Song of Ogun,
Respect begets respect. So, it is only out of personal respect for you that I am replying.
I have read your diatribe.
Abi or maybe, na your song be dis :
"Well well, na true I want talk again O
Na true I want talk again O
If I dey lie O
Make Orisha punish me
Make Ifa dey punish me O
Make Edumare punish me O
Make the land dey punish me O
Make Edumare punish me O "
As Fela said, "I never tell you finish"
If I told you that I heard Kenneth Dike say such and such , I would not be necessarily lying... or would I ? As to what Awo said or never said, I assume that you were not there and that you were probably in Sweden at the timer such words were being attributed to him, right? Or if I said ( word against word) I heard Baba Kadiri say this or that, I would not necessarily be lying, would I? A lot of history including some of the New Testament is made up of the kind of stuff known as gossip, right? In fact very few verifiable, first person witness accounts. And then even in the realm of literary studies there all types of biographical heresies...
Your words : "...fraudulently concealing a basket of wheat from the Church in order to avoid being taxed." Let me tell you this : The Ananias story is yet another anti-Semitic Shylock type of libel in your so called "New" testament - another mischievous and malicious fabrication which the loathsome missionaries have deceived you into believing is "the word of God"
Word of God my foot. Just as in this case as you present it, even the more mundane "word of AWO" cannot be proved. Your main bone of contention is that it cannot be proved that the words attributed to AWO were said by him either when he was alive or from the grave or from the ethereal spheres of of the Hereafter , right? This does not mean that in his lifetime AWO never talked about the hunger and starvation of Biafra, outside of the inverted commas attributed to him or deny the possibility of verifiable sources attesting to the veracity of any such remarks – in which case all you are asking for is that such a statement pass the litmus test of cross -examination which would permit such words to be legal tender in this case if he were (God forbid) to be tried posthumously, for crimes against humanity. And about Yoruba gods business, your words again, your multiple references such as your " world ruled by 'ELÉGBARÀ,' the Yoruba god of mischief " and I guess your other deities of the Yoruba pantheon, which the bona fide Muslims refer to as the unforgivable sin shirk of the Mushrikun...
After the Sweden – Mexico match, I'll get back to you. I'm looking forward to getting back to you. I intend to relish the moment and I hope that you will enjoy it too. Before that, pray for us, this is not Nigeria versus Biafra this is our Sweden versus Mexico. You know that we need to win this one..
On Wednesday, 27 June 2018 00:14:51 UTC+2, ogunlakaiye wrote:
...Rabbi Hamelberg,
I observe your pretence of answering one of the questions that I posed to you as a condition for my further engagement with you on this subject. Derived from Fela's song, you swore to be punished by the Almighty God if you told lie just because you are sure that God no longer cares about deadly lies human beings commit everyday here on earth. How I wish God is still as active as He was when He caused Ananias and his wife, Sapphira, in the Acts of Apostles, Chapter 5, New Testament, to be struck to death with thunder and lightening for lying and fraudulently concealing a basket of wheat from the Church in order to avoid being taxed. With such consequence, you would not have dared swear falsely as you have done in your response.
One of my questions which you pretended to be answering was in relation to the statement of Obafemi Awolowo in the London Financial Times of 26 June 1969 and which was culled in the London Daily Telegraph of June 27, 1969. The papers quoted him thus, "All is fair in war, and starvation is one of the weapons of war. I do not see why we should feed our enemies fat in order for them to fight us harder." It was this particular statement that Chinua Achebe took up on p.233 of his book, There Was a Country, and dubbed it a diabolical policy on the part of Awolowo to reduce the population of the Igbo. Awolowo died on 9 May 1987, but Achebe's book in which Awolowo was accused of applying a diabolical policy to reduce the population of the Igbo during the war was published in 2012, good 25 years after the demise of Awolowo. In your post on this forum, Thursday, 14 June 2018, you attached google links to support your claim that Awolowo defended himself against the accusation of genocide while he was still alive with us on this earth. I opened all the links and observed that you have quoted specifically from this link : www.igbofocus.co.uk/The-
Biafran-War/Obafemi--Awolowo/ The source of information about the purported Awolowo's statement on his role in the civil war was disclosed by the online Igbo Focus as Punch of October 10, 2012. All the links agreed that Awolowo made the purported statement at a town hall meeting in Abeokuta during the 1983 presidential election campaign, but none gave the date of the meeting. There were no audio or video recordings of Awolowo uttering the purported statements on his role in the civil war. Responding to your links on Awolowo's statements on starvation, 18 June 2018, I debunked the statements as fake since Bukola A. Oyeniyi in a book, Writing The Nigeria Biafra War, claimed that Awolowo made the statements in a Radio and Television interview, while other links claimed it was at a Town Hall meeting in Abeokuta. Moreover, no one ever heard of the statements until 2012, and in response to Achebe's postulation in his book. In order to back up your lie, you asked, "What do you Baba Kadiri understand by these words quoted by you and attributed to AWO?" Thereafter, you quoted the tail end of the Igbo Focus online publication on the subject which was not included in other links supplied by you. Certainly, there was reason for you to prefer quoting just from the Igbo Focus online. I will now reproduce in full what you quoted in your post of 14 June 2018, which is, "The ending of the war itself that I'm accused of starving the Igbo, I did nothing of the sort. You know shortly after the liberation of these places, Calabar, Enugu and Port Harcourt, I decided to pay a visit. … But when I went there, what did I see? I saw the kwashiorkor victims. If you see a kwashiorkor victim, you'll never like war to be waged. Terrible sight, in Enugu, in Port Harcourt, not many in Calabar, but mainly in Enugu and Port Harcourt. Then I enquired what happened to the food we are sending to the civilians. We were sending food through the Red Cross and CARITAS to them, but what happened was that the vehicles carrying the food were always ambushed by the soldiers. That's what I discovered, and the food would then be taken to the soldiers to feed them, and so they were able to continue to fight. And I said that was a very dangerous policy, we didn't intend the food for soldiers. But who will go behind the line to stop the soldiers from ambushing the vehicles that were carrying the food? And as long as the soldiers were fed the war will continue and who will continue to suffer? Those who didn't go to the place to see things as I did, you remember that all the big guns, all the soldiers in the Biafran army looked all well fed after the war, its only the mass of the people that suffered kwashiorkor. You won't hear of a single lawyer, a single doctor, a single architect, who suffered from kwashiorkor? None of their children either, so they waylaid the foods, they ambush the vehicles and took the foods to their friends and to their collaborators and to their children and the masses were suffering. So I decided to stop sending food there. In the process the civilians would suffer, but the soldiers suffered most … when you saw Ojukwu's picture after the war, did he look like someone who is not well fed? But he has been taking the food which we send to the civilians and so we stopped the food." All the online media that published the above purported statement of Awolowo, except the Igbo focus that claimed the Punch as the source of its publication, ended it with two sentences : So I decided to stop sending food there. In the process the civilians would suffer, but the soldiers will suffer most. Obviously Igbo Focus had mischievously changed the soldiers will suffer most to but the soldiers suffered most. Realizing that Awolowo had no power to decide and implement the statement, 'So I decided to stop sending food there', the Igbo forum then made Awolowo to accuse Ojukwu thus, "But he has been taking the food which we send to civilians and so we stopped the food." The Igbo forum must have noticed that the author of, My role in the civil war by Awolowo had made him to enquire, 'what happened to the food we were sending to the civilians?' The Igbo forum must have noticed also that the author of the statement made Awolowo to say, 'We were sending food through the Red Cross and Caritas to them; we didn't intend the food for soldiers,' and finally discovered that Awolowo who was made to talk in collective pronoun, we, implying the federal government of which he was only a member but not the leader, could not personally have claimed, 'So, I decided to stop sending food there.' Consequently, the Igbo Forum carelessly retained the claim that Awolowo personally and singlehandedly decided to stop sending food to Biafra while at the same time adding to it that Ojukwu 'has been taking the food which we send to civilians and so we stopped it.' With this explanations, only those talented with unlimited SQ will still maintain that Awolowo referred to himself simultaneously as 'I and we in the decision to stop sending food to civilians in Biafra.My-role-in-the-civil-war/
Among the links forwarded by you that published the purported statements of Awolowo on starvation in Biafra, beside Igbo Focus, are: (i) Nigeria Village Square.com of 7 October 2012, under the headline - Chief Obafemi Awolowo On Biafra In His Own words. The source of the information indicated, posted by NVS. (ii) Arise Nigeria. Org, with the headline - Awolowo Speaks from the Grave, Replies Achebe, Says I Am Not A War Criminal, Ojukwu and his men Stole Food Sent By Red Cross and Caritas. It gave the source of the information as Pointblank News. (iii) ireport.com/docs/DOC-854578, posted on 7 October 2012 by jide001 under the headline - Response of Late Pa Awolowo to The New Book Of Chinua Achebe - There Was a Country. The publisher seemed attached to the CNN with caution to readers thus, About This iReport, Not verified by the CNN. That implies that the information contained in the publication was not audio or video recorded and as such not reliable . My dear Rabbi Hamelberg, even if cyber touts can thumb your nose with fake news, they cannot remove your spectacles and deny you the right to read and detect their fake news. Take note that not every information in the google is true. The statement of Awolowo in the London Times of June 26, 1969, objected to giving food to enemy's soldiers so that they would not be able to fight harder, but Ojukwu's Ahiara Declaration of June 1, 1969 under the subtitle, SHAKING OFF NIGERIANISM, revealed the lifestyle of the Biafran elites at that time. Ojukwu said, "We accuse Nigerians of inordinate love of money, ostentatious living and irresponsibility, but here, even while we are engaged in a war of national survival, even while the life of our nation hangs in the balance, we see some public servants, who throw huge parties to entertain their friends; who kill cows to Christen their babies. We have members of the Armed Forces who carry on attack trade instead of fighting the enemy. We have traders who hoard essential goods and inflate prices….." There were two types of Biafrans, the Di-Ala and the Osu. While Di-Ala were throwing parties to entertain their friends and killing cows to Christen their babies; and while soldiers were using their weapons to commandeer Red Cross relief supplies, called attack trade by Ojukwu, and traders were hoarding food and increasing prices, the Osu were dying of preventable starvation in Biafra.
As a self-styled professor of truth and champion of the Igbo's rights, you elevated, from your high pedestal, the catastrophes of the World War II to the same level as Biafra/Nigeria war. To the best of my knowledge, the Jews in Germany did not have a Jewish military leader with a standing army that declared a part of Germany, a sovereign state for Hebrews, and declared his readiness to fight against the rest of Germany. German civilian Jews and Jews in other parts of Europe were just gunned down or sent to concentration camps to be gassed to death. 26 million Russians who were non-Jews died in that war in which Britain, France and the USA expended the lives of over ten million Black people as mine sweepers in their war Nazi Germany. After the end of that tragic war, another holocaust was committed when millions of Palestine people were murdered and evicted from their ancestral land. Berlin wall fell but a 720 kilometre long and 8 metre high wall, twice as high as the Berlin wall, was erected in the West Bank. Lest, I forget, there was Nuremberg Tribunal that investigated, prosecuted and punished Nazi offenders for their crimes, not against the Jews alone since the cause of the war was not the Jews, but entire humanity. In his book, The Holocaust Industry, Norman G. Finkelstein, whose parents sat in the German concentration awaiting to be gassed to death, has reflected on the exploitation of Jewish suffering and the reduction of the World War II to just the persecution of Jews. That is not to deny the atrocities of the World War II as it affected the Jews. Unlike the Jews, the Igbo had a military leader, Ojukwu, who declared part of Nigeria a sovereign state of Biafra, contrary to international law and the constitution of Nigeria. He declared his readiness to fight a war with Nigeria. The Federal government prosecuted the war under the supervision of International Observers from the UN, the then OAU, Poland, Sweden, Britain and Canada. The reports of the Observers never indicted Nigeria for military misconduct or genocide. In fact, the Nigerian civil war was the only war in the world in which a party to war had invited a team of international observers to trail the steps of its soldiers at the war front so as to ascertain good conduct. I refrain from using the word I have in mind to describe you for equating World War II to Biafra War because as Yoruba people say, A KÌ T'ORÍ WÉRÉ-WÈRÉ PÁ ÒBUKÓ, literally meaning, we don't crucify a he-goat for being restless. That of course emanate out of our understanding that he-goats are naturally born to be restless.
S. Kadiri
Från: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com > för Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 24 juni 2018 19:31
Till: USA Africa Dialogue Series
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Death of MonarchismTo the ever obdurate Baba Kadiri:
I don't label you a "pettifoger" but I wonder why you should want to elevate your attested spirit of mischief to the status of a Yoruba deity/ Yoruba God-ship?
"And when it is said unto them: "Make not mischief in the earth", they say: "We are peacemakers only."
I only crave your patience. I intend to deliver the coup de grâce towards the end when you yourself finally admit Q.E.D. that you have exhausted all futile prevarication and your own systematic refusal to acknowledge the plain meanings of words and the logic inherent in them has come to an end. Finito.
Let us agree that the factual accuracy of what actually happened does not depend on Baba Kadiri's truthfulness or what the truthful Chief Obafemi Awolowo or Emeka Ojukwu or Nnamdi Azikiwe or Comrade Gowon said.
To the first of your questions:
You asked, (1) "Did what Awolowo say constitute a policy of genocide or an act of genocide?"
As Fela sang,
"Well well, na true I want talk again o
Na true I want talk again o
If I dey lie o
Make Orisha punish me
Make Ifa dey punish me o
Make Edumare punish me o
Make the land dey punish me o
Make Edumare punish me o "What do you Baba Kadiri understand by the word "incitement"?
At the risk of sounding as pedantic as you usually are, when it is to your advantage, what do you Baba Kadiri understand by these words quoted by you and attributed to AWO ;
"... So I decided to stop sending the food there. In the process the civilians would suffer, but the soldiers suffered most... when you saw Ojukwu's picture after the war, did he look like someone who is not well fed? But he has been taking the food which we send to the civilians, and so we stopped the food."
As a result of the deliberate policy of "so we stopped the food", close to two million Biafran People died through hunger and starvation and not by Federal army gunfire. How does Baba Kadiri answer this question in good conscience: If the Biafrans were Chief Awolowo's Yoruba people would he have " stopped the food"?
It is only a conjecture on my part that what Ojukwu could have meant by he "saved " his people from genocide, is that he saved them from the ongoing hunger and starvation - the inhumane/unhumanitarian and calculated genocidal effects of the starvation policy which we are to assume would have continued to kill Igbos if he had not capitulated. In that sense he could have meant that he saved his Igbo people from the ongoing genocide which would have increased the number of dead Igbos from two million to a number that's too hideous to even contemplate, hypothetically speaking.
You think that the goddess of Yoruba smartness is guiding your senses and your SQ when you write , "Well, in this world ruled by 'ELÉGBARÀ,' the Yoruba god of mischief, the word further has been introduced to precede Ojukwu's stated genocide as if to say the genocide against Biafra was carried out in instalments."
Baba Kadiri, cynics say that " Rome was not built in a day"
Nota bene : Concerning the unholy trinity of Hitler , Eichmann and Dr, Mengele, the instigators, authors, architects and perpetrators of The Final Solution , do I need to further inform and correct you and the holocaust deniers that just as in the case of the Biafra genocide so too the Holocaust was definitely "carried out in instalments"
On Sunday, 24 June 2018 16:54:50 UTC+2, ogunlakaiye wrote:Dear Rabbi Hamelberg,
I never knew that you are such a great pettifoger, capable of arguing that 'Ojukwu could have meant that he had consequently saved his people from further genocide.' Had it not been that I know that the Secretary to the Government of Biafra led by Ojukwu was Mr. N.U. Akpan, I would have mistaken you for the Secretary to Ojukwu and therefore accept you as an authority on the interpretation of what Ojukwu meant when he answered rhetorically to a direct question thus, "How could I feel responsible in a situation in which I put myself out and saved the people from genocide?" Well, in this world ruled by 'ELÉGBARÀ,' the Yoruba god of mischief, the word further has been introduced to precede Ojukwu's stated genocide as if to say the genocide against Biafra was carried out in instalments. Certainly a non-pettifoger would have understood Ojukwu as having said that he prevented genocide from being committed against his Igbo people. To the disappointment of you and your fellow propagandists accusing Nigeria of having committed genocide against the Igbo during the civil war, it was not only Ojukwu that asserted that there was no genocide against the Igbo people when he claimed that, he put himself out and saved the Igbo people from genocide, but also Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe who dismissed the accusation of genocide by Nigeria against the Igbo as a heartless propaganda designed to exploit the fear of traumatised Igbo people.
You may wish to know that Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe was among the delegates sent by Ojukwu to Paris in September 1968 to solicit for more arm supplies from the French government. Realizing that no amount of arms support to Biafra could reverse the military fortune of Ojukwu controlling less than 5% of its original Biafran territory, the French government declined to increase its military support to Biafra. While other delegates to France returned to Biafra, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe absconded and sought asylum in Britain. On August 17, 1969, Nnamdi Azikiwe visited Nigeria and toured the country, including the liberated parts of Biafra. On August 28, 1969, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe addressed a press conference in London at which he uttered the followings among other things, "Knowing that the accusation of genocide is palpably false, but bearing in mind the widespread killing of 1966, which must always hunt our memories, why should some people continue to fool our people to believe that they are slated for slaughter, when we know that they suffer mental anguish and physical agony as a result of their being homeless and their places of abode having been desolated by war and their lives rendered helpless?" Nnamdi Azikiwe's statement on false accusation of genocide committed by Nigeria was based on the fact that Ojukwu had told the Igbo that if they stayed behind in the Igbo towns captured by the federal forces, they would be killed. Therefore, many Igbo civilians voluntarily followed retreating Biafran soldiers from towns captured by the Nigerian Army. Whatever version of Awolowo's statement in circulation about starvation in Biafra you choose to accept as being rationale, you still need to confirm if the statement in question constitute, intent to commit or commission of, genocide.
You should not joke about serious issue by purposefully misreading me to derive personal fun. The Israeli government has kept and is still keeping Gaza on air and sea blockade. Much as Israel is obliged, under international law, to see to it that passage of relief supplies to civilians in Gaza are not blocked, any cargo by air or sea ferrying relief supplies to Gaza must be subjected to the inspection of Israeli authorities, according to the same international law. The point here, which I know that you are clever not to grasp is that the receipt of relief supplies by people of Gaza is attached with condition, which is pre-inspection of cargoes to Gaza by the Israeli. You must, therefore, understand, through your own Jehovah given wisdom, that if the ruler(s) of Gaza should reject any food or relief supplies that have passed through Israel's inspection, the resulting self-promoted mass starvation of Gaza civilians by its ruler should not be blamed on Israel as an act of genocide.
You asked, "So, the Federal Nigerians did not want to force food on the starving Biafrans? Are you faintly suggesting that the starving Biafrans rejected all food supplies, …, passing through Nigerian territory? Does that make sense to you?" The starving Biafrans living in the territory under the control of the Biafran Army and its leader, Ojukwu, had no choice but to rely on their leader. There was no way the Federal side could militarily enforce supplies of food to the starving Biafrans under Ojukwu's control as you insinuated.
Implicitly or faintly, I have never suggested that starving Biafrans rejected all food supplies passing through Nigerian territory. The Biafran leader, Ojukwu, took that decision on behalf of his people in 1968 and made it public to the whole world when he declared that food and relief supplies into Biafra were unacceptable to him, unless they came from sources and through channels that had no connection with the Federal government of Nigeria. That was why he rejected Gowon's plan for international supervised land route corridors from Port Harcourt and Calabar for transportation of relief supplies to civilians in Biafra. Instead, Ojukwu wanted the international relief agencies to increase airlifts of food into Biafra from São Tomé (see p. 211, THERE WAS A COUNTRY By Chinua Achebe). Your questions do not make sense to me and I don't think they will make sense to anybody, because starving Biafrans did not, could not, and were not in position to, reject food that had passed through Nigerian territory. Evidently, the Biafran leader, Ojukwu, made that decision and mass starvation of Biafrans should be blamed on his government.
The oppressed and persecuted Semites in Gaza threw pebbles against their oppressive and persecuting fellow Semites in Israel. The Semites in Israel responded by perforating the bodies of fellow seventy-five Semites in Gaza to death. Was that genocide, my dear Rabbi with a big clean heart?
Since I do not want to keep repeating myself, this would be my last response to you on this issue unless you answer to my previous questions restated here forthwith. (i) Did what Awolowo say constitute a policy of genocide or an act of genocide? (ii) Whose responsibility was it to feed the Biafrans, the Biafran government or Nigerian government? (iii) In which Court/Tribunal was it established that the Federal Government of Nigeria committed genocide on the Igbo and that the Yoruba ethnic group partook in it? The music of civil war stopped playing on 15 January 1970 but those that are deaf still keep dancing on to the civil war music.
S. Kadiri
Från: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> för Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 23 juni 2018 06:46
Till: USA Africa Dialogue Series
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Death of MonarchismBaba Kadiri,
Ojukwu could have mean that he had consequently saved his people from further genocide
So that you can no longer accuse me of not answering your questions, although you have not answered mine , please read on. I know that you are going to be very happy when you read this, up to a point:
Even as you accuse me of "double talk" you are the one shooting out of both sides of your mouth. Please make up your mind :
So, Awo's rationale of "why should we feed our enemies fat in order for them to figh
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