Oga Biko,
I was informing you that your life does not reflect your claims of not being centred in relation to Europe.
I was not asking you to tell me about your family's education. I was asking a rhetorical question.
I know you have no choice g
On Thu, Aug 19, 2021, 10:00 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:
--Oluwatoyin,If or when you have children of your own, you will understand that it is not acceptable to ask a father where or how he is educating his own children unless you are contributing money to the costs. Otherwise, it is none of your business. Nigerians raise such questions about public officials because the costs are met at public expense. How or where I educate my own children does not concern you.Your magical thinking is not logically adequate. You assume that those abroad are enjoying life and therefore have no right to seek to try and make where they live even better as expected under the philosophy of the pursuit of happiness and civic education for a more perfect union. You also assume that being stranded at home means that you are more patriotic whereas you are full of jealousy for those who never worry about lights out and you feel that your culture is inferior to the foreign culture in every sense.Instead of being consumed by envy, plan your own work systematically wherever you may be and write two hours in the morning, two hours in the afternoon, and two hours in the evening for a full time work as a writer. You will be amazed how productive you will be. You have told us repeatedly that you too went abroad to study and returned with multiple Master's degrees. Congratulations. The majority of the best work by African writers came while they were resident in Africa. You too can write great work even while at home. Keep it up.You want to know what we are doing abroad but Ali Mazrui answered that question long ago - we are providing technical foreign aid abroad just as there are thousands of Europeans and North Americans in Africa doing the same.You think that the US has nothing to learn from the Taliban? Wrong. For years to come, they will be analyzing the lessons from that war in order to make their own society better. I already pointed out a couple of lessons that we can learn from them - a public health campaign against alcoholism that Soyinka attempted in all genres, Achebe did too, and the Palm Wine Drinkerds tried to teach but some people cant be taught anything unless the lesson is coming from Kant.An estimated 95,000 people die from alcoholism in the US every year (68,000 men and 27, 000 women) much more than the number of US troops killed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam combined. Maybe they would not binge drink so much if they haver access to recreational marijuana as adults freely choosing what to consume. Do you even know how many people die from alcoholism in Naijungle?
Alcohol Facts and Statistics | National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and A...
According to the 2017 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 86.3 percent of people ages 18 or older re...
Another lesson that we can learn from the Taliban and Boko Haram is that they are mistaken in opposing the education of girls. I hope that the US learned this lesson enough to fund education massively and make it accessible to all tuition-free at all levels. Africans can wipe away illiteracy within four years if we prioritize it and organize for it.Do not agonize! Organize!BikoOn Wednesday, 18 August 2021, 16:35:21 GMT-4, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com> wrote:Oga Biko,--But there you are, a proud Igboman sitting pretty in the US.Why did you not remain in Nigeria or return to Nigeria to work at UNN?You won't do so.If you do, how readily will you be able keep in touch with cutting edge research in your field?When last did you experience a power outage in your house or office? Do you own a generator for such situations?When last did you fear traveling interstate beceause of fear or robbers and kidnappers?That is the situation of your fellow scholars at UNN.Are any of your children studying in Nigeria?Yet there you are, having voted with your feet to relocate to where the grass is clearly greener for you and you are talking about Europhilia and Stockholm Syndrome.Africans were the first creators of mathematics. The Asians and Arabs laid the foundations of mathematics.But we know the people who built upon these foundations to give us today's world as defined by science and technology.We know those people were not living in Africa, Asia or the Arab world. We also know that those Asians and Arabs, such as Abdus Salam, the first Pakistani to win a Nobel Prize, in physics, to play a role in defining the modern world on those contexts, did not do it from their home countries.Why?Why are you and so many African scholars in the US in spite of the rigours of gaining US citizenship and the racist undercurrents of the environment, challenges absent in your home countries?Bros, all societies are not equal.Do you need the Taliban to learn about the negativities of excessive alcohol?Where was the research done that specified the biological dangers of excessive alchohol? Was it in societies run by people like the Taliban?Is the very concept of research in relation to critical quest for knowledge not anathema to the values of those Islamic extremists?You are enjoying the liberality and access to knowledge enabled by the US and are talking of learning from the Taliban and Boko Haram.Perhaps you could reference what could be learned from them about cutting the throats of sleeping school children as Boko Haram did in Nigeria, machine gunning school children as they did in Nigeria and as the Taliban did in Pakistan, of kindapping female students as sex slaves as Boko Haram did in Nigeria, of shooting female schooldren in the face on their way to school as the Taliban did with Mailala, of bombing churches packed with Christimas worshippers as Boko Haram did at Madalla and running a policy of regularly machine gunning Christians in churches and bombing govt establishments as they did in their resurgence.If you need to learn from Islamic civilisation, please place those inhuman savages in their place and dig into Islamic literature, philosophy, art and architecture.Make the acquaintance of such poets and thinkers as Rumi, Ibn Arabi, Ibn Sina and more.Read the Koran, noting both it's sublimity and it's negativities.Savages like Taliban have been and Boko Haram are represent a debased and atavistic form of Islam, approaches other Abrahamic faiths have left behind.ThanksToyinOn Wed, Aug 18, 2021, 15:49 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:--Oluwatoyin,Check to see that you are not suffering from Stockholm Syndrome too with your apparent Europhilism.There is no need for a clash of civilizations or the end of history thesis. Cultures can and do coexist and enrich one another for the better. What you call Western science is simply science and the West borrowed much of it from the Orient. Even today, we have something to learn from the Taliban and Boko Haram about the risk of alcoholism to public health. We can, however, better rely on education rather than prohibition to control this risk.In case my first draft was misleading in any way, I have edited the post on my blog site:
Obama's Withdrawal Doctrine
By Biko Agozino It was Obama's idea to get out of Afghanistan as far back as 2010, even without a victory. He d...
On Wednesday, 18 August 2021, 05:53:02 GMT-4, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com> wrote:Powerful piece from Biko.Reminds me of my developing thoughts.What have the Taliban got to offer the average Afghan in terms of quality of life?That is the question.Not claims of adherence to religious codes.Whatever our faith, some fundamentals are needed for quality of human life. If you can't build that, your religion could become a trap.I see Europe and North America as the most successful polities in moving beyond the trap religion often becomes and caring for their people, in spite of their imperfections.The example of Islamic societies is uneven in this regard and without the freedom from religious constraints won by Western thinkers enabling the Scientific Revolution I'm not able to understand how any people can develop themselves into a knowledge powerhouse, the enduring core of Western global doniance in technology and it's relationship to weapons construction, other technologies and wealth creation.Without liberalised economies that inspire innovation and wealth creation I can't see how anyone can approximate Western leadership in information technology and other sectors.Whatever Asia is doing today in technology all comes from Western innovations.In the past 300 years has any other body of people's advanced human knowledge, human control of nature, human comfort, human creativity, as much as the West?Yes, they have been criminals, thieves, slavers, manipulators, colonialists, destroyers of civilisations and remain neo-colonialists while racist nationalism grows within their borders, but the complete scope of their contrbution to human well being, in terms of models of how to live with dignity and self fulfillment as a human being remain unequalled.Anyone who claims to have a better blueprint has to prove it.Claims of divine revelation, the core of claims of Islamic supremacy in social management can't replace lived reality in people's lives.ThanksToyin--On Wed, Aug 18, 2021, 01:12 bikozino via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:Note taken. Let them make an exception for marijuana then since it has never hurt a fly and doctors recommend it to the sick.But even with opium, the war on drugs and the war in Afghanistan allowed the trade to boom. True that opioids killed 95,000 in the US last year and half a million in the past ten years but because it is profitable, there is no war on the manufacturers. Rather, they are allowed to negotiate chicken feed fines and escape with the loot just like big tobacco and legal moonshiners for tax revenues.Education works better to reduce harm than prohibition. Peace and love work better than war. Health care for all.I support Biden pulling out as fast as he could to escape being trapped in a pyrrhic defeat at huge costs. The transition to the Taliban is proving more peaceful than the transition from Trump. If Trump supporters want to continue fighting against the Taliban, let them go and volunteer for the opposing war lord's over there. Let the Taliban surprise their people by pursuing development instead of militarism.Biko--On Aug 17, 2021 6:42 PM, "'Emeagwali, Gloria (History)' via USA Africa Dialogue Series" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:--Note that legalizing drugswould be interpreted as legalizing the poppyand heroin .That is a slippery slope. Opiod Crisisfrom Afghan poppies and US pharmaceuticalsis devastating enough.
Trump definitely bungled things and maybe responsible for the demoralization of theAfghan army and the swift victory of the Taliban.
Good reminder that Obama/Bidenwanted out. Where Biden went wrongis in the flat footed response.
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
From: 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 17, 2021 4:48 PM
To: Usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Obama's Afghan Exit StrategyPlease be cautious: **External Email**
--It was Obama's idea to get out of Afghanistan as far back as 2010, even without a victory. He did not like the idea of fighting to protect corrupt politicians who did not have the guts to fight their own civil war. Bob Woodward wrote in Obama's War that the policy should have been to construct a Jeffersonian style democracy (as if Jefferson who enslaved hundreds and raped enslaved children was such a good role model for democracy) but Obama insisted that it was up to the Afghans what sort of polity that they wanted to build, so long as they did not harbor terrorists or threaten human rights. If they choose to build a more perfect union, the US will be there to assist them and if they allow any group to threaten the US from their soil, the can count on being punished again, collateral damages and all.
US generals told Obama to follow their recommendation to remain because they were the ones on the ground. Obama told them that he was the Commander In Chief and that he was giving them the direct order to find an exit strategy. Although he agreed to their recommendation for more resources by sending 30,000 more troops in the surge of 2009 to bring the troop levels to nearly 100,000, he made it clear that it was a temporary measure to accomplish the goal getting Osama and getting out. He got his man in 2011 and immediately started rapid draw down of troops.
Trump came in and said that it was a mistake to leave quickly. He wanted to stay on and 'kill terrorists'. But he ended up negotiating with the Taliban for a time-table to withdraw US troops within a year. Biden delayed Trump's arbitrary deadline by 3 months to see if the Afghans would come to a negotiated settlement on their own but their corrupt government bragged that they preferred to fight on. Biden is wrong in suggesting that getting out of there is the Trump policy, it was set by the Obama-Biden administration. It was bungled by Trump who may have demoralized Afghan troops by negotiating with the Taliban without inviting Afghan government officials.
It is to the credit of the US that thousands are scrambling into the military cargo plane crammed like a slave ship to escape their own country. It is true that hundreds of thousands more will prefer to move to the US than live under the Taliban. Afghans can help to change that Stockholm syndrome by guaranteeing the rights of women and children to go to school. Obama already increased school enrollment by girls and brought women into the traditional ruling councils called Jirgas (reported by Wardak and Braithwaite in a two-part article in the British Journal of Criminology in 2013). Afghans should consider having a co-equal bicameral legislature with a House of Men and a House of Women and they should enforce gender parity in all offices provided that their is mass literacy. Abolish capital punishment too.
After 20 years of conquest and occupation, the average years of schooling remained 3.9 years and that is the shame of US occupation. If 26% of the trillions of dollars spent in Afghanistan had gone to education, as recommended by UNESCO for all countries, the country would have 100% literacy today. If all that money was spent at home on education, all the student loan debts of US students would have been paid off with some change to provide for publicly funded education at all levels and healthcare for all. The Biden-Harris administration should pursue bold policy initiatives with the savings from wars of choice that should be rightfully ended.
It was reported that the Taliban made much of their war revenues through the drugs trade. They should now join states in the US by legalizing marijuana because it is known to be medicinal and therefore should not be forbidden as Haram. Legalization of marijuana will bring in wealth and employment opportunities for many families as they recover from the war and the government can tax their profits.
Biden-Harris should lead the world by example from home by ending the war on drugs so that educators and healthcare providers can use harm-reduction instead of punishment to deal with the public health issues of drug use. End the war against the people in the guise of the war on drugs worldwide, says the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Biko
Bob Woodward book details Obama battles with advisers over exit plan for...
President Obama urgently looked for a way out of the war in Afghanistan last year, repeatedly pressing his top m...
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