Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Contemporary reality ( vainly trying to reverse the brain drain) : “some of us tend to look down on things African and lust for all things "foreign."

Our mostly "victimology" approaches (whether as our individual or local or national or international selves) to the WHAT and the HOW of the various or different selves of our cultural others often involve certain appropriations or misappropriations of such otherness that continually reinforce or reproduce inferiority complex (IC) almost endlessly. Perhaps, a most difficult challenge in life amounts to being oneself (paradoxically) and yet changing for the better.

Life AIN'T just an axiom— perhaps, also an axiom (a serial axiom) AND a serial maxim — eternal series of both. 

Oohay

On Saturday, May 24, 2025, 7:08 AM, Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com> wrote:

Contemporary reality ( vainly trying to reverse the brain drain) : "some of us tend to look down on things African and lust for all things "foreign."

For the Bible Thumpers ( I almost wrote Bible Trumpers) : 

Devarim 17  // Deuteronomy 17 : 16 - 17 

Contemporary reality : according to Sir Victor Okafor (rhymes with Sir Victor Uwaifo), 

"some of us tend to look down on things African and lust for all things "foreign." 

To which charge, not "some" but according to Paul all of us have sinned

and - Union Sundown - have no alternative than to plead guilty:

lusting after foreign women

lusting on arrival

lusting for survival

lusting after foreign gods & goddesses 

lusting for foreign watches, planes,

private jets, hair pieces, alcoholic beverages,

watch straps, clothes, shoes

computers, cars, phones, currencies

cameras, all manner of electronic devices 

NB: In 1981, I was dazed and amazed : the brand names of the sound systems that I found at the Aba Market had never been seen in Sweden 

Here's the stark reality of US imports from other countries 

  

I'm writing this after watching CNN's Richard Quest & Co give a breakdown of Trump's latest threat, giving meaning to the madness/ the method or lack thereof in the madness and this time it's not the Hiroshima bomb, because so far, Trump the Nobel Prize aspirant is a "man of peace"  and this time it's Man of Justice and Human Rights for Americans First and foremost, hence Trump's  great, righteous indignation that "they're ripping us off " - and it's not the Mafia boss talking, this time it's a uniform 50% tariff to be inflicted on all EU goods seeking legal entry into the United States. There are other methods and points of entry of course and even the possibility of going back to the future by revisiting the dreaded past as when during the Great Depression and those awful prohibition times they were known as "contraband goods" available on "the Black Market" - so too this time, if Trump is not careful, they would be arriving from the continent of Europe, like the influenza, unheralded  and Kennedy his Health Minister had better watch out because those contraband goods will be arriving illegally - like UFOS, like aliens and unwanted refugees, by air, land , sea, yes, even through  the American Gulf or historically speaking, The Gulf of Mexico  soon to be and the Gulf of Mar-a-Lago according to the new time reckoning, AT ( after Trump) so that like the stargazers you'll hear the neighbours singing in unison, hysterically,   

Close the door  - they're coming through the window !

We're talking poetry here : 

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, 

Or what's a heaven for?

I too have a dream : For lack of a better word, I'd say that Professor Victor Okafor's latest is also a beautiful dream logos , a very tall order indeed,  visionary alright, but perhaps a little less cosmic than Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju's earthly humanistics & his scientific trajectory "Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

On my more earthly plane, as the saying goes " If wishes were horses then beggars would ride" ….and if wishes were sputnik spacecraft, then on Elon Musk's Tesla for a little fee / down payment, beggars/ supplicants would ride and  -the higher the price the nicer the nice, for a much bigger fee, fly all the way to the moon and the stars. 

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