Dear Professor Harrow,
Mood I'm in, I'm still laughing.
Earlier in the day, on the tube to our Kulturhuset in down town Stockholm I started my journey through BLACKASS and from page one, no headphones on, started laughing – and to hell with the people staring at me as if I (Black Man) maybe back in Africa because of the light summer heat had now finally gone off my bonkers – which made me laugh even more merrily and the more the thought took shape, the more the ripples escaped and became mirth-ier. Philip Roth's erotic fantasy The Breast is funny enough - except that the stasis of his erectile projection - a story of metamorphosis al-right but mostly of stasis - passive receptivity and an object of stimulation unlike the infinite social, cultural , political , not to talk of the sensitive and the emotional possibilities of metamorphosis from black to white - black and white – black and night. The last time it happened on the screen was through a deliberate act of deception in Soul Man - and so I burst into a fresh round of uncompromising laughter and this time it was the politics of my imagination i.e. possibly Ogbeni Kadiri 's worst nightmare : metamorphosed overnight into an Oyibo (white skin, green eyes, red hair) one that the devil had cursed and returning (waking up from his nightmare to lo and behold he had just been transformed into one of my favourites species: an oyibo! And so laughter continued as my Oyibo Ogbeni Kadiri the protagonist of my imagination (nationality Nigerian) walked down Furo's street on the way to the interview and seeing the world anew through his new green eyes, maybe cursing the gods or the wizards or fate or all of them together for being so cruel. It was a short ride, my train arriving at the Stockholm Central Station at the point where a mother is laughing and saying to her child who has just beheld Mr. White Man , " No fear, no cry again my pikin. No be ojuju, nah oyibo man"
Once I arrived at the Kulturhuset , I phoned the real Ogbeni Kadiri to tell him about the cause of my laughter….
Re - "but i don't fear for the u.k. turning into a neofascist rightwing state"
Of course, I share your optimism that there is no danger of the UK and the descendants of the people who first gave us the legal document the Magna Carta will become Nazis or that the principles enshrined in the Magna Carta are in danger of falling into desuetude.
My optimism is even greater about the United States of America. In the same breath and just like yours truly, I suppose that you also have some reasonable reservation about the US prospective President's latest spiel that the US should consider profiling Muslims – supposedly a practical anti terrorist measure ( vetting suspect ideologically anti American extremists, racists, anti-Semites, terrorists , Sadists, homophobes, islamophobes ) but raising the inevitable question that have always dogged racial profiling and the head question : What does this kind of profiling lead to and where doe sit end?
As to the UK referendum on the EU - rule of thumb is that the bonafide Brits don't like foreigners like Barack Obama, telling them what to do . But today, the scary proposition that Brexit could mean an economic meltdown for the man in the street - plus the noxious propaganda that Tommy Mair was an ambassador of Britain First and merely executing Brexit policy is said to have blown some wind of change into the sails of those who don't want to take any risks by Br-exiting the EU
BTW, one only has this life in which to serve the Almighty in every capacity and formally as any nationality. The proposition that " The word was made flesh and dwelt among us" is so loaded that one does not have to read paragraph two the book that was written on the island of Patmos to take on the many implications of his contention….
Shalom aleichem !
Cornelius
On Saturday, 18 June 2016 18:46:40 UTC+2, Kenneth Harrow wrote:
i agree w see troubling developments, but i don't fear for the u.k. turning into a neofascist rightwing state. i fear for my own country that has inexplicably gone mad in promoting a neofascist idiot like trump. every day another scene of his embrace of hatred, and his stupidities, are exposed, and yet he is on his way to being the republican candidate. i know well enough, after almost 60 years, that an election in this country is determined by the campaigns. enough has been written about trump's politics that i don't feel the need to justify why he is associated broadly with fascist tendencies. my worry is that we have such a large segment of the population that embraces his fascistic appeal that we have to understand the country itself as severely marked by this political identity.
africa might seem distant, the worries about an extreme rightwinger less concerning. perhaps that's true. i doubt it. when mussolini came to power, and wanted to reassert the glory that was rome, he invaded and conquered libya, he colonized somalia and conquered ethiopia, the indominable. i don't fear a return to colonialism with trump; i fear a heightened irrational militantism, and the distance between his fingers and the red button that could spell the doom of humankind.
crazy fears? remember 1933, and the 60 million dead in world war two before you decide it couldn't happen again.
and even if the target of the current hatred and fear is more limited, more targeted, how would we all feel with him taking punitive measures against latinos and muslims that resulted in more guantanamos, more torture, more concentration style camps, more abuses, more hatred.
the sun is shining; i will have to turn such negative thoughts away, and hope we will come to our senses next november. in the face of that, the question of brexit seems slight
ken
On 6/18/16 12:11 PM, Oluwatoyin Adepoju wrote:
Very, very, very disturbing developments, taking my mind to Nazi Germany's ascendancy in the late 1930s and the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by an Israeli Jew, as well as the assassination of Anwar Sadat signalling the struggles for dominance by hawkish attitudes in the Middle East.
--
On Sat, Jun 18, 2016 at 4:25 PM, Alinah Segobye <alinah....@gmail.com> wrote:
With grey skies hanging on what was meant to be a sunshiny warm midsummer day in Bradford I am confined to my desk reading this post and many other interesting posts of this wonderful platform and getting greatly inspired (for my research) to ponder further on the subject of how we as African in Africa and the Diaspora engage with/relate to and articulate with this Thing called the West (or North and East for that matter). Cornelius pricked my conscience having been rudely awakened yesterday to a post of a #racistrant from South Africa. Indeed my empathy for the late Cox as a woman leader, mom of young children, supporter of causes did take my mind of other concerns crowding my mind including the big question of how does South Africa address the challenge of racism 40 years after June 16 1976 as one just marker of our timeline of state brutality?
I was an ambivalent partaker (via radio) of weeks of celebrating the Queen's 90 birthday including a recitation of a prayer http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2016/04/18/bishops- which among other things extolled us to pray for the 'Preservation of the Queen from all that is harmful and evil'. I found myself ambivalent and unable to eloquently complete an essay on African feminism and decoloniality which among other things needed me to interrogate the 'evils' of colonialism and empire'. I thought of my mother just shy of 89 years of age who unlike the Queen's - has memories of want and servitude in a Protectorate and now independent state which still struggles to to provide for her basic needs. In another time, the Queen as an 'older sister' might have been obliged to 'carry' her young sister on her back but i doubt this is on the Queen's To Do list this moment.ask-catholics-to-pray-for-the- queen-to-mark-90th-birthday/
So whether one is sitting under a baobab tree in the motherland or some office/park or similar quaint space in the 'northern' hemisphere ambivalence and perhaps self-contradiction is bound to be part of out-loud thoughts and or private musings as we navigate our relations with the continent (Africa) and our other adopted (adopting?) lands. As a very temporary visitor to West Yorkshire I can only hope that the lessons I learn daily from this platform and the Radio continue to enrich my thoughts and hopefully research on my entanglements of with this Island (former Empire?) as its Brexit angst. I suspect tomorrow Mass will extol us to think deeper of our decisions concerning the Vote but as a non-voting visitor I do not worry about that task. I muse curiously though how History changes... a 'kingdom' and continent that had such appetite for far away lands and held on to them to the bitter end are on a precipice concerning Brexit or not to...? As a student of the African past (Archaeology & History) I have scrambled for my copious notes and sources and still cannot make sense of the current debates as my continent's recent past keeps butting in to this picture and I cannot focus properly... A fractured continent struggling to integrate but sorely divided along lines of language, allegiance and other inconvenient things is waiting with abetted breath for the outcome of the referendum.
Meanwhile as a human(e) being I wish Ms Cox RIP. May peace prevail ahead of Brits pronouncing their In-ness or Out-ness. Whichever way they pronounce, I we who adore #allthingsbrit should perhaps be asking ourselves when our referendum(s) will come to un-love the 'kingdom'... perhaps a name change (the Island formerly known as...).
AKS--
On Sat, Jun 18, 2016 at 3:19 PM, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:
--
I understand that from the brothers that I've talked to so far, France is the favourite nation to win the European football championship -
the reason being that Négritude or no Négritude , there are at least seven Africans in France's national football squad . France does
not discriminate when it comes to national prestige in football or language proficiency….
I have mostly been gleaning valuable insights from Bernard Porter's blog in which he (a venerable English man and an anti-imperialist too)
has been deliberating on some of the issues under our purview here. He is currently in the UK...
It' doesn't look like Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi ( a Scot) is going to be weighing in on this referendum - as he did on the Scottish referendum.
The savage murder of Jo Cox is vividly reminiscent of the butchering of Anna Lindh on the 11th of September, 2003. I wailed like a new born blues
baby when I first heard the news. In spite of sympathy votes for the side of the referendum that she was canvassing for , they did not win.
I should hate to make a decision as to what is in the best interests of the UK, based on faulty premises. Briefly : Re- Kennedy Emetulu's plea:
Even for a self-righteous, self-appointed minority spokesperson, it's a pitiful display of either abject ignorance or falsification of reality and bigotry
to reduce the Brexit referendum to being a contest between good and evil, between what he calls the racists' camp composed of mostly those -
from his point of view, evil Brits who like former Mayor of London Boris Johnson want to leave the sinking EU ship and those who want to stay,
the good guys comprising the angelic likes of Prime Minister David Cameron and good Muslims such as Sadiq Khan the new Lord Mayor of London
and his greater multi-culti flock, including good Nigerians such as the Kennedy Emetulu, or so he would like us to believe.
Curiously enough Emetulu's exhortation is that "Nigerians and all other ethnic minorities in the UK, including all progressive and peace-loving citizens
of the country, vote to make Britain greater in Europe!" - a weak voice and a weak echo, sounding off like Donald Trump only that this one's melody is
simultaneously Sweet Mother and God save the Queen and please Make Great Britain Great Again in the EU - and no to any Britannia Rules the Waves !
Not British to the bootstraps , how is it to be expected that Johnny just come should be harbouring any nostalgic sentiments about former glory or future
victory? As far as he may be concerned the more Nigerians that immigrate into Great Britain, the merrier and the Greater will Great Britain Be! Thanks to
Lord Lugard, doesn't Nigeria already rule / control Peckham now known as " Little Lagos" ?
As Boris Johnson said (and I think that this was slightly under the belt) the EU aims at accomplishing what Hitler failed to do :
Emetulu may still be a Nigerian at heart and in his soul, but doesn't he know that only British citizens are eligible to vote in this referendum?
This morning when asked his name, Tommy Mair (alliterates with Tony Blair) the man charged with the murder of Jo Cox , said
: " My Name Is death to traitors and freedom for Britain"
But the sins of one man should not be sufficient reason to crucify a whole nation?
Okay,
"They say that patriotism is the last refuge
To which a scoundrel clings
Steal a little and they throw you in jail
Steal a lot and they make you king
There's only one step down from here, baby...( What's a sweetheart like you doin' in a dump like this?"
As Grucho Marx put it, "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others."
R.S.V.P.
I'm ready
Cornelius
On Friday, 17 June 2016 19:07:50 UTC+2, Kennedy Emetulu wrote:
The death of Jo Cox, the 41-year old Labour MP murdered while going about her duty in her constituency in Birstall, UK is sending shockwaves around the world. Here was an excellent MP who was celebrated by her constituents and colleagues for her vision, warmth, industry and open-door policy gunned and hacked down in broad daylight by a 52-year old Mr Tommy Mair. This man, a fellow Yorkshire resident described as a loner was reported to have shouted "Britain first!" as he hacked her down. So, while this brutal killing has pushed to the fore the debate about security of MPs, the more telling impact is that it has brought the BREXIT campaign closer to the consciousness of the people because Jo Cox was a passionate campaigner for the Remain Campaign.
Okay, the investigations are still ongoing and it may well turn out that Mr Mair has mental health issues. In fact, there are unconfirmed reports that he was a patient at the Mirfield-based Pathways Day Centre for adults with mental illness before 2010. But whether or not he has mental health issues, with the BREXIT referendum just a few days away no one is pretending that people are not looking at this incident as a possible determinant of where their vote will go. To me, whether or not the fellow is sane, he could not have felt that strongly about the issue to the extent of killing the MP if there was no prior talk with others. There are also reports that he's a white supremacist with clear links to white extremist groups. For instance, he is said to have been a long-time subscriber to a pro-Apartheid extremist magazine, "S. A. Patriot" up till 2006. The UK-based publication, which campaigns against "the fall of civilised rule" in South Africa, was edited by former National Front member Alan Harvey.
Now, I'm not saying any group of people set him up to do this, but they may have created the condition that influenced his troubled mind (if indeed, troubled) to push him to go out there and kill an MP that has been a staunch campaigner for Britain to remain in Europe and one of the more progressive politicians on the immigration front with her work with refugees all over the world and her serious activism over Dafur, Syria and Palestine. I mean, since the Leave Campaign has focused its main case against remaining in the EU on immigration, it is not out of place to imagine that unstable supporters would do what this fellow has done, especially with the neo-racialist tone of the Leave Campaign when discussing immigration and immigrants. Here is a man said to have lived in the Birstall area for more than thirty years and who, despite being a loner has not been known to be violent before now. The only thing they know him for is that he's the one that does the gardening for the locals for a living. What could have triggered his mind except the viciousness of this campaign?
I know that the politicians are being cautious now, so that no one accuses them of playing politics with this death, but it's worth observing that Neil Coyle, the Labour MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark has, while paying tribute to Jo Cox, broken ranks already by saying clearly that the Leave Campaign "risks inspiring extremist elements". While Mr Coyle is being rounded on for playing politics with this, it is important that the rest of us, especially those of us who are ethnic minorities, look closely at those the Leave Campaign and its leading promoters are empowering with their rhetoric. I say this, because whatever the reason the killer did this and whatever the ultimate outcome of police investigation, as an ethnic minority in the UK, the whole tone of the debate and this killing worry me. In fact, if I was thinking of voting Leave, at this point I would be doing a rethink because a Britain out of Europe I see is a very dark place. With Nigel Farage strutting around with a sick smirk on his face and Boris Johnson seeking frantically the keys to No 10, I see a Britain where the far-right rules and where the civil liberties and freedoms won over the years will be eroded in pursuit of the false objective of making "Britain first!" As Samuel Johnson once famously said, patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel and I see a lot of them now wrapping themselves around the Union Jack.
Honestly, Jo Cox's death has left me really sad and I just cannot muster the strength for now to make a proper analysis of this future I see if we leave Europe, but suffice it to say when you read the statement by Brendan Cox, Jo's husband and his insistence that we must defeat hate, you get the idea that he has an idea where this whole hate is coming from, especially when we consider that he himself is a staunch supporter of the Remain Campaign who had consistently complained about the hate coming from the Leave camp before this incident.
So, yes, this hate is not coming from Muslims or immigrants; it's coming from people who think they have an entitlement to Britain by virtue of their white skin and their supposed indigenousness. It is coming from people who have been brainwashed into thinking that immigrants are the devils coming to take over their land and their jobs and that they are left no choice but to use violence to stop them. They are the people who people the white extremist groups and even though there are many decent people who want Britain out of Europe for other reasons, these extremists are today hiding under the sovereignty argument to push the idea of Britain leaving the EU as mainstream. But in truth, this is just primed to be the first step in their mission to return Britain to the rulership of the far-right.
Well, the Britain these far-right people want is not the Britain my family and I want. The Britain we want is the one showed in Birstall where an unnamed 77-year old Pakistani man tackled the killer of Jo Cox in an attempt to stop him and got injured for his troubles. Despite this tragedy, that man is a hero. It is quite significant that he, an ethnic minority, a Muslim, an old frail man, was the one who tackled this fellow in defence of his MP. The Britain I want is the one one being showcased in Birstall today as Britons of all religions, all faiths and all races are coming together in unity to mourn an outstanding British politician.
As an ethnic minority with a stake in Britain and the wider world, I will urge my fellow Britons to vote to stay in Europe, to vote to stay connected with the world. With the rise of far-right parties all over Europe now on the back of the misdirected angst against immigration, do not blindly sign your own death warrant. You've got to know that there's nothing by way of a viable solution to the immigration problem being offered by the Leave Campaign. All they're doing is selling fear - fear of small Britain being swarmed by Barbarians. The Little Englander in Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Nigel Farage is just being ballooned by the foul air of overambition! Even their attempt to link the immigration with an economic argument is cloaked in evil lies and fear-mongering! I mean, what is more embarrassing than Alex Salmon catching out Boris Johnson misquoting the Bank of England report he has not read and typically being bullish in his topped-up ignorance? It is typical of the tissues of lies being bandied about by the Leave Campaign to hear Johnson say that a Bank of England study showed that for every 10 percent increase in immigration there was a two percent reduction in wages when in fact what the study says is that a 10 percent rise in immigration would result in a one-third of one pence diminution in average wages. Since when did one-third of one pence become two percent reduction in wages? But these are the type of bloodcurdling lies they bandy about in their bid to get Britain out of Europe.
Obviously, the campaigns have been suspended for now in tribute to Jo, but the vote is still coming up next Thursday, 23 June 2016. So, Nigerians and all other ethnic minorities in the UK, including all progressive and peace-loving citizens of the country, vote to make Britain greater in Europe! There will be no better tribute to Jo Cox, a true internationalist and lover of humanity, than ensuring that the bigots do not take over!
…..
The picture is of Jo Cox and family joining the #floatilla campaign on the River Thames as part of the IN (Remain) Campaign. The picture was posted on June 15, at the time of the event, by Brendan Cox, the husband of Jo with the following comment: "So this is the moment the #VoteLeave lot started hosing my kids with river water. Nice friendly lot #floatilla."
…
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-- kenneth w. harrow professor of english michigan state university department of english 619 red cedar road room C-614 wells hall east lansing, mi 48824 ph. 517 803 8839 har...@msu.edu
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