USA Africa Dialogue Series - AFRICA VOICE--Re: HUGE GIFT‹Re: IMG-20161203-WA0022.jpg

Yes, yes. Thank you, Femi. And again thank you Ayo; the genie behind it all. 

And now the Africa Voice? 

What did we learn/ absorb of extending the long-tested and successfully evolved "systems of life conduct" in our own lives, our own communities? What were the elaborate, deep-settled roots from which they derived? How have we and our recent forebears sought to safeguard/ to ensure they REMAIN at the core of our communal being?

How have we shown our respect for these not merely secular, but sacred values in our daily lives? How have we taken care, from the heights of our enlightened understanding, to carry them forward into the lives of a hard-struggling humanity beyond? 

A humanity that here in UK, for one, has been locked in the reality-fantasy of Dervish-spin, a mad and demeaning spin that grows daily in ludicrous obsessions promoted by folk and institutions that increasingly are losing their bearings--banks/ investment houses/ all the principal industrial and business institutions--all this happening amongst one of the most caring and aware population of world 98ers; one that always has retained a wise, common sense root bearing when their rulers have lost theirs? Which has not been seldom.

Where is the Africa voice? A voice that can breach/ circumvent the great walls of Mainstream Meedja institutions that serve vigilantly to protect those closely engaged in guiding the Dervish-spin in the Fortress within, while blaring forth their messages?

There is much to do. And it will come. It will be done. It will NOT have the root of its change, gain its momentum, from the dizzying/ disorienting/ dervish world of those in perpetual spin within that Fortress. No. 

I listen for the clear sweet notes of the Africa voice. 

I wait for the distant sound of sure and certain finger beats, 

That exquisite beat of foot and finger, 

That voice combined with fire and sweetness, 

That carried me to an age without age, 

That wonderful and brilliant woman 

Who took me to the core, the rhythmic, beating core of life. 

Fiendish in its complexity but presented here to me 

With the polished presence of a simple and wholly enrapturing 

Force of an ancient simplicity. 

Tis, of course, that simplicity from which all mechanism takes its root guidance; from which the transient material gains its licence and its start. And of course our Western world particularly has been so engaged. But in its arrogance, it's profanity, it has never appealed to the Higher Powers, the Sacred Source for the Grant of this Licence. Too late it has started to recognise that without this Licence it can never achieve that which is sought.

Oh Ayo, oh my friend Falana. 

Do please forgive my outburst; 

That the Ethereal and the Mundane,  

The Sacred and the Profane, 

All from an Africa root, 

Which for me resides 

In the sweet, cool rippling waters, 

The high, bright, silent forest of her shrine. 

And there she is, 

As always to greet me. 

Osun. 

You may understand all the energies, 

The great and good things she stirs, 

As always she does, within. 

It is from the ancient, ever-vibrant presence of Osun, 

And many other Great Deity Forces, 

That the United Africa gathers, 

And shapes, as we speak, 

The growing waves of increasing power, 

That carry messages of great healing, energy and humane vitality 

To that mechanistic, hyper-materialistic world desperately in need beyond. 

Quite enough. 

My contribution to your daily thoughts

--Or of course to that wondrous invention of cybernetic modernity, 

The delete button. 

"Why does not this man shut his mouth?"

And so I shall.  

Baba m

Sent from my iPad

On 4 Dec 2016, at 03:36, Femi Falana <falanafemi15@gmail.com> wrote:

I join others in commending Prof Olukotun for his balanced views on Fidel Castro's legacy. Although it is a seeming departure from the jaundiced analysis of western media it nevertheless placed undue premium on bourgeois conception of human rights. As far as Prof Olukotun  is concerned the biased commentaries of western media "which focus obsessively on the excesses and human suffering of the despotic rule are not altogether wrong..." and that Cuba became an anachronism "in an age where democratisation and respect for human rights have become normative."

The "despotic rule" of Fidel Castro is not worse than that of any of the democratic regimes in the United States with respect to the observance of political and civil rights. With billions of dollars spent on elections,  liberal democracy cannot be said to be a government of the people, for the people and by the people. With racism and extrajudicial killings it is incorrect to say  that "human rights have become normative" in the US.  With torture routinely  inflicted on criminal suspects by US security forces  in the Guatanamo Bay prison in Cuba the US has contempt for human rights to dignity and fair hearing including the presumption of innocence of accused persons. 

While the US sends soldiers to effect "regime change" and kill millions of people around the world  Cuba has sent doctors and nurses to no fewer than 150 countries to save lives. For instance, while the US and other western countries were stigmatising West Africans during the ebola crisis Cuba dispatched a team of medical personnel to Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone to combat the disease. The New York Times  was forced to write an editorial which called on the Obama administration to lift embargo on a nation that is ahead of the West in providing  humanitarian services to the needy and vulnerable segment of humanity.

Throughout the tenure of Castro there were 276 executions including that of the General who engaged in drug trafficking in Angola. In the US, the bastion of liberal democracy, 875 people, mostly blacks, have been extrajudicially killed by the police in 2016 alone. A country which claims to respect human right to life has continued to justify the execution of hundreds of convicts. 

Unlike in the very rich western countries, there is no prostitution, no homelessness, no child nourishment and no street  beggars in the poverty stricken Cuba. With literacy rate of 98.7 percent Cuba is ahead of the many western  countries in the area of education. With a  life span of 75 and the lowest infant and maternal rates, Cuba is ahead of the US  in the provision of health services. 

While I  agree that Cuba should respect the civil and political rights of dissidents it is indisputable that Cuba is ahead of western countries in the observance and provision of socioeconomic rights for the majority of her citizens.

In the words of the late Fela Anikulapo-kuti this is an occasion we should  tell the West, "Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense."

Femi

On Sunday, 4 December 2016, Michael Vickers <mvickers@mvickers.plus.com> wrote:

Ayo,  This is wonderful stuff. Brilliant observation. In death Castro has given us a huge gift. He has opened doors to imaginative and inspiring thought. …

Africa of course holds the key to the future. It has the fast-rising presence, the resources, the folk of fresh and innovative genius/ the great hunger for achievements/ explorations of every kind. It is carrying us forward. It is the force of now and of the future. It has much to abstract from the Castro/ Cuba Presence. And then to place it in Africa Life Experience; and duly to open it to a world that has long been failing and falling under IMF/ World Bank/ Global Corporate Models, which no one who knows bothers/ dares to tell us are long obsolete. 

And the Africa Message? It is rooted in an Ethic and Attitude to life that incorporates a good deal of what Castro held close. But then, if you care to think on't it, how much of Castro's Value base had its roots in Africa Life Values going back at least 3000 years? America Values, with nothing but a surface Fantasy Engagement—one which spurned/ treated with contempt, values of those whose land they stole; values with Pedigrees of Evolved presence reaching back 7000 years—is a wondrous high-wire exercise. Its whiz-bang rocketry and fabulous material wonders, have given our life much; and its  heritage will persist; and will gain ever further heights. But Fantasy Engagement, with no root, no flow-up of steady nourishment, can have but a limited life. As we all know, but are never permitted to say, the Fantasy High-Wire Engagement of America and the West has broken/ snapped. We in the West are in free-fall. And have been for some time.

My point?  I am waiting to hear an Africa voice. A confident voice from Africa that has turned in, has drawn up, has selected and shaped its basic and extended messages, and then put them forward to a world in disarray—nothing new in that—a world that may hear, see and most of all sense, that powerful and exotic force; that Humane and Inclusive Root from which ALL human life proceeds; the root of Energy Release and Actuation that for many decades, behind/ beneath the blankets of meedja and political posturing, has been extending its messages in lives of individual folk in communities world-wide. 

There are some, women and men, in Africa and indeed Nigeria who know perfectly the reality of what I say. I look forward to the sound of their voices, to the long with-held release of their advocacy, to the sweet, warm and up-lift of their sense and sensitivity in common sense policy projection. 

Africa, such folk, such policies, such uplift, such humane instruments of communal Energy Release worldwide are with us. Let us hear their voices. We need to hear their voices. Now. …

Fidel is nodding his head, laughing, lighting another monster Havana Cigar. …He knows/ he knew from the start that guidance can no longer hope to come from West or East. Their day is long done. Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" brought home this message to Leading Folk and 98ers worldwide. Where man is set loose on the "money-making path," with Guaranteed Rights, and no Required Responsibilities, he sets the seeds for his own demise and that of his fellow folk who inhabit it. …Castro recognised and understood this. …He worked hard for the presence he and his helpers created. …And that was nearly sixty years ago.

Africa's time has long arrived. It has and indeed has long-extended the Ethic and Message from which this modern world as it moves on, needs to and will absorb. Put another way, Africa has arrived at an harmonic/ a lyric moment. When the material/ the mechanistic met its fabulous apogee; Africa was already making its timely entry. All part of the Creator's/ Dame Fortuna's Plan? All we know is that it is slipping the cushion of a humane humanity, between the accelerating descent of the modern Developed/ Western/ Eastern World, and the hard earth of a cruel and savage reality. A reality already experienced by far too many billions—Nigeria's 98ers high-ranking amongst the victims.

Again Ayo. Great stuff on Castro.  And an engaging debate. It is so good to "hear" great minds let loose. Such minds, such folk of great intellectual/ creative force, are the very precious fruit of their communities; in larger and smaller Africa contexts. We treasure and celebrate them. All of them. 

Pardon my intrusion. And if I got a little carried away. There is a reason. England's Ruggie Team not only has completed an Unbeaten Season (with an unbeaten string of 16 matches). But today they socked the Aussies. Wonderful. 

Dear friend; all goes to show. Yes, we are all savage infants at heart. Does Ruggie do more harm than good? Does it merely encourage/ validate/ elevate just the attitudes and behaviours I've indicted by implication in the above? Is not  Ruggie merely a substitute for war? Preparation for us to be ordered by our oligarchs, yet again, to kill each other by the millions? …Mmmm. 

No snow yet on these Sussex hills. But very chill in my office. 

Time for beddies. 

Baba m

On 03/12/2016 17:57, "ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com" <ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com> wrote:

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld from Glo Mobile.