Beyond the Somali piracy...

Dear IBK,
Thanx for yours below. Your views are not without merit. I think the issue though boils down to problematizing the problem from a conscious point of departure hinged on solution-seeking.

Whatever is made could be destroyed. The problems you identify are human-made. They can and will be changed by human beings. Different countries have different sets of problems amidst some universal problems of each age.

History shows us not only how we got to where we are, but hinged on a concrete analysis of the concrete situation emerging from it....and most importantly: taking systematic actions to unravel a systemic series of crises like Nigeria/Africa's, we will transcend where we are.

It might not be in our life time, it might be. But if it ever will be, what we do even today could turn out more crucial in changing our fate as a people than we could ever imagine right now. For example, would Martin Luther or Rosa Parks had thought that less than half a century later their dream would take on the reality of a black president? I doubt it. But if the Luthers, Carmichaels, Malcolms, Paks, Newtons, 'Soldeds', Davies and co had not taken their stands would today have come? And if before them, the Douglasses, Turners, Du Boises, Jameses, and even John Brown had not stood agaisnt the tide of their times, put in their own quotas of limbs, (personal) liberties and even life, what would have inspired the Martin Luthers?

In my view, my brother.....it is yet morning on creation day.

My regards,

Baba Aye


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--- On Tue, 4/14/09, Ibukunolu Alao Babajide

Baba Aye,

Well articulated but in the case of Africa, through the dehumanization of the freedom loving masses, the conniving elite though minor hold sway. Add the pacifying influence of religion and the opiate effect on poor masses, then you see the obvious point in Ralph's assertion.

Look at the Niger delta for example. The ruling houses there have collected royalties from 1957 to buy houses in England and send their children to the poshest public schools in England.

The price is that they turn their eyes the other way while pollution and environmental degradation kill their own people. That was what Kenule Saro-Wiwa exposed and his fellow elite that he broke ranks with had to kill him.

Look at the way it was done. Shell killed him with 12 other supporters to serve as a lesson to freedom lovers of the consequence of asking for their rights and freedom.

There are the likes of Fubara David-West a direct beneficiary of this conniving with oppressive western exploiters who instead of using his PHD to highlight this evil against his own sides with it.

To salve his compromised conscience, he writes high fallutin nonsense about Nkrumah, Nasser, Amilcar Cabral and others who stood firm against imperialist exploiters of African peoples.

You see that is the problem of Africa.

IBK

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Dear Ralph,

I was so surprised that any one with the least of grasp of Africa's history could still try to support Western domination with that don't you know our forefathers (and presently 'leaders') collaborated with them kind of talk!

Of course a minority of the elites did, just as there were many more ramified efforts at resistance by popular masses both here and in the Americas where the Africans captured were taken as slaves. Of course in every society a few who are the elites benefit from the state of things. Or more properly put, a fraction of the elites because there are often intra-elite struggles with victory in some instances for the more progressive wings resulting in some extent of progress as with Pak's South Korea or Nasser's Egypt for example.

With tens of thousands of tons of literature on what Fanon summarized as 'black skins, white masks' and which flowing from earlier developments in China's meeting Europe has been called by some as the circumstances of the 'comprador', I would say it is very unfortunate to say the least for you to still advance such simplistic formulations.

The interest of the West with the rest of us (apologies to Chinweizu) has not changed. It is only the mechanisms that have changed to fit in with enhanced industrialization and post-industrialization. From the trans-Atlantic slave-trade to today's globalization Africa Euro-America' s mission has consistently been like the biblical devil: 'to steal. to kill and to destroy'.... .any other development has been at the very best nothing but side dishes

Baba Aye


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--- On Mon, 4/13/09, Dr. Valentine Ojo wrote:

From: Dr. Valentine Ojo

Mr. Nwokike:
Then as a practicing attorney, you should know better than most that
people - and especially Europeans - DO NOT always announce the TRURE
INTENT of their actions.
Do you think those LOOTING the Nigerian treasury would tell you
that's what they are doing?
Why do they invariably HIDE their LOOT in Swiss banks?
Why is it then inconceivable to believe that these European ships DO
NOT always announce or declare what they carry?
What is BUNKERING all about - if not about stealing, and not
declaring what you have stolen and are now carrying?
Dr. Valentine Ojo
Tall Timbers, MD
On Mon 04/13/09 1:50 PM , Ralph Nwokike rnwokike@yahoo. com sent:
Sorry, Dr. Ojo. I apologize. No insulted intended and envisaged in
my posting with Mr. Have a nice day with your scholarly contributions.
Sometimes, people address me as Attorney or Barrister(As a member
of the Nigerian Bar in good standing) , or even Mr. I usually don't
mind, anyway. I understand people are different. Atty. Ralph
Nwokike, Esq. Seattle, Washinton, USA.

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Mr. Nwokike - that is DR. OJO!
I did not bother to read the rest of your RANT!
Believe what you want, and please continue kissing white ass.
Hope you like it!
"...the ambushing of ships passing on the International Waters by
Somali pirates while delivering goods or their products to other
people. In this instance, the US Alabama was taken some relief goods
to Kenya. I did not read about wastes or anything of that sort on
that ship."
Oh, so you are NAIVE enough to expect them to announce their true
manifesto of the ship on the front pages of newspapers?
Are some Africans still really this DUMB?
When nuclear waste were dumped in Koko, did the ship's manifest say
it was carrying nuclear wastes?
How about the nuclear wastes dumped recently in the Ivory Coast? You
think the ship's manifest said it was carrying European nuclear waste?
Anyway sa, I am NOT Somalian! And I DO NOT make a habit of carrying
other people's WAHALA on my head - I have enough of my own.
I am content to leave that to continue to be your own HEADACHE - I
have said my own piece
And I am out of this thread!
Ciao!
Dr. valentine Ojo
Tall Timbers, MD
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On Mon 04/13/09 1:27 PM , Ralph Nwokike sent:
Mr. Ojo, I beg to disagree with you, once again , on this topic.
If the justification for piracy dates back to what you think that
Lord Lugard and others did to Africans, have you forgotten that our
forefathers aided their operations by their own omission or commission
, by selling their very own people into slavery. It was an enterprise
for the high chiefs and other authorities that conspired to do this to
fellow Africans. It takes two to tango, they say. That was 18Th or
19Th centuries ago. We are talking about the 21st Century when events
should not repeat itself and Africans should be smarter and wiser
than they are. Did you remember the history of Koko in Delta when
the industrial waste was dumped in Nigeria during IBB's regime.
Haven't you read that the Federal Government and all these thieves in
the Nigerian government knew that these foreigners had the dangerous
wastes to dump , took money and allowed them dump the wastes in
Nigeria. Who is to blame?. Europeans or Nigerians for their
ignorance?. On the Somali pirates issue, illegality is illegality.
That is what this latest incident is all about. It is not about black
and white people. It is about African government knowing their
responsibilities to their citizens when the Europeans come with their
deceptive business or practices. They should be wise and educated
enough to say , NO. But the problem is that, we have many morons as
leaders who neither know their right from left. They have no idea what
governance is in the first place. But that does not justify the
ambushing of ships passing on the International Waters by Somali
pirates while delivering goods or their products to other people. In
this instance, the US Alabama was taken some relief goods to Kenya. I
did not read about wastes or anything of that sort on that ship.
Atty. Ralph Nwokike, Esq. Seattle, Washington, USA.

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