Samburu Women Of Kenya

For Women Who Are 'Difficult' To Love.

 (Today I came online with great intentions of writing something of my own, until I found this treasure @ Bring me the African guy which belongs to my friend Kweli.)

you are a horse running alone
and he tries to tame you
compares you to an impossible highway
to a burning house
says you are blinding him
that he could never leave you
forget you
want anything but you
you dizzy him, you are unbearable
every woman before or after you
is doused in your name
you fill his mouth
his teeth ache with memory of taste
his body just a long shadow seeking yours
but you are always too intense
frightening in the way you want him
unashamed and sacrificial
he tells you that no man can live up to the one who
lives in your head
and you tried to change didn't you?
closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel
him travelling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do love
split his head open?
you can't make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love. 

-Warsan Shire

Diego Garcia: Paradise Cleansed

There are times when one tragedy, one crime tells us how a whole system works behind its democratic facade and helps us to understand how much of the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments lie. To understand the catastrophe of Iraq, and all the other Iraqs along imperial history's trail of blood and tears, one need look no further than Diego Garcia. The story of Diego Garcia is shocking, almost incredible. A British colony lying midway between Africa and Asia in the Indian Ocean, the island is one of 64 unique coral islands that form the Chagos Archipelago, a phenomenon of natural beauty, and once of peace. Newsreaders refer to it in passing: "American B-52 and Stealth bombers last night took off from the uninhabited British island of Diego Garcia to bomb Iraq (or Afghanistan)." It is the word "uninhabited" that turns the key on the horror of what was done there. In the 1970s, the Ministry of Defense in London produced this epic lie: "There is nothing in our files about a population and an evacuation." Diego Garcia was first settled in the late 18th century. At least 2,000 people lived there: a gentle Creole nation with thriving villages, a school, a hospital, a church, a prison, a railway, docks, a copra plantation. Watching a film shot by missionaries in the 1960s, I can understand why every Chagos islander I have met calls it paradise; there is a grainy sequence where the islanders' beloved dogs are swimming in the sheltered, palm-fringed lagoon, catching fish. All this began to end when an American rear admiral stepped ashore in 1961 and Diego Garcia was marked as the site of what is today one of the biggest American bases in the world. There are now more than 2,000 troops, anchorage for 30 warships, a nuclear dump, a satellite spy station, shopping malls, bars and a golf course. "Camp Justice," the Americans call it. During the 1960s, in high secrecy, the Labor government of Harold Wilson conspired with two American administrations to "sweep" and "sanitize" the islands: the words used in American documents. Files found in the National Archives in Washington and the Public Record Office in London provide an astonishing narrative of official lying all too familiar to those who have chronicled the lies over Iraq. To get rid of the population, the Foreign Office invented the fiction that the islanders were merely transient contract workers who could be "returned" to Mauritius, 1,000 miles away. In fact, many islanders traced their ancestry back five generations, as their cemeteries bore witness. The aim, wrote a Foreign Office official in January 1966, "is to convert all the existing residents ... into short-term, temporary residents." What the files also reveal is an imperious attitude of brutality. In August 1966, Sir Paul Gore-Booth, permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office, wrote: "We must surely be very tough about this. The object of the exercise was to get some rocks that will remain ours. There will be no indigenous population except seagulls." At the end of this is a handwritten note by D.H. Greenhill, later Baron Greenhill: "Along with the Birds go some Tarzans or Men Fridays ..." Under the heading, "Maintaining the fiction," another official urges his colleagues to reclassify the islanders as "a floating population" and to "make up the rules as we go along." There is not a word of concern for their victims. Only one official appeared to worry about being caught, writing that it was "fairly unsatisfactory" that "we propose to certify the people, more or less fraudulently, as belonging somewhere else." The documents leave no doubt that the cover-up was approved by the prime minister and at least three cabinet ministers. At first, the islanders were tricked and intimidated into leaving; those who had gone to Mauritius for urgent medical treatment were prevented from returning. As the Americans began to arrive and build the base, Sir Bruce Greatbatch, the governor of the Seychelles, who had been put in charge of the "sanitizing," ordered all the pet dogs on Diego Garcia to be killed. Almost 1,000 pets were rounded up and gassed, using the exhaust fumes from American military vehicles. "They put the dogs in a furnace where the people worked," says Lizette Tallatte, now in her 60s," ... and when their dogs were taken away in front of them, our children screamed and cried." The islanders took this as a warning; and the remaining population were loaded on to ships, allowed to take only one suitcase. They left behind their homes and furniture, and their lives. On one journey in rough seas, the copra company's horses occupied the deck, while women and children were forced to sleep on a cargo of bird fertilizer. Arriving in the Seychelles, they were marched up the hill to a prison where they were held until they were transported to Mauritius. There, they were dumped on the docks. In the first months of their exile, as they fought to survive, suicides and child deaths were common. Lizette lost two children. "The doctor said he cannot treat sadness," she recalls. Rita Bancoult, now 79, lost two daughters and a son; she told me that when her husband was told the family could never return home, he suffered a stroke and died. Unemployment, drugs and prostitution, all of which had been alien to their society, ravaged them. Only after more than a decade did they receive any compensation from the British government: less than £3,000 each, which did not cover their debts. The behavior of the Blair government is, in many respects, the worst. In 2000, the islanders won a historic victory in the high court, which ruled their expulsion illegal. Within hours of the judgment, the Foreign Office announced that it would not be possible for them to return to Diego Garcia because of a "treaty" with Washington – in truth, a deal concealed from parliament and the U.S. Congress. As for the other islands in the group, a "feasibility study" would determine whether these could be resettled. This has been described by Professor David Stoddart, a world authority on the Chagos, as "worthless" and "an elaborate charade." The "study" consulted not a single islander; it found that the islands were "sinking," which was news to the Americans who are building more and more base facilities; the U.S. Navy describes the living conditions as so outstanding that they are "unbelievable." In 2003, in a now notorious follow-up high court case, the islanders were denied compensation, with government counsel allowed by the judge to attack and humiliate them in the witness box, and with Justice Ousley referring to "we" as if the court and the Foreign Office were on the same side. Last June, the government invoked the archaic royal prerogative in order to crush the 2000 judgment. A decree was issued that the islanders were banned forever from returning home. These were the same totalitarian powers used to expel them in secret 40 years ago; Blair used them to authorize his illegal attack on Iraq. Led by a remarkable man, Olivier Bancoult, an electrician, and supported by a tenacious and valiant London lawyer, Richard Gifford, the islanders are going to the European court of human rights, and perhaps beyond. Article 7 of the statute of the international criminal court describes the "deportation or forcible transfer of population ... by expulsion or other coercive acts" as a crime against humanity. As Bush's bombers take off from their paradise, the Chagos islanders, says Bancoult, "will not let this great crime stand. The world is changing; we will win." John Pilger, 4 October 2004, This article first appeared in The Guardian

Immoral Technique - The 3rd World...

Remember Sharpeville!

We, the people of South Africa, Recognize the injustices of our past; Honour those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land;    Respect those who have worked to build and develop our country; and Believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity We therefore, through our freely elected representatives, adopt this Constitution as the supreme law of the Republic so as to —Heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights; Lay the foundations for a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by law;Improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person - Build a united and democratic South Africa able to take its rightful place as a sovereign state in the family of nations. May God protect our people.Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika. Morena boloka setjhaba sa heso. God seen Suid-Afrika. God bless South Africa. Mudzimu fhatushedza Afurika. Hosi katekisa Afrika.

-The Preamble to the South African Constitution  

(Images : google)

I Hope You Watched Material...

I loved the movie it was accurate, funny, well made and understated. The cast was awesome and Fordsburg has never looked so artsy. The characters were well thought out and if you are from this community there is no way it was not familiar. Makes me want to a take a walk through Fordsburg and down into Newtown and this time look a little deeper :)

When The War Turns Pathalogical - Withdraw !

The latest occupation crime in Afghanistan was a shooting spree on March 11 by a lone American soldier in the village of Balandi in the Panjwai District of Kandahar Province of Afghanistan. 16 Afghan civilians, including women and children, were shot in their homes in the middle of the night without any pretense of combat activity in the area. Such an atrocity is one more expression of a pathological reaction by one soldier to an incomprehensible military reality that seems to be driving American military personnel on the ground in Afghanistan crazy. The main criminal here is not the shooter, but the political leader who insists on continuing a mission in face of the evidence that it is turning its own citizens into pathological killers.

American soldiers urinating on dead Taliban fighters, Koran burning, and countryside patrols whose members were convicted by an American military tribunal of killing Afghan civilians for sport or routinely invading the privacy of Afghan homes in the middle of the night; whatever the U.S. military commanders in Kabul might sincerely say in regret and Washington might repeat by way of formal apology has become essentially irrelevant.

These so-called ‘incidents’ or ‘aberrations’ are nothing of the sort. These happenings are pathological reactions of men and women caught up in a death trap not of their making, an alien environment that collides lethally with their sense of normalcy and decency. Besides the desecration of foreign lands and their cultural identities, American political leaders have unforgivably for more than a decade placed young Americans in intolerable situations of risk, uncertainty, and enmity to wage essentially meaningless wars. Also signaling a kind of cultural implosion are recent studies documenting historically high suicide rates among the lower ranks of the American military.

Senseless and morbid wars produce senseless and morbid behavior. Afghanistan, as Vietnam 40 years earlier, has become an atrocity-generating killing field where the ‘enemy’ is frequently indistinguishable from the ‘friend,’ and the battlefield is everywhere and nowhere. In Vietnam, the White House finally sped up the American exit when it became evident that soldiers were murdering their own officers, a pattern exhibiting ultimate alienation that became so widespread it give birth to a new word, ‘fragging.’

Whatever the defensive pretext in the immediacy of the post-9/11 attacks, the Afghanistan War was misconceived from its inception, although deceptively so (to my lasting regret I supported the war initially as an instance of self-defense validated by the credible fear of future attacks emanating from Afghanistan). Air warfare was relied upon in 2002 to decimate the leadership ranks of Al Qaeda, but instead its top political and military commanders slipped across the border. Regime change in Kabul, with a leader flown in from Washington to help coordinate the foreign occupation of his country, reverted to an old counterinsurgency formula that had failed over and over again, but with the militarist mindset prevailing in the U.S. Government, failure was once again reinterpreted as an opportunity to do it right the next time! Despite the efficiency of the radical innovative tactic of targeted killing by drones, the latest form of state terror in Afghanistan yields an outcome that is no different from earlier defeats.

What more needs to be said? It is long past time for the United States and its NATO allies to withdraw with all deliberate speed from Afghanistan rather than proceed on its present course: negotiating a long-term ‘memorandum of understanding’ that transfers the formalities of the occupation to the Afghans while leaving private American military contractors—mercenaries of the 21st century—as the outlaw governance structure of this war-torn country after most combat forces withdraw by the end of 2014, although, incredibly, Washington and Kabul, despite the devastation and futility, are presently negotiating a ten-year arrangement to maintain an American military presence in the country, a dynamic that might be labeled ‘re-colonization by consent,’ a geopolitical malady of the early 21st century.

As in Iraq, what has been ‘achieved’ in Afghanistan is the very opposite of the goals set by Pentagon planners and State Department diplomacy: the country is decimated rather than reconstructed, the regional balance shifts in favor of Iran, of Islamic extremism, and the United States is ever more widely feared and resented, solidifying its geopolitical role as the great malefactor of our era.

America seems incapable of grasping the pathologies it has inflicted on its own citizenry, let alone the physical and psychological wreckage it leaves behind in the countries it attacks and occupies. The disgusting 2004 pictures of American soldiers getting their kicks from torturing and humiliating naked Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib should have made clear once and for all to the leaders and the public that it was time to bring American troops home, and keep them there if we cared for their welfare.  Instead, punishments were inflicted on these hapless young citizens who were both perpetrators and victims, and their commanders resumed their militarist misadventures as if nothing had happened except an unwelcome ‘leak’ (Donald Rumsfeld said as much). What this pattern of desecration exhibits is not only a criminal indifference to the wellbeing of ‘others’, but also a shameful disregard of the welfare of our collective selves. The current bellicose Republican presidential candidates calling for attacks on Iran amount to taking another giant step along the road that is taking American over the cliff. And the Obama presidency is only a half step behind, counseling patience, but itself indulging war-mongering, whether for its own sake or on behalf of Israel is unclear.

President Obama recently was quoted as saying of Afghanistan, “now is the time for us to transition.”  No, it isn’t. “Now is the time to leave.”  And not only for the sake of the Afghan people, and surely for that, but also for the benefit of the American people Obama was elected to serve.

Richard Falk , 14 March 2012, Al Jazeera 

Happy Jumuah :)

Remembering The Herero and Nama...

(www.photopedia.com)

                                    

In January 1904 the Herero people led by Samuel Maharero rebelled against German Colonial rule and in August the German general Lothar von Trotha responded with a fatal combination of military might and gunpowder. In October of that year the Nama people rebelled against the Germans only to suffer a similar fate.

More than 110000 Herero and Nama died in the 3 years that followed and the genocide was characterized by widespread death due to starvation and thirst because the Herero and Nama who fled the violence into the desert were prevented from returning and the German colonial army systematically poisoned desert wells. 

Survivors, majority of whom were women and children, were eventually put into concentration camps  and forced to work as slave labor for German military and settlers. German Scientists came to the concentration camps to conduct medical experiments on race using children of Herero people and children of Herero women and German men as test subjects. The experiments included sterilization, smallpox injections, typhus and TB. The numerous cases of mixed offspring upset the German colonial administration and their obsession with racial purity. 310 mixed-race children were subjected to numerous racial tests such as head and body measurements, eye and hair examinations. In conclusion the scientist advocated the genocide of alleged "inferior races" stating that "whoever thinks thoroughly the notion of race, can not arrive at a different conclusion".

These scientific actions and torment of the children were part of wider history of abusing Africans for experiments, and echoed earlier actions by German anthropologists who stole skeletons and bodies from African graveyards and took them to Europe for research or sale. An estimated 3000 skulls were sent to Germany for experimentation.

The Herero genocide has commanded the attention of historians who study complex issues of continuity between the Herero Genocide and the Holocaust. It is argued that the Herero genocide set a precedent in Imperial Germany to be later followed by Nazi Germany's establishment of death camps, such as the one at Auschwitz.   

The 1985 UN Whitaker Report classified the aftermath of the rebellion as an attempt to exterminate the Herero and Nama peoples and therefore one of the earliest attempts at genocide in the 20th century.

Red Earth and Pouring Rain...

(image : scenicreflections.com)

' What could my mother be to yours?

What kin is my father to yours anyway?

And how did you and I meet ever?

But in love

our hearts have mingled

like red earth and pouring rain.'

A translation of poetry from the Kununtokai, a classical tamil anthology

Sexycise...

The Tuareg Rebellions

The Tuareg live across the Sahel, from Mali to Niger to southern Algeria. The first post-colonial rebellion begain in the 1960's following Mali's independence it was a fight between a group of Tuareg and the newly independent state of Mali. The Malian Army suppressed the revolt. Resentment among the Tuareg fueled the second uprising in May 1990.

The Tuareg in both Mali and Niger claimed autonomy for their traditional homeland: Tenere with its capital Agadez and the Azawad and Kidal regions of Mali. Deadly clashes between Tuareg fighters  and the military of both countries followed, with deaths numbering well into the thousands.

 Negotiations initiated by France and Algeria led to peace agreements on 11 January 1992 in Mali and 1995 in Niger. Both agreements called for decentralization of national power and guaranteed the integration of Tuareg resistance fighters into the countries' respective national armies.

As of 2004, sporadic fighting continued in Niger between government forces and Tuareg groups struggling for independence. In 2007 the violence began once again.

Many of those involved in the current rebellion are thought to have fought for Colonel Gadaffi, a long-term supporter of their claims for greater independence, in the Libyan conflict. When Gadaffi was killed in October, significant numbers returned home.

The Tuaregs' long-standing grievances are that their desert heartlands – places like Kidal and Gao in northern Mali, and Agadez in northern Niger – have been neglected by central government and need urgent development. There were a number of violent rebellions by Tuaregs in both Mali and Niger in the 90s and 00s.

As a result of the fighting some 700,000 people in Mali and Niger have been displaced and a massive humanitarian crisis is lurking in the shadows. When there are claims of Al-Qaeda in the desert blowing up stuff one cannot help and be sceptical because history has shown us that such announcements are usually followed by Aerial bombardment , international intervention and untimately lots of stolen resources.

The struggle for self-determination is never one to be dismissed but in these times where every struggle seems to be moulded to suit some foreign race for gain one can only hope that the reasons and the struggle do not become mere pawns in an international soap opera for domination of already scarce resources.

And Now For More Mysteries From The Male Mind...

El General And Other Tunisian Rappers