What was I saying?

[Sabella]

1.    According to Emmanuel Macron, we should be afraid of “Islamist Terrorism,” but should have no fear of apartheid and or settler-colonial states.

2.    They said we should be afraid of immigrants, but they have nothing negative to say about neo-imperialists and their predatory tendencies.

3.    Recent events have shown that the US is not and cannot be an impartial arbitrator in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

4.    Some rich and powerful individuals are threatening educational institutions and critics of the State of Israel for “holding on to their beliefs.” What’s the moral of their action? “He who pays the piper dictates the tune.”

5.    In today’s America, there is a price to pay for the public support of the Palestinians. For more than three decades, I have been a supporter and an advocate of the two-state solution and the right of both peoples to live in peace and peacefully.

6.    Why is it so difficult to understand and or accept the fact that Statehood for the Palestinians is the right and just thing to do and would lessen the tension in the Middle East?

7.    According to a news report, “Germany's Scholz warns Iran, Hezbollah not to enter Middle East conflict.” Ha, there is God ooo…why not advise the White House not to overtly/covertly enter/send military and intelligence aid to Israel?

8.    "The emperors and generals who sent their men to war in August 1914 thought in terms of weeks, not months, let alone years." - John G. Stoessinger

Sabella O. Abidde

[Toyin Falola]

Dear sir:

Hegemonic power is framed in moral terms: power is moral; challenges to power is immoral. Whatever power does is regarded as moral. Power then defines challenges to it in amoral terms as in terrorism. Critics of power are then labeled: anti US/anti-order, anarchists. And what you wrote below, to power, is treated as out of order. And to defenders of power, they ask: “why did you leave your shit-hole country to teach us what to do?’ Hegemonic power, historically, has always been dangerous.

TF

 

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[Harrow, Kenneth]

My recollection is that the term terror/terrorists began with bush at 9/11. Sure, it existed before, but he created the phrase “war on terror.” Since then the term has expanded geometrically so that now all regimes in the world label their opposition “terrorists.” It is a means of authenticating those in power, as toyin says, delegitimizing opposition, and thus undermining political systems that permit oppositional politics, i.e. democracies. It is basically antidemocratic by permitting those in power to define those who do not legitimately oppose their power. 

Remember, how in the older days when we espoused revolution more enthusiastically, another term came to be used, or set of terms. They were defined around “state” as in “state terrorism,” where the state permitting itself to perform acts it denied to individual groups, typically oppositional groups. Close to that were “raisons d’etat,” or the state’s rationalizations for its actions, or kissinger’s realpolitik, another form of raison d’etat.

The united states supported israel, but not unconditionally because it also wanted saudi oil, not to mention iraqi or iranian or uae etc oil. It supported, and continues to support egypt, with billions in military aid annually. It had a middle eastern policy, not just an israeli policy, and israel, after all, has no oil, only jews with a jewish lobby in the u.s. that did not prevent trump’s election, and ultimately supported trump.

Already i’ve read of biden opposing an israeli invasion of gaza; the u.s.is not automatically pro netanyahu.

Recall trump’s son in law making deals with the saudis….

Ken

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2023 9:43:40 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - What was I saying?

 

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[Edward Kissi]

The title of Ama Ata Aidoo’s famous play engulfs the lives of people who leave the comfort of their homes to labor in the vineyards of others in an “Elsewhere Community”. 

In my village in Ghana, in the years past, no sojourner was allowed a voice in the affairs of the community, in the chief’s palace. Sojourners from Northern Ghana who came from their homes in the North to work as laborers on our cocoa farms in the East lived in our village like “ghosts” at our pleasure. We smiled to them in public and spoke differently about them in private. We could dismiss their opinions by asking them to get back to the North. If they insisted on a right to speak, even on the most urgent moral issues of the time, we could threaten to take the pieces of land on which they farmed from them. In short, we exploited their migrant status and frightened them into silence. They lived like ghosts at the mercy of my elders who built the village. The dilemmas of the northern migrant were bottled in a ghost-like frame.

The African intellectual-immigrant in an American academy has a dilemma similar to the northerners  in my village. That immigrant must weigh his positions on volatile politics and weighty moral dilemmas carefully.  If that immigrant is an Akan, there are proverbs that can serve as antidotes to that dilemma of a ghost. The Akans have a proverb for everything, and proverbs about weighty moral issues, volatile matters, terrorism,   vengeance, and proportion are couched in indecent language. 

The Akans say that “when a person strips naked in front of you and farts in your face (an indignity in the first place), be careful in your response because when you are consumed by rage to return the fart, in a disproportionate fashion, and urged by many to do so, you might end up defecating in that person’s face, and the initial sympathy you earned from suffering an indignity might evaporate and you could earn the scorn of the community for committing the intolerable”.

Just a thought!

Edward Kissi

Sent from my iPhone

On Oct 18, 2023, at 3:44 AM, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:



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[Emmanuel Udogu]

It seems to me, as a student of conflict resolution, that the Israeli-Palestinian war is about to mimic the hundred years’ war between England and France over territorial rights, et cetera (actually, it is said to have lasted from 1337-1453–i.e. 116 years).

 War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing! (The Temptations)

Ike Udogu

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[Sabella Abidde]

Greetings, Prof. TF:

The good news is that in this country, and many parts of the world, many are beginning to see -- especially in this instance -- the biased, decadent, and inequitable nature of hegemonic power. Many of us don’t always speak up because our time and voices are needed elsewhere. But when injustice, bias, and abuse are this obvious and heart-wrenching, we must.

It is in the interest of the US and the interest of the international system to have a peaceful and flourishing Middle East. This cannot be achieved when the violated, the abused, and the dehumanized are told to shut up and “get with the system.” Unfortunately, a weak UN has allowed this to go on and on and on.

Not many people know how bad things are for the Palestinians. For every innocent Israeli that is killed, some thirty-five or more innocent Palestinians are killed; homes bulldozed, and lands confiscated; and untold numbers are deprived of their human rights and civil liberties. How is that right, how is that just?

Sabella O. Abidde 

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Sabella Ogbobode Abidde, PhD
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Alabama State University, Montgomery Alabama 36104
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[Sabella Abidde]

Greetings, Brother Ike:

I do not think it is going to last one hundred-plus years before it is resolved. Frankly, if PM Benjamin Netanyahu were a serious peacemaker, this issue would have been resolved, at least, under President Clinton. It was even possible 10-20 years before Clinton. But unfortunately, the political will was not there.

My first public essay on this matter was in 2000 or 2001, and the last, I believe, was in 2011 or 2015. The issue is complicated; but not that complicated that it cannot be resolved by the US and or the UN Security Council. More than a dozen political entity has been granted Statehood in the last fifty years…the Palestinians are still struggling and suffering. Why?

In recent years, much of the focus has been on the Islamic Resistance Movement, aka HAMAS. But you see, the HAMAS is no more dangerous than the National Military Organization in the Land of Israel, aka Irgun, was. You should read about what they did in the decades before Israel became a rightful and deserving member of the UN.

Regards,

Sabella Ogbobode Abidde