Every Child is Beautiful, Mr. President
Posted by By Akogun Akomolafe at 21 December, at 08 : 19 AM Print
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“When beggars die there are no comet seen… the heavens themselves blaze forth for the death of Prince.” – Shakespeare in Julius Caesar.
“The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.” – Eldridge Cleaver in Soul on Ice
“I can think of no other way to say this, so here goes: An awful lot of white folks need to pull our heads out of our collective ass. Two more children are dead and thirteen are injured, and another community is scratching its blonde scalp, utterly perplexed as to how a school shooting the likes of the one in Santee, California could happen. After all, as the Mayor of the town said on CNN: “We’re a solid town, a good town, with good kids; a good church-going town; an All-American town.” Well, maybe that’s the problem.
I said this after Columbine and no one listened, so I’ll say it again: Most whites live in a state of self-delusion. We think danger is black or brown, not to mention poor, and if we can just move far enough away from “those people,” we’ll be safe. If we can just find an “all-American” town, life will be better, because “things like this just don’t happen here.”
Well excuse me for pointing this out, but in case you hadn’t noticed, “here” is about the only place these kinds of things do happen. Oh sure, there’s plenty of violence in urban communities too. But mass murder, wholesale slaughter, kill-’em-all-let-God-sort-’em-out kinda’ craziness seems made for those “safe” white suburbs or rural communities. Yet the FBI insists there is no “profile” of a school shooter.” – www.alternet.org
“Given the utter lack of human empathy exhibited by the US in its dealings with the world, it should perhaps come as no surprise when the lack of empathy is replicated on a smaller scale at home by school assassins and the like. It goes without saying, however, that the president’s tears are reserved for the non-military slaughter of domestic civilians.
As for Obama’s pledge to do whatever he can to “prevent… more tragedies like this”, it would seem that true prevention efforts would require the comprehensive rewiring of American society.
I don’t believe my son belongs in jail… But it seems like the United States is using prison as the solution of choice for mentally ill people. According to Human Rights Watch, the number of mentally ill inmates in US prisons quadrupled from 2000 to 2006.
In the end, however, gun control is merely one of many issues requiring attention in a country that should itself be diagnosed as mentally ill.” – Belen Fernandez
“According to Mother Jones, since 1982, 61 mass murders involving firearms have occurred throughout the country. Of these, 43 of the killers were white males, and only one was a woman. Mother Jones focused on whether the killers obtained their guns legally (most did). But this highly visible sign of mental illness should lead us to consider how many people in the U.S. live in fear, like I do.
When I asked my son’s social worker about my options, he said that the only thing I could do was to get Michael charged with a crime. “If he’s back in the system, they’ll create a paper trail,” he said. “That’s the only way you’re ever going to get anything done. No one will pay attention to you unless you’ve got charges.”
I agree that something must be done. It’s time for a meaningful, nation-wide conversation about mental health. That’s the only way our nation can ever truly heal.
God help me. God help Michael. God help us all.” Liza long, ‘I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother.’
It has become a familiar spectacle: for whatever reason, another American has grabbed an assault rifle, that big gun designed for combat troops to achieve maximum kill-rate, and sprayed innocent people with hot lead and left scores dead.
The media rush to express shock like it has never happen before. Analysts brought out their crystal balls and talk themselves silly on the Constant Negative News (CNN). Politicians dodged and fudged and the Commander-in-Chief donned the garb of Mourner-in-Chief, made impassioned speech, not forgetting to wipe off a tear or two and vow to do something ‘meaningful.’
Candles are lit and a solemn funeral held where the names of the victims are called and remembered with fondness by loved ones.
There is a vow to do something to stop the senseless massacres. Everybody goes home. Few days later, things are back to normal. Massacre is forgotten. It is time to eat hamburger, drink soda and watch football unmolested by the dins of wars and of drones and their missiles.
After all this is America, land of the free and the brave which has a genius of insulating itself from the mayhem and the violence its unrestrained military unleashes on the world every minute of every hour of every day of every year since 1945.
So, a young man of 20 years somehow got hold of an assault rifle. There are reports that the weapon belongs to his mother.
There are several questions provoked here: At the risk of sounding sexist, what on earth is a woman doing with an assault rifle in her home?
Many societies consider a 20-year a teenager that still needs parental/societal guidance to navigate the maze that is life.
But of course in God’s own country, even babies have constitutional rights that are inviolable. And men (and women, too) consider the amassing of insane amount of armaments God’s given rights.
One of the most baffling things I noticed during my sojourn in Europe was the ability of the people to totally divorce themselves from all the reality around them.
Europeans claim to be educated but they know so little about the world they so thoroughly dominated (through their military and their media) and they care even less.
The genius of the European Power Elite was to successfully create societies where people are totally isolated from any and all atrocities committed in their names by their armed forces.
For example, the Netherlands was actively engaged in two wars – in Iraq and Afghanistan (let’s forget the Dutch participation in the NATO piracy off the Somali coast, for a while), with the citizens delightfully unaware.
Not once did I see a picture of the war on Dutch television. The people are simply not allowed to see the blood and the gores of wars.
The wars got mentioned in the press all right but sans its nastiness and its messiness.
The Dutch media has so totally dehumanized the enemy that even the most progressive of citizens have trouble thinking of him (it?) as a human being worthy of empathy.
The other, the enemy, is reduced to a Nonentity; a mere abstract statistical figure in a remote place with unpronounceable name.
After all, democratically-elected government has determined that it (the enemy) is a blasted, freedom-hating, horned ogre with no purpose in life than to threaten the lives of the civilized, Christian, democratic, freedom-loving, altruistic Westerners.
The westerner has had this falsehood fed and brow-beaten into his head he knows nothing better.
Lest the Westerner veer and start a dangerous self-doubt, the Western free press constantly do their best to re-inforce the imagery with relentless bombardment of untruths and outright lies.
Dutch businesses get a good cut of the pie that is war booty (an oil contract here, a pipeline deal there eventually adds up to serious money so beloved by the Dutch).
War booties keep the economy on good stead and living standard high and they guarantee good life for Dutch citizens.
So what if some, ungodly Afghan, Somali, Iraqi or Pakistani child, or children got killed?
Collateral damages happen in wars, don’t they?
So, the Dutch blissfully go about their businesses unconcerned, unmoved, untroubled and without the least worry in their lives, except for worries about inflation and the state of the Euro.
That is until the enemy kills a Dutch soldier.
And suddenly, the whole country wake up to the realization that there is war going on after, all.
Flags are lowered; Generals and Politicians put pancakes on their faces to look good on television where they blabber until kingdom come.
The Dutch Monarch, the Queen, is drag into the affairs. As head of state, she has to lead and be seen to do so.
There is great fanfare in the land with all the attendant pomp and pageantry.
The fawning media is there is to capture and propagate the disaster (the killing of a Dutch, nay, Westerner, anywhere is always a disaster) until tomorrow.
I often wonder why the Westerners always think that their lives are worthier than those of the rest of us.
Dutch troops kill Iraqis, Libyans, Iraqis routinely with no mention made in the Dutch media. But there is over-saturation of news coverage if a single Dutch soldier is killed.
It is the same way I wonder why the Dutch celebrate the four years Nazi occupation of their country, but develop collective amnesia when it comes to the question of their country’s bestial colonization of Indonesia and Suriname or the dastardly apartheid they imposed to blight the beautiful country of South Africa.
Another trait of the West that constantly baffles me was the way people think that they somehow will not reap what they sow.
I see Westerners expecting to reap love when they (or should I say their governments?) go around to litter the world with hatred.
The people of the European Stock (apologies to my editor at the New African magazine, Baffour Ankomah), tout their rationality, but few of their actions suggest rationality.
They also appear incapable of telling themselves the truth.
However much we grief for the hapless victims, especially the children of Connecticut, we should be honest enough to tell ourselves some home truths.
Any society that promotes and glorifies violence should expect tragedies to happen.
Any nation that thinks only of violence to resolve disputes should not express surprise when some citizens do the same.
A nation that built multi-billion dollars blood-drenched video games industry should not tell us that it does not expect its citizens to become violent.
A nation that allows citizens, for whatever reasons, to have more guns than some nation’s army is only courting serious trouble.
A nation where bullets are dirt cheap should also expect massacres to occur now and then.
A nation where film industries make billions in make-believe violent wars should realise that some citizens will sooner or later act upon the fantasies.
So, our Nobel Laureate Emperor Obama is capable of shedding tears on the death of little children?
Tchaah!
This is the same man that day after day orders the killing of little children from Yemen, through Somali through Afghanistan through Pakistan.
According to reports, Mr. Obama has taken personal charge of the CIA-engineered drone wars and has ordered more drone attacks that all his predecessors put together. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?_r=0
Of course, like its Dutch counterpart, the American media shield the American from seeing the unpleasant sides of wars.
A drone assault on a wedding party in Pakistan is mentioned alright, but the reportage is so bland, so devoid of all humanity that it is impossible for the American to feel a darn thing for the victims.
A missile assault on a hut in remote Afghanistan might wipe out entire family including little children, but to the American, it is just another dry statistics.
The media could have been talking about goats or sheep.
Which American journalist has the time to ferret out the names, the ages, the hobbies and the ambitions of little Afghan children?
Which true-born American wants to read about those inanities anyway?
When Obama was making his speech, many called for the N—– to get off their television so that they can watch their football? See here: http://deadspin.com/5968935/take-that-nigger-off-the-tv-we-wanna-watch-football-idiots-respond-to-nbc-pre+empting-sunday-night-football
“You don’t have to teach people how to be human. You have to teach them how to stop being inhuman.” – Eldridge Cleaver
Readers, kindly read this:
“With seven seconds left to go, there was no one to be seen on the ground. Bryant could still have diverted the missile at that point. Then it was down to three seconds. Bryant felt as if he had to count each individual pixel on the monitor. Suddenly a child walked around the corner, he says.
Second zero was the moment in which Bryant’s digital world collided with the real one in a village between Baghlan and Mazar-e-Sharif.
Bryant saw a flash on the screen: the explosion. Parts of the building collapsed. The child had disappeared. Bryant had a sick feeling in his stomach.
“Did we just kill a kid?” he asked the man sitting next to him.
“Yeah, I guess that was a kid,” the pilot replied.
“Was that a kid?” they wrote into a chat window on the monitor.
Then, someone they didn’t know answered, someone sitting in a military command center somewhere in the world who had observed their attack. “No. That was a dog,” the person wrote.
They reviewed the scene on video. A dog on two legs?”
– ‘The Woes of an American Drone Operator,’ By Nicola Abé, published by Der Spiegel.
It was Mr. Obama who ordered the drone attack that killed the innocent children in a village between Baghlan and Mazar-e-Sharif(they even lack the decency to get the name of the village).
An innocent human child heartlessly and unfeelingly reduced to a mere dog.
It was the same Mr. Obama that tearfully tells us how beautiful the children that died in Newtown, Connecticut were.
Was the child in a village between Baghlan and Mazar-e-Sharif ugly?
We would never know as he went quietly to his grave, anonymous, unnamed, unloved, unsung, un-praised and with no dirge and no high-falutin rhetoric from Emperor Obama.
May his innocent soul rest in peace.
About the Author
Femi Akomolafe is a passionate Pan-Africanist. A columnist for the Accra-based Daily Dispatch newspaper and Correspondent for the New African magazine. Femi lives in both Europe and Africa, and writes regularly on Africa-related issues for various newspapers and magazines.
Femi was the producer of the FOCUS ON AFRICANS TV Interview programme for the MultiTV Station.
He is also the CEO of Alaye Dot Biz Limited Dot Biz, a Kasoa-based Multimedia organisation that specialises in Audio and Video Production. He loves to shoot and edit video documentaries.
His highly-acclaimed books (“Africa: Destroyed by the gods,” “Africa: It shall be well,” “18 African Fables & Moonlight Stories” and “Ghana: Basic Facts + More”) are now available for sales at the following bookshops/offices:
- Freedom Bookshop, near Apollo Theatre, Accra.
- The Daily Dispatch Office, Labone – Accra
- WEB Dubois Pan-African Centre, Accra
- Ghana Writers Association office, PAWA House, Roman Ridge, Accra.
- African Kitchen in Amsterdam Bijlmer
Where to buy them online:
On Lulu Books:
18 African Fables & Moonlight Stories https://goo.gl/Skohtn
Ghana: Basic Facts + More: https://goo.gl/73ni99
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Africa: It shall be well: https://goo.gl/KIMcIm
Africa: it shall be well
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Africa: Destroyed by the gods
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Get free promotional materials here:
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A FREE Chapter of ‘Africa: It shall be well’ could be downloaded here: http://alaye.biz/africa-it-shall-be-well-a-free-chapter/
- Africa: Destroyed by the gods (How religiosity destroyed Africa) http://alaye.biz/africa-destroyed-by-the-gods-introduction/
A FREE Chapter of ‘Africa: Destroyed by the gods’ could be downloaded here: http://alaye.biz/africa-destroyed-by-the-gods-free-chapter/
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Kindly help me share the books’ links with your friends and, grin, please purchase your copies.
Comradely,
Femi Akomolafe
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