International Social Justice Activist

Sunday, April 21, 2013

A Race to the Bottom and the Global Economic Abracadabra

While listening to the radio some days ago in the Washington DC metro area, there was an interview of an air traffic controller in the Frederick county area. The subject was so upset that as part of the United States federal government austerity or sequestration magic, his job would be vamoosed from federal funding. The shocked controller went on to indicate his right wing leaning support for cuts within the government but wondered aloud why his job should be on the cutting block. This is not unique as corporations and individual members of the elite 1% club have used their stooges such as the main street pan-international media to wage regimes of miseducation against public sector workers around the globe.

So from Cyprus to London England, from Greece to Wall Street America, and from Wisconsin to Ohio there is the renewed mantra to blame the victims of corporate malfeasance and victimize the fatalities of individual greed instead of the so-called makers. When middle income folks within the private sectors lose their jobs and are unable to secure and provide for their families they are quick to point fingers at government workers instead of taking an objective look at the global corporate gluttony. They become impotent to challenge the transfer of jobs abroad and the automation of businesses to render people obsolete in various employment arenas.

These economic casualties which are perceived as mere collateral damages but are actual systematic offspring of our global economic systems are depressed, demoralized, and dejected and become unable to connect the dots between the disparities in income within their former organizations and their present conditions. There is a failure to link the corporate jets and CEO bonus to the devastation permitted on the common folks. Ours is a race for the crumbs that seeks to scavenge and be content for what miserly benefits that greedy elites deem necessary for us to survive on. We are swift in condemning homeowners that lost their homes in loan mortgage crises without realizing that they were ponds of the banking cartels and/or turning a blind eye to the same scams which the bankers have used from Spain to west coast states in America such as Nevada and California.

Consequently, we are presented with a Europe of unimaginable dichotomy like in the bible (religion) for butter (resources) days. At the same time we have more Portuguese and Spaniards heading to Angola than at any time since the global slave trade economy. We now have Europeans openly embracing fascism politics and cultural xenophobia. Amidst the petroleum wealth and boom in Luanda no one questions the Europeans for their workers permits. But in Europe and America it is easier to pick on the foreigners instead of organizing against those from within that specialize in setting up tax havens, shipping jobs around the globe to pay the lowest cost, and reaping astronomical profits. On US television there is an open call to move monies and investments to Ireland whereas urban and rural unemployment remains off the chain with the ensuing societal cost.

Paradoxically, the race to the bottom is sanctioned by politicians and the corporate media types who are beholden to the corporate status quo. As such they have the masses divided and fighting themselves, for example poor Europeans in America against African Americans and Latinos and African Americans against immigrants. Whilst they keep us bickering and competing for the lowest common denominators, the Dow Jones and other leading financial markets are creating no jobs, depressing wages, gambling with the savings of folks, forcing municipalities into bankruptcies, but making record earnings for the economic/financial gurus and members of the exclusive 1% club. These entitled classes would rather hoard monies and properties to service 3-5centuries of their descendants, whence people are poor, homeless, and dying today.

Nnamdi F. Akwada MSW, BA is a Social Justice Activist

Friday, March 29, 2013

Emmerson ft Timaya This Na Mi Yone...2012

1st Music of the Week
www.usafricanculturalfestival.com

LES PATRONS feat J.MARTINS OFFICIEL HD "Près du Coeur"

2nd Video of the Week
www.usafricanculturalfestival.com

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Viva La Comandante Chavez

Hugo Chavez just died few hours ago and yet he has been assaulted by the revisionist histories of western media propagandizing that some around the globe are falling prey to. I am going to analyze Chavezismo based on the contexts of my two homes. The same main street media in the United States that collaborated with Bush and Cheney to deceive us into an unjust war in Iraq and who want President Obama to invade Iran has embarked on the smear campaign against Chavezism, since President Chavez kicked out the oil company cabals, speculators, and monopolies . While Chavez was increasing participatory democracy in Venezuela, setting up business cooperatives, and eradicating poverty, so called democracy agents in the states were busy reducing access to the polling places such as restricting voting centers, limiting days for voting, disenfranchising college students and the elderly in the guise of voter IDs, and requiring voters to wait for 8-9hours before they could cast their votes in 2012.

The sins of Chavez include fighting for the self determination of Latinos, Africans, and other people of the world who desire the pursuit of happiness, liberty, equality, and communal actualization. The media portrays him as buffoonish for speaking truth to power and accuses him of wrecking his nation’s economy; these same journalists that are still embedded in the lies that have sustained the invasion, occupation, reconstruction, and fleecing of Iraq. And then and now they seem not to be interested in truth telling about some of the reasons behind our prolonged economic crisis in the United States and the push for austerity when the 1% are still making out like bandits as exemplified by the Miracles on Wall Street.

One of the most hated truths that Comandante Hugo spoke was when he called Bush a devil at the United Nations in New York. What else could he have called a liar that sent young American soldiers to untimely deaths because Saddam tried to kill his papa or Iraq had nuclear weapons, or he wanted to install democracy or the Texas oil barons wanted control over Mesopotamian oil fields. How many Iraqis have since died because of the actions of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and Paul Wolfowitz? Why are they not facing crimes against humanity trials in the United States or at The Hague? But for the so-called American exceptionalism and racism we remain unaccountable to our own citizens and the other inhabitants of the world, hence the escalation to unending global drone strikes and warfare.

In Africa, one wishes that we had just one leader in this generation who would not be preoccupied with their systematic theft of resources and self-aggrandizement but with improving the conditions of the people. A leader or two who would not just allow multinational companies to plunder their nations while accepting crumbs in return like in the days of human slavery and contemporary economic globalization slavery. Chavez was not perfect and should have left the Venezuelan constitution without tamper while training the new crop of leaders, assuming the role of elder statesperson, and taking care of his health. He should have increased community policing in line with the community cooperatives nonetheless if any of our current African rulers can achieve one-tenth of what Hugo Chavez has done, ours would be multiple havens of some sort on the mother continent.

Nnamdi F. Akwada MSW, BA is a Social Justice Activist

Monday, February 11, 2013

President Jonathan and Co! How do you guys sleep at night amidst the Crumbling infrastructures?

Africans overseas normally get irate when images of poverty stricken rural areas, animals, and woods (aka jungles) are used to portray all of Africa. These are standard images in the western media with the classic been the pictures of poor starving African children with flies on their faces and white “saviors” asking for a dime per day to feed them. In the middle of our indignations we wonder why these so-called saviors do not show either the vicinities of the airports they landed at and/or the luxury resorts they stay in in-between TV shoots. But our desires to have Africa put its best foot out, belies the reality that we have a bunch of impotent, uncaring, and greedy rulers at the helms of governments throughout Africa, who are content to do little for the privileged few while the masses wither away.

Our grievances are misplaced and ignorance becomes bliss whereas we long for a day or setting to show the world the same playgrounds of the wealthy and scant middle income folks on the African continent. We ignore the life line of our countries such as our dilapidated basic amenities and infrastructures. For example, visitors to the local wing of the Murtala Mohamed Lagos Airport would be highly impressed with the edifice and international standards within, when the Port-Harcourt-Aba federal government express road remains a deathtrap of human making and/or neglect. Some get excited about the state of aviation that is used by less than 10% of Nigerians and Africans while our highways and railways the key to affordable transportation for 95% of individuals, businesses, and goods are eyesores.

President Jonathan of Nigeria and his band of yes-men have no qualms in seeking second terms and hedging their power when all the matrix indicate that poverty is on the rise and the benefits of economic growth is centered on the select few in our upper classes. Current Minister of the Niger Delta Affairs, Elder Godsday Orubebe is in the middle of a heated argument with Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State about performance with government allocations. It should be noted that wiser men have built interstates, railroads, and engineered decades of economic development with lesser monies than Mr. Orubebe and Amaechi have in our public but unaccountable coffers. As they quibble we have young people who have graduated from universities and polytechnics with specialized degrees but are not employed because they lack 3-5years of working experiences and are part of the African underclass.

At least the governor and minister are challenging each other to stop the siphoning and theft of petroleum generated public revenues which are handed to them with insufficient oversights. In Abia State the people are forced to exist in what could best be described as series of manmade disasters. The Abia people have been subjected to inept leadership for close to a decade courtesy of Mr. T. A. Orji and Mr. Orji Kalu. In Port-Harcourt the problem is congestion and pollution but in Aba (Enyimba land) we are presented with a dump for a city. Refuse adorns the Abia axis of the Aba Port-Harcourt express road. In fact motorists have to switch to the opposite sides of the road with oncoming traffic, a situation that compounds those deathtraps that we call roads. This is done numerous times to seek a modicum of drivable freeways.

Irrespective of how our rulers are able to sleep through these glaring problems whether of their free will or through chemical dependency substances, we the people need to brainstorm and implement concrete solutions instead of getting distracted, bamboozled, and mislead by staged optics. Diaspora progressives like this writer take issue with the messages behind aid to Africa such as the Lawrence O’Donnell’s and UNICEF’s K.I.N.D. program in Malawi and other NGO paradigms which reinforces the African dependency narratives, when we have the richest continent that attracts home based and outside exploiters. We would like for shows like MSNBC’s The Last Word, to investigate and find out why the Malawian President Joyce Banda and her cohorts who are multi-millionaires by all standards, cannot provide basic necessities like classroom chairs and desks for African children.

But the reality is that western media establishments do not owe us any favors. We have to be the ones responsible for demanding the changes that have eluded us since the days of our independence. As Diasporan Africans we have to ask the critical questions about rulers like President Jonathan that have become dismal failures and his stooges such as Governor Amaechi and Minister Orubebe whose budgets are more than those of many African countries? We need to realize that our organizing and support of the Occupy Movements from abroad can only go so far. Changes can only come about in Africa when we are ready to move back and put our lives on the line. Alternatively, collective economic developmental changes would come about when our sisters and brothers in the continent actually get sick and tired of the status quo to the point of standing up for the fixing.

References and Related Articles on Infrastructures

http://www.zimbio.com/Nigeria/articles/g0vyMBtph-A/2015+Fight+Between+Minister+Niger+Delta+Governor
http://www.thenigerianvoice.com/nvnews/90993/1/southern-nigerian-guidelines-sng.html
http://www.pointblanknews.com/Articles/artopn3657.html


Nnamdi F. Akwada MSW, BA is a Social Justice Activist