Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Western (American and European) Guinea “Pigism” and the Collaboration of African Elites

The celebrations in Nigeria on the eradication of Ebola should be squared against the sad reality that about 1 million West Africans are expected to die by next year if the Ebola biological terrorism continues.The speed to cheer is ill-advised if we do not get a foothold at the problem.The Economic Community of West African States' (ECOWAS) governments need to meet in Nigeria immediately and remove all western sponsored bio-terrorism establishments in West Africa. The Anglo European actions are reminiscent of the offering of molasses, butter, bibles, and gun powder in exchange for human slaves.

Furthermore, decisions need to be made about what is really needed in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Do we need medical doctors like the contingent from Cuba or foreign troops in West Africa? If the foreign troops remain should they be supervised by ECOMOG soldiers? How do we supply local foods to communities under quarantine? The alternative is to seat tight in fear with divide and conquer physic, whereas allowing for a biological terrorism holocaust in the region. These are some of the critical issues at stake for the West African people and governments.
                
As these aforementioned modalities are examined there needs to be the push for parallel investigations to ascertain how Ebola got to West Africa for the first time. Instead of falling prey to the lies of how bats transported Ebola from East Africa to West Africa, the assessments need to focus on all the western bioterrorism research centers in Africa. Why do we have Tulane University, the United States government, the United States Army, and the World Health Organization (WHO) experimenting with Ebola in West Africa?
                
These independent investigations must also examine the collaboration of African rulers and officials in these ongoing biological warfare disaster. How did the authorities in the affected countries decide to outsource their healthcare systems? When did they start focusing on Ebola instead of tackling diseases like malaria, typhoid fever, and pneumonia that are perennial killers in Africa? Western companies and their officials that offer African rulers visas while proceeding to conduct Ebola and other bioterrorism research activities need to be prosecuted at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
                
Whereas, all the infected American Ebola patients have survived, the only African who arrived and became symptomatic was allowed to die under clouds of suspicion in Dallas Texas. Mr. Thomas Eric Duncan’s death was an open letter to the world which categorical states that African Ebola victims who are able to arrive in Western countries are not welcomed here. Ebola has decimated African health workers. But are African rulers and people going to stand by while this primed weapon of mass destruction dislodges the Chinese influence in Africa, imposes foreign troops, and aid the looters.
                                   
                                Nnamdi F. Akwada MSW, BA is a SocialJustice Activist
                                            www.facebook.com/AfricanDiasporatv
References


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2798713/3-000-uk-troops-germ-warfare-style-ebola-blockade-plan-sierra-leone.html



http://tulane.edu/news/newwave/101807_bioterrorism.cfm


Thursday, September 11, 2014

Michael Brown- Did the Police Kill the wrong Boy?

As a transplanted African man in the American cosmos with four children including three boys, I am forced to address and confront the vigilante execution of Michael Brown in broad daylight and the ramifications that might prevail in the later years. It does not take a behavioral scientist or some extensive longitudinal research to figure out that America for all its virtues and values remains a society hedged on white systematic privilege, socioeconomic classism, and cast. Hence, a justice system that humanizes Caucasians with innate status, others with their income/wealth, and some due to their closeness to whiteness at every juncture.

One of the entities that encapsulates the governmental sanctioning of Caucasian privilege is the American regional and local police forces. These men and women with state and municipality authorities are granted the licenses to kill without little or no accountability. Police officers work hand in hand with prosecutors and judges and are granted the privilege of infallibility. So enormous are these relationships that they have developed cottage industries to tax and lockup whole communities of poor, disenfranchised, and dark skin people for minor traffic infractions under the cover of the so called impartial criminal justice system.

Interestingly, I am a witness to the impunity of this privilege that dots the American landscape and gets threatened when black people speak, especially those with accents. I was threatened with arrest by a judge few months ago, just few days after welcoming my third son into the universe. I had arrived in the Maryland district court to answer to what I assumed was a routine speeding ticket. At the onset, I motioned her Honor to grant a summary dismissal of the case. I reminded the judge that this was the third time the proceeding was scheduled and that my right for speedy trial had been compromised. I also told the judge that I was experiencing sleep deprivation because of my new born.

In my exhaustion and naivety I was quickly made to remember that police officers are angels who are supported in every step of the way. They can do no wrong though they issue speeding infractions while in motion, an action that might be contrary to elementary physics. At the transaction in court, I was reminded like Professor Henry Gates that my degrees and integrity, did not amount to much. As an African man I am to remain in my stead, shut up, be docile, and pray for the mercies of a prejudice system. The police officers are always 100% right. Never second guess them despite qualitative and quantitative evidences that say otherwise.          

However, the rightness of the supposed peace officers who are more interested in maintaining societal order which includes the marginalization of others, have ran into the fatherhood conundrum within the African American communities. Before the execution of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown there was a common held misnomer that black children and adults who died from gun violent are deserving of such demise. The black communities and the larger society in the US were told to overlook issues of economics and justice as though phenomenon such as poverty, drug proliferation, mass incarceration, and fatherlessness occur in vacuums.

There is now the jarring reality that black boys with working class fathers, black boys who are not drug pushers, black boys that listen to hip-hop music, and black boys who do not use more drugs than their counterparts in other communities, can be the victims of extrajudicial killings in the land of liberty. The US government and global agencies such as Amnesty International preach about extrajudicial killings in faraway lands while they ignore those that happen in their backyards. As the Brown’s and other families seek justice, the privileged should not derail their quest. Otherwise, someday on the execution of a black kid, it will take more than warfare weapons to secure the system.

                         Nnamdi F. Akwada MSW, BA is a Social Justice Activist 
                                       www.facebook.com/AfricanDiasporatv 
               
                           
#Ferguson

Sunday, June 30, 2013

Nelson Mandela + US Supreme Court +Trayvon Martin + Football + Mass Protesters + NSA Spying= Human Rights and Economic Justice


                These confluences of historical events this week are such that most of us would be twitching our bodies and scratching our heads to resolve, and appreciate for years to come. Indeed the events that have transpired this week would require generational assessment if we desire the relevancy of mankind in the cosmos. Our human race have been saddened by the critical condition of the indomitable voice of the oppressed in South Africa under the apartheid reign and the eventual distinguished leader of the South African people. Most are eagerly praying that Mr. Nelson Madiba Mandela who gave 27years of his life to affirm our collective dignity and humanity will remain with us as we go through these trying times in our various societies.

                Human Rights in the United States have undergone rapid developments this week that we have monitored through the main street media, alternative media, and social media a.k.a. NSA swimming pool. With the US Supreme Court’s decision on affirmative action and abolition of section IV of the voter’s right act, one wonders what Mr. Bayard Rustin one of the great leaders of the civil rights movement in the United States and a convener of the 1963 Civil Rights march on Washington would say if he were still alive. In making the decision to rescind section IV, it is as though the members of the court who voted in the confirmatory were having their own hurricane Katrina moments. They conveniently disregarded the whole of last year when governors, secretaries of state, attorney generals, and legislatures sort to rig and/or influence the elections from Pennsylvania to Ohio to Texas to Wisconsin to Florida to name a few. These shameless justices practically sanctioned longer voting lines and fewer voting days’ policies. Instead of eliminating section IV, the US past and contemporary history necessitates that it should have applied to all fifty states and regions.   

                 Ironically, the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Right Act which made the United States a great nation and a beacon of freedom around the world has been guttered on the same week that our homosexual brothers and sisters were spared the indignities of federally sanctioned discrimination. The Civil rights movement and the resultant laws were the actualization of the American ideals, ideas, and promises that are contained in the Bill of Rights. It could be said that the American bill of rights were not worth the papers they were written on until the abolition of Jim Crow segregation laws and those practices that infringed on the inalienable rights, liberty, and pursuit of happiness for a cross section of Americans. At the core of civil rights movement that was led by the likes of Rev. Martin Luther King, Mrs. Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, and Representative John Lewis is human dignity and economic empowerment for all.  

But in 2013 those so-called jurist in the supreme court  are of the opinion that close to 300years of slavery and 100years of Jim Crow racial segregation and discrimination can be whitewashed with less than 50years of civil rights, voting rights, and affirmative action. The Civil Rights act and the Voting Rights act were the affirmation of our equality, sanctity of life, and our collective human rights to survive, rather than to squalor with racial discrimination, prejudice, and insidious second class citizenship. Those rights were put in place to mitigate the carnage of lynching, apartheid, economic marginalization, and disenfranchisement in the United States.  These laws were put in place to ensure that companies like McDonalds and others do not trick us with limited black people in their advertisements whereas they use our patronage funds to sponsor organizations such as American Legislative Exchange Council ALEC.

ALEC was the same organization responsible for placing stand your ground laws to shield criminals like George Zimmerman who was enthusiastic about dehumanizing any black life under the pretense of neighborhood watch. ALEC amalgamated corporations and legislators to sponsor laws that busted unions and restricted access to voting. We also need to remember the ALEC connections to the Koch brothers who were also sponsors of the AstroTurf Tea Party groups with their manufactured mass movements.  Under their schemes, poor households and other minorities should be afforded limited affirmative action and educational financial assistance which is withdrawn for the flimsiest of reasons such as marijuana use. Conversely, it is okay to pass laws that allow African American and Latino boys and men to be subjected to systematic racial profiling. It is also dandy to promote laws that empower people to gun down young boys like Trayvon Martin with intended malice and hate void of any provocation, and wait for mass agitation before the murderer is charged and tried in court.

                Other mass movements remain alive and well in places like Brazil and Turkey where the footballing industrial Complex has shown their might like they did at the South Africa 2010 world cup. When the South Africans got frustrated about the cost of the world cup and the dictates of the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) they turned inwards and massacred fellow Africans under the guise of overpopulation and economic hardship. But in Brazil and Turkey the focus remains on the culprits of economic malaise and inhumane social justice policies. In Brazil which has excelled in uplifting the poor under former President Lula da Silva and his successor President Dilma Rousseff the question remains as to why more investment on the peoples’ economic development has not remained a priority, instead of state corruption and massive investment on FIFA projects like the stadiums.

                In Turkey, the masses want to be able to shape policies in their country. They crave for a bottom to top approach rather than the heavy handedness of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan. Though, Mr. Erdogan has being instrumental in delivering foreign investment in Somali and accommodating the Syrian refugees, the Turks want to be consulted in their domestic matters. They long for a society that would be guided by the aspirations of the people rather than the dogmas of the religious right. Hence like the Brazilians who are protesting right in front of the soccer fields that are the venues of the confederate cup, the Turks are also demonstrating and boycotting the FIFA Under 20 soccer tournament. In both countries they would rather be on the streets than pay the exorbitant fees to watch the football matches.

The Occupy Movements in Brazil and Turkey are producing the next generations of Nelson Mandelas who are speaking truth to power and forcing concessions for a better world. Global citizens in Rio prefer capital expenditures in the favelas that will benefit the local inhabitants without creating artificial inflation and/or bubbles that results in homelessness in the short run and unsustainable growth in the long-term. Those in Istanbul are akin to Mr. Snowden of the United States who resents the power grabbing nature of some of the world’s governments. They want their government to desist from usurping authorities and abusing public trust. These heroes yawn to be part of the progressive public discourses that have been engrained in our collective consciousness this week. Irrespective of our economic systems these protesters and billions around the world long for transparency in government, which has human rights and economic justice at the core.               

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

 


 

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Diaspora Voices and Our Perspectives

http://vimeo.com/66875436

http://vimeo.com/66875436

Diaspora Voices and Our Perspectives

Public Policy and Social Justice Monthly Program- Diaspora Voices

Our public affairs programming would highlight the state of affairs within specific African and African Diaspora countries, regions, and communities. We are going to take a driver’s seat on the condition of economics, politics, and social justice within our motherland and elsewhere by bridging the gulfs between the African peoples through the required awakenings. For example, emphases would be placed on our perceived intractable problems and the program would include calls for accountability and problem solving within the African context and throughout the globe.

Panelist: Mariama Jalloh-Heyward of the Green White and Blue Commission

Yemi Falusi Esq. of the Occupy Nigeria Movement in Washington DC


Cultural Education and Entertainment Monthly Show- Our Perspectives

With the on-going evolution of the African renaissance there remains the need for Africans to take ownership and present our cultures in ways that illuminates the various positive attributes of the African people. We intend to be the responsible vessels to interpret and utilize our cultural norms, values, food, crafts, and fashion as the means of repairing most of the bias, prejudice, and discrimination of the African people that remains prevalent in the global community. The show portends to reduce our self-hate while advocating self-efficacy and pride. Ours should be the authentic lens for affecting and spreading the African culture and vitality.

Guest: Anna Mwalagho DMV based musician, poet, and social activist from Kenya
www.annamwalagho.com

Emmerson musician, social-economic, and political activist from Sierra Leone

Venue: Agama Kitchen and Restaurants
5640 Annapolis Road, Bladensburg MD 20710
www.agamakitchen.com

Date: Sunday May 26th, 2013
Time: 2pm-4pm

Producer: Omar Rafik of Life Depicted Productions
www.lifedepicted.com

Declaration of Emergency in Nigeria! Is it too little too late?

                In December of 2011 after the Christmas Day bombing, President Goodluck Jonathan missed the opportunity to address the Boko Haram issue head-on. Instead of resolving the terrorist problem the administration decided to zero in on taxing average and/or regular Nigerians with the Fuel Subsidy scheme on January 1st, 2012. Shock and Awe policies were rolled out to conflate the oil barons and marketers with ordinary Nigerians and the Islamic fundamentalism with oil subsidies.

                Those of us that stood up as Occupy Nigerian Movement protesters have been vindicated over and over again with the exposed corruption in the Petroleum sectors reaching up to the National Assembly membership and the explosion of terror in West Africa. Hopefully, with the eventual declaration of emergency against those that have perpetrated carnage on our homeland, other fights would emerge such as those again corruption, impunity, and unemployment. These scrutiny and measures of accountability should not be reversed for opponents of the regime.

Carnage in Northern Nigeria (article written in April 2011)

                Amnesty International, one of the premier human rights organizations characterized the incidents in the northern areas of the United Nations of Nigeria as riots and demonstrations. Thus equating the carnage to the demonstrations in Bahrain, Yemen and Syria where people are currently using peaceful and civil means to petition their governments. This mischaracterization is appalling because what took place in northern Nigeria was hundreds of bloodbaths, lynching, burning of innocent human beings, arson, and gross destruction of properties by Dictator Muhammadu Buhari’s supporters. With nearly 250people dead and close to 50,000 fellow Nigerians displaced, give it up to the perpetrators of inhumanity to remain indifferent. They have mastered the skills of committing mass murders while simultaneously cloaking in victim hood. Similar butchery was the primary reasons behind the Nigerian and Biafran genocidal wars.

                Contrary to revisionist historians after the 1966 coup, counter coup d'état, and extinction of some southeastern officers from the ranks of the Nigerian Army, our union was still standing. It was days of similar mass massacres like the world have just witnessed from April 17-18th 2011, that has continued sporadically from 1960’s until now, that forced the hands of the South-easterners to head back home to peace and safety. In the process they realized that their safety could not be protected in some parts of the Disunited Nations of Nigeria and were forced to declare independence in 1966. Unfortunately these shameless killings have continued unabated since then. The Nigerian and international press always report about these barbaric incidents as though they began after 1999 when the civilians took over from the military.

                However, Enough is Enough! How can northerners continue to preach “One Nigeria” only when they are holding on to the presidency? The sad reality is that they have controlled and/or occupied the said position for about 40years within our so-called 50years independence. In their time as rulers, the Northern Military Industrial Complex (NMIC) alias Army Arrangement have legitimatized corruption and mismanaged our national resources. The northern elites have set the country backwards about twenty-five years if not more with their incessant coups and dictatorships. This retardation in developments has been felt in every nook and cranny of the United Nations of Nigeria. With the marginalization of the Niger Delta and the assassination of Dr. Ken Saro Wiwa the veils were finally lifted off the eyes of the South-south. The south west including Awoist (who would like to focus on the prediction of Chief Awolowo that a Niger Delta man would become president someday) are beginning to understand that while the Southeasterners might allegedly play you wayo, some northerners are very willing to exterminate their fellow Nigerians.

                It is one thing to contest the votes/elections and the tabulations of the result but quite another to execute regional killing orgies. These ghastly acts were done to intimidate the masses who came out in droves to cast their votes all over the country. In the north, President Goodluck Jonathan got more than 25% (http://www.inecnigeria.org/results/states.php) of the votes in nearly a dozen states. So the vitriolic Congress for Progressive Change CPC) supported murdering quads wanted to silence the segment of the northern population that have realized that the Presidency is not the panacea to their problems. The CPC supporters wanted to terrorize the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) who conducted a commendable election. These killing thugs wanted to suppress the announcement of the election results. Why did CPC supporters not wait for the pronouncement of the outcome before going out to threaten and arrest our national security?

                Where were these hooligans, their parents, and their sponsors when Dictator Sani Abacha took the whole nation hostage and ostracized Nigerians from the African and global communities of nations? We could not participate in the African Cup of Nations in South Africa and we were suspended from the Commonwealth of Nations not for resisting imperialism but due to authoritarianism. Where were these miscreants when Dictator Abdulsalami Abubakar handed the presidency to Dictator Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999? Why was there no protest when Mr. Obasanjo and his pal Professor Maurice Iwu gave the post to President Umaru Yar’Adua in 2007? But they have the audacity to slaughter law abiding Nigerians. These nonsense needs to stop right now, we have to break the cycle of massacres, we cannot compensate our way out of these man made tragedies.

                Notwithstanding the concerns of Amnesty International the Nigerian government has a responsibility to use adequate force to defend law abiding citizens. While the observance of peaceful protest should remain sacrosanct the carnage that we have just witnessed in Nigeria should be prevented and suppressed with commensurable force to safeguard the lives of innocent law abiding citizens. The union of the United Nations of Nigeria cannot remain sacrosanct for long when it is a death sentence in northern Nigeria to be suspected of southern ethnicities, an Ancestor worshipper, a Christian, and a Muslim who votes for a Christian. My own sister (a Christian, an Igbo and Ijaw) supported and campaigned for Dictator Muhammadu Buhari, so what would the murderers do in her case?

                Moreover the fact is that people like Mr. Buhari and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar had sown the seeds of violence before the elections. They purposely used languages like “lynching” and the “inevitability of violence” to ginger up their supporters in preparation of the Saturday April 16, 2011 elections. Hence, Buhari did not see the need to call off his supporters from the streets while the killings went on for more than twenty four hours. Alhaji Abubakar wants to pay lip service to the so-called revered indivisibility of our nation when the lives and property of southerners and fellow northerners who voted their conscience is not guaranteed in the United Nations of Nigeria. Our people are nonchalantly orphaned, our parents are rendered childless through brutality, and others are maimed. The sanctity, safety, and respect of lives should be our primary sacrosanct obligation and not nationhood/religion.   

                Moreover, the Nigerian federal and northern state governments need to bow their heads in shame because of their negligence. They knew that some in northern Nigeria would turn to their tried and true part time of using tyrannical savagery. The stakeholders should have prepared for the worst while hoping for the best which many of us knew was not likely given the antecedents of some northerners. Heads of the Nigerian security apparatus need to immediately tender their resignations. Hopefully, contrary to press reports, Captain Emmanuel Ihenacho the Minister of Interior was relieved of his position for the ineptitude in providing security for our young national service coopers and the general public in the north. The expectation is that he was not suspended due to internal political considerations from Imo State. It would be a betrayal of the highest order to the victims if no one takes accountability for this perennial mayhem.

            Never Again should people be victimized in such callous ways with impunity. President Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan and the authorities need to establish the Emergency Response Tactical Teams (ERT) in all northern states that have a past history of perpetrating this carnage. The ERTs should train and practice the needed skills to protect the general public and should never be deployed to disrupt non-violent protest. These teams should be able to be organized within 15minutes of any disturbances when the lives and properties of individuals from the United Nations of Nigeria are under attack. Our governments should mandate the ERT to protect our visitors too. We must protect the sanctity of the African lives.           
                                          Nnamdi F. Akwada MSW, BA is a Social Justice Activist