Saturday 31 March 2018

A timely tweet from the Martin Luther King Center grounds an essay!

(The King Center, Atlanta, United States)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

EARLIER on in the week, there was a dreadful news report from genocidist Nigeria which claimed that the Martin Luther King Center, Atlanta, US, had “awarded” an “exceptional African leadership” prize to Nigeria’s lead genocidist operative Muhammadu Buhari. On Wednesday (27 March), I embarked on an essay response to this development… Most thankfully the following day, Thursday, the tweet from the King Center (copy below) brought my essay drive to a screeching halt!

The King Center
The award given to President Buhari of Nigeria was not given by The King Center, at the request of The King Center or by the children of #MLK and #CorettaScottKing. @MrFixNigeria
22:08 - 28 Mar 2018

INSTEAD, I am posting here an essay written in March 2007 on the odious relationship between Andrew Young, a one-time close aide of Martin Luther King, and these genocidists in Nigeria – then led by Olusegun Obasanjo  entitled  “Andrew Young, Obasanjo and the Nobel”,
(http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/andrew-young-obasanjo-and-nobel.html)
(An Evening with Joe Henderson, Charlie Haden, Al Foster, “Serenity” [personnel: Henderson, tenor saxophone; Haden, bass; Foster, drums; recorded: live, Genova Jazz Festival, Villa Imperiale, Genoa, Italy, 9 July 1987])
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe


273rd birthday of Olaudah Equiano

(Born c1745, Essaka, Biafra; dies 31 March 1797, LondonEngland)

GREAT Biafran and one of African World’s most celebrated intellectuals, sailorexpeditionistentrepreneuroratorversatile campaigneractive exponent of African freedom (during the 1780s in Britain) from enslavement and other spheres of subjugation waged by an assemblage of European World states and interests (including, especiallyBritain, PortugalSpainFrancethe Netherlands, Italian city-statesGerman princely statesSweden-NorwayDenmarkthe United States) and their “successor states” in the Americas/Caribbean, begun in the 15th century, visionary of eventual African liberation, author of the classic, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789), towering member of the iconic men and women that constitute the freedom pantheon from which the current Biafra freedom movement derives invaluable insight, tenacity, focus
(City of Westminster London’s (Britain) commemorative plaque for Olaudah Equiano, the outstanding 18th century Igbo intellectual and irrepressible exponent of freedom, at 73 Riding House Street, Paddington, London, where Equiano lived and worked and published his classic, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African in 1789. This building is now owned by the University College London.)
(Ornette Coleman Quartet, “Ecars” [personnel: Coleman, tenor saxophone; Don Cherry, pocket trumpet; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Ed Blackwell, drums; recorded: Atlantic Studios, New York, US, 27 March 1961])
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Wednesday 28 March 2018

106th birthday of Léon-Gontram Damas

(B 28Mar1912, Cayenne, French-occupied Guiana, S America)
POET, editor, philosopher, academic, co-founder with Léopold Sédar Senghor and Aimé Césaire of the 1930s-1940s “negritude” intellectual movement of African affirmation in Paris, France, and whose demonstrable volume of poetry, Pigments (1937), gives notice of the engaging trajectory of the movement:
my hatred thrived on the margins of culture
the margin of theories the margin of idle talk
with which they stuffed me since birth
even though all in me aspired to be [African]
while they ransacked my Africa
(Andrew Hill Sextet, “Spectrum” [personnel: Hill, piano; Kenny Dorham, trumpet; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone, bass clarinet, flute; Joe Henderson, tenor saxophone;  Richard Davis, bass; Tony Williams, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 21 March 1964])
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Sunday 25 March 2018

89th birthday of Cecil Taylor

(Born 25 March 1929, New York, US)
VIRTUOSO pianist and one of the preeminent leaders of the free-jazz movement beginning in the mid-1950s, prolific composer, poet, academic
(TWO masters’ rare and perhaps only known recording session togetherJohn Coltrane and Cecil Taylor play Coltrane Time, featuring the following four compositions: “Shifting down”, “Just friends”, “Like someone in love”, “Double clutching” [full personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; Kenny Dorham, trumpet; Taylor, piano; Chuck Israelsbass; Louis Hayes, drums; recorded: United Artists Records, New York, US, 13 October 1958])
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Friday 23 March 2018

Hillary Clinton, “white men”, “[not]white men” and Africa

(Hillary Clinton:... unrelentingly tortured tale ... now blames “white men” for loss)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

HILLARY CLINTON has continued her unrelentingly tortured tale of why she lost the November 2016 US presidential election to Donald Trump, her anti-establishment opponent. In the latest episode, narrated to an audience in Mumbai, India, where she was on a visit, Clinton now blames “white men” for her poll defeat: “We [did] not do well with white men and [did] not do well with married, white women. And part of that is … a sort of ongoing pressure [for the latter] to vote the way [their] husband, [their] boss, [their] son, whoever, believes [they] should…” (Jack Crowe, “Hillary: white women were ‘pressurised’ to vote for Trump by their husbands”, National Review, 13 March 2018).

The reflections here will not assess the veracity or otherwise of Clinton’s claims on the role of “white men” in that election but would focus more pointedly to what impact this demographic constituency, which Clinton undoubtedly feels is crucially important to her political ambitions and destiny, had on her performance and policy outcomes on Africa specifically, whilst she was US secretary of state in January 2009-February 2013.

Contradictory

THE background to Clinton becoming US secretary of state in 2009 would, in the overall, appear to lend some element of credibility to the premise of her presumed problematic relationship with the country’s “white men” electorate, albeit contradictorily. In the previous year, 2008, Clinton had had a bitterly fought presidential election contest with Barack Obama, an African American, in which she was beaten. On winning, Obama actively sought Clinton’s goodwill by offering her the position of secretary of state in his incoming administration and paying off her huge outstanding campaign debts with surplus funds from the former’s campaign organisation. Clinton’s acceptance of Obama’s cabinet position offer helped in the process of “healing” in the Democratic party after the evidently rancorous poll and her tacit agreement not to challenge the latter in the 2012 election cycle, if he were to seek another term’s presidential run, also included an “understanding” that a 2-term President Obama would deploy the incalculable resources of such an incumbency to support his former rival to run again for the presidency in 2016.

So, thanks to Barack Obama, the African American, i.e., “[not]white man”, indeed the first African-descent elected president after 233 years of the founding of the US republic, Hilary Clinton becomes secretary of state in January 2009 and is duly emplaced on the path of contesting for the presidency, yet again, this time with the expected robust backing of her new “ally” and employer.   

Imposition and invasion

On Africa, right from the outset, two distinct policy areas defined the Obama administration’s focus: imposition and invasion – not too distinct from generally the case in previous US administrations. And both (new) president and secretary of state were in tandem in the formulation and implementation of this mission. A year in office, Obama reinstated the notorious trail of France’s invasion history in Africa which his predecessor, George W Bush (“white man”, “right-wing”!), had blocked for 
seven years as “punishment” for the 2003 French refusal to join the US-led coalition invasion of Iraq. Prior to Bush’s ban, the French had carried out 48 military invasions of most of the so-called 22 so-called francophonie states in Africa between 1960 and 2003 which every US president of the era each supported.

Elated by the Obama approval, French President Sarkozy at once resumed his country’s 50 years of flagrant military campaigns in Africa. Sarkozy ordered his military to invade Côte d’Ivoire (French invasion no. 49 of an African state since 1960) which overthrew the government of President Laurent Gbagbo in the process and installed a new regime headed by an Ivorian puppet who would oversee the vast French economic and strategic interests in the country and region. During the assault, 2300 Africans were murdered and several business and residential districts of the commercial city of Abidjan, the principal focus of the invasion, were significantly destroyed.

Emboldened by the French “success” in Côte d’Ivoire in southwestcentral Africa, Obama mapped out further to the north of the continent, to Libya, a year later, 2011, to implement his next invasion target in Africa which would be executed by the US and the French, and Britain, the other lead EuropeanConqueror-state of Africa. This time round, the US would be a far more active, direct participant in the operation. Indeed, Hillary Clinton took up the composite range of most uncompromising advocacy for the US involvement in the Libya invasion that its politics and aftermath became the central plank of her record as secretary of state.

Just as in Côte d’Ivoire, the invasion of Libya was catastrophic. The West tripartite force overthrew the Muammar Gaddafi regime during the attack, Gaddafi himself was murdered as well as some members of his family in addition to some influential officials of his regime, hundreds of other Libyans were murdered, and most Libyan cities and principal communication network (outstanding achievements of the Gaddafi years in office) were spectacularly smashed up. Obama could not restrain himself in emphasising the crucial role of the US in this operation: “we [the US] had wiped out all [Libyan] air defenses and essentially set up the entire infrastructure [for the invasion]” (Jeffery Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine”, The Atlantic, April 2016 Issue, April 2016).

Besides these military invasions of stipulated states, the other method that the Obama administration pursued its aggressive policy of “leadership” imposition in Africa was to interfere or meddle in elections/“elections” in countries elsewhere on the continent as shown in Egypt (2012), Kenya (2013) and Nigeria (2015). Both interferences in the polls in Egypt and Kenya failed spectacularly but in Nigeria Obama succeeded in imposing Muhammadu Buhari, one of the vilest Nigerian genocidist islamist/jihadist operatives during these 52 years of the Igbo genocide (1966-present day) as head of Nigeria regime. For Obama, given the historical background noted earlier as the first African-descent president of the US republic in 233 years of existence, his unflinching support for an African-led genocidist regime in Africa waging genocide, a crime against humanity, against an African people is the abhorrent legacy of his presidency. In that last 18 months’ duration of the presidency after the Buhari imposition (May 2015-November 2016), the genocidist Buhari military and its Boko Haram and Fulani militia adjunct terrorist forces (two of the world’s five deadliest terrorist organisations – Melissa Clarke, “Globally, terrorism is on the rise – but little of it occurs in Western countries”, ABC News, 17 November 2017) murdered 2000 Igbo across Biafran cities, towns and villages. Neither Obama’s White House nor his state department nor his embassy in Nigeria ever condemned any of these stretches of murders.

IT should be added that Obama’s imposition of Buhari was carried out with David Cameron, then British prime minister, and had been preceded by the Obama-Clinton insistence, whilst Clinton was secretary of state, of not designating Boko Haram terrorist despite the latter’s murder of thousands of African peoples, overwhelmingly Igbo, during the period. It was therefore not surprising to quite a few observers when a US-based social group claimed in November 2016 that the Buhari regime had donated “[US]$500 million to the [Hillary] Clinton [election] campaign” (247ureports.com, 16 November 2016, accessed 17 November 2016). It was no secret that the Buhari regime was confident that Clinton would win the election and continue Obama’s support for its genocide against Igbo people.

The score: “white men” vs “[not]white men”

As far as the Obama presidency (January 2009- January 2017) was concerned, it was in fact business as usual on Africa as its policy programme developed and implemented on the continent explicitly demonstrated. Following Hillary Clinton’s choice of that lexical configuration, “white men”, other likely expressions in the same semantic field should now be invoked to elaborate on this policy programme in the concluding notes here.

It would undoubtedly be the case that the former secretary of state wouldn’t state that she worked for an administration headed by a “white man” but a “[not]white man”. During two terms of presidency, this “[not]white man”-headed government deployed a dual track policy on Africa marked by invasions of states and impositions of “leaders” as we have indicated. Prior to January 2009, in US administrations since the 1960s, all headed by “white men”, invasions and impositions of leaders, directly or indirectly (especially in approval or in complicity with allies particularly 
France, Britain, Portugal, South Africa, Rhodesia [see, for instance, Mohamed A El Khawas and Barry Cohen, ed. The Kissinger Study of Southern Africa: National Security Memorandum 39 {SECRET}, 1976]) also featured highly as foreign policy goals in Africa. Indeed, given the overriding importance of Libya to Clinton’s work in the Obama administration, we should recall that on 14 April 1986 the “white man”/“right-wing”-led Ronald Reagan government ordered the US air force to bomb Libya, pointedly for a raid that was over in just an hour;  25 years later, in 2011, another US president, this time a “[not]white man”, ordered the same US air force to bomb Libya – but for a much longer duration and the consequences duly recorded. Additionally, it should be noted that Hillary Clinton was closely supported in her hardline “invade-Libya” position by none other than Susan Rice, an African American woman, another “[not]white man”, Obama’s advisor on national security who was assistant secretary of state on Africa in the Bill Clinton presidency back in 1994 during the Rwanda genocide, executed by “[not]white men”, and had covered up this crime at the time because the administration she worked for decided not to intervene to stop the slaughter. (cf. Alice Gatebuke, “On this anniversary of Rwandan genocide, Bill Clinton’s words ring hollow”, Huffpost, 14 April 2017.)

IT SHOULD now be obvious that:

1a. “white man”-president can invade, overthrow, impose; “[not]white man”-president can invade, overthrow, impose

1b.white man”-state functionaries can pursue policies to invade, overthrow, impose; “[not]white man”-state functionaries can pursue policies to invade, overthrow, impose

2. “white man”-president/“white man”-king/ “white man”-chancellor/“white man”-prime minister/“white man”-general/“white man”-journalist/“white man”-academic/“white man”-cleric/“white man”-farmer…  has planned, executed, supported genocide(s) against a people or peoples over the course of recent history

3. “[not]white man”-president/“[not] white man”-king/“[not]white man” attorney/“[not]white man”-journalist/“[not]white man-academic/“[not] white man”-cleric/“[not] white man”-sergeant/“[not]white man”-corporal/“[not]white man”-general… has planned, executed, supported genocide(s) against a people or peoples over the course of recent history

Surely, a serious, fruitful examination of any feature of human society requires the development, articulation and deployment of critical tools of analysis to help or enhance interpretation and understanding. As we have shown, Hillary Clinton’s “white man” lexicon and its variations have surely not been helpful tools to enable us understand what, in fact, presents as the unchanging thrust and tenor in the trajectory of US foreign policy in Africa for the greater part of the past 50 years irrespective of whether or not the president and/or other state officials in office are “white men” or “[not]white men”.

JUST as in Africa, Clinton’s “white man” mantra would hardly be fit for purpose as an explanation for why she lost the United States November 2016 presidential poll.

References

Clarke, Melissa. “Globally, terrorism is on the rise – but little of it occurs in Western countries”. ABC News, 17 November 2017, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-17/global-terrorism-index-increase/6947200, accessed 17 November 2015.

Crowe, Jack. “Hillary: white women were ‘pressurised’ to vote for Trump by their husbands”. National Review, 13 March 2018, https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/hillary-clinton-white-women-pressured-husbands-vote-trump/, accessed 13 March 2018.

El Khawas, Mohamed A. and Barry Cohen, ed. The Kissinger Study of Southern Africa: National Security Memorandum 39 (SECRET). Wesport: Lawrence Hill, 1976.

Gatebuke, Alice. “On this anniversary of Rwandan genocide, Bill Clinton’s words ring hollow”. Huffpost, 14 April 2017,  https://www.huffingtonpost.com/alice-gatebuke/on-22nd-anniversary-rwandan-genocide-bill-clinton_b_9677440.html, accessed 1 June 2018.

Goldberg, Jeffery. “The Obama Doctrine”. The Atlantic, April 2016 Issue, April 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/, accessed 16 March 2016.

247ureports.com. “Buhari donated $500 million to Clinton campaign: US group”. 16 November 2016, http://247ureports.com/2016/11/buhari-donated-500m-to-clintons-campaign-us-group/, accessed 17 November 2016.
(Jaki Byard Trio, “Trendsition zlidjian” [personnel: Byard, piano; David Izenzon, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Prestige, New York, US, 31 October 1967])

*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author of Readings from Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature (2011) and author, with Lakeson Okwuonicha of Why Donald Trump is great for Africa (2018)


Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe




76th birthday of Walter Rodney

(Born 23 March 1942, Georgetown, Guyana)
ONE OF Africa’s preeminent historians whose A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800 (1970) and How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972) are compulsory references in the study of Africa and African peoples worldwide of the past 500 years
(Max Roach & Anthony Braxton, “Birth” [personnel: Roach, drums; Braxton, reeds; recorded: Ricordi Studios, Milan, Italy, 7 September 1978])
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

76th birthday of Ama Ata Aidoo

(Born 23 March 1942, Saltpond, Ghana)
 Distinguished poet, novelist, playwright, academic
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Wednesday 14 March 2018

180 days ... Genocidist Nigeria: Where is Nnamdi Kanu? Where are Nnamdi Kanu’s parents, Eze Israel Okwu Kanu and Ugoeze Nnenne Kanu?

(Nnamdi Kanu and his loving parents)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

TODAY marks six months or 180 days since the 14 September 2017 genocidist Nigeria military, led by Hausa-Fulani/islamist jihadists, stormed the home of Nnamdi Kanu’s parents at Afaraukwu-Ibeku, eastcentral Biafra. Consequently, the whereabouts of Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (constituted integrally in the Biafra freedom movement), and his parents, remain unknown. Scores of the Kanus’ relatives and friends were murdered during the assault and scores of others are still unaccounted for.

GENOCIDIST Nigeria, this haematophagous monster, this most beastly and serially kakistocratic and notoriously most vividly anti-African peoples state ever emplaced in Africa, surely knows that it will account for the safety of Nnamdi Kanu and his parents and take full responsibility for the consequences of that savage raid on a family home.
(John Coltrane Octet, “Selflessness” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; Donald Rafael Garrett, bass clarinet, bass, percussion; Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jonesdrums; Frank Butler, drums; Juno Lewis, percussion, conch shell, hand drum;  recorded: Western Recorders, Los Angeles, US, 14 October 1965]) 
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

81st birthday of Michael Echeruo

(Born 14 March 1937, Umunumo, Biafra)
POET, literary critic, academic, university president (vice-chancellor/rector),  offers selfless and distinguished service as head of the crucial Biafran resistance government communication directorate during phases I-III of the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, carried out by Nigeria and its suzerain state Britain who murder 3.1 million Igbo people or 25 per cent of this nation’s population; in phase-IV of the genocide, 13 January 1970-present day, the dual genocidists have murdered an additional tally of tens of thousands of Igbo people
(Charles Mingus Sextet – with Eric Dolphy, Cornell University 1964, “Meditations” [personnel: Mingus, bass; Johnny Coles, trumpet; Dolphy, flute, bass clarinet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Jaki Byard, piano; Dannie Richmond, drums; recorded: live, Cornell University, 18 March 1964]) 
Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

56th birthday of Terence Blanchard

AWARD-WINNING trumpeter, bandleader, educator and versatile composer whose output includes a range of film scores especially the critically-acclaimed music for director Spike Lee’s 2006 documentary, When the Leeves Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts on the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina
(Terence Blanchard Sextet & Orchestra, “Levees” [personnel: Blanchard, trumpet; Brice Winston, tenor and soprano saxophones; Aaron Parks, piano; Derrick Hodge, acoustic and electric basses; Kendrick Scott, drums, percussion; Zack Harmon, tabla drums; Northwest Sinofia {40-member string orchestra, conducted by Blanchard}; recorded: Blue Note, New York, 14 August 2007])
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

84th birthday of Virginia Hamilton

(Born 12 March 1934, Yellow Springs, Ohio, US)
Distinguished prolific author of children’s books including the critically acclaimed MC Higgins, the Great

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Tuesday 13 March 2018

83rd birthday of Kofi Awoonor

(Born 13 March 1935, Wheta, Ghana)
Poet, linguist, academic, diplomat
 
Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

Saturday 10 March 2018

198th birthday of Harriet Tubman

(Born c1820, Dorchester county, Maryland, US; dies 10 March 1913, Auburn, New York, US)
Activist exponent of African American freedom who works intensely and expansively on the historic underground railroad liberatory network and whose illustratively resilient freedom strategy is a rich legacy that the great Biafrans of our age would find most rewarding
(Wynton Marsalis Quintet, “Harriet Tubman” [personnel: Marsalis, trumpet; Joe Henderson, tenor saxophone; Marcus Roberts, piano; Bob Hurst, bass; Jeff “Tain” Watts, drums; recorded: BMG Studios, New York, US, {?} {?} 1991])
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Friday 9 March 2018

Ornette Coleman, freedom, Biafra

(Born 9 March 1930, Fort Worth, Texas, US)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

TODAY is the 88th birthday of Ornette Coleman: alto saxophonist, trumpeter, violinist, composer, one of the very top inventive jazz artists of all time – a leading exponent of the avant-garde/free jazz movement, beginning late 1950s/early 1960s when his varying working quartets (personnel: Coleman, alto saxophone [tenor saxophone on Ornette on Tenor only], Don Cherry, cornet/trumpet/pocket trumpet; Charlie Haden/Scott LaFaro/Red Mitchell/Percy Heath/Jimmy Garrison/Don Payne, bass; Billy Higgins/Ed Blackwell/Shelly Manne, drums) and quintet (Something Else!!!! only with Walter Norris on piano) record seven classic albums (Something Else!!!! [1958], Tomorrow is the Question [1959], The Shape of Jazz to Come [1959], Change of the Century [1959], This is our Music [1960], Ornette! [1961], Ornette on Tenor [1961]), and an eighth, this time recorded by an octet (Coleman, alto saxophone; Cherry, pocket trumpet; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Eric Dolphy, bass clarinet; Haden, bass; LaFaro, bass; Blackwell, drums; Higgins, drums), pertinently titled Free Jazz (1960).

Biafra

In this revolutionary epoch in which stretches of peoples and nations across the globe but especially in the African World have risen against centuries of pan-European conquest, occupation and subjugation, and also, pointedly in these past 52 years, the Igbo resistance to the bludgeoning genocide being waged on their people in Biafra by the Africa-based Hausa-Fulani/islamist-led Nigeria client state and suzerain Britain, Coleman’s music has consistently offered an infectiously gripping optimism for freedom. 

IGBO PEOPLE have demonstrated extraordinary resilience in their resistance to the genocide and will surely overcome this Anglo-Nigeria haematophagous monster as the strikingly innovative and irrepressible Biafra freedom movement triumphs. Two compositions from the Coleman repertoire couldn’t be more appropriate to capture the immense transformational possibilities that success in Biafra will have for constituent peoples in southwestcentral Africa region and elsewhere in Africa: “Turnaround” (February 1959) and “Change of the century” (October 1959).
(Ornette Coleman Quartet, “Turnaround” [personnel: Coleman, alto saxophone; Don Cherry, trumpet; Red Mitchell, bass; Shelly Manne, drums; recorded: Contemporary’s Studio, Los Angeles, US, 23 February 1959])
(Ornette Coleman Quartet, “Change of the century” [personnel: Coleman, alto saxophone; Don Cherry, pocket trumpet; Charlie Haden, bass; Billy Higgins, drums; recorded: Radio Recorders in Hollywood, California, US, 8 October 1959])
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Thursday 8 March 2018

83rd birthday of George Coleman

(Born 8 March 1935, Memphis, US)
Distinguished tenor saxophonist, composer, bandleader, educator
(Wynton Kelly Trio with George Coleman, “Mr PC”  [Kelly, piano; Coleman, tenor saxophone; Paul McLure, bass; Jimmy Cobb, drums; recorded, live, Left Bank Jazz Society, Baltimore, Maryland, US, 22 September 1968])
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Wednesday 7 March 2018

Why these other elections interfered in from abroad probably don’t require investigative special counsels à la Robert Mueller


Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

As US special counsel Robert Mueller and team continue their work investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US elections, no such investigations are currently underway to probe those hardly disguised meddling-in-elections/“elections”/referendum by the ex-President Barack Obama US government itself in the following seven countries between 2009 and 2016: Honduras, Macedonia, Britain, Egypt, Kenya, Israel, Nigeria.

Legacy of imposition & invasions

APART from Nigeria where Obama, first African-descent elected president after 233 years of the founding of the US republic, imposed Muhammadu Buhari, one of the vilest Nigerian genocidist operatives during these 52 years of the Igbo genocide, as head of Nigeria regime in March 2015 (this imposition was carried out with then British prime minister David Cameron), his administration’s robust interferences in elections in the other six states in the group including the June 2016 British referendum on Brexit were spectacularly a failure.

BESIDES the Buhari-imposition catastrophe, Obama intervened elsewhere in African politics:

1. supported the 2010 French military invasion of Côte d’Ivoire in which 2300 Africans were ruthlessly murdered and the Laurent Gbagbo regime in Abidjan overthrown and replaced by a personage more acceptable to French strategic and economic interests in the country

2. was part of the 2011 US-Britain-France tripartite military invasion of Libya during which head of regime Muammar Gaddafi was murdered as well as some members of his family in addition to some influential officials of his regime, hundreds of other Libyans also murdered during the operations, and several Libyan cities and infrastructure destroyed

3. supported French military invasion of Central African Republic (2013)

4. supported French military invasion of Mali (2013)
(John Coltrane & Don Cherry, “Focus on sanity” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; Cherry, pocket trumpet; Percy Heath, bass; Ed Blackwell, drums; recorded: Atlantic Studios, New York, US, 28 June/8 July 1960])
Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe