Rethinking Africa is a forward looking blog dedicated to the exchange of innovative thinking on issues affecting the advancement of African peoples wherever they are. We provide rigorous and insightful analyses on the issues affecting Africans and their vision of the world.
Showing posts with label John Coltrane & Don Cherry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Coltrane & Don Cherry. Show all posts
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe What label? THE BRITISH LABOUR party, this party that led Britain into executing the Igbo genocide, this crime against humanity, with its Fulani-led islamist/jihadist Nigeria client-state in southwestcentral Africa, beginning 29 May 1966, is a social democratic/socialist/trade unionist party, democratically elected by the British population in October 1964 in one of the leading West World countries – it is “left wing”, “egalitarian”, “inclusivist”, “party of working class/people”, “party of diversity”,“progressive”, “liberal”, “humanist”, “party of leading British thinkers on social justice and change in post 1939-1945 war Britain”, “internationalist”, not the Conservative Party nor “right wing” nor “party of the state religion” nor “conservative” nor “party of the oppressor” nor “party of the privileged” nor “party of the rich” nor “party of bankers and landowners” nor “party of/for the white man” nor“nationalist” nor “nativist” nor “xenophobic” nor “right of centre” nor“far right” nor “fascist”... The dual-genocidist states murdered 3.1 million Igbo people, 25 per cent of the Igbo population, during phases I-III of the genocide, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970; they have murdered tens of thousands of additional Igbo in phase-IV, launched on 13 January 1970 ... The genocide continues as these lines are written...
(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])
*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author, with Lakeson Okwuonicha, of Why Donald Trump is great for Africa (2018)
(Harold Wilson: ... “would accept half a million dead Biafrans...”)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe
“Diminution-of-African life”
AT the apogee of phase-III of this genocide, summer 1968-autumn 1969, 23 years after the horrendous Jewish genocide in east and central Europe carried out by Germany, Harold Wilson informed Clyde Ferguson (United States state department special coordinator for relief to Biafra), on record, that he, Harold Wilson, “would accept half a million dead Biafrans if that was what it took” the Nigerian génocidairesto destroy the Igbo resistance to the genocide (Roger Morris, Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy, 1977: 122). Wilson pursued his genocide drive against the Igbo, steeped in that overarching ideological rubric of the expressed “diminution-of-African life” that constitutes the engaging, subjugating template of 400 years of pan-European enslavement of the African humanity in the Americas and elsewhere, beginning in the 15th century, and Europe’s consequent occupation of the African homeland itself.
Wilson’s Igbo death-wish tally of 500, 000 represented 4.2 per cent of the Igbo population at the time. The prime minister’s on the ground African executioners led by Fulani islamist/jihadists, fulsomely obliged their “massa” Wilson, murdering 3.1 million Igbo by 12 January 1970 – 2.6 million more Igbo than the Labour leader’s slaughtering target or 25 per cent of the Igbo population. Wilson would later acknowledge the extent of the British role in the sheer savagery of the Igbo genocide. In his memoirs, he noted that the Nigeria genocidist military, equipped zealously by Britain, expended more small arms ammunition in its campaign to achieve its annhilative mission in Biafra than the amount used by the British armed forces “during the whole” of the Second World War (Harold Wilson,Labour Government, 1964-1970: A Personal Record, 1971: 630, added emphasis). Colonel Robert Scott, military advisor in the British diplomatic mission in Nigeria then couldn’t agree more with Wilson on the subject. Scott stated that as Nigerian genocidist military forces unleashed their attacks on Biafran cities, towns and villages, they are the “best defoliant agent known” (Daily Telegraph, London, 11 January 1970). Chillingly dreadful...
Intelligible
SEEN AGAINST this background of Harold Wilson’s repugnant involvement in the Igbo genocide, the very trenchant charge of antisemitism and racism that current Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn has had from some of his colleagues and other prominent persons in Britain, becomes hugely intelligible:
(Margaret Hodge, British Labour party member of parliament: “Jeremy Corbyn is f****** racist and antisemite”, The Independent, London, 18 July 2018)
(Chuka Umunna, British Labour party member of parliament: “The Labour party [under Jeremy Corbyn] is institutionally racist ... very painful”, Daily Mail, London, 9 September 2018)
(Jonathan Sacks, former British chief rabbi: “[Jeremy Corbyn] is anti-semite [who has] given support to racists, terrorists and dealers of hate”, New Statesman, London, 28 August 2018)
(Trevor Philips, former head of British equality commission: “[Jeremy Corbyn] is anti-semite and racist”, Daily Mail, 13 September 2018)
(Jeremy Corbyn, British Labour party leader...)
(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])
(Harold Wilson:“would accept a half million dead Biafrans if that was what it took...”)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe
“Diminution-of-African life” AT the apogee of phase-III of this genocide, summer 1968-autumn 1969,
23 years after the horrendous Jewish genocide in east and central Europe carried out by Germany, Harold
Wilson informed Clyde Ferguson
(United States state department special coordinator for relief to Biafra), on
record, that he, Harold Wilson, “would accept half a million dead
Biafrans if that was what it took” the Nigerian génocidairesto
destroy the Igbo resistance to the genocide (Roger Morris, Uncertain Greatness: Henry
Kissinger and American Foreign Policy, 1977: 122).
Wilson pursued his genocide drive against the Igbo, steeped in that overarching
ideological rubric of the expressed “diminution-of-African life” that
constitutes the engaging, subjugating template of 400 years of pan-European
enslavement of the African humanity in the Americas and elsewhere, beginning in
the 15th century, and Europe’s consequent occupation of the African homeland
itself.
Wilson’s
Igbo death-wish tally of 500, 000 represented 4.2 per cent of the Igbo
population at the time. The prime minister’s on the ground African executioners
led by Fulani islamist/jihadists, fulsomely obliged their “massa” Wilson,
murdering 3.1 million Igbo by 12 January 1970 – 2.6 million more Igbo than the
Labour leader’s slaughtering target or 25 per cent of the Igbo population.
Wilson would later acknowledge the extent of the British role in the sheer
savagery of the Igbo genocide. In his memoirs, he noted that the Nigeria genocidist
military, equipped zealously by Britain, expended more small arms ammunition in its campaign to
achieve its annhilative mission in Biafra than the amount used by
the British armed forces “during the whole” of the Second World War (Harold Wilson,Labour Government, 1964-1970: A Personal Record, 1971: 630, added emphasis). Colonel Robert Scott, military advisor in the British diplomatic mission
in Nigeria then couldn’t agree more with Wilson on the subject. Scott stated that
as Nigerian genocidist military forces unleashed their attacks on Biafran
cities, towns and villages, they are the “best defoliant agent known” (Daily Telegraph, London, 11 January 1970). Chillingly dreadful...
Intelligible
SEEN AGAINST this background of Harold Wilson’s repugnant involvement in the Igbo genocide, the very trenchant charge of antisemitism and racism that
current Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn has had from some of his colleagues
and other prominent persons in Britain, becomes hugely intelligible:
(Margaret Hodge, British Labour party member of parliament: “Jeremy Corbyn is f****** racist and antisemite”, The Independent, London, 18 July 2018)
(Chuka Umunna, British Labour party member of parliament: “The Labour party [under Jeremy Corbyn] is institutionally racist ... very painful”, Daily Mail, London, 9 September 2018)
(Jonathan Sacks, former British chief rabbi: “[Jeremy Corbyn] is anti-semite [who has] given support to racists, terrorists and dealers of hate”, New Statesman, London, 28 August 2018)
(Trevor Philips, former head of British equality commission: “[Jeremy Corbyn] is anti-semite and racist”, Daily Mail, 13 September 2018)
(Jeremy Corbyn, British Labour party leader...)
(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])
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’Ivoirein 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])
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe NIGERIA IS Africa’s most notorious genocidist state. Britain created Nigeria in the early 1900s after its conquest and occupation of the constellation of states of nations and peoples in the southwestcentral region of Africa. A hundred and twenty years on, genocidist Nigeria remains a British client-state, run on its behalf by the Hausa-Fulani/islamist jihadist north region confederates. Indeed, Nigeria exists principally to serve Britain and this local overseer conglomerate and continues to offer Britain outlandishly excellent returns, as any conceivable socioeconomic/geostrategic index demonstrates, year in, year out. Not surprisingly, the British chief representative in Nigeria spent quite some time in 2017 in a rigorous defence of Britain’s Nigeria (https://www.pambazuka.org/democracy-governance/igbo-are-gone-gone-free, accessed 14 January 2018). Beginning on Sunday 29 May 1966, Britain, led by the Labour party government under leader and prime minister Harold Wilson, and its Nigeria launched phase-I of the Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide of post(European)conquest Africa. Forty-four months later, by the end of phase-III of the genocide, Britain and Nigeria had murdered 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of this nation’s population. Phase-IV of the genocide has continued subsequently, without let up, with the murder of tens of thousands additional Igbo by the dual-genocidists. For Britain, this genocide is to “punish” Igbo people for the Igbo vanguard role played in the African peoples’ campaign to terminate the British occupation of these states of Africa during the course of the mid-1930s to October 1960 (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-conquerors-concord-in.html). What label?
THE BRITISH LABOUR party that led Britain into executing the Igbo genocide, this crime against humanity, is a social democratic/socialist/trade unionist party, democratically elected by the British population in October 1964 in one of the leading West World countries – it is “left wing”, “egalitarian”, “inclusivist”, “party of working class/people”, “progressive”, “liberal”, “humanist”, “internationalist”, not the Conservative Party nor “right wing” nor “conservative” nor “party of the oppressor” nor “party of the privileged” nor “party of the rich” nor “party of bankers and landowners” nor “nationalist” nor “nativist” nor “xenophobic” nor “far right” nor “fascist”...
(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])
IN STRIKING contrast to the name Biafra which rattles the sensibilities of the leadership of
the Hausa-Fulani/islamist-led genocidist Nigeria so irredeemably (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/blog-post.html), the
notorious epithet, “tribe”, is arguably this grouping’s most enduring mantra. Even
though “tribe” has no meaning in any African language, it is invoked by regime spokespersons
with such relish as part of its broader historical anti-African worldview,
particularly its visceral hostility to African agency which includes its opposition
to the restoration-of-African-independence (in this southwestcentral Africa
region) from the British conquest and occupation. The Igbo led this freedom
movement during 1930s-October 1960 and, pointedly, if not predictably in
response, the grouping launched the Igbo genocide with full British involvement.
It should be obvious that there is, in fact, no “tribe” or its plural “tribes” in
genocidist Nigeria nor indeed anywhere else in Africa; definitely, not in
Biafra.
AS in the
rest of the world, there are peoples or nations in Africa: Igbo people or Igbo
nation, Gĩkũyũ people or Gĩkũyũ nation, Wolof people or Wolof nation, Ndebele
people or Ndebele nation, Herero people or Herero nation, Tiv people or Tiv
nation, Kanuri people or Kanuri nation, Bini people or Bini nation, Luo people
or Luo nation, Akan people or Akan nation, etc., etc. Elsewhere in the world,
for instance, there are Scottish people or Scottish nation, Catalonian people
or Catalonian nation, Welsh people or Welsh nation, Kurdish people or Kurdish
nation... Each and every people or nation, whatever their size, wherever found
in the world, has a profoundly layered history that embodies and projects its
inheritance.
Dehistoricisation
This is the
background or context that helps to elucidate the contemporary use of the tag, “tribe”,
in genocidist Nigeria and indeed anywhere else on earth. “Tribe” is a racist
Western anthropological/sociological categorisation of African peoples/nations
and others elsewhere that pan-European World conquered and occupied, beginning
in the 15th century CE. It is essentially a conqueror-epithet aimed chiefly to
dehistoricise or deny the history of these hitherto subjugated peoples as a
means of “rationalising” the conquest while simultaneously privileging the
concocted state-name (“Nigeria”, “Niger”, “Gold Coast”, “Rhodesia”, “Côte d’Ivoire”, “Upper Volta”, “Guinea-R”, “Guinea-S”, “Guinea-T”...) it
has imposed on the peoples’ states or homelands in the wake of the conquest (at
times the occupation mischievously but incorrectly interchanges its designation
of its concocted, imposed name on the peoples with the term “the nation”!).
CONSEQUENTLY, “tribe” is often employed in uncritical academia and media as
a weapon to demonise these peoples. This is why, in its rampant usage, no one
in their right mind would dare refer to 5 million Scots as “tribe” or 7.5
million Catalans as “tribe”, whilst, for example, cavalierly categorising the
25 million Oromo or 20 million Amhara as “tribe”. Nothing but geographical
emplacements (namely, Scots and Catalans are peoples in Europe; Oromo and
Amhara are peoples in Africa) dictate the choice made in these last four
classifications, underlying its sheer racist tract.
(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])
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe IF ANYONE, anywhere in the world, ever doubted the sheer
savagery of the Hausa-Fulani/islamist-led Nigeria genocidist military in its 51
years of campaign to destroy the resourceful and resilient Igbo people of
Biafra, the internet and other media are deluged, presently, with awfully
distressing videos, still shots and other recorded accounts of its ongoing
scorched-earth operations in Biafra that capture its dreadful portraiture. This
is an unrelentingly sustained terrorism in real
time operation to overrun the Biafra freedom movement, the most peaceful of its kind in Africa and one of the very few in the South World, by a state’s military, not “non-state”, that immanently
privileges its jihadist history and geography and worldview. This state and
military are equipped and reequipped by Britain which created both for its service in perpetuity. As I have argued severally, the priority of the Biafra government on the morrow of the restoration-of-independence is to inaugurate the
construction of a civilisation where Igbo life, human life, fundamentally,
is sacrosanct. This salient feature cannot be overstressed, given the
sickening pictures of Nigeria’s acts of depravity of recent days. Nigeria has
been, for the Igbo, a haematophagousmonsterthroughout
its history. In contradistinction, Biafra is a realisation, a
profound reclamation of that which makes us all human and part of
humanity.
BIAFRA isthe beacon of the tenacity of
the spirit of human-overcoming of the most desperate, unimaginably brutish
Hausa-Fulani/islamist forces and all that they represent.
(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])
THE CURRENT orgy of massacres of Biafrans by the Nigerian occupation genocidist military, begun on Wednesday 2 December 2015 in Onicha, westcentral Biafra, has continued unabated. Multiple reports in the media in Nigeria indicate that a number of Biafrans in the south oil port city of Igwe Ocha, participating in a mass solidarity rally for today’s (Friday the 20th) inauguration of new US President Donald Trump, were murdered by the genocidists. A Vanguard (Lagos) reporter, quoting eyewitnesses at the scene, puts the figure of Biafrans shot dead at 11 and “... 27 with bullet wounds while 57 people were arrested” (Vanguard, Lagos, 20 January 2017). Two other news organisations have indeed recorded higher fatality numbers from the massacre as a fuller picture continues to emerge...
(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, 28 June/8 July 1960])
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is specialist on the state and on genocide & wars in Africa in the post-1966 epoch – beginning with the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-present day, the foundational and most gruesome genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa. 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of this nation’s population were murdered by Nigeria and its allies, principally Britain. Africa and the rest of the world largely stood by and watched as the perpetrators enacted this horror most ruthlessly. The world could have stopped this genocide; the world should have stopped this genocide. This genocide inaugurated Africa’s current age of pestilence. During the period, 12 million additional Africans have been murdered in further genocide in Rwanda (1994), Zaïre/DRCongo (variously, since the late 1990s) and Darfur – west of the Sudan – (since 2004) and in other wars in Africa. African peoples have, presently, no other choice but exit/dismantle the extant genocide-state (the bane of their existence & progress) & construct own nation-centred states that serve their interests. He is author of several books & papers on the subject and his new book is entitled The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019).
