Reflections

When the international community takes its forty winks: A typewriter and the dream of an artist

2013-03-31T19:19:00.002-07:00

Underneath the surface, the lands and peoples we ignore. Metal and fence in Salzburg
Pic by Philo Ikonya

Will the world always remain this tilted towards the nations that have achieved much more development?

I dreamt of changing the world and have not stopped. I realise even more clearly that it is not so hard. Not so hard because there is something you can do right now and change the world. The statistics may not matter. Today and now you can decide that when you see people you will check your own barometer of justice. Check if at once you feel you are better than the people you see around you because of a specific reason. Check what that reason is and dismantle it. You cannot know that you are better than someone, superior by just looking at them! And even if you contested on something, you cannot always be the winner.
The other way of changing anytime is learning something new and reflecting on it. Writing is a physical and spiritual way of reflecting.

I was not so aware of what tantalum is until I read about minerals that are used to make computers and practically every other gadget that we hold in our hands as electronic. And then I read about coltan too. Many nations want to claim that they all have some. China, Norway, Finland and many more. I think Russia too says she does have it.
It is all essential for making phones, computers and all our current plethora or contemporary connection goods.
But one thing is for sure, the country known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo has more of these minerals than any other country we know.

But the sad part is that these minerals never lead to peace and prosperity, instead they fuel wars. Diamonds and gold do the same for there is something in humans that makes them compete immediately for any resources that fetch money and quick. Power and wealth.

The DRC is not so often in the news and when it is we hear of a musician or a crisis that affects the country, the last one having been a volcanic eruption. Then the main international channels followed some tourists there. When the rape of over 200 women in the Kivu carried out by some UN Peacekeepers was publicised, I did not see much footage on the area around Kivu.

I have not seen the country marketed on ads on international channels the way I have seen Zambia, South Africa and others do. But we are a global village. A global village in which our neighbours and their problems are hanging off cliffs but never in the centre. For I know this country and others need more information to be aired on their growth and sustainability.
I fear that we believe we have everyone in sight when we do not.

I hear that the International Community is at work for all nations but when I listen hard, the song of exploitation of minerals and the people in the DRC and other lands, I do not hear so loud. Instead I find out that most electronics are dumped in Ivory Coast and other lands of Afrika. I find out that in general, climatic changes are going to hit Africa hardest. One has to wonder what we are doing to bring some issues to prominence long enough for all of us to understand them. How is positive action against these changes being measured? How can we try to take the burden off Afrika? She has not polluted the world the most. On the contrary!

It is high time that we stopped believing that these games are fair. Time to audit and question what goes on. For all things need to be re assessed today. How is technology affecting us and our relationships, our families? Is it time to look carefully and see how we are evolving to a different level that will be studied in the near future?

There was a time when young people used to believe that their parents knew everything and did all very well. Such times might still exist in some places where the wonders of self connectedness has not overcome. Somewhere in worlds that are still away from all social media. A place where it is normal to stare at the sky and dream. Walk for ages without getting a phone call or without listening to music. That place is rapidly shrinking all over the world and with that something is lost and much should be found.

For our fingers are trapped into tapping. Typing has become old fashioned for some. Two quick fingers does it all on the phone. Keyboards are no longer the ones of the "The quick brown dog jumps over the fence!". You can look all the time and just touch type as you go a long. Did the sound of the keys upon punching a typewriter make a difference to our capacity to be alert? Remember that sound? Some kind of rapping ability it had and it rung a bell " Zweee!" when you happily returned the carriage. And with it some satisfaction. The writer and the typewriter.

I remember how keen I was to teach myself to touch type. I had a big heavy book with practice exercises. I picked up speed fast in a few evening classes. I did not include the numbers but I got the feel for the 'f' and 'g' keys and that is half the job done.

I loved to look at a neatly typed sheet. Of course white out was always there on the side. It did not look quite so neat although it did the job. Carbon papers were hard to control for a copy. Today you can just delete forever with the delete key. As for copies you can make as many as you like on your computer, print if need be and come back for some more. We have leapt over a chasm in technology and moved so far. But what about our imagination?

There are so many gadgets available. You can have almost all your books on a Kindle or on the computer too, especially the new purchases of the time. I never thought about all these things in the 80s did you?

I never imagined that I could be in touch with the world at any time - audio-visually. So much has changed. One thing thing however remains true. The muse of inspiration is still a muse.
There are pleasing moments in which I can get lost completely in my fantasy and dream stories and write them either by pen or on a computer. I can also sit down and just think about them.

The life-span and location of the manuscript has changed. I can share a poetic verse often and I do that on my page on facebook.
I can share thoughts on my Timeline. What have I gained and what have I lost? Well connecting as I like is my gain. Using that connectivity for growth is the challenge. Sometimes it remains just a connectivity there with the potential for sparking off some useful work or not. But with nations, we cannot afford to sleep. We have enough media to make all places anywhere on earth to be accessible and almost all knowledge and information. Then we there might be something global about us even if not a village!

http://clotelsisters.blogspot.no/2013/03/wangari-wa-maathais-eyes-and-mothers-of.htmlWangari Maathai celebrated (1st April 1940 - 25 Sept 2011)

A white Papamobil for a black Pope

2013-03-02T16:12:00.002-08:00

Pope Benedict XVI: regarded by many as a hero for his humility in accepting
his limitations and choosing to resign from the papacy

You shall know a tree by its roots too!
It is not the first puzzling thing to happen to a Pope. John Paul I the smiling Pope was Pope only for just 33 days. You can still read stories of intrigue about him. People still ask who killed him even when his family say he died of ordinary disease. Pope's are not supposed to die just like that. Neither are they meant to leave the Holy See that easily. So then people cried in 1978: 'What could it be, Oh Tiber tell us in your flow that takes away this smiling one so fast from our earth? All suspicions were muted where I was. It was God's will we were told. It was time to pray harder for the church. And people prayed and fasted for the church. Even then I heard the question I still hear now. Will the Pope be black for a change, or for just this once? The Italians had dominated the universal church with too many Popes. Other European nations were waiting for a chance. Latin America dreamt of it too. Afrika?

That the colour issue still persists points to little progress. Just like hoping and praying that the president of America would be black after all these years. And then he was. Barack Obama. And then they said he was Kenyan not American. And why Barack Hussein? Some answered he had to be an incognito Muslim, a friend of terrorists. Then in 2011, he unveiled a big statue of Martin Luther King Jr who was assassinated for believing in his people and all people. I was embarrassed that America had taken this long to give that honour to Dr. King.

Back to John Paul II. He seems to have come from a background that many felt would help him understand and change the world. He loved Literature. He liked drama and acted when he was younger. He had a heart full of love for his friends since his youth. He seemed to be marked for a special one in life. How could you forget the young boy after the early death of his mother doing homework with his father? His story is extraordinary. I read they even told his mother when he was in a cot he was going to be a special boy. What with a lorry running over him and he surviving that? My son would say that is close to Fifty Cents surviving 9 bullets. And then I would tell him actually the Pope too was shot and lived and that he embrace Ali Agca. Even though he is still blamed for conservatism, John Paul rocked if I may say.

Why, he was the only cardinal swimming in between conclave sessions at the election of John Paul I and when it was over he left fast for home. He loved the silence of the mountains. Then he was back promptly and before he knew it he wore the ring and put on the shoes of the fisherman. "You are Peter, and upon this rock I shall build my church!" He became Peter. He did not do a Quo Vadis, running away from Rome in pain but he flew longer than some pilots, still holding the key of Peter well.

I saw him in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania at different times and in Rome too. When John Paul II died there were many interviews in Kenya. I was invited to some and I contributed an article for the daily newspaper on him.

St. Peter's Square in the distance. Reflection time

The year is 2013. The last two weeks have been awash with Vatican news since Pope Benedict XVI resigned. This resignation also happened just before Ash Wednesday, the day that starts a solemn 40 days for many Catholics. A time when many pilgrims flock to Roma especially during the Holy Week to receive the blessing Urbi et Orbi from the Holy Father. To see the Pope. They expected to see Benedict the XVI. Besides all that his was an untraditional exit, not by death the death of the Pope seen as the normal mode and seen as a divine intervention but by human design which is often not seen as divine. So many reasons why were given to beef up the simple explanation that the Pope himself gave. We were at scandals, Vatileaks, mafia and just name it. The Pope had to appeal again to bring back focus on his poor health and inability to be Peter the keeper of the Key of Heaven on earth.

And this in sharp contrast to his friend and immediate predecessor John Paul II who died on his sick bed after suffering for long. This too the reverse of the belief that like Peter is depicted in Quo Vadis - "Where are you going to, Peter?" A voice asked him - He was asked to turn back and go and sit on his throne in The See of Peter. It is not supposed to be abandoned. The Pope is another Christ they say. Christ suffered up to the end. Today, many people feel that things have been demystified. A German Pope has said that he is lonely and cannot carry on, that he is unwell. I wonder what would have happened if he had been from Kenya or another Afrikan country and resigned. We still confuse people with borders. When John Paul I died I was in Kenya. I remember the big headline. The Pope is Dead. And a black banner at the top of the headline instead of an advertisement. And Kenya is not a Catholic country. The newspaper was owned by a Muslim. There was an eerie ring around the death of John Paul I. The smiling Pope who lived as Pope for such a long time. People around me were deeply concerned. The influence of the church spawns continents.

I think John Paul II may also have wanted to resign. But he endured Parkinsons disease and many other ailments. He stayed. He was a superstar in his 'youth' young people came to his window at night to check how he was doing in his last minutes. He had broken certain walls of bureaucracy. He was the friend of young people. I know that when Benedict the XVI was announced after the white smoke, I wondered if something had gone wrong. Somehow, his age and style did not seem to me to be directed at where the Church was going before but then many said that Benedict XVI was very intelligent and was the right candidate to succeed John Paul II. There is no contesting the white smoke and actually one is advised not to even talk about it.

But now agains, some questions keep coming up. Don't ask me again if the Pope will be black what does it matter? If he be black and I still cannot shop a white market in peace. Europe gone right wing will monsoons begin to blow in the Black sea? What do I care when every black girl you see on Carl Johann Street is supposed to be a Magdalene's descendants the old profession bringing to life and continuity? If God has always been he and white in our churches and Simon of Cyrene helping the Christ carry his cross was black what means race here?
Have you not seen that after all Augustine of Hippo will not be seen as black no matter how you try? Unless you refer to his life of debauchery first, not his intellectual ability. Monica. What does that kind of diversity matter? These are the roots of the tree.

If the Pope were black he would not be pope because he is black. The Canon Law on resignation of a Pope in article 422 or any other would not change. There are some people who whether in the church or not imagine that they know what there is in an Afrikan who is not suppose to know very much as soon as they see one. Black Sisters always had to form their own convents in some congregations in Afrika because they could not live with the White Sisters. You can still find them. Who rationalises that in some congregations? All the Black Sisters to be in one convent opposite the White Sisters? When it comes to examples and the vigour of the faith in Afrika, I hear nought about the example of the martyrs of Uganda even when the church needs their example quite badly for:

"They had repeatedly defied the king by rescuing royal pages in their care from sexual exploitation by Mwanga which they believed contrary to Christian teaching"

Castel Gandolfo is calm and beautiful. Little ripples on Lake Albano know many stories. Touristic yes but also stories of the struggles of different religious groups within the Roman Catholic Church. They are many. Some are lay organisations of enormous influence such as Opus Dei. Others such as Focolare are religious organisations. There are many secular institutes a different category. In many international church groups, leadership is hardly ever Afrikan or female. Founders of organisations that are taken seriously by the church do not have roots in Afrika.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uganda_Martyrs

In the Roman Catholic canon of saints, there are not many from Afrika. The number only went up because of the 22 Martryrs of Uganda, both Protestant and Catholic but all of them canonised by Paul the VI in 1964 for embracing a new faith, baptising themselves and rejecting the Kabaka Mwanga's sexual advances. Only that in Uganda today they publish names of and kill people who are seen to be homosexual and the churches are mum.

Namugongo, near Kampala is a shrine dedicated to them. Most saints come from Europe. Once canonised it is said that they belong to the whole world but when Afrikan ones are elevated to the altars there is always more jubilation. It would be seen as a great thing to have an Afrikan Pope and in that rejoicing, what sadness. The more remarkable this becomes the worse the indication about the world, and this church.

I have not heard preaching against racism much in church when I went. I noticed in Europe people not eager to shake hands with Afrika. They made it quite obvious they were afraid. They kissed their partners and protected their palms in church. They bowed from afar to us. These are small things that priests never seem to observe or address from the altar.
I waited for weeks when the scandal of priests sexually harassing people was abuzz and in the church I went to there was not a word save one fast sentence one Sunday.
There is a need for more dialogue over many things and real challenging of ourselves.
In Africa many people believe that Jesus was a European and his mother and father it would follow. I think that would not change in the minds of many people of the continent. I think there would be fear in many quarters of Europe especially if the Pope like Barack Obama went into his family tree and found that he had a sister called Fatuma. No one would remember that there is a Fatima in Portugal. And if they went deeper into the story, there would be questions raised. I was went to Loretto in Italy. I was told that the House of Loreto flew from the Holy Land in Israel, from a spot that architects verified because Muslims were invading the area! Flew away instead of throwing the doors open to those who were living nearby. The entrance to this church today has gullies on the ground, formed by the knees of pilgrims crawling in to pray for healing just like the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico.

What colour are brains? What colour is faith? The number of Great Britain's black academia is woefully down compared to the white. Promotion has trusted colour so what colour should doctrine be? If any new Pope comes into the Vatican, he has a tradition to uphold. If there would be a doctrine change, then there would be no Catholic Church. Those waiting for a change in the Catechism of the Church are waiting for the impossible. Those who are waiting for a black pope may see one someday for of course, the Pope can come from any land. But what we need now is the people reflecting and guiding in the church. What we hope now is that the Cardinals continue in ever deeper reflection and accept the humility of change.

Internalising Women´s Issues

2013-02-05T15:22:00.000-08:00

If the human rights of one person are abused all our rights are violated. I sat in a discussion in Norway recently where a woman -annoyed that the South African government was being criticised as we watched a film titled Dear Mandela in which poor people in townships struggle for housing -decided to say out loud that only one or two women had their rights violated. That to her meant that the government and situation was not so bad because only a few girls were reported hurt and not millions.

She was asking how many were treated to badly in order to downplay the fact that one woman was arrested and tortured. Those of us in the house stood up for the one. For there is something so important about how we take the threatening or the deprivation of the rights of one that has to do with us all.

When it comes to women´s issues it is a fact that many are inclined to see the world in very small bits but still use the words ´globalisation´, ´´internationalisation´ and so on. Key for many should be the fact that if we do not internalise women´s issues we cannot resolve the dilemmas that face women. This is because we then take regional patterns and not see how one form of oppression leads to the other, and the next and the next. That oppression is one but takes different forms.

Womens´issues are couched in cultures. It is a cultural matter how we decode them, not just a matter of figures and geographical expanses even when they must be included too. Culture is very deeply internalised that it often relegates women to the voiceless masses. It is true that the number of women who speak out is important, it is necessary to have a majority representation for change to happen but very little changes if we have numbers but no internalisation of women´s issues.

Big words. Internalisation of women issues is important for surely if we are not internalising them, there is not need internationalising them. I consider the sharing between nations vital whether they are nations in one continent or in many. But of no use if one regional group is not able to overcome Female Genital Mutilation amongst neighbours who practice it and instead wait for power to come from the West to help them stop the malaise.

I consider that there might be one unknown woman with unsual ideas in a part of the world we are not familiar with and this woman, whoever she is we have to recognise as international even if we do not know her. She can stop the genital mutilation of the girls near her without hitting any headlines. We overlook such work. This is the real reason that women´s issues look isolated and as if they are to be drawn out of a dark well. It is the fact that we only want to recognize most often those we know and of the day, especially if they are celebrities. Women issues have always been global even when it was only one woman lost on a river canal - and paddling a canoe on her own as I was told about one toothless woman doing this - in Thailand to go and vote.

Women issues have always been received with concern in different areas of the world even when it was only one woman Kabata who lay in hospital dying from domestic violence. In her head was a universal if global makes us think some are smaller. The issue was that she was dying and would not be visible to us anymore because her husband in Ukambani Kenya, had battered her until she was close to death and then dead. For sometimes we can go too far in divorcing some parts of the world and then celebrating as if everything is new.

I know recent cases move us and I am greatly moved by the recent reactions to rape in India. Many of us are campaigning for literacy and freedom of expression with Malala Yousoufzai and that is why I want those who write on women´s issues especially in papers that have a great reach to go much deeper. We have to take these issues beyond the big resound in what is normally recognized as international.

The words ´global village´, ´globalisation of issues´ too are many years old now. But depending on how they are used and who uses them, they can look almost new. The old book Globalisation and its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz is almost a dozen years old now. In this book about the world of economics Stiglitz argues the case for the discontents of globalisation. Looked at in the same way women´s issues can risk being unseen because they are considered as globalised.

It is clear so often that in the South and I speak for the part of Africa that I try to understand, the West is always welcome and well known. It is always known as global and is hardly questioned. On the other hand, the West finds it very hard to include the rest and the South that I know in its dialogue. I have been looking for writers in Europe who have a heavy presence even just of the many people who live in their nations but in vain. They do not dent the psyhe of the West. This cannot be with regard to women´ issues. Women have always been part of the global and world issues. There is nothing so new in this if you ask me. To read about globalisation as if it is new concerns me because it seems that then we are stagnant. So I wonder where we belong in Africa when I hear this:

“Women issues are world issues,” Michelle Bachelet, the executive director of U.N. Women and former president of Chile, said recently. “Today there is greater awareness than ever before that women’s full participation is essential for peace, democracy and sustainable development.”

I am sure that Lusita Lopez Torregrosa has written other articles I may have not read and while I react to her article, I know it was not her doctoral or other thesis but the dialogue is important and especially as big media from the West shapes public opinion more than the stories my grandmother told me by the fireside in Kenya. I opt for the internalisation of women's issues.

What is it about a New York article on the Female factor by Lusita Lopez Torregrosa published on January 8 2013, see the link below, that might not be a good indicator for women even if she starts on a note of cautious optimism? Ít is the lack of a historical take. It is the reduction of the issues to the women present in positions today to the ones who make issues international.

Why is New York celebrating the internationalisation of Women's issues today without a word about the rural women of Mexico, Mexican women journalists when they die in big numbers to this very day to defend their nation and opinions? Where is mention of Mexico 1975, Nairobi 1985 and Beijing 1995? Are we not at this level then recording women´s gains throughout decades?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/us/09iht-letter09.html?src=recg&_r=0

Cross the Ganges in rage on rape, India is not an island

2013-01-17T08:11:00.003-08:00

If quiet flows the Ganges I know not; rape on ice revisited

A winter 'sunrise' in Oslo 13 January 2013. Photo by Philo Ikonya

I still see scattered ashes of the gang-raped student of physiotherapy on the Ganges and the huge river rages in my mind. All rivers meet. All names name us. We do not need to know her name to never forget her. If it is offered we shall revere it. Deep in us, we know it. And we know more. We know that there is a message in this death for every human being everywhere in the world. This is not a debate on which to ask how come India is so enraged. It is not India. It is the world. From the North to the South: streams, rivers, lakes and finally oceans that seem to wrap the world in peace from on high are one.

It does not matter what form the ashes have taken now or where they are. This was not meant to shake India alone. Whatever shores they may have touched have known rape before. We will not make light of this grave matter and say it just happens. I won't. I shall rage more than Dylan Thomas* for this was "no gentle good night!"
There is and was insane violence. It is happening again and again right now. There is no good rape. Not even the one in which the 'victim' in this case is a person who cannot due to illness or age react. And yes, I am raging because my little friend who has cerebral palsy was raped right in her mother's house while her mother was away for a while. Kenya. We must all shout at the beast of rape wherever we see it because too many people are silenced for one reason or another. Sometimes, it is a bribe.
I wrote long e-mails, used the phone to get the mother out of fear but suddenly, her daughter had not been raped. The doctor says it was not the first time. What then?

The River Ganges is long. Everywhere along it people can have their own entry point. But the last time we saw it on January 15, people were there to bathe in millions for the forgiveness of their sins. I have not time here to go into one religion. But this is about all of us. We wash again and again just like Pontius Pilate on that day and the priests daily. I think the worst all of us can commit is to keep on thinking that this outrageous rape-murder has only pointed to India. For who really lives after rape? Which child? Which grandmother? Which young girl? Which boy or man? So I rage that we talk without borders.

But let us first look right next to ourselves and how we deal with rape and what that says to the world.

We can now ask India many questions and say that after all she is not that great. We are not overlooking her rapes, they are horrendous. Who has spoken up for the Dalit? How many more unknown groups are under ground as the UN keep peace? But let us first look at ourselves and very near us. I am in Norway.

Last winter 2012, there was what was referred to as "A rape wave" in Oslo, Norway. Never before had there been so many reported rape incidents. It was and is still a disaster. Nothing can be worse than girls being afraid to go home on their own in the dark because they are afraid that they can get raped. But in the discussions we had in the media and on our own. Something very strange kept happening. There were many who easily pushed the issue back to the girls. How they are dressed, what time they were out and who they were with. I know this boils over. There are people who want to convince you and they are sure themselves that women provoke rape. They are everywhere.
The other dimension became the "immigrants". Blame a whole group of people. Blame them because they are black or green. Blame them because they were not born here. Blame them. It was the first reaction too when Oslo was bombed. It is terror. It is the 'outsiders'. In the moment of addressing rape, the best would be to stick to the offence and report all offenders not races or background. Today I visited the Akerselva. She battles with winter 2013 to tell her story about rape on ice.

She wants to remind us of the environment too but that for another day. Until we all treat rape and acknowledge that it happens everywhere, we are going nowhere.

High profile cases that signal trouble for the world
The reported cases that reach the media are the ones we call high profile. But these too sometimes go out of attention silently. What happened to the world when United Nation Peace keepers raped over 200 women in Kivu of the D R Congo? Was this little violence? And if your read well you know that this is not the first time that UN Peacekeepers rape.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/second-reading/peacekeepers-gone-wild-how-much-more-abuse-will-the-un-ignore-in-congo/article4462151/

What impression do they give to the world? Of course some of them are settled out of court and outside the limelight. I remember Dominique Strauss- Khan. It is only that this headline coming a few days after the rape of the Indian girl probably bored most people. http://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/19/world/europe/france-dsk-carlton-case/index.htmlThe last thing I saw was a beautiful Gambian woman, Nafissatou Diallo, thanking the people who stood by her and God and telling us that this had been resolved out of court. There is no death sentence in many places of the world for rape.

Julius Assagne might be clean, but the world deserves to know the truth. After all this is a man who believes in 'outing' the truth. All we need is a reasonable end. Ecuador gave asylum to Julius Assange whose freedom of expression I do not begrudge him. If we cannot get these things out then we have no right to sit hard and pretty and ask India questions such as I heard on Hard Talk. They are questions to the world. I know the idea is that India does not take action and police do not record enough crime but on rape let us not make only news. Let no river flow in peace from now on.

For was it not only yesterday that we confirmed that former BBC manager Jammy Savile so vile hid in the best place? He hid in the open and as a celebrity for over fifty years molesting, harassing, raping children for years. Now only his tombstone is in trouble?

Let the Ganges and all rivers rage. I forever thank the Indian activists, the people for standing up, speaking out and saying rape is death. Their children did not carry placards that said stop rape in India. They said, Stop Rape!

And we saw one tough ex-police boss who comes out clear minded and ready to work, not only for India but for the world on rape issues. After all she clearly stated that Indian police behave the way they do because they still operate with the 1816 British Law (Better start serious review India dear, Kenya has only changed the law and discovered much more work needs to be done still for real change to come. Take the first steps you Mahatmian land... great soul!)
This reform must flow longer than the Ganges and rather than wash any sins, take justice urgently to so many because justice we shall never give to our unnamed hero and so many other people in the world!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2215324/Jimmy-Savile-gravestone-removed

Invictus: we need to become Mandela

2013-01-07T14:56:00.002-08:00

"We sang a song about the Freedom Charter, and another about the Transkei, with the lyrics, 'There are two roads, one road is the Matanzima road, and one road is the Mandela road, which one will you take?' The singing made the work lighter...and we were soon ordered to stop singing. (Whistling was banned.) From that day onwards we worked in silence. Long Walk to Freedom. The autobiography of Nelson Mandela *Abacus. pg. 484

We have a treasury of so many words from and about Nelson Mandela. Films. Invictus a film directed by Clint Eastwood celebrates the invincible spirit of Mandela. Mandela is a big name. No one proves it best than youth who live in the poorest of conditions in South Africa. I saw how eager they were in Soweto and other places that Mandela recovers from his recent lung infection. They meant it. They said it. They cried it. They wrote it. They prayed it. We have to become Mandela rather than spend time arguing if he is a product of the West as some of my friends have done on Facebook. Why do we want to stand in the face of unquestionable greatness? His greatness does not mean that the others are not great and that is what Invictus shows.

Mandela's is a story that is impossible to forget. A story? A life. He made it out of Robben Island and he became the icon around which much of South African hope was centred. Weaknesses we all have but some people once in many, many years seem to visit humanity for a very specific message. Mandela is one such man. There were and are many other heroes in South Africa but human beings have a way of looking to some people for hope in a particularly earnest way. For some reason, some individuals are somewhere at a specific time and things happen in a different way. They take a position on the psyche of many people and there is the production of positive energy and hope. They are loved.

If you gave many people a chance to have tea with friends, they would not leave Mandela out. This includes the people of Soweto, many African people, individuals such as Chief Albert Luthuli, Vufile Mini, Ahmed Kathrada, Hellen Joseph, Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu... Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela...and well, if you went all the way back and Gandhi was coming to tea he would be keen too. Very keen. Now even Idi Amin if he were alive would gladly want to reach Mandela, so would Colonel Muamar Gadaffi, Bokasa, my grandmother and father, Mother Teresa a whole host of us. You have seen how many singers and people liked to visit Mandela and sing for him on his birthday. I longed to see him but learned it was better to try and understand his story.

On the 16th of June 2012 both at 13.00hrs in her Nobel Lecture, Aung San Syu Kyi had Mandela's name on her lips. She talked about him when she addressed the people during a concert in her celebration outside the Peace Centre in Oslo. Later upon reading Desmond Tutu´s foreword to Freedom From Fear, the second edition of her book, I read "...she had no bitterness; and she was ready to work for the healing of her motherland, which had suffered so grievously. In revealing this extraordinary magnanimity, she was emulating Nelson Mandela who has left the world awed by his singular lack of bitterness, his magnanimity and his willingness to forgive those who ill-treated him."

Towards the end of 2012, I watched the documentary titled Dear Mandela. It is a about those those who still suffer evictions try to see how to be unconquerable in the spirit of invictus but in a different circumstances. The young people are searching for the liberation that did not come with Mandela's exit from Robben Island and his five years as president. Suffering after the acquisition of freedom is difficult to take after so many people have died for freedom and better means and lives. Mandela did the honourable thing and left office after five years, an example to many people in political power despite the risks.

It is at this time in South Africa when power is in the hands of black people that the people expected to have less problems of housing and other issues when the contradiction of poor leadership hit home most. The documentary is described as a film about unfreedom. My earlier letter in this blog was a quest on my mind on how to decipher that complete freedom too on the whole continent of Africa . I believe we need it. http://philoikonya.blogspot.no/2010/01/dear-mandela.html

Some say that the West is eager to make heroes out of some for others to look up to. I think that is ridiculous. Anyone who bothers to read A long Walk to Freedom will find out for themselves that what was in Mandela was only recognised when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with De Klerk. In Amandla the movie and in so many records can one see that Mandela is one of those few persons, who visit humanity once in many years and who leave an indelible mark whilst spreading inspiration from Burma to Iceland.

We need the spirit of Mandela in all of Afrika and everywhere. Indeed many people beyond the borders of the townships of South Africa longed and prayed for his recovery. What we now need to focus on is working towards opening up ways so that Mandela's approach and life can help us all. What is most important is that we allow ourselves to inherit his spirit and be our own award to ourselves. To scrutinise our own selves in many ways to see where it is that we miss the mark and how to overcome that. It is not easy. We have reached a point where we have to see political parties such as the ANC for what they are.

We have to give a keen look to all of Afrika from Mali to Somali, Central Africa to South Africa and keep searching for the key to uniting the continent in focusing on economic growth and greater success for all the people. ANC was lucky to have Mandela. His outlook, his appreciation of power and his leadership are needed today. We must climb to the peak of leadership in Afrika. Much has been gained in many countries there is room for change. South Afrika and Kenya are examples of that.

And yes we do need one another as a continent because whether we like it or not our people are strewn across borders due to how Africa was divided in Brussels and roads, and railways seas, lakes and rivers unite us. See how Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique need Lake Tanzania. Landlocked country economies go down when ports are inaccessible due to war or unrest. What if our governments learned to spread goodness, respect justice and not be bitter over old feuds? Well, we do seem to unite for some things and what sadly seems to be the case is that our elected leaders unite and lobby much more for their power bases to keep strong than for the people to get justice. Recently elected president of Malawi Joyce Banda refused to host an AU meeting in her country if the ICC indicted president Omar Al Bashir was to attend. She faced a lot of criticism but she followed the law as a signatory to the Rome Statute. Sadly the Kenyan government did the opposite in 2010 when Al Bashir was invited to Kenya. We could go on but this was about Mandela and through him, owning roots of goodness, our heroes, our philosophies and worthy convictions. Our history is full of greatness examples and who are we to opt to be so small trying to even say that Mandela is made for us? Has our wisdom vanished? Is De Klerk also a product of the West? Are the Dalai Lama, Aung San Syu Kyi, and Desmond Tutu? Well then if they are, and if justice especially from the ICC is from the West, what is left? The life lessons from Mandela are valid for humanity and we should be glad to have shared the times in which he lived with him even if we met Mandela.

I do not have to say that Mandela remains our hero and this blog celebrates him unreservedly and is so delighted he recovered well. Walk on Mandela! It is truly a long road to freedom! I still see you sparring with Jerry Moloi, yearning to be a boxer when you were stronger. You know better and have served well. Your attitude reminds me as the wise Indian saying goes that "We have not inherited this world from our ancestors, we have borrowed it from our children!" There is nothing contradictory in that. You worked like one who knew others must come. When we have put others behind in leadership in Afrika, we have to acknowledge that we have let Mandela down.

Is birth the beginning or the end? Self- immolations, life as a burning light

2012-12-26T07:30:00.001-08:00

In free flight, Photo by Gloria Fernandes

2012. This year in numbers has looked elegant to me with two gracious 2s at the end of it. But it is the number 95 that means most to me as I come to almost end of 2012. 82 men and 13 women have immolated themselves in Tibet. Because they were born there and there is no freedom.
They have made me ask "What is birth?" For people were happy when these women and men were born. Now they are gone in our eyes is there shame that they could not live? http://www.savetibet.org/resource-center/maps-data-fact-sheets/self-immolation-fact-sheet

Wangchen Kyi, 17 years, the last immolate on the 9th of December is heart rending. Only seventeen years of age. Her name sounds like my sister´s. Wangchen has paid the ultimate price for freedom. She is one among soon, hundreds. There has to be another way.

I want to think about birth. This is a topic of course that can be enriched by the festivities of this season. See how the birth of one Child is important in December for many people. I think about the greatness of a country that stands up for one person, like India has done for the student of medicine who was gang raped on a bus and is still fighting for her life. That is a birth because hundreds of women are raped in Delhi daily. Because ultimately, there is no such a thing as one person. Never.

The question of the Tibetans is not one between Muslims and Christians. The message Urbi et Orbi Pope Benedict XVI, 2012 received much international press. He mentioned several by name including my beloved Kenya, for to be born somewhere does make the place dear to us at heart. But this should not be over another's rights. Nigeria too was mentioned, and Africa in general was described as the continent so challenged for peace. And it is true. Mali, DR Congo, so many refugees in pain and suffering. Much of this conflict is seen to be based on religious differences.

In the message, Asia was in focus. But not directly Burma where the recent killings of Rohingya Muslims has taken place. Europe and its tendency to the right wing was not. Germany was not. The refugees from Afrika come mainly to Europe and find life very difficult. One who mentions China does not mention the sufferings of the Tibetan people so easily. So, that these immolations did not sound like the birth and death of Christ. What are the underlying factors on how we are reaching out for one another in the world today? http://www.marinij.com/ci_22257994/text-pope-benedicts-urbi-et-orbi-christmas-message

But I go back home. I have lost a dearly loved uncle in the last week. We nicknamed him Joj. Medical doctor GN Gitatha, Joj, (RIP). He was always open to everyone around him. In my village, we call that a good person. He learned new things including Haematology and always used them to serve others. For so many people it does not matter their ethnic affiliations when it comes to helping. He walked miles to sit with a sick person even long into his retirement. I did not see him limited by what he was. He learned languages. He tried to reach others in many ways. I could say that Joj burned out his life for others and so he lives even now and left so many people aware that his life was. He did not find a retired life in a village a barrier, neither were his simple clothes. Some people who thought they were progressive in the village did not understand a man who had lived in Europe for some years and now walking around 'just like that'? He did. He kept fascinated by life in the present. He had no media and was not on fb. His smile on the village paths gave life. He read books. He read his niece's books and was always so happy about them!

As I reflect someone is already whispering that we are born to die. Well, we are also born to live and actually it depends on you to see which one prevails. And living in such a way that we are saying something about our life and that of others. That we are a fire that is burning or a light. Of course those who prefer the dark side of life are welcome. Joj was not born a doctor, he became one. He was always striving to be a better doctor. And so it was hard for him to "oppress" anyone by virtue of being a doctor.

We are living in an age of great technological progress and yet we are concentrating more and more on our own entity and are not too willing to reach far beyond. I have heard people from a very small clan, forget kings, simply say in arrogance that their clan does not speak to another or have anything to with them. They do not marry into that clan they disdain, they emphasise. I have heard the same argument repeated by big faiths, royalty, races and people in power and in class.

I am talking about being born into religions, royalty, tribe or ethnic group, man, woman. In Kenya and else where, I have lived with people who find it hard to relate to others who are not their own. Even if they say that they are ¨born again¨. I find it even worse to keep reading that at home, where ethnic conflict sparked by electoral fraud caused death and much bloodshed, loss of homes and livelihoods.

If we do not have the courage to see that what we are born into is not something we can use to oppress others or humiliate them then we have hardly been born, so to speak. If we cling onto our being ´born´ this and that, then we are a miscarriage of what we were meant to be. You might ask what we were meant to be, a miscarriage of what and I would say of many things. For too long we have laid deep emphasis on what we are born: This country. This Religion. This Class. This sex. What we are born into or are cannot be denied but how does our birth affect those we find around us? If it only leads to deaths as in Tibet then it is better that we question our identity. What is growth as human beings on this planet if another cannot live how they wish?

It is not a very alien idea. Kings dressed in rags and walked as paupers in years gone by so they tell us, to see how life is for the others. Today, kings or royalty might Twitter as does Pope Benedict XVI and some other leaders of the world. Who among them is really concerned about what is happening in Tibet? But we all need to see for ourselves around us. We need our own eyes. We have to recognise that we are that other person we see as outside of us. And this is not just a romantic idea. Well it has never been. Because some people such as Hitler were so obsessed with what one is born genetically, 6 million people died in gas chambers. One would like to think that this is over but its ugly signs are not under cover. They are visible in Europe.

Today my heart goes with one couple I read about in a Norwegian language magazine All Verdens Historie Number 14/2012. I am impressed by the man who refused to salute Hitler. It was in June 1936 in Hamburg. August Landmesser kept his arms folded on his chest as all others saluted. He did not intend not to be seen. In a sea of Hitler salutes a photo has shown that he remained firm because he was in love with Irma Eckler, a Jew and engaged to her. They had a child. He was arrested for watering down the German race and was imprisoned. Even though he disappeared and had escaped and found a job but was disappeared and believed to have died in 1944. Humans in love and daring to be. The Gestapos arrested Irma in 1938 and in 1941 she was sent out of Hamburg where they were and in 1942 she was killed in a gas chamber.

I have talked about similar occurences, (would you call them stories? ) with people who always pipe out very fast that the thing to do is to have saluted to save his own life. Such people define life as breathing, eating for more years. But let me try and stick to my topic. What we think we are born into brings us very many problems, I have seen.

When the Rohingya Muslims get their houses burnt by Hindus and the act blessed by monks, I shudder to think that we do not understand being born into religions. I really do. Did we want Burma free so that some people can die? We have to fell some walls. Why should a child, a woman, a man die because of religion? Who is God that you might take life on behalf of whom all religions say is sacred and holds life sacred? There are so many things that obviously tell us that being born here or there is just accidental but we see it as ordained by some mighty force. I have not forgotten the same thing is done by other Muslims somewhere, say in Nigeria or Egypt, they persecute the Christians. Kill them at Christmas in church and on most ordinary Sundays of 2012. Christians did that before to the Muslims, so what is this all about?

The same differences occur in other areas. Lineage remains captured in a way that does not make sense for the outcomes in the lives of so many other human beings. I understand our longings for home and to belong. I know I felt it when the Mannasseh race left India over 2000 years later to go home to Israel. I suffered very much reading the Exodus and I wished I could just go and push Pharaoh out of Egypt all by myself for when you read these things as a child, they continue happening in your mind and are never over. I later learnt that there are many other pharaohs in our lives.

It is important that Tibetans regain their freedom and space. There have been more It is more important if their freedom is going to mean much to the world including to China´s own freedom. Because Mohammed Bouazizi was born in Tunisia, he immolated himself for Tunisia. But his fire was aflame beyond the Tunisian borders. Likewise when we are born, our flame must go beyond our religion, our light must go beyond my own things and touch humanity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Bouazizi

But how is it that we are not able to cope with those who we think are different by birth, religion, race and culture? How does a an 'accident', as they are called in Metaphysics of Being, such as location, colour, place and so on become so very important over the substance? Look at race. And that not only black and white abut also racism with race. Dark skinned Indians versus are oppressed by lighter skinned ones. The cast system reigns.

What is it that we are not doing to focus now what we should become regardless of where we are born? Fundamentalism is rife in many ways and we need to help ourselves to recognise that we are not whom we believe we are. Are we all together living a lie? It sounds strange I know.

So I look at this birth thing again in religion. Seeing what is becoming of us because of confessed faiths, I have said before that actually nobody should be born anything. We have to thank rather than condemn those who are questioning our society in this regard. If we cannot live above or confessed faiths then Christopher Hitchens' international bestseller will always be greater than God.

I think we must quickly invite all forms of criticism and questions today. We have to take this life as a gift ... and unwrap this it. I see the scars of it in politics. People claiming power as family, that is to inherit it from their fathers (almost always) at the expense of the many who were not born to there father of those who claim it. Sometimes it can be fair but it hardly ever is.

I cannot believe it when I see people even fighting from groupings that hardly mean a thing to the world, considering how the world is disorganised. Tibetans cannot to be forced to be what they do not want because they are growing in a different way. I hope that we will all dedicate more action and thoughts to Tibet right from today. Before 2013 most likely there will be another self-immolation. Shall we not all tell representatives of peoples voices to speak out against this all over the world? If the world behaved like India last week, standing up for Tibet in spite of our own wounds, and nothing changed, we would at least say we stood up to be counted!

Insecurity in Kenya, activist Okiya Omtatah attacked yesterday

2012-11-09T02:58:00.002-08:00

Violence unleashing in Kenya. For speaking out, someone will remove your teeth and hit your thinking head, the house of your brain until it bleeds. Okiya has been outspoken and fearless in Kenya. This is what they have done to him. It was done at night
http://www.nation.co.ke/News/Activist+seriously+injured+in+night+attack/-/1056/1615622/-/sb95y0z/-/index.html

There are many times I have received text messages from people in villages in Kenya who tell me they cannot sleep because of fear. They get attacked by thieves or gangs and the police are far from being available. I know sometimes they are. But most times even as we discuss in the media big topics the people are just worried about how to get out of the house safely and go to a toilet outside the house as is common in the rural areas where water does not flow to have outside toilets. Just how to hold up for the night and how to sleep. How can you when every leaf that move reminds you of how your doors and windows can come out all of a sudden and you find knives on your flesh.

Even as we argue that we can manage our justice systems and indeed even want to stop the ICC from prosecuting our indicted leaders on political violence in 2007, where is our strength? Even as we insist that the African Court of Human and Peoples Rights should have capacity built for this, where is our hope? Activists in Kenya are in fear. The people both in the cities and in the rural areas live in fear. We need to take into consideration that Kenya goes into an election next year.

A tale of two hearts of liberty: Chief Albert Luthuli and Maxim Gorky

2012-11-06T19:14:00.002-08:00

Chief Albert Luthuli

I was given a book gift on the life Albert Luthuli. I normally look at several books at any given time so I was also re-reading Mother by Maxim Gorky. It is exciting to be able to play with dates and see what was happening in different places at the same time. Contemproraiety has its interesting aspects. Chief Albert Luthuli and Maksim Gorky. They are very different but their passion for freedom and political growth measures the same. It is all consuming. Perhaps they both died for their love for freedom.

It sounds strange. Can you compare a writer to a Nobel Prize winner? But I often wonder what was happening in the same years or thereabouts in different places and people. What if I could hear a symphony of all events? Would it be a symphony or a cacophony? What about just two lives? Are they easy to see clearly? They both lived in very complex political arenas. Was Gorky murdered or did he die of a heart attack? How could a moving train slay Chief Albert Luthuli ever so cleanly on the back of the neck? Who killed him?

Could I make sense of a unity of facts without music but just seeing the dates and how they influence others? Seeing it clearly in my mind like in a crystal ball? What did Luthuli and Maksim have in common? The former was brought up by his mother and the latter by his grandmother. Where is the dicordance in their lives? What did it mean to Gorky to be an orphan and for Luthuli to only have his Mother, the very person Gorky so longed to have that this influences the title of his book about change: Mother? Did deprivations of affections they needed from missing parents make them more of seekers of justice? What hope is there today for so many orphans in Africa. My article is a strange introspection. How much do Russia and Africa communicate? How much African literature do Russians or Chinese people know?

Can you compare this great spirit of Albert Luthuli to that of a writer's free spirit in Maksim Gorky? Well, I do because of the way the two handle change. One of these men became change, Luthuli. That was especially so when he chose to defend the ANC. Gorky other became the change in his writings which he sends out to the world. Both persons impressive for working against all odds. Chief Luthuli was a quiet and humble activist. Gorky wrote Song of the stormy Petrel, a poem that got the Marxist magazine banned. He was an activist though the writing and in speeches. Both men got arrested many times. The Chief was banned from addressing people. He joined many protests including the one after the Shaperville massacre.

Gorky (in white)and A. Chekov

Chief Albert John Luthuli (Nobel Peace Prize 1960) lived from c. 1898 to 21 July 1967. His Zulu name was Mvumbi. He was a teacher and a politician. He read and wrote a lot. He is the author of Let My People Go! Luthuli lived in exile too. Chief Luthuli was a fervent Christian but he was a friend of all. His role was in the non-violent struggle against apartheid. Today when the Chinese inundate Africa, will they inter-marry and learn with respect and depth our African languages?

Chief Albert Luthuli could answer all these questions today. He was the first African, and the first person from outside Europe and the Americas, to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.Chief Luthuli believed in equality of all human beings. He knew how to love people who believed in other means of changing society.

The Chief worked with everyone who looked for good even when they did not agree on certain things. He worked with Moses Kotane, a Communist, Logan Naidoo tells us in the book about Goolam Suleman In the Shadow of Chief Albert Luthuli. Chief Albert Luthuli was born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe then Southern Rhodesia where his father worked as an interpreter. His father died when he was 10 years old and his mother returned to Grouteville because they were very poor and life was hard. His mother had grown up in the royal court of King Cetshwayo, the third in the line of Zulu Kings and since King Shaka. (Logan Naidoo, In the Shadow of Chief Albert Luthuli)

Could they, being people of very diverse areas of origin have been inspired by the same things? What was it that made them make a difference? One is a believer in God and the other an atheist. These are two men who knew the change they wanted to see. They envisioned it, owned it and set forth to let it grow. We need to learn from them. We need to desire a peaceful world not to the same extent that we desire to eat or wear a dress. This has to be madly. I love activists and Maksim Gorky was a political activist.

I have heard and seen something of Luthuli here and there, but visiting his Museum in Durban was very special. It happened that we went there as part of Poetry Africa 2012. The spirit of the man fills every nook and pricks with little rays of light, every little cranny in that place. I did not visit it, I experienced it. There is a sense of peace there. The school students who were there to recite pomes were for me the greatest sign of hope for Africa.

One wonders where all this peace and common sense has gone in some parts of the continent of Africa. We are descendants of very dignified people. Nobody feels out of place with people who have the spirit of freedom. People who struggle for it, no matter the differences they may have. We are surrounded by examples of good leadership which we do not allow to blossom, however. There is so much learning and study in Africa. So much study that we have to say if we are still failing to bring progress and stability to some nations it is because we are not interested.

There are many lessons to learn form literature, history and politics. Why are people only ready to listen to their own group leaders today in so many parts of Africa. Chief Albert Luthuli is a fine example. See how he handled Communism. Chief was never a Communist. But he knew how to work with everyone to attain freedom. "Moses is a top intellectual. I respect him highly. He is making a tremendous contribution to the cause. We will work together until freedom is atained; after that maybe Moses and I will fight because he is a Communist and I am a Nationalist." The Chief believed in the dignity of all peoples.

Maksim Gorky writes powerful things but this is his first sentence in Mother. "Every day the factory whistle bellowed forth its shrill, roaring, trembling noises inot the smoke begrimed and greasy atmostphere of the workingmens's suburb: and obedient to the summonss of the power steam, people pored out of little gray houses into the street. With somber faces they hastend forward like frightened roaches... Living a life like that for some fifty years, a workman died."

They are two very different men but whose were greatly involved in the lives of their nations and peoples. They are so different but their interest in humanity helps them overcome many difficulties and diffferences. Perhaps they read one another. Perhaps they did not. Both did amazing work to ignite the consciousness of the people towards freedom and dignity.

Wikipedia writes of Gorky that, "At the heart of all his work was a belief in the inherent worth and potential of the human person. In his writing, he counterposed individuals, aware of their natural dignity, and inspired by energy and will, with people who succumb to the degrading conditions of life around them. Both his writings and his letters reveal a "restless man" (a frequent self-description) struggling to resolve contradictory feelings of faith and skepticism, love of life and disgust at the vulgarity and pettiness of the human world."

Maxim Gorky wanted to awaken the world to struggling for a better life. He was a political activist who funded Lenin's party but spoke against it when necessary. He did not join the party. He was a Marxist. He was part of the 1905 Russian Revolution. He opposed the Bolsheviks taking of power in 1917. He worked with people who did not agree with is ideas.

Yes, Gorky means "bitter" . Bitter is the last adjective one would use to describe the humble and peaceful Chief Albert Luthuli but these two men reach very far in stirring our consciences or the that of humanity, if such a thing exists, and for the good of the human race. Gorky, is one of the many pen names that Alexei Macimovich Peshkov who lived from March 28th 1868 to 18th June 1936 used. His novel Mother was an immediate success. He lived in exile. At the age of twelve in 1880, he ran away from home to find his grandmother. He was brought up by his grandmother. He lived in exile for many years. He handled paper and writing when it was very dangerous in his country to do so.

Chief Luthuli travelled a lot to speak with people about freedom. He travelled by bus. Gorky, deeply affected by the death of his mother travelled on foot across the Russian Empire for years looking for different jobs and gathering ideas for his writing. Maxim believed that man created God. However he has thousands of people who follow him today as a saint. Who follows Chief Albert Luthuli who prayed often for his nation and for guidance? Who thinks this ancestor of Africans is a saint? At least the followers part should matter. Africa needs generous, dedicated and happy leaders. Look at that smile again?

The Imam and His wife- Freedom of Expression is paramount

2012-10-03T10:39:00.001-07:00

This picture of Imam Abduljalil and Jamila Sajid lasts and lasts on my mind. It is the Imam looking down from his six foot something frame tenderly at his only wife Jamilla, who spoke with much passion about freedom on his side. The Imam spoke first about the Innocence of Muslims, a You Tube that a few weeks ago was all the rave in the news and which he addressed in the context of freedom of expression. His wife Jamilla told us of her firm belief in togetherness and how in Brighton in their early years, she decided to speak to all her neighbours about why it is important to talk to other people. She says, "What is important is to keep talking. When you talk, you discover many other things, and there can be peace!"
It was not easy. I asked her if some people did not reject her message especially those who were from her own background because she has opted not to wear the hijab for the time being and says she may one day wear it but not now.

"Of course. Some of them shut the door in my face and broke eggs on me when they saw me." But that did not stop her. She spoke to us at a Sophus Lies Gata 5 at the invitation of Initiatives of Change (IOC) and then went on to speak at the Daru Salaam Mosque about bringing up children without rolemodels, the experience of Muslim mothers in Great Britain. Jamilla is of her own mind and the Imam knows that.

Abduljalil hardly mentioned the film in question. "Freedom of Expression is paramount" he says. He explains that does not mean insulting others. However, violence is not an answer to such insult if it should occur. I could hear between the lines that responding with violence, and two weeks ago violence hit many embassies and in Libya Chris Stevens the USA ambassador and two of his colleagues were killed, is futiel. Abduljalil says violence does not show your enemy or the person you fight that your are superior but on the contrary, it gives a poor image of the violent and all that they stand for, The Prophet and religion included.

He told a story of how lonely he was in his days in Oxford. Then one Christmas there was a message for those who were going to be alone at Xmas and felt it to get in touch. He ended up being a guest of a Christian family at Christmas. He had thought it would be his last one in England as he could not stand the place. Rev Carr and his family however, made him see another side of life. Imam Abduljalil tells of his fears on his way to the Christian home which turned out to be the Rev's home. 'First, they will have dog at home. Then they will serve pork!" It turns out that this family had no dog. I would say that for a British family was like to be without 'god' and then they did not have 'pork' and even alcohol was not served. He relaxed when he heard Rev Carr say that they too did not serve alcohol but allowed those who wanted to drink to do so in town and to if drunk to stay outside! Abduljalil cannot ever forget his surprise.

Islam as a religion suggests what a woman should wear but does not oblige one to wear that. This is no secret. The suggestion is made several times but it does not become an order to wear a hijab but yes, to cover the body. In Jamilla's case, the body is well covered with her punjabi-lke suit and lovely delicate sandals. Her long hair covers her head.

Imam Abdulljalil says that the Prophet has taught that one in a foreign land must understand and respect the rules of that land. Abduljalil argues that if some people cannot understand that freedom of expression is paramount in the West, they have to remember they are not at home. They also have to know that just because in their countries some people are ordered to hit at others by presidents who are dictators, the case does not apply in America and other lies. Therefore, he said people who feel offended have to know that it is not the president of America who told someone to make a film titled "The Innocence of Muslims". The hitting back at a whole land and its peoples is illogical. He pleaded for dialogue and patience, and never hitting back. The Imam and his wife work for peace. This is a favourite couple!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaO4yqz3UBY

The rhythm of activism for peace in Harry Belafonte

2012-08-30T15:53:00.001-07:00

Mending the hole in the bucket

It does not matter where you start... if you sing out loud "There is a hole in the bucket... " everyone will join in with "Dear Liza, dear Liza!" "Coconut woman is calling out... and ... " Before you can go any further you will hear all join in " and everywhere you can hear her shout eh... " If you start singing, 'wid plenty rydthm and so sweetly... " before long you will hear " dey play this stilbahn... " If you star "Day O... Day O... " You know what you will hear.
Harry Belafonte was even suprised that before he started "Day O " in Japan when he visited... the people had gathered to sing his song to him. Then, he told us in the Melafestavalen in Oslo last week, he knew then that the power of song is immense. See, he went on, among all the arts music is with us everywhere. It is found wherever we are because we take it there. That includes in the bathroom and the bedroom.

A singing soul

But Harry Belafonte has another song in his soul that we were so lucky to listen to. And this song calls one to consciousness. He is a resilient activist and unabashed to speak out for the voiceless.. you will be left shattered by the images in his film "Sing your Song" especially so the last image. I will not say what it is. And again once you hear this song of championing for justice deeply in you, you will find you will join in singing it somehow... you will find your own lyrics, you will begin to do your own thing, you will start to Sing your Song if you had not began. If you had began it you will find that it has more and more verses and choruses and that you just have to keep on singing louder after hearing Harry Belafonte.

It was amazing to watch the film Sing your Song and listen to HB's live interview in Oslo's Melasfestivlen 2012. I am glad that a friend had a reservation for me. You see it was a very special thing to be there not because of fame or how shall I put it? It was something else that happened at Klingenberg Kino. It was the fact that I heard a song that Belafonte sings very deeply with his soul. It is the song of peace. The song of that peace which many of us know is not found by just smiling back but by speaking as he often repeated, 'Truth to Power'. This is the song I did not know that Belafonte sang so deeply with all his might and soul. It was very inspiring. The film, which am not reviewing here is a jolt for those who sit back and watch all the violence and injustice in the world going on.

We cried and laughed and went through deep soul searching with Harry Belafonte whose life story is an example of what it takes to be resilient. Growing from poverty of not just not having material things but also lack of voice and recognition for the many black people in the South and becoming the icon he is another sign that much can be achieved in this life. Let me say quickly that for me this interview was life defining. I can say and this not just because he is a UNICEF Ambassdor of goodwill that Harry Belafonte can change lives with his words. I will blog this story in bits but I will blog on for some time because I want to explain what I mean as well as share thoughts on Harry Belfonte's thoughts in Oslo. I warn you that am not referring to any notes or magazine. Only if I need a spelling or some data. I am doing this a week later and without notes to see how much of it I made mine and why. I am challenging myself.

So we were waiting and then the movie rolled on. Violence, poverty, blood and song. The first scene in the house where Belafonte in the house where he was born is pacing up and down and the title of the movie on his backs is a masterpiece as the rest of the documentary produced by Gina Belafonte is. The movie is fast and intense. I went through a whole range of emotions. Some of the things I heard are never to be forgotten. Smiles, tears, tough times, telephone calls. Joy in Afrika, the visits to Afrika and a place where am going to go deeper. Harry Belafonte and Afrika. I knew that he had sang with Miriam Makeba but I must say I was very impressed that this was the first question that the interviewer asked him. No notes, so what I remember is that he was asked what it was like to and how he came to sing with Makeba. The answer was beautiful. He said he heard hear and he knew at once that this was a voice from Afrika singing... and telling the African story from Afrika. My soul was smiling as I so love as many people do, Miriam Makeba. I know she sang in western capitals but Miriam was in touch with the soul of her continent all the time as is Harry Belafonte when it comes to Afrika. He is committed to championing justice and am glad the issue of so many black Africans in prisons today in America is so well analysed and taken to deeper levels. Modern day slavery. I have been shocked everytime I have switched on programs on TV and especially one National Geographic which for me was meant to always be about scenic and exotic travel. Lots of crime in one color. We went form Norway where the 22nd of July was a real alarm to realising that this unfortunately is the world. From Mississippi to New Guinea. I count myself lucky to have been in that hall and heard and seen for myself what Harry Belafonte is all about. A friend and I had watched Carmen Jones before when we saw he was coming. I had not seen this old movie and it is mindblowing. In Sing your Song, clips of movies with famous actor come in. He narrates some details relating to the movie that one would never have got to know.

The picture coming to my mind now is Nelson Mandela's. I did not write earlier how the flight to Afrika from Mississipi impressed me. The dignity and joy of the people on the roads dancing and singing is captured so well. These and many other scenes keep coming to mind. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. so close and so far.. in death. The scene where Harry Belafonte is asking where he had gone is heart rending. Seeing our Kenyan Tom Mboya almost made me stand up in the hall but on the way home always the puzzle of what we know about who assassinated this man Tom Mboya in Kenya in 1969. The decade sixties for those with strong convictions did not only swing, it stung. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated at 6:01 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Tom Joseph Mboya was assassinated on July 5, 1969 in Nairobi at about 1 pm and J F Kennedy at 12.30 p.m. on November 22, 1963.

But we go back to Mandela and hear Belafonte saying that he would rather wake up listening to Tata's wisdom than looking at his accounts. And then the wonderful meeting where Madiba calls him "Harry Boy" and laughs asking if he remembers him... so wonderful. See... am carrying on...

Marikana Miners' burial song (South Africa)

2012-08-23T13:04:00.003-07:00

Marikana broadcasted live during burial of 44 miners killed, 34 of them shot by police.

12.32 local time

"The cage moved downwards till it was out of sight and there was a vacant hole where the cage had been.
Xuma had known it would happen. Yet it shocked him. His heart pounded. His hands wre clammy with sweat"
Mine Boy, Peter Abrahams 1946. Heinemann Johannesburg

To the 44 miners
by philo ikonya

In death
It is impossible for this poet
to break words like kola and
wrap you with oil squeezed from seed
I have heard the miners blood crying as priests sing salve
and their shroud I must make with no cheap justice
from speaking minds we must get liberation
Racing beyond fears for a loss so deep
I weep at your burial from the north
violence the robber black and white
and anger that you have gone
chokes me in songless silence
All miners and the 44 miners killed in Marikana
I still hear your worksong unfading and tearing the world
and I pray you sing it till they in power tremble
We perish our tears and grab your struggle

So simply you asked for your rights
which so long all miners have deserved
Behind a rock you stayed put
holding on to tough ancestry
hands triggering smooth bullets
get you down forever
and Afrika has become lesser
she shrinks in my praying hands
Undressed in pain and moaning
Leaving widows carrying sticks
crying unclad in gold and children who know not copper
Like your blood devoid of diamonds
You writhing no more in rigor mortis held

And I stand up to make your tiaras
with same hand I open word power curse
To them that kill you so
To powers that standby and watch
Afrika raped and killed no matter when
entertaining your leaders in fine wine
To hearts and minds unmoved
All Africa should be in demon stration
Not enough to pencil evil: ballot castration
To churches and peace elders quiet
To young people waiting in violent dreams
Change this course as soil covers these miners
Change this shaft of blood, change these cages
And let us open up new ways so old
Let the miners keep singing till they break power drums

Without aparted salary, destroy apart wages
Join the cry of ages while anger still rages
Injustice must depart no new color can it wear
This nation can pay and it must pay now
Chile and China saved her trapped miners
You shoot ours dead and leave the rainbow bleeding

All Miners, your eyes you must not close
Blaze your fire beyond death and drill ruling brains
Blaze it beyond church prayer and free silenced lips
Occupy and occupy the world
Raze with your spirits a new path build and pave
for peace for your children and ours. Rest not now
Rest not. The bugle cries the world over
that together we shall not perish.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Philo-Ikonya-Publications/112797722129643

Dear Siri, this is not a secret, we must rid ourselves of fear

2012-07-31T15:34:00.000-07:00

Dear Siri,

You are not happy at all, Siri. And you know I wish that you were. Not so long ago you told me about your frustrations with the slow pace of developments in Kenya. I remember sighing a lot when you mentioned tribalism. You were skyping with me from a far country where you live and work for now. You told me that we had to do something. I promised to write you a letter. Skype was not enough even though we could talk for long, see each others' expressions and even take tea in between. You liked my black mug. It was written in white. NO to Racism! From such things, I drink Siri.

You know your name fascinates me.Siri. In Kiswahili it means a secret and you seem to have none. In Norwegian it is a girl's name. And it is not in the dictionary Norsk-engelsk dictionary by Aschehough and Gyldendal that I have here. But we have the internet. And I have found it in a site called My birthvillage.com! Its meanings are given there in Kiswahili and Swedish. " The baby girl name Siri comes from the Indian word which means 'Godess Lakshmi, wealth'. 'God's gift of love'. In Sandinavian countries it means "Beautiful & victorious, fair victory!"

I really wish for us in Kenya, Siri that we become like you. Have a fair victory. Can we make it? How shall we make it to live with that wealth that is love? You know Siri, a lot is said about our peoples taking to tribalism because of lack of knowledge. I disagree. You see Siri, very often we take it for granted that things cannot be examined and questioned and that this makes us grow. Look, I know that many people in Kenya quoted to me the Bible, in the book of Isaiah often during elections.

They told me.. "My people perish for lack of knowledge!" Not always so. We know much about one another. Of course we can always learn more but we lie to ourselves if we say that people discriminate for lack of knowledge of the other. No one knows a human being completely. No one can actually master even one culture and why it ticks. Our business is not to master one another. It is to be open to one another. I do not know all your customs in your area but to love and not want to cut you down including with a panga does not come from knowing your customs. I know it just by being human. I do not want anyone to cut up my children or me, and so it simply follows that I do not wish it on any human being.

I saw that a dean at the University of Nairobi was very excited that on one radio there is education about our many ethnic groups. I understand. But let me say that it is actually injustice that makes people angry, not lack of knowledge. It is when people are left out and feel they are hanging precariously on the whims of those in power and not institutions.

Tribalism which is worrying you and is uppermost on our minds for a long, long time and moreso since 2007 has a direct correlation with poor governance. I mean that if Kibaki had led in a different way, it would not be an uppermost concern. It grows proportionately with cronyism, nepotism and corruption. There is some kind of touting of what one has and can do for individuals one chooses that goes with it. It grows more when institutions are not respected.

You have seen the Judiciary in Kenya is trying to make a significant mark. The fact is that Justice Mumbi Ngugi ruled that the president cannot appoint as Kibaki had done 47 county chiefs without regarding of gender and unilaterally was great. In the judicial reforms and appointment we were and are breaking world records with the vetting of judges. Why should anyone then over look an instutition and be so retrogressive, so against the steps we have already taken forward. This kind of action as the county bosses were not reflecting any gender or even regional balance bring tribalism head on to the people. It really does not take too much to see that.

Just rulings, will include the risk of choosing democracy. It is a risk in that it allows power to the people and the people can do a lot with power, but it is a happy risk. Much better than not having it and choosing dictatorships. You will see, Siri that if judgements continute to uphold the rule of law and human rights, there will be less tribalism.

I know there are so many other issues to speak about but I must do that another time. However, I want to let you know how much I enjoyed meeting or seeing Aung San Syu Kyi in Oslo. It was on 16.06.2012. She was so peaceful land so calm inspite of the very many years of oppression. She gave a marvellous speech in which her reference to refugees and those who are not at home was so moving because she knows what it means for one to be shut off from the people one loves. I was very near where she passed and there was something that many people did not see but which I saw. A woman from Burma covered her head with a cloth as she left the hall on the isle. I was watching how she bent her head so humbly and the cloth was put on her. I have a photo which is not so clear but which I will post to you with time. Today am writing very late and I have an early morning flight to catch. And I cannot find the page i wanted to quote in this book but will.

But Siri, the more I read about Burma where my Uncle and so many other Kenyan men were taken to fight by the British, the more I see that we have here a model both for Kenya and for us. What do I mean? I will eleborate and draw parallels. I will not do it all in this letter as I will write again. For today, let me just say that when I read about dosa bhaya or corruption that is indulged in because of fear. I read about in Freedom from Fear by Aung San Syu Kyi. I had two ideas.

First was of course Bhaya... so close to mbaya which we depending on the class of the noun we are discussing in Kiswahili also turn it to baya means bad. Now this is deep. Aung San Syu Kyi describes four types of corruption. Dosa bhaya is an injustice one does because they are afraid to disappoint. They connive in cheating or giving another public resources because that other is a clansman or woman, of the same tribe or family and there is fear to say no because love might be affected. I have never seen corruption split into these sections and I wish so much to share more with you if you would like it. For you see, where there is fear we cannot look one another in the eye and say, we are going to sort out the problems of our country. We have faith in the people, in one another and this is something we must do.

All people who have a public post, all people who can write and do, must help us cut deep into our consciousness and from there arise with better thoughts and deeds. Arise without fear of saying this is where things have gone wrong and this, is what we can do about them...

I will write more when you reply. Remember to suffer in your heart for Uganda hit by Ebola a second time. We do not need more of these diseases that are so mysterious. Siri, all human being are learning and all of them are behind. Do not think as many do that all is well in advanced nations. I am sure you have heard that in a Baptist church in the USA a pastor refused to preside over the marriage ceremony of a couple simply because they are black. I guess this pastor who apologised later has never understood anything around him, never really seen these people. But he knew for sure that they worshipped in his church. He saw for sure, black people all over that land built upon slavery but he never saw. He learned but had no knowledge because he never wanted, did not have the will to open up to people of a dark skin. I am just concluding by telling you that we do not want the knowledge we have. We have to learn to will to know and to do.
We have to stand up without fear. We have to...

So long Siri,
Ni mimi
Philo

We no longer ask who assassinated Tom Mboya on 5th July 1969

2012-07-05T01:54:00.000-07:00

Tom Mboya

We no longer ask who assassinated Joseph Thomas Mboya, on July 5 1969 and Josiah Kariuki Mwangi, on 2 March 1975. We know. We must now acknowledge these deaths as the Government of Kenya.

The Government of the day must rise and serve justice, and tell the people…how to make sense of their history and nation. An apology is not enough. We have elected governments that have continued to operate as if these were not matters of urgency.

Writers and intellectuals have been relentless in this cause. Politicians have given up. The last voice I heard on Robert Ouko was James Orengo's and then it petered out. We cannot leave everything to a Truth Justice and Reconciliation Committee that has been dwarfed by controversy. We have great hope in the Judiciary today. If only reforms will be real after the new constitution. We have hope in committed people. Dr. Willy Mutunga, Kenya's Chief Justice is one of those who might make a big difference to Kenya's capacity to know herself as a nation, to believe in herself. And the citizens of course.

We know our responsibility in communicating culture, history and peace. Tom Mboya, J.M Kariuki, Robert Ouko and Gama Pinto, no matter their weaknesses, are personalities that represented so much for Kenya that many people have died as a result of the deaths of these voices.

Chief Justice of Kenya, Dr. Willy Mutunga

We have to learn from history. Nations are still apologizing for the deportation of the Jews. Jens Stoltenberg the Prime Minister of Norway did so this year, January 2012. Recognition of such inhumanity, horror is important. It is vital.

Joseph Thomas Mboya was assassinated on Saturday of July 5^th 1969 in Nairobi

Kenya

at about 11am. The city of Nairobi and the entire country was plunged into darkness. We were paralysed. I was in Kiambu and shock spread everywhere so tangibly that children could touch it. We only asked the adults in hushed tones… “What is it?” As we crowded round radios.. Later a song was released. Tom Mboya, ndiye baba yetu… Afirika twasitikika!.... “Tom Mboya is our father and we in Afrika are distraught!”

It was a dark day beyond every border. It was terrible in Nyanza and Kisumu the capital. At his ceremony there was a stampede. My aunt told me that Mama Ngina’s shoes came off there. In Kisumu people were later shot the day when Kenyatta visited Kisumu to open what was called the Russian hospital. Poet Macgoye was there. She wrote a poem about the children who were killed.

The darkness continues since Mboya’s death. No justice was served. Writers and human rights activists continue to speak out and to ask questions.

This is Tom, the man

Kenya

lost.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0B60s5NiJw

Writers

David Goldsworthy wrote: Tom Mboya, the man Kenya wanted to forget. There are other books.

Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye has written about Mboya in her fiction. In Coming to Birth. Mboya was a brilliant leader.

In her fiction, Macgoye describes Tom Mboya after one of his meetings in Kenya. She writes,

"Martin was present at that Adult Education rally at Bahati where Tom finished his speech, debonair and controlled as ever and then rushed into the meeting which had been organised to exclude him."

On reading this, we realize that had the author captured Tom in a lively manner, Tom's image in action, this might have vivified this work tremendously. After all, Mboya's life had marked effect on the major characters, Paulina and Martin. This minister was Martin's hero and when he died Martin's life was deeply influenced. It is then that Martin, and the author questioned the real meaning of freedom.

There is so much pain. There are no words. The characters speak…in sorrow…

Martin says in Dholuo.., "wawuok mondi" let us go… "woud min, nyathiwa" which means `child of my mother'. Macgoye further describes the situation in her poetry.

She wrote this poem For Tom only partly quoted here.

There's danger.

The grass is trampled.

Only vultures overhead

swoop, rend and darken.

All sheep is down,

The buffalo is down,

The elephant fallen,

Lion torn and unmanned.

......................

Lie low for safety

The highest is gone.

"The hunters go unchecked; we see

Nothing to salvage from their prey.

The carcase snatched from jackals,

lay encased, the spirit wandered free".

In a second poem,("For Tom another mode)", Macgoye asks pertinent questions about the death of Tom which led to so much distress in the land. She asks a question for freedom, for "the hunters go unchecked" after they have taken away the freedom to live, think and act from a leader who promised to be extremely helpful to the poor who needed him most and to the nation.

"Who calls him rich in worldly things?

We knew him rich in peasant tongue,

Thought in each language newly sprung

and courtesy, the grace of kings."

“In 1965, Pio Gama Pinto, formerly an activist for independence in 1950, was assassinated for political reasons. When in 1975, Josiah M. Kariuki, Member of Parliament disappeared and his dismembered body was found in Ngong Hills, the people of

Kenya

were deeply shocked. Macgoye, narrates in Coming to Birth how the people never stopped to miss their elected but killed leaders. They mourned and commemorated them. The impact of J.M's death was strong: "J.M. burst upon the scene as a martyr and a paroxysm of grief ran through the city. The skies were leaden that April and it grew colder and colder." And pop music makers of the day, Kamaru and others did not fear so ask Kenyatta in songs in his mother tongue which they spoke what happened to Kariuki. The song went... People of our mother since Kariuki has died... and he has not stolen or killed anybody He has died for being good... and you ask yourself what you will die for... a song I heard and which moves me still. "Andu a maitu tondu Kariuki ni akua.. na tikuiya kana kuragana.. tundo arakua arakwire wega wake.eee na inyui mwiyuragiee mugakua kiii_ oiii oiii ooiii ye.. J M Kariuki mwendwo ni iri...." Kenyatta banned the song.

JM Kariuki

A bomb blast at a Nairobi bus station in 1975 preceded J.M. Kariuki's death. Some ordinary Kenyans were killed in that mysterious incident. Macgoye shows the negative impact of these mysterious deaths of leaders on the people and on the country as a whole. In so doing, Macgoye is questioning the fact that some individual's political careers and therefore freedom, were so thwarted. “ (Philo Ikonya MA thesis)

Charles Mugane Njonjo is testifying today, 5^th July 2012, in the Kirima case in Nairobi was interviewed by Citizen TV and a series run in 2008 &2009 on the assassination of JM Kariuki on March 1975. It is still about questions, not answers but it gets very close. Leaves it in Government. Now we want acknowledgement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Njonjo

Charles Mugane Njonjo

Former legislator, Martin Shikuku who is unwell today told me in 2008 and that is also recorded in the Hansard (Kenya Parliament official documentation) how he spoke to JM Kariuki when Mboya was killed urging him to support him when he asked the question in Kenyatta’s Bunge. Everyone was a afraid. JM Kariuki was Kenyatta’s secretary. Shikuku asked the question in Kenyatta’s Parliament, Who killed Tom Mboya? He was supported by Deputy Speaker, Seroney. J.M. Kariuki did not manage. Martin and Seroney were detained. But a five years and a few months later, J.M. Kariuki was assassinated too. Now Shikuku still went to Parliament and still asks from his sick bed am sure….”Who killed Joseph Thomas Mboya? Who killed Josiah Mwangi Kariuki? We ask because it is good when governments acknowledge their big errors even if time has passed. Norway only apoligized to the Jews this year. We ask. But we know even when we ask. We know. It is better that you, governments of today, come clean and speak to us. There is something about healing in agreeing on what happened if we are one! These issues have never been focused on in a way that can unite us and now we are often torn and in tribal shreds. Some of the politicians today were still in Parliament then, many have died without telling us what they knew or felt, registering their grief beyond tribal and family cocoon, bar talk.

We do not need whispers anymore. We need crystal clear voices of justice on what went wrong, symbolic ceremonies, justice for the families, shrines and museums where we make reparation for their bodies so violently taken, all of them...all the heroes of Kenya recognized and their role, and more books and poems. Songs. Songs in all languages of Kenya but songs of unity in our struggles. Songs for heroes. Not songs of the hatred that injustice has borne among us and tribalism, the child of political machinations. We need hope in the likes of Shikuku, Seroney, Ouko, Kariuki and Mboya who spoke the mother tongue of justice without worrying about clans and ethnicity they came from. All these and more love protests, so that history is forever alive!

Robert Ouko, left Minister for Foreign Affairs, Jimmy Carter and Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi on the last tour they made A few weeks after their return, Robert Ouko was assassinated.

Eh Mungu nguvu yetu!

Utøya, Anders Breivik and justice

2012-06-22T06:31:00.001-07:00

Norwegians were not glued to the live transmission of the Anders Breivik case that has been going on for the last 10 weeks. Many said there is a lot more to life than Anders Breivik. They did not want him to have so much airtime but to uphold the fact that this is a matter of public interest, the hearing of his case was still transmitted live daily. Not even today when the court hears the last of the case and the judges are left on their own are people that enthusiastic. He is not a hero.

The judges will pronounce their sentence perhaps before 22 July or maybe not. Their judgement may come later. Some Norwegians will be at home, many more will be on holidays abroad. Those at home will hold a memorial for all those who died. The 77 people all of them innocent and unsuspecting that such terror was ever possible in Norway. It has been termed as the worst killing ever since World War II. NATO and the European Union and many countries in the world, among them also countries with huge Islamic populations, suffer the burden of these killings with Norwegians.

It has been a very difficult year. It was the darkest summer that ever was here that day of 22 July 2011 ironically in a season when the sun does not set here in Norway, the season of the midnight sun.

This has been referred to all the time as the Anders Breivik case. The words "terror attack" have come up again today. But many times they disappeared and if they did not, they did not sound like terror or terrorist whent it is said at home. For there, the US immediately steps in and takes suspects in renditions to lands unkown. They say they take them to Guantanamo Bay. If Andres Breivik was called Adam Sheikh he would be there now, I think, even if he held Norwegian citizenship. This was a huge act of terror. It involved all the things that make many around the world get renditioned. Some of them are innocent and they suffer for years, for life. Many of them who will never have the comfort of Anders Breivik. He smiled, lost no weight and took time so often to say he preferred not to be asked some questions, for example, about his connections in the UK.

Here a bomb was made by Anders Breivik. Here use of internet was at its highest for all these machinations to work out as he planned. There were journeys back and forth in the acquisition of the bombing materials. There were flights to other countries. And then, here in Oslo a bomb exploded in a government building very next to Apotekegata Bus stop. It was just what happened when the American Embassy in Nairobi was bombed in 1998, a car drives in and parks, and minutes later, every thing is in the air. Here assassinations were planned and executed. It was done by Anders Breivik and he says he is not insane. He says he did it for political convictions that sound very fundamentalist.

If as at the start some people worried this man had turned out to be from Afghanistan, Pakistan or any stan or Somalia, we know where this case against terror would be. We may not all understand the law, but it is relevant to ask why these laws are not coming into play here. They are not laws I like. Many people I know have suffered under them endlessly. But does not this terror, this stuff that Anders Breivik is made of, fit like a glove for the aims of the law against terror- which operates internationally? Please guide me.

Shall we then kill a mocking bird? We are poorly educated on racism!

2012-05-31T14:02:00.004-07:00

Samuel Eto'o celebrates a goal

Football whether watched at home on screens or in stadiums brings more than a buzz of life to a city. It charges the atmosphere. Money is earned. It can plant faith in values. In Nairobi pubs are full to beyond capacity. No matter the threats of grenades, people sit and cheer, stand and cheer, shout, bet, rejoice and cry at loss. It is the same everywhere. Maybe football is humanity challenging itself?

Not too long ago, a fan even committed suicide because his team lost. http://www.goal.com/en-india/news/221/champions-league/2009/05/06/1249621/kenyan-fan-commits-suicide-after-arsenals-champions-league-defeat

He knew nothing but love for Arsenal. That was his Juliet. In Kenya, kids know the Man U's and the Chelseas long before they know what is T-shirt. How are we and they suppose to understand that our heroes who score goals for many teams abroad are permanently suffering and bearing the brunt racism on football pitches? Today, Bolatelli says something that should make us all sit up. He says racism is unacceptable for him and that if anyone throws a banana peel at him again... he will kill that person. About violence let us rue as we hear the man's frustrations. Racism itself is unbearable violence. We do understand his frustration. Leaders in football and in governments must not sit and wait for more violence to happen. They must talk and act now.

Racism is everywhere

Harper Lee, author. To Kill a Mockingbird

The history of racism in football is a reflection of racism in the world. It does manifest in fields far from football pitches. And some of them more deadly. What should we do? Guilty, shall we kill a mocking bird? We have no excuse for being so ignorant. We have none either for not knowing what football racism is. Those heading teams have no reason whatsoever why to brook this kind of denial mentality. This is at a time when we are showing off that we are so connected?A time when we are saying even kids are reading the whole world online? A time when all it takes is to google football racism and see what comes up? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_association_football

While FIFA says it has zero tolerance for racism, some managers keep saying either it does not exist or what can they do about it anyway, if people are racist. Denial persists at government levels and at football leadership levels even in churches. Shocking indifference. It is time for action now, not just words. Why should anybody suffer because of the color of their skin or because of where they were born? Has the preacher you listen to ever defined racism and fought against it? Isn't there a good portion of it in your holy book? If you want to overcome racism, you must be prepared to be radical even in your way of reading traditions and religions. Radical.

Voices against racism

I am so glad that there are so many people in history and living today who understand racism and are doing something to stem the tide. I am so glad that so many of them are unknown heroes and sheroes who will have nothing to do with racial discrimination because they know it exists and it is unworthy of human beings and so destructive. Equally so that others are icons. Let them speak out more clearly each time! What has been said and written does not seem to be enough. I wish that we could all hear them. I am disturbed that some suppress fellow humans on the basis of race. Some rationalise racism and accept it.

Mario Balotelli: Racism is unacceptable! Yes!

Blatter chatter harmful

Blatter's chatter was in denial of racism in football. And he in a high position in UEFA. And later, after an apology, he said all you need to do if your are racist is to shake hands. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2062343/Sepp-Blatter-Racism-forgotten-handshake.html Now it seems as if a huge number of people are doing a Blatter. Saying sorry is no enough. We fall short of concrete measures against racism.

Racism in football is a big shame on the world. Marion Balotelli Barwuah threatens to walk off the pitch if he is taunted again. The image of a group of European youth shouting Hitler slogans and broadcast on BBC was very ugly.

"In 2006, British librarians ranked Harper Lee's book To Kill A Mockingbird ahead of the Bible as one "every adult should read before they die"

Racism is not a myth or a fabrication, it is an ugly reality

I am glad that because of Euro 2012 racism is being discussed openly. I was watching TV. Poland and Ukraine were on the spot because British citizens said they would not attend Euro 12 because of racism. It is amazing how cagey the Polish minister for Foreign Affairs and the Culture minister were regarding something we cannot deny. Racism. Racism is real. Football has only given us a podium. But many continue to be in denial http://www.abna.ir/data.asp?lang=3&id=303158 And societies you would dream are liberated of racism have challenges right at their doorsteps. Scandinavia is no haven for minorities. Nobody is setting the pace except perhaps Toronto, Canada, and that only perhaps.

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/afp/france-football-manager-blanc-denies-race-quota/438191

Nations boycotted games in South Africa to break apartheid

The Asian man was hit repeatedly. He staggered head bent forward and just when he was about to straighten up some two young white men infront of him kicked him in the belly again. He bled. Before that, they had shouted Hitler slogans and booed Africans calling them monkeys. The TV footage was appalling but it was not all. This is illegal and immoral.

To fight apartheid many nations cut links with South Africa. They would not trade or play with her. It was a powerful message. Today, a country that displays racism should not be acceptable ground for play. The memory of Mahatma Gandhi being thrown off a train for his color in South Africa sprung to mind when an Asian young man was hit repeatedly by different European people for being black.

When you think of it, this is what it really means to be barbaric! And all of it happening in the so called civilised societies. To beat or kill someone because of his skin color is to be very base. Is it possible that in all our endeavours to educate humanity so many people have missed the point? Balotelli is right. We cannot accept racism. Not in Africa, not in Asia, not anywhere. Not from anyone, even when we do not kill a mocking bird. Europe's moral collapse is tremendous. The Middle East and all the Arab countries are also challenged with accepting the 'other'

Ida B Wells precursor of Rosa Parks

It is ironic that only in 2010 we had a Football World Cup in South Africa where apartheid helped to make the injury of racism an unhealing and deep wound with the hope that this was a declaration that the world can make it out of racism.In Apartheid times, it was legal to discriminate in South Africa. This was a defiance of basic natural rights. Natural law should make us realise that we are no better than anybody else. Maybe I should start with that we all eat and we know where all the food ends up. What we have is a celebration of color in human beings not black and white. We want human dignity in our diversity all over the world. Ida Burnett- Wells the precursor of Rosa Parks, fought racism. The history of the civil rights movement is recent. How has the memory died on us?

Poland, Ukraine

and Euro 12, Be afraid!

I know what the Government officials of Poland are talking about... They mean well. The problem is that no one can assert that a whole country is not racist... that is cheap publicity. Racism is rife too in Britain. It is everywhere. We need to be afraid of how corrupted we can be rather than try to say we are the best. We can only be free from fear when we recognize our enemies well and when we are making big efforts to fight racism. I am not against the Polish take. Reality is. I have a polish amethyst ring given to me by a woman in leadership in Poland. She loves all people. I know her well. Let us just call her Danuta for now. She lives in an Afrikan country. Between her and I, we share a solidarity for freedom that few people can have. I know all about Solidarity and the workers at Gdansk. Lech Walesa is my hero. When John Paul II declared "Do not be afraid!", he meant only if we are fighting to overcome evils we should have no fear. All the beauty of the Polish spirit that I know does not mean that some Polish people cannot be racist. Even when they suffered the holocaust.

Keep asking and reading about racism for your own good

So what it is racism? I have read some people who have written that if one says a people are racist, one becomes racist themselves... So that when Balotelli says that Italians are racist (of course he does not mean all of them are) he is told to stop being racist himself. So that when Grada Kalomba defines racism and talks about identities some people answer that she is so racist herself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aj3esOI11Pg Some of the comments one reads tell it all.

Who is so arrogant? Who is so arrogant as to forget what slavery did to the world, colonialism? Who is so arrogant as not to know that some churches also perpetuated racism? Who is so ignorant as not to know that naturally this stinks? Who is ranting as to keep on turning the pain of racism back to the black people? I looked at these responses to Grada Kalomba and I wondered where these people live? Of course it is true that people of darker complexion whether African, Romany, Indian or American have been at the receiving end of racism. Between 100 000 to 200 000 Romany were killed during Hitler days. And Hitler was a manifestation of the mentatlity of many during those times. "Long before the Nazis came into power in Germany there existed a strong anti-Semitic tradition in Europe. This was not a specifically German phenomenon. A widespread hatred of the Jews can be found in the writings of Martin Luther and it was an important part of the self-perception of many Christians."

http://www.holocaust-education.dk/holocaust/hvadhvemhvor.asp

Action

Everyone should do something to stem racism. It behoves those societies that spread it most to do more. It is a moral responsibility too that those who have greater capacity invest more in this. Everyone must accept racism exists. There are endless things we can do personally and together in the world if we are really seriously against racism.Others must be done institutionally. Each country should not just say we have a law but take proactive steps for the world we have must change! You have some answers too. One of them lies in acquiring knowledge. There are books that are a must read. Just recently I read that British librarians declared that Harper Lees 'To Kill a Mocking Bird' must be read even before the Bible is.

For a Lady or Lord of the dance in Kenya: It is time for change!

2012-04-29T14:13:00.000-07:00

Once, he said, the Thembu the Pondo, the Xhosa adnd the Zulu were all children of the same father....the white man shattered the abantu...Long walk to Freedom

In 1969, Norway from where I am writing, discovered oil. Before that, it was among the poorest countries in Europe, second to Ireland. In 1969, I got an offer to go to a good primary school on account of my mother having been a good student herself and very much by luck, been among some of the early Loreto nuns trained girls in Limuru. Education was the oil of our family.

My parents like many others put in their lives and souls into our learning to read and write. Character was emphasised. I can say today that we are not poor. Today, Kenya is poor, however, even if she does try. Today 2012, Kenya has at last confirmed oil is within her borders. But still the eyes of the hungry child meet mine - http://haririphiloikonyagasheri.blogspot.com/2011/03/eyes-of-hungry-child-is-there-or-isnt.html- They haunt me. They are many eyes. They include those of the youth. What is the meaning of having one or two dialysis machines in Kenyatta National Hospital? Doctors and teachers are frequently on strike in Kenya these todays too.There are many types of famines.

Still the promises of independence in1963: elimnation of poverty, disease and ignorance are relevant. Of course one cannot eliminate all disease and ignorance but much of it yes. Poverty overcome actually means these two other forces really dwindle. Oil. But in countries that find oil in Afrika, often comes a curse. Resources kill Afrika. Aid kills Africa. Aids kills Africa. We are seeing it in action now in the two Sudans where one cannot but be sorry watching innocent women, children and men lying in hospitals which are not even equipped for daily sicknesses taking in victims of unacknowledged bombings. Who will lead young people in growth in larger principles? Who hold up bigger images of humanity so that they do not support corrupt leaders and instead stand up for justice? It is encouraging to see Lillian Ikal's efforts. And to know, it can be done! She cheers us up!

Lillian Ikal Angelei: Winner of the Goldman 2012 Prize for environment

http://siku-moja.blogspot.com/2012/04/kenyan-lilian-ikal-angelei-wins.html

We know that 60% of Kenyas population is young, below 18 years of age. It is very important then that young people know and love democratic principles. It is key that they see this reflected in the lives of their elected representatives. They are ones paying them. In Kenya, Members of Parliament take the second most highest salary in the world. The President earns even more, as do cabinet ministers.

I remember the moment in the film Invictus when Mandela receives his first payslip as president and he is so surprised at the amount! It is too much. He immediately says he will contribute to some projects. His concern to bring races together without leaving out Afrikaaners after apartheid is overriding. He leads. A rugby match becomes vital. Who is watching for what can unite Kenyans across different ethnic groups? Who is telling them that this tribe thing is not us? That it came to us for the purposes of power? That the beast created does not fit into the description of any ethnic group we know? Why do we not like JM Kariuki speak more about the deprivation of resources that hits all people across and divides us into the poor and the rich, the class struggle more than tribalism? Why do we not get lost in issues rather than be cheated that it is our wonderful diversity of culture that is killing our nation? Greed?

In Kenya, breaking the trend of highly salaried politicians has been impossible for Kenyans. Until recently Members could raise their salaries after a simple survey by a judge whose procedures the public were hardly privy to. Today this is still a concern. Read this link for more.

http://blog.marsgroupkenya.org/?p=2914

So that 60% of the youth we are talking about are mainly in the poor bracket as must be true if we say 90% of the population is poor and that Kenya's wealth due corruption patterns is held by 10% of the population. The way of the elected representative is not the way to go! The lack of good distribution of resources is one of the reasons why people will die to see someone who shares a name and a language get to power. And these people do not lead the people not to think that way. They say if their own is in power, then they will eat the national cake together. This is a continent where blood ties are very valued. It is easy to make people corrupt in the practice of nepotism, corruption and the elimination of the other who is seen as an enemy.

Yet those whom we pay to lead the nation do not want to acknowledge their failures in the past and in the present since they seek to continue in office at higher or same levels. The distortion of tribe has occured and what exists in the mind of many is tribalism not differences and similarities of cultures and Ubuntu. This is used in favour of those who seek political power.

I heard that to my surprise the younger people who are even on social media and advanced in use of present day social tools are not less easily vulnerable to negative ethnicity to my surprise. But why should I have been surprised if negative ethnicity is nothing but a result of dictatorships? Am I expecting power hungry people to want to that democracy that truly believes in the voice of the people?

It has come to this. President Kibaki believes that all these young people and the rest of the nation will only be safe in the hands of a leader from one part of the country. This is obvious to most of us inspite of the fact that Uhuru Kenyaata stands indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. He and William Ruto another politician, Francis Muthaura, then Secretary to the Cabinet and Joshua Sang a radio journalist, hoped that the Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo would not find enough evidence for their trial but he did. The trial must commence soon.

The young people concern me because they more than anyone else should be changing the way they view Kenya if we are to hope for a better country for our children and theirs. There has to be a way out for Kenya. The two Sudans, Somalia and Ethiopia are weak neighbours in terms of understanding of freedom and cohesion as nations.

Reading history and reflection calls us to deep conscientization. Many politicians were to blame we have seen. But how is it that the good people and the good politicians are not able to turn all of us to greater good and virtue when they so easily turned us to hate? How is it? Is it as they say that it is harder to build than to demolish even in the making of a happy and achieving nation? Why is it that we cannot hear one another, at least some of us and not so few of us, across certain divides? What makes us not realise that in a real sense, there are only two divisions. Those who have, the rich, and those who do not have. For the people who have and are busy with their businesses, even in politics rub shoulders with anybody who helps them reach their goal of achieving more. The people who do not have, do not care who their boss is in terms of ethnic origin as long as at the end of the day they can take bread home to the children they have not choice to do otherwise than bring up amidst all this? So that even based on very material grounds, it is possible to cross certain divides.

A country does not fall apart because only some people are not playing their role. It must also be true that most of us are not innocent. How is it possible that university faculties have been found to be matriculating students into faculties based on ethinic favour.? How is it that our heroes in athletics could not stand with one voice in 2007 when voices of unity were so needed in a burning country? How is it that many people with clout were silent and those of us willing to speak were not getting media to amplify our voices? How is it that the media was so corrupted as to be taking money from the rich for their voices to dominate those of the humble people who tried to influence the mood of the nation and to find platforms to articulate better policies? How is it that the police was divided on ethnic grounds? An administration policeman testified to me that they looked at their colleagues as tribe for the first time. How is it that the churches including the Catholic leadership was riven by tribal considerations in the body of its bishops? The priests?

The thoughts of division along superficial lines and laziness in speaking unity and achieving together live in us. The violence continues in tribal hatred and what has come to be Kenya's frequent experiences of grenades thrown in bus stops and preyer meetings, bars and other places -today in a church at 8.50 am- is violence brought about by people who live in our homes, worship in the same places and who are in our midst all the time.

Wisdom escapes us. Those who have media attention because of their positions in society are bereft of healing actions and words. It is tempting to be preachy and to say this and that to so and so in politics and to lose the deep conscientization which wisdom, reading and reflection calls us to. After my experience of violence in 2007 in Kenya, I know now that we must not let a deep sense of collision and lack of irrationality reign. I see my country fragmented and very tribal.

So that the lady or lord of the dance who seeks to lead the people of Kenya as president from the year 2013 must change the usual rhetoric we hear on TV and our radios. People just seeking for power. For me it is time to learn an new song and dance. It is time to find unity by pointing at our various successes. We have the August 27th constitution. We struggle for it. We have leaders who are heard and who must acknowledge their failures and offer to help lead the youth to better recognition of self as nation.

We have the teachings of Gandhi, Mandela and Dr. Martin Luther King. Justice, recognition of failure and reconciliation must come into play. The media must ask for this agenda from those who want to lead Kenya from 2013. The people must undress the presidency of the notion that it is so powerful that the people cannot determine who they are. We need to define ourselves and to tell the youth that we have made a big mistake. That we are willing to undo this mistake without which Kenya cannot go forward. We have the oil, let us uproot corruption. Maybe then, like Norway in less than 50 years, in this age of fast communication it should take us less, Kenya will be riding high. If not, I shudder to think of it, but we are not immune to a Somalia disintegration of a the nation state. We have been warned about that in the past. Hon. Paul Muite pronounced it. These days Kenya is very challenged by violence within and around it. We must find the right step to lead diversity of religion, ethnic background and gender in the right dancing steps. We must find leaders who cultivate other leaders at every level in every area of Kenya with the urgency and sense of duty of a mother who holds a sick and dying child in her hands. We have no time for people who are paid to be corrupt and sit pretty as the nation dies. Kenya has hope in those who would risk their lives to save to mobilise a community for good. Lillian is setting the pace! We can dispell this gloom!

Freedom From Fear. The world needs Aun San Suu Kyi's win!

2012-03-31T18:01:00.000-07:00

I am eagerly waiting to see if the voters in her Kawhmu vote in Aun San Suu Kyi and do the world proud. I cannot sleep. I wan to see the results of her campaign. Two years ago when she was still under house arrest four of us in Nairobi held vigil for the night of her birthday. We sent our energies to her. http://worldpulse.com/node/10852 Now I believe she is marching to the top. She has only just begun. She has got to help the world focus more sincerely on what democracy really is. We have to unite for good and undo the union with evil that comes from our history.

You might not know this but the British rule took our uncles and grandfathers from Kenya and other African countries to fight in Burma in the Second World War. Whey should we not unite with her now in the struggle for freedom? That night we as women did our bit to accompany her. We had invited the late Wangari Maathai to the vigil in Nairobi but she was in Australia and busy on a trip, serving the world. Now Aung San Suu Kyi is free. She is still working hard for democracy. This is a life we can never ignore and in focusing on it, we see so many others. Tonight, she is The Lady with the light.

And her win and the road to democracy for Burma should mean something for Kenya, Mali, Sudan, Somalia, Mauritania, Gabon, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Niger, Chad Zimbabwe and all countries on earth that are under oppression. She has much to offer to the world. Aung San Suu Kyi's name should ring in Syria, Palestine, Israel, the USA, South America, Iran and Iraq and in Afghanistan. Her triumph should matter in Tahrir Square, in Tunisia and all lands of the Arab Spring. It has to matter in Germany and elsewhere in Europe where the right wing is setting the pace against a world that believes in people. It needs matter in Scandinavia where even if long strides have been taken, still women need to be heard and felt more, where still the girl faces challenges in a different way. We should not look at Burma as a remote place where people have not understood for long. It matters to the world that Burma burns in people power tonight through the vote.

In his foreword to her book, Desmond Tutu of South Africa, writing at a time she had been set free did not hesitate to position her as he should have. "Aung San Suu Kyi is free. How wonderful - quite unbelievable. I tis so very like when Nelson Mandela walked out of prion on that February (11*) day of 1990, and strode with so much dignity into freedom. And the world was thrilled at the sight."Mandela was in prison for 27 years and Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for 15 years. She is seasoned in deprivation and enriched in what one learns when their only companion is oppression.

"Aung San Suu Kyi cannot be silenced because she speaks the truth and because her words reflect basic Burmese and universal concepts!" Vaclav Havel in a foreword to her book, Freedom from Fear.

For most of us, Aung San Suu Kyi is only beginning her march to the presidency and Burma is making history.

I know the political path is tough. I have been there. What is important is to be steadfast in one's beliefs in spite of the difficulties particularly a woman has to endure on this path. I have heard Aung San saying in her campaigns that stones were thrown at her. Thus respond cowards when they see that the spirit of a person is able to burn deep into the peoples' consciousness. I have empathised with her when she said that her campaign venues were not being respected. I remembered a day I arrived at the last campaign venue and found my opponent a very well heeled old man had his vehicles all over the field and I could not hold my last rally in the village where I was born.

So I reflect on something beautiful. That Aung San Suu Skyi has not given up the struggle ever. And this inspite of so many difficulties. She acknowledges the role other people have played their part in the struggle for freedom in Burma. She knows that she is not the only one.

I read her old address in Rangoon in 1988. It is a speech to a mass rally at the Shwedagon Pagoda. It is moving to see how long she has stayed the course to this day of 31st of March 2012 when she is exhausted in her campaign and aware that manipulation could be used to make her lose. I do not want to think about that.

In that address so long ago, she is explaining that living away from home and being married to a foreigner did not take away her love for her land. ""It is true that I have lived abroad. It is true that I am married to a foreigner. These facts have never interefered and will never interfere with or lessen my love and devotion for my country by any measure or degree."

" Democracy is the only ideology wich is consistent with freedom. It is also an ideology that promotes and strengthens peace. It is therefore the only ideology we should aim for."

Her involvement in the movement for Burma's freedom was very political. But people everrywhere take long to believe in women. There is a proverb in my mother tongue about that and it makes me very impatient. But Aung San Suu Kyi is very patient. "Another thing that people are saying is that I know nothing about Burmese politics. The trouble is that I know too much. My family knows best how complicated and tricky Burmese politics can be and how much my father had to suffer on this account."

I am waiting to hear that Aung San Suu Kyi has won. That she is freer again! The faith of Aung San Suu Kyi and her film - The Lady must become more popular than just her person . No matter what, she is a winner! But in this regard, many lands in Afrika and elsewhere must only just begin. To search for democracy and to live it as if it mattered for our next breath because it does, and especially so for the women and youth!

"We must make democracy the popular creed. We must try to build up a free Burma in accordance with such a creed. If we should fail to do this, our people are bound to suffer. If democracy should fail the world cannot sit back and just look on, and therefore Burma would one day, like Japan and Germany, be despised. Democracy is the only ideology wich is consistent with freedom. It is also an ideology that promotes and strengthens peace. It is therefore the only ideology we should aim for."

Rape: Amina of Morocco kills herself? the IMF & Human Rights

2012-03-19T18:31:00.002-07:00

Amina Filali, of Morocco, only 16 years old was supposed to be married off to a man who raped her. Instead she chose death in the month in which the women of the world celebrate International Womens' Day. A huge campaign against Morocco's article 475 started. It was alive on the streets and passionate. It was rolling off in tweets, fb and many social fora. But Amina Filali is no more. She committed suicide. Was it Amina Filali who killed herself or the rape supported by the law of Morocco in article 475? I understand her thoughts. The day is cursed and the soil of a land where this is practice. It is debasement of the highest order. Most of us condemn this situation in the strongest words possible, in all languages and including body language. Our memories are stirred deep for rape bestrides a so called progressive world, a global village. We shall not relent. The solutions must be global.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/14/amina-filali-morocco-rape_n_1345171.html

Rape. It does not matter where it occurs and to who, rape is a hideous crime. It cannot be 'rewarded' in any way and least of all with marriage as is done in some countries. Justice must be done and not delayed. To tolerate rape in families is criminal. To make a woman marry a rapist is to do that. There are many unspoken deeds of incest and rape. Experts say that rape is more commonly commited by those who are close to us and not strangers. No community should allow any custom to cover up rape. The solution to the problem should be close to us, just as the perpetrators are. Within family rape must be shamed and named. No violence is purely domestic. Rating high among abuses of human rights in the world, rape must also feature high on the global agenda in monetary terms.

I cannot imagine how it is for women who have had to live with someone who violated their being. It is an ubearable thought but a certain reality in the Middle East and other parts of the world. The strategies to overcome this henious crime should be visible to all everywhere. The strategies should be perpetually alive and in many ways. They should be abuzz in social media where everyone seems to be after and during working hours, during travel and in dreams.

Silence came too soon after UN soldiers raped women they were supposed to defend in the DRC Congo in the intense rape zone of Kivu. Crimes committed by westners disappear like shooting stars from our media. Not that anyone holds the light in Darfur very persistently. Instead there is consistent scandal.

In the last few months, anyone who has worked with human rights must have been truly concerned about the devaluation of rape in the world. No one has forgotten the case of Julius Assagne, the accusations and the trivialisation of rape. For indeed when he was accused of rape in the storm of the Wikileaks things went into a surreal gear. This is not to say if he had been guilty he should not have been accused; but we all remember how everything was muddled up and then, the silent disappearance from the eye of the media and many being left wondering just what was what.

It was a deadly blow to the real survivors of rape to have had a man in the limelight accused of rape in the moment he was being lionised by many for the Wikileaks. In the end it was more about rape being used and the Swedish law versus the UK law and the US law. This did not leave women and rape in a better standing. We firm unshakeable grounds on rape with balance sheets as real as money is in the IMF. The West and Europe's leaders stay awake at night when the Euro is sick but not when Amina commits suicide because she like many women cannot live with rampant abuse and be said to be alive. Is there a real conviction for human rights?

Let us prod the recent past a little further. There is Dominique Strauss the boss of the IMF then. His swift arrest from a plane and the accusations caused a stir in the world of those informed. It was with baited breath that many waited. And then the unexpected happened. He walked away free. Many were saying, 'You see, these women are always after rich men and fixing them.' The woman from the Gambia, his accuser, became a liar who had lived on the same lie of being raped happily, it was reiterated. We were told she enjoyed saying she was raped so that she could get to live in Europe. Many hung their head in shame. What is missing in this picture?

I said to a friend that am prepared to bet that in the hospitality industry and in high society hotels women are part the service 'given', 'negotiated' or 'organised' for those who would. I hear that the Strauss is being investigated with connection to a prostitute ring connected to hotels. Of course his wife might be right in saying he is innocent but such words have come from the lips of many wives.

So nothing appeases the mind that wants to see rape addressed as it should be. If we cannot win on this for women and for a better society then essence is lost. There was a French journalist in the middle of the two events. Her case was against Dominique Strauss too and it was quashed. It is great that Dominique Strauss is no longer the head of the IMF and Christine Lagarde has taken over.

Rape. Norwegian newspapers are still reporting that the year 2011 had the highest number of rapes in a long time. The sad thing is that one does not see a visible anti-rape campaign in Norway. One does see an ocassional poster against spitting with a huge ugly mouth. I have seen some TV debates on the topic but I have not seen as I used to see in Nairobi any sign posted to indicate dangerous grounds for women. Yes, I have heard there are escorts and that girls have been adviced not to drink late and walk through parks. But this reminds me that it is clear that the victim is often seen as the perpetrator. Debunk the myths.

The latest headline I saw in Aftenposten about this topic screamed that only one man had been judged out of 96 cases of rape in courts. Many are incensed by the slow pace in this but they are continue saying it to the media in a country where one has got to wonder about the percentage of the readers of newspapers. There is no activism in the air.

But Amina Filali, and between her and the few mentioned cases there are thousands of women, is dead. At 16 she chose to die. I saw a demonstration in Rabat in the wake of her death. I am not seeing it taking the dimensions of the Arab Spring. Perhaps the revolution in the Arab speaking world does not touch the women?

Amina Filali reminded me of Mohamed Bouazizi of Tunisia. But I look and see that women are far behind in these days of the Arab Spring. Where is the revolution that will cast out laws like law 475 in Morocco? How can a 16 year old get married to a man who raped her or any man for that matter? Is this tenable in our days? In1946 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was published in Europe. Has it reached the Middle East? Is this Declaration where our money is?

I was watching Christine Lagarde on a BBC documentary. No doubt a formidable woman. She said she was no longer French nor for that matter European because the IMF is a global concern. I am glad to note that I can therefore say that Christine Lagarde is Moroccan and also Mexican? Christine Lagarde also stated that she is happy to see women in high positions obviously because she is a woman and secondly because if women are absent we cannot talk of democracy. And true even when one watches global channes such as CNN and BBC one has to wonder where the gender balance is even in interviews. Count the number of women interviewed versus men on any show and publish the statistics. On one of these channels men sat around the table by themselves discussing leadership! That is just unbelievable.

I go back to Christine Lagarde and the IMF and rape. For I think it is very urgent that we put our money where our mouth is. I am disappointed to find old articles which are reminding the IMF that money must be connected to human rights more seriously. I am sad because it would appear that this has been a concern for many for years. I am not talking about sanctions just now even though that should apply in some instances. I am talking about the Head of the IMF going to Mexico and other countries in search of money because the European economy is shaken. Lagarde in that documentary is asking Mexico for money. Of course IMF may ask for the money where she will. But I am thoroughly disappointed to see that the journalists interviewing Christine Lagarde do not ask her how the IMF could take money from Mexico and not talk about the rampant abuse of human rights in Mexico. Why? How many journalists die in Mexico for daring to probe rights issues?

It would appear strange to me that the IMF considers sanctions or some form of punishment for the non-compliant but will on the other hand take money where it is to be found and that includes Mexico, without a warning to the giving government regarding human rights abuses.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/radhika-balakrishnan/making-the-international_b_549976.html

One of the article I read about IMF and human rights quotes 'Development is Freedom'by Armayrta Sen. It states that freedom of expression is a fundamental basic for the fight against poverty. This is a clear idea which one can easily understand. http://www.imf.org/external/np/vc/2001/090401.htm
In my view, we cannot speak to Mexico only about supporting Europe and not insist at the same time that human rights violations to cease. For accountablity for the many writers and journalists who have been killed in Mexico in recent memory is our duty and the West must come out strongly or forget about human rights ever being taken seriously by some governments.

I am convinced that for things to work for women as Christine Lagarde says she would like to see, we must essentially change our ways of working. The Human Rights agenda must not be something we say for the screen. It must be real. We must put good money in for Human Rights. We need to act fast on this for if not, in countries like Morocco, there will be no change at all. Young women will continue to commit suicide to escape the shackles of outdated laws and Dafur, Kivu and other parts of the world will bleed to death. I would like to see the key turning both ways. I would like to hear the IMF speak clearly and strongly condemning human rights abusers. I would like to hear the IMF speak out against rape and tell member countries that this an urgent matter which should be discussed whenever a chance arises I would like the IMF not to beg money from countries that have it and have made it whilst abusing human rights.

We cannot do business with dictators or people who have unjust laws and say we are working for global stability. Commitment must be real and organising has to be many notches higher.

Syria- Rent the sky in every land | World Pulse

2012-03-17T00:47:00.001-07:00

Syria- Rent the sky in every land | World Pulse

Syria, Afghanistan and our hope- What can I do?

2012-02-21T17:25:00.000-08:00

A Syrian Poem by Faraj Bayradkar

this is my vision

and my exhaustion attests to it.

The river doesn't bend except

for this wager

But I, when a woman falls heavily

at the end of night, I forget my hands

on her voice, and then she departs,

leaving me my chains,

to write something, finally

but I, whenever the late birds struggle

(toward me the horizon shokes)

and an hour's mirage

I gargle it.

Oh, these two...

Give me back a little space

since my cell is a body I claim

and a freedom that claims me...

And give me back a question.

For the answers scattered by the tribes

or that scattered me over them,

no harm in that...

Look: the coming day, overflowing, will gather me

teardrop by teardrop, like an ode in its cradle,

and then illuminate me suddenly,

like a verse at its climax,

and bless me with its antithesis.

Do not dream, demand!

2012-01-29T22:32:00.000-08:00

Demand not a dream today but a reality. If someone is looking down on your ability or simply cannot stand you because of your skin, you must demand to be. Tsunamis make many very sad. All human catastrophes of a natural or unnatural causes make many suffer. Many move out of their cocoon and act. I see the world filled with voices of hope. It reaches out. We help how we can. Memories come rolling in: Haiti, Japan, Italy, Missouri and many other places. Here we can help and have helped.

I move back to the individual on the skin level. I say demand justice. I did not say be violent. Let those who are violent learn not to be. My heart fell last evening when I saw Jessi, that is what I want to call her as I recall Jessi Jackson, on TV last night. Jessi is a woman in Oslo. She says that she dares not step out in the evening since somebody hit her on the basis of having a black skin. Someone struck the castle of her skin. She was in the central part of the city just taking a walk. Her tears were near. She said that she knew that most Norwegians were not like that person who hit her. Police asked people to report these cases. Recently I heard that the problem with racism is that some people who are not hit openly like Jessi do not even know it when it is happening to them. They do not identify it. So they do not report it. Society must wake up. Many in Norway say that racism is subtle. It is not openly seen. I differ. It is visible and identifiable and can be quontifiable and actionable so that the few who want to be retrogressive can learn.

I am refusing to believe that racism will not go away. Someone has even put it in a famous saying, that when it goes, we shall invent something else for the basis of discrimination. I surge with fury. I do not want to dream now. Dr. Martin Luther King has and had a dream, it is time for that dream to be fulfilled. I was sad and glad when I heard Jimmy Carter on Intelligence Sq. BBC talking about racism last year. He said it was unfortunately still so rife. A few days later Obama unveiled the great sculpture of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I love the man and his words. We must go beyond his speech and spill into action, for this man had and has a dream which by now should have rocked the world. I know am up against ethnic forces here and there. I know it is possible to get people interested in many other things so that they act on other more powerful levels. I know it is possible to fascinate people with possibilities. I know the media can do much in this. I know writers can. I know it does not work to see very few people of another color on TV screens and only see them when they are in trouble. For Jessi and her types have a profession. Jessi and her type have families. Jessi and her type have many things that the media often forgets.

This is January. On 19th January most media reflected on Dr. King. I did not see anything here on TV. I know I said do not dream. I mean you could have shown something about how to make this dream come true. Besides, I was closely watching what would happen on the 26th of January. It is the day Benjamin Hermansen was killed for being black in 2001 in Norway. At the beginning Norge was shocked. Thousands of people came out in protest. The street action was impressive. It has petered out. Perhaps that is natural. But something else should have grown in its place. As long as the racism issue is left to a few people who speak themselves hoarse and often are from the visible discriminated minority, nothing will happen to change things. I did not see the action that I would expect from Human Rights Watch and other organisations. I did not see Amnesty International lighting up candles here. I would like to see more focus. I would like to see this burden come off the shoulders of individuals and move to institution. Dreams should not be possible in institutions, the individuals in them must make dreams live. Act and demand justice. Never be ashamed to say where we are hurting. This is what weakens human endeavor for change. It is not possible to only make a little noise and go. The police must follow up their word. Ways of identifying offences must be made known to all and not just to the often discriminated people.

Libraries following the legacy of Deichman are powerful here. So, this week I am reading a little book Rasisme forklart for barn by Walid al - Kubaisi and published by Pantagruel Forlag in 2001. It was soon after Benjamin was killed. The foreward is by his mother. Marit Hermansen. Her pain is tangible and I know it never died. Why has ours died? There is another book on Benjamin Hermansen. A big book and colourful. Both these books should have been on forefront display the whole of the month of January and books and films on Dr. King, Gandhi and others. In the lectures of the week held in differerent libraries, I saw nothing focused on history or race. Instead I stumbled on a book about neggers. On this one I will write another day in subsequent articles.

This is a problem we must address as deeply as we can and we can reach many people. It does not go away by not looking too straight at it. In the big book, young people expressed themselves to a newspaper in words I shall shortly quote when I get it, here below. All this has gone into hiding somehwere. We surely must do better as society which actually functions on the basis of equality.. or likestilling. It is meaningless to have gender equality when not all human beings are not seen to be equal because of their skins. We all have the wounds of old and of late. July 22 2011 is also steeped in unacceptance of the 'other' in many forms.

2011-12-28T18:32:00.001-08:00

Dear Mohammed Bouazizi, for a man and his vegetable cart, your anniversary.

2011-12-26T02:38:00.000-08:00

Dear Mohammed Bouazizi,

Ever since you struck that match the flame has not died. We saw the flames it has been difficult to rest, Mohammed. Then you were 26 years now you are an ancient giant. You should be as present as yester- history. It is Christmas time and you kept ringing bells in my ears, Mohammed. I weep. I meditate on you, Mohammed, during this Christian festive season. I cannot detach myself and watch history. I am sure we should be lacking in foresight if we thought you only died for Tunisia and for Arabs. In my mind you died for many. Many had died silently before. Maybe others had chosen fire alone too. But your fire was the one chosen to be loaded with meaning, to spark a revolution, an Awakening that the world should not turn away from. An awakening that must turn the world. An Afrikan Awakening too.

See Nigeria. Questions of faith too. Christianity and Islam. Burning the other. You immolated yourself. Is it true that we are so lost in small divisions where the Northerner in any country claims difference with the westner and the southner with the centralist and eastner? Is it true that belief in God must kill us? Is it true that it is us who speak peace in churches where we do not turn to our neighbour because she is Sudanese and Nubian and not of our Arab ancestry? See India's castes. Division is built on economic trouble, inequality of opportunities. Incapacity to live with differences. Our view of the 'other' is so complex. You taught me that to make room for the other I may need not be present everywhere but tribe in Kenya cheats me the opposite. I take the teaching, I try to leave the cheating.

Is it true that at home tribe marks tribe and in Europe race and tribalism live on? Is it true so many people wanted to change the world when they were teenagers? Is it true that old men and women are meditating? Is it true that we light candles on graveyards and place wreaths of peace?

I hear the name word Tunisia and my thoughts turn to you. I hear Libya it is the same. I hear of Syria today engaged in such massacres and killings and Assad will not hear and I wonder about why you did not live and others died. What have we done to bring the Awakening that must happen in so many lands. Where are our values as humanity?

In the backdrop of what is happening in Syria, Egypt and many lands we may not find in our media because they seem to fall of the map of the world's attention, I think of you. It is for the Arab Awakening that you Mohammed Bouazizi struck the match. Your flames are still burning for the world needs them. You doused yourself in petrol and went up in flames. You were saying you had enough of a world full of injustice not just in Tunisia. Mohammed, we are not able to light up our minds. Dictators hold on as so many people die. The world has betrayed Syria. Sakharov, Vaclav Havel and you and many others are disappointed. We buried all of you? Do we not ignite ours then? You challenged us with a match Bouazizi and you left your mother crying, and us. I sometimes so wish that we could see you watching the world. See your spirit. Touch it.

From Al Jazira. Mohammed must live in our minds. I do not want to see this again!

I do not like it that matyrdom was forced on your psyche. You were seeking to live. I praise you for your courage because sometimes there is no other language possible. You did not take the life of another. I remember your name suddenly hit us as between the 17th of December and the 4th of January, you struggled for your life in hospital all bandaged up. Doctors had done their best. They stood by your bed with nurses. Some important people visited you and took photographs and the whole world was paralysed by this at Christmas. I know now that my Christmas in Norway, in Kenya, in wherever I may be will never be the same again.

I listen to carols at this time and every little boy, every child, every market woman offering bananas lifting them high to a traveller on a bus window reminds me of you. Those men I have seen in Nairobi pulling a cart with their stomach as if they have horsepower remind me of you. My cousin pulls one in a smaller town. I know that life. I know his children waiting for Christmas. I know his faith and effort.

Someone killed two vendors in Firenze on 15th of December. They said he was right wing and angry. He killed himself too. The news was splashed for a while. It is practically forgotten. Those two vendors from Senegal who were shot dead in Firenze, Florence, the other day remind me of you. Four people were injured. The mothers' of those vendors received corpses at home.I was thinking about this when I read in La Stampa, which does not yet carry posthmous postal stamp that indeed his colleagues said, Someone will have to tell Samb's mother. La pieta comes to mind again and no pity. How long with a mother with broken limbs, dead children in her hands, a mother holding ashes at the Ganges, a mother weeping have to live? This mother lonely and filling the face of the earth. This mother holding out her children to us hungers for justice. We cannot sleep. We must unmask our feasts and ask the world what our children will celebrate tomorrow.

http://www.worldcrunch.com/florence-where-counterfeit-gucci-and-immigrant-dreams-meet-racist-violence/4302

I saw photos of Senegalese men on the street demonstrating. I did not see demonstrations anywhere else in the capitals of Europe. I did not see people come out as human beings: Not race, not religion but people who care about the life of another. This event was very close to the UN International Human Rights Day, 10th December.

I know that the mayor of Firenze reacted fast and condemned this. I remembered that I was in Firenze on 9th December 2010 at the Nelson Mandela Forum. I remembered young Italian children 14- 18 filled a stadium with love. I remembered how they celebrated Mansur Raji and I. I remembered one boy who just wanted to call my name and when I looked up he smiled and run away. I remembered hope. I felt pain because I know there are many people who would not have this happen but a few who seem to work harder than the rest of us to be heard.

I know a young boy who was killed here on 26th January 2001 in Oslo for being Benjamin Hermansen. In the 2010 demonstration that my friend took me to, there were very few people compared to the beginning. We are weak. There are many things we shall not root out. Our self immolation does not require that we set fire on ourselves. We need to set fire on our thoughts, on our souls and hearts. We need to act. Nothing is over yet, everything remains from slavery to bombings. The world must show us who is leading it today. Where is the bigger voice. The Pope of the Roman Catholic Church reflected on Syria on Christmas Day and asked for prayers, but in Northern Nigeria in Jos, someone killed many Christians in a church. Which language shall we speak Mohammed?

If you try to Google shooting of boy.. . without his name, no matter what year you put, your finds will be filled with Anders Breivik and Utøya. Here, where I live for sometime now, we like to console ourselves. We say that our racism is hidden? Is it? I see it not only on Benjamin but in many places. What is hidden to the world and why? Mohammed, thank you. May we learn to burn bright that which is still hidden in darkness. May we just at least try, to step out for humanity. You inspire me even as I hurt deeply seeing that we do not have enough with the awful natural disasters.. in the Philipinnes, Somalia, U.S.A, Australia and Japan. What are we learning and doing? Why are those against ideals so much more active than those of us who are pro humans? Ask us Mohammed, ask us. We owe you many answers.
http://www.sos-rasisme.no/sentralt/71/2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Benjamin_Hermansen.

Hermansen was 15 years old when he was shot just before midnight on 26th January 2001.

Burden of Peace for theree wise women, Nobel Peace Prize 2011

2011-12-09T22:27:00.001-08:00

Gentle smiles of enduring peace

Leymah Gbowee, Nobel Peace Prize winner and Patricia Howell from Jamaica in Oslo 8th Dec 2011

Nobel Peace Prize 2011- the feet of them that bring news of peace!

Celebrations now come on! There are some reflections, one can only make with the body! It ached then. It dances now. Three women have journeyed from afar. See their first steps, barefeet and full of pain. See them dance today.

Celebrations now.. come on!

See me dance for them. See me. I am full of joy. Three wise women. They are in Oslo this historic day, of December 10^th. This is the day when every year some outstanding personalities stand before us and make us one in hope. It is Human Rights Day.

I know there are controversial issues but today let me rejoice in these women. After all, it was in a workshop titled Defending Defenders in Nairobi where I met one of these women, Leymah Gbowee. It was organized by Urgent Action Africa then directed by Betty Kaari Murungi. There were women from Africa and Asia.

Many great sisters were there and I know today they are recalling that workshop in many parts of the world with joy because Leymah was there and because women are on the worlds’ podium for honor today.

There is a party going on right here..

The Nobel Peace Prize and its history still retains great prestige and meaning. It remains a high peak. It is a big responsibility to receive it. I love the fact that this onus is on our wonderful sisters Tawakul, Leymah and Ellen Jonson Sirleaf in 2011.

To walk in the company of Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., Chief Luthuli, Wangari Maathai, Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan and so many great people is a great thing!

Should I liken these three sisters to the three kings of yore? No. They are not all from the orient and the one that is may not have the three kings in the hadiths. Is this story part? It is December 10^th 2011. Well, from that story let me steal the lesson that they must remain people who are moving towards others who are seemingly lowly as it was with kings travelling miles on camels to see a little baby in that Christmas story. Leymah Gbowee Prayed the devil back to hell sometime back with a large group of women. You can see the documentary on this today. She led.

Muslim and Christian women came out and challenged Charles Taylor who had taken liberty from Liberia. They wanted their children back. They wanted to see their boys grow up and their girls and mothers not raped. They like many queens insisted their children had to live. It is about time women showed no fear in uniting even across religious groups. The world is challenged by serious divisions. Will women bring us the frankincense and myrrh we need for our healing?

United across age groups. Ellen Jonson is a torch bearer, Leymah runs strong and Tawakul is the youngest in age and certainly wise... they are all youthful!

So celebrations..

I could be in my warm winter bed sleeping. It is so early. It is one of the days that my 4am alarm has rang after I have woken up. I thought I switched it off on my mobile phone and then it sweetly rang again after ten minutes. I remembered as I put it off how one feels when sleep embraces the eyes forcing them closed and an alarm rings. That you want that snooze. It is that snooze I cannot afford in life. And, I am in Oslo, how can I not write about this?

Part of Oslo will show great excitement today. Sadly, some other people got used to it. I am part of the ones trembling with joy, excited, even as I sit and write and am not invited to the concert which only big people go to. We can’t wait for the public torch parade and for the brief appearance of the Nobel Peace Prize winners at the historic window! It is the land of equal opportunities! I am honored that I read a poem in a gathering where one of the Nobel laureates was invited. I am contented that we- a group of African women- saw one of the Nobel laureates barefoot . and we joked about the dignity of the Nobel Prize! Who would not celebrate the feet of women like these? It is not always our turn to mourn. We loved seeing their families happy. We celebrate!

Tawakul, what is the use of the revolution if we only die and not dance? I hope for you so much. I hope the best. My mother says part of you name means lamp in her language.. Tawa, and so it was to be, and my son says that the other part is ‘cool!’ This is how domestic you have become in my village too.. so... Drive that energy into changing the world! All three of you, the work has only just begun. The world needs real changing, even here on the ground on which you receive the Nobel. Ask us.

Let me not dwell on what others say regarding deserving. This will always come up. It is not new. Give these women a break! Put your fears regarding this or that into something else.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has played a big part in peace building at home regardless of what some say. For me, it is just that. What they must say. Three women will receive the Nobel Prize for Peace. Tawakul is the youngest. She is from

Yemen

. She moved the revolution forward in the Arab Spring, in her country.

I am reminded of Martin Luther King Jr. I am reminded of non violence. I am reminded of some aspects of his amazing life and his ever living dream.

I am reminded of Martin Luther King Jr’s own acceptance speech of the Nobel Peace Prize on the 10^th of December 1964 where he spoke more about the masses than about himself.

“Everytime I take a flight I am always mindful of the many people who make a successful journey possible, the known pilots and the unknown ground crew. ..You honor the ground crew without whose labor and sacrifices the jet flights to freedom could never have left the earth.”

We will always celebrate those who come and return to the people with words of peace regardless of a world that would rather they were not celebrated. Celebrate now!

Afrikan resources stolen just as Dag Hammarskjøld said

2011-11-26T07:08:00.001-08:00

It is not surprising that there are many people who would have nothing to do with anyone promising support for democracy in Afrika. Years of betrayal continue. Dag Hammarskjøld, UN Sec General UN in the 60s was clear. He is still relevant. What is happening to tantlum or coltan in DRC is unbelievable. And everything continues as if all were normal. What is normal? That will not be for long. A world revolution born on the back of the Arab Spring must liberate the whole world. The taking of resources from those who cannot defend themselves is stealing. Multinationals have continued this injustice in many forms. There has to be a new way of dealing with resources in the world. Someone has to champion this. Many people. Billions of them. It can be done.
There are many people in Afrika who are angry enough. They normally throw out the whole western concept or any deed from the west, sometimes even individuals as evil to be rejected by all means. But we need those people in the world who know and see the origin of some of these problems. And I miss deep souls like Dag's! Shame! Thank you John Jones for keeping the flame alive and sharing with us. Here is your article.

http://www.un.org/wcm/content/site/chronicle/cache/bypass/home/archive/webarticles2011/daghammarskjoldstoodupfortheunondevelopment?ctnscroll_articleContainerList=1_0&ctnlistpagination_articleContainerList=true