This was our last evening walk of 2022! Today was an overcast day.
I love my evening walks. I love being on this hill, listening to and watching the bats, and working out with fellow Monrovians in the shadows of the Big Bad American Embassy and the Masonic Lodge. ๐
Loved this address by Javed Akhtar and, his pointed critique of how Urdu is being attacked as a 'foreign language' in BJP infested Hindustan. Urdu is a beloved language of the people of India and, is a people's language. I really appreciate how he explains that relationship language/zubaan has with script and syntax grammar. For example, Khari Boli is the ancestor of Urdu and Hindi and, Urdu and Hindi can be written in both Devanagri and Persian scripts just as Western Roman languages borrowed Roman script. As for syntax and grammar, just because you sprinkle an Urdu sentence with English words doesn't mean you are speaking English because it is syntax and grammar which make language. Lastly, Urdu was never a priestly/religious language but incredibly agnostic and philosophical. We should all be proud we know and speak Urdu.
(See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h5C857U0C0)
Kavita and Desire tried their best at jump rope. Results are hilarious and cute. See this video: Children thinking they are doing jump rope.
But the Woggle-Bug strutted along as if he had made some brilliant remark, and the Scarecrow was obliged to say:
“I have heard, my dear friend, that a person can become over-educated; and although I have a high respect for brains, no matter how they may be arranged or classified, I begin to suspect that yours are slightly tangled. In any event, I must beg you to restrain your superior education while in our society.”
“We are not very particular,” added the Tin Woodman; “and we are exceedingly kind hearted. But if your superior culture gets leaky again—” He did not complete the sentence, but he twirled his gleaming axe so carelessly that the Woggle-Bug looked frightened, and shrank away to a safe distance.
The others marched on in silence, and the Highly Magnified one, after a period of deep thought, said in an humble voice:
“I will endeavor to restrain myself.”
Please see a video of Kavita reading from The Marvellous Land of Oz: "We are exceedingly kind hearted". And, guess what? You can read the whole book online here: The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Marvellous Land of Oz, by L. Frank Baum.
Read this by L. Frank Baum on how he was convinced to write this book. And, for Kavita to know the L. Frank Baum is from Chicago, city of her birth:
I love these illustrations:
I explained to Kavita this book was published in 1904 and she's reading a beloved children's book that is more than a 100 years old!
I am very proud of Kavita's reading skills and she is reading much more than I was at her age. However, with all the distractions that lurk everywhere (on demand streaming, YouTube, Netflix, video games on the phone), one has to force children to read. But when they do start reading, they get lost in the story.
Biden held a thoroughly panned Summit of the Americas earlier this year and now is trying again with a US Africa Summit. US efforts to counter China's trade and diplomacy are, what can we say, pathetic since they are so insincere. Just a few months ago, the former American Ambassador to Liberia , now the US rep at the UN, came to Africa to literally warn African countries not to trade with Russia. What has Biden promised Africa now? A paltry US $ 55 billion to the second biggest continent while it spends more than US $ 800 billion on defence. Don't let any one be fooled by Biden and Americans they are a war machine and, everything they do is to serve American imperialism.
Liberia's President's son scored a goal for the American football team in FIFA World Cup last night. What do you say to that? Individually it's a spectacular achievement , especially when we think of how many African players play for European teams and, when it's hailed as an African team, French Ambassador has to write to Trevor Noah. While George Weah himself may come from a very humble background and brought glory to his country, but now being head of state, his son's citizenship brings up another politics altogether. What kind of role model do we have as President if the elite's children are invested in Global North. We have had same issues back home in Pakistan , where elite children go abroad and don't come back home to participate in politics and society.
I've been thinking about how much time media devotes to the American electoral cycle, the American democracy machine. In recent times, one feels there is a battle going on between good and evil, the Good Democrats fighting for women's abortion rights, for immigrant rights, for the environment, for public funding for schools and healthcare while the Evil Republicans are eroding a progressive, inherently good American society. We are meant to cheer the successful election of a person of colour to local or Federal level or of a white politicians standing up for the right thing.
Good Democrats like Biden and Obama are trotted out at voting time to save democracy.
But then the same media will report that President Biden has said something as racist and offensive like "Pakistan is the most dangerous country there is" and, "Afghanistan is such a Godforsaken place."
Anyone care to connect these dots? Why are we invested in following the integration of people of colour into the American State and, at the same time being insulted by American heads of state?
I was pretty livid at Biden's statements and, still am. They personally stung me and the timing could not have been worse. two thirds of Pakistan was submerged under water when Biden called it a dangerous state. I know he was attacking the military state but how democratic to not even bother to differentiate between people and the state.
His comments on Afghanistan maddened me with rage. I was livid with rage. How dare he continue to belittle , hurt and offend people of our region? I realised he speaks with arrogance only an imperial lord can. He may not necessarily dictate hatred to his public but reserves racism and bigotry for people his country conquers. His remarks immediately sent me off in blinding rage, thinking of the 80s, the invasion and carpet bombing of Afghanistan after 9/11, of Obama and his drones and how he traumatised children of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the trillion dollars they supposedly spent to help the country, the cowardly withdrawal, and how Afghan girls are now literally fighting the Taliban for their rights.
I realised that only a racist imperial power tired of bombing, invading and abandoning a land can speak like this.
I also thought about my American friends who demonstrate their Democratic credentials online as they cheer Hillary or Obama and condemn Trump. But not one peep against any American war. I think about their tears as Republicans shred this so-called veneer. But not a peep against any imperial destruction. I also think about the artificiality of international friendships where my concerns are irrelevant but somehow my deep knowledge, general interest and ability to follow and comment on heir society is taken for granted.
In my adult life I've met most Americans through the aid and international development complex. I've also met many Europeans like this. Are they passionate about international aid because of its neo colonial nature, its apolitical hollow nature of work? As a consolation prize for imperial wars? How do Westerners see their jobs and careers in countries directly ravaged by American occupation? And all her countries suffering long term colonial legacy? Capitalist extraction? Debt incurred by borrowing from Western institutions?
I suppose looking for accountability and empathy from individuals is a big ask. Privileged sections of society benefit from a system and, they are selective in critique of power.
Nevertheless I'm profoundly disturbed.
Enough to finally realise what defines the core of American support of Israel. If we take a long view of history as Americans inheriting the vast British Empire, we can see why they supported such a violent settler colonial take over of Palestine by European Jews. It was not only to create friendly state amongst a dying Muslim Ottoman Empire and, play the region. American support for Israel is a a profoundly white supermacist project. White Christian America believes Israel has the right to exist and occupy and destroy Palestinians. Every American President furthers this cause. Even the lone black one has to follow suit.
Israel is a white imperial project.
Zelensky congratulated Netanyahu and, said his country shares values with Israel. What an amazing loop. Biden gives billions to Netanyahu for fighting Russians who in turn call Ukranians Nazis. And, round and round we go.
American Presidents will never speak against Israel. But they can shit over rest of us.
I fail to understand why states and government officials around the world uncritically jumped on the Twitter bandwagon and started using it as a platform to issue statements, conduct foreign policy and, in worst cases, promote dangerous propaganda. Now, a megalomaniac has bought the platform and is threatening to destabilise the ship. States and governments have colluded with private capital to erode honest independent journalism, democracy and, their own state functions and accountability.
Kavita accompanied on an evening walk after a long time.
Kavita's reading The Marvelous Land of Oz. While reading it out loud to me, the name of one of my favourite songs "wonders never cease" popped up. And, "comrade" popped up too! I was told recently that L. Frank Baum was very interested in politics and, one can find a Marxist analysis in his stories.
This is a video from our channel of Kavita reading the whole page: Passage from Marvelous Land of Oz. We both will be reading passages from books we are reading.
Kavita is almost 10. She has to decide how much more she wants to be on social media, have her videos on YouTube. Is this what she really wants to do?
My reading of liberal Western democracies is that the liberal project has solved feminist/racial question by representation, inclusion and diversity crap. They recruit black brown men and women to their system and outsource the capitalist/imperial /racist project to them. System doesn't change. But optics look good.
You know why the EU thinks it can call itself a garden and rest of the world a jungle? Because they know they are the barbarians who colonised us and sent us to our Middle Ages. They know when they came to loot and plunder us, we had long ago, mapped the stars, invented algebra and astronomy, built the Pyramids, and, even created egalitarian matriarchal societies long before they they learned how to even bathe! They know when they de-throned our Kings and Queens, they de-stabilised us, sending us into a chaos and subjugation. They know they enslaved us! They came to loot us, take our treasures to put in their museums. They know they destroyed our cultures, languages and heritage disconnected us ourselves. They know we had pluralistic and far more advanced ideas about gender while they are only now discovering it! What gardens? The most beautiful gardens have always existed outside of Europe. So, even now that they continue to loot us, subjugate us in their hegemony, they know they can look down at us and talk about a garden they have.
Please see: EU's Josep Borrell under fire for calling outside world a 'jungle'.
Also, read Marwan Bishara's Josep Borrell as Europe’s racist ‘gardener’.
