• Home
  • About
  • Concepts, Coins, and Terms
    • Anthropolitical Psychology
      • Civilizational Narcissism
      • Conflict – Language Uptake – Social Programming and Scripting – A Suggestion
        • Language Uptake – Programming – On Learning to Listen
        • Mouth –> Ear –> Mind –> Heart System
        • Social Grammar
      • Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy
      • Malignant Narcissism
      • Narcissistic Scripting
      • Normative Remirroring
      • Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation
    • FTAC – “From The Awesome Conversation”
    • God Mob
    • Intellectual Battlespace
    • Islamic Small Wars
    • New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left
    • Political Spychology
    • Shimmer
  • Library
    • About Language
    • Russian Section
  • Comments and Contact

BackChannels

~ Conflict, Culture, Language, Psychology

BackChannels

Tag Archives: Africa

Nigeria: A Letter Offering Correction to The New York Times Regarding Dionne Searcey’s ‘Nigerian Herders Face Threat From Farmers Competing for Land’, September 22, 2018

01 Monday Oct 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Africa, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, International Development, Islamic Small Wars, Nigeria, Politics

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Africa, conflict coverage, ethnic cleansing, ethnic conflict, Fulani, Fulani Land Pirates, Middle Belt, Muslim v Christian, Nigeria, religious warfare

The article features a Gombe State case study that romanticizes the Fulani at peace within their own ethnic and religious community.  My question for you: why not take Taraba, Benue, or even Plateau State in the north central region of Nigeria or the more than 16 states that have experienced horrific violence and see the story through the eyes of the bereaved and dispossessed?

Gombe State, Nigeria-ed

Screen capture of the outline of Gombe State, Nigeria, October 1, 2018.

BackChannels’ editor has been responding to a contact in Nigeria with interest in what this blog has referred to as the “Fulani Land Pirates” — and this has been the year for watching “activity” (brigandage or warfare or both) that has amounted to the ethnic cleansing of Christian villages from the land with either apparent or somewhat implied complicity on the government’s part.

Last month, The New York Times (TYNT) published an overview of the Fulani drifting — in part a response to desertification — and the related conflict, but the journalist chose to paint a romantic view of the Fulani who have indeed lived with the bravado, color, and community known to nomadic herdsmen.  On behalf of Nigeria’s isolated or remote Christian community, the contact took exception to that depiction.

The edited letter was submitted to TNYT last week (October 24), but having not appeared, BackChannels offered to publish it.


Editor,

I am writing to express my disappointment with “Nigerian Herders Face Threat From Farmers Competing for Land” (September 22, 2018) by Dionne Searcey.

I don’t believe there has been a deliberate attempt to mislead the general public and do injustice to the thousands of people that have been raped, hacked or killed by assaults associated with herdsman, but the numbers in the article have merely hinted at the scale of the violence.  Many attacks have involved marauding “troops” with numbers above one-hundred, and as a consequence today there are thousands of people living in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in states like Benue, Taraba and Plateau.

Herder umbrella groups like Miyetti Allah that have issued threat of violence and followed through with hundreds of people killed were not mentioned in the article.

Moreover, the failure of security under the present government to arrest these killers was also not mentioned.

Portraying the southern part of Nigeria as a Christian majority viewing herders as beheaders, rapists, or Boko Haram may suggest bias in support of the herders. The truth is the southern portion of Nigeria has accommodated all despite differences in culture and religion.

In fact, most herders have lived peacefully with their hosts until turning without warning to run the same off the land.

In the past few years, the continuous influx of herders into Nigeria coupled with ethnic and religious issues and a complete absence of the rule of law have set loose countless raiders against Christian farmers.

Southern Nigeria has been organized into three large geopolitical zones comprised of 17 states, most of which have suffered murders, kidnappings, destroyed property, and the loss of farmland. At times, related arson has been dramatically political.  The burning of a farm owned by Chief Olu Falaye on 21 January 2018 and the burning of former naval chief Afolayan’s 90 hectares of productive land – oranges, cassava, and palm – deliberately beg the public’s conscience and patience in relation to the desire for earnest state defense.

I also disagree with the article’s position that the President has not done much for Fulani herdsmen.

President Buhari has represented Fulni  interests more than those of any other group. In October 13, 2010 he led a protest to the Oyo state government complaining about the treatment of Fulani herders despite that he was acting on a wrong heading.  He also has tried to grab land to give to the Fulani herders but has been impeded only by constitutional arrangements in which lands are not vested with the Federal government but with state governments.

The article features a Gombe state case study that romanticizes the Fulani at peace within its own ethnic and religious community.  My question for you: why not take Taraba, Benue or even Plateau State in the north central region of Nigeria or the more than 16 states that have experienced horrific violence and see the story through the eyes of the bereaved and dispossessed?

Why whitewash this conflict that at the hands of Kalashnikov-armed Fulani herdsman has seen numerous Christian villages burned and ethnically cleansed in the manner of medieval rape and rapine?

One may concede that cattle rustling is a major problem that affects herders, and that rustlers – as bandits often do – cut across ethnic boundaries (as widely reported in Zamfara State where the majority are Hausa-Fulani Muslims), and the police should up their game on bringing to justice those criminals.

For peace for the near future of Nigeria, ranching would be the best solution to pursue through legal political processes.  The frontier for nomadic herding without boundaries may need to be closed.


Plateua State, Nigeria-ed

Screen capture, Plateau State, Nigeria, October 1, 2018.


Related Online

Odunsi, Wale. “Buhari blows hot over renewed Plateau killings.” Daily Post, October 1, 2018.

–33–

Zoom Zoom Zuma! Hail the Presence of Another African “Aristocommicrat”

09 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by commart in Africa, China, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, South Africa, Zimbabwe

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Africa, African socialism, Jacob Zuma, kleptocats, kleptocracy, kleptocrats, Mugabe, nationalization, redistribution, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zuma

Zuma is an economic leftist, who has described himself as a socialist.[32] He has received support from trade unions and from the South African Communist Party as well as the Women’s League and the Youth League of the ANC.[32] According to The Guardian and The New York Times, Zuma supports redistribution of wealth and has allied himself with socialists and communists that seek to redistribute wealth.[32][33] However, The Guardian (UK) has also reported that Zuma has tried “to reassure foreign investors their interests will be protected.”

Jacob Zuma – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – as viewed 12/9/2013.

&

It is a nation racked by poverty, where 13 million people survive on less than £1 a day, and two million have no access to a toilet.

Yet as his people struggle in squalor, South African president Jacob Zuma has sparked outrage by spending £17.5 million to upgrade his rural family home.

Lavish works – which include the construction of 31 new houses, an underground bunker accessed by lifts and a helipad – will cost almost as much as the £19 million British taxpayers send to South Africa in annual aid.

UK gives £19million aid to South Africa – its president spends £17.5million on his palace | Mail Online – 11/24/2012

&

When Jacob Zuma was facing corruption charges while still deputy president of the country, he scaled the length and breadth of the country to tell all and sundry that he wanted his day in court. The implication, was that he was a victim of a political conspiracy. When his bluff was called, and moves were made to satisfy his urge to grace the country’s courts with his morally upright presence, he did everything in the book to ensure that he didn’t appear in court. It was at that time that we first heard of the existence of the so-called spy tapes which would prove that the corruption case against him was politically motivated and manipulated.

After some nifty footwork by his legal team, the National Prosecuting Authority dropped the charges against Zuma. The public was assured that excerpts from these supposed spy tapes were then in the possession of the NPA. This cleared the path for Zuma to sing his way to the office of the president without having to answer to the charges of corruption. Now, Zuma is not only fighting attempts to have the tapes released to the DA, he is now on record as having said that he has never listened to the tapes, and therefore was not aware what the tapes contained. Fell me down with a feather already! If Zuma, the supposed victim of a political conspiracy who used these tapes as his weapon against the NPA, has not heard the contents of the tapes on what basis did he engage his lawyers to work on the so-called excerpts from the tapes?

A new trademark for the rainbow nation – hypocrisy | eNCA – 9/11/2013.

______

As regards criticism, much less examination by an independent court, our beloved and charming malignant narcissists enjoy (by dealing it unto themselves) a free pass.

They will do the investigations, the scrutinizing, the nitpicking, the moralizing, and the talking — oh my, how Qaddafi use to talk — but grant them immunity.

Or else!

* * *

These former communist cum autocratic aristocrats — coin: aristocommicrats — flow down from the big mamma of sweet talking while thieving states: Mother Russia in her Soviet phase: to work goes the worker; to the gulag the dissenting intelligentsia; and to the palatial dacha on the Black Sea go the ruling party elite . . . not unlike China’s elites, come to think of it, purchasing mansions in Melbourne.  On that:

A new global breed of private investors has emerged as competitors to institutional investors for prime real estate priced at US$500 million and above.

The trend is being felt in Australia, where ultra-high net worth individuals (defined as those with a personal wealth of over $30 million) or family groups are successfully outbidding institutional investors for property.

Property provides rich pickings for Asia’s elite | Business Spectator – 12/4/2013.

* * *

A cousin of Robert Mugabe accumulated assets worth an estimated 180 million ($360 million), according to a divorce case in Zimbabwe that has thrown a spotlight on the vast wealth acquired by the regime’s inner circle.

Details of Phillip Chiyangwa’s assets were placed before the Harare high court by his wife, Elizabeth, who is seeking 85 per cent of her husband’s assets and maintenance of 53,000 a month for 10 years.

‘God’s Gift’ on the block in divorce – World – NZ Herald News – 12/6/2013.

Mugabe’s regime has been systematically nationalizing enterprises and redistributing them to his supporters. The more nationalization and redistribution Mugabe’s regime does, the more Zimbabwe’s economy disintegrates.

Blog: Mugabe Regime Demands More Socialism – 9/10/2011.

______

Ah, family!

May we imagine that Jacob Zuma is today no Nelson Mandela?

“They Only Care About Power, Not People”

All of this became painfully obvious in August last year when militarized police forces violently cracked down on a wildcat miners’ strike in the platinum town of Marikana. In the ensuing bloodbath, the most serious bout of state violence since the Sharpville massacre of 1960 and the end of apartheid in 1994, 34 workers were killed after being peppered with machine gun fire at close range. Needless to say, the Marikana massacre brought back painful memories of police brutality under white minoritarian rule. This time, however, the policemen and politicians responsible for the massacre were mostly black and represented the same party that had once led the struggle against racial oppression: the ruling ANC of President Jacob Zuma and the iconic freedom fighter Nelson Mandela. The Marikana massacre was the most powerful expression yet that little had changed below the surface. The violence of the state simply reasserted itself anew under the ANC.

Jacob Zuma | Notes toward an International Libertarian Eco-Socialism – 12/8/2013.

* * *

South Africa’s press have defied warnings from the country’s president and printed pictures of his lavish home revamped with some $18 million of taxpayers money.

The media had been warned not to use the images of Jacob Zuma’s private rural home — complete with swimming pool, helipad and even a soccer field — claiming it would contravene the country’s security laws, South African press reported.

South Africa press defies warnings: Shows photos of President Jacob Zuma’s $18M mansion – NY Daily News – 11/24/2013.

Anyone want to see the house?

This might work: https://www.google.com/search?q=Jacob+Zuma’s+mansion&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS523US523&espv=210&es_sm=122&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=x-WlUqvLJIS7kQeLk4DQBg&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1600&bih=1084

# # #

  • Compassion
  • Empathy
  • Justice
  • Humility
  • Inclusion
  • Integrity
____________

Caution: The possession of anti-Semitic / anti-Zionist thought may be the measure of the owner's own enslavement to criminal and medieval absolute power.
___________

Diane Weber Bederman Recommends BackChannels on Facebook!

"If you want to read great ideas and great prose, check out this FB page: BackChannels. James S. Oppenheim is a brilliant writer Get a glass of wine or a cup of coffee, sit down and enjoy."

Recent Posts

  • Detecting Post-Soviet Russia’s Black Narrative of Revenge for ’89 and ’91
  • A Note on Marching Forward Into the Past
  • Malignant Narcissistic Process Distilled
  • A Few Keys Related to ‘East-West Rivalry’
  • Russia Full Tonto Kleptocracy, Mafia, and Terrorist State
  • FTAC: Russia’s One Big Step Backward-Why Ukraine Must Prevail to the Four Compass Points of Its Pre-Crimean Annexation

Categories

  • 21st Century Feudal
  • 21st Century Modern
  • A Little Wisdom
  • Also in Media
  • American Domestic Affairs
  • Anti-Semitism
  • Asides
  • BCND – BackChannels News Day
  • Books
  • Conflict – Culture – Language – Psychology
  • COVID-19
  • Epistemology
  • Events and Other PSA's
  • Extreme Brown vs Red-Green
  • Fast News Share
  • foreign aid
  • Free Speech
  • FTAC
  • FTAC – From The Awesome Conversation
  • International Development
  • Islamic Small Wars
    • Gaza Suzerain
  • Journal
    • Library
  • Journalism
  • Links
  • Notes On Reading BackChannels
  • Philology
  • Philosophy
  • Poetry
  • Political Psychology
  • Political Spychology
  • Politics
  • Psychology
    • Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy
  • Qualities of Living (QOL)
  • Referral
  • Regions
    • Africa
      • Central African Republic
      • Guinea
      • Kenya
      • Libya
      • Mali
      • Morocco
      • Nigeria
      • South Africa
      • Sudan
      • Tunisia
      • Zimbabwe
    • Asia
      • Afghanistan
      • Burma
      • China
      • India
      • Myanmar
      • North Korea
      • Pakistan
      • Turkey
    • Caribbean Basin
      • Cuba
    • Central America
      • El Salvador
      • Guatemala
      • Honduras
      • Mexico
    • Eastern Europe
    • Eurasia
      • Armenia
      • Azerbaijan
      • Russia
      • Ukrain
      • Ukraine
    • Europe
      • France
      • Germany
      • Hungary
      • Poland
    • Great Britain and United Kingdom
    • Iberian Peninsula
    • Middle East
      • Egypt
      • Gaza
      • Iran
      • Iraq
      • Israel
        • Palestinia
      • Jordan
      • Kurdistan
      • Lebanon
      • Palestinian Territories
      • Qatar
      • Saudi Arabia
      • Syria
      • United Arab Emirates
      • Yemen
    • North America
      • Canada
      • United States of America
    • Norther Europe
    • Northern Europe
      • Sweden
    • South America
      • Argentina
      • Brazil
      • Columbia
      • Ecuador
      • Venezuela
    • South Pacific
      • Australia
      • New Zealand
      • Papua New Guinea
      • West Papua
  • Religion
  • Spain
  • Syndicate Red Brown Green
  • transnational crime
  • Uncategorized
  • Visual Data

Europe

  • Defending History
  • Hungarian Spectrum
  • Yanukovych Leaks

Great Britain

  • Stand for Peace

Israeli and Jewish Affairs

  • Chloe Simone Valdary

Journals

  • Amil Imani
  • New Age Islam

Middle East

  • Human Rights & Democracy for Iran
  • Middle East Research and Information Project

Organizations

  • Anti-Slavery
  • Atlantic Council
  • Fight Hatred
  • Human Rights First Society
  • International Network Against Cyberhate
  • The Center for Victims of Torture

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

Archives

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • BackChannels
    • Join 770 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • BackChannels
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar