ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Opinion category.

September 11, 2001 – a poem

Raining debris of a thousand dreams over Manhattan

And tears of pain, a gaping hole in the eye of summer.

The world morphed suddenly into dust and heat

and a flag-draped beginning of a new, frigtening day.

There we were, going our separate ways, waking.

Working, living, arguing – a usual rite of passage,

And there they were,  willing acolytes of a sad resolve,

boarding jetliners with armoury of a cultivated god.

 

Here we are, a decade away, still a bewildered folk.

Just a little step from the true vanity of all our pain.

So we hope, and dream, and watch, accordingly,

and live with the same wondering resolve: any lessons?

The world remains what it is – a weird blubbering ball

hanging in the daunting mystery of its core, warts and all.

 

Dedicated to the memory of victims, first responders, firemen and all other casualties of the 9/11 attacks and the war therefrom.

September 11, 2001 – a poem was published on September 11th, 2011, with the tags , , , under the Opinion, Soliloquy category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.

America’s Language War

These are interesting times in this country. I have been watching a lot of television lately (something I haven’t done in a while), usually the frontline of the many ideas competing to take hold in the national mind. Today’s issue is about language use, and rhetoric, in politics. Fox News had just juxtaposed the video of President Obama talking in February about civility in political discourse with the video of Labour Leader Jimmy Hoffa calling the Tea Party activists “sons of bitches” though not directly.

President Obama had made the remark at the memorial for the dead at Tuscon, Arizona, calling for people to tone down the heat in their talk and bring civility back to public discourse. However, now after such a pummeling by an unrelenting army of conservative activists in his own political career, he seems to have now been tacitly endorsing a retaliatory verbal retort by his own army of union workers. Sean Hannity, on his All-American show this evening, stacked  the set with a group of people who believed that the president needs to step up and censure his own people. What is not being verbalized is that if that is not done, the Conservative right will return to do the same and won’t listen to any entreaties.

What I find mostly interesting about it all is the spin that confronts the viewer depending on which television station they watch. I had been watching Fox News, the mouthpiece of the conservative movement (as contrasted – by their own words – to the mainstream media*). When I am watching MSNBC, I get a different perspective. I grew up in Nigeria watching CNN so I had a pretty “mainstream” access to the American news world. There was Larry King, Wolf Blitzer and a host of others. Watching Fox News today is like watching a different country. It finally dawned on me that there are many Americas, and each of them has a different window on the world which they often defend to the exclusion of others.

In his exclusive interview with Vice President Cheney yesterday where he did all he could – sometimes superfluously –  to make the former Bush Administration powerful man discredit the current administration, Sean Hannity played a clip of former Secretary of State Colin Powell and then asks the Vice President whether he was offended by Colin Powell referring to him as Mr. Cheney rather than Vice President Cheney. When the latter said “no”, Sean Hannity seemed surprised. The irony of the situation, of course, was that for many more times than the former Vice President in the same interview, Sean Hannity referred to the current president as “Barack Obama” or “Obama” and the current Vice President as “Joe Biden”, but the ex-President as President Bush without a hint of self-awareness.

So here is what I see: that the ideological underlining of these media enterprises makes it hard for them (and thus their viewers) to admit a simple universal truth whenever it favours an opposing ideology. Ed Schultz of MSNBC needlessly puts a racial slant on Rick Perry’s “black cloud of debt” speech while Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh – no matter how much it comes out of the mouth of even their own favourite interview subjects – would never agree that the current administration ever did anything right. It’s strange that each of them believes that their viewpoint represents what America really is. On the one hand, some viewers are able to see this spin. On the other hand, there are many more who views the world and the country only through these narrow media viewpoints.

On the bright side, it will always give people like Jon Stewart something to amuse us about, and people like me something to write about on an idle evening.

*PS: By what standard exactly is Fox News not part of the mainstream media, with their record of consistent high ratings for many years. I never quite understood that part of their usual talking points.

America’s Language War was published on September 6th, 2011, with the tags , , , under the Observations, Opinion category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

A World Without Borders

Well, for a start, let us all agree that this fabled world doesn’t exist anywhere except perhaps on the internet. A Nigerian on a three-hour stopover at Heathrow will not be allowed into London for fear, perhaps, that he will suddenly ditch his American visa and decide to live in the fruitful fields of England forever, eating clover, beans and mangel-wurzels. A Turkish citizen hoping to visit any European capital will usually need a shengen visa or should just not make an effort. It all makes sense, doesn’t it? A few years ago, all anyone needed to visit Kenya from any part of Africa was a passport. Then after 1998 embassy bombings by a few radical thugs, everyone needed a visa, including neighbouring Ugandans.

The concept of national borders is fascinating, and mostly annoying. Take for example the problem of driving from Lagos to Dakar, a stretch that will be similar to one from Minneapolis to St. Louis just as soon as we can ignore the useless police checkpoints along the borders of the “countries” along the way. Once upon a time, West Africa was just west Africa, with contiguous autonomous kingdoms and no fake borders manned by corrupt men in khaki uniforms. Now, the Yorubas are not just Yorubas. They are Nigerians, Beninoise and Togolese, and this doesn’t prevent them from the harassment of faux obstacles placed on a road leading from one part of the continent to the other.

The last time we had the Ambassador of Kenya to the United States on campus, I asked him why it is taking African politicians so long to realize that artificial obstacles at national borders created more problem than it solved, he gave a platitude. And then I switched on the news and heard that even the United States is now considering building a wall – yes you heard right – a wall between itself and Mexico, this time to prevent the problem of illegal migration. Yet, all migrations are legal, as we all know, as the basis of human civilization, and change. Is there a point to my rant on this post? I doubt it, but I’ve spent some time pondering the idea of human migration for a while now. I think my most recent motivation is the discovery of an interesting fact that humans – no matter where they find themselves – would always prefer migration at some point in their life, than staying in the same spot. Yes, that applies to Americans too.

A World Without Borders was published on September 2nd, 2011, with the tags , , , , under the Observations, Opinion category. There are currently 2 comments on this article so far.

On Dangerous Revolutionaries

There is a curious pattern of dangerous behaviour  now coming out of the Libyan revolt against the government of Moamar Gaddafi. In this frightening CNN report, rebel soldiers looking to exact revenge on the dying regime have found a perfect victim demographic: black sub-saharan African (in this case Nigerians) who are in the country en route to Spain or Italy for a better life.

There is enough to debate about the presence of Nigerian citizens residing legally or illegally in a war-torn country (and the Nigerian government has a duty to protect them as well, to the best of its ability), but a so-called revolution aimed at liberating a country from tyranny should not turn itself into one – at least not so soon – at the expense of foreigners. The fact that they are targeted for their skin colours – as the report states – makes it even more alarming, and worrisome.

In post-Apatheid South Africa a few years ago, a similar thing happened where foreigners (also mostly Nigerians) became a target of xenophobic behaviour by citizens looking for scapegoats in a poor economy. It didn’t matter that just years before then, most of those other African countries had provided asylum for the freedom fighters running away from the oppressive Apatheid government. A similarly disgusting thing happened right after the Egyptian revolution succeeded, when Gael Ghonim – the acclaimed IT mastermind of the whole movement tweeted this. (At least he didn’t have a gun to someone’s head.)

A pattern has emerged here that should be roundly condemned.

On Dangerous Revolutionaries was published on September 1st, 2011, with the tags , , , , , , under the News, Observations, Opinion, Soliloquy category. There are currently 2 comments on this article so far.

Bombing UN HQs

You know you are a despicable scum when the target of your assault is a building filled with innocent humanitarian workers of an organization known for the pursuit of peace and global justice.

That said, maybe it will be time to ask for more CCTV units in Nigeria’s big cities, especially now in the North where the new extremists – like little children seeing a toy for the first time – are playing checkers with car bombs and innocent lives. At times like this, one wonders what other solution can be prescribed without losing one more civil liberty just like the sadists hope.

Hearts go out to the victims.

Bombing UN HQs was published on August 26th, 2011, with the tags , , , , under the Opinion, Soliloquy category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.