You hate me and my Kookoase people to the core, you hate democracy, you hate Busia for no reason, you hate the West, particularly the US, where the best of the best resides. You even expressed your dislike for God in one of y ... read full comment
You hate me and my Kookoase people to the core, you hate democracy, you hate Busia for no reason, you hate the West, particularly the US, where the best of the best resides. You even expressed your dislike for God in one of your essays when you labeled God as unjust and undemocratic for throwing Lucifer out of heaven. In defense of Satan? To Love Trokosis and hate God is an unpardonable transgression.this is hypothetic to me since possible to love God and love Satan. Are you not the real "Kwaku Bonsam", the metaphorical characterization in some of your essays?
Mr. Figure-Out 9 years ago
I mean " it is not possible to love God and love Satan"
I mean " it is not possible to love God and love Satan"
francis kwarteng 9 years ago
Mr. Figure-Out,
You do not have to read all of Part 1. I have extracted the portion I want you to read. Here it is:
.....................................
We all know about Mr. Obama’s illicit spying on Americans an ... read full comment
Mr. Figure-Out,
You do not have to read all of Part 1. I have extracted the portion I want you to read. Here it is:
.....................................
We all know about Mr. Obama’s illicit spying on Americans and foreign governments as revealed to the world by Edward Snowden (a former National Security Agency’s contractor). How does Mr. Obama explain the hypocritical disconnect between “Africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong institutions” and Snowden’s shocking revelations? We all know about Mr. Obama’s administration’s support for dictators (See “U.S.–Africa Summit: Activists Remind President Obama ‘Africa Doesn’t Need Strongmen; It Needs Strong Institutions”). We all know about Mr. Obama’s endorsement of and clandestine, sometimes even overt, collaboration with brutal theocracies like Saudi Arabia and Qatar in the service of America’s hegemonic interests. The question is: Who is behind the rise of ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), Wahhabism, and Islamic fundamentalism?
Many have pointed to Saudi Arabia, one of America’s staunchest client states, as the chief culprit! In an interview with Charlie Rose, the host of PBS’s “Charlie Rose” and co-anchor on CBS’s “This Morning,” Bill Maher had the following to say about the subtle union between ISIS and Saudi Arabia: “’The New York Times’ pointed out in an op-ed a couple of weeks ago in Saudi Arabia just since August 4th, they think it was, they have beheaded 19 people. Most for non-violent crimes…”
Maher adds: “Right, okay, so we’re upset that ISIS is beheading people which we should be upset about but Saudi Arabia does it and they’re our good friends because they have oil. Okay. But they do it too…”
Charlie Rose then asked Maher another pointed question: “But they [Saudis] are now fighting against ISIS too. They’re joining us in the fight. As is the Emirates. As is Jordan. They are all Muslim countries.”
Bill Maher: “Well, they [Saudis] are both fighting ISIS and they are for ISIS.”
Charlie Rose: “Well, it’s not the government. I mean, some of them…”
Bill Maher: “Certainly the governments.”
Charlie Rose: “It’s a bit like today about Qatar. The big story in ‘The New York Times’ about Qatar…”
Bill Maher: “But I mean in Mecca where infidels, non-Muslims, are not even allowed in the holy parts of the city…They [Saudis] do behead people. Now if they were beheading people in Vatican City, which is the equivalent of Mecca, don’t you think there would be a bigger outcry about it?”
In effect American (and Western) politics is a sheer display of double standards (For interview transcript, see “Maher vs. Charlie Rose: To Claim Islam is Like Other Religions is Naïve and Plain Wrong,” Real Clear Politics (website), Sept 10, 2014). Further, Saudi Arabia, a brutal theocratic regime, is a polity Mr. Obama and his predecessors have always supported. However, there are also others who have cited the sheer number of Saudi citizens among the executors of September 11, 2001, the terrorist bombing of New York’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon, America, to underscore Saudi’s general culpability in the act. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) counts among America’s important sprinkling of client states in the so-called Middle East. “In recent weeks, the UAE has made headlines for its crackdown on Emiratis advocating for expanded civil liberties and political freedoms,” writes Bret Nelson. “The UAE recently put over 90 real or suspected Islah activists on trial for allegedly planning a coup. However, there is no evidence that Al-Islah is anything other than a civil society group calling for adherence to Islamic precepts in everyday life. Despite the breakneck pace of its modernization and economic development, the UAE remains one of the more repressive countries in a highly repressive region.”
That is not the entire story. “It is also important to note that all of the Gulf countries are key allies of the United States. The Sunni minority regime in Bahrain, which hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, has been able to violently suppress dissent without strong objections from Washington,” continues Nelson, adding: “But when U.S. envoys ignore human rights abuses in these countries, or worse yet, explain them away, as Ambassador to the UAE Michael Corbin recently did in an interview with the ‘Khaleej Times,’ the United States makes itself complicit in the repression (See Bret Nelson’s “Emirates Crush Dissent at Home, Tarnishing Image Abroad”). Moreover, both the US and the UK have sold weapons running into tens of billions of dollars to Qatar (See Avaneesh Pandey’s “Biggest Arms Sale of 2014 Signed, US TO Sell Arms Worth $11B to Qatar”; see also Simon Rogers’ “UK Arms Sales to the Middle East and North Africa: Who We Sell to, How Much is Military and How Much Just ‘Controlled’”). Most of these troubling arms deals have occurred under the oversight of Mr. Obama’s administration.
Why should a “democratic” state like America (and the UK) sell arms to repressive and autocratic regimes? The reasons always given point to protection of America’s strategic interests! Yet American (and Western) exceptionalism gives it the exclusive right to defend itself and to protect its strategic interests, however it deems fit and convenient, but not so with South America, Asia, and Africa, particularly in the case of Kwame Nkrumah who came under sustained terrorism and sabotage designed to kill him and his legion of supporters, subversive acts perpetrated by foreign sponsors through their local agents. It should be made clear that Bill Maher, Whoopi Goldberg, and Dan Rather all lost their jobs merely for exercising their rights, namely, criticizing President George W. Bush in the wake of Sept. 11. What happened to their First Amendment rights? Therefore, it is ironically sad and unfortunate to read, to hear, to see Franklin Cudjoe, Founding President and CEO of the IMANI Center for Policy and Education, make unfounded, unscientific commentaries on democracy, politics, history, and questions of liberty as though he lives on a different planet, as though he is detached from the actualities of history, sociology, and politics.
Often IMANI is not morally, intellectually, and scientifically forthcoming with many of their public pronouncements and research publications. Partisan political emotionalism seems to direct its public rhetoric. Of course every issue is political and IMANI cannot pretend its research findings are apolitical given its overt policy tendencies toward the NPP. Yet it has consistently abjured demands from some quarters to provide a disclaimer or proviso arresting public suspicions about its possible identification with the NPP. This is however to be expected from a lookalike think tank funded through external conduits with strategic interests in Ghana’s and Africa’s vast wealth, a pseudo-research outfit that sees nothing wrong with the moral shortcomings of democratic capitalism and with the humiliating biases of Western democracy. There is therefore an imperative need for individuals or institutions in Ghana (or Africa) to create alternative think tanks with the sole aim of conducting rigorous scientific research to correct the political biases of IMANI’s research activities.
Now back to Mr. Obama, American exceptionalism, democracy, human rights, and defense of a state’s strategic national interests. We all know about Mr. Obama’s drone assassinations of suspected terrorists without due process. We all know renditions still transpire under Mr. Obama’s watch (See Craig Whitlock’s “Renditions Continue Under Obama, Despite Due Process Concerns”). We all know about Mr. Obama’s moral resistance to public appeals to grant Marcus Garvey a posthumous pardon in light of mounting evidence establishing the FBI as the mastermind of Garvey’s frame-up and his subsequent deportation. We all know about the enormous pressure Mr. Obama is putting on the Cuban government to extradite Assata Shakur, an African-American civil rights activist, to face trial in the US, when many well-placed American citizens and foreign personalities point to her being framed up by the FBI, the New Jersey State police, and the CIA, a fact substantiated more or less by her previous sham trials and subsequent acquittals.
Moreover, there are many well-informed researchers, political pundits, human rights activists, scholars, historians, and political scientists who suspect Mr. Obama of employing that pretext, the extradition request, to appease his conservative White critics. Finally, Prof. Cornel West and radio/television personality Tavis Smiley have written about some of the abject failures of Mr. Obama’s presidency (See their book “The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto”). Other American public intellectuals have also written about the failures of Mr. Obama’s presidency (See Chris Hedges’ essay “The Obama Presidency: Why Cornel West Went Ballistic”; see also Aaron Blake’s “A Majority of Americans Say Obama’s Presidency is a ‘Failure’”). Mr. Obama’s foreign policy decisions and internal politics exonerate Kwame Nkrumah. How? We strongly believe Mr. Obama has finally come to realize it is always easy and cheap to pontificate from the outside, but crucial challenges posed by the internal and external dynamics of politics sporadically require draconian proaction, sometimes exertion of military might and operational suspension of legal instruments in the interest of national security prioritization and of preserving human lives. Of course wisdom, intelligence, prescience, experience, and reliability of practical solutions are born of individuals’ tactical and strategic approaches to challenges.
Nkrumah probably understood these security matters better than Mr. Obama and as a result Nkrumah’s government worked hard to make sure appropriate laws were put in place to protect the new nation from disintegrating, to facilitate developmental projects around the country, and to safeguard the well-being of private citizens as well as public officials against the subversive tendencies and terroristic acts of internal and external enemies. Mr. Obama has read Nkrumah, Mandela, Garvey, Malcolm X, etc., and been greatly influenced by them, for he knows the mounting national security challenges Nkrumah faced which are somewhat similar to his. It is all too common to see African-American activist-scholars and politicians change or tone down their rhetoric to court the franchise of America’s majority, White Americans, and to make them feel at home in his liberal corner.
Thus, Mr. Obama’s reproach of Nkrumah and other African “strongmen” may have resulted from a desire to massage the West’s historical conscience on the subjects of slavery and neocolonialism and from a genuine desire to see the fruits of democratization replace the spectral descendants of colonial autocracy. Nkrumah did not introduce one-party democracy into Ghana; colonial one-party autocracy preceded him. Colonial legacy, Western material greed, terrorism, attempts on his life, constitutional guarantees, and blatant refusal of the opposition to work with him and his government produced the so-called one-party democracy. Moreover, the survival instinct is not something one puts out so easily since it operates under the spell of biology or nature. Hopefully Mr. Obama understands this too. What is more, Mr. Obama’s failures are not uniquely and distantly different from Nkrumah’s from our point of view. Nkrumah always worked within the confines of the law, not always so with Mr. Obama or his immediate predecessor.
These assessments do not detract from the abuses to which the Preventive Detection Act (PDA) was subjected. Interesting is the fact that the National Liberation Council (NLC) substituted the PDA for another, the Protective Custody Decree (PCD), then under it imprisoned 1850 as opposed to 1377 under the PDA. Yet the NLC ruled Ghana for three years. Or less. This constitutes a major sentimental irony of Ghana’s political history. This part of Ghana’s political history is customarily bowdlerized from official narratives especially so by Nkrumah’s ideological enemies and their descendants. Is Mr. Obama cognizant of this useful piece of Ghana’s political history? Probably not. Our close reading of Mr. Obama’s corpus of literary works and his historic speech in Ghana do affirm our position. Why is Nkrumah made a criminal, the National Liberation Council (NLC) saint? Where is the political hagiography of the NLC coming from? Yet Nkrumah did exactly what Mr. Obama is doing now on behalf of America and the West! Why is Nkrumah retrospectively wrong, Mr. Obama right?
Circumspection is the way forward for those who have decided to make careers out of intellectualism. Nkrumah should not be faulted for taking to a law of the land, the PDA, to redress national security problems, among which terrorism, targeted assassinations of political opponents (CPP), and national disintegration, represented the salient variables. There are obvious differences between Mr. Obama’s and Nkrumah’s personalities and backgrounds. First, Mr. Obama is a lawyer and a professor of law, Nkrumah was not. Second, the times and circumstances are different. Third, Mr. Obama is lucky to have had the rich experiences (and the West) of an elderly nation behind his proactive decisions, unlike Nkrumah. Lastly, Mr. Obama has not also faced the kind of direct threats to his person as consistently as confronted Nkrumah, his family, and persons close to him.
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ADJOA WANGARA 9 years ago
You see every right thinkinh person will side with me that this kwarteng is carrying a head filled with only water on his neck. He will copy any nonsense from any corner paste it on this platform for well thinking people to r ... read full comment
You see every right thinkinh person will side with me that this kwarteng is carrying a head filled with only water on his neck. He will copy any nonsense from any corner paste it on this platform for well thinking people to read. Kwarteng, bow your water head in sand.
francis kwarteng 9 years ago
Mr. Figure-Out,
Please go back and read Part 1 of this two-part series if you have not done so already.
You can then begin to deal with particularities rather than with faint convenient generalities.
Mind you, Mr. ... read full comment
Mr. Figure-Out,
Please go back and read Part 1 of this two-part series if you have not done so already.
You can then begin to deal with particularities rather than with faint convenient generalities.
Mind you, Mr. Figure-Out, I do not hate KA Busia or JB Danquah. History does. Interrogating that history will surely help!
Please go back and read Part 1.
Thanks.
Mahmoud 9 years ago
How can any reasonable human being in his right mind justify communist dictatorship and tyranny? Nkrumah did not have any excuse for doing what he did except that he was preparing the ground with series of unprovoked actions ... read full comment
How can any reasonable human being in his right mind justify communist dictatorship and tyranny? Nkrumah did not have any excuse for doing what he did except that he was preparing the ground with series of unprovoked actions to create a one party state, and declare himself president for life
Communist ideology doesn't have a place for opposition in the system. Have you ever heard of a communist democratic country in the world, with an opposition to check the government? Nkrumah chose communism as a means of keeping himself in power forever. He therefore imposed the Detention without Trial Act only to gag everybody, create a communist dictatorship, eradicate the opposition and turn himself into a president for life. This is because communists don't share power.
Mahmoud 9 years ago
How can any reasonable human being in his right mind justify communist dictatorship and tyranny? Nkrumah did not have any excuse for doing what he did except that he was preparing the ground with series of unprovoked actions ... read full comment
How can any reasonable human being in his right mind justify communist dictatorship and tyranny? Nkrumah did not have any excuse for doing what he did except that he was preparing the ground with series of unprovoked actions to create a one party state, and declare himself president for life
Communist ideology doesn't have a place for opposition in the system. Have you ever heard of a communist democratic country in the world, with an opposition to check the government? Nkrumah chose communism as a means of keeping himself in power forever. He therefore imposed the Detention without Trial Act only to gag everybody, create a communist dictatorship, eradicate the opposition and turn himself into a president for life. This is because communists don't share power.
francis kwarteng 9 years ago
Mr. Figure-Out,
You have not convinced readers yet why the American critics of the Obama administration (those I specifically mention in Parts 1/2) and of American internal politics and foreign policy are not haters of "th ... read full comment
Mr. Figure-Out,
You have not convinced readers yet why the American critics of the Obama administration (those I specifically mention in Parts 1/2) and of American internal politics and foreign policy are not haters of "the best in the world"? Remember 99.9% of these critics are white!
You have also not told readers and I why I am not a hater of Ghana and Africa (when I criticize both)? You read my essays "What Sort of Democracy Is This, Ghana?" Do I hate Ghana?
We should avoid sentiments and learn to deal with facts. It is sometimes frustrating when some readers read a piece and begin to discuss it outside the piece's immediate context!
You have also not given readers evidence of my hatred for God! Cite just one sentence to back your claim. Don't make vague remarks and run away with it. That is not helpful! Give readers something substantial to evaluate your claims!
Let me know.
Mr. Figure-Out 9 years ago
Much as I don't mean to thwart your efforts to educate the general public and also your quest to find answers to your numerous predicaments I still maintain the contents of my comments. I could read you loud and clear and hav ... read full comment
Much as I don't mean to thwart your efforts to educate the general public and also your quest to find answers to your numerous predicaments I still maintain the contents of my comments. I could read you loud and clear and have nothing to prove to your avid readers since one does not need to be a rocket scientist in order to unravel the mischievous mendacity inherent in some of your misguided essays. Your evils series, " The Faith Of The Misguided Scholar" and " Stop Mourning The Ghost Of A Dead Empire ", though scholarly, speaks volumes, amply demonstrate and tell it all about the feelings you have for the " Great Porcupine Warriors" of Kookoase, inter alia. You have even denounce your Kookoase traditionality and now in bed with Togolese Trokosi encroachers. Anyways me think my views on you does not take your good works away from you. Keep it up.
FRANCIS KWARTENG 9 years ago
Mr. Figure-Out,
You have said nothing. What you say is hollow.
Does my essay "What Sort of Democracy Is This, Ghana?" sat I hate Ghana? What sort of reasoning is this?
You constructively criticize your society, int ... read full comment
Mr. Figure-Out,
You have said nothing. What you say is hollow.
Does my essay "What Sort of Democracy Is This, Ghana?" sat I hate Ghana? What sort of reasoning is this?
You constructively criticize your society, interrogate history, and try to point out everything that is going on and you are hater! This is part of the reasons some societies don't grow.
Obama has criticized America in nearly all of his books, does that make him a hater of America? Molefi Kete Asante, Cornel West, etc., have all critizized Africa and America one way or the other, does that make them haters of America and Africa?
Prod. Noam Chomsky, one of the world's greatest scholars, has wriiten over 100 (most of which examine and criticize American foreign policy from de-classified records), does that make him a hater of America? Prof. Chomsky is a White American.
The major problem our educational institutions have is the training we don't get in the area of cultural criqiue and cultural theory. You get to learn aspects of these concepts by the time you finish American high school. These concepts go with critical or analytical thinking, etc.
It is taught in some detail in American university. Thus, students become critical of the American society (though most Americans know less to nothing about the outside world beyond America).
I have so many well-known American websites where writers/scholars examine and interrogate American historical and contemporary realities all the time.
These writers/scholars do not hate America. They write to expose biases,racism, white supremacy, educational inequity, corporate irresponsibility, partisan political issues, gender inequality, etc. You do the same about Ghana and you are a hater. What sort of ignorance is that?
Writing and exposing injustices of the past played a role in bringing out a blackman to the White House. These critical aseessment of American society touched the white conscience to the extent where it believed American minorities should be treated fairly and given a chance in a racist society as America.
On the other hand, we don't study our won history, for, if we do, know one will go about making noise about the Asante Empire. There is so much about the Asante Empire most Ghanaians university graduates (majors in Ghana history) don't even know about.
Yet the records are all there. Manhyia has all the history. My essays on the Porcupine said practically nothing about the Asante Empire. There is enought historical record(I have most of the sources with me) to discredit the Asante Empire. There are many Ghanaian scholars who are aware of these records but it is unfortunate they are taught!
If you can cry over these little essay, what will you do when you are exposed to the facts? These facts are all over the place. I have about 30 of the best primary and secondary sources on the Asante Empire as we speak (I have them right before me).
We are not critical of our societies as the West sometimes is!
francis kwarteng 9 years ago
Dear Readers,
Please, those of you who did not see or read Part 1 of this two-part series can read this:
......................................
We all know about Mr. Obama’s illicit spying on Americans and foreign ... read full comment
Dear Readers,
Please, those of you who did not see or read Part 1 of this two-part series can read this:
......................................
We all know about Mr. Obama’s illicit spying on Americans and foreign governments as revealed to the world by Edward Snowden (a former National Security Agency’s contractor). How does Mr. Obama explain the hypocritical disconnect between “Africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong institutions” and Snowden’s shocking revelations? We all know about Mr. Obama’s administration’s support for dictators (See “U.S.–Africa Summit: Activists Remind President Obama ‘Africa Doesn’t Need Strongmen; It Needs Strong Institutions”). We all know about Mr. Obama’s endorsement of and clandestine, sometimes even overt, collaboration with brutal theocracies like Saudi Arabia and Qatar in the service of America’s hegemonic interests. The question is: Who is behind the rise of ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), Wahhabism, and Islamic fundamentalism?
Many have pointed to Saudi Arabia, one of America’s staunchest client states, as the chief culprit! In an interview with Charlie Rose, the host of PBS’s “Charlie Rose” and co-anchor on CBS’s “This Morning,” Bill Maher had the following to say about the subtle union between ISIS and Saudi Arabia: “’The New York Times’ pointed out in an op-ed a couple of weeks ago in Saudi Arabia just since August 4th, they think it was, they have beheaded 19 people. Most for non-violent crimes…”
Maher adds: “Right, okay, so we’re upset that ISIS is beheading people which we should be upset about but Saudi Arabia does it and they’re our good friends because they have oil. Okay. But they do it too…”
Charlie Rose then asked Maher another pointed question: “But they [Saudis] are now fighting against ISIS too. They’re joining us in the fight. As is the Emirates. As is Jordan. They are all Muslim countries.”
Bill Maher: “Well, they [Saudis] are both fighting ISIS and they are for ISIS.”
Charlie Rose: “Well, it’s not the government. I mean, some of them…”
Bill Maher: “Certainly the governments.”
Charlie Rose: “It’s a bit like today about Qatar. The big story in ‘The New York Times’ about Qatar…”
Bill Maher: “But I mean in Mecca where infidels, non-Muslims, are not even allowed in the holy parts of the city…They [Saudis] do behead people. Now if they were beheading people in Vatican City, which is the equivalent of Mecca, don’t you think there would be a bigger outcry about it?”
In effect American (and Western) politics is a sheer display of double standards (For interview transcript, see “Maher vs. Charlie Rose: To Claim Islam is Like Other Religions is Naïve and Plain Wrong,” Real Clear Politics (website), Sept 10, 2014). Further, Saudi Arabia, a brutal theocratic regime, is a polity Mr. Obama and his predecessors have always supported. However, there are also others who have cited the sheer number of Saudi citizens among the executors of September 11, 2001, the terrorist bombing of New York’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon, America, to underscore Saudi’s general culpability in the act. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) counts among America’s important sprinkling of client states in the so-called Middle East. “In recent weeks, the UAE has made headlines for its crackdown on Emiratis advocating for expanded civil liberties and political freedoms,” writes Bret Nelson. “The UAE recently put over 90 real or suspected Islah activists on trial for allegedly planning a coup. However, there is no evidence that Al-Islah is anything other than a civil society group calling for adherence to Islamic precepts in everyday life. Despite the breakneck pace of its modernization and economic development, the UAE remains one of the more repressive countries in a highly repressive region.”
That is not the entire story. “It is also important to note that all of the Gulf countries are key allies of the United States. The Sunni minority regime in Bahrain, which hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, has been able to violently suppress dissent without strong objections from Washington,” continues Nelson, adding: “But when U.S. envoys ignore human rights abuses in these countries, or worse yet, explain them away, as Ambassador to the UAE Michael Corbin recently did in an interview with the ‘Khaleej Times,’ the United States makes itself complicit in the repression (See Bret Nelson’s “Emirates Crush Dissent at Home, Tarnishing Image Abroad”). Moreover, both the US and the UK have sold weapons running into tens of billions of dollars to Qatar (See Avaneesh Pandey’s “Biggest Arms Sale of 2014 Signed, US TO Sell Arms Worth $11B to Qatar”; see also Simon Rogers’ “UK Arms Sales to the Middle East and North Africa: Who We Sell to, How Much is Military and How Much Just ‘Controlled’”). Most of these troubling arms deals have occurred under the oversight of Mr. Obama’s administration.
Why should a “democratic” state like America (and the UK) sell arms to repressive and autocratic regimes? The reasons always given point to protection of America’s strategic interests! Yet American (and Western) exceptionalism gives it the exclusive right to defend itself and to protect its strategic interests, however it deems fit and convenient, but not so with South America, Asia, and Africa, particularly in the case of Kwame Nkrumah who came under sustained terrorism and sabotage designed to kill him and his legion of supporters, subversive acts perpetrated by foreign sponsors through their local agents. It should be made clear that Bill Maher, Whoopi Goldberg, and Dan Rather all lost their jobs merely for exercising their rights, namely, criticizing President George W. Bush in the wake of Sept. 11. What happened to their First Amendment rights? Therefore, it is ironically sad and unfortunate to read, to hear, to see Franklin Cudjoe, Founding President and CEO of the IMANI Center for Policy and Education, make unfounded, unscientific commentaries on democracy, politics, history, and questions of liberty as though he lives on a different planet, as though he is detached from the actualities of history, sociology, and politics.
Often IMANI is not morally, intellectually, and scientifically forthcoming with many of their public pronouncements and research publications. Partisan political emotionalism seems to direct its public rhetoric. Of course every issue is political and IMANI cannot pretend its research findings are apolitical given its overt policy tendencies toward the NPP. Yet it has consistently abjured demands from some quarters to provide a disclaimer or proviso arresting public suspicions about its possible identification with the NPP. This is however to be expected from a lookalike think tank funded through external conduits with strategic interests in Ghana’s and Africa’s vast wealth, a pseudo-research outfit that sees nothing wrong with the moral shortcomings of democratic capitalism and with the humiliating biases of Western democracy. There is therefore an imperative need for individuals or institutions in Ghana (or Africa) to create alternative think tanks with the sole aim of conducting rigorous scientific research to correct the political biases of IMANI’s research activities.
Now back to Mr. Obama, American exceptionalism, democracy, human rights, and defense of a state’s strategic national interests. We all know about Mr. Obama’s drone assassinations of suspected terrorists without due process. We all know renditions still transpire under Mr. Obama’s watch (See Craig Whitlock’s “Renditions Continue Under Obama, Despite Due Process Concerns”). We all know about Mr. Obama’s moral resistance to public appeals to grant Marcus Garvey a posthumous pardon in light of mounting evidence establishing the FBI as the mastermind of Garvey’s frame-up and his subsequent deportation. We all know about the enormous pressure Mr. Obama is putting on the Cuban government to extradite Assata Shakur, an African-American civil rights activist, to face trial in the US, when many well-placed American citizens and foreign personalities point to her being framed up by the FBI, the New Jersey State police, and the CIA, a fact substantiated more or less by her previous sham trials and subsequent acquittals.
Moreover, there are many well-informed researchers, political pundits, human rights activists, scholars, historians, and political scientists who suspect Mr. Obama of employing that pretext, the extradition request, to appease his conservative White critics. Finally, Prof. Cornel West and radio/television personality Tavis Smiley have written about some of the abject failures of Mr. Obama’s presidency (See their book “The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto”). Other American public intellectuals have also written about the failures of Mr. Obama’s presidency (See Chris Hedges’ essay “The Obama Presidency: Why Cornel West Went Ballistic”; see also Aaron Blake’s “A Majority of Americans Say Obama’s Presidency is a ‘Failure’”). Mr. Obama’s foreign policy decisions and internal politics exonerate Kwame Nkrumah. How? We strongly believe Mr. Obama has finally come to realize it is always easy and cheap to pontificate from the outside, but crucial challenges posed by the internal and external dynamics of politics sporadically require draconian proaction, sometimes exertion of military might and operational suspension of legal instruments in the interest of national security prioritization and of preserving human lives. Of course wisdom, intelligence, prescience, experience, and reliability of practical solutions are born of individuals’ tactical and strategic approaches to challenges.
Nkrumah probably understood these security matters better than Mr. Obama and as a result Nkrumah’s government worked hard to make sure appropriate laws were put in place to protect the new nation from disintegrating, to facilitate developmental projects around the country, and to safeguard the well-being of private citizens as well as public officials against the subversive tendencies and terroristic acts of internal and external enemies. Mr. Obama has read Nkrumah, Mandela, Garvey, Malcolm X, etc., and been greatly influenced by them, for he knows the mounting national security challenges Nkrumah faced which are somewhat similar to his. It is all too common to see African-American activist-scholars and politicians change or tone down their rhetoric to court the franchise of America’s majority, White Americans, and to make them feel at home in his liberal corner.
Thus, Mr. Obama’s reproach of Nkrumah and other African “strongmen” may have resulted from a desire to massage the West’s historical conscience on the subjects of slavery and neocolonialism and from a genuine desire to see the fruits of democratization replace the spectral descendants of colonial autocracy. Nkrumah did not introduce one-party democracy into Ghana; colonial one-party autocracy preceded him. Colonial legacy, Western material greed, terrorism, attempts on his life, constitutional guarantees, and blatant refusal of the opposition to work with him and his government produced the so-called one-party democracy. Moreover, the survival instinct is not something one puts out so easily since it operates under the spell of biology or nature. Hopefully Mr. Obama understands this too. What is more, Mr. Obama’s failures are not uniquely and distantly different from Nkrumah’s from our point of view. Nkrumah always worked within the confines of the law, not always so with Mr. Obama or his immediate predecessor.
These assessments do not detract from the abuses to which the Preventive Detection Act (PDA) was subjected. Interesting is the fact that the National Liberation Council (NLC) substituted the PDA for another, the Protective Custody Decree (PCD), then under it imprisoned 1850 as opposed to 1377 under the PDA. Yet the NLC ruled Ghana for three years. Or less. This constitutes a major sentimental irony of Ghana’s political history. This part of Ghana’s political history is customarily bowdlerized from official narratives especially so by Nkrumah’s ideological enemies and their descendants. Is Mr. Obama cognizant of this useful piece of Ghana’s political history? Probably not. Our close reading of Mr. Obama’s corpus of literary works and his historic speech in Ghana do affirm our position. Why is Nkrumah made a criminal, the National Liberation Council (NLC) saint? Where is the political hagiography of the NLC coming from? Yet Nkrumah did exactly what Mr. Obama is doing now on behalf of America and the West! Why is Nkrumah retrospectively wrong, Mr. Obama right?
Circumspection is the way forward for those who have decided to make careers out of intellectualism. Nkrumah should not be faulted for taking to a law of the land, the PDA, to redress national security problems, among which terrorism, targeted assassinations of political opponents (CPP), and national disintegration, represented the salient variables. There are obvious differences between Mr. Obama’s and Nkrumah’s personalities and backgrounds. First, Mr. Obama is a lawyer and a professor of law, Nkrumah was not. Second, the times and circumstances are different. Third, Mr. Obama is lucky to have had the rich experiences (and the West) of an elderly nation behind his proactive decisions, unlike Nkrumah. Lastly, Mr. Obama has not also faced the kind of direct threats to his person as consistently as confronted Nkrumah, his family, and persons close to him.
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Thanks
Osofonana 9 years ago
Is it not possible to worship your idol without showing hatred for others? The fact that the world has honoured Nkrumah does not mean others are devils. The world has always honoured, most of all, murderers and brutal rulers. ... read full comment
Is it not possible to worship your idol without showing hatred for others? The fact that the world has honoured Nkrumah does not mean others are devils. The world has always honoured, most of all, murderers and brutal rulers. mandela is not only honored; he is sincerely loved by all. Nkrumah was great, even a great African but Danquah and Busia were not the dwarfs you want them to appear to generations of Ghanaians. Is it not their ideas that have won eventually? Democratic governance; dialogue instead of violence; development in freedom etc., etc,? Get honest and real.
francis kwarteng 9 years ago
Dear Osofonana,
There is no divisiveness in the historical facts I present here. Please. Let us learn to deal with historical and csientific facts.
Do read the following books by Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro and others ... read full comment
Dear Osofonana,
There is no divisiveness in the historical facts I present here. Please. Let us learn to deal with historical and csientific facts.
Do read the following books by Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro and others to open your eyes and horizon:
1) Who knows Busia and Danquah outside Ghana (only a handle of irrelevant scholars/indviduals in Ghana promote them)?
2) "How Far We Slaves Have Come: South Africa and Cuba in Today's World"
3) "Cuba and Angola: Fighting for Africa's Freedom and Our Own"
You will not use the word "revisionism" ever again after reading what Nelson Mandela has to say.
Development in freedom, whatever that means, came about through the efforts of Nkrumah, Mandela, Castro, Randall Robinson, and several others. Busia and Danquah had nothing to do with it. Don't make emotional excuses for the failures of Danquah and Busia and the absence on the international scene! Their meager achievements exclude them from te ranks of the greats!
Let us stop this emotional and childish attributions and resort to hard scientific and historical facts. And let us use our real names on Ghanaweb rather than strange monikers.
1)Do you understand the word "revisionism"?
2)Did the violence of the Apartheid government against Black South Africa (and Southern Africa) de-colonize South Africa?
3) Would you call putting Nelson Mandela (and others) in prison for 27 years as they struggled to free South, killing Steve Biko and hundreds of innocent children and women, making blacks prisoners in their own country "violence"?
4) Would you call the situation where South African White scientists killed hundreds of black activists via chemicals (Read "Apartheid: Biological and Chemical Warfare Program"; link: www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/south_africa/index.html) violence?
5) Have you read about Dr. Wouter Basson, head of South Africa's Chemical and Warfare Program during the Apartheid era?
6) Have you read the book "The Kaiser's Holocaust: Germany's Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism" (Authors: David Olusoga/Casper W. Erichsen). This book should tell one of the world's greatest "secrets" regarding what went on in Southern Africa!
7) Do you know how many times Nelson Mandela and the ANC proposed constructive dialogue with White South Africa to de-colonize the country (and the white government rejected all; read Nelson Mandela to understand why rejection of their proposal for constructive dialogue led to armed struggles)?
8) Do you know it was Nelson Mandela and the ANC, not Busia, who proposed constructive dialogue to discuss the future of South Africa?
9) Reading more about what Nelson Mandela has to say should it was Nkrumah, Fidel Castro, and Nelson Mandela, not Busia, that won the day? Nelson Mandela (and the people of South Africa) never saw Danquah or Busia as their hero! Therefore stop the revisionism. Read more about the awards posthumously given to Nkrumah by the international body and the people/government of South Africa.
It is not dialogue that de-colonized South Africa. Danquah and Busia will always be dwarfs in the shadow of Nkrumah. All right thinking people know this!
Come back later after reading the sources. You will not how Busia and Danquah do not appear in the written history of Southern Africa. They were irrelevant.
Thanks.
Kwadwo 9 years ago
Osofonana does not need to read all the references you suggested to be intelligent. Are you not impressed with the simple wisdom he imparted to you? In your world, Busia and Danquah are irrelevant. To Osofonana and many other ... read full comment
Osofonana does not need to read all the references you suggested to be intelligent. Are you not impressed with the simple wisdom he imparted to you? In your world, Busia and Danquah are irrelevant. To Osofonana and many others, these two leaders are very relevant. You cannot change that view and is about time you embrace and cherish that. It is that simple, buddy. My family never liked Nkrumah's dictatorial policies, but I will never refer you to read anti Nkrumah scholarly pieces to change your mind on your hero, Nkrumah. It will be insulting don't you think?
francis kwarteng 9 years ago
Dear Kwadwo,
Read what Nelson Mandela and other real players say about South Africa, Africa, and the world.
Mention any important scholarly work on Nkrumah that you think I have not read or do not know about.
Busia a ... read full comment
Dear Kwadwo,
Read what Nelson Mandela and other real players say about South Africa, Africa, and the world.
Mention any important scholarly work on Nkrumah that you think I have not read or do not know about.
Busia and Danquah are irrelevant to African and world politics. They don't matter! It is why Ghana, Africa, and the world celebrate Nkrumah.
Besides, Busia and Danquah are hardly known outside the borders of Ghana. Those one or two individual scholars who celebrate Busia and Danquah are irrelevant for the most part.
In fact, I can count all the "important" scholarly works done by and about Busia and Danquah in my palm. They don't have any intellectual weight outside Ghana for the most part. They are worthless, to say the least!
As a matter of fact, these writers have not done scholarly or scientific work on Busia and Danquah for respectable scholars to appreciate. It is why respected international (and most African and Western) sholars don't waste their time on Danquah and Busia. In fact, most of these international scholars (Western, African) would rather write about Nkruma, Mandela, Lumumba, Kenyatta, Cabral, etc., than waste their time on nonenties like Busia and Danquah.
Nkrumah was and still is a world figure. In Ghana neither Busia and Danquah comes close in intellect and political prowess.
Forget Busia and Danquah, they don't matter to the world, not even to the villages they came from!
You hate me and my Kookoase people to the core, you hate democracy, you hate Busia for no reason, you hate the West, particularly the US, where the best of the best resides. You even expressed your dislike for God in one of y ...
read full comment
I mean " it is not possible to love God and love Satan"
Mr. Figure-Out,
You do not have to read all of Part 1. I have extracted the portion I want you to read. Here it is:
.....................................
We all know about Mr. Obama’s illicit spying on Americans an ...
read full comment
You see every right thinkinh person will side with me that this kwarteng is carrying a head filled with only water on his neck. He will copy any nonsense from any corner paste it on this platform for well thinking people to r ...
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Mr. Figure-Out,
Please go back and read Part 1 of this two-part series if you have not done so already.
You can then begin to deal with particularities rather than with faint convenient generalities.
Mind you, Mr. ...
read full comment
How can any reasonable human being in his right mind justify communist dictatorship and tyranny? Nkrumah did not have any excuse for doing what he did except that he was preparing the ground with series of unprovoked actions ...
read full comment
How can any reasonable human being in his right mind justify communist dictatorship and tyranny? Nkrumah did not have any excuse for doing what he did except that he was preparing the ground with series of unprovoked actions ...
read full comment
Mr. Figure-Out,
You have not convinced readers yet why the American critics of the Obama administration (those I specifically mention in Parts 1/2) and of American internal politics and foreign policy are not haters of "th ...
read full comment
Much as I don't mean to thwart your efforts to educate the general public and also your quest to find answers to your numerous predicaments I still maintain the contents of my comments. I could read you loud and clear and hav ...
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Mr. Figure-Out,
You have said nothing. What you say is hollow.
Does my essay "What Sort of Democracy Is This, Ghana?" sat I hate Ghana? What sort of reasoning is this?
You constructively criticize your society, int ...
read full comment
Dear Readers,
Please, those of you who did not see or read Part 1 of this two-part series can read this:
......................................
We all know about Mr. Obama’s illicit spying on Americans and foreign ...
read full comment
Is it not possible to worship your idol without showing hatred for others? The fact that the world has honoured Nkrumah does not mean others are devils. The world has always honoured, most of all, murderers and brutal rulers. ...
read full comment
Dear Osofonana,
There is no divisiveness in the historical facts I present here. Please. Let us learn to deal with historical and csientific facts.
Do read the following books by Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro and others ...
read full comment
Osofonana does not need to read all the references you suggested to be intelligent. Are you not impressed with the simple wisdom he imparted to you? In your world, Busia and Danquah are irrelevant. To Osofonana and many other ...
read full comment
Dear Kwadwo,
Read what Nelson Mandela and other real players say about South Africa, Africa, and the world.
Mention any important scholarly work on Nkrumah that you think I have not read or do not know about.
Busia a ...
read full comment