THE ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH TERM (HYMN)

THE ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH TERM (HYMN)

We've Been Hellenized: *Hellenize - to make Greek in character; to adopt Greek ideas, or customs; to imitate the Greeks. (See Greek, Greek Love, Gray)

Hymn (n.)

c.1000, from Old French ymne and Old English ymen, both from Latin hymnus "song of praise," from Greek hymnos "song or ode in praise of gods or heroes," used in Septuagint for various Hebrew words meaning "song praising God." Possibly a variant of hymenaios "wedding song," from Hymen, Greek god of marriage (see hymen), or from a PIE root *sam- "to sing" (cf. Hittite išhamai "he sings," Sanskrit saman- "hymn, song") http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=hymen&searchmode=none

HYMN = HYMEN

HYMEN or HYMENAEUS (Hymên or Hymenaios), the god of marriage, was conceived as a handsome youth, and invoked in the hymeneal or bridal song. The names originally designated the bridal song itself, which was subsequently personified. The first trace of this personification occurs in Euripides (Troad. 311), or perhaps in Sappho ( Fragm. 73, p. 80, ed. Neue). The poetical origin of the god Hymen or Hymenaeus is also implied in the fact of his being described as the son of Apollo and a Muse, either Calliope, Urania, or Terpsichore. (Catull. lxi. 2; Nonn. Dionys. xxxiii. 67; Schol. Vatic. ad Eurip. Rhes. 895, ed. Dindorf; Schol. ad Pind. Pyth. iv. 313; Alciphron, Epist. i. 13; Tzetz. Chil. xiii. 599.) http://www.theoi.com/Ouranios/ErosHymenaios.html

 Etymologies

From Latin hymenaeus, wedding song, wedding, from Greek humenaios, from Humen, Hymen, from humen, membrane; see hymen,Maidenhead.

Hymen(noun)a fold of muscous membrane often found at the orifice of the vagina the vaginal membraneHymen(noun)a fabulous deity according to some the son of Apollo and Urania according to others of Bacchus and Venus He was the god of marriage and presided over nuptial solemnitiesHymen(noun)marriage union as if by marriage

The derivation of the word, "hymen" is a bit more confused. This word for the vaginal membrane could come from hymnos, for wedding song, or from the Greek humen, meaning membrane, or from the god of marriage (Hyman in Greek, Hymen in Latin). It's unsure whether the god took his name from the membrane, or the membrane was named after the god. *Hero - There is a huge difference between the modern definition and the classical definition for this word. In early Greek mythology, a hero is any offspring of a mortal being with an immortal one. The Christian cross and the church (vagina) and the steeple (Penis) Represents one of the sacred marriage symbols.

A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity/deities, a prominent figure or an epic tale. The word hymn derives from Greek hymnos "a song of praise".

Hymenaios (also Hymenaeus, Hymenaues, or Hymen; Ancient Greek: ?µ??a???) was a Greek god of marriage ceremonies, inspiring feasts and song. He was celebrated in the ancient marriage song of unknown origin Hymen o Hymenae, Hymen delivered by G. Valerius Catullus, which both the terms hymn and hymen are derived from..

Ancient hymns include the Great Hymn to the Aten, composed by Pharaoh Akhenaten, and the Vedas, a collection of hymns in the tradition of Hinduism. The Western tradition of hymnody begins with the Homeric Hymns, a collection of ancient Greek hymns, the oldest of which were written in the 7th century BC, in praise of the gods of Greek mythology.

African-Americans developed a rich hymnody from spirituals during times of slavery to the modern, lively black gospel style.

If you thought this is all you have about sex worship in Xtianity, here is more.

Now what do you think the church steeple signifies?

1. A steeple or tower in association with a place of worship was a feature of ancient paganism, oriented to sun worship and fertility cultus. A common form, especially in Egypt, followed the geometric figure known as obelisk, which in places served also as a phallic symbol. Phallic worship in ancient Greece centered around Priapus (the son of Aphrodite) ... of this filtration by placing the vulgar phallic symbol upon YOUR church roof ! http://www.remnantofgod.org/steeple.htm Steeples, the pointed roofs of churches, have been included in church buildings since the conversion of Constantine and his proclamation making Christianity the official religion of his state. The origins of steeples, however, have been traced back to several different traditions.

Read more: What Is the Origin of Church Steeples? http://www.ehow.com/about_5052101_origin-church-steeples.html#ixzz25IH9e9HS

As Goddess-dominated religions made the YONI their holiest symbol, so God-dominated religions adored the PHALLUS. Patriarchal Semites worshiped their own genitals, and swore binding oaths by placing a hand on each other's private parts, a habit still common among Arabs.Words like TESTAMENT, TESTIFY, and TESTIMONY still "at TEST" to the oaths sworn on the TESTICLES.

John 4:22

Common English Bible (CEB)

22 You and your people worship what you don’t know; we worship what we know because salvation is from the Jews.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john+4%3A22&version=CEB

As Goddess-dominated religions made the YONI their holiest symbol, so God-dominated religions adored the PHALLUS. Patriarchal Semites worshiped their own genitals, and swore binding oaths by placing a hand on each other's private parts, a habit still common among Arabs.  Words like TESTAMENT, TESTIFY, and TESTIMONY still "at TEST" to the oaths sworn on the TESTICLES.

Abraham's servant swore by placing his hand "UNDER THE THIGH" of his master (Genesis 24:9) because "THIGH" was a common euphemism for "PENIS", used in superstitious fear of mentioning the divine organ directly. Myths of male psuedo-birth-like ZEUS'S FATHERHOOD of DIONYSUS-made the offspring come forth from the father's "THIGH". But the meaning was "PENIS", as in the HINDU myth that substituted the lingam for the YONI: god SUKRA (SEED) came out of the stomach of the Great God by way of his penis.

Jewish Rabbi Explains Why Baby Penis Is To Be Sucked

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4wwaUB7Fgo

Jewish Talmud Recipe For Pedophilia and Murder

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xke4hl_jewish-talmud-recipe-for-pedophilia-and-murder_news?start=6#from=embed

The Bible calls JACOB'S penis the SINEW that SHRANK, lying "upon the hollow of the thigh". Scholars have tried to interpret this limp penis as something else; a severed tendon, or a certain thigh muscle, which Jews were forbidden to eat (Gen.32:32). But medieval translators frankly recognized the PHALLIC meaning of the "SINEW". They said the god-man's blighting touch on Jacob's shrunken member was "to cool the fires of concupiscence".

Biblical patriarchs worried inordinately about the vulnerability of the penis and avoided direct mention of it lest evil spirits be drawn to it.

Old Testament laws reveal a special fear of women's power over the penis. God's commandment was that A woman who grabs a mans genitals must have her hands cut off, even if she does it to defend her husband against an enemy (Deuteronomy 25:11-12).

Why only 9/11 is so atrocious for the new world?

The last of the fullblooded abOriginal Natives of Australia, to be captured and enslaved by the white=Christian so-called new settlers.. a.k.a rather invading christian=white crusaders... anyways these black abOriginals are from the Yolngi/Yolngo tribe's of northern Australia's arnhemland...Behold the True black abOriginal Melanin-blessed Darkskinned Natives of Australia, and amongst the 1st of all human-kind to migrate out of Africa in Ancient pre-historic times of the human migrations of this world we call earth..

The native abOriginals of Australia and Papua, migrated out of north-eastern Africa between the East-African countries called Sudan, Somalia, tanzania and the african Sahara, before the Sahara desert transformed into a desert thousands upon thousands of years ago, even before Ancient Egyptian dynastical times...

When I show pictures like this, of atrocities, actual historical images, i am not infrequently told that i am stirring up hatred. sometimes even black people say this. but who accuses jewish people of stirring up hatred when they show pictures from the holocaust? Don't we also deserve to know about our history? and should not we also never forget or allow the world to forget? is our pain and suffering any less than others? or is this part of our history simply, for others at least, an inconvenient truth?

Here's a quote from Jefferson Davis "It [slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God...it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation...it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts...Let the gentleman go to Revelation to learn the decree of God - let him go to the Bible...I said that slavery was sanctioned in the Bible, authorized, regulated, and recognized from Genesis to Revelation...Slavery existed then in the earliest ages, and among the chosen people of God; and in Revelation we are told that it shall exist till the end of time shall come. You find it in the Old and New Testaments - in the prophecies, psalms, and the epistles of Paul; you find it recognized, sanctioned everywhere. "In another area of human rights, many Christian clergymen advocated slavery. Historian Larry Hise notes in his book 'Pro-Slavery' that ministers 'wrote almost half of all defenses of slavery published in America.' He lists 275 men of the cloth who used the Bible to prove that white people were entitled to own black people as work animals."

[James A. Haught, 'Holy Horrors'](I LOVE BEING AFRICAN).

"Long before the invasions of Africa by Asians and Europeans and the subsequent capture and kidnapping of African people and their forcible removal to the Americas, African people migrated as free men and women to the far corners of the earth. This had nothing to do with Pangaea or continental drift. The descendants of these ancient Africans reside by the millions today in Asia, Australia and the Pacific. These are the Black people who so astound and puzzle so many of us today because we have been programmed, some would say bamboozled, to believe that the only reason that Black people exist outside of Africa today is because of enslavement and the rape of Africa. It is time that we step out of this void of ignorance and recognize that we are a global people with rich and diverse histories."

--Runoko Rashidi

Massacre of Buddhism: Ongiin Khiid

I had no idea, when I agreed to help my friend Susan celebrate her 50th birthday by going with her to Mongolia, that I'd end up standing in a place that would make me feel some of what I felt in Auschwitz-Birkenau: the ruins of the Buddhist temple complexes of Ongiin Khiid in the Gobi Desert.

Susan and I had just finished a three-day horse trek to the lakes of Naiman Nuur so we were mostly focused on getting a hot shower and a restaurant meal -- the short walk to see the local sites was an afterthought. And it was a pretty raucous walk at that, what with peals of laughter from three small boys who kept sneaking up behind us and then running away again when we turned to look. I bother to tell you this to explain how blind-sided I was by my feelings as I began to understand what I was looking at -- and the scale of it.

Ongiin Khiid is now mostly just the smashed remnants of two enormous monastery complexes (Barlim Khiid and Khutagt Khiid) on either side of the only year-round river that runs through Dundgovi province in southern Mongolia. They were destroyed in 1938. What's left of the original buildings and the communities that supported them are the foundations of countless buildings, a few feet of wall here, some broken bits of adornment there.

In person, the ruins of Ongiin Khiid were devastating but, because the buildings were made of the earth at the site, the vast and overwhelming scope of the wreckage is difficult to convey in photographs. There were  ruins as far as you could see. The wrecked altar alcove that once housed a Buddha icon overlooked it all. 

I cannot explain the effect of this site on me. We'd already been to two other ruined and slightly rebuilt monastery sites, Erdene Zuu (pix here) and Tuvkhen.( pix here) They were a mix of sad and hopeful, touristy and sacred, run-down and beautiful. But the raw violence of the destruction at Ongiin Khiid was still visible, still palpable, even though it happened over seventy years ago. 

 for more read...
http://marleytheheathen.blogspot.in/2012/08/massacre-of-buddhism-ongiin-khiid.html 

Adivasi agitate for removal of ‘tribal’ Virgin Mary statue -- Anumeha Yadav

Religious leaders of the Sarna tribe have announced an agitation this December demanding that a statue of Virgin Mary be removed from a Catholic parish church in Singpur.

The religious leaders described the statue — Virgin Mary, hair tied in a bun, dressed as a tribal woman in a traditional red and white sari, wearing bangles and depicted holding an infant in a sling — as a proselytising ploy. Sarna religious leaders announced the agitation after the police imposed IPC Section 144 and stopped them from marching to the church in question on Sunday.

“We met the church representatives in May and had offered them three months to remove the statue. But the talks broke down because they ignored our request. They have dressed the statue in our traditional clothes so that over time the nature-worshipping tribals here start associating Mother with a tribal woman. This is a strategy for conversion and to attack our distinct culture,” said Sarna dharamguru Bandhan Tigga.

“We have announced our agitation to oppose not just this but other attacks on our faith in Bible Society publications which give false accounts of our religious practices describing them as uncivilised,” he alleged.

More than 27 Sarna religious groups have publicly demanded the removal of the statue, unveiled by the Archbishop of Ranchi Cardinal Telesphore Toppo, since May.Earlier in July, in villages near Ormanjhi, 20 km from Ranchi, members of the Protestant Assembly of God church had reported that some Sarna Adivasi leaders had threatened them with violence if their families did not convert back to the Sarna faith — a threat they said had occurred a few days after the statue controversy erupted.

“Three days after the statue was unveiled by Catholic priests, the Sarna society leaders called some families who had converted to Christianity several years ago in Ormanjhi and gave them a week to convert back to the Sarna faith. A week later, some men from the same group arrived in the village and broke the gate of one of our community member’s house,” said the pastor of a church in Ormanjhi who did not wish to be identified. A First Information Report was registered in the Ormanjhi police station.

The Catholic church has so far refrained from commenting on the controversy. “We wish to remain silent and have had no discussions amongst ourselves on this subject,” said Father Theodore Toppo.

“This is not a constructive approach by leaders of the Sarna faith and takes the focus away from more serious issues that affect tribals of all faiths, such as tribals’ rights to resources and land and their other constitutional rights. At the same time, the church representatives should come out of their shell, be gracious and offer to remove the statue and make a clear statement that we do not wish to offend anyone’s sentiments,” said Father Stan Swamy, a social activist.


http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/adivasi-group-to-agitate-for-removal-of-tribal-virgin-mary-statue/article5062363.ece?homepage=true&css=print

The Most Dangerous Place to Be Black

For Florida, being at the center of a maelstrom about race and justice for black Americans is nothing new. Especially if you ever had a run-in with Lake County’s brutal seven-term sheriff, Willis McCall.

[I]t’s just harder for black defendants to assert stand-your-ground defense if the victim is white, and easier for whites to raise a stand-your-ground defense if the victims are black,” says Darren Hutchinson, a law professor and civil rights law expert at the University of Florida in Gainesville. “The bottom line is that it’s really easy for juries to accept that whites had to defend themselves against persons of color.” —Christian Science Monitor, August 6, 2013

* * *

Sixty years before George Zimmerman fired his single shot in Sanford, the people of central Florida lived through one of the most suspicious claims of self-defense in American history. The incident on November 6, 1951, prompted outrage and protest across the country—as well as from the podium at the United Nations, where the Soviet foreign minister Andrei Vishinsky brandished a newspaper with headlines and gruesome photos of two black men who had been shot by a Florida sheriff, as he chided, “This is what human rights means in the United States! This is the American way of life!”

Eight months earlier Thurgood Marshall and lawyers from the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund had been able to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a Florida court verdict that had sentenced to death two of three young black men between the ages of 16 and 22, known as the Groveland Boys, in the alleged rape of a white 17-year-old farm girl that whipped up a frenzy of mob violence against the local African-American community. It was widely thought that the accusations were trumped up in order to rid Lake County of a handful of “uppity” blacks who were not dependent on day work in the citrus groves. (Ernest Thomas was hunted down and killed by a posse, while 16 year-old Charles Greenlee was given mercy and sentenced to life on a chain gang.)

The Groveland case, if up to the Florida justice system of the time, would have ended with the quick and quiet executions of the convicted black youths, and then it would have disappeared, as did so many capital cases in the Jim Crow South. But, unlike the Trayvon Martin shooting in late February 2012, something extraordinary occurred in Lake County, Florida, on that rainy night in November 1951. Like a Shakespearian ghost, a young man, presumed to be dead, rose from a ditch to tell a tale of murder.

After the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the verdict, Lake County Sheriff Willis McCall volunteered to transport the two young defendants, Samuel Shepherd and Walter Irvin, from the Florida State Prison back to court for the retrial. McCall, it should be known, was revolted by the high court decision. The two young men didn’t make it back to the town of Tavares, Florida, for court that night. McCall turned down a dark, clay road where, he claimed, the two handcuffed prisoners jumped him in an escape attempt. In self-defense, McCall insisted, he’d been forced to shoot the two assailants.

Samuel Shepherd was killed instantly. Cuffed to his now dead best friend, Walter Irvin took two gunshot wounds to the chest and collapsed beside Shepherd. But Irvin’s evening of horror wasn’t over yet. Summoned to the scene by Sheriff McCall, Deputy James Yates arrived and shined his flashlight down on Irvin. “This nigger is not dead,” Yates mumbled. Then he fired what was supposed to be the coup de grace: a .38 caliber bullet straight through Irvin’s neck.

Miraculously, Walter Irvin survived. While he lay on the roadside, McCall and Yates moved into the glare of the sheriff’s Oldsmobile headlights. They ripped at McCall’s clothes, rumpled his Stetson, and struck a blow to his head that produced a trickle of blood. Thus the two men concocted, and substantiated, their story of an attempted escape.

Then they summoned witnesses to the scene. It was not until a photographer’s flash fired 15 minutes later that a prosecutor on the scene noticed that Walter Irvin was still alive.

From his hospital bed the next morning, Irvin offered Thurgood Marshall and the FBI a version of events very different from McCall’s. Irvin claimed that the sheriff had shot him and his friend Samuel in cold-blooded murder.

But Irvin was black and convicted of rape in the eyes of the state. Next to the testimony of the popular sheriff, Irvin’s version carried little weight. A coroner’s jury made up mostly of McCall’s friends swiftly cleared the sheriff of any wrongdoing, concluding that he had indeed acted in self-defense. Judge Truman Futch, the Groveland trial judge, declined to impanel a grand jury on the grounds that the coroner’s jury had proved to be so thorough there was no need for a grand jury investigation.

FBI agents—men from the South who weren’t necessarily sympathetic to civil rights cases—were nonetheless aghast. They went back to the crime scene and dug into the soil beneath Walter Irvin’s spilled blood. The FBI offered to make their forensic evidence, which supported Irvin’s version of the shootings, available to prosecutors in order to secure indictments against McCall and Yates. But they were rebuffed by Judge Futch. So the incriminating evidence remained sealed in FBI files, hidden from Thurgood Marshall and his NAACP attorneys. Sheriff McCall, with the help of powerful friends in Florida and a supportive public that believed a trial would be a waste of time and money, had escaped yet another civil rights investigation.
Following Trayvon Martin’s death in 2012, NAACP organizers and hundreds of protestors marched in Sanford to demand the arrest of George Zimmerman. Such demonstrations would have been unimaginable in Lake County in 1951. For years citrus pickers had attempted to organize for higher wages and better working conditions, only to see their efforts thwarted with violence and arrests by Sheriff McCall and his deputies. If the message against agitation wasn’t clear enough to activists, white supremacists resorted to more extreme measures. Harry T. Moore, an indefatigable NAACP executive whom Marshall had tasked to a campaign protesting McCall’s shooting of the Groveland Boys, was killed with his wife, Henrietta, on Christmas night 1951, when a bomb exploded beneath the bedroom of their house. The couple, who had celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary that same night, died in Sanford, a few miles from where Trayvon Martin drew his last breath. More than a decade before the death of Medgar Evers, Harry T. Moore became the first leader of the modern civil rights movement to be assassinated in the United States.
If there is a lesson to be drawn from Thurgood Marshall’s fight for equality in the Jim Crow South in the years before he became the nation’s first black Supreme Court Justice, it is that Marshall saw criminal trials and their verdicts as snapshots on a timeline ever evolving toward equal justice in the courts. The scope of these trials was often narrow, and the verdicts did not always reveal unadulterated truth or deliver immediate justice. But Marshall made sure always to hold a bright light on the laws of the land by selecting cases that could create precedent in higher appellate courts. There, verdicts could be overturned, and public opinion, or outcry, might lead to legislative changes. More importantly, truth might alter the biases of a nation’s hearts and minds.

Four months after he was shot by Sheriff McCall and Deputy Yates, Walter Irvin was again convicted and sentenced to death at retrial. Thurgood Marshall was undeterred. He worked closely with the media to promote travel and citrus boycotts in Florida. (“Notice Negro blood on your grapefruit?” one newspaper editorial inquired.) He organized massive letter-writing campaigns to Governor LeRoy Collins. He urged clergy from around the country to demand justice for Walter Irvin. Marshall’s multi-pronged attack soon began to convince Collins that Florida’s three sturdy legs—tourism, industry, agriculture—might wobble if the flow of northern money into the state should wane due to continuing negative media coverage and political pressure. Despite the fact that Walter Irvin had been found guilty by two separate juries and had been twice sentenced to death, Collins conducted his own investigation into the rape allegations and the conduct of Sheriff McCall. In December 1955, the governor commuted Irvin’s death sentence to life imprisonment. Irvin was eventually paroled in 1968. (He was found dead in a car one year later when he returned to Lake County for a relative’s funeral.)

To the surprise of many, there was no more dangerous place for blacks than Florida during Jim Crow. In their comprehensive work, A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882-1930, Stewart E. Tolnay and E.M. Beck show that blacks in Florida had a much greater chance of being lynched than in any other state in the South, with 79.8 lynchings per 100,000 blacks. (Mississippi was a distant second with 52.8.)

The NAACP was instrumental in the stemming of violence against blacks before and after World War II, and Thurgood Marshall risked his own life to ensure that blacks received equal justice in the courts, and that the verdicts of coroners’ juries or decisions by local law enforcement agencies in the South were not the last word. Were it not for protests by NAACP organizers that led to extensive media coverage and the public outcry across the nation, George Zimmerman may never have stood trial for killing an unarmed black youth, where the facts of his case could be tested in a court of law, win or lose.

Willis McCall had very little protest or opposition to contend with in 1951. After he shot Samuel Shepherd and Walter Irvin, McCall continued to serve another 21 years. In 1972, he was forced to stand trial for kicking to death a black, mentally retarded prisoner who’d been brought into his jail on a minor traffic offense. The case (McCall was eventually acquitted), and his suspension from office by Governor Reubin Askew, prevented him from campaigning at his usual pace. Still, McCall only narrowly lost in his bid for an eighth consecutive term as sheriff of Lake County.

 taken from http://www.psmag.com/culture/the-most-dangerous-place-to-be-black-64206/

African Quagmire

African mentalities account for Africa’s backwardness

The problem is, so few want to articulate this truth.

There are reasons why Africa is such a backward place: why it is the beggar continent that perpetually lives off handouts called ‘foreign aid’ even as it sits on an abundance of natural resources; why most of its countries are lands of broken down infra­structure, stratospheric jobless rates, ramshackle government institu­tions “education systems” that are a sad joke, and so on ad infinitum.

There are reasons why black Africa is the continent of basket case countries best exemplified by the DR Congo, and others that are so totally off charts they do not even qualify to be called basket cases any more, like Somalia.

There are reasons, many reasons, why much of Sub Saharan Africa is the way it is. But if you want to begin to understand the main problem, stop listening to what many Africans say. These things have been said, time immemorial: Africa was exploited by Europeans, its best people sold into slavery, its countries colonized and looted…Africa continues to suffer because the West forcefully imposes its agendas on us and continues taking our resources for a pittance…“Yes!”, a Congolese will proclaim at the top of his voice, “They are taking away our gold and copper and diamonds and enjoying them while we get nothing!”…, and so on ad nauseum. There of course are many other people who do not lay all the blame for the appalling state of the continent on outsiders, asserting instead that bad leadership is the main source of problems.

As an African, you listen to all these things and after a number of years, if you are honest with yourself you come to realize, and admit the truth: central to this continent’s backwardness are its people. Pre­cisely the mentalities which most Africans approach life with. This is making a blanket statement obviously, because a hundred percent of any people cannot have a uniform view on any one issue. But by and large, too many black Africans are too willing to wallow in the blame game, to point accusing fingers at everyone but themselves. They are people who seem totally unaware that as grown human beings they (and other Africans like them) are to a large extent responsible for the choices they make, and how such choices impact their lives. They are utterly unwilling to accept facts that may contradict their world view, which is the dangerous and false idea that we are backward because other people are making us so; that these other people “will never give us a break and allow us to develop our societies so that we too can live in better material conditions…”

Whiners

These black Africans are whiners too ready to take positions devoid of objective fact, on any issue, especially issues where white people (or, to be more precise, Western countries) may be involved. All these whiners on this continent also seem to be too happy to complain about how the whites of this world, the bazungu (or wazungu in Swa­hili) are screwing us over, but never ever do anything that may in the long run put an end to that exploitation, even after years and years of the same complaint. Africans never lay out any strategies to defend themselves against the said exploitation; never devise ways to protect themselves against the exploitation they complain about. Even when they sit in so called meetings to do something, such gatherings tend to be chaotic shout fests that produce contradicting positions on any number of issues. And when the meetings are over and everyone has gone back to their home, they forget all about the resolutions and simply let the paperwork gather dust on shelves. The easiest course of action is to whine and whine and do little else.

 

 

 

The whiners may even be well-read and informed, and may very well be aware that Africa is not the only place that ever was colo­nised or exploited and enslaved by the bazungu, but that such so­cieties – China and India quickly spring to mind – are well on the way to economic and military su­perpower status while Africa is as backward if not, in certain cases, even more backward than when the colonialists left over half a century ago. The whiners seem devoid of any self-awareness, and, yes, even the educated ones seem unconcerned about how child-like they sound when they go on and on about how every­one is “picking on us,” “exploiting us,” “not giving us a break,” and so on it goes. The whiners seem unaware that with all their com­plaining and lack of sustained ac­tivity to change things, they only serve to perpetrate the stereotype that Africans are helpless dupes everyone will take advantage of, safe in the knowledge that the worst the African will do is com­plain and grumble.

There are any number of black Africans who are not whiners of course; people who are aware that we are our own worst enemy, and have been our own worst en­emy for decades and decades.

These are people who know that if anything is to ever change Africans better get off their back­sides, end their usual chaotic ways while working extremely hard, smart and purposefully. The sadly outnumbered none-whiners know we can only ever make something positive of our societies by aspiring to be punc­tual in whatever we do, be time conscious and avoid this usual, dangerous nonsense called “Af­rican time;” they know effort, in­telligence and innovation should be rewarded, instead of reward­ing tribe or kinsman; they know we should look at the long-term picture instead of corruptly plun­dering whatever little resources at your country’s disposal.

 

(Of course corruption exists all over the world; it is not in Af­rica only. But the corruption else­where tends to be the kind that does not lay waste to entire sectors; the corruption elsewhere tends to be smart, and targeted at creating even more wealth (when a Chinese corrupts an African president for in­stance, he gets a fat, juicy mining concession that will enrich his com­pany, its employees, shareholders and, ultimately, his government. In short, a big net gain for China, or whoever else will bribe the African, while the African official will as an individual become immensely rich even as all around him the wails of hungry, sick children lacking medi­cal care are to be heard, roads are in a deplorable condition, so called schools lack basics such as textbooks, and so, depressingly, on. Or for instance when an American businessman corrupts an American poli­tician called a congressman, it is because that businessman wants an opportunity to build a road in a certain district, or wants to bring a factory to a part of the city, etc. And that businessman will build that road, according to standard, and relatively quickly. Or his factory will benefit the wider community in which it is built, employing many, and paying reasonably good wages and on time. In Africa on the other hand some minister will only be scheming to siphon off about ninety percent of the budget to build a highway, and salt all the cash away in some Swiss bank account while the people the highway was sup­posed to benefit continue suffering the horribly potholed road which contributes to increased costs for businesses in expenses to repair ve­hicles…it is endlessly self-defeating and stupid, this African way of do­ing things, and it is the real source of the continent’s problems, not all the things the whiners moan about).

Gaddafi apologists

I will give a personal example of what happens when one tries to upend the popularly held notions of whiners. Last week in this news­paper I wrote an article with the headline, Gaddafi is gone; what are Africans mourning, a sort of obituary in which I describe just a few of the acts of the late Libyan tyrant that illustrated clearly, to any­one who cared to see the truth, that Muammar Gaddafi was a raving lunatic. In conclusion I lamented that so many on this continent are mourning a character whose depravity knew no bounds. Well, I can’t begin to describe the torrent of abuse that accompanied the piece. (Shyaka Kanuma “is a slave and it is slaves like this that are the real bane of Africa,” wrote an individual on the discussion thread of the ar­ticle on the website, AllAfrica.com. “Gaddafi was a great man who did much for this continent and “this raving lunatic from Kigali” (mean­ing me), should keep quiet, or something like that. Many others were writing in my Facebook account, to tell me what a fool I was, “playing the game of the West by reciting every bad thing it (West) was saying about Gaddafi.” Blah blah blah.

Implicit in all this abuse is the corrupt mindset of the average African (Gaddafi in his four-decade rule was well known for dispensing largess with abandon all over black Africa, a road here, numerous mosques there, but, most of all, the endless cash gifts he gave to individuals, big and small, down the years…and that is what probably has all the whin­ers worked up; they instead are in a frothing rage that anyone would dare mention any of the crazy activities of a buffoon whose activities (and those of his wastrel sons), set the aspirations of the average Liby­an back probably by hundreds of years).

Oh, the whiners are saying, “Gaddafi was only attacked for his oil”…“Oh, Gaddafi was too much of a revolutionary for the wazun­gu and spoke truth to them” and blah blah blah…

These Gaddafi apologists in­stead of siding with the Libyans who said “enough!” and “Get out of our lives Gaddafi!” after more than forty years of absolute, one-man tyranny will instead be shouting that the uprising in Benghazi was the doing of the whites (namely the US, France, the UK, Nato in general). It is in­credible how the whiners choose to ignore facts that totally con­tradict their version of events. Every person should be aware of events called “the Arab Spring”, which were set off when in De­cember last year a young Tuni­sian fruit vendor called Muham­mad Buazizi set himself on fire in protest at the acts of police who confiscated his fruit cart, physi­cally abusing him in the process. Enraged Tunisians rose en masse and after a few weeks toppled the government of Zine al Abidine ben Ali. Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak fell next. The Libyans, looking at these events, thought now was the time to ask their tyrant to step aside. Protests began in the city of Benghazi, and how did Gaddafi respond? By deploying his air force on his own citizens in an attempt to bomb them into submission. They did not sub­mit. They went on protesting, and Gaddafi’s fighter jets kept bombing away. Libyans were crying out to the world to help. They were crying out to the Af­rican Union, but of course that is a quite useless and highly cor­rupt organization most of whose member leadership Gaddafi had long ago put in his pocket with his oil dollars. The Libyans kept protesting, and crying out for help, even as Gaddafi vowed to “hunt down the rats”, neighbour­hood to neighbourhood, door to door. Then Nato came in. The Gaddafi apologists would have you believe that no Libyan asked for help to save them from Gad­dafi’s campaign of massacre; they (apologists) instead trot out their own propaganda, which is that the wazungu were only after oil, and that any other rendering of what happened is only Western propaganda. But the Al Jazeera news network was following events closely, showing Libyans supplicating, asking for help as all around them Gaddafi’s jets reduced everything to rubble. Now, I challenge any whiner, or Gaddafi apologist to prove to anyone that Al Jazeera was not telling the truth, that it too is “an arm of Western propaganda”.

Yes, Nato may have had problems with Gaddafi (the man after all perpe­trated acts of terrorism against them, like a stupid little boy throwing stones into a beehive, for example having a civilian air­liner brought down and killing all on board in the Lockerbie incident); Nato members may have an interest in the oil, but if you are an informed person you know Libya accounts for only 2 percent of the world’s oil produc­tion. Which is no small amount, but, if according to the apologists and whiners, Western countries are so willing to steal poor peo­ple’s oil, why not go ahead and steal Angola’s as well, or Nigeria’s, or Saudi Arabia’s? ‘Oh!’, ‘But those countries are not led by revolutionaries!’ the apologists will exclaim. It is a waste of time to ask them to contemplate that maybe, just maybe, Nato came in to save a people whose cries had been going on for weeks even as the African Union took a specta­tor’s stance to the bloody events in Benghazi. The apologists and whiners seem to have no idea how ridiculous they sound, de­fending a character who was willing (and said so himself) to obliterate everyone demanding an end to his rule when they may be the same ones who claim they are fed up with the bad and long-running leaderships of their own countries. They see absolutely no reason to support Libyans aspir­ing for change, demanding for it, and dying for it. What hypocrisy. What an appalling willingness to play Judas for the thirty pieces of silver Gaddafi has been giving them for years!

Let me say this: not all Afri­can governments are led by bad leaders, in fact a two or three are pretty good leaders, men of integ­rity upon whom we can pin our hopes. And, like I stated earlier, not all Africans are whiners, or apologists of terrible rulers. They should never allow themselves to keep quiet, or to be drowned out by the ruinous chatter of the whiners. Only their willingness to stand up, and fight a war of ideas against all the stupidity will give this continent some hope.

 

This article was written by Shyaka Kanuma on Oct 31 2011