M D Nalapat
Friday, June 07, 2013 - While Asian Americans have retained the culture of their home countries, the same is not always true of African Americans. Brilliant authors such as Alex Haley have pointed to the imperative of looking back into an often distant past so as to discover one’s roots, and since that period, there has been a trend within the vibrant African-American community in the US to look to Africa and rediscover their cultural foundations. The continent of Africa will certainly emulate Asia in becoming an engine of development, once the continent rids itself of the hangers-on of former colonial powers who join with the latter in squeezing their countries dry of resources. France in particular still uses its military to ensure compliance with the wishes of its own as well as other Euro corporates, although these days competition from China and now India is making it difficult for Paris to dominate as comprehensively as during the previous centuries. What French policymakers have accomplished across large swathes of the African elite has been to sponge away any trace of local culture and consciousness, replacing this with an ersatz “French” veneer.
Thus, local elites get addicted to things and to people French, ignoring their own traditions and people. The reality is that indigenous cultural tradition is core in the self-confidence needed to achieve, and the example of Asian-American students in the US (who outperform all others ,including often Jewish Americans) shows the importance of an awareness of one’s own cultural roots. Because Asian-Americans remain cognizant of their cultures, they excel in school and college, unlike other groups which have forgotten theirs Judging by what has appeared in the media about her, Susan Rice knows about as much of Africa’s rich cultural heritage and traditions as her boss Barack Obama seems to know about Kenya’s. Both have completely immersed themselves in the Europeanist traditions of the East Coast elite of the US, thereby failing to gain the advantage possible were they multi-cultural.
Earlier, Colin Powell demonstrated the same unquestioning fealty to Europeanist thought, formulating a foreign policy which accepted the axioms of the 19th century, which are that only Europeans have the ability - and indeed the duty - to run the rest of the world. To this day, a significant body of EU officialdom, joined by their counterparts in the so-called “Whote” world, believe that it is their responsibility to police and to discipline the rest of the world.
Although they indulge in superficial gestures of cognizance of global multiculturalism, such as Hillary Clinton going to an Indian restaurant or bolder colleagues even wearing a sari on occasion, within themselves the belief is total that only those of European extraction have the understanding needed to handle the problems of the globe. Although newly appointed US National Security Advisor Susan Rice has all along adopted the Europeanist policy of seeing the globe as a theatre where only the intervention - often through the use of military force - of the NATO bloc can “improve” matters or “solve” problems, hopefully she will - along with her charismatic boss - appreciate the need to factor in the fact that only a composite of cultures makes sense in a globalised world. This would be in contrast to the relentless effort by the NATO powers to force-feed their own perceptions and prescriptions to the rest of the world. It is amusing how CNN or BBC (and these days that faithful ally of NATO, Al Jazeera) inevitably conflate the view of chancelleries within NATO as “international opinion”.
They ignore the fact that even within the NATO bloc,s ubstantial numbers of people reject the view that “a small group of white countries has the duty of ensuring global stability”, in the words of an EU official to her workmates. Most recently in the case of Syria and the reckless policy of armed intervention proposed by Paris and London, CNN and BBC ignore the fact that China, Russia and India oppose the Cameron-Hollande-Kerry policy of arming the “moderate” rebels. Either the three are being economical with the truth or they have IQs which are of a basic level. There is no way that Jabhat Al Nusra, which has inflitrated into the entire armed struggle against Bashar Assad, will not get its hands on any of the weapons supplied to “carefully vetted moderates” on the ground in Syria.
In their pell-mell rush to please Anksra, Doha and Riyadh, both France as well as the UK are on a path which will repeat the 1982 Ariel Sharon blunder of taking sides in a sectarian conflict. The impact will be for the NATO bloc to join Israel in the list of countries where Shia terror operates, a “gift” by Cameron, Hollande and Kerry to their populations that will last generations.
Susan Rice is among those “do-gooders” eager for intervention across the globe, of course in tandem with other NATO powers. She needs to do a spot of meditation and examine the tortured history of the immense continent from which her ancestors were brought in chains to the US. The fact is that outside intervention is almost always fraught with negative consequences, nowhere more so than in West Asia and North Africa, where since 2011,Hillary Clinton’s NGO-oriented policy has resulted in chaos and in the increasing dominance of Wahabbism over what may be called Classic Islam.
This moderate and forgiving theology was once all-powerful in Turkey, but is these days being replaced with Wahabbism, albeit of a lighter shade, thanks to R T Erdogan. The AKP during its ten years in power has moved Turkey away not only from the philosophy of Kemal Ataturk but the ethos of the Ottoman Empire,adopting instead a social and cultural vision that has much in common with that followed in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the two states where Wahabbism permeates policy, in the first case internally and in the second, externally. Susan Rice from the start backed Hillary Clinton in her activism and her Europeanist interventions, and now needs to step back and see what such policies have wrought.
http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=209026
Friday, June 07, 2013 - While Asian Americans have retained the culture of their home countries, the same is not always true of African Americans. Brilliant authors such as Alex Haley have pointed to the imperative of looking back into an often distant past so as to discover one’s roots, and since that period, there has been a trend within the vibrant African-American community in the US to look to Africa and rediscover their cultural foundations. The continent of Africa will certainly emulate Asia in becoming an engine of development, once the continent rids itself of the hangers-on of former colonial powers who join with the latter in squeezing their countries dry of resources. France in particular still uses its military to ensure compliance with the wishes of its own as well as other Euro corporates, although these days competition from China and now India is making it difficult for Paris to dominate as comprehensively as during the previous centuries. What French policymakers have accomplished across large swathes of the African elite has been to sponge away any trace of local culture and consciousness, replacing this with an ersatz “French” veneer.
Thus, local elites get addicted to things and to people French, ignoring their own traditions and people. The reality is that indigenous cultural tradition is core in the self-confidence needed to achieve, and the example of Asian-American students in the US (who outperform all others ,including often Jewish Americans) shows the importance of an awareness of one’s own cultural roots. Because Asian-Americans remain cognizant of their cultures, they excel in school and college, unlike other groups which have forgotten theirs Judging by what has appeared in the media about her, Susan Rice knows about as much of Africa’s rich cultural heritage and traditions as her boss Barack Obama seems to know about Kenya’s. Both have completely immersed themselves in the Europeanist traditions of the East Coast elite of the US, thereby failing to gain the advantage possible were they multi-cultural.
Earlier, Colin Powell demonstrated the same unquestioning fealty to Europeanist thought, formulating a foreign policy which accepted the axioms of the 19th century, which are that only Europeans have the ability - and indeed the duty - to run the rest of the world. To this day, a significant body of EU officialdom, joined by their counterparts in the so-called “Whote” world, believe that it is their responsibility to police and to discipline the rest of the world.
Although they indulge in superficial gestures of cognizance of global multiculturalism, such as Hillary Clinton going to an Indian restaurant or bolder colleagues even wearing a sari on occasion, within themselves the belief is total that only those of European extraction have the understanding needed to handle the problems of the globe. Although newly appointed US National Security Advisor Susan Rice has all along adopted the Europeanist policy of seeing the globe as a theatre where only the intervention - often through the use of military force - of the NATO bloc can “improve” matters or “solve” problems, hopefully she will - along with her charismatic boss - appreciate the need to factor in the fact that only a composite of cultures makes sense in a globalised world. This would be in contrast to the relentless effort by the NATO powers to force-feed their own perceptions and prescriptions to the rest of the world. It is amusing how CNN or BBC (and these days that faithful ally of NATO, Al Jazeera) inevitably conflate the view of chancelleries within NATO as “international opinion”.
They ignore the fact that even within the NATO bloc,s ubstantial numbers of people reject the view that “a small group of white countries has the duty of ensuring global stability”, in the words of an EU official to her workmates. Most recently in the case of Syria and the reckless policy of armed intervention proposed by Paris and London, CNN and BBC ignore the fact that China, Russia and India oppose the Cameron-Hollande-Kerry policy of arming the “moderate” rebels. Either the three are being economical with the truth or they have IQs which are of a basic level. There is no way that Jabhat Al Nusra, which has inflitrated into the entire armed struggle against Bashar Assad, will not get its hands on any of the weapons supplied to “carefully vetted moderates” on the ground in Syria.
In their pell-mell rush to please Anksra, Doha and Riyadh, both France as well as the UK are on a path which will repeat the 1982 Ariel Sharon blunder of taking sides in a sectarian conflict. The impact will be for the NATO bloc to join Israel in the list of countries where Shia terror operates, a “gift” by Cameron, Hollande and Kerry to their populations that will last generations.
Susan Rice is among those “do-gooders” eager for intervention across the globe, of course in tandem with other NATO powers. She needs to do a spot of meditation and examine the tortured history of the immense continent from which her ancestors were brought in chains to the US. The fact is that outside intervention is almost always fraught with negative consequences, nowhere more so than in West Asia and North Africa, where since 2011,Hillary Clinton’s NGO-oriented policy has resulted in chaos and in the increasing dominance of Wahabbism over what may be called Classic Islam.
This moderate and forgiving theology was once all-powerful in Turkey, but is these days being replaced with Wahabbism, albeit of a lighter shade, thanks to R T Erdogan. The AKP during its ten years in power has moved Turkey away not only from the philosophy of Kemal Ataturk but the ethos of the Ottoman Empire,adopting instead a social and cultural vision that has much in common with that followed in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the two states where Wahabbism permeates policy, in the first case internally and in the second, externally. Susan Rice from the start backed Hillary Clinton in her activism and her Europeanist interventions, and now needs to step back and see what such policies have wrought.
http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=209026
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