The error is that Westerners look at African religious artifacts as works of Art

3 Réponses vers “AFRICA ART , anthropologie, ethnologie, tribal art,”

Dr Viban Viban Ngo a dit :

The error is that Westerners look at African religious artifacts and call them works of art. They were not art works at all as Westerners perceive them until tourist curios surfaced in the 1960s. They were not supposed to be displayed. They were sacred replicas of real people, family heads, elders, or souls of dead people. In some tribes they were supposed to be fed, oiled and given liquid refreshment as if they were thirsty and famished persons. If you did this before going to the market you had luck and sold all your articles of trade with a super profit. The ancestors supposed to be lodged in the fetishes you oiled were the ones that gave you luck. If you were sick, you prayed to the ancestral spirits that were lodged in one of these fetishes. If they represented your dead elders, they had to be kept in a sacred shrine and not displayed or handled by anyone who was not initiated. It was the work of the consecrated priests or priestesses.

Now the problem is someone who had seen western art and tries to look as these fetishes or even displaying masks that were not meant to be appreciated as Western art works have different interpretations. He, as many other is inclined to call them "primitive" because they were not as polished as Chinese, Japanese or European 3d or 2d works of art. I read this in Ladislas Segy’s work African Sculpture Speak and many more. I think traditional African set up has no artistic elements as Western or Chinese sort of art. They are just unique and should not even be called art works but praying artifacts as one would talk of a Bible and Rosary in the Catholic Church.

In the same vein, that is from the African perspective, Christ represented on the cross is not a true form of art. May be to the Westerner, but to the Africans, it is not. The African may attribute that with the soul of Christ that may not even be displayed to remind man of the brutality of man in the past. To an untouched African, a Christ's crucifix contains the soul of Christ and may not be touched or even seen by a person who is not initiated; in this case a consecrated priest or priestess.

African art works that are remotely like those of European started in earnest in the 1950s when missionaries and some colonial teachers started teaching Africans to draw two-dimensionally and to carve as was the case in Zimbabwe with soap stones, the Congo with wood works, and West Africa in the 1950s. The 1950s will be when African started having what Europeans will call real art and those would not have excited Picasso who popularized them and made a fortune from imitating them. In this case Picasso was no original but a copyist who exaggerated what he had copied from Africans.

You will be surprised to know that some of the African religious fetishes or masks are only seen when taken out of Africa as they are taboo objects for reasons aforementioned. For example, some may not be touched by women or children or the non-initiated back in Africa.

Do Not Touch the Hornet’s Nest. Do not touch President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe

Objective commentary on Zimbabwe, Southern Cameroons, colonialism and survival of the fittest doctrine of Charles Darwin… by

Dr. Viban Viban Ngo.

“If there is hardship over in Zimbabwe it is deliberately caused by the very Caucasians who had ever controlled the lands, industries, lucrative mines and still do so as before.”



Early this week, I deplored us using French in this forum and I drew the havoc those who spoke that language as their native tongue did to a once peaceful country like Rwanda and many more. I also highlighted what role they played during the dirty Biafra-Nigerian internecine civil war. The energy they took to push that war forward because they had been promised the Gulf of Guinean oil and that in the River State of Nigeria the Ogoni peoples are fighting for that blinded their reasoning. Again, they are closing their eyes to our interminable pleas to tell their Cameroon Republic friends alone to leave us and their craving for oil is still blinding them. Now, we have to record these as our children will not be myopic as we or our parents were who went on signing bogus agreements at Fumban without an agenda and not knowing the people we were getting chummed up with, Cameroon Republic. Let me not go too far as all these are reiterated in sundry forms. The UNO, UK, France, USA, and the African Union are monitoring it unfolding minute by minutes.

History shows that Africans have never abused their economic and political powers. God earlier gave Africans power and they did not abuse it. Remember the Maurs (Moors), Africans. They could have marched right to Britain after defeating the Spaniards but they were not grabbing like the Europeans Caucasians after the doctrine of Charles Darwin of the survival of the fittest. The fittest, Europeans went every where and grabbed people and their lands and did not care a damn what became of them. Is it not appalling that the Catholic Church is forgiving Charles Darwin by supporting that man actually evolved from some sort of ape? We Africans who have suffered and are still for his so-called scientific research are disappointed.

Today the British glamorize this man by printing his head on their currencies. This Darwin planned to kill himself before his ORIGIN OF SPECIES was published as he doubted the truth of what he had written and did not want to face the negative reaction from Christian believers. The colonialists took his doctrine literally and it was not long before they regarded any non-white creature as inferior and closer to animals. With that belief instilled by Charles Darwin with the tacit support of Europeans governments, it was easier to enter Cameroon and other countries or regions with sophisticated Maxim guns and wipe our people defending their lands from invaders.

Do you still remember what the Germans did to the Heroros in the present Namibia, then called German South West Africa? They drove thousands to the deserts and they died of thirst and hunger just to take over their land? They caught their king, Hendrik Wibooi and hung him as a rebel. Do you rebel when you defend the land that had been yours since time immemorial? By implication, are you Southern Cameroons citizens who want your independence as you were since 1954 rebelling? That will lead me to comment on Comrade Robert Mugabe, the incumbent president of Zimbabwe that should rightly be called Monomatapa Republic.

The crime of President Robert Mugabe is that he had refused to allow a Caucasians-backed stooge to take over the reins of power so as to legitimize the lands that the British colonial government seized from the Shona and Ndebeles and gave to a handful of Britons who were brought from Britain to settle in the then Charterland, later known as Southern Rhodesia. The man who carved this out as his private property, Sir Cecil Rhodes used his company and resources. The settlers in Rhodesia subjected the locals they derogatorily called natives to slaves, took away their fertile lands, seized their livestock, killed some and forced them to live in near desolate tracts they gave the name reserves. These so-called reserves were rugged landscapes where motorized farming was impossible and were full of outcrops of sand stones and some had no running water. The natives there depended on wells for their water supplies. The sites of these reserves had been studied by the white agronomists and found to be less predictive, no minerals and poor soils for agriculture and that was why they dumped the Africans who were less or not humans.

Africans there were used as reserves for labor supply in whites-owned industries and domestic purposes. Even in reserves, the so-called natives were not allowed to own landed properties. They were restricted from planting tree crops that is, citrus, avocadoes, apples, vines, and even exploitable trees. It was one way to ascertain that the Africans depended on them as the slaves in Southern USA were made to depend on their white owners. They were not allowed to study beyond Standard Six level which you the senior cadres in The Southern Cameroons took for granted. If one was lucky to go beyond that as Joshua Nkomo, one had to go abroad to a country like South Africa where one was still subjected to extreme racism. If not, one had to escape to sympathetic countries like Tanzania, Ghana and you will remember that we had some who studies at Sasse. We also had some Darfurian who studied at St. Augustine’s College, Kumbo, and others at PSS Bali. Do they also help us now that we are in dire need? Stories have come to our ears of South African security men running after our boys seeking asylum in South Africa as economic migrants. Did Southern Cameroons elders call South Africans and Zimbabweans economic migrants when they were running away from persecution?

Nkomo was persecuted while studying in South Africa simply because he was allowed by a white widow to drive her in her late husband’s car. A black was not allowed to sit next to a white lady not to talk of sharing the same means of transport. The Jim Crow rule in the southern USA applied. Interested executives who could afford it should read the autobiography of Joshua Nkomo entitled NKOMO. It is a must for all our executives as we are likely to face what he and his cohorts went through under colonialism as you in The Southern Cameroons are being subjected to by Cameroon Republic.

When Africans are screaming that Mugabe be eliminated and that all the hardship is because of his bad governance, they tend to forgot what the British Government did when late Ian Smith declared the UDI and economic sanctions were imposed on that country. Africans were dying like flies. What measures did the British Government take? We Africans tend to forget so fast.

Mugabe is there because of his gorillas that fought and defeated Ian Smith’s government and unless they deem it so, no one can replace Mugabe. Mugabe is a guarantee to the security of Africans. They could have galloping inflation, did anyone write of this when the UDI was declared by Ian Smith? Africans are not new in undergoing these sorts of hardship. It was appalling under the UDI. Would we in The Southern Cameroons claim that we are better off under the autocratic ruler Paul Biya than under Dr. E.M L. Endeley or under Augustine N. Jua? Be honest!

President Robert Mugabe was one of the leading defendants of Africans when the rest had folded their hands as they are folding their hands and watching Southern Cameroons being trampled on by Cameroon Republic. When tomorrow will come, will some person stand up to destroy our leaders who have been having sleepless nights looking for strategies to liberate us with little of no shed of bloods as inscribed in our motto? President Yar Adua of Nigeria could be instrumental in broking the peace of The Southern Cameroons and Cameroon Republic but Nigerians never bother. They are only concerned with taping electricity from Cameroon Republic for their industries. All these can happen if there is peace next door. Of what good are Nigerians to us as our western neighbors? Tomorrow electricity that they badly need will be coming from the River Congo Basin via The Southern Cameroons. They would need the sanction of Southern Cameroons and they better pave their ways right now and not tomorrow. They should remember that we are there indefinitely and we better sing their praises instead of regretting their presence.

When the British Government was asked to invade Southern Rhodesia to impose majority rule when successive meetings in Europe could not change the hardened mind of Ian Smith to share power with Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe, what did the British Government of Prime Minister H. Wilson do? When Smith’s regime went about poisoning water wells in those African reserves and African-Rhodesians were dying from drinking it like flies where were these Westerners and Africans who are now sympathizing with the whites of Zimbabwe? When Ian Smith notorious scouts bombed refugees’ camps in Zambia and surrounding Southern Rhodesia and hundreds died and were buried in mass graves where were these Westerners and Africans who are now crying that Mugabe is killing his people with cholera? When it was suggested in the past that water be tapped from Lake Caribba to supply towns and villages, where were these very whites and Africans who now sympathize with the whites? The whites were the ones with their South African cohorts who argued that it would reduce the supply of water that run the hydro electric generators in the Carriba gorge that was in turn used in South African apartheid industries. Why do they levy the blames on Mugabe?

When Mugabe and his senior partner Joshua Nkomo were trying to reason with Ian Smiths, they were rounded up and imprisoned. How long was Nkomo in high security prison? Since Mugabe came in after the Lancaster Gate Agreement in 1979, how many whites, Rhodesian Caucasians did he imprisoned. How many did he kill? None. He forgave that son of Scotland and a British agent, Ian Smith and he lived in Zimbabwe as free as a bird till he died naturally. Was he ever tried for war crimes against African Zimbabweans? No.

When he, Ian Smith was ruling his Southern Rhodesia, all Caucasians had to be armed to the teeth and one never traveled without one’s AK47 clogged and readied for action. Again, how many Caucasians Zimbabweans have died since Robert Mugabe took over in the hands of African Zimbabweans? None. How many go around carrying their guns openly? None. The irony is that those Rhodesians who ran away when Robert Mugabe took over to Canada, USA, Australia and the UK have been applying to come back. Why? They had the highest standard of living in the world. One man with acres and acres of free land, massive mansions, strings of servants, and gold underneath their homes. Where else could they live like that today in this world? No where.


If there is hardship over in Zimbabwe it is deliberately caused by the very Caucasians who had ever controlled the lands, industries, lucrative mines and still do so as before. They are the ones who have deliberately blocked financial aids to Zimbabwe. Why because they are comfortable and only Africans are suffering. They stashed money abroad in the hope of strangling Robert Mugabe’s Government to submission so as to bring in a quisling like Morgan Tsvangirai who would not take away the land from them and give to their rightful owners, African Zimbabweans.


How many Caucasians Zimbabweans stood up against Ian Smith when he seized power from the British colonial government by coup d’etat? We all knew that he was gambling with the lives of British and other European settlers including Jews. They shied away because they really wanted to prove to the world that the Caucasian British were still as tough and 150,000 Caucasian settlers could rule 6,000,000 African Rhodesians. We over heard some British saying that it was true that one white was equal to eight Africans?

When Africans are bending low because of their fear of God, the whites conclude that it is because they are weak. Are you Africans, including you of Southern Cameroons really weak? Is the fact that you cannot raise your arm to strike a Cameroon Republic citizen when he is molesting you, stealing your resources a sign of weakness?


The stubborn stance of the whites even when Africans were literally dying under them was still the survival of the fittest doctrine of Charles Darwin that was being implemented. Perhaps a break to this will come if the socialist Chinese stand firm but they are proving to be more exploitative than even the extreme right wing capitalists that I have ever seen. They do not bother dealing with the autocratic government of The Sudan to get their oil from the Southern Sudan, my Equatoria. This was the name it was known when Sir Gordon was still the British Governor of The Sudan before he was beheaded by the Mahdi Arab fundamentalists as they still do today in Darfur.

The massacre in Darfur does not deter the Chinese and some Europeans and North American firms from investing in the oil industry in the Sudan. Who put money before human lives and even God? You see that given opportunities, some Europeans and Arabs could still revert to slavery and slave trade. Some have not equated Africans to themselves. Africans are still viewed in some quarters as inferior noble savages. Progress of Africans is still interpreted as maverick achievements and that is very sad indeed when we know what the man from African has contributed to the technological and economic grown of the world. On account of the grabbing attitude of the Chinese, The African Union may have to monitor China and speak with one voice against blind investment and exploitation.

Many Africans are opening their doors to the Chinese settlers even you in The Southern Cameroons. They, Chinese must agree to be Africans and not to transfer all their gains back to China as once did the Indians in Uganda before Idi Amin Dada got infuriated and repatriated most of them.

If Africans remain fragmented and pretend that they had been made so by the Europeans and are to stay sacrosanct they may be in for surprises. Having advanced this point, I am not in for the union of Cameroon Republic and The Southern Cameroon State and that of Morocco and the Arab Saharwi Republic, former Western Sahara where the formers sit on the later countries as slaver dealer on his slaves. You will recall that one of the reasons advanced by the USA, and the UK for not sending their nationals to fight the Rwanda Government Forces (RGF) and Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) of President Paul Kagame of Rwanda was that it was in Africa and Africans had better defended their people. When it was the First and Second World Wars did they say that Africans better remain home not to defend France against the belligerent Germans? Are Africans still looked down on as very inferior apes by Caucasians in the 21st Century? Is Charles Darwin’s doctrine of the survival of the fittest still operational?

Their priority was Yugoslavia, being white that was being torn apart to enfeeble communism that had ever been on their way. Having said this, I am not going to go down in history that we should unite with peoples or countries that will turn round to be more imperialistic and exploitative than the former colonialists. I am referring to Cameroon Republic that is using the power of the barrels with the tacit support of another colonial country with the worst colonial records in Africa, France.

Freely Thinking on Housing and Bush or Brush Fires in the USA and Australia

Freely Thinking on Housing and Bush or Brush Fires in the USA and Australia

“Once a house is built, it has to protect its occupants and not them protecting the house.”

Could someone tell me why the entire wild brush or bush fires are ever concentrated in California and Australia? Africa that is clad with bush and jungles and has got climatic similarities with Australia and California do not cry like this every year. Have the inhabitants of these regions ever heard of clearing fire paths every spring? That is done in Europe and by most African villages and they do not “cry of fire again” every year with the lost of several lives, properties and livestock.

Have peoples in these regions ever thought of having sprinklers surrounding their properties so that in the event of fire out break being fanned by the wind they could be turned on? Have they ever considered building fire proofed houses? Is there any reason why Californians and Australians should use wood for construction when they could use concrete and tiles instead of shingles for their roofing? These are fire proofed materials. Is there any reason why people build in isolations in wooded or bush areas when they know that their homes are flammable? Is there any reason why California whose climate is not inclement should build like those person up in the north where there are extremes of temperatures? People are better off using local materials in their areas for construction as that is the way nature distributes resources and would protect those who make good use of them.

Do you ever hear the French and Swiss and British crying of massive fires as in America and California above all yearly? Do you hear these cases in Brazil? Why is it that it only affects those areas peopled by Anglo-Saxons who left Europe and have thrown away their tradition of building solid fire proofed houses? Why is it that it affects the affluent societies and not the poor? One person told me that constructing fire proofed houses in North America would be so expensive that no one would be able to afford them. Why is it that the haves build them? Most high rising penthouses are fire proofed and these are mostly afforded by the very rich.

The irony is that in countries like Zimbabwe and South Africa that are poorer, fire proofed houses are mandatory and they even have concrete tiles and concrete walls that are impenetrable by the most violent of bush fires. This goes with houses in the Middle East particularly in Israel where a mortar could set houses on fire at any given time. Do North Americans and Australians have to wage a war with some Moslem fundamentalists before they could change their designs and construction of houses that could withstand fire and other natural hazards?

In a country like Zimbabwe, steel roofing is cheaper than wood and no amount of fire could burn them down. Besides they use concrete tiles that could be copied by all around the world. Sand is so plentiful and Africans could set up industries to produce such material from the Sahara and Namib deserts sand for export. Dry walls could be replaced by concrete walls. These are feasible but one person has to start. We are tired of hearing death caused by bush or electric fires or lightning every year. Are you not tired? You should if you are human and care for others.

This may not be the case with others. I hear conservatives shaking their heads that my comments could put a dent in the pickets of Rona, Rena, Home Depots and other suppliers of flimsy housing materials in North American building industries. Could regions like Australia and North America not copy traditional houses in New Zealand, Austria, Italy, Southern Africa etc.? I do not mean shacks that sprawl the suburbia of Johannesburg and Cape Town. That should be a shame of the African successive African governments that took over from the racist Caucasian apartheid regimes.

When people talk of houses in North America you will think of solid concrete or brick or stone houses, the sorts of houses you will fine in the suburb of Enugu, Abuja, Geneva, and Rome, Foncha Street at Bamenda or St. Augustine’s Junction, Kumbo. They look flashy but the majority of them are simply paper walls, clad with flammable plastic materials and timber roofs clad with flammable shingles. The life span of most of these is just only ten years before they start falling apart. That is good for the capitalist economy but are buyers so low and naive that they would not want to get the best out of the money? They do but the building industries are monopolistic and there are fewer options. On account of that, the housing market is not competitive and that is too bad for an apparently developed economy.

Do you know why most North Americans will not at this time buy their own cars or vehicles they had been used to since 1914? It is because they were not worthy of the money they paid for. They turn to European and Japanese cars and everyone is panicky and flying in executive jets to go and ask their governments to bail them out of the falling demand for their badly designed vehicles. That is still not the right way to do it. The right way is to ask the buyers what they want and improve upon the products instead of dumping on them as was the case in the past with the assumption that they would continue buying willy-nilly.

Let me not be carried away by my illustration with motor industries and that is a different topic for our next discussion. The joists, principles, doors, frames of houses are sometimes made of paper and wood with padding of insulation materials that are still flammable. Why could houses not be built to last forever so that next generations invest in other things other than houses? The few you see are for the very rich or those built by the first European settlers in North America. What will the present generation leave for the next? Would it be the same poor techniques and materials? How do they expect those houses to be speared from man-made or natural disasters as outbreaks of fire when they are not well constructed and fortified against these calamities? The inhabitants cry every year and no changes are made in the designs and material for construction of houses for the ordinary peoples. Has a year ever bypassed without houses being burnt down in California? Be honest with me and tell me the truth Mr. Mayor of Los Angeles?

Sincerely speaking, building companies are so selfish and go into the field with the assumption that we know better than the people who buy the houses we build. Is that not the same haughty attitude of the automobile industries in North America? Why will you diplomats and students after your services in North America not buy North American cars to take back to your countries in Africa, Europe or the Middle East? It is because they are badly designed. They will not like to hear me utter this constructive criticisms but I have motor mechanic experience and can challenge them. The Toyota was the American jeep the Japanese copied and modified. The Japanese had their training in German and used those skills or knowledge well in their design. Toyota vehicles entered the US market through the back door and are toppling the US and Canadian GMC, Chrysler, etc. These companies are not moronic. They know the answers but still have the feeling that they are far away and insulated from the other manufactures in the world and that the time is still. Are they right in this century?

When you hear of the USA bankrupt, most of it owed to loans banks give to purchase flimsy houses that if left standing un-attended to collapse after a couple of years or are consumed by fire? Through such houses are good for consumerism but when there is a U-turn in the economy for the worst, do we not think that better design are thought of and implemented? I lived in a house in England that had been standing there for five hundred years. You would never get a good number of houses that last so long in North America unless you have to patch them and rebuild year in year out. Once a house is build it has to protect you and not you protecting the house. Why? It is so because flimsy ones are good for demand but when we are getting poorer and no longer controlling two-third of the world economy, would it not signal that you change they way you do things? We better keep our houses in order or we die or bank these for our children. What is the opportunity cost here?
.

When there are fire damages the insurance companies come in and pay hefty sums of money. Is that good business? The fact that there are out breaks of fire is good business for insurance companies. That is sad as ideally all houses should be fire proofed, and provided with solid bunkers that are equally fire and bullet or bomb proofed. As in Switzerland, they should have food supplies and water that that could keep occupants at least for one month in case of out breaks of fires, wars, or other unforeseen contingencies. Are Americans and Australians prepared for all these? They are far from the center of the world and have forgotten how to live with nature but artificial glamorous life that provides no protection to the environments and their homes. Could they take a new leaf after reading my write up? “Naught,” they will say that it is revolutionary and if they change they would be kowtowing to a man from a Third World Country and that does not augur well with their high status. Do not laugh but sympathize with them.

Dr. Viban Viban Ngo.


Post Script: Readers who want  to know more on this topic are recommended to read my article'Plants' Intelligence' below.

COMMENTING ON AFRICAN APPELLATION AND COLOR

YOU MUST PASS THIS MESSAGE TO AFRICANS, AFRICAN EUROPEANS AND AFRICAN AMERICANS.

COMMENTING ON AFRICAN APPELLATION AND COLOR.

Why don't you guys address yourselves as Africans? Why do you stick to the racist color of Charles Darwin of the lighter your color the more of a human being you are? Peoples from the continent of Africa are of all sorts of color of the spectrum and for that reason should be called Africans and not referred to by the color of their skin. There are Caucasian Africans who are not black in complexion... such as, peoples of the Horn of Africa, Arabs who were born and live in Africa, Choa Arabs, Fula, the San people of Southern Africa who could by pass you for Chinese. The last group were referred to in the past by the racist imperialists as Bushmen. Dont we Africans want to use a more engulfing term "Africans", that is persons born in the continent of Africa or of African descent to be known and called AFRICANS?


I am just thinking aloud as an Africanist who is interested in making us advance and be united instead of being fragmented where others are called BLACK and others AFRICANS out of naivety?


Europeans who had the media in the days of darkness could apply any terms to designate us, now that we have that power media in our hands, why can we tell our children and the rest of the world the right way they should address us? We are Africans no matter our gender, religious inclination, wherever we live in the world, be it in Russia, Iraq, Britain, South America, Caribbean, North America, Australia or back in mother Africa. You do not call SE Asians, YELLOWS. Do you? Why do you think it is right to call people who come from the continent of Africa BLACKS? Are we still accepting our false inferiority the slave traders and colonialists enforced on us so as to feel no regret when enslaving or colonizing lower class peoples of Africa? I know you will tell me that slaves also came from Indian subcontinent. Their number was ,minuscule compared to yours, Africans and that support to use the term Africans does not hold.


Dear author of the article below and others, there are some Caucasians, Chinese, Indians, Arabs... who were born in Africa and had never been out of Africa. Do you want to exclude them from Africa by using the instrument the racist colonialists and slave peddlers introduced donkey years ago because that was instilled in your heads? We got to upgrade our appellation and the correct term is AFRICANS. Anyone who has African blood in him or her, be he yellow, red, white, tar-blue black, light skinned, born in African or is a descendant of African parentage wherever in the world should be called African.


Some of those you call blacks could be bypassed for Caucasians. Are we fair in our choice of the word BLACK when slavery that denigrated Africans to the bottom of the races had been abolished or are we simply being naive? From my perspective when you call me black when I am light-skinned I see you as a color blind person yearning for slavery and colonialism to re-visit Africa. You are longing to be called Nigger. Can we stoop that low in the present century? Did you see what race and color did to Rwanda in 1994? Did you see what it did to the world during the Second World War? Did you see what race and color did to peoples in Southern Africa under apartheid? Did we as African of all colors not learn a thing from the history of racism? Why do you want to adhere to color when you already know scientifically why we have different colors and that all of us living in other continents and islands once are from parents who emigrated from Africa?


How do you long for African Unity and when it comes to living together you start calling others yellow, red, white, black, light-skinned, tanned, swarthy and so so as to make that unity difficult? Let us wake up. For instance, President Barack Obams of the USA is African-American and not BLACK. If you insist on calling him black you are myopic and require an eye operation to correct your eyesight.
Dr VIBAN VIBAN NGO

--- On Sun, 8/2/09, Dr. Valentine Ojo wrote:

From: Dr. Valentine Ojo
Subject: [Naijanet] FW: BLACK HISTORY IS WORLD HISTORY!
To: AfricanTalk@yahoogroups.com, Africare-Newpublications@yahoogroups.com, Edo-Ciao@yahoogroups.com, Nidoa@yahoogroups.com, Naijanet@yahoogroups.com, Naijaintellects@googlegroups.com, TalkNigeria@yahoogroups.com, "'Voice Of Uganda'" , Yorubas-Community@yahoogroups.com
Cc: "''USA Africa Dialogue Series'"
Date: Sunday, 8 February, 2009, 2:05 AM

Culled from Luv4self_Network@ yahoogroups. com
[mailto:Luv4self_Network@ yahoogroups. com]

From: On Behalf Of Runoko Rashidi
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 1:18 AM

Subject: BLACK HISTORY IS WORLD HISTORY!


By Marvin X


Before the Earth was
I was
Before time was
I was
you found me not long ago and
called me Lucy
I was four million years old
I had my tools beside me
I am the first man
call me Adam
I walked the Nile from Congo to Delt a
a 4,000 mile jog
BLACK HISTORY IS WORLD HISTORY

I lived in the land of Canaan
before Abraham, before Hebrew was born
I am Canaan, son of Ham
I laugh at Arabs and Jews
fighting over my land
I lived in Saba, Southern Arabia
I played in the Red Sea
dwelled on the Persian Gulf
I left my mark from Babylon to Timbuktu
When Babylon acted a fool, there was me
I was the fool
When Babylon fell, that was me
I fell
BLACK HISTORY IS WORLD HISTORY

I was the first European
call me Negrito and Grimaldi
I walked along the Mediterranean
from Spain to Greece
Oh, Greece!
Why did you kill Socrates?
Why did you give him the poison hemlock?
Who were the gods he introduced
corrupting the youth of Athens?
They were my gods, black gods from Africa
Oh, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle
Whose philosophy did you teach
that was Greek to the Greeks?
Pythagoras, where did you learn geometry?
Democritus, where did you study astronomy?
Solon and Lycurgus, where did you study law?
In Egypt, and Egypt is Africa
and Africa is me
I am the burnt face, the blameless Ethiopian
Homer told you about in the Iliad
Homer told you about Ulysses, too,
a story he got from me.
BLACK HISTORY IS WORLD HISTORY

I am the Chinese
China has my eyes
I am the Aboriginal Asian
Look for me in Viet Nam, Cambodia & Thailand
I am there, even today, black and beautiful
BLACK HISTORY IS WORLD HISTORY

I used to travel to Americ a
long before Columbus
came to me asking for directions
Americo Vespucci
on his voyage to America
saw me in the Atlantic
returning to Africa
America was my home
Before Aztec, Maya, Toltec, Inca & Olmec

I was here
I came to Peru 20,000 years ago
I founded Mexico City
See my pyramids, see my cabeza
colosal
in Vera Cruz and Yucatan
that's me
I am the Mexican
for I am mixed with all men
and all men are mixed with me
I am the most just of men
I am the most peaceful
who loves peace day and night
Sometimes I let tyrants devour me
sometimes people falsely accuse me
sometimes people crucify me
but I am ever returning
I am eternal, I am universal
Africa is my home
Asia is my home
Americas is my home
BLACK HISTORY IS WORLD HISTORY

Commenting on the Origin of Rap Music

COMMENTING ON THE ORIGIN OF RAP MUSIC IN USA as having it roots in Scottish bars and not IN AFRICA and Lady Wiiba Bin of Nso’.



In Africa Rap Music was like an open window of freedom of speech in a house where such was censured.

We will dispute this theory as slaves were not allowed to even learn the proper language (Europhone) of the slave masters (Whites), the only book they were grudgingly allowed to own was the Holy Bible. They were forced to keep their distance from their white masters and mistresses who regarded them as animals and were ever suspicious of them. There was not cordial relationship whereby they could be taught poetry, rap and other disciplines. The reasoning was that the language of the Caucasians was like a tool for liberation which if Africans mastered; they were going to use it as a platform to stand on to demand their liberty. Therefore to talk of Africans Americans having learned rap from Caucasians of the past is utterly unfounded and farfetched.

Slaves were constantly transferred from one plantation or factory to another and never allowed to have steady families that you take for granted today. Slave masters deprived them of their languages (Africaphone) they brought from Africa as a way of breaking them down so that they could not secretly plan a coup against their slave masters. They were raped of their African names and enforced Greco –Judea -Roman names that meant nothing to them.

However, one thing is clear, run-away slaves kept their African traditions or singing and rapping and would sing their songs and rapped. Those who could not run away as in the southern USA, when given the least time for breaks away from their hawkish masters who treated them as animals they improvised and reminisced entertainment as back in mother Africa and one of these was rapping. Remember that it was alleged that one white was equal to eight Africans. It tells you how low Africans were looked down upon. We are looking into history now as African activists fought hard with blood, sweat and tears and they are marching forward with the first African American President Elect, Barack Obama. The past is shelved and a bright future of all races around one table is in the horizon.

Furthermore, prior to the blossoming of raps of recent in the West, rap music was and had been in Africa since time immemorial. Those readers who have done Ethnomusicology know that African history was essentially oral tradition and one way to pass it from generation to generation was via raps and sometimes folklore narration. It was therefore passed with ease and easily recapitulated by listeners since most of the composers injected in them natural rhyming schemes.

Those of you from Nso’ Kingdom in Western Africa will recall the remarkable heroine, Lady Wiiba Bin. She was a royal composer, singer and rapper. Lady Bin never ever entered the four walls of a Western class room and was not fluent in English till she left this earth. She had never heard of American raps, yet she had been rapping in the fifties in her native Nso’ Kingdom when Americans were exporting a different kind of music to Africa. Do you sincerely believe that she learned her marvelous chants and rapping from the Scottish bars in Scotland and translated them into Lam Nso’? Romors circulate by some Whites who always want to get credit for all that sells, that rap started by Scots in their bars. Can an Nsonite really buy this? We are not denying the fact that Northerners did not compose and wrote sonnets. Remember that mankind is one and we do not see even what we call primitive communities not composing beautiful poetry and rapping. So Northerner, Caucasians also innately rapped as did Southerners, Africans and others.

You will recall that traditional African set up was not book-learned; even hitherto and one way of passing information is by word of mouth. That is why the phone business is perhaps the fastest growing industry after brewery in say West Africa. For those of you who understand Lingala spoken in central Africa, Nso’, Tiv, Hausa in North Nigeria and Niger, Yoruba, Ibo, and Shona, languages the colonialists derogatorily called dialects, griots (street singers) who sang the praises of VIPS, and criticize certain development in the communities used rap. They covered their ears as they rapped current affairs, epic stories and so on. Where the local authorities did something that was disputed, elderly women rapped in the public to demonstrate their disapproval. With rapping one had all the freedom to criticize, suggested solutions and even abuse and he or she was never prosecuted. In Africa Rap Music was like an open window of freedom of speech in a house where such was censured. This was before Europeans came to Africa with evil or good intentions, slave trade and colonialism. Rap is still very strong in the traditional Africa set ups. I challenge readers to visit central Africa, western and the horn of Africa with a tape to listing to traditional rap of those who are not educated in the Western sense of education. Their sort of rapping is unique and you are going to connect with the rap as in down town clubs in Chicago, LA, NY, Georgia, etc. and in Europe.

Instead it should be stated that the Scots learned from the Maurs (Africans) who were taken to Scotland to serve the gentries, lords, kings and queens before the dreadful episode in human history of Africa slave trade ever started (for those interested readers who want to be in terms with me, read the biography of Francis Drake, the official pirate of Queen Elizabeth I. These Maurs sometimes written Moors were already brought in to the UK, particularly by the Scottish sailors before the dreadful Queen Elizabeth I started her ban on miscegenation and stop the importation of Africans into the UK and falsely claiming that Africans who were essentially domestics and musicians were to pollute and debase the purity of the Anglo-Saxons. Was that true? That is a different story but I have brought this to put a period when Africans were respected as excellent musicians in Scotland and the Scots might have copied from these Maurs rapping techniques.

If one is linking the passing of rap by the Scots it had to be disputed for the following facts: If the Scots who immigrated to the USA and became slavers might have passed rapping to the slaves and this is disputed. We doubt this for “superior Whites” were not even allowed to teach the slaves music or any other knowledge that would make them be respectable and get out of their alleged animal forms. For those still doubting this, see the outline on the breaking down of a slave by Willie Lynch in H.J. Harris book: IS AMERICA RACIST? 2008. Also, Africans were used to epic poetry as in Francis Babe's rendering: AFRICAN MUSIC: A PEOPLE'S ART (1975).

Many persons had even been trying to dispute the fact that African Americans did not teach European Caucasians rock and roll. The fact is that if African Americans were not there, there would not have been any rock and roll that we take its proliferation now for granted. The white music was essentially country music and classic stuff that is often associated with the slaves from Africa who ended up in Persia that later on spread to Europe and gave rise to classical music. That is a different story. Many a great Caucasians musicians as Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, …do admit that they are indebted to Africans for the music they play, introduced in North America by African Americans, descendants of erstwhile African slaves. If rock-and-roll is innately African, why would you doubt that rap is not inherently African or came from Africa? Europeans did write and recite poetry and old literate as Chaucer, etc, support this fact, and then it was not a way of life as in Africa that was essentially not book-learned as in European communities.

The truth is that many a Caucasians have invented lots of things (so did many an Africans and other races) and we give them credit for these achievements. Those are facts. When it comes to rapping as rapped by African Americans it originated from Mother Africa. Let no one not try to take away this from Africans by uplifting spurious underpinnings. Watch out for those as Dr. J. Watson who last year (2008) told lies to feel good when with his neurosis and nervousness as once stated by Adolf Hitlers without a shred of evidence that the IQ of whites was higher than that of Africans and their descendants. That is a different story that was hotly debated and his allegation refuted and filed. Whatever the case, let no one of whatever color try to bamboozle Africans in this century by falsely putting them down as was in the past without scientific proofs or concrete evidence. Scientifically, all human being are the same and there is no question of one being superior to the other. If the first man created or evolved, call it what you like in Africa on whose podium would you stand to stated that the first tradition as rap came from outside Africans and not from Africans? I have admitted other inventions or tradition but when it comes to music and a plethora of musical instruments, no matter how “primitive”, they first originated in Africa.

Viban Viban Ngo, PhD

HUMAN SACRIFICES

Dear Moses,

I never read comments twice in the forum but I did this for your reply per human sacrifices. Many travelogues on Africa in the past were written with exaggerations out of all proportion so as to cause sensations and woo naive readers to buy those books. Also some men of God did that when they wanted to gain sympathy and supports for their adventures in Africa.  That was how they raised cash for their missions. Today some NGOs and even Unesco Unicef.. still do this to play on the sentiment of humankind and raise the needed cash. Remember the 'Dark Continent' of Henry Stanley the British born naturalized American journalist in central Africa employed then to work for King Leopold of the Belgian peoples? He popularized the phrase.  Was the continent really 'dark' literary? His dark stood for lack of information about Africa (see my work: http://vibanflagbooksinternatinal.blogspot.ca/2013/05/origins-of-africa-place-names-newly.html.) 

Remember the Dark Ages of Europe? It was too dark because there was no information about Europe to the rest of the world. 'Dark' had nothing to do with the color of African population, soil, flora or fauna as applied in the past to some parts of Africa. (Also, read my work entitled Origins of African Place Names (2009). Now we know but some jejune journalists still use that term today as their way to derogate Africa [as to some, what is light colored is better than what is black]. I will cite from Morel's Black Man's Burden (1923: 9) to further elucidate this point:

"The figure on my canvas [he meant his frontispiece with Africans carrying rocks on their heads-my italic] is the African, the man of sorrows in the human family....And the reason he alone is represented there is that the question of 'native races' and their treatment by the white races, centres henceforth upon the Black man, as the African is called, although few Africans are wholly black. The statement needs amplifying, perhaps." I have succinctly done this for you (supra). 

I would like to tell you that there is not a single community on earth that never practiced human sacrifices at one stage of their existence. It is even happening as you are reading this commentary! If you dig into the etymology of 'Britain' you will see that the Greek gave that name because of their savage sacrifices of humans. It was bloody, brutal, and merciless in those days. 

You will also see that in the past when some anthropologists or ethnographers were not putting sand in skulls of Africans and measuring the sizes of their craniums to determine their idiocies, they were coming forward with all sorts of bogus theories to substantiate their primitiveness. This is not fiction but go to their old journals and you will be shocked reading their 'scientific' findings. That was racism of naivety.  Do you know the reason? It was because they were neurotic and ever wanted to get something to prove that they were on top when everybody was the same. It was a common practice in the past when looking for reasons to  substantiate racial superiority of one group of persons over another that never was and will never be. 

If you are white it is because nature so loved you that it gave you that color to survive in the cold or temperate zones. If you are black it is also the love of Mother Nature, call it God that gave you that to enable you to survive in the very hot open air climes of the tropics. Your color or your shape has nothing to do with your intellectual vivacity or status as a biological being. We will be awry to confine this to these our brothers, some of whom have no clue as to the origin of man on earth and how all of us are related to one another and emanated from Mother Africa. 

When it comes to economy and survival, some persons on earth could put others down so as to have the lion's share of the cake. There are men who have put women down in the past and even as your are reading this so as to ride them like donkeys,lackeys. Many still do at the time of writing in the Middle East, Africa and in other communities even in North America. Why do women not get the same salaries as men even when some of them work harder than men? It is sexual discrimination just for some men to sit on top as they had done before. 

Do you know that apartheid masters preached that you blacks were so inferior and cannot even govern yourselves. I remember Mr. Ian Smith the UDI Prime Minister of Rhodesia, now Dzimbabwe (correct spelling) called Zimbabwe said that in a 1000 years no African would rule that country. It might have been his attitude that framed the mind of old President Robert Mugabe to have the feeling that if he gives up power the Northerners will return to dominate Africans, Southerners again as in the past.  To Mr. Smith, they were not fit as they were inferior. Are you all that inferior? How long did it take the Greeks to figure out the democratic government? Who were the first teachers of Greek philosophers whose doctrine influenced the Western thinking? Africans! How long did it take Europe to wipe out imperial dictatorship vestiges of which are still extant?

Some sacrifices still take place today we call mercy killing, euthanasia. It is sometimes sacrifices as the offering of people on gods' alters in the past some of which we read in the Holy Bible. Many of you did not long ago when tasting the first yams harvested in SE Nigeria and there are still isolated killing of albinos or others for their parts to be sacrificed to gods to achieve certain things in life in Tanzania, East Africa. These peoples have made the earth their heaven and are not convinced by any counselling or religious doctrines as Thou shall not kill of the Ten Commandments. 

I once read a story of mercy killing that most of you do today called euthanasia or abortion. It was the killing of a sick aged Indian, you now call "First Nation People". The father of these two Indians in Hudson Bay was ill and the men dug his grave and put him in it and strangled him to death with the use of rawhide pulled from opposite directions. When he died they covered his dead body with dirt. Past stories of this genre from SE Asia, Africa and South America will make you consider the killing today of those they consider as not sympathetic with them by the infamous ISIS, Boko Haram, Al Shabaab, Al Qaeda as a child's play. What of your Nazi killing during the Second World War in attempt to weed the world of inferior peoples: Jews, homosexuals, the intellectuals, the physically and mentally impaired, etc.. and have a super Aryan race. Many were gazed or destroyed by other conceivable ways many of you know if not read the well researched and Britten work of Roberts Weistrich: Hitler and the Holocaust (2001) with the only critique being that he did not compare the sacrifices of the Jewry with those of  Africans during the Slave Trade and Slavery. Those were human sacrificed

In the modern killing we euphemistically call euthanasia, injections or tablets are given to accelerate the death of a person who rather than commit suicide themselves, die naturally opt for a rotten medical person to perform that act for them. In another case that happens every minute on earth a live fetus is killed as weed or parasite from parents, women who do not want to bring such children up for all sorts of reasons. We call this abortion. Literally millions are killed that way year in year out for economic, health, family planning and other reasons beyond the scope of this missive. The defenseless fetus is sacrificed so that the mother can be free from economic hardship or responsibilities or remain youthful and still have dalliance, voluptuous bliss. She is applauded by some family planners who defend her that her body belongs to her and she could do anything she wants with it. That is their definition of human right. Others applaud as abortion helps to reduce what they see as overpopulation of the world with less food, water and wealth to go round, an archaic doctrine of Malthus when technology of food production and others were still at their infancy. To them, reduction of global population by such vice which they do not accept as vice, evil gives man quality life. Remember that to them, the world is Heaven and after life on earth there is nothing else but worthless speculations. Agnostics even subscribe money to trumpet this message on your ears on international media. That is freedom, human sacrifice of those who believe that after their death life ends and that there is no Heaven or even God. They are soulless peoples, they believe.

Still in the case of the Hudson Bay tribe referred to above, they would  also eat their babies rather than to starve to death as reported in a book called Le Voyageur Francais in 1748. Let me not go far, in 1884, two sailors Dudley and Stephens were shipwrecked off the British coast because their ship was blown away from their trajectory and were away for 24 days and they ran short of provision. They were eventually rescued by another passing boat. They had had with them a little skipper boy whom they decided to kill him to eat rather than to starve to death. When they were rescued they gave their account of the missing chap and were arrested and prosecuted to be hung. There were outcries from the British public to release the men. The case landed on the desk of  Sir William Vernon Harcourt Esq, a Cambridge trained no-nonsense public lawyer who was then the Home Secretary of the UK Government. He would not yield but owing to formidable pressure the men were not hung and lived to die a normal death but in prison. To kill another innocent persons so as to save your life is what the two sailors did and what many do today to fetuses they do not consider as living things. Are we allowed to kill others so as to live? That my 'amicus' was and is human sacrifice. 

You will see that biologically a rat is the same as a man and an elephant but would a man stand on a rostrum to tell those creatures that he is better than them? That is what some Caucasians  did in the past. Remember before they actually believed that if you were fair-skinned you were more of a human and better off than a dark-skinned person. Were they right? It did help them to exploit mercilessly dark-skinned peoples as slaves who gave some the wealth they are luxuriating in today. It is now history and we do not want to exhume the bitter past if not when the dark-skinned person would have their turn no one would be safe on earth. The hatchet has been buried and sealed with concrete.  Now that we know that color of the skin is nature's way of protecting us based on the latitude we are in, do we still believe that our color is superior to that of the person next door or in the other continent? Hope you have been reading Dr. Thomas Ozoji's write ups, you will learn more particularly the piece he wrote to refute Dr. Watson's allegation that Africans' (black people's) IQ was low. Such a person will say that President Barack Obama's IQ is that of a maverick. Thanks for the good piece.
 Viban Viban Ngo.



Date: Friday, 23 January 2009
From: Moses Ebe Ochonu


I am a little confused. Are we discussing human sacrifice as actual acts of ritual or power or as a discursive category of othering? I fear that we are not approaching the issue methodologically and raising questions about how and why human sacrifice was/is an appealing rhetoric of othering--operationalized by both Europeans and Africans. Does the fact that human sacrifice make cameo appearances in art, colonial discourse, and local legend answer our inquiries on the subject or should it raise new methodological concerns about how this rhetoric is deployed and why and for whom discourses of human sacrifice function.

I am not suggesting that human sacrifice qua human sacrifice is not a historical or anthropological reality. But how do we separate the prevalent discourses on it, found everywhere in the colonial library and in colonized African legends, from actual acts of ritual sacrifice that perhaps deserve a separate analytical examination.

I have encountered several colonial accounts and claims of head hunting and its supposed association with certain African groups. But on close examination, most of these tales emerge as familiar, convenient ethnographic renderings of that mysterious, unsearchable zone of African symbolic life, the aim of which is to simplify African universes and render them in a lexicon that suits European cultural palates and legitimizes colonial social actions. Indeed, the colonial ethnographic desire to "know" everything about African colonial peoples produced and helped fabricate social practices and universes that would appear strange even to Africans that are purportedly associated with them.

At the same time, I have confronted African tales and legends--collected, of course, by the etymologically hegemonic colonial ethnographer--that advance fantastic tales of head hunting and human sacrifice. The Africans who told these stories were often using them to curry favor from colonial anthropologists by confirming prepackaged Eurocentric perspectives on them and their group. They also advanced these legends to pad and burnish their masculine resumes, hoping that that would position them well in a colonial system obsessed about working with strong African men. For their part, the colonial ethnographers they had what they wanted--a reaffirmation of standard narratives of African otherness.

Everyone went home happy, so to say, and we contemporary scholars are left to clean up and sort out the methodological mess, trying to sift through strategic colonial social communications and the realities that they purport to describe or analyze.

I urge that we guard against being seduced by the mere existence or prevalence of sources--secondary or primary--on human sacrifice in Africa so that we can ask the right methodological questions of this corpus of human sacrifice writings.

Are you as thrilled as I was listening with open mouth President Barack Obama's inaugural speech. I have appended it here for you dear friends and readers.

OBAMA: My fellow citizens:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because we the people have remained faithful to the ideals of our forebears, and true to our founding documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land — a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America — they will be met.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted — for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things — some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions — that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act — not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions — who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them — that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account — to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day — because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control — and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart — not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our founding fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort — even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West — know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us today, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment — a moment that will define a generation — it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter’s courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends — hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is the source of our confidence — the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed — why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

"Let it be told to the future world ... that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet (it)."

America, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.