Saint Cornelius,

You are right in detecting my crossing the river somehow without giving any 
clues. I am aware of the concentration on Gambian issues, and I have placed 
upon my unhonourable self the task to have to say something about the last 
elections and what I think went wrong...so dipped in those thoughts that 
everything else had to be placed on hold. Perhaps I have become 
schizophrenic -like Mauricio. Yes, and the continued carnage in Iraq - a 
most tragic case of imperial power projection.
So much for Auntie Ingrid Nyamko.

Cheers,
momodou


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Cornelius Edward Hamelberg" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2006 7:16 PM
Subject: Re: Sabuni and FGM


> Momodou ( or St. Sidibeh if you prefer)
>
> Please permit me to respond to the first two paragraphs of your epistle 
> plus the first sentence of your third paragraph, ending with the words " 
> no tangible results"
>
> I'll attend to the serious matters of your other verses later - just for 
> the record.
>
> About first names , I was only joking. Everyone says Saddam, Yahya, the 
> Honourable this and the Honourable that until you are tempted to say that 
> honourable Mo Fo..YOU KNOW THE KIND I MEAN...Mo..
>
> In one of his last interviews as head of State  in South Africa  F. W. de 
> Klerk was asked how he felt , being the last White man that will ever be 
> president of South Africa. Mr. de Klerk said that now that Apartheid had 
> been dismantled - by law,  colour was consequently of little consequence 
> in the New South Africa and the possibility still existed that he ( or 
> his) could be coming back...( and I though to myself, maybe he is thinking 
> of swimming back North..but in Sweden we live in another situation:
>
> http://www.economist.com/media/pdf/DEMOCRACY_TABLE_2007_v3.pdf
>
> If you overemphasise the blackness of Nyamko you are also signify the 
> otherness, the whiteness of the others - whereas this is not so so 
> significant. I think that she actually wants the Trade portfolio followed 
> by the post of prime minister. If she will deserve that in the near future 
> remains to be seen.  What would Baffour Ankomah not say! At such a time  - 
> he'd have to say, the country was ripe for that kind of change.
>
> When it was suggested many years ago that Colin Powell might possibly be 
> the  very next president of the United States, David Frost asked him in 
> that interview " Sir,  How would you like to be remembered "? - as if he 
> was going to  be assassinated by the KKK shortly after taking the oath of 
> office/ swearing in , or any other time shortly thereafter...
>
> When I first read the news about the termination of  funds to "the 
> Anti-racism Campaign office" in which a relative of Nyamko was active - I 
> thought that this was to kill at source, any rumours - that  might arise - 
> that could be promoted by her political enemies in the near future..about 
> any kind of ne-po-ti-sm. And as to the effectiveness - how effective has 
> it been?  We are to suppose that, in time, a similar type of organisation 
> will eventually replace it - and that someone in that organisation could 
> win the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King prize that Hon. Joe Frans created.
>
> About first names, well I say Joe, but not George, or Fredrick , and 
> Mauricio would be friendly, Mr. Rojas would be formal, like Sheik 
> Momodou - but thanks for the social analysis, it sounded Dickensian in a 
> post-colonial and assimilated kinda way. Going a little further back ( 
> Sweden has changed so much that it's no longer the same country that I 
> came to in 1971- and as the saying goes you can't take a dip in the same 
> river twice - but I'm talking about significant changes, so  that Tage 
> Erlander would have difficulties estimating the number of years that have 
> elapsed since he was last here, and even recently there was a time when 
> even in the telephone directories people's professions were part of their 
> social identities  and so in "Swedish For Foreigners"  our textbook said " 
> There is Engineer Svensson. In the evenings he plays in an orchestra." I 
> used to se him on my way to Tempo -old blue eyes,  the guy with the neatly 
> trimmed moustache,  Ingenjör Svensson.
>
> So far for first names..
>
> There's nothing diversionary about Swedish issues or  EU issues like  the 
> Pope's visit and Turkey's entry into membership of  the resurrected  old 
> Roman Empire could be side issues  that you deign to look at and indulge 
> in or forever hold your peace about that and other matters which most 
> directly affect your welfare and wellbeing  in this country where we live 
> ( I'm still not sure if you are in Sweden or the Gambia)...
>
> Later Ali-G -ator
> On the banks of the river Gambia...
>
> Ok?
>
>>
>> From: Momodou S Sidibeh <[log in to unmask]>
>> Date: 2006/11/29 on PM 02:59:22 CET
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Ämne: Re: Sabuni and FGM
>>
>> C. Edward Hamelberg
>>
>> Keeping the discussion rolling on these matters is no easy task for me at
>> present, draining from my tissues the energy required to continually 
>> justify
>> why the talk must go on, barring recognition that these "Sweden" issues 
>> are
>> perhaps a stimulating diversion. But I do not find much disagreement
>> anywhere. Except, well in re: the matter of me being in first name terms
>> with Nyamko Sabuni and Mauricio Rojas. Swedish tradition has done away 
>> with
>> such mystification of identities as is supplied by useless titles: Mr.,
>> Mrs., Sir, Dr, Your Highness, Chief, Alhaji, and so on..., perhaps not 
>> quite
>> tolerable for the post-colonial mind still soaked in the science of 
>> social
>> stratification? The prime minister is just Fredrik Reinfeldt, not Your
>> Excellency Fredrik Reinfeldt. The idea of being on first name terms is to
>> remain down to earth without invading the other's integrity. Just listen 
>> to
>> yourself say: His Excellency, Dr. Alhaji Yaya A.J.J Jammeh, and then 
>> imagine
>> the cruelty he represents. What a waste?
>>
>> So Nyamko Sabuni can be called Nyamko, even on tv! Your attempt to 
>> write-off
>> Mauricio I hope, was purely for practical reasons. The man is no longer
>> politically interesting, I agree. But let us at least recognise the two 
>> have
>> shared the podium on very significant issues in the past: language skills
>> testing for Swedish wannabes, deportation of "hardened" criminals
>> (irrespective of social links to the country, such as children and 
>> spouses);
>> reformation of public funding of private religious oriented schools, and 
>> the
>> implementation of more aggressive control mechanisms to "smoke" out 
>> social
>> welfare crooks, and so on. Thus, your writing off one, while lauding the
>> other as a "saint who treads where angels fear" deliberately bends the 
>> rules
>> of logical inference. In a country where even the BertIan double (Bert
>> Karlsson and Ian Wachmeister) recognise that immigrants and people of
>> immigrant ancestry receive stiffer sentences than ethnic Swedes for
>> similar(!) crimes, to call for the deportation of "grova kriminella" 
>> (severe
>> criminals) even if that should mean their leaving behind children and
>> spouses, is simple, callous cruelty. If all that is just the cake, let us
>> look att the icing that crowned it!
>> One of the very first "ministerial" assignments she executed without 
>> delay
>> was to stifle funding for the Anti-racism Campaign office on the grounds
>> that its work brought no tangible results! When about a month ago, 
>> Veckans
>> Affärer (Sweden's version of Business Week, so to speak), the most 
>> bourgeois
>> of the right-wing press asked her for comments on the immigrant brain 
>> drain,
>> she said she had no time! [Hundreds of well educated immigrants remain
>> unemployed and/or underemployed for years in Sweden only to find suitable
>> lucrative positions as soon as they arrive in Britain or Canada. Nyamko
>> finally commented on the issue last night]!  All of this, plus more
>> discursive soup served by a very eloquent black lady minister.
>>
>> Let us recapitulate on what Sweden means to me, and hopefully us. Rampant
>> discrimination and racism, certainly. Night clubs that refuse blacks and
>> dark-haired immigrants are plenty, and employers will tell you all sorts 
>> of
>> lies for not offering you a job. These days if you are called Abdirizak
>> Mohammad, or Ali Baba, or Abdurahman Omar, your chance of becoming 
>> gainfully
>> employed might lie in altering your name to Magnus Lindkvist or Ingrid
>> Johansson or some other blue and blond name. Forces of cultural 
>> alienation
>> are sending a lot of immigrants, both young men and women to plastic
>> surgeons. Persian and Arab youth alter their facial features, nose and 
>> chin,
>> so as to look more caucasian! Others, having lost their souls in 
>> tentative
>> integration into a society that eventually rejects even those with good
>> grades, take to violent crime. (Have you read "Snabba Cash"?).
>> But their is as well, a noble history of genuine solidarity and 
>> progressive
>> politics. Sweden offered the most help to the ANC and liberation 
>> movements
>> on the African continent. It still pours millions in aid to Ethiopia,
>> Tanzania, Mozambique, and Vietnam, significantly subsidising the budgets 
>> of
>> these countries. That Nelson Mandela's first trip outside Africa after 
>> his
>> release from prison in 1990 was to Stockholm was not simply incidental.
>> Swedes risked their lives running underground support systems that helped
>> sustain the families of victims, killed or jailed, of the apartheid 
>> regime.
>> My friend it is in these complexes of contexts we must place and weigh
>> Nyamko Sabunis performance as minister. Perhaps she is no Uncle Tom, but 
>> she
>> is an Auntie Igrid to me! and even if she deserves a honeymoon on account 
>> of
>> her historic appointment, I am sure she will be colliding with many
>> activists, including me. I know that I am travelling to an entirely
>> different destination. The question is whether you are just taking a
>> different bus to the same destination as Nyamko. Tell me, please.
>>
>> I am holding on to Ginny's position on female genital cutting. As she
>> rightly opined, some Africans have already gone underground, secretly 
>> taking
>> their daughters to their home countries where they are cut, and then 
>> brought
>> back to Scandinavia. It is a horrifying practice to all of us, i.e those
>> convinced that they know better, and we should work to abolish it. Yet, I
>> cannot think of any country where education and information have been 
>> more
>> effectively used as instruments of social engineering, as a way of 
>> altering
>> attitudes, as a consistently proven method of implememting even socially
>> unpopular reforms. It has been the cornerstone of social democratic 
>> politics
>> for decades since the pre war years.
>> Subjecting African girls to examination to determine the state of their
>> genitalia is not just an abominablel invasion of their privacy. Even if
>> Nyamko says her suggestion was to provoke debate, that such a suggestion
>> came from her is a reflection of the general climate of antagonistic
>> cultural encounter immigrants experience here. Because female genetical
>> cutting is demonised, its practitioners are equated, perhaps not 
>> explicitly,
>> as savages whose brutal impulses towards their own wives and daughters 
>> must
>> be aggressively checked. Why, a trip to the gynaecologist must be taken 
>> as a
>> most ordinary and compassionate samaritan act. Behold, even Cornelius
>> Hamelberg thinks FGC has its historical roots buried in the primordial
>> cruelty of men bent on depriving women of their divine right to a life
>> endowed with sexual bliss. But don't we know better? Are there no 
>> medicinal
>> roots to FGC, even if ill informed? And like the circumcision of males, 
>> is
>> that of girls not largely a crucial aspect of initiation rites into
>> womanhood? But besides, whence does all this anti-FGC hail?
>>
>> Anti-FGC militantism is hardly older than the rise of feminist activism 
>> in
>> the West. It is this political project of gender liberation that has 
>> largely
>> defined FGC as an incredible act of widespread cruelty. Yet as genuine as
>> the concerns of westerners are, the brutality of the application of 
>> "rusty
>> knives" on female flesh in the African bush, is hardly more severe than 
>> the
>> tortuous lives of women in societies steeped in violent misogyny. Sex
>> reassignment surgery - never mind the clinically decent name, nothing
>> brutish here you see - is in many instances, more horrifying than many 
>> forms
>> of FGC including infibulation. Male to female surgery involves cutting 
>> off
>> the testicles completely, apart from other complicated procedures 
>> required
>> for making a man sexually female. There are "clit" clinics in L.A where
>> women go to be operated upon to alter the look of their genitals. If you 
>> can
>> imagine an old grandmother using crude knives in the African bush to 
>> slice
>> open the  breasts of young girls and stuff them with different kinds of
>> silicon implants you would come closer to understanding why words,
>> professional training, money, clinical environments are all brought to 
>> bear
>> to create a mental projection defined by a dominat culture that sees one
>> practice as "barbaric" and the other as qualified aesthetic surgery. It 
>> is
>> all about the exercise of power.
>>
>> Unless their is genuine respect for other people inspite of their
>> traditional practices, attempts to alter attitudes may prove more painful
>> than necessary. That is a message we need to convey to Nyamko Sabuni.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> sidibeh
>>
>> ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤
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