Baba,

Splendid, beautiful! Simply brilliant.  As Bailo, i shall be avidly waiting
for the rest of the series.  '

Thanks,

Mboge

On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 9:21 PM, Bailo Jallow <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Baba,
>
> Brilliant!. Looking forward to B Section.
>
> Bailo
>
> ------------------------------
> From: [log in to unmask]
> To: [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask];
> [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [>-<] The Real July 22nd Revolution - A Section
> Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2010 17:48:37 +0000
>
>
> The Real July 22nd Revolution – A Section
>
> By Baba Galleh Jallow
>
> Traditionally, as July 22nd approaches, our minds are exercised by matters
> of grave national import occasioned by the military overthrow of the
> thirty-year-old civilian regime of Sir Dawda Jawara. A conspiracy theory has
> it that some malignant distant power seems to have grown tired of old Sir
> Dawda or perceived him, rightly or wrongly, as representing some form of
> threat to its sacred interests. Whatever its motive, the malignant power
> seems to have found ready and willing weapons in the hands of a few soldiers
> of the Gambia National Army with which they chased Sir Dawda out of town and
> then carried him to safety. The condition and reward for the willing weapons
> was merely that no weapon must be discharged and they would all live happily
> ever after. A second, more mundane theory, one that was espoused by soldiers
> of the Gambia National Army in the aftermath of the July 22nd, 1994 coup,
> has it that Sir Dawda Jawara presided over an inefficient and corrupt
> system, that had been in power for far too long, and that the loyal national
> army had intervened to rectify.
>
> Whether our conspiracy theorists are right or wrong, the soldiers have
> lived happily ever after, some of them becoming millionaires in the process
> and bagging honorary doctorates both fundamental and ordinary universities
> around the world. Every year, they celebrate July 22nd in grand style. They
> declare it a national holiday, a day on which the Gambian people are invited
> to join in commemorating the day the weapons killed without discharging. It
> is always a magic day for them. A day on which they proclaim their legendary
> bravery against a small group of unarmed and terrified old men suffering
> from chronic paranoia born of perennial fear of a military coup. A day on
> which they enumerate their great victories over pitifully unequal opponents
> and tout their great achievements, evidenced by heavily armed convoys of
> fierce looking soldiers, the glittering lines of flashy expensive cars they
> own, the magnificent flowing robes they wear, the visible shine of the
> creamy fat oozing out of their formerly hollow cheeks. On that day, Opulence
> itself is bedecked with gold and glory and made to strut and wildly dance in
> the streets, making funny faces at the National Conscience; making the
> hungry stomachs of the teeming poor churn with sorrow, and making them
> wonder why some people are so filthy wealthy, while they are so dryly poor.
> This disturbing thought conjures up the solid myth of divine favor, which
> appeases their baffled spirits. Yes, it is God’s will that Yahya Jammeh
> becomes president. It is God’s will that he could rise from a poor,
> malnourished lieutenant to a fat multi-millionaire, if not billionaire,
> within the space of a few years, while they have been poor and hungry all
> their lives, even before Yahya Jammeh was born.
>
> Deaf and blind to the sorry plight of these hungry poor, the conspiratorial
> weapons of the malignant power quietly insist that they are indeed the
> blessed recipients of divine favor, the praiseworthy saviors of the wretched
> masses. They quietly insist, and often selectively proclaim, that they are
> the blessed ones who had brought national glory and happiness to the utterly
> stupefied masses. It does not matter that most families hardly afford only
> one meal per day; or that the streets are so full of beggars that the police
> had to round them up and drag them before a so-called court of justice,
> accused of being a public nuisance. Because they are poor, these innocent
> beings are publicly humiliated and told that they represent an undesirable
> element, a less than human nuisance to their fellow beings. What cruel and
> unjust order will stab the souls of people who spend their daily lives
> suffering the excruciatingly painful humiliation of begging for a living?
> The real July 22nd revolution recognizes that an alliance of soldiers that
> claimed to have intervened to rescue the poor people from the clutches of a
> corrupt order has morphed into a strange disorder that is not only filthy
> rich and corrupt, but that also labels poor beggars a nuisance. It must be a
> very small mind that thinks such thoughts and that can justify such
> mind-boggling cruelty.
>
> This year again, the now exceedingly wealthy conspiratorial weapons of the
> malignant distant power gleefully look forward to July 22, 2010, another
> potentially ridiculously wasteful episode of nauseating extravagance, yet
> another occasion to once again remind the Gambian people how extremely
> grateful they should be to His Excellency the President, Retired Colonel
> Sheikh Professor Doctor Alhaji Yahya Abdul Aziz Jemus Junkung Jammeh;
> Exemplary Muslim Extraordinaire; Charitable Soul; Legendary Discover of the
> first cure for Aids – the Breakthrough! Possessor of Mystical Powers; Owner
> of Escaped Demons; Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Second
> Republic of The Gambia! This year again, His Profellency of Aids
> Breakthrough fame is looking forward to another celebration, another
> occasion to display to the common people just what an uncommon superman he
> is. He will enumerate the multiple achievements of his government; he will
> reaffirm his iron commitment to the advancement of the Gambian people; he
> will warm his ministers and all members of his government that nothing less
> that perfect loyalty and perfect service will be tolerated; he will call on
> all patriotic Gambians to join him in the noble task of nation-building; he
> will swear by the Holy Quran that only over his death body will he allow
> anyone to pose a threat to the our national security; he will chastise and
> threaten his opponents and critics; and he will deftly demonstrate to the
> national public why all his opponents and critics are unpatriotic Gambians
> who deserve the worst that his government can offer –imprisonment or even
> death!
>
> The real July 22nd revolution refuses to recognize Yahya Jammeh as a true
> revolutionary. His record as a leader of the Gambian people is much less
> than deserving of that honorific title of revolutionary. A true
> revolutionary cannot be drowned in a sea of names. A true revolutionary
> cannot bear the sight of massive posters of his grinning image posted on
> every street corner, every park and square, every nook and cranny of the
> city. The mind of a true revolutionary cannot possibly be preoccupied with
> grandiose and undeserved religious and academic titles; or with flowing
> robes and sentence names, and large grinning posters of himself. These will
> be a nuisance to his conscience, a distracter to his spare attention, a
> shame, an embarrassment to his sensibilities. The real July 22ndrevolution affirms that he who wears large and heavy clothes whether it’s
> hot or cold stands in urgent need of a mind revolution. The real July 22ndrevolution recognizes that our so-called former soldiers with a difference,
> whose mantra back in 1994 was “we are not here to stay”, do not realize the
> enormity of their historical predicament. These men choose to believe what
> they want to believe. They merely take life for granted and feel too good to
> admit that they are sometimes cruel or unjust, or that they could sometimes
> be wrong. Because they are incapable of admitting their human fallibility,
> men like Yahya Jammeh are condemned to a tragic state of mental blindness –
> much worse than physical blindness; the kind that could mistake poor beggars
> for a public nuisance under a self-proclaimed revolutionary and redemptive
> order.
>
> The real July 22nd revolution insists that the military coup that brought
> Yahya Jammeh to power was not a revolution at all. It was merely an
> archetypical African military coup, one of more than two dozens that have
> happened on the continent since 1960. The behavior pattern of Yahya Jammeh
> and his henchmen in the military have been no different from that of the
> Mobutu Sese Sekos, the Idi Amins, the Sani Abachas, the Mengistu Haile
> Mariams, the Samuel Does, and the Gnassingbe Eyademas of Africa. Each has
> seized power citing corruption and inefficiency; each had become even more
> corrupt and inefficient than its predecessor; and each had unleashed bloody
> brutality on sections of its population in the name of national security.
>
> The real July 22nd revolution knows that a true revolution is not
> expressed through flowing robes and extravagant displays of wealth in a
> country with so many beggars that they are declared a public nuisance. A
> true revolution is not expressed through the adoption of grandiose titles
> and ridiculously high-sounding sentence names. A true revolution is not
> expressed through the erection of buildings, the building of roads,
> electrification, a growing GDP when at the same time, the jails are full of
> innocent inmates like Femi Peters, forcibly snatched from his family and
> friends, criminalized, and condemned to waste and drown in a sea of
> frustration and powerlessness at Mile Two Prison merely for offending Yahya
> Jammeh by holding a legitimate and peaceful political rally without a permit
> the police repeatedly refused to grant; when the families of men like Chief
> Ebrima Manneh, Kanyiba Kanyi, and Daba Marena live in burning agony worrying
> about their disappeared loved ones; when the family and friends of a gentle
> and promising soul like Ousman Koro Ceesay are condemned to perpetual
> agonizing over just how or why Koro was burnt to ashes in his government
> issued vehicle; when mild-mannered government critics like Deyda Hydara are
> brutally gunned down in nocturnal drive-by shootings, when the hard-earned
> printing presses of struggling media houses are doused with petrol and set
> on fire, when - and this must be the crowning evil of this regime - when the
> president wallows in a nauseatingly creamy sea of wealth while poor and
> hungry beggars are arrested by police and charged with being a public
> nuisance. The order that presides over these states of affair cannot by any
> stretch of the rational imagination be a true revolutionary order. Such an
> order desecrates the sacred spirit of Revolution and represents a rude
> assault on decent human sensibility.
>
> A real revolution is always born of extreme oppression. The true
> revolutionary spirit is awakened only under conditions of persistent and
> brutal oppression. And whatever crimes the regime of Sir Dawda Jawara might
> have been guilty of, it was certainly not guilty of the extreme brutality
> and oppression, the kind capable of triggering the onset of a real
> revolution. That dishonor is rightfully claimed by the regime of President
> Yahya Jammeh. The relentless pattern of injustice and brutality the Jammeh
> regime continues to mindlessly inflict on Gambian nationals is what has led
> to the birth of the revolutionary spirit of the real July 22nd revolution,
> which manifests itself in the evolution of a sharp Nation Mind and the
> flowering of progressive institutions within the Gambian Nation, which is
> much more than merely a geographical expression on the coast of West Africa.
> The real July 22nd revolution is an emergent critical mass of politically
> conscious Gambians who have bonded across time and across space, and who
> recognize Yahya Jammeh for what he truly is – an unfortunate episode in the
> history of our country. The real July 22nd revolution knows that Jammeh is
> a mere historical actor who, sooner or later, will have to pass on to the
> realm of nonbeing. The real July 22nd revolution is a spirit, an essence
> that, by its very nature, is beyond mortality and temporality. It has
> evolved into a thoughtful Nation Mind that projects itself beyond time and
> beyond space; that refuses to recognize man’s right to indulge in willful
> and naked acts of injustice against his fellow man merely because he is in a
> position to do so. For this Nation Mind, Yahya Jammeh occupies nothing more
> and nothing less than his rightful place in the larger scheme of things.
>
> The real July 22nd revolution also expresses itself in the flowering of
> vibrant Gambian civic institutions, despite all of Jammeh’s futile attempts
> to stop such a fortunate eventuality. It expresses itself in the spirits of
> the Gambia L and the Gambia Post; in the spirits of the Freedom Newspaper,
> Gainako, Maafanta, Jollof News, The Gambia Echo, Senegambia News, the Gambia
> Journal, Raaki Radio and TV, Baati Rewmi, and other new and vibrant online
> media that refuse to recognize Jammeh’s claims to revolutionary stature. It
> expresses itself in the spirits of Gambian civic organizations such as the
> STGDP and the GPU-USA, among others. This year, as we approach that fateful
> date in our nation’s history, it is this Real July 22nd Revolution that
> exercises our minds, not the other, fake one which is both illusory and
> transitory.
>
> *Caution:* The real July 22nd revolution is not merely a grammatical
> expression to be lightly dismissed out of hand. God willing, in B Section of
> this series, we shall demonstrate why this is so.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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