The reality came to Sweden in full force and poignantly too when it happened to one of her own:

David Stevens (R.I.P)

Maria Stevens (Swedish by birth, a  former farmer’s wife in Zimbabwe)

The news is that our old friend the late octogenarian Robert Mugabe now in his upper eighties, is still a popular president in Zimbabwe. For all the reasons best known to Zimbabweans.

But not as popular here and or in the rest of Europe or anywhere else in da kingdoms of other White Man’s Lands.

Way back in Nigeria, this was the song : Papa’s Land

Roberto Mugabe has been popular before, when fighting for a just cause . It was Sweden that financed the printing of his electioneering posters & ZANU campaign papers during the political campaign in liberated Zimbabwe; but he is unlikely to be popular again over here until and unless he settles all the old scores – outstanding and overdue reforms based on non-racial land redistribution – ha ha – and until he rescues the collapsed economy that he once wrecked.

In 1981, a Zimbabwean dollar was roughly the equivalent of the American dollar, anywhere in the world. By the time Maria Steven’s husband was being slaughtered and the Stevens farm being taken over, it’s still impossible to imagine but with hyper-inflation it had devalued to something like an astronomical six hundred million Zimbabwean dollars to the American dollar and about fourteen hundred million Zimbabwean dollars to the British pound. Nor was this merely a direct consequence of what Brother Mugabe so famously told Tony Blair: “ So, Blair keep your England, and let me keep my Zimbabwe”. Sometimes we get what we want.

In other words he was telling the then Prime Minister of GB , you hold on to the British bulldog pound and land, and I’ll hold on to mine. Although it’s trade that makes the world go round. Stubborn man now deliberately still sporting that anti-British Hitler moustache.

Money matters. Daily bread and bread crumbs matters can be terrifying and almost as horrifying as to hear that the US is 14 trillion dollars in debt and owes China alone, 4 trillion – American dollars. That’s US of America’s number one capitalist problem. My problem and perhaps the Zimbabwean peoples’ problem is that we don’t even know how much a trillion is. Do you (yes you) know how many zeroes there are in a trillion?

At 87-years of age President Mugabe could pass away on the throne and go down in history as one of those who achieved the status of “ President for life” and this could happen any day now, since all of us (including Brother Leader Gaddafi) are living on extra time. Tenacity consists in Mugabe or Gaddafi as the man of the beginning/ First Horse-man of the Apocalypse being consistent with the man nearing the end, being consistent throughout the course of life’s struggles, life’s pilgrimage to the empty grave, waiting to swallow us up.

King Bob – as Robert Mugabe is affectionately or not so affectionately called by many of Zimbabwe’s disaffected, dissident ex- Brits, has said many things to both his nation and to the United Nations. Yet there is something that he never got across to most of us, certainly not to me, and this turned up unexpectedly during a very two-way discussion on the subject of Mugabe and the White African a serious discussion for you to follow at the USA- Africa dialogue series.

In most African circles where the delicate/sensitive subject of land distribution in Zimbabwe or South Africa is being discussed, you are either pro- Mugabe and Mau-Mau and pro “one settler one bullet” PAC or you are thought of as an uncle tom. In the heated discussions that have taken place these past years, many have gone as far as calling Morgan Tsvangirai a British-backed traitor.

So, it’s best to place the important matter about land distribution in context and in the context of that discussion which is part of the perennial discussion about the land problem in Zimbabwe, it reminds me very much about the basis of existence of the land known as Israel and its most essential and Divinely Sanctioned raison d’etre – an aspect of existence that Mugabe has failed to emphasis throughout these years when talking about his own country, perhaps because he has been following in the footsteps of Kwame Nkrumah’s dictum, “Seek ye first the political kingdom, and all else shall be added unto you” in contrast with Jesus of Nazareth’s Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven.

Mugabe is a Roman Catholic.

For me, the key to the greater understanding of what the Land issue means to the Zimbabweans turned up in the middle of that USA-Africa discussion with one of the discussants, an Africanist scholar John Edward Phillips popping up in a very timely fashion with an article that he had written in The Japan Times of Monday, July 28, 2008 and entitled Believe it or not, Mugabe still has supporters

As Bishop Desmond Tutu once said (and he has been widely quoted) “When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.”

Not that Zimbabwe would need a theology to de-justify Boer or other settler colonisation, but Mugabe could have fashioned a sort of political theology and done the world propaganda tour explaining justice and righteousness on the basis of the politics of Sacred Shona land theology

But with Israel everybody knows that it’s different: it’s the Almighty, His people Israel/Jeshurun, the Torah and the land of Israel and that the connection between the Almighty, the People of Israel, the Torah and the Land of Israel, is indivisible…..

The Torah portion for this Sabbath is Parashat Masei about the Children of Israel’s 42 journeys.

For those intent on reading the Torah as internal allegory, here’s 42 Journeys ….

Chazak! Chazak! Venischazeik !

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Indeed, the fallout from the Oslo massacres has been tremendous and the chief concerns seem to be less about security and more about the dangers of what is defined as far right-extremism, now that one of the so called far right extremism’s crazy ideologues has used terror as a method by which to draw attention to their own pain, which the extreme far right-terrorist says is caused by unchecked/uncontrolled immigration of Muslims in turn resulting in the rapid islamization of European societies – which is deemed a threat to the survival of the  traditional, national & cultural identity of, not least of all, Norway.

If the Sweden Democrats can be called “Far Right” or “ Extreme Far Right” then Sweden Democrat’s Kent Ekeroth and the one called Ted Ekeroth have also been plauditing for anti-immigration and anti-islamization though they have never suggested violence as a method for attaining anti-immigration and anti-islamization policies; it is therefore not surprising that their leader Jimmie Åkesson has condemned what happened in Norway and insists that Multiculturalism# is not to be blamed for the crimes against humanity committed by Anders Behring Breivik …

The fear of Eurabia

Eurabia ?

The Norwegian authorities cannot be accused of being taken by surprise whilst they were napping – at least they excuse themselves on the grounds that the home grown Norwegian terrorist who calls himself a nationalist, had not turned up on their security radar and had in fact evaded the early warning signals which have since become more unmistakably apparent/ visible.

Security and the kinds of extremism that encourage or carry out wanton acts of violence to gain “political advantage” are of concern to all law-abiding, peace-loving people living in civilised democracies….

The ADL was first out with these points two days later (after the massacres) that the Norwegian Terrorist was Motivated By Growing Extremist Ideology In Europe And The U.S.

Professor Paul Eidelberg spells out what’s at stake for Western Civilisation, even more clearly, in this article Norway and the Silencing of Rational Criticism

In the ever-growing climate of European xenophobia can the fires of hatred being constantly fanned by the extreme anti-immigration and anti-islamization elements and other islamophobes, result in similar kinds of explosions and mass-murder in Sweden? That is the question.

How this can be prevented, is the answer to that question.

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A sad day for all of us

RE – The Oslo Massacre

Between 1814 – 1905 Sweden and Norway were one nation, known as The United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway – so it’s understandable that Norway’s sorrow is Sweden’s sorrow and felt as deeply, Norway and Sweden being like not merely brother nations but twins – and so on the morning after the Oslo massacre, the Svenska Dagbladet editorial headline in solidarity, asserted that, “En attack på Norge är en attack på Sverige” An attack on Norway is an attack on Sweden

Sweden’s humanity is Norway’s humanity. As we all know, there’s only one humanity, not two or three.

No less understandable, our Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt’s sympathetic “Our thoughts are with Norway”….and Sweden’s empathy for a sister nation was finally crowned by our poetic Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, also said to be the Swede with the greatest sense of humour, compared to all other Swedish politicians, but here dead serious & in commiseration, imbued with some of what Keats called “negative capability”, and finalising the reunion of Sweden and Norway in response to this tragedy, overwhelmed by extreme empathic emotion he declared “ We are all Norwegians.”

He who feels it knows. All Norway, a traumatized nation in mourning and some of the numbed & badly shaken Swedish-Norwegians thanking the Good Lord that it wasn’t Sweden or a similar atrocity visited upon us here in Stockholm or resulting in the decimation of innocent Social Democrat youths camping out at Almedalen – on which sad note Carl Bildt in a political fit of poetic extremism and carried away by emotion could have heard himself saying – in commiseration or not in commiseration the most unlikely sentence to ever leave his lips: “ We are all Social Democrats”

Before the madman was apprehended and publicly identified – ( Heaven help us all) the prime suspects (of course) were some as yet unidentified terrorist  MUSLIMS – who else?

After all the forehand speculation if it had turned out to be a lone lunatic Muslim responsible for the Scandinavian carnage of 22-7 , then all Muslims on the Norway-Sweden peninsular would be ( please excuse the paucity of expression that gets to this) but we are indeed all Norwegians – the Danes too – and at such a time of uncertainty about the future, all Muslims within the Scandinavian realm would then be in deep shit – very deep – “up shit creek” – to say the least – and you can be sure that all Muslims would still be wisely staying indoors or be going out shopping, to stock up with essential groceries without Hijab or turban covering their heads – for their own safety – whilst Jimmie Åkesson and Ted Ekeroth among others would be still seething through their teeth and maybe, triumphantly asking the politicians, SÄPO, the police, the General public “ Now you see what we have been telling you?”

And you did not believe in SD prophecy….

That’s the danger – that that’s all it would take – an insane act of that kind of proportion by a lone Muslim lunatic – to have a disastrous effect on all Muslims and many immigrants……

The fallout has been tremendous. Just like the fallout would have been if it had been a Palestinian who had assassinated Yitzhak Rabin …. can you imagine ???

Or a Muslim had assassinated Olof Palme?

Or had knifed Anna Lindh on the third floor of NK?

Or? OR?

Here’s some of it (the fallout from the Oslo tragedy)

Now, there are all kinds of post-mortems, requiems being composed and just now this curious item turned up, Debunking 6 Myths About Anders Breivik . I’m sure that you could be curious.

And to top it all here is some more commentary, this time,  Muslim reaction

The ADL has this to say

( To be continued)

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Israel Learned How to Block Gaza Floti

An article asks,

What do “Flotilla folk” do?

The probable answer is that they plan with unabated determination, with renewed determination. They plan to set fail again, if we are to go by what Mankell promised, in the hoary spirit of “if you try and don’t succeed, try, try again”. He said, “we will come back. We won’t give up” – and by “we” he must have been referring to the “Flotilla folk”.

To quote him more fully, he is reported to have expressed some disappointment in the poor Greek Government, claiming, “That we were not able to leave (for Gaza) has to do with the fact that the Greek government has sold its soul for a silver coin.”

Should Flotilla 3 be planning to set sail around the same time next year, all that can be said is that one year ahead is far, far away and many many “things” are going to be happening before then

True or false, one thing is certain: The one thing I won’t be saying to him (Mankell)  is, “ Better luck next time”

I wish that I could be as bold as Chinweizu who does not mince his words about those he does not like, wishing them the very worst in these no holds barred imprecations, herein expressed against the Africans who venerate Muammar Gaddafi – to the point of crowning him King of Kings of Africa etc

Not that I like or dis-like our Mankell – at least I don’t hate him and respect what I think is the foolhardiness of his continuing to act on principles such as they are,  based on false premises , ostensibly to redeem the Beloved Gazans from a non-existent Humanitarian crisis.

Who knows, next port of call, even further away than Gaza would be a few shiploads of essential supplies to East Africa where everybody knows there is a critical humanitarian crisis demanding a brothers’ Keepers response.

Hamas Executes Two Gazans as Spies for Israel -

Nice news about Gaza

Latest bad news: Libya a source of arms to Gaza

More bad news:

Syria Arming Hizbullah with More Missiles

Iran Moves Nuclear Enrichment Program to Underground Bunker

Ahmadinejad Wants to Develop Nuclear Arms Openly, Khamenei Disagrees

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He knows it and she knows it too.

“She know’s there’s no success like failure and that failure is no success at all”

Arnold Schwarzenegger as The Terminator said, “ I’ll be back”. So did Jesus

Now we can all breathe a sigh of relief

because,

1.There was no violence on foreign (non-Swedish) territorial waters, Mankell did not get martyred (- gone is gone – and done is done  – and Mankell done and gone  would have caused some international condemnation/ outrage no matter the cause or causes )

and

2. Mankell has not reported a loss or sabotage of any precious manuscripts.

Like the comeback kid, he says, perhaps speaking in the Majestic Plural, “But we will come back. We won’t give up,”

better still the words of Sir Winston Churchill, ( last paragraph) :  we shall never surrender

Mind you, like the first time so too the second coming, Mankell promises that the third Flotilla /Flotilla III which might coincide with the outbreak of the 3^rd Intifada and humanitarian crisis or no humanitarian crisis, he has spoken: “But we will come back. We won’t give up,”

His question still remains unanswered and we will have to wait and see.

“”What will happen next year when we come back with hundreds of boats? Will (Israel) fire a nuclear bomb?” he asked. “

We don’t know what will happen. In the meantime this is what has happened :

Israel 1, Flotilla 0

The Flotilla Flop

Gaza Flotilla Founders

Flotilla Diplomacy Proves the Importance of Hard Power –

Flotilla Diplomacy Proves the Importance of Hard Power -

Some of the Swedish innocents belong to this category : Face the Enemy

It’s quite possible that by this time next year Mankell & Co  will be returning to Gaza via the Rafah Crossing  with this kind of  freedom mission in mind

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Too good to be true

What an anti-climax to read the rest of the news item after – at last – the apocalyptic headlines “Gaza flotilla group sets sail from Athens” – you would have thought that they would be arriving on the outskirts of sovereign territorial water by noon for the start of the Armageddon confrontation and showdown – manic Mankell’s razor versus the iraniac nuclear bomb; but instead it’s an anti-climax : the delegation of crestfallen Swedish activists led by a still hopeful Löfgren and the still sorrow-ful Mankell – “in grief and dismay” merely being invited to travel by sea just to have a sip of tea with the mayor of Palea Fokea , a small coastal town a stone’s throw away to the south of Athens, far from the theatre of piracy action on the high seas….. they clearly don’t understand what time it is or even when the chips fall down, what side they are on ( maybe will join Hamas – very ultimately, Syria after all thinks that Palestine is but a province of Syria – and there’s no love lost between the Turks and the Arabs… just ask Lawrence of Arabia. That being so I cannot buy into much of krrodman’s analysis post #7 15:08 July 5, 2011, and especially not his quite astounding triune conclusions – and he should keep an eye on Egypt … and yes the Euphrates is very very important but we’ll have to take that up at a later date.

Ah the Flotilla crews. The cowards. The laughing stock of everyone’s common sense. If they were really committed – really intent on challenging the blockade they would have paid no regard to international law being invoked by the Greeks, stopped bowing in submission to the Greek authorities and set sail without permission 100 knots an hour and no brakes from the Greek harbours, non-stop & hell-bent do-or-die to Gaza, like real men. But we know the whole story and that like zombies, Greece tells them they must stop and they stop…. out at sea the IDF will say the same to them -  stop – nearer to where they have no permission to enter and they will want to start some violent altercation/ resistance and hope that a few people are killed or fall overboard and drown so that they can say “Look at what Israel has done!”

Perhaps they will be holed up in Greece for a few more weeks and start thinking of returning home to Sweden by November, not fait accompli but with their tails between their legs to report a total failure with mission impossible. Better luck next year when they dream of returning with hundreds if not thousands of boats to mount the Flotilla 9-11

Should be interesting to read the daily entries in their dairies this their summer of discontent.

If they were really smart they’d join the move meant to Free Gaza – from Hamas

Now here’s the good news: UN Report: Gaza Blockade Legal, Israel Doesn’t Owe Turkey Apology for Marmara

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Imagine all this concern and agonising in We Sweden, just because there are supposed to be about 20 Swedes on the Freedom Flotilla 2‎ …..which has been facing a lot of problems and therefore the one delay after another.

“They tell you, “Time is money’ as if your life was worth it’s weight in gold.“ Wonder if the Swedes are just hanging around all day waiting for their ship to set sail. Another way of spending a summer holiday?

In my view , this video gives a foretaste of The Alternative Peace Prize/ Right Livelihood activity:

[VIDEO] How to Help Gaza: The REAL Solution!!

We must constantly bear in mind that the blockade is legitimate — and important.

The latest:

Greece Stops Another Gaza Flotilla Boat !

A Tale of Two Blockades on Gaza: Greece and Israel

There’s so much ignorance here so we had better be clear about this: International Law and the Flotilla II

We could all soon be singing this song whilst Flotilla 2 is still lingering, anchored, forever waiting patiently for their final departure from some Greek Harbour. Greek Harbour…..perhaps what Mr. Mankell had in mind when he speculatively prophesied with his now famous/ infamous awesome question “What will happen next year when we come back with hundreds of boats? Will (Israel) fire a nuclear bomb?” Perhaps, still anchored in Greece in the author’s imagination lurks this famous association.” The face that launched a thousand ships” and who knows, next year the famous question might be upgraded to read, “What will happen next year when we come back with a thousand ships ? Will (Israel) fire a few nuclear bombs on us then?”

A nuclear bomb against his solitary razorblade, Mankell thereby, obviously not wishing

"This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."

But this year, it seems that Mr. Mankell doth exaggerate about the  ” hundreds of ships” he was dreaming of for Flotilla 2.  He should count himself lucky if they are up to nine ships altogether should they finally leave the safe harbour for mission impossible…..

Back to The Alternative Peace Prize/ Right Livelihood activity:

[VIDEO] How to Help Gaza: The REAL Solution!!

The frustration of waiting onshore and the disappointment with all the setbacks, that too is legitimate…..

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First things first: The Gaza Flotilla: Facts and Official Reactions

Please excuse and forgive the language atrocities and the injustices committed by the Google automated translation of Israel’s Ambassador Benny Dagan’s debate article which appeared more recently in Dagens Nyheter, here in Stockholm, the undivided and eternal Jerusalem of Our Sweden : that which is most clear & concise, straightforward and comprehensive

Mind you, you don’t have to read the New York Times on 911 to know that these are dangerous times…

Here is a catalogue of Gaza terrorism still being perpetrated on Israel, from Gaza

And, as we all know, nor is it every wise Socratic head that pays attention to the saying that “ Fools rush in where angels fear to tread”

Message to Mankell & his razor blades : Israel on Flotilla: We Won’t Be Surprised This Time

More, much more Israeli Humanitarian aid to Gaza than 1,000 Flotilla ships could ever provide

Facts and more facts

On Wednesday night, as I ripped through the prologue of Henning Mankell’s “Innan frosten” which is appropriately dubbed not Hymietown but worse case scenario “ Jonestown, November 1978”, even according to my morbid imagination the prologue touched me as a kind of premonition – (retrospectively speaking of course) an excellent case of dramatic irony in a very post-mortem sort of way, considering the many instances of what vis-a-vis Mankell’s Flotilla 2, reminded me of what was is and could be the fate of what Melanie Phillips most appropriately calls the Gaza flotilla of fools and fanatics .

Here’s an extract from Mankell’s prologue translated into English…

You’d have to read the whole of that prologue yourself to fall over so many sentences that echo that calamity as a prefiguration of fear and calamity in general, such as the one that’s almost already aborted before it sets sail, to coincide with other shattering events in the neighbourhood, in Syria and Lebanon where four anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist and anti-post Zionism Hezbollah agents are charged with the murder of Lebanon’s billionaire prime minister Rafik Hariri and the 26 other innocent souls that they blew up with their mighty car bomb – one of their usual weapons of mass destruction , even as Mankell wonders aloud whether “the next time” when he sails with a hundred more boats to Gaza, Israel will take out the nuclear bomb on him and their Armada.

There are probably Hezbollah agents on board Flotilla 2. After all, Hezbollah and Hamas are comrades-in-arms as are some  cloak and dagger others on board who this time also vow that they are hungry for martyrdom…..

Mankell’s strong arm is in the detective fiction genre and like Gardell, Flotilla2 & Co , are not legal luminaries and so before anything else, even before contemplating the possibility of life after death (when we will all be all soul – and leave the body behind) we should try to get this right – and getting it right should not be a crime: The Legal Basis of Israel’s Naval Blockade of Gaza

The scumbags and trouble-makers (of course ) are praying that it will be the same procedure as last year

Another way of understanding the raison d’être of the blockade :

Israel’s Gaza Sea Blockade Is an Act of Self-Defense

This undermines the purported reason for any confrontation Flotilla being  on a “humanitarian”  mission:

Life for Palestinians in Gaza Improved, So Why Send Flotilla There? -by Khaled Abu Toameh

In a more balanced and objective mode Gardell and Mankell could have written this:

Flotilla Plots a Course that Ignores Inequities and Terrorism of Hamas –

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, for further developments:

Daily Alert

Shabbat Shalom everyone…..

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