The 'Lost' Music of 1970s Somalia

What a delight discovering Somali secular music from the 1970s; the era before the civil war, al-Shabaab militancy, piracy and failed state notoriety, although the war in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia between the armed forces of Ethiopia and Somali was in the news during the later part of the decade.

It is a hybrid sound redolent of many familiar genres juxtaposed with Somalian heritage. Sometimes it sounds like Afro-Beat meets Wassoulou. Other times like Reggae meets Les Ethiopiques. On on one occasion, I thought that I was listening to Mohammed Wardi, the great Sudanese singer.

This album is a treat!

Sweet As Broken Dates: Lost Somali Tapes from the Horn of Africa is released on Ostinato Records.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2017)

Adeyinka Makinde is a London-based writer.

My Interview at 'The Mind Renewed' about the West's weaponising of Islam - Part Two of "The Pan-Islamic Option: The West's Part in the Creation and Sustaining of Islamist Terror"

The second part of an interview with Julian Charles of ‘The Mind Renewed’ about my recent essay, “The Pan-Islamic Option: The West’s Part in the Creation and Sustaining of Islamist Terror”. This segment focuses on the historical background to the West’s use of Islamic groups to fight wars and insurgencies going back to the Wilhelmine and Nazi-eras of Germany, Britain from the First World War onwards and the United States’ enduring relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, and its inadvertent contribution to the rise of global jihadism through its support for the anti-Soviet Mujahideen in Afghanistan.

It also refers to the situations where Islamists have been given protection by Western state intelligence bodies and have gone on to commit acts of terror. It invites listeners to consider whether the many instances of such occurrences are down to negligence or something more sinister.

TMR Page - Episode 181 “The Pan-Islamic Option” (Part One: Recent Years)

“That land over there is yours. You’ll go back to it one day, because your fight will prevail. And you’ll have your homes and mosques back again, because your cause is right and God is on your side.” - Zbigniew Brzezinkski

We are joined once again by the lawyer and university lecturer Adeyinka Makinde for the second instalment of a two-part interview centring on his recent article, “The Pan-Islamic Option: The West’s Part in the Creation and Sustaining of Islamist Terror”.

In this second part we discuss some of the historical background to the West’s use and support of violent Islamist groups, looking at examples of German, British and US policy since the early days of the Twentieth Century.

Adeyinka Makinde trained for the law as a barrister. He lectures in criminal law and public law at a university in London, and has an academic research interest in intelligence & security matters. He is a contributor to a a number of websites for which he has written essays and commentaries on international relations, politics and military history. He has served as a programme consultant and provided expert commentary for BBC World Service Radio. China Radio International and the Voice of Russia.

Links

TMR 181: Adeyinka Makinde: The Pan-Islamic Option (Part Two: Historical Background)

Interview Notes

© Adeyinka Makinde (2017)

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer and law lecturer based in London, England.

Petit Clamart: 22nd August 1962

On a Summer's day on a quiet road in a quiet Suburb of Paris called Petit Clamart, a black Citreon DS 19 limousine speeds through a road en route to an airport. Suddenly, the peace is shattered by a wall of noise. It is the sound of bullets spewing out of an array of automatic sub-machine guns aimed at the vehicle's passenger; the French head of state, Charles de Gaulle.

Miraculously, he escapes without a scratch as does Madame De Gaulle, his son-in-law and the driver who evades the ambush despite the puncturing of two of the car's wheels.

The opening sequences of the film version of the Frederick Forsyth thriller, The Day of the Jackal is largely faithful to real events in its recreation of the ambush.

The backdrop to this scenario of a hit-team consisting of serving and former members of the French military against the man who embodied the resurrection of the French nation after its humiliation by Germany in the Second World War was one of Europe's biggest political crisis in the post-war period.

DeGaulle had done an about turn and decided to hand back the French North African colony of Algeria to the Algerians after a bitterly fought war of independence -a conflict immortalised through Glilo Pontecorvo's film The Battle of Algiers and the writings of Franz Fannon. What made Algeria different from other conflicts between European colonists and the indigenous seekers of independence was that the northern area of Algeria, situated on the Mediterranean, was considered to be a part of metropolitan France. As French as Provence, Burgundy or Il-de-France. It was a place where many French families had settled for generations.

Adding to the fevered level of emotion swirling around the conflict was that a French withdrawal for many would cap a series of national disasters that would shatter the collective psyche of a people who had been defeated and occupied in World War Two and more recently, been forced to evacuate from Indo-China.

France had already been brought to the brink of civil war by a rebellion by a number of generals. But while De Gaulle had faced down this challenge, he was aware that many of his countrymen still hated him for his change of policy and that a band of dissident (mainly) army officers had sworn to kill him. There were many attempts on his life with many of these plots being hatched under the aegis of the O.A.S.; Organisation de l'Armee Secrete (The Secret Army Organisation).

The instigator of this particular plot, Lieutenant Colonel Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry, was in point of fact not an O.A.S. member; he belonged to another even more secretive group ‘Vieil Etat-Major’, which shared the views of the O.A.S. and O.A.S. personnel were used in this plot. Bastien-Thiry was a devout Catholic who justified his plot on the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas who said that regicide was morally correct in certain circumstances.

The gang at Petit Clamart were all caught, tried and convicted. All were initially condemned to death but De Gaulle exercised the presidential prerogative of mercy by commuting all the sentences but one -that of Bastien-Thiry.

Bastien-Thiry's plea for clemency had been on the grounds that he was clinically depressed at the time and that his plan had been merely to kidnap DeGaulle and have him tried at a secret location.

DeGaulle had given clemency to the rebellious generals and others who had committed treason but decided that Bastien-Thiry should die because he placed himself at a safe distance from the mayhem of bullets (he was the look-out who waved a newspaper in order to alert the gunmen of the arrival of De Gaulle's car); his operation had also endangered Madame De Gaulle and some innocent bystanders.

In upholding the death sentence, De Gaulle knew that he would be making a martyr of Bastien-Thiry but choose him above the generals who in his words were "kicking footballs" around the precincts of a French penitentiary.

He was executed by firing squad in March of the following year at a military barracks on the outskirts of Paris, the Fort D'Ivry.

Many of those who were imprisoned for plotting his death and the overthrow of the state did not serve lengthy sentences -a prudent policy in terms of setting the ground for future national reconciliation.

©  Adeyinka Makinde (2008)

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England

My Interview at 'The Mind Renewed' about the West's weaponising of Islam - Part One of "The Pan-Islamic Option: The West's Part in the Creation and Sustaining of Islamist Terror"

The first part of an interview with Julian Charles of ‘The Mind Renewed’ about my recent essay, “The Pan-Islamic Option: The West’s Part in the Creation and Sustaining of Islamist Terror”. This segment focuses on recent policies followed by the West through which weaponised Islam is used as a tool in seeking geo-political advantage, But this has come with huge moral, financial and security costs.

TMR Page - Episode 180 “The Pan-Islamic Option” (Part One: Recent Years)

“I don’t know if they turned a blind eye; I think it was a decision, a wilful decision.” - Mike Flynn

We are joined once again by the lawyer and university lecturer Adeyinka Makinde for the first instalment of a two-part interview centring on his recent article, “The Pan-Islamic Option: The West’s Part in the Creation and Sustaining of Islamist Terror”.

In this first part we discuss indications in recent years of the West’s use and support of violent Islamist groups for the purposes of advancing geopolitical goals, with reference to speeches, interviews and emails associated with people in high office, and position papers by influential think tanks.

Adeyinka Makinde trained for the law as a barrister. He lectures in criminal law and public law at a university in London, and has an academic research interest in intelligence & security matters. He is a contributor to a a number of websites for which he has written essays and commentaries on international relations, politics and military history. He has served as a programme consultant and provided expert commentary for BBC World Service Radio. China Radio International and the Voice of Russia.

Links

TMR 180: Adeyinka Makinde: The Pan-Islamic Option (Part One: Recent Years)

Interview Notes

© Adeyinka Makinde (2017)

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer and law lecturer based in London, England.

Eyes of Hitchcock

Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (1899-1980)

An assemblage of stills from the works of film auteur Alfred Hitchcock focusing on the eyes: an investigation of shock, fear, terror, malevolence and madness.

Credits

Filmmaker: Kogonada

Music: “Anything can happen, and usually does...On the Orient Express” by Rob Cawley

© Adeyinka Makinde

Adeyinka Makinde is a London-based writer

A Good Few Reasons Why The United States Should Exit Afghanistan

Donald Trump’s presidential election campaign promised to apply sound traditional conservative values of non-interventionism once he got into office. This included getting the United States out of Afghanistan where the American military have engaged in that nation’s longest war. However, rather than dis-engagement, the Pentagon and the State Department have in recent months recommended an increase in troops in a country where the Taliban presently controls more territory than at any point since the invasion. Additionally, the ISIS franchise has established control over a stretch of land along the Afghan border with Pakistan. Trump has reneged on a great many campaign promises but it is worth reminding why the United States would be best served by withdrawing from this quagmire, a legacy of its post-Cold War drift towards militarism.

1. The $800 billion cost of ‘nation-building’ which has not contained global Islamic terror or defeated the Afghan Islamist belligerents: the Taliban and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant - Khorasan Province.

2. As of October 2016, 2,386 American military personnel have been killed, 20,046 American service personnel have been wounded in action and 1,173 American civilian contractors have lost their lives.

3. Thousands of Afghans -over 91,000 civilians, soldiers, militiamen- have been killed in a cycle of violence since the U.S. invasion in what was supposed to have been a ‘police action’ against Osama Bin Laden who was never indicted for the 9/11 atrocity. Nor was he formally put on the F.B.I.’s wanted list. In fact it was Libya’s Colonel Muammar Gaddafi who was responsible for the issuance of the first Interpol warrant.

4. Millions of Americans have become addicted to heroin since the U.S. invasion, the aftermath of which has seen an increase in poppy production. The irony is that the Taliban had virtually wiped out the harvest and trade of opium but changed policy in order to use the tax it imposes on farmers to finance its insurgency.

5. Afghanistan arguably serves as a corporate welfare program for both the defence and chemical industries. The former benefit from Cold Wars with Russia and China as well as in counter-insurgency adventures such as Afghanistan. The latter are keen to benefit from the exploitation of Afghanistan’s rare-earth minerals.

The untapped deposits were estimated in 2010 to be potentially worth up to one trillion dollars. That figure was disputed at the time and would be much less given the general fall in the value of commodities. Nonetheless, this has been utilised as a recent ‘selling point’ by Michael Silver, the CEO of American Elements.

It is a well known fact that American officials had drawn up plans to invade Afghanistan before the attacks of 9/11. Threats of military intervention had emanated from Washington during the summer of 2001. The underlying reason involved the United States setting up a base close to the oil-rich lands of Central Asia. That rationale and the one being proffered by Michael Silver only serve to reinforce the thesis propounded by Major General Smedley Butler that war is a racket.

Unfortunately for the American people, the Afghan racket, along with other unjust wars, has only served to enrich the nation’s oligarchs while they suffer the consequences of a chronic national debt.

© Adeyinka Makinde 2017

Adeyinka Makinde is a London-based writer. He can be followed on Twitter @AdeyinkaMakinde

Zulus, Redcoats and Sabaton

Watercolour of a Zulu Warrior by William Whitelock Lloyd

““What do you know about Zulus?”

“Bunch of savages, isn’t it?”

An exchange between a Boer and a British soldier in a scene from the 1964 Paramount International release Zulu kick-starts a series of clips from that movie set to a frenzied burst of ‘Power Metal’ music played by the Swedish band Sabaton.

According to Wikipedia:

The band’s main lyrical themes are based on war and historical battles -the name is a reference to a sabaton, knight’s foot armour...Lyrical content drawn from World War I, World War II and other historical conflicts is prevalent and lyrics often recite stories of heroic deeds by men and armies from all over the world.

Thus the group have written songs dedicated to the likes of the Seventh Panzer Division of the Wehrmacht, the ‘Ghost Division’ which was commanded by Erwin Rommel, the Swiss Guards, a mercenary unit involved with defending the Holy See during the sacking of Rome in 1527, and the 24th Regiment of Foot, the defenders of the mission at Rorke’s Drift.

While the band have on occasion had to explain that they espouse neither nationalist nor racist sentiment, the videos made by connoisseurs of their music on youtube tend to attract commentators who wish to read those values into them. Thus the crusader theme accompanying the track “The Last Stand” brings out a number of trolls expressing hatred for Islam and the need to be instilled with the crusader spirit in order to stem the perceived invasion of Europe by Muslims.

Similarly, the song “Rorke’s Drift” which is about the heroism of 150 British redcoats defending an outpost against between 3,000 to 4,000 Zulu warriors attracts the odd acerbic comment such as “Fuck Black Lives Matter”. Having said that, the commentary is a mixed bag with a fair proportion displaying good knowledge of history.

It has to be said that the lyrical content of Sabaton songs are not laced with the sort of ambiguity which has bedevilled several songs written by the German ‘Industrial Metal’ band Rammstein which have been used by a multitude of youtube video makers seeking to glamorise the Third Reich and the Waffen-SS.

The bone one picks with the Sabaton rendition of Rorke’s Drift is the analysis of history. Among the opening lines are:

Chance for peace and justice gone and all talks had been in vain

A prince had been offended and he has gone the path of war

These words remove the backdrop of the Anglo-Zulu wars being one predicated on the aggression of the British seeking to extend the frontiers of the their empire. While the Zulu empire may have been a militarised society along the lines of Ancient Sparta, its ruler, King Cetewayo, was keen to reach an accommodation with the neighbouring British colonial authorities.

But the British wished to break up the Zulu nation in order to achieve wider objectives related to establishing new trade routes and facilitating the conduct of mineral exploration and commercial opportunities.

The song also fails to mention anything about the ineptitude of General Chelmsford in leading the British Army to defeat at iSandlwana. The opening words refer to the main force having been slain and towards the end that the empire is “saved”. The Battle of Rorke’s Drift did not of course ultimately decide the Anglo-Zulu War -the decisive confrontation would occur six months later at Ulundi- instead it was used at the time as a propaganda piece to deflect public scrutiny from the failings which had led to humiliation at iSandlwana.

The song’s chorus is all about the resilience and fortitude of the redcoat in the face of the approaching Zulu hordes:

Zulus attack

Fight back to back

Show them no mercy and

Fire at will

Kill or be Killed

Facing, awaiting

No mention of the heroism of Zulu warriors charging against an onslaught of bullets and as defenders of their realm from foreign aggressors.

Perhaps one expects too much from the lyrics of a Power Metal band.

But if the heroism of members of a British infantry is the focus there, the 1981 song “Impi” by the South African multiracial band Juluka highlights the valiant effort of the Zulu army in inflicting a defeat on the British at the aforementioned Battle of iSandlwana. And if truth be told, the lyrics of Johnny Clegg provides more detail on the doomed army of Chelmsford as they brace themselves for war on the eve of the battle.

There are no forensic references to izimpondo zankomo - the battle formations of the Zulus, the boldness in charging rifle-armed soldiers and the climax of the short spear-wielding warrior killing the red-coated invader. Instead Clegg relies on a refrain sang in the Zulu language to convey the power and mystique of the army of a people who Disraeli described as a “remarkable people who defeat our generals, convert our bishops and who on this day have put an end to a great dynasty”:

Impi! Wo ‘nans’ impi iyeza

Obani bengathinta amabhubesi?

Translation

Here comes the army

Who can touch the lions?

Perhaps Sabaton might have examined heroism from both perspectives in a way similar to that attempted by the heavy metal band Iron Maiden in their 1982 song “Run To The Hills”. That song contrasted the plight of the nomadic Cree Indians with that of the white settlers, who acting on the religious-derived and state approved ideology of ‘Manifest Destiny’, sought to ethnically cleanse the indigenous populations from the Atlantic Seaboard to the Pacific Ocean.

But song lyrics as with movie scripts are noted for their often ruthless view of history. And in this regard, Sabaton’s “Rorke’s Drift” is no different.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2017)

Adeyinka Makinde is a London-based writer. He can be followed on Twitter @AdeyinkaMakinde