Aloha Bwana* Obama

By B. R. Gowani

Happiness/Sadness

This must be the happiest day of your life as you will be entering the White House – a house that was built with the sole intent of housing rich white men. However, it is also the saddest day for your predecessor — not the outgoing president – but his father, the 41st president. Senior ruled at a time when US became the solo Empire of the world — in wake of the Soviet Union disintegration. His 1991 war against Iraq was instigated to impose the United States’ global hegemony. His son set that same Empire on a downward slide through his gringo-style violence which was, of course, conducted with blessings and full stimulus from the Jewish Lobby. It marks the beginning of the end of the US Empire.

Like many of your predecessors, Mr. Obama, your legs must have given up too at the thought of running for the highest office of the land, but you were damn smart, sir, to grab the two crutches offered to you (without which no body can even dream of reaching the highest office of the land): the Jewish Lobby and the Corporations.
One Cautionary advice: Never should a thought cross your mind that you can do away with either of these crutches. Let us look at what happened when you predecessor tried to explore the thought of eliminating the crutch: When George Bush Sr. asked the then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir not to use the US loan money on building Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, he felt the negative power of the Jewish crutch and this is widely believed to be the reason he lost the second term.

Hope/Change Technique

I don’t know whether you have seen Stanley Kubrick’s film “A Clockwork Orange,” or read Anthony Burgess’ novel the movie was based on. Let me briefly recap for you: the main character was violent. When the circumstances led to his arrest he volunteered himself to be used as a guinea pig by the state prison for the Ludovico Technique. He was cured from committing crimes. Upon his release, he had become completely non-violent. However, ultimately he returned to his old ways, when faced with adverse conditions.

You have used a similar technique but under a different strategy: Hope/Change. The people you’ve chosen to run your administration do not show change nor emanate any hope. So the effect of Hope/Change Technique is gradually wearing off and many people are returning back to their normal resigned selves realizing that the Hope is hopeless and the Change is sameness.

Colored People’s Tragedy

Historically, the Third World countries were occupied and colonized by white Europeans. However, when the oppression brought about uprisings, the colonizers trained a tiny select group to continue the oppression by handing them the aura of power. Then came the world wars and it became necessary for them to fight the home fire and they were forced to leave the colonies. By then, the colonies had been looted by the occupiers and their economies were intertwined with those of colonizers in such a way that economic dependency became the newly independent nations’ fate. The leaders of these nations who tried to carve their own paths were crushed or strangled economically and those who followed their dictates were allowed to loot for personal gain and forced to let the former colonizers continue to loot. Either way, the majority of people in those countries could not enjoy the fruits of freedom. The blame was, of course, laid on their non-whiteness in that it was said that the colored folks could not run the country effectively.

Never before in the history of the United States, or the world, has a colored person been known as “the most powerful man in the world.” This is a first. The reality that you’re inheriting a country which is bankrupt and the empire that is breathing its last breath makes your task more difficult. The US debt stands at $11 trillion, in addition to budget and trade deficits. We can not overlook the state of depression and joblessness the country is facing. If you fail to deliver much — which is highly likely — then the racist elements will point a finger at your skin tone.  They’ll intentionally overlook the fact that it has been all the white occupants of the White House that have brought this country to such a desperate bankrupt state.

What You Can DO

Even if you can only accomplish the following couple of things during your time in office, many people in the US and the world will remember you for a long time:

1. Try to eliminate the legal injustices and economic disparities between the colored and white people. In 2002, 50% of the people put behind bars for drugs were blacks. They make up only 13% of the total US population. One reason for this disparity is that the whites who have 18 ounces or 500 grams of cocaine are sentenced to the same imprisonment time as are blacks with 0.2 ounces or 5 grams of crack.

Or take for example the 18% children under 18 living in poverty in the US in 2007, where:
33.7% were Black children
28.6 were Hispanic children
11.9 were Asian children, but only
10.1 were White non-Hispanic children.
At the very least what you should plan to do is to reduce the above numbers as follows:
Black percentage by 23.6
Hispanic percentage by 18.5
Asian percentage by 1.8
to match the population spread and thus bringing equality in poverty.

These small changes will be a step in the right direction to eliminate disparity among the poor Whites, Hispanics, Asians, and Blacks.

2. Use all your charm and oratory power to convince the Israeli leaders and the Jewish Lobby in the US to refrain from blatant and destructive wars, such as the current one against the Palestinians in Gaza and the July 2006 war against Lebanon. Don’t try to stop them — because you cannot — from continuous murders of Palestinians and the Lebanese on a regular basis, albeit on a smaller scale. It’s just that when the killing is on a large scale, that even the US supported Muslim leaders get embarrassed and are forced to show little sympathy for the victims. This will also prevent you from facing awkward “shoe” moments.

You may be aware of what recently happened to the most powerful white man in the world. President George Bush got his final humiliation from the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently (as cited by Paul Craig Roberts):

“Early Friday morning the secretary of state [Condoleezza Rice] was considering bringing the cease-fire resolution to a UNSC [United Nations Security Council] vote and we didn’t want her to vote for it,” Olmert said. “I said ‘get President Bush on the phone.’ They tried and told me he was in the middle of a lecture in Philadelphia. I said ‘I’m not interested, I need to speak to him now.’ He [Bush] got down from the podium, went out and took the phone call.”

Bloody good performance for a leader of a tiny country, whose destruction of the Palestinian people depends on the arms and aid from the US. Goliath yet again got humiliated by David.

So Obamaji, to the Israeli government and the Jewish Lobby the most powerful black man in the world means nothing. In spite of you being in this dire circus environment (meticulously planned, strategized with no room for error), yet I cannot restrain myself from wishing you all the best.

B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com.

*Aloha means dear or beloved in Hawaiian language and bwana means mister in Swahili language, spoken in Tanzania, Kenya, and some other African countries.