https://youtube.com/shorts/X5Y....qr9Vz0YM?si=j03X8igj
https://youtube.com/shorts/-7Q....4j05ve38?si=cnT3Pl8j
The policing minister, Chris Philp, appeared to confuse the neighbouring countries of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on BBC Question Time on Thursday.
When discussing the government policy of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda, the Conservative MP for Croydon South responded to an audience member’s question during the BBC One programme by asking: “Rwanda is a different country of Congo, isn’t it?”.
The audience member, who said he came from the DRC where there is fighting with neighbouring Rwanda, asked: “Had my family members come from Goma [a city on the country’s border] on a [Channel] crossing right now, would they then be sent back to the country they are supposedly warring – Rwanda?”
An ally of Philp reportedly told the BBC Philp’s question had been rhetorical.
FOREVER GENOCIDE? CONGOLESE NOT ‘HUMANISED!’
There is a double standard and hypocrisy in how atrocities are portrayed and addressed, depending on the victims. The Holocaust is universally condemned, and rightly so. We hear mantras like “Never again.” But then there’s the ongoing gen*cidal violence and human-rights abuses in DR Congo. Why aren’t these given urgent attention and condemnation?
Activist Chakabars says it’s as if the suffering of the Congolese people hasn’t been adequately humanised.
He says we need to reach a “tipping point.” The diaspora communities have a role and responsibility to help publicise the issue and push for change, rather than being “tacitly complicit” through not just inaction but through ownership of devices like mobiles and tablets that depend on child exploitation in DRC. (He’s not saying give up the tech, but rather: pay fairly and insist the minerals are morally sourced.)
Economic exploitation of Congo’s minerals continues to fuel conflict and harm local communities. Alternative economic models to capitalism are desperately needed to create an environment in which minerals can still be accessed but in a way that develops rather than destroys the country.
Listen to what he says...
He had called ahead to make reservations for him and his wife. But, when they got to the motel, the desk clerk looked at them and nervously told them there were no vacancies.
It was October 8, 1963, and the motel turned out to be a "whites only" motel. He was furious that this could be happening to him, he thought he had achieved a fair amount of success in his life that those barriers no longer applied to him. But, it didn't matter who he was, he still had the wrong skin color. His wife nudged him, and explained, that they needed to go.
"They're going to kill you," she said. He replied back, "They're not gonna kill me - I'm Sam Cooke." His wife just looked at him and replied, "No...to them you're just another ...' you know."
Sam Cooke would later be arrested and jailed. He went on to continue his successful music career though, becoming a rare cross-over hit who became popular with both black and white alike, but he never did forget about that evening. Within one or two months of that incident, Sam Cooke started putting words down for a new song, a song, which he reportedly said "scared" him. He sang it for his protégé Bobby Womack, asked him "What's it sound like?" His friend truthfully told him, "It sounds like death," to which Sam Cooke replied, "Man, that's kind of how it sounds like to me. That's why I'm never going to play it in public." The song was titled "A Change Is Gonna Come," which has become Cooke's signature song, a song Rolling Stone now calls one of the greatest songs of all time.
Unfortunately, Sam Cooke never lived to witness the song's success. Just before the song was to be released as a single in December of 1964, Sam Cooke would be shot to death at a motel in Los Angeles.
The song eventually became one of the anthems for the civil rights movement, becoming a universal message of hope. As Rosa Parks would later say, when she heard that Dr. Martin Luther King was killed, she wasn't sure what to do or what to think. She went home, cried and hugged her mother, then listened to Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come," playing it over and over again. Parks said that Cooke's voice "soothed" her and the words were "like medicine to the soul. It was as if Dr. King was speaking directly to me," giving her the hope to go on, knowing that eventually...a change is gonna come. ~ Sam Motherfuckin Cooke.