Guest Post by Anonymous* If you follow current headlines, you may have noticed a seemingly new conflict arising in the Middle East. Recent migratory trends in Israel have led to new challenges beyond the decades long occupation of the Palestinian Territories. The tension surrounding the influx of African asylum seekers and refugees to Israel has reached a boiling point resulting in racist violence against these groups over the last several months.  In late April and early May, a series of Molotov cocktail attacks targeting asylum seeker and refugee communities, including a primary school for refugee children, marked a definite shift from xenophobic rhetoric to indiscriminate street violence. In late May, a 1000 person mob of right-wing Jewish Israelis vandalized African-owned shops and attacked asylum-seekers in the streets of south Tel Aviv. In the most recent attack, the home of Eritrean asylum seekers was fire bombed in Jerusalem, as violence spread beyond cities with high concentrations of migrants. A warning scrawled outside the house made the message clear -- Africans should leave the neighborhood or suffer the consequences. The recent attacks have instilled an increased sense of foreboding in refugee communities. Volunteers from refugee ally organizations accompany children to school to discourage attacks, similar to the situation experienced by many Palestinians in settlement plagued areas of the West Bank. Asylum seekers fear leaving their homes and many have lost what low-paying jobs they had due to governmental policies targeting refugees and their employers. Refugee aid organizations have been subject to threats of violence and even arrest for aiding “illegal migrants”. Yet this fear is not new, nor is the violence experienced by these communities. Africans who have sought asylum in Israel since the end of 2006, currently number between 21,000 and 60,000 people, with the majority coming from Eritrea and Sudan, traveling through the Sinai Peninsula. Though Israel is a signatory of the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees, and both the 1954 and 1967 Protocols, the Israeli government does not have a functioning asylum process and has not adopted associated asylum legislation. As such, the situation faced by refugees in Israel is tense, as the asylum process is arduous; work permits and social services are lacking and/or outright denied. To date, the Israeli government has recognized less than 200 asylum seekers as refugees, portraying most as economic migrants traveling to Israel for work. UNHRC recently reported that in 2011, only one of 4,603 asylum applications was approved, with an additional 6,000 cases pending review. As the number of Africans in Israel increased, so have levels of hostility from local Israeli communities, particularly in south Tel Aviv. The recent attacks that received heightened media attention are merely a continuation, though more explosive, of anti-African sentiments that have pervaded the Israeli state since the arrival of Ethiopian Jews in the 1980s and early 1990s. Anti-African protests in Tel Aviv began in 2010 and the home of Sudanese refugees in the city of Ashdod was firebombed in early 2011. The media, both in Israel and abroad, has largely failed to report the presence of racial incitement and violence as a process constructed over time, preferring to portray recent events as an overnight phenomenon in reaction to uncontrollable migration flows. The American media landscape has largely ignored the struggles of African asylum seekers in Israel, focusing more closely on high-level political events surrounding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and tensions with Iran. In the period preceding the recent violence, there was only sporadic reporting of refugee-related issues, even as Israel began constructing the world’s largest asylum detention facility in 2011. This facility in the southern Negev is expected to open in late 2012 and will incarcerate upwards of 10,000 people, including children. Of the limited reporting that has been done, most lacks a serious analysis of the political situation in Israel and displays a number of disturbing trends, namely the mimicry of government security claims, the prioritization of Israeli voices over those of refugees themselves, and a failure to address the role of political figures in driving racial incitement. A general lack of context and clarity has resulted in a number of misleading headlines and news reports. Following the recent xenophobic riots in Tel Aviv, CNN published a report titled “Hundreds protest in Israel illegal immigration battle,” in which the outlet refers to asylum seekers as “illegal African migrants.” Even more damaging, when highlighting the violence and arrests that ensued, the outlet does not illuminate who were the perpetrators of such violence, leaving it unclear to the reader that it was Africans asylum seekers that were under attack. The New York Times displays similar trends, though paints a picture of re-establishing order in response to the chaos resulting from migration. Articles published by Isabel Kershner and Ethan Bronner include headlines such as, “Israeli Leader Pledges Hard Line on Migrants” and “Israel Acts to Curb Illegal Migration from Africa.” Bronner takes it a step further in parroting racist and discriminatory language such as the usage of the word “infiltrators” to describe Africans in Israel. Israeli media demonstrates similar trends, though there has been a marked shift in the general media landscape. Since the onset of the recent attacks, a number of news outlets began interviewing asylum seekers in response to the violence. The inclusion of these individuals has been a rare occurrence over the years, as even more progressive news outlets such as Haaretz have largely given greater space to Israeli elected officials and their associated ‘law and order’ narratives. The recent inclusion of asylum seekers is not itself without flaw. Though these interviews illuminate the experiences of asylum seekers in Israel and touch on their want of greater rights including recognition as refugees, the overall portrayal erases the agency of these individuals, rendering them solely as victims of violence and exploitation. Very few outlets have reported on protests petitioning for refugee rights or asylum seeker-led demonstrations outside the Eritrean embassy demanding political reform. As a result, it is difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint a political solution that is sought by the individuals most seriously affected by recent events -- African asylum seekers themselves.

I am writing this from Cape Town, South Africa, where it took a while to load the 53 second Youtube video of the latest Nando's ad (embedded at the end of this paragraph), so I am not sure how "it is going viral" as the local press would suggest. Though viral here also means about 300,000 people viewed it on online. In any case, Nando's is the South African fast food chain that makes "Portuguese-style" chicken (it's really Mozambican).  They have  "global" ambitions, initially in places with large South Africans diasporas--in the UK, US (in Washington D.C)., Australia--but increasingly also elsewhere: for example, Dubai and a few African countries (I once ate at a Nando's in Dakar). Here's the ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ptgf8q0-Vc Nando's claims the ad is a comment on xenophobia. For those who have not seen it yet or can't watch it online, it opens with scenes of black undocumented migrants crossing the country's border while a voice-over says: "You know what's wrong with South Africa? It's all you foreigners." The ad then cuts in quick succession to a series of stereotypes and references: Chinese (yes, offloading goods), Indians (trading), Kenyans (in running gear), Afrikaners (yes, a farmer with dog in front seat and black workers in the back), Zulus, Tswanas, and Sothos, etcetera. It is unclear what reinforcing these stereotypes is supposed to do. All these people, once we're introduced to them, disappear in puffs of smoke. The only person who survives the puff-of-smoke effect is "a traditional Khoisan man" who, using expletives, says he’s not going anywhere because "you found us here." South Africa's public broadcaster, SABC, then announced it would not show the ad on any of its three channels. Interestingly satellite operator DStv and the country's only private terrestrial channel ETV also announced they would do the same thing. But the SABC got the most flak. It does not help that South Africans  are now obsessed with saying everything is banned. So of course when the SABC--synonymous in the media and the suburbs with "ANC dictatorship"--clumsily announced its decision to not show the ad (its spokesman said the SABC was concerned “that the public might interpret [the ad] differently”). The papers predictably insinuated that it was a "political" decision and that the ad was "banned." Curiously, DStv and ETV weren't subject to the same judgment--in their cases, it's just good business to censor the ad). This being the country where the media acts like they're writing/reporting from Somalia and North Korea as political researcher Steven Friedman puts it so well, the usual social media hysteria followed. Nando's CEO went on about "freedom of expression" and "censorship," though he failed to tell reporters that Nando's withdraws its own ads when it is not good for business.  Nevertheless, you can still watch the ad online (that is if you can wait for it to download while in South Africa). But what about the ad itself? The reporting here on the content of the ad has been very poor--to put it mildly. I actually find the ad unfunny and problematic. It basically endorses, on the one hand, the white right-wing parliamentarian Pieter Mulder's willful denial of South Africa's violent history especially on land dispossession  and on the other hand it bolsters the similarly ahistorical and ethnocentric claims of coloured nationalists who are all "Khoisan" now (that category in itself is a 20th century construction since the two--Khoi and San--that make up "Khoisan" are separate, distinct peoples and a majority of coloured people actually trace much of their ancestry to slavery or "mixed" relationships). In the final analysis this is about Nando's wanting attention for its brand and getting that attention; the brand thrives on "political controversy."  The only result that matters: Nando's will sell more peri peri chicken. Of course, I asked those in the AIAC "office" for comments. Here's an edited version of the conversation. Melissa Levin: I totally agree with you. That's how I read it too. That we are all 'colonizers' and the fight was one between groups of land invaders. In addition, it persists in buoying the nonsense about cultural identity, diversity, multiple groups making up the South African fabric--no majorities and minorities, blacks and whites, but Xhosas, Afrikaners, etcetera. "We are all minorities now." The contest over the meaning and content of public life is quite brutal it seems. Daniel Magaziner: Unfunny and problematic is putting it kindly. The ad traffics in the long disproved 'empty-land' thesis on the early 20th century, which held that South Africa's current residents--whether white or black--were conquerors, who had displaced the subcontinent's legitimate inhabitants. If both whites and blacks were conquerors, than what right could Africans possibly have to cry foul at land dispossession and segregation? Bantu-speakers (the ad's fast disappearing array of Zulus, Tswanas, Sothos, etcetera) had simply lost the great game of imperial conquest to the whites. Boo hoo. Let's not even dwell on how the ad's comparison between Kenya and Lesotho, Cameroon and 'Zululand' traffics in apartheid era claims that Bantu-speakers' legitimate homes were in the Bantustans (including those supposedly pure ethnic enclaves beyond South Africa's 'white' borders), just as whites were legitimate in their white republic. And the stereotypes, oh, the stereotypes. Although I enjoyed the running Kenyans, I found the the Boer in the bakkie with the dog in front and the workers in the back a little too real. Nando's chicken is delicious; its historiography and social criticism less so. Basia Lewandowska Cummings (@mishearance): It's strange that they portray the 'Khoisan' guy at the end in some with a kind of hip hop style aggressive cool. Why make him swear? I suppose the only interesting thing the advert throws up, other than a brilliant array of stereotypes, some dubious looking chicken and a poke at xenophobia, is: whose place is it now to question social realities like xenophobia? It's interesting why Nando's feel they can/should comment on it, and think that it's a lucrative means of advertising their product. And if advertising will increasingly become a place to address these concerns, can we predict that it will continue to fall into such crude, stereotypical, de-contextualised 'advert-myths' like this one? Also, with a range of only 2 apparently 'diverse' styles of chicken their product isn't even very diverse. 2 types of chicken is still only--using their own analogy--just black and white. Herman Wasserman (@hwasser): I think there are various issues here that have become conflated in the somewhat predictable public outcry against ‘censorship’. For one, there is the feeble attempt at humour that falls flat. I also find the ad unfunny--as a joke, the ad does not quite gel, perhaps because it takes itself too seriously. Then there is the ideology--problematic to say the least. The ad flattens out history, denies any possibility of asymmetrical distribution of visibility among competing cultural identities, and ignores the relationship between ethnicity and political and economic power. "We are all just foreigners here," it tries to say, “so don’t come and make any claims to restitution or redress. If those people in Alexandra could just learn to laugh at themselves, they wouldn’t have gone and burnt immigrants alive.” But the lack of humour and problematic ideology aside, I do think the refusal to screen it was misguided. The SABC’s claim that it had ‘xenophobic undertones’ missed the point. It was meant to look like xenophobia, not hidden away underneath, but so exaggerated that the very possibility of xenophobia becomes impossible. By refusing to screen it, the TV channels bought into the current discourse about ‘media freedom under attack’ and lent gravitas to an ad that wouldn’t have attracted half the attention it has if it were allowed to disappear among the many other mediocre ads on television. Mikko Kapanen (@mikmikko): Nando’s has always presented a moral conundrum to me: I like their vegetarian burger, but find their advertising very off-putting and this advert is perfectly in line with their TV advertising strategy. It has got practically no connection to the product they are selling, millions of Rands [the local currency] have been thrown into its production and it’s offensive. I am not even one of those people who are looking around for things to be offended by, but this just is. Just like probably every advert by Nando’s I have ever seen. I think textually these visuals have been analysed spot on here by others (empty-land etc.), but purely from a production point of view, I’d say that even in general this is a very typical South African TV advert. The advertising industry--having observed it in action especially in Cape Town--is very detached from the majority of South Africans, but they are too proud, stubborn or just unaware to admit it. I remember a friend who is an industry insider telling me how his white supervisor had told him with no irony or regret that in advertising “white is aspirational” and as a logical consequence of that they didn’t have to understand the Black cultures of South Africa while coming up with adverts to them. Many industry people also focus so hard on trying to win the TV Laurie (advertising award) meanwhile most radio adverts are pretty terrible regardless of the relative efficiency of that medium. No other country I have ever lived in has had such abundance of locally produced expensive looking TV adverts that effortfully try to connect the product and its potential consumers--and Nando’s is just one of the companies that have climbed on this ox-wagon. Brett Davidson (@brettdav): Of course I'm sure that as long as people are discussing the ad, whether positively or negatively, Nando's is happy. Herman Wasserman: Yes, Brett, Nando's might even be happier with the ad being 'censored' and gaining credibility online than having it screened on TV. But does this whole saga not also point to a certain failure of mainstream media, commercial or public, to engage their audiences in an informative, creative and entertaining manner in debates about race, culture and power? When these issues enter media debates, it is often done in such heavy-handed manner that audiences become fatigued and then the repressed racial tensions in those dreadful comments at the bottom of online news stories that we see everyday on South African based websites. Lily Saint (@lollipopsantos): The manner by which people are eliminated (by a puff of smoke) is pure euphemism. Meant, I suppose, to recall various moments in South African history when different groups featured in the ad were targets and victims of brute violence, would the ad still have any claim to humor if people were shot dead by bullets instead of lamely evaporated into clouds of smoke? While there is certainly offense to be taken in the stereotypes and exclusions in this ad, the real problem as others have pointed out, is the erasure of actual histories of violence that continue to plague the present. By making light of these the ad wants to make consumerism the only identity that can unify people--the pun on "real South Africans love diversity" of course evokes national, ethnic and racial diversity, but more ominously speaks to the rhetoric of "choice" allowing us all to think we are free agents while keeping us spoon-fed capitalism. Melissa Levin: On Brett's earlier point. He is spot on. There is something important to be said about the multiple ways in which public space is increasingly privatized. Whether it is football teams that are owned by big business rather than supporters, or public parks that are sponsored by private companies, whether it is the roll-back of basic state services that are doled out to the well-connected or whatever. In this case it is a business that sells its product by both defining and giving meaning to the issues of the day. So public space is increasingly occupied by corporate soundbites. At the apparent end of history, social issues are addressed through buying a bag to end hunger, for instance, or eating 'anti-xenophobic' chicken. I cannot help myself but to carry on yelling about this and giving the chicken people more air-time, because I am all for the post-Nazi adage that suggests that the imperative of humanity is to be at home nowhere. That way, we make no claims above another. I am against the trite evocation of this theme that reinforces the politics of difference and the political imperative of being nice. The dominant exposition of the idea of culture transfers an idea of a categorical, immutable, static identity from the notion of race which we must no longer have an appetite for. But the claims are similar. Someone else has spoken of this process of trading race for culture as being neo-racist. Kathryn Mathers: This discussion keeps making me think back to those SAB (the now multinational South African Breweries) adverts from the 1980s [and through the 1990s], you know, the perfect embodiments of South African cosmopolitan masculinity both black and white getting together in a bar for beer? I am pretty sure it was the 80s because I remember discussions about how they were filmed when black and white couldn't drink in the same bar and how technology was used to paste together two separate but equal (sic) scenes. (There are also the post-apartheid versions like the Klippies "eish/met ys" romance.) I have always found those advertisements confusing since they were certainly utopic if you believed in a nonracial South Africa but they could not have been simply aspirational since it seemed pretty clear that the majority of potential SAB drinkers did not aspire to a nonracial South Africa. This discussion is making me wonder how these two advertisements are part of a long tradition in South African media that has less to do with erasure of violence past and present than with its displacement. By shifting the terms of racism/xenophobia rather than trying to erase them, which would be near to impossible, it makes it much easier to live with, making viewers/participants doubly implicated ultimately not just for the violence but for trying to hide it in plain site. I argue that this is a gesture typical of romanticized images of Africa in the US where the white savior is made possible not by the erasure of Africans but by their relegation to a backdrop or by the kind of move that Disney's Animal Kingdom makes, which is not to ignore the social/political challenges of the continent but to bring one of the less disturbing ones forward, big game poaching, even in the context of an amusement park. Nando's does not try to suggest that South Africans are not xenophobic--rather they show how everybody is xenophobic but we can still laugh about it so it doesn't really matter, thereby displacing the problem without denying it, and making it  even more invisible than erasure would or could. Tom Devriendt (@telamigo): The male voice-over is the "Voice of Reason," holding the moral high ground: "This is your history. History is not how you live it." Reason trumps experience. The advertising genius trumps the consumer. But a stereotypical hypocrite is hard to visualize in a one-second shot. So the soutpiel, not for the first time, is let off the hook. There's no time for self-criticism in the ad world. Herman Wasserman: Good point, Tom. Perhaps this points to the invisibility of white South African English normativity and supposed ideological neutrality. Melissa Levin: To Tom and Herman, I thought the white couple in the fancy car that were referred to as Europeans are the souties? And 'even the Afrikaner' who disappears is clearly another category of identity. Herman Wasserman: Melissa is right. Appropriately, the English white stereotypes in the ad are not in some 'tribal' gear but can fit in anywhere looking thoroughly modern as we know. Tom Devriendt: That, or--how I read it--it is a generic reference to the tens of thousands Belgian, Dutch, German or English immigrants that have made South Africa their home over the last decade -- "Bought this house in Clifton for a steal!"

Between the relentless media coverage, the twitter deluge, the pronouncement by a South African judge (“This is a matter of great national importance”), and declarations by the South African President’s daughters about “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” you might be forgiven for thinking that–finally–some urgency about South Africa’s big issues was making national news. Were we talking about how to deal with the persistent racial and class inequality, joblessness, and a lack of government accountability? Not so much. Instead, the fuss revolved around a piece of agitprop art by artist Brett Murray that cut and pasted a limp penis and President Jacob Zuma’s head onto a Soviet era poster of Vladimir Lenin. By midweek the ruling party had sued the gallery displaying the work and demanded that a Sunday newspaper “remove it from the internet” (huh?) and two men had entered the gallery and defaced it. (The different treatment of the two men–one of them was white–by the media and gallery security, is another story, entirely. But let’s not get distracted.) The leader of the South African Communist Party, an ANC ally, called for a boycott of the newspaper. Inside South Africa the whole thing, apart from making the artist Brett Murray very famous, is playing out as a battle between freedom of expression and African “values.” Some half-baked theorizing about black sexuality compared Zuma to Sara Baartman, the nineteenth century Khoi women abducted and displayed at freak shows in Europe. Liberals smell authoritarianism (this is “Africa”) and impatient black elites see white racism. As far as the dignity argument is concerned, this is not a series of naked photos taken of the president by insatiable paparazzi. It is an artist’s representation of a penis that, as far as we know is not modeled after the actual one, but is meant as an artistic statement about contemporary South African politics and Zuma’s complicated and scandalous personal life. The question is whether it’s successful. Most critics are unimpressed. The ANC appears to be Murray’s biggest promoter. So it no longer matters that Murray makes didactic and uninteresting art. The fact that so much passion can be generated around it, when the material conditions in which people live are so dire (see the AIDS activist Nathan Geffen’s critique of the whole thing here or that of Tselane Tambo, daughter of the late ANC leader, here), perhaps makes Murray’s point much better than his artwork ever did. We are mostly stunned at how the ANC and its allies have handled this. (You have the spectacle of people like Buti Manamela of the Young Communist League, tweeting about arranging marches to the gallery before the poster was defaced, protesting at the court, and forwarding essays about “black male sexuality”.) But perhaps we shouldn’t be. New South African politics and how the country’s media report it, has always been done in such a way that someone with little knowledge of the country or its history, chancing upon its public discourse, would mistake it for Somalia or North Korea. Here’s what the proponents of freedom of expression (who incidentally remained silent or oblivious when Murray’s gallery refused to display some of his other work for fear it may offend Jewish and Muslim South Africans) and those on the other side yelping about African “tradition” can’t or won’t see: this is plain electioneering by the ruling party. Whether it started out deliberately like that, is not at issue here. What is, is that the ANC is giving red meat to supporters. Check how ANC supporters have come out in support of the party on social media. They know about Zuma’s personal failings and how his party has failed them when it comes to housing, health care and schooling. But they’re living in a world where the mainstream rubbish trade unions and the white leader of the main opposition party refer to black South Africans as “refugees.” So they still have no choice but to vote ANC. The ANC knows this and they’ve doubled down. They don’t care about critics on this one. Critics of how the ANC is handling this don’t vote ANC anyway and the ANC does not need them. In any case, another day spent on posters about penises is another day in which people don’t talk about government ineptitude. The ANC has found its comfort zone in a visionless neo-liberal malaise. This serves to generate a politics buttressing the wealthy at the expense of the poor by channeling and mobilizing legitimate anger away from the failures of capitalist exploitation. Moral of the story: The ANC is a cynical political party now. South African politics is finally normal. * Melissa Levin contributed to this post.

http://youtu.be/2tig5g9jV5Y British based Nigerian rapper Modenine starts off our weekly Friday Music Break. Here's four more. No we're not including the video just below just because Flint, Michigan-born Tunde Olaniran is half Nigerian. Yes we are. But he is also talented. (Detroit MC Miz Korona makes a feature appearance.) http://youtu.be/WjqT85G2yyg Nigerian pop gets a French makeover http://youtu.be/C7YvqEoEOK8 More pop rap from West Africa: Veteran (yes, they’re been around for a while now) rappers VIP, from Accra, are now flogging fantasy, cars and girls. Computer graphics come in handy. http://youtu.be/El_82jAuNq8 From about a year ago: rapper Pharoahe Monch gets help from the Miguel Atwood-Ferguson Ensemble (or it's the other way around). http://vimeo.com/35522086 See you Monday.

The obituary of British anti-apartheid campaigner Bruce King makes reference to his marriage to his South African wife, Jamela Adams. It describes their wedding in "a Muslim ceremony in Cape Town" in 1964 in defiance of the Mixed Marriages Act. The couple left for England (presumably to have another ceremony there), and was then predictably refused entry back into South Africa. They then moved to Tanzania. But there's this tidbit about their time in Tanzania:

We thought it would be nice to compile a Bonus Music Break centered on acoustic guitar music. First up is Toronto-based Ghanaian Kae Sun with "Lion on a Leash": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8d7AyRkDSs Another Ghanaian: Kesse (made his breakthrough on Ghana's version of American Idol) was profiled by The Fader last year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juw1-d5JmKU Then there's German-Nigerian Ayo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzxRpAU-YO0 And video of a 23 minute live set by Asa, France-based Nigerian (credits: "Fire on the Mountain," "Mr Jailer,"), recorded in San Francisco: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II668alI00g Bez, the young Nigerian (remember him?) will be in New York City next week (Society HAE has the details) http://youtu.be/S26Ti4VqKxY You can't say acoustic guitar music and not include Michael Kiwanuka, Ugandan-born British crooner. He is a big part of our regular Twitter #musicbreaks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BN_Shadmk0o Stateside, there's Cody ChesnuT. (BTW, while below he slows things down, I've seen him crank it up with The Legendary Roots Crew): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTuj3jYehtE And Gary Clarke Jnr with a stripped down version of my favorite tunes (remember him?) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB_9qaHmTok

Photographer Gregory Chris shot African music stars Nneka, Meta (of Meta and the Cornerstones) and Just a Band in and around New York City. Here he talks about how he came to chose these artists and what he tried to convey. "I wanted to shoot the artists in the streets of the city, in the neighborhoods where they live, their favorite places, inside their homes, in a place they feel comfortable. Basically, I wanted to shoot them as they are."

Republican party propaganda wants to paint President Barack Obama's Kenyan family as alien to America. In this propaganda, Barack Hussein Obama Snr and the old man's supposed "anti-colonial" and left-wing biases. In this propaganda Kenyans are reduced to anti-American zealots. Yet the strongest impression one gets from the Obama family in Branwen Okpako's beautiful, and substantive documentary of Obama's half sister, Auma Obama, is how familiar and American (i.e. the values Republicans proffer of hard work and guile) the Obamas are.

"Relentless" is fundamentally a film about Lagos. About how director Andy Okoarafor sees it. In Okoarafor's rendering, Lagos is a hard, inhospitable city, where people look stressed out, always hustling. They're always on the move. But Okoarafor also has loves this city.