Month: October 2014

Happy Halloween, Ebola Sir

Happy Halloween, Ebola Sir

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

halloweenebolaNot even the outstanding basement haunted house that I so successfully ran when my children were in middle school can begin to achieve the truly absolutely unbelievable fears of ebola stoked by despicable American politicians.

“An epidemic of fear can be as dangerous as an epidemic with a virus.”

Maine health-care providers, led by the executive vice-president of the Medical Association of Maine issued that quote, in response to Maine’s T-Party governor’s abrasive and ignorant actions against a health care hero who just returned from West Africa.

A third-grader banned from attending her Milford, Connecticut grade school because she just returned from a wedding in Nigeria where she was the flower girl, had to get a court order to go back to school.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal sent out letters to recent returnees from West Africa who were planning to attend this weekend’s convention in New Orleans on tropical medicine, advising them they shouldn’t come.

A Strong, Maine, elementary school teacher was ordered into a 21-day quarantine because she just returned from her vacation in Texas!

Not only did parents panic when the principal of the Hazelhurst Middle School in Mississippi returned from vacation in Zambia, so many pulled their kids out of school, it closed!

“Principal Lee Wannik had returned to school a day early from a recent trip to Africa, where the Ebola virus has been spreading fairly rapidly. Principal Wannik has just returned from attending the funeral of his brother in Zambia, Africa. A meeting was held Tuesday, October 14 in the school’s auditorium, to try to calm parents and officials who wanted the principal to leave permanently.”

Zambia is thousands of miles away from the epidemic, further than London, with no viral epidemic outbreak there and no history of ever having had one.

The day after the parents pulled their kids out of school, the rumor spread
that the principal actually had ebola.

Tuesday Nigerian applicants to a community college 60 miles from Dallas showed their rejection letters to the press: Elizabeth Pillans, the Director of International Programs, confirmed that “Navarro College is not accepting international students from countries with confirmed Ebola cases.”

The applicants who revealed the letters are from Nigeria, which is “ebola free.”

The DeKalb County (part of Atlanta) Georgia K-12 school board issued the following statement yesterday:

“…no new students from Ebola-affected West African countries, including Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and other affected areas in the United States will be enrolled or allowed to attend classes on school campuses without proper medical documentation and approval by the Superintendent.”

Yesterday Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, notable for supporting the grieving family of Thomas Duncan who died of ebola there, told the press:

“…my wife who was in tears [was] told that she can’t work in the [school] cafeteria by some other moms because she might have Ebola, because I might have Ebola, therefore my child might have Ebola, [and] maybe they all need to leave school.”

There’s more: London’s very somber and highly respected Guardian Newspaper ran the following headline this week:

“Panic: the dangerous epidemic sweeping an Ebola-fearing US.”

Follow the link above so that you can read how American Airlines flight attendants locked someone in an airline bathroom because she vomited, how a journalism department at Syracuse University disinvited a Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter because he had been in Liberia, and on and on and on.

Let’s stop. Drill down into each of these and you drill into a conservative, often T-Party community. I’m not saying this is wholly restricted to Republicans. My own democratic governor up for re-election is acting just as immature.

But we’ve got to fight back. The gloves need to come off. The divide is clear. We can’t be polite or shy. The more conservative an area is, the more likely it’s been fomenting this hysteria.

I’ll leave it to others to study why. Meanwhile, I’m pleading with you to join me in calling out the brazen fear-mongers wherever you see them.

Fight back. Inject some sanity back into America next Tuesday.

Between Black & White

Between Black & White

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

NotYetScottWhite fear of black in America is profound but black fear of white in Africa is even more profound.

Currently of Africa’s 53 countries, only one is being led by a white man, and that came as a great surprise to most in the world, and in fact, to him.

Or did it?

Guy Scott was a close friend for many years of the president of Zambia, Michael Sata, who died early yesterday morning in a London hospital.

Scott’s Ph.D. in agriculture, his birth in Livingstone and his outspoken dedication to remaining essentially unmeaningful except as a symbol gave the former president all sorts of political hedges and foreign notice.

So Sata’s rise to power was never without Scott at his side, and much of Zambia saw this very unusually blended team as just what the country needed four years ago. And so it proved so.

Not because of what Scott brought to the team, but specifically because what he didn’t.

Many vice presidents around the world have no power. It’s a peculiar anomaly of the executive type of democracy that the man designated to replace the dead leader has so little to do or say until that tragic moment comes.

Yet it comes quite often. Presidents of democracies have a very high fatality rate, and not just from assassination. Many don’t achieve the position until they’re quite old and sick. That was the case with Sata, and many wonder if certain Zambians allowed Scott to be put on the ticket as vice president for that very reason.

African executive democracies are almost all much more executive than in America. Each time Sata left the country, he had the power to appoint an acting president, and it was never the white face.

In the last several years Zambia like many African countries has been actively implementing piece by piece a new constitution. Zambia moved faster and faster as Sata got sicker and sicker, but Tuesday the race ended with Sata’s death.

One of the pieces currently up for consideration would eliminate the requirement of the old constitution that limits the president only to persons whose parents were born in Zambia.

Among the reasons this is so contested is because Michael Sata’s son, the very popular current mayor of the Zambian capital of Lusaka, was born to a Sata wife from Malawi.

The mayor, known commonly only by his first name Mulenga (just to avoid muddying the waters), is technically no more eligible than Scott to run for president, but he commands a very powerful political wedge in current Zambian politics.

Scott was born in Zambia in 1944, but his parents were born in Scotland. The Sata/Scott team headed a very popular political party in Zambia, brought to power in no small part because of anti-Chinese sentiment that swept over this fairly industrialized country the last few years.

Chinese investment in Zambia is as intense as anywhere in Africa, but the Chinese ran into hurdle after obstacle when trying to quell the power of Zambian unions.

In his recognized lack of power, Scott often remarked disparagingly about the Chinese as the perfect mouthpiece for his powerful boss. What Scott said was presumed to be what Sata believed, even as Sata negotiated more and more Chinese investment.

They were a perfect team.

The moment Sata died and Scott was confirmed the interim president yesterday, Zambia’s incessant talk of coups heated up:

“…it is a period for the people of Zambia to reflect as to whether this is the kind of constitution we want [or one] that could provide a different scenario all together,” Scott’s African lawyer told the press yesterday in what many consider setting the stage for a herculean political battle.

Sata loved Scott but not so much his son, Mulenga, who hates Scott. The political opposition hates them all, and their leader has already announced he will run for the president.

In my opinion Scott isn’t qualified to be any country’s leader. His crass remarks about Chinese and his oft-stated support for the neighboring and ruthless dictator, Robert Mugabe, disqualify him in my view. He served a cute purpose for a while.

But also in my opinion a white face couldn’t make it yet in any African country. This is where America stands above Africa: Obama may be facing some of the most racist obstacles to governing of any man alive, but he did ascend to highest office.

In Africa, not yet.

Good Ebola Travel Policy

Good Ebola Travel Policy

by Arusha ♥ 3 Comments

campdinnerAfrican travel companies are rethinking their ebola policy, putting their money where their mouth is, and offering unconditional refunds.

Embracing science and the history of past ebola outbreaks, companies mostly so far in East Africa are advising customers that deposits will be refunded without penalty if WHO declares an outbreak in an area in which they operate.

WHO’s designation, “outbreak,” differs from isolated cases of the sort experienced in Dallas and New York. An “outbreak” is multiple confirmed cases in separated, multiple areas. There is no history or other evidence suggesting that isolated cases lead to outbreaks.

Among the first this weekend to change their policy was Great Plains Conservation, which operates three luxury camps in Botswana and three in Kenya.

“Many of our guests are really worried about Ebola. One can’t really blame them given the media hysteria surrounding the story. We believe this will sort itself out in time as the world mobilizes to tackle this head on,” Jacqui Usher explains as the lead-in for the policy change.

The Great Plains policy will refund all monies held – no questions asked – if an ebola outbreak occurs in Kenya or Botswana.

Moreover, Great Plains has now announced that even if there is no outbreak, customers can get all their money back within 16 weeks of arrival. Most African camps require an up-front, nonrefundable 15-20% at the time of booking.

And within those 16 weeks should a customer grow weary of coming, Great Plains will roll any monies held for the customer to new booking dates up to a year in advance.

This is the gold standard of sensible ebola policy. This is spot-on reasoning, bold marketing and honest communication with consumers. No legalize or other lengthy pontificating qualify this extraordinary situation we currently find ourselves in: a hollow fear of something that will simply not happen.

Yesterday in Mwanza, Tanzania, the blood tests of a man who had died suspiciously of symptoms identical to ebola tested negative for the virus.

The possibility, though, that the man had ebola had spread like wildfire through this large Tanzania city on Lake Victoria last week. Health care workers responded in force, a public health campaign was initiated, associates of the man were quarantined and even if the man had tested positive, the spread of the disease would have been stopped in its tracks.

The Mwanza response is what is lacking in West Africa, and the reason that the disease is still spreading there.

Great Plains may be the gold standard and the first company to play it straight with consumers, but it has been resoundingly joined by others:

“Gamewatchers Safaris understands travelers’ sensitivities about planning a holiday almost anywhere in the world during an Ebola outbreak,” Jake Grieves-Cook, former head of the Kenyan Tourist Organization and now owner/operator of Kenya’s Gamewatchers Safaris explains in the lead-in to his new policy, which is similar to Great Plains’.

Great Plains and Gamewatchers were among the very first, but by no means the only companies to announce revised changes, yesterday. It’s going to be very difficult, now, for any African travel company to sit on its hind and not join this sensible movement.

And the result? Consumers will be assured that the African travel companies really believe what science and medical experts have been saying all along:

Ebola is hard to get, and relatively simple to stop spreading except in very unique areas like the three countries in West Africa just ravaged by generations of war.

Don’t Vote

Don’t Vote

by Arusha ♥ 16 Comments

sheshouldntvoteThe depths to which some Americans have descended in an hysterical attempt to protect themselves against ebola has become immoral.

The airport quarantines of health workers arriving from West Africa is dead wrong. It will impede the health services and trade, which West Africa must have to recover, and many more people will die.

In a worse case scenario, the situation which had become better will slide into worse, and the threat to Americans will increase substantially. The policy is self-destructive.

Then why is this happening?

Politics. American politics has become so corrupt our democracy is now impotent. The electorate has lost the ability to analyze issues and is controlled by false claims and fearful media.

Governors Quinn, Cuomo, Scott and Christie are hardly bar chums.

Yet they walked in lockstep to solicit their electorate’s hysteria, because they are all about to lose power, and they are getting votes however they can.

Of course their actions reveal an electorate – if they’re correct – that’s slum ignorant. Are you truly so ignorant? Or like me, do you feel helplessly manipulated?

My own governor, Illinois Pat Quinn, is no angel but I did plan on voting for him as “the lesser evil.” His challenger, Bruce Rauner, is no alternative for a progressive like myself.

So I now have no choice but not to vote for either. This is hardly democracy at work.

But it is at least myself acting on the truth that I know:

The four governors that enacted this barbarian policy are killing people in West Africa and not increasing the protection or health of their own citizens.

In fact, the policy endangers their own citizens’ health and well-being.

This political act against self-interest is what has been happening to America for a generation. Whether it is the senior voting to end Medicaid or the food server voting to end a minimum wage, Americans have been brainwashed with a thousand false ideas to act against what they know is best for themselves.

And now this toxic social personality threatens the lives of thousands.

Facts be damned. Scream don’t think. The man will do anything to stay in power.

I can’t keep him out. But I won’t vote him in.

Bad Ebola Cancellation Policy

Bad Ebola Cancellation Policy

by Arusha ♥ 5 Comments

badvacationThings are calmly down, slides in travel are reversing, and African tour companies are once again shooting themselves in the foot.

In the last ten days a wave of African travel companies have issued new cancellation policies addressing a perceived fear by potential travelers of ebola, which does absolutely nothing except increase fears.

As far as I can tell it began with one of southern Africa’s most reputable and larger companies, Wilderness Safaris.

Wilderness is a holdover from archaic marketing days and still doesn’t sell directly to the consumer, so it sent a rather petulant email to agents worldwide that began by deriding the notion that ebola in West Africa could effect holidays as far away as East and southern Africa.

But then sighing through the internet, the company issued a new policy that said it would cover any difference in lost cancellation fees from nonrefundable payments not refunded by the travelers own insurance company.

Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? It didn’t take long for a whole bunch of companies throughout the continent to follow suit.

It’s meaningless – at least for Americans – and in my opinion is totally counterproductive.

First, why it’s meaningless:

Read the revised policy’s fine print. (1) WHO must declare an “outbreak” in the country in which the safari is scheduled. (2) The traveler must then apply first to his own travel insurance company for refunds of monies on deposit. (3) Whatever the insurance company doesn’t cover, this widely adopted policy will not refund cash but rather a credit for future travel, which is limited by time and other conditions depending upon the specific company.

(1) There is currently much more ebola in the United States then in any sub-Saharan country. WHO has not declared an “outbreak” of ebola in the United States. That is a strategic-specific term that precedes an actual “epidemic” and it requires multiple cases in multiple locations. So to begin with, a single case say in a game park in South Africa will not trigger this policy.

(2) I’m not completely knowledgeable about the travel insurance available to other than Americans, but in the United States there is not a single travel insurance company that covers a travelers’ decision to abort their trip because of ebola or any other public health emergency. In the U.S. normal travel insurance provides benefits strictly for accidents and other health conditions befalling the traveler him/herself.

(A few very expensive policies cover terrorism, and consumers can spend an enormous amount of money for “cancel for any reason” but for most travelers these rare policies are prohibitively expensive.)

In other words, normal travel insurance bought in the U.S. will not provide benefits for a public health emergency in the country scheduled to be visited.

Refunds of part of your deposited trip, and not others, essentially mute out the first refund: Few Americans traveling to Africa will deposit on a trip there without also buying their air fare. There is no indication whatever that any airline will issue any refund for a travelers’ decision to cancel because of a public health emergency.

(3) As most established travel agents and operators worldwide know, most local African companies are quite liberal in extending nonrefundable date-specific services for almost any reason. In other words, most travelers are able to reschedule their previously deposited trip to a later date with no penalty for any reason, much less ebola.

For Americans, then, there is absolutely no benefit whatever from the newly expressed policies.

Most American consumers are a bit more savvy than Africans believe their geography quotient may be. I think most consumers will see this for what it is: a marketing gimmick. Gimmicks don’t help sales.

Consumers who consider the policy more substantial than a gimmick will actually be further deterred: Creating policies that on their surface seem beneficial to the potential traveler only if an outbreak actually occurs suggests that company is conceding that an outbreak is possible.

When the risk is nil. Consider that several of the last ebola outbreaks occurred in Uganda, a popular East African safari country. It never turned into an epidemic, and Uganda’s health-care system countrywide is below average compared to most other sub-Saharan countries.

Consumers – especially in America where two of its largest cities now have had locally developed ebola (Dallas and New York) – are recognizing however slowly that sub-Saharan Africa is actually less risky to visit than the Cowboys’ new stadium or the Statue of Liberty.

African travel companies have always been a little bit behind the times. This stupid policy does nothing but reignite irrational fears.

Time’s Up, Pat!

Time’s Up, Pat!

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RobertsomTimeUpIt’s funny, but it’s not. Yet is this a turning point? White, racist, evangelical attitudes especially towards Africans might really be changing.

For decades, now, we enlightened ones have snickered at the bad jokes and patently racist attitudes of The Right almost to exhaustion. When allies relented and began inviting “opposing viewpoints” onto pubic forums, many of us wondered if the schism was permanent.

The abhorrence of racism became the stuff of comic strips.

Tuesday night CNN’s Anderson Cooper extended comedy into sarcasm and lambasted racist tele-evangelist Pat Robertson like never before.

Robertson is the star of the Christian Broadcasting Network and he had just answered a question on the popular “700 Club” show about ebola. He warned would-be travelers to Africa against using towels there that will infect you with AIDS.

This isn’t a gaff, it’s a simple reflection of a quintessential racist belief that black is evil.

It was hardly Robertson’s first time at it. Last year he actually claimed that gays in San Francisco wear evil little pointed rings so that when you shake their hand they can infect you with AIDS, which he called “their stuff.”

Apparently the attention to the ebola controversy breaks the threshold of cartoon tolerance of racism. Robertson’s network apologized for this remark the next day, although he never has.

No apology was ever made for the gay ring remark.

What struck me as particularly important this time was how Africa reacted. Like many of us before, Africans tend to shrug off racist attitudes as something held by bumptious uncles. Inured to the point of frustration, the general viewpoint has been that most of these attitudes will die out with the current generation.

In fact Robertson’s remarks got little attention in the African media until Cooper flayed them.

Now, for the third straight day running, it’s the most popular story in the Kenyan media.

Take that link above and scroll down to the local comments. Here are a few of my favorites:

“You can contract the sometimes incurable disease of ignorance if you listen to the likes of 700 club.” – Melissa Wainaina

“Sorry, dear Kenyans, but that’s America (USA). They don’t know there anything about other countries.” – Hanna

“Can one get aids from Towels in America? … This is ignorance and racist mixed into a potent mix.” – cbertmann

The irony is that Pat Robertson probably has a larger following per capita in Kenya than in the U.S. “What is more sad is that this guy has a huge following in Kenya,’ Shazam3535 reminded readers.

That’s because Kenyans are far more religious than Americans. Kenyans are also, in my opinion, far more tribal and therefore actually more racist than Americans, although their racism is black-on-black more than black-on-white.

Racism is racism, though, and it’s heartening reading these comments to recognize what might be a new awareness that religious evangelism provokes if not causes racism.

Are the times really changing?

Ebola’s Surprising Effect

Ebola’s Surprising Effect

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

thisisnttexasThis ebola epidemic has a surprising effect: Americans are wondering if Africans have it better.

Most Americans’ live styles are much better than their counterparts in Africa, but what about the change from year to year? Americans believe they aren’t getting better. Africans by a wide margin believe they are. Both are right.

It’s only a matter of time before Africans feel they are better off than Americans.

Nigeria and South Africa both had ebola patients come to them from the infected areas. One Nigerian ebola patient infected one of the hospital care givers in Nigeria. Both the patient and the care giver were cured. In South Africa no transmission to health care workers occurred. Both South African and Nigeria are today “ebola-free.”

Texas isn’t.

So why is the American future pessimistic compared to the African future, and why is ebola being better contained – outside the three-country infected area – in Africa than America?

I’ve got one answer: school field trips.

School field trips in Kenya are on a massive increase; trips in the U.S. way down.

According to Education Next, “Museums across the country report a steep drop in school tours… A survey by the American Association of School Administrators found that more than half of schools eliminated planned field trips in 2010–11.”

For example, the Field Museum in Chicago has lost a third of its annual school visitors, as has the Cincinnati arts organizations.

I’ve got another answer: declining infrastructure.

The title of the Council on Foreign Relation’s new report on American infrastructure, “Road to Nowhere,” says it all.

Infrastructure is booming throughout Africa. I can’t believe my eyes when I’m absent from Nairobi for more than a couple months: another highway, another factory, another rail line…

Here’s another answer: American protection of human rights is on the decline. While human rights is still on the whole better in America than in Africa, America is getting worse while some parts of developed Africa like South Africa are getting better.

The Human Rights Risk Atlas for 2014 lists America at 139 of 197 countries, or a “medium risk” of human rights abuse.

It’s possible to go on and on down the list of what governments are supposed to do: build roads, educate children, protect human rights. By so many metrics, even the simple metric of stopping the spread of ebola in a hospital, America isn’t doing so well.

While much of Africa is getting better.

But this should come as no surprise. Social investment in education, infrastructure, even the money we spend on courts and judges, is shrinking.

I once thought it impossible that in my life time any African country could achieve some kind of significant metric that bettered America.

I’m not so sure, anymore.

Zuma in Wonderland

Zuma in Wonderland

by Arusha ♥ 2 Comments

ebolaidiotsWhat do the U.S. Army Chief of Staff, a governor and numerous Congressmen have in common with Jacob Zuma, the President of South Africa?

Like Zuma, they deny simple facts of science, in this case about ebola. Like Zuma, they should be sacked.

Rand Paul and Georgia Governor Zeal along with a host of other nuts in Congress are unfortunately just as astute politicians as Jacob Zuma, so I don’t expect they’ll be leaving the scene, soon.

But Martin Dempsey is a soldier, and the country’s top soldier, and Obama should immediately fire him.

“If you bring two doctors who happen to have that specialty (Ebola) into a room, one will say, ‘No, it will never become airborne, but it could mutate so it would be harder to discover.’ Another doctor will say, ‘If it continues to mutate at the rate it’s mutating, and we go from 20,000 infected to 100,000, the population might allow it to mutate and become airborne, and then it will be a serious problem.’ I don’t know who is right,” Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN this weekend.

This is America’s top soldier. This is one reason we have so many failed wars led by a military that’s incapable of being controlled.

Jacob Zuma contends you can simply protect yourself from AIDS by taking a rigorous shower after unprotected sex.

How the world, the U.S. or Africa, has allowed leaders whose beliefs are so warped to survive is more terrifying than any possible 9/11 threat. Neither is really a leader. Both Zuma and Dempsey are followers of the frightened and ignorant masses on which they depend.

Where I grow so angry is that at least one of them, Dempsey, can be sacked. Right now. No questions asked. If Dempsey believes what he said, imagine what he might believe about the war against ISIS.

This weekend CNN in print finally did what CNN-US never could: criticize CNN-US:

“What’s more disturbing than Ebola? The outrageous commentary,” the CNN headline by Michael Martinez read.

I hope the link above works for you, because CNN has modified its story and changed its link several times since it first appeared early Saturday morning. Clearly Martinez’ fresh and honest approach to news is anathema to Wolf Blitzer’s America.

Before all is lost, here are a few other choice comments Martinez compiled in that story:

“If someone has Ebola at a cocktail party, they’re contagious and you can catch it from them.” — Sen. Rand Paul

“The most comforting thing that I heard from (Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Health) was that water kills the Ebola virus.” – Georgia Governor Nathan Deal

“The U.S. must immediately stop all flights from EBOLA infected countries or the plague will start and spread inside our ‘borders.’ Act fast!” – Donald Trump

“Reports of illegal migrants carrying deadly diseases such as swine flu, dengue fever, Ebola virus and tuberculosis are particularly concerning.” — Georgia Republican Rep. Phil Gingrey, a medical doctor

“I don’t know … But I think this Ebola epidemic is a form of population control.” — R&B star Chris Brown

Crazy rightest Michael Savage said President Barack Obama wants to infect America with Ebola: “There is not a sane reason to take three- or four-thousand troops and send them into a hot Ebola zone without expecting at least one of them to come back with Ebola, unless you want to infect the nation with Ebola.”

There’s more where these came from and in multitudes of other stories, and it’s a shame that CNN has been so dainty in modifying and adjusting Martinez’ first filing.

These people are influential, powerful Americans. We already know they could care less about Africa, much less any community outside of their own cocktail parties.

Their beliefs have traction in America because Americans are poorly educated and have an increasingly myopic view of themselves and their communities.

The most important fact to recognize on this day that the World Health Organization declared Nigeria “ebola-free” while America still isn’t (because of Texas), is that without much more help from the outside of the sort Obama is offering, the epidemic in Africa will get worse and worse.

It is, in fact, possible to imagine a scenario a few years down the line if people like Dempsey, Paul, Deal and others held sway, where futile attempts to isolate the current infected countries turned into a world epidemic.

That is exactly what these ignoramuses if they prevail will ultimately cause.

Donald Trump couldn’t survive a week without the government he decries, and we’ve been able to live with that contradiction for a long time. His influence on Americans is counterbalanced so far by enough of us sane people.

But his (and other’s) influence in calling for an isolations of West Africa is not so easy to contain in today’s troubled and frightened America.

If you are reading this… if you are not as troubled and ignorant as the characters above, say something, please. Just a sentence. Just a few words of truth to your neighbor.

It’s not just the survival of millions of west Africans that’s in play. It’s the sanctity of truth.

Perry’s Practicalities

Perry’s Practicalities

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killwestafricansWhen tiny incidents like a few ebola cases in Dallas are properly scrutinized by the obsessed media, their exaggeration grows unbelievably large.

The media is obsessed, because the public is obsessed.

Every unnecessary harm should enrage us: including the 10,332 American deaths caused by drunk driving in 2012 (that’s 28+ per day, more than 1 per hour); or the 23,362 homicides that’s 64+ per day, almost 3 per hour).

But DUIs and homicides, much less war fatalities, poverty, infant mortality, industrial accidents and so forth, are not contagious. Is that the difference?

The obsessed public believes itself essentially so good and righteous that they would never be involved in unnecessary harm … unless they caught it?

Or: the obsessed public is so anti-social that nothing matters except individual responsibility? In other words, forget about John Doe or Jane Odhiambo, I shouldn’t get infected with something I didn’t stupidly expose myself to? And to hell with those who have?

I don’t know, but it’s a sad, sad commentary on our American society in general when the focus is so incredibly tiny.

There’s also the possibility that Americans just can’t telescope out. They’ve been so brain washed by the often useless concepts of individual responsibility and self-survival that they can’t think in macro terms.

Right now, folks, if you drive, you’re 10,000 times more likely to be killed by a drunk driver than by contracting ebola. And if you drive and aren’t a health care worker, the stat is mind-boggling: you’re millions of times more likely to be killed by a drunk driver than by contracting ebola.

Did you get a flu shot? If not, the chances you’re going to die of flu this year are in the hundreds of thousands more than that you’re going to get ebola. Even if you live in Dallas.

But people won’t get flu shots, and their Congresspersons (mostly Republican) are getting besieged by phone calls demanding that we stop all air traffic into the areas where ebola is an epidemic.

So they’ll take the same amount of time, maybe more, to ultimately kill more West Africans that would otherwise not die for an infinitesimally virtually nil insurance against they’re own getting ebola.

And then, they’ll be one of the 30,000 American deaths from flu this year. Like seniors voting to end social security, Americans just love to act against their own self-interest if only the media can tell them why.

When life-and-death becomes political, it gets dirty. Wars are dirty. Crime and punishment is dirty. And now the poor and needy have become dirty.

How utterly despicable.

When Night is Day

When Night is Day

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

aardvarkinsunAnecdotal evidence that global warming has caused a decline in African animals is slowly but surely being confirmed by field science.

No one argues that Africa abate its growth, and it comes as no surprise that this growth is directly linked to global warming. Industry is mostly fired by fossil fuels: CO2 heats the atmosphere while more wealth builds Africa.

The immediate benefits to Africans are indisputable. But the ecology of the continent is suffering greatly and more quickly than we ever imagined.

The World Wildlife Fund’s “Living Planet Report” contends that nearly half of the world’s animal species have been lost since 1970.

This is beyond astounding. My children’s children will have a planet with only an eighth of the animal species around when I was born.

One irony for African wilderness is that some of its better known areas, like East Africa with its great national parks like the Serengeti, show visibly improved biosystems. This, too, is directly linked to global warming.

The great East African wilderness lies on the equator. One of the effects of global warming has been increased rain as the melting of the poles increases ocean levels and precipitation worldwide. One result in part coupled with an early management approach to the Serengeti has been to nearly triple many of the larger animal species like wildebeest and zebra.

But move hardly 200 miles north or south of these equatorial wildernesses and the story dramatically changes.

Increased global precipitation is not falling equally across Africa or anywhere else but as torrents as extreme weather events even while global warming burns deserts into many other areas.

Global weather has become a nightmare, as the American Meteorological Society recently documented. The band along the equator seems to be handling this pretty fortuitously, but nowhere else.

Travel south and wildlife populations in places like Kruger National Park, the Okavango Delta and many private reserves are falling precipitously.

While elephant populations in East Africa are probably too large, in southern Africa they’re dangerously small. Buffalo and other large herding animals like eland are declining, and rarer antelope like nyala, sable and roan are also in decline.

Exact science on large animal decline is difficult, because much of it is human caused through poaching. But go down a notch to slightly smaller animals, and the science is becoming compelling.

An excellent indicator species is the anteater, or aardvark. A study recently concluded by scientists from Johannesburg’s prestigious Witwatersrand University claims that only animals whose behavior can accelerate adaptation will survive.

“Many species will not be able to evolve fast enough to adapt to the rapid rate of current climate change… most large mammals simply don’t reproduce quickly enough to allow for adaptive traits to be selected,” the report explains.

Aardvark are the focus of the study not just because of demonstrable changes in their own behavior, but because so many other endangered animals depend upon them.

The report found that aardvark are trying to adapt their behaviors to an increasingly hot and dry environment caused by global warming.

In one astounding finding, the scientists show that aardvark are now foraging in daylight hours as well as through the night as usual. It had previously been presumed that their eye physiology would not allow this, but as their food sources dwindle they’re forcing it.

The unstated implication is that this won’t work in the long term, and that eye physiology will stop any long term behavioral change.

Aardvark holes are used by scores of other animals and birds, and as the number of dens decline so will populations of anteater chats, porcupine, warthog, pole cat, meerkats and others.

The WWF report focuses heavily on human/animal conflict as probably the single greatest factor effecting the planet’s decreasing biodiversity. This is certainly, for example, the reason lions are declining so quickly continent wide.

But studies as those from The Wit on aardvark complement this understanding with recognition that as adaptive as world creatures are, behavioral adaptation will simply not be quick enough.

The WWF along with many other organizations believe there is a path out of this through management of global warming with the technologies like solar energy that we already possess.

I don’t see it. Frankly, I can imagine a future world adequately under control for human development. But I just can’t see a path that will retain our current magical biodiversity.

Delta Destruction

Delta Destruction

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DeltaDestructionThe battle between fossil fuel mining and the environment has moved into Botswana’s main tourist attraction, the Okavango Delta.

The photo above of a painted frog was taken by EWT client, Melissa Michel, this year. The background of a mining waste dump is compliments of Rio Tinto.

Tourism in the Okavango Delta is the second largest source of Botswana’s GDP, after mining (which dwarfs it, by the way: 40% vs 12%).

Exact figures are hard to confirm, because the government has not defined how government and ancillary industries like educational training and direct contributions contribute to or diminish the tourism and mining sectors. But clearly mining is 3 to 5 times as important as tourism.

Historically most of this was with diamonds. Botswana is the world’s largest diamond producer, but several years ago the government recognized that “diamonds aren’t forever.”

This led to increased fossil fuel exploration and bingo, there’s a lot of it. Relative to diamonds, coals lasts forever.

The largest Botswana owned company, Tsodilo, listed on the Toronto stock exchange, recently announced plans to mine more than 440 million tons of iron ore, and with less fanfare, a rather sizeable amount of coal.

Botswana’s chief mining official said that Rio Tinto, the world’s largest mining company, would be the principal in coal extraction.

“The future of Botswana mining is going to be the coal and iron ore resources…,” he said before adding as an afterthought, “and of course diamonds.”

Botswana is already the 65th richest country in the world. This will likely push it up further.

Unfortunately, much of the iron ore discovered is underneath or close to the Okavango Delta.

Although Botswana has a variety of big game habitats, it is the Delta which is the draw. Unique on earth, it’s where a desert seasonally floods. This produces extremely unusual habitat as well as major deterrents to human settlement.

Over the eons vast numbers of endemic species have arisen in The Delta, many which remain to this area alone. These are mostly plants, amphibians and fish, but the area is also outstanding for more notable, rare and larger animals like sitatunga and wild dog. Many water fowl absolutely depend upon the Delta and many are extremely rare, like the Wattled Crane.

The world’s growing appetite for fossil fuels is as undisputed as the fact that most of them will come from Africa.

Why should Botswana be denied compromising its ecosystem for greater wealth, as Alaska and California did big time last century?

The answer is usually that the world’s just come too far. Time is not on their side, as it was with the Rockefellers and early gold diggers: The global warming apocalypse takes precedence.

That’s such a subjective argument it falls on deaf ears in Africa. South African environmentalists, however, are trying more clever answers.

Winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize, Desmond D’Sa recently explained that the argument that mining will “create wealth for the people” was fallacious. “We’ve seen the mining industry in South Africa, hundreds of years, has created impoverishment and poverty… The majority, the 99 percent of us in the country, are poor, are living in abject, poor conditions.”

And that’s true and compelling … for the instant. But what happens if – as many of us hope – this changes and there is a real redistribution of wealth? Like in China?

Reversing the world’s poverty is going to take a lot of industry. Protecting the unique ecosystems under which that industry is fired will be no small task.

Columbus Day

Columbus Day

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Today is Columbus Day in the United States, a federal holiday.

“Columbus Day” for my African readers has always perplexed them. After all, we know that Columbus didn’t land in America, but in the West Indies. So it absolutely strikes non-Americans as a fickle holiday in a country that’s known to not have many.

This year, though, it has special meaning. We in America normally take long weekend breaks much deserved and anticipated around days like this. For those of us living in The North it’s always a beautiful time as the trees change color and the frost of winter appears on our morning windows.

But this year we aren’t relaxing a bit: Americans are glued to their TVs and radios anxiously wondering if they will contract ebola and if not that, end up in yet another war in the Levant.

All but a handful of states suspend many elective services, schools are closed, all banks in all states must be closed, and there’s no mail delivery. The holiday was proclaimed in 1937 on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus into the Americas. So this year, with so much of the federal government also closed, America is really chilling out.

Many large cities, including New York, have huge parades. Over the years the celebration has taken on an ethnic tone, celebrating Italian heritage.

Many of us would normally take short road trips to country house BnB’s and tiny towns further north to enjoy the fall colors.

But this year the only color we see is black. The country is worried, today.

Tired World Invites Strongmen

Tired World Invites Strongmen

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faitacompliKenya’s battle with the World Court is the perfect example of how global institutions are losing relevancy in an increasingly conservative world.

Around the world and especially in Africa societies are becoming conservative and authoritarian. Oligarchies are consolidating power. Minorities are growing submissive. Particularly in Africa this means the Strongman reemerges.

Uhuru Kenyatta is such. Very much like his father, Jomo Kenyatta, the country’s first president for 15 years until his death, Uhuru has masterfully consolidated his power to the point that he is almost invincible.

Kenyatta isn’t quite yet the benevolent dictator like his father, but I imagine after the next election he will be. Afterwards, subsequent elections will be fairly meaningless or simple window dressing.

The reason this is happening is for the same reason it started this way at Independence. Turmoil is considered more expensive and damaging than the increased opportunity that might be unleashed by movements like the Arab Spring.

Kenya under the current Kenyatta has prospered by the geopolitical metrics of economy that seem to govern the world. The World Bank projects 4.7% growth this year, and increasing growth in the years ahead.

While this is down from a few years ago, it’s impressive when you consider the challenge of the Somali War. As that successfully fought war continues positively the literally hundreds of thousands of successful Somali businesspeople in Kenya return to Somali causing a drain on growth… for good reasons.

Kenya’s education and health care policies are among the most progressive in Africa. Womens rights are more progressive in Kenya than almost anywhere elsewhere in Africa except South Africa, and were it not for the highest people in the current administration (e.g., Uhuru Kenyatta) the LGBT community would likely be facing as horrific oppression as it does in neighboring countries like Uganda and Rwanda.

But Human Rights Watch, like me, equivocates Kenya’s appearance of progressiveness with its patent immoralities and lack of democratization.

The Kenyan government under Kenyatta has systematically undermined the World Court’s prosecution of Kenyatta and his Vice-President. The evidence that existed two years ago, collected by the World Court, was damning: Kenyatta was guilty of crimes against humanity. It was eventually how he came to power.

But since he’s been in power the dozen or so witnesses, many of them in witness protection programs in Europe, recanted or disappeared. Pressure on their families back home seems to have been the reason.

So now, there is no evidence. Without evidence, there’s no case.

Yesterday, Kenyatta returned jubilant from The Hague. It’s likely the last time he will go there.

While ICC prosecutors are arguing for various censures of the Kenyan government for its lack of cooperation, other Heads of State in Africa are rallying behind Kenyatta. If the ICC fails to relent, Africa as a whole might leave the ICC.

The many global institutions like the ICC which appeared last century to guarantee the human rights of all global citizens now seem almost irrelevant.

Within Kenya police power has exploded exponentially. Summary arrests and neglect of existing laws protecting the innocent like habeas corpus are routinely ignored. More and more there seems to be only a single authority: Uhuru Kenyatta.

And yet that seems to be what if we dare generalize the “Kenyan public” wants, even those who are theoretically in the opposition.

Stability, however unequal, rules the day.

I think it’s public fatigue. War fatigue, election fatigue, countless fatigues that were so promising only a few years ago but proved futile by today. The world, for whatever underlying reasons, is moving away from freedom in order to avoid conflict.

Of course it’s true here at home, too, as well as Kenya. By the way, yesterday China became the world’s largest economy.

Quarantine Texas

Quarantine Texas

by Arusha ♥ 12 Comments

ebolaThe behavior of Americans is contributing to the spread of ebola in war-torn Africa. We’ve got to change.

Inbound airport screening is useless. Reactionary raising of funds “for ebola victims” in schools or churches is abject nonsense.

One of the world’s best virologists said today, “I know that President Obama has raised the whole issue about screening at the airport. It has not worked in the past. It has not worked with influenza, it’s not worked with SARS, MERS. You know, all you do is cause confusion and upset.”

These kinds of knee-jerk responses foil real efforts that could stop the epidemic in parts of West Africa.

First, it distracts real and necessary aid of the sort Obama has sent with our military, so that later an idiotic Congressman can vote against raising the deficit to build hospitals in Liberia because their home-town middle school is already doing something.

Second, it gives all those fear loving Americans a quick fix. Quick fixes don’t work. Even gorilla glue doesn’t live up to its reputation.

Quick fix mentality is why Americans are in such a horrible state, today, socially and morally. It’s why there’s jihadism in the Middle East, and so much poverty and disease in America compared to other industrialized nations.

We are the head of the snake that bites our own tail: Our own regular lives become disrupted by irrational fears.

This is squarely, and clearly, because of individual American reactionism. It all begins at home, not with your Congressperson, so don’t blame her. She’s just reflecting your own irrational fears:

The first warnings about AIDS, the nuclear air raid drills I undertook as a young teenager in remote northwest Arkansas, the police cars guarding the East Dubuque bridge after 9/11, the thousands of people certain that at midnight, December 31, 1999, either their whole world or at least their hard drive would stop.

It doesn’t even have to remind. Americans at this very instant are reacting against themselves: A majority want to bomb Syria and Iraq but that same majority doesn’t believe it will work.

There’s no doubt that irrational ebola fear can be found anywhere in the world where the media has sensationalized it, and that’s where it all begins. Americans, though, believe in their choice of media more than anywhere else in the world, despite their lavish protestations to the contrary.

We Americans tout ourselves for being so generous, but so much of “our giving” is senseless and ultimately useless. Is that really generosity?

It’s likely that now that every American knows that ebola is less of a threat to herself and his community than this year’s flu epidemic ready to begin. It’s likely right now that almost all Americans intellectually accept that their chances of getting ebola are nil.

That it is not very contagious. That it is pretty easily contained in a community with even a half efficient public health system.

Much more importantly, I think most Americans know that if we isolate those three countries in western Africa by stopping air service, for example, that we will not give ourselves more protection yet we will manifestly increase the misery there.

Yet: click here.

Or here.

Or here, of course:

It’s hard for me to not panic against the panic, but I’m trying. Take a deep breath as I’m doing. Let’s remove the exclamation points and get on with our lives. Send your kid to school. Let the airplanes fly to Liberia. Take that vacation as planned.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about how you can do good. Let’s just start today by stopping doing bad.

Water Wars

Water Wars

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waterwarsIt was inevitable. Africa is coming to blows over water. It’s no joke that it could mean war.

Nine African countries depend upon The Nile. All of them are water deprived and all of them except Egypt are subject to devastating droughts. Only Egypt – which rarely experiences rain at any time – has matured without climate catastrophes.

But Egypt is the greatest user of the Nile waters, and the last of the nine countries on the chain from Lake Victoria and the headwaters of the Blue Nile. During colonial times Egypt was much more developed than the other nine countries, and Britain was the colonial master of them all.

So Britain produced a mid 1950s treaty that gave Egypt veto power over any of the other nine countries when deciding collectively how to use the Nile water.

Times have changed.

Fresh water is as precious a commodity among these countries as oil. In 1999 the nine countries agreed that parceling out the waters of the Nile was the most important issue among them. They formed the Nile Basin Initiative, and since the formation, nothing at all has happened except bitter name calling.

Meanwhile, parts of the shoreline of Lake Victoria have receded more than 150 feet, and the depth of the lake has dropped by nearly 30 feet.

To manage their increasingly vital resource, more than 25 dams are currently planned for different parts of the Nile. The largest dam in the world is currently being built in Ethiopia, and Egypt is furious with Ethiopia for building it.

Egypt depends upon a strong flow of water along the Nile to irrigate its enormous agricultural industry. There is every indication the Grand Renaissance Dam alone will deplete this flow.

“Egypt sees its Nile water share as a matter of national security,” strategic analyst Ahmed Abdel Halim explained. “To Ethiopia, the new dam is a source of national pride, and essential to its economic future.”

A year ago Egypt’s president Morsi said “all options are on the table” including “military responses to Ethiopia.”

Yesterday Kenya’s Natural Resource Cabinet Secretary ended another failed Nile Basin Initiative meeting. It failed principally because Egypt would not officially attend, although its ambassador to Kenya did show his face.

Nine of the countries less Egypt have agreed on an initiative agreement, but Egypt is balking. According to the 1999 accord, only 6 of the 9 countries need ratify the agreement for it to take effect. But Egypt is considered critical.

“That is the only way we can do this peacefully. Otherwise… we are going to be at war because of water,” Prof Judi Wakhungu, the Environment, Water and Natural Resources Cabinet Secretary told Kenya’s main newspaper yesterday after the meeting broke up.

Egypt without enough Nile water would be brought to its knees. It seems to me that much more powerful than the 1950s colonial shelf treaty is the fact that Egypt’s very existence for more than 7,000 years has depended upon The Nile. That’s quite a few grandfathers to be claused in.

I doubt there will actually be war, but not because Egypt doesn’t have the resolve if the waters stop flowing. Rather, I think Ethiopia is sensible enough to realize that turning off the spigot will cause war, so it won’t.

But there are many who disagree. Ethiopia is something of a maverick state, always has been. As the Grand Renaissance Dam starts to rise, the country’s leaders may also start basking in their increasing level of power.