Imminegration

Imminegration

Courtesy / The New York Times
Two of my closest African acquaintances are settled in America. Both hurdled right over all the obstacles to immigration into the States: One is a political refugee and one is an accomplished physician.

It’s left me scratching my head. What distinguishes these two individuals from the hundreds of thousands pounding on our southern border with similar motivations and urgencies?
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Divy Up

Divy Up

Minutes after Biden’s speech ended the media of sub-Sahara Africa fired up. No matter they were all ending their day: “Biden tears into Trump,” Nigeria’s Independent online newspaper proclaimed. South Africa’s Business Insider focused on Barak Obama’s praise of the speech.

“Democracy is at a greater risk,” Business Insider concluded.

You have to go outside America to see what the speech means. No matter how historical or consequential the speech may be for Democrats and progressives, it doesn’t exist for Trumpians.
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Pox on Vax

Pox on Vax

Is naming anti-vaxxers who die of Covid a moral strategy for promoting vaccination?

No, says Elizabeth Bruenig in this month’s Atlantic. Yes, counters University of Cape Town professor Nicoli Nattrass.

The “Death Shaming” controversy is on big time. It’s on because Delta is mowing down those who flaunt it, and it’s on because the madness that denies vaccine science can just as readily deny the anti-vaxxer’s obits.
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Afghan Parts

Afghan Parts

Chinua Achebe, author of “Things Fall Apart,” was a greater seer than any of his characters: Today Africans across the continent are filled with worry, nervous with a sense of helplessness. Across the continent it feels like things are falling apart.

“The Americans wanted revenge over the 2001 September 11 attack on the Pentagon Building,” Nigeria’s largest newspaper, The Sun, says today in its lead editorial. “What they now have is a defeat.”
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Update on UP

Update on UP

Africa is breaking as covid cases surge.

Data collection and compilation varies so dramatically one country to another. Moreover collection and compilation has improved equally dramatically since the start of the pandemic, so each country’s numbers may be inflated by their improved collections. Suffice it to say that not a single African country reports the situation improving and many are sounding the alarm.
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Afghan Apprehensions

Afghan Apprehensions

“U.S. abandoning Afghans sends terrible message” is the headline in South Africa’s BusinessLive. The Daily Maverick calls it an “unmitigated disaster.” Kenya’s Standard: “U.S. Government has let down Afghanistan.”

None argue that America should stay. The criticism is entirely for abandoning the tens maybe hundreds of thousands of Afghans who live in mortal danger because of their American connections. And for the stupidity of having extended the original mission:

“The purpose of armies is war, not peace,” writes BusinessDay this morning in Johannesburg. “The failure of military intervention [in Afghanistan] shows the time has come to disband Nato and US bases around the world.”
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Covid Confusion

Covid Confusion

The spike in Covid-19 in certain countries in the southern hemisphere is causing mayhem in the travel industry. Today South Africa moved to an “adjusted alert Level 4″ which further closes down the country, and separately, the CDC advised even vaccinated travelers against visiting Tanzania.

This needs much explanation, especially since the new Tanzanian president is really moving the country in the right direction. But the one thing she refuses to do is specifically why the CDC kiboshed Tanzanian travel. In South Africa’s case, it’s just rotten luck.

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Corona Calculations

Corona Calculations

Sometimes it’s better to let your brain suppress your gut. Better than Rolaids. It’s what I have to do when contemplating the virus in Africa.

There’s an enormous disconnect between what my gut tells me about the dangers of Covid-19 and what my brain does. The numbers on the continent are – and I suppose this is the point – ridiculously low. But numbers in Africa are like snow flakes in a cotton field. They rarely appear and when they do, they’re very hard to find.

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African Corona

African Corona

The news about coronavirus is overwhelming, dominating all the major media and social media in sub-Saharan Africa. Several important points, especially for travelers planning to visit Africa, soon.

Africa so far presents a “puzzle” to health officials wondering why there isn’t a greater outbreak there, because travel exchange in Africa with China is among the highest in the world, and as a continent Africa has the least developed public health systems in the world. (Notable exception is the country of South Africa.)

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Melting Time

Melting Time

America, your weak, lilly-white specious religious and facetious democracy with its high faluting quasi morality is in complete meltdown. Wide-eyed Africans watch in disbelief. The “trust” and “transparency” and “morality” of the self-styled always-correct America that kept them at bay are evaporating into thin air like the last drops of water in a burning world.

I can find only one – not two – pardons given by any African chief executive in the last century that comes a mile close to what Trump did yesterday. But guess what. They’ll be rolling off the equatorial alabasters, now.

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Versus Mankind

Versus Mankind

Everyone is focused on the Covid19 pandemic, but what about the unprecedented continuing outbreak of Ebola in central Africa and Lassa in Nigeria, and why all this now?

The ebola outbreak began in August, 2018, and of 3,340 confirmed cases 2,249 have died, a two-thirds mortality rate. And it continues. In Nigeria the chronic Lassa virus has mushroomed with over 600 cases and 170 deaths annually since 2018.

What’s going on?

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Grip Tightens

Grip Tightens

If you believe that there is too much immigration into the United States, then Friday’s announcement imposing additional immigration restraints on six countries including Nigeria and Tanzania looks reasonable.

But the reasons given by Homeland Security are not reasonable, they’re nonsense. The halfwits in the Trump administration are learning the ropes. They’re becoming just as politically agile as any of the reptile predecessors they promised to sweep away.

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Tea Off

Tea Off

Empowered by their greater morality, three of Africa’s most important countries are giving America the finger.

Last year was different as small and developing countries in particular seemed to kowtow to Trump’s self-styled Mother Superior attitude towards them. But the killing of Solemaini seems to have broken that spell.

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