Civil violence in Baltimore, Beijing, Nairobi, Cairo and Johannesburg reflects societies coming apart.
One thing is certain: “We will bring order. We will bring calm. We will bring peace,” the (black) Baltimore mayor vowed last night as national guard troops entered her city.
Then, one of two things happens afterwards: a more democratic Tunisia, South Africa and Kenya; or a more autocratic China and Egypt.
Civil violence is quite distinct from war. It happens from within. Brothers are pitted against brothers. In the beginning new ideas link across disparate social communities. That’s the case today when we find Baltimore mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, saying things that her opponents consider collaborative with the protestors.
It’s the reason that the World Court indicted the current President of Kenya for fomenting crimes against humanity. It’s the reason Hosni Mubarak lingers in a jail guarded by the men he brought to power.
Civil violence reveals fissures and inconsistencies in social systems that are difficult to reconcile .. even by its leaders. It’s about human rights violations, not border disputes. Groups like ISIS will use civil violence to then start geopolitical warfare, but in the beginning it’s an internal conflict not an external one.
It often devolves into whether “the end justifies the means.” But it’s rarely so clear, much murkier: Is it fair that Uhuru Kenyatta paid youth under-the-table to fight a rival tribe in order to preserve his beneficence that now seems to be very positive in Kenya?
Peace at all costs?
Yes, so far anyway, eventually that’s human history. For the champions of human rights who fight in the streets, it’s a battle against the clock. They have limited time to bend society to their ideas until they’re crushed.
Civil violence is growing around the world, just as it did many times previously in human history. The hours on the clock are growing longer.
We’re entering a period of enlightened conflict, perhaps because of videos transmitted in nanoseconds by watches.
“Thank God for cell phone videos because the truth will come out,” the lawyer for the Freddie Gray family said last night.
Unlike in the past, more of us see and hear the same thing. The media can’t distort it as easily as in the past.
In this new and more volatile world, those of us in privileged situations should take stock:
“The infidels have so much to lose, they can be afraid of even losing their happiness! We,” he said, lifting his eyes to the sky as his mind’s eyes pulsated with a black sun, “We have nothing, so we fear no loss.”
That short excerpt is from my book, Chasm Gorge. It’s the world’s greatest terrorist explaining why he fights to the death.
The difference between those who have less and those who have more will not last in the new world. How much must be given away by us privileged is being determined by the battles being fought right now, from Baltimore to Johannesburg.
There’s no question a redistribution will occur. The question is how will it occur? Democratically or ruthlessly?
The Naru Bushman experience was the highlight of our two days in the Kalahari.
I’m continually upset when clients ask me to “visit a village.” There are no traditional villages left in most of Africa, and certainly not in the areas that tourists can visit. Braame Bodenhorst explains to Marty Fisher ‘re-enactment’. Yet someone will insist that their friends just came back and that they “visited a real village.”
What their friends saw and what they ask me to see are horrible remnants of traditional life. As Africa progresses rapidly, traditional life styles are understandably being lost as Africans seek better education and a better life.
In many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, however, the development cannot meet the demand, and so many traditional peoples get caught between the old ways and the new ways. Binding arrowheads & making shafts from acacia.
The so-called “villages” that people claim to have experienced are impoverished groups of people who wish they were better off and in most cases are stuck in the worst of two worlds.
It is the identical situation to many impoverished communities in America — distressed villages in Appalachia or southwest Wisconsin. I’m infuriated that travelers will actually return from these visits, claiming to have experienced “the real Africa.”
No longer nomadic, many of these so-called villages become unclean and their children get sick. That was not the case when nomadic peoples moved regularly. Unable to get the jobs that their schooling prepared them for, they down poorly maintained traditional garb for tourists and “interpret” the old ways in the near perfect English they would prefer was being used in a business in town. Demonstrating water harvesting/storage.
In the end traditional life is not conveyed at all. What is conveyed is the disgusting failures of modern development. The glorious and successes of traditional Africa life ways are completely obscured.
Braame Badenhorst, owner/manager of Deception Valley Lodge, has mastered a display of early Bushmen life without denigrating the people who portray it.
Our two Naru Bushmen trackers, both 31-year olds and fine staff additions to our successful game drives, traveled with us into the bush, then hopped off the vehicle as our other guide, Jacob, explained they were going to change costumes.
Bramme wants people to understand what real traditional Bushmen life was like, especially the younger generation of Naru. But he makes no bones about it: “There aren’t any traditional Bushmen, anymore,” he flatly tells his guests.
What his two staff members are going to do, to both our and their benefit, is reenact what it was like 30 years ago. Many uses of roots.
So they stripped off their khakis, pulled out their earplugs from their iPhones, and gave us the best example of “traditional peoples” I’ve ever had the privilege to see.
It was fabulous. The kids, who I’m ashamed to say I can’t transliterate their names, had mastered their grandparents’ techniques in water and food gathering, hunting, and tool building. They conveyed to us a life style that may no longer exist, but demonstrated how creative and clever their ancestors’ – our species – can be.
In so doing, they preserved for themselves, us and generations to come, mechanisms and solutions for survival that may be valuable even in the modern age, and will preserve in ways no written account can, the history of these magnificent people.
This was a true visit into the past: an unpretentious reenactment of something that no longer exists and risks being lost forever. Taking questions. If a traveler wants to see poverty, disease and human distress, it’s much closer to his home than Africa, I’m sure. If a traveler wants to understand what traditional African life ways were all about, they will not “visit a village,” because traditional villages do not exist where 99.9% of travellers go.
Whether it is innate racism or a weak intellect, travelers are plagued by a desire to see “bad.”
Put a Naru Bushman’s day opposite one of John Boehner’s, and there’s no contest. That’s the truthful message waiting for travelers with a real desire to understand what traditional Africa is all about.
‘Ebola’ and ‘terrorism in Kenya’ have been massively distorted by American media and not for wont of reporting truthfully.
Confused? So was I until helped by a little email dialogue with a friend. What I mean is that readers’ reactions today are so instantaneous a normal bloke can’t possibly have taken any time to think about what he’s going to say before saying it.
And in this case, saying is believing.
Then it’s too late … it’s on the comment page, Facebook or Twitter, and it’s been retweeted and cloud copied an infinitum. There’s no delete.
There’s a race to be first to react. Reaction trumps deduction. Like my old childhood “telephone game” in virtually minutes if not seconds of a media story, “facts” and “truths” have all been distorted to conform with the cultural presumptions of the reactors.
Case One: The medical doctor who is the son of the current President of Liberia.
From what I understand, Dr. James Adamah Sirleaf is a highly respected Connecticut physician, highly credential academically, remarkably generous and dedicated especially to helping the medical development of his birth country, Liberia.
He spoke freely to Wall Street Journal reporters last October about why he wasn’t giving up his life in the United States since 1990, his family, his practice and children, to go fight ebola.
In fact, he was ardently fighting ebola … for years, through philanthropy and NGO organizations that he founded and directed. His too severe conclusions about his own actions caused a maelstrom of criticism that spread worldwide.
As reported today in AllAfrica “The two [WSJ] articles generated over 3,600 social shares … including [from] reporters, editors, producers or bureau chiefs at news organizations including Politico, Reuters, Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, Financial Times, Boston Globe, CNN, Associated Press, NBC, the New York Times and the BBC.”
Ultimately the story jeopardized Liberian public support for the otherwise popular president, his mother, Ellen Sirleaf.
This is an excellent smaller example of how the whole issue of ebola was distorted in the public mind.
The very nature of the disease – the fact that it is less contagious than measles or most flues; exactly how dangerous it is to societies with public health – less so than measles; and especially how and where it might be prevented – not from quarantining returning doctors … are just some of the distortions that led to this massive “Ebola Myth.”
Yet short of Rupert Murdoch’s media I couldn’t find a single initial incorrect story about it. But the perfect storm of instant reaction and dystopian, mendacious culture that gives rise to Fox News generated a “situation” that was no longer real.
We’re still unpacking the disreality of “Ebola.”
Case Two: American travel warnings on Kenya.
I have been writing about this for decades, enough I suspect to conceivably be used by “Fawlty Towers” to return to prime time.
American travel warnings are so overly cautious that they’re self-defeating: follow their advice and there’s no need to follow their advice because you won’t go anywhere near the place.
They’re also irrelevant because they’re often so specific that were the logic applied to some area like Kenya applied to New Orleans it would effectively end the Mardi Gras.
Over the years, they’ve also just been proved outright wrong, based on completely fallacious information. (That’s subsided in recent years.)
Yesterday, America’s best African reporter, the New York Times Jeffrey Gettleman, wrote a thoughtful and I felt inspiring piece on why America’s current travel warning on Kenya could actually be fueling terrorism.
“Our policy doesn’t make much sense,” Gettleman quoted an American official in that article: “There are neighborhoods in Washington, Anacostia, for example, that are way more dangerous than Nyali or Diani,” he said, citing two relatively quiet Kenyan beach towns [under current American travel warnings].
Carefully, simply and logically, Gettleman explained the self-defeating power of a foreign policy to produce the very outcome it tries to prevent: a travel warning against going somewhere because the threat of calamity is deemed to high.
The warning impedes or stops travel. The tourist location becomes stressed. The locals becomes terrorists.
When I read the story today there were 64 comments. They were insane. There wasn’t one that addressed the evidence, logic or import of Gettleman’s story.
Several, for example, claimed expertness by arguing that Americans aren’t a very significant part of Kenyan tourism anyway, so why does it matter what America says? [Small minds don’t think America’s position has an effect on others in the world?]
I’m not sure I can sum up the dustbin of meaning of these disparate, illogical comments, but “JOHN” stood out because he came to exactly the wrong conclusion, “So what should Western Governments do? Urge their citizens to go to dangerous zones to spread the love? ISIS would no doubt give them a warm welcome.”
Gettleman said precisely what America should do: “… some American officials … wonder if their own government has overreacted, with possibly dangerous unintended consequences. Other Western nations… have formulated more nuanced travel warnings, highlighting certain hot spots without drawing a giant red X across Kenya’s entire coast.”
Did John not read that far? Or did John only read the comments before his?
That’s what I think. That’s the American media overdrive. A story is poorly and too quickly read, not thought about, then reblasted with tons of emotion and misunderstanding. Suddenly, ebola will have a million victims and decimate Peoria, and travel to Fiji is certain death.
African critics are condemning the Oscars for validating American Sniper, which they charge is little more than propaganda.
Calling it a “highly dangerous and simplistic film,” respected Kenyan author Rasna Warah claimed this morning that American Sniper will reenforce the lies that many Americans believe regarding the Iraq War.
Popular South African movie critic, tha-bang, called the movie Clint Eastwood’s “biggest propaganda film ever.”
Warning her African readers that “though it may be hard to believe,” Warah explained that many Americans still think Saddam Hussein was involved with the Twin Towers bombing and that he harbored weapons of mass destruction.
Kenyans were drawn into this controversy, because director Clint Eastwood used documentary footage of the bombing of the Kenyan Embassy (in 1998) as part of sniper Chris Kyle’s motivation to become a Navy Seal and go into combat.
There is of course no connection whatever between those who organized and blew up the Kenyan embassy and those who were later fighting in Iraq.
“The fact that the weapons of mass destruction lie is so conveniently skipped in this movie as the rationale for the invasion of Iraq instead of the Twin Towers, just shows what kind of film this is,” tha-bang concludes angrily.
“The film has not only angered Arabs but fueled anti-Muslim sentiments,” Wasna warns.
Warah knows her stuff: she’s a Kenyan expert on African terrorism. Her books include “War Crimes” and “Mogadishu Then and Now,” two essential reads for persons interested in understanding Somalia.
I think we need to heed these voices, and of course critics of American Sniper for being propaganda are not confined just to Africa. There have been many similar critiques here at home and from respected critics abroad.
The better a production a movie is, the more dangerous it becomes if its message is unreal or untruthful.
American Sniper carries a message which is a lie, “American avengers are honest souls.”
They are not. American soldiers were no less tricked than me or you into thinking what they were doing was right.
It was wrong, and the film pulls that reality back into the fictionalized grandeur of a nonexistent America.
So whether or not the acting is superb, or the cinematography is near perfect, or the music splendid and dramatic, a message … which is a lie … is carried into the watcher.
We pride ourselves in America for allowing any voice short of one untruthfully screaming “fire” to enter our collective consciousness.
But if critics here at home condemn Obama because he won’t say “Islamic terrorist” then they better endorse Warah and tha-bang, too, for condemning Eastwood for not just rehashing but promulgating the biggest lies of my lifetime.
Baz Luhrmann said it all, and Nigerian Queens of Africa dolls are now outselling barbies.
Nigeria is a complex place, among the most difficult African countries for a westerner to visit and enjoy, much less understand its foreign or social policies. Yet Nigeria often best embodies the contest between The West and Africa. Today in Nigeria, barbie dolls are losing.
Think about it. What toys do little Russians buy? What do those cute little primary school girls in Shanghai do after school? After all those primly dressed little Indian kids get home from their expensive Delhi boarding schools, what do they play with?
Other than smartphones and xBoxes, what do nonwestern kids play with?
I know images are developing in your minds of poverty struck barefoot Africans rolling the frame of a canabalized bicylcle wheel down a dirty path. (It happens in Appalachia, too.) It happens less and less in Africa, where the majority of the population – including kids, by the way – are growing up in cities that often don’t have dead grass.
Do you remember your toys? I bet if you tried hard enough you’d be able to create a narrative of your life, today, that begins with your toys as a child.
The Queens of Africa dolls intentionally challenged the barbie doll market in Africa, and they’re winning.
They’re beginning to sell well in Brazil as well, and they would probably sell well in America if the barbie cartel weren’t blocking them. What are we afraid of?
“The ‘Queens of Africa’ [dolls] … represent progressive qualities such as endurance, peace and love, while developing literary potential in children as well as enhancing their career development for the future,” doll creator, Taofeek Okoya, told Elle Magazine.
Moulin Rouge film producer, Baz Luhrmann nailed it: “It’s not about turning into a blonde Barbie doll or becoming what you dream of being; it’s about self-revelation, becoming who you are.”
Exactly as with barbie, Queens of Africa come in upteen different styles with upteen different outfits and upteen different accessories.
Hip culture digital magainze, TakePart, said: “As Barbie sales continue to plummet, another doll is aiming to slide in and take her place,” but then unfortunately added, “– in Nigeria, that is.”
Therein lies the battle between The West and Africa. TakePart is a creation of Jeff Skoll, the first president of eBay. Skoll who is Canadian sees the world from a much more global perspective than most Americans, even though he’s now firmly entrenched in the L.A. scene.
But he can’t fanthom a future in which Africa betters The West.
Even though with dolls for kids it already has. Averaging a quarter of the cost of a barbie, and with no other discernible functional differences, Queens of Africa would devour barbie in the American market.
After all, for years black kids in America played only with white barbie dolls.
“Okoya is starting to ship more of his dolls overseas, which means it could only be a matter of time before toy shelves in America are filled with African Queens and Naija Princesses,” according to the Atlanta magazine, BlackStar.
I have some reservations, by the way. The dolls are modeled after Nigeria’s three major ethnic groups … not helpful for anti-racism. Okoya is something of a playboy, the son of a Nigerian billionaire and few Nigerian billionaires are nice people… not helpful for moral capitalism.
But I probably could find similar reservations about Mattel.
So if you got one Barbie Rambo in a ring with one Queen of Africa Sheba, who’d be on the turf first?
The Tanzania government is inviting violence as it cracks down on all dissent prior to two upcoming elections.
Tanzania has never been a model of transparency. European governments suspended aid more than a year ago because of shady, under-the-table mining deals, and despite some demanding young mavericks in Parliament, the government continues to stonewall all requests for basic information.
But now it’s getting very serious. For the first time the government has banned a major newspaper.
In times past the government has banned smaller papers and blogs, but the East African newspaper is a large regional publication that has been popular in Tanzania for twenty years.
The paper is one of the most aggressive in East Africa. Its investigative journalists recently published details of the government’s fraudulent passing of a new proposed constitution to ready it for a national referendum in April. This is likely what provoked the ban.
The Media Institute for Southern Africa further reported that the East African’s principal bureau chief in Dar-es-Salaam was detained and questioned by police.
The government is running scared. National elections are scheduled for October, and a referendum on the disputed new constitution is scheduled for April 30.
Neither are expected to go well. The proposed constitution was approved by a Parliament that was boycotted by virtually ever member of the opposition. Critics are especially angered by mechanisms intended to keep the party which has ruled Tanzania since independence firmly in control.
Among the mechanisms that would do this is the subjugation of Zanzibar, which was one of the reasons a new constitution was to be considered in the first place. It was presumed that a federal system would give Zanzibar considerably more autonomy and that would help calm the civil disobedience afflicting the island.
Last October the fractured opposition to the government announced a coalition to oppose the government candidates in the upcoming national elections. Today that appears to be evaporating, and in this moment of weakness I think the government wants to regain control.
It won’t work, of course.
As one of the comments to the story in Nairobi’s Daily Nation pointed out, most everyone reads the East African today online. The government has no way of banning that.
So the act of trying to do so is likely to do little except further inflame the situation.
At the same time if the opposition is unable to reconstitute its coalition I think it deserves to lose. There could be no better opportunity than right now to dislodge the ruling party. If this moment is missed, expect Tanzania to grow more and more repressive.
Is Charlie Hebdo hateful, and if so, should it be banned?
In the U.S. hate speech is constitutionally protected, but acts motivated by hate can be deemed illegal. It’s an extraordinarily complex if subtle distinction.
It’s not surprising that the political and religious leaders of Africa are near universally condemning this week’s European terrorism, but their societies are not expressing any such agreement at all.
Some of the most Muslim of Africa’s countries, including Morocco, Egypt, Mauritania and even Somali walked in lockstep with their condemnation of the terrorists but without, however, bringing up the subject of free speech. These and many more government statements seemed almost like they were all written by the same person.
But dig into social media and it’s a completely different situation:
Moreover, government policy as opposed to government statements in Africa is quite different. The same governments above – as with almost all African governments – have strict laws against free speech.
In Egypt a person can be detained indefinitely whenever suspected of terrorism, and in Egypt today terrorism is defined as simple as speaking the words, “Muslim Brotherhood.”
In less authoritative regimes like Kenya and South Africa, current legislatures are grappling with new laws that seriously restrict the press and other forms of free speech.
So don’t believe the government statements. I believe that Africans of almost all persuasions view the terrorism this week in France and Belgium as an understandable outcome of excessive “free speech.” The question is whether the outcome is worth it.
Free speech in Africa is a powerful weapon and those in power are unanimously wary of it.
With the less stable (Somalia), less developed (Mauritania) or more contentious governments (Morocco and Egypt), inhibiting free speech is used against Islamic militants because that same interdiction is used against any criticism of the existing regime.
With more stable and progressive governments like Kenya and South Africa, where political criticism is vibrant, the debate over Charlie Hebdo is quite unsettled. Earlier this week I wrote about this.
My own view is that we need to value the “worth” of hateful criticism. In an educated and tolerant society this value can be truly understood as an important test of free speech.
But in less educated and tolerant societies the value flips and reflects not a freedom but the oppressive power of the subjugator. Thems fighting words.
“Just like there is no such thing as unfettered capitalism, there is no such thing as unfettered free speech,” writes a New York muslim using an anonymous penname (touché!).
So when we as westerners condemn curtailments of free speech elsewhere, without criticizing our own hate speech/crime laws, are we simply claiming to have achieved the perfect standard … universally?
That’s the cardinal mistake of the West: presuming not just that they know best, but that no one else anywhere knows better.
It’s just not true. It’s not possible, and if we can excise this egoism from the argument, I think we’ll begin to empathize with the movers and shakers in the developing world who have very few riches to be taken from them, but enormous amounts of dignity.
Comedy conveys reality to Americans today better than straight facts, and last Friday’s ‘The Daily Show’ masterfully presented the real Africa.
Jon Stewart introduced his new correspondent from South Africa, Trevor Noah, who conveyed to Americans a lot more successfully than I and dozens of other bloggers have:
(1) Eric Garner and Michael Brown demonstrate more police brutality in America than in South Africa.
Moreover and more importantly, police brutality in South Africa was once much worse and is now much better, and this is not the case in America.
Noah pointed out that police brutality in South Africa was a construct of apartheid, and that when apartheid ended this brutality began to reverse.
In America, where there’s never been apartheid as such, brutality has remained high if not increased.
(2) There is more ebola in America than South Africa.
True and undeniable, but no matter how many times we say this it’s forgotten until carried in a comedy routine!
Noah said his friends warned him against going to America for fear of contracting ebola, and he replied “just because they had a few cases of ebola there [America] doesn’t mean we should cut off travel, there.”
(3) Americans believe they can “save Africa” by small charity donations. Noah remarked, “for just five cents a day.”
This sarcasm is powerful stuff. It reveals the ignominy of American charities and the naivete of American donors in the much fuller arguments that I and many others have made for years about the mistake of so much American charity.
(4) Americans think almost exclusively that Africa is a vacation destination for big game safaris. While Africans absolutely don’t, of course.
Noah then presented a game, “Spot the Africa” which was phenomenal.
A series of two paneled photographs came up multiple times contrasting Africa with America, and as you can imagine, the horrible ones were America.
This wasn’t just nitpicking. It was real.
Stewart then asked Noah, “You aren’t saying that things in America are worse than in Africa?”
And Noah replies, “No, I’m not saying that, you guys are saying that.”
I’m one of those guys.
And Noah ended with a brilliant observation that knits the reality of sarcasm to the troubled conundrum of American life:
“You know what African mothers warn their children, about, Jon? Be grateful for what you’ve got, because there are fat children starving in Mississippi.”
Justice, fairness, equality – “legally” lost today around the world. Uhuru Kenyatta, Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo are today uncharged, and they should not be. What’s wrong?
Uhuru Kenyatta, the President of Kenya, was indicted for crimes against humanity by the World Court more than a year ago. Today the chief prosecutor dropped all charges.
Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo are white police officers who exceeded their professional protocols while apprehending unarmed black men and killed their victims, but both were released of any charges by local grand juries.
All of this is legal and lawful.
And wrong.
The debating if bickering as to why these major miscarriages of justice occurred will go on for years and ultimately it will be concluded — exactly as it’s understood at this very moment — that modern systems of justice are easily manipulated by those in power.
In Kenyatta’s case, the prosecutor issued a statement blaming the Kenyan government for gross intimidation of witnesses and refusal to cooperate in the search for evidence.
The white police officers were exonerated because of prosecutors’ unusual granular involvements in the deliberations, and law that has become badly interpreted to vindicate virtually anything that a police officer does.
All three men are most likely guilty of the crimes for which they had been considered or in the case of Kenyatta, charged. Without a completed prosecutorial investigation, this certainty will never exist, of course, so we’re forced to speculate if justice was served.
If any of them is truly not guilty, that too will never be known, now. In the public mind it grows more and more impossible that they are innocent.
So justice, whatever it really is, will never exist in these cases.
The only valuable outcome I see is the fact that the world is fast recognizing that these three men are but representatives of a much larger community of possible criminals who escape justice by the manipulation of those in power.
And that power, even in democracies, is apparently absolute.
Many, particularly in Kenya but also here at home, argue that regardless of whether justice was served or not, the outcome is correct.
This is to say that justice is not always the right outcome.
Many, many Kenyans believe that the stability that Kenyatta seems to have achieved among Kenya’s brutally opposed ethnic groups, was worth a couple hundred thousand displaced persons and a thousand deaths.
The argument is that in the absence of Kenyatta’s management of violence following the disputed 2006/7 election that Kenya would have become a failed state mired in unthinkable if barbaric horrors not unlike the situation in Nigeria’s Biafra in the 1960s.
Similarly, Americans believe that police officers can break the law in order to enforce it, provided the overall outcome is a more lawful society.
I disagree. Justice and injustice are mutually exclusive. Manifesting justice does not beget injustice.
There is nothing inherently weakened in the concept of justice if the powerful who find themselves its guardians are themselves punished for injustice. In fact, it strengthens not weakens justice.
No, the explanation is not found in arguments that verge on hyperbole. The explanation is found in the larger masses of society, who are today apathetic or placated if fooled.
There is too little moral indignation than there should be among the societies where these injustices take place, and the powerful recognize this and so take advantage of it.
Justice is not something that was delivered to us by men in wigs 300 years ago, or in the case of Kenya, a convoluted global justice system in its initial stages of infancy.
President Hollande of France entering an ebola hospital in West Africa.The apparent slowing of the spread of ebola in West Africa is almost as worrisome as the outbreak itself.
Many will think I’m crazy to write an epilogue to this story before it really is over, but like so many global crises the ebola epidemic will become forgotten the moment headlines disappear.
We really shouldn’t do this, this time. There are four extremely important lessons to be learned, that right now I hope everyone can understand.
There are just under 7,000 reported deaths from ebola, just under 17,000 reported individual infections, and both numbers are likely low because of the difficulty of accurate reporting in the ebola infected areas.
Foreign help is working. ABC reported yesterday two pages of good headlines about ebola in Liberia, including Obama’s troops and hospitals coming online, Chinese hospitals coming online, and the possibility there will be no new cases at all in Liberia.
With all the accelerated research and development of diagnosing and vaccinating against the disease, I predict ebola in West Africa will be contained in the first quarter of next year.
In a demonstration of similar optimism, the President of France visited a hospital in Conakry, Guinea, on Friday. Conakry is an epicenter of the disease.
With an outbreak of this magnitude it’s difficult to imagine it will ever be completely over, since so much of the area retracted into primitiveness as a result of almost two generations of horrible, scathing war.
But I’m willing to take the risk of being premature for wont of not losing public attention. We have four serious lessons to take from this situation:
Lesson 1. TERROR & RACISM RULES
American culture in recent times craves being terrorized. There could be all sorts of reasons: remnants of 9/11, poor education, the Great Recession … whatever. Whether it’s vampires at the cinema, fear of ISIS or “open borders” or ebola, we crave being threatened.
In all these cases, “The Threatener” is the demon. Imagine, for example, if some horrible virus literally as bad as ebola or worse suddenly broke out in Des Moines. We would not be closing our bridges over the Mississippi or road-blocking I-80.
A virus worse than ebola did break out in America in the 1950s. It was called polio. Some parents did keep their kids out of school, but most didn’t even do that.
Ebola happened in BLACK Africa. All our reactions this time demonstrate racism to the core of our beliefs. Polio in Pittsburgh is god’s will and we will overcome it. Ebola in Africa is the work of the devil.
Lesson 2. KNEE JERKS precipitate KNEE REPLACEMENTS
America today leads the world in short-term thinking, and that short-term thinking is why we have an ebola epidemic to begin with.
America’s political system is the best example. We fund the government almost from month-to-month. We have no long term social plans.
We cherish quick stock trades; we tutor our third grader just enough to get into fourth grade; we hand out just enough food stamps to take us through winter.
We lay globs of asphalt in cracks rather than pieces of new cement and then get furious when the cracks get bigger the next year.
Our hearts may be in the right place, but our minds are in Pluto. We pass referendum to increase the minimum wage for a long-term benefit to everyone including the shop keeper that gets the extra dough, but then elect politicians who vow to reduce the minimum wage to balance next year’s budget.
Tom Sommerville writing today in African Journalism argues so well that the ebola epidemic today is a result of American-dominated short-term thinking manifest by the IMF and World Bank.
He’s right on, and I’m not going to summarize his thinking, just go to his link above.
Basically, you get what you pay for. America has led the world paying discount prices for a modern planet that needs a bit more quality than we’ve been willing to accept.
It’s so counterproductive! We spend literally millions of dollars to intercept ebola (so far, no one) at our airports who has a temperature, but resist funding Obama’s emergency request to build ebola hospitals! Now how ridiculous is that!
We all know where this is going to lead, don’t we? Didn’t your grandpa give you your first piggy bank? If you neglect the oil change, won’t you have to buy a new car sooner? Come on guys, get real!
Lesson 3. EXAGGERATION KILLS
I’m probably the greatest offender, admitted, and I am constantly trying to reform myself, so at least I’m ahead of many.
So I can attest first-hand of this horrible American affliction, exaggeration. Texas has to be the biggest place. My kids are always above average, thank you Garrison. My yard has the greenest grass. My pastor is the kindest man. My dog is the sweetest and … my enemy is always the devil incarnate.
Current ebola infection stats are horrible but nowhere near as catastrophic as earlier predicted. Both the CDC and WHO are now loathe to make future predictions, since their earlier ones were so off base.
Those quantitative assessments that earlier suggested “millions” of possible cases from institutions as respected as WHO and the CDC make me wonder if those organizations suffer from the same scientific deficits as Senator Inhofe.
Opponents of realism, of what is right in the world, of what should be done morally and practically, will now use these exaggerated claims to stop funding Obama’s ebola eradication mission, and this will kill hundreds if not thousands of more people than would otherwise be saved.
Lesson 4. GEOGRAPHY IS DEAD
When I’m working in Nairobi or Johannesburg, I’m just about the same distance from the ebola epicenter as my kids are living in New York.
Every single capitol city in Europe is closer to the ebola center than any city in the U.S.
There are three nonstop flights daily from West Africa to the U.S. (two into JFK and one into Dulles). Daily, there is only one into Johannesburg and no non-stops into East Africa. There are dozens of nonstops daily into European capitols.
It has absolutely astounded me how bad Americans’ knowledge of basic planet geography is. I started work in Africa 40 years ago, and I was astounded then that someone in Chicago thought Dakar was as close to Nairobi as Detroit is to Cleveland.
But that has persisted, and there’s no explanation except poor education.
* * * *
The outbreak of ebola, the messy containment, the lessons that won’t be learned from the situation, are every man’s responsibility, every man on earth.
America cannot yet shed its responsibility as the world’s greatest power, and so it has to assume its greatest responsibility.
Remedies begin at home, of course. They begin with adjusting ourselves to realism and moralism. It’s a very dark time in America right now. Kids, get us out of this!
At a holiday party recently, someone asked me if when I’d been in Africa recently I’d heard any of Africa’s great new music, you know, gospel.
This past weekend was Africa’s continent-wide music video award show which I found particularly interesting since artists and production companies from my neck of the woods, Tanzania and Kenya, did extremely well.
Tanzania and Kenya, compared to South Africa and Nigeria, is like comparing Hot Springs, Arkansas, to Nashville, in terms of financing and production capability. But the continent has been connected for many decades by its music and music competition, and East Africa is emerging with what I think is the greatest creativity.
Earlier in the year, the African music awards which represent the top stars in the industry was held again in South Africa.
I really listened to these closely again, and darn it, I couldn’t find any gospel.
Nigeria continues to dominate the industry. The energy of modern Nigerian pop stars makes me think it would be absolutely impossible — beyond the realm of imagination — to think that Islamic terrorists could ever take over this country.
I’m not being facetious. I’m presenting an entirely better defense against terrorism than what current politicians espouse.
The list of the hundred, even thousand top performers in Africa includes … no gospel music. Boko Haram may have extinguished them, I suppose, but rather I think you might just say … times have changed.
In fact, I remember shortly after Kathleen and I started to work in Kenya in 1972 that the two top music award winners that year in Kenya were the Kenyan Police Band and a church gospel choir.
I’m no music critic, but in listening to a wide range of modern African hits today I’m impressed by their gentler tone than we have in the west.
Most of the themes are ones of individual love lost or pined for, and many of them actually do remix the old dada da-da / dada da-da rhythm of the ancient adungu instrument.
But even that isn’t .. gospel.
Gospel is indeed part of America’s musical heritage.
It really isn’t in Africa. The gospel music that was promoted in colonial times was the music thrust on the oppressed by the overlords. They probably didn’t expect anything else was possible.
A growing number of women are becoming jihadists, especially in Africa. Why?
London’s Daily Telegraph claimed recently that one of every seven Britains who has traveled to troubled areas to join a jihadist cause is a woman.
Elizabeth Pearson of Kings College points out this is nothing new, although it appears to be growing substantially.
Ms. Pearson also points out that women are increasingly being used as suicide bombers.
Does this just provide a media advantage for jihadist groups, since media is more likely to report on terrorist acts if a woman is involved, as Ms. Pearson suggests?
The families of suicide bombers no matter their gender are often paid substantially, and jihadist leaders also perpetuate what I believe they believe is the myth that suicide in action assures martyrdom.
I actually think the main reason women are becoming more involved in jihadism is more simple. Gender abuse in America – and elsewhere in the western world – has been talked about for a very long time, but not really acted on in ways meaningful enough to reduce it.
If men want women to do something — anywhere in the world — they’re more likely able to persevere than the other way around.
Another more subtle reason may be linked to the definitely new global awareness that’s emerged recently to gender abuse. In this infant stage, this new awareness may have a polarizing effect especially upon many traditional male/female relationships.
The “put-up or shut-up” syndrome may be forcing some women — especially from less modern communities — to make a clear choice of being subservient or rebellious.
Whatever the underlying causes, it’s clear that the male/female “divide” is very easy to exploit by jihadists.
“Jihadist” is not synonymous with “Muslim” and Americans in particular don’t realize this, and this also contributes to why women are becoming increasingly involved in global terrorism.
Terrorism is successful when it clearly and completely divides its adversaries. There are good guys and bad guys, no moderate or indecisive or inconclusive guys.
America and much of the rest of the western world, especially Britain, are perfect places to overlay this ideology, because our societies have become so polarized. (Don’t think that Ted Cruz is anomalous to America. Britain, the Netherlands, France … they all have their Ted Cruz’.)
So-called modern women in Britain or the U.S. may still begin their outing in more traditional communities. Threatened and/or encouraged by liberation all around them, their communities force them into extreme choices: ostracism or submission.
Fleeing as a jihadist captures the rebellion of ostracism while still being entirely submissive. It is the ability to resist innate rights violations by, in fact, becoming a part of them.
Al Arabiya claims that British women are given the most important jihadist roles in Africa “because they [are seen as] the most committed of the foreign female fighters.”
Kamakazism and terrorism in all its forms from jihadists in the Mideast and Africa will not stop until America and its allies grow more circumspect about the real danger that exists from this jihadism.
Vilifying and exaggerating jihadist acts elevate their impact beyond reality then at the same time further divides modern societies into extreme opposites. No middle ground remains for the more traditional woman to find modern sanctuary.
Barbarism is hard to minimize. But until we acknowledge and fully embrace the fact that the barbarism of the terrorists in Nigeria is the same as the barbarism of an NFL player, we will continue encouraging the traditional woman to submit, whether that to be to abuse in an elevator or strapping herself with then detonating a gown of bombs.
The whole damn world is turning conservative, but Kenyans are fighting back! The current battle is over miniskirts!
Last Wednesday while waiting for a bus at a stop in Nairobi, a woman was screamed at by passing matatu (private taxi cab) operators for wearing a miniskirt.
The protest grew rapidly and soon the woman was on the curb stripped naked. Kenyan authorities condemned the stripping and promised prosecution, but nothing’s happened so far.
The good side, the left choice above as usual, is composed of virtually all Kenyan elites and most modern educated people, and that’s mainly because miniskirts have come back in fashion big time in Africa.
Young kids populate schools in them and old ladies wear them trying to look young. From Nigeria to South Africa, miniskirts are in.
Typical of the good side are the oft repeated arguments that men’s reactions to scantily dressed women are reflections of their misogyny, dress codes presumed necessary for women are never applied to men, and that the constitution protects however a woman wants to dress.
Typical of the bad side is the universal presumption that dressing scantily is an invitation if not outright challenge for sex, politely presented in its obverse:
“Cinderella didn’t need to take off her dress to get Prince Charming. Neither do you.”
Need I mention radical evangelists of the Christian and Muslim faiths who find common ground here?
Kenya is dealing with this in a transparent and public way, and the voices of the correct side, the left side, are not being suppressed nor are they growing. In such a situation, reason will ultimately prevail.
In many conservative communities in America, in many right-leaning American cities and certainly in spit drooling revivals among many American evangelists, the story isn’t so hopeful.
An antiquated governing system flipped between two irreconcilable ideologies, because those ideologies are so far apart that compromise isn’t possible.
Many of you – I’m thinking particularly in Kenya – want to replicate America’s governing system. Don’t. It was great for the 19th and 20th century, but it doesn’t work in our high-tech, globalized 21st century.
Yesterday’s politicians and media analysts are absolutely right that “America is yearning for compromise” but they’re absolutely wrong that “now there’s hope the two sides will work together.” Our political structure has evolved to prevent compromise, so while we all want it, we’re not going to get it.
Since about a generation ago, “left” and “right” have moved too far apart from one another to be able to compromise within our system of government. This isn’t a failure of democracy, it’s a failure of the governing system to reflect democracy.
So gridlock will continue. Obama will stick to his positions and no substantive laws will be passed, or he will concede Republican positions. The two sides won’t each “give a little.” Neither side can: the positions are simply too far apart. So all legislative outcomes will simply be reflections of one side or the others ideology.
My ideologies and Ted Cruz’ are irreconcilable, but we are both gaining support. There is nothing left of the middle in America. I’m not sure this is in itself bad. The “middle” is often nothing more than a “muddle.” In many places in Europe widely divergent clearly opposing parties manage functional government through a parliamentary system. America is unable to.
Obama’s presidency is failing, because he still believes in legislative compromise. He still believes that he is the leader of everyone in America, and that idea means that he’s the leader of no one.
Whether it be on human rights, national security and wealth distribution, compromise isn’t possible: The difference in opinion is too great.
Today’s American elections are structured to achieve a knockout punch. Last night was a big Republican win. The Democrats will have their turn, again, and then the Republicans again, while America sinks further and further behind China and India and much of you in Africa.
“Sinks” in terms of economy, yes, but also in terms of culture, education and human rights.
The demons are three: an executive presidency, the rules of candidate campaigns and a little understood process called gerrymandering.
By the way, the American public as a whole is much more unified than our elections make it seem. In Tuesday’s election, “ballot initiatives” and “referendum” – policy questions put to the electorate as a whole – received massive support : redistributing wealth (“minimum wage”), protecting human rights (“anti-discrimination”), decriminalizing the poor (“legalizing marijuana”) among many others.
But under America’s system, today, these are rarely allowed to come before the voters and often then only as recommendations to their legislators rather than methods of creating law.
And under our broken system of government, the public’s will can’t be manifest well. So while the public passed those few referendum, at the very same time they elected powerful legislators who promised to oppose those exact same referendum.
So … nothing gets done. Gridlock or schizophrenia, doesn’t matter.
You in Africa have a unique opportunity to see how wonderful democracy has been for a long time in America. Use your fresh ideas to figure out a way to sustain it. We’re failing, here.
Election Day in America is of no interest whatever in Africa, completely unlike the elections two years ago. Do Africans know something we do, too?
Two years ago the African press was filled with American election news. Yesterday and today I could hardly find a single story.
“A handful of toss-up US Senate races this week could hold the key to whether the stock market glides through the year-end in a typical post-midterm election rally,” from South Africa’s MoneyWeb on-line business service is typical of ‘that’s about it.’
Not even blogs, exploding about the American election two years ago, were interested.
To virtually every African, of whatever politics or economic class, the outcome of today’s election in the United States means virtually nothing.
The only relevant if annoying interest is whether there will be a clear outcome, and that muddy situation seems of interest only to high-end investors in Africa:
Reminding readers of the situation with George Bush and the uncertain election then, MoneyWeb worries that an uncertain outcome in the Senate will make the markets volatile.
Uh-huh.
Kenyans’ election commission leaders will actually be on hand in the U.S. to witness the election.
“There is a lot to learn from this election. As you know, America has very advanced electoral institutions that can be very helpful to us in our quest to improve the way we conduct our elections,” the commission’s chairman said today in Washington.
So one must ask: to what avail?
Democracy isn’t what it used to be, in my opinion. My views, your views, figure less than ever in what is happening in our country or community.
My reasons for this are probably yours, too: if it isn’t that I’m being swayed or fooled, lied to or tricked by fancy ads and robo calls and well groomed former leaders under lights, I’m just too darn fed up with the whole thing.
Nothing seems to change. Not for my way or your way. The old guys are still in power.
Hillary vs Bush? Wow, now that’s a fresh of breath air, ain’t it?
Civil violence in Baltimore, Beijing, Nairobi, Cairo and Johannesburg reflects societies coming apart.
