A breakthrough in eradicating the world’s worst and most onerous disease has set the scientific and conservation worlds into a maddened dither. Why on earth is everyone so concerned that the disease we’ve been fighting for centuries might at last found its master?
Stripped Away
When the cat’s away, the mice will play… If you’ve used the popular Breckenridge siding for your house or renovation, you’re a part of a horribly malicious global scheme run by the Chinese, facilitated by the American wood companies Roseburg, Evergreen and Cornerstone, and given a wink and a nod by the Trump administration.
As a result Gabon has lost much of its precious rainforest, the very rare okoumé (Aucoumea klaineana) timber in particular.
Just A Sparrow
Today I assist our area’s most celebrated birder in conducting the “BBS” for our government. The Breeding Bird Survey gives me a great perspective when comparing African avifauna to the bird life of my home.
Memorial Day
Today is America’s Memorial Day holiday.
The holiday is intended to honor the memories of U.S. soldiers who died in action. It’s similar to the Remembrance Days celebrated in many parts of Africa, and like in South Africa created primarily to honor the freedom fighters for independence.
But America’s Memorial Day has grown to honor all fallen soldiers not just those who fought in the 18th century revolution. In fact it wasn’t started until after the Civil War when it was first called “Decoration Day,” following a petition by recently freed slaves (most who came from Africa) to honor the Union soldiers who had freed them.
After World War I it was changed to “Memorial Day” and extended as an honor to all soldiers in all conflicts.
As a young boy it was a big red-white-and-blue festival. School got out early Friday so we could decorate our little red wagons and bikes for the big Monday parade, just as we would hardly a month later for the July 4th Independence Day Holiday.
Since then my own personal regards for Memorial Day has diminished. The numerous wars my country began during my life time have mostly been unfair and unjust. The end of conscription — which happened when I was in university — changed the military so radically that it is no longer a people’s army: It no longer represents society as a whole.
Today the military is composed either of young men who can’t get any other kind of job or who need the benefits once their service is finished, or avowed militarists.
I do stop during the day and think of my relatives in the Great Wars. I think of the way the country ultimately came together to fight world tyranny. But in my life time there is little in America’s wars to be proud of. They are mostly memories I wish we didn’t have.
Social Snuffs
In our morose and combative world it’s such a struggle to consume the minimum amount of news to keep a sense of reality. It’s very easy to slip out of this challenge and thereby decay into fodder for all things evil.
One very difficult task is to contrast social with political issues. Yes, Roe-v-Wade seems more vulnerable than ever, but it stands and it stands while freedom of sexual orientation, gender and pay equality actually move forward progressively. Who’s among the top 3 or 4 democratic candidates right now?
A perfect example of how this struggle is global can be found with feminist Stella Nyanzi in Uganda.
Gorillas Sweating
I saw my first gorilla in 1977. It was an eastern lowland gorilla in Kahuzi-Biega national park in The Congo, a species of gorilla (graueri) that’s still going extinct. I watched several Italians throw tomatoes at them. There were no guides then. You just climbed into mountain jungles and threw things at fur. It was an improvement over shooting.
In November the most celebrated of the four gorilla species, the mountain gorilla (berengei), was moved OFF the critically endangered to just the endangered list. I was exhausted and exhilarated learning this. And nobody partied. No ticker tape parades. The world’s just too damned complicated at the moment.
China Trumps Africa
You were fooled by Trump. Don’t be fooled by China and Africa.
With 5G power Africa opened its arms to China, and China took the embrace nanoseconds after Trump imposed new sanctions on hi-tech transfer to China.
It seemed rehearsed:
Not Funny Trevor
Trevor Noah isn’t so funny, anymore, and I find it kind of weird saying so. He’s a Sowetean comic in the United States and I’m an American blogger of South Africa.
We came to blows after his recent rendition of the South African election and one candidate in particular:
A Future Yawns
Change is on the way but it’s a long way ‘comin.
That’s what the South Africa election tells us and not only about South Africa but for all the world’s democracies.
OnSafari: Wisconsin
I was sitting in our breakfast room, the corner of the house all windowed, overlooking the lake when a red Corolla with a red canoe on top raced down our driveway and a tall lanky man with wading boots and a funny hat jumped out and ran to the edge of the lake.
When he raised his binoculars my concern turned to relief. I walked out barefoot in my jammies into the 45F spectacularly clear morning and introduced myself, but I all I did was manage to agitate him as he muttered, “Yellow over red. No… pink over red.”
Back to The Past
More and more we can foreshadow global futures by following South African politics. Read my many previous blogs comparing the impeached Jacob Zuma with the yet to be ousted Donald Trump and the established political parties and their fiery challengers.
As I write this today 75% of the votes have been certified in Wednesday’s national election. The outcome is close to what the polls predicted, so unlike earlier elections. And the outcome suggests a return to an older status quo, a failure for significant change but with an overall (if counterproductively slow) movement towards more progressive policies.
Vapid Voting
So far no surprises in the South African elections and quite possibly an affirmation that pre-election polling was correct.
Actual results won’t be known until tomorrow but there is incredible news: once again, nearly 70% of voting age South Africans actually voted. This is a vibrant democracy and it gives Americans pause to rethink exactly what we are.
Culling Politicians
Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe claim to have 250,000 elephants – which is a bit high – and their Heads of State met yesterday to decide how to handle “too many elephants.”
Botswana has a hotly contested election in five months. Elephants are a hot button issue in that election with the president decrying “too many elephants” and offering absolutely useless but provocative methods to reduce them. He hopes this glitzy gathering of mostly unpopular Heads of State will help his cause.
Spineless Science
So even scientists have been coopted, now. Today in Paris most all of the most famous scientists in the world issued an 1800-page much anticipated report detailing what the rapid loss of biodiversity is doing to us:
Killing us, essentially. By the way, what did you think about that last Game of Thrones episode? Pretty cool, isn’t it, that Alex Cora is skipping the White House meeting? Is it possible that climate change has something to do with the decline in biodiversity?
No Press Today
The State of the World, or … the fight between Nadler and Trump, is beautifully encapsulated by the volumes of reports being issued to mark this World Press Day:
We’re losing control of truth. Worse, we’re ceding our individual determinations of truth to media and the political leaders they support. This trend is most dramatic in Africa where in a mere five years the majority who vigorously supported press freedom no longer do.