As I’m writing this protestors are being shot and killed on the streets of Kampala, Uganda, in what boils down to a rebellion of Fake News.
In fact, the president of the country in trying to quell the growing uprising has invoked Donald Trump as a supporter. The energy is so intense that it’s spilling over the western Kenyan border.
Africans from every part of the continent look to South African for global guidance. And South Africa is telling them to dump the United States. Trump has destroyed “any reservoir of trust in American words and promises.”
Look instead to: Germany, for international norms and decency; China, for economic directions and instructions; and … get this … Russia for global security. “… this, sadly, is the world that Donald Trump hath wrought,” South Africa’s Daily Maverick sums it up today.
It’s still too early to tell, but I’ll concede a sliver or two of hope: the current global pendulum forever swinging to the right might be slowing down and coming back.
Africa is the leading indicator. South Africa’s Jacob Zuma’s ascent to power 9 years ago foretold what then happened in places like Austria and the United States. I wrote earlier that Zuma’s ouster earlier this year foretells what will happen worldwide, but the question is when? Do the rest of us have to wait 9 years?
Kenya tries too hard to be western. It even started to reign in widespread corruption, trying to achieve that fine line that western countries manage between corruption and lobbying.
But the last two years have been seen the most enormous setbacks. Kenya has slipped to 143 of 180 countries ranked by clean government by Transparency International. I think I know why: You can try to be western but if you don’t know all the tricks you’ll get hoisted by your own petard.
Was Donald Trump brought to power by Harry Potter?
Don’t laugh. Outrageous ideas sometimes carry bits of insight even if only from understanding why they’re wrong.
Today is World Lion Day, an unofficial designation employed by wildlife organizations. In the last quarter century the population of The King has declined dramatically. World Lion Day is intended to focus public interest on The King’s travails.
Needless to say public interest in The King is the highest among wild animals and that directly translates into interest at academic and public levels. Unfortunately, the huge amount of consistent data gathered on The King’s decline is not generating enough correct public policy. Most field efforts by the big-name conservation organizations fail to show sufficient consideration for the local people.
Is Facebook now a Faceless demagogue enforcing inconsistent morality on the world, or when it throttled Liberia’s most popular site was it reigning in web prostition and child trafikking?
Is it time that government of the people become the mediator rather than a board of billionaires?
Twenty years ago this morning I scurried about my Garden Cottage room in the Norfolk Hotel in Nairobi grabbing all sorts of pieces of paper and maps and hastily stuffing them into my briefcase. I was late for my 10:30a meeting with my transport manager.
I saved oh 2 or 3 seconds jumping over the rails of my patio onto the beautiful central Norfolk garden grounds. The instant my feet hit the grass the bomb detonated. A terrible era began.
“Worse than under Mugabe,” the principle opposition spokesman told London’s Guardian newspaper this morning.
Four days after a hopeful election that inspired the world, Zimbabwe has returned to its dark cave. Masked groups move through the country abducting known opposition supporters.
Persons on the streets are tortured and beaten. There’s not much more to report. Zimbabwe has retreated from the outside world. Outsiders dare not visit.
Crocodile Mnangagwa was declared president of Zimbabwe with 50.8% to his nearest challenger, charismatic Chamisa’s 44.3%.
Slightly fewer votes for Mnangagwa putting him below 50% would have triggered a run-off with Chamisa. There were 23 candidates in the race; Chamisa’s chances in a run-off were very good, and that had been his party’s strategy from the beginning. With grave concerns expressed by international observers on the election’s authenticity, Mnangagwa’s presidency is now as legitimate as Donald Trump’s.
And that’s my point. These days’ democracy sucks.
Real hopes that I had yesterday of bringing visitors back to Zimbabwe are now exactly like the three innocent, unarmed young people shot by soldiers on the streets of Harare yesterday afternoon: dead.
Final election results have yet to be announced at the time of this writing, but they don’t matter. How someone becomes a Zimbabwean soldier, I don’t know, but that is the only hope to power left to any Zimbabwean.
At a time when democracy has lost its cache all around the world including in America, Zimbabwe today blinked a glimmer of freedom. We’re all on pins and needles wondering if that blink will flicker or flourish.
The evisceration or even outright repeal of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is one of the best illustrations of what’s going on in America, today.
The ESA is a socialist policy initiated by Richard Nixon and enacted because of proactive Republican support in the face of considerable Democratic resistance. This exact mirror image of today proves that politics, not ideas, generate American policy.
‘Work hard with homage to our lord and your assured place in the kingdom is safe.’ So affirmed Uganda’s Supreme Court yesterday.
Yoweri Museveni is now President-for-Life. While untouchable dictators are not unusual in Africa, they had until recently been going out of fashion. But I wonder if that Middle Ages Oath of Homage I opened with is reemerging – all over the world, not just in Africa. Why are people yearning for unassailable lords?
Several generations ago five million people depended upon Lake Chad in central Africa for food and work. It was Africa’s fourth largest lake, the size of New Jersey, with bountiful fish and plenty of water for irrigated farming. Today the lake is one-tenth that size and supports 45 million people.
Equal assaults on the lake by climate change and overuse portend a day soon when it will all be sand. The run-up to that could be quick, a year or less, and the human catastrophe would be unprecedented like a nuclear attack on Japan.