The #MeToo campaign is sweeping across Africa, just as GOP “just-say-no” techniques have infused the failed Kenyan opposition and the Chinese governing model takes hold in Zimbabwe.
What we’re seeing is the inception of a single global society. We’re a long way from a single government, but the seeds have been planted.
Today begins the long Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. (Canada celebrates it earlier.) Technically on Thursday, many households begin preparations today as relatives from distant places begin their traveling to the Thanksgiving home. For many Americans this has become a bigger holiday than Christmas and other end-of-the-year celebrations, which are considered more religious than familial.
In both Canada and the U.S. the holiday is characterized by copious amounts of food featuring seasonal recipes and lots of sweets. The traditional meat served at the feast is turkey.
The holiday originates with the first permanent settlers to the New World, people who called themselves “pilgrims” who were fleeing England’s restrictive laws on religion. They arrived the northeast coast of America between 1620 and 1621.
They faired poorly in the beginning until two local native Americans, Wampanoags of the Algonkian-speaking clans, both of whom spoke English (because one of them had previously traveled to England in 1605) befriended the settlers. The “Indians” taught the pilgrims how to farm and build homesteads, and the summer planting season was so successful that the pilgrims invited the Indians to a “Thanksgiving” harvest dinner in November, 1621.
Click here for much more information about the history and meaning of Thanksgiving by a native American school teacher, who dispels not only the myths about the “primitiveness” of native Americans, but also about the pilgrims’ history and beliefs.
Germany’s Nazi party was one of the craftiest, most patient political apparatuses ever created. Unable to win a federal election outright it concentrated locally, slowly and assuredly consolidating national power until it was in complete control of Germany by 1933.
Nazis masterfully used democracy to end it. What’s happening today in America, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and many other places is a version of this with one critically important difference. The consequences of not recognizing this are as dire as they come.
Here’s the thing: we should all be upset with USFW’s reversing a ban on importing elephant tusks, but it’s not quite the story you think. As described below I could see a Hillary administration doing the same thing.
What Ryan Zinke did (please let’s stop pinning everything on the moron Donald Trump who doesn’t even know the difference between African and Indian elephants) will definitely set back wildlife conservation in Africa, but in the panoply of so many other anti-conservation actions in the last few years, it’s minor. It’s the panoply which is major, which makes every minor move that much worse.
You need to focus on the facts. Stick with me.
In 2013 after a lifelong success of writing novels about his native East Africa, H.R. Ole Kulet was awarded the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for literature. His short novels are now an essential part of the history of East Africa.
Ole Kulet described life that was changing so fast that today young Kenyans can’t fanthom his characters or his plots, including such things as rich old chiefs sexually assaulting young teen girls.
Get where I’m going?
Events are moving quickly in Zimbabwe as the regime changes.
The Army is control. A credible news source, ZimNews, confirms that the President’s wife, Grace Mugabe, despised by the Army and the focal point of the coup, has fled to Namibia.
Emerson Mnangagwa, the vice president “deposed” by Grace several weeks ago, has slipped back into the country and will likely assume power. The 93-year old dictator, Robert Mugabe, is expected to address the country later tonight or tomorrow.
Another two tourists were killed by elephant Saturday.
There are conflicting accounts of the deaths. The official Zambian police report claims that the 57-year old Belgian woman walked “too close” to take photos. But family members of the two killed told the Lusaka Times “the duo were looking at the giant mammals from a distance” and were charged unexpectedly.
In the big scheme of things, here’s why the details matter less than you might think.
One of the most important elephant organizations in the world, Cynthia Moss’ Elephant Trust, has minimized any imminent threat of elephant extinction and quite to the contrary reaffirmed the need “to promote coexistence between increasing numbers of humans and elephants.”
Over the last few years there have been literally dozens, if not hundreds, of not-for-profit organizations using inflammatory claims that elephants are on the brink of extinction in order to raise funds. This was malfeasance little different from Fox News.
Moss’ organization has reset the “elephant problem” in the right way.
In war we focus on battles won and lost. Little question for the need to fight: the causes were reasoned as justified. In chaos spiced with denial and obfuscation it’s like punching a cloud of smoke. You die of exhaustion without landing a single punch.
The resources the U.S. currently deploys in Africa approaches that of the Afghanistan invasion, while 60% of our State Department has been eviscerated. “The growing scale and lack of clear motive for shadow wars and African militarization is a cause for concern,” concludes the UC-Davis’ “nonpartisan” political magazine today.
And it’s not working. It’s making things critically worse.
The best taxi service is still Uber… in Nairobi, Joburg, Cape Town, Lagos, Kampala, Cairo, Dar… but … not in London or Amsterdam. Uber lost its license in London and its customers in Amsterdam.
The Uber controversy is fascinating, and a perfect example of what’s to come in a better world. (You’ll be surprised what I mean.)
The lofty positions held by a number of Africans in both government and business is jeopardized by the Paradise Papers expose, and for exactly the same reason that Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, is on the way out.
Nothing illegal is alleged in the Paradise Papers’ leaked business deals, mostly with Cayman Island banks. Nothing illegal is alleged in the Times’ expose of Apple’s tax havens in Britain and Ireland.
But legality isn’t the issue. Morality is. Wealth of this magnitude should not be held by so few.
The release last week of the unredacted Guantánamo Diary is a terrifying reminder that America is destroying itself.
How apt at the same time a gun fit leaves 26 dead outside a little Texas church, world climate talks open with three competing US delegations, South Koreans boo Trump and announce they wish to arm themselves with nuclear weapons, and two more cabinet secretaries purge themselves.
I’m not sure we have until the midterms.
Time to check your clocks. No, I’m not reminding you about the end of daylight savings time. I want to be sure that your ticks still clock, sinets mounting into meconds and inuits into mours, because it isn’t just government that’s falling apart, science is, too.
Our world of disinformation and strangled reasoning has sucked in science. Walrus-looking agricultural science advisors with no science credentials, EPA forbidding use of the world ‘climate’ and what has really driven me crazy, paleontologists speaking like political idiots.
In this incredibly dangerous and mendacious time when little seems to get better but the bank accounts of the rich why is society reacting so quickly to improve its mores regarding sexual relations?
While democracy, poverty, disease and war get worse? Is it because doing, confessing and chastising sexual harassment is easier than stopping a man from killing eight people with a truck in God’s name? Is it because the hypocrisy of the rich and religious has just gotten so grotesque that it’s finally bubbling over?
I surveyed a number of African countries to find out. Here’s what I learned:
The Trump Administration’s new military rules of engagement have destroyed years of peace-making efforts that were coming to fruition. Terrorist bombings and conventional attacks are substantially increasing as the U.S. goes on the offensive, particularly in Africa.
So far the U.S. has acknowledged only one soldier killed in Somalia and 4 in Niger, but local reports suggest far more – perhaps dozens – of U.S. casualities as the Africa war explodes.