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Dress the Christmas Tree on your Interactive Whiteboard
Remember the old feltboards we used to use? Now, we have one for your Interactive whiteboard. Talk about the different words as you pull them into the tree. You could decorate the tree and have it on your board during your class party!
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There are quite a few activities on this website around Hanukkah including a powerpoint presentation about Holidays around the world. It is a great time to talk about the holidays of many different faiths.
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A lesson plan to help children make and understand snow through investigation and creation. This will be fun!
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YouTube For Schools: A Safer Way For Students To Learn | Edudemic
If you use Google apps for education you now have access to YouTube for schools. This strips out comments and related videos. While not all videos are ported over, this is a solution for those overly restricted schools.
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I love Kanban boards of all kinds. I use Fogbugz to do trouble ticket tracking for my school. They've recently given it a facelift and it is incredibly useful and could be used for everything from maintenance tracking to trouble tickets. This is a plug in for the software called Kanban board that lets me convert the tickets to a kanban board. Love it!
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Play vocabulary games and as you get them right, you play and can feed hungry people.
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A video game to bring awareness to the crisis in Darfur to help students know what is happening and how they can act. This is something you may want to schedule in to your next semester if it is too upsetting around Christmas. However, it may be great to encourage kids to use Christmas money not just on themselves.
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Free iPad app and Contest to win iPad2 that ends Friday
I've already written about the ipad app with math games from TES. (Look for Tes Christmas in the store.) This is a nice post from Pooky Hesmondhalgh from the UK about the app and the contest. All you have to do is download the app, write a review of the app in the iTunes store and then tweet about the review with the hashtag #Tesxmas and you'll be entered to win a free iPad2 on Friday.It is a nice set of three games. My son and I played them on Sunday night so he could get his review in.
Daily Education and Technology News for Schools 12/13/2011
Examining Other Genocides
...in a dramatic expansion of its mission, the foundation is now incorporating testimonies from mass atrocities other than the Holocaust into its archives. Five survivors of the Rwandan genocide are learning the organization’s archiving methods at the Shoah Foundation Institute here, part of an effort to add at least 1,000 interviews with Rwandans to the foundation’s archives. Ten testimonies from Rwanda have been recorded already, with at least 50 more expected next yearMore here
Gacaca Films|Documenting Indigenous Institutions
"Gacaca (Ga-CHA-cha), which literally means "justice on the grass," is a form of citizen-based justice which Rwandans decided to put into place in an attempt to deal with the crimes of the 1994 genocide...Filming for over a decade in a tiny rural hamlet, director Anne Aghion has charted the impact this experiment in transitional justice has had on survivors and perpetrators alike.Through their fear and anger, accusations and defenses, blurry truths, inconsolable sadness, and hope for life renewed, she captures the emotional journey to coexistence..."More here
My Neighbor My Killer: Official Trailer from Gacaca Films on Vimeo.
Sudan – the Quieter Revolution
Speaking to people in Khartoum and surrounding areas, I found a wariness, a feeling in the air that people have had enough of political instability. Unlike most other Arab countries, Sudan has witnessed several governments since independence, each with its own unique predilection for failure. Military dictatorships, flirtations with communism, Islamism and a toothless liberal civil government of elites have all instilled a sense of fatigue. Add to this the seismic shift of the separation of the south, and you have a recipe for caution – an almost unconscious cognisance of the fragility of the moment and a negligible appetite for more upheaval.More here
Who is Your Sovereign?
A sovereign is the supreme lawmaking authority within its jurisdiction. When the Pilgrims left England and came to America, in their hearts they didn't recognize as their sovereign lord the King of England, realizing that anyone who could make it wrong to practice your religion could not truly be the real authority over your actions. The Pilgrims didn't recognize themselves as sovereign lords over themselves, able to determine what was right and wrong for themselves, knowing that this sort of selfishness and vanity would lead away from morality and create an absence of law. When the Pilgrims came to America, they didn't recognize 'no one' as sovereign, realizing that someone had to be responsible for their actions and had to provide law over them or else their community would dissolve into anarchy.
When the Pilgrims arrived in America, they knew in their hearts who their sovereign lord was- they knew who was the real lawmaking authority who watched over them and governed their behavior. Even on the shores of a faraway world, far from the British military or the power of the crown, far beyond the reach of any monarch, in a hostile land filled with potentially hostile people, the Pilgrims sat down and gave thanks to their sovereign lord and savior, to the authority which governed their society, to the source of law and rules and power, and to the one person who could possibly guarantee their safety and salvation. The Pilgrims gave thanks to God and his son, Jesus Christ, recognizing him as their sovereign.
Nolan Finley, writing in the Detroit News today, wrote in Editing God out of history distorts truth:
Ask any grade school kid who the Pilgrims were giving thanks to on the first Thanksgiving and I'll lay you three-to-one odds that the answer you get is, "the Indians." Public education is so obsessed with separation and so uncomfortable with discussions of religion that it has sanitized the unbreakable link between faith and America's founding. Now children are taught that the Pilgrims set the first Thanksgiving dinner for the Native Americans who helped keep them alive during their first harsh year in the New World.Truth is largely being scrubbed from public schools today, especially in the social studies, in ways big and small, and the fact that almost every single one of my students thinks that Thanksgiving was held to give thanks to the Native-Americans and not God is just one more piece of evidence that our nation is losing its history and its soul, and soon when people ask you who your sovereign is, your answer of "The President of the United States" will not be the same as the Pilgrim's reply of "God and Jesus."
This is more than just a small distortion in the name of political correctness. And it's not one of those Merry Christmas versus Happy Holidays issues. Whether you're a believer or non-believer, you should be concerned that God is being written out of this nation's history because doing so will limit our understanding of who we are as a people.
Faith was the driving force in the lives of the Pilgrims. Certainly the Indians helped them through the deprivations of that first year. But the settlers believed it was their prayers that accounted for their survival. And despite the starvation and sickness, they saw this new land as a great gift from God, a place where they were free to practice their religion.
The freedom to worship sparked a hunger for other liberties and created a culture that chafed at submission to arbitrary authority.
The words they used matter. When you edit out "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights" from the Declaration of Independence, as President Barack Obama has been doing lately, you lose the understanding that the early Americans were able to take the extraordinary risk of breaking way from their king and taking responsibility for their own governance because they believed God was the only sovereign they were answerable to.
It was a remarkable proposition at a time when the entire rest of the world was under the rule of monarchs.
The belief in America's divine destiny and its providential partnership fueled the nation's sea-to-sea expansion and sparked a missionary zeal for spreading freedom. It gave rise to the notion of America's large and unique place in the world and the theory of American exceptionalism that is also now considered quaint in many quarters.
The irony here is that schools have no problem exposing our flaws in the name of getting history right. It almost relishes defrocking our heroes — Jefferson owned slaves, and so did Washington; Jackson practiced genocide; the pioneers ravaged the land. They do so even to the point of challenging the nation's legitimacy.
But when it comes to discussing the very complex and integral ways religion shaped our history, educators lose their nerve. So they invent more convenient scenarios, such as Pilgrims cooking up the idea of a huge Thanksgiving dinner to honor their Indian benefactors, instead of the God whom they ardently believed led them to this New World and controlled every aspect of their fate.
There's both good and bad in the nation's religious history. Americans have done some noble things in the name of serving God, and they've made some tragic mistakes doing the same. It's not proselytizing to explore that relationship between God and country. It's just telling the truth.
“Kinyarwanda”
In Shadow and Act:
During the Rwandan genocide, when neighbors killed neighbors and friends betrayed friends, some crossed lines of hatred to protect each other. At the time of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the Mufti of Rwanda, the most respected Muslim leader in the country, issued a fatwa forbidding Muslims from participating in the killing of the Tutsi. As the country became a slaughterhouse, mosques became places of refuge where Muslims and Christians, Hutus and Tutsis came together to protect each other. KINYARWANDA is based on true accounts from survivors who took refuge at the Grand Mosque of Kigali and the madrassa of Nyanza...[continue reading]
Reconciliation after Genocide is just another form of torture.
Susie Linfield writing in Guernica:
“Reconciliation” has become a darling of political theorists, journalists, and human-rights activists, especially as it pertains to the rebuilding of postwar and post-genocidal nations. Nowhere is this more so than in the case of Rwanda. Numerous books and articles on the topic—some, though not all, inspired by Christian teachings—pour forth. It can plausibly be argued, of course, that in Rwanda—and in other places, like Sierra Leone and the Balkans, where victims and perpetrators must live more or less together—reconciliation is a political necessity. Reconciliation has a moral resonance, too; certainly it is far better than endless, corpse-strewn cycles of revanchism and revenge. Yet there is sometimes a disturbing glibness when outsiders tout the wonders of reconciliation, as if they are leading the barbarians from darkness into light. Even worse, the phenomenological realities—the human truths—of the victims’ experiences are often ignored or, at best, treated as pathologies that should be “worked through” until the promised land of forgiveness is reached.via
3QuarksDaily
Nnedi Okorafor's fantastic journey into Sci-Fi
In the Sun Times Mary Houlihan reviews Nnedi Okoroafor's latest novel Who Fears Death:
More here...it is mix of fantasy and reality set in a post-apocalyptic Saharan Africa. It deals with dark issues, including genocide, rape, female circumcision, prejudice, child soldiers and the constraints of fate. But there also is true love, deep friendships, hope, valor and great adventure.The narrative unwinds around the life story of Onyesonwu, a young sorceress, born after her mother is raped. She slowly comes to understand she is the key to the survival of her people, the Okeke, who are persecuted by the Nuru, the tribe of her rapist father.
The Case for Mordor: Another Look at J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings
Last week on TV I watched for the uncountable time The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. This movie was my favorite out of the three (although The Bridge of Khazad-dûm in one and the Battle of the Pelennor Fields in three rival it). Although I love the movies, just like I loved the original Star Wars, there are some parts of the movie I don't like, and so I was glad to find a LOTR companion to match the excellent piece that the Weekly Standard's Jonathan V. Last put out on the Star Wars called The Case for the Empire. It is high time that the LOTR was analyzed in a similar manner, and I think that this piece by Salon's David Brin does just that. Do I really believe this stuff? Probably not, but it is fun reading. Enjoy!
J.R.R. Tolkien -- enemy of progress: "The Lord of the Rings" is lovingly crafted, seductive -- and profoundly backward-looking. Why not look at things through the Dark Lord's eye for a change? Here are the best parts (only about 1/3 of the whole article)- I highly suggest you read the whole thing here:
Of course there is much more to this work than mere fantasy escapism. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote his epic -- including its prequel, "The Hobbit" -- during the dark middle decades of the 20th century, a time when modernity appeared to have failed in one spectacle of technologically amplified bloodshed after another.
LOTR clearly reflected this era. Only, in contrast to the real world, Tolkien's portrayal of "good" resisting a darkly threatening "evil" offered something sadly lacking in the real struggles against Nazi or Communist tyrannies -- a role for individual champions. His elves and hobbits and über-human warriors performed the same role that Lancelot and Merlin and Odysseus did in older fables, and that superheroes still do in comic books. Through doughty Frodo, noble Aragorn and the ethereal Galadriel, he proclaimed the paramount importance -- above nations and civilizations -- of the indomitable Romantic hero.
Millions of people who live in a time of genuine miracles -- in which the great-grandchildren of illiterate peasants may routinely fly through the sky, roam the Internet, view far-off worlds and elect their own leaders -- slip into delighted wonder at the notion of a wizard hitchhiking a ride from an eagle. Many even find themselves yearning for a society of towering lords and loyal, kowtowing vassals.
Wouldn't life seem richer, finer if we still had kings? If the guardians of wisdom kept their wonders locked up in high wizard towers, instead of rushing onto PBS the way our unseemly "scientists" do today? Weren't miracles more exciting when they were doled out by a precious few, instead of being commercialized, bottled and marketed to the masses for $1.95?
Putting aside cultural superficialities, on every continent society quickly shaped itself into a pyramid with a few well-armed bullies at the top -- accompanied by some fast-talking guys with painted faces or spangled cloaks, who curried favor by weaving stories to explain why the bullies should remain on top.
Only something exceptional started happening. Bit by bit, the elements began taking shape for a new social and intellectual movement, one finally capable of challenging the alliance of warrior lords, priests, bards and secretive magicians.
In this conflict, J.R.R. Tolkien stood firmly for the past. Calling the scientific worldview "soul-less," he joined Keats and Shelley, Sir Walter Scott, Henry James and many European-trained philosophers in spurning the modern emphasis on pragmatic experimentation, production, universal literacy, progress, cooperative enterprise, democracy, city life and flattened social orders.
In contrast to these "sterile" pursuits, Romantics extolled the traditional, the personal, the particular, the subjective, the rural, the hierarchical and the metaphorical.
By the turn of the century, Romanticism was fast losing all vestige of its initial empathy for the concerns of common folk. One solitary artist -- or entertainer or lost prince or angry poet -- loomed larger in importance, by far, than a thousand craft workers, teachers or engineers (a value system shared today by the mythic engine of Hollywood). Just as in Homer's time, 10,000 foot soldiers mattered less than Achilles' heel.
This fits the very plot of "Lord of the Rings," in which the good guys strive to preserve and restore as much as they can of an older, graceful and "natural" hierarchy, against the disturbing, quasi-industrial and vaguely technological ambience of Mordor, with its smokestack imagery and manufactured power rings that can be used by anybody, not just an elite few. (Recall the scene where Saruman turns away from the "good" side and immediately starts ripping up trees, replacing them with mining pits and smoky forges. The anti-industrial imagery could not be more explicit.)
Consider the rings. Those man-made wonders are deemed cursed, damning anyone who dares to use them, especially those nine normal humans who tried to rise up, using tools to equalize and then usurp the rightful powers of their betters -- the High Elves.
The nine Ringwraiths aren't just evil henchmen and cardboard monsters. In my opinion, they are among the most important figures of the epic. Tolkien himself calls them tragic figures and dwells on their background. These fallen mortals -- men who were hauled into service to the "dark side" -- can be looked upon as cautionary figures, conveying the universal lesson that "power corrupts."
On that much we can all agree. But I think there's more to the Ringwraiths. To me, they distill the classical Greek notion of hubris -- a concept that Romantics often embrace -- the idea that pain and damnation await any mortal whose ambition aims too high. Don't try putting on the trappings or emblems or powers that rightfully belong to your betters. Above all, don't try to decipher and redistribute mysteries. In other words, exactly the same morality tale preached in "Star Wars." Romanticism has come full circle, now unctuously praising the very same lords -- the über-men -- that it started out bravely opposing.
Were any orcs or "dark men" offered coalition positions in King Aragorn's cabinet, at the end of the War of the Ring? Was Mordor given a benign Marshall Plan? I think not.
In fact, J.R.R. Tolkien was himself far more critical of the situation portrayed in his universe than any but a few of his myriad readers ever chose to notice. Certainly more self-critical than most of his contemporary readers or those watching the new film trilogy.
In several places, Tolkien openly stated his authorial judgment that the elves who made the Three Rings were ultimately to blame, having set the stage for tragedy in Middle Earth. They made their own rings (preceding Sauron's One Ring) in order to control the world, stopping time and preventing change, forbidding anything to die and decay and thus blocking the potential for new growth. In an oft-quoted letter, Tolkien wrote:
"They wanted to have their cake and eat it: to live in the mortal historical Middle Earth because they had become fond of it ... and so tried to stop its change and history, stop its growth, keep it as a pleasaunce." There are moments scattered throughout LOTR when Tolkien seems to be warning that Romanticism can lead one down the road to genocide. He was disturbed to see the Nazis, for example, embrace many of the same Nordic mythic stories and symbols that he used as source material.
In other books, like "The Silmarillion," Tolkien went deeper into this self-exploration, even going so far as to cast an analytical eye upon the elvish hierarchs of Middle Earth, in much the same way that Isaac Asimov reevaluated his Second Foundation and the meddlesome-patronizing robots of his famed science fictional universe. (This is the kind of self-examination the "Star Wars" cosmos desperately needs, alas, while there's still time.)
Indeed, many academics have cited the obvious parallel between the retreat of the High Elves in LOTR -- who abandon Middle Earth to return "west across the sea" -- and the dissolution of the British Empire that began with the emancipation of India about the same time that Tolkien was writing his epic. In fairness, J.R.R.T. did not rail against this change: He saw it as regrettable but inevitable -- like the end of his mythical Third Age, an approaching time of iron, when aloofly noble figures like Elrond and Galadriel must go back whence they came.
But those self-critiques never had the widespread readership or influence of the original LOTR. And ultimately, Tolkien could never bring himself to cross the gap that another Oxbridge don was writing about at roughly the same time -- the infamous "two cultures" gulf that C.P. Snow mapped between the world of science and the world of the arts.
Try as he might, and even confronted with the blatant Romantic excesses of Nazism, Tolkien could not escape his own deep conviction that democratic enlightenment and modernity made up the greater evil. That hated trend, he feared, would ruin all the beauty that he found in tradition. In aristocratic-mystical hierarchies. In the ways of the past.
The urge to crush some demonized enemy resonates deeply within us, dating from ages far earlier than feudalism. Hence, the vicarious thrill we feel over the slaughter of orc foot soldiers at Helm's Deep. Then again as Ents flatten even more goblin grunts at Saruman's citadel, taking no prisoners, never sparing a thought for all the orphaned orclings and grieving widorcs. And again at Minas Tirith, and again at the Gondor Docks and again ... Well, they're only orcs, after all.
Lev Grossman made a similar point in a recent Time Magazine article, when he asked, "Where are the women? Peter Jackson filled out Liv Tyler's role for the movies (it's much less prominent in Tolkien's version), but the Fellowship is still as much a boys' club as Augusta National."
Let's not ignore but instead openly acknowledge the underlying racism and belief in aristocracy that J.R.R. Tolkien wove into the books, without even much attempt at subtlety. Nor do I much blame him. He couldn't help it, coming from the imperialist and class-ridden culture that raised him.
Moreover, the characters whom the reader comes to know best -- Frodo, Sam and even the king-in-waiting, Aragorn -- are themselves not very snooty or racist. Aragorn has an easygoing, common touch -- much like Luke Skywalker, the only unpatronizing Jedi. The snootiest and most relentlessly aristocratic characters in LOTR stand off in the wings -- for example, the preachy, secretive and patronizing elf-lords Elrond and Galadriel, coaxing maximum effort from their allies while letting others do the fighting for them. (I'd point out endless parallels with a fellow named Yoda, but that would stir up too many hornets at once!)
Obsession with either past or future can almost define a civilization. Worldwide, most cultures believed in some lost golden age when people knew more, mused loftier thoughts and were closer to the gods -- but then fell from grace. Under this dour but recurrent worldview, men and women of a later, coarser era can only look back with envy, hearkening to remnants of ancient wisdom. Recognize this motif? It drenches every page of "Lord of the Rings." It is the old classic, the eternal verity -- the worst of all human clichés.
Only a few societies ever dared to contradict this dogma of nostalgia. Our own scientific West, with its impudent notion of progress, brashly relocated any "golden age" to the future, something we might work toward, a human construct for our grandchildren to achieve with craft, sweat and good will.My point? Well, LOTR is obviously an account written after the Ring War ended, long ago. Right? An account created by the victors.
Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day
Yesterday was Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day (April 24). The word ‘genocide’ is a recent word that means destroying, either in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. This can be done by killing them all off, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life that are calculated to kill them off, imposing measures on the group intended to prevent births by the group, forcibly transferring children of the group to another group, and trying to breed the group out of existence by raping the women of the group.
The 20th Century has a brutal legacy of genocide, and it all started with the Armenian Genocide from 1915-1923. Before Darfur (current day), before Bosnia (1995), before Rwanda (1994), before Cambodia (1975-1979), before the Nazi Holocaust of Jews and Poles and Gypsies (1938-1945), and before the Ukrainian Famine, there was the Armenian Genocide. Hitler once justified his Holocaust by asking “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
In the Armenian Genocide, more than 1.5 million Armenians were killed out of 2 million. The main reason for this was a desire to ‘Turkify’ the Ottoman Empire and kill off all non-Muslims (Armenians were largely Christian). Armenian men were drafted into the army to fight WWI- and then were disarmed and put into labor camps, where they were soon starved or killed. Groups of government officials spread rumors of the Armenians betraying Turkey, blamed them for the losses Turkey was suffering during WWI, and demanded ‘justice.’ In April 24, 1915, all community leaders were systematically rounded up and put to death. After that, as WWI spread and became more confusing and disorganized, armed groups would come into Armenian villages and kill off the rest of the men or make them go on death marches, rape or carry off the women to use as slaves, kidnap or enslave the children, loot the village of all valuables, and then chase off remaining Armenians (who then later died of starvation, exposure, or brutality). By 1923, Armenian was simply a memory- 4000+ years of history wiped away like it never existed- churches, monasteries, schools, people, possessions were all destroyed or gone. Even the Armenian names of cities, villages, and rivers were changed.
The official line in Turkey is that the number of people that died has been grossly inflated, and the evidence of this genocide comes from dubious and prejudicial sources. Turkey claims that more Muslims than Christians died during the same period in the chaos that engulfed Turkey during and after WWI. Turkey says that Ottoman officials were tried for crimes against the Armenians and were acquitted, and that the word ‘genocide’ wasn’t even around until after WWII, and that the Holocaust isn’t anything like what happened in Turkey to the Armenians. In 2004, Turkey passed Article 301, which makes it a crime to even talk about the Armenian Genocide, and Turkey today spends millions lobbying the US to try to defeat efforts here in the US to recognize the genocide. Turkey even gives millions to prestigious universities to fund studies of the ‘Turkish view’ of the genocide and offers scholarships to people who will write books or articles denying that the genocide ever took place.
Typical for the waffling spineless President that he is, Barack Obama refused to call what happened in Armenia from 1915-1923 a genocide, instead 'artfully' finding a middle ground on the issue, much like Chamberlain did when confronted by a similar display of evil. "On this solemn day of remembrance, we pause to recall that ninety-five years ago one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century began," Obama said in a statement.... " It is in all of our interest to see the achievement a full, frank and just acknowledgment of the facts." He then refused to call what took place in Armenia a 'genocide' and mouthed vague words of nothingness to mark the occasion.
The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) rapped Obama for "disgraceful capitulation to Turkey's threats" and of "offering euphemisms and evasive terminology to characterize this crime against humanity," in a press release Saturday. I agree.
While it is important to maintain relations with Turkey, and while we badly need their support on a bunch of important subjects, the truth is the truth, and it is black and white. Obama should recognize the truth and quit trying to make everything so grey.
Where is the African Church?
Mukoma Wa Ngugi writing in Zeleza:
The fiery Che Guevara once said that love is the basis of revolution. The clergy that stood against apartheid and dictatorships, or gave refuge to the hunted during the genocide in Rwanda, might not have agreed with Che's methods, but they were certainly being moved by a deep love for a collective humanity...today, without the evil incarnates of apartheid and the neocolonial dictatorships of the 1990's, oppression is no longer so easily definable. We are living in confusing times. Opposition parties have been bought off. Intellectuals are unable to help us digest what the betrayal of our second independence demands of us. Political activists engaged, sometimes by necessity, in bread and butter issues such as housing cannot attend to the national and international dimensions of our struggles.More here
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France retreats from Africa?
In LRB Stephen Smith writes about France's slow withdrawal from its erstwhile colonies:
It’s hard to date the death of Françafrique precisely: the exquisite corpse still haunts many minds, and ghost stories are a lucrative business. Even so, three events in 1994 adumbrated the end: the (unprecedented) devaluation of the CFA franc and with it the crumbling of the monetary wall around the Franco-African enclave economy; the genocide in Rwanda, which left blood on the hands of Africa’s gendarme (having failed to understand a country outside its historical zone of influence, France had thrown its weight behind ‘Hutu power’); and finally, the state funeral of the Ivorian president, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, the sub-Saharan godfather of Françafrique and an enthusiast of the ‘Franco-African state’ – indeed, it was Houphouët who coined the term at a party congress in 1973.More here
The Rwanda Genocide: A Reconciliation
From Walrus Magazine:
Emmanuel: Alice is the last person I cut. I cut off her hand and made a scar on her face. I thought I killed her. And then I stopped killing. Something had begun to bother me...[continue reading]
photo courtesy of Lionel Healing
ICYIZERE: hope
Patrick Mureithi is the director of ICYIZERE: hope A documentary about trauma, reconciliation and forgiveness in Rwanda after the genocide.
Bizarro World and the Israeli-Hamas Conflict
As the recent conflict between Hamas and Israel unfolds, what is most interesting to me is how it is viewed by the larger world. Not to be overly dramatic, but a peaceful and prosperous nation conducting air attacks by uniformed personal vs a violent and poor non-nation launching rocket attacks by men wearing black ski masks should be viewed as a conflict between good guys and bad guys, and treated as such. I know there are underlying issues, and I am sympathetic to them, but clearly this conflict has a clear good guy and bad guy.
Unless you live in bizarro world, that opposite reality that the American left, the main-stream media, and Democrats live in. In Bizarro world, society is ruled by the Bizarro Code which states that you mus do the opposite of all normal things- you must hate beauty and love ugliness and it is a crime to make things right. Inhabitants of Bizarro world believe that our economy must crash for things to be better, and that you must appease all bad guys in the name of peace. Kind and considerate people who are curious about the world around them are the bad guys, and closed minded shouting politically correct individuals who want to control your life are the good guys- that is bizarro world.
So let's look at what bizarro world looks like in relation to the conflict between Hamas and Israel. Much of the controversy in this conflict centers around what is a 'proportionate' response by Israel for unprovoked random rocket attacks by terrorist groups operating in Hamas controlled Gaza Strip. After reading David Aaronovitch's article in the Times Online, I think I have a better idea of what bizarro world would look like here.
In bizarro world, the world of the liberals, it be best if Israel were to manufacture a thousand or so wildly inaccurate missiles and then fire them off in the general direction of Gaza City. Or one of Hama's rockets could manage to hit an Israeli nursery school at the wrong time (or the right time, depending upon how you look at it) and then the proportionality issue would be solved in one explosion. In bizarro world, Hamas is the good guy, and Israel is the bad guy- you know if you're talking to a resident of Htrae (Earth spelled backwards to those unfamiliar with Superman lore) because they'll believe this and cry about genocide or some such nonsense.
Yes, people are dying, and that is bad thing. Innocent civilians are being killed. But I wonder- how innocent are you when you support with your labor and taxes and comforting words the terrorist who is shooting random missiles at a peaceful country? Are you really 'innocent'? This debate is deep and complex, and gets to the very heart of the beast on conflict, war, and terrorism. Solving it will make the world a better place.
The 'Responsibility to Protect' & Zimbabwe
Bret Stephens writing in the WSJ thinks its time to invoke the 'Responsibility to Protect' doctrine in Zimbabwe:
A solution for Zimbabwe's crisis isn't hard to come by: Someone – ideally the British(better still the AU...they did it in Comoros) – must remove Mr. Mugabe by force, install Mr. Tsvangirai as president, arm his supporters, prevent any rampages, and leave. "Saving Darfur" is a somewhat different story, but it also involves applying Western military force to whatever degree is necessary to get Khartoum to come to terms with an independent or autonomous Darfur. Burma? Same deal.
International relations theorists, including prominent Obama adviser Susan Rice, justify these sorts of interventions under the rubric of a "Responsibility to Protect" – a concept that comes oddly close to Kipling's White Man's Burden. So close, in fact, that its inherent paternalism has hitherto inhibited many liberals from endorsing the kinds of interventions toward which they are now tip-toeing, thousands of deaths too late.
"...The Responsibility to Protect describes an evolving concept about the duties of governments to prevent and end unconscionable acts of violence against the people of the world, wherever they occur.
The international community has a responsibility to protect the world’s populations from genocide, massive human rights abuses and other humanitarian crises. This responsibility to prevent, react to and rebuild following such crises rests first and foremost with each individual state. When states manifestly fail to protect their populations, the international community shares a collective responsibility to respond. This response should be the exercise of first peaceful, and then, if necessary, coercive, including forceful, steps to protect civilians..."-Responsibilitytoprotect.org
"Brickyards to Graveyards"
Written by Villia Jefremovas:
Brickyards to Graveyards examines how the overidealized picture of Rwanda as the darling of the world community in the 1980s was shattered amidst the genocide that occurred a decade later. The brick and tile industries of Rwanda provide a microcosm to examine the transformation of gender, class, and power relations through the precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial periods, and provide insights into the explosive impact of these changes on Rwandan culture and society. The book illustrates how these gender, class, and power relations played out in times of economic, political, and demographic crisis, and argues that these factors have not changed significantly since the Rwandan Patriotic Front took power in 1994.
Does Africa Exist?
Michael Radu writes "...It does not seem that [Africa's] leaders even accept the notion of responsibility, let alone the idea of using what resources it has to address its own problems...For more than four decades, African elites and their intellectual mentors in the West have comfortably lived with a fiction: that whatever is wrong in the continent—tribalism, corruption, genocide, failing states, poverty, and HIV/AIDS—is somebody else's fault, i.e., the rich West's. Genocide in Rwanda? Blame the Belgians. Rampant anti-Asian racism in East Africa? Blame the British. Even more blatant anti-White racism in Zimbabwe? The British again. A string of spectacularly bloody tyrants, including Idi Amin in Uganda, Bokassa in Central Africa, Macias Nguema in Equatorial Guinea? The really guilty ones are in London, Paris, and Madrid; "Africa" is innocent..."
The Shackled Continent: Power, Corruption, and African Lives
Melinda Ammann reviews Robert Guest's The Shackled Continent, why he asks is “Africa is the only continent to have grown poorer over the last three decades.” After six years of covering the continent’s civil wars, genocide, famine, and disastrous monetary policies, his answer boils down to this: Africans are poor because they are poorly governed...One of the reasons that Africa is so poor,” Guest explains, “is that most Africans are unable to turn their assets into liquid capital. In the West, the most common way to do this is to borrow money using a house as security. This is how most American entrepreneurs get started..."
Via ReasonOnline
The "Colonialism-Imperialism" Paradigm Is Kaput (2 of 2)
Modern Grievances against the West
External Props of African Despots
Historically, every foreign entity that goes to Africa does so to pursue their own interest, not those of Africans. Witness the scramble for Africa in the 1880s. The Chinese do not go to Africa because they love black people soo much. They go there to pursue their interests. Exactly the same can be said of the Cubans. This competition for influence in Africa became pronounced during the Cold War, when super-power rivalry led to the establishment of client states across Africa. The West supported the likes of Mobutu Sese Seko, Samuel Doe, Hastings Banda, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, etc. etc. The East supported the likes of Mengistu, dos Santos, Mattieu
Kerekou, Sassou Nguesso, Samora Machel, etc. etc. Arab countries also backed their clients in Africa: Sudan, Mauratania, Chad, etc.
Cold War Intrigues and Machinations
Each side in the Cold War provided billions in aid to their clients to protect their security interests in Africa. Angola, Ethiopia, and Mozambique all received substantial amounts of Soviet military hardware. For example, Mengistu Haile-Mariam of Ethiopia received more than $11 billion in military weapons between 1975 and 1990. Angola received at least $2 billion annually
in military assistance from the Soviet Union in the 1980s (The Independent, London, Feb 19, 1992). In 1991, $4 billion of Angola's $8.7 billion foreign debt was owed to the former Soviet Union. On July 1, 1991, President Eduardo dos Santos said: "military debts were not usually honored," implying that Angola would not pay it (The New York Times, July 8, 1991). Soviet aid was stingy.
The economic aid the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) provided to sub-Saharan Africa in 1985 was $300 million. Of this, Ethiopia received by far the most (57.9 percent). Next were Mozambique (13.8 percent), Egypt (6.6 percent), Madagascar (4.2 percent), Angola (2.8 percent), and Tunisia (2.1 percent) (West Africa, Dec 12-28, 1988; p. 2320). Angola and Mozambique benefited more from arms supplies. The $300 million aid was only 5 percent of total Comecon bilateral disbursements and only 3 percent of the total aid flow to sub-Saharan Africa.
Furthermore, the little Soviet economic aid that did flow to Africa had strings rigidly attached. Loans and trade credits supplied could only be spent in the Soviet Union and Comecon countries (100 percent tied aid). In addition, the Soviets supplied the technical personnel and the equipment for project construction. Repayments of loans were often by barter, but to the
decisive advantage of the Soviet Union. For example, in Guinea, Soviet help in building a bauxite plant at Kindia was to be repaid with deliveries of two million tons of bauxite ore a year for 30 years.
Barter arrangements also hurt Soviet clients in Africa in a different way. For example, repayments of loans Nkrumah of Ghana took from the Soviet Union were to be made in kind with exports such as cocoa. But the Soviet Union had little use for Ghana's cocoa. Re-export of cocoa by the Soviet Union helped depress the world market price of cocoa in the mid-1960s.
China, an active player in Africa, sought to win adherents to the Chinese brand of socialism. Zhao Ziyang, China's foreign minister in the early 1960s, reminded African leaders of the presence of Chinese coolies in Africa. China's perception was that Moscow, not Washington, was its principal enemy. Its strategy was therefore to weaken "social imperialism at the expense of monopolistic capitalism" (Snow, 1988). West Africa observed that "in Africa, China increased assistance to old friends such as Tanzania and Zambia. The 2000km Tan-Zam railroad was meant to overshadow the Soviet-built Aswan High Dam in Egypt. China also made friends with old enemies such as Mobutu, helping him during the Shaba uprising in 1978-79; in 1980 they helped him build a naval base at Kinkuzu in southern Zaire to threaten Angola" (Aug 15, 1988; p. 1473).
China's fortunes in Africa quickly turned into mirages, however. At first, China's anticolonial stance was welcomed by African liberation movements. But as independence was gained, China's emphasis on subversion and its intense enmity toward the Soviet Union became less and less appealing or relevant to Africans. In fact, as early as 1963 Julius Nyerere of Tanzania
complained of a new scramble for Africa between the Soviet Union and China. Because their actions were anti-Soviet rather than pro-African, the Chinese themselves did not achieve much by way of influence.
Furthermore, China was no less immune to blunders than the Soviets. Less wisely than the Soviets, China meddled in Burundi ethnic feuds. In 1963 China backed the Tutsi expedition by training a number of Tutsi in guerrilla warfare in China. The subsequent massacres in Burundi earned China much opprobium. China also supported the Biafran secessionists in Nigeria's civil
war (1967 to 1970) simply because Moscow backed the Federal Government of Nigeria. Similarly, in Angola, China supported the FNLA (National Front for the Liberation of Angola) because Moscow was backing the ruling MPLA.
In Mali and Congo-Brazzaville, China made some headway. But a spate of military coups brought to power new rulers distrustful of China. Only in Tanzania did China achieve some diplomatic and ideological success. China agreed to fund and build the 1,200-mile Tan-Zam railway line at a cost of 166 million pounds sterling, free of interest. The railway was both an
engineering and a political achievement. It was completed two years ahead of schedule and was much touted as a model of what foreign aid could do for Africa. But it was one thing to build the railway and quite another to run it efficiently. Maintenance was poor, services degenerated, and the Dar es Salaam terminal became chronically clogged to the point of immobility. Although the Chinese had nothing to do with these shortcomings, their reputation suffered.
Zimbabwe received technical and military aid from North Korea and China. For its part, the West also poured billions into Zaire, Liberia, Kenya, Nigeria, and other African countries.
Each side also sought to undermine African regimes that were hostile to it. Lumumba was assassinated by the CIA operatives and the 1966 coup against Nkrumah was orchestrated by the CIA. In this sphere, the French were the worst, intervening directly to remove African leaders they did not like in Francophone Africa. For the French, independence did not mean a retreat from Africa. France left hundreds of officials in Africa as advisers. Behind the doors of many key ministries in the Ivory Coast and Senegal or Gabon, discreet but powerful French officials kept a close eye on policy. The French also sent teachers to Africa and brought African students and civil servants to France for training. France secured the right to maintain a
heavy military presence in Africa. In 1989, for example, France had a significant number of military advisers in 16 African countries and permanent Forces d'Intervention in seven. Total strength of French troops in Africa exceeded 12,000 in 1990. In France itself, the Forces d'Action Rapide, numbering 47,000, could be mobilized in less than 48 hours for action anywhere in Francophone Africa. These forces played an economic policing role and backed up French diplomacy and paternalism. They supported "approved" Francophile governments such as those of Leopold Senghor of Senegal and Felix Houphouet-Boigny of Cote d'Ivoire.
After 1960 the French intervened on many occasions to prop up unpopular African regimes against internal dissatisfaction and disorders. The most notorious such occasion was in Gabon in 1964, when French troops were used to reinstate President Mba after a coup. Noting that the French did not intervene to save President Youlou in Brazzaville in 1963, critics charged that intervention was predicated on mineral wealth. (Gabon is rich in oil.)
Now, each foreign entity operating in Africa pursues its own interests. It was ONLY the West which propped up hideous dictators in Africa. A foreign prop is a foreign prop is a foreign prop, regardless of its origin. An African leader is supposed to pursue the interests of his PEOPLE. If he doesn t, remove him from power but did we? Instead, we argued ad nauseam that, since the West put Mobutu, for example, in power, it was the responsibility of the West to remove him. This was ridiculous because if Mobutu was serving Western interests, why would the West remove him? And even if the West removed him, who do you think the West would have installed as a replacement? Another Mobutu !
It is clear that we have drawn no historical lessons from our dealing with the West and other foreign blocs. Here s a popular adage: If someone cheats you once, he is the fool but if he cheats you again, you are the fool. If you agree, then why are we talking about the Second Scramble for Africa ? And have we not learned that if you give an African problem to the Americans, Brits, French or the Chinese to solve it, each would solve it to their advantage? Does the mantra, African solutions for African problems, make sense to you?
Again, prop or no prop,
You cannot claim that it was the West which told Mobutu to loot the Zairean treasury. Nor claim that it was the North Koreans who told Mugabe to butcher over 20,000 Ndebele in 1980 (Matabeleland massacre). Neither can you claim that it was the Arabs who ordered Idi Amin to
butcher over 200,000 Ugandans. Nor can you claim that tell me it was the French who ordered Gnassingbe Eyadema to cling to power for 34 years and amass a personal fortune worth $3
billion.
True, the French and indeed the World Bank knew these African despots were stealing money and looked the other way. But who is an African leader accountable to? To the French, the World Bank or his PEOPLE? Prop or no prop, these leaders must be held accountable for their actions.
In fact, these days the charge of foreign meddling in African affairs and the specter of sinister and greedy multinational corporations lurking in the dark, waiting for a chance to pounce and exploit Africa confute reality. Foreign investors have fled Africa as the continent remains unattractive. Is it not African governments who have been drawing up elaborate and fancy
investment codes to ATTRACT them back? And is it not African governments themselves who take their budgets to foreign capitals for approval in order to get foreign aid? So who ALLOWS the meddling in African affairs?
Even then, the West has shown little interest in meddling in African affairs in the past few decades. If anything, the West has been in retreat from Africa! Recall the statement by presidential candidate, George Bush, that Africa was not of strategic importance to the U.S. And was it not the same African leaders who were complaining after the Cold War that Africa was
being marginalized ? So which is which: Is the West meddling in African affairs or the West marginalizing Africa?
In case you did not know, the West is thoroughly fed up with Africa, which it regards as a cry-baby, hopelessly incapable of solving any of its problems and is constantly crying out for help. What do you think the expression donor fatigue means? That is the diplomatic way of saying that the international community is fed up with incessant African appeals and begging. Today, there is famine in Ethiopia, tomorrow, there is a refugee crisis created by war in Liberia, or Somalia. Then there is genocide in Rwanda, starvation among refugees in eastern Congo, Ivory Coast, and on and on. Haba. Africa is now synonymous with war, destruction, famine, refugees, starvation, instability and chaos. Year after year since 1985, one African country after another has imploded, scattering refugees in all directions: Ethiopia (1985), Angola (1986), Mozambique (1987), Sudan (1991), Liberia (1992), Somalia (1993), Rwanda (1994), Zaire (1996), Sierra Leone (1997), Congo DRC (1998), Ethiopia/Eritrea (1998), Angola (1999), Ivory Coast (2000), Togo (2005).
The implosion of these countries had nothing absolutely nothing to do with the slave trade, nothing to do with Western colonialism or imperialism, nothing to do with artificial colonial borders, nothing to do with an unjust international economic system; in short, nothing to do with so-called external factors. They all had to do with one thing: POWER the adamant refusal to relinquish or share political power. If GENERAL Siad Barre of Somalia, GENERAL Juvenal Habryimana of Rwana, GENERAL Pierre Buyoya of Burundi, GENERAL Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, GENERAL Samuel Doe of Liberia, GENERAL Joseph Momoh of Sierra Leone, GENERAL Robert Guie of Ivory Coast, GENERAL Gnassingbe Eyadema, etc. etc. had been willing to step down or put in place power-sharing arrangements, each of their countries would have been
saved. Note the frequency of the title, GENERAL.
The rule is this and you can call it Ayittey Law: "The adamant refusal of an African head of state to step down or share political power will ultimately lead to the destruction of his country." If Mubarak of Egypt, Museveni of Uganda, Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Ghaddafi of Libya refuse to leave the political scene or share power, their countries will be destroyed. This is not rocket
science and it has nothing to do with the West. It is a personal or political failure that cannot be blamed on Americans, Chinese or Martians.
Back in 1986, President Museveni of Ugana said that no African leader should be in power for more than 10 years. What happened to him? He has been in power for more than 16 years and still counting. Finally in the late 1990s, African leaders wrote Constitutions in which they inserted the two-term limits. What happened? They are the very same ones who are now using their parliamentary majority and various devious maneuvers to override or repeal the two-term limits in Chad, Guinea, Namibia (Nujoma before he retired), Uganda, and even Nigeria.
Benin, Cape Verde Islands, Sao Tome & Principe, South Africa and Zambia all saved themselves from implosion because their leaders agreed to power-sharing arrangements crafted out of sovereign national conferences. South Africa would have blown up if the whites had not sat down with the blacks in a Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) to craft a new
political dispensation for the country. Rwanda blew up because the Hutu-dominated government of GENERAL Juvenal Habryimana refused to share power with the Tutsi minority and, instead, decided to exterminate them. "No Tutsis, nobody to share power with" was the macabre and brutal logic. More than 800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered in a orgy of violence and brutal massacre. That, in itself, was an excellent example of "intellectual astigmatism".
We could see with eagle-eyed clarity all the repugnant and inhumane brutalities of the white apartheid system in South Africa but we were hopeless blind to the equally heinous tribal apartheid regime in Rwanda. If the racist apartheid regime in South Africa had butchered just 2,000 blacks, even Idi Amin, who himself slaughtered more than 200,000 Ugandans, would
have arisen from his grave to attack South Africa with 3 dilapidated helicopters! But we said nothing when 800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered. Instead, we blamed the WEST for NOT intervening to stop the genocide. In fact, at its July 2000 Summit in Lome, Togo, the defunct OAU demanded a Marshall plan style compensation package for Rwanda. The demand for
compensation was part of the OAU inquiry into the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which blamed Western powers for failing to intervene to stop the mass slaughter. Naturally.
The OAU inquiry singled out France and the United States for particular blame for failing to prevent the genocide in addition to the United Nations Security Council as a whole. France was culpable because, having high level contact within Rwanda s Hutu-led government, the OAU report argued, could have exerted pressure to prevent the death of 800,000 people. The OAU
enquiry also blamed the US for failing to use its influence in the Security Council to authorize a military intervention to prevent the killing. The report argued that the West failed Africa despite the availability of copious evidence that the mass killing had been about to begin. In
conclusion, the report noted, a simple apology as already made by the United Nations was not enough and called for compensation, alluding to the $13 billion Marshall Aid plan the U.S. launched for the reconstruction of Europe after World War II. And what did these self-righteous leaders do to prevent the killings going on right under their very noses? And how can these
leaders complain about foreign meddling in African affairs and at the same time blame the West for NOT INTERVENING in an African problem to stop a massacre?
These days appeals by African leaders fall on deaf ears. OECD aid to Africa fell by 22 percent between 1990 and 1996, decreasing by 18 percent to sub-Saharan countries between 1994 and 1996 alone. (DeYoung, 2000a; p.A1). Even humanitarian aid to Africa has been shrinking. Contributors to United Nations aid and development programs have provided slightly more than half of the $800 million requested in 1999 for African countries suffering from "complex emergencies" -- the term is applied when war and failed institutions, often combined with a natural disaster, leave vast numbers of people homeless and starving. Specific programs for some particularly problematic areas, such as the Great Lakes region of Central Africa
including the two Congos, Rwanda and Burundi, have fared even less well (DeYoung, 2000b; p.A1).
In Sept 1999, the U.N.'s World Food Program announced it would curtail its feeding program for nearly 2 million refugees in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea after receiving less than 20 percent of requested funding. An emergency appeal during the summer to feed and shelter at least 600,000 Angolans who had been displaced in that country's long-standing civil war
brought minimal initial response and predictions of mass starvation. In Africa's Great Lakes region of Congo, Burundi and Rwanda, where wars have produced nearly 4 million refugees, the United Nations estimated it would need $278 million to take care of them. By Oct 1999, only 45 percent of that amount had been donated. Nearly 80 percent of the United Nations humanitarian appeals in 2004 were to address African problems, but the response was disappointing as to be non-existent. "I remember sitting in this very room last summer (2004) asking for five helicopters to save thousands of lives in Darfur (Sudan). In the end we had to hire helicopters commercially as no Member States were willing to provide them," Under-Secretary-General Jan Egeland, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the chief of the UN humanitarian office told the Security Council meeting on humanitarian challenges in Africa in January 2005 (http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?). Even Irish rock star, Bob Geldof, who organized Band Aid and Live Aid to provide famine relief to starving victims in Ethiopia in 1985 is now fed up with Africa. He said this on Jan 31, 2005, of his work in Africa: "I'd dearly love not to have to go there the day after tomorrow. More often than not, it bores me profoundly - the pace of change is far too slow, and Africans excuse their own complicity in exactly the same way as our politicians (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/4222373.stm).
Private organizations are also having difficulty raising funds for African relief operations. According to Mario Ochoa, executive vice president of the Maryland-based Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA), which operates relief projects out of its own donations and under contract with donor governments, If I were to go now and make an emergency appeal for, say, Rwanda, for $500,000 for food, I'd probably get about seventy or eighty
thousand" in contributions (The Washington Post, Nov 26, 1999; p.A1).
True, every now and then, a major effort is launched in the West to help Africa. Africa s plight follows a ten-year attention deficit cycle: 1985 (Live Aid to save famine victims in Ethiopia), 1996 (a Special U.N. Session to boost aid to Africa to $25 billion), and now (2005). It is so humiliating to have the salvation of Africa tied to the success of rock concerts. And 20
years later, Ethiopia still can t feed itself and is appealing for food aid. Who do you blame: The white kids who did not give enough charity at the rock concerts or the stupid policies of Ethiopia s leaders?
Unjust International Economic System
Back in the 1950s and 1960s, this argument had much validity: The international economic system, dominated by western multi-national corporations, was rigged in favor of the rich countries. Prices of cash crops were fixed at artificially low levels; markets were cornered by giant western corporations, paying low wages and raking huge profits. While prices Africa received for its exports remained low, the prices Africa paid for imported manufactures soared astronomically (declining terms of trade). But today, with the onset of globalization, this argument carries little validity.
First, there is much competition on the international market. Asian corporations are now some of the big players. Second, African governments have done next to nothing to add value to their exports. Ghana still exports much of its cocoa in raw beans form. Third, every market has its ups and downs. We complain when the markets are down but conspicuously silent when
the market booms. Did we complain about an unjust international economic system when copper prices reached record levels in the late 1970s? When gold prices soared in the 1980s, cocoa prices in the 1990s? May I mention oil prices? By the way, what did we do with the windfall we reaped from the high prices? We squandered it!
Fourth, Africa s share of world trade fell from more than 3 percent in the 1950s to less than 2 percent in the mid1990s and to only 1.2 percent, excluding South Africa (The World Bank, Can Africa Claim the 21st Century;p.20). This erosion of Africa s world trade share in current prices between 1970 and 1993 represents a staggering annual income loss of $68 billion. This loss is not due to an unjust international economic system. Fact is, Africa has not been producing and you can t trade on the international market if you have nothing to sell. The physical volume of exports has been declining and therefore it is not a question of Africa not being able to earn enough because of low prices. Burundi s coffee exports, Ivory Coast's cocoa exports, and Sierra Leone s diamond exports have been devastated not because of low world market prices but by senseless civil wars. Even with food, we don t produce enough to feed ourselves and spend $19 billion a year on food imports. Nigeria spends $3 billion a year on food imports and has now brought white Zimbabwean farmers to teach it how to become self-sufficient in food production. What a disgrace!
Much of the decline in agricultural production in Africa is due to price controls, naked exploitation of Africa s peasant farmers, and senseless civil wars that have devastated the countryside and uprooted millions of people. Refugee camps are full of women and children, who produce the bulk of Africa s foodstuffs. State marketing boards fixed at ridiculously low
prices to milk the peasant farmers and they REBELLED. In Senegal, peanut (groundnut) farmers were receiving less than 20 percent of the world market price for their produce; in Ghana, cocoa farmers were receiving less than 30 percent for their produce in the 1980s. Those who complain about the Western conspiracy to fix prices for African exports at artificially low levels obviously do not see the ridiculously low levels their own State Marketing
Boards fix prices for peasant farmers.
Unfair Trade Practices, Trade Barriers and Subsidies
To be sure, unfair trade practices -- trade barriers and agricultural subsidies -- are legitimate issues of concern for the Third World. It is hypocritical for the West to preach free trade to the developing countries and yet put barriers in its place. But there is hypocrisy on both sides.
According to Columbia University economist, Jagdish Bhagwati, there is greater tariff protection on manufacturers in the poor countries . . . and autarkic trade barriers make domestic markets more lucrative than exports, leading therefore to an incentive bias against exports. So even when the rich country markets are opened further, one s own trade barriers can prevent the penetration of these markets (The Wall Street Journal, Jan 18, 2005; p.A16).
More importantly, the rich countries protect themselves against unfair trade practices, so why shouldn t African countries? A case in point is U.S. s anti-dumping law. Known as the Byrd Amendment for its chief author, Senator Robert Byrd (D-W. Virginia), the law passed by Congress in 2001 provides that when foreign manufacturers are found to be dumping goods in the U.S. market that is, selling at unfairly low prices any anti-dumping duties that are imposed can be handed over to the U.S. companies that brought the dumping case, rather than to the Treasury. It has benefited U.S. firms in industries including steel and pasta, with one of the largest beneficiaries being Timken Co., an Ohio maker of bearings, which collected about $40
million in 2004 (The Washington Post, April 1, 2005; p.A4). So, what have African governments done to protect their countries against dumping? NOTHING!
Even then, trade barriers are peripheral to the core issue of Africa's under development. Africa s exports consist mainly of cash crops (cocoa, cotton, coffee, bananas, sisal, etc.) and minerals (gold, diamonds, oil, titanium, cobalt, copper, etc.). Trade barriers and agricultural subsidies in the West affect only a few African exports, such as cotton (Burkina Faso, Mali, Sudan), peanuts or groundnuts (Gambia, Senegal, Sudan), sugar (Mauritius, Mozambique, South Africa), tobacco (Malawi, Zimbabwe), and beef (from Botswana, Namibia). Only a few African countries such as Ivory Coast, Mauritius, and South Africa export manufactured goods, which can encounter
trade barriers in the West.
It is not Western agricultural subsidies, however, that have hurt African food agriculture. Food production per capita has been declining and Africa's food import amounts to some $19 billion annually. The recent civil war in Ivory Coast, for example, cut the country's cocoa exports by half and disrupted agricultural exports of neighboring countries that pass through Ivory Coast. In Burundi, coffee production has dropped by more than 50 percent because of civil war/strife that has engulfed that small country of 8 million people since 1993. In Malawi, crime has risen so sharply that some farmers have refused to grow crops. And while the U.S. maintains import
quotas against Zimbabwe's tobacco exports, the industry has virtually been destroyed by President Robert Mugabe's violent seizures of white commercial
farmland to remedy "colonial injustices .
Wailing over agricultural subsidies in rich countries amounts to shedding crocodile tears since it gives the false impression that African governments care much about agriculture. The erosion of Africa s share of world trade was caused not so much by trade barriers but rather a host of internal factors. Among them are the neglect of agriculture occasioned by the over-emphasis on industrialization, raging civil wars, crumbling infrastructure, and misguided socialist policies that exploited Africa's farmers through a system of marketing boards and price controls. For example, trade barriers do not block exports of oil, diamonds, gold, col-tan, and other minerals from Africa. Yet, paradoxically, countries that produce them -- Angola, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Nigeria, Sudan, among others -- have been wracked by war, poverty and social destitution. In fact, Africa's diamonds have fueled such barbarous civil wars in Angola, Congo, and Sierra Leone that human rights activists in the West have called for a boycott of Africa's "conflict diamonds.
A key note speech by the new African Union (AU) secretary-general, Amara Essy, to mark the New Year on Jan 3, 2002 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, did not provide Africans with hope or assurance. He "accused the international community of failing the continent; their refusal to alleviate Africa's huge
debt burden continues to compromise its development" (IRIN, Jan 03, 2002). Same old drivel. Rather, it is African leaders who have failed the continent. The externalist paradigm by which African leaders blame everyone else but themselves for Africa s woes, is now KAPUT. The African people no longer buy it. Why then does this paradigm still have avid adherents? Four
reasons.
First, it is naturally the credo of most African leaders since it exculpates them from any blame for the current mess. Some evil external force did it! But the people don t buy it. Witness the huge credibility gap between the rulers and the ruled. Second, advocacy or veneration of the externalist paradigm constitutes a passport to career advancement. Those African scholars and intellectuals who rail against the World Bank, IMF and other external enemies are often rewarded with ministerial posts and government appointments. Rail against British colonialists and President Robert Mugabe will reward you with a government post. Such was the case of Jonathan Moyo.
Outside Africa are the third and fourth groups. Black Americans, drawing upon their own horrific experience, unfortunately have a radically different perception and understanding of Africa s woes. Most black Americans do not distinguish between African leaders and the African people and see Africa as a victim of Western neo-colonialism and imperialism just as they see
themselves as victims of racism, white supremacy and the lingering effects of slavery. Given their history and experience, black Americans tend to see only white devils because their oppressors and exploiters in the past were all white. Black Americans have never lived under brutal tyrants such as Idi Amin, Samuel Doe or Sani Abacha and therefore cannot relate to black
tyranny. This partly explains why black American leaders led the campaign against the heinous apartheid system in South Africa but were conspicuously absent in the campaign against the equally heinous de facto apartheid regimes in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and elsewhere in Africa. It also explains the tendency of black American leaders to embrace those African leaders that spit venomous anti-West vitriol: Minister Louis Farrakhan and Moammar Ghaddafi of Libya. Thus, black American perspective on Africa often clashes with that of the people. In fact, when President Clinton appointed Rev. Jesse Jackson as special envoy to Nigeria in 1994 activists threatened to stone him if he ever stepped foot in Nigeria. Five years later, Sierra Leonians were outraged when Rev. Jackson compared Foday Sankoh to Nelson Mandela. Sankoh was the late leader of RUF (Revolutionary United Front), the murderous gang of savage rebels whose signature trademark was to chop off the limbs of those even children and breasts of women who stood in their way.
The final group of strict adherents to the externalist doctrine consists of some African scholars and intellectuals in the diaspora. They are mostly in academia and have made heavy emotional, personal and professional investment in the externalist paradigm. Their bible continues to be How Europe Under-developed Africa. Their careers have been advanced, promotions secured and books written, propagating the externalist doctrine. It would exceedingly difficult for them to admit that their books and scholarly works are no longer relevant to the immediate needs of Africa. Political correctness pervasive in academia and black American influence also make
it difficult and embarrassing for these African scholars to admit that African leaders have failed their people. They erroneously think such an admission would amount to washing Africa s dirty linen in public and provide ammunition to racists. But who is fooling who?
The African people know that the leadership and/or government are the primary obstacles that stand in the way of poverty reduction in Africa. Said a tribal chief in a rural farming community in Lesotho: "We have two problems: rats and the government" (International Health and Development, March/April 1989; p. 30). Amina Ramadou, a peasant housewife, came up with a
creative way of solving Zaire s economic crisis: "We send three sacks of angry bees to the governor and the president. And some ants which bite. Maybe they eat the government and solve our problems" (The Wall Street Journal, Sept 26, 1991; p. A14). When the presidents of Algeria, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa traveled to Kananaski, Alberta (Canada) on June 26,
2002, to present NEPAD to the G-8 Summit for funding by the rich nations, Mercy Muigai, an unemployed Kenyan was irate: All these people [African leaders and elites] do is talk, talk, talk. Then if they do get any money from the wazungu [white men], they just steal it for themselves. And what about us? We have no food. We have no schools. We have no future. We are just left to die (The Washington Times, June 28, 2002; p.A17).
In July, African leaders will be heading to another G-8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, to beg, beg, and beg for more foreign aid. I will be going there myself to represent Mercy Muigai. Let the other African scholars continue to read How Europe Under-developed Africa by Walter Rodney.