RattlerGator Blog

2014 11.19 Africa Review

Courtesy of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, the U.S. National Defense University, and the United States Department of Defense, here are a representative sample of articles on African matters, either from around the African continent or about Africa-related activities: 

The 'Caliphate's' Colonies: Islamic State's Gradual Expansion into North Africa
The caliphate has a beach. It is located on the Mediterranean Sea around 300 kilometers (186 miles) south of Crete in Darna. The eastern Libya city has a population of around 80,000, a beautiful old town and an 18th century mosque, from which the black flag of the Islamic State flies. The port city is equipped with Sharia courts and an "Islamic Police" force which patrols the streets in all-terrain vehicles. A wall has been built in the university to separate female students from their male counterparts and the disciplines of law, natural sciences and languages have all been abolished. Those who would question the city's new societal order risk death. Darna has become a colony of terror, and it is the first Islamic State enclave in North Africa. The conditions in Libya are perfect for the radical Islamists: a disintegrating state, a location that is strategically well situated and home to the largest oil reserves on the continent. Should Islamic State (IS) manage to establish control over a significant portion of Libya, it could trigger the destabilization of the entire Arab world. Der Spiegle

Al Qaeda branch releases video of French, Dutch hostages
Al Qaeda's North African branch, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), released a video Monday purporting to show a French and a Dutch hostage who have been held in the Sahara since being kidnapped separately in Mali in November 2011. In an online video identified by the private SITE jihadist monitoring group, French national Serge Lazarevic and a man identifying himself as Sjaak Rijke appeal to their governments to negotiate their release from the AQIM militants. There is nothing in the footage of Lazarevic to suggest when it was shot, but Rijke says he is speaking on September 26 this year and refers to a US-Taliban prisoner exchange conducted in May. France 24

Mali: Last Chance in Algiers
As northern Mali experiences renewed violence, peace negotiations in Algiers offer a unique opportunity to resolve the crisis. But after almost two months of negotiations, peace remains a distant hope. The Malian government and participating armed groups have struggled to find common ground. Influential radical groups that are absent from the negotiating table are tempted to resort to violence to derail the process. Conflict resolution will require reconciliation of competing interests regarding security in the Sahara, organisation of the Malian state structure and local balance of power between divided communities in the north. In the face of armed clashes, it is tempting for mediators to move quickly to achieve a deal that would only guarantee security in the short term. But rushing the process will not help. Time is needed to build the foundations of sustainable peace. After months of deadlock, Algeria arranged international mediation that had long been handicapped by institutional rivalries. The mediation team led by Algeria should maintain this momentum and take the time necessary to build broad consensus for a future agreement. International Crisis Group

Islamic State Allegiance Could Cost Egypt's Sinai Jihadis Popular Support
Last week, the Egyptian militant group Ansar Beit al-Maqdis (ABM), which operates primarily in the Sinai Peninsula, pledged its loyalty to the so-called Islamic State (IS). In an email interview, Zack Gold, a visiting fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, discussed the implications for Egypt.WPR: What are the major armed groups operating in Sinai, to what degree do they coordinate activities and do they have any foreign support? Zack Gold:Egypt's Sinai Peninsula has been a base of armed activity, both militancy and smuggling, for many years. Following the uprising of 2011, however, the remnants of smaller jihadi groups amalgamated into Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, the "Supporters of Jerusalem." World Politic Review

Sinai caught in the middle of Egypt's 'war on terror'
With soldiers firing warning shots to herald the nightly curfew and jihadist militants beheading informants, Sinai's residents find themselves caught in the middle of Egypt's "war on terror". The Sinai Peninsula has become a hotbed of Islamist militancy after decades of neglect under former president Hosni Mubarak, and amid a security vacuum triggered by the army's ouster last year of his successor Mohamed Morsi. Militant attacks remain commonplace almost two years since the military launched its "war on terrorism" in northern Sinai bordering Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip. A brazen suicide bombing on 24 October killed 30 soldiers near the North Sinai capital El-Arish, sparking a state of emergency and a curfew being slapped on several areas of the province. News 24

 Subcommittee Hearing: Fighting Ebola: A Ground-Level View (video)
Witnesses: Mr. Rabih Torbay, Senior Vice President for International Operations International Medical Corps - Mr. Brett Sedgewick, Technical Advisor for Food Security and Livelihoods Global Communities - Darius Mans, Ph.D. President Africare. House Comittee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations

Obama on Ebola in West Africa: 'We are nowhere out of the woods'
President Obama said Tuesday that despite progress, West Africa is "nowhere near out of the woods" on Ebola. "It underscores how important it is to continue to push forward until we stamp out this disease entirely in that region," Obama said before a meeting on the virus with national security and public health officials. "Until we do, there are threats if additional outbreaks, and given the nature of international travel, it means that everybody has some measure of risk." White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said later that the president was referring to the country of Mali, which was declared free of the virus, only to see it come back. Obama said that attention on the virus in the United States has ebbed in the past week, "the challenge remains." The Washington Post

Guarding The Ebola Border
On a map, a border is a solid black line. On the ground, it can feel like a fiction. I'm standing on the edge of a shallow stream through the forest that separates two West African countries: Ivory Coast and Liberia. Here there is no fence. No sign. No border guard to prevent my crossing. On either side of this stream, people speak the same local language, Yokuba, a language incomprehensible to most of their countrymen. They share the same currency, the West African CFA franc, as well as a currency of trust built up over generations of intermarriage and communal life. There's even one tribal king who can settle disputes on both sides. Ebola changed all that. NPR

Army names new units that will deploy to Africa
The Minnesota National Guard's 34th Infantry Division headquarters and soldiers from 11 other states will deploy this spring to support U.S. Ebola response operations in West Africa, officials announced Sunday. In all, about 2,100 soldiers from the National Guard and Army Reserve are expected to deploy to Liberia and Senegal to relieve troops who deployed to the region in September and October as part of Operation United Assistance. The deployment of the Guard and Reserve soldiers was announced Friday. Army officials released the list of specific units tapped for the deployment on Sunday after notifying soldiers and their families. The soldiers, as well as those already in country, are expected to be deployed for six months. About 1,200 Guard soldiers are expected to deploy from these units. ArmyTimes

Algeria opposition calls for new elections
A coalition of Algerian opposition parties and political figures has called for new presidential elections because of the continued hospitalizations of the country's leader. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, 77, was elected to a fourth term in April, but he has rarely appeared in public since suffering from a stroke in 2013. He was briefly hospitalized in France last weekend. Tuesday's opposition statement said the leader's absence is a sign of the "serious crisis in the country." The coalition, which includes Islamist and secular opposition parties, and former government ministers, also called for an independent commission to oversee elections. AP on Yahoo News

Tunisia: Political comeback of Ben Ali's cohort a setback to democracy 
The political party Nidaa Tounes has won 85 seats in the newly-elected 217-member Tunisian parliament. This compares with the 69 seats won by the Islamist party Ennahdha, which after the last election in 2011 held the majority in the Constituent Assembly. The elections on October 26th were welcomed by most Arab, African and international media observers who saw in them a model of democracy for a region torn by strife and dictatorship. Lebanese columnist Rami Khouri described the elections as "the most significant domestic and national political development in the modern history of the Arab world". Despite social unrest and severe economic challenges, Tunisia's political factions were able to agree and compromise for the sake of national unity, "in sharp contrast with the hysteria and hallucinatory emotional excesses" in Egypt where the army overthrew the elected Islamist president to great popular acclaim, Khouri wrote in the Daily Star. African Arguments

Tunisia 2.0 - from revolution to republic
For someone who has not been sleeping much, and working punishing hours for months, 27-year old Anis Smaali is in an extraordinarily good mood. He is running a team of 5,000 election observers for Mourakiboun - a group that monitored Tunisia's parliamentary elections in October and on Sunday will be observing the first freely contested presidential election in the country's history. "These are the most important elections in the history of Tunisia," he says with a broad smile. "After this we will have a real government with a five-year mandate. Tunisia is showing that a real and sustainable democracy is possible in the Arab world." Less than four years ago, Mr Smaali was among hundreds of thousands demonstrating outside the Interior Ministry, calling for an end to dictatorship. BBC

Nigeria: Policing the Police
[...] The population of the police is about 370,000, a minuscule fraction of Nigeria's 167m. If the police are unable to manage police affairs, how do we expect them to protect millions of Nigerians? How many other cases, like Banor's, are in police's files? Could Banor have acted alone? We are wondering if the police realise the implications of what they are telling the public. Are they confirming stories about dismissed police officers making their way back to service? Could it be that the police take finger prints of criminals, but do not have finger prints of their personnel? Why is the police pay roll not computerised as has been the case with the Nigeria Immigration Service since 2006? How are the police using the technologies that are available to them? How did Banor's matter get to the stage of the allegations against him? Is his case common in the police? Vanguard on allAfrica

Cameroon under pressure from Boko Haram
Cameroon's military are battling cross-border raids by Nigeria's militant Islamist group Boko Haram, as the BBC's Thomas Fessy found out when he joined soldiers on a patrol. A soldier is standing on the back of a flatbed pick-up truck leading the convoy. His high-powered twin-barrelled gun is turned towards Nigeria. In reality, though, the weapon is aimed at what Boko Haram call their "caliphate", or Islamic state. The border village of Amchide is mostly deserted. Only a handful of people can be seen as we drive through. They are hastily throwing a few belongings on a cart as they prepare to leave. They probably did not have time to take anything when they fled during an attack, and came back to recover their possessions. BBC

Zambia to hold presidential by-election January 20
Zambia's interim leader announced a presidential by-election on Jan. 20 and called for calm and tolerance amid concerns about a tense contest to succeed President Michael Sata, who died in office last month. Interim president Guy Scott, who became the continent's first white leader since the 1994 end of apartheid in South Africa, said he hoped all contestants, both from the ruling Patriotic Front (PF) and opposition parties, would desist from violence. "It is my prayer that peace continues during the campaigning and the presidential by-elections," he told a news conference. Questions about the stability of Africa's second-biggest copper producer arose when Scott fired a presidential front-runner, Edgar Lungu, as PF secretary-general on Nov. 3, without explaining why. Reuters

The real value of the Zimbabwe torture ruling
The South African Police Service (SAPS) really doesn't want to investigate torture in Zimbabwe. When the Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC) and the Zimbabwean Exiles Forum (ZEF) first asked it to do so in 2008, even giving detectives a dossier of evidence to get them started, the police took no action. When a court action (brought by SALC) forced it to do so, it appealed. When it lost that appeal, it appealed again. All to no avail. In late October, the Constitutional Court - the highest court in the land - ruled that SAPS must investigate the complaint. Failure to do so would violate South Africa's obligations under both domestic and international law. For SALC and international justice campaigners, the verdict was vindication after a long and difficult fight. ISS

'White Widow alive and well' in Somalia: report
Dubbed the "White Widow," Samantha Lewthwaite - a British convert to Islam who is said to have been involved in the Kenya mall attack last year - is reportedly living in Somalia with her jihadist husband, Marco Costa, a wanted Al-Qaeda suspect, the Daily Mail quoted Kenyan sources as saying. The sources said Lewthwaite was 'alive and well' and living in the south Somalia, the daily reported. The paper said it had obtained a forged Mozambican passport bearing Costa's picture. The document clearly identifies him as Jamal Salim, who the paper said was on the run from Kenyan police since he shot and killed two police officers in Nairobi in 2011. Lewthwaite has previously used a false South African passport and alias. The couple, according to the Daily Mail, also appears in a selfie taken at their home, adding that police are using these and pictures of their two children as part of a countrywide manhunt for the suspects. Al Arabiya

Ivory Coast tells soldiers to return to barracks 
The Ivory Coast government is calling on disgruntled soldiers to return to their barracks after they protested in the streets over their benefits. The Defense Ministry said it would make concessions the soldiers, whose complaints earlierTuesday had raised the specter of widespread unrest. The demands of the soldiers - dominated by former rebels who brought the current president to power - include increased health care benefits and improved opportunities for career advancement in the military. Defense Minister Paul Koffi Koffi said the government will address those issues. Ivory Coast is still recovering from a bitter political standoff that left about 3,000 people dead after a disputed December 2010 election. AP on Stars and Stripes

DR Congo's Katanga 'catastrophic' as 71,000 flee homes: UN
The UN refugee agency said it was "deeply concerned about the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Katanga". Rampant violence in the mineral-rich southern region has uprooted about 400,000 people since 2012, and brought the total number of people internally displaced to nearly 600,000, UNHCR said. In October alone, the agency said it had registered 1,737 "incidents" in the territories of Kalemie and the so-called "triangle of death" comprising Manono, Mitwaba and Pweto in northern Katanga. The violence is mainly attributed to the Mai Mai rebel group which is fighting for a better distribution between the north and south of the wealth from the province's immense natural resources. Times Live

Food on Hold, Ex-Rebels in Bangui Face Bleak Future 
Ex-rebels in the Central African Republic have been threatening to blow themselves up to protest a government attempt to relocate them from camps in the capital, Bangui. The rebels are under pressure to move - an international aid agency says their food supply has been put on hold while talks about their relocation continue. Tensions are running high in the streets of Bangui around two camps containing ex-rebels, as negotiations over their future drag on. Peacekeepers from the United Nations mission MINUSCA have deployed to the area to prevent clashes between the ex-Seleka rebels inside the camps and anti-Balaka militia outside. VOA

Traffickers turn to teenagers to drive migrant boats across Mediterranean 
Traffickers in Egypt and Libya are increasingly using children to drive boats of migrants to Italy. Many of these teenagers are then detained and imprisoned by the Italian authorities, facing up to 15 years in jail and fines of hundreds of thousands of euros. This year, 18 children have been sent to jail in Catania, Sicily, on trafficking charges. Others are being held in juvenile detention centres in Agrigento, Palermo, Siracusa and Reggio Calabria. Lawyers in Sicily say more and more minors are being charged with offences as traffickers attempt to evade Italian authorities by sending children in their place. Said, now 19, was only 15 when he was jailed in Italy on charges of aiding and abetting illegal immigration and criminal association. The Guardian

Habyarimana case: the new Rwandan witness disappeared 
The new witness in the case of the attack against the plane of former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana - April 6, 1994 on the eve of the genocide - has been missing since Thursday, November 13. He was to be heard soon by the judges Nathalie Poux and Marc Trévidic. According to testimonies collected by RFI, Emile Gafirita was abducted in Nairobi, Kenya, outside his home shortly before midnight. He was stopped by two men who handcuffed him and forced him into their vehicle. No news since. Kenyan police ensures not have arrested him and they are investigating this matter. Emmanuel Mughisa had moved there two months ago, in the district of Dagoretti, Nairobi.Rwandan " without history, rather friendly and open , "according to nearby residents. [...] According to his French lawyer, Maître François Cantier Emile Gafirita had just received his call when he was removed on Thursday, but his name as a witness was known for several weeks by all parties, including the Rwandan regime figures charged in this case. The ProxyLake

 Global report says 36 million people enslaved: Mauritania is biggest offender 
[...] "From the Thai fisherman trawling fishmeal, to the Congolese boy mining diamonds, from the Uzbek child picking cotton, to the Indian girl stitching footballs ... their forced labour is what we consume," read the report. The biggest offender, with the highest proportion of its population enslaved, remains the west African nation Mauritania, where slavery of black Moors by Berber Arabs is an entrenched part of society. Mauritania has anti-slavery legislation but it is rarely enforced and a special tribunal set up in March has yet to prosecute any cases, the report said. In second place was Uzbekistan where, every autumn, the government forces over one million people, including children, to harvest cotton. Countries like Qatar in the Middle East were a major destination for men and women from Africa and Asia who are lured with promises of well-paid jobs only to find themselves exploited as domestic workers or in the construction industry, the report found. Al Jazeera

America: forging partnerships for Africa's future.

 

Nelson Mandela Tribute

1918 - 2013

First, a musical selection in tribute to the great man. South Africa's national anthem performed by Miriam Makeba, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and Paul Simon among others:

Second, on this, the day of his burial, I want to post something from a stranger to Nelson Mandela. The gentleman is also a stranger to me. In fact, his represent (I believe) the words of a generic white man who is apparently a Son of the South (apparently a Carolinian), clearly a fan of Mandela, probably liberal, and likely infused with perhaps an unhealthy dose of white guilt. Whatever the case, his words, however conceived *or* received, have merit. They arguably ring true. To me, at least. Here is what the guy who calls himself Sintax.the.Terrific (you can also find him on Facebook) had to say about this towering figure:

I have one take on Mandela, and I’ve made it to others many times before.

I am unaware of any other human in all of history who was oppressed so absolutely and then was given so absolutely the power to invert that oppression on millions of lives in justifiable retribution and yet declined. Not Ghandi or Dr. King or Mother Theresa. All of these individuals, righteous and consistent in their pacisifism, never actually gloved the reigns to violent power that must have tempted Mandela. They were always subject to power, maybe power they declined, but power they never possessed in the way he did. He was the undisputed psychological Monarch of South Africa upon his election. Had he chosen to change the country’s language to Mongolian Chinese and require men to birth the nation’s children he would have had widespread support.

Call it strategic or contrived, he elected, in the face of significant opposition from his own and victimized people, to largely integrate and accommodate. If you notice, throughout much of the rest of the developing world, when abused society obtains power they return the abuse.

The only parallel is in the lives of famous religious figures, like Christ. They are disqualified from this conversation insofar as they profess either actual divinity or divine authority or x-ray vision. As far as we can tell, Mandela was not any kind of incarnation or supernatural peeping tom.

Just a man who chose to do right in the face of so much opportunity to do wrong.

Maybe the greatest human that ever lived. Seriously.

That's a powerful testimony on the mystical reach of the legend that is Nelson Mandela.

Finally, a poem commissioned by the United States Department of State in anticipation of Nelson Mandela's death:

His Day Is Done

By Maya Angelou

His day is done.
Is done.

The news came on the wings of a wind
Reluctant to carry its burden.

Nelson Mandela’s day is done.

The news, expected and still unwelcome
Reached us in the United States and suddenly

Our world became somber.
Our skies were leadened

His day is done.

We see you, South African people
Standing speechless at the slamming
Of that final door
Through which no traveler returns.

Our spirits reach out to you
Bantu, Zulu, Xhosa, Boer

We think of you
And your Son of Africa,
Your father
Your One More Wonder of the World.

We send our souls to you
As you reflect upon
Your David armed with
A mere stone facing down

The Mighty Goliath,
Man of strength Gideon,
Emerging Triumphant

Although born into the brutal embrace of Apartheid
Scarred by the savage atmosphere of racism,
Unjustly imprisoned
In the bloody maws of South African dungeons.

Would the man survive?
Could the man survive?

His answer strengthened men and women
Around the world.

In the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas
On the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco,
In Chicago’s loop
In New Orleans Mardi Gras
In New York City’s Times Square

We watched as the hope of Africa sprang
Through the prison’s doors

His stupendous heart intact
His gargantuan will
Hale and hearty

He had not been crippled by brutes
Nor was his passion for the rights
Of human beings
Diminished by twenty-seven years of imprisonment

Even here in America
We felt the cool
Refreshing breeze of freedom

When Nelson Mandela took
The seat of Presidency
In his Country
Where formerly he was not even allowed to vote
We were enlarged by tears of pride
As we saw Nelson Mandela’s
Former prison guards
Invited, courteously, by him to watch
From the front rows
His inauguration.

We saw him accept
The world’s award in Norway
With the grace and gratitude
Of the Solon in Ancient Roman Courts
And the confidence of African Chiefs
From ancient royal stools.

No sun outlasts its sunset
But will rise again
And bring the dawn

Yes, Mandela’s day is done,

Yet we, his inheritors
Will open the gates wider
For reconciliation and we will respond
Generously to the cries
Of Blacks and Whites,
Asian, Hispanics,
The poor who live piteously
On the floor of our planet
He has offered us understanding
We will not withhold forgiveness
Even from those who do not ask

Nelson Mandela’s day is done

We confess it in tearful voices
Yet we lift our own to say

Thank You.
Thank You, Our Gideon.
Thank You, Our David.
Our great courageous man

We will not forget you
We will not dishonor you
We will remember and be glad
That you lived among us

That you taught us
And
That you loved us
All !!!

-- The End --

There are difficult days ahead for South Africa. Political pettiness has already reared its ugly head, and a brutal dose of reality is surely on the agenda in the coming days. Many are reflecting on a different path that could have been taken, a disastrous path taken by Zimbabwe. Can they hold their country together?

I hope and pray they can. Just as Mandela did.

Mandela, Spear of the Nation: Spear of the World

Take your leave, old Soldier. A gratefull community pauses around the globe to marvel at your legacy.

Words fail me at the moment, so I can only fall back and present here some iconic images of the great man:

The youthful Mandela:

Mandela released from prison:

Mandela speaks before a special session of the United States Congress:

Catullus 101

Wandering through many countries and over many seas
   I come, my brother, to these sorrowful obsequies,
to present you with the last guerdon of death,
   and speak, though in vain, to your silent ashes,
since fortune has taken your own self away from me
   alas, my brother, so cruelly torn from me!
Yet now meanwhile take these offerings, which by the custom of our fathers
   have been handed down -- a sorrowful tribute -- for a funeral sacrifice;
take them, wet with many tears of a brother,
   and for ever, O my brother, hail and farewell!

Umkhonto we Sizwe.

VH1 You Oughta Know - Emeli Sande

Wifey was watching the ending of "Undercover Brother" on VH1 earlier this week while getting ready for work. We both laughed at some of the stupidity of the film, and after it ended something called "VH1 You Oughta Know" came on. Interesting looking woman, interesting sound -- okay, who the hell is this?

The song was obviously You Will Find Him Next To Me, or something like that. But -- WHO. IS. SHE !!!

We had to know, so we waited for the end of the video.

Emeli Sande?

Who the hell is that? You ever heard of her? No? Me neither!

So, I had to go find out something about the woman.

Now, I have a new artist to love. Go 'head, chick -- do your thing.

Emeli Sande - Next To Me - Next To Me - Free Music Videos

I guess I'll have to give this VH1 You Oughta Know a bit of my time, too.

Africa Roundup: Mid-May 2011

Here are a collection of articles pulled from America's National Defense University and their Africa Center for Strategic Studies:

17th Air Force chief: Trust growing in Africa
Maj. Gen. Margaret Woodward has had a busy few months as commander of 17th Air Force. She directed the U.S. air campaign over Libya. Sixty of her airmen just finished teaching the Congolese military how to conduct aeromedical evacuations. And she traveled to Ethiopia with Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz for the African Air Chiefs Conference — sponsored by 17th Air Force. Air Force Times

Libya: ICC prosecutor to seek warrants for officials
The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor is to seek approval for the arrest of three top Libyan officials suspected of crimes against humanity. Luis Moreno-Ocampo said evidence showed Libyan forces had conducted “widespread and systematic attacks” on civilians. BBC

British Commander Says Libya Fight Must Expand
Two months into the NATO bombing campaign against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces, Britain’s top military commander has said that the Libyan leader could remain “clinging to power” unless NATO broadened its bombing targets to include the country’s infrastructure. NY Times

Koussa among defectors ‘helping Nato bomb secret Gaddafi sites’
A network of Libyan defectors, including the former regime stalwart Moussa Koussa, are helping Nato to destroy Muammar Gaddafi’s military sites, including bunker complexes from which much of the war has been run, according to senior officials in Libya. The Guardian

Libya Rebels: Misrata Is Ours
NATO aircraft blasted an oil terminal in a key eastern city at nightfall Sunday, Libyan TV reported, after Britain urged the alliance to widen its assault on areas controlled by ruler Moammar Gadhafi. Libya’s deputy foreign minister Khaled Kaim sharply condemned that call, describing it as a “provocation.” The Huffington Post

Rebels fail to get full diplomatic recognition from White House
Following a meeting with the National Security Advisor Tom Donilon Friday, the US said it will not be giving the National Transitional Council full diplomatic recognition for now even though it views it as the “legitimate” voice of the Libyan people. France 24

Military intervention in Libya: Is Congress getting impatient?
On Thursday morning, the Obama administration was supposed to finally report to the Senate on progress in the campaign against Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya, which began March 19. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg took a chair in the foreign relations committee hearing room. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, was ready with questions: Slate

NATO airstrike kills Libyan military spokesman – media
Colonel Milad Hussein al-Fiqhi, spokesman for the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s forces, was killed on Sunday in a NATO raid that targeted an intelligence headquarters in the capital Tripoli, Al Arabiya television reported. “Colonel Fiqhi is most probably responsible for the crimes that took place in Zawiyah town,” Al Arabiya quoted an opposition source. RiaNovosti

Sudanese candidate wanted on war crimes charges wins governor’s seat
Ahmed Haroun, a Sudanese ruling National Congress Party candidate wanted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges, was elected governor of a central Sudanese state Sunday in an election opponents say was rigged. LA Times

Danish Navy frees 16 Iranians from suspected Somali pirate ship
After a firefight with suspected Somali pirates, Danish sailors freed 16 Iranian hostages on board an alleged mother ship, according to the Danish Royal Navy. Four suspected pirates were killed and 10 wounded during the firefight Thursday, the Royal Navy said on its website. No one on board the Danish ship Esbern Snare was hurt, and the hostages were also not injured. CNN

Tunisia Is Uneasy Over Party of Islamists
Accused as subversives or terrorists, they bore the repressive brunt of the Tunisian dictator’s reign — two decades of torture, prison or exile. But since the dictator, President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, fled in January, the Islamists of the once-banned Ennahda Party have emerged from obscurity, returned from abroad and established themselves as perhaps the most powerful political force in post-revolution Tunisia. NY Times

Human Rights Watch: 800 killed in Nigeria post-election riots that swept northern states
An international human rights group says at least 800 people died in election-related violence that swept across northern Nigeria. Human Rights Watch said in a statement Monday that last month’s elections in Nigeria “were heralded as among the fairest in the country, but they were also the bloodiest.” The Washington Post

Rediscovering Congo
These are strange, exhilarating times to be working on the Democratic Republic of the Congo. For the first time since full-fledged war broke out in the central African country in 1996, the American public seems to be waking up to the brutality of the conflict there. Over the past year, there has been a flurry of activity inside and outside the Beltway. Foreign Policy

Nigeria: Corruption Commission Probes Nine Governors
NINE outgoing state governors across the country who have enjoyed immunity for the past four or eight years may soon be guests of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, as their tenures expire on May 29. allAfrica

Museveni’s crackdown on Besigye brings tough integration issues into the open
The violent clashes between Ugandan security and Walk to Work protestors demonstrating against the high cost of living, have shocked the world — but done a lot of good for East African integration. The East African

I. Coast militia killed 220 in southwest: government
Militia and mercenaries loyal to Ivory Coast strongman Laurent Gbagbo killed 220 people while fleeing through the southwest of the country, a spokesman for President Alassane Ouattara said on Saturday. After being chased out of their stronghold in the main city Abidjan on May 4, the fleeing Gbagbo forces committed “atrocities in the southwest of our country,” said Patrick Achi. AFP

Sierra Leone holds both lessons and warnings for Ivory Coast
Sierra Leone recently celebrated its 50th anniversary of independence. The West African nation still bears the scars of a brutal civil war but its fledgling democracy offers lessons to regional neighbor Ivory Coast. Deutsche Welle

Burkina Faso: Angry soliders in late night rampage through streets of Po
Angry soldiers in Burkina Faso fired their weapons into the air late into the night on Saturday a month after widespread army and police mutinies. The incident took place in the key garrison town of Po in the south of the country near the border with Ghana. RFI

Family Law At The Crux Of Algerian Women’s Futures
Algeria, which shares a border with both Tunisia and Libya, is so far just watching the upheaval across the Arab world. Most Algerians say their country is still too scarred by a decade of violence in the 1990s to endure another uprising. Nearly every Algerian now calls that a lost decade, but no one feels it more acutely than Algerian women. NPR

Has France lost its grip on Africa?
The headstone was in place, the epitaph inscribed. Throughout last year, as 17 African countries headily celebrated the 50th anniversary of the parting of ways with their former colonial master, the unanimous view was that France’s once considerable influence on the continent was on its deathbed. Daily Monitor

No democracy relies so much on the military
Makerere University law professor Joe Oloka-Onyango made a presentation at the Inter-Religious Council of Uganda (IRCU) post-election 2011 conference in Kampala on 27 April 2011. President Museveni, who closed the conference, was very critical of Professor Oloka’s presentation, accusing him of poisoning the minds of ‘our children’. Uganda’s The Observer published a slightly edited version of the paper that got Museveni so worked up. Pambazuka News

Using Radio to Facilitate Dialogue on Governance in Africa
The increasing penetration of mobile telephone in Africa is widening opportunities for people to take part in discussions about governance. Radio is a widespread medium through which communities can tune-in to listen to debates on topics such as health, the environment and politics. FrontlineSMS:Radio is a software, which is being designed to help facilitate radio listener interaction via text message. Africa The Good News

Mobile Phones, Radio Promote Rights in Africa
Much needs to be done to secure human rights in Africa, but “the tide is turning” and mobile phones and FM radio have arguably done more than most other conventional methods to pursue this objective, reports Amnesty International in its annual report. allAfrica

I haven't done an Africa Roundup in a bit more than two years. I've been so perplexed by the whole Barack Obama thing, and my certainty that he was on a high-speed rail toward abject failure, that it -- the false phenomenon of Obama -- has given me pause in ways I'm sure I don't quite understand yet. The recent nailing of Osama bin Laden, something I unashamedly celebrated with gusto, has removed our President from my abject failure list.

Is he still a failure, however? Absolutely, positively. If I'm going to go down on this score, I will go down as resolutely certain as I was (and still am) that he never should have been elected in the first place.

Arab Man Dies for His Country

People fighting to be free is a constant around the globe, especially wherever totalitarian regimes rule. Libya, for instance. Thanks to Galrahn at Information Dissemination, I've been introduced to a man who died today -- Muhammad Nabbous. In the video posted below, we hear from his widow who is announcing his death. I have always been something of a sucker for a woman crying out of grief. I often marvel at what it does to me; this was a tough video to watch and listen to:

libya17feb on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

I salute you, Nabbous, though I know very little of you. May the master of the universe have mercy on your soul. Whittaker Chambers was right; life must be cherished, but it is such an everyday struggle.

Saluting Leo Linbeck III

About a week ago Wretchard announced that "Houston, we've got a problem." It was a nice little play on a familiar NASA communications phrase that simultaneously jabbed a less-than-diligent education writer who is described thusly at examiner.com, where she writes:

Caroline Grannan was an editor at the San Jose Mercury News for 12 years. Currently she contributes to a number of Internet sites dealing with education and schools. She is a San Francisco public school parent, advocate, and volunteer and has followed education politics locally and nationwide.

Unfortunately, Grannan embarrassed herself with the poorly researched write-up that sought to cast aspersions on a gentlemen named Leo Linbeck III. The Belmont Club readers do a good job of setting things right in the post and Leo himself does a great job of defending himself and his work with KIPP:Houston. I invite you to read the full thread.

As for my salute to Linbeck, I'd like to do it this way because it speaks volumes to me about the man. Here 'tis: I don't remember when I first took notice of Linbeck at the Belmont Club but Wretchard's November 2008 post, Which was made of brass, still bounces around in my brain.

The AFP describes a police raid on a baby trafficking syndicate in Nigeria. Babies were being bred for resale at a hospital “in Enugu, a large city in Nigeria’s southeast”

The doctor in charge, who is now on trial, reportedly lured teenagers with unwanted pregnancies by offering to help with abortion.

They would be locked up there until they gave birth, whereupon they would be forced to give up their babies for a token fee of around 20,000 naira (170 dollars, 135 euros).

The babies would then be sold to buyers for anything between 300,000 and 450,000 naira (2,500 and 3,800 dollars) each, according to a state agency fighting human trafficking in Nigeria, the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).

What is the market for children in Africa? The BBC describes the various uses to which the traffic in humans, which may be as large as 200,000 individuals per year, are put:

In the eastern Nigerian city of Benin, girls and young women are sent to west Africa and Europe to work as prostitutes. Many go willingly, but some are tricked.

They are taken to a witch doctor, sworn to secrecy and end up in effective slavery to the middle men who smuggle them abroad. Other children are trafficked for work inside the country. Girls and boys as young as six are taken from desperately poor homes and placed as domestic workers with strangers in the city.

Those are the lucky ones. The AFP report says “In 2005, a Lagos-based orphanage suspected of ties to child trafficking rings, was shut down. There, charred baby-bones were discovered on the rubbish tip, leading to suspicion the orphanage was involved in the peddling of human body parts, possibly for use in rituals or for organ harvesting.”

In an age where strength has become synonymous with barbarism, it is important to remember that weakness is no virtue in itself. Evil is attracted to the defenseless . . . .

Well, it was a disturbing post and I highlighted Wretchard's comment at the end because so many on the left aggravate me so with their indifference to this truth. Back to my subject, click this link for a quick bio of Linbeck from Rice University. If you read the bio, it will not surprise you that the post on the baby trafficking syndicate also captured the attention of Linbeck, who offered up this compelling comment:

Good stuff. A topic worth engaging.

The philosophical core of “the concentration camp oven, the post-partum dumpster and infant trafficking” is the notion that some human beings have greater value than others. Germans are worth more than Jews, gypsies, gays, and members of the underground. Women are worth more than fetuses. Western babies with a terminal illness are worth more than Nigerian babies with healthy organs.

The Judeo-Christian culture - with elements wonderfully described above by Pascal et. al. - has always had this fundamental notion that each human stands as an equal before God. This does not mean that everyone is equal; that is absurd and clearly contradicted by our personal experience. Rather, God is infinite, and therefore as finite beings we are all equal on a comparative basis (1/infinity = 1,000,000,000,000/infinity).

The practical implications of this cultural norm are extremely important. Without equality before God, all sorts of horrible behavior is easily justified by the perpetrator, who is the only one who needs justification. It is but a small stretch to say that the belief in fundamental inequality has been the source of all the great evils: communism (vanguard>proletariat>bourgeoisie), Nazism (Aryans>everyone), Rwanda (Hutus>Tutsis), apartheid (whites>blacks), slavery (masters>slaves), the Inquisition (Catholics>Protestants), jihadism (Moslems>everyone), materialism (rich>poor), eugenics (beautiful>ugly, smart>dumb, light skin>dark skin, etc.), and so on. Add to the list as you see fit.

In all cases, it’s “Us” vs. “Them,” which always implies Us>Them.

This is why the fight is always so difficult for those of us on the Us=Them team. We’re not really saying we’re better in some ontological sense. We’re saying they’re not better than us. This is, by its nature, a defensive argument, which is why just wars are defensive. But it’s hard to win on defense, a fact that multi-cultis have turned to their advantage. And there is always the fact that the best defense is a good offense, which tempts us into buying into the same Us>Them logic. But we do so at the cost of our own soul.

Population control is an excellent example of an intellectual tradition founded upon Us>Them inequality. When “population” is determined to be a problem in need of solution, the next step is to decide who to control to solve the problem. The world is quickly divided into those who “breed responsibly” and those who need to be spayed or neutered like a dog. Initially, attempts are made to convince people that birth control is in their interest. But when these attempts fail to address the “problem,” birth control is imposed. One couple, one child. Abort or abandon.

Not much of a choice.

L3

Us greater than them inequality. Good stuff, Leo. Us=Them, a defensive argument. What a shame that Caroline Grannan, a former editor for twelve years at a major paper, couldn't be bothered to take the time to read up on you just a little bit more. All the greater is the shame that had she done so, she would still quite likely not have been able to see that Us=Them.

America's Policy in Africa in the 21st Century

I'm presenting in full an address from a few months ago on a topic of great interest to me: Africa and America. I backed away from doing an "African Roundup" on this blog many months ago after the absurd posturing with respect to the Department of Defense's Africa Command and its stand-up along with relocation to the continent became quite clear to me.

Somehow, we can have a European Command and it doesn't generate stupidity. Talk about setting up an equal command, the establishment of an Africa Command, and all manner of Africans (and African Americans) start talking stupid.

Or so it seems to me.

That said, here's the address.

U.S. Policy in Africa in the 21st Century

Phillip Carter, III

Acting Assistant Secretary

Bureau of African Affairs

The Africa Center for Strategic Studies

Washington, DC

February 9, 2009

Good morning. It is an honor to be here with you today -- I will discuss the outlines of U.S. policy in Africa, and six priorities that I see as important in the relationship between the United States and Africa. This seminar, organized by the African Center for Strategic Studies, is consistent with the US Government’s ongoing efforts to support the professionalization of Africa’s security sector, and we are proud to be part of that effort here at the Department of State. I want to leave time for your questions and comments so that we can engage in a clear dialogue about relations between the United States and Africa. I am here as much to learn from you, and to hear thoughts that may be different from those I hear everyday in Washington.

U.S.-AFRICA POLICY IN CONTEXT

Let me say up front that I believe firmly that the one foreign policy success of the previous administration is Africa, although even there we have met with challenges and frustration.

For too long Africa has been an afterthought in U.S. foreign policy interests. In World War II, Africa was a strategic stepping stone to the places that mattered in Europe. In the Cold War, Africa was a pawn in East-West struggles. Even as we Americans set in place well-intentioned economic development policies, it was too often with the idea of trying to do good for Africa, rather than to do good with Africa.

This has changed. Instead, the U.S. has implemented a strategy to operate more effectively in a world where non-state actors and illegal trans-border activity can pose major threats to even the most powerful of countries.
The goal is to develop a network of well-governed states capable through responsible sovereignty of protecting themselves and contributing to regional security. By so doing, they also protect the international system. Our new Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, last week reaffirmed the extremely high priority of security. She said that, “…we all know that there are real threats to the United States and our friends and allies around the world. And the State Department has an important role to play…to be a good leader and a good partner…” In a word, this means partnership. This vision supports African leaders as strategic partners and seeks to build up Africa's institutional capacity. In other words, doing things with Africans, not for Africans.

We believe these sentiments coincide with Africa's own growing emphasis on the values of freedom, the rule of law, and collective security, as embedded in the African Union's New Partnership for African Development. The New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) Peer Review mechanism reinforces African leaders' own efforts to promote democracy and good governance among their peers.

The U.S. understands that there are new, rising strategic powers around the world, including Sub-Saharan Africa. Nations such as South Africa and Nigeria have used their diplomatic, economic, and military power to shape the continent for the better. Mali, Mozambique, Liberia, Ghana, Botswana, Benin and many other African countries are leading the way as examples of the power of democratic rule of law.

We are pursuing the shared goal of ending conflict in Africa by supporting African conflict mediation and strengthening African capacities to mitigate conflict and carry out peace support operations. To do so, we work directly with lead African mediators, bilaterally with African Governments, and multilaterally with the African Union, the United Nations, and African sub-regional organizations. To put it more simply, we want to support African leadership and African solutions to African problems.

There is considerable evidence that this approach works. We've had success working with African partners in ending seven major conflicts in the past seven years: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire, North-South Sudan, Ethiopia-Eritrea, and Angola. Although the current peace is fragile in several of these countries -- and challenges persist in Darfur, Eastern Congo and Somalia -- Africa has demonstrated that it is committed to resolving conflict and promoting stability.

Let me now focus on four U.S. priorities in our relations with African nations:

Our first priority is providing security assistance programs that are critical to securing the objective of a peaceful African continent. We are working with our African partners to build capacity at three levels: (1) at the level of the African Union, (2) at the sub-regional level, and (3) at the level of individual states. At the level of the AU, we are supporting the Strategic Planning and Management Unit at AU headquarters in Addis Ababa with advisors and equipment. At the sub-regional level, we have provided assistance to peacekeeping training centers in Senegal, Ghana, South Africa, Mali, and Kenya. The United States provides a peace and security advisor at ECOWAS headquarters, and continues to support the ECOWAS logistics facility in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

An important step was taken in early 2007 when the decision was made to create a Department of Defense Unified Combatant Command for Africa – the U.S. Africa Command, or "AFRICOM." This decision to create AFRICOM marks the beginning of a new era where African security issues can be addressed from an Africa-centric perspective. AFRICOM is a new type of command that will focus on building African regional security and crisis response. Its objective is a more secure Africa, but it is not expected to have any assigned forces to the African continent. Rather, AFRICOM is a headquarters staff that coordinates the kind of support that will enable African Governments and existing regional organizations to have greater capacity to respond in time of need.

Through programs like the International Military Education and Training (IMET) Program and the Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance (ACOTA) Program, we are working to build the capacity of the African militaries to respond to African problems. Over 100,000 African peacekeepers have been trained by ACOTA or by ACOTA-trained trainers, and eight African nations are now in the top 20 of all contributors to UN peacekeeping operations. African states are contributing peacekeepers to missions not only in Africa but also to UN operations in Lebanon and Haiti. We will continue to work with the AU, sub-regional organizations, and member states as they work to stand up the Africa Standby Force. This includes civilian aspects of the African Peace and Security Architecture, such as the Continental Early Warning System and Panel of the Wise.

In Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, and southern Sudan, we are helping to rebuild professional military forces for these post-conflict states, and are looking to engage in similar Security Sector Reform (SSR) activities in Somalia as soon as the situation will permit.

In addition to long-term capacity building, we are working to provide logistics support and equipment for African peacekeeping units deploying to Darfur and Somalia. The United States has supported the deployment of additional infantry battalions to the UN-AU Hybrid Mission in Darfur, with more than $100 million in peacekeeping operations funding for equipment and training. The United States has made the largest contribution of any international donor to the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), and will continue to provide equipment and logistics support to troop- contributing countries in the future.

We will continue to work with our African partners to build the necessary sustained capacity to disrupt and ultimately eliminate the ability of terrorists to operate in the region and secure safe havens, recruits, popular support, finance, and freedom of movement across borders. The Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP) and the East Africa Regional Security Initiative (EARSI) are two initiatives that seek to identify resources throughout the United States government to support specific areas of cooperation identified by our partners in the region.

Maritime security is gaining in importance. For example, Nigeria has now surpassed Somalia as the most dangerous maritime region in Africa, with only Indonesia registering more incidents in 2007. The US Government will continue to work with African maritime security forces to secure their maritime domains from threats such as piracy, illegal fishing, and trafficking in persons and illicit goods. Through AFRICOM’s deployment of the African Partnership Station, we are building the capacity or West and Central African states to protect their territorial waters, respond to oil spills and other disasters, and patrol vital oil and gas platforms.

Our second priority on the continent is promoting democratic systems and practices -- we are engaged in supporting the rise of freedom and democracy on the continent. It is not enough to just end wars, but we must move beyond post-conflict transformation to consolidate democracies. Moreover, we must work with African societies on the critical issues of governance, transparency, and accountability as a means of helping establish pluralistic communities where open political dialogue is the channel for reform and progress. During the past two decades, progressive democratic reform has adapted to local values, customs, and practices throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Outgrowths of democratic, well-governed states that adhere to the rule of law, support the will of their people, and contribute responsibly to the international system are developing. One U.S. think tank that has studied Africa, Freedom House, has determined that three quarters of African countries are now “free or partly free,” as opposed to less than half the states in 1990.

Despite significant progress, the recent military coups in Mauritania and Guinea and the flawed elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe have hindered these advances. The international community is urging Mauritania to restore its democratically-elected government and is pressing Guinea to hold democratic elections this year. The Kenyan and Zimbabwean elections, marked by voting irregularities, contestable results, and post-election violence, demonstrate that the path to democracy is often difficult. As a result, we must and will continue to assist and encourage our African partners in building democratic institutions, conducting free and fair elections, and governing justly. This means providing support to civil society and media, strengthen political parties and elections monitoring mechanism, providing support to legislatures, building the capacity of key ministries, and encouraging political transparency.

Our third foreign policy priority is promoting sustainable and broad-based, market-led economic growth. While sub-Saharan Africa has experienced impressive growth rates in recent years, Africa can still be characterized as a rich continent in an impoverished state. The United States must help our African partners raise income levels, promote sustainable growth that benefits all in a society, opens markets for African exports, reduces barriers to investment, and identifies opportunities and comparative advantages.

Responding to this challenge, the United States implemented the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), a revolutionary foreign assistance program that seeks to reduce poverty through sustainable economic growth by awarding sizeable grants -- not loans -- to countries that practice good governance, seek to take responsibility for their own development, and are committed to achieving results. Of the 18 compacts signed to date, ten totaling over $3.8 billion have been signed with sub-Saharan African countries. Two other African countries, Senegal and Malawi are in the process of developing compacts.

The United States Government has also enacted the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a program that allows responsive and responsible partners in Africa to benefit from preferential access to American markets. With 40 countries presently qualified for this program, AGOA has become a cornerstone of our trade and investment policy in Africa. The United States has been in the forefront of efforts to forgive the debts owed by poor countries – but only if those countries’ governments first demonstrate their commitment to poverty reduction and good economic management. MCC and AGOA are important programs strengthening African economic health and underscore the cardinal interest of the United States in the continent’s economic affairs.

I should note that even in this tough time of economic recession overtaking the world, the United States does not anticipate any reduction in the support that we have provided to African nations. We want to continue to be a leader in supporting development on the African continent.

Related to this effort is our focus promoting enhanced food security and agricultural development. This means reducing poverty and hunger, raising agricultural output and reducing dependence on imported food, raising rural incomes, improving the livelihoods of women, children and families, and improving land management.

Between FY2008 and FY2009, the United States will have committed over $1 billion in food assistance worldwide, with much of this assistance focused on Africa. U.S. efforts in West Africa include programs designed to increase the productivity of staple crops, stimulate supply response, and expand the trade of staple foods. In East Africa, the United States has supported a targeted response to meet urgent food security needs and strengthen staple food markets. 

Our fourth U.S. foreign policy priority in Africa is promoting health and social development. As the leading cause of death on the continent, disease is one of the greatest challenges to Africa’s future. Rising to meet this challenge, the United States, through public health initiatives targeting the prevention, care and treatment of disease, is partnering with sub-Saharan nations to fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.

The United States has responded to the severe and urgent HIV/AIDS crisis with the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. PEPFAR is the largest commitment ever by a single nation toward an international health initiative. Through PEPFAR, the U.S. Government has already provided $18.8 billion in HIV/AIDS funding, with a reauthorization of up to $48 billion for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria over the next five years.

Thus far, PEPFAR has provided treatment for 2.1 million people, care for more than 10 million people living with HIV/AIDS, including more than 4 million orphans and vulnerable children, and prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission during nearly 16 million pregnancies, thus allowing nearly 240,000 children to be born HIV-free.

Responding to the malaria crisis, the United States launched the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) in 2005. The U.S. committed $1.2 billion in new malaria funding to reduce malaria-related deaths by 50 percent in 15 African countries. In 2007, the Malaria Initiative reached more than 25 million people with effective prevention and treatment interventions. Under this program we have virtually eradicated malaria from the island of Zanzibar and are making great strides in other places on the continent through aggressive indoor spraying, the distribution of treated bed nets, and the distribution of medication.

Through the prevention and treatment of disease, programs such as PEPFAR and PMI are touching the lives of millions. In collaboration with our regional partners, we will continue to develop sustainable healthcare infrastructure so African nations can address these challenges through their own national institutions.

CONCLUSION

I would like to now open the floor for a discussion and to answer your questions. As I have just outlined, the goal of the United States is to work with African nations to find solutions to the challenges and problems facing African nations. Working together, I believe that we will see more progress and less frustration, more peace and less conflict, and ultimately, more stability in the world.

D'Souza on Solzhenitsyn: A Must Read

Actually, the post, The Prophet at Harvard, is all about Solzhenitsyn at Harvard way back in 1978 and it informs the reader why our leftwing and many on the right who criticized the hell out of D'Souza's "The Enemy At Home" were severely off the mark.

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Imagine the scene at Harvard in the spring of 1978 when Alexander Solzhenitsyn gave his now-famous address. Solzhenitsyn had already won the Nobel Prize for The Gulag Archipelago and other great works exposing the murderous nature of atheist Communism. But at Harvard Solzhenitsyn touched on a topic much closer to home. Even though he was second to none in his denunciation of totalitarian socialism, Solzhenitsyn said, "should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively." The whole address is worth reading, but here are some highlights.

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D'Souza goes on from there and quotes select paragraphs from the address. They are stunningly prescient and (you'll not be surprised to learn) were thoroughly ridiculed at the time. For illustration, I will post these three:

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On the rights of criminals: "Legal frames especially in the United States are broad enough to encourage not only individual freedom but also certain individual crimes. The culprit can go unpunished or obtain undeserved leniency with the support of legions of public defenders. When a government starts an earnest fight against terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorists' civil rights. There are many such cases."

On the abuses of freedom: "Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Soceity appears to have litle defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror...Such a tilt of freedom in the directionof evil has come about gradually but it was evidently born out of a humanistic concept according to which there is no evil inherent to human nature."

On freedom of the press: "The press, too, enjoys the widest freedom. But what use does it make of this freedom? The press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. One would then like to ask: by what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible? How many hasty, immature, superficial and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, and without any verification? Thus we see terrorists made into heroes, or secret matters pertaining to the national defense publicly revealed, or shameful intrusion into the privacy of people under the false slogan: everyone has the right to know everything."

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Remarkable. Here is D'Souza's close:

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[T]oday when you go to Asia you hear everywhere the slogan, "Modernization, yes; Westernization, no." Throughout the Muslim world there is a reaction--exploited of course by the Islamic radicals--against what is perceived as the shamelessness and decadence of Western values and culture. Even in the West there is deep ambivalence about what has happened to cherished notions of liberty, the rule of law, freedom of the press, and the pursuit of happiness.

We don't have to agree with Solzhenitsyn on everything to say that, far from being a reactionary, here was a man who was ahead of his time in diagnosing some of the serious ailments of the modern era. Not only was he right about the Gulag; in many respects this forlorn Russian hermit was also right about us.

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And, of course, wrong. Like most Europeans, he still doesn't quite know how to grasp the fact that America is of the so-called Western World but our nation is not a European nation. Not even close, although I understand why that's a controversial point to many. I personally believe most of those folks overestimate the import of not being a European nation just as they underestimate the import of being substantively influenced by the cultures of the world. To me, there are ways in which Argentina is substantively more of a European nation than America is but . . . big deal.

We Americans, African Americans included, owe a tremendous debt to Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He was in the belly of the beast and somehow figured out a way to alert the world. His Harvard address goes far, in my estimation, of explaining the black decline so lamented in African America since the Great Society legislation passed in the 1960s. Perhaps (perhaps!) we've been far too focused on past grievances (segregation, slavery, reparations, etc.), and not focused enough on the basic requirements and responsibilities of life in the here and now.

Wubete

Last night, completely by chance, I happened upon the beginning of a show on PBS titled "A Walk to Beautiful." I thought it looked interesting and the titled grabbed me so I decided to stay put and watch it until the end. I'm glad I did. The program discussed the problem of women having a problematic child birth, often ending in a still-birth, and developing an obstetric fistula. As a result, they become incontinent. Thus unable to control their discharge of urine or feces (or sometimes both), they (the program was an examination of the problem of poor women in Ethiopia) become outcasts because of the unsanitary problem that is with them always.

All the featured women captured me but one tiny youngster particular grabbed my heart -- Wubete:

I hate to see a female cry; it does something really weird to me. Wubete told her story, or the narrator did -- I can't really recall, but the upshot was she was on her third trip to the hospital and had not been cured of the problem. She cried and was resolute that she would not return to her village. She had no one there, she said.

I was now fully invested in the show and hooked. I was going to be supremely angry if they didn't help this girl even though I know that not everyone with an obstetric fistula can be completely "cured." The girl said she would beg on the streets before going back to that village.

"No, no, no, no, no," I was now thinking, "don't let the girl have to beg for a living."

They couldn't completely cure her, they did provide her with a tube of some sort that allowed her to control the time and place of her urinary discharge and that seemed to be good enough to Wubete so it was good enough for me. Eventually, she was placed in a home caring for children orphaned when their mothers died from AIDS. Wubete now had a place, a purpose, and some children to care for.

Well done, Dr. Catherine Hamlin. Well done. Associated with a Santa Clara, California-based organization, here is how

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Having a baby can be one of the most joyous events in a woman's life. Yet for the millions of young women in the developing world who develop severe injuries called fistulas from obstructed labor, it's the beginning of a living nightmare, one that can last the rest of their lives. Since 1974, when she and her late husband Reginald established the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in Ethiopia, Dr. Catherine Hamlin has given her all to curing fistulas and restoring life to these women, many of whom are just teenagers. In this interview, conducted at the fistula hospital by "A Walk to Beautiful" codirectors Mary Olive Smith and Amy Bucher, Hamlin talks about just how heartbreaking this tragedy can be for poor women—and how miraculous the cure.

Note: To learn more about the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital and the U.S.-based Fistula Foundation, see www.fistulafoundation.org.

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For an interesting additional bit of information on Dr. Hamlin, read this citation she received from her alma mater, the University of Sydney.