Still not my grand return, but I saw this on Aid Watch’s twitterfeed, and wanted to comment.
The Bumpers Amendment is in no way a support of international development. To refuse to allow aid money from USAID aka United States Agency for International Development to be used to fund agricultural development is counterproductive.
The goal of aid, especially aid directed towards development should be to make itself obsolete. Refusing to allow development aid money to develop is a waste of resources and in no way useful in the big picture.
OK. I’ll step down from the podium, now.
This isn’t my grand return to blogging. That will be made with my critique of IC, post Gulu meeting. It’s coming. I promise.
I just felt this needed to be shared in as many outlets as possible. It’s insanely dangerous for a band with the exposure to young people that the Foo Fighters possess to endorse such a message. Irresponsible and ignorant.
(via Mother Jones) & (via alanna_shaikh)
This is a great post by Bill Easterly, of White Man’s Burden fame, over at his blog, “Aid Watch”. It deals with the problems faced when attempting to lump poverty and human rights together, as Amnesty International has done in its 2009 report. It slows down the solutions to both.
Chris Blattman also touches on this here.
P.S. I should have a post or two more going up today before I leave for Uganda tomorrow and they become much more sporadic.
This week, it is time for young artists of Goma to EXPRESS themselves. They are drawers, painters, musicians, dancers, and they have decided, through their art, to spread the word about the war that is ravaging their country.
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Voices of the youth from Eastern Congo: “EXPRESS” — Condition: Critical
This is a very well-done video about the role music and the arts plays as a form of expression in eastern DRC.
It’s a bit dramatic, but still well-done.
It’s also quite relevant to the Jazz for Justice Project.
My favorite line is:
He explained that the deployment was made after the Police realised that some drivers do not respect traffic laws when they are out of the city centre.
Am I to assume that Kampala police think that motorists obey traffic laws within the city center? Have they been to the middle of Kampala? I wouldn’t be surprised if the answer to that question is no… You know, seeing as traffic laws aren’t properly enforced in the city center.
To say ”We recognise that HIV is a serious disease but it is not the only disease affecting Ugandans,” as chair of the house standing committee Rose Akol Okullo has is an absolute cop-out and unacceptable.
In addition to the large defense fund that the article discusses, earlier this year, Uganda spent 88.2 billion shillings on a new Gulfstream for President Museveni. Yet, somehow, Uganda wants to cut funding on ARV’s to address other health concerns. I guess it would be completely unreasonable to cut the flippant spending on things like new jets.
I mean, Museveni’s old jet wasn’t good enough for him? It sure was sufficient enough in 2003 to fly his daughter to Germany for the birth of her child — At an estimated cost to Uganda of £70,000, at the high end, and £20,000, at the low.
Museveni is a darling of the United States and the West, literally getting away with murder. The legislation on Uganda and the U.S. involvement is concentrated on ridding the world of the LRA, completely forgetting that the UPDF also abducted children. The UPDF also raped, looted and killed. And the UPDF is still responsible for the displacement camps that people still live in, today.
Yeah, that’s right, the IDP camps weren’t a choice. Either you moved in or were considered amongst the ranks of the LRA, and, according to the government, thus… guilty.
Of course, then people were corralled up for the LRA to come through with warnings of anyone left in the camps the next day are considered government sympathizers and, according to the LRA, thus… guilty.
But all of this is ignored by the governments of the Western world. Mugabe is the hot word because he’s sat atop a country for a ridiculous 29 years, but Museveni is still a-OK ruling a country and marginalizing a region for 23.
It’s time that we realize that one of the biggest threats facing Uganda is Yoweri Museveni. He’s not a darling. He’s a tyrant. It’s time to hold the Ugandan government accountable for their actions. This latest proposal to cut ARV funding is just the most recent in a long line of irresponsible moves when dealing with the lives of people, and it is unacceptable.
I know nothing of Gambia, and it’s very rare that I see anything written about it in international headlines, but after reading this story, I need to read deeper. What’s described in this article are massive human rights violations. President Jammeh is mad, and yet it’s rare to hear anything about he or the country he rules over.
This is all in relation to the tug-of-war over rights to Migingo Island, but the salient bits are that another East African country is calling Museveni’s regime its proper name (read: “hostile state”), and this:
The Kenyan MPs, calling President Museveni an “aggressor” and an “expansionist” asked their President, Mwai Kibaki “to stand up for Kenya” against the aggression.
Despite the accurate name-calling, I don’t like the implications of standing up against agression — especially when followed by:
Some MPs in the Kenyan parliament have proposed that Kenya deploys its army on the island.
I would say neither country needs this, but I think that’s pretty well understood.
I’m not offering much in the way of personal insight, today, but you really should give this post a close read.
Here’s the first paragraph for a preview:
In the past six months or so, there’s been a concerted push by the Congo activist community (it does exist, believe it or not) to focus on the exploitation of natural resources by the various armed groups and foreign governments operating in the region. Roughly modeled on the campaign to end the use of “conflict diamonds,” the idea is that it’s possible to end (or at least slow) the conflict in the Congo by cutting demand for minerals like tin, cassetterite, and coltan in the global market. Because many of the armed groups rely on access to the mines to earn money with which they buy weapons, the reasoning goes, getting consumers in the West to push electronics manufacturers to stop sourcing these minerals for their products will choke off the money flow to the armed groups, which presumably will convince the soldiers/rebels/bandits to go to UN demobilization camps, turn in their weapons, and return to life as peasant farmers. Et voila! Peace.
It’s nice to see that not everyone has to wrap every problem of the world into a nice, tidy, gift-wrapped box.
Pointing to Africa as the epicentre of the global food crisis, the United Nations Deputy Secretary-General today called for an African Green Revolution, urging the international community to double food yields across the continent through sustainable agriculture.
Because the article is pretty self-explanatory, I’ll leave my commenting to one line.
It’s about time.
