Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
Podcast Episode 107 For hundreds of years, Europeans explored, plundered, and colonized Africa. But decolonization offered the opportunity for Africans to reclaim not only their sovereignty but their right to self-determination. To say they have squandered it would be an understatement. But only that explains Pope Francis traveling to the Democratic Republic of Congo and… Listen.
Kenya held another free and fair presidential election last week. But, with Monday’s announcement of the official results, the country is threatening to descend into violence. That, of course, would be déjà vu all over again. Because the previous two elections, in 2012 and 2017, played out that way too. I commented on the most… Read more.
Natural disasters, like droughts and pandemics, are commonplace in Africa. As I write this, for example, drought is decimating East and Southern Africa while a new Ebola outbreak is raging across the Democratic Republic of Congo and threatening to spread beyond. Hell, you’d be forgiven for thinking that God is continually unleashing plagues to get… Read more.
You might notice that this blog does not feature any revenue-generating ads. That’s because, when I launched it 12 years ago, I wanted to make plain my primary interest in contributing to informed public debate on an eclectic array of topics. This has distinguished it over the years from the blogs of far too many… Read more.
In a meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council on Wednesday, a special commission to South Sudan described the state of the country in the starkest terms possible. Atrocities like murder and gang rape are happening on an ‘epic’ scale, reported the commission’s chief, who warned that the world’s youngest country now ‘stands on the… Read more.
For important context on this grazing tragedy, here is an excerpt from “South Sudan Descending into the Heart of Darkness,” December 30, 2013. _________________ I joined the chorus of those heralding the birth of South Sudan as a new nation in Africa – fathered not by colonial masters but by Africans themselves. But I felt constrained to… Read more.
More than 1 million people in South Sudan have fled their homes at a crucial time of the year: planting season. Famine, aid officials say, could be the result, and the U.N.’s top official for human rights said Wednesday she is appalled by the apparent lack of concern by the country’s two warring leaders that… Read more.
Last summer I joined the chorus of those heralding the birth of South Sudan as a new nation in Africa – fathered not by colonial masters but by Africans themselves. But I felt constrained to sound this cautionary note in a commentary presaging its independence day: What looms, however, may cause the southerners’ Independence Day, which… Read more.
I joined the chorus of those heralding the birth of South Sudan as a new nation in Africa – fathered not by colonial masters but by Africans themselves. But I felt constrained to sound this cautionary note: What looms, however, may cause the southerners’ Independence Day, which they will mark on July 9, to turn… Read more.
