![great perspective!
theatlantic:
The Soft Bigotry of ‘Kony 2012’
The much-circulated campaign subtly reinforces an idea that has been one of Africa’s biggest disasters: that well-meaning Westerners need to come in and fix it. Africans, in this telling, are helpless victims, and Westerners are the heroes. It’s part of a long tradition of Western advocacy that has, for centuries, adopted some form of white man’s burden, treating African people as cared for only to the extent that Westerners care, their problems solvable only to the extent that Westerners solve them, and surely damned unless we can save them. First it was with missionaries, then “civilizing” missions, and finally the ultimate end of white paternalism, which was placing Africans under the direct Western control of imperialism. And while imperialism may have collapsed 50 years ago, that mentality persists, because it is rewarding and ennobling to feel needed and to believe you are doing something good.
“African solutions for African problems” isn’t just a State Department slogan, and it isn’t about promoting African leadership, although that’s certainly important. Africans are already leaders. There are many reasons for Africa’s amazing rise over the last ten years, but one of the biggest has been African leadership. It’s not a coincidence that the 200 years of Western leadership in Africa were some of the continent’s worst. Africans have proven time and again that they’re better at fixing African problems. While helping is always good, and it’s great that people care, what Kony 2012 ignores is that Africans are not “invisible” and the last thing they need is for a bunch of Westerners to parachute in and take over (again). We sometimes mistake our position at the top of the global food chain as evidence that we’re more capable, that our power will extend into complicated and far-away societies, that we’ll be better at fixing their problems than they are. This assumption, both well-meaning and self-glorifying, has led us into disaster after disaster after disaster.
Read more. [Image: Invisible Children]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0mt6diu7b1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
great perspective!
The Soft Bigotry of ‘Kony 2012’
The much-circulated campaign subtly reinforces an idea that has been one of Africa’s biggest disasters: that well-meaning Westerners need to come in and fix it. Africans, in this telling, are helpless victims, and Westerners are the heroes. It’s part of a long tradition of Western advocacy that has, for centuries, adopted some form of white man’s burden, treating African people as cared for only to the extent that Westerners care, their problems solvable only to the extent that Westerners solve them, and surely damned unless we can save them. First it was with missionaries, then “civilizing” missions, and finally the ultimate end of white paternalism, which was placing Africans under the direct Western control of imperialism. And while imperialism may have collapsed 50 years ago, that mentality persists, because it is rewarding and ennobling to feel needed and to believe you are doing something good.
“African solutions for African problems” isn’t just a State Department slogan, and it isn’t about promoting African leadership, although that’s certainly important. Africans are already leaders. There are many reasons for Africa’s amazing rise over the last ten years, but one of the biggest has been African leadership. It’s not a coincidence that the 200 years of Western leadership in Africa were some of the continent’s worst. Africans have proven time and again that they’re better at fixing African problems. While helping is always good, and it’s great that people care, what Kony 2012 ignores is that Africans are not “invisible” and the last thing they need is for a bunch of Westerners to parachute in and take over (again). We sometimes mistake our position at the top of the global food chain as evidence that we’re more capable, that our power will extend into complicated and far-away societies, that we’ll be better at fixing their problems than they are. This assumption, both well-meaning and self-glorifying, has led us into disaster after disaster after disaster.
Read more. [Image: Invisible Children]
Ignoring Court, Israeli Officials Bulldoze Palestinian Homes -
America’s unflinching support of Israel is unfortunate on so many levels.
And more acts of aggression by the Israeli government. Just another example how governments everywhere don’t care about civil liberties and human rights.
It was a dark and stormy night in the village of Tha’lah. Israeli “civil administration” officials arrive at the hut of a local shepherd, ordering the entire family to vacate their house within one minute.
But wait, the owner has official documentation from the Israeli High Court of Justice, an interim order requiring the civil administration to halt the demolition. The officer from the decidedly uncivil Administration tore up the court order, and slapped the home’s owner across the face. Within moments, the house was demolished, the water cisterns sealed. Even the sheep pen was bulldozed, several sheep dying in the process.
It is just one of several reports coming out of a complaint filed by Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR) about the Civil Administration. Indeed, had the RHR not intervened with the State Prosecutor’s Office, they say the administration was planning to bulldoze the entire village, despite the court order.
With the destruction of Tha’lah stopped, at least for today, RHR warns that the Civil Administration is planning to move against several energy producing windmills and solar panels set up by Community, Energy and Technology in the Middle East. The facilities provide energy for some 1,500 Palestinians in the area, and Israel is imposing a “work stoppage order” aimed at ending all energy production in the area. The German government, which financed the windmills, has been pressing Israel to reverse the order. So far it doesn’t appear to be making much progress.
Martin says this is how I chew.
Photo: Sakchai Lalit / Associated Press (via SFGate: Day in Pictures)
Would love to have more journalists like this.
“We go to remote war zones to report what is happening. The public have a right to know what our government, and our armed forces, are doing in our name. Our mission is to speak the truth to power. We send home that first rough draft of history. We can and do make a difference in exposing the horrors of war and especially the atrocities that befall civilians.” - Marie Colvin
You get the real impression that Colvin’s influence in death could go far beyond her influence in life. There’s probably a 18-year-old journalism student who’s reading this quote somewhere, saying to themselves, “I can do this.”
(via shortformblog)
Beautiful, would love to live here. Preferably in Zimbabwe.
(via architectureblog)
Its me! (seal/ceal/nicknamesfromchildhood)
Harp seal pup (Phoca groenlandicus) St Lawrence Gulf, Canada.
Picture: DOUG ALLAN/NPL/REX (via Freeze Frame: Doug Allan’s images of wildlife in some of the world’s coldest places - Telegraph)
For Marty and I’s Zambezi side home in t-minus 20 years…
(via 1kindesign)
(via architectureblog)
Once Dan Carlin said on one of his podcasts something like we are limited by the institutions and methods of governing that exsist today. The forms of government that exist today haven’t existed forever, and won’t last forever. Maybe now is the time to start being inventive again.
by Lew Rockwell
The modern institution of the presidency is the primary political evil Americans face, and the cause of nearly all our woes. It squanders the national wealth and starts unjust wars against foreign peoples that have never done us any harm. It wrecks our families, tramples on our rights, invades our communities, and spies on our bank accounts. It skews the culture toward decadence and trash. It tells lie after lie. Teachers used to tell school kids that anyone can be president. This is like saying anyone can go to Hell. It’s not an inspiration; it’s a threat.
The presidency – by which I mean the executive State – is the sum total of American tyranny. The other branches of government, including the presidentially appointed Supreme Court, are mere adjuncts. The presidency insists on complete devotion and humble submission to its dictates, even while it steals the products of our labor and drives us into economic ruin. It centralizes all power unto itself, and crowds out all competing centers of power in society, including the church, the family, business, charity, and the community. I’ll go further. The US presidency is the world’s leading evil. It is the chief mischief-maker in every part of the globe, the leading wrecker of nations, the usurer behind Third-World debt, the bailer-out of corrupt governments, the hand in many dictatorial gloves, the sponsor and sustainer of the New World Order, of wars, interstate and civil, of famine and disease. To see the evils caused by the presidency, look no further than Iraq or Serbia, where the lives of innocents were snuffed out in pointless wars, where bombing was designed to destroy civilian infrastructure and cause disease, and where women, children, and the aged have been denied essential food and medicine because of a cruel embargo. Look at the human toll taken by the presidency, from Dresden and Hiroshima to Waco and Ruby Ridge, and you see a prime practitioner of murder by government.
Today, the president is called the leader of the world’s only superpower, the “world’s indispensable nation,” which is reason enough to have him deposed. A world with any superpower at all is a world where no freedoms are safe. But by invoking this title, the presidency attempts to keep our attention focused on foreign affairs. It is a diversionary tactic designed to keep us from noticing the oppressive rule it imposes right here in the United States.
As the presidency assumes ever more power unto itself, it becomes less and less accountable and more and more tyrannical. These days, when we say the federal government, what we really mean is the presidency. When we say, national priorities, we really mean what the presidency wants. When we say national culture, we mean what the presidency funds and imposes.
The presidency is presumed to be the embodiment of Rousseau’s general will, with far more power than any monarch or head of state in pre-modern societies. The US presidency is the apex of the world’s biggest and most powerful government and of the most expansive empire in world history. As such, the presidency represents the opposite of freedom. It is what stands between us and our goal of restoring our ancient rights.
And let me be clear: I’m not talking about any particular inhabitant of the White House. I’m talking about the institution itself, and the millions of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats who are its acolytes. Look through the US government manual, which breaks down the federal establishment into its three branches. What you actually see is the presidential trunk, its Supreme Court stick, and its Congressional twig. Practically everything we think of as federal – save the Library of Congress – operates under the aegis of the executive.
This is why the governing elites – and especially the foreign policy elites – are so intent on maintaining public respect for the office, and why they seek to give it the aura of holiness. For example, after Watergate, they briefly panicked and worried that they had gone too far. They might have discredited the democratic autocracy. And to some extent they did. But the elites were not stupid; they were careful to insist that the Watergate controversy was not about the presidency as such, but only about Nixon the man. That’s why it became necessary to separate the two. How? By keeping the focus on Nixon, making a devil out of him, and reveling in the details of his personal life, his difficulties with his mother, his supposed pathologies, etc.
Of course, this didn’t entirely work. Americans took from Watergate the lesson that presidents will lie to you. This should be the first lesson of any civics course, of course, and the first rule of thumb in understanding the affairs of government. But notice that after Nixon died, he too was elevated to godlike status. None other than Bill Clinton served as high priest of the cult of president-worship on that occasion. He did everything but sacrifice a white bull at the temple of the White House.
The presidency recovered most of its sacramental character during the Reagan years. How wonderful, for the sake of our liberties, that Clinton has revived the great American tradition of scorning tyrants. In some ways, he is the best president a freedom lover can hope for. Of course, someday, Clinton too will ascend to the clouds, and enter the pantheon of the great leaders of the free world.
The libraries are filled with shelf after shelf of treatises on the American presidency. Save yourself some time, and don’t bother with them. Virtually all tell the same hagiographic story. Whether written by liberals or conservatives, they serve up the identical Whiggish pap: the history of the presidency is the story of a great and glorious institution. It was opposed early on, and viciously so, by the anti-federalists, and later, even more viciously, by Southern Confederates. But it has been heroically championed by every respectable person since the beginning of the republic.
The office of the presidency, the conventional wisdom continues, has changed not at all in substance, but has grown in stature, responsibility, and importance, to fulfill its unique mission on earth. As the duties of the office have grown, so has the greatness of the men who inhabit it. Each stands on the shoulders of his forerunners, and, inspired by their vision and decisiveness, goes on to make his own contribution to the ever-expanding magisterium of presidential laws, executive orders, and national security findings.
When there is a low ebb in the accumulation of power, it is seen as the fault of the individual and not the office. Thus the so-called postage-stamp presidents between Lincoln and Wilson are to be faulted for not following the glorious example set by Abe. They had a vast reservoir of power, but were mysteriously reluctant to use it. Fortunately that situation was resolved, by Wilson especially, and we moved onward and upward into the light of the present day. And every one of these books ends with the same conclusion: the US presidency has served us well.
Ready or not, here i come!
Picture: Nenad Druzic/Solent News & Photo Agency
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/02/veterans-for-ron-paul-rally-at-white-house/
