November 19th, 2008 By DAVID SCHRAUB, Assistant Editor
Joe’s post about al-Qaeda’s recent foray into racial commentary raises an easily-overlooked opportunity. For years, the United States was plagued in its Cold War battles with the USSR because our domestic racism was so easily wielded against our protestations of righteousness and morality. Why not learn from our own mistakes? Racial progress tends to smoke out the reactionaries, as al-Zawahiri as so conveniently demonstrated. I wonder how well his racist commentary will play in Pretoria, and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa?
We read or hear the names of a plethora of countries every day. But I have to confess that as closely as I try to follow world news and foreign affairs, I can’t always identify the locations of some countries.
In this era of globalization and of the projection of US power and influence, it seems sort of important for we Americans to be more aware of the world around us. After all, people in Yemen, Bahrain, and other places can’t avoid us or the influence of our culture.
Today, the Middle East Strategy at Harvard blog linked to several geography quiz sites. They can be a little discouraging, but educational and fun.
Geography-Maps-Games.com has all sorts of quizzes, testing both national and international geographic knowledge.
Rethinking Schools Online has a map of north Africa and the Middle East to which you have to drag the country names.
Of the emerging pantheon of articles about why other nations lack their own Obamas, this article from Germany is particularly eye-opening. According to Werner A. Perger of Die Zeit, Germany’s political parties discourage charismatic figures who tend to take the initiative. And why is that? It seems that the road Adolph Hitler and his Nazi party took that nation down is the chief cause of this aversion.
“No wonder that in Old Europe, Obama’s electoral win was registered not only with relief but respect. One is downright fascinated at the way this young senator came out of nowhere, saw and conquered; how he transformed mistrust into confidence through a rhetorical laying on of hands, got young people off of their sofas and in no time at all, made them into campaign volunteers. And how week after week on the Internet, he set new fundraising records by collecting small contributions. Obama is a true fisher of men. It all seemed to happen just the way it was supposed to: Everyone seemed to agree that we [Germans] need and want someone like him. But where is he? ”
“At least for those who are sensitive to the past, even if they agree with the correctness of what is being said, the historical reminder of the eternal cipher’s speech at the Sport Palace is hard to shake. [This was a speech delivered by the Nazi Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels at the Berlin Sportpalast on February 18, 1943, calling for “total war,” as the tide of World War II was turning against Germany, see photo, left . The author calls Goebbels the ‘eternal cipher’].
November 18th, 2008 By MICHAEL STICKINGS, Assistant Editor
Please check out Michael Kavanagh’s “Five Million Dead and Counting” at Slate, a reporter’s account of the ongoing civil war and atrocities in North Kivu, an eastern province of the Congo:
There are now more than 1 million displaced people scattered throughout the province. In the last 10 years of fighting, more than 5 million people have died in the Congolese conflict — mostly civilians who haven’t had access to enough food or health care because of the fighting. And let’s be clear: That’s 5 million and counting.
Essentially, the civil war in the Congo is an extension of the civil war and genocide in Rwanda, with — if I may simplify — Congolese Tutsi rebels, led by Laurent Nkunda and backed by Rwanda’s Tutsi-led government, in battle against the Congolese government and Rwandan Hutus in the Congo: “And the early returns look like displacement, starvation, rape, murder, and terror.” (According to the International Rescue Committee, “[c]onflict and humanitarian crisis in [the Congo] have taken the lives of 5.4 million people since 1988 and continue to leave as many as 45,000 dead every month.”)
There is a good deal of blame to go around, with brutality on both sides, but Kavanagh rightly points to the failure of the international community — the U.N., the E.U., the U.S., and the A.U. — to respond in any meaningful way to the crisis.
Make sure to read the whole thing. We all need to pay more attention to Africa — and to what’s going on in the Congo (it’s not just Darfur that’s suffering). And not just when Bono or Bob Geldof or John le Carré tells us to.
I must admit from the start that I am somewhat surprised that this story is not getting more play in the media. An Saudi oil tanker has been hijacked by Somali terrorists and is seemingly being held for ransom of its $ 100 million cargo.
One of the more rewarding things about showing Americans what the rest of the world thinks about our nation, is to introduce people to newspapers that they would never ordinarily be able to read. For example, how many Americans have ever read a newspaper from the civil-war stricken Portuguese-speaking country of Angola?
This article by Altino Matos of the Jornal de Angola has an interesting take on the election of Barack Obama. While it suggests that the ‘American Media Machine’ chose Obama to alter our global image - it doesn’t seem to think there’s anything wrong with that.
“The American communication system, one of the largest in existence, was quick to realize that it had to do something substantial and consistent to save the United States, considering the erosion of its image, which began primarily with wars in Afghanistan Iraq and the Middle East.
“The strategy for recovery had to come from the Democrats, but it couldn’t be based solely on words. It was essential to find a face that could incorporate these words and breathe life into a comprehensive program. In this way, the technocrats found in Barack Obama a man of the multitudes.”
Now that Barack Obama Junior is safely America’s president-to-be, his stepmother has decided to speak to the press about her courtship and relationship with Barack Obama Senior. According to this interview with Grace Keziah Obama from Kenya’s Standard newspaper, the father of our President elect was quite a lady killer and, ‘He liked fun and loved good things. Which is why I wasn’t surprised when I heard that he had married a second wife in the U.S.’ She is referring, of course, to President-elect Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham.
“She was only 16 and attending school. She had no idea that the young man courting her that Christmas night in 1956, would one day father the future president of the most powerful nation on earth. He asked to dance with me during a party and I couldn’t turn him down. He picked me out of several girls that were there. A few days later, I married him … He paid 14 cows as dowry for me, which were delivered in two batches. That was because he loved me so greatly.”
Despite the saber rattling of Russian President Medvedev the day after Senator Obama’s election as president, one shouldn’t get the impression that Russians haven’t been moved by the meaning and symbolism of his rise to prominence.
In fact, according to this editorial from Vedomosti, one of Russia’s leading business dailies, the reality of a President-elect Obama is a strong signal to Europeans and Russians that it’s time to get with the program - and confront their own prejudices.
“With Obama’s victory, the societies of other countries with large racial and ethnic minority populations, in particular France and Britain, will reconsider the possibility of electing non-White leaders.”
“The majority of ethnic Russian citizens in our country are against someone of a different nationality heading the government. Russia has yet to internalize the possibility of the emergence of a ‘non-Russian’ and non-Eastern Orthodox president. … However, beginning today, the question of skin color and the access of ethnic minorities to government control will recede into the background.”
It’s going to be a long and interesting night. WORLDMEETS.US will be covering the global reaction to the U.S. election every step of the way. We are keeping a particularly keen eye on Kenya and Indonesia.
Here are some initial headlines:
