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Turn to the left, turn to the Right: Get your Marxists right right right

In Uncategorized on November 15, 2008 at 7:25 pm

Okay, people. I really don’t want to go here more than once. (And I haven’t, on the blog, but I have this conversation with people.) Let’s get the record straight: Fascists and Marxists…not the same. Both, in the eyes of some people like Republican Rep. (GA) Paul Broun, evil…but in a country with our level of college education, can’t we please distinguish between types of alleged evil?

Here’s what Broun said earlier this week:

    “That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did,” Broun said. “When he’s proposing to have a national security force that’s answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he’s showing me signs of being Marxist….We can’t be lulled into complacency[...]. You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I’m not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I’m saying is there is the potential.”

I’m not even going to touch the Hitler non/comparison. Except to say that Paul Broun apologized for calling Obama….a Marxist. But not for comparing him to Hitler.

    One day after the Athens Republican told a radio talk show that he regretted calling Obama a “Marxist,” a spokeswoman for the Athens congressman said, “We have not issued any official apology” for comparing Obama’s proposals to the tactics of Hitler and the Soviet Union.

That’s right. He did say he apologized “to anyone who took offense at that”–and the “that” was the use of the word Marxist, not the non-comparison comparison to the architect of the Holocaust. Broun’s office did issue this non-apology statement, which you can’t find anywhere on Broun’s own website—transparency in government?—but if you Google enough different things, you can find reprinted in full on the website of a Georgia NBC affiliate.

It was a beautiful week-long respite from partisan hackery we had, but it has, apparently, passed. Now the hacks are back to being partisans, and vice versa, and it’s starting to feel a lot more like my country again, where socialists, Marxists, fascists, and Democrats are all, apparently, the same. Give or take a moustache.


Readers, beware

In Uncategorized on November 13, 2008 at 10:48 am

Here’s a story from the NY Times about an elaborate blogosphere hoax the swept up the American media. There’s a guy who invented a name, a think tank, and a credit as a ’senior advisor’ to John McCain, who’s none of those things. The thing the media trekked around? That Sarah Palin didn’t know Africa was a continent and not a country. Here’s the story.

Palin refused to comment on the Africa matter when asked about it last week, saying she wouldn’t get into debates about things from unnamed sources. It seemed fair enough at the time, and now makes her look purty darn clever. Or right, at least.

Anyway, this comes to me on the heels of several corrections from my own readers, and I promise to be more careful.

Rwanda-Germany update

In Uncategorized on November 12, 2008 at 12:02 pm

I spoke with a friend in Kigali yesterday who told me that an estimated 7,500 people joined a march to protest Kabuye’s arrest. That’s quite a figure anywhere, but especially in a country that doesn’t use a march as a forum for expression as often as, say, America. I also hear from folks in Kigali that the German ambassador has been expelled.

Also, corrections from on-the-ground in Kigali: Kabuye is a former, not a current, member of Parliament, and she is chief of protocol for President Kagame, so she went to Germany to help arrange his visit. There’s more about her background in the links I posted.

Keep the news (and corrections) coming, readers!

Three new (ish) stories, from Africa and New York

In Uncategorized on November 9, 2008 at 4:09 pm

Some more of my Sierra Leone reporting has finally seen the light of day. Here’s a story about a woman who runs a local restaurant, and the childhood she remembers before Freetown fell into war:

For fufu in Freetown, this African diner’s the place

And here’s a story about a young woman who moved back to her native country to launch her fashion empire:

Sierra Leonean designer redefines African couture

And a New York story, about the guy who founded overheardinnewyork.com:

New Yorkers say the darndest things — and spies await them

(Yes, as a friend pointed out, I am on the eavesdropping beat.)


Change is everywhere…

In Uncategorized on November 6, 2008 at 1:33 pm

Now that I’m writing about Africa from New York, I thought it time to change things up a little. Which is supposed to include the design of the site, but wordpress is acting up, so as soon as it actually changes the template, this space will look different, too.

For those of you who have no interest in analysis about African news penned from my Brooklyn apartment, you can find old notes from the field here. But I hope you’ll stick around. There’s a lot to say about all things Africa, especially in eastern Congo, my last stomping ground before my return home. Stay tuned—and thanks, if you do.