danalwyn

Many people have toppled old nations. Many people have raised new ones. But few have done both without leaving a great trail of blood behind them. No eulogy is sufficient, but we say goodbye to Nelson Mandela knowing that he was one of the few people about whom we can safely say that he left the world a much better place than he found it, and knowing that we may never see his like again.

So how can I distract my mind from the horrific problems of my comfortable, pampered, upper-middle-class existence? By reading about the misfortunes of others, or course! And seeing how everything else seems to be blowing up around us this week, it's pretty easy to find something else to get all depressed over.

( And the news, it is depressing )

So the coup in Mali is having some birthing problems. The whole point of the coup (ostensibly) is that the civilian government wasn't doing enough to fight against the Taureg rebels in the north of the country. The soldiers who overthrew the government swore that they would do everything the government was refusing to do and would supply the soldiers properly so that they could take the fight for the enemy.

They were dismissive of foreign protests. They were outright hostile to suggestions that civilian rule should be restored. When people questioned their methods, they claimed that foreigners had no place in Mali. When other countries complained, they were basically told to get out and stay out. And, when the leaders of several local countries proposed to lay out their terms in a visit to the capital of Bamako, the visit was canceled when armed coup supporters somehow managed to "evade" airport security and storm out onto the pavement - essentially threatening to assassinate several heads of state.

And the result of the coup? ECOWAS has embargoed the country, which is landlocked and depends on imports for almost anything. The Tuareg rebels first seized the city of Kidal, and now have seized the major city of Timbuktu.

And now, after having overthrown his government, deliberately threatened foreign heads of state, and demanded foreigners butt out, what is the new leader of Mali's strategy to defeat the Tuareg?

As the news was coming through, coup leader Capt Amadou Sanogo asked for foreign help to tackle the rebels.

Something tells me that this guy is not going to go down in history as one of the world's most brilliant leaders. Kicking people out and then begging them for help has never been a winning strategy.

From the BBC:

Kenya's military spokesman has said large groups of donkeys in Somalia will be considered "al-Shabab activity" following reports the militants are using the animals to transport weapons.

I'm normally against cruelty to animals, but the idea of some uniformed Kenyan officer standing on a platform in front of a "Global War On Donkeys" poster, with a map of Somalia with little cut-out donkeys velcroed onto it, waving a swagger stick at a television monitor showing gun camera footage of airplanes going after donkey herds just strikes me as inately hilarious.

Yes, there will be very real consequences for this. It's still hilarious.

It's long been assumed that Americans had a strong lead on really weird reality television. I mean, think about it, we had shows where people basically got married because the producers decided to do so.

Well, it turns out we may be beat. Zambia also has a show where 18 women compete in order to win the prize of $9000 for their marriage. But the show has a twist, all the contestants are prostitutes recruited from the streets of Zambia. Apparently they get voted off by the viewers, one by one, until the last one gets the grand marital prize.

Now, I can see how this show claims to do some good. The losers get hefty consolation prizes, and everyone apparently gets personal counseling and vocational skill training. In theory all of them will be offered full-time jobs, and the show seems to indicate that their goal is to show that prostitution is not a glamorous business in Zambia.

But as Wronging Rights points out, there's something that just seems really wrong about this show (already in its third season). And I can't help but think that if you really wanted to help prostitutes out there had to be a better way then turn them into a spectacle on TV and making them engage in cooking and housekeeping competitions on a show with the cringe-inducing title Ready for Marriage. Isn't there some other way you can show how bad prostitution is in Zambia, and how the people who are trapped in that field are real people who are willing to fight their way out if just given the chance, without forcing them to go through housecleaning competitions? Why not show them learning skills, getting jobs, building careers, and starting businesses instead?

It seems that even in Zambia, the only way television will let prostitutes leave their job is through the altar or the grave.

Since this journal normally looks more like a news and politics blog then anything else, here are some updates from the last month for things I'm watching that could go boom just to prove that if I've been replaced by a doppelganger, he's at least consistent.

( The World Keeps Going Faster )

Coup count for 2010: +2

Well, we haven't had one since February, so I thought we might be safe, but there now appears to be a serious coup in progress in Madagascar. This should hardly be unexpected, since Madagascar has been in the throes of a political and economic mess for some time, and the referendum probably didn't help. Nobody knows whether the coup is successful or not; the military appears to have some disagreement as to whose side they're on. Possibly this will just blow over, which would make everyone happy (except for possibly the people in Madagascar, and Greenpeace, but really, who cares about them? We're only in this for the lemurs).

Well, we almost got through the year with only one. Maybe 2011 will go more smoothly.

I don't blog about sports. I don't talk about sports, partially because I'm generally not interested in them. And when you're not interested in sports and you live in a place where people seem to be obsessed with them, it becomes a mark of your identity to not discuss them.

That is why I feel somewhat pained to admit that, for the first time since I was about ten and had to be excited in the World Series because everyone else was, I'm excited about a sporting event. Not because of the teams, because I don't know who's good and who's bad, or even who's playing. I'm excited about the World Cup because of the host.

( Ramblings under cut )

Coup count for 2010: +1

Since it overthrew a scummy regime, and since it happened in inaccessible Niger, don't expect anything serious anytime soon.

Remember Moussa Dadis Camara? He managed to get himself in trouble lately by, oh, being responsible for the rape and/or murder of hundreds of people, which is the sort of thing that slips out of the media's eye.

Of course, that's not the way he tells it.

( Camara's Day in Court )

ETA: Where did all my links go?