To Ramp Up Fear of Russia in Africa, NYT Downplays Massive US Military Presence;The Same Media That Opposed Democracy in South Africa Now Warn Against It in Israel/Palestine; Coffee Prices Have Collapsed, Threatening the Livelihood of Millions;
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What’s more, in many of those nations, coffee exports are a major source of foreign exchange, so the skidding world price threatens imports of medicine, food, and other necessities—for everyone, not just the small farmers who live directly from coffee.
Reports of crisis are coming in from Uganda and Rwanda, from Colombia and Brazil. Back in March, 13 organizations in the World Coffee Producers Forum issued an emergency appeal, warning that the price drop is threatening to become a full-blown “humanitarian crisis.” The forum said:
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So far, the mainstream Western media are ignoring the crisis, aside from brief, dry accounts buried in the financial pages.
One ominous precedent was set during the 1989–94 coffee crisis, with consequences that were even more tragic than increased hunger and forced emigration. Back then, Rwanda earned some 80 percent of its income from coffee exports, according to David Waller’s 1993 book Rwanda: Which Way Now. The experts agree that the price collapse was a major contributor to the economic depression and political upheaval that culminated in the 1994 genocide.
To Ramp Up Fear of Russia in Africa, NYT Downplays Massive US Military Presence on Continent
of Russia’s Africa presence. AFRICOM map of Africa, published by The Intercept (12/1/18). Note that in the Pentagon’s doubletalk, the US does not have “permanent bases” in Africa—it has “enduring…
Filed under: Africa, New York Times, Russia, War & Militarism
"Pope Francis began a three-nation Africa tour last week, and for good reason. Africa has the fastest-growing Catholic population on the planet, which is projected to reach nearly 350 million by 2050.
As Francis reaches out to this growing population of the faithful, he would do well to look to the history of Catholicism in the region. He should do so not just to connect Catholic Africans to their past, but to underscore his own message of change. As a reformer who seeks to shake up the church, Francis can draw inspiration from Africans who played a key role in the reorientation of Catholicism in the 1950s and 1960s.
Francis’s visit comes at a moment when Catholicism is in the midst of a titanic shift, comparable in historical importance to its early spread in the Roman Empire or to the upheavals of the Protestant Reformation. The church’s strength in its longtime strongholds in Europe is evaporating. Priestly vocations are so rare there that bishops increasingly rely on clergy from Africa to lead their churches. In 2015, for example, there were over 1,000 francophone African priests working in France."
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"Yet, after the scientific team’s decision to publish, I continued receiving awkward demands to revise my own texts (I wrote the issue’s introduction and one article). Coupled with unusual delays, I began to suspect political obstacles—suspicions confirmed by the director’s resignation.
Contrary to some comments I received later, we were not naïve when we submitted our issue to this French journal. I have been working on French security and military policy in Africa since 2002 and was fully aware of how difficult it can be to talk critically about the French state in Africa, especially when the critiques are written in French by non-nationals. A long list of anecdotal experiences comes to mind. I also knew about the basic history of the journal, understood its affiliation with the Agence française de développement (AFD; the French development agency), and recognized how French military engagement in Mali had almost become taboo, too delicate politically to allow for contradictory or opposing views.
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I lived the whole thing as a very personal experience: initial (paranoid) fear of being the victim of state censorship, pressure and stress to respond to multiple demands, responsibility and guilt towards my colleagues and Malian friends, and so on, including having to find another venue (it will appear in the Canadian Journal of African Studies, December 2019 issue ). In the eyes of many, it gave our work credibility. Vocal supporters, however, emphasized the issue of academic freedom to the detriment of discussing the situation in or our work on Mali. For others, we were simply naïve or irrational. A few months later, a former Malian prime minister told me about his discussion with a high-ranking French official who called us “hysterical extremists.” I doubt that the key issue is academic freedom, but our little censorship story tells us much about the state of France-Africa relations, imperial legacies and the impact these have on the production of knowledge about Francophone Africa."
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— “I think what [it] comes down to is Russia exporting sovereignty. ... In a nutshell, we are going to sell you cheap weapons, do business deals with you, set up partnerships, all under the umbrella of helping you be strong and independent — and stand up to the West.“
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The Same Media That Opposed Democracy in South Africa Now Warn Against It in Israel/Palestine
…demise of Asians in South Africa under a one person, one vote system. When apartheid reigned in South Africa, Western media commentary frequently suggested that if a one person, one…
Filed under: Israel/Palestine, South Africa
