By Fr Lazaro Bustince Sola, Missionaries of Africa,*
Introduction
One of the most intriguing questions we face today both in Church and State Institutions as well as in society in general is the interaction between two fundamental and simultaneous movements: the movement towards respectful dialogue and just relationships on one hand, and the movement towards fundamentalism on the other.
On one hand we observe the commitment and struggle of many social groups to promote a more respectful dialogue among cultures, ethnic groups and faiths, a more just society. Proof of this commitment are events like: the present appraisals in many Arab countries, solidarity with victims of natural disasters like in Japan, interfaith commissions to work together for a more human and peaceful society, human rights groups, social forum, UN efforts to foster a greater solidarity among the human family, the Churches commitment to dialogue, the second Synod for Africa to promote reconciliation, justice and peace, and the increasing number of Religious Societies which take as a priority the commitment to justice, peace and dialogue.
At the same time, there is a clear movement towards greater fundamentalism! Examples of this could be: political dictatorships and presidents for life, abuse and control of resources by individuals and multinationals, mafias for women and children exploitation, drugs and arms trafficking, absolute powers of some cultural and religious leaders, middle east conflicts, suicidal bombers, appointments of many religious leaders of “strict mentality movements”, impositions of some religious leaders-bishops upon their congregations, covering up injustices, increasing demand of “blind obedience” in many religious congregations and increasing emphasis on strict observance of external laws and practices to feel secure and orthodox.!
In this article, I want to focus on religious fundamentalism!
“There can be no peace in society without peace among religions “! (Hans Kung)
By religious fundamentalism, I refer to: the mind set and practice of APPLYING VERY STRICTLY the rules and teaching of any religion.
This can take place in cultural, political and economic systems. Basically, fundamentalism leads to RIGID thinking and attitudes resulting in COMPULSIVE or driven behaviour.
MORALISM referring to having or showing very FIXED ideas about what is right/wrong leading often to judge/condemn human behaviour.
Highlighted is the importance of: genuine dialogue and compassionate relationships, the movement towards fundamentalism-moralism, some roots and consequences of this fundamentalism-moralism among religious.
1. GENUINE DIALOUGE AND COMPASSIONATE RELATIONSHIPS
We notice in today’s world a strong movement towards: freedom, democracy, respect for human dignity and human rights, dialogue and social justice. Humanity is crying for greater solidarity, justice, authentic peace and respect for the other. The cry for responsible leaders who care for the common good and empower their followers other than dominate and dictate without any form of dialogue or consultation is becoming very loud in all spheres of life. Examples of the recent political uprisings in Egypt, Libya among others are big lessons. In Uganda, the recent Elections have shown quite clearly the craving for change and for a more just society and responsible leaders of integrity. In the Church, especially after the second African Synod, there is as well a great awareness and commitment to promote justice and dialogue among ourselves and in society. In many religious congregations, as in our own Missionaries of Africa Society, there is certainly a renewed commitment, clearly expressed in our four recent Chapters, to promote more just and respectful relationships in all our services. This commitment though is clearer in the documents than in our daily attitudes and behaviour.
Our daily witness is not quite as convincing, particularly in the quality of our relationships, in being Mission centred and in our style of leadership. There is a big gap between words, what we preach and actions. We often remain at the level of “political correctness” and of “secular success”, rather than becoming prophetic witnesses.! I find that Pedro Arrupe’s life and leadership is one of the most inspiring prophetic witnesses for religious leaders today. By the end of Vat.II, he was already convinced that: True faith must bear fruits of compassionate justice in dialogue with each culture of today’s world! We humans are so attracted by power and glory that frequently we forget the “Ways of the Kingdom”, and the Way of Jesus which is the way of washing of the feet and service to all that they may have LIFE!
MOVEMENT TOWARDS FUNDAMENTALISM-MORALISM
In today’s world, injustices, corruption, decadency the moral fabric, abject poverty and abuse of power (political –religious) seem to be on the increase and this leads to frustration, social civil unrest, loss of lives and loss of credibility.
The constant social, political and religious “protests” of these days are symptoms of a deeper evil at work. Personal and structural dictatorships seem to have the upper hand in controlling resources, abusing human dignity and rights and other violations of human freedom which take place with impunity.
These fundamentalists’ attitudes and behaviour are particularly evident and regrettable in religious movements, in the Church and in religious societies/orders manifested in the following ways:
• Abuse of minors, both by civil and by some religious leaders.
• Impositions of some religious leaders and even some bishops on their congregations.
• Vatican decisions of imposing certain “strict” renewal movements on some churches, like Japan.
• The focus on “ritual celebrations” forgetting compassionate behaviour and respectful dialogue. Jesus was clear that he wants mercy and not just sacrifices! Math. 9,13
• Increasing demand of “blind obedience” in many religious circles rather than personal and community discernment to search together for God’s Will.
• Abuse of power and money-power in office;
• Gender violence, jealousy and lack of genuine dialogue and cooperate discernment in religious congregations;.
• Unfair suspension and dismissal of staff in religious institutions based on personal issues, ethnic bonds and without any previous dialogue;
• Manipulating appointments of religious members for “bad” reasons;
• Focussing more and more on “survival issues” rather than on Mission;
• Controlling attitude in leadership style rather than “team leadership” in genuine dialogue;
• Covering up injustices and abuses rather than truth telling, compassionate justice coupled with forgiveness and reconciliation
• Encouraging “formalism and uniformity”, for safety’s sake, rather than personal responsibility, quality relationships and creativity.
1. SOME ROOTS OF THIS FUNDAMENTALISM-MORALISM AMONG RELIGIOUS
Lack of focus on the Lord’s Mission for us today
Many religious congregations are becoming quite “introvert” because of the ageing of their members rather than focussing on Christ’s Mission for us in today’s world. Some religious leaders are turning to “strict observance of the rules”, partly out of fear, rather than remaining Mission centred and prophetic. Being too preoccupied with our own survival, we loose the focus on Christ’s Mission for us today and become irrelevant to people’s lives and needs. Our faith often bears little impact on everyday’s life and on the culture of today. Are we deeply rooted in the Vine!?
Disconnected from people and from reality.
The decreasing number in many religious societies is also caused by our lack of credibility. We live often in our own “ivory towers and comforts”, disconnected from the real life and the real needs of the people. We engage in some charitable works but rarely dare to go to the root of the injustices and find ways to overcome them. Since religious are hardly affected by the injustices, pains, sufferings and concerns of so many people, they fail to read the signs of the time. In this situation many religious “over-spiritualize” everything and speak-preach a language foreign and irrelevant to the people. Some religious groups could balance better their religious practices by being closer to the poor and needy. True intimacy with the Lord will bear always abundant fruits of loving the people. (cf. Jn.15:15)!
Crisis of leadership.
We are facing in many religious communities a serious deficit of leadership. We have no charismatic leaders. We lack leaders of sufficient human and spiritual maturity, able to be at ease and dialogue respectfully with others. Thus, many religious leaders resort to abuse of power and to “labelling” of members, exonerating themselves from caring for them and causing serious harm to many. “They lord it over them”! (Mt.20:25). Many religious leaders also fall into the “celebrity culture” of secular leadership rather than remaining in the attitude of service. Many religious leaders seem to function in “political correctness”, be out of fear, be out of personal expectations for higher office! Some are in positions of authority because “we have nobody else”!
Among the temptations for religious leaders and financial administrators today, power for control (prestige, possessions) seems certainly the most damaging of all. The Gospel invites us precisely to use authority for service. Mt. 20,20-28. Some people who become leaders have never known parental love. They had authoritarian fathers, mothers or guardians who wanted to control everything, who did not understand or affirm them. These conflicts with parents often create a sense of insecurity and an ambivalent attitude in regard to authority. When children have had a bad experience with authority, they will have difficulty taking and exercising responsible leadership when they become adults. They have never had good models!
Sometimes authority becomes mere power. The leader then starts organizing everything and everyone, without any care and respect for the persons dignity. They often try to control others and stifle their freedom. Such a leader would easily start finding pleasure in having power and in all the privileges that are attached to a function. They tend not to listen, particularly to those whom they consider to be critical and disturbing.
The need for power can often hide and compensate for a lack of inner freedom and strength! Often leaders cling and hide behind the role instead of becoming good shepherds who serve others and the common good. In the Gospel of John Chapter 10, Jesus describes the characteristics of a good shepherd. Good shepherds know their sheep by name. Knowing someone by name implies knowing his or her gifts, strength, weaknesses, inner wounds as well as vocation and mission in life. This presupposes listening to each one attentively and constructively without judgemental attitudes.
Lack of ongoing renewal
Some religious leaders lack deep and ongoing renewal and sufficient human-spiritual maturity, becoming often “administrators and functionaries”. Being unaware of how they operate and why, they continue to act from their “shadows”, projecting on others the compulsive needs they have within themselves. The “ora et labora” (pray and work) of St. Benedict is often not balanced, leading many religious leaders to one sided views, “re-cycled preaching” and routine practices. There seems to be often a lack of understanding and integration between personal freedom-initiative and community responsibility, due to insufficient human-spiritual integration.
How many of us know and are committed to implement the recommendations of the second African Synod and the Catholic Social Teaching? How many are in touch with the signs of the time ?
2. SOME CONSEQUENCES OF THIS FUNDAMENTALISM-MORALISM AMONG RELIGIOUS
Unless “we live more justly, love more tenderly and walk more humbly with our God” (Micha 6,8) with genuine respect for each other and well focussed on Christ’s Mission for us today, our religious congregations will become more and more irrelevant in the lives of the people, seeking “false” securities in ritualistic celebrations and “strict observances” of external regulations, thus becoming counter-witnesses!
The Church and religious are fast loosing credibility in many countries because of these injustices, abuse of power, hiding the truth and irrelevant living. Clinging to traditions and rituals has failed to bring renewal and vitality. The tendency to find “refuge” in external practices, uniformity and strict observance of blind obedience is one of the most serious temptations for today’s Church and religious. Equally damaging is the lack of consequence and single minded commitment to live the priorities of the Mission as defined in the Gospels, in the Synods of the Church and our own Chapters. This has serious repercussions not only on the number of vocations but especially on the lack of credible and life giving witness. “They do not practice what they preach”! Mt. 15,8. We become then “conformists”, “secularised” and irrelevant rather than prophetic and life giving witnesses. Our faith to be transformative, needs to be “hammered on the anvil of life”, and pruned in deep intimacy with the Lord and care for the neighbour.
CONCLUSION
“This people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. In vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines human precepts. You disregard God’s commandments and cling to human traditions”. Mk. 7, 6-8
“I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees…” Mth.5,20
“The Lord loves justice and right and fills the earth with goodness”. Ps.33,3
How we deal with fundamentalism- moralism will determine our spiritual and moral health as individuals, our vitality and relevance as religious societies/orders, and our credibility as leaders of the world which cries for true freedom and integrity. The events in the world today do not afford us the luxury of stagnation in the status quo. The bells of history are definitely tolling for fundamentalism and calling for authentic dialogue and more just-compassionate relationships. I am convinced that in less than ten years, a change of mentality will be a reality in the style of leadership.! Lent may be a good opportunity to review our way of “praying, fasting and helping others”! Perhaps this can be a time of awakening and turning to God and our neighbour in greater truth, compassionate justice, genuine dialogue and convincing witness both as individual leaders and as religious communities.
For this we pray and labour!
*By Fr Lazaro Bustince Sola Missionaries of Africa, Lourdel House, Kampala.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
The Voice of Nature
By Dominic Nkoyoyo*
The magnificent and brilliant colours of the breath-taking splendour of dawn, the gorgeous and ineffable beauty of twilight, the twinkling stars in the deep blue of the night sky, the silent music of the flowing waters, the vastness of the seas and the immensity of space all speak to us in a voice known to the heart alone! Nature is speaking and its voice is medicine for the soul!
Unfortunately, it is as if we have totally closed and stuffed our ears with cotton! In today’s world, we no longer listen to the messages of wisdom of the soothing voice of nature! Even our own make up, our human nature, is speaking and sometimes very loudly, but we are not paying any attention!
From around the age of 18 to 28, nature adorns a woman with exceptional beauty and allure. This has been so down the centuries and it is very unlikely that it is going to change tomorrow! In the programme of nature, this is the best time for a woman to get a life companion, a husband. And the best time for child bearing and rearing. In general beyond this time child bearing gets more difficult and complicated and chances of begetting an abnormal child are high. Nature is speaking! Are we listening?
Apparently most of us are not listening! In today’s world, many women want to prolong their youth into their late thirties and early forties on the ground that they want to perfect their careers, move around the world and enjoy life before they get old. Unfortunately the privileges nature gives and bestows upon a woman in her twenties do not move along with them in their late thirties! So by the time they think of begetting children, it is rather too late!
To marry and to get married and bring up children is one of the basic desires nature has engraved upon the fibres of our being! But in today’s world we seem to be paying very little attention to this! Apparently many people do not think that marriage and having a family and children is important in their lives. But many regret as they get older!
We need to know that the things which our very nature dictates are basic! And we ignore them at our own risk! Love of money, academic achievements and an endless search for self amusement have made many forget the basic needs of human life. The article «Are Kenyan Women Wearing Trousers?» which appeared in the Kenyan news paper Daily Nation of February 25, 2011, is a reminder that we should go back to the basics. It discusses today’s Kenyan woman also called «This New Woman!» And in my opinion, what is said of this new Kenyan woman is true of most career and single women all over the world.
This new woman, is described as the career woman, well educated, economically independent and generally un married! At one point the moderator of the discussion poses a very important and fundamental question : «Is this new woman happy?» The panel of experts discussing this new woman includes men and women. The answer Ann Gitao gives to this question is deep and astounding. She hits the nail on the head!
She thus says, «…Your genetic make up, your natural instinct is to be a mother, to be a wife, to be all those things and you can never scrap that. So I think you are happy as a lady if you have that and you are feeling fulfilled. Hopefully, you end up with a good marriage and a good family and on top of that you are living comfortably and living your other dream, your career growth…So I would describe a happy woman as one who has fulfilled her natural instincts and continues to meet them and one who also meets her worldly needs and desires.»
Nature has also engraved upon the heart of a man, the desire to take care of his wife, to provide for her and to protect her. But today many people call this outdated! That it was true only of the primitive and stone age man, the hunter! For they claim that since today’s new woman is economically independent and sometimes earns much more than her husband, she can take care of herself, provide for herself and protect herself! But this wrong thinking has had devastating consequences on the psychological identity of men. Many men no longer know clearly who they are in relation to women! Some even shy away from women because their inner self, their identity and confidence as men has been eroded and destroyed.
Naturally any man whether of yesterday, today or tomorrow will always find joy and fulfillment in providing for his wife and protecting her. I have no problem with a woman being economically independent and I encourage it. But her economic independence does not change the natural instincts of a man! So her economic independence should be harmonized with the natural instincts of her man. Dr. Njoki Fernandez one of the experts and panellists discussing «The New Kenyan Woman» understood this very well.
In the discussion she shares her own experience thus: «I got married when I was very young, at 21, and in medical school. So for a long time, my husband was provider, care giver and whatever and it was a role he enjoyed and did very well. But fortunately or unfortunately, you complete medical school, get employed and soon money starts to come in and this girl starts showing signs of independence. The man freaked out. Soon there were all these fights about ‘now you think you have money you can do your own thing.’ I think I also took it a bit too far, telling him, ‘don’t fuel my car, I can do it myself.’ When I realised what was happening to us, I withdrew a bit and I allowed him to be the ‘one.’ Now there is peace because I had taken over his role.»
Another dictate and command of nature which we should listen to, is that man and woman are relational and social beings. And therefore should not live in isolation. In other words man and woman are communal beings who should live in some form of community like a family or a religious community.
Unfortunately, Western individualism and urban setting have deprived many people of their relational and communal dimension of life. Although it is normally said that no man is island, many people in the Western world and in most of the big cities all over the world have been reduced to «islands!» They find themselves all alone in their apartments, with no one to talk to, no one to share with. And they suffer grave and serious effects from this isolation! These people have money and all the material things they need but no friends!
Again when we listen attentively, we hear the voice of nature telling us that our sexuality is a treasure beyond price. For it forms part of the core of our innermost being and identity! What touches our sexuality touches the roots of our being, our identity and dignity as human persons. This is why when we engage in inappropriate sexual relationships (which instinctively we know) they fill us with shame, humiliation and guilt instead of joy.
Our sexuality is meant to help us establish and form healthy and warm relationships, to strengthen and cement them! And our creative powers, be it in terms of procreation, imaginative thinking and creative writing, to my knowledge they are all linked to our sexuality!
But what we see today is the trivialisation of this treasure of our sexuality! It is handled and treated no better than rubbish in the dustbin! Everyday we are bombarded with pornographic material from every side! Sex for many, is no longer a relational and personal act through which people express their love and commitment to one another.
We can rightly say that sex has been reduced to an empty and impersonal theatrical act! It is staged in the studio or open air before the cameraman, for the pornographic industry! In other words, sex in our digital world is no longer a bedroom affair but a stage affair for all, including our children, to see!
We shall live to regret our refusal to listen to the voice of nature and the damage we do to these children and to our society as a whole.
*Dominic Vincent Nkoyoyo, Monastery Val Notre-Dame, Canada.
The magnificent and brilliant colours of the breath-taking splendour of dawn, the gorgeous and ineffable beauty of twilight, the twinkling stars in the deep blue of the night sky, the silent music of the flowing waters, the vastness of the seas and the immensity of space all speak to us in a voice known to the heart alone! Nature is speaking and its voice is medicine for the soul!
Unfortunately, it is as if we have totally closed and stuffed our ears with cotton! In today’s world, we no longer listen to the messages of wisdom of the soothing voice of nature! Even our own make up, our human nature, is speaking and sometimes very loudly, but we are not paying any attention!
From around the age of 18 to 28, nature adorns a woman with exceptional beauty and allure. This has been so down the centuries and it is very unlikely that it is going to change tomorrow! In the programme of nature, this is the best time for a woman to get a life companion, a husband. And the best time for child bearing and rearing. In general beyond this time child bearing gets more difficult and complicated and chances of begetting an abnormal child are high. Nature is speaking! Are we listening?
Apparently most of us are not listening! In today’s world, many women want to prolong their youth into their late thirties and early forties on the ground that they want to perfect their careers, move around the world and enjoy life before they get old. Unfortunately the privileges nature gives and bestows upon a woman in her twenties do not move along with them in their late thirties! So by the time they think of begetting children, it is rather too late!
To marry and to get married and bring up children is one of the basic desires nature has engraved upon the fibres of our being! But in today’s world we seem to be paying very little attention to this! Apparently many people do not think that marriage and having a family and children is important in their lives. But many regret as they get older!
We need to know that the things which our very nature dictates are basic! And we ignore them at our own risk! Love of money, academic achievements and an endless search for self amusement have made many forget the basic needs of human life. The article «Are Kenyan Women Wearing Trousers?» which appeared in the Kenyan news paper Daily Nation of February 25, 2011, is a reminder that we should go back to the basics. It discusses today’s Kenyan woman also called «This New Woman!» And in my opinion, what is said of this new Kenyan woman is true of most career and single women all over the world.
This new woman, is described as the career woman, well educated, economically independent and generally un married! At one point the moderator of the discussion poses a very important and fundamental question : «Is this new woman happy?» The panel of experts discussing this new woman includes men and women. The answer Ann Gitao gives to this question is deep and astounding. She hits the nail on the head!
She thus says, «…Your genetic make up, your natural instinct is to be a mother, to be a wife, to be all those things and you can never scrap that. So I think you are happy as a lady if you have that and you are feeling fulfilled. Hopefully, you end up with a good marriage and a good family and on top of that you are living comfortably and living your other dream, your career growth…So I would describe a happy woman as one who has fulfilled her natural instincts and continues to meet them and one who also meets her worldly needs and desires.»
Nature has also engraved upon the heart of a man, the desire to take care of his wife, to provide for her and to protect her. But today many people call this outdated! That it was true only of the primitive and stone age man, the hunter! For they claim that since today’s new woman is economically independent and sometimes earns much more than her husband, she can take care of herself, provide for herself and protect herself! But this wrong thinking has had devastating consequences on the psychological identity of men. Many men no longer know clearly who they are in relation to women! Some even shy away from women because their inner self, their identity and confidence as men has been eroded and destroyed.
Naturally any man whether of yesterday, today or tomorrow will always find joy and fulfillment in providing for his wife and protecting her. I have no problem with a woman being economically independent and I encourage it. But her economic independence does not change the natural instincts of a man! So her economic independence should be harmonized with the natural instincts of her man. Dr. Njoki Fernandez one of the experts and panellists discussing «The New Kenyan Woman» understood this very well.
In the discussion she shares her own experience thus: «I got married when I was very young, at 21, and in medical school. So for a long time, my husband was provider, care giver and whatever and it was a role he enjoyed and did very well. But fortunately or unfortunately, you complete medical school, get employed and soon money starts to come in and this girl starts showing signs of independence. The man freaked out. Soon there were all these fights about ‘now you think you have money you can do your own thing.’ I think I also took it a bit too far, telling him, ‘don’t fuel my car, I can do it myself.’ When I realised what was happening to us, I withdrew a bit and I allowed him to be the ‘one.’ Now there is peace because I had taken over his role.»
Another dictate and command of nature which we should listen to, is that man and woman are relational and social beings. And therefore should not live in isolation. In other words man and woman are communal beings who should live in some form of community like a family or a religious community.
Unfortunately, Western individualism and urban setting have deprived many people of their relational and communal dimension of life. Although it is normally said that no man is island, many people in the Western world and in most of the big cities all over the world have been reduced to «islands!» They find themselves all alone in their apartments, with no one to talk to, no one to share with. And they suffer grave and serious effects from this isolation! These people have money and all the material things they need but no friends!
Again when we listen attentively, we hear the voice of nature telling us that our sexuality is a treasure beyond price. For it forms part of the core of our innermost being and identity! What touches our sexuality touches the roots of our being, our identity and dignity as human persons. This is why when we engage in inappropriate sexual relationships (which instinctively we know) they fill us with shame, humiliation and guilt instead of joy.
Our sexuality is meant to help us establish and form healthy and warm relationships, to strengthen and cement them! And our creative powers, be it in terms of procreation, imaginative thinking and creative writing, to my knowledge they are all linked to our sexuality!
But what we see today is the trivialisation of this treasure of our sexuality! It is handled and treated no better than rubbish in the dustbin! Everyday we are bombarded with pornographic material from every side! Sex for many, is no longer a relational and personal act through which people express their love and commitment to one another.
We can rightly say that sex has been reduced to an empty and impersonal theatrical act! It is staged in the studio or open air before the cameraman, for the pornographic industry! In other words, sex in our digital world is no longer a bedroom affair but a stage affair for all, including our children, to see!
We shall live to regret our refusal to listen to the voice of nature and the damage we do to these children and to our society as a whole.
*Dominic Vincent Nkoyoyo, Monastery Val Notre-Dame, Canada.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Hiding the Real Africa - Why NGOs prefer Bad News
By Karen Rothmyer
And now for some good news out of Africa. Poverty rates throughout the continent have been falling steadily and much faster than previously thought, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. The death rate of children under five years of age is dropping, with “clear evidence of accelerating rates of decline,” according to The Lancet. Perhaps most encouragingly, Africa is “among the world’s most rapidly growing economic regions,” according to the McKinsey Quarterly.
Yet US journalism continues to portray a continent of unending horrors. Last June, for example, Time magazine published graphic pictures of a naked woman from Sierra Leone dying in childbirth. Not long after, CNN did a story about two young Kenyan boys whose family is so poor they are forced to work delivering goats to a slaughterhouse for less than a penny per goat. Reinforcing the sense of economic misery, between May and September 2010 the ten most-read US newspapers and magazines carried 245 articles mentioning poverty in Africa, but only five mentioning gross domestic product growth….
Reporters’ attraction to certain kinds of Africa stories has a lot to do with the frames of reference they arrive with. Nineteenth century New York Herald correspondent Henry M. Stanley wrote that he was prepared to find Zanzibar “populated by ignorant blacks, with great thick lips, whose general appearance might be compared to Du Chaillu’s gorillas.”
Since the Biafran War, a cause célèbre in the West, helped give rise in the late 1960s to the new field of human rights, Western reporters have closely tracked issues like traditional female circumcision. In the 1980s, a famine in Ethiopia that, in fact, had as much to do with politics as with drought, set a pattern of stories about “starving Africans” that not only hasn’t been abandoned, but continues to grow: according to a 2004 study done by Steven S. Ross, then a Columbia journalism professor, between 1998 and 2002 the number of stories about famine in Africa tripled.
In Kenya, where I was a Peace Corps volunteer in the late 1960s and where I returned to live four years ago, The New York Times description of post-election violence in 2007 as a manifestation of “atavistic” tribalism carried echoes of Stanley and other early Western visitors.
But the main reason for the continued dominance of such negative stereotypes, I have come to believe, may well be the influence of Western-based non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international aid groups like United Nations agencies. These organizations understandably tend to focus not on what has been accomplished but on convincing people how much remains to be done. As a practical matter, they also need to attract funding. Together, these pressures create incentives to present as gloomy a picture of Africa as possible in order to keep attention and money flowing, and to enlist journalists in disseminating that picture.
Africans themselves readily concede that there continues to be terrible conflict and human suffering on the continent. But what’s lacking, say media observers like Sunny Bindra, a Kenyan management consultant, is context and breadth of coverage so that outsiders can see the continent whole, its potential and successes along with its very real challenges. “There are famines; they’re not made up,” Bindra says. “There are arrogant leaders. But most of the journalism that’s done doesn’t challenge anyone’s thinking.”
Over the past thirty years, NGOs have come to play an increasingly important role in aid to Africa. A major reason is that Western donors, worried about government corruption, have channelled more funds through them. In the mid-1970s, less than half a dozen NGOs (like the Red Cross or CARE) might operate in a typical African country, according to Nicolas van de Walle, a professor of government at Cornell, but now the same country will likely have 250.
This explosive NGO growth means increasing competition for funds. And according to the head of a large US-based NGO in Nairobi, “When you’re fundraising you have to prove there is a need. Children starving, mothers dying. If you’re not negative enough, you won’t get funding.”
So fierce is the competition that many NGOs don’t want to hear good news. An official of an organization that provides data on Somalia’s food situation says that after reporting a bumper harvest last year, “I was told by several NGOs and UN agencies that the report was too positive.”
Rasna Warah, a Kenyan who worked for UN-Habitat before leaving to pursue a writing career, says that exaggerations of need were not uncommon among aid officials she encountered. “They wanted journalists to say ‘Wow.’ They want them to quote your report,” she says. “That means more money for the next report. It’s really as cynical as that.”
Western journalists, for their part, tend to be far too trusting of aid officials, according to veteran Dutch correspondent Linda Polman.
In her book; “The Crisis Caravan,” she cites as one example the willingness of journalists to be guided around NGO-run refugee camps without asking tough questions about possible corruption or the need for such facilities. She writes, “Aid organizations are businesses dressed up like Mother Teresa, but that’s not how reporters see them.”
Pushed and pulled by slashed budgets and increased demands, journalists are growing increasingly reliant on aid groups. Sometimes that involves not just information or a seat on a supply plane, but deep involvement in the entire journalistic process.
In an online essay written in 2009, Kimberly Abbott of the International Crisis Group discussed a 2005 Nightline program on Uganda that her NGO helped to produce and fund. It was hosted by actor Don Cheadle, the star of Hotel Rwanda. Nightline’s Ted Koppel explained in his introduction, as retold by Abbott: “Cheadle wanted his wife and daughters to get a sense of the kind of suffering that is so widespread in Africa. The International Crisis Group wanted publicity for what is happening in Uganda. And we, to put it bluntly, get to bring you a riveting story at a greatly reduced expense.”
According to Abbott, “versions of such partnerships are happening now in print and broadcast newsrooms across the country, though many are reluctant to discuss them too openly.”
Daniel Dickinson, a former BBC reporter who is now a communications officer for the European Union in Nairobi, has seen the impact of technology and economics on reporting on Africa first-hand. “The big difference in the past five to ten years is the expansion of the Internet,” he says. “Journalists have got to feed these animals. Add to that the financial crash, and more and more internationals are taking the content we offer them.”
Ben Parker, co-founder and head of IRIN, a news agency that is part of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, admires Dickinson’s success. “He does stories and they’re picked up whole,”
Parker says. IRIN itself can point to many similar successes in finding takers for its stories on aid projects. “The Western media won’t reprint us verbatim,” he says. “But some plagiarize.”
Lauren Gelfand, a correspondent for Jane’s Defence Weekly who is based in Nairobi, says most reporters she knows string for three or four news organizations to make ends meet, and can’t afford to do time-consuming stories. She saw the effect when she took a year off from journalism to work for Oxfam. “If reporters were going to cover a development story it had to be easy,” remembers Gelfand, noting that the simplest sell was a celebrity visit to an aid project.
Gelfand says that her Oxfam experience helped her to understand just how much attention NGOS put on getting their story told. “All the talking points are carefully worked out…. It’s a huge bureaucracy and there are as many levels of control as in any government,” she says of Oxfam, adding that many NGOs are reluctant to cooperate with media unless they know they’ll be shown in a positive light.
To be fair to the NGOs, Gelfand says, “It’s easier to sell a famine than to effect real, common-sense policy change.” And, she says, she continues to believe that most aid workers do what they do because they want to make a difference. Nonetheless, “A lot of what Oxfam does is to sustain Oxfam.”
Stories featuring aid projects often rely on dubious numbers provided by the organizations. Take Kibera, a poor neighborhood in Nairobi. A Nexis search of major world publications found Kibera described as the “biggest” or “largest” slum in Africa at least thirty-four times in 2004; in the first ten months of 2010 the claim appeared eighty-three times. Many of those stories focused on the work of one of the estimated 6,000 or more local and international NGOs working there, and cited population figures that ranged as high as one million residents. Recently, however, the results of Kenya’s 2009 census were released: according to the official tally, Kibera has just 194,269 residents.
In 2010, Rasna Warah wrote in the Daily Nation, a Kenyan paper, that while working for the Worldwatch Institute, an NGO, she had published inflated population estimates using UN-Habitat data, despite knowing there was no consensus on the numbers among her former colleagues at the organization. Sometime after 2004, she wrote, population estimates for Kibera started to rise, and “Before we knew it, the figure spread like a virus.” She added, “The inflated figures were not challenged, perhaps because they were useful to various actors…. They were particularly useful to NGOs, which used them to ‘shock’ charities and other do-gooders into donating more money to their projects in Kibera.”
Questionable figures of another sort are to be found in reports on the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, a series of targets on poverty reduction and other measures of well-being. UN and NGO officials routinely describe Africa as failing to meet the goals, and the press routinely writes up this failure.
But some experts, among them Jan Vandemoortele, one of the architects of the MDGS, have expressed concern that the goals are being misused.
He wrote in 2009 that the MDGS were intended as global targets, but have been improperly applied to individual countries and regions. “It is a real tragedy when respectable progress in Africa is reported as a failure by international organizations and external observers,”
Vandemoortele wrote, voicing the suspicion that particular measurements have been selected “so as to present Africa as a failure, solely to gain support for a particular agenda, strategy, or argument.”
Nonetheless, when the UN met in September, The Associated Press quoted UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as saying, “Many countries are falling short, especially in Africa,” while the Los Angeles Times quoted an Oxfam report as saying, “Unless an urgent rescue package is developed to accelerate fulfillment of all the MDGS, we are likely to witness the greatest collective failure in history.”
The consequences of skewed or incomplete reporting on Africa are not just a disservice to readers but also have the potential to influence policy. “The welfare model [of Africa] is still dominant on the Hill and in Hillary Clinton’s world,” according to van de Walle. Among corporate officials, says Catherine Duggan, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, the perception is still that “Africa is where you put your money once you’ve made it somewhere else.”
Moreover, such reporting is demoralizing to Africans working for change. Martin Dawes, a UNICEF regional chief of communication for West and Central Africa, says that when there is a disaster, journalists “come to us as aid workers but often don’t talk to the government, which is often what we’re working through. It means that the chances for Africans to show an engaged response is limited. They are written out of their own story.”
Even with shrinking resources, journalists can do better than this.
For a start, they can stop depending so heavily, and uncritically, on aid organizations for statistics, subjects, stories, and sources. They can also educate themselves on how to find and interpret data available from independent sources. And they can actively seek out stories that deviate from existing story lines.
But in the end, it will probably take sustained economic progress to break the current mold. Sunny Bindra, the Kenyan management consultant, recalls that in the 1980s, “Japan got attention because it was whacking the US. It’s the same with India and China now.” Until that happens, a sick African woman in labor will continue to be treated as poverty porn, and most Africans will have to starve in order to make it onto the evening news.
This article was adapted from a paper (pdf) written for Harvard’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.
Columbia Journalism Review Reports — March / April 2011 http://www.cjr.org/reports/hiding_the_real_africa.php?page=all
And now for some good news out of Africa. Poverty rates throughout the continent have been falling steadily and much faster than previously thought, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. The death rate of children under five years of age is dropping, with “clear evidence of accelerating rates of decline,” according to The Lancet. Perhaps most encouragingly, Africa is “among the world’s most rapidly growing economic regions,” according to the McKinsey Quarterly.
Yet US journalism continues to portray a continent of unending horrors. Last June, for example, Time magazine published graphic pictures of a naked woman from Sierra Leone dying in childbirth. Not long after, CNN did a story about two young Kenyan boys whose family is so poor they are forced to work delivering goats to a slaughterhouse for less than a penny per goat. Reinforcing the sense of economic misery, between May and September 2010 the ten most-read US newspapers and magazines carried 245 articles mentioning poverty in Africa, but only five mentioning gross domestic product growth….
Reporters’ attraction to certain kinds of Africa stories has a lot to do with the frames of reference they arrive with. Nineteenth century New York Herald correspondent Henry M. Stanley wrote that he was prepared to find Zanzibar “populated by ignorant blacks, with great thick lips, whose general appearance might be compared to Du Chaillu’s gorillas.”
Since the Biafran War, a cause célèbre in the West, helped give rise in the late 1960s to the new field of human rights, Western reporters have closely tracked issues like traditional female circumcision. In the 1980s, a famine in Ethiopia that, in fact, had as much to do with politics as with drought, set a pattern of stories about “starving Africans” that not only hasn’t been abandoned, but continues to grow: according to a 2004 study done by Steven S. Ross, then a Columbia journalism professor, between 1998 and 2002 the number of stories about famine in Africa tripled.
In Kenya, where I was a Peace Corps volunteer in the late 1960s and where I returned to live four years ago, The New York Times description of post-election violence in 2007 as a manifestation of “atavistic” tribalism carried echoes of Stanley and other early Western visitors.
But the main reason for the continued dominance of such negative stereotypes, I have come to believe, may well be the influence of Western-based non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international aid groups like United Nations agencies. These organizations understandably tend to focus not on what has been accomplished but on convincing people how much remains to be done. As a practical matter, they also need to attract funding. Together, these pressures create incentives to present as gloomy a picture of Africa as possible in order to keep attention and money flowing, and to enlist journalists in disseminating that picture.
Africans themselves readily concede that there continues to be terrible conflict and human suffering on the continent. But what’s lacking, say media observers like Sunny Bindra, a Kenyan management consultant, is context and breadth of coverage so that outsiders can see the continent whole, its potential and successes along with its very real challenges. “There are famines; they’re not made up,” Bindra says. “There are arrogant leaders. But most of the journalism that’s done doesn’t challenge anyone’s thinking.”
Over the past thirty years, NGOs have come to play an increasingly important role in aid to Africa. A major reason is that Western donors, worried about government corruption, have channelled more funds through them. In the mid-1970s, less than half a dozen NGOs (like the Red Cross or CARE) might operate in a typical African country, according to Nicolas van de Walle, a professor of government at Cornell, but now the same country will likely have 250.
This explosive NGO growth means increasing competition for funds. And according to the head of a large US-based NGO in Nairobi, “When you’re fundraising you have to prove there is a need. Children starving, mothers dying. If you’re not negative enough, you won’t get funding.”
So fierce is the competition that many NGOs don’t want to hear good news. An official of an organization that provides data on Somalia’s food situation says that after reporting a bumper harvest last year, “I was told by several NGOs and UN agencies that the report was too positive.”
Rasna Warah, a Kenyan who worked for UN-Habitat before leaving to pursue a writing career, says that exaggerations of need were not uncommon among aid officials she encountered. “They wanted journalists to say ‘Wow.’ They want them to quote your report,” she says. “That means more money for the next report. It’s really as cynical as that.”
Western journalists, for their part, tend to be far too trusting of aid officials, according to veteran Dutch correspondent Linda Polman.
In her book; “The Crisis Caravan,” she cites as one example the willingness of journalists to be guided around NGO-run refugee camps without asking tough questions about possible corruption or the need for such facilities. She writes, “Aid organizations are businesses dressed up like Mother Teresa, but that’s not how reporters see them.”
Pushed and pulled by slashed budgets and increased demands, journalists are growing increasingly reliant on aid groups. Sometimes that involves not just information or a seat on a supply plane, but deep involvement in the entire journalistic process.
In an online essay written in 2009, Kimberly Abbott of the International Crisis Group discussed a 2005 Nightline program on Uganda that her NGO helped to produce and fund. It was hosted by actor Don Cheadle, the star of Hotel Rwanda. Nightline’s Ted Koppel explained in his introduction, as retold by Abbott: “Cheadle wanted his wife and daughters to get a sense of the kind of suffering that is so widespread in Africa. The International Crisis Group wanted publicity for what is happening in Uganda. And we, to put it bluntly, get to bring you a riveting story at a greatly reduced expense.”
According to Abbott, “versions of such partnerships are happening now in print and broadcast newsrooms across the country, though many are reluctant to discuss them too openly.”
Daniel Dickinson, a former BBC reporter who is now a communications officer for the European Union in Nairobi, has seen the impact of technology and economics on reporting on Africa first-hand. “The big difference in the past five to ten years is the expansion of the Internet,” he says. “Journalists have got to feed these animals. Add to that the financial crash, and more and more internationals are taking the content we offer them.”
Ben Parker, co-founder and head of IRIN, a news agency that is part of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, admires Dickinson’s success. “He does stories and they’re picked up whole,”
Parker says. IRIN itself can point to many similar successes in finding takers for its stories on aid projects. “The Western media won’t reprint us verbatim,” he says. “But some plagiarize.”
Lauren Gelfand, a correspondent for Jane’s Defence Weekly who is based in Nairobi, says most reporters she knows string for three or four news organizations to make ends meet, and can’t afford to do time-consuming stories. She saw the effect when she took a year off from journalism to work for Oxfam. “If reporters were going to cover a development story it had to be easy,” remembers Gelfand, noting that the simplest sell was a celebrity visit to an aid project.
Gelfand says that her Oxfam experience helped her to understand just how much attention NGOS put on getting their story told. “All the talking points are carefully worked out…. It’s a huge bureaucracy and there are as many levels of control as in any government,” she says of Oxfam, adding that many NGOs are reluctant to cooperate with media unless they know they’ll be shown in a positive light.
To be fair to the NGOs, Gelfand says, “It’s easier to sell a famine than to effect real, common-sense policy change.” And, she says, she continues to believe that most aid workers do what they do because they want to make a difference. Nonetheless, “A lot of what Oxfam does is to sustain Oxfam.”
Stories featuring aid projects often rely on dubious numbers provided by the organizations. Take Kibera, a poor neighborhood in Nairobi. A Nexis search of major world publications found Kibera described as the “biggest” or “largest” slum in Africa at least thirty-four times in 2004; in the first ten months of 2010 the claim appeared eighty-three times. Many of those stories focused on the work of one of the estimated 6,000 or more local and international NGOs working there, and cited population figures that ranged as high as one million residents. Recently, however, the results of Kenya’s 2009 census were released: according to the official tally, Kibera has just 194,269 residents.
In 2010, Rasna Warah wrote in the Daily Nation, a Kenyan paper, that while working for the Worldwatch Institute, an NGO, she had published inflated population estimates using UN-Habitat data, despite knowing there was no consensus on the numbers among her former colleagues at the organization. Sometime after 2004, she wrote, population estimates for Kibera started to rise, and “Before we knew it, the figure spread like a virus.” She added, “The inflated figures were not challenged, perhaps because they were useful to various actors…. They were particularly useful to NGOs, which used them to ‘shock’ charities and other do-gooders into donating more money to their projects in Kibera.”
Questionable figures of another sort are to be found in reports on the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, a series of targets on poverty reduction and other measures of well-being. UN and NGO officials routinely describe Africa as failing to meet the goals, and the press routinely writes up this failure.
But some experts, among them Jan Vandemoortele, one of the architects of the MDGS, have expressed concern that the goals are being misused.
He wrote in 2009 that the MDGS were intended as global targets, but have been improperly applied to individual countries and regions. “It is a real tragedy when respectable progress in Africa is reported as a failure by international organizations and external observers,”
Vandemoortele wrote, voicing the suspicion that particular measurements have been selected “so as to present Africa as a failure, solely to gain support for a particular agenda, strategy, or argument.”
Nonetheless, when the UN met in September, The Associated Press quoted UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as saying, “Many countries are falling short, especially in Africa,” while the Los Angeles Times quoted an Oxfam report as saying, “Unless an urgent rescue package is developed to accelerate fulfillment of all the MDGS, we are likely to witness the greatest collective failure in history.”
The consequences of skewed or incomplete reporting on Africa are not just a disservice to readers but also have the potential to influence policy. “The welfare model [of Africa] is still dominant on the Hill and in Hillary Clinton’s world,” according to van de Walle. Among corporate officials, says Catherine Duggan, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, the perception is still that “Africa is where you put your money once you’ve made it somewhere else.”
Moreover, such reporting is demoralizing to Africans working for change. Martin Dawes, a UNICEF regional chief of communication for West and Central Africa, says that when there is a disaster, journalists “come to us as aid workers but often don’t talk to the government, which is often what we’re working through. It means that the chances for Africans to show an engaged response is limited. They are written out of their own story.”
Even with shrinking resources, journalists can do better than this.
For a start, they can stop depending so heavily, and uncritically, on aid organizations for statistics, subjects, stories, and sources. They can also educate themselves on how to find and interpret data available from independent sources. And they can actively seek out stories that deviate from existing story lines.
But in the end, it will probably take sustained economic progress to break the current mold. Sunny Bindra, the Kenyan management consultant, recalls that in the 1980s, “Japan got attention because it was whacking the US. It’s the same with India and China now.” Until that happens, a sick African woman in labor will continue to be treated as poverty porn, and most Africans will have to starve in order to make it onto the evening news.
This article was adapted from a paper (pdf) written for Harvard’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.
Columbia Journalism Review Reports — March / April 2011 http://www.cjr.org/reports/hiding_the_real_africa.php?page=all
Friday, March 18, 2011
Fires in the Japanese Tsunami: A Call for a Nuclear Free World
By Dominic Nkoyoyo*
Possession of nuclear weapons makes us feel powerful, super-powerful and irresistible! It makes our individual and national egos swell with pride that everything is under our control. And that we are the masters directing the events in the world! «The Big Super Powers» or «The Nuclear Club»: USA, Russia, Britain, France and China are so called because they have stockpiles of these weapons of mass destruction! India, Paskistan and Israel, they too being in possession of atomic bombs seek to join the club!
When you have nuclear weapons, you feel safe, powerful and ready to confront any enemy who comes your way. Moreover, it is a clear warning to the rest of the world, that anyone who tries to offend you can and will be punished very severely! With these weapons, we feel invincible! However, what an illusion! No human being is invincible, no nation is invincible! We are mere creatures who will always remain weak and vulnerable. The 9th November 2001 Al Qaeda attacks on USA testify to this!
In fact these nuclear weapons in which we have put our trust can spew and unleash uncontrollable fires which no waters can quench, fires that can reduce to ashes and rubble the very nation that has stock piles of them! In addition, I think this is one of the message and warnings we can read in the uncontrolable fires of the Japanese tsunami. Twenty four hours after the tsunami struck, the fires were still raging uncontrollable amid the floods!
Normally water and fire are great enemies. However, in the morning hours of the unforgettable day of 11 March 2011 when a mega earthquake of magnitude 8.9 struck the eastern coast of Japan, a giant tsunami, ten metres high sprang to its feet from slumber! In addition, with anger, cruelty and speed of 700km per hour, began its march and adventure of destruction and devastation heading towards the cities where humans live. It sparked off untamable fires! Moreover, for what looked like an eternity, Water and Fire hand in hand wrecked havoc beyond all description in towns, cities and villages!
Thousands of our Japanese brothers and sisters for whose eternal rest we now pray, perished in the water tides and in the blazing flames that looked like «light islands» amid the floods. And as if the earthquake and tsunami catastrophes were not enough, the next day at Onagawa, a huge explosion tore through the roof of a nuclear plant adding misery to a nation already in tears and grief!
Kenji Koshiba a construction worker who lives near the plant, in article by the Associated Press entitled: Japan’s nuclear crisis intensifies as authorities race to combat threat of multiple meltdowns, expressed his worries thus, «First I was worried about the quake…Now I am worried about radiation.»
This raises a very important question, namely: How reliable and effective are our nuclear reactors’ and nuclear weapons’ safety measures? An article entitled: Principles of Nuclear Weapons Security and Safety, in an attempt to answer this question tell us thus, «Due to their extreme destructiveness, nuclear weapons require stringent measures to ensure that they are never detonated either intentionally or by accident except under properly authorized circumstances.» In other words this article is telling us that these weapons are designed with safety mechanisms in them and that they are even resistant to detonation by accident!
Another article by World Nuclear Association entitled: Safety of Nuclear Power Reactors, in an attempt to answer the same question informs us thus, «…radioactive material is not readily mobilized beyond the immediate internal structure. Thus, even if the containment structure that surrounds all modern nuclear plants were ruptured, it would still be highly effective in preventing escape of radioactivity.» It continues to say, «It is the laws of physics and the properties of materials that preclude disaster, not the required actions by safety equipment or personnel. In fact licensing approval now requires that the effects of any core-melt accident be confined to the plant itself, without the need to evacuate nearby residents.»
And a nuclear expert Valeriy Hlyhalo, Deputy Director-General of the Chernobyl Safety Center when on 12 March 2011 was interviewed by Reuters on the explosion at Japan nuclear plant, he said that Japanese nuclear plants are earthquake resistant!
Unfortunately, however much experts want us to believe that the safety mechanisms and measures of our nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons are very reliable and effective; the facts on the ground in the Japanese earthquake and tsunami are showing us the contrary! Radiation has escaped and has also been made to escape more by the operators themselves beyond the internal structure!
The evidence on the ground also dismisses Valeriy Hlyhalo’s claim that Japanese nuclear plants are earthquake resistant! If they were that resistant, there would be no talk of a Japanese nuclear plant crisis reported in all local and international media! Reuters on Sunday 13 March 2011 in an article entitled: Japan fights to avert nuclear meltdown after quake, reports thus, «The most urgent crisis centres on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, where three reactors were threatening to over heat and where authorities said they had been forced to vent radioactive steam into the air to relieve reactor pressure…The nuclear incident,…sparked criticism that the authorities were ill-prepared for such a massive quake and threat that could pose to the country’s nuclear power industry.»
Since a quake of magnitude 8.9 has crippled the nuclear plant, suppose it was of magnitude 9.5 or above, how would the situation be? And on Monday 14 March 2011 there was a second huge explosion at the plant!
And by telling us, «In fact licensing approval now requires that effects of any core-melt accident be confined to the plant itself without the need to evacuate nearby residents,» the World Nuclear Association wants us to believe that those responsible for licensing approval know the gravity of all possible nuclear accidents! But the evidence on the ground proves them wrong. The fear and danger of a possible meltdown at the nuclear facility has forced authorities to evacuate the nearby residents. On 12 March 2011 Reuters reported thus, «About 140,000 people have so far been evacuated from areas near two Japanese nuclear power plants after Friday’s earthquake.»
Given today’s industrialised world with a large consumer society that finds it very difficult to tame its desires for material things, the demand for electric energy is enormous. And it is very difficult to find an alternative to nuclear energy. The Japanese tsunami experience is therefore a wake up call for all of us to invest more time, energy and money in research projects whose target is to find alternatives to nuclear power. For our nuclear plants have the potential to destroy not only all the scientific and technological development and advancement we have achieved so far but also ourselves!
The potential for self-destruction through our nuclear plants is very real. And this is supported by what Reuters reported in an article entitled: Japan’s nuclear power operator has chequered past, «The company at the centre of a nuclear reactor crisis following the biggest earthquake in Japan’s recorded history has had a rocky past in an industry plagued by scandal…In 2002, the president of the country’s largest power utility was forced to resign along with four other senior executives, taking responsibility for suspected falsification of nuclear plant records. The company was suspected of 29 cases involving falsified repair records at nuclear reactors. It had to stop operations at five reactors, including the two damaged in the latest tremor, for safety inspection. A few years later it ran into trouble again over accusation of falsifying data.»
Another worrying report @BBC World on Twitter said, «Japanese engineer Masashi Goto, who helped design the containment vessel for Fukushima’s reactor core, says the design was not enough to withstand earthquakes and tsunamis and the plant’s builders Toshiba knew this.» These shady deals which compromise standards and professionalism in the nuclear industry should be a concern for everybody.
Due to past falsification of data, lack of transparency and these shady deals in the nuclear industry, the Japanese population finds it very difficult right now to believe what the nuclear engineers operating the Fukushima nuclear plant and the government are telling them about the situation! On March 15, 2011 a third deafening blast was heard at the Fukushima nuclear plant! And it was reported that radiation was being released directly into the air! But it took long before the Prime Minister was informed of it. Reuters thus reported, «Japan’s Prime Minister was furious with the power firm at the centre of the nuclear crisis for taking so long to inform his office about a blast at a stricken reactor plant, demanding ‘What the hell is going on?’»
From my analysis of the information I have bout the Fukushima nuclear plant looming catastrophe, it is very likely that this nuclear crisis will be worse than the 1986 Chernobyl crisis! On the 16 March 2011 the Associated Press in an article entitled: Japan suspends work at stricken nuke plant due to surge in radiation, announced thus, «Japan ordered emergency workers to withdraw from its nuclear plant Wednesday amid a surge in radiation, temporarily suspending efforts to cool the overheating reactors.»
As for our nuclear weapons, the Japanese earthquake and tsunami reveal to us that even the waters of the sea will not be able to extinguish the fires these deadly weapons will unleash upon the earth once several of them explode! This experience also puts in question the safety mechanisms of these weapons in which we trust! It is claimed that they are even resistant to detonation by accident, but if an earthquake of magnitude 9 and above blew up their depot, are we sure they would still not explode?
And we have thousands of these weapons around the world. Reliable sources say that we have at least 23,000 stockpiles of nuclear weapons scattered around the planet! And apart from ordinary atomic bombs, USA, Russia, Great Britain, France and China also possess thermonuclear or hydrogen bombs which can be thousands of times more powerful than atomic bombs!
So let the entire world learn from the nuclear crisis at the Japan’s nuclear plant the dangers posed by our nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons scattered all over the planet. And let us work hard for a nuclear free world.
*Dominic Vincent Nkoyoyo, Monastery Val Notre-Dame, Canada.
Possession of nuclear weapons makes us feel powerful, super-powerful and irresistible! It makes our individual and national egos swell with pride that everything is under our control. And that we are the masters directing the events in the world! «The Big Super Powers» or «The Nuclear Club»: USA, Russia, Britain, France and China are so called because they have stockpiles of these weapons of mass destruction! India, Paskistan and Israel, they too being in possession of atomic bombs seek to join the club!
When you have nuclear weapons, you feel safe, powerful and ready to confront any enemy who comes your way. Moreover, it is a clear warning to the rest of the world, that anyone who tries to offend you can and will be punished very severely! With these weapons, we feel invincible! However, what an illusion! No human being is invincible, no nation is invincible! We are mere creatures who will always remain weak and vulnerable. The 9th November 2001 Al Qaeda attacks on USA testify to this!
In fact these nuclear weapons in which we have put our trust can spew and unleash uncontrollable fires which no waters can quench, fires that can reduce to ashes and rubble the very nation that has stock piles of them! In addition, I think this is one of the message and warnings we can read in the uncontrolable fires of the Japanese tsunami. Twenty four hours after the tsunami struck, the fires were still raging uncontrollable amid the floods!
Normally water and fire are great enemies. However, in the morning hours of the unforgettable day of 11 March 2011 when a mega earthquake of magnitude 8.9 struck the eastern coast of Japan, a giant tsunami, ten metres high sprang to its feet from slumber! In addition, with anger, cruelty and speed of 700km per hour, began its march and adventure of destruction and devastation heading towards the cities where humans live. It sparked off untamable fires! Moreover, for what looked like an eternity, Water and Fire hand in hand wrecked havoc beyond all description in towns, cities and villages!
Thousands of our Japanese brothers and sisters for whose eternal rest we now pray, perished in the water tides and in the blazing flames that looked like «light islands» amid the floods. And as if the earthquake and tsunami catastrophes were not enough, the next day at Onagawa, a huge explosion tore through the roof of a nuclear plant adding misery to a nation already in tears and grief!
Kenji Koshiba a construction worker who lives near the plant, in article by the Associated Press entitled: Japan’s nuclear crisis intensifies as authorities race to combat threat of multiple meltdowns, expressed his worries thus, «First I was worried about the quake…Now I am worried about radiation.»
This raises a very important question, namely: How reliable and effective are our nuclear reactors’ and nuclear weapons’ safety measures? An article entitled: Principles of Nuclear Weapons Security and Safety, in an attempt to answer this question tell us thus, «Due to their extreme destructiveness, nuclear weapons require stringent measures to ensure that they are never detonated either intentionally or by accident except under properly authorized circumstances.» In other words this article is telling us that these weapons are designed with safety mechanisms in them and that they are even resistant to detonation by accident!
Another article by World Nuclear Association entitled: Safety of Nuclear Power Reactors, in an attempt to answer the same question informs us thus, «…radioactive material is not readily mobilized beyond the immediate internal structure. Thus, even if the containment structure that surrounds all modern nuclear plants were ruptured, it would still be highly effective in preventing escape of radioactivity.» It continues to say, «It is the laws of physics and the properties of materials that preclude disaster, not the required actions by safety equipment or personnel. In fact licensing approval now requires that the effects of any core-melt accident be confined to the plant itself, without the need to evacuate nearby residents.»
And a nuclear expert Valeriy Hlyhalo, Deputy Director-General of the Chernobyl Safety Center when on 12 March 2011 was interviewed by Reuters on the explosion at Japan nuclear plant, he said that Japanese nuclear plants are earthquake resistant!
Unfortunately, however much experts want us to believe that the safety mechanisms and measures of our nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons are very reliable and effective; the facts on the ground in the Japanese earthquake and tsunami are showing us the contrary! Radiation has escaped and has also been made to escape more by the operators themselves beyond the internal structure!
The evidence on the ground also dismisses Valeriy Hlyhalo’s claim that Japanese nuclear plants are earthquake resistant! If they were that resistant, there would be no talk of a Japanese nuclear plant crisis reported in all local and international media! Reuters on Sunday 13 March 2011 in an article entitled: Japan fights to avert nuclear meltdown after quake, reports thus, «The most urgent crisis centres on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, where three reactors were threatening to over heat and where authorities said they had been forced to vent radioactive steam into the air to relieve reactor pressure…The nuclear incident,…sparked criticism that the authorities were ill-prepared for such a massive quake and threat that could pose to the country’s nuclear power industry.»
Since a quake of magnitude 8.9 has crippled the nuclear plant, suppose it was of magnitude 9.5 or above, how would the situation be? And on Monday 14 March 2011 there was a second huge explosion at the plant!
And by telling us, «In fact licensing approval now requires that effects of any core-melt accident be confined to the plant itself without the need to evacuate nearby residents,» the World Nuclear Association wants us to believe that those responsible for licensing approval know the gravity of all possible nuclear accidents! But the evidence on the ground proves them wrong. The fear and danger of a possible meltdown at the nuclear facility has forced authorities to evacuate the nearby residents. On 12 March 2011 Reuters reported thus, «About 140,000 people have so far been evacuated from areas near two Japanese nuclear power plants after Friday’s earthquake.»
Given today’s industrialised world with a large consumer society that finds it very difficult to tame its desires for material things, the demand for electric energy is enormous. And it is very difficult to find an alternative to nuclear energy. The Japanese tsunami experience is therefore a wake up call for all of us to invest more time, energy and money in research projects whose target is to find alternatives to nuclear power. For our nuclear plants have the potential to destroy not only all the scientific and technological development and advancement we have achieved so far but also ourselves!
The potential for self-destruction through our nuclear plants is very real. And this is supported by what Reuters reported in an article entitled: Japan’s nuclear power operator has chequered past, «The company at the centre of a nuclear reactor crisis following the biggest earthquake in Japan’s recorded history has had a rocky past in an industry plagued by scandal…In 2002, the president of the country’s largest power utility was forced to resign along with four other senior executives, taking responsibility for suspected falsification of nuclear plant records. The company was suspected of 29 cases involving falsified repair records at nuclear reactors. It had to stop operations at five reactors, including the two damaged in the latest tremor, for safety inspection. A few years later it ran into trouble again over accusation of falsifying data.»
Another worrying report @BBC World on Twitter said, «Japanese engineer Masashi Goto, who helped design the containment vessel for Fukushima’s reactor core, says the design was not enough to withstand earthquakes and tsunamis and the plant’s builders Toshiba knew this.» These shady deals which compromise standards and professionalism in the nuclear industry should be a concern for everybody.
Due to past falsification of data, lack of transparency and these shady deals in the nuclear industry, the Japanese population finds it very difficult right now to believe what the nuclear engineers operating the Fukushima nuclear plant and the government are telling them about the situation! On March 15, 2011 a third deafening blast was heard at the Fukushima nuclear plant! And it was reported that radiation was being released directly into the air! But it took long before the Prime Minister was informed of it. Reuters thus reported, «Japan’s Prime Minister was furious with the power firm at the centre of the nuclear crisis for taking so long to inform his office about a blast at a stricken reactor plant, demanding ‘What the hell is going on?’»
From my analysis of the information I have bout the Fukushima nuclear plant looming catastrophe, it is very likely that this nuclear crisis will be worse than the 1986 Chernobyl crisis! On the 16 March 2011 the Associated Press in an article entitled: Japan suspends work at stricken nuke plant due to surge in radiation, announced thus, «Japan ordered emergency workers to withdraw from its nuclear plant Wednesday amid a surge in radiation, temporarily suspending efforts to cool the overheating reactors.»
As for our nuclear weapons, the Japanese earthquake and tsunami reveal to us that even the waters of the sea will not be able to extinguish the fires these deadly weapons will unleash upon the earth once several of them explode! This experience also puts in question the safety mechanisms of these weapons in which we trust! It is claimed that they are even resistant to detonation by accident, but if an earthquake of magnitude 9 and above blew up their depot, are we sure they would still not explode?
And we have thousands of these weapons around the world. Reliable sources say that we have at least 23,000 stockpiles of nuclear weapons scattered around the planet! And apart from ordinary atomic bombs, USA, Russia, Great Britain, France and China also possess thermonuclear or hydrogen bombs which can be thousands of times more powerful than atomic bombs!
So let the entire world learn from the nuclear crisis at the Japan’s nuclear plant the dangers posed by our nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons scattered all over the planet. And let us work hard for a nuclear free world.
*Dominic Vincent Nkoyoyo, Monastery Val Notre-Dame, Canada.
Friday, March 11, 2011
An Appeal to the EAC Governments
By Dominic Nkoyoyo*
Drought is looming throughout East Africa! Even Uganda, East Africa’s principal food producer is already alerting its people on the impending drought……
The Ugandan news paper, The Monitor of Sunday, March 6, 2011 carried an article entitled: Review channel used to relay message about drought. In part this article says «…the office of the Prime Minister (OPM) is currently broadcasting a message on television in English aimed at building awareness about the impending drought as well as cautioning the public against the misuse of food reserves and water resources since the country is likely not to receive rains until May.»
Another article entitled : USAID/East Africa Food for Peace Provides Kenya Drought Donation, that appeared in USAID/EAST AFRICA of Wednesday, February 16, 2011 has this to say «During January, 2011 USAID staff…travelled to two of the most drought affected regions in Kenya—Wajir and Marsbit—to ascertain the severity of the drought…and come up with appropriate response options,…In every community the priority cited by the local representatives was the need for water for humans and animal consumption…In order to address ongoing mitigation efforts USAID/FFP has made a contribution of food aid, valued at $24 million.»
Our people with their animals are dying because they have no water! The 2009 drought caused the death of very many animals in Kenya. Human beings too died! An article entitled: The Great drought: Disaster looms in East Africa, which appeared in the British news paper, The Independent describes that calamity in vivid terms, «On the plains of Marsabit the heat is so intense the bush seems to shiver…carcasses of cattle and camels are strewn about the burnt red dirt in every direction. Siridwa Baseli…passes a skeletal cow that has given up and collapsed under a thorn tree…he is driving his herd in search of water…Only 40 of his herd…that once numbered 200 have survived. Those that remain are dying at a rate of 10 every day.»
According to reliable sources, over the past 20 years droughts are common in East Africa. Unfortunately for all these years the East African governments have done little or nothing to contain the situation. It is normally the humanitarian organizations and the International Community that come in to save the situation! And usually help arrives late when several people have already died of starvation and hunger!
We now know that this tragedy of drought is not just a natural disaster, by cutting down trees and destroying forests we are part of its cause. For example we have greatly destroyed the Mau Forest Complex. Covering an area of 273,300hacters (675,000acres) it is the largest water catchment in Kenya and in East Africa as a whole!
Since 1999 the East African countries have been working on plans of using Lake Victoria and River Nile waters for irrigation, in view of increasing food production to combat famine. Unfortunately most of the big rivers which feed Lake Victoria originate from the degraded Mau Forest! And although many people have been evicted from the forest, to restore its eco-system will take many years. It is also clear that since the Nile is the lifeline of Egypt’s population of 80 million which is expected to swell to 122 million in 2050, we cannot divert too much water from Lake Victoria.
This water problem affects not only people in remote and dry areas but also those in towns! Because of deforestation, drought and global climatic changes, all the big cities and towns in East Africa are experiencing shortage of water supply. One reliable source says that the daily demand by Nairobi residents alone stands at 750,000 cubic metres against the supply capacity of 530,000 cubic metres, leaving a deficit of 220,000 cubic metres! In Mombasa the daily water demand is 150,000 cubic metres, but the water firms can supply only 58,000 cubic metres!
During the 2009 drought a lot of boreholes were sunk in Nairobi to address the water shortage in the City. But according to experts, ground water in some areas because of the many minerals it contains is not recommended for domestic purposes! Marsabit residents blamed underground water for cancer illnesses and deaths suffered by their people and animals! And a report by Water Resource Management released in April 2009 confirmed that water from the boreholes in that area was hazardous!
With lakes and rivers drying up because of climatic changes and with ground water being hazardous in some areas, where should we turn to address the water problem?
God in his infinite kindness has given us the Indian Ocean! And I have no information that it too is about to dry up! So I am proposing that the Indian Ocean be our principal source of water in East Africa. And our weapon to combat drought and famine!
I therefore appeal to all the East African Community governments to construct together two big Desalination Plants which remove salt from sea water. One should be constructed at Mombasa in Kenya and another at Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Then pipelines from these two big water refineries should be constructed to supply water to all areas in the region including semi desert areas like Wajir, Marsabit, Karamoja etc.
If our governments push this project through, we shall have put an end to starvation and death of our people due to drought and famine. Saudi Arabia is a desert country but it has enough water for domestic purposes for its people! And this is explained by its desalination plants! Its Shoaiba Desalination Plant at the cost of USD1,060 million is the largest in the world. It produces 450 million litres per day!
Our governments should realise that through the death of our people and animals due to drought and famine we lose a lot of money. Kenya alone during the 2009 drought lost more than 3,000,000 head of cattle. This loss amounts to a staggering Ksh 75 billion ($ 1 billion)! And if we take into account the sheep, goats, camels, elephants etc, which died how much money is that?
So I again appeal to the East African Community governments to take seriously my proposal of the construction of Desalination Plants as our weapon to combat famine in the region. I also call upon all our religious leaders in the region to help me explain this to our governments.
*Dominic Vincent Nkoyoyo, Monastery Val Notre-Dame, Canada.
Drought is looming throughout East Africa! Even Uganda, East Africa’s principal food producer is already alerting its people on the impending drought……
The Ugandan news paper, The Monitor of Sunday, March 6, 2011 carried an article entitled: Review channel used to relay message about drought. In part this article says «…the office of the Prime Minister (OPM) is currently broadcasting a message on television in English aimed at building awareness about the impending drought as well as cautioning the public against the misuse of food reserves and water resources since the country is likely not to receive rains until May.»
Another article entitled : USAID/East Africa Food for Peace Provides Kenya Drought Donation, that appeared in USAID/EAST AFRICA of Wednesday, February 16, 2011 has this to say «During January, 2011 USAID staff…travelled to two of the most drought affected regions in Kenya—Wajir and Marsbit—to ascertain the severity of the drought…and come up with appropriate response options,…In every community the priority cited by the local representatives was the need for water for humans and animal consumption…In order to address ongoing mitigation efforts USAID/FFP has made a contribution of food aid, valued at $24 million.»
Our people with their animals are dying because they have no water! The 2009 drought caused the death of very many animals in Kenya. Human beings too died! An article entitled: The Great drought: Disaster looms in East Africa, which appeared in the British news paper, The Independent describes that calamity in vivid terms, «On the plains of Marsabit the heat is so intense the bush seems to shiver…carcasses of cattle and camels are strewn about the burnt red dirt in every direction. Siridwa Baseli…passes a skeletal cow that has given up and collapsed under a thorn tree…he is driving his herd in search of water…Only 40 of his herd…that once numbered 200 have survived. Those that remain are dying at a rate of 10 every day.»
According to reliable sources, over the past 20 years droughts are common in East Africa. Unfortunately for all these years the East African governments have done little or nothing to contain the situation. It is normally the humanitarian organizations and the International Community that come in to save the situation! And usually help arrives late when several people have already died of starvation and hunger!
We now know that this tragedy of drought is not just a natural disaster, by cutting down trees and destroying forests we are part of its cause. For example we have greatly destroyed the Mau Forest Complex. Covering an area of 273,300hacters (675,000acres) it is the largest water catchment in Kenya and in East Africa as a whole!
Since 1999 the East African countries have been working on plans of using Lake Victoria and River Nile waters for irrigation, in view of increasing food production to combat famine. Unfortunately most of the big rivers which feed Lake Victoria originate from the degraded Mau Forest! And although many people have been evicted from the forest, to restore its eco-system will take many years. It is also clear that since the Nile is the lifeline of Egypt’s population of 80 million which is expected to swell to 122 million in 2050, we cannot divert too much water from Lake Victoria.
This water problem affects not only people in remote and dry areas but also those in towns! Because of deforestation, drought and global climatic changes, all the big cities and towns in East Africa are experiencing shortage of water supply. One reliable source says that the daily demand by Nairobi residents alone stands at 750,000 cubic metres against the supply capacity of 530,000 cubic metres, leaving a deficit of 220,000 cubic metres! In Mombasa the daily water demand is 150,000 cubic metres, but the water firms can supply only 58,000 cubic metres!
During the 2009 drought a lot of boreholes were sunk in Nairobi to address the water shortage in the City. But according to experts, ground water in some areas because of the many minerals it contains is not recommended for domestic purposes! Marsabit residents blamed underground water for cancer illnesses and deaths suffered by their people and animals! And a report by Water Resource Management released in April 2009 confirmed that water from the boreholes in that area was hazardous!
With lakes and rivers drying up because of climatic changes and with ground water being hazardous in some areas, where should we turn to address the water problem?
God in his infinite kindness has given us the Indian Ocean! And I have no information that it too is about to dry up! So I am proposing that the Indian Ocean be our principal source of water in East Africa. And our weapon to combat drought and famine!
I therefore appeal to all the East African Community governments to construct together two big Desalination Plants which remove salt from sea water. One should be constructed at Mombasa in Kenya and another at Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Then pipelines from these two big water refineries should be constructed to supply water to all areas in the region including semi desert areas like Wajir, Marsabit, Karamoja etc.
If our governments push this project through, we shall have put an end to starvation and death of our people due to drought and famine. Saudi Arabia is a desert country but it has enough water for domestic purposes for its people! And this is explained by its desalination plants! Its Shoaiba Desalination Plant at the cost of USD1,060 million is the largest in the world. It produces 450 million litres per day!
Our governments should realise that through the death of our people and animals due to drought and famine we lose a lot of money. Kenya alone during the 2009 drought lost more than 3,000,000 head of cattle. This loss amounts to a staggering Ksh 75 billion ($ 1 billion)! And if we take into account the sheep, goats, camels, elephants etc, which died how much money is that?
So I again appeal to the East African Community governments to take seriously my proposal of the construction of Desalination Plants as our weapon to combat famine in the region. I also call upon all our religious leaders in the region to help me explain this to our governments.
*Dominic Vincent Nkoyoyo, Monastery Val Notre-Dame, Canada.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
The Uncomfortable Silence
By Jimmie Briggs*
In his quest to end violence against women, former war journalist Jimmie Briggs faces his toughest audience yet.
"I couldn’t tell my daughter’s class about my struggles as a man in a traditionally women’s movement, because I barely understand them myself."
Several months ago, my daughter’s teacher invited me to speak to her class about what I do for a living. How was I to tell a room full of squirmy first-graders that I am launching a global campaign to end violence against women and girls, using hip-hop and soccer? That I’ve gone from, sometimes, war reporter to human rights advocate? My own daughter has only the slightest inkling about my work, and the thought of facing her classmates terrified me.
As I trudged up the stairs to my daughter’s classroom, I could hear the barely controlled chaos beyond the door. I opened it quickly and bounded across the room. Once the giggles, finger pointing, and poking subsided under the teacher’s laser-like stare, I cleared my throat and walked to the front of the room, finally leaning my back against the chalkboard. My daughter was sitting near the middle of the class, unsmiling and propped forward—unable to contain her anticipation. I took a deep breath. All I could do was speak to them as I would any other group and hope they understood.
I told my daughter’s class the truth: I began my work as a journalist but would be ending it as an activist. I told them about travelling around the world, speaking to kids very much like them, who are fighting and hurting each other, or who are being treated badly by the adults around them, especially, the girls. I told them that I didn’t like the stories I heard when I was writing articles or books, and about how I’m trying to get other people to help me give those stories happier endings. I told them that since the summer of 2008, I’ve been flying back and forth across the world to build a new kind of effort to end violence against women and girls. It’s the vision of a worldwide campaign called “Man Up.” As I spoke, I saw my daughter lean back and smile.
But I couldn’t tell my daughter’s class about all the suffering I’d seen in places like Afghanistan, Colombia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. That had held people as they died in my arms, and I’d sat with women who had been raped to the point of paralysis.
I also couldn’t tell my daughter’s class about my struggles as a man in a traditionally women’s movement, because I barely understand them myself. I frequently meet with people to talk about my ideas for confronting violence against women, and I run into a lot of suspicion—as if I have an ulterior motive for doing this work. At one cocktail reception, a woman asked me, half-jokingly, if I was exploring this issue as a way to meet women. The stare behind her smile told me she was being more serious than not. My guy friends assume the same.
Outside my professional life, I consciously avoid speaking about the work I do, because people expect me to be the embodiment of the “good guy,” the ideal man. I’m quick to cite a mother, ex-wife, daughter, and scores of frustrated ex-girlfriends who would eagerly agree that I’m anything but perfect.
Trying to build a campaign, or a movement, is all-consuming. Most of the time I feel halted in social situations because all I’m really able to talk about is work, leading me to feel like “Debbie Downer” from the TV show Saturday Night Live, guaranteed to bring a festive mood to an abrupt, uncomfortable end.
One night at a regular Sunday evening dinner party with friends and acquaintances, every time I brought up my work, or hot-button words like “rape,” “activism,” or “change,” one guest would change the subject to the texture and taste of the dessert, or to the succulence of the roast chicken. Eventually, I made it a game to see what food item would be introduced next.
As my talk to the first-grade class wound down, I asked them rhetorically, “Why do I care so much about what is happening to women and girls around the world?” The students all turned to look at my daughter as she began to blush and smile nervously. They got that I’m doing this for my daughter.
I hope one day my work over the last 20 years for women and girls will mean something to her and her classmates. At present, my daughter only knows that her dad leaves for days and weeks at a time, returning only to leave again, just when we’ve become reacquainted. But I stay on the path because there is hope; there is affirmation in this movement of women and men. I see it every day when I read about the many men’s conferences on violence against women that are springing up on college campuses across the US; when I see the grassroots efforts that are struggling to be born in the unlikeliest of places on the Web; and when I witness the coalitions that are being formed between organizations across the globe.
Amid the darkness I witnessed as a journalist, there was light as well, resting in the imaginations and faith of countless young people surviving in the worst imaginable situations. My purpose, the end goal of the Man Up Campaign, is to create the space for that light, and for my daughter and her classmates to be in it.
*Jimmie Briggs is a New York-based writer, teacher, and activist, and is the founder of the Man Up Campaign. His upcoming book, "The Wars Women Fight: Dispatches from a Father to His Daughter," will be published in 2011. Learn more about his international campaign to end violence against women at www.manupcampaign.org
In his quest to end violence against women, former war journalist Jimmie Briggs faces his toughest audience yet.
"I couldn’t tell my daughter’s class about my struggles as a man in a traditionally women’s movement, because I barely understand them myself."
Several months ago, my daughter’s teacher invited me to speak to her class about what I do for a living. How was I to tell a room full of squirmy first-graders that I am launching a global campaign to end violence against women and girls, using hip-hop and soccer? That I’ve gone from, sometimes, war reporter to human rights advocate? My own daughter has only the slightest inkling about my work, and the thought of facing her classmates terrified me.
As I trudged up the stairs to my daughter’s classroom, I could hear the barely controlled chaos beyond the door. I opened it quickly and bounded across the room. Once the giggles, finger pointing, and poking subsided under the teacher’s laser-like stare, I cleared my throat and walked to the front of the room, finally leaning my back against the chalkboard. My daughter was sitting near the middle of the class, unsmiling and propped forward—unable to contain her anticipation. I took a deep breath. All I could do was speak to them as I would any other group and hope they understood.
I told my daughter’s class the truth: I began my work as a journalist but would be ending it as an activist. I told them about travelling around the world, speaking to kids very much like them, who are fighting and hurting each other, or who are being treated badly by the adults around them, especially, the girls. I told them that I didn’t like the stories I heard when I was writing articles or books, and about how I’m trying to get other people to help me give those stories happier endings. I told them that since the summer of 2008, I’ve been flying back and forth across the world to build a new kind of effort to end violence against women and girls. It’s the vision of a worldwide campaign called “Man Up.” As I spoke, I saw my daughter lean back and smile.
But I couldn’t tell my daughter’s class about all the suffering I’d seen in places like Afghanistan, Colombia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. That had held people as they died in my arms, and I’d sat with women who had been raped to the point of paralysis.
I also couldn’t tell my daughter’s class about my struggles as a man in a traditionally women’s movement, because I barely understand them myself. I frequently meet with people to talk about my ideas for confronting violence against women, and I run into a lot of suspicion—as if I have an ulterior motive for doing this work. At one cocktail reception, a woman asked me, half-jokingly, if I was exploring this issue as a way to meet women. The stare behind her smile told me she was being more serious than not. My guy friends assume the same.
Outside my professional life, I consciously avoid speaking about the work I do, because people expect me to be the embodiment of the “good guy,” the ideal man. I’m quick to cite a mother, ex-wife, daughter, and scores of frustrated ex-girlfriends who would eagerly agree that I’m anything but perfect.
Trying to build a campaign, or a movement, is all-consuming. Most of the time I feel halted in social situations because all I’m really able to talk about is work, leading me to feel like “Debbie Downer” from the TV show Saturday Night Live, guaranteed to bring a festive mood to an abrupt, uncomfortable end.
One night at a regular Sunday evening dinner party with friends and acquaintances, every time I brought up my work, or hot-button words like “rape,” “activism,” or “change,” one guest would change the subject to the texture and taste of the dessert, or to the succulence of the roast chicken. Eventually, I made it a game to see what food item would be introduced next.
As my talk to the first-grade class wound down, I asked them rhetorically, “Why do I care so much about what is happening to women and girls around the world?” The students all turned to look at my daughter as she began to blush and smile nervously. They got that I’m doing this for my daughter.
I hope one day my work over the last 20 years for women and girls will mean something to her and her classmates. At present, my daughter only knows that her dad leaves for days and weeks at a time, returning only to leave again, just when we’ve become reacquainted. But I stay on the path because there is hope; there is affirmation in this movement of women and men. I see it every day when I read about the many men’s conferences on violence against women that are springing up on college campuses across the US; when I see the grassroots efforts that are struggling to be born in the unlikeliest of places on the Web; and when I witness the coalitions that are being formed between organizations across the globe.
Amid the darkness I witnessed as a journalist, there was light as well, resting in the imaginations and faith of countless young people surviving in the worst imaginable situations. My purpose, the end goal of the Man Up Campaign, is to create the space for that light, and for my daughter and her classmates to be in it.
*Jimmie Briggs is a New York-based writer, teacher, and activist, and is the founder of the Man Up Campaign. His upcoming book, "The Wars Women Fight: Dispatches from a Father to His Daughter," will be published in 2011. Learn more about his international campaign to end violence against women at www.manupcampaign.org
Friday, March 4, 2011
The Arab Revolt in North Africa: Inter-Religious Dialogue in the Balance in «The New World Order»
By Dominic Nkoyoyo*
The Arab revolt in North Africa beginning in Tunisia, Egypt and spreading like wild bush fire to the rest of the Arab world, has taken the International community by surprise! And for better for worse a «New World Order» is in the making!
On 17th December, 2010 the «self-immolation» of a young Tunisian man trying to earn his living in very difficult circumstances, sparked off the revolt. Police brutality, unemployment, food inflation, poor living conditions, a lack of freedom of speech and political freedom were behind the «self-immolation» of Mohamed Bouazizi. He set himself ablaze after suffering from police repression and brutality.
Anti-government protesters forced dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali who had ruled the country for 23 years to flee to Saudi Arabia where on January 14, 2011 he officially resigned as President of Tunisia! Then the rebellion caught up with Dictator Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. It began on 25th January, 2011. Millions of protesters went to the streets in Egypt demanding the resignation of the dictator. And on 11th February, 2011 after 30 years in power Mubarak resigned.
Internationally this Arab rebellion has deep implications and far reaching consequences at three basic levels: Political, Economic and Religious.
At the political level, the Arab countries are going to change their political structures. And this is going to affect their relationship with the rest of the world including the Super Powers! It is clear that the West which claims to be the defender of democracy had been the one supporting the toppled Arab dictators! Will the new governments in these Arab countries still have the same relationship with the West?
As the entire world watches the unfolding of events in the Arab nations, citizens of other countries who are dissatisfied with their governments might also take to the streets to force them out! The Arab revolt has shown that people can liberate themselves from oppressive regimes.
At the economic level, all these Arab countries affected by the revolt are oil producing! And the one who controls this oil controls international economics! Since USA has been supporting the toppled dictators it has obviously been controlling most of this oil. Will this stay the same? Wont China in the changed Arab political structures not use this chance to try and get the lion’s share of this oil and so reduce USA and EU control over the «black gold?»
At the religious level, the Arab countries are basically Muslim states. Since the West which has been supporting the toppled dictators is identified with Christianity, the revolt is at once against the dictators themselves, the West, Christians and the Jews! We can already see that brutality and atrocities towards the minority Christians and Jews in these countries is on the increase. And remember Osama Bin Laden is still around! And this Arab revolt in my opinion is a great victory for him. Many political analysists have ignored or downplayed Al-Qaeda involvement in the Arab revolt! And just call it popular revolt! I doubt their analysis, for its difficult to believe that there no secret links between the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda!
So it cannot be a far-fetched idea that Al-Qaeda is going to increase its attacks on Christians in these countries. On 1 November 2010, Al-Qaeda followers calling themselves «the Islamic State of Iraq» massacred 58 Christians and wounded 78 in the Church Our Lady of Salvation in Baghdad. Then posted a statement on the website saying: «We will open upon them the doors of destruction and rivers of blood. All Christian centres, organisations and institutions, leaders and followers are legitimate targets for mujahedeen wherever they can reach them.»
During the Egyptian revolt on 30 January 2011 at 3PM local time in the village of Sharona in this very country, Muslims killed 11 Coptic Christians including children and left four others seriously wounded. On 1 February 2011 the El Hamma Synagogue one of the last surviving synagogues in Tunisia was set on fire by some Islamists. The fire damaged the Torah scrolls inside the building. And it is reported that the police which was not far from the Synagogue did not do much to prevent the attack.
So the Arab revolt deeply affects the inter-religious dialogue and co-existence of non Muslims in the Muslim world. Catholic League, 23 January 2011 thus reported: «The president of Al-Azhar, an Egyptian university, Sheikh Ahmed el Tayeb, along with leading members of the Islamic Research Academy, announced Thursday they are breaking off dialogue with the Vatican in response to Pope Benedict XVI’s criticism of Muslim violence against Christians.»
The Christians are better positioned to dialogue with anybody including their enemies! Because several teachings in the Scriptures allow this, for example: «You have heard that it was said ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.» (Mt.5 :44).
But the Quaran itself, if taken literally, makes it very difficult for Muslims to dialogue with other religions. It says for example: «Those who follow Muhammad are merciless for the unbelievers but kind to each other.» (Quaran, Sûrah. 48 :29). «Kill the unbelievers wherever you find them, besiege them and prepare for them every kind of ambush.» (Quaran, Sûrah. 9 :5). «Fight the unbelievers in your surroundings, and let them find harshness in you.» (Quaran, Sûrah. 9 :123). With these verses in the Quaran it is very difficult to see how on the theological or doctrinal level the Christian-Muslim dialogue can achieve much! But we should not forget that the Quaran also says some very beautiful things about God, «In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All the praises be to Allah the Lord of all» (Quaran, Sûrat.2:1-3).
So in this New World Order sparked off by the Arab rebellion, we have to ask ourselves : «Is it possible to keep the Christian-Muslim dialogue alive?»
My position is that we should make every effort to keep this dialogue alive. But we should change our strategy! Up to now this dialogue has basically been between Vatican officials and some outstanding Muslim leaders and academics. This is good but I propose that we should also take the dialogue to grassroots level in the villages and towns where Muslims and Christians interact on a day to day basis! In other words let us get the dialogue to diocesan and parish levels! Let the parish priest and the village Muslim leaders get engaged in the dialogue. Facebook groups could also be created to enrich the dialogue. Right now I have three Facebook Muslim friends from India with whom I am engaged in this dialogue. I am reasonably well informed about Islam. And I have my copy of the Quaran which I often read.
While the theologians continue with their intellectual dialogue, here in the villages let Muslims and Christians work together on developmental projects to up lift their standards of living. And let us engage our young people both Christians and Muslims into sport activities, song, dance, theatre and other cultural activities. This working closely together might lead them to grasp the most important thing in life, namely: love of each other regardless of religion, race, colour or tribe. A concrete example will help: In Masaka Catholic Diocese (Uganda) Bishop Kaggwa created the «Kaggwa football Cup.» I happened to be in Uganda at the end of 2008 and I was deeply touched by the competitions of that year for this Cup. All the parishes of the diocese sent in their teams, but the team members were not just Catholics but also Protestants and Muslims! It was really moving to see these young people together appreciating each others’ presence!
Once people come to the knowledge that we need each other regardless of religion, race, colour or tribe, it becomes easier for them to overcome contradictory religious doctrines engraved in their scriptural writings and traditions. Then they begin to work for each other’s good and to protect each other in difficult times. My best friend in secondary school was a Muslim. We were in the same class. We revised our notes together and prepared for exams together. To this day he is still my friend! I lived for some years in a predominantly Muslim region in Cameroon, and my closest friends there were Muslims. So it is very possible for Christians and Muslims to live together in peace. The present difficulties should not discourage us from keeping the dialogue alive.
We have faced difficulties before but the dialogue continued. For example in March 1996 seven Cistercian monks who lived in a small monastery called Our Lady of Atlas in Algeria, we slaughtered by Muslim fundamentalists. But what is amazing, the Muslims of the small village of Tibherine where these monks lived remember them with great reverence, joy and love to this day. A French film by Xavier Beauvios has been made about them. It is called «Des hommes et des dieux» (in English: Of Gods and men.) Within a very short time since it was launched on 8th September 2010, it has been viewed by more than 2,000,000 people in France alone! Since 25th February this year it is also showing in Canada!
But this interreligious dialogue should not be limited to religious leaders and their flocks discussing among themselves, the United Nations and political leaders should get involved. For it is an illusion to think that religion and politics can be completely separated. For the two are just different dimensions of the same human being.
The very fact that over the years USA and its allies have been engaged in a bitter battle with Al-Qaeda which is an Islamic religious group is evidence enough that the interreligious dialogue should involve the international community and its political body. At some point we might be forced to speak and negotiate with Al-Qaeda! The attacks against Jews and Christians during the Tunisian and Egyptian Arab revolt points to the Al-Qaeda elements and involvement in it!
If we want lasting peace in today’s world, Politics must get into dialogue with Religion. And the different religions all over the world should come to the consensus that no one should ever take away the life of another in the name of religion or God or Allah.
*Dominic Vincent Nkoyoyo, Monastery Val Notre-Dame, Canada
The Arab revolt in North Africa beginning in Tunisia, Egypt and spreading like wild bush fire to the rest of the Arab world, has taken the International community by surprise! And for better for worse a «New World Order» is in the making!
On 17th December, 2010 the «self-immolation» of a young Tunisian man trying to earn his living in very difficult circumstances, sparked off the revolt. Police brutality, unemployment, food inflation, poor living conditions, a lack of freedom of speech and political freedom were behind the «self-immolation» of Mohamed Bouazizi. He set himself ablaze after suffering from police repression and brutality.
Anti-government protesters forced dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali who had ruled the country for 23 years to flee to Saudi Arabia where on January 14, 2011 he officially resigned as President of Tunisia! Then the rebellion caught up with Dictator Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. It began on 25th January, 2011. Millions of protesters went to the streets in Egypt demanding the resignation of the dictator. And on 11th February, 2011 after 30 years in power Mubarak resigned.
Internationally this Arab rebellion has deep implications and far reaching consequences at three basic levels: Political, Economic and Religious.
At the political level, the Arab countries are going to change their political structures. And this is going to affect their relationship with the rest of the world including the Super Powers! It is clear that the West which claims to be the defender of democracy had been the one supporting the toppled Arab dictators! Will the new governments in these Arab countries still have the same relationship with the West?
As the entire world watches the unfolding of events in the Arab nations, citizens of other countries who are dissatisfied with their governments might also take to the streets to force them out! The Arab revolt has shown that people can liberate themselves from oppressive regimes.
At the economic level, all these Arab countries affected by the revolt are oil producing! And the one who controls this oil controls international economics! Since USA has been supporting the toppled dictators it has obviously been controlling most of this oil. Will this stay the same? Wont China in the changed Arab political structures not use this chance to try and get the lion’s share of this oil and so reduce USA and EU control over the «black gold?»
At the religious level, the Arab countries are basically Muslim states. Since the West which has been supporting the toppled dictators is identified with Christianity, the revolt is at once against the dictators themselves, the West, Christians and the Jews! We can already see that brutality and atrocities towards the minority Christians and Jews in these countries is on the increase. And remember Osama Bin Laden is still around! And this Arab revolt in my opinion is a great victory for him. Many political analysists have ignored or downplayed Al-Qaeda involvement in the Arab revolt! And just call it popular revolt! I doubt their analysis, for its difficult to believe that there no secret links between the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda!
So it cannot be a far-fetched idea that Al-Qaeda is going to increase its attacks on Christians in these countries. On 1 November 2010, Al-Qaeda followers calling themselves «the Islamic State of Iraq» massacred 58 Christians and wounded 78 in the Church Our Lady of Salvation in Baghdad. Then posted a statement on the website saying: «We will open upon them the doors of destruction and rivers of blood. All Christian centres, organisations and institutions, leaders and followers are legitimate targets for mujahedeen wherever they can reach them.»
During the Egyptian revolt on 30 January 2011 at 3PM local time in the village of Sharona in this very country, Muslims killed 11 Coptic Christians including children and left four others seriously wounded. On 1 February 2011 the El Hamma Synagogue one of the last surviving synagogues in Tunisia was set on fire by some Islamists. The fire damaged the Torah scrolls inside the building. And it is reported that the police which was not far from the Synagogue did not do much to prevent the attack.
So the Arab revolt deeply affects the inter-religious dialogue and co-existence of non Muslims in the Muslim world. Catholic League, 23 January 2011 thus reported: «The president of Al-Azhar, an Egyptian university, Sheikh Ahmed el Tayeb, along with leading members of the Islamic Research Academy, announced Thursday they are breaking off dialogue with the Vatican in response to Pope Benedict XVI’s criticism of Muslim violence against Christians.»
The Christians are better positioned to dialogue with anybody including their enemies! Because several teachings in the Scriptures allow this, for example: «You have heard that it was said ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.» (Mt.5 :44).
But the Quaran itself, if taken literally, makes it very difficult for Muslims to dialogue with other religions. It says for example: «Those who follow Muhammad are merciless for the unbelievers but kind to each other.» (Quaran, Sûrah. 48 :29). «Kill the unbelievers wherever you find them, besiege them and prepare for them every kind of ambush.» (Quaran, Sûrah. 9 :5). «Fight the unbelievers in your surroundings, and let them find harshness in you.» (Quaran, Sûrah. 9 :123). With these verses in the Quaran it is very difficult to see how on the theological or doctrinal level the Christian-Muslim dialogue can achieve much! But we should not forget that the Quaran also says some very beautiful things about God, «In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All the praises be to Allah the Lord of all» (Quaran, Sûrat.2:1-3).
So in this New World Order sparked off by the Arab rebellion, we have to ask ourselves : «Is it possible to keep the Christian-Muslim dialogue alive?»
My position is that we should make every effort to keep this dialogue alive. But we should change our strategy! Up to now this dialogue has basically been between Vatican officials and some outstanding Muslim leaders and academics. This is good but I propose that we should also take the dialogue to grassroots level in the villages and towns where Muslims and Christians interact on a day to day basis! In other words let us get the dialogue to diocesan and parish levels! Let the parish priest and the village Muslim leaders get engaged in the dialogue. Facebook groups could also be created to enrich the dialogue. Right now I have three Facebook Muslim friends from India with whom I am engaged in this dialogue. I am reasonably well informed about Islam. And I have my copy of the Quaran which I often read.
While the theologians continue with their intellectual dialogue, here in the villages let Muslims and Christians work together on developmental projects to up lift their standards of living. And let us engage our young people both Christians and Muslims into sport activities, song, dance, theatre and other cultural activities. This working closely together might lead them to grasp the most important thing in life, namely: love of each other regardless of religion, race, colour or tribe. A concrete example will help: In Masaka Catholic Diocese (Uganda) Bishop Kaggwa created the «Kaggwa football Cup.» I happened to be in Uganda at the end of 2008 and I was deeply touched by the competitions of that year for this Cup. All the parishes of the diocese sent in their teams, but the team members were not just Catholics but also Protestants and Muslims! It was really moving to see these young people together appreciating each others’ presence!
Once people come to the knowledge that we need each other regardless of religion, race, colour or tribe, it becomes easier for them to overcome contradictory religious doctrines engraved in their scriptural writings and traditions. Then they begin to work for each other’s good and to protect each other in difficult times. My best friend in secondary school was a Muslim. We were in the same class. We revised our notes together and prepared for exams together. To this day he is still my friend! I lived for some years in a predominantly Muslim region in Cameroon, and my closest friends there were Muslims. So it is very possible for Christians and Muslims to live together in peace. The present difficulties should not discourage us from keeping the dialogue alive.
We have faced difficulties before but the dialogue continued. For example in March 1996 seven Cistercian monks who lived in a small monastery called Our Lady of Atlas in Algeria, we slaughtered by Muslim fundamentalists. But what is amazing, the Muslims of the small village of Tibherine where these monks lived remember them with great reverence, joy and love to this day. A French film by Xavier Beauvios has been made about them. It is called «Des hommes et des dieux» (in English: Of Gods and men.) Within a very short time since it was launched on 8th September 2010, it has been viewed by more than 2,000,000 people in France alone! Since 25th February this year it is also showing in Canada!
But this interreligious dialogue should not be limited to religious leaders and their flocks discussing among themselves, the United Nations and political leaders should get involved. For it is an illusion to think that religion and politics can be completely separated. For the two are just different dimensions of the same human being.
The very fact that over the years USA and its allies have been engaged in a bitter battle with Al-Qaeda which is an Islamic religious group is evidence enough that the interreligious dialogue should involve the international community and its political body. At some point we might be forced to speak and negotiate with Al-Qaeda! The attacks against Jews and Christians during the Tunisian and Egyptian Arab revolt points to the Al-Qaeda elements and involvement in it!
If we want lasting peace in today’s world, Politics must get into dialogue with Religion. And the different religions all over the world should come to the consensus that no one should ever take away the life of another in the name of religion or God or Allah.
*Dominic Vincent Nkoyoyo, Monastery Val Notre-Dame, Canada
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