Category: u.s. politics

jackfruit of the week (10.08.08)

I ran into a friend of mine last Thursday. “I woke up this morning feeling like today was a holiday,” she said, with obvious glee at the prospect of watching Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin humiliate herself yet again on national television.

I was going to make this the Palin Edition of Jackfruit of the Week, commenting snarkily on pieces like this:

The problem with Ms. Palin’s candidacy is that John McCain might actually win this election, and then if something terrible happened, the country could be left with little more than an exclamation point as president.

(from Palin’s Alternate Universe)

And this:

Yet surely, more than most of us, politicians need to be able to think on their feet, to have a brain that works quickly and rationally under pressure. Do we really want to be led by someone who, when asked a straightforward question, flails around like an undergraduate who stayed up all night boozing instead of studying for the exam?

(from The sentences of Sarah Palin, diagrammed)

Then I ran across this:

Right now we’re in the middle of the Days of Awe, the stretch of time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when Jews are asking forgiveness. Not of God, but of each other. Because God can’t forgive you for the mean things you’ve done to other people. Only the people you’ve harmed can forgive you.

Good common sense.

I always enjoy it, this forgiving. Also the mulling and the brooding. I like going back over my year and thinking about what I might’ve done differently. And this year, I find that I owe an unexpected apology to someone I don’t even know.

Sarah Palin, I’m sorry—

Really, I mean this sincerely. I do.

…

Maybe you have wild post-partum swings. Maybe your other kids are feeling neglected. I bet there are days when you question the choices you’ve made. That’s not easy, I know. It’s hard to be a woman in the world today, hard to balance family and career. Hard to sacrifice the privacy of loved ones for a public life.

And even though you’ve chosen the spotlight, and even though reporters have the right to discuss your record, that doesn’t mean I need to be talking smack about another working mother’s personal life. You don’t need to be what I talk about at dinner. Or blog about cruelly.

See, I really do want to believe in hope. I want things to change. And part of that is wanting you and John, and Barack and Joe to rise above the mudslinging. I don’t want to hear about Bristol any more than I want to hear about Barack’s madrassa. But if I’m going to cross my fingers and say a prayer and expect YOU not to engage in Lashon Hara—

Well, change starts at home, right?

(from Forgiving: An open apology to Sarah Palin. Really.)

Even though I enjoyed the first two pieces — I laughed out loud while reading them and promptly sent them to friends — the last one made a deeper impression on me. L’shanah tovah, Sarah.

whine, iraq, whine, whine, stupid government, hiphop

I’m going to pull a Whitman (do I contradict myself? Very well, then…) and take the wonderful opportunity afforded me by Sunday’s New York Times to bash a little on American foreign policy. 27th Comrade, if you’re reading, this still doesn’t mean I think the VA Tech killings were justified.

James Glanz wrote a fun little exposé about the spectacular failure of American-sponsored reconstruction projects in Iraq.

Like every other American who’s ever traveled with aid and development in mind, I find myself questioning my purpose here so frequently that it’s easy to fall into despair. Dante asked why I don’t write a more personal blog — it’s because no one wants to read my self-inquisition:

What am I doing here? Am I helping anyone? Am I even capable of helping anyone? Why did I think I could do that? What skills or magic knowledge did I think I had? I’m 22 and have a Russian degree, of all things. Idiot.
Break out a few racks, some rusty chains and a vat of boiling oil, and you have a close approximation of the inner workings of, I’d venture, most development workers’ minds.

I read a book last month that threw in red-hot pincers and a guillotine: Michael Maren’s The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity. It’s mostly about (surprise) America’s blunderings in Somalia, but the broader message is that the vast majority of aid and charity is nothing more than a self-serving industry that ends up harming more than it helps.

A real upper.

Maren writes exclusively about Africa, but Glanz points out that this trend isn’t unique to the continent: seven out of eight “successful” projects designed to rebuild Iraq are non-operative due to technical problems, lack of maintenance, looting, misuse and local distrust. Millions of dollars worth of generators at the Baghdad International Airport aren’t running because of missing batteries or broken fuel lines. A medical waste incinerator at a maternity hospital isn’t being used (and the waste contaminating the water supply) because no one can find the key. Meanwhile, the U.S. is proudly touting these “successes” to the public.

I try to stay optimistic, and every once in a while I hear about a project that reminds me of the wonderful things that a little concerted, locally-initiated and externally-sponsored effort can do. Glanz quotes Rick Barton, co-director of the postconflict reconstruction project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, as saying that “What ultimately makes any project sustainable is local ownership from the beginning in designing the project, establishing the priorities.” How are we still not getting this?

Um, hello? Government? Elected officials? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

I’m not saying that I could do this any better, but an 87.5% failure rate isn’t exactly screaming “Great job, Team USA!” to me.

May Day resolution: stop reading depressing books and spend more time around people like Abramz, starting with this weekend’s Hiphop For a Cause festival.

arguing tragedy with a communist

Kelly, UBHH newbie Tim and I had a run-in with the ever-opinionated 27th Comrade over the Virginia Tech tragedy at this week’s UBHH. Our passionate young communist argued that Americans deserve what they get and shouldn’t make a big deal out of things like this because far more than 33 people die from violence, preventable illness or sheer neglect each day in Africa because of things America has done or failed to do. Kelly and Tim were ruffled, and I think the appropriate response to insensitivity and callousness isn’t more of the same. Still, I get his point…sort of.

The VA Tech shootings earned far more American media coverage than any event in Africa last week, despite the fact that Nigeria had hotly contested elections, Somalia is exploding, the Ugandan peace talks resumed and Zimbabwe is always in trouble. What makes the fates of these students any more media-worthy than the fates of thousands of Africans?

Well, location, for one — Americans want to read news about other Americans, and papers need to sell. Ugandan coverage of Somalia is from the Ugandan peacekeeper angle, and neither the Monitor nor the New Vision talked at all about the unrest in Kirkuk last week, so you can’t blame just the American media for being narrow-minded.

So let’s talk about foreign policy. By now pretty much everyone admits that American involvement in the Horn of Africa in the 1990’s was worse than worthless — approximately 85,624 books have been written about the terrible things we did there. I’d be one of the first to say that the HIV/AIDS programs we’re pursuing aren’t always the best course of action — supporting Martin Ssempa’s public condom bonfires is probably contributing to, rather than stemming, unprotected sex among infected teenagers. But Janet Museveni’s championing ineffective family planning methods just as hard, and the West isn’t exactly rallying around Mugabe’s latest antics or trying all that hard to keep Obasanjo in power.

Yes, America has been and continues to be stupid and occasionally harmful when it comes to Africa. But the majority of deaths on the continent aren’t solely attributable to the U.S. any more than to colonialism or corruption or lack of media coverage or an environment hospitable to rapidly spreading fatal diseases, and the students who were murdered last week don’t deserve to be used as part of a transatlantic morality scale that needs to be balanced.

Pointing fingers only goes so far, and that’s where I start to butt heads with the 27th Comrade. Tragedy is tragedy wherever it happens, and I think you could have picked your argument — and your audience — a little better.

jackfruit of the week: march 22


A hanging Jackfruit
from TravelBlog

Lots of fun things to talk about, post-Gulu/Lira/Apac. Links while I’m getting all of my stories ready: