From: http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?
type=topNews&storyID=8863561

Holy Cow!

Grandfather kills leopard with his hands
Wed Jun 22, 2005 11:42 AM ET

NAIROBI (Reuters) - A 73-year-old Kenyan grandfather reached into the
mouth of an attacking leopard and tore out its tongue to kill it,
authorities said Wednesday.
Peasant farmer Daniel M'Mburugu was tending to his potato and bean
crops in a rural area near Mount Kenya when the leopard charged out
of the long grass and leapt on him.
M'Mburugu had a machete in one hand but dropped that to thrust his
fist down the leopard's mouth. He gradually managed to pull out the
animal's tongue, leaving it in its death-throes.
"It let out a blood-curdling snarl that made the birds stop
chirping," he told the daily Standard newspaper of how the leopard
came at him and knocked him over.
The leopard sank its teeth into the farmer's wrist and mauled him
with its claws. "A voice, which must have come from God, whispered to
me to drop the panga (machete) and thrust my hand in its wide open
mouth. I obeyed," M'Mburugu said.
As the leopard was dying, a neighbor heard the screams and arrived to
finish it off with a machete.
M'Mburugu was toasted as a hero in his village Kihato after the
incident earlier this month. He was also given free hospital
treatment by astonished local authorities.
"This guy is very lucky to be alive," Kenya Wildlife Service official
Connie Maina told Reuters, confirming details of the incident.

Transitionary Leaders always get a hammering and the harshest
criticisms for not delivering. then again, maybe as candidates they
shouldn't sell products that don't really exist...?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/26/
AR2005062601235_pf.html

For Mexico's Fox, a 'Revolution' Unfulfilled
By Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 27, 2005; A01



MEXICO CITY -- Five years after his historic election on July 2,
2000, as President Vicente Fox enters the twilight of his term and
the nation moves toward elections next year in which he is not
eligible to run, even his critics say he has made government more
honest and transparent, fortified the economy and championed democracy.

But the idea of Fox as a revolutionary, a powerful figure who would
energize and modernize a nation long strangled by corrupt and
authoritarian government, has died. And many of his closest advisers
say that despite his image, Fox succumbed far earlier than anyone
realized, and sooner than they wanted to admit at the time.

Several advisers said that within weeks of the election, major
problems emerged, including Fox's distaste for confrontation and his
rejection of get-tough politics with the Institutional Revolutionary
Party, or PRI, which ruled Mexico for seven decades until Fox became
president. In addition, he was nearly paralyzed by concern that
adversaries, if provoked, could destabilize the economy with strikes
or protests.

Within a year, the advisers said, the bold promise of his
administration had all but evaporated.

"The Fox revolution died in the transition," said Adolfo Aguilar
Zinser, a key aide to Fox and architect of his presidential campaign,
referring to the five months between his election and inauguration.

One exchange offered a glimpse of why Fox's promised revolution -- to
slash crime, create millions of jobs and supercharge the economy by
reforming antiquated tax, labor and energy laws -- never got off the
ground, key aides and outside observers said.

In June 2001, six months after Fox took office, a group of his
closest aides requested an emergency meeting at his ranch. They
feared that his promised "revolution of the 21st century," along with
his presidency, was sinking.

"You are not doing the job; you are deserting us," said Aguilar
Zinser, who later served as Mexico's ambassador to the United Nations
until Fox dismissed him for his criticism of U.S. policies.

The aides told Fox he was being too soft on the PRI, which was now
strangling his key reforms in Congress. They told him it was time to
play hardball, and they proposed a plan: scrutinize the finances of
100 PRI officials and threaten to expose their corruption.

"Let's give them options: leave the country or go to jail," Aguilar
Zinser recounted in an interview before his death in a traffic
accident earlier this month.

The president shook his head.

"I am not God," Fox said, according to Jorge G. Castañeda, a former
top aide and foreign minister. "Who am I to draw up that list?"

"This is not going to work," Castañeda remembered saying in
frustration. "We're losing too many battles."

Fox, in an interview aboard his presidential plane earlier this
month, insisted he had succeeded in bringing far-reaching change to
Mexico.

"The revolution to me was breaking the 70 years of authoritarian
dictatorship," he said, recalling his election night, when Mexicans
danced in the streets.

Fox likened himself to Lech Walesa, whose election as president of
Poland was a historic blow against Soviet communism, but whose
transition from crusading candidate to head of state was "not very
smooth." Fox said his own shift from fiery campaign rhetoric to a
more cautious approach as president was simply the pragmatism of an
executive whose party held a minority in Congress.

When Fox took office, full of swagger and standing 6-foot-6 in his
trademark cowboy boots, perhaps no Mexican political figure had ever
so captivated both Mexicans and millions of people in the United
States, many of whom for the first time knew the name of a Mexican
president.

Now, as Fox nears his 63rd birthday, his black hair and mustache are
tinged with gray, his wrinkles are deeper and his big grin is slower
to appear. Back surgery a couple of years ago forced him to trade his
big boots for sensible, flat shoes.

"My government is not a failure," he said, his voice rising over the
roaring jet engine just outside the window. "You don't build up a
country in six years. Mexico was so far behind that we will need a
generation to solve all the problems completely."

Asked whether he felt overwhelmed by the office, he responded
vehemently.

"Never, never, never. That's not what made me change," Fox said.
"Many people still ask me: 'Where are the boots? Where is your
language and your messages of before?' . . . But being president is
different from being candidate. It's more prudence, more tolerance.
Being a president, a minority president, I am more obliged to . . .
reach consensus and agreements. So, that's what I have to work at.
Everything would have been different with this story if I had had a
majority in Congress."

Still, Fox acknowledged that his early coalition-building efforts
with the PRI had yielded few results. Was it the right call?

"That's a decision that history will have to judge," Fox said. "Up to
now, it seems that it was not the right decision. But if I were to go
back, I would still keep on trying the option of plurality and
alliances. I'm absolutely at peace in my conscience that I did well
for the country."

Protecting His Popularity
Shortly after the election, Fox's transition team began meeting at a
private house at 607 Reforma, a tree-lined boulevard where Fox's
second-floor office overlooked a lush garden.

In one of the first meetings, Castañeda recalled, the campaign
received a gift. He said outgoing President Ernesto Zedillo had
privately signaled that he was willing to seek increases in
electricity rates and gasoline prices before he left office, creating
a potentially huge revenue infusion for Fox's first budget.

Castañeda was delighted that Zedillo, a Yale-educated economist who
had fallen out with his own party, was offering to take the political
hit for an unpopular move.

But Fox would have none of it.

"No, no," Castañeda recalled Fox saying. "We don't want to start off
with unpopular measures."

"It was the first warning sign," Castañeda said, recalling his
concern that a newly elected leader was unwilling to take risky but
needed moves. "I said: 'Gee, wait a minute. We've got a problem here.' "

Fox, in the recent interview, said Zedillo had made no such offer. A
source close to Zedillo, however, said the former president had done so.

There were many instances in those early months, Castañeda said, when
Fox recoiled at the notion of doing anything that might damage his
popularity ratings.

During the campaign, Fox had made bold promises. He would create
millions of jobs and lift up the poor. He would win a new immigration
deal with the United States. He would change outdated labor and tax
laws to attract investment. He would overhaul education. He would
expose and punish the corruption that undermined Mexico's government
and judicial system.

Marketing and Governing
Lino Korrodi, Fox's former campaign finance chief, has known Fox
since 1967, when they were both starting out at the Coca-Cola Co.,
where Fox rose to become the company's top executive for Mexico.
Korrodi said he had always thought of Fox as almost superhuman and
fearless. But after becoming president, Korrodi said, Fox suddenly
seemed to show "a lack of determination."

Korrodi, who left the administration after allegations that he had
helped channel illegal contributions to Fox's campaign from abroad,
said Fox "changed completely" and seemed "smaller" after he arrived
at Los Pinos, the presidential residence.

"There are two Foxes I'm talking about," Korrodi said. "The Fox who
made it to 2000, and the Fox who, on getting to the door of Los
Pinos, took off his boots."

Aguilar Zinser said he observed the same contrast in September 2000,
when the transition team went to a beautiful old hacienda in Cocoyoc,
a weekend resort town south of Mexico City.

One morning, Aguilar Zinser said, the team entered a meeting room
where a vast organizational chart of the sprawling federal
bureaucracy had been posted on a wall. He recalled that Fox looked
increasingly alarmed as he studied the web of ministries and agencies
dealing with matters from spying to fisheries.

"Is this what I have to manage?" Fox said, according to Aguilar Zinser.

Mexico's lumbering, often corrupt bureaucracy might have buried any
new leader's ambitions, and Fox seemed particularly daunted.
Castañeda said part of the problem was that Fox had not really
expected to win, so he was not prepared to rule. A revealing moment,
he recalled, was when he heard Fox telling Prime Minister Tony Blair
of Britain in 2001 that he enjoyed being a candidate much more than
governing.

Aguilar Zinser said Fox was effectively marketed to the nation as a
new product.

"The product was a mustache, a hat, a belt, the boots and a brand
name," he said. "It was all identified with a bottle, a Coca-Cola
bottle. And Fox was very comfortable being a bottle."

But faced with the challenge of governing, Aguilar Zinser said, Fox
suddenly seemed uncertain of his role and unable to grasp the power
of the presidency.

"We did not want to acknowledge it in the beginning, but when we
looked into the bottle, we said, 'My God, it's empty.' "

Dealing With the PRI
A few days after Fox took office, he approached Carlos Rojas Magnon,
a lifelong friend who was handling administrative issues in the
presidential office. He held out a list of journalists and media
companies that were receiving monthly payments from the presidency, a
long tradition that helped shield PRI politicians from criticism.

"Get rid of it," Fox ordered.

Rojas said he explained that cutting off the journalists' payments
would anger them, and that this would surely color their coverage of
the new president.

"Well," Fox said, "one day it has to be done, and today's as good a
day as any."

To Rojas, the moment was an example of Fox's accomplishments. He said
the president's efforts to end corrupt ties and make public spending
transparent -- in a nation where predecessors could legally spend
millions in secret -- were indeed "revolutionary."

Ironically, it was the new transparency that forced Rojas out of
government. When a Web site on government expenses showed the
presidential residence had been outfitted with $400 towels, Rojas
took the fall. But he and Fox remain close, and he began an interview
by saying, "I love this man."

During the PRI era, both Fox and his aides had endured humiliation
and worse. Rojas was jailed for painting anti-PRI slogans on a wall.
Fox lost a 1991 gubernatorial election in which fraud by the PRI was
alleged. Aguilar Zinser said he was kidnapped from his office by PRI
thugs in the early 1980s and taken to a military base where he was
blindfolded, beaten and had his head repeatedly submerged in a toilet.

While some PRI officials were honest, others rigged elections and
looted the treasury to subsidize lavish lifestyles. Party officials
also were implicated in the killings of rivals.

Once Fox was elected, however, he gave important jobs to PRI members.
Rojas said he could not believe it. At one transition team meeting,
he said, he protested to Fox: "What the hell are we doing with all
these guys from the PRI in the government?" But Fox, he said, went on
about the need for consensus.

"It was not easy to take," Rojas recalled.

Rojas said he believed that Fox at times "did not exercise the kind
of leadership that was necessary." Fox failed to control his cabinet
members, he said, and disagreements descended into public bickering.
But Rojas said the problem was most obvious with Fox's handling of
the PRI.

Fox's election had devastated the PRI. Its leaders were quarrelling
openly and its financial picture was so grim that party leaders even
discussed selling some landmark buildings. The party appeared in
danger of splintering. Rojas argued that this was not the time to
ease up, saying old-guard PRI loyalists would respect only force.

"When you have your opponent hanging in the ring, you finish him,"
Rojas said. "You don't hold time for 10 minutes so that he can
recuperate." Fox "should have finished them in the first months. But
it's not in his nature."

Fox, however, said he was just doing what was "prudent." In a country
that in 1994 had suffered a major economic crisis that crushed
millions of Mexicans, he said the "drums of war" approach advocated
by some of his advisers made no sense. "Stability," he said, was his
"number one ingredient" during the transition.

Fox also knew that the PRI still controlled many labor unions and was
capable of creating destabilizing strikes or even violence. Some
aides said they also suspected that Fox had struck a deal with
wealthy business leaders who bankrolled his campaign, promising not
to provoke the PRI. Mexico's elite worried that a war between Fox and
the PRI could scare off foreign investment and sink the stock market.

"I think Fox didn't know what to do with the PRI," said Dulce Maria
Sauri, a senator who was PRI president in 2000. "During the campaign,
it was very useful to paint the PRI as the devil. But to govern, that
was not enough. Fox's plan was to get the PRI out of Los Pinos, but
then he didn't know what to do. He opened the door to the transition,
but then he stood there paralyzed in the doorway. He wasted his
political power."

Defending His Legacy
Fox's plane touched down in Veracruz state on the Gulf of Mexico. It
was a brutally muggy day earlier this month and Fox took the podium
in a sweltering concrete warehouse in the port city of Coatzacoalcos
to address a crowd gathered for Mexico's annual Navy day.

Four and a half years earlier, wearing a crisp business suit and the
green, red and white presidential sash across his chest, Fox had
delivered an inaugural address filled with soaring oratory, promising
to make dramatic changes and to "keep alive the call of hope."

Now, his graying hair and white guayabera shirt were soaked with
sweat. The sunburned president began a long defense of his
administration's performance as a few hundred sailors and civilians
fanned themselves in the heat. He railed against "radical opponents"
in the PRI who had blocked his plans to reform the justice system,
taxation, fiscal policy, labor laws and energy laws.

He spoke of new highways and housing complexes, of new pension and
health plans for workers, of how Mexico was now making its debt
payments on time.

"This is a responsible government," Fox said.

He mentioned Mexico's devastating economic crash of 1994, clearly
proud that his government had not suffered a similar disaster. He
appeared to be measuring his legacy more by what he had avoided than
by what he had achieved.

"One of the great changes and transformations in our country is this:
economic stability, political stability and social stability," Fox
said. "We are not going to put that at risk."

It was a businesslike, pragmatic speech. Gone was the reach-for-the-
stars rhetoric that once inspired his followers. Instead, his flat
list of accomplishments could barely compete with the humidity for
the audience's attention.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

David Brooks, in his Editorial to the NYT touches on the age old
debate of how foreign policy can end poverty in africa. is it through
increasing the amount of aid, or focusing on 'building democracy' and
insitutions in africa...?

i agree with a lot of his points that money alone won't solve the
issue. we do need to build institutions that can address these
challenges. most of the time, my frustration is that africans are not
given the space to build instutions that work for them. however, when
people have built institutions based on their ideas of what they want
these institutions to achieve, the results have been remarkable. Take
for example, target="new" class="bodytxt">Community Foundation for the Western
Region of Zimbabwe. It was built by people in rural communities
and is effective in enabling them to address issues that are
important to them. part of why people are poor, in addition to not
having access to finances, and also in that they have had their
cultures and tools for creating wealth stripped form them, they do
not have access to institutions and systems that affect their lives.
so in building these institutions, i feel that it is important to
enable people to create institutions that make a determine how
programs are implemented, and what the priorities are--makes sense to
me.

~the dumi


From the The New York Times
Editorial Pages


Liberals, Conservatives and Aid

By DAVID BROOKS
Karl Rove has his theories about what separates liberals from
conservatives and I have mine. Mine include the differences between
Jeffrey Sachs and George Bush.

Jeffrey Sachs, as you may know, is the Columbia University economist
who has done more to put poverty in Africa atop the global agenda
than anybody else. He has hectored and lobbied the developed world to
forgive debts, set goals and increase aid to ameliorate the suffering
of the extremely poor.

But Sachs is a child of the French Enlightenment. At the end of his
new book, "The End of Poverty," he delivers an unreconstructed
tribute to the 18th-century Enlightenment, when leading thinkers had
an amazing confidence in their ability to refashion reality so that
it would conform to reason.

Throughout the book, Sachs comes across as a philosophe for our
times. He is, he writes, a "clinical economist," who diagnoses the
maladies that affect nations the way a doctor diagnoses and holds
life-or-death sway over a human organism. One of the striking
features of his book is the absence of individual Africans. There is
just the undifferentiated mass of the suffering poor, trapped in
systems, and Sachs traveling around the globe prescribing treatments.

Sachs is also a materialist. He dismisses or downplays those who
believe that human factors like corruption, greed, institutions,
governance, conflict and traditions have contributed importantly to
Africa's suffering. Instead, he emphasizes material causes: lack of
natural resources, lack of technology, bad geography and poverty
itself as a self-perpetuating trap.

This gives him an impressive confidence on the malleability of human
societies. Though $2.3 trillion has been spent over the past 50 years
to address global poverty, without producing anything like the
results we would have hoped for, Sachs is sure that with his
insights, and most important, with more money, extreme poverty can be
eliminated with one big, final push. "We can realistically envision a
world without extreme poverty by the year 2025," he writes. "Ending
the poverty trap will be much easier than it appears," he declares.

Sachs, who tends to regard anyone who disagrees with him as immoral,
is contemptuous of the Bush administration. The Bush folks, he
charges, have failed the poor.

The Bush administration has nearly doubled foreign aid, but it will
not spend the amounts Sachs wants. The Bush folks, at least when it
comes to Africa policy, have learned from centuries of conservative
teaching - from Burke to Oakeshott to Hayek - to be skeptical of
Sachsian grand plans. Conservatives emphasize that it is a fatal
conceit to think we can understand complex societies, or rescue them
from above with technocratic planning.

The Bush folks, like most conservatives, tend to emphasize
nonmaterial causes of poverty: corrupt governments, perverse
incentives, institutions that crush freedom. Conservatives appreciate
the crooked timber of humanity - that human beings are not simply
organisms within systems, but have minds and inclinations of their
own that usually defy planners. You can give people mosquito nets to
prevent malaria, but they might use them instead to catch fish.

Instead of Sachs's monumental grand push to end poverty, the Bush
administration has devised the Millennium Challenge Account, which is
not dismissed by Sachs, but not heralded either. This program is
built upon the assumption that aid works only where there is good
governance and good governance exists only where the local folks
originate and believe in the programs. M.C.A. directs aid to
countries that have taken responsibility for their own reform.

It has the faults of its gradualist virtues. I recently sat in on a
meeting in Mozambique between local and American officials. It was
clear that the program, while well conceived, has been horribly
executed. The locals had been given only the vaguest notions of what
sort of projects the U.S. is willing to finance. After two years of
trying they had received nothing.

Nonetheless, the Bush approach, when reformed, at least builds on the
experience of the past decades, while Sachs, as reviewers have
noticed, repeats the 1960's. If, à la Sachs, we assume money
translates easily into growth, if we pour aid into Africa without
regard to local institutions, we will do little good, we will exhaust
donors and we will discredit the aid enterprise for years to come.

E-mail: dabrooks@nytimes.com

Here's one of my favourite topics: the importance [and power] of
African Languages! have a look at some of the comments on this
article where people are debating the issue -- class="bodytxt">How Important is Your Mother Tongue?

i think it is critically important for Africans to understand the
importance of language as a tool for development and empowerment. it
doesn't necessarily mean that we as africans should go into empire
mode to promote out language globally like those that speak european
languages have done over the years. but we must own our languages
and understand why they are an important tool for empowering our own
people. through lanugage, we navigate the world on our own terms.

i find it really sad when i see parents bringing up their children to
not embrace and love their traditional languages. in that transition
between generations, there are huge losses that cannot be accounted
for. when you lose your language, you lose contact with where you are
from, who you really are and the essence of what it means to be
african. some may not agree, but i think it's true. if it wasn't the
case, oppressors in the past would not have made such large
investments in stripping people of their languages and forcing
spanish, english, french, german, portuguese etc upon them.

i strongly believe african children should grow up speaking and
learning african languages. actually, more than one. the more
languages you can learn/speak, the more access you have into
different worlds and perspectives. the more empowered you are to
navigate the world. some people think that language capacity is a
gift or a talent. i think it's a matter of exposure and not ability.
as our generation of africans grows up in a globalizing world, will
we also place other people's languages and cultures over our own
arguing that it will be easier for our kids to get employed if they
speak english, or french [or in the future, chinese]...? who will
those kids be if they do not know who they are and cannot communicate
with their people and understand what has really made them the people
that they are?

i wrote an article once on the
The Many Dimensions of
Language looking at some of these issues which i hope is useful
to the wider debate.

given this study, i still wonder why people in the US have no clue
what the capital of canada is...? or where iraq is on the map...? or
what's happening in their own country and capitals... i find it mind
boggling that a country to have such an easy access to information
still is relatively uninformed about what's happening around them.
ok... my US bashing for the month quota is used up! :-)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/24/national/24library.html?
ei=5088&en=864132d4843c7fe3&ex=1277265600&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewan
ted=print

June 24, 2005
Almost All Libraries Offer Free Web Access

By GRETCHEN RUETHLING
CHICAGO, June 23 - Nearly all libraries around the country have free
public Internet access and an increasing number are offering wireless
connections, according to a study released Thursday by the American
Library Association here.

The study, which was conducted by researchers at Florida State
University, found that 98.9 percent of libraries offer free public
Internet access, up from 21 percent in 1994 and 95 percent in 2002.
It also found that 18 percent of libraries have wireless Internet
access and 21 percent plan to get it within the next year.

"U.S. public libraries have gained a tremendous amount of headway as
it relates to connectivity and access," said John Carlo Bertot, one
of the study's authors. "The challenge lies in ensuring that
libraries continue to get the support they need to provide necessary
improvements to the technology."

The study found that rural areas were more likely to have slower
connections and fewer workstations and training opportunities.
Arkansas, California, Idaho, New Hampshire, Virginia and West
Virginia had the lowest levels of access.

Urban areas, which also had some of the highest poverty rates, tended
to have high levels of connectivity, bandwidth and wireless access.

The study sampled 6,865 libraries out of the total 16,192 in the
country and received responses from 5,023 libraries in 34 states.

Hazel Williams, 50, of Chicago said she started going to the library
for Internet research two years ago while she was earning her high
school equivalency diploma. On Thursday, she was surfing the Web for
jobs at the Harold Washington Library Center, which has 78 computers
with Internet access, in downtown Chicago.

"Because I don't have a home computer, it's very convenient for me to
use it here," Ms. Williams said. "If they didn't have the computer
here, it would be kind of hard for me to get one."

People like Ms. Williams who go to the library for Internet access
might be one reason that the number of annual library visits has
increased from 500 million in the early 1990's to 1.2 billion today,
said Carol Brey-Casiano, president of the American Library Association.

The study also reported that almost 40 percent of public libraries
filter public Internet access to prevent minors from gaining access
to sexually related materials. State library systems in Georgia and
West Virginia put filters on all public libraries, the study reported.

i always tell people that africa's 'democracy' challenges are more
complex than just changing political parties and removing long
standing leaders. i was in kenya a few weeks after Moi's government
was voted out and there was great hope for change, and in the west
the media was ecstatic about the democratic process. an evaluation of
that democratic process much closer, i feel will reveal lots of gaps.
there needs to be a deeper cultural transformation around democracy
and not just a bureaucratic one. i think that people in africa really
want to have more just, more effective and more prosperous countries--
but the dynamics in the way of reaching that goal are huge. it would
be nice if the media [western and other] focused on real issues
facing these countries in their transformations rather than the
shallow bits of elections, and the political ideologies of
candidates. [it usually sounds like "blah blah is the pro-market
candidate and embraces western style reform. blah-blah-blah is the
nationalist candidate and has been in power for yonks. end of story"]

in the coming days, i'll be posting a bog on the recent month of
activities in zimbabwe. i've been so busy with travel and work and
graduation and hosting people in boston from all over the world that
i haven't been able to share some perspectives on it, but promise to
do so soon. i think there is so much to discuss and ponder over as
far as that situation is concerned and i have been doing some
'research' about it from different points of view that i'd like to
share. so if you're interested in that, watch this space

peace

~the dumi


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Kenya MPs 'dishonest and selfish'
Kenya's MPs are mostly dishonest, insincere and tribalistic, says
speaker of parliament Francis ole Kaparo.
"There is clear lack of clarity, purpose, and vision in the behaviour
of our MPs and political parties," Mr Kaparo told a meeting of young
MPs.
He went on to reprimand them for failing to turn up to work, which
meant the chamber was unable to pass laws.
A recent survey revealed that parliament was open for business for
only 57 days last year.
'Parochial'

Mr Kaparo, one of Kenya's longest-serving MPs, likened his colleagues
to local councillors, concerned only with petty and selfish interests.

"If you want to talk about parochial issues, you'd rather go back to
the councils," Mr Kaparo is quoted by Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper
as saying.

On occassion as few as five MPs attend debates when a quorum of 30 is
needed to pass bills, the newspaper reports.

Mr Kaparo also expressed concern that MPs showed no party loyalty,
with many leaving the former ruling party Kanu to join the governing
Narc coalition which came into power in 2002.

"They no longer have any cause and do not espouse any ideology,"he said.

The BBC's Caroline Karobia in Nairobi said many people in the capital
agreed with the speaker's comments, regarding their parliamentarians
as lazy.

It was difficult to find anyone who had a good word to say about MPs,
she said.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/4619207.stm

Africa's getting a lot of love in the press these days! i think it's
awesome... and it's about time too! part of what we're working on
with the SMT project is to change perceptions around how people see
Africa. it seems we're getting a lot of help! The Media's jumping on
the Africa band wagon, the G8 and western countries are all up in it
too. it's hard to tell what efforts are authentic, and which ones are
about promoting massive self interest. i spoke to someone last week
who felt that Gordon Brown's "i love africa" campaign is really much
about positioning himself as someone capable of showing global
leadership as a prime-minister in waiting, to demonstrate that he can
forge global coalitions and so on. Someone else also commented at how
disgusted they were with the whole Live 8 thing. 'how can they have a
series of concerts for africa and not include african artists or have
any concert on the continent itself?' they said... they've now booked
a concert for johannesburg too, but in what seems like an
afterthought. the debt cancellation seems like a good idea though i
must confess i haven't looked over the details of the agreements that
are canceling this "debt" (though if we were to really do a toll of
who owes you, you might find that africa is actually owed trillions
of dollars... but that's for another day). i still argue for more
trade over aid. if they reduced aid by 80% and increased trade, fair
trade, by 20% i think the differences would be incredible. i'm
willing to be challenged on that!

africans have to take a central position on the stage that is
defining their future, and not leave it up to everyone else to do so
on non-african terms. it just won't work that way. so, some progress
is being made, but as africans, we need to step up and change how
that future is being re-defined!

the the
Sweet Mother Tour online community is growing with lots of youth
from around the world connecting around some of these questions, and
soon we hope to have more discussions and even projects launched that
relate to this issue.

it's incredible how much needs to be done though :-)

this article below was in yesterday's boston metro



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From http://parex.metro.st/ftp/20050620_1000005.pdf

Respect for Africa
From Live 8 to MTV, all things African are the hot topic

• A recently added Live 8 concert in Johannesburg will take place on
July 2. Visit www.live8live.com for more information. By MALCOLM VENABLE





WHEN BOB GELDOF announced plans for the Live 8 concerts that
will benefit Africa, his humanitarian gesture — a rock star cause
celebré for decades — only added to the mounting attention. Africa
has been getting lately. In spite of its philanthropic need, the
continent is becoming less of a charity case and, increasingly the
subject of several trends inpop culture. From Dave Chappelle’s
endorsement of South Africa as the post meltdown hotspot, to
MTV’srecent pan-African launch, to even fashion runways, Africa is
suddenly seeing a newfound respect for its cultural offerings.



MTV GOES EVEN MORE GLOBAL

Execs at MTV are hoping that the new pan-African satellite MTV base
in Johannesburg will reap the benefits of the Africa buzz. “MTV base
celebrates the diversity of vibrant music culture across Africa,
offering rich, creative inspiration for MTV’s global network,” MTV
International President Bill Roedy says in a statement.



VIDEO TREATMENT

Hip-hop is rediscovering Africa too, albeit in a much different way.
In his video for “Pimpin’ All Over the World,” Ludacris raps about
curvy women, caviar and vodka with cranberry while riding elephants
and watching South African natives perform traditional dances. The
video’s message is somewhat mixed and far from the Native Tongues’
pro- Africa movement in the ’90s, yet breaks ground as the first
American rap video shot on the continent. “People just think it’s all
jungles and flies and poverty,” says Ludacris. “I had to show the
beautiful side of what Africa as a whole is all about.”



FASHION FORWARD

Perhaps the most obvious example of the mainstream’s interest in
Africa are the collections churned out by fashion houses such as YSL
Rive Gauche, Marni and Gucci for spring and summer. “Even with the
accessories — the wooden bangles, the layering of necklaces, the huge
gold earrings — that is straight African driven, ” says Glamour
magazine fashion expert Daisy Lewellyn.



A LASTING INFLUENCE?

Despite its prominence, will Africa’s current moment in the sun fade,
linger or initiate social change? “It’s hard to say,” says Ballman,
who is white. “It could just be the flavor of the month, but
increased exposure can lead people to examine broader issues in
African culture.”

I was invited to represent Pioneers of Change to the Community Commons
Conference [check out
http://www.undp.org/equatorinitiative/secondary/events/CommunityCommons/CommunityCommons.htm]
hosted by the U.N in partnership with Fordham University. i thought i'd been
to enough of these UN type events and was ready to meet up with yet another
group of people well dressed and articulate on development challenges who
will complain about the system--i was wrong (and i HATE being wrong... but
this time, am happy to be wrong!)

there are about 10 kenyans here who don't speak english and are walking
around in traditional masai outfits. it's a sight. indigenous people are
given prominance and speaking english isn't a pre-req for participation.

the sessions are rather boring for me.. the people rather inspiring!

i keep thinking of the SMT Conference (http://sweetmother.org/?q=conference)
next spring... man, do we have work to do! more later!
~the dumi

--

This editorial from
the New
York Times underscores what i see as some of the long term
challenges the US has to face. There is very little chance that this
country will be able to survive a massive downturn/deterioration if
they cannot maintain a healthy middle class and uphold a decent
standard of living for its peoples. i do not not if a country this
large can absorb the shocks [social, psychological, political] of a
major economic collapse (for lack of a less dramatic word). it seems
like a far off idea that the US could have economic issues like
easter europe did after the fall of the USSR, but as they say in
insurance, "it could happen you you..."


~dumi

June 6, 2005
The Mobility Myth

By BOB HERBERT
The war that nobody talks about - the overwhelmingly one-sided class
war - is being waged all across America. Guess who's winning.

A recent front-page article in The Los Angeles Times showed that
teenagers are faring poorly in a tight job market because of the
fierce competition they're getting from older workers and immigrants
for entry-level positions.

On the same day, in the business section, the paper reported that the
chief executives at California's largest 100 companies took home a
collective $1.1 billion in 2004, an increase of nearly 20 percent
over the previous year. The paper contrasted that with the 2.9
percent raise that the average California worker saw last year.

The gap between the rich and everybody else in this country is fast
becoming an unbridgeable chasm. David Cay Johnston, in the latest
installment of the New York Times series "Class Matters," wrote,
"It's no secret that the gap between the rich and the poor has been
growing, but the extent to which the richest are leaving everybody
else behind is not widely known."

Consider, for example, two separate eras in the lifetime of the baby-
boom generation. For every additional dollar earned by the bottom 90
percent of the population between 1950 and 1970, those in the top
0.01 percent earned an additional $162. That gap has since
skyrocketed. For every additional dollar earned by the bottom 90
percent between 1990 and 2002, Mr. Johnston wrote, each taxpayer in
that top bracket brought in an extra $18,000.

It's like chasing a speedboat with a rowboat.

Put the myth of the American Dream aside. The bottom line is that
it's becoming increasingly difficult for working Americans to move up
in class. The rich are freezing nearly everybody else in place, and
sprinting off with the nation's bounty.

Economic mobility in the United States - the extent to which
individuals and families move from one social class to another - is
no higher than in Britain or France, and lower than in some
Scandinavian countries. Maybe we should be studying the Scandinavian
dream.

As far as the Bush administration is concerned, the gap between the
rich and the rest of us is not growing fast enough. An analysis by
The Times showed the following:

"Under the Bush tax cuts, the 400 taxpayers with the highest incomes
- a minimum of $87 million in 2000, the last year for which the
government will release such data - now pay income, Medicare and
Social Security taxes amounting to virtually the same percentage of
their incomes as people making $50,000 to $75,000. Those earning more
than $10 million a year now pay a lesser share of their income in
these taxes than those making $100,000 to $200,000."

The social dislocations resulting from this war that nobody mentions
have been under way for some time. But the Bush economic policies
have accelerated the consequences and intensified the pain.

A big problem, of course, is that American workers have been hurting
badly for years. Revolutionary improvements in technology,
increasingly globalized trade, the competition of low-wage workers
overseas and increased immigration here at home, the decline of
manufacturing, the weakening of the labor movement, outsourcing and
numerous other factors have left American workers with very little
leverage to use against employers.

Many in the middle class are mortgaged to the hilt, maxed out on
credit cards and fearful to the point of trembling that all they've
worked for might vanish in a downsized minute.

The privileged classes, with the Bush administration's iron cloak of
protection, avoid their fair share of taxes, are reluctant to pay an
honest dollar for an honest day's work (the federal minimum wage is
still a scandalous $5.15 an hour), refuse to fight in their nation's
wars, and laugh all the way to their yachts.

The American dream was about expanding opportunities and widely
shared prosperity. Now we have older people and college grads
replacing people near the bottom in jobs that offer low pay, no
pensions, no health insurance and no vacations.

A fellow named Mark McClellan, who was bounced out of a management
position when Kaiser Aluminum closed down in Spokane, Wash., told The
Times in the "Class Matters" series: "I may look middle class. But
I'm not. My boat is sinking fast."

E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com

the event was well organized. John Renehan spoke REALLY eloquently and passionately about what EnVision does and about his love for youth leadership/development work. i'm glad the slide projector broke down because we got to actually look at him and his presidential looks while he spoke!

Tulaine, the keynote speaker was REALLY incredible. she spoke about preparing young people to grow up and take on the leadership challenges they face in a fast changing world and one where they have to deal with changes in race and how it's understood, where there is a shift in the dynamics of class and also of the reasons why a lot of people, especially those from poor backgrounds do not complete secondary education.

my brother was at the event, fresh from zimbabwe. he loved it!