Africa is a mess. The only bright spot for the whole year on the continent was the election of a son of Kenya, Barack Hussein Obama, to be President of the United States, so there is hope for Africa now, or so this article implies.
How bad was it for Africa in 2008? The highlight of the year for most of the continent just might’ve been the election of a half-Kenyan to lead a nation thousands of miles away.
President-elect Barack Obama’s triumph in the U.S. raised Africa’s hopes – no small feat in a year that saw rigged elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe, virtually no progress toward ending the mass suffering in Darfur, political and social upheaval in South Africa and – just when you thought some places had hit bottom – even more chaos and bloodshed in Congo and Somalia.
Throughout Africa, 2008 was a year to forget. For all the hope embodied in the arrival of a new year, and of Obama himself, however, 2009 brings no obvious solutions for any of Africa’s most intractable problems.
Asked what should be Obama’s and the world’s priorities for the continent in 2009, Francois Grignon, a veteran analyst and now Africa director for the International Crisis Group research agency, sighed.
“The whole of Africa, really, remains at the top of the list,” he said.
And, you can bet that the International Crisis Group, with a list of board members who helped Obama get elected will be at the White House gate knocking to get in on January 21st.
I mentioned the International Crisis Group in August here when I wrote about a study they had just released about the refugee “crisis” in Iraq. This is what I said then:
I don’t know all the names on the International Crisis Group Board of Trustees, but here are a few I know: George Soros, Wesley Clark, Kofi Anan, Richard Armitage, Zibigniev Brzezinski and the best of all HRH Prince Turki-al-Faisal. LOL, such a bunch of independent members of the anti-war crowd. As security improves in Iraq, this refugee “crisis” is the last thing they have to wrap around the neck of the Bush Administration.
I am starting to see a pattern! Everywhere is a crisis! Those wanting to change the way we live, change our towns, change our country, change our government, change the world must first tell us there is a crisis. Our economy is in crisis, Africa is in crisis, the Middle East is in crisis, if they aren’t in crisis someone is going to generate a crisis. It looks like that’s what this Crisis group is all about—create and chronicle crisis. Then we need a mythical character, Obama (?), to swoop in and save the day!
We’ve all fallen for this strategy from time to time, I know I have with the economic so-called “crisis,” but I think we need to start resisting. How about if conservatives instead of defensively fighting back the Lefts “change” agenda took up positions that were optimistic initiatives. Imagine a group called something like “America is O.K. (and will continue to be O.K.)” I think that would send a powerful message to voters the next time around. Afterall, isn’t that what we found so appealing about President Reagan—his profound love of all things American, that we were fundamentally a good people.
For more on the International Crisis Group, see Discover the Networks here.
For more on crisis=change check out my Alinsky calendar here.
Endnote: When I looked at all the foundations funding the International Crisis Group, I note that many are the same foundations funding the environmental movement in the US—-you know those groups spreading fear (crisis!) about global warming. They are such fear-mongers those leftwingers aren’t they?