Posts Tagged ‘Rwanda’
Kigali Grenades: News Redux
If you do a Google News search for ‘kigali grenades,’ you’ll get nearly 1500 items right now. That includes a lot of bullshit, so here are the high points, which is to say, most of the real news stories. I suspect it’s most because I found them all on the first page of the Google [...]
Don’t look here for good news
Al Shabaab bombs Kampala threatens Bujumbura, which now feels like my second home. Journalists and political candidates are turning up dead in Rwanda. New fighting by the same old freaking people in eastern Congo sent 70,000 more people running. Meanwhile, Burundi apparently still can’t get its act together, and it’s dragged the East African [...]
An open application to join Kofi Annan’s speech writing team
Because I’d make a few tweaks to his op-ed on Holocaust education and genocide prevention. I’d clean up some sloppy language and some bad metaphors. And lest you think that’s just snotty writer talk, here’s the point up front: The metaphors we use about genocide tell us what we think causes it. [...]
This week in African elections…
There aren’t any. To be fair, only one of the three I’m thinking about is even supposed to have happened. But the other two are getting dicey.
Let’s start with Rwanda, because it’s all over the news. I’m not there at the moment, but that never stops the New York Times from writing vague stories without [...]
Does the Holocaust teach us anything about modern-day genocide? (Oh, and happy new year)
Things are quiet on this blog while we’re preparing for a server transfer and redesign. But here’s a nice graph from a piece in Foreign Policy last month, on whether the Holocaust is the right tool for teaching us about genocide (or helping us identify early warning signs, etc.). The whole piece is [...]
Thanks to the girls at St. Mary's in Portland, Ore.
I had a great time this afternoon with the ladies of the comparative religion class at St. Mary’s Academy in leafy downtown Portland. Thanks, ladies, for sharing your knowledge of ‘primal religions’ with me, and letting me share a little bit from my work in Africa with you.
I am a freelance journalist and multimedia producer who covers human rights, Africa and foreign affairs. [