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Take the Hammer Away: News Items of Note

Take the Hammer Away: News Items of Note

Last updated on: July 23, 2020 at 8:08 am by Anne Kennedy

Take the Hammer Away: News Items of Note 2020-07-23T08:08:52-04:00 Anne Kennedy

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As usual, I should be doing other things besides wandering around the internet. But before I stop and attend to the smaller dramas of my own life, here are just a few interesting things going on that you probably already know about.

Mali is in crisis. Five presidents from around West Africa are in Bamako trying to bring about a resolution to growing political unrest. Here is a brief summary:

The visit on Thursday by the presidents of Ghana, Ivory Coast, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal comes days after a mediation mission by the West African regional bloc ECOWAS failed to break the deadlock. The foreign leaders are expected to meet Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and key figures of the opposition coalition behind the protests, known as the June 5 Movement. “It will be difficult to rebuff presidents who come to help bring back peace and stability to your country,” said researcher Demba Moussa Dembele, president of the Dakar-based African Forum on Alternatives. “The government and the opposition would likely avoid being blamed if the mission were to fail,” Dembele said. Mobilised by influential Muslim leader Ibrahim Dicko, tens of thousands of opposition protesters have in recent weeks poured onto the streets of Bamako to demand Keita’s resignation.

Of course, for useful information about Dicko, you have to keep clicking and then scroll down quite far to find out that

Dicko’s influence unnerves some in Mali, which is 95% Muslim but has a secular constitution, and France where some commentators have likened him to Iran’s late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. He studied in Mauritania and Saudi Arabia in the 1970s, where he embraced conservative Salafist ideas. As head of Mali’s influential High Islamic Council in 2009, he led successful protests against a family code that would have thrown out a requirement that women obey their husbands. His efforts to mediate with Islamist militant groups have also drawn suspicion. Mohamed Kimbiri, a member of the High Islamic Council, said Dicko was not challenging state secularism but wanted a less rigid version. “Today, he alone can command the Malian ship,” Kimbiri told Reuters. “The politicians have disqualified themselves, and the Malian public is now really in favour of the religious leaders.”

I must say, it is discouraging to go looking for international news and find every single new purveyor main headline blazing with something or other American, either how badly we’re doing with covid, or how badly we’re coping with all night rioting and demonstrations. That’s just my own complaint. There are a lot of interesting and terrible things going on around the world. It would be nice if we could know about some of them. That said, I’ll just be hypocritical and make sure and mark this moment–the glorious cancellation of Margaret Sanger:

But your history book may not have mentioned the darker side of Sanger, like her views on eugenics, a discredited belief in improving the human race through selective breeding. Eugenics practices targeted the disabled, people of color, and poor people. Sanger died in 1966. On Tuesday, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York (PPGNY) announced that it would be removing Sanger’s name from their Manhattan Health Center.

Yeah, exactly, why didn’t they mention the darker side? Why didn’t they? For the same reason I have scroll and scroll and scroll looking for news. The same reason I didn’t know, even though I watch France 24 every morning, that

The French Interior Ministry recorded 996 anti-Christian acts in 2019 — an average of 2.7 per day. The true figure may be higher, as it is thought that officials do not count fires of undetermined cause at churches across the country. On July 4, for example, fire devastated the Parish of St. Paul in Corbeil-Essonnes. Investigators concluded that the blaze resulted from a gas leak caused by squatters, but locals questioned the official explanation. “Over the past two years, French government officials have started to talk about it more publicly, perhaps because the visibility of such attacks is now so great. Both President Emmanuel Macron and his new Prime Minister, Jean Castex, have, for instance, spoken clearly and forcibly about the recent attack on the cathedral in Nantes,” he said. While the number of officially recorded anti-Christian incidents has remained steady over the past two years (1,063 in 2018 and 1,052 in 2019), it has risen by 285% between 2008 and 2019, according to Ellen Fantini.

Thank goodness for twitter and people putting links there. So anyway, this is my last thing–the mayor of Portland trying to be “solidaire” and it not going well:

Mayor of Portland @tedwheeler joins the Federal resistance

Complains about the stinging feeling of tear gas

He is then attacked (see other posts) by protesters while Feds never touch him

It’s hard to lie to the public when only one side attacks you
pic.twitter.com/hcS4D3KVpU

— E (@ElijahSchaffer) July 23, 2020

Every single morning for the last six months I’ve been watching videos of stuff going on in Portland during the night. I wake up, click on twitter, and start scrolling. People have been putting stuff up for that long, if not longer. But now its because the federal government sent people in? Color me super surprised. Here is a visual demonstration of what it feels like to watch Portland and Seattle burn to the ground (I linked it on Monday, but it bears watching again, gosh I hope it’s actually a hoax or something):

https://twitter.com/ivaniz66/status/1283756509881667585?s=20

My goodness, take the hammer away. Why is that so hard? That is the question of the moment. I guess I’ll answer it since no one else wants to. Taking the hammer away would mean people with actual political power telling the truth about their own ambitions and desires, instead of lying about them. It would mean doing difficult and painful things that might mean they were never reelected. It would mean putting the good of others–the actual good, not the easy, fatuous, selfish feelings of pride and vainglory–before the self.

So anyway, I guess I’ll go back to my regularly scheduled life. Enjoy the apocalypse! Have a great day!

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