January 9, 2007 Somali Strikes: Lamu Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the reported target of the U.S.
airstrikes in Somalia and the alleged planner of the bombings of the
U.S. embassies in Nairobi and the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam in
1998, seems to have been recently teaching either on or near Lamu, an island
quite close to the southern Somali border. Though a speck of an island,
Lamu has been of interest in recent years as a gateway between Somali and
Kenya. Then there's the frequent traffic between the island and the Middle
East. (That flow of life from Lamu to the Persian Gulf has been going on
for centuries now. As I remember it, the heating and cooling of the Himalayas
created great winds that pushed and pulled boats between the two places.)
I mention Lamu because the island was the setting for my master's thesis
on how life on the 19th century Swahili coast was shaped by East African
slavery. The idea of that paper was that while "slave" was a more
mutable role on the Swahili coast than it was in the American South and
the Caribbean, the 'slave state' was so enmeshed in the religous and cultural
life of Lamu that the social role of former slaves and their descendants
carried on with force long after the end of recognized slavery. I don't have much more
to add to the story at this point, but mentioning Lamu at least gives me
a chance to post a photo of me on the island with an ass that I bought there:
"In breaking with our past... we need to fight and resist all forms of discrimination and prejudice, including homophobia."
South Africa broke from the apartheid part of its past when I was already a highschool senior -- which you'll have to trust me that it wasn't all that long ago -- and now we see it today becoming the fifth country in the world to enshrine marriage equality into law. Huzzah for a progressive South Africa.
While the people of South Africa might not be completely ready for the change, the same might be said of much of the U.S. when LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act and we seem to be getting by all right on that count. 2, Africa
Here's why I read Ethan Zuckerman almost obsessively, why if I only have a few minutes to catch up on blog reading, I head to him first. It was just a few days ago that I first learned that the north west hunk of Somali largely considers itself the autonomous "Somaliland." I hadn't ever heard that, but I was of course fascinated by it. And now, today, Ethan points to and discusses this New York Times piece about the place. It's as if the dude blogs for me.
Here's YouTube video of Obama's speech from yesterday's Darfur rally in DC. The crowd seems to take a little while to warm up to him -- he opens by quoting Proverbs, but as he starts on his "we don't always know who the good guys are and the bad guys are, we don't always know what the proper course of action is -- this is not one of those times", you remember what the big deal with him is.
Well worth watching, or at listening to. The video is crap.
You got your George "Booker" Clooney, you got your Barack "Barry" Obama, you got your Rally to Stop Genocide this Sunday in DC, down on the mall and starting at 2.
Go for that girl in the white frock, second in line. Let's call her, hmm, "Nyanath," a Sudanese name meaning something like "daughter of humanity." (Yeah, I looked it up.) Go for little Nyanath. Cause she can't. Seriously though, I tend think that the progressive rallies are largely pointless, but this one could actually make a difference. It's a chance to bring attention to a situation that desperately needs attention paid to it and it has a clearly defined focus. And if anyone starts yelling "Free Mumia," feel free to tell them to shut up.
I'm a Brooklyn-based writer obsessed with technology, networks, social organizing, and the politics of food. This is my online home where I talk about those things and whatever else strikes my fancy. Learn More
