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USA Edition | Today Is Thursday, March 11, 2010 |
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USA Edition | Today Is Thursday, March 11, 2010 |
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| Best Of 2009: Brooksley Born: Responsible, Accountable, American | « Scan Content In The Order It Was Published » | Mark: A Definition | |
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The Year In Review
From the Kenyan Plains To The Flats Of Somalia Drought Threatens Lives and Nations.
There is famine in Kenya and Ethiopia again. Sending food and emergency relief will make things worse in the long term.
Sam Kiley, Times Of London
In October, 2009, Newsroom Magazine contributors reviewed an article by Sam Kiley about the causes and implications of reoccurring African drought-famines published by the The Times Of London.
We often write about the importance of being relevant, probative and credible — qualities rarely found in electronic journalism today. Even today, these lofty goals are well served by newspapers at home and abroad. But what about believable? Should good journalism always posses the quality of easy believability, or ought it to challenge our preconceived notions, biases and intellectual stubbornness?
We might well have answered such questions very differently before reading Sam Kiley’s compelling article about the vast chasm between western values and African realities. And, for most of us, believing his concept of doing the right thing instead of what feels good, was not easy to swallow — at least not until we examined what others had to say about their experiences.
Not all Newsroom Magazine contributors live in the U.S., and some of us have worked or lived overseas — not in American compounds, but on what State Department people usually describe as the local economy. Only last July, Newsroom Magazine correspondent Tony Koorlander introduced us to the outstanding broadcast reporting being done by BBC International correspondent John Simpson. [ World News At A World Class Standard ]
What we found so reassuring about Mr. Simpson’ work was his determination to speak to what is probative as opposed to what is commonly believed. What about our great American conventional wisdom?, you might wonder. To this question we found New York Times’ writer David Carr’s recent admonition right on point: “Conventional wisdom, while widely held, is not always wise.”
All of which caused us to wonder, when doing the right thing for us might be the wrong thing for someone else?
UN: Africa Drought Map
What sparked the discussion was a Times of London article concerning the causes and outcomes of reoccurring African drought-famines. Kiley’s article describes an ongoing conundrum that appears to be irreconcilable between either African culture or western idealism. Our internal discussion gave evidence to how strongly we in the west resist notions or conclusions that run counter to our own cultural beliefs and aspirations.
The Times essay is about what’s possible and what’s not when our best intentions lead to decisions that produce unwanted consequences every bit the equal of what people set out to overcome. It reveals how broadly those living in wealthy nations, especially the United States, believe that our way of addressing problems is infallible — no matter how often we fail. Thus we prefer to send aid where knowledge is needed, and set out to nation-build as a means of providing democracy to peoples and nations absent any foundation for democratic society or governance.
Freedom one does not fight to win, or keep, is in reality only temporal benevolence.
Must Vs. Can: Which Children Shall We Let Starve? This Generation, Or Their Children?
Should you choose to read Sam Kiley’s article, as we did, follow-up by also reading the comments — for this article runs afoul of conventional thinking by examining not only the immediate outcome of something that seems rational, but the unintended consequences. It is through the comments that we discover that the opinions of people who know both the realities and the unintended consequences, but had no voice in decision making, give immense context to the Time’s journalism.
Be forewarned that reading Sam Kiley’s account will challenge your preconceived notions about Africa by separating what is real from what was expected. For, as we all learned from last years’ banking collapse, doing anything without considering the unintended consequences comes at great risk of doing the wrong thing for otherwise good reasons.
Read Sam Kiley’s London Times Essay Here
What follows is a summary of some of our internal discussions about Sam Kiley’s work and what it tells us about ourselves.
Tony Koorlander
Bideford, Devon, EnglandCommonsense indeed – and I do remember clear discussions in the control room at TV News when these original items came in and the whole Band Aid – feed the World was hitting the headlines. Instead of ‘god-botherers’ we’re now ‘( politically unacceptable word beginning with n deleted ) – botherers’ – was the general line of talk. Sorry – but you should realise that BBC TV News engineers and studio crews had a cult of cynicism and bluntness beyond reproach in those days .. and you DON’T want to know what we thought of the French either….
Nobody was under any illusions as we saw the recent reports showing lush vegetation, wide rivers, gorgeous soil and exotic plant life. Here were cultures who lived off the land – well actually the co-existed WITH the land in an entirely appropriate way – until the Westerners decided to impart greed, selfishness and dependency upon them.
Their land was the lost garden of Eden, but it needed commonsense management – and natural selection had prevailed for eons prior to the arrival of the white man. The slavery and corruption that built America’s early financial stability came out of the oppression of the African race ( and probably a tad of the Irish too! ). The culture of slavery also supported the British Empire. We meddled and we messed and then the worm turned and we’ve followed our guilt into an inappropriate sacrifice to attempt restoration.
With the comment of the first paragraph – you can imagine the level of incredulity when Band Aid was announced. The four letter word swearing of Bob Geldof in his almighty fund raising did nothing to endear any of us to the plan – especially as we had already produced our own practical solution – teach the idiots ( polite word again ) to look after themselves. The similar scenario was seen in Bangladesh, when huge ( and predictably regular ) flood washed away thousands of settlements on the rich river delta.
The inhabitants of volcanic slopes live in the rich and fertile proximity of a beast that can take the life of their community and vapourise it in a few hours (Montserrat). Human ignorance should not be supported by human guilt. It should be repaired with human intelligence and education. To ignore the rules of survival is a treacherous route to take. Tragically – we seem to be taking that route ourselves in the lack of responsible education in our Western schools.
Yes – let’s save money on education and waste it on shutting the door after the horse has bolted by increasing crime levels, cost of health and safety implementation, and ring fencing society to stop it damaging itself from the inside. WRONG! Inverted reasoning that is the downfall of our society. Civilisation begins at school. Miss out that bit and you breed a nation of self-serving idiots with no future. OOPS! .. methinks I just foretold the recent crash?
When you give a child more rights than the adult who is endowed with the responsibility of educating that child – then you are calling for a mission impossible accomplishment. When you force people to remain childlike in order to fool them out of their money in the cause of capitalism you risk some very nasty outcome.
So .. to Africa – yes- wisdom says implement the change in attitude that will fix this and support the home-grown efforts. The change comes from within. The worry that I have is that the easy solution is throw money and food without any careful planning. Inevitably you then support militant activists who can war whilst we feed their neglected families. Nobody will part with money to engineer a longer-term fix. This is the way of our Western World – short termism. The major worry is to avoid the pitfalls we’ve made everywhere else this decade. War disrupts society.
In South Africa, primitive tribal violence has thrown responsible farmers off their land and allowed disruptive and careless destruction of food and livestock producing resources that took hundreds of years to establish. We ignore these things at our peril, and spend too much effort on fighting wars against invisible enemies. What have we done – nothing – we allow disreputable dictators (Idi Amin in Uganda and more recently Robert Mugabe in Zambia) to take control of the situation, and stand idly by – more concerned with inventing a worthy oil-based cause that we can fix by military might and weapon-based supremacy. The danger is that we have opened Pandora’s box, and you can never close that lid again.
Somalia is far more worrying than Afghanistan …
Harley Blank
Columbus, OhioNotwithstanding Tony’s comments, our meddling with Africa over 2-3 centuries could have expected nothing but bad results. Robert Ruark’s 1955 book Something of Value about the Kenyan Mau Mau uprising ( 1952-56 ) was almost prophetic of the results of our misadventures. The problem isn’t African, but our inability to accept the limits of our own power.
Thus, feeding a starving population does nothing but assure their reproductive success guaranteeing that future despoiling of the landscape and subsequent periods of starvation will take on apocalyptic proportions demanding even more desperate sympathy and bad answers.
But the problems of overpopulation are troubling elsewhere. I recently viewed a similar disturbing report on China’s dramatically expanding deserts on the National Geographic Channel that are no less troubling, nor more likely to go away.
The Chinese are different from the Africans — they have rockets and nuclear weapons. Should they get hungry, they could pose a real threat.
Robert Butche
Newsroom MagazineIt’s great to be part of a prosperous and generous nation willing to give a hand to others in their time of need.
It’s not great to be part of a prosperous nation that chooses to do what feels good no matter the consequences to others.
Like most other American’s I failed to see, or consider the possible unwanted consequences of doing what seemed right and felt good for people suffering as much from our interference in their affairs as from their circumstances.
Sam Kiley’s article made me wiser — and it served to remind me that our great American Can-Do attitude does best when we know how to balance what we want to do against that which we can do.
