Category Archives: Politics – World

Obama has broken the Republicans’ back! 2

Politics - World • Tags: , , , ,

The verdict is in and it makes for grim reading for America’s Republicans. Contrary to the pundits’ predictions, this election wasn’t even close.

Ohio, with 18 electoral votes decided this election, not California with 55. More money was in fact spent by both parties campaigning in Ohio than in California because the latter was already a foregone conclusion. The electoral college principle has again ensured that small(er) states are not trampled underfoot. The American system of democracy really works.

But that is not the real story of yesterday’s vote.

The real story, and the core problem for the Republicans, is that blacks, Latinos, women, young people, and Jews all voted for Obama in huge numbers. The Romney crowd were, ahem, trailer-park trash white males of middle America whose numbers are dwindling while the Democrat-leaning numbers are growing.

The math will be impossible for the Republicans to add up in 2016 if they don’t pay attention to minority and social issues such as immigration, gay marriage, universal healthcare, or if they keep pandering to the Tea Party that has dictated their strategy over the last 18 months.

Someone has argued that because the make-up of Congress and the Senate hasn’t changed, Obama is going to be up against yet more gridlock. Forget it – the Republicans bent over backwards to frustrate Obama over the last 4 years and it is their back that has been broken. They won’t dare play the obstructionist games after this sound defeat. This election has finally taken the wind out of their sails. Look for compromise and capitulation instead … unless, unless they want to be wiped off the electoral map totally in the 2014 mid-term elections.

Ladies and gentlemen: The tide has turned decisively against American trigger-happy, war-mongering, ultra conservative, rabidly right-wing, homophobic, anti-abortion, religious fundamentalist, racist conservatives. Welcome to a more liberal, centrist America.

Obama will forever go down in history as the Democratic president who finally broke the Republicans’ back.

Hip, hip, hooray!

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NAACP closes ranks: endorses same-sex marriage

Gay - Marriage, Gay - Political, Politics - World • Tags: , ,

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has endorsed gay marriage, shutting yet another gate that Mitt Romney might have thought was still open to him in whatever quest he may have had for the African-American vote.

The endorsement likely has very little to do with the NAACP believing fervently that homosexual black men and women should marry each other. After all, the NAACP has never given Bayard Rustin, the civil rights activist, due credit for his selfless contribution  (as a gay man)  alongside Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, something that should be easier to do if their thinking on homosexuality has really evolved.

Bayard Rustin (1912-1987) – His pivotal contribution to the civil rights movements was downplayed for decades because he was homosexual

It must be all about sending a message to Mitt Romney that there will be no black votes for him come November 2012. In the election that brought Barack Obama to power, blacks voted over 90% for him. That percentage should rise to near 100% this time round, what with all the terrible  things the Republicans have done to push blacks and other minorities deeper into the Democratic camp.

Take their rejection of the Affordable Care Act or their tacit approval of Tea Party politics which everyone can see are racist. And of course it’s pretty apparent that the Republicans have vowed to do what it takes, including bringing America to its economic knees, in order to remove the black man in charge from power. Obama must not get a second term because … he is black.

The response to Obama’s gay marriage “evolution” from usually introverted Africa has been muted because, of course, Obama is one of us and we can’t be seen to be attacking him incessantly without looking like traitors. So, the pulpits and political rostrums have been largely silent following Obama’s revelation that his thoughts on gay marriage have evolved.

On a continent where mere talk of homosexuality is still heretic, Obama’s pronouncement should have caused fits of apoplexy in the churches, mosques and national parliaments. The lack of response can thus be seen as Africa finally retreating, at least where public, hysterical, repostes to “our Obama” are concerned. The priests and politicians might not like what he is saying but he is our black man, a son of  the Kenyan soil who, thus, has more justification for calling himself African-American than the sons of slaves who were transported to America 300 years ago. We can’t continue nit-picking everything he says that we don’t like – that would be treachery.

In the same vein, the NAACP have closed ranks despite the fact they don’t have a strong history of being gay rights advocates, let alone supporters of gay marriage.

The most important achievement Obama has had on this subject, perhaps, is to make the gay discussion mainstream in Africa and all over the world. Whereas only 10 years it was impossible to hold a rational discussion about homosexuality, today the discussion is as heated as it is happening in bars, on public airwaves, around water coolers, in village meetings and in churches. The context is usually along the lines of “Obama said …” Or why is Obama …?”

From African governments pretending that they didn’t have any gay citizens, to being ignored and/or relegated to the fringes, Obama’s administration has ensure that gays are talked about in African corridors of power up to and including what he might do to the US Aid they rely on if they don’t begin to show that they see the gay question from his point of view.

The subject of homosexuality has lost almost all its mysticism even in the smallest sub-Saharan villages in the 42 months Obama has been in power in the United States. Talk about a seminal leader, setting the agenda.

As an internet friend likes to say: We are moving.

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Barack Obama: the consummate seller of ‘stale’ news 13

Coming Out, Gay - Marriage, Gay - Political, Politics - World, Social Commentary • Tags: , , ,

Once upon a time, there were three men. They all lived in slightly different eras and all three achieved notable success in their chosen fields of specialization.

One of the men was/is white, the other Latino and the third one is African-American (black) with mixed parentage.

Of the three men, Elton Joh had the earliest secret which bothered him so much that he decided to do something about banishing it; on February 14 1984, he married a woman called Renate Blauel. To everyone’s consternation, the marriage lasted four years, following which Elton John revealed the “secret” that had been gnawing at him for years: he was happy to be a gay man. Those who could bother rolled their eyes and went back to living their lives. They had, after all, known that Elton John was gay well before he wed that … woman … and their only surprise was that the marriage had lasted as long as it did.

Sold thei world stale news: Ricky Martin, Elton John, Barack Obama

Almost 20 years later, a phenom by the name of Ricky Martin graced stages with waist and butt wiggles that had nubile girls swooning in the aisles when they were not wading in their juices on account of his … well … phenomenal pelvic thrusts. The stadium cleaners shrugged their shoulders after Martin’s shows and gamely mopped up the fans’ hormonal fluids. Martin made a lot of money being a sex symbol even though he had just two songs in his repertoire.

Ricky Martin, like Elton John had a secret. It ate away at him, zapped his creative artistry until one day in March 2010 he decided to give up the ghost. He confirmed that he was, had always been gay.  A few eyebrows were raised and then everyone went back to their business. This wasn’t really such fresh news after all, was it, even his erstwhile dyed in the wool fans reasoned.

The third man is Barack Obama. Beating the odds for a black man, and a first term senator, Barack Obama run for the highest political office in the United States and won handily. But Barack Obama had a secret. He was a liberal senator from Illinois, a black one at that, and he cared, truly cared for those less fortunate than himself. Not only that, Obama had another secret; he was a thoughtful man who understood fairness and commonsense even when the political odds were seemingly stacked against both.

So, Barack Obama pushed for the Affordable Care Act and … got it. He then refused to enforce the ridiculous Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) policy of the United States military even as his opponents demanded shrilly that he protects American forces from the homosexuals already serving honorably. DADT was finally repealed on Obama’s watch and Obama didn’t lose any sleep over the reversal of what had been, for all intents and purpose, a blight on America’s collective conscience.

But Obama still had another secret; his mind was “evolving” over gay marriage. Finally, in a blaze of publicity, Barack Obama told the world, that, with wise counsel from his daughters, he had come round to the view that homosexuals deserved to marry if they so wished. The headline writers went into a frenzy.

A few days later, the same writers are asking themselves openly: hang on, was this really newsworthy? Were we really surprised by the “announcement?’

Any sensible journalist, commentator now realizes that they were foolish for working themselves into a lather over the Obama pro-gay marriage announcement. They had known all along what his thoughts on it were.

Like Elton John and Ricky Martin before him, Barack Obama announced very stale news May 12, 2012. Like the two men before him, Obama will reap big from managing to excite the world about something they already knew.

Talk about selling snow to the Eskimos.

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GLAAD leadership under fire for being ‘too white’ 2

Gay - Political, Gay Social, Politics - World, Race • Tags: , ,

Can an all white jury pass objective judgment against a black man or woman? Can an all-male panel speak authoritatively for or against female contraception and/or right to abortion? Can a man ably represent the International Federation of Women Lawyers? Can an all-male parliament or cabinet (Saudi Arabia’s refers) advance the interest of both men and women in any country?

In other words, in order for fairness, justice, objectivity,  and empathy to not only be established, but to be seen to be established, must any panel of leaders or opinion formers reflect every hue and facet of those it seeks to represent?

Most, if not all, of the GLAAD executives are white men and women

That is the issue that has pitched Gays & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) against gay bodies that should logically be its natural allies.  Tthe anti defamation body that seeks to (some might say lives to) ferret out anything negative said about LGBTI issues and expose it, with the intention of ensuring that gay and lesbians are fairly represented in the media and out in the world where we homosexual men and women walk.

But African Americans, even gay African Americans, are not buying it as this recent thinly veiled sarcastic blog publication indicates.

When a black journalist called Roland Martin made what was construed to be a homophobic joke (yours truly called GLAAD out on their response to it, but for a different reason), black gay spokesmen lacerated GLAAD on the grounds that, as an all-white-led organization, they had no moral authority to call out a black man, even one who might have made a homophobic joke because “GLAAD is a white organization.” The article in Dsicreet City is still making the same point a couple of months later.

As it turned out, GLAAD forced CNN to suspend Roland Martin for a couple of days, Martin groveled to GLAAD and got his job back, but he will have been chastized by the entire experience. You will not hear or see him making gay jokes soon so one can argue that GLAAD successfully muzzled him.

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) amplifies the voice of the LGBT community by empowering real people to share their stories, holding the media accountable for the words and images they present, and helping grassroots organizations communicate effectively. By ensuring that the stories of LGBT people are heard through the media, GLAAD promotes understanding, increases acceptance, and advances equality. GLAAD’s Mission Statement

Now, that would rate as a success given GLAAD’s avowed mission. But, no, the black gay community is most concerned that an all white jury (if you like) basically put upon a black man and brought him to his knees. The implication is that had there been some black gay representation on the GLAAD leadership, the criticism would have been more palatable.  Note the implicit suggestion that a black man was the victim of a white ambush, as well as the clear suggestion that, for not having a black face in its ranks, GLAAD was not qualified to remark on comments made by a black man.

Are GLAAD doing a good job? I have no idea since I don’t know much about the organization. I sense, though, that they exist to find “haters,” that they, to quote Maslow,  “have a hammer, [and so] every problem looks like a nail.” That has its own perils that are beside the point at this time. That said, they have made their mission public and can thus be judged on whether they are delivering or not by any interested parties.

Should they add black and Latino faces to their ranks in order to be representative of the entire LGBTI? What might the transvestites say then? Add one of their own, too? The list would go on and on, wouldn’t it?

In another era I would have argued … no … and I would have gone on and on about looking for the best people who can do the job. In 2012 where perceptions so often are the be all end all, it seems to me it makes sense to be more inclusive  – or at least show that you have attempted to recruit the best people from the spectrum of those you represent and have just failed. I also don’t know if GLAAD has done this.

The short of it is that if a cross-section of the people you claim to be representing show their resentment on the grounds that you lack the qualifications to represent their views, it makes sense to sit up and listen – actively.

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Africa tries to punch above its weight!

Politics - World, Social Commentary

In the end, it was as it was in the beginning, it is now and for the foreseeable future shall be. Obama’s World Bank nominee got the nod and Africa went away having rattled the matches in the box without being able to light any.

Of course he who pays the piper calls the tune so it was misplaced arrogance for Africans to think that Obama was going to nominate his candidate and then let their basket case of a mismanaged continent come in and spoil his party.

Looks tough but has yet to prove it with actions Ngozi Okonjo-lweala

And you know what? Africa doesn’t yet deserve to hold such a post; not now, not even in five years when the position comes up again for leadership consideration.

Making an African, even one with the academic credentials of Nigeria’s Minister of  Finance, would be akin to making Robert Mugabe head the International Governance Council. Yes, he has been president since 1980 but is there anything else he has done that anyone endowed with a sense of shame wants to talk about? Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is best advised to prove herself by sorting out Nigeria’s scandalously moribund economy despite all that oil. Thereafter, she can perhaps be considered to run the African Development Bank . Think of it as learning to walk before one tries to run.

Of course the newly appointed World Bank head will also not move the earth off its axis. But that wasn’t the point at all, was it? The point was that a continent that has proved to be best only at rigging elections, squandering mineral fortunes (Nigeria, DRC) while its people continue to live on less than $2.00 a day, killing its own people with preventable diseases (almost every African country South of the Sahara) and mollycoddling octogenarian despots who openly treat their countries’ coffers as their personal piggy banks doesn’t deserve to be  entrusted with the world’s development.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala thinking that she is ready to head the World Bank when she hasn’t yet proved herself as Nigeria’s Minister of Finance? How was she expecting to handle Yoweri Museveni and African leaders like him who run their countries on supplementary budgets, by printing money to oil elections and on unauthorized spending? This woman and her supporters really flattered themselves.

Africa: please let’s be serious here.

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Robert Mugabe on his death bed?

Gay - Political, Politics - World • Tags:

The news that Robert Mugabe is dying in a Singapore hospital seems too good to be true. I haven’t seen any further reports  since the one in the Zimbabwe Mail which suggests that we might finally be about to be rid of this ogre of a man.

I am not a praying man but this one certainly deserves some prayers.

Dear Lord, please take this man! May he never return to Zimbabwe alive. Please!

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Youssou N’dour given ministerial post

Culture, Politics - World • Tags: , , ,

From popular musician to cabinet minister: Youssou-N'dor

I just read from the BBC that Senegal’s new President Macky Sall has made musician Youssou N’dour culture minister in his cabinet.

One needs to hold ones’ horses on such knee-jerk appointments but I have trawled around the net for N’dour leadership experience and haven’t found anything that suggests he has managed anything other than a band. But perhaps I am looking in the wrong places.

While I wish the new post holder well, the appointment nonetheless leaves me wondering … could Miriam Makeba have been a great minister in South Africa’s black government? Or perhaps Fela Kuti, the Nigerian musical heavyweight who literally carried the cross of black Africa on his shoulders in his music, could have been Minister of Culture in Nigeria.

Hm … interesting thought, interesting concept.

There is nothing for it, though, but to wish Senegal’s new Minister of Culture well.

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Liberia’s Johnson Sirleaf walks the gay tightrope 4

Gay - Political, Politics - World • Tags: ,

Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has finally been pushed to start walking the gay tightrope. In this article in The Guardian on Facebook, she apparently took the first public steps on the matter and set the pro-gay lobby scrambling when she immediately seemed to lose momentum.

“We like ourselves just the way we are.” (Sirleaf )

Harvard educated and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, it is not very likely that Sirleaf has such a Neanderthal view on life – that things have to stay the same simply because that is how they have been. Else she would instead have packed her bags, left her cushy life in the United States and gone back to Liberia to be a chattel to men, as things used to be, still are, in many parts of Africa. But instead she chose the non-conventional option – running for the highest political office in her country – twice.

But Sirleaf is also a pragmatic politician and she knows that though she has broken the ‘women-in-the-kitchen’ mold, her constituency are still a bunch of hypocritical, uncritical, thinkers when it comes to matters of sex and sexuality. So, she has done what Uganda’s Museveni is trying to do – pandering to whatever audience she thinks is listening most closely at that point. Sirleaf is indeed practicing the art of speaking through both sides of her mouth on the issue of gay rights in Liberia.

In private, unattributed, comments, she has been said to have vowed not to sign anti-gay legislation. One senses that, anonymous though these assignations are, they reflect her own private sentiments. But in public, she is trying to act tough, no doubt trying to show her voters that she is no puppet of the West.

Of course, it also helped Sirleaf’s cause that she opted for the bombastic tone she took while sitting next to Britain’s former Prime Minister whose pro-gay, pro-Catholic positions are difficult to reconcile. Tony Blair, no doubt aware of the discordance of his newly discovered Catholicism and his political pro-gay positions while still Prime Minister, gifted her the gift of squirming visibly and running away when asked about his views on legalizing homosexuality in Africa.

“AGI Liberia has specific terms of reference … that’s all we require of them,” she said, crossing her arms and leaning back. (Sirleaf, in a thinly veiled warning to Tony Blair to keep his mouth shut about his true sentiments on homosexuality)

Johnson Sirleaf stayed on the tightrope, albeit with part of her head-dress coming loose according to the gay rights observers. Her real test will of course come as surely as day follows night because Sirleaf will eventually have to state clearly whether she is  for or against the anti-gay bill currently being prepared for Liberia’s Parliament to debate.

For now,  both the pro and anti-gay lobbies continue to hold their part of the rope – on each side of the abyss.

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Obama to be re-elected in a landslide

Politics - World
Obama is going to coast to a comfortable landslide victory this coming November. If you have any doubts, read Andrew Sullivan’s fantastic analysis here. It may take up to around July of this year for the rest of America to catch up with what Sullivan has already seen. And then it will be downhill for Obama’s opponent from there.

Money quote:

His spending record is also far better than his predecessor’s. Under Bush, new policies on taxes and spending cost the taxpayer a total of $5.07 trillion. Under Obama’s budgets both past and projected, he will have added $1.4 trillion in two terms. Under Bush and the GOP, nondefense discretionary spending grew by twice as much as under Obama. Again: imagine Bush had been a Democrat and Obama a Republican. You could easily make the case that Obama has been far more fiscally conservative than his predecessor—except, of course, that Obama has had to govern under the worst recession since the 1930s, and Bush, after the 2001 downturn, governed in a period of moderate growth. It takes work to increase the debt in times of growth, as Bush did. It takes much more work to constrain the debt in the deep recession Bush bequeathed Obama.

Poor Herman Cain ran for president in the wrong country

Culture, Politics - World, Social Commentary, Uganda - Politics
Crashed and burned: Herman Cain

In a discussion on another forum, a friend said this of Herman Cain’s US presidential campaign that recently burnt and crashed due to accusations of marital infidelity: “Herman Cain is running for president in the wrong country.” He couldn’t be more right.

In Uganda, Herman Cain’s campaign would have picked up any allegation of marital infidelity and run away with it, praising Cain’s sexual prowess and, perhaps, making up innuendo-laden pet names for him. The electorate would lap them up and Cain’s star would rise even further on account of having mistresses on the side.

In Uganda, it’s more of an electoral liability not to have mistresses than to show a happily married facade with one wife and kids. “What is wrong with him?” most people would ask of any aspiring politician with just one wife and no whiff of ever having succumbed to the charms of a Jezebel, perhaps even fathering a nursery school of children in the process. The latter is what is considered normal, praiseworthy, manly. Having just one wife and two children with no hint of extra-marital affairs tends to be an electoral liability in Uganda if your more libidinous opponent chooses to exploit your squeaky clean image.

Gilbert (Mahogany) Bukenya

That is why Uganda’s former vice-president, Giblert Bukenya, won re-election in a landslide a couple of days ago following the nullification of his February 2011 election on account of bribing the voters. Nicknamed “mahagony” in part due to tales of his many extra-marital flings as well as his claim that he can’t be felled by his political enemies, Bukenya has a grocery list of mistresses from all walks of life and he revels in the implication this has for his sexual prowess.

Despite the mistresses, despite being accused of corrupt electoral practices, despite being accused of wanton corruption in the award of a multi-million dollar vehicle contract in the run-up to the 2007 Common Wealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) – a charge that is still being thrashed out in the courts – Bukenya was returned as MP for his Wakiso constituency with something like 77% of the vote. In the entire proceedings, his wife has stood stoically by his side, waltzed down church aisles with him when mistresses made press conferences about their sexual shenanigans with Bukenya and, though largely in the shadows, the official Mrs. Bukenya steadfastly stood by her man. There is nothing she can do about it since she and the retinue of women in Bukenya’s sexual wake are but a mere parenthesis in his political trajectory. Swinging his hook at will makes him all the more electable and lovable. His electorate understands that and so should the wife and mistresses.

That is Uganda; a country that AfroGay is sure Herman Cain would envy deeply given the spectacular disintegration of his campaign on account of … mere accusations of marital infidelity.