I’m swamped with meetings and classes and meetings and appointments and meetings and so the last few days have seen me get buried with a whole host of stories and links I’ve wanted to write about but have instead let pile up in my Firefox tabs, surely to ill effect of my computer’s memory and speed. Let’s see if I can dig myself out:
Wrap your head around this one: The humanitarian crisis in Somalia, according to the UN’s Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit, is the worst it has been in eighteen years. Is there any reason to think that next year the FSNAU won’t issue the same report and replace references to “eighteen” with “nineteen”? It is unfathomable for most of us to imagine living in a place where today is the worst day ever and tomorrow will be worse. yet that seems like the functional analogy to Somalia’s plight.
Newsflash: After four decades, Muammar Qaddafi is still baffling. We expect him to zig, he zags. (And does anyone have so unsettled a spelling of his name among the western press — can’t we have a meeting and pick one, if only for the sake of Google searches?) At some point we will reconcile ourselves to the fact that Qaddafi is about no one’s interests as much as Qaddafi’s. That’s lousy for the region, to be sure, but it will add at least a hint of rationality to our assessments of him.
The Caster Semenya story continues to baffle and intrigue and mystify. The South African World Champion in the women’s 800 meter race has been tested in South Africa and reportedly has higher-than-normal testosterone levels, but those are nonetheless well within the acceptable range. It is worth remembering that we have been down this road before with women’s sports. As long as some try to cheat, many will have to deal with the suspicions.
South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma hoped to raise the issue of “deviant behaviour” in Zimbabwe. Ahh, the euphemisms that make diplomacy function.
The fighting in Darfur has died down (for now?). But the situation in the South deteriorates.
Disease has stricken the banana crops in a huge swath of central Africa. This clearly has both economic and food security ramifications.
The Springboks confront the Wallabies Down Under as heavy favorites. The Boks are saying the right things about being wary of the still-dangerous Aussies. But I am going to lay it down that the South Africans cruise to their first Tri-Nations title since 2004 by winning big in Perth.