Obama Must Reverse Bush-Era
African Policy
2 April 2009 ( EQN ) -
The United States
Militarized its policy
towards Africa,
defended
unpopular and undemocratic regimes and undermined
United Nations peacekeeping missions on the... More
African Policy
2 April 2009 ( EQN ) -
The United States
Militarized its policy
towards Africa,
defended
unpopular and undemocratic regimes and undermined
United Nations peacekeeping missions on the... More
Congratulating Ugandans at VOA while
commiserating with their Ethiopian counterparts
22 November, 2010 | By Kiflu Hussain
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On November 3, I received an email from the talkshow host of
“Straight Talk Africa” on account of the 10th anniversary. I was
invited by the Ugandan-born American journalist,Shaka Ssali, to a
“Discussion and Webcast Celebrating”to reflect on the 10-year
journey covered by the programme. Unfortunately, as I had to grab
the first opportunity that took me out of Kampala with all expenses
covered on top of some extra bucks for my pocket, I couldn’t find
the time to respond to Shaka as to how really touched and
“profoundly honored and exceedingly humbled” I was by his
invitation to one of the most followed programmes in the history of
radio and television in Africa. After all, it’s not everyday that a
refugee whose face and name carry no meaning even to the
international agency supposed to represent him gets invited by a
powerful media such as VOA.Thankfully, though, I got back in time
to view the celebration on November 10 on WBS.That day, Shaka
Ssali took the guest seat after being described by the guest host,
Esther Githui, as “the man of the hour or as the man of the decade.”
Indeed, he is.
During the show, the usual “Question of the Week” was presented
to viewers. It was “What is your most memorable reflection of
VOA’s 'Straight Talk Africa' from the past 10 years?”Naturally, I
developed the urge to respond to the question right away.Yet, after
a few seconds reflection, I realized that I had listened more to other
VOA programmes than Shaka’s brainchild “Straight Talk Africa.”
Though, I have been aware of the programme long ago, somehow I
never got around listening to it. I remember that I started tuning in to
VOA’s “Special English” on the exhortation of my father/RIP/ who
naively believed that America supports any aspiration for freedom
anywhere until the rude awakening he experienced in 1991. He took
disillusionment to his grave due to the terrible realization that
America and its allies on the contrary derails other peoples'
aspiration for freedom by siding with downright despots. At any
rate, in those innocent and trusting days, I distinctly recall my being
glued to a husky voice that sounded like coming from a heavy
smoker introducing itself “I am Kay Gallant” before proceeding to
tell a story in simple English. But what attracted me most to VOA
Special English was the music show presented by George Collinet,
the Cameroonian-French born American broadcaster. The
humorous introduction he used to make with his baritone voice
between every music was highly educative by itself. With the
commencement of the Amharic Service in the early 1980s on VOA,
all these changed and I more or less abandoned the English Service.
Besides as my English has improved by that time, I began to resort
to BBC whenever the need arises for other sources of information.
To cut a long story short, it’s in 2007, after I came to Uganda that I
heard again about “Straight Talk Africa.” One morning, I found my
friends hotly discussing Dr.Berhanu Nega’s appearance on Straight
Talk Africa. When they began to describe his physical appearance, I
got perplexed and asked them “what do they mean by that?” since
all my knowledge of VOA was confined to its radio broadcasting.
To my delight, I learned that WBS, one of the numerous Ugandan
TV channels, is a VOA affiliate and airs Straight Talk Africa live
every Wednesday. Although, I was dying to see what Shaka Ssali
looked like, luck was still not with me. The area where I rented my
first house in Kampala had a problem to receive certain channels
clearly among which was WBS.Turned off by that experience, once
again I put Straight Talk Africa out of my mind. When dictated by
life to change to another location, however, my television viewing
has also improved for I moved in to an area where I got better
reception that enabled me to hook on with Straight Talk Africa.
Is VOA a propaganda tool?
Considering VOA’s background that prompted it to launch its
broadcast during World War II, one may say it is a counter-
propaganda tool meant to tackle Nazi propaganda. When one sees
its expansion into different languages after the war that targeted the
Soviet camp during the rivalry in the Cold War, one may harden his
view by dubbing it as just another propaganda machinery. On closer
scrutiny, however, one finds it difficult to equate VOA with
propaganda outlets of the Eastern bloc and dismiss it as such.VOA
like its counterpart BBC in the same camp, had never manifested a
crude and unpalatable form of propaganda. On the contrary,
journalists who work in media outlets such as VOA enjoy a certain
degree of freedom that enables them to do their work professionally
unlike those who used to work in the former Soviet camp and in
other dictatorships such as Africa where tyranny seems to be
perpetuated eternally. Having said that, however, doesn’t mean that
the Western media is completely independent. It also suffers from its
own demon which is so subtle and can only be felt by those
discerning or by those who suffered as victim of its double
standards. Since the cessation of the cold war, this has become
obvious whereby it is easy to understand Noam Chomsky’s and
John Pilger’s thesis in their respective work titled “Hegemony or
Survival” and “The New Rulers of the World.” Chomsky illustrated
how the western world confounds public opinion which it calls the
“great beast” through the “manufacture of consent.” Whereas Pilger
demonstrated how “dissent is permissible within ‘consensual’
boundaries thereby reinforcing the illusion that information and
speech are ‘free.’ The current saga on the founder of WikiLeak,
named Julian Assange on account of his whistleblower website,
vindicates the two gentlemen’s assessment of “freedom of speech or
the press” in the western world. Despite these sort of setbacks, I still
believe that there is ample space in the western world for free
speech.Assange who has been accused of raping women after his
damning expose on the war crime perpetrated by the “Coalition or
NATO forces,” could have easily ended up in a disease infested
concentration camp without due process in places like Addis
Ababa. Or he could have mysteriously been mowed down like
Anna Politkavskaya, the Russian-American journalist who was
assassinated on the elevator of her apartment in Moscow. So,
where do all these place Shaka Ssali’s “Straight Talk Africa?”
Straight Talk Africa; Aljazeera for Africans within VOA
When I equate Aljazeera with Straight Talk Africa, it’s crystal clear
that I consider Aljazeera as the most independent news outlets from
all the powerful Medias that dominate the world. Anyone
disagreeing with this opinion would at least know that Aljazeera is
my number one preference over BBC, CNN and VOA. Also for
anyone that may cynically link my preference for Aljazeera with my
Arabic sounding name in a world that’s increasingly regressing into
racism and sectarianism, I just refer that person to what Rageh
Omaar, the Somali-born journalist but British to the core of his being
said on leaving BBC to Aljazeera after describing it as “a white man’
s club.” Also doesn’t hurt to ask why renowned names such as Sir
David Frost work for Aljazeera instead of CNN and the like upon
leaving BBC. Though, BBC, VOA and the like never engaged in a
deliberate dissemination of falsehoods, it’s axiomatic that they
withhold unpalatable truths in the name of “stability” or “security.”
Consequently, they refrain from exposing and criticizing the
wrongdoers. This is what I witnessed in my long experience with
VOA, especially, the Amharic service. Most of us youngsters then
took the launching of the Amharic service during the military
dictatorship of Mengistu Hailemariam as a testimony that America
supports the aspiration of Ethiopians for freedom. Every time we
listened to Getahun Tamrat,alias Negussie Mengesha’s voice while
interviewing after arming himself with an insider information and
encyclopeadic knowledge of Ethiopia as if he had never been away,
we not only used to be marveled by his prowess as a journalist but
also used to get moral uplifting as Ethiopians. Ironically, all the
leeway given to him and his colleagues in the Amharic Service was
disrupted after the fall of Mengistu. In fact, upon the insistence of the
new rulers that carved Ethiopia between two new dictatorships in
Asmara and Addis, he was removed from his chieftaincy in the
Service and transferred to another desk whereby it dawned on us
that Washington has never been interested for a long-lasting stability
which can only be founded on the basis of rule of law and genuine
democracy. In collusion with successive United States ambassadors
in Ethiopia since the advent of the Meles Zenawi regime, Chiefs in
the VOA Horn of Africa Service such as Annette C.Sheckler
attempted to tarnish the integrity of the Ethiopian-American
journalists working in the Amharic service. Although, this has
backfired eventually in having fired Sheckler herself, she and her
cohorts succeeded for some time in transforming VOA Amharic
Service as a totally meaningless media like the current FM stations
affiliated with TPLF/Tigray People Liberation Front/, a minority
ethnic faction which Zenawi chairs. Still,the Amharic Service hasn’t
fully recovered from this experience. In their eagerness to please
their “allies on the war on terror” some American officials to date
don’t hesitate to poke their noses and have the Ethiopian-Americans
censured. Emboldened by all these, Meles Zenawi not only admitted
that he had jammed VOA which he likened with that of Radio Mille
Collines that orchestrated the ghastly genocide in Rwanda in the
early 1990s. He recently told Americans in their own University at
Columbia and with their own money that he would do everything
possible to block VOA broadcasts from reaching Ethiopian
listeners. Meanwhile, as Shaka told us recently at the 10th
anniversary of Straight Talk Africa, Zenawi not only enjoys VOA
live on television but also uses the call-in show to talk back while
denying Ethiopians this inalienable right by jamming as well as
disabling text messages and disrupting internet service at will.
Therefore, viewing or listening to Straight Talk Africa against this
backdrop in the history of VOA is to me like watching another Riz
Khan Show on Aljazeera in the person of Shaka Ssali. And this is
where I congratulate Shaka and other Ugandan-born journalists on
VOA like Douglas Mpuga.While they are able to get their message
across throughout the continent including their birthplaces without
any hindrance via live shows, their Ethiopian-American counterparts
not only get jammed and denied access to visit their birthplaces.
They also come constantly under the threat of being sentenced to
death in absentia on account of bogus charges of “genocide.”
reminding one to go through articles such as “Press Freedom in
Uganda; Myth or Reality?” by Asuman Bisiika written in 2006
wherein he articulated the genesis of the NRM/National Resistance
Movement/’s posturing on “tolerance” to some degree of press
freedom, I point out to the recent banning of a book written by Dr.
Olive Kobusingye before one makes any hasty conclusion. Be that
as it may, I acknowledge that there is some space by the regions
standard that Ugandans could have used to turn around things for
the better. Too bad, as Timothy Kalyegira once described us
Ethiopians as too “serious” I also see too much frivolity on
Ugandans despite being accorded better information than
Ethiopians. Perhaps that is the explanation behind Museveni’s
latitude whereas his counterpart Zenawi clamps down on all forms
of expression. Can you imagine, what would happen if the two swap
subjects like decadent swap wives?
---------------------------------------------------------------
Kiflu Hussain is An Ethiopian Refugee in Uganda, he can be
reached at: kiflukam@yahoo.com
commiserating with their Ethiopian counterparts
22 November, 2010 | By Kiflu Hussain
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On November 3, I received an email from the talkshow host of
“Straight Talk Africa” on account of the 10th anniversary. I was
invited by the Ugandan-born American journalist,Shaka Ssali, to a
“Discussion and Webcast Celebrating”to reflect on the 10-year
journey covered by the programme. Unfortunately, as I had to grab
the first opportunity that took me out of Kampala with all expenses
covered on top of some extra bucks for my pocket, I couldn’t find
the time to respond to Shaka as to how really touched and
“profoundly honored and exceedingly humbled” I was by his
invitation to one of the most followed programmes in the history of
radio and television in Africa. After all, it’s not everyday that a
refugee whose face and name carry no meaning even to the
international agency supposed to represent him gets invited by a
powerful media such as VOA.Thankfully, though, I got back in time
to view the celebration on November 10 on WBS.That day, Shaka
Ssali took the guest seat after being described by the guest host,
Esther Githui, as “the man of the hour or as the man of the decade.”
Indeed, he is.
During the show, the usual “Question of the Week” was presented
to viewers. It was “What is your most memorable reflection of
VOA’s 'Straight Talk Africa' from the past 10 years?”Naturally, I
developed the urge to respond to the question right away.Yet, after
a few seconds reflection, I realized that I had listened more to other
VOA programmes than Shaka’s brainchild “Straight Talk Africa.”
Though, I have been aware of the programme long ago, somehow I
never got around listening to it. I remember that I started tuning in to
VOA’s “Special English” on the exhortation of my father/RIP/ who
naively believed that America supports any aspiration for freedom
anywhere until the rude awakening he experienced in 1991. He took
disillusionment to his grave due to the terrible realization that
America and its allies on the contrary derails other peoples'
aspiration for freedom by siding with downright despots. At any
rate, in those innocent and trusting days, I distinctly recall my being
glued to a husky voice that sounded like coming from a heavy
smoker introducing itself “I am Kay Gallant” before proceeding to
tell a story in simple English. But what attracted me most to VOA
Special English was the music show presented by George Collinet,
the Cameroonian-French born American broadcaster. The
humorous introduction he used to make with his baritone voice
between every music was highly educative by itself. With the
commencement of the Amharic Service in the early 1980s on VOA,
all these changed and I more or less abandoned the English Service.
Besides as my English has improved by that time, I began to resort
to BBC whenever the need arises for other sources of information.
To cut a long story short, it’s in 2007, after I came to Uganda that I
heard again about “Straight Talk Africa.” One morning, I found my
friends hotly discussing Dr.Berhanu Nega’s appearance on Straight
Talk Africa. When they began to describe his physical appearance, I
got perplexed and asked them “what do they mean by that?” since
all my knowledge of VOA was confined to its radio broadcasting.
To my delight, I learned that WBS, one of the numerous Ugandan
TV channels, is a VOA affiliate and airs Straight Talk Africa live
every Wednesday. Although, I was dying to see what Shaka Ssali
looked like, luck was still not with me. The area where I rented my
first house in Kampala had a problem to receive certain channels
clearly among which was WBS.Turned off by that experience, once
again I put Straight Talk Africa out of my mind. When dictated by
life to change to another location, however, my television viewing
has also improved for I moved in to an area where I got better
reception that enabled me to hook on with Straight Talk Africa.
Is VOA a propaganda tool?
Considering VOA’s background that prompted it to launch its
broadcast during World War II, one may say it is a counter-
propaganda tool meant to tackle Nazi propaganda. When one sees
its expansion into different languages after the war that targeted the
Soviet camp during the rivalry in the Cold War, one may harden his
view by dubbing it as just another propaganda machinery. On closer
scrutiny, however, one finds it difficult to equate VOA with
propaganda outlets of the Eastern bloc and dismiss it as such.VOA
like its counterpart BBC in the same camp, had never manifested a
crude and unpalatable form of propaganda. On the contrary,
journalists who work in media outlets such as VOA enjoy a certain
degree of freedom that enables them to do their work professionally
unlike those who used to work in the former Soviet camp and in
other dictatorships such as Africa where tyranny seems to be
perpetuated eternally. Having said that, however, doesn’t mean that
the Western media is completely independent. It also suffers from its
own demon which is so subtle and can only be felt by those
discerning or by those who suffered as victim of its double
standards. Since the cessation of the cold war, this has become
obvious whereby it is easy to understand Noam Chomsky’s and
John Pilger’s thesis in their respective work titled “Hegemony or
Survival” and “The New Rulers of the World.” Chomsky illustrated
how the western world confounds public opinion which it calls the
“great beast” through the “manufacture of consent.” Whereas Pilger
demonstrated how “dissent is permissible within ‘consensual’
boundaries thereby reinforcing the illusion that information and
speech are ‘free.’ The current saga on the founder of WikiLeak,
named Julian Assange on account of his whistleblower website,
vindicates the two gentlemen’s assessment of “freedom of speech or
the press” in the western world. Despite these sort of setbacks, I still
believe that there is ample space in the western world for free
speech.Assange who has been accused of raping women after his
damning expose on the war crime perpetrated by the “Coalition or
NATO forces,” could have easily ended up in a disease infested
concentration camp without due process in places like Addis
Ababa. Or he could have mysteriously been mowed down like
Anna Politkavskaya, the Russian-American journalist who was
assassinated on the elevator of her apartment in Moscow. So,
where do all these place Shaka Ssali’s “Straight Talk Africa?”
Straight Talk Africa; Aljazeera for Africans within VOA
When I equate Aljazeera with Straight Talk Africa, it’s crystal clear
that I consider Aljazeera as the most independent news outlets from
all the powerful Medias that dominate the world. Anyone
disagreeing with this opinion would at least know that Aljazeera is
my number one preference over BBC, CNN and VOA. Also for
anyone that may cynically link my preference for Aljazeera with my
Arabic sounding name in a world that’s increasingly regressing into
racism and sectarianism, I just refer that person to what Rageh
Omaar, the Somali-born journalist but British to the core of his being
said on leaving BBC to Aljazeera after describing it as “a white man’
s club.” Also doesn’t hurt to ask why renowned names such as Sir
David Frost work for Aljazeera instead of CNN and the like upon
leaving BBC. Though, BBC, VOA and the like never engaged in a
deliberate dissemination of falsehoods, it’s axiomatic that they
withhold unpalatable truths in the name of “stability” or “security.”
Consequently, they refrain from exposing and criticizing the
wrongdoers. This is what I witnessed in my long experience with
VOA, especially, the Amharic service. Most of us youngsters then
took the launching of the Amharic service during the military
dictatorship of Mengistu Hailemariam as a testimony that America
supports the aspiration of Ethiopians for freedom. Every time we
listened to Getahun Tamrat,alias Negussie Mengesha’s voice while
interviewing after arming himself with an insider information and
encyclopeadic knowledge of Ethiopia as if he had never been away,
we not only used to be marveled by his prowess as a journalist but
also used to get moral uplifting as Ethiopians. Ironically, all the
leeway given to him and his colleagues in the Amharic Service was
disrupted after the fall of Mengistu. In fact, upon the insistence of the
new rulers that carved Ethiopia between two new dictatorships in
Asmara and Addis, he was removed from his chieftaincy in the
Service and transferred to another desk whereby it dawned on us
that Washington has never been interested for a long-lasting stability
which can only be founded on the basis of rule of law and genuine
democracy. In collusion with successive United States ambassadors
in Ethiopia since the advent of the Meles Zenawi regime, Chiefs in
the VOA Horn of Africa Service such as Annette C.Sheckler
attempted to tarnish the integrity of the Ethiopian-American
journalists working in the Amharic service. Although, this has
backfired eventually in having fired Sheckler herself, she and her
cohorts succeeded for some time in transforming VOA Amharic
Service as a totally meaningless media like the current FM stations
affiliated with TPLF/Tigray People Liberation Front/, a minority
ethnic faction which Zenawi chairs. Still,the Amharic Service hasn’t
fully recovered from this experience. In their eagerness to please
their “allies on the war on terror” some American officials to date
don’t hesitate to poke their noses and have the Ethiopian-Americans
censured. Emboldened by all these, Meles Zenawi not only admitted
that he had jammed VOA which he likened with that of Radio Mille
Collines that orchestrated the ghastly genocide in Rwanda in the
early 1990s. He recently told Americans in their own University at
Columbia and with their own money that he would do everything
possible to block VOA broadcasts from reaching Ethiopian
listeners. Meanwhile, as Shaka told us recently at the 10th
anniversary of Straight Talk Africa, Zenawi not only enjoys VOA
live on television but also uses the call-in show to talk back while
denying Ethiopians this inalienable right by jamming as well as
disabling text messages and disrupting internet service at will.
Therefore, viewing or listening to Straight Talk Africa against this
backdrop in the history of VOA is to me like watching another Riz
Khan Show on Aljazeera in the person of Shaka Ssali. And this is
where I congratulate Shaka and other Ugandan-born journalists on
VOA like Douglas Mpuga.While they are able to get their message
across throughout the continent including their birthplaces without
any hindrance via live shows, their Ethiopian-American counterparts
not only get jammed and denied access to visit their birthplaces.
They also come constantly under the threat of being sentenced to
death in absentia on account of bogus charges of “genocide.”
- Of course, the sum
effect of this
comparison between
Zenawi’s Ethiopia
and Museveni’s
Uganda would be to
lend the appearance
for the latter as
reminding one to go through articles such as “Press Freedom in
Uganda; Myth or Reality?” by Asuman Bisiika written in 2006
wherein he articulated the genesis of the NRM/National Resistance
Movement/’s posturing on “tolerance” to some degree of press
freedom, I point out to the recent banning of a book written by Dr.
Olive Kobusingye before one makes any hasty conclusion. Be that
as it may, I acknowledge that there is some space by the regions
standard that Ugandans could have used to turn around things for
the better. Too bad, as Timothy Kalyegira once described us
Ethiopians as too “serious” I also see too much frivolity on
Ugandans despite being accorded better information than
Ethiopians. Perhaps that is the explanation behind Museveni’s
latitude whereas his counterpart Zenawi clamps down on all forms
of expression. Can you imagine, what would happen if the two swap
subjects like decadent swap wives?
---------------------------------------------------------------
Kiflu Hussain is An Ethiopian Refugee in Uganda, he can be
reached at: kiflukam@yahoo.com
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