This picture was posted as a tweet last year by Bill Easterly and I came across it on my computer yesterday which means I probably saved it because I found it so damn hilarious. Re-posting because it is the season for it.
George Monbiot in the Guardian’s Comment Is Free suggests that Pope Francis is not quite the development pope I suggested in my last post:
Pope Francis knew what poverty and oppression looked like: several times a year he celebrated mass in Buenos Aires’s Villa 21-24 slum. Yet, as leader Argentina’s Jesuits, he denounced liberation theology, andinsisted that priests seeking to defend and mobilise the poor remove themselves from the slums, shutting down their political activity.
He now maintains that he “would like a church that is poor and is for the poor”. But does this mean giving food to the poor, or does it mean also asking why they are poor? The dictatorships of Latin America waged a war against the poor, which continued in many places after those governments collapsed. Different factions of the Catholic church took opposing sides in this war. Whatever the stated intentions of those who attacked and suppressed liberation theology, in practical terms they were the allies of tyrants, land grabbers, debt slavers and death squads. For all his ostentatious humility, Pope Francis was on the wrong side.
Read it all and make up your own mind.
The Catholic Church and its Popes have been of little interest to me what with the pedophilia scandals, views on safe sex, and bigoted opinions on homosexuality. That all changed this past week though with the election of Pope Francis. It’s early days but I’m drawn to his social justice background in Argentina. Chris Bain of Cafod puts it thus:
“He’s not that well-known outside Argentina. We know he is very strong on social justice; a simple, humble man. It augurs well for global development. We would hope he can also get his message across to the rich world to live simpler lives.”
In 2007 he spoke out against poverty during a meeting of Latin American bishops:
“We live in the most unequal part of the world, which has grown the most yet reduced misery the least [...] The unjust distribution of goods persists, creating a situation of social sin that cries out to Heaven and limits the possibilities of a fuller life for so many of our brothers.”
In 2002 he spoke out against the Argentinian elite during a sermon at the height of the 2001-02 economic crisis:
“Let’s not tolerate the sad spectacle of those who no longer know how to lie and contradict themselves to hold onto their privileges, their rapaciousness, and their ill-earned wealth.”
In 2008, on the Holy Thursday, the then Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio washed the feet of 12 recovering drug addicts at a rehabilitation center in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 2001 he also visited a hospice to kiss and wash the feet of 12 AIDS patients.
Since his election, he has talked of wanting “a poor Church, for the poor”. Yes, these are words and yes, we’re only a week into his papacy but nevertheless, it seems like we have what I’d like to term a “development pope”. This is an adaptation of the term “development monk”, which is explained by Mike Parnell and Martin Seeger (who happen to be two of my lecturers) as Buddhist monks
who see it as their social duty to confront the social, economic, and environmental, and occasionally or unavoidably political, challenges that are increasingly associated with modern capitalist development.
The idea is of a fundamental re-engagement of monks with the community they serve in order to attain “developmental emancipation”. With talk of what the post-2015 development agenda should encompass once the Millennium Development Goals expire, powerful voices from the Global South speaking in favour of stronger anti-poverty measures need to be heard.
Kenyans vote today (in some places voting have already started). And somehow, as in any election in any African country, the cliches are not far behind. "Will Kenya fall into mayhem after the results of the general elections are announced?" "Will one of (East) Africa’s most politically stable countries see a return of post-election violence that swept through the country five years ago?" "Has tribalism been eradicated in Kenya?" We can't count how often international reporters have asked these questions in the past days.
UN Sec-Gen Ban Ki-Moon has accused the M23 rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo of having external support. In particular, Ban suggests that both direct and indirect external support led to the capture of Goma last year:
[...]the subsequent speed, efficiency and success of the renewed M23 offensive were rendered possible by a sudden increase in the group’s combatants, coordinated multi-pronged attacks and attacks with coordination between infantry and fire support, all capacities that are not characteristic of former integrated CNDP elements [National Congress for the Defence of the People militia]. Furthermore, MONUSCO observations of the command and control ability of the attacking force, the effective coordination of its fire support, the quality of its equipment and its general fighting ability, particularly during nighttime, all suggested the existence of external support, both direct and indirect.
What makes this interesting for me is that this afternoon I was at a lecture by David Booth of the Overseas Development Institute who was discussing the work he and his collaborator, Frederick Golooba-Mutebi, have recently published regarding Rwandan economic development entitled “Developmental Patrimonialism? The case of Rwanda” (PDF download available here). After discussing the paper he was asked about Rwanda’s role in the DRC and the potential impact on development in Rwanda and for parastatal businesses such as Crystal Ventures.
Booth gave a fumbling, non-answer but then went on to talk about a Rwandan power survey that he and Golooba-Mutebi were asked to conduct by the Swedish government. The survey, much like the paper he was presenting, was based on interviews with members of the elite (which was apparently facilitated by the fact that Golooba-Mutebi had been educated with many of them). What Booth told the audience is that Rwandan involvement in the DRC is not proven and that the interviews suggest that members of the government themselves do not believe that Rwanda, as a state, is involved in the DRC. He did seem to indicate that a faction of the government centred around Defence Minister General James Kabarebe might be involved, which seems to concur with what a separate UN report alleged last year:
The latest report by the UN Security Council’s Group of Experts provides more details of Rwanda’s alleged continued involvement.
It says M23 leaders “receive direct military orders” from Rwanda’s chief of defence staff, Gen Charles Kayonga, “who in turn acts on instructions from the minister of defence”, Gen James Kabarebe.
Kabarebe has form in DRC, as he explains in this video:
It’s quite possible, if not likely, that those Rwandans interviewed by Booth & Golooba-Mutebi who do not believe that the Rwandan state is involved because they’ve either not been told about it, or it is unofficial state policy (and therefore haven’t been told about it), or are lying. I don’t claim to be an expert about Rwanda and the DRC so won’t rush to any conclusion just yet. Booth said that he would be pressing the opinion of his interviewees further given the negative consequences the allegations of Rwandan state backing for the M23 rebels has had on international aid to the country. In other words, watch this space, I guess.
If you don’t know what the Harlem Shake meme is (er…hello? where have you been?), then either read this or watch this first. You also need to know that the Harlem shake also happens to be a dance that originated in Harlem, New York. Once you know all that, watching the video is pretty damn funny.
I can only blame myself because I was trying to be a little too clever. Instead, I’ve fucked up.
I wanted to move my iTunes library to Dropbox so it was backed up online and accessible from my iPad. What I didn’t factor in was the amount of time it would take to upload 40GB of music with a crappy internet connection (the answer is “forever”, if you’re wondering). On top of that it was impacting on the uploading of other stuff to Dropbox. So I decided to move the library back and that’s kind of where it all went wrong.
The first thing I notice was that hundreds – high hundreds – of songs were missing. Somehow, in between uploading to Dropbox and pausing uploads there were some sync’ing conflicts which cause some files to disappear. Luckily, I was able to undelete them from Dropbox and restore them on my hard drive. Then I spend the better half a day or so putting the files back where they belong. This involved individually checking each folder and manually moving back stuff as required.
Problem was when I reopened iTunes, I then had to tell it where those missing songs were located. This is every bit as soul-destroyingly boring as it sounds. iTunes 11, unlike earlier versions (if memory serves me well), isn’t able to figure out where particular songs are located if you tell it the general location (e.g. iTunes Music folder..hello).
After much clicking and unclicking, turning options off and on, and so on, I stumbled across the solution.
This took the number of missing songs down from 1200 to 50ish. I can live with that.
But there’s still another problem. When copying music across to my iPod not all music is copied. Yeah, I was like what the fuck is this shit. Again, I tried the random selection of clicking and unclicking options I never knew existed. Nope, no good. Despite the music being in my library the music isn’t transferred. Looking on the Apple discussion boards it seems to be a problem that has not yet been resolved. Until now.
Obviously, I’m not responsible if, by following anything I’ve written above, you fuck up your iTunes or iDevices. Tough shit if it does, especially if you didn’t backup before messing with stuff you shouldn’t mess with.
And of course, the best thing is to avoid iTunes altogether but I’m a sucker and you probably are too if you’re reading this.
