Chile announces unprecedented water rationing plan as drought enters 13th year

An aerial view shows low water levels at the Rungue reservoir during a drought in Rungue, north of Santiago, Chile, on April 11, 2022.


APRIL 12, 2022

REUTERS

SANTIAGO — As a punishing, record-breaking drought enters its 13th year, Chile on Monday (April 11) announced an unprecedented plan to ration water for the capital of Santiago, a city of nearly 6 million.More from AsiaOneRead the condensed version of this story, and other top stories with NewsLite.

"A city can't live without water," Claudio Orrego, the governor of the Santiago metropolitan region, said in a press conference. "And we're in an unprecedented situation in Santiago's 491-year history where we have to prepare for there to not be enough water for everyone who lives here."

The plan features a four-tier alert system that goes from green to red and starts with public service announcements, moves onto restricting water pressure and ends with rotating water cuts of up to 24 hours for about 1.7 million customers.

The alert system is based off the capacity of the Maipo and Mapocho rivers that supply the capital with most of its water and have seen dwindling water levels as the drought drags on.

The government estimates that the country's water availability has dropped 10 per cent to 37 per cent over the last 30 years and could drop another 50 per cent in northern and central Chile by 2060.

The water deficit in the rivers, measured in liters per second, will determine if cuts will take place every 12, six or four days. In each case, a different area would face water cuts each day.

ALSO READ: As climate dangers rise, scientists predict disasters before they happen

"This is the first time in history that Santiago has a water rationing plan due to the severity of climate change," Orrego said. "It's important for citizens to understand that climate change is here to stay. It's not just global, it's local."

Certain areas in the city center would be exempt due to the high concentration of capitals. Areas fed by well water or other sources besides the two rivers will also be exempt.

Scientists To Open Mystery Sarcophagus Discovered After Notre Dame Fire

Archeologists found the well-preserved lead sarcophagus beneath the famed Paris cathedral during work to repair damage from the 2019 fire.

By Ryan Grenoble
Apr. 15, 2022,

A centuries-old sarcophagus discovered beneath Paris’ Notre Dame cathedral will soon be opened, officials at France’s national archaeological institute, Inrap, said Thursday.

Archeologists discovered the well-preserved lead sarcophagus about 65 feet beneath the 850-year-old cathedral’s floor last month while doing a precautionary dig during preparations to rebuild part of the iconic French Gothic structure devastated in an April 2019 fire.

Scientists speculate the coffin could date to the 14th century, which would make the discovery extraordinary. It was found under a mound of earth that contained 14th-century furniture.

“If it turns out that it is in fact a sarcophagus from the Middle Ages, we are dealing with an extremely rare burial practice,” lead archaeologist Christophe Besnier said.


The 14th-century lead sarcophagus discovered under the floor of the Notre Dame Cathedral, in Paris, is seen on March 15, 2022.

JULIEN DE ROSA VIA GETTY IMAGES

A small camera inserted into the coffin revealed cloth and hair remains, the upper part of a skeleton, a pillow of leaves and objects that have yet to be identified.

The Inrap team also found a number of other artifacts, including a stone sculpture of a man’s head, resembling Jesus, and fragments of decorative stone, some of which still have intact paint.

“We uncovered all these riches just 10-15cm under the floor slabs,” Besnier said. “It was completely unexpected. There were exceptional pieces documenting the history of the monument.”
The discovery was “an emotional moment,” he said. “Suddenly we had several hundred pieces from small fragments to large blocks including sculpted hands, feet, faces, architectural decorations and plants. Some of the pieces were still colored.”

France Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot (C, left) visits the Notre Dame Cathedral archaeological research site after the discovery of a 14th-century lead sarcophagus, in Paris, on March 15, 2022.
JULIEN DE ROSA VIA GETTY IMAGES

INRAP told France24 the sarcophagus was carefully extracted from the cathedral on Tuesday and will be transported to the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Toulouse for examination “very soon.”

Institute head Dominique Garcia told the outlet the remains would be handled with the utmost respect.

“A sarcophagus containing a human body is not an archaeological object,” Garcia said. “These are human remains, and while examining the sarcophagus and analyzing the body and other objects inside, we must do so with respect.”

The remains may be re-interned at Notre Dame afterward.

It’s unclear whether the sarcophagus contains any liquid, like the “forbidden nectar” found in some Egyptian remains that hooligans have clamored to consume.

Canadian Conservative candidate vows to delist LTTE

 12 April 2022

Canadian Conservative leadership candidate Patrick Brown has pledged to delist the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as a terrorist organisation if elected to the post, whilst vowing to acknowledge Canada’s historic failure to support Tamil refugees.

“We need a public apology," Brown, the current mayor of Brampton, told Tamil constituents. "It’s horrible how Tamils were stereotyped. And rather than it being a symbol of terrorism, the tiger is a symbol of self-defence against the government committing war crimes."

Brown went on to state that the label has been used to slur and defame activists, including when he has spoken out on Sri Lanka’s genocide of Tamils.

“The Sri Lankan High Commission tells people that I’m LTTE,” he said. “Literally, the high commission.”

“So I’m going to lift the ban. I’m going to cancel the ban. I’m going to give a public apology. I firmly believe that those who are defending loved ones in Sri Lanka against a government that was committing a genocide — it was acts of self-defence against a Sri Lankan government that was acting in a manner that was a modern atrocity. Egregious. War criminals.”

The LTTE remains listed in several countries around the world, despite having been militarily defeated in 2009. Efforts have been made in the Europe, including in Britain, to de-list the group in recent years. In October 2020, a British commission ruled that the decision to ban on the LTTE was "flawed", and though the UK subsequently continued to maintain its ban the moved raised questions from British Tamils across the country.

Canadian Tamils at a 2012 rally in Toronto.

Brown's comments mark the first public pledge by a Canadian politician to lift the ban. “You won’t hear any other politician speaking that frankly,” he claimed.

He went on state that if elected, he would support Tamil asylum seekers fleeing Sri Lanka, telling the audience “I want to reunite as many Tamil families as possible immediately”.

“And so my goal is to make sure every Tamil family that wants to be reunited, and any Tamil family that wants to come to Canada as part of this apology, we’re going to welcome with open arms and say, ‘Sorry (for) what you had to go through.’”

The Star reported that Brown doubled down on his commitments, telling the paper “Canada and the global community took the wrong side in the Tamil genocide”.

His pledges were welcomed by Tamil Canadian activists, who called on other political leaders across Canada to make similar vows.

“The listing of the LTTE has been used to stigmatize the Tamil Canadians and criminalise our liberation struggle for years,” a Tamil Canadian activist told the Tamil Guardian. 

“The pledge to delist the LTTE is a significant one that shows the legitimacy of our liberation struggle and we call on other candidates to follow suit.”

“Canada has an opportunity to right the wrongs of its past in this election,” the activist added. “I hope the other candidates do.”

Related Articles: 

06 September 2021 : UK maintains ban on LTTE but British Tamil activists have questions

21 October 2020 : Britain’s decision to ban LTTE is ‘flawed’, rules commission

India offers aid whilst China remains silent on Sri Lanka

 

India offers aid whilst China remains silent on Sri Lanka

 15 April 2022

As Sri Lanka continues to grapple with its worst political and economic crisis in recent history, senior officials in Delhi express an interest in providing an additional $2 billion in aid whilst those in Beijing remain tight-lipped on assistance.

Discussions of aid follow announcements from Sri Lanka’s finance ministry and central bank that the country would no longer be able to pay its international debt obligations, effectively defaulting on US $51 billion of foreign debt. Sri Lanka citizens have responded to the dire economic crisis by taking to the streets and demanding an end to the Rajapaksa administration. Faced with growing public outcry and a string of resignations, the Rajapaksa administration holds a government with only four ministers.

Read more here: Plans for interim cabinet derailed by controversial appointment

Sino-Lanka relations

Reuters notes that one reason for India’s expanded offer of aid is to “regain ground lost to China in recent years”. Under the initial Mahinda presidency, Colombo fostered deeper ties with Beijing as it acquired diplomatic, financial, and military assistance to carry out the genocidal massacres of 2009. The following years would see the development of numerous projects, primarily located in the South, which utilised Chinese loans and labour. However, the Gotabaya presidency has seen growing tensions in Sino-Sri Lankan relations as poor economic management and a spate of public diplomatic rows have left Chinese officials wary of Sri Lanka’s credibility.

“Beijing has for the past couple of years been rethinking its external lending because their banks realised they were carrying a lot of debt with countries whose prospects of paying back were quite limited” Raffaello Pantucci, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University told Bloomberg news.

Despite this frosty relationship, Sri Lanka’s ambassador to China, Palitha Kohona has maintained that he is very confident China will respond to their plea for $2.5 billion in financial support. Chinese officials have yet to respond to this request but Kohona claimed to have received reassurances, stating:

“Our request will be honoured, but they have to go through the Chinese system”. He did not provide any information on the terms of the assistance nor a timeframe for when this would be received.

Bloomberg further reports that in meetings with Jin Liqun, President of the China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Sri Lanka’s ambassador was advised to turn to the US-based International Monetary Fund.

The situation has not been helped by China’s own economic crisis as it has had to deal with the worst outbreaks of COVID since early 2020; shutting down the technology and financial hubs of Shanghai and Shenzhen.

Thus far, China has provided a $1.3-billion syndicated loan and a $1.5-billion yuan-denominated swap whilst there are ongoing negotiations for greater lines of credit and loans. In contrast, India has provided India has so far committed $1.9 billion to Sri Lanka in loans, credit lines, and currency swaps.

Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, a researcher at the Point Pedro Institute of Development in Sri Lanka, highlights that China’s ability to assist Sri Lanka is limited given that most financial assistance provided by Beijing is “almost always tied to specific projects”.

He further stresses that China is not alone in its hesitancy with “even the IMF appears to be moving very slowly -- if not abandoning -- the requests of both Pakistan and Sri Lanka for their assistance”.

“Which sane bilateral donor country or international financial institution would pour money into sinking ships in both Pakistan and Sri Lanka” he asks.

Indo-Lanka relations

(Basil Rajapaksa with India's Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar)

In contrast to China, India appears more willing to dole out assistance to Sri Lanka, with Reuters indicating that one reason is to regain sway over its neighbour.

"We want them to reduce their debt levels from China and we want to become stronger partners," New Delhi officials told Reuters.

Sri Lanka has an outstanding debt of about $3.5 billion with China - or 10.8% of the island's total. India’s attempt to leverage Sri Lanka away from China has also been bolstered by US officials who encouraged the Sri Lanka government to diversify its sources of credit and investment to salvage its economy.

In meetings with Sri Lanka’s then finance minister, Basil Rajapaksa, India pressed its demand to expand several projects in the Tamil homeland. During the UN Human Rights Council India further stressed the need for Sri Lanka to meet “the legitimate aspirations of the Tamil community” and implement “meaningful devolution” through the 13th Amendment.

However, these demands have been met with fierce resistance from Sri Lankan outlets such as the Sunday Times LK which accused India of “diplomatic blackmail”. In an editorial they claimed that whilst Sri Lanka is “gasping for economic oxygen”, India has kept urgent economic aid “as a carrot at the end of a list of conditions” Sri Lanka must meet.

 

Read more here and here.

Macron, Le Pen decry ‘shocking’ Stellantis CEO pay
By COLLEEN BARRY and ANGELA CHARLTON

FILE - In this Feb. 26, 2020 file photo, CEO of PSA Groupe Carlos Tavares arrives for the presentation of the company's 2019 full year results in Rueil-Malmaison, west of Paris. Reports of Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares’ remuneration package of 19.15 million euros during Stellantis’ first year of existence, not counting long-term incentives, caused waves on as Macron and Le Pen campaigned ahead of the April 24 runoff vote. Polls show purchasing power and inflation are a top voter concern. Centrist President Emmanuel Macron, perceived by many voters as being too pro-business, called the pay package “astronomical” and pushed for a Europe-wide effort to set ceilings on “abusive” executive pay. (AP Photo/Michel Euler, File)


PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron and his far-right challenger in the French presidential vote, Marine Le Pen, on Friday both decried as “shocking” the multimillion euro payout to the CEO of carmaker Stellantis.

Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares’ remuneration package of 19.15 million euros just a year after the company was formed became an issue as Macron and Le Pen campaigned ahead of the April 24 runoff vote. Polls show purchasing power and inflation are a top voter concern.

Stellantis, formed last year through the merger of PSA Peugeot and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, sought Friday to defend Tavares’ work in turning around the fortunes of the French carmaker — and his pay package.

Macron, a centrist perceived by many left-wing voters as being too pro-business, called the pay package “astronomical” and pushed for a Europe-wide effort to set ceilings on “abusive” executive pay.

“It’s shocking, it’s excessive,” he said Friday on broadcaster France-Info.

“People can’t have problems with purchasing power, difficulties, the anguish they’re living with, and see these sums. Otherwise, society will explode.”

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who enjoys support from many working-class voters, said: “Of course it’s shocking, and it’s even more shocking when it is the CEOs who have pushed their society into difficulty.”

“One of the ways to diminish this pay, which is often out of proportion with economic life, is perhaps to allow workers in as shareholders,” she said Friday on BFM television.

Stellantis continued to back the package despite a 52.1% to 47.9% vote rejecting it at an annual shareholders’ meeting chaired from the Netherlands, where the company is legally based, on Wednesday. The company, citing Dutch civil code, noted that the vote is advisory and not binding.

Stellantis said in a statement that it took note of the vote, and will explain in an upcoming 2022 remuneration report “how this vote has been taken into account.”

In a new statement Friday, the company outlined Tavares’ work in pulling PSA, owner of Peugeot and Citroen, out of “near bankruptcy.”

It said Stellantis’ success “made it possible to redistribute 1.9 billion euros to employees (+70% compared to 2020), i.e. as much as to shareholders.” It said Tavares’ pay is “lower for example than that of GM or Ford, and should be considered in view of the size and performance of the company he heads.”

In the 2021 report, the company identified peer group companies that it used as a salary benchmark, including U.S. companies like Boeing, Exxon Mobile, General Electric as well as carmakers Ford and General Motors.

Stellantis, whose brands include Peugeot, Fiat, Jeep, Opel and Maserati, reported net profits last year had tripled to 13.4 billion euros ($15.2 billion).

The French government is the third-largest shareholder in Stellantis, with a 6.15% stake through the Bpifrance Participations S.A. French public investment bank.

___

Barry reported from Milan.

Jalal Al-e Ahmad: The last Muslim intellectual

Through the thick and thin of his political career, the Iranian redefined what it meant to be a Muslim in the world

Hamid Dabashi
7 April 2022 

Jalal Al-e Ahmad was ‘a self-confessed Muslim thinker’ (Wikimedia Commons)

Jalal Al-e Ahmad (1923-69) was the "last Muslim intellectual". At least, that's the claim I make in my latest book, which explores the life and legacy of the towering Iranian critical thinker.

This was a deliberately provocative title, intended to draw attention to the work. But it also relies on an argument embedded throughout the volume - one that turns the writing of an intellectual biography into a potent claim on the future of Muslim critical thinking.

In the book, I place Al-e Ahmad next to Frantz Fanon, Aime Cesaire, Leopold Sedar Senghor and Edward Said. The argument thus required rethinking the significance of a Muslim critical thinker in larger global terms.

Al-e Ahmad was not chasing after any lost self; he was aiming to decolonise critical consciousness

How could any Muslim thinker be called “the last Muslim intellectual”? How do we know whether other, more commanding Muslim intellectuals will emerge in the near or distant future?

The full range of Muslim critical thinkers, from Morocco to India, makes any such claim dubious, if not altogether ludicrous. But there was some method behind my provocation.

Let me begin with the epithet “Muslim”. Al-e Ahmad was born and raised in a prominent Shia clerical family. His father was a leading member of the Shia clergy, as were other members of his family. He, too, was meant to go to Iraq and study in a Shia seminary. But his agitated soul was drawn to the more adventurous aspects of his time.

Early in his youth, Al-e Ahmad was drawn to militant secularists, such as Ahmad Kasravi, and ultimately to the pronounced socialism of the Tudeh Party. He rose in their ranks, and at some point became the editor of their newspaper.

But soon after the Allied invasion and occupation of Iran during World War II, and the heavy-handed Soviet interference in Iranian affairs, Al-e Ahmad and many other independent-minded intellectuals left the communist Tudeh Party, without abandoning their socialist ideals.

Through the thick and thin of his political career, Al-e Ahmad remained a self-confessed Muslim thinker, in the broadest and most self-conscious way. Almost single-handedly, he redefined what it meant to be a Muslim in the world - aware, conscious, engaged and receptive.

Restless soul

As a Muslim, Al-e Ahmad was a restless soul - not just in politics, but particularly in his moral imagination, literary taste, critical thinking and sense of the sacred. After he abandoned his father’s wishes for him to become a cleric, and unbeknownst to his family, he opted to pursue a more contemporary, state-sponsored public (misunderstood as “secular”) education.

But the turmoil of his homeland soon drew him to the political predicament of a young, inquisitive mind. After his initial attraction to Kasravi and the Tudeh Party, his restless soul sailed towards less charted territories. He was reenacting what it meant to be a Muslim in the world.

Iran and the US: When friends fall out  Read More »

Al-e Ahmad’s most famous text is Gharbzadegi, usually translated as “Westoxication”, in which he sought to offer a prognosis for a colonised mind.

The Muslim world, the colonised world, and Iran are shown to be sites of this Gharbzadegi, where thinking, acting and the very lexicon of collective consciousness have been Europeanised, mesmerised, westernised - in short, colonised.

A thick layer of false consciousness had overcome the very condition of thinking. Al-e Ahmad was not chasing after any lost self; he was aiming to decolonise critical consciousness. This short treatise was the subject of intense debate, and has had enduring significance since its publication in the early 1960s.

Al-e Ahmad’s response to the colonised mind was intense intellectual engagement with the vital issues of the time in relentlessly critical prose, including literature.

Throughout his short but fruitful life, Al-e Ahmad remained committed to literature and produced some of the most popular works of fiction of his time, chief among them The School Principal (1958), an autobiographical critique of public education.
Ideological force

Al-e Ahmad’s post-Marxist turn to existentialism, which led to a sustained period of translations from European and Russian sources, including the seminal works of Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Fyodor Dostoevsky, must be read in the same vein. Through these translations, he was reliving a critical consciousness outside of his own immediate life and heritage.

After the failed June 1963 uprising led by Ayatollah Khomeini (a dress rehearsal for the 1979 revolution), with which he identified, Al-e Ahmad wrote a major study on the services and treacheries of public intellectuals, heavily influenced by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. By this time, Al-e Ahmad was convinced that leftist movements that were bereft of local and regional rootedness were destined to fail.

In this respect, he was the forerunner of perhaps the most potent ideological force of the 1979 revolution, Ali Shariati, with whom he had a brief encounter in the holy city of Mashhad.

Shariati was a convinced and convincing ideologue, a visionary Islamist. Al-e Ahmad was too much in the sun, too self-doubting, too much drawn to “on the other hand” - he was like a bee always attracted to the next flower. He made of his nomadic mind a proverbial truth.

After his brief affiliation and subsequent departure from the Tudeh Party, Al-e Ahmad remained committed to the cause of socialism. Precisely in that period, he made the monumentally stupid decision to travel to Israel on an official invitation and to write a deeply misguided account defending the Zionist project.

Soon after the 1967 war, however, he realised the inanity of his hurried impressions, and wrote a second part in which he denounced Zionism and its US and European supporters. The two parts were so diametrically opposed that some even doubted the authenticity of one or the other.

But they were both his, reflecting his agitated, restless, impatient and impressionistic way of thinking. He was not consistent. He was real. Before his detractors had collected the prose to criticise him, he was already somewhere else. He compared himself to a horse who could hear the tremors of a pending earthquake, rather than a seismographer measuring it scientifically.

The 'four qibla'

Al-e Ahmad’s most enduring works were perhaps his ethnographic monographs on Iranian localities, such as Kharg Island or the village of Owrazan, followed by his travelogues, the most important of which arose from his Hajj pilgrimage.

From his travels to the Soviet Union, the US, Mecca and Jerusalem, Al-e Ahmad had intended to publish a fourfold account of the “four qibla” of his time. To these four destinations, he was drawn with equal intensity. The result was a critical consciousness of the world around him that became the critical consciousness of the world around his nation.

Good or bad, pleasant or nefarious, critical or implicated, Al-e Ahmad represented a moment in a Muslim's intellectual engagement with the world

Al-e Ahmad’s most important and potent works of prose were delivered in the form of short essays, a mode he perfected. He did for Persian prose what George Orwell, James Baldwin, EB White or Samuel Johnson did for English.

His telegraphic prose became proverbial, forever changing how Iranians would read the world. His essays on leading literary figures, such as Nima Yooshij and Sadegh Hedayat, remain among the most insightful works of literary criticism in the language.

Perhaps his most controversial text was an autobiographical confession titled Sangi bar Guri (A Tombstone), in which he wrote candidly and subversively about his inability to have children, his extramarital affair, and his exceedingly loving but troubled relationship with his wife, Simin Daneshvar.

Simin Daneshvar, Jalal's wife, was a towering literary figure in her own right

Daneshvar (1921-2012) was a towering literary figure in her own right; her masterpiece novel, Savushun, was a landmark in modern Persian fiction. The couple cut an exceptionally powerful set of public personae and deeply influenced each other’s work. The recent publication of their extensive correspondences has shed light on a crucial aspect of the private and public lives of prominent couples in Iran.
Critical revaluation

Al-e Ahmad died at the age of 45, purportedly from a sudden heart attack, though it has also been claimed that he was poisoned by the agents of Savak, the Shah's secret police.

His wife’s eulogies for her husband today read as landmarks of literary prose, illuminating the deepest aspects of love. They were written with a forgiving soul that turns troubled realities into enduring truths.

Soon after his death, and upon the violent triumphalism of the Islamic Republic that took over after Iran’s 1979 revolution, the legacy of Al-e Ahmad became as divisive as his lifetime achievements. Iran’s ruling elite began actively incorporating his memory into the ideological apparatus of the Islamic Republic, naming highways after him, printing stamps in his honour, and giving literary prizes to commemorate his legacy, while paradoxically, the English translation of his travelogue to Israel turned him into a fully fledged Zionist.

'The Shah is gone': Revisiting the Iranian revolution 40 years later

Read More »

As his detractors began blaming him for the atrocities of the Islamic Republic, the vast and variegated contours of his short but exceptionally fruitful life were lost and neglected in the process.

My renewed interest in Al-e Ahmad, which led to my critical revaluation of his life and legacy, was prompted by a need to retrieve the cosmopolitan disposition of the age that gave birth to his character and the rich body of work he left behind. In doing so, I also paid closer attention to his relationship with Daneshvar, detailing how their respective voices had become dialogical.

My paramount concern was to retrieve a mode of being a Muslim in the world, in which a towering Muslim intellectual was embracing the planet in all its contradictions and paradoxes, rather than dismissing and rejecting them in an act of futile piety or staged resentment.

Good or bad, pleasant or nefarious, critical or implicated, Al-e Ahmad represented a moment in a Muslim’s intellectual engagement with the world when banal sectarian divisions or deeply alienated triumphalism had not distorted the rich and effervescent intellectual legacy of Islam.

It is in that sense that the legacy of Al-e Ahmad as “the last Muslim intellectual” becomes a prelude to a post-Islamist liberation theology, which shimmers in the future of the Muslim world.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian professor of Iranian studies and comparative literature at Columbia University in the City of New York. His latest books include Reversing the Colonial Gaze: Persian Travellers Abroad (Cambridge University Press, 2020), and The Emperor is Naked: On the Inevitable Demise of the Nation-State (Zed, 2020). His forthcoming book, On Edward Said: Remembrance of Things Past, is scheduled to be released by Haymarket Books later this year.

Expect a Full Pink Moon to Shine This Entire Weekend

The full moon sets behind Stonehenge in Amesbury, England, on April 27, 2021. (Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images)

Apr 15, 2022

April’s full moon will illuminate the sky this entire weekend, and while it’s called the pink moon, it’s not actually that color.

The pink moon will appear full from early Friday to Monday morning, according to NASA. It will be at its peak fullness on Saturday, April 16, at 2:55 p.m. ET.

The moon is associated with the springtime blossoming of the Phlox subulata plant, a pink wildflower native to eastern North America, according to The Old Farmer’s Almanac. The plant is commonly known as creeping phlox, moss phlox, or mountain phlox.

Native American names for April’s full moon were homages to the spring season, according to The Old Farmer’s Almanac. The Dakota tribe dubbed it the “moon when the streams are again navigable,” while the Tlingit tribe called it “budding moon of plants and shrubs,” in reference to the end of winter and the resurgence of plant growth.

The pink moon also aligns with several religious holidays, according to NASA. It’s called the Paschal moon in the Christian ecclesiastical calendar, because it’s the full moon before Easter. For Hindus, this moon marks Hanuman Jayanti, the celebration of the Hindu monkey deity Lord Hanuman. The pink moon is Bak Poya for Buddhists, especially in Sri Lanka, and commemorates Buddha’s visit to the island country, where Buddha prevented a war by settling a dispute between chiefs.

Unlike the last two years, this April’s pink moon will not be a supermoon. However, it still comes with its own folklore. According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, “A full moon in April brings frost. If the full moon rises pale, expect rain.”

“There certainly is a chance of rain or frost this weekend. There is also a chance of neither,” said CNN Meteorologist Judson Jones. “But in some areas of the Midwest, people will see some below-average morning temperatures this weekend, which may leave them wishing for a pale moon.”

After the pink moon, there are eight full moon events still to come in 2022, with two of them qualifying as supermoons. Here’s a list of the remaining moons for 2022, according to the Farmers’ Almanac:

May 16: Flower moon
June 14: Strawberry moon
July 13: Buck moon
August 11: Sturgeon moon
September 10: Harvest moon
October 9: Hunter’s moon
November 8: Beaver moon
December 7: Cold moon

While these are the popularized names associated with the monthly full moons, the significance of each one may vary across Native American tribes.

Jackie Robinson was a radical – don’t listen

to the sanitized version of history

“I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a Black man in a white world.”

The Conversation
April 14, 2022


In our new book, “Baseball Rebels: The Players, People, and Social Movements That Shook Up the Game and Changed America,” Rob Elias and I profile the many iconoclasts, dissenters and mavericks who defied baseball’s and society’s establishment.

But none took as many risks – and had as big an impact – as Jackie Robinson. Though Robinson was a fierce competitor, an outstanding athlete and a deeply religious man, the aspect of his legacy that often gets glossed over is that he was also a radical.

The sanitized version of the Jackie Robinson story goes something like this: He was a remarkable athlete who, with his unusual level of self-control, was the perfect person to break baseball’s color line. In the face of jeers and taunts, he was able to put his head down and let his play do the talking, becoming a symbol of the promise of a racially integrated society.

With this April 15 marking the 75th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s breaking baseball’s color line, Major League Baseball will celebrate the occasion with great fanfare – with tributes, movies, TV specials, museum exhibits and symposia.

I wonder, however, about the extent to which these celebrations will downplay his activism during and after his playing career. Will they delve into the forces arrayed against Robinson – the players, fans, reporters, politicians and baseball executives who scorned his outspoken views on race? Will any Jackie Robinson Day events mention that, toward the end of his life, he wrote that he had become so disillusioned with the country’s racial progress that he couldn’t stand for the flag and sing the national anthem?

Laying the groundwork

Robinson was a rebel before he broke baseball’s color line.

When he was a soldier during World War II, his superiors sought to keep him out of officer candidate school. He persevered and became a second lieutenant. But in 1944, while assigned to a training camp at Fort Hood in Texas, he refused to move to the back of an army bus when the white driver ordered him to do so.

Robinson faced trumped-up charges of insubordination, disturbing the peace, drunkenness, conduct unbecoming an officer and refusing to obey the orders of a superior officer. Voting by secret ballot, the nine military judges – only one of them Black – found Robinson not guilty. In November, he was honorably discharged from the Army.

Describing the ordeal, Robinson later wrote, “It was a small victory, for I had learned that I was in two wars, one against the foreign enemy, the other against prejudice at home.”

Three years later, Robinson would suit up for the Dodgers.

His arrival didn’t occur in a vacuum. It marked the culmination of more than a decade of protests to desegregate the national pastime. It was a political victory brought about by a persistent and progressive movement that confronted powerful business interests that were reluctant – even opposed – to bring about change.

Beginning in the 1930s, the movement mobilized a broad coalition of organizations – the Black press, civil rights groups, the Communist Party, progressive white activists, left-wing unions and radical politicians – that waged a sustained campaign to integrate baseball.

Biting his tongue, biding his time

This protest movement set the stage for Brooklyn Dodgers executive Branch Rickey to sign Robinson to a contract in 1945. Robinson spent the 1946 season with the Montreal Royals, the Dodgers’ top farm club, where he led the team to the minor league championship. The following season, he was brought up to the big leagues.

Robinson promised Rickey that – at least during his rookie year – he wouldn’t respond to the verbal barbs from fans, managers and other players he would face on a daily basis.

His first test took place a week after he joined the Dodgers, during a game against the Philadelphia Phillies. Phillies manager Ben Chapman called Robinson the n-word and shouted, “Go back to the cotton field where you belong.”

Though Robinson seethed with anger, he kept his promise to Rickey, enduring the abuse without retaliating.

But after that first year, he increasingly spoke out against racial injustice in speeches, interviews and his regular newspaper columns for The Pittsburgh Courier, New York Post and the New York Amsterdam News.

Many sportswriters and most other players – including some of his fellow Black players – balked at the way Robinson talked about race. They thought he was too angry, too vocal.

Syndicated sports columnist Dick Young of the New York Daily News griped that when he talked to Robinson’s Black teammate Roy Campanella, they stuck to baseball. But when he spoke with Robinson, “sooner or later we get around to social issues.”

A 1953 article in Sport magazine titled “Why They Boo Jackie Robinson” described the second baseman as “combative,” “emotional” and “calculating,” as well as a “pop-off,” a “whiner,” a “showboat” and a “troublemaker.” A Cleveland paper called Robinson a “rabble rouser” who was on a “soap box.” The Sporting News headlined one story “Robinson Should Be a Player, Not a Crusader.” Other writers and players called him a “loudmouth,” a “sorehead” and worse.

Nonetheless, Robinson’s relentless advocacy got the attention of the country’s civil rights leaders.

In 1956, the NAACP gave him its highest honor, the Spingarn Medal. He was the first athlete to receive that award. In his acceptance speech, he explained that although many people had warned him “not to speak up every time I thought there was an injustice,” he would continue to do so.

‘A freedom rider before the Freedom Rides’

After Robinson hung up his cleats in 1957, he stayed true to his word, becoming a constant presence on picket lines and at civil rights rallies.

That same year, he publicly urged President Dwight Eisenhower to send troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to protect Black students seeking to desegregate its public schools. In 1960, impressed with the resilience and courage of the college students engaging in sit-ins at Southern lunch counters, he agreed to raise bail money for the students stuck in jail cells.

Robinson initially supported the 1960 presidential campaign of Sen. Hubert Humphrey, a Minnesota Democrat and staunch ally of the civil rights movement. But when John F. Kennedy won the party’s nomination, Robinson – worried that JFK would be beholden to Southern Democrats who opposed integration - he endorsed Republican Richard Nixon. He quickly regretted that decision after Nixon refused to campaign in Harlem or speak out against the arrest of Martin Luther King Jr. in rural Georgia. Three weeks before Election Day, Robinson said that “Nixon doesn’t deserve to win.”

In February 1962, Robinson traveled to Jackson, Mississippi, to speak at a rally organized by NAACP leader Medgar Evers. Later that year, at King’s request, Robinson traveled to Albany, Georgia, to draw media attention to three Black churches that had been burned to the ground by segregationists. He then led a fundraising campaign that collected $50,000 to rebuild the churches.

In 1963 he devoted considerable time and travel to support King’s voter registration efforts in the South. He also traveled to Birmingham, Alabama, as part of King’s campaign to dismantle segregation in that city.

“His presence in the South was very important to us,” recalled Wyatt Tee Walker, chief of staff of King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. King called Robinson “a sit-inner before the sit-ins, a freedom rider before the Freedom Rides.”

Robinson also consistently criticized police brutality. In August 1968, three Black Panthers in New York City were arrested and charged with assaulting a white police officer. At their hearing two weeks later, about 150 white men, including off-duty police officers, stormed the courthouse and attacked 10 Panthers and two white supporters. When he learned that the police had made no arrests of the white rioters, Robinson was outraged.

“The Black Panthers seek self-determination, protection of the Black community, decent housing and employment and express opposition to police abuse,” Robinson said during a press conference at the Black Panthers’ headquarters.

He challenged banks for discriminating against Black neighborhoods and condemned slumlords who preyed on Black families.

And Robinson wasn’t done holding Major League Baseball to account, either. He refused to participate in a 1969 Old Timers game because he didn’t see “genuine interest in breaking the barriers that deny access to managerial and front office positions.” At his final public appearance, throwing the ceremonial first pitch before Game 2 of the 1972 World Series, Robinson observed, “I’m going to be tremendously more pleased and more proud when I look at that third base coaching line one day and see a black face managing in baseball.”

No major league team had a Black manager until Frank Robinson was hired by the Cleveland Indians in 1975, three years after Jackie Robinson’s death. The absence of Black managers and front-office executives is an issue that MLB still grapples with today.

Athlete activism, then and now

Athletes still face backlash for speaking out. When NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick protested racism by refusing to stand during the national anthem, then-President Donald Trump said that athletes who followed Kaepernick’s example “shouldn’t be in the country.”

In 2018, after NBA star LeBron James spoke about a racial slur that had been graffitied on his home and criticized Trump, Fox News’ Laura Ingraham suggested that he “shut up and dribble.”

Even so, in the past decade, athletes have become more outspoken on issues of racism, homophobia, sexism, American militarism, immigrant rights and other issues. They all stand on Robinson’s shoulders.

It was Robinson’s strong patriotism that led him to challenge America to live up to its ideals. He felt an obligation to use his fame to challenge the society’s racial injustice. However, during his last few years – before he died of a heart attack in 1972 at age 53 – he grew increasingly disillusioned with the pace of racial progress.

In his 1972 memoir, “I Never Had It Made,” he wrote: “I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a Black man in a white world.”

By Peter Dreier, E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics, Occidental College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Baseball greats, family honor Jackie Robinson

Baseball legends, fans and family gathered in New York to celebrate Jackie Robinson Day. Friday is the 75th anniversary of Robinson breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball when he started for the Brooklyn Dodgers. (April 15)

 

Column: Remembering Jackie Robinson in town where it started

By PAUL NEWBERRY

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A jersey of Jackie Robinson is displayed at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, commemorating the 75th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's integration of Major League Baseball, Thursday, April 7, 2022. Robinson became the first African American to play in Major League Baseball breaking the baseball color barrier on April 15, 1947, when he started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Far off the beaten path, way down in southwest Georgia near the Florida state line, a remarkable life began in the most humble of circumstances.

Jackie Robinson was born just outside the small town of Cairo (pronounced “KAY-ro”), the child of sharecroppers struggling to make ends meet in the grinding poverty of the Jim Crow South.

As Major League Baseball honors the 75th anniversary of Robinson’s historic breaking of the color barrier, let’s not forget where he came from.

Robinson spent the first year of his life near Cairo. For decades, there was nothing to mark that he was ever there — a forgotten first chapter to one of America’s most significant stories.

That has changed over the last quarter-century.

There are now a pair of historic signs honoring Robinson — one downtown in front of the library, another at the remnants of the rural shack where he was delivered by his grandmother, a midwife, on Jan. 31, 1919, less than three months after the end of World War I.

Even more significantly, the Jackie Robinson Boys & Girls Club was founded about a dozen years ago, striving to create a better life for Cairo’s young people, many of whom still face some of the same challenges that Robinson did a century ago.

Stephen Francis, the club’s director, proudly notes that it’s the only Boys & Girls Club in the entire world to bear Robinson’s name.

Its mission certainly would’ve met with his approval.

“Being named after Jackie Robinson makes us feel a little more special than the normal Boys & Girls Club,” Francis said. “But it’s also a great responsibility with what he stood for. We have to uphold that and pass it down to the children in our daily programs and the life skills that we teach. We want to make sure we’re instilling the character that Jackie Robinson stood for.”

What was that?

“It’s OK to fall as long as you get back up,” Francis replied. “Failing is not falling. Failing is giving up when you fall. You’re gonna go through some things. But if something is worth it, it’s worth fighting for.”

The Jackie Robinson Boys & Girls Club was at the center of a big celebration Friday.

In a most fitting gesture, the Atlanta Braves brought their World Series championship trophy to Robinson’s birthplace on Jackie Robinson Day.

The whole town was buzzing over its appearance.

“People are cleaning their yards like the the trophy is coming to their house,” Francis said, chuckling. “They’re cutting their grass and washing their cars and getting their hair done. It’s like a big party.”

Dr. Linda Walden was among those who planned to attend the trophy celebration. She wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

Walden is a third cousin of Robinson’s. A native of Queens, she never met Robinson — who died in 1972 at age 53 — but moved to Cairo in the mid-1990s to start a much-needed medical practice in an area that played such a significant role in her family’s history.

She was stunned at what she found — or, more accurately, what she didn’t find.

No statues. No monuments. Not even a simple marker to commemorate this is where it all began for Robinson. Heck, he wasn’t even in the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame (which finally inducted him in 1998).

Maybe that was only natural since Robinson spent such a short time in Georgia. After his father left the family, his mother packed up Jackie and his four siblings and moved to Pasadena, California in search of a better life.

Even so, Walden has dedicated much of her life outside of medicine to making sure that Cairo is remembered for more than its famous syrup.

She now owns the site where Robinson was born. A fence protects the grounds, though all that is left is a brick chimney. The abandoned structure burned down long ago.

Walden also had a historic marker installed, which sadly became a symbol of just how far we have to go in this country. Vandals damaged the plaque with gunshots. She suspects it was the work of racists who were none too pleased with the progress that Robinson fought for throughout his all-too-short life.

“I’m gonna let God handle all that and take care of whoever did it. He has his ways to dealing with people,” Walden said. “But it’s really disappointing that people would show the ugly face of racism that still exists. I just pray for those people.”

Fortunately, the nasty part of the story takes a more promising turn. MLB made a $40,000 donation that got the ball rolling to install not one, but two replacement markers. One at the library, where more people in the town of roughly 10,000 would be able to see it, and another at the birthplace outside the city limits.

“Birthplace of Jackie Robinson: First African American in Modern-Day Major League Baseball,” the marker says.

A dedication ceremony for the new plaques was held in January.

“I’m very proud,” said Walden, who still gets emotional every time she talks about her distant relative. “This means his legacy will continue. Those signs represent the man and the resilience of Jackie Robinson. They’re a symbol of hope, a symbol of courage, a symbol of confidence and determination, a symbol of excellence. No matter what, we can achieve.”

The damaged sign, meanwhile, was shipped to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City. Missouri, which held its own event Friday to unveil the marker “as a reminder that the ugliness of America’s past persists to this day.”

It will remain on temporary display through mid-August, said Raymond Doswell, the museum’s vice president and curator. Then it will become part of a permanent exhibit.

“We’re not going to try to repair it,” he said. “We want to show people his humble origins, and at the same time show with the damaged marker that the fight against racism and violence continues.

”We have a long, long way to go.”

We’d like to see MLB take another big step to honor Robinson’s legacy.

Bring a real big league game to the town where it all started.

Already, MLB has constructed a pair of temporary stadiums to host a one-off game at the Fort Bragg military base in 2016 and the wildly popular “Field of Dreams” game in Iowa that will have an encore in 2022.

How about a “Jackie Robinson Day” game in Cairo next April 15 between the home-state Braves and the Los Angeles Dodgers, the team that Robinson played his entire big league career for while they were in Brooklyn?

The Braves could wear replica uniforms from the Atlanta Black Crackers, the city’s Negro Leagues team. The Dodgers could don the caps they wore during the Robinson era, adorned with a “B” rather than “LA.”

Walden has long dreamed of raising funds to build a field that could host big league teams in Cairo. This seems like a perfect opportunity for MLB to step up again to honor its most significant ballplayer and, hopefully, boost waning interest in the national pastime among Black Americans.

If a fictional movie is worthy of a special game, Jackie Robinson most certainly is, too.

His story really happened.

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Paul Newberry is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at pnewberry(at)ap.org or at https://twitter.com/pnewberry1963

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More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Putin’s other war zone --- Africa --- goes barely noticed

Francis Karugu, Dc Report@ Raw Story
April 16, 2022

The late Robert Mugabe

As Vladimir Putin wages war in Ukraine, little attention is being paid to how he has long waged a quiet campaign to win the hearts of African strongmen.

Over the last decade, Russia’s involvement in Africa largely escaped world attention as the world focused more on ISIS in Iraq and Syria and the Taliban in Afghanistan. As a result, Russia stealthily cemented ties with many African countries during this period, including Togo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Uganda, and the Central Africa Republic.
The two dictators spoke like economic sanctions are a good thing, an honor even.

Putin’s Russia uses private military companies to support dictatorial African regimes in Sudan and the Central Africa Republic. From the Central African Republic, to Chad, Congo, Rwanda, and Sudan to Uganda, Putin’s weaponry and military training have kept African dictators as ruthless as Putin in power.

Name any dictator in Africa — Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, Salva Kiir of South Sudan, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni of Uganda, the late John Pombe Magufuli of Tanzania, Dennis Sassou Nguesso of Congo — and you will find unholy alliances with Vladimir Putin.

Putin hosted an initial Russia-Africa summit at the Black Sea resort city of Sochi in 2019. All 54 African nations sent delegates. They discussed increasing sales of Russian grains and other foodstuffs to Africa, along with killing machines.

Weapons account for about 40% of Russian exports to Africa.

A Kremlin spokesman put the value of Russian food exports to Africa at $25 billion and weaponry at $15 billion. That is just shy of 10% of Russian exports that year.

During the summit, there were also discussions to allow more Russian deals to mine metals and extract oil in Africa. More oil and minerals mean more money to Russia for wheat and weapons.

What Putin had in common with some of his guests was lust for power and murderous hatred of dissent.

Misery companions

Misery loves company. Putin finds his in African despots who love Putin’s style of extinguishing dissent at home and using military firepower to stay in power.

Consider Robert Mugabe, the strongman who ruled Zimbabwe for 47 years. He flew to Moscow in 2015 ostensibly to discuss the defeat of Nazi Germany 70 years before. But this was not long after the West had placed economic sanctions on Russia for invading Ukraine’s Crimea, the first illicit seizure of land from a sovereign country since WWII ended and a precursor to the 2022 invasion of the rest of Ukraine, which is roughly the size of Texas.

Mugabe’s playful greeting to Putin: “You have sanctions, we have sanctions!”

The two dictators spoke like economic sanctions are good, like valorous medals or even scars from battlefield bravery. But these two earned their economic scars on the wrong battlefields through atrocities and oppression that made their countries pariah nations with troubled economies and widespread poverty.

Rigged Elections

Mugabe rigged elections and ruled Zimbabwe with an iron fist, just as Putin does in Russia. Unlike Putin, however, Mugabe ruled in an unholy alliance with his wife Grace. Her parading about wearing expensive high fashion in a desperately poor country earned her the nickname “Gucci” Grace Mugabe.

Putin smiled broadly during a photo-op with Mugabe, the man who turned an African breadbasket into a basket case. Zimbabwe’s economy per capita, measured in purchasing power equivalent dollars, is a scant $1,214. At the same time, neighboring Botswana’s economy generates five times as much, Russia at 11 and the United States at 54 times as much.

Putin remains in power as a modern tsar while Mugabe was ousted in a 2017 coup, his power eroded by years of economic decline and brutal repression of critics. He died in 2019, but that didn’t weaken the ties between Harare and Moscow.

The current ruler of Zimbabwe, Emmerson Mnangagwa, sided with Putin by abstaining from a United Nations debate over sanctions on Russia for its vicious invasion of Ukraine.

Mnangagwa is Mugabe’s former vice president, part of a thieving regime.

Since 2006, no Ugandan election can be said to have been free and fair. Uganda’s army is a ruffian collection of underpaid, sometimes undisciplined, gun-toting youth committing war crimes in Africa’s Great Lakes region – Lakes Victoria, Tanganyika, and Malawi — which hold even more water than the North American Great Lakes.

Lousy Pay

Putin’s army is comprised mainly of conscripts paid just $30 a month. Poor pay and draftee status may explain the Russian army’s appallingly poor performance in Putin’s current war against Ukraine.

Museveni used to be a darling of the West, primarily because of his rhetoric on democracy, his successful campaign against HIV infection and his contribution to the so-called war on terror, especially in the Horn of Africa.

Just as Putin makes the absurd claim that he is the legitimately elected leader of the Russian Federation, fellow dictator Museveni made the laughable claim last year that Uganda had the best democracy in the world.

Putin sent Semivolos Vladlen to Uganda as his ambassador in 2021 with a new mission. In a hushed brief, both parties indicated that Russia and Uganda would be entering into a serious partnership that will mix oil and military weaponry.

Oil Discovered

In the last decade, oil was discovered in Uganda, which could transform Uganda’s economy if petroleum exports begin as expected in 2024 or 2025. Revenue from black gold emboldened Museveni, who tightened his authoritarian grip on power.

Museveni holds his defense sector close to his chest, just like Putin in Russia. Oil money to buy weapons and pay soldiers is of close interest to Museveni as he works to stay in power for life.

Museveni runs the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces as his personal enterprise. It’s not exactly closely supervised in its outreach. Click on the official website URL produces a “this site can’t be reached” message.

Museveni came to power in 1986 with a coup staged by his guerrilla force, the National Resistance Army. He then became the latest in a long line of Ugandan military rulers.

The Resistance Army was among the first rag-tag militias in Africa that used child soldiers deployed to commit brute offensives on civilian targets. This army then converted into Uganda’s ruling political party, the National Resistance Movement.

That successful conversion from guerrilla military force to political party inspired other movements in East Africa, the African Great Lakes region and West Africa. In the 1990s and the 2000s, dozens of militias applied the Uganda model to disturb the peace, capture power and fight other guerilla movements.

Inside Uganda, Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army, and the ISIS-linked Allied Democratic Force, used Museveni’s military strategies.

Paul Kagame, the Rwandese strongman, created a child-soldier militia to capture power. So did the late Laurent Kabila, who toppled Congolese dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Kagame and Kabila were proteges of Museveni. In fact, Paul Kagame was a general in Museveni’s NRA before forming the similarly organized Rwandan Patriotic Front, which captured power in Rwanda in 2000.

America Looks Away

These warlords rose to power in the 1990s, soon after the Iron Curtain fell with the 1989 collapse of the old Soviet regime in Moscow. Washington and Europe eased their involvement in Africa, contributing to the vacuum in which the wannabe dictators used violence to attain power.

Museveni, Kagame and Kabila had earlier proclaimed their Communist-Marxist inclinations. All three received covert support from China and Russia through Tanzania, where Julius Nyerere built close ties to both Moscow and Beijing and promoted communist economic policies in rural areas. Such policies failed.

The World Bank in Washington and European countries were, at the same time, pushing for expanded private enterprise in Africa.

Museveni and Kagame quickly transformed into small “d” democrats and declared themselves champions of market economies while dropping their freedom-fighter and communist tags.

At the same time, their benefactors were also transforming. China was developing its state capitalism model, while in 1998 Putin took over Russia together with his band of oligarchs. They ended up with the wealth of the old Soviet which, in theory at least, belonged to the proletariat, the people.

In 2011, Uganda’s GDP was $26 billion. Military spending accounted for 4% of that, more than double the norm in Europe. Putin spends 4.3% of his economy on war and is the fourth largest weapons exporter.

Relying on Russia

With increasingly cold relations with the West, Uganda relies heavily on Russia to feed its heavy-handed military. In 2011, Uganda spent close to $1 billion on Russian military equipment, including six Sukhoi Su-30MK2 fighter planes.

At ceremonies during the delivery of the Russian jets, Museveni declared that, unlike the United States and Europe, Russia doesn’t interfere with the politics of Uganda.

Museveni meant that he was free to use Russian arms to extinguish internal political competition with no fear that Moscow would stop weapons sales.

Indeed, with his Russian-equipped army, Museveni constricts political space for competitors such as Kizza Besigye, who has been his most fervent opponent since 2006. More recently, Museveni unleashed his military on supporters of another competitor, Robert “Bobbi Wine” Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, during the 2021 elections in Uganda.
Soviet-style purge

Museveni also has been purging military comrades using Soviet tactics in a plot to ensure that his son, Gen. Muhoozi Kaneirugaba, will consolidate power and be able to succeed him.

The Muhoozi Project, as it is known in Uganda, is a plan to eliminate all competition — political, financial, military – to Museveni’s rule. Army rank and file must toe his line. Soldiers suspected of dissent are destroyed financially, exiled or killed.

Applying a Putin-style rulebook that brooks no dissent, Museveni uses three methods:

Consolidation of military power with himself as the top general while his son Muhoozi Kaneirugaba commands land forces.

Unleashing his police, whose leaders are military officers, on supporters of opponents such as Bobbi Wine and Kizza Besigye.

Eliminating internal opposition within ruling his NRM party.

This third method is perhaps the most important to Museveni. Only a few of the upper echelons from the original bush comrades remain today as Museveni is fast eliminating them through assassinations, exile, forced retirement and financial ruin.

Among those cast out are Gen. Mugisha Muntu (dishonorably discharged from the military, his businesses destroyed by the state); Gen. Henry Tumukunde (exiled and facing state-sponsored prosecutions on trumped-up charges); Gen. David Tiyefunza (exiled); Gen. Kale Kayihura (charged with high treason, stripped of rank and politically ruined).

Last year a rising political figure, Gen. Katumba Wamala, survived an assassination attempt.

When time runs out for Museveni, his intended successor may not be up to the job. While his favored son holds the rank of general, he is known as a spoiled brat, has no combat experience, and owes his good fortune entirely to his father’s largesse.

Museveni’s bush comrades despise the son.

A scheme known as the “Muhoozi Project” began a decade ago when Museveni brought his son Muhoozi into the army. Journalists who report on this are prosecuted, as are citizens who dare to speak up.

Paranoid Pals

Just like Putin, Museveni is a paranoid man fearful of those around him who might challenge his power.

This Putin-inspired pattern has been observed with other African strongmen. In Chad, military dictator Idris Deby kept an iron grip on the landlocked West African nation of more than 16 million people. After his assassination in 2021, the Russians continued supporting his successor, his son Mahamat Deby.

Putin has sold weapons to the Deby regime for over a decade, becoming the murderous regime’s primary backer.

At the same time, France and the United States helped prop up Deby’s government because of his support for counterterrorism operations in the Sahel and the Lake Chad basin while simultaneously turning a blind eye to his repression and violations of social and economic rights at home.

Since Deby’s assassination, Putin has deployed forces in Libya, Sudan, Central Africa Republic, and Nigeria. Russia is the main military ally of Chad’s neighbor to the south, the Central Africa Republic, where human rights abuses are routine.

In the Republic of the Congo, Putin’s oligarchs provide a lifeline for the dictatorial regime of Denis Sassou-Nguesso. Sassou-Nguesso, a military strong man, has been in power since 1979, except for a five-year hiatus between 1992 and 1997.

Congo’s National Petroleum Company, a government enterprise, has deep ties with Russia’s Pipe Metallurgical Co. The oil company has been a cash cow for the Sassou Nguesso family.

Russia’s Deputy Defence Minister, Alexander Fomin, acknowledged in 2018 that Congo has lots of Russian-made military and special hardware dating to Soviet times. The Putin-Nguesso alliance means newer Russian military and police equipment for the Congolese dictator. Russian specialists also train the Congolese army, police, and the presidential guard.

Awful as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is, it is part of a pattern in which Putin seeks to buoy murderous dictators in his quest to destabilize democracies and create a new world order run by the unaccountable.