Kato was brutally beaten to death in his home on Wednesday, January 26, 2011. As the New York Times reports, Kato was one of a number of people Rolling Stone, a notorious Ugandan newspaper, identified as "homosexual" and targeted under the banner "Hang Them." He had been repeatedly threatened and attacked over the years, and had just won a legal decision against Rolling Stone. Uganda’s High Court ordered the magazine financially compensate those it had attacked and to stop publishing the names of people it claimed were gay.
His murder also occurred within the context of Uganda's parliamentary debates about making homosexuality a capital crime, a move directly fostered by US evangelicals, as the Times reported early in January of this year. In fact it was shortly after a 2009 visit by US evangelicals that Uganda's Parliament began pushing a law to capitalize being gay, though pressure from the US led Ugandan president Yoweri Musaveni to disavow the law. It nevertheless could still be enacted. (Here's the Times's presentation of the views of four Ugandans, including a transman, on the issue.)
I won't even try to reprise Gukira's post, but I'll just quote a small section:
A quick look at his Facebook page tells one story. Early this morning, messages from January 3 and 4 congratulated David on the win against the Ugandan Rolling Stone. Just above them, expressions of loss and solidarity, of love and courage, of mourning. This juxtaposition enacts a certain kind of work to which I hope to return in this edit.
From what I know, which is to say, from the available evidence, it is not clear that a direct line can be traced from David’s activism to his murder. I write this not to be contrary, but because I think it’s important to be judicious, to be contextual. Simultaneously, and just as importantly, there is no evidence that his murder was not a result of his activism. For now, his death remains something that can be used in any number of ways.
So the Tunisian people have driven out their corrupt, authoritarian president, Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, in office since 1987. Mohamed Ghannouchi, the prime minister, has stepped into the breach on his ouster, to form a coalition government and work with the former Speaker of the Parliament, Fouad Mebazaa (below, at left), who has now temporarily assumed the presidency according to the Tunisian Constitution. Mebazaa has promised elections within 60 days, but it remains unclear what sort of government will be formed, and by whom, especially given how harshly Ben Ali and his allies, many of whom presumably are still in the country, had restricted the opposition parties, especially those on the left and of a religious cast. In fact, Al Nahda, the Islamist Party, had been completely outlawed. Ben Ali's Constitutional Democratic Rally Party (Rassemblement Constitutionnel Democratique) or RCD, so long in control and so dominant, is now, it appears, thoroughly discredited.
What provoked this "Jasmine" revolution, which is reverberating throughout the Middle East, has been the frustration, building over a series of years but erupting a month ago, of millions of people, especially the young, the middle and working-classes and the poor, who faced a lack of jobs, rising costs for staples, constant repression in a police state, and no representation in and by a government that was robbing the country blind. Ben Ali's stage-managed elections were a sign of the problems; his family's steady enrichment a symptom of all that had been going wrong in Tunisia. The specific spark seems to have been the self-immolation of Mohammed Bouazizi, an unemployed university graduate, who made his mortal protest after police stopped him from earning a subsistence living selling fruits and vegetables, because he lacked a permit. News of his death spread via Facebook, engendering protests by unemployed university graduates like Bouazizi, and then, according to The New York Times, by workers and young professionals, which the Ben Ali government met with brutal, repressive responses.
Thus far, gun battles between the military and militias loyal to Ben Ali are continuing in and around key sites in the capital, Tunis and its suburb, the historical city of Carthage, with the military apparently backing the nascent government. Though he also may have aided Ben Ali's flight from Tunisia, the country's military's chief, General Rachid Ammar, had earlier made the dramatic and crucial decision to cease firing live ammunition against the protesters (initially labeled by the Western media as "rioters" and "looters"--sound famliar), which enabled Ben Ali's overthrow. Military authorities have arrested Ben Ali's former Security Chief, Ali Seriati, who is alleged to have been promoting chaos, "murder and pillage," along with other leading figures in Ben Ali's government, including the former Interior Minister, Rafik Belhaj Kacem. (Is he any relation to the French philosopher, critic and novelist Mehdi Belhaj Kacem? Do any J's Theater readers know?)
One point much discussed in recent days is the role that Twitter and Facebook may be playing in spreading news about and helping to organize the protests, and in serving as means of communication and information dissemination; according to several reports I've read, these platforms were integral to the sustained anti-government action that culminated in Ben Ali's ouster. This counters some arguments out there that these platforms are basically impotent in this regard, and confirms, to some degree, predictions by figures like NYU's Clay Shirky. Also noteworthy is a US cable, released by WikiLeaks, detailing Ben Ali's corruption and the US's lack of confidence in his rule, leading some to call this a "WikiLeaks Revolution." To quote The Huffington Post:
Leaked U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks had discussed the high levels of nepotism and corruption displayed by [former Tunisian First Lady Leila] Trabelsi's clan. But U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley rejected any notion that WikiLeaks disclosures led to the revolution in Tunisia, saying Sunday that Tunisians were already well aware of the graft, nepotism and lavish lifestyles of the former president and his relatives.
If I readNew York Times reporter David Kirkpatrick's January 13 article correctly, the cables released by WikiLeaks may have played a role, however, in specific uprisings that occurred in the resort town of Hammamet, on the Mediterranean coast. Here, in the "St.-Tropez" of Tunisia, was where many members of Ben Ali's and Trabelsi's extended clans had built mansions and chosen to luxuriate, and here was where protesters had their say, in violent response, flooding the streets as they chanted and denounced the soon-to-depart president, and eventually ransacking, stripping and then burning the house of one of Ben Ali's relatives.
Holly Pickett for The New York Times Looters took furniture from a home belonging to a relative of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Hammamet, Tunisia, on Thursday.
One final point is that neighboring authoritarian governments must be a bit nervous, Egypt especially, which is tighly ruled by its octogenarian president, Hosni Mubarak. Tunisia's revolution also presents challenges for the US, which has traditionally backed governments like Ben Ali's with money and political support, most recently as part of the "Global War on Terror," while unironically and simultaneously calling for increased democratization. So what is it going to be, and if it turns out that the Islamic Party is a big winner in Tunisia, what then for the US and its chess-playing in this country and across the region? Most importantly, though, what now for Tunisia and its people?
Scenes from the streets
Al Jazeera's report on the Tunisia protests, from last Friday
We don't hear a lot about how all of that stimulus money is being spent, do we? We don't even hear whether it worked or not. Some folks say it did, some folks say it didn't. Since I guess that opinion depends on how your current situation is, it's really hard to say. But if I had to guess, I would say that the stimulus money hasn't done all that it could have done because it has been spent on dumbass things that have absolutely nothing to do with stimulating the economy over here. Hmm. Perhaps 'dumbass' is a bit harsh. I don't know. You tell me. Is it 'dumbass' to spend almost a million dollars "...on a study by a UCLA research team to teach uncircumcised African men how to wash their genitals after having sex." Wait. What was the question?
The question was just what you read that it was. According to something called CNS News, "The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), spent $823,200 of economic stimulus funds in 2009" on just such a study. The care and feeding of one's grundle in Africa. Paid for with stimulus funds that were paid for by your tax dollars. Why is this an important study? Well, from what I can tell, it's not. It's not even close to being an important study. It's certainly far from being worth almost a million bucks of dough that was supposed to be injected into the American economy, that is pretty clear to me.
But I could be wrong. Let's go over some specifics. First of all, this is a multi-tiered study and it's only the penis washing part that received stimulus money. (There's a sentence I never thought I'd type.) Second, they decided upon the genitalia cleansing goal because they "...have been unsuccessful in convincing most adult African men to undergo circumcision" so they're going to attempt "...to determine whether researchers can develop an after-sex genitalia-washing regimen that they can then convince uncircumcised African men to follow." Now, one of the first things that I thought (that was printable) when I heard this was, "Why does anyone give a fat rat's ass whether or not African men can keep their unit clean after all of the sex?" That question is a little hard to answer, as it wasn't made real clear (shocking, I know). The closest that I could find to an answer was in the part of this grant that said: "If we find that men are able to practice consistent washing practices after sex, we will plan to test whether this might protect men from becoming HIV infected in a later study." Wait. What?
Um, don't we know how HIV is spread? Does bathing one's grundle prevent HIV? I'm not so sure that it does. I'm pretty sure that it won't. It sounds kind of like a fairly simple solution to not get HIV. Just wash off the ol' unit after the inadvisable coitus that you just engaged in and go about your way! That's not what we've been taught. Is it? I don't think that it is. But maybe they know something I don't. I, personally, don't own a penis, so I don't know how this might possibly translate into the real world. Do you have a penis? Do you wash it? Do you have HIV? I guess if you answered yes to the first two questions and no to the third, then I can deduce that the practice does work? Good Lord, I hope that's not the conclusion that I come to.
You know what part of this makes me think that this is just a complete waste of time? All of it, that is correct. But do you want to know specifically which part? It's where they explain "If most of the men in the study wash their genitals after sex, are willing to do so after the study ends, and report that their partners accept the regimen, the researchers will develop another study to see if the “penile cleansing procedure” actually works to prevent HIV infections." These are the kind of folks who just do not see the benefit in washing the wang after doing the ol' horizontal watusi. These are the kind of folks whose partners might be unacceptingof a dried-off dingus. What possible benefit were they offering these folks to participate in this study?
What is the water situation over there, anyway? I'm guessing that indoor plumbing is out for most of the folks that would be involved in this sort of practice, yes? How feasible is this anyway? I'm guessing not very. How feasible is it that the stimulus money that was spent on penis polishing practices did not stimulate the US economy? Again, I'm guessing not very. And how feasible is it that this could be justified by the weasel that got the money for this study? Judging from the fact that he did not answer the question (posed by CNS News), "The Census Bureau says the median household income in the United States is $52,000. How would you explain to the average American mom and dad -- who make $52,000 per year -- that taxing them to pay for this grant was justified?” I'm going to stick with my answer of 'not very'.
Too bad they couldn't have used this money to teach some of thePeople of Wal-Mart how to wash themselves. Or, at the very least, dress themselves. Now that would have been justifiable!
