In a failed state on the West African coast, fallow fields and an oligopolic import market mean many are going hungry. In this year's elections, rice is used as a political tool.
In Liberia, devastated after 14 years of a senseless civil war, talk is cheap. Any aspiring politician this election years knows he needs rice – and lots of it – if he wants a crowd at his stump.
The impoverished masses of this country, founded on the West African coast 150 years ago by freed slaves from America, view campaign season as a boon time. This is politics in the Tammany tradition. And though a voter may think twice about selling his vote, at least there is no question as to what the currency will be. “A Liberian man may put food in his mouth all day,” says Vincent Klede, for three years a driver for Firestone, which maintains the world's largest rubber plantation outside the capital Monrovia. “But if he hasn’t eaten rice, he’ll say he hasn’t eaten.”
In a country so broken it can't even offer the statistics that show its neighbors have the lowest quality of life on earth, the staple food is a vivid image to the hungry. Liberians date the beginning of their political awakening to the rice riots of 1979, when frustration over rising prices and the one-party state brought the public to the streets. Monrovians associate the worst periods of their many years of conflict with the concomitant spike in the price of a cup of rice. Chea Cheapoo, former chief justice of the Supreme Court, opened his unsuccessful senatorial bid in River Gee County in September by explaining his reasons for retiring from the bench: “That judiciary is so rotten,” he told a dancing, drumming crowd in one of the least developed regions of the countryside. “They bribe just like how you cook rice every day.” And while only one warlord, Sekou Conneh, was among the 22 candidates in the political free-for-all that was the first round of the race for the presidency, his estranged wife over the border in Guinea is an eerie reminder of darker forces in the wings. The International Crisis Group, which monitors West Africa closely, reports Aisha Keita Conneh is luring throngs of former fighters to her home by cooking 100 50-kg bags of rice every week.
In the country’s last experiment with democracy, citizens overwhelmingly elected the country’s leading warlord to the presidency. Six years after the 1997 elections, Charles Taylor, alienated by the international community and with two rebel movements at the gates of Monrovia, fled into exile. He had been elected by turning his fighting forces into a well oiled political machine, with feasts of grand proportions at the precinct and district level. Many see their choice then as a mistake, but would only be so happy to live through his campaign once more.
The Liberian officials and international experts overseeing this year’s election have devoted much hand-wringing to its needless concurrence with the rainy season. Less attention has been given to the anachronistic constitution’s placement of campaigns during the hungry season, when hampers have run dry and children grow thin. In these months, the cost of feeding a family on imports from China and Pakistan, 80 percent of which are controlled by two Lebanese businessmen, can soar as high as $40, more than the monthly salary of many civil servants. Families grouse by on cassava or the much-maligned bulgur wheat, imported from the American heartland.
The campaign feeding frenzy has mellowed since October 11, when the first round of voting decided the races for the Senate and House. The two candidates in the second round - required because none received an outright majority of votes in the first - don't want their heightened profile to get them in trouble with the country's oft ignored campaign finance regulations, which outlaw vote buying.
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a former World Bank official and chair of the Special Executive Rice Committee, has been part of the political landscape since the final days of the True Whig Party in the 1970s. But with her advanced Harvard degree and years abroad, she is far from the Liberian mainstream. Her runoff competitor is George Manneh Weah, the 1995 world soccer play of the year. He can’t boast a high school diploma, but his supporters say he’s too rich to be corrupted.
It's a stark choice for voters, but both candidates claim to offer the one thing Liberians want other than rice. A way out of the senseless war that has ravaged the country. Round two takes place on November 8.
By: Jeff Austin contributing writer to PurePolitics.com
Monday, October 31, 2005
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
The Southern Vent: I am not a conservative
I’ve got news for you, folks. The blame game in natural disasters can go all around in a vicious circle if it pleases, but the god honest truth is that the blame rests in the societal and cultural shift we’ve seen in the last decades towards a welfare state. If I may wax philosophical but for a moment, I’ll return us in memory to the principles upon which this country was founded: freedom, honesty, HARD work ethic, national pride, and patriotism.
I’m not even talking about philosophies or ideals…I’m talking about the character qualities that formed the core of our nation’s people. I’m a firm believer in the concept that those qualities that forged the strength and iron will of our nation’s people have been slowly but surely weaned out of us. Formerly, we were a “crock pot” nation. We are now a “microwave” nation. We were fitted with patience, cunning, and the ability to wait things out. Now (and I even include myself in much of this analysis), we are a microwave oven nation. We want our pop – tarts immediately, we want direct deposit for our paychecks, we want the paper on the front porch every morning, we want a coffee maker that will make coffee on a timer so we don’t have to turn it on in the morning, and we want to be able to buy movie tickets online so that we don’t have to stand in line.
Formerly, we were an enterprising nation. We are now a nation outsourced all over the world. A wise politician in our country once said that our country was equally formed by the bravery of our soldiers, and the sweat and toil of the farmers who stayed home. That’s not at all to detract from our men and women of arms; it’s simply a recognition of the hard work that made us great. Now, many people spend four years in college learning how to outsource, delegate, sub contract, and automate. The internet is plagued with a plethora of get rich quick schemes…we even have seven minute abs.
Formerly, we were a nation without fear. When this nation was founded, boys grew up just waiting for the opportunity to join the military. It was an honor, a desire, to serve our country in uniform. Nathan Hale regretted that he had “but one life to give for his country.” Now, fear permeates even our armed forces and law enforcement, and men and women desert the armed forces and quit their jobs as law enforcement in droves. It seems the sons of Benedict Arnold have returned. Formerly, a man was shamed and placed in stocks who refused to work for his food and his family. Now, we pat him on the back, give him a government check, and send him home to watch TV. When these same people are unable to receive the government handouts, they resort to violence, shooting, and crime. I know it’s harsh, but it’s the cold hard truth. I’ve talked to enough high school aged young men who PLAN, not stumble upon, but plan to drop out of high school, find a single girl with a child and a welfare check, woo her, and move in.
For those of you who’s ire I’m beginning to raise, I have a question for you: that sorry excuse for a young man is taking your hard earned dollars through your tax money: where’s your pride in a job well done? Why don’t you care to keep the money you worked hard to make? We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare; we have abused power and called it politics; we have coveted our neighbor’s possessions and called it ambition; we have become a generation of learners, not thinkers; we have become a generation of consumers, not producers; we have become a generation enslaved to a system who attempts to even the playing field and giving us everything we want, when we want it, and how we want it…on a silver platter.
We are no longer a nation of tested, tried, and true, enterprising, proud individuals. We are, and have become, a culture of egalitarian parasites. “In modern socialist theory, socialism is the pursuit of the goal of creating a democratic society that would form the backbone of an ideal welfare state.” That’s one dictionary’s definition of socialism. What did this “welfare state” bring us to, in one small example of the breakdown of the ideal American societal system? From the Washington Times: “Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on. “The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire…. “Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders. ” ‘These troops are…under my orders to restore order in the streets,’ she said. ‘They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.’ ”
That’s why we had to send in thousands of battlefield hardened troops in APCs to the streets of New Orleans. That’s why the stories reported brought news of violence, rioting, rape, and anger in conjunction with floods, wind, destruction, and devastation. That’s why there were some reports of cannibalism taking place in New Orleans. That’s why the news feeds have contained images that could be confused with movies such as Hotel Rwanda and Black Hawk Down. That’s why, according to early news reports, New Orleans had no plan for getting all the criminals out of the city. So, they just let many of them loose. That’s why Drudge later reported: “Even as Americans rally to make donations to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, the Internet is brimming with scams, come-ons and opportunistic pandering related to the relief effort in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama — and in greater numbers and varieties than any past disaster, according to Thursday editions of the NEW YORK TIMES.
Florida’s attorney general has already filed a lawsuit against a man who mounted one of the earliest networks of Web sites — katrinahelp.com, katrinadonations.com and others — which purported to collect donations for victims of the storm. In Missouri, a much wider constellation of Internet domains — with names like parishdonations.com and katrinafamilies.com — displays pictures of the flood-ravaged south and drives traffic to a single site, InternetDonations.org, a nonprofit entity with apparent links to a white supremacist group.” That’s why, folks. Joseph Farah, in his article Why I Am Not a Conservative, speaks to this issue: “Conservatives, by definition, seek to conserve something from the past—institutions, cultural moores, values, political beliefs, traditions…No, it takes a radical agenda to defeat a radical agenda.
Conservatives have no stomach for fighting—the sort of fighting that it takes to restore real freedom in America. It’s not time for timidity or compromise. It’s not a time for defensiveness and conciliation. It’s time to take an offensive in this struggle. Was Washington a conservative? No. He was a revolutionary. He is known throughout the world—or was when people appreciated such concepts—as the “father of freedom.” Was Thomas Jefferson a conservative? No, he was a radical, a visionary. He wasn’t interested in preserving the status quo. Like his contemporaries, he risked everything to expand freedom, not just to preserve the limited freedoms that existed in his time…” “We can see these symptoms of materialism throughout our society, but the most visible one is the loss of courage. Our political leaders watch communism gobble up other nations, and they do nothing. They are afraid. People complain in private about the state of affairs, but will not speak out. They are afraid…” General Lewis B Walt
This being said, I will write to you from the perspective of one who lives and breaths this larger than life chess game we call politics, from the perspective of one who was raised on the fundamental principles this country was founded upon, from the perspective one of the few, perhaps, who still believes that patriotism rest secondarily only to devotion to one’s God and family.
I am, however, far from radical, as “pragmatic” seems to be an ever increasing part of the vocabulary that describes my personal, religious, and political beliefs. You will most of the time find me commenting on matters related to faith, family, and freedom; politics in the United States, or politics in the state of Georgia.
You’re welcome to contact me at smillican@gmail.com. I’d be honored to hear from you.
Seth Millican is a contributing writer for PurePolitics.com as well as other local and national news organizations. He resides in Macon, Georgia. He can be reached at smillican@gmail.com.
I’m not even talking about philosophies or ideals…I’m talking about the character qualities that formed the core of our nation’s people. I’m a firm believer in the concept that those qualities that forged the strength and iron will of our nation’s people have been slowly but surely weaned out of us. Formerly, we were a “crock pot” nation. We are now a “microwave” nation. We were fitted with patience, cunning, and the ability to wait things out. Now (and I even include myself in much of this analysis), we are a microwave oven nation. We want our pop – tarts immediately, we want direct deposit for our paychecks, we want the paper on the front porch every morning, we want a coffee maker that will make coffee on a timer so we don’t have to turn it on in the morning, and we want to be able to buy movie tickets online so that we don’t have to stand in line.
Formerly, we were an enterprising nation. We are now a nation outsourced all over the world. A wise politician in our country once said that our country was equally formed by the bravery of our soldiers, and the sweat and toil of the farmers who stayed home. That’s not at all to detract from our men and women of arms; it’s simply a recognition of the hard work that made us great. Now, many people spend four years in college learning how to outsource, delegate, sub contract, and automate. The internet is plagued with a plethora of get rich quick schemes…we even have seven minute abs.
Formerly, we were a nation without fear. When this nation was founded, boys grew up just waiting for the opportunity to join the military. It was an honor, a desire, to serve our country in uniform. Nathan Hale regretted that he had “but one life to give for his country.” Now, fear permeates even our armed forces and law enforcement, and men and women desert the armed forces and quit their jobs as law enforcement in droves. It seems the sons of Benedict Arnold have returned. Formerly, a man was shamed and placed in stocks who refused to work for his food and his family. Now, we pat him on the back, give him a government check, and send him home to watch TV. When these same people are unable to receive the government handouts, they resort to violence, shooting, and crime. I know it’s harsh, but it’s the cold hard truth. I’ve talked to enough high school aged young men who PLAN, not stumble upon, but plan to drop out of high school, find a single girl with a child and a welfare check, woo her, and move in.
For those of you who’s ire I’m beginning to raise, I have a question for you: that sorry excuse for a young man is taking your hard earned dollars through your tax money: where’s your pride in a job well done? Why don’t you care to keep the money you worked hard to make? We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare; we have abused power and called it politics; we have coveted our neighbor’s possessions and called it ambition; we have become a generation of learners, not thinkers; we have become a generation of consumers, not producers; we have become a generation enslaved to a system who attempts to even the playing field and giving us everything we want, when we want it, and how we want it…on a silver platter.
We are no longer a nation of tested, tried, and true, enterprising, proud individuals. We are, and have become, a culture of egalitarian parasites. “In modern socialist theory, socialism is the pursuit of the goal of creating a democratic society that would form the backbone of an ideal welfare state.” That’s one dictionary’s definition of socialism. What did this “welfare state” bring us to, in one small example of the breakdown of the ideal American societal system? From the Washington Times: “Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on. “The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire…. “Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders. ” ‘These troops are…under my orders to restore order in the streets,’ she said. ‘They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.’ ”
That’s why we had to send in thousands of battlefield hardened troops in APCs to the streets of New Orleans. That’s why the stories reported brought news of violence, rioting, rape, and anger in conjunction with floods, wind, destruction, and devastation. That’s why there were some reports of cannibalism taking place in New Orleans. That’s why the news feeds have contained images that could be confused with movies such as Hotel Rwanda and Black Hawk Down. That’s why, according to early news reports, New Orleans had no plan for getting all the criminals out of the city. So, they just let many of them loose. That’s why Drudge later reported: “Even as Americans rally to make donations to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, the Internet is brimming with scams, come-ons and opportunistic pandering related to the relief effort in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama — and in greater numbers and varieties than any past disaster, according to Thursday editions of the NEW YORK TIMES.
Florida’s attorney general has already filed a lawsuit against a man who mounted one of the earliest networks of Web sites — katrinahelp.com, katrinadonations.com and others — which purported to collect donations for victims of the storm. In Missouri, a much wider constellation of Internet domains — with names like parishdonations.com and katrinafamilies.com — displays pictures of the flood-ravaged south and drives traffic to a single site, InternetDonations.org, a nonprofit entity with apparent links to a white supremacist group.” That’s why, folks. Joseph Farah, in his article Why I Am Not a Conservative, speaks to this issue: “Conservatives, by definition, seek to conserve something from the past—institutions, cultural moores, values, political beliefs, traditions…No, it takes a radical agenda to defeat a radical agenda.
Conservatives have no stomach for fighting—the sort of fighting that it takes to restore real freedom in America. It’s not time for timidity or compromise. It’s not a time for defensiveness and conciliation. It’s time to take an offensive in this struggle. Was Washington a conservative? No. He was a revolutionary. He is known throughout the world—or was when people appreciated such concepts—as the “father of freedom.” Was Thomas Jefferson a conservative? No, he was a radical, a visionary. He wasn’t interested in preserving the status quo. Like his contemporaries, he risked everything to expand freedom, not just to preserve the limited freedoms that existed in his time…” “We can see these symptoms of materialism throughout our society, but the most visible one is the loss of courage. Our political leaders watch communism gobble up other nations, and they do nothing. They are afraid. People complain in private about the state of affairs, but will not speak out. They are afraid…” General Lewis B Walt
This being said, I will write to you from the perspective of one who lives and breaths this larger than life chess game we call politics, from the perspective of one who was raised on the fundamental principles this country was founded upon, from the perspective one of the few, perhaps, who still believes that patriotism rest secondarily only to devotion to one’s God and family.
I am, however, far from radical, as “pragmatic” seems to be an ever increasing part of the vocabulary that describes my personal, religious, and political beliefs. You will most of the time find me commenting on matters related to faith, family, and freedom; politics in the United States, or politics in the state of Georgia.
You’re welcome to contact me at smillican@gmail.com. I’d be honored to hear from you.
Seth Millican is a contributing writer for PurePolitics.com as well as other local and national news organizations. He resides in Macon, Georgia. He can be reached at smillican@gmail.com.
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
non bill of rights
"We the sensible people of the United States, in an attempt to helpeveryone get along, restore some semblance of justice, avoid more riots,keep our nation safe, promote positive behavior, and secure theblessingsof debt free liberty to ourselves and ourgreat-great-great-grandchildren,hereby try one more time to ordain and establish some common senseguidelines for the terminally whiny, guilt ridden, delusional, and otherliberal bed-wetters. We hold these truths to be self evident: that awholelot of people are confused by the Bill of Rights and are so dim theyrequire a Bill of NON-Rights." ARTICLE I: You do not have the right to a new car, big screen TV,orany other form of wealth. More power to you if you can legally acquirethem, but no one is guaranteeing anything. ARTICLE II: You do not have the right to never be offended. Thiscountry is based on freedom, and that means freedom for everyone -- notjust you! You may leave the room, turn the channel, express a differentopinion, etc.; but the world is full of idiots, and probably always willbe. ARTICLE III: You do not have the right to be free from harm. If youstick a screwdriver in your eye, learn to be more careful, do not expectthe tool manufacturer to make you and all your relatives independentlywealthy. ARTICLE IV: You do not have the right to free food and housing.Americans are the most charitable people to be found and will gladlyhelpanyone in need, but we are quickly growing weary of subsidizinggenerationafter generation of professional couch potatoes who achieve nothing morethan the creation of another generation of professional couch potatoes.ARTICLE V: You do not have the right to free health care. Thatwouldbe nice, but from the looks of public housing, we're just not interestedinpublic health care. ARTICLE VI: You do not have the right to physically harm otherpeople. If you kidnap, rape, intentionally maim, or kill someone, don't besurprised if the rest of us want to see you fry in the electric chair. ARTICLE VII: You do not have the right to the possessions ofothers.If you rob, cheat, or coerce away the goods or services of othercitizens,don't be surprised if the rest of us get together and lock you away in aplace where you still won't have the right to a big screen color TV or alife of leisure. ARTICLE VIII: You do not have the right to a job. All of us surewantyou to have a job, and will gladly help you along in hard times, but weexpect you to take advantage of the opportunities of education andvocational training laid before you to make yourself useful. ARTICLE IX: You do not have the right to happiness. Being anAmericanmeans that you have the right to PURSUE happiness which, by the way, isalot easier if you are unencumbered by an over abundance of idiotic lawscreated by those of you who were confused by the Bill of Rights. ARTICLE X: This is an English speaking country. We don't care whereyou are from, English is our language. Learn it or go back to whereveryoucame from!ARTICLE XI: You do not have the right to change our country'shistoryor heritage. This country was founded on the belief in one true God. Andyet, you are given the freedom to believe in any religion, any faith, ornofaith at all; with no fear of persecution. The phrase IN GOD WE TRUST ispart of our heritage and history and if you are uncomfortable with it,TOUGH!!!! If you agree, share this with a friend. No, you don't have to, andnothing tragic will befall you if you don't. I just think it's abouttimecommon sense is allowed to flourish.Sensible people of the United States, speak out because if you don't,insensible people will.
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