FAO Quotables

"But being right, even morally right, isn't everything. It is also important to be competent, to be consistent, and to be knowledgeable. It's important for your soldiers and diplomats to speak the language of the people you want to influence. It's important to understand the ethnic and tribal divisions of the place you hope to assist."
-Anne Applebaum

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

A Poem: How Does One Measure Sadness?

Updated 30 MAY 2012
I wrote this poem today (it's a work in progress, with more verses to come), inspired by someone with whom I was in a discussion on Twitter (@FAOFUUO) who said: "There has been worse things that happened to other humans than the Holocaust. Just one sad event in human history not the worst."  Now this statement is recounted here without much context, but the point is not about that person or the Holocaust itself, but instead a deeper philosophical, spiritual and perhaps theological pondering.


My first reaction was one of concurrence with the statement, but as the day wore on his statement sunk into me and agitated inside up me like gravel on my skin and I ended up rejecting it--maybe the Holocaust was the worst--maybe it wasn't.  For me it came down to an unanswerable question that would only have an answer that would be irrelevant and certainly irreverent.
         
How Does One Measure Sadness?

Does one hold a measuring cup to
Capture the accumulated tears
Of an atrocity’s victims?

Does one hoist the tears of
Gassed Holocaust Jews and
Does one add to it
the rubbered scars of the survivors?
Does one scrape and shake out the
Ink from tattooed serial numbers into
The cup?

Does one appraise the tears of
Raped, murdered and mutilated
Tutsis and Hutus?
Does one weigh
The bones of school children slaughtered?
Does one record the nightmares recounted
In gacaca courts’
Grass fields?

Does one quantify the tears
Vaporized in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Does one tally the
Seared and blackened
deadened flesh?
Does one register
The slow demise of life
from radiation sickness?


Does one place the hearts
buried at Wounded Knee
upon the scales of Dike?
Does one mark the expanse
of the theft of an
entire continent?
Does one count
sorrows’ burden of
desolate and derelict reservations?

How does one measure sadness?
Does one pile up

the tears                     the bodies            the flesh            the nightmares
the ink                        the bones            the corpses            the screams

to compare and judge their loss?

How does one assess the weight of a scream?

How does one compute the last gasp of a dying child?

How can I ever 



grasp 

your loss?




Thursday, May 17, 2012

FUUO's Daily Dose of Vitamin CATM (Culture, Africa, Military and Technology)

FUUO's Daily Dose of Vitamin CATM (Culture, Africa, Military and Technology)


Culture:

Apostrophekola

New photo blog Everyday Africa, shot with cellphone app (by journalists Peter DiCampo and Austin Merrill)


Africa:
Sipping on Gin and Juice--Valentine Strasser embraces his inner Snoop Dogg in Sierra Leone
17 sentenced to death in #somaliland following attack on military base
The new French minister of women's rights is Moroccan-born Najat Vallaud-Belkacem
Playboy bunnies? $2m Bugattis? Bags full of cash? No not Hugh Hefner. #Obiang's son & Eq. Guinea's Min of Agriculture!


Technology:
I wasn't aware of 3 of these tips--so a useful article.  10 Facebook Tips 4 Power Users  
Somalia video games boom dents al-Shabaab recruitment
Hilarious Last Dictator Standing Commerical
7 suggestions to get YOU retweeted more often 
I wasn't aware of 3 of these tips--so a useful article.  10 Facebook Tips 4 Power Users  


Military:
Regionally Aligned Forces: A New Model for Building Partnerships 
US to Send Large Combat Brigade Throughout Africa
US to assign army brigade to Africa - Americas - Al Jazeera English
Teuflehunden in ST 6...who knew.  The Difference Between DELTA and SEAL TEAM SIX | SOFREP:



LINKS:
http://www.newstatesman.com/africa/2012/01/sierra-leone-strasser-war
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/12184540-us-ramping-up-military-presence-in-africa
http://armylive.dodlive.mil/index.php/2012/03/aligned-forces/
http://news.antiwar.com/2012/05/16/us-to-send-large-combat-brigade-throughout-africa/print/
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2012/05/2012516215036645965.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/04/somalia-video-game-boom-al-shabaab?CMP=twt_gu
http://t.co/nS7RDZ5Z
http://www.business2community.com/twitter/7-keys-to-a-successful-retweet-0176211


Microsoft Tied to Terrorism and Piracy? or Video Games Saved My Life or Defeating Al-Shabab One Playstation at a Time

Microsoft tied to Terrorism and Piracy? or Video Games Saved My Life or Defeating Al-Shabab One Playstation at a Time

   The Guardian published a mildly amusing article last week: Somalia video games boom dents al-Shabaab recruitment.  To think, DoD has been racking its brain trying to squash Shabaab and piracy and all they needed was Playstations!  


    So an obvious question arises (biensur): does Microsoft (Xbox) support terrorism and piracy?


It seems obvious that they must.  Both Nintendo and Playstations are mentioned as being used by Somali youths, yet Xbox is conspicuously absent.  I will follow this closely to see if Microsoft will come out officially and on the record as being against terrorism.  


I think a good start would be for Microsoft to air drop a few thousand 

My favorite quote:

"Many of my friends are unlucky and have taken part in the violence in the country. Some of them have died. Others are carrying guns around. In some ways, video games have saved my life," Ali Abdi said.

LINKS:



***Hopefully you realize that my intent in asking if Microsoft supports terrorism is satirical***
































Wednesday, May 16, 2012

ICow, Mangoes, Bombs in Somalia, and Caesar in the Congo

ICow, Mangoes, Bombs in Somalia, and Caesar in  the Congo

Four worthwhile articles to read.  The first one should be mandatory for every journalist and blogger that writes about Africa.  One may not agree with everything in her article but she makes a plethora of great points that should serve as foundation for further discussion.  My favorite is the last article.




Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Don't Tweet Into A Vacuum: Improving Your Social Media IQ and Reach

UPDATED 5 JUNE 2012
   I mainly use Twitter (@FAOfuuo) as a news source for my interests--namely Africa, photography, poetry, writing and defense.  It's the most efficient way to keep current on relevant events, news and news-makers.
    I have also started to use it, however, to promote this blog.  It is this secondary use that this post addresses.  It all started when I joined Klout I joined Klout out of curiosity after reading a Wired article about it.  It's easy to set up, takes 30 seconds out of my day to maintain and could yield benefits one day.  It did get me thinking, though, how to better use my Twitter account.  My post below is the result of those thoughts.  I can promise you that an hour spent investigating the links below will reap countless monetary and/or readership/reach benefits:

Read These Articles: 

Time is On Your Side  The half life of a tweet is 2.8 hours.  Who knew.  

Try Out These Cool Tools:

Highly Recommended:


Twylah: This is my new favorite site!  It takes absolutely no effort and automatically creates a dynamic website out of your Twitter activity.  Here's my page so you can get a feel for what it does:  For Unofficial Use Only.  As you can see from my blog here, you can also generate a banner for your website/blog that will mimic the trending data.  This site/app is especially great for your friends who don't tweet because it gives them a way to understand your Twitter feed.


Tweet Stats  Take a few minutes to build.   Shows a bevy of stats including how often you retweet (alot for me) and what people you most often retweet.  It also creates a tweetcloud which is pretty cool.
Twitter Backup  This is an essential site.  It allows you to export a text/html/csv file of your tweets.  This file allows me to search my past tweets easily--important since I will often want to find a link from months ago.  
TwitSprout  This gives you a nice graphic on growth and decline in both your followers and those you follow broken down in various manners.  It takes them a week to build your trends.  
MarketMeSuite  I use this to schedule specific tweets that I want to put out consistently--like poems.  It also has a version that you can pay to get added benefits.
Slipstream  This is a great add-on that works inside your twitter.com account.  It allows you to build preferences on tweets about which you don't care--you click hide on a tweet you don't want to see and a pop up appears in which you build a rule that will prevent similar tweets from showing up in your timeline.
Klout  This site measures and quantifies your social media influence and reach by analyzing your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts.  It will connect to your other accounts (YELP, Tumblr etc) but doesn't analyze them YET.
Manageflitter  A more versatile version of UnTweeps  It shows you people who are more and less active.  It also shows you a list of the people who aren't following you back.
SocialBro  Solid analytical software, bro.  Of note, it gives you a breakdown of your followers by timezone.  Shows which time zones your followers are in--this helps you to target your tweets for maximum exposure.


The Jury Is Still Out:
Tweet When  You need to have a decent number of retweets to see any data.  Sadly, I didn't, however, I use Twitter (at least right now) as more of a news source than as a way that I can provide analysis and information to others.
Timely  You plug your tweets in and it auto schedules them for maximum exposure.  Experimenting with this one right now.  
Tweriod  Key tip: the program uses whatever time zone setting you have on your twitter account.  Mine was set to Quito, so their analysis was pretty worthless.  This site will show you when most of your followers are online so that you can get maximum exposure.  This one is only marginally useful.  I most likely will never use it after the first time.  
UnTweeps  Shows you a list of people that you follow that have been inactive and gives you the option to unfollow them.

All Links:

Monday, May 7, 2012

CRS Report: The LRA: The U.S. Response

CRS Report: The LRA: The U.S. Response
    I am a big fan of CRS reports.  They provide great background to current events and issues.  They are, however, hard to come by--when I get them I will post them here.




Other relevant past links:

http://fuuo.blogspot.com/2012/03/i-paid-bribe-and-killing-kony-2012.html http://fuuo.blogspot.com/2011/01/zanzibar-chest-chronicles-continue_10.html http://fuuo.blogspot.com/2010/08/secretary-clinton-speaks-out-on-mass.html

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Poet of the Week from Lesotho: Rethabile Masilo

Poet of the Week from Lesotho: Rethabile Masilo
     I've followed Masilo's blog "Poefrika" for a while now.   He puts out some great original material that's always a pleasure to read.  Case in point is a recent poem he wrote below.  You can also follow him on twitter at @RethabileESL.


Winter II

'Everyone loves a story. Let's begin with a house.'
~Philip Levine


One day when winter
had snuck into the house,
in the shadow of the poor,
telling them with wind
how to gather at its feet
and tremble, the aged and the new
who hardly knew how to cower from the cold
for never ever having run from anything,
among them several
who deserve respect
on account of age, all
the epaulettes pinned to their souls,
winter tried to push them too
over the edge into the universe.




Past Poets of the Week:
http://fuuo.blogspot.com/2012/05/african-poets-of-week-compilation.html

Some of my favorite poetry books:

Friday, May 4, 2012

Nigeria Air Expo 2012

Anyone headed to this?

Nigeria Air Expo 2012, sponsored by the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) (http://www.nigeriaairexpo.net/ ) is slated for 15-19 May in Kaduna, Nigeria. The event will feature static and aerial displays, exhibitions of aviation facilities, safety, training and weapons displays as well as aeromedical facilities display.


Farewell MCA

I can remember mowing lawns when I was in middle school, bumping Sabotage on my walkman.   Those were great and simple days spent in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina tucking $20 bills away for each lawn cut.

Farewell Nathanial Hörnblowér aka MCA aka Adam Yauch--your flow will be missed.

Thursday, May 3, 2012

The New Harvest by Calestous Juma

The New Harvest by Calestous Juma is a worthy read.  Unlike many academics, Juma can write.  As a grad school student I appreciate this--I wonder just who these peers are that review the myriad articles before they are published in peer-reviewed journals.  They definitely value content and regression graphs (ugh) more than clear and concise writing.

I am only about 1/3 of the way through so I will remain guarded in my recommendation until the final 2/3.  An excerpt is below:



"But Africa faces three major opportunities that can help transform its agriculture to be a force for economic growth. First, advances in science, technology, and engineering worldwide offer Africa new tools needed to promote sustainable agriculture. Second, efforts to create regional markets will provide new incentives for agricultural production and trade. Third, a new generation of African leaders
is helping the continent to focus on long-term economic transformation. This book provides policy- relevant information on how to align science, technology, and engineering missions
with regional agricultural development goals.

This book argues that sustaining African economic prosperity will require significant efforts to modernize the continent’s economy through the application of science and technology in agriculture. In other words, agriculture needs to be viewed as a knowledge-based entrepreneurial activity.   The
argument is based on the premise that smart investments in agriculture will have multiplier effects in many sectors of the economy and help spread prosperity. More specifically, the book focuses on the importance of boosting support for agricultural research as part of a larger agenda to promote innovation, invest in enabling infrastructure, build human capacity, stimulate entrepreneurship and improve the governance of innovation."



http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/the_new_harvest_complete_updated2011.pdf

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

African Poets of the Week Compilation


African Poets of the Week Compilation

I've been negligent in my Poets of the Week the past few months so I thought I would do a little organizing and put together all of the poets that I've featured in the past.  I've included them below.

That Spring in 1994: Recollections on Rwandan Genocide
My recollections on Rwandan Genocide.

























Lawful Magic





Noliwe 

Some of my favorite poetry books:

Nigerian Hip Hop Grows in Popularity- Video Report

Check out this 2 minutes video report on the rising popularity of Nigerian hip-hop.  This is great stuff!

Sound Soultan and mo'cheddah and vocal slender
a video of The Very Best's hit song Warm Heart of Africa with guest artist Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend joining Esau Mwamwaya of The Very Best. This sweet and jolly song combines pieces of my life (Columbia University and Malawi where my South African husband lived for five years). 


Links:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13356235


http://www.chinaafricarealstory.com/2011/04/new-york-city-meets-warm-heart-of.html
http://www.vh1.com/video/the-very-best/449762/warm-heart-of-africa.jhtml#artist=3204522