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jooohnn
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Name: john
Country: United States
Gender: Male
Interests: I am far too busy to indulge in my hobbies. they include: banging on things in the hope that they work. making things go boom and go fast and go far. making furniture. gadgets. weaponry. many other things. acting monkeylike with my friends. making as many ridiculous sounds and expressions as possible.
Expertise: I am an excellent procrastinator. I play the saxomaphone in the EMU jazz band. not the oboemaboe. I like to jump out of planes, and off cliffs. i like to build things, and blow them up. i like launching vetatables at ridiculous velocities into the atmosphere, as well as through things like car doors. I am good at most things, excluding basketball, drawing, and basketweaving. i'm also not so hot at crocheting.
Occupation: Artist
Industry: Entertainment
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
10/22/2003
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| Hey y'all. for those who don't read Ellie's xanga or my LJ and i haven't talked to you in person,
We're Engaged!
that is all.
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| Op-Ed Contributor
All Rock, No Action
By JEAN-CLAUDE SHANDA TONME
Published: July 15, 2005
Yaoundé, Cameroon
LIVE 8, that extraordinary media event that some people of good intentions in the West just orchestrated, would have left us Africans indifferent if we hadn't realized that it was an insult both to us and to common sense.
We have nothing against those who this month, in a stadium, a street, a park, in Berlin, London, Moscow, Philadelphia, gathered crowds and played guitar and talked about global poverty and aid for Africa. But we are troubled to think that they are so misguided about what Africa's real problem is, and dismayed by their willingness to propose solutions on our behalf.
We Africans know what the problem is, and no one else should speak in our name. Africa has men of letters and science, great thinkers and stifled geniuses who at the risk of torture rise up to declare the truth and demand liberty.
Don't insult Africa, this continent so rich yet so badly led. Instead, insult its leaders, who have ruined everything. Our anger is all the greater because despite all the presidents for life, despite all the evidence of genocide, we didn't hear anyone at Live 8 raise a cry for democracy in Africa.
Don't the organizers of the concerts realize that Africa lives under the oppression of rulers like Yoweri Museveni (who just eliminated term limits in Uganda so he can be president indefinitely) and Omar Bongo (who has become immensely rich in his three decades of running Gabon)? Don't they know what is happening in Cameroon, Chad, Togo and the Central African Republic? Don't they understand that fighting poverty is fruitless if dictatorships remain in place?
Even more puzzling is why Youssou N'Dour and other Africans participated in this charade. Like us, they can't help but know that Africa's real problem is the lack of freedom of expression, the usurpation of power, the brutal oppression.
Neither debt relief nor huge amounts of food aid nor an invasion of experts will change anything. Those will merely prop up the continent's dictators. It's up to each nation to liberate itself and to help itself. When there is a problem in the United States, in Britain, in France, the citizens vote to change their leaders. And those times when it wasn't possible to freely vote to change those leaders, the people revolted.
In Africa, our leaders have led us into misery, and we need to rid ourselves of these cancers. We would have preferred for the musicians in Philadelphia and London to have marched and sung for political revolution. Instead, they mourned a corpse while forgetting to denounce the murderer.
What is at issue is an Africa where dictators kill, steal and usurp power yet are treated like heroes at meetings of the African Union. What is at issue is rulers like François Bozizé, the coup leader running the Central Africa Republic, and Faure Gnassingbé, who just succeeded his father as president of Togo, free to trample universal suffrage and muzzle their people with no danger that they'll lose their seats at the United Nations. Who here wants a concert against poverty when an African is born, lives and dies without ever being able to vote freely?
But the truth is that it was not for us, for Africa, that the musicians at Live 8 were singing; it was to amuse the crowds and to clear their own consciences, and whether they realized it or not, to reinforce dictatorships. They still believe us to be like children that they must save, as if we don't realize ourselves what the source of our problems is.
Jean-Claude Shanda Tonme is a consultant on international law and a columnist for Le Messager, a Cameroonian daily, where a version of this article first appeared. This article was translated by The Times from the French. | | |
| It seems that my xanga friends are more willing to post thoughtful things and comment on them, so even though i prefer LJ, i thought that i would cross post this to see if i could get a rise out of y'all.
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I read something interesting on someone's blog today. He was taking a class with Erwin McManus, who presented the following idea, roughly encapsulated by me, with a few of my own thoughts added in.
The church has very little to no theology of change or creativity. If we think about all the words that we associate a person who comes to Jesus, they are all change-based: regeneration, redeemed, sanctification, Rebirth, metamorphosis, transformed, conversion, our language of personal salvation is all about change. BUT, we change the focus from individual to congregational, that language of change goes away totally. Christians are not interested in change, they want security and safety and standardization. People never talk about changing the church. Those who do are mildy to extremely ostracized.
How can you have an organism where everything within it changes, but the organism itself remains the same?
Now i'm not against having tradition, in fact i'm all for it. i'm not sure what i think about the argument he makes, or how sound it is. i'd have to think about it some.
on the tradition note, i believe we should have a bit of tension between what we've always done and what God is calling us to, and how similar those two tihngs are. its very easy to become focused on forms and patterns, and give them importance far beyond what we should. My favorite example of this is a person who asserted that music that has the emphasis on beats 1 and 3 is more reverent and pleasing to God than music with a 2 and 4 emphasis. this mis-focus is one of the reasons we have denominations.
The role that tradition plays ( and should or should not play) is a very interesting topic. i wish to speak and think with people wiser than i on this one.
but tradition isn' t all that Erwin is adressing with his above idea, it is much more fundamental, i think.
alright. over and out. | | |
| lets try this agan. hello, all. i am well. go here to find out
LIVEJOURNAL
click it. welcome to my life. | | |
| note to world: i primarily use Livejournal, so you can view my daily ramblings there. http://www.livejournal.com/users/jooohnn/
anywho. for those that haven't known, i've been horribly sick since friday, it now being wednesday, and i'm getting a little tired of it. it seems to be getting worse in some ways, and better in other ways. my head feels like its in a vise. and there are (and i quote) "monkeys running around it waving big signs. wearing bright red overalls. and screaming. and its floating in a pool of paper mache glue."
thats about what it feels like. right now. its nice, really, you should try it. really. so i'm going to go now, cause it hurts to look at the screen. of course, it hurts to do anything, but hey. whatev.
mur. | | |
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