South African Firefighters Have Fun in Canada

Gone to fight the blaze in Canada, they added some game.

Protesting Donald J. Trump

We here at Flourishingafrica will be protesting the GOP nomination of Donald J. Trump as their 2016 presidential candidate by sending out a tweet to this effect each day until he loses the election in November. Our reason for doing this is legion and have been catalogued in many other sources. However, our primary reason for opposing him here is that he is a racist who promotes violence as an instrument of leadership.

Donald Trump, Racism, and Economic Interest

Even though racism has often been unmasked as motivated by economic interests rather than various claims to superiority, it has at the same time not been popularly seen as an essentially economic phenomenon. It has often been presented as based in cultural distinction, as has been the case in South Africa, or in something called "races", as has been the case in the USA. With Donald Trump, however, the mask has been taken off and racism has clearly been shown to be based in economic interest. His desire to ban Muslims from the United States, his "rapist" and "wall" remarks about Mexicans, point to the group of people he would like to exclude from the United States so that his people may be "great again". Now the KKK is pointing to Donald Trump as the one who has a similar vision as the group, a vision which, it can hardly be denied, is based in the economic stress which their constituency in the United States has been experiencing. Other presidential candidates in the United States have run on economic issues but hardly has the economic message been so openly racist. What makes Trump different is that his economic message has been clearly tied to racism. Those, like Howard Fineman of Huffington Post, who think that Trump's economic message may lead him to victory, fail to see that this economic message is laced with racism and may only lead to victory if Americans also generally buy into his racist vision. Are Americans not better than this racist vision?

1600 Days of Protesting Paul Biya's 33-Year Dictatorship in Cameroon

Paul Biya, the dictator of Cameroon, came to power November 6, 33 years ago. He is currently one of the longest serving dictators anywhere in the world. FlourishingAfrica has been protesting the misrule of Paul Biya in Cameroon since the machinations of the last election that returned him to power. The was over 1599 days ago. Each day we send out a tweet as protest against this continued misrule in the country. His years at the helm of the state in the country has not brought the medical system to a level he could entrust with his own health, that is why he keeps spending more time in Europe for medical purposes. For most Cameroonians, however, this is not an option. Whenever they suffer from a serious ailment, the option left open for them is to pray for a miracle or die. Paul Biya currently remains in power not because he has a vision for the country (in fact, he is becoming senile) but just because he could not envision  himself doing anything else. As one of the longest serving dictators in the continent, he loves maintaining a low international profile that would keep the country off the map rather than call attention to his plunder.

Even as the country  is currently fighting Boko Haram in the north of the country, with many Cameroonian soldiers losing their lives there, Paul Biya has hardly been engaged in the issue. The country apparently does not even have money to engage in the fight as citizens are being asked to donate money towards the fight. All the while, the dictator spends more time out of the country, minding his own business in Europe. There is no good reason why he should continue to remain the head of state in Cameroon, given that he is hardly present there.

The World's Unfree People as Defined By . . .

By the way, who defines who is free and who is not? That would be the debate regarding the map below: