American Buddhist Net

Andrew Bossone in Cairo
for National Geographic News
July 2, 2008

A well-preserved mud-brick settlement in southern Egypt is providing a rare glimpse into nearly 3,000 years of ancient Egyptian daily life, archaeologists announced Tuesday. (See photos.)

The Tell Edfu site includes a public town center that was used for collecting taxes, conducting business, recording accounting, and writing documents.

The discovery paints a picture of a relatively advanced system of society during ancient times, with commerce playing an intricate part of daily Egyptian life, according to the University of Chicago and the Egyptian Supreme Council on Antiquities.

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June 25, 2008
By KATHARINE HOURELD

BUNGOMA, Kenya (AP) — Dozens of scared children filed silently into the bare room, their eyes on the cracks in the floor. One by one, in low voices, they told of being tortured by the Kenyan army because they were suspected of aiding rebels. They told of being beaten and made to shake hands with corpses. They told of being forced to crawl through barbed wire tunnels and of genitals squeezed by pliers.

Then the children took off their shirts. White scars crisscrossed the dark skin on their backs like grains of rice. Some were still bleeding.

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For more on this subject, see: Special Report: China In Africa. ABN
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by David Blair, Telegraph, Aug 31, 2007

No one alive at the close of the 19th century could have missed the "scramble for Africa". A motley collection of robber barons, imperialist ideologues, explorers, rogues and adventurers - the likes of Cecil Rhodes and the appalling Leopold II, King of the Belgians - carved up the continent in the name of five European powers.

Today, few appear to have noticed that a second "scramble for Africa" is under way. This time, only one giant country is involved, but its ambitions are every bit as momentous as those of Rhodes and company. With every day that passes, China's economic tentacles extend deeper into Africa. While Europe sought direct political control, China is acquiring a vast and informal economic empire.

Reliable information on Beijing's African adventure is hard to come by. But we do know that trade between China and the world's poorest continent totalled about £30 billion last year - a sixfold increase since 2000.

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The High Court in South Africa has ruled that Chinese South Africans are to be reclassified as black people.

It made the order so that ethnic Chinese can benefit from government policies aimed at ending white domination in the private sector.

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May 20, 2008

MARCHOUX, Ivory Coast (AFP) — Cured of their disease, the remaining residents of this Ivory Coast leper colony now face the plight of being abandoned by their government and most of their families.

"We're the last survivors, all alone, our families having abandoned us," says Dosso, 69, one of 20 cured leprosy sufferers still living in Marchoux or Gnankanassi ("Thank God" in the local Ebrie language).

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Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Different cultures view humility in widely differing ways. Traditional and usually very religious societies tend to value humility as a desirable trait. More 21st societies see humility as a wholly undesirable character. The issue is even more complex as there are contrasts even within segments of given societies…

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See also this for more on the forces behind the destruction today: Special Report: China In Africa. ABN
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The massive scale of environmental devastation across the continent has been fully revealed for the first time in an atlas compiled by UN geographers. Michael McCarthy reports

Wednesday, 11 June 2008

It was long shrouded in mystery, called "the Dark Continent" by Europeans in awe of its massive size and impenetrable depths. Then its wondrous natural riches were revealed to the world. Now a third image of Africa and its environment is being laid before us – one of destruction on a vast and disturbing scale.

Using "before and after" satellite photos, taken in all 53 countries, UN geographers have constructed an African atlas of environmental change over the past four decades – the vast majority of it for the worse.

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June 12, 2008
Jan Raath in Mhondoro

The men who pulled up in three white pickup trucks were looking for Patson Chipiro, head of the Zimbabwean opposition party in Mhondoro district. His wife, Dadirai, told them he was in Harare but would be back later in the day, and the men departed.

An hour later they were back. They grabbed Mrs Chipiro and chopped off one of her hands and both her feet. Then they threw her into her hut, locked the door and threw a petrol bomb through the window.

The killing last Friday – one of the most grotesque atrocities committed by Robert Mugabe’s regime since independence in 1980 – was carried out on a wave of worsening brutality before the run-off presidential elections in just over two weeks. It echoed the activities of Foday Sankoh, the rebel leader in the Sierra Leone civil war that ended in 2002, whose trade-mark was to chop off hands and feet.

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By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: June 8, 2008

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania — Samuel Mluge steps outside his office and scans the sidewalk. His pale blue eyes dart back and forth, back and forth, trying to focus.

The sun used to be his main enemy, but now he has others.

Mr. Mluge is an albino, and in Tanzania now there is a price for his pinkish skin.

“I feel like I am being hunted,” he said.

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June 1, 2008

LAGOS, (AFP) - Perching on a concrete slab under a motorway bridge, Jude Anyadike displays his pirated video CDs which titles such as 'Curve Enticement' and 'Interminable Pleasure'.

Anyadike, 34, is one of the hundreds of sellers of 'pornos' in the sprawling city of Lagos where people brazenly break the law and authorities very often look the other way.

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The Associated Press
Published: May 28, 2008

YOKOHAMA, Japan: Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda of Japan pledged Wednesday to double Tokyo's aid to Africa by 2012 to inspire growth and attract private investment - a model that helped propel postwar Japan into economic prosperity.

In particular, Japan will provide up to $4 billion in flexible, low-interest "soft loans" to Africa over the next five years for infrastructure projects, Fukuda said at the start of the three-day Tokyo International Conference on African Development.

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Excellent piece, well-worth reading. This six-part series is quite long but gives a very good overview current economic conditions in Africa and how they are influenced by China, and increasingly less by Europe and the US. ABN
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With its resource-hungry push into the sub-Sahara, Beijing puts the planet to the test.

By: Richard Behar

...During my recovery, I had time to dwell on parasites, how they invade and deplete their hosts, much as successive colonial powers have done over the centuries in places such as Africa. Anyone who thinks that kind of ravenous acquisition of resources is a thing of the past should take a close look at the suction China is applying in the sub-Sahara. The region is now the scene of one of the most sweeping, bare-knuckled, and ingenious resource grabs the world has ever seen.

...Oxford's Paul Collier, author of The Bottom Billion and a former head of research at the World Bank, is a leading expert on African economies. "I think the sad reality is that although globalization has powered the majority of developing countries toward prosperity," he says, "it is now making things harder for these latecomers." In other words, he says, Africa "missed the boat." And on a divided, demoralized continent, one where the United States has lost both its economic leverage and moral authority, Beijing can cherry-pick almost at will. That spells trouble not only for Africa but also for our ability to outthink the global consumption death spiral we have all set in motion.

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By Wangui Kanina

NAIROBI, May 21 (Reuters) - A mob has burned to death at least 11 people accused of witchcraft in an area of west Kenya where traditional beliefs run deep, police said on Wednesday.

"Their houses were torched. Eight women and three men suspected of being witches died," Kenya's deputy police spokesman Charles Owino said.

Kisii district residents confirmed the killings, saying an enraged crowd had gone house-to-house on Tuesday night, using a list of supposed witches in the region.

"They burned them alive in their homes," one resident said, asking not to be named.

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20 May 2008
By Nico Colombant

African countries like Senegal, where journalists regularly get sentenced to jail for what they say and write, or where the quality of reporting is not good, comedians are playing an expanding role as government watchdogs in the media.

...[radio program director Antoine Diouf] says comedians can talk about things journalists are too afraid to investigate, like corruption scandals, or conflicts between government officials.

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11 May 2008

A formal reburial ceremony for the skeletons of slaves discovered on the Prestwich site in Green Point has had to be rescheduled because of simmering political tensions between city and provincial leaders.

...Eleven boxes symbolising the nation's diversity as reflected in its linguistic groups were received from the South African Heritage Resources Agency and carried into the newly built ossuary at the corner of Buitengracht and Somerset Road where they were laid to rest.

These boxes contained the remains of slaves who died around the city in the colonial period, people from often marginalised backgrounds who helped build Cape Town.

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By Richard Spencer
Last Updated: 2:31AM BST 10/05/2008

Chinese farming companies may be backed by the government to buy and lease tracts of land in Africa and Latin America to grow crops to feed its 1.3 billion people.

A proposal before the state council, or cabinet, proposes extending a business strategy known as the "go-out policy" to farmland.

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By KENNETH CHANG
Published: May 9, 2008

Six thousand years ago, northern Africa was a place of trees, grasslands, lakes and people. Today, it is the Sahara — a desolate area larger area than Australia.

Lake Yoa, in northeastern Chad, has remained a lake through the millennia and is still a lake today, surrounded by hot desert. Although little rain falls, Lake Yoa’s water is replenished from an underground aquifer.

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Sunday, May 4, 2008
Meredith May

Dr. Frank Artress looked down at his fingers. His nail beds were turning blue. He was running out of oxygen near the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.

A cardiac anesthesiologist, Artress knew the signs of high altitude pulmonary edema. He knew there was a 75 percent chance that he would perish on Africa's highest peak.

Artress led his wife to a rock, and they sat together above the clouds. Then it hit him. He wasn't afraid to die; he was ashamed. He had lived only for himself - practicing medicine in a Modesto hospital, traveling with his wife, purchasing luxury vacation homes and collecting art. He felt as if he had nothing to show for his 50 years. He felt as if his life had been a waste.

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Thurs., May. 1, 2008

...While hardly bodice-rippers by Western standards, the controversy surrounding what academics call “Kano market literature” is increasing with the books’ readership. Conservative scholars and clerics in Nigeria’s north deride the tomes as pulp fiction that degrades Islamic and indigenous cultural mores. A top Islamic leader recently set fire to a pile of the books.

But female readers say the volumes — with such titles as “Edge of Fate,” “False Love” and “Undeceiveful Heart” — help them navigate contemporary life and their titles are proliferating rapidly, pitting younger women against a predominantly male, conservative elite.

“Women are not only writing for pleasure, no, we are writing because we are seeing what is happening in the society and we want a lot of corrections,” says Binta Rabiu Spikin, a 32-year-old single woman who was raised in her grandfather’s home, which included four wives.

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01/05/08

The ship was laden with tons of copper ingots, elephant tusks, gold coins - and cannons to fend off pirates. But it had nothing to protect it from the fierce weather off a particularly bleak stretch of inhospitable African coast, and it sank 500 years ago.

Now it has been found, stumbled upon by De Beers geologists prospecting for diamonds off Namibia.

"If you're mining on the coast, sooner or later you'll find a wreck," archaeologist Dieter Noli said in an interview Thursday.

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28 April 2008
By Adam Fowler

Imagine an extract from a berry that would make sour things taste sweet and help you lose weight. Then imagine not being allowed to take it.

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28 April 2008
By Caroline Smith

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu on Sunday called for compassion and action on Tibet as well as Zimbabwe, and said that South Africa's own freedom "would not have happened without the support of millions of people around the world".

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27 April 2008
Florence Baingana

I get asked this question so often, every time I mention that I am a Buddhist..."So, who is your God, who controls all aspects of your life?" Coming from a Christian background, I do understand where the question is coming from, but having practiced Buddhism for 14 years now, I no longer find it strange to say, "I am responsible for all that happens in my life, I am God, if you will". This is almost like blasphemy to some, but not to me.

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By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News

Ancient humans started down the path of evolving into two separate species before merging back into a single population, a genetic study suggests.

The genetic split in Africa resulted in distinct populations that lived in isolation for as much as 100,000 years, the scientists say.

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Let's not forget that Gore was the "clear victor" in 2000, until the Supreme Court stepped in. ABN
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24 April 2008

Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was the "clear victor" of last month's poll, a top US envoy says.

Jendayi Frazer was speaking in South Africa, at the start of a tour to lobby Zimbabwe's neighbours to put pressure on President Robert Mugabe.

The results of the presidential election have not been released.

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