Africa Now : The most important story for the 21^st
Century ( before the war).This BBC Web article
Desperate measures in Zimbabwe by Michael Hartnack
appeared on the BBC website. It is part of the real story of the 21^st century, the spread of devastation across Africa, a whole continent embroiled in a vortex spreading desert, decimating human population, rolling forward with crushing poverty, and two instances of genocide within a decade so far. The spread of AIDS is unchecked, many governments are organized around kleptomania, many with social policies that destroy the economy. Rogue governments are more common and unchallenged in the world community. Environmental policies are trumped by corruption, education is retreating up the class mountain, like the retreating snow lines on Mt. Kilimanjaro.

This trend will not be contained on the African continent. Distressing
indeed is that the deserts growing like a stain across the continent most likely couple with the evolution of Hurricanes that eventually cruise up the Florida peninsula, intensifying them and encouraging their spawn. Global warming is indeed melting huge amounts of ice in Antarctica, and in the Arctic.

Tropical diseases are now in Northern California, in New York, in places that
they hadn’t called home for around 2000 years or more, maybe 20,000 years.

Interesting to contemplate the fact that the California coastline used to be more than 6 miles further out around Moro Bay. That means that within the time that Indians have been living in California, most of the shift came from melting ice. There has been some geologic uplift, but
over only 10000-20000 years, that’s a HUGE change. Humans not only adapted, we flourished. That change was fairly slow, and the ecological reservoir was diverse and rich.

The pace of change threatens much of the genetic legacy, the diversity of species, the wonderful beings from bacteria to whales. We humans have not taken care of the rich web of life, and threaten to wipe out huge amounts of the remaining ecological wealth through the exercise of regular old greed. The change that was set in motion by the burst of greenhouse gasses, disastrous forestry and farming practices that spread desert , and is likely to be an organizing element in Human activity for a very long time!

Africa has large regions where the government provides little security, doesn’t feed their starving, destroys agriculture in the name of land reform, and is increasingly controlled by feudal warlords as failed corrupt democracies deteriorate into irrelevance. The world response to the Darfur genocide is discouraging.

Truth would go a long way toward shaping effective responses, and the Bush administration still doesn’t speak the obvious truth about Sudan. The UN and US have still not spoken out about how the Janjaweed and the government are working together to commit the genocide, Arab against tribal blacks. The government sponsored military operations driving out and killing one group of people from their homes to take their assets, meager as they may be. Whole regions will be ethnically cleansed if the Sudan government continues to implement their plans.

This is a stage, where a group that can’t make it on their own, and simply kills to keep going, that should be frightening to all who treasure their civilized lives, who live in our Disneyland. I’m not sure what comes next, but it doesn’t seem likely that this trend is near an end.

This essay was inspired by this BBC story :BBC World : Africa

Bruce Bagnoli