Category: Uganda

‘Machine Gun Preacher’ Endorses Mitt

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When the cellphone rang this morning and I saw the name on caller ID, it was a pleasant surprise: “Sam, how the heck are you, man?”

Pastor Sam Childers, the Harley-riding missionary whose amazing life story inspired the film Machine Gun Preacher, caught me up on his latest activities and asked what I was up to. After I told him I’ve been out covering the presidential campaign, Pastor Sam told me how some reporters had kept after him about crazy rumors that he was diamond smuggler or a gun runner, and he threatened to run for president himself:

“There’s nobody on this earth, including Christ, who has ever done anything good that people didn’t come against him. Nobody. And I made the comment the other week: If they keep coming up with any more garbage or accusations, I’m going to run for president in 2016.”

Don’t doubt him for a minute. He’s done crazier things than that before, but he was laughing about it, especially when he said some other reporters had actually taken him seriously. Pastor Sam is truly unique — sui generis — and is politically independent.

Of course, he’s a Bible-believing Christian fundamentalist, but Pastor Sam comes from a blue-collar background and has a natural skepticism toward politics and politicians, so he’s not officially part of the “Religious Right” and, indeed, his courageous missionary work in Sudan and Uganda has won him the admiration of many Hollywood liberals. As a matter of fact, in 2007-08, the candidate who most interested him was Democrat John Edwards.

Pastor Sam’s vote for Mitt Romney? Yeah, that’s actual news.

Pastor Sam is currently preparing to go back to Africa and his Angels of East Africa ministry is raffling off a motorcycle to raise money, and God bless everyone who clicks that link and gives. He is a righteous servant of the Lord, no matter what Vanity Fair says about him.

Sam was telling me about the smears, which really do annoy him, but he’s learned to laugh about it: “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” Indeed. And never doubt the miracles God can do.

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UPDATE: Jai Simon reminds us that Sam Childers is the “only man Chuck Norris fears.” Trust me, you never want to see Sam angry.
 

#Kony2012 Video Prompts Uganda to Vow ‘Dead or Alive’ Manhunt for Terrorist

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“Take a good look at this face. This is what unalloyed evil looks like. His name is Joseph Kony, and some news accounts call him a ‘leader’ of ‘Ugandan rebels.’ Don’t believe it.
“Kony is not a leader. He’s a terrorist monster, and his ‘rebels’ are nothing but a gang of armed thugs who prey on unarmed innocents.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, March 4, 2008

It’s kind of weird how things come full-circle. Four years ago, I flew off to Uganda with the Christian missionary Pastor Sam Childers, whose book Another Man’s War inspired last year’s action movie Machine Gun Preacher. Pastor Sam, who rescued children orphaned in the brutal civil wars in northern Uganda and South Sudan, was at one point targeted for death by Joseph Kony’s terrorist LRA.

Now an online documentary, “Kony 2012,” has gotten more than 60 million views and attracted worldwide attention, prompting Ugandan officials to pledge renewed efforts to bring Kony to justice:

Kony and his fighters were driven out of northern Uganda in 2005 after terrorising communities for nearly two decades.
“All this hoopla about Kony and his murderous activities is good in a sense that it helps inform those who didn’t know the monster that Kony is. But of course, this is too late,” Uganda’s defence ministry spokesman Felix Kulayigye told Reuters.
“It might take long but we’ll catch Kony, dead or alive. How many years did it take to end the conflict in Northern Ireland? So our hunt for Kony can take long but it will end one day,” he said. . . .
Kony fled northern Uganda to roam the dense forests of Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic and South Sudan. Attempts to corner him and his rump LRA force, believed to be 200-300 strong, have failed.

This highlights the problem: Kony and his remaining handful of LRA thugs are somewhere in a vast no-man’s land along the western and northern borders of Uganda. In December 2008, for example, there was a joint Ugandan-Congolese military raid on an LRA hideout in the Garamba National Forest, after which the LRA went on a rampage in Congo and then vanished somewhere near the South Sudanese border.

Finding Kony and bringing him to justice may be more difficult than the hunt for Osama bin Laden, which was the No. 1 objective of the United States government for 10 years before bin Laden was finally killed. Uganda, Congo and South Sudan are relatively poor countries without the vast military capabilities of the U.S.

Some people — including my American Spectator colleague Reid Smith — are therefore skeptical toward the idealistic belief that a viral video can bring about Kony’s capture. The video has become controversial, with some critics claiming it oversimplifies the situation and especially that its portrayal of Uganda is misleading:

“What that video says is totally wrong, and it can cause us more problems than help us,” said Dr Beatrice Mpora, director of Kairos, a community health organisation in Gulu, a town that was once the centre of the rebels’ activities.
“There has not been a single soul from the LRA here since 2006. Now we have peace, people are back in their homes, they are planting their fields, they are starting their businesses. That is what people should help us with.”

This is true: The LRA has been chased out of Uganda, and while the Ugandan military is willing to be part of any effort to hunt down Kony, there are limits to its ability to accomplish this goal.

The U.S. has sent a small number of military advisers to assist, but do we really want to escalate U.S. involvement in the region? Or would these African nations, which achieved independence from European colonial powers barely a half-century ago, welcome a European-led military intervention? There are obvious political and diplomatic difficulties involved.

Nevertheless, having written a good deal about Kony and the LRA, I’m glad to see this issue get widespread public attention, even if the prospects of a quick resolution aren’t altogether encouraging. Alyssa Milano has been part of the effort to promote the “Kony 2012” video, and it was through a Tweet of hers Friday that I learned about this viral phenomenon:

Uganda: Inflation Sparks Riots

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A 3.8% inflation rate is enough to make Americans complain about rising prices. Now imagine 14% inflation in Uganda — a much poorer country — and you have a formula for political disaster:

KAMPALA, Uganda — This capital city was brought to a virtual standstill Friday as angry protesters set up roadblocks, setting them ablaze throughout Kampala, and the police and military cordoned off neighborhoods in the largest and most violent day of protests since the demonstrations started nearly three weeks ago. . . .
Kizza Besigye, the opposition politician leading protests who was partially blinded after being violently arrested Thursday, was allowed to fly to Kenya on Friday for medical attention, according to the news station Nation TV, after initially being rebuffed. . . .
Troubles in this relatively peaceful and easygoing East African country began this month when Mr. Besigye called for demonstrations against rising commodity prices less than two months after Mr. Museveni handily won re-election after 25 years in power. . . .

The Christian Science Monitor quoted a small business owner in Kampala:

“The prices are only going higher and the anger growing,” Ssentongo said. “This is not going to end soon.”

Besigye is a demagogue, exploiting the people’s anger over inflation by claiming it is the result of government corruption, but the government’s harsh reaction — and the discontent over rising prices — have made him a sympathetic figure. Here is a video report from Al-Jazeera:

And here is a video report from a Ugandan network:

Let me ask you something: Do you believe that the government in Kampala is causing their inflation? Or does it occur to you that when the Federal Reserve pursues a blatantly inflationary policy, that this is a very large stone thrown into the global economy, so that the ripples are felt severely in places like Uganda? And Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain . . .

Not to sound too much like a tinfoil-hat crank or anything, but there are times when the phrase “international bankers” is not just for conspiracy theorists. And this may be one of those times.

Black People Killed by Gadsden Flags at Tea Party Rallies and Al-Qaeda Terrorism

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But mainly Al-Qaeda terrorism:

Among the at least 64 people killed in the two devastating blasts that tore through outdoor gatherings in Uganda where hundreds of soccer fans were in the midst of watching the World Cup final was 25-year-old American Nate Henn. . . .
The selection of targets in the Ugandan capital of Kampala — a restaurant and a sports field where people were watching the game on large-screen TVs — ensured the bombs struck a broad mix of Ugandans and foreigners, including Americans. . . .
Al Shabaab, a fundamental Islamist group based in Somalia, today claimed responsibility for the attacks.
“We will carry out attacks against our enemy wherever they are,” Sheik Ali Mohamud Rage speaking from Mogadishu told The Associated Press.
“No one will deter us from performing our Islamic duty.”

So, with dozens of Africans and at least one American killed by terrorists in Kampala, guess who the NAACP decides to denounce?

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People will propose a resolution this week condemning Islamic extremism racism within al-Qaeda the tea party movement.
The resolution, scheduled for a vote as early as Tuesday by delegates attending the annual NAACP convention in Kansas City, calls upon “all people of good will to repudiate the murderous terrorism racism of al-Qaeda the Tea Parties, and to stand in opposition to its drive to push our country back to the pre-civil rights era.” . . .
“I think a lot of people are not taking Islamic terrorism the tea party movement seriously, and we need to take it seriously,” said Anita Russell, head of the Kansas City chapter of the NAACP.

No matter what the problem, the NAACP’s solution is “blame whitey.”

Andrew Sullivan Gets Punked?

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Reacting to a blog report that an LGBT activist in Uganda had been beheaded, Sully headlined it:

The Wages Of Christianism

And then the blog that ran the original report added this:

Updated — Possible Hoax
. . . Sources in the U.S. and Uganda now tell me that the young man in question was not connected with Integrity Uganda, and that Bishop Christopher Senyonjo did not make the statement attributed to him . . .
The Rev. Erich K Kasirye, identified as the “General Secretary, Integrity Uganda” and who gave an extensive quotation that I reproduced below, appears to have been involved with a few money-raising scams . . .

“This just in from the Dept. of Too Good to Check . . .”

UPDATE: From the Uganda Daily Monitor:

Detectives had by last night taken into custody two men suspected of beheading a colleague worker at a farm in Wakiso District that authorities said belongs to Electoral Commission chairman Badru Kiggundu.
The trio, witnesses told police, stayed in the same house in Kibiri A zone, a rural lakeside residential area overlooking the posh Munyonyo and Buziga suburbs. Police Spokesperson Judith Nabakooba said the arrests followed the finding, in a pit latrine, on Friday of a human head believed to be that of Pascal Kashushu killed a week earlier.

So, according to the local newspaper, police believe Kashushu was killed by “colleague workers” with whom the dead man had been staying at the same house. No word on the motive, and nothing to implicate homophobic “Christianists” in the murder.

UPDATE II: It seems that the campaign to turn the murdered man into Uganda’s Matthew Shepard began with an Anglican gay activist named Colin Coward who (a) spells the victim’s name “Pasikali Kashusbe” and (b) so far as can be determined, has never set foot in Uganda.

Coward’s report ricocheted around the gay blogosphere, onto DKos and HuffPo and thence to Memeorandum, where I saw it, but there is not a single regular-news source in Uganda or anywhere else reporting this as an anti-gay hate crime. The blog that Sully linked as his source now says:

The young man’s murder is no less horrific. But the connection to homophobia, for now, appears doubtful.

Perhaps Sully should go back to obstetric theorizing about Republican women, which seems to be his chief area of expertise.

UPDATE III: Local news video:

If I understand the reporter correctly, one of the suspects who has been questioned by police is the cousin of the victim, and police have not yet established a motive.

UPDATE IV: Why did some people leap so quickly to the conclusion that homophobia was to blame for Kashushu’s death? The Advocate reports:

They were looking for the Rev. Henry Kayizzi Nsubuga, who disappeared last month after delivering a sermon supporting gay people.

It seems to be taken as a given by gay-rights activists, post hoc ergo propter hoc, that Nsubuga has fallen victim to homophobic violence. Well, read this story in the Uganda New Vision and see if you find any reason to be skeptical toward such an assumption.

Everybody with access to the Internet nowadays seems to think they’re a detective, and this is like CSI: Kampala or something.

UPDATE V: Bad week for Sully: Levi Johnston admits he was “just makin’ stuff up.”