Below is an excerpt from a recently published Pastoral Letter from the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops’ Conference:

We urge our political leaders to:

i) Prioritize poverty eradication by using proceeds from natural resources like diamonds, land, etc., for the development of the whole nation and all its citizens. In its final message, the Second Special Assembly for Africa of the Synod of Bishops noted that Africa is rich in human and natural resources but ‘many of our people are still left to wallow in poverty and misery, wars and conflicts, crisis and chaos. These are very rarely caused by natural disasters. They are largely due to human decisions and activities by people who have no regard for the common good … .’
(No. 5).

ii) Stop the active and tacit collusion of those undermining the fight against corruption. Corruption is a cancer destroying our nation.

iii) Prosecute wrong doers and widely publicize any disciplinary action so that no one is seen to commit crime with impunity.

iv) Desist from intimidating and mistreating members of the public, the media, civic communities, etc. Uphold human rights.

v) Uniformed forces should maintain peace and security for all citizens at all times and especially before, during and after elections, and do so impartially.

vi) We implore our political leadership in the coalition government to reflect deeply on the timing of elections bearing in mind the unhealed state of the nation and the fragile state of the economy. They shoulder a heavy responsibility to serve and save Zimbabwe. They must think and act in pursuit of the Common Good. In the event of elections, implement the SADC guidelines in full.

vii) We expect our members of Parliament to make an effort to spearhead the mitigation of the pressing needs of the people they represent and desist from being preoccupied with enriching themselves.

Protests in Tunisia are continuing, with demonstrators objecting to the dominance of leaders from the toppled president’s party in the country’s new “inclusive government.” They say the dictator may have gone, but the dictatorship is still there.

They are also concerned about the elite transfer of power which created the unity government, and are demanding more grounded constitutional reforms. Speaking in an interview with the BBC yesterday, the spokesperson for the Communist Workers Party of Tunisia said “We don’t have a constitution. We have a document that has been written, and rewritten, to maintain the dictatorship.”

Sound familiar?

Ethan Zuckerman recently published a great blog on Facebook. Here’s an excerpt, but read the whole post.

Algorithms, Unbirthdays and Rewiring Facebook

Tuesday was my birthday, and I spent the day largely offline. That meant that Wednesday morning, my email inbox featured hundreds of messages from Facebook, each alerting me to a birthday greeting on my Wall. (I’m an infrequent Facebook user, so I usually find these sorts of alerts useful and haven’t disabled them.) On the one hand, this outpouring of online affection was wonderful – I felt grateful to be remembered by people I’ve not spoken to since high school.

On the other hand, it’s basically impossible to respond to the flood of messages with anything other than “Thanks!” And, of course, there’s usually nothing to the message than the greeting itself – the message is symbolic, not substantive. Which left me thinking

-    I should be better about logging onto Facebook and sending my own symbolic, semantically void greetings
-
and then

-    I should write a Facebook ap that partitions my friends into 365 roughly equally sized groups and encourages me to say hi to that specific, small set of people on that day. I’d occasionally reach someone on their birthday (though I could add additional logic to pick only unbirthday folks.) Unbirthday notes would arrive on days when people weren’t overwhelmed, and might actually spark a conversation and a chance to catch up.

Socially transgressive, or a helpful hack for building actual conversations between out of touch friends? Would other people resist such a rewiring of Facebook and the social norms it embodies, or embrace it?

The Tunisian protests that saw President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali flee the country on Friday after 23 years in power began when a young man set himself on fire after police had confiscated merchandise he was selling on the streets. The demonstrations that followed – and their success in forcing Ben Ali out of power – have sparked similar incidents of self-immolation in Egypt, Algeria and Mauritania.

The Zimbabwean government might well be tempted to ban the use of matches here – to prevent similar protests. But with so many power cuts, how would people light their candles and cooking fires? Hmmm. That might make things worse.

Blessed are the hearts that can mend. They shall never be broken.
- Albert Camus

When I heard that The Kids Are All Right had won the Golden Globe for best film (comedy/musical) yesterday, I was confused. It certainly wasn’t the best film I saw last year, nor would I have called it a comedy. But then I remembered – there’s that part where Nic, Anntte Bening’s character, breaks into All I Want by Joni Mitchell at the dinner table.  Ah. It must have gotten it for best musical.