Northern Uganda Messenger Post

NORTHERN UGANDA MESSENGER POST: Live and Let Live: The wretched of the earth in Acholi also deserve distributive justice#links

Ugandan Member of Parliament Simon Oyet (FDC, Nwoya) should be commended for his stand on behalf of the wretched of the earth regarding the land question in Acholi. Find it here: http://www.monitor.co.ug/artman/publish/news/Brigadier_evicts_100_families_68661.shtml All Acholi, including those among us here who are also involved in massive land enclosures and speculations in Acholi, must think about the rest of those less fortunate and their children and their children. This by no means is to discourage individual progress. But to think of gradually easing Acholi society into the kind of ravenous market society that some among us think we must hurtle it towards. My position is that, Acholi communal land has been husbanded by our forbearers for centuries and access and use were well-regulated to ensure equity and social equality. This is not to say that there were no poorer folks as a result of laziness or some other disadvantages, but no one was landless or unable to grow their own foo...

Of the Anglo-American racist, imperialist Bully being Socked in the face at the UN and hauling that Afrikan dictator who raised frankenstein of northern Uganda to the dock. Sometimes, when things seem so daunting, and your spirits are in the doldrums, and you are ready to resign yourself to the notion of fate and impossibilities; suddenly, the gods smile on you and you wake up with elation to a dream-come-true reversal of fortunes in your favour. We woke up at NUMP this morning, to two exhilarating pieces of news. The improbable kinds that cheers up the underdog; the downtrodden; the doormat of international justice; the kind of news that gives the scrawny little boy on the school playground a startling sigh of relief. The news that the strapping, fat, ugly, greedy brute ; the schoolyard bully that preys on other kids and their lunches by throwing his weight around, was socked in the face and floored by some courageous new kid who suffers no fool! Our ecstatic ululations at NUMP, is ...

NORTHERN UGANDA MESSENGER POST: Being is individual, personal and problematic

Intersubjective Communication Gaps and political and moral leadership failures in Uganda: Is Joseph Kony an “unredeemable villain” or an “existentialist hero” of Uganda’s violent political order and imprisonment of individual freedom and conscience? An existentialist response to Opiyo Oloya’s “Kony has come to the end of his tether.” Part IV Being is individual, personal and problematic In the face of decades-long, well-orchestrated concealment and revisionism through paid western intellectual brokerages in academia and public relations firms, our desire to engage Opiyo Oloya-type arguments farther in an attempt to humanise and repatriate Joseph Kony back to the realities of existence in Acholi in 1986, and journey with him to the present, is a difficult and contentious one that readily exposes proponents as easy targets for dismissal as LRM/A ideologues and sympathisers at home and in the diaspora. However, we feel that it is a worthwhile enterprise to undertake, and we are confiden...

NORTHERN UGANDA MESSENGER POST: Contextualising Joseph Kony: Convenient Political Truth Versus the experiential and existential Truth

Intersubjective Communication Gaps and political and moral leadership failures in Uganda: Is Joseph Kony an “unredeemable villain” or an “existentialist hero” of Uganda’s violent political order and imprisonment of individual freedom and conscience? An existentialist response to Opiyo Oloya’s “Kony has come to the end of his tether.” Part III Contextualising Joseph Kony: Convenient Political Truth Versus the experiential and existential Truth "Little attention has been paid to modern movements of social protest which fall outside the classic patterns of labor or socialist agitation, and even less to those whose political coloring is not modernist or progressive but conservative, or reactionary or, at any rate, rather inarticulate. Robin Hood is fine in the Middle Ages, but out of place in the 19th and 20th centuries. Revolutionary workers and their doctrines are familiar figures; revolutionary peasants and their heroes are only just beginning to be recognized. But peasants, shephe...

NORTHERN UGANDA MESSENGER POST: Anarchy in the northern Uganda peace process as “tragedy of the commons".

Intersubjective Communication Gaps and political and moral leadership failures in Uganda: Is Joseph Kony an “unredeemable villain” or an “existentialist hero” of Uganda’s violent political order and imprisonment of individual freedom and conscience? An existentialist response to Opiyo Oloya’s “Kony has come to the end of his tether. ” Part II Anarchy in the northern Uganda peace process as “tragedy of the commons.” Garrett Hardin is famous for originating the theory of the “tragedy of the commons.” It is the view that, where there is no clear control, authority, management, demarcation and ownership of a resource and access and user rights are not defined or even privatised, anarchy reigns and there is a tendency for people to over exploit, misuse and be indifferent to the sustainability of the resource. Good examples of such commons are community grazing grounds, fish in lakes and rivers, where people can own and graze as many livestock and as often as they like; or catch as much fis...

NORTHERN UGANDA MESSENGER POST: Is Joseph Kony an “unredeemable villain” or an “existentialist hero” of Uganda? Part I

Intersubjective Communication Gaps and political and moral leadership failures in Uganda: Is Joseph Kony an “unredeemable villain” or an “existentialist hero” of Uganda’s violent political order and imprisonment of individual freedom and conscience? An existentialist response to Opiyo Oloya’s “Kony has come to the end of his tether.” "The obligations and duties that exist for both government and armed groups under international human rights and humanitarian law and armed groups under international humanitarian law provide a framework for discussion of human rights abuse that reduces the risk of falling into a debate on which side is somehow "worse" or "better" than the other. Human rights abuses by one side, no matter how gross, do not provide legitimacy to abuses by the other side. Looking at human rights abuses in relation to an objective set of legal standards is the first step towards breaking the circle of violence." Amnesty International, 1999. Intro...

NORTHERN UGANDA MESSENGER POST: Zimbabwe Must Become Pan-Africa's Afghanistan or Iraq!

From the English Civil Wars to the American War of Independence, American Civil War, the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution and through to ZANU-PF and the ANC, some people had to give their all and die for the right causes so others may live in peace and freedom. For instance, the English people and the British people will never allow any stooge, even a prince, to sanctify the vote more than the ideals the votes are supposed to protect. There will never be any return to absolute monarchy where there is no parliament and the kings and queens can do as they please. Similarly, the French Republic will stand against any notion of restoration of the bourbons. And, America will not soon want to revert to control from the kings and queens of England; the Republic is there to stay and so are the ideals for which the American Civil war was fought. Were there another power from mars strong enough to create a Morgan Tsivangirai in England, France, or America, who would want to roll bac...