Jay and Silent Mo - ein Blog, den die Welt noch nicht gesehen hat

Wie vor kurzem bereits angekündigt, hat ein weiteres Baby die unendlich weite Welt der Bits & Frames erblickt und macht sich tatkräftig daran, ihr ordentlich einzuheizen.

Was wir, Jay and Silent Mo, ausprobieren wollen, ist die Fusion zweier idealistischer Geister auf Augenhöhe und der gleichen Plattform. Was bisher nur in Form von email-Austausch stattfand, werden wir auf der große Bühne des öffentlichen Interesses vorführen. Beteiligen daran darf sich jeder, der den verständlichen Drang danach verspürt ;) - wir bitten geradezu darum!

Wir - das sind Moritz und ich, ein Philosoph und ein Taugenichts. Diese beiden teilen einen Großteil ihrer Ansichten, zu einem Streitgespräch wird es also nicht so leicht werden - es sei denn, ihr macht es daraus!
Das Bloggen wird ja erst in dem Moment spannend, in dem Dritte sich daran beteiligen und man als Autor also bemerkt, dass das eigenhändig Geschaffene auf Resonanz stößt!

Ich werde hier selbstverständlich weiterschreiben. Doch kann es sein, dass mir Blog Nr. 2 (oder Parallel-Blog, oder Hauptblog, oder Superblog) ein wenig die Puste rauben wird. Das wiederum hängt ebenfalls zu einem nicht geringen Teil von der hoch verehrten Leserschaft ab...


Und nun... Vorhang auf, Manege frei für einen ersten Vorgeschmack auf "Jay and Silent Mo", Auszug einer meiner emails an Silent Mo:

Namaste, Mitstreiter!


Eine "Innenansicht der gebeutelten afrikanischen Seele" könnte ich es überschreiben.
Das wäre idiotisch.
Unmenschlich.
Verwerflich.
Aber es wird gemacht.

Wenn wir nach den Ursachen und Umständen der politischen Dauerkrise des subsaharischen Afrika Ausschau halten, kommen wir um eine grobe Einteilung in zwei Problemfelder nicht herum.
Ich würde sie vorläufig als "innere" und "äußere" Faktoren bezeichnen.


Was "außen" bedeutet, liegt auf der Hand. Das politische Afrika schwebt nicht im luftleeren Raum, ebensowenig wie seine Geographie von einer sogenannt "Ersten Welt" abgetrennt wäre. Aufgrund seines Resourcenreichtums ist es vielmehr Gegenstand verschiedenster Interessen anderer Staaten oder sonstig organisierter Vereine.
Das ist die eine Seite des Problems: Welche Rolle spielen Akteure von außerhalb des "schwarzen" Kontinentes? Inwiefern lässt sich an innerafrikanischer Politik der Stempelabdruck äußerer Einflusse und Machenschaften ablesen?
Das ist ein gleichzeitig leichtes und teuflisch schweres Unterfangen, weil sich das Augenmerk auf so viele Ebenen richten muss, von denen einige perfekt einsehbar sind, andere wiederum wohl nur den unmittelbar Beteiligten bekannt - und vielleicht auch dann nur in Details.
Unterhalb der offiziell zwischenstaatlichen gibt es ja noch diverse halblegale, illegale oder vollkommen verschwiegene Ebenen.

Beispiel Waffen: Es gibt eine Reihe deutscher Unternehmen, die mit Waffentechnologie gutes Geld verdient. Natürlich nicht in direkten Geschäften mit afrikanischen Diktatoren. Aber vielleicht mit ukrainischen Paramilitärs. Welche eventuell "Aufträge" in afrikanischen Krisenregionen unternehmen.
Man fragt: Woher kommt denn das ganze Kriegsgerät? Gewiss nicht von hier, oder?
Der Genozid von Rwanda 1994 ist zum großen Teil mit Macheten aus chinesischer Produktion ausgeführt worden. Selbst wenn die chinesische Regierung sie nicht direkt dorthin verkauft hat, kann ich mir nur schwer vorstellen, dass sie von den Geschäften gar nichts gewusst hat. Das Ausland (bzw. eigentlich müsste man sagen, Unternehmen aus dem Ausland) verdienen aber nicht allein an Waffenverkäufen. Sie bekommen im AUstausch auch teure Rohstoffe zu einem Spottpreis.

Da ist es nur natürlich, dass sie an einem Fortführen der Kämpfe in rohstoffreichen Gebieten interessiert sind. Denn neben einem beständigen Bedarf an Waffen sichert die instabile Lage mit wechselnden Machthabern auch die Inoffizialität und das Nebulöse der Geschäfte. Was in meinen Augen wesentliches Merkmal und ein Grund für die Erfolgsgeschichte solcher Transaktionen ist.

News from Africa and me

The world as we know it will soon be an image of the past...

Moritz, fellow student of Sinology and Philosophy, and me are having acute plans on collaborating for the sake of a better world.
Lucas came up with the idea of naming our baby "Jay & Silent Mo", and, whether you believe it or not, I tend to like it.
Anyway, we have much to tell...

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As for Africa... What the hell is happening in Kenya?!

What is happening bears alarming similarities to the situation in Rwanda, when it all started off. Thank God, nothing in the like of Rwandan genocide was prepared before the elections in Kenya held in the end of December.
Afterwards, obviously dummying everyone with some understanding of democratic procedures, Kibaki claimed to have won the presidency by popular vote. That his rival Odinga didn´t succumb to that dumb maneuver is only understandable. But how and why turned in the aftermath the elections out to be drawn along ethic lines?
Why are now Kikuyu (Kibaki's ethnic tribe) killing Luo (Odinga's people) and Kalenjin (which have territorial feuds with the Kikuyu), why do Luo and Kalenjin slaughter Kikuyu?
Where are the reactions from Kenyan politicians, from the African Union, UN, US, and EU? Why does it take so long?

No one seems to be prepared for a war in a country that was a stabilisator in the region. However, what happens if a formerly stable country experiences disorder and civil war, can be easily seen in Darfur, Sudan. As long as that conflict is not peacefully resolved (by making Darfur a new nation state), disorder will spread in the entire region.
These last days, one hears alarming news from the Chad, where rebells are marching towards the capitol.
Uganda has a most brutal rebel movement in the north of the nation that simply won't disappear, making it impossible for the government to control the country's north. In East-Congo, an agreement was reached, but no one can tell for sure when and how efficient disarmement will start. So long, none of the local leaders is giving in. There are plenty of ressources to plunder.

Once there is peace, another huge question is waiting. These societies must try to integrate Thousands of former rebels, bush fighters, war children, rapers and killers. How can we forgive? How can we start over, when you have gone through atrocities like these?
It is women and children who suffer most from civil war.
HIV infection rates in Kenya are rising with all the more rapings that came along with the outbreak of violence.

How can we sit still and watch?
What can we do?
A newspaper in Kenya suggested fractioning the country. My thoughts here come back to an earlier post in which I wondered whether dissolving the current system of nation states was a possibility. Politics in Africa had to be begun anew from the start. Ceasing exterior interest in its ressources were a crucial pre-condition to this.

Where can you go for more information?

Andrea Böhm is blogging from Kenya for "Die Zeit" in German.

The Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala has some information about the situation.
Aside from these, you will surely find more information than you can possibly digest, once you start looking around.

A few students from Germany started a German school in Uganda. You can read about their attempt to give something back here and here in "Die Zeit".

How Should We Then Live, James? Jacob on the future of Journalism

Die Zukunft des Journalismus...

Werden gedruckte Zeitungen langsam verschwinden, und mit ihnen der sogenannte Qualitätsjournalismus? Werden sie von den Blogger-Heeren des Web 2.0 aufgesaugt oder vertrieben? Will im Jahr 2040 niemand mehr Zeitung auf Papier lesen?

What will the future of Journalism look like?
Will there be no more quality printed newspapers?

- I find it hard to imagine that bloggers (like me, perhaps?) are going to be the only future of journalist writing. Point #1.
As for myself, I no doubt cherish a quality article.
Even today, journalists for the most part are adapting to a new sort of media. It offers them a great chance, to say the least. For journalists who publish their blogs, podcasts, or videos on the internet can gain some individual profile and imprint their names into their readers memory.
That's what I am convinced of.
Take me for an example: I am trying to make use of my bit of spear time and read a variety of articles in different newspapers, blogs, and the like. Once you find something that is more than just worth your time, you can usually tag it with a RSS feed and transfer it to your favourite reader. There, you will receive all future posts on that XML-page (so it depends on whether you subscribe to "news" from a big site, e.g. New York Times, which would make some hundred articles per day, or you subscribe to a bloggers page, who normally wouldn't bother you with more than one or two articles a day.


I don't really see the problem posted in the article in "Süddeutsche Zeitung".
As I said before, I prefer quality articles to mere sentimental blog posts. However,

1.) there is a good number of professional journalists already writing blogs, and

2.) many of the non-professional bloggers are writing about specific topics that sometimes the media are not covering in any sufficient way, or - they are biased in their writing.

Some examples:

I am looking for information about democracy in China, human rights and so on, you know.
I would not go looking for it in the German media. Rather, I would go to open democracy or some other online forum, where there are intellectuals writing about things they know about. Take Li Datong and Lung Ying-tai for an example. Li is one of the most famed Chinese critical journalists, and he got to online blogging only because he was forced to, since he wasn't allowed the same critical attitude when writing for a newspaper in China.
But he has insight, and he is a professional.
If I were to look for information on the situation in Taiwan, I'd turn to blogging expatriats on the island. They might not be professionals, but they write what they care about, plus they more often than not have studied it. If one were only following the news home, one would gain very biased information on the topic, since most journalists are writing from Peking or care about Taiwan little if at all. From my own experience, German media unquestioningly broadcast Peking standpoints, Taiwan being renegade province, or KMT-points, and obviously part of it is not based on data. You can read more about it here.


"Quality" mass media is not always right, especially when they talk about happenings far from home.
Blogging, however, is a very basis-democratic form of organisation, where like-minded people are given a good opportunity to meet and exchange ideas. Thus, we can more easily build interest movements and exchange information. It is part of a development that Dan Tapscott calls "wikinomics", open sharing and developing through internetworks.
There is a point in just how verified the information is. On the internet, nothing can be taken for granted. However, it must be possible, to come as close to a verification as it can get. Surely, this will be so when most of the "hidden" information (that you cannot reach freely on the internet as of yet) is revealed and open to access for everyone. Then it depends on people and their willingness to blindly accept or spend more time looking for data.


I appreciate most intellectual newspapers publish their content online. Most of my information I still obtain from the websites of my favourite magazines. "Die Zeit", for instance, has a whole archive on its authors articles that you can read online, as well as publishing some authors weblogs on the homepage. This makes it easy for me to subscribe to my favourite authors' articles. In German, that would be called "vorbildlich".
I admitt, we'd have a huge problem if everyone were like me (although I am buying the printed newspaper, too!). If people stopped buying printed newspapers, then where should the publishing house's money come from? Especially since buying/selling articles online does not work well enough (as the New York Times had to experience).

Apart from online news and political questions, you can gather a lot of scientific knowledge through blogs on the internet. You do find enough information packed well enough for comprehensive understanding without going too much into detail for the lay person.


One crucial point in my opinion lies in the influence that weblogs already exert on their young audience, and this will only increase. They transport information, and thus have the power to shape consciousness. An informative and rhetorically virtuous can have quite an impact on its readers opinion.
This also means responsibility for those writing. We need to thoroughly question where the information we transport originates from.
What will be interesting to see is how blogs in China will shape consciousness of the country's young. When our generation grows into power, will there already be democratic change? If so, to a great deal this would be thanks to some brave minds continueing blogging on alternatives to the authoritarian regime.