“Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.”
The delightful Frank Luntz, in a memo to the US Republican Party, 2003
“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level.”
4th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007
“Few PR offences have been so obvious, so successful and so despicable as the attack on the scientific certainty of climate change.”
Jim Hogg, PR professional,...
Soundtrack for this post: Talk Talk Talk by Wunmi.
By some misfortune, politicians everywhere are suspected of lacking sincerity. This may have something to do with their habit of misleading voters in various ways, thus creating ideal conditions for the cultivation of cynicism.
Congo is no exception. Congolese people love to talk, and Congolese politicians are masters of a flowery rhetoric that would have sounded over-the-top in the Court of Louis XIV. Many seem convinced that if you can say something well, you don’t need to mean what you say. (’Straight talk’ isn’t traditionally a Francophone aspiration anyway, hence the fascination with the blunt delivery of Sarko l’Americain.)
So it is unsurprising that, given the opportunity to discuss peace in the...
It’s always a pleasure to report some good news from this patch, albeit with some obligatory qualifications. The Congolese and Rwandan governments have - once again - agreed to deal with the threat posed by Rwandan armed groups in the DRC, and in particular the mostly-Hutu FDLR.*
Yes, half-a-dozen previous neighbourly agreements and millions of unimpressed citizens and refugees attest to the tiresome political truisms that words are far cheaper than deeds, and promises are only as good as the collective will and capacity to implement them. Nevertheless, people who specialise in monitoring the risk of conflict tend to pay quite close attention to what is said as well as what is done. Words do count for something, and these ones have been negotiated, signed, witnessed and publicly...
I’m sorry about the slowdown in posting since Sunday. It’s not for lack of things to say, but I have some other responsibilities to see to, now that the little matter of survival has been taken care of.
The war of words has begun. Yesterday, in his first unscripted press conference, the President defended his hard-line actions and ruled out any further negotiation with Bemba. You can watch video extracts of this on his website (in French).
Bemba has said he’ll go into exile if his security cannot be guaranteed, and that ‘if they continue to decapitate the opposition, it will be the start of a new dictatorship‘. His party has issued a statement condemning the violence, sharing the pain of affected citizens and worrying about the ongoing arrests of its...
For some reason, lots of people around here feel a strong compulsion to exclaim “Mundele!” when they see a white person walking down the street. In East Africa, the Swahili equivalent is Muzungu; both words mean, simply, ‘white one’.
The thing is, no matter how many times I hear this, I’m always stumped for a suitable response. “Moyindo!” (black!) I could retort, but somehow this doesn’t appeal. If I’m feeling friendly I introduce myself, if I’m not I generally ignore it. (If you have any witty suggestions, preferably in Lingala, please let me know.)
As an experiment, then, I’m opting for the pre-emptive strike. I went to a print shop with an old t-shirt and a few pictures of archetypal mundele John Cleese doing his silly...