Pink News: Satire Dies While Fisting Itself

Mr Leather explains outreach visit to Uganda http://t.co/Tf5ga1jkqm pic.twitter.com/jPACNst9RR

— PinkNews (@pinknews) September 15, 2015

I give up.

The Observer: Out Of Africa

The Ugandan example shows how poorly handled interventions can have unintended consequences. In 2011, Mr Cameron threatened Uganda with cuts to international aid as a result of political support for a law to recriminalise homosexuality. Since the law was passed in 2014, many western nations, including the US and the Netherlands, have indeed cut aid to Uganda. Many African gay rights activists have criticised such cuts as playing into the hands of leaders who have used an anti-gay agenda to build popular support, allowing them to hold LGBTI groups up as scapegoats. It has enabled politicians to make the debate one of national sovereignty in the face of western imperialism. While Uganda’s supreme court has since overturned the law on a technicality, the government is planning on introducing another, more draconian law.

Of course western governments should publicly condemn the flouting of basic human rights. But withholding aid can be dangerously counter-productive and risks charges of hypocrisy when different approaches are taken with different countries. Saudi Arabia takes one of the harshest approaches to homosexuality in the world, but there is no suggestion that this has had any impact on its relations with the US, for instance...

The truth is western governments have been reluctant to invest in local gay rights advocacy and community-led programmes aimed at fostering dialogue and tolerance. If we are serious about promoting international gay rights, this must change. This must be seen as an agenda led by African activists, championing African, not western, liberal values. Public condemnation – while relatively easy– will, by itself, achieve little.

The Observer editorial.

Sensible stuff.

Though knee-jerk neo-colonialist attitudes are still depressingly popular.

PS The story that David Cameron threatened to cut aid to Uganda and other African countries over anti-gay legislation is - though widely repeated - a somewhat twisted version of the truth originating in the Daily Mail.

Uganda: No, Thank Us!

It appears it's literally inconceivable to the likes of Pink News and Gay Star News that this may have had little or indeed nothing to do with the interventions of some Great White Western Saviours.

Meanwhile a Pink News reader comments...

Does Pink News have a policy on racist readers' comments being published, one wonders?

Do you think how the gay media report stories about African countries encourages these?

Uganda: Pointless Gesture Draws Widespread Praise

In what's been widely hailed as the most patronising and pointless gay 'protest' since the last one, a wealthy American businessman has planted a rainbow flag at the summit of the highest mountain in Uganda, Pink Star News can reveal.

I'll write that again while its full import sinks in; he planted a rainbow flag on top of a mountain in Uganda!

Neal Gottlieb, a US ice cream manufacturer, claimed he was protesting a draconian new anti-gay bill.

Apolitical gay journalists around the world have been left shrieking with glee and shaking with excitement like so many big wobbly pink blancmanges.

Mr Gottlieb was seemingly unaware of the appalling imperialist symbolism of a wealthy white man planting flags on African territory, and declaring; “Your country’s highest point is no longer its soil, its snow or a summit marker, but rather a gay pride flag waving brilliantly."

On the top of MOUNT STANLEY!

Or of how this self-publicity stunt could be counter-productive, and hurt gay Ugandans struggle.

Nor of the existence of homophobic laws in the USA that he could actually hope to affect change.

As no-one could possibly know this silly act had happened, Gottlieb, wrote an open letter to Uganda's president Yoweri Museveni, which he sent out to the gay media in a press release, thoughtfully attaching a photo of himself and a plug for his ice cream company.

Because nothing shows how much you care about the fate of LGBT people in Africa like PR stunts telling people to buy your ice cream.

Thought For The Day: Mark Twain

'There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.'

Maybe when we criticise and slate, say, Russia or Uganda for being 'backwards', 'uncivilised' etc, it is just to feel smug, while being politely racist, and let ourselves off the hook?

Maybe that's how hegemony works?

Fagburn loves Mark Twain so much....

Uganda: Help

Museveni publicly waffled over the bill and was aware of its diplomatic repercussions, telling parliament to "also take into account our foreign policy interests." In private, he admitted that homosexuality had always existed in Africa, even as he secretly funded groups that whipped up homophobia. As one Western ambassador said of the president, "He may be mad, but he's not stupid."

But as foreign LGBT activists and western governments pushed to have the bill killed, it became the one Ugandan story making headlines, raising its stakes and transforming what was a potentially popular law into Museveni's political trump card. Distressingly, Ugandans began blaming their gay brothers and sisters for the negative coverage, thereby pushing the hand of the bill's supporters in parliament.

Should activists and Western governments not have decisively lent their support to the beleaguered LGBT community in Uganda? Of course not. But outsiders struggled to grasp that their rancor over the law was inconsistent with a long silence during Museveni's increasingly dictatorial 28-year rule and his flagrant corruption, disregard for human rights and suppression of opposition parties, problems that made life difficult for all Ugandans. None of those issues presented the viral-friendly morality play of an apartheid-esque law...

Ultimately, as Jocelyn Edwards writes, it was the gay bill and Museveni's cynical ploy to "distract from an acute governance deficit in the nation" and build a "flimsy smoke screen for Uganda's more pressing problems" that made headlines.

How LGBT Activists Accidentally Helped Pass Uganda's Anti-Gay Laws, Samuel Oakford, PolicyMic.

By intervening in the heavy-handed way they have done, western governments have helped turn the issue into more than a vote winner for Mr Museveni; he has broadened the row into a nationalist cause, with Europe and the US laying themselves open to the charge of hypocritical bullies.

Not for the first time donors have been outsmarted by a wily politician whose grasp of African geopolitics is far more acute than theirs. Having failed as the world’s policeman, the west needs to think before becoming a self-appointed monitor of Africa’s morality.

The West Lays Itself A Trap Over Uganda’s Anti-Gay Laws: Donors should have shown a better grasp of local politics, Michael Holman Finacial Times.

See also 'Rescuing' gay people from Africa is no answer to homophobic laws - An internet fundraising campaign to help LGBTI people ‘escape’ to the west is at best both palliative and patronising, Melanie Judge, The Guardian.

First Do No Harm.

PS And here's Scott Long on the the latest misreporting of a 'gay' news story about Iran by the American right.

Uganda: Dear David Aarnovitch Et Al, Please Read This!

The question of cutting Donor AID has arisen. Our position on this is very clear. We do not support General Aid Cuts to Uganda. We do not want the people of Uganda to suffer because of the unfortunate Political choices of our government. However, we support Strategic Aid Cuts to specific sectors, such as the Dutch Government’s decision to withdraw funding from the Justice Sector. We encourage urgent review of Aid to organizations and government institutions that have failed to demonstrate respect for Human Rights and those that have been actively supporting this bill. We DO NOT support cuts in support to NGO’s and other civil society institutions that offer life saving health services or other important social services to the People of Uganda.

Updated guidelines on how National, International and Regional partners can support Ugandan LGBTI Persons and their allies

Thanks as ever to Scott Long. x

FT: Here Is The Real News...

In 1886, King Mwanga II in what is now Uganda burnt to death Christian missionaries who opposed his homosexual predilection for page boys.

So when Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni this week signed a new anti-gay bill in the face of widespread condemnation by the international community, his argument that homosexuality is an un-African western import was undermined by his country's history.

President Museveni, pictured recently.

The law bans homosexual activity and stipulates life imprisonment for those found guilty of same-sex marriage and or ‘aggravated’ homosexuality, including sex with a minor or someone disabled, but stops short of the death sentence proposed in earlier drafts.

The legislation may reflect the country’s conservative social mores but says more about the way homosexuality has been exploited by the domestic interest groups for political gain. Championing the bill has helped Mr Museveni see off challengers for the leadership of his National Resistance Movement party, halt wider political opposition and divert attention from the failings of his government.

But his decision could also threaten Uganda’s economy. The World Bank has delayed a $90m loan, the US is reviewing its $485m relationship and a number of other countries are pledging to cut at least some of their aid. The country’s currency dropped by 2 per cent in the days after the bill was signed.

“I don’t think deep down in his heart he intended to sign the bill but it was a trade-off because the anti-gay lobby had become so strong,” said Kikonyogo Kivumbi, executive director of the Uganda Health and Science Press Association, gay rights group. “The NRM said: ‘Fine we are going to allow you to stand unopposed at the party election, but then we also want you to sign this’.”

Mr Kivumbi pointed out that the bill is the latest example of Ugandan governments making scapegoats of vulnerable minority groups. He pointed to Idi Amin’s accusations that Indians were wrecking the economy in the 1970s, and his successor Milton Obote running Rwandans out of the country in the 1980s. Now homosexuals are paying the price for a government regularly mired in corruption scandals, he said.

Although Mr Museveni avoided signing the legislation for five years, analysts say that international pressure helped push him into approving a watered-down version of the bill.

Mr Museveni’s spokesman said “western pressure and provocation” pressed the president into signing; Mr Museveni himself said the only reason he approved the bill was because of “arrogant and careless Western groups”, whom he said “carelessly handle other issues concerning Africa”.

The Ugandan leader has shown himself to be adept at reframing domestic political crisis as a populist tussle between Africa and the west. Last year, he referred to the International Criminal Court as a vengeful “blackmail” tool by western backers intent on installing African leaders of its choosing. He helped sponsor an African Union motion against the court that eventually caused a split at the UN Security Council.

Ugandan analysts say the threatening position adopted by the US – which labelled the original version of the bill, that included the death penalty, so ‘odious’ that Washington would reconsider its support for the country – not only made it impossible for Mr Museveni not to sign into law, but also gave him the chance to adopt an anti-western position and score political points at home.

The country may be able to withstand the economic fallout of the decision. Uganda is due to start pumping oil in 2016 and maintains it can do without aid. The World Bank and other western donors often redirect aid rather than stopping it altogether, as in the case of Rwanda, which was publicly accused by the UN of creating and supplying a proxy rebel group in neighbouring Congo for its own ends. Moreover, Uganda is a key security ally in the region, donating troops for a UN-backed force against Islamist jihadists in Somalia.

“When the US issued these statements filled with threats they hardened positions – he [Mr Museveni] was forced by Obama,” said Ugandan commentator Andrew Mwenda, who pointed out quiet diplomacy would have been more effective in fighting the legislation. “Because of colonialism we become very sensitive when western countries issue instructions on what we should do.”

By Katrina Manson in Nairobi, Financial Times.

Ask your average political nerd to guess Noam Chomsky’s favourite newspaper and few would tender the Financial Times. But the emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at MIT, revered the world over by left-wing intellectuals and social activists, believes the pink ‘un is the only global newspaper “that tells the truth”.

High quality global journalism requires investment.

Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2013/02/15/bb-interviews-noam-chomsky/#ixzz2ugXvTJpO

Fuck that.

You should pay me.

And here's The Economist on why Diplomatic Pressure Did Not Stop An Absurd Law. 

Uganda: Aid

Uganda shrugged off Thursday foreign aid cuts and international criticism of its tough new anti-gay law, saying it could do without Western aid.

"The West can keep their 'aid' to Uganda over homos, we shall still develop without it," government spokesman Ofwono Opondo said in a message on Twitter...

Telegraph.

Something suggests Ofwono Opondo's twitter account may be made up.

Just a hunch...

David Aaronovitch: If I Were Gay

A sub-header exposes the rather small flaw in David Aaronovitch's argument in his article in The Times.

Astonishing.

But then David thinks beastly 'backwards' foreign types can be 'civilised' by US and UK bombs.

This unthinkpiece is a reply to the editor of Think Africa Press, David Schneider's call for Western countries not to cut aid, and consider the consequences of all their actions for LGBT Ugandans.

A view supported by Frank Mugisha the director of Sexual Minorities Uganda. 

Still I bet they enjoy having an arrogant straight white Orientalist westerner like Mr Aaronovitch telling them what he thinks is best for them.

PS Loving that If I were gay... 30-day trial only £1 juxtapostion. 

Uganda: What We In The West Can Do

@Fagburn sanctions on politicians pushing the law
— Dr. Frank Mugisha (@frankmugisha) February 26, 2014

Someone asked; 'What would you do Fagburn?'

So I thought I'd ask Dr Frank Mugisha, director of Sexual Minorities Uganda.

PS Josh Scheinert on Slate; How Americans Can Help African Gays Targeted By Anti-LGBTQ Laws.

The Independent: Dumb Letter Of The Day

Apart from the fact this could be a counter-productive gesture, and Museveni would just say 'Bring it on!', this could prove difficult as the UK does not currently give the Ugandan government any aid.

“We ended all budget support payments to the Ugandan government last year. The UK strongly opposes all discrimination on any grounds and Justine Greening has been clear that governments receiving UK aid need to meet a specific set of principles, including human rights.”

Department of International Development statement, quoted in Pink News.

Direct aid was suspended due to fraud and misuse of funds in late 2012, not because of The Gays, btw. 

Looks like the 'debate' about gay rights in Uganda could be as ill-informed as the one about Russia.

PS Would cutting aid to Uganda achieve anything? Gaz Morris, Vada magazine.

@dex_mon I don't support aid cuts , unlike you I don't wanna create new victims
— Dr. Frank Mugisha (@frankmugisha) February 25, 2014

Dr Frank Mugisha is director of Sexual Minorities Uganda.

And as with Russia, it seems that the last people some in the West will listen to are LGBT Ugandans themselves...

Africa: First Do No Harm

Governments have always had a grubby habit of getting involved in their citizens' sex lives. But it is relatively new to see sexuality as part of foreign policy. In the past few months we have watched the peculiar spectacle of Russia and the United States transposing their geopolitical antagonisms onto a struggle over gay rights in Russia. Now, Ugandan leaders are using homophobia to pursue anti-imperialist politics, while Western leaders are painting their criticism of this as indicative of their concern for human rights. But neither posture is genuine. There are two truths in this sad tale: mutual hypocrisy and the victimisation of Uganda's LGBTQ community...

David Schneider, Independent Voices.

But sit back and watch as certain gay media and 'campaigners' now forget all about 'uncivilised' Russia, and start obsessing over 'backwards' Africa...
These people don't play by our rules! etc etc.
Let's see how many pro-gay progressive voices from Africa are quoted.
Oh, and President Museveni doesn't give a hoot if you sign a silly online petition...

Presumably in the interest of balance, Independent Voices have also published this daft piece of knee-jerkery; LGBT Ugandans are facing a crisis - what action will the UK take?

See also: Has Britain's promotion of gay rights in Africa backfired? Telegraph blogs.

What's also worrying are the comments from Mr Museveni's spokesman when he made the announcement this morning [Monday]. The president, he disclosed, did not opt to quietly sign the bill over the weekend, while the world was distracted by the revolution in Ukraine. Instead, he wanted "the full witness of the international media to demonstrate Uganda's independence in the face of Western pressure and provocation".

In other words, this is no longer just about gay rights, in Mr Museveni's view, but about the West lecturing an African country on how to run its internal affairs, in this case on a matter of sensitive sexual morality...

The new issue of Uganda's Red Pepper

PS African LGBT campaigners queue up to condemn Peter Tatchell's interventions as dishonest, unhelpful, patronising, counter-productive... Follow @TatchellWatch

Africa: More Homophobic Than Antarctica

Simon Lokodo cannot imagine kissing a man. "I think I shall die," he said last week. "I would not exist. It is inhuman. I would be mad. Just imagine eating your faeces."

Lokodo is "ethics and integrity" minister in Uganda and a champion of the country's swingeing anti-homosexuality bill, which looked set to become law on Sunday until President Yoweri Museveni halted it, pending scientific advice. The delay was a small victory for activists dismayed a week ago when Museveni insisted that he would approve the legislation. That news prompted Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, to tweet: "In name of Africa culture Uganda Pres will sign anti-gay law pushed by US evangelists toughening British colonial ban."

In 140 characters, Roth encapsulated a broad sweep of history and geography and one of the central paradoxes of Africa's new war on gay and lesbian people. It is a war marked by political opportunism, biblical fundamentalism and a clash between cultural relativism and universal human rights. But it is also a measure of conservatives' anxiety that every day more and more African homosexuals are coming out and losing their fear. Western liberals eager to see the best in Africa must face an inconvenient truth: this is the most homophobic continent on Earth. Same-sex relations are illegal in 36 of Africa's 55 countries, according to Amnesty International, and punishable by death in some states. Now a fresh crackdown is under way.

David Smith, the Observer's Africa correspondent.

A lengthy, thoughtful article.

Though its main thrust - that African homophobia is a legacy of Western colonialism, that's now being stirred up by American evangelical Christians - is simplistic and has become a media trope/truism.
For they are but passive agents, and all they have was given by us?

Further, it seems odd, cruelly ironic and rather insulting, that David Smith does not interview any LGBT Africans.

They do exist, and are campaigning in Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda... *

Why are they not allowed a voice, why can they not speak for themselves?

Smith does however talk to that well-known self-appointed expert on Africa, and indeed on all things gay, Peter Tatchell.

It seems the colonial mindset still has quite a hold.

'The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country's cultural standards' - Frantz Fanon.

Saint Peter has started talking up his affiliations with the UK-based African LGBTI Out & Proud Diamond Group. 
If so, why didn't he tell The Observer to talk to from someone from there?
Someone who knows what it's like to be black and African now.
Unless he just uses them for self-promoting photo-opportunities?

* Sexual Minorities Uganda. 

Picture Of The Day: Kenyans For Ugandans

A masked Kenyan supporter of the LGBT community holds a condom as he joins others in protest against Uganda's anti-gay bill in front of the Ugandan High Commission in Nairobi, Kenya. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is to decide before 16 February whether or not to enact the proposed anti-gay law, which would mean homosexuals in Uganda would face life imprisonment.

Pictures Of The Day, Telegraph. 

Africa: Another Meaningless Map

BBC News.

Illustrating an article about Uganda and Nigeria.

"Boo! Africans! They don't play by our rules..." etc etc.

As ever - the question about the other countries is; how often, if ever, are the laws actually enforced?

The Guardian's 'DATABLOG' recently ran something of a classic of this meaningless kind. 

"Hold me while I weep for the misery of the gay world!" etc etc.

Lesbians and gay men are brutally oppressed all around the world, but printing charts about what the law says is patronising, lazy and tells us nothing.

The world's gay media set off fireworks last week as Northern Cyprus became the last European country to legalise consensual gay sex. 

Of course decriminalisation means something beyond a mere change in the law, but was anyone recently actually arrested for this?

Uganda: Googling Gay Porn?

Last year, Google published statistics about the places in the world where their search engine was most used to find gay porn sites. The results were extraordinary. According to its figures, Uganda is third on the list of counties where "man fucking man" is most searched for, behind Kenya and Pakistan, both of which are countries where homosexuality is illegal. These figures also demonstrate a high degree of correlation between places of conservative religious practice and internet searches for gay porn...

The Guardian.

But who would Google the bizarre term "man fucking man"?

If you actually Googled the more obvious "gay porn" the world looks rather different.

And less than 7% of Ugandans have internet access anyway.

Oh, and people speak 40 other languages apart from English.

So what is your point?

Uganda: Wealthy White Man Arrested!

Queerty.

All gay media are going big with this, but I thought Queerty should be highlighted as it's not-British, and can't claim the "local man dies in the Somme" defence.
BBC News mention incidentally; "Mr Randall was charged along with a Ugandan man, who has denied a more serious charge of carrying out "acts of gross indecency" which could see him jailed for up to seven years if found guilty."
Randall, if he is to be believed, could face only two years.

But the Ugandan is some nameless poor African young man, and not a rich white westerner, so obviously he doesn't matter...

Stephen Fry's Out There: Actually Quite Good, Perversely

There are people who are so rabidly homophobic, and I just find that fascinating - it's as if you met someone who has absolutely spent all their life trying to get rid of red telephones. You'd go 'What?' You wouldn't understand it. Why would you so bother to attack a group of people who really do them no harm.
This is a series about gay people and the trouble people have accepting them...

While Elton and David have done much to encourage a change in attitudes to gay people here, I'm keen to know more about what it means to be gay elsewhere in the world...

Okay.
I have to admit I thought I'd hate this and would end up screaming at the wind about how England's leading poshgay "national treasure" was saying how it had all gone wrong since we lost the colonies, but no.
This was pretty good, actually.
It wasn't aimed at cynical old pooves like me, anyway, but more at members of the so-called heterosexual community in middle England - it was TV Pick Of The Day in the Express - and it did that well.
It was a nice BBC2 programme, for Chomsky's sake, you can't expect Democracy Now!
Although bookended with Fry talking to gay celebrity zillionaires married with kids etc in Windsor and Hollywood - who are clearly livin' the Western dream LGBT Africans must aspire to, as indeed must we all - it did stress our Christian colonial legacy when talking about Uganda ("We brought you a bible...").
Further; "Perversely the philosophy that underpins this twisted idea comes from the land that gave birth to gay liberation."
America riddled with homophobia shock!
Let's get an e-petition going and boycott Disneyland.
Even when talking about Iran, Stephen Fry at least implied he agreed it was a propaganda fiction that men are hanged "just for being gay".
If you get killed "just for being gay" in Iran they're not doing a very good job of it.
Remember when the media was filled with horror stories about anti-gay atrocities in Iran?
Most were made-up, but now forgotten, as Russia has become our big "illiberal" bogeyman again.
Funny that.
He often came across as a patronising public school housemaster scoffing at peoples' "silliness".
And, perversely, it was Fry who seemed to be the person who seemed most obsessed with anal sex.
He kept bringing it up - stressing he'd never done it - and saying being gay is all about love.
But gay men around the world tend to get arrested for sodomy, not sending valentine's cards.
Spoiler alert! The coming out of the "ex-gay" as an ex-ex gay was a stroke of televisual genius.
Fagburn also liked Stephen Fry reading out the Ugandan newspaper headline; 'How Bum-Shafting Shattered My Whopper'.
Wouldn't it be scary if people in a country that isn't "backwards" or "uncivilised" (© Stephen Fry) like ours believed every silly thing they read about The Gays in the papers... bad or good.

Available on BBC iPlayer - who warn 'Contains upsetting scenes', and put it under a parental guidance lock!
Hold me now while I weep for the world...

Some famous rich gay men, pictured recently, with babies option

For its faults, Hollywood is a pretty accurate reflection of the way most of the world is looking... and the fact that they can have actors who are openly gay, openly camply gay, is not something you should thank and congratulate Hollywood for, you thank and congratulate the culture that Hollywood recognises, accepts things like that.
Hollywood is the thermometer that is thrust up the anus of the world's sensibility.
Things do move forward.
It's three steps forwards, two steps back, but in the end it is always progress, people learn.

Uganda: Great Lies Of Our Time

Be interesting to talk to this fellow when he gets back to the UK and ask him if he made all this up.
First rule of Fagburn: The further away something happens, the less likely it is to be true.
Second rule: Never trust a posh twat.