This article was originally published at Africa Report on September 13, 2011.
When Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika warned activists, “I will follow you to your hiding place and smoke you out,” the public was startled. But few took their leader’s threats literally.
That was before two lead organisers of July 20 demonstrations saw their properties burn in obvious acts of arson (bringing the total for the year to three). Now, people are asking, is Mutharika making good on his threat?
Shortly after midnight on August 11, a “petrol bomb” sailed through the window of Rev. MacDonald Sembereka’s home. Thankfully, no one was hurt. But the house was gutted by the blaze.
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Three thoughts on the last 24 hours in Benghazi and Cairo
A break from regurgitations of articles I’ve had published elsewhere. Quick thoughts on the September 11-12, 2012, riots at the American embassy in Cairo, Egypt, and the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
1) Despite every media outlet in the world telling me that there’s some low-budget anti-Islam film at the center of these riots, I’m pretty sure that nobody had seen the piece of crap until after it had apparently incited riots. (I’ve also yet to be convinced that the two outbursts of violence were even really related to one another.)
2) Recall that 2005 violence across the Muslim world attributed to the publication of Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed did not occur until months after those images publication, and that those riots were the result of a highly-organized effort of a small group of individuals. (http://bit.ly/NovJa1)
3) We already knew that Mitt Romney is an idiot (but… http://bit.ly/QdjvRK), Hamid Karzai might be a worse US ally than Nouri al-Maliki (http://nyti.ms/PjiT9x), and Glenn Greenwald isn’t quite as smarter than everybody else as he believes (http://bit.ly/UKQYU2).
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