Newspaper columns

Not with a bang but a whimper

BERLIN – So Hitler was called to lurk among us. And never showed. Not even in Germany.

This regarding Kony 2012, the strange and shrinking campaign that in its posters — now hung virtually nowhere — features Hitler idling behind warlord Joseph Kony and Osama bin Laden.

The square-moustached megalomaniac has made a bigger splash online. On YouTube, an impersonator of the führer is enraged over the world’s apparent inaction against Kony. “Get my laptop,” he tells his generals, with English subtitles, in this satirical video with a million views.

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Waiting and watching on the Arab Spring

KAMPALA, UGANDA – The times, they are a changin.’ Maybe. Sort of. Well, we live in hope, anyway.

I think of it while on Skype with Walid al Saqaf. We’re talking to catch up, about Yemen and censorship and technology and other things.

Walid is a Yemeni journalist who has been noted in this space in the past. We were colleagues in Sana’a while Walid was publisher and editor-in-chief of the Yemen Times. I worked at his side.

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Konymania: this is not Uganda’s reality

LONDON — The world is getting faster. And stranger. Have you noticed?

This is what I know. I think. I mean, sometimes it’s hard to know what we know. Take Joseph Kony. He’s someone who, thanks to social media, you likely know.

I’m betting you know Kony is that Ugandan warlord with a strangely genteel face, that he’s abducted thousands of Ugandan boys and stole their souls when he made them into so-called soldiers.

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