HOW THE GUARDIAN CHEATS AFRICA: MARTIN KETTLE ANALYSES GORDON BROWN’S SPEECH TO THE US CONGRESS ON 3/4/09.

March 5, 2009

WASHERA_2



I know Gordon Brown makes good speeches and it was no different when he addressed the US congress on Thursday. Martin Kettle of the Guardian tried to give it his own spin, most of which I had no problem with. All politicians do try to appease their audience in one form or other.



The speech covered the strong ties between America and Britain/Europe, in the process bestowing accolades on President Barack Obama and paying tribute to an old guard, Senator Edward Kennedy, with an honorary knighthood from the Queen.



Gordon Brown covered the Iran-Iraq issue, his belief for a viable Palestinian state and most importantly concentrated on what he called “new priorities for our new times.” He talked about the lesson he learned from his minister father:



“ ..That wealth must help more than the wealthy, good fortune must serve more than the fortunate and riches must enrich not just some of us, but all of us.”



With this, he delves into the politically important part of his speech, that the US political leaders have to exercise global responsibility, not just look after their own voters. He goes on to explain how economic crisis does not stop at the water’s edge, but ripples across the world, hence the need for global solutions for the crisis.



His plea for US leadership to achieve tougher new targets on climate change and investing on environmental technology to end the dictatorship of oil got a standing ovation. He was also appealing for President Obama to give global leadership at the London G20 Summit next month. He believed trade to be the engine of prosperity and educating our children throughout the world as a major priority.



I was following Mr. Martin Kettle’s analyses until I came to the speech Mr. Brown makes regarding Africa, which starts off by saying, “And let us not forget the poorest.”



Except, Mr. Martin Kettle, the distinguished commentator, the mighty mouth piece of the Guardian, decides to remove the entire speech and replace it with a half-sentence created only to precede the next sentence in Mr. Brown’s eloquent speech. I kid you not! He added (sic) “As we strive to spread the values of peace, political liberty, and the hope of better lives across the world, perhaps...” and here he marries it with the actual speech, “the greatest gift our generation could give to the future, …” and continues without missing a beat. Did he receive a different version of the speech or is he at liberty to treat Africa just like his old colonial days? I was flabbergasted at his audacity to leave out the entire speech made by Mr. Brown on Africa. I am forced to bring that part of the speech, left out by Mr. Kettle, in its entirety and will leave the judgment to the reader.



“In the Rwandan Museum of genocide, there is a memorial to the countless children who were among those murdered in the massacres in Rwanda.



And there is a portrait of a child, David. The words beneath him are brief yet they weigh on me heavily.



It says name David, age 10, favourite sport football, enjoyed making people laugh, dream to become a doctor, cause of death tortured to death, last words - the UN will come for us.



But we never did. That David believed the best of us, that he was wrong is to our eternal discredit.



We tend to think of a day of judgment as a moment to come. But our faith tells us, as a writer says, that judgment is more than that.



It is a summary court in perpetual session and when I visit those bare, rundown yet teeming classrooms across Africa, they are full of children, like our children, desperate to learn.



But because we have been unable as a world to keep our promises to help, more and more children are being lured to expensively funded madrassas teaching innocent children to hate us.



So for our security and our children’s' security and their children’s' future, (and here the above paragraph comes to a conclusion) the greatest gift our generation could give to the future, the gift of America and Britain to the world could be, for every child in every country of the world, the chance millions do not have today; the chance to go to school.”



I thought the British Prime Minister made an impassioned speech to ask the world leaders to think globally in their deliberations. We applaud him for that and we will continue our struggle to become equal partners in educating all people to retool and reskill to invest and invent our way out of the downturn. We refuse to be deleted or excluded by the likes of the Guardian’s Martin Kettle.