Governance

At around 0700 local time in Bamako, Mali, on Friday, 20 November 2015, ten armed men, some driving in a black Toyota 4 x 4 SUV, entered Bamako's poshest hotel, the Radisson Blu.

Two weeks ago police shot and killed an individual at Pacific Wildcat Resources tantalum mine in central Mozambique. The incident received some attention in Canada because community members responded by seizing the Vancouver-based company’s mine site and setting some equipment ablaze.

I was in the midst of a lovely concert at the Stade Mamadou Konate organized and sponsored by Orange (a French telecom provider) here in one of France’s former colonies, Mali, when the news of the Paris attacks surfaced.

A four-year-old girl raped by her uncle; a 10-year-old boy beaten to death by his father; yet another heart wrenching story of abuse. No day passes without similar stories in the media.

The 13 November bombings and shootings in Paris murdered 129 innocent people. Many of them in their twenties and thirties, they happened to be attending a rock concert, eating out in a lively neighbourhood, watching football in a sports bar or just walking by.

I received a message from one of my friends in Lebanon who asked with feigned curiosity why the U.S. media only gave a passing reference to the bombing in Beirut before turning to non-stop coverage of the attacks in Paris.

Civilians in Paris have been killed because of these imperial drives for power, just as tens, hundreds of millions before them have been killed in the past.

I used to hop across the road and bring her home from school.

We would have lunch together.

I enthused her so much about Ghanaian food that on the first occasion she visited Ghana and she was asked by the hotel staff what she wanted for breakfast, she replied: “Fufu and soup!”

The video begins mid-action. A Black man sprawls on the ground. He seems injured. He tries to move but his efforts are slow, labored, slight. There is blood beneath him, fresh and bright against the polished white floor. On the edge of the frame, people move frantically.