Getting a mild dose of tear gas tonight was the least of my worries.
As the Métro train was approaching Opéra station, the driver announced that there would be a little "smoke in the tunnel. Just don't panic, please. The train won't stop at Opéra."
But it certainly wasn't just "smoke."
I've no idea who was being gassed above ground and I'm too tired to care tonight.
Far more importantly, my friends' most dire forecasts about Ivory Coast appear to have been right. I don't know about the other agency copy on the Net, but the stuff from the Factory -- 'I. Coast peace in shambles after deadly protests' (AFP/Yahoo) -- couldn't be filed from the office because our people were unable even to get to the place in that part of Abidjan.
What happened today is the kind of insanity -- or, rather, deliberately orchestrated mayhem on the part of a head of state -- that makes people want to stop reading about Africa.
"Meanwhile, in the midst of the bloodshed, international radio stations including France's RFI and BBC's Africa service, went off the air, just as they had done when rebels rose up in September 2002 against [President Laurent] Gbagbo."
That paragraph fairly near the bottom of the story speaks volumes.
One of the obvious ways in which a power maniac like Gbagbo can really scare the hell out of his people and set the panic and rumour mills going is to deprive them of the news from abroad about what's really happening at home.
This particular piece of shit, during all his years in opposition, billed himself a socialist! A man of the people...
After tomorrow, I think I'm going to avoid the news sites for a week, unless I want to be consumed by guilt for taking those long-awaited days off when I know staffing's short at work. I'd forgotten until tonight, but it was in part an inability to let go of a bad, breaking story -- and repeating that experience over and over again -- which led to the onset of the Condition last year.
And I called last night's entry 'Avoidance therapy'?
10:31:32 PM link 
|
|
postbox