The Weekly Sneak: Free Speech, I Think...

You ever fall into a deeply metaphorical mood? When connections between disparate things somehow make sense and then you want to explore them and then you write an article and hit send and then you realize that maybe it was a bit (a lot) weird and why can't you just be normal for goodness sakes? Yeah? No? 

Guys, even I am not entirely sure this one worked. But it was the one that wanted to come out, so. 

"I learned a valuable lesson from Donald Trump recently, a lesson about freedom of speech. It was a complex one, based on contradiction. There is footage online shot by the alternative news channel Young Turks of him at one of his rallies, spouting the most chilling hate-speech towards his detractors. He spends quite a bit of time whipping up a mob frenzy to the point where journalists and various people get evicted from the premises with increasing use of force. He uses the terms 'they' and 'us' with a dangerous recklessness.

There he stands waving his arms and I realized that one day in a class about totalitarianism, this footage will come up. He might be crazier than a geriatric african despot, but he has the right to share that insanity with his fellow Americans, because one of the fundamental things that make this illogical man possible in America in 2016 is their reverence for freedom of speech.

It is a distinct pleasure to be able to welcome The EastAfrican back to Tanzania in her physical form after an absence of one year. Regimes have changed and so have ministers et cetera so there is no need to revisit old grievances. However this triumph has been somewhat dimmed by the concurrent banning of another newspaper, Mawio, over charges of seditious content. Here we go again with the contradictions."