He wasn't complaining. He was cogently critiquing.

I'm reading "Donald Trump’s latest Nobel peace prize effort? DRC and Rwanda/Foreign ministers from the feuding east African nations joined the president on Friday after he complained last week that he would not receive an award" (London Times).

What a misreading! Trump is vindicated when he doesn't win the prize, especially as he racks up more achievements.

And headlines like that one also vindicate him, by the way.

How about an article that's not about his imagined effort to win the prize but on his ostensible effort to end a war? Isn't "war" the right word? Or does the London Times regard wars between African countries as "feuding"?

As Trump described it: 

"The Trump administration is planning to transport a group of immigrants to Libya on a U.S. military plane..."

"The nationalities of the migrants were not immediately clear.... The country is racked with conflict, and human rights groups have called conditions in its network of migrant detention centers 'horrific' and 'deplorable.' The Libya operation falls in line with the Trump administration’s effort to not only deter migrants from trying to enter the country illegally but also to send a strong message to those in the country illegally that they can be deported to countries where they could face brutal conditions.... A major transit point for Europe-bound migrants, Libya operates numerous detention facilities for refugees and migrants. Amnesty International branded those sites 'horrific' and 'a hellscape'...."

The NYT reports.

Meanwhile: "Trump offers illegal immigrants $1,000 to 'self-deport'" (BBC): "The scheme relies on migrants utilising the CBP Home app, which can be used to confirm that person's return to their home country...." So, part of the incentive to self-deport is that you get to go to your home country. The threat of removal to Libya (or Rwanda) is powerful. 

"Across Africa, daily shipments of recycled clothing, sent largely from the US, UK and Canada, fuel a multimillion-dollar informal industry that employs thousands of local retailers..."

"... who turn a profit reselling the items..... Rwanda has made huge economic progress in the past 25 years. But officials argue that the ubiquity of recycled apparel – known as chagua – has stifled the growth of its nascent textile industry and has dented national pride. 'The objective is to see many more companies produce clothes here in Rwanda,' says Telesphore Mugwiza, an official at Rwanda’s ministry of trade and industry. 'It is also about protecting our people in terms of hygiene. If Rwanda produces its own clothes, our people won’t have to wear T-shirts or jeans used by someone else. People need to shift to [this] kind of mindset.... People will shift from secondhand to new clothes. What will change is just the type of product but not the business.'"

From "'It's about our dignity': vintage clothing ban in Rwanda sparks US trade dispute/Secondhand garments are stifling the country’s fashion industry, officials say, but the ban has dismayed local traders – and reportedly imperils 40,000 US jobs" (in The Guardian).

"The Masked Neocolonialist."

"Most of my colleagues remained under house arrest while Pamela (the other uninfected mzungu) and I traveled north to see some mountain gorillas. In Muhanga, a sound truck cruised the streets announcing that Americans had brought disease, and to keep away from us. When we walked through the streets, children covered their noses and mouths and turned away. The Rwandan newspaper New Times had an article about us."

Richard's in Rwanda.

Post #1:

The completely ordinary, and the worldwide problems of economics, coexist here with the unimaginable. Will I be able imagine it after I've heard it? If so, there's the danger of it becoming ordinary: "Oh yes, you told me that story before." A defense mechanism to keep it at safe distance.

Meanwhile, there's fun!...

Fifteen more nights under a moquito net, in a shared hot room where no mosquitoes are seen. Playing with 5-year-old Gentil, who can count to 1,000 in English and taught me how to fold a paper boat and blow bubbles.

Post #2:

... Five-year-old Gentil is counting teabags in English before he gets ready for school; Costa is bouncing baby Queen on his lap...

The floors have been mopped and the front and back patios dusted, as on every morning. Yesterday my clothes were not only wash[ed] by hand but ironed, an experience most of them had never had before....

Over the past couple of days we've been to two different genocide memorials...

It's hard to imagine a nation that is more constructively aware of its problems or facing them more honestly and progressively.... To me it appears that if the average American were as aware of our nation's problems, and as committed to solving them, as the average Rwandan is for Rwanda, in a decade and a half our inner-city schools would be graduating masses of literate, ambitious, responsible adolescents, the problems of gang violence and drugs would disappear, our health care system would care for all Americans equally, and our government would mobilize a nationwide environmental cleanup and infrastructural upgrade. In other words, we would be the nation we ought to be. A much, much poorer nation than ours is accomplishing equivalent goals. We could even do it without the need for genocide memorials.