Month: August 2012

African Perspective on Romney

African Perspective on Romney

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

No surprise that Africans don’t like Mitt Romney. But what is surprising is that they take Obama’s reelection as a given. Romney is not considered a serious candidate.

Or possibly Obama is considered invincible, and those of us at home know this is really not the case. But why do Africans think so?

The birther issue reborn a few days ago, Romney’s callous remarks about his ancestors owning slaves as reason he understands black people, and last night’s clumsy if crude endorsement by Clint Eastwood are all the types of news stories that quickly make it into the African press.

And frankly, those Romney snippets don’t portray a serious candidacy but one so far on the fringes it can appeal to only a very small group of people.

That’s, of course, where Africans are wrong, as is much of the world. Americans are credited with superior everything – superior economy, superior entertainment and superior government. But that, too, is wrong. And Romney’s appeal – however limited foreigners might think it – clearly appeals to a large portion of America.

In my opinion, it isn’t an America foreigners can’t know, it’s one they choose not to know.

There’s so much angst in the world right now, the notion that there is not a shining beacon on the hill is just something an African, for instance, would rather not believe.

The South African press in particular has been covering the election campaign quite extensively. The issue of most interest this week got little attention in the American media.

A reporter for Yahoo News, David Chalian, was caught unawares on a live webcast in conjunction with ABC News at the Republican Convention. As Hurricane Isaac approached New Orleans he remarked to a guest at his side, “Feel free to say, ‘They’re not concerned at all. They are happy to have a party with black people drowning.'”

Chalian was immediately fired by Yahoo, and that has stirred widespread disbelief that the American system is so unforgiving of impoliteness, particularly when the impoliteness happens to be true.

In a comment left after a South African report of the incident, ‘Pointman’ summed up all the other many comments that today flood South African newspapers about the story:

“The journo was most probably right. Remember the Republican party’s response to Katrina and the flooding in New Orleans- all those Black people (and whites too) stranded after the inundation and no help anywhere for days.”

“I agree,” then commented ‘Cocolucho.’ “The republicans only seem to care about bible wielding whites and no one else, which is funny cos they are such hypocrites.”

“Most White Americans including those that fired him,” added ‘Tsatsatsa’ “share the very same sentiments.”

“Americans are racist,” declared ‘DJ-Winner.’ “They go as far as calling that country a safety heaven. Safety heaven, my foot.”

‘MommaC’ said, “Shouldn’t have been fired for telling the truth.”

The comments are flooding the South African press, today. They are essentially dismissing the seriousness of people who really still question Obama’s nationality, who take Romney’s remarks about women and ancestors and abortion with hardly a grain of salt, and who would fire a reporter for what he thought was an offline remark which also happened to be true.

They are dismissing the Romney candidacy as no real threat.

Don’t be so sure.

Sheik Aside

Sheik Aside

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Tuesday’s drive-by killing of the jihadist cleric Aboud Rogo in Kenya marks a small if hopeful turning point in the troubled East African coast.

Real evidence will never emerge so we are left to speculation, but blogs, rumors and common sense seem to converge this time: the murder was specifically intended to stoke religious and ethnic violence.

It did at first, but only at first, and the city did not even fire up like Watts in 1965 or Tottenham only a year ago.

This doesn’t mean that the embers remaining aren’t nuclear. But to me it seems a clear indication that Kenya’s invasion of Somalia, the global “War Against Terror,” and Christian/Islamic confrontation has peaked. In a weak and uncertain way, logic tells me things are going better.

Sheik Rogo was a fiery and provocative cleric, openly recruiting young Muslims in his Mombasa madrassa for al-Shabaab. For years he’s been associated with a number of jihadist attacks in East Africa, including the bombing of the American embassy and several high profile attacks on the coast, including the terrible bombing of an Israeli resort.

He was killed Tuesday in a carefully planned and masterful drive-by attack. The attack car which has not been found, the lack of any leads by police, the particular place the shooting actually began, and the high caliber bullets found at the site and not easily available in Kenya, all point to a very carefully organized murder.

The sheik has been confined to the Mombasa area virtually since 2002 when he surrendered his passport to Kenyan authorities. He remained charged with numerous counts of terrorism, and his legal battles in Kenya are legendary.

But he has never actually been brought to trial, and Kenya has resisted extraditing him to the U.S. for instance, for fear such action would provoke Mombasa’s radicals. So instead Kenya did what a western country can’t discipline itself to do: nothing.

African patience was winning out. The sheik’s prominence peaked. His support was waning. In the most virulent political battle on the coast going on right now, a move by a new but powerful Islamic political party to secede from Kenya, the sheik had no involvement. In fact, it appeared he’d been excluded.

Western detractors tried to pin the assassination on America or the Kenyan police, claiming each was no longer tolerant of the protracted legal battles against the sheik. I seriously doubt this. Obama’s War on Terror is going just fine, in part because people like Rogo have been marginalized. Better to have him contained in Mombasa than Guantanamo.

It’s much more likely that the dying powers in Somalia saw the sheik as a sacrificial lamb. Recruits from his madrassa to al-Shabaab are less important, now that al-Shabaab is being routed.

I think the sheik was killed by a sheik. Disquieting, yes, but when the fighting turns inwards the battlefield grows smaller.

Terrifying Silence in Kenya

Terrifying Silence in Kenya

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

An awful restraint hangs like a veil over Kenyan journalism today, as civil disturbances continue in Mombasa and Wajir.

In neither area is the trouble as widespread as some international media have reported: the heavily read International Business Times reported “absolute chaos in the city” of Mombasa, which is absolutely untrue.

In fact the disturbances are pretty confined to a four-block area. And in Wajir, the curfew comes as a preventative measure, not in response to growing turmoil.

Nevertheless, I’m concerned at how the mainstream Kenyan press is suppressing coverage. The Mombasa disturbances are as a result of a radical Muslim cleric, on bail but not allowed to leave Kenya for terrorism related charges, being killed by unknown gunmen Monday.

In Wajir two different ethnic groups are in the middle of a spat of revenge killings.

These are two extraordinarily different types of social unrest. The Mombasa trouble is linked to the global war against Islamist terrorism, of which Kenya is an enthusiastic supporter having invaded Somali last October.

The Wajir trouble is ethnic, sparked by dwindling resources.

But my concern is that rather than deal with it robustly as Kenyans normally do, the intellectual center in Nairobi is simply not discussing it.

The city’s major newspaper is providing coverage, but it’s off page one, and the Daily Nation’s battalion of excellent bloggers has ignored both issues completely. But the city’s energetic radio stations, which also provide online coverage, said nothing about Mombasa, today.

The situation in Mombasa is much more serious than Wajir, because of its impact on tourism. Mombasa is where a dozen charter flights weekly arrive with European tourists for Kenya’s world-famous white sand beaches. Half of all Kenyan tourists never see an animal; they’re beach bums.

This will undoubtedly be seriously effected, just as bookings for the important end of the year holiday season become finalized.

And I would be one of those travel consultants who would be telling his clients to go elsewhere this year.

So that’s the likely explanation for the press’ restraint. But it’s not worthy of Kenya’s strong history of truth-seeking and long legacies of critical discussion and self-introspection.

If Kenya falls into denial to deal with its problems, it will surely fail. There are extremely important questions to be explored about the current travails in Wajir and Mombasa.

The most obvious is who killed Sheik Aboud Rogo? It was a typical 1930’s Chicago gangster drive-by assassination. The sheik was speeding in a car taking his wife to a doctor’s appointment when gunmen sped up behind him and sprayed the car, killing him.

One could immediately speculate it was America, trying for months to get the Sheik out of Kenya for trial elsewhere. But it is much more likely a completely internal crime, a Kenyan battle that involves the new and complex politics of leading up to the March elections.

A near internecine battle between the front-runner in Kenya’s presidential race, Raila Odinga, and an arch rival, Miguna Miguna has stirred ethnic and religious unrest throughout the country as Miguna goes campaigning. Miguna has interjected Islam/Christian – Terrorism/Anti-Terrorism into the national debate which disarms many in Kenya’s political elite.

It’s a touchy issue to be sure, but Kenyans have never shied away from dealing with the big issues head on.

Until now.

Three Times Nostalgia

Three Times Nostalgia

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

Not too many years ago, the Mt. Kenya Safari Club was the magic that made a safari. Today it’s just another resort off the Thika Superhighway.

Bidding has opened for 95 of the quarter million dollar residences on the Mt. Kenya Holiday Homes resort, located hardly spitting distance of the Safari Club. Each of the ultra modern 3- or 4-bedroom homes in two or three stories has a fireplace, and is powered and heated by solar panels.

The 123-acre complex is being marketed to city dwellers who long for a second country home, in a perfect location for weekend hiking, bird watching, trout fishing, horseback riding and that occasional golf.

There will be a perfectly manicured 9-hole golf course, and the entire complex is secure by a big game proof electric fence and mini-moat to keep out those wandering buffalo. But if you yearn for wild animals like zebra, lion, elephant and so forth, don’t worry. The resort is just south of the Sweetwaters Ole Pejeta private reserve, famous for its abundant big game.

When Kenyan safaris first became popular to Americans in the 1970s, trepidation was introduced into hard-earned holidays, and the “adventure vacation” was born. And to be sure back then, we knew lots less about malaria and how to prevent it, many of the roads were hardly tracks, and most of the night time lodging was in very basic tented camps with shared toilet and shower tents.

More than once I took my safaris far enough into the bush that we would encounter locals who had not often seen visitors. It was never certain how these meetings would develop: friend or foe. And about the same time police were being appointed to far out places, and it was always certain we’d be delayed for a bribe.

And quite different from what you might expect, the game was hard to find. There was actually more of it, of course, but it was very skittish of people. It wasn’t really until the 1980s that Kenya’s highland game was approachable enough to take good pictures.

So what game we did encounter evinced the old “fight or flee” syndrome. On my very first safari at the age of 21 on my very fast game drive I was charged and hit by a rhino. In my first decade as a safari guide I had tusks through floorboards, was rolled in my tent by an elephant, escape charging lions, had a woman faint to a bellowing buffalo and watched two lovely ladies scream while being charged by a hippo.

And every day was very dusty and very dirty and the evening’s ice cold water for showers was manna from heaven. And even the finest Chicago debutante appeared at the evening camp fire looking like Miss America.

In those days you didn’t race over to Kenya and back for a 12-day jaunt. Most safaris were 22-26 days long. And by the third week, I would definitely notice “adventure fatigue.”

That was when we’d arrive at the Mt. Kenya Safari Club.

Frankly, in the 1980s, the Mt. Kenya Safari Club was hardly more than a nice Holiday Inn on well landscaped grounds built around a central Victorian mansion. The fact was that there were similar homes in the Kenyan highlands, but kept well under the radar, because they were owned by old white colonials still lying low. So to a visitor the Mt. Kenya Safari Club was the most unexpected and amazing jewel in the crown of an adventure safari.

It cost about three times what other night’s lodging cost. The plumbing always worked. Usually, there was hot water. The food, all local, was fabulous, and the old colonial woodworking, Victoria furniture and servants clicking heels became a sort of Colonial Theme Park.

There was a Members’ Dining Room ostentatiously separated from the guest dining room, and membership (open to all) cost about $500/year. The President of Kenya was one of the few black members at the time. (He was one of the few who could afford it.)

So your richest and most resplendent clients were advised before departing home that William Holden, the principal investor of the Club, would welcome their “membership.” And by so doing on those few nights under Mt. Kenya, you would remove yourself from the grand guest dining room and be escorted by the Maitre D’ into the exclusive members’ lounge.

Back then $500 was about a third what a 25-day safari cost! Using the same metric, today, you can actually make the entire down payment on a 4-bedroom, 4-bath luxury home with a fireplace!

The grand if palatial public areas of the original Safari Club were all deep wood plastered with big game trophies. The Club was originally designed as a hunter’s retreat by William Holden and friends. As photography safaris grew much more popular, the board had no trouble pivoting into the modern age.

Today the Safari Club is a Fairmont Hotel. Its revenue stream is now less than 50% from tourists, attracting Kenyans from the city for a weekend holiday.

And no longer unique, there is nothing here different from other nearby resorts like the new Mt. Kenya Holiday Homes except some very precious nostalgia.

Renewing [or not] The Strongman

Renewing [or not] The Strongman

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Last week’s death (unusually of natural causes) of Ethiopia’s strongman Meles Zenawi is an unique opportunity for America to reflect on its impact in East Africa, if not the whole of the developing world.

Meles was one of the most ruthless dictators in the world. He was also heavily supported (argue, “propped up”) by the Obama administration. This contradiction was justified because Meles was also instrumental in the War on Terror.

America’s Wars on Communism and Terror and Drugs have governed our policies in Africa for more than a century. The question, now, is whether we are mature enough of a society to throw off these archaic shackles usually described as “self-interest.”

    Cycle One: The War on Communism

In 1960-1962 during the presidency of John Kennedy democratic movements throughout the Congo were quashed and its leaders assassinated paving the way for the continent’s most famous and longest serving tyrant, Mobutu Sese Seko.

    Cycle Two: End of The Cold War

In 1993-95 during the presidency of Bill Clinton democratic movements in the Congo and Rwanda were abandoned to chaos paving the way for seemingly interminable war and ethnic conflict.

At the time the rationale for abandoning Africa to dictators and mayhem was that there was nothing consequential to America in Africa at the time worth fighting for. The Cold War was over

    Cycle Three: The War on Terror

Today, 2010-2012, under the presidency of Barak Obama strongman regimes in Rwanda, Uganda and Ethiopia have received huge amounts of military and development aid paving the way for ruthless dictatorial regimes violating all sorts of human rights.

Today’s rationale is that the War on Terror is going pretty well, and especially well in The Horn of Africa.

Lesser acknowledged but well known is the American Right’s involvement in all three of these cycles. Until the current cycle it was principally from church missions and was admittedly less significant. But during this latest cycle, the involvement of DC’s Church Street and other evangelical groups most prominently in Uganda has been well reported.

The contradictions are explosive:

The most incredible one is that while President Obama has inched his own country away from homophobia quite successfully, his administration piles enormous support on the Ugandan regime which is still trying to pass legislation that will execute gays for being gay and imprison nongays for not revealing that someone is gay.

And there are many more: no military involvement in Libya or Syria, but already a brigade of green berets in Uganda and the CAR; and tax to death or forbid U.S. corporations from extracting coltan and other precious metals from the troubled DRC, but laden Rwanda with extra development aid to build local industries that do just that.

This is not a Right or Left affair, although it seems to always be initiated by Democrats and then massively supported by Republicans that follow. And it is not a Left versus Right affair, either. The fact that Democrats in power are essentially promoting the same thing as evangelic Christians funding movements in African backrooms is clear this is not a Left verus Right affair. It’s a power thing.

It’s ends justify the means. It’s Kissinger’s self-interest dogma. It’s we do what works best for us, irrespective of morals, ethics or human rights. It’s been the way of the world for centuries.

And so we endure Cycle Three: Museveni in Uganda, Kagame in Rwanda and whoever will be Meles’ successor in Ethiopia are all ruthless dictators. Together with American drones, the War on Terror proceeds just hunky-dory.

All hail the African Strongman.

You Can’t Befriend Somalia without Training

You Can’t Befriend Somalia without Training

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Matthew Wrote:
Jim i want to begin providing aid in somalia, would you recomend Garissa a good
place to live and creat a relationship with somalians?

Matthew –

In your straight-forward email, I sense a dogged commitment and very high moral belief in what you’ve decided to do, so far be it from me to dissuade you. But that’s what I’ve been doing most of my life in Africa.

I have a forty-year view. Individual charity or “missions” are almost always bad. But there are thousands, probably tens of thousands of people exactly like yourself who are successfully helping Africa. They do it with proper training, first, and then by joining some of the outstanding organizations like the Red Cross or Medecins sans frontieres for health issues, or by joining NGOs like USAid or UN agencies. Those groups of people do Africa enormous, untold good.

Good individuals like yourself often help African individuals, but it’s like biofuels here where I live near Iowa. We spend more energy and other resources to make biofuels then we get out of them. Most individual charity work expends more money, human resources, intellectual effort than it produces good. Especially someone as clear-minded as yourself. You belong in the foreign service, not on an individual mission. You probably don’t even know the extent of your own talents, but a good organization will determine that and will maximize your individual effort.

Go back to my blog and navigate to “charity” on the right-hand panel and then read the thumbnails of a dozen blogs I’ve written that explain this more fully.

I’m not telling you not to go. I’m telling you to make a short turn first, to a good organization.

Regards,
Jim Heck

Another Black Day in Kenya

Another Black Day in Kenya

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Visitors and citizens alike were horribly killed in Kenya yesterday reflecting a very strained society.

As of this morning four tourists are reported dead with several others still in critical condition after a scheduled flight aboard of Mombasa Air Safari LET aircraft from the Maasai Mara to Mombasa crashed on take-off.

Forty-eight Kenyans were killed in ethnic clashes near the town of Mandera in the arid Tana River region far east of Nairobi.

The two quite different incidents both reflect Kenya’s growing strain as it prepares for critical elections next March.

The Mombasa Air Safari crash was of a Czechoslovakian made, Soviet-styled LET aircraft. LET aircraft (of a variety of different sizes and types) has a horrible safety record with twelve accidents and 424 fatalities just this year alone. It was a cheap aircraft to begin with that became even cheaper with the breakdown of the Soviet Union. Almost like bad weaponry, LET aircraft have been showing up more and more in Africa as lax aircraft regulation mixes with strained economies.

The ethnic clashes which have been mostly reported in the world press as revenge killings by one ethnic group against another for disputes over water resources and range rights is actually only the tip of the story.

Kenya has redistricted itself in preparation for next year’s elections under the new constitution. Multiple smaller districts have been consolidated – as I believe they should – to create a truly more representative parliament.

And one logical outcome pits former established politicians as competitors for a single representative seat. It isn’t just coincidence that this is the case where the ethnic clashes occurred yesterday.

Police have confirmed that villagers have been incited to violence by local politicians vying for a consolidated district under the new constitution.

To a certain extent both these tragedies are isolated. Kenya tourism – indeed more and more of East African tourism as a whole and almost all of southern African tourism – depends upon small aircraft. I’d estimate in East Africa that more than half the tourists take at least one such flight, and likely a quarter take two or more.

The overall safety record for such a massive industry is pretty good. LET aircraft represent a very small proportion of the tourist aircraft, which are predominantly very safe Cessnas. (Unfortunately, there are no actual statistics, although the data is there to compile. So my statements are not evidential, but I believe accurate enough.)

And the ethnic clashes in Mandera which have been picked up in the world press as evidence of Kenya’s overall ethnic strife is nonsense. The new constitution, some pretty harsh laws, four prominent citizens on trial in The Hague for causing ethnic violence in 2007 all point to a Kenyan society righting itself masterfully.

But dead is dead. Another few hurdles for this tough and struggling society.

Leaping out of The Wild

Leaping out of The Wild

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Yesterday eland was photographed in Nairobi National Park. It’s enough to make you believe the wilderness will be preserved!

There is hardly anything as anomalous in the wild as Nairobi National Park. Three of its four sides abut some of the highest low-rise human population densities on earth, including some of its most truculent slums. Its main water source, the Athi River, is fickle and destructive and often terribly polluted.

Yet this biggest of Nairobi’s parks still manages to sustain big game like lion, zebra, hartebeest, impala and eland, the biggest antelope on earth.

Imagine taking the narrowest side of New York’s Central Park and extending it over the Hudson, over (or under) I-90 and eventually into the Jersey forests. That’s what Nairobi National Park is like, a narrow southwest side gingerly extending towards the wilderness near Amboseli past concrete factories, giant warehouses and manicured ranches.

I think of eland as a real indicator species, but not in the traditional sense. Normally an indicator species is a fragile one, an animal or bird that is endangered by shifts in its ecosystem. The eland is different. It’s one of the most adaptable on the big game.

In the wild and seemingly endless plains of the southeast Serengeti, somewhere west of the big Lemuta Kopjes, hundreds of eland in family groups that size roam with the greatest timidity. Though each animal approaches 1600 pounds, they are extraordinary shy.

As we approach within a mile, they start running away, and they’re amazing runners. Almost without moving the rest of their bodies an inch, the legs start trotting as if the rest of the body is resting on a railway car. The feet go quicker and quicker moving the giant animal upwards of 30-35 kph.

Then, one – often the leader – leaps! This giant animal can leap 8-10′ into the air, creating this graceful arch over the plains. Soon they’re all leaping that from a distance looks like a line of boiling and popping cooking oil.

Rarely in the wild do we get within a mile or two.

Yet eland can be domesticated easier than any other antelope! In fact there was a period when Kenyans tried to farm them. The problem was that the meat wasn’t very tasty. But like a wild horse, once captured and fenced the eland becomes nearly a pet.

The eland in Nairobi National Park are very tame and according to one observer, now confined to the park, too weary to leave through the narrow corridor southwest. Technically, they haven’t been captured or fenced since the park is fenced on three sides only. But for all practical purposes they have been fenced by a rapidly growing human society.

So instead of leaping away, they are posing for pictures!

The Nairobi National Park is no San Diego Wild Animal Park. It’s much bigger; it has a much greater diversity of wildlife that benefits or suffers from the radical changes in climate, today; and it actually has far fewer visitors.

But it is absolutely the best, and surprisingly so, of the earlier wild. And the fact that we might have lost the eland’s leap for its presence might just not be so bad.

Malaria Milestone

Malaria Milestone

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

The greatest of evolutionary battles is between man and his diseases and a recent genetic discovery about malaria gives man a new flank to attack.

Malaria is one of the most intriguing diseases in the world, incredibly complex. It is among the greatest killers in Africa, vying every year as the greatest killer with AIDS and gastrointestinal infections.

Last month researchers at the Centre International de Recherches Médicales de Franceville in Gabon collaborating with French laboratories published an amazing discovery about the genetic makeup of malaria. Their findings could open up an entirely new front for the attack against the disease.

As we learned this past week in Texas, the might of the developed world’s mastery of pesticides has kept malaria and other mosquito born diseases mostly at bay.

Malaria was essentially eradicated from the U.S. by the middle of the last century through extensive use of DDT. Many in the developing world argue for the use of DDT right now in Africa, but control of the substance remains with the developed world that has decided it’s too toxic a pesticide.

That debate is furious but there is strong evidence to suggest DDT might do more harm than good for two very interrelated reasons.

The first is that systematic spraying of the sort that occurred in the U.S. would be too hard to implement in Africa’s most malarial areas, which include sprawling slums and extraordinarily remote wetlands and swamps.

DDT’s toxicity isn’t in dispute: Numerous species of bird, insect and even plants could be eradicated if used. But in light of the terrible plight the sickness strikes every moment in Africa, the world might be willing to lose a few species of bird, insects and plants, but not if the implementation plan is as uncertain as it seems it would be.

Particularly if other remedies for malaria can be found.

Malaria isn’t just a single thing. It seven different life forms, like caterpillars and cocooned pupas and butterflies, but more than double that butterfly formation. The one form that does us damage is the sporozoite which produces the malaria attack.

But all other six forms have to produce and cycle to produce the sporozoite, and just that amazing transformation in an evolutionary sense is absolutely mind-boggling.

Remember, evolution is chance. Imagine the billions, trillions, godzillions of chance mutations that occured on each of the seven life forms meaning we have a permutation of godzillion to the seventh power (which I think is still godzillion).

Anyway, I hope you catch my drift. This is an amazing evolutionary development arguably as complex as many of the most complex life forms on earth, today.

But consider this after you catch your breath. Each life form’s mutated chance change produced some type of response in the disease’s host. Maybe, like sickle cell anemia, the sporozoites slides off the red blood cell so can’t infect it. Maybe another godzillion defenses (many like sickle cell anemia aren’t ideal) occur.

So there is this back-and-forth over time of the disease and its host (including man) trading punches. To date, malaria has won.

We know that apes and chimps get malaria, too. But we didn’t think until this new research that anything other than creatures in man’s family tree got malaria.

Wrong. The new research reveals that the greater spot-nosed monkey gets malaria. The guy is a primate, but we know from DNA research that he is far away from the line of primates that produced chimps, apes and man.

That means that malaria was doing its dirty work before the homonids line evolved from earlier primate forms. And that means that the malaria had to have evolved in some type of parallel way to homonids, and separately, to the greater spot-nosed monkey.

And that means if we can study the detailed difference between greater spot-nosed monkey’s malaria, and hominin’s (man’s), then we might find the point in the complicated life cycle of the disease that is most vulnerable to attack, the spot that makes human malaria distinctly human.

Perhaps it’s a gene in the human malaria that binds to hemoglobin. We’d have never known to look for that gene (among untold numbers of genes) if it wasn’t pointed out to us because it doesn’t exist in the monkey malaria. It’s very likely that that unique gene is of critical importance to the whole malarial chain of events that we might then be able to interrupt.

Go ahead and scratch your head. Read this wonderful summary about malaria that is better than mine. And then, think about it. It’s incredibly fascinating.

Pop Goes the Weasel

Pop Goes the Weasel

by Arusha ♥ 5 Comments

The horrible killing of South African miners yesterday is less news than analysis of not just South Africa’s political legacy, but the whole wide world’s.

Police conceded that at least 34 admittedly aggressive strikers at a platinum mine in the north of the country were killed when things got out of control. The number is probably higher.

While the protest was ostensibly over wages, the weeks leading to the outburst were more of a battle between two labor organizations, the official union for the mine and a renegade self-styled militant union that is passionately communist.

I use that term with caution but deliberately. Communism in a truer and less autocratic way than adopted by the Soviet Union, for example, has been a significant part of South African politics for more than a century. Its leaders would be considered moderate by the style of historic European communism, more like American communists in the 1920s.

But lately South Africa – and the world – have taken significant right turns, becoming more conservative socially and fiscally. And in many places in the world, such as the U.S. under Bush and a number of European nations under current conservative leadership, it’s been downright dictatorial.

It never seems that way at the time. When America invaded Iraq, my own liberal heroes were behind the invasion. But with time history is revealing what a small number of men, motivated not by facts but ideology, actually made the decision.

It was affirmed by a greater segment of society, but the die had been cast. Society as a whole had neither the guts or power to oppose it. Even our “progressive leaders,” or in the case of South Africa, union leaders appear to capitulate to the rightist dogma.

In South Africa, the mining weasel popped. And it wasn’t pretty Thursday.

Earlier this year South Africa almost nationalized the mines. That, too, is a perennial topic it seems in South Africa, but this time they got closer than ever to doing it, and in fact the renegades have expressly said they hope this violence will make the country revisit the issue.

Nationalization would be a thunderclap in the world. Even as a diehard liberal I think it would be far too serious a jolt. This is because South Africa’s reservoir of gold and other precious minerals is too large. In one fell swoop it would alter the way energy is consumed in the world. Moreover, in South Africa it would empower a currently corrupt political leadership that could be spun out of control with their dizzying new responsibilities.

But nationalization was a real topic because blue collar workers are being shafted, just as they are in the United States, and as they are most of all in places like China. It’s a very hard argument to make, because workers are better off, today, in South Africa and China than they were two decades ago.

At the expense, I might add, of American workers.

But without the long analysis needed (read Chris Hayes’ Twilight of the Elites) the point is not so much that workers are being shafted, but that the capitalistic balloon is busting.

The right side of the balloon is the rich owners radically pulling their salaries and dividends even more to the right. But it can’t be pulled that way without pulling the left side an equal distance “shafting” the poor.

We guys in the middle just tread water and wait for the pop.

South African mine workers aren’t, really, too off-center compared to where they were a decade ago, or compared to many other workers in South Africa, today. But from their central location they see their families over there in the poor left being vastly distanced by the owners and stakeholders getting fabulously rich by the platinum they are pulling out with their hands.

New York Times reporter, Lydia Polgreen, nailed it: “The shooting left a field strewed with bodies and a deepening fault line between the governing African National Congress and a nation that, 18 years after the end of apartheid, is increasingly impatient with deep poverty, rampant unemployment and yawning inequality.”

This is ripe stuff for an explosion. Particularly in a society where workers – especially miners – have a history of activism. It isn’t just that they want higher wages, they’ve actually seen their own country’s politics radically moved by their activism.

The violent confrontation, of course, does not make South Africa’s poor richer. But it did make the rich more poor.

So this isn’t the end of it, folks. Where unions still have some power, like South Africa, there’s going to be more and more labor unrest. Relatively rich countries like South Africa will either ultimately nationalize giant industries like mining, or the global capitalistic gyroscope will reset somehow, reversing the trend of the last half century. The richer will become poorer and the poor will become richer.

I vote for the latter. It will be much less violent.

PETA vs MING

PETA vs MING

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

Yao Ming, the former Houston Rockets skyscraper, is trying to do what no Chinaman has done before : sensitize his countrymen to African conservation.

Ming retired as the awkward but successful 7’6″ basketballer last year and has been judiciously investing in a way definitely not characteristic of most sports stars. His current job is filmmaker, but it’s hardly more than a vehicle to deliver an unsavory message to his fellow Chinese: stop consuming animal products.

Ming is well known for his home town generosities and stardom throughout China. Injuries forced an end to his career last year, but injuries that many sports figures would have surgically corrected for a short-term sprint that ends them in a wheelchair when they’re 45.

Ming, instead, walked away from a salary that ESPN claimed would have been $17,686,100 for another 2012 season. Since then his endeavors have included buying a Napa vineyard and starting a wine export business to China, buying and coaching a Chinese basketball team and now, starting a film career.

Ming is currently in Kenya where together with American producer, Jay Cohen, he is producing a wildlife film mostly for Chinese consumption with the rather cliched title, “End of the Wild.”

Bundle this together with his decision to be an ambassador for WildAid and his appointment to a Chinese communist party committee in his hometown, Shanghai, and I think we have a man who is tall enough to bring two worlds together.

Wildlife conservation is not a Chinese passion. In fact, most of Asia has never viewed nature with the same reverence or awe as we cowboys. These older and more established cultures have sort of put nature in a picture frame rather than accepted it as something untamed.

For probably a millennium the unique characteristics of many animal horns and antlers have provided accomplished Asian sculpturers with a media that can be found nowhere else on earth. Ivory is the only natural substance that allows such intricate sculpting.

And similarly for a millennium and probably longer, traditional Asian medicines have relied heavily on rare animal parts: bear feet, rhino horn, rare bird livers.

I think that one of the reasons contemporary wildlife conservation has had such a hard road into Asia is that the most vocal of western conservationists are evangelical ideologues. Not that their foundation that preserving any form of life is not a viable first principle, but it completely ignores or at least leapfrogs the compelling science for animal conservation.

And that ideological position at the level of first principle does nothing but start a fight with opponents who cherish other first principles, like the preeminence of man.

You might call it PETA vs Ming.

More patient science shows us that even the simplest of life forms is so incredibly complicated not even Watson can replicate it. And this means we don’t know everything about it. And this means if we wipe it out, we’ll never know. And this means all sorts of knowledge, and knowledge specifically beneficial to humankind is lost for good.

Once that horror is truly understood there is a reverence for “what is living” that might come full circle to PETA’s mania. But it is the evidential science that will win over the majority of the world to wildlife conservation, not the simpler battle cry.

That’s why Ming’s old hat title of “End of the Wild” may mean something to a Chinese society that is only recently emerging from their cocoon.

Touring in Laikipia

Touring in Laikipia

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

[email protected]> asked:
When is the best time to see wildlife at Mt. Kenya vicinity? What is the cost of a safari there?

The “Mt. Kenya” area is usually known as “Laikipia” and is an area with abundant wildlife, but also great ranches and several densely populated cities. North of Mt. Kenya and a bit north of Liakipia is Samburu to the west and Shaba to the east, both at the beginning of the great northern frontier, and at this point there are few ranches or populated cities.

You can obtain much more information by googling Laikipia, Samburu or Shaba.

Everyone has their own preferences for when a given area is the best. For me it is just as the rains begin or end, which in this part of East Africa is mid-November through mid-December, March or June.

There is a huge variance in the cost of a safari. An overland camping safari in a big Bedford vehicle where you share the truck with up to 30 other people can cost as little as $100 per person day. Most lodge safaris cost around $400 per person per day. And boutique luxury camps can cost upwards of $800 per person per day.

Regards,
Africaanswerman

Knight of Power

Knight of Power

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Yesterday, Egypt crowned a new prince. There is nothing for us as secular outsiders to fear of a powerfully Islamic ruler but a lot for the subjects of this new Egyptian strongman to fear.

After yesterday’s palace shakeup Mohamed Morsi is Egypt’s most powerful man. Yesterday, he emasculated the two most powerful military men who have ruled Egypt since Mubarak stepped down. He replaced them with young Islamists in the military clearly now beholden to him. And he has eliminated at least for the time being any legislature that could challenge him.

What’s left?

Time. The progressives who started the revolution long ago fizzled out in the face of overwhelming Islamic democratic sentiment among voters. Rather than force issues of womens’ rights, habeus corpus, free speech and such, they chose to wait and see how oppressive Morsi and team would be to their progressive ideas.

So far there’s been no chance to rate him; the Big Boys have been fighting for the crown. We don’t know what jewels may have spilled out. But one thing is clear: Morsi is scaring to death Egyptian democrats.

Now that the crown is clearly upon Morsi’s head the world may soon know how draconian or — on the completely other hand — how Islamically permissive Morsi will be. Analysts have been delving into Morsi’s past for a clue.

His many years as a college professor in California give progressives hope. Yet I see a remarkable similarity to the young Muammar Gaddafi who carefully and systematically removed opponents as he patiently came to power in 1966-69.

Morsi, however, is no Gaddafi. The Libyan leader for all his narcissism and greed was for all practical purposes a moderate Islamist perhaps because he was a permissive and pretty immoral individual. Morsi is anything but: his Islamic purity is almost terrifyingly strong.

Morsi’s final blow to his opposition was to effectively sack the military strongman Hussein Tantawi yesterday. He did this by manipulating an effective military coup led by the younger, Islamist officers clearly allied to him. And he did it on the 23rd day of Ramadan, which the Koran labels as the “Night of Power.”

The respected Egyptian analyst, Issandr El Amrani, said immediately afterwards, “It is hard to believe [this] purely coincidental.”

Each night of Ramadan Morsi breaks his own highly publicized fast by a 5-minute radio broadcast that answers what are supposedly random call-in questions by everyday Egyptians. But the highly scripted and professionally edited segments are anything but random.

What progressive Egyptians fear most is that two popular ideologies, democracy and Islam, are in critical ways diametrically opposed. But the questions Morsi allows – quite contrary to the flattering NPR report cited above — are about how many bakeries exist and which potholes will be repaired first.

There is no mention of Egypt’s escalating crime, crumbling military in the troubled Sinai, increasing power outages, escalating unemployment or self-imploding stock exchange.

What seems clear to me is that these big, critical issues have been intentionally ignored while the fog slowly lifted from the palace.

Well, the sky is crystal clear today. There is one man in power. He controls the military. And despite earlier popular attempts to recreate a legislature, he has said that Parliament will not reconvene. Since Egypt’s judiciary is essentially a military creation, this means today that Morsi is president, lawmaker and judge.

Some kings are good. Some kings are bad.

Anything for A Buck!

Anything for A Buck!

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Tanzania’s scandals and sheer wastefulness of its bountiful natural resources are legendary. But last month’s incident took the prize.

In addition to the world’s second largest single vein of gold, countless copper and recent rumors of off-shore oil, large deposits of uranium were discovered hardly 100 miles from the port of Dar-es-Salaam last year.

The fact that most of the streaks were in the massive Selous Game Reserve really was incidental. According to the government less than 1% of the reserve would be effected.

Not the Tanzanian government is to be believed about the time the sun rises, but the way the natural resources ministry mismanaged the gold mining near Lake Victoria, which has essentially stalled normal mining, I think gave hope to many environmentalists who simply expected this new discovery will also be bungled.

But uranium has a “security” component to it gold does not. The interest of world powers is acute. No fewer than 26 multinationals (and one Tanzanian) company are now involved.

In approval faster than a speeding bullet, UNESCO who fought tooth and nail to protect a single road from bisecting the Serengeti, approved yet to be revealed mining methodology of the world’s largest protected wilderness, The Selous.

By 2014, optimistic businessmen claim, Tanzania will become the world’s eighth largest producer of uranium.

All to be expected, and despite my sarcasm I have never opposed proper natural resource extraction from Africa and I’ve always countenanced arguments for extracting it from protected wildernesses.

The fact is that the world is energy desperate and Africa is sitting on the golden goose. It’s about time that Africa get its fair share.

And that’s the problem, now. There are so few fair shares of Tanzania’s gold getting back to the local population that it’s a joke.

Now, one of the few rational, educated, articulate Tanzanian politicians, the shadow minister of natural resources, Ms. Halima Mdee, has revealed that one of Tanzania’s equally unscrupulous hunting companies, Game Frontiers, has actually sold off the block of Selous given it for hunting to a mining company!

And no one seems to care!

The fact that this violates a tome of Tanzanian law isn’t the point, since most of Tanzanian law is violated one way or the other. It’s just the sheer crassness of this move that’s so infuriating.

What’s more, Ms. Mdee seems to understand that any legal argument is pointless, so she is scolding the government on larger ethical and moral grounds.

“Other than the illegality of the contracts,” Tanzania’s Guardian newspaper reported, “she described what she called ‘unfair’ distribution of disbursed compensations on the part of the hunting company embezzling the villagers share.”

Did you get that?

The way to appeal to either popular consensus or somehow otherwise gain political advantage is to drop altogether the body of law in Tanzania and the rest of the world that disallows a hunting company to farm out a country’s resources, and claim that the local people in and around the hunting block aren’t getting their fair share of the loot from the illicit deal!

Whoa Tanzania. Yes, thank you Ms. Mdee, and by the way how are you doing with the laundry of al-Qaeda’s Somali weapons?

Poopooing Philanthropy

Poopooing Philanthropy

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Bill Gates’ “Reinvent the Toilet Fair” in Seattle next week illustrates perfectly the limits of philanthropy and why real generosity must come from governments not individual rich people.

The Gates’ Foundation work to prevent and cure malaria is outstanding. The battle against the disease is perfect for individual philanthropy for two reasons. But most philanthropy, if not the vast majority promulgated by private foundations and individuals is wasteful and destructive.

The first reason the Gates’ Foundation work in malaria is valuable is that global agencies and governments from the developed world dare not tread on the mechanisms of global capitalism. Developing a vaccine, or a super small X-ray machine, or the Mars’ Curiosity, takes enormous capital. It’s the reason cancer drugs are so expensive. The drug company must recover not only the huge initial investment for a successful drug but it must also cover the huge losses of failed drugs.

Governments are capable of making these investments to be sure as are multinational corporations, but developed world interest in eradicating malaria in Africa doesn’t reach the threshold of importance developed world society does place, for example, in Mars’ Curiosity. Whether this is right or wrong isn’t my point. It’s just the case that developed world priorities do not extend to malaria eradication in the developing world.

Last year U.S. aid for developing world disease control and prevention – concentrated principally to fight tuberculosis, AIDS and malaria – was $503 million (from an HHS agency budget of $30.5 billion.) Gates alone has spent nearly four times this amount just on malaria research and prevention.

Because that is how much it takes to develop a malaria vaccine. The disease is among the most complex diseases on earth, a legendary evolutionary battle between man and his greatest nemesis, disease.

Neither will the developed world’s capitalist markets undertake a project to eradicate malaria. A malaria vaccine would not generate enough financial return to warrant the investment. Once malaria was controlled in the developed world — just as with polio more recently — the developed world will not provide the additional capital investment from either governments or markets for control in the less affluent developing world.

So it’s a perfect project for a rich man.

The second important reason malaria control is perfect for western philanthropy is because it’s so political. Malaria was eradicated in the developed world by DDT. The developed world now believes that DDT poses too great an environmental hazard to be used, now.

Whether this is rank fiscal hypocrisy or a cold prioritization of self-interest I’m not certain, but the door to quick eradication of malaria in the developing world, using the only historical method we know, has been slammed shut. DDT manufacturing is mostly controlled by the developed world, but more importantly, the threat of sanctions against developing countries that would dare to use it is real.

But most philanthropy cannot be justified by these two reasons. The vast majority of philanthropy funds projects that societies are fully capable of funding themselves. By that I mean not just through government services supported by taxes but more so by the albeit much smaller capitalist markets in the developing world.

They include almost everything from education to sanitation to energy development. When a philanthropist steps into areas like these it’s usually because of a failing in society’s planning or an oversight by market developers. To that extent pointing these out becomes the greatest justification for philanthropy.

But once pointed out philanthropists should move on and the implementation should be left to society. Society, of course, can’t do everything so it picks and chooses its priorities and that process of choosing is the very essence of a society. It should not be usurped by individuals. The best example is education. There’s no doubt that education is fundamental to almost all other development. Everyone agrees with this.

The components of successful education may be innumerable. There will always be a myriad of ways to better society’s educational efforts. Philanthropy has a major role in discovering society’s failings and to discovering innovative components otherwise overlooked by society.

But once discovered it should be left to that society to implement. Implementing it outside of normal societal mechanisms (such as through individual philanthropy) distorts any social plan and usurps the right of the majority.

Community sewage disposal is as fundamental to organized communities as education is to a workable society as a whole. A multitude of techniques are known, the engineering is fully developed, none of the essential technology is protected by copyright, and it’s fair even for a laymen to conclude there aren’t many alternatives to waste disposal except disposing waste.

So the Gates Foundation’s $42 million grants to “reinvent the toilet” are absurd. Like our own current infatuation with ethanol from corn in gasoline, more energy is being used by the so-called innovation than if we just didn’t do it at all.

The reason Nairobi’s sanitation is so underdeveloped is not because Kenya lacks either the resources or technology to lay appropriate sewers in the city’s ground, but because in part the country’s resources are being used instead to fund a war in Somalia.

I’m not arguing whether the war in Somalia is right or wrong, I’m arguing that Kenya should not assume its expense. The turmoil in Somalia was not caused by Kenya. It was caused by the developed world.

So the problem in poor sanitation in Nairobi is that the world as a whole — including Kenya itself — hasn’t owned up to its social obligations even though it’s fully capable of doing so. And this dynamic is propped up by western philanthropy.

If the Gates’ Foundation is successful in creating a “better toilet” for the developing world it could not possibly be more efficient than community sewage works. But it might indeed discover a device that can produce sanitation for a given few who have the wealth to enjoy it, and then delay even further extending sanitation services to the greater society at large.

In a nutshell it divides the rich from the poor, and it accelerates the dividing.

Frankly, I think even Gates’ officials and associates realize this. A blog widely disseminated in the developed world yesterday by Gates associate Diane Scott was rife with self-deprecation and embarrassment and proves what foolishness is going on. I can just imagine my friends in Nairobi reading this and chuckling madly.

Utopia is not in the cards, I know. But philanthropy in the main delays most utopian visions. Gates should be commended for so much of his work, but this – and most philanthropy in general – is just not right.