Month: February 2015

Bon Voyage!

Bon Voyage!

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LenatTSAThose of us daring to leave the country after today through unpaid security staff might heed the following advice.

Go early. I can’t blame anyone who works for the TSA for slackening up. Many went through this in the 2013 government shutdown, and the experience wasn’t pleasant or fair to any of the workers.

To begin with senior personnel who aren’t on the front lines of security will actually be furloughed, just as they were in 2013. The bosses.

Everyone eventually got paid, including these senior managers. So for the bosses it was, in effect, a paid vacation. That doesn’t sit well with the employees who have to come in under the terms of their contract … even without pay.

“When it comes down to it, there’s people who’s going to decide not to come to work,” Bob Bartz, the TSA Local 1048 president told ThinkProgress Monday.

Congress thinks that it has “fixed” the disaster that confronted travelers when the 2013 shutdown began, by funding traffic controllers and a few other essential personnel. But not paying people who are doing legitimate work is not exactly a fix that sticks.

I’m reminded of a section of my new novel, Chasm Gorge. Len Willy, the safari guide, has just returned to Nairobi and must pass through immigration and customs, manned by officials rarely paid:

The line moved quickly, and the fatigued official stamped his passport without even looking at him. He quickly walked down the never having worked and never will work escalators into baggage reclaim where the overworked carrousel tried, stopped, and tried again to revolve baggage back into the lives of passengers.
      Len’s line of sight cut over the frozen stares of the passengers to the customs tables, where indecently clothed and overstuffed officials waited for their bribes, appropriately directly beneath a newly painted sign that announced that no bribes should be paid.
  His two bags arrived, and with his fingers already searching for money in his front pocket, he quickly walked towards the customs table.
      Kenya was a land of chai, the Swahili/Hindi euphemism for a bribe. In the old days Len remembered resisting angrily, staring at young hooligans’ hands with the disgust of a master visitor, capable of withdrawing his support and the thousands of American tourists he commanded. But the fat Wazee who manned the scratched and scarred customs tables were no hooligans. Their clothes were frayed, their eyes held in sockets by flaps of skin made thick by nights of no sleep. Big bellies were likely extended not from too much food, but from too much cheap changaa – cheaper, sweeter, faster than a bottle of beer.
      Len could muster no anger when he imagined the throngs of family waiting to be fed, clothed, and sent to school by a single man fortunate enough to be closely enough related to some high official that he got this coveted government position – only not to be paid from the national treasury for months.
      Len was stopped. Most weren’t. But he was as much a ripe target for chai as tourists were for cab and elephant hair bracelet scams. Resistance welled in his veins even as his pocketed hand grabbed the hundred shilling note.
      The customs official didn’t even try to seem legitimate. Instead, he just threw his fingers at random parts of Len’s bags.
      Len pulled the shilling note out of his pocket, and before he even opened his hand, the official snapped it up with little regard to keeping it secret and then casually took out his wallet and carefully folded in the note, abandoning all notice of Len as he returned his attention to the back of the arrivals hall, deeper into the carousel’s twists and turns than luggage would ever go.
      “Three kilos of flour, or a half kilo of tea, or all the makings to launch a SAM,” Len recounted dreamily to himself the worth of his hundred shillings.

Nairobi has greatly improved since that segment was inspired.

O’Hare, on the other hand ….

The Cold Out of The Spy

The Cold Out of The Spy

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letsnotpaythemToday’s spy scandal in South Africa, CitizenFour and my own novel, Chasm Gorge, all show that the old spy isn’t all that he’s cracked up to be.

And that, my friends, is why not funding Homeland Security could be the greatest security threat the United States has faced since 911.

This morning South Africa is raked by still another controversy, but this one is more sexy because it’s about spying.

Calling South Africa the “El Dorado of Espionage,” the Guardian newspaper and Al-Jazeera jointly announced they had collected hundreds of secret documents from South Africa which revealed the identities of 78 spies working in the country, plus an additional 65 foreign intelligence agents.

(A subtle difference: a “foreign intelligence agent” is a credentialed foreign officer usually associated with an embassy or consulate who ostensibly works in a non-security area. A “spy” is your Johnny-down-the street.)

Both the Guardian and al-Jazeera are in the forefront of today’s investigative media, and both have agreed to not release the actual identities of those discovered.

Which is a shame because I rather think that most of these 143 people are pretty inept when considered in the context of our classic Cold War spy heroes. What’s been unearthed by these so-called spies seems either highly technical and something that a normal third grader facile with the internet could do, or kind of comic.

“South Africa … relied on a spy … to find out details of its own government’s involvement in a … joint satellite surveillance programme with Russia,” was how the [South African] Mail & Guardian described what it felt was the most significant story of the investigation.

Did you get that? South Africa used a spy to figure out what it was itself doing.

The two outstanding and aggressive news agencies characterize their investigation:

“The continent has increasingly become the focus of international spying as the battle for its resources has intensified, China’s economic role has grown dramatically, and the US and other western states have rapidly expanded their military presence … in a new international struggle for Africa.”

I agree. I just don’t share the belief that spies or foreign intelligence agents are the movers and shakers of this information.

As CitizenFour demonstrates all it takes is a geek. The world is so transparent, today — relative to the Cold War — that the skills required to uncover information have long since changed.

In my novel, Chasm Gorge, I portray African spies as old, pudgy and easily manipulated by nonspies: the politicians who are today’s real movers and shakers.

Which is why if we don’t fund Homeland Security, and since I’m scheduled to leave America on an airplane this weekend, and since there’s now a good chance the people manning security aren’t going to be paid … well, have you noticed some of those TSA folks?

Many don’t strike me as material for the Boston Tea Party militia. I didn’t feel in the beginning that their services would be very useful, but now that their services are institutionalized, they can very easily become compromised, too.

We have achieved a sort of stasis in preventing terrorism within America. By throwing everything and the kitchen sink at anything that wiggles, the marauding cats have been sequestered at the dumpsters.

If TSA doesn’t get paid, if all the tens of thousands of others throwing kitchen sinks don’t get paid, what’s going to happen?

Maybe exactly what Congressman Steve King wants: “It’s the only leverage that we have,” King told NewsMax yesterday.

I.E. The leverage to blow ourselves up.

Seems to me that’s exactly what a suicide bomber believes.

Ebola & Other Warnings

Ebola & Other Warnings

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asboluteprotectionagainstebola‘Ebola’ and ‘terrorism in Kenya’ have been massively distorted by American media and not for wont of reporting truthfully.

Confused? So was I until helped by a little email dialogue with a friend. What I mean is that readers’ reactions today are so instantaneous a normal bloke can’t possibly have taken any time to think about what he’s going to say before saying it.

And in this case, saying is believing.

Then it’s too late … it’s on the comment page, Facebook or Twitter, and it’s been retweeted and cloud copied an infinitum. There’s no delete.

There’s a race to be first to react. Reaction trumps deduction. Like my old childhood “telephone game” in virtually minutes if not seconds of a media story, “facts” and “truths” have all been distorted to conform with the cultural presumptions of the reactors.

Case One: The medical doctor who is the son of the current President of Liberia.

From what I understand, Dr. James Adamah Sirleaf is a highly respected Connecticut physician, highly credential academically, remarkably generous and dedicated especially to helping the medical development of his birth country, Liberia.

He spoke freely to Wall Street Journal reporters last October about why he wasn’t giving up his life in the United States since 1990, his family, his practice and children, to go fight ebola.

In fact, he was ardently fighting ebola … for years, through philanthropy and NGO organizations that he founded and directed. His too severe conclusions about his own actions caused a maelstrom of criticism that spread worldwide.

As reported today in AllAfrica “The two [WSJ] articles generated over 3,600 social shares … including [from] reporters, editors, producers or bureau chiefs at news organizations including Politico, Reuters, Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, Financial Times, Boston Globe, CNN, Associated Press, NBC, the New York Times and the BBC.”

Ultimately the story jeopardized Liberian public support for the otherwise popular president, his mother, Ellen Sirleaf.

This is an excellent smaller example of how the whole issue of ebola was distorted in the public mind.

The very nature of the disease – the fact that it is less contagious than measles or most flues; exactly how dangerous it is to societies with public health – less so than measles; and especially how and where it might be prevented – not from quarantining returning doctors … are just some of the distortions that led to this massive “Ebola Myth.”

Yet short of Rupert Murdoch’s media I couldn’t find a single initial incorrect story about it. But the perfect storm of instant reaction and dystopian, mendacious culture that gives rise to Fox News generated a “situation” that was no longer real.

We’re still unpacking the disreality of “Ebola.”

Case Two: American travel warnings on Kenya.

I have been writing about this for decades, enough I suspect to conceivably be used by “Fawlty Towers” to return to prime time.

American travel warnings are so overly cautious that they’re self-defeating: follow their advice and there’s no need to follow their advice because you won’t go anywhere near the place.

They’re also irrelevant because they’re often so specific that were the logic applied to some area like Kenya applied to New Orleans it would effectively end the Mardi Gras.

Over the years, they’ve also just been proved outright wrong, based on completely fallacious information. (That’s subsided in recent years.)

Yesterday, America’s best African reporter, the New York Times Jeffrey Gettleman, wrote a thoughtful and I felt inspiring piece on why America’s current travel warning on Kenya could actually be fueling terrorism.

“Our policy doesn’t make much sense,” Gettleman quoted an American official in that article: “There are neighborhoods in Washington, Anacostia, for example, that are way more dangerous than Nyali or Diani,” he said, citing two relatively quiet Kenyan beach towns [under current American travel warnings].

Carefully, simply and logically, Gettleman explained the self-defeating power of a foreign policy to produce the very outcome it tries to prevent: a travel warning against going somewhere because the threat of calamity is deemed to high.

The warning impedes or stops travel. The tourist location becomes stressed. The locals becomes terrorists.

When I read the story today there were 64 comments. They were insane. There wasn’t one that addressed the evidence, logic or import of Gettleman’s story.

Several, for example, claimed expertness by arguing that Americans aren’t a very significant part of Kenyan tourism anyway, so why does it matter what America says? [Small minds don’t think America’s position has an effect on others in the world?]

I’m not sure I can sum up the dustbin of meaning of these disparate, illogical comments, but “JOHN” stood out because he came to exactly the wrong conclusion, “So what should Western Governments do? Urge their citizens to go to dangerous zones to spread the love? ISIS would no doubt give them a warm welcome.”

Gettleman said precisely what America should do: “… some American officials … wonder if their own government has overreacted, with possibly dangerous unintended consequences. Other Western nations… have formulated more nuanced travel warnings, highlighting certain hot spots without drawing a giant red X across Kenya’s entire coast.”

Did John not read that far? Or did John only read the comments before his?

That’s what I think. That’s the American media overdrive. A story is poorly and too quickly read, not thought about, then reblasted with tons of emotion and misunderstanding. Suddenly, ebola will have a million victims and decimate Peoria, and travel to Fiji is certain death.

We can do better, America.

Listen to Africa

Listen to Africa

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notpropagandaAfrican critics are condemning the Oscars for validating American Sniper, which they charge is little more than propaganda.

Calling it a “highly dangerous and simplistic film,” respected Kenyan author Rasna Warah claimed this morning that American Sniper will reenforce the lies that many Americans believe regarding the Iraq War.

Popular South African movie critic, tha-bang, called the movie Clint Eastwood’s “biggest propaganda film ever.”

Warning her African readers that “though it may be hard to believe,” Warah explained that many Americans still think Saddam Hussein was involved with the Twin Towers bombing and that he harbored weapons of mass destruction.

Kenyans were drawn into this controversy, because director Clint Eastwood used documentary footage of the bombing of the Kenyan Embassy (in 1998) as part of sniper Chris Kyle’s motivation to become a Navy Seal and go into combat.

There is of course no connection whatever between those who organized and blew up the Kenyan embassy and those who were later fighting in Iraq.

“The fact that the weapons of mass destruction lie is so conveniently skipped in this movie as the rationale for the invasion of Iraq instead of the Twin Towers, just shows what kind of film this is,” tha-bang concludes angrily.

“The film has not only angered Arabs but fueled anti-Muslim sentiments,” Wasna warns.

Warah knows her stuff: she’s a Kenyan expert on African terrorism. Her books include “War Crimes” and “Mogadishu Then and Now,” two essential reads for persons interested in understanding Somalia.

I think we need to heed these voices, and of course critics of American Sniper for being propaganda are not confined just to Africa. There have been many similar critiques here at home and from respected critics abroad.

The better a production a movie is, the more dangerous it becomes if its message is unreal or untruthful.

American Sniper carries a message which is a lie, “American avengers are honest souls.”

They are not. American soldiers were no less tricked than me or you into thinking what they were doing was right.

It was wrong, and the film pulls that reality back into the fictionalized grandeur of a nonexistent America.

So whether or not the acting is superb, or the cinematography is near perfect, or the music splendid and dramatic, a message … which is a lie … is carried into the watcher.

We pride ourselves in America for allowing any voice short of one untruthfully screaming “fire” to enter our collective consciousness.

But if critics here at home condemn Obama because he won’t say “Islamic terrorist” then they better endorse Warah and tha-bang, too, for condemning Eastwood for not just rehashing but promulgating the biggest lies of my lifetime.

Frontiers Are Endless

Frontiers Are Endless

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MarsOneMarsOne has all the makings of the Africa Association and might just be mankind’s next great exploration.

Revolution was stirring across the globe, a sort of Arab Spring. The major powers were preoccupied with managing a tech boom as well as numerous wars. Distant and unexplored parts of Africa had their attention but not their passion.

Arabs had been the real explorers. They knew much of interior Africa intimately, but they lacked good map making skills. They dominated slaving and ivory harvesting, but they lacked the ships for transport, which came from the Europeans. With few exceptions they worked individually with little capital like bounty hunters in the wild west.

Several major powers including Britain, Spain, Portugal and France established coastal outposts in West Africa by the early 1700s. They wanted to control or at least regulate the growing slave trade. Their vying for territory in Africa mirrored their rearrangement of Europe as former fiefdoms and tiny kingdoms began to form the countries we recognize today.

Europeans excellently charted most of the African coast during the 16th century but very little was known inland more than 10 or 20 miles. The few explorers who ventured inland died of strange diseases, complained of deathly climates and hostile savages and for some reason lacked the wherewithal of the Arab slavers and ivory hunters.

Competition among European powers, though, forced their reluctant leaders to invest in Africa. By the mid 1700s Britain had a dozen trading stations in interior West Africa.

The furthest and controversial Pisania station was 200 miles up the Gambia River. The managers were to monitor the slave trade, keep their eyes on the Arabs and develop new commerce in palm oil.

But Britain had no passion to find out what lied over the next hill. Revolution was brewing in its colonies across the Atlantic. India demanded most of the colonial office’s resources, so Africa was left to private companies to develop.

Enter MarsOne. MarsOne is Dutch created and managed. So was Cape Town, Jakarta and New York.

“MarsOne will establish a permanent human settlement on Mars. Crews of four will depart every two years, starting in 2024. Our first unmanned mission will be launched in 2018.”

According to an MIT group studying Mars One half of the first set of explorers will die enroute Mars, the costs will be exponentially greater than the organization predicts, and “it’s not really feasible under the assumptions they’ve made.”

Very similar remarks to King George’s Prime Minister, the Early of Bute, about the group that later became the African Association.

Lord Bute was right, by the way. When the Africa Association raised the capital and government license to explore West Africa, nine of its first ten explorers died exploring the Niger River.

It wasn’t until the formidable Mungo Park in 1795 successfully went beyond the Pisania Trading Station and returned to tell about it.

Recently MarsOne chose its first 100 explorers. I listened to one interviewed by Chris Hayes this week.

Women, too, of course, because all the missions will be … one way.

One advancement mankind has made in the last several centuries since Mungo Park sailed down the Niger is to better predict outcomes. In those early African days explorers were often driven by notions of the divine, or of their heroic and legendary personal heritages.

Mungo Park and the dozen explorers who died preceding him knew their chances of returning were slim, but actual probabilities were much harder to ascertain. Mungo Park’s main concern wasn’t the chances of running out of food or fuel, but of overcoming fear.

Many were motivated by the rewards of success, the book deals that in the 18th and 19th centuries were like worldwide movie contracts. I don’t doubt there are some in the MarsOne 100 who are similar.

But the MarsOne folks have a lot more data to sit on than Mungo Park did. They don’t wonder if theirs might be a one-way journey. It is. So whether they die on the way, or die there, they will never come home.

The MIT study is packed with much more science than the drawer-full of old Arab maps and stained notes of early explorers held by the African Association. Yet to me it still reeks of the obdurance of Lord Bute’s plaintiff appeals to King George III to forget about Africa and those “unknown worlds,” accept the 1763 Treaty of Paris and concentrate on making life better in Edinburgh.

Thank goodness there are still humans in this world with the passion to explore and the bravado to tempt the unknown. More than ever today we need a belief that there is so much more out there than our troubled selves.

The Season Change… Again

The Season Change… Again

by Arusha ♥ 5 Comments

bokoharamleaderThis week’s aggressive attacks against Islamic extremists by Egypt, Jordan and now Nigeria is a significant turning point in the wars against ISIS and Boko Haram.

That’s not to say it’s a significant turning point in the “War against Terror.” But we’ll never get to figuring that one out until we start dealing in realities and admitting that the current western mission against ISIS and Boko Haram appears to be working.

It’s now been a day or more since countries in the region of Islamic terror have begun to fight back, and the response from the terrorists indicates they’re worried.

I believe the many seemingly disconnected events that happened this week in Africa and the Levant indicate that Islamic terrorists for the first time believe they are losing.

Al-Jazeera reported this morning that the Taliban and America are exploring “peace talks” in Qatar. The Taliban has had an office in Qatar for several years, and there have been other rumored meetings with America to no avail.

But in light of the much more extreme ISIS and affiliates, the Taliban now seems like Switzerland, very much worth talking to – or through – in times of travail.

Egypt bombed Libya, and Jordan bombed Syria and Iraq, to retaliate against ISIS’ beheadings of their nationals. In Nigeria a new offensive by the army claims to have killed hundreds of terrorists and reclaimed villages that had long been under Boko Haram’s control.

For so long Obama and other sane minds have explained that the war against Islamic extremists in the Levant will only improve when the countries in those regions actually pick up the fight.

Normally Boko Haram and ISIS would never the twain meet. The raw racism that exists between Arabs and Africans is something westerners can’t understand. It exceeds the antipathy of tribalism within Arabs (mostly Sunni versus Shiia) and Africans with their multitude of different ethnic groups.

If things weren’t going badly for radical Islamists as a whole, there would be no collaboration between the African Boko Haram and Arab ISIS. Yet that is exactly what is suggested today.

In a video released by Boko Haram vowing to disrupt the Nigerian election, the Boko Haram leader shows himself for the first time. That together with the professionalism of the production has all the markings of ISIS propaganda.

Recently the two groups released photos of each other’s flags and praised each other’s fighting. That’s hardly collaboration, but even if it’s a stretch to conclude anything more than empathy among villains that’s a significant change.

Almost exactly two years ago a similar new fight was happening in Mali. That represented the last hurrah of al-Qaeda. I predicted as such, and I think that is now what is happening to ISIS and Boko Haram.

Obama/Hollande’s strategy of chasing terrorists and wearing them down works, especially when countries in the area actually begin fighting.

As with al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab, they never disappear altogether and they fracture into new thugs, but they lose their original power and focus.

I’m not suggesting that’s enough, and I’ve often written how short-sighted this strategy is:

ISIS emerged from the fracturing of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Boko Haram emerged from the defeat of certain Tuaregs and other Islamic groups. So theoretically we’ll spend eternity squashing one group that emerges in the pyre of the previous.

Yet call a spade a spade, folks. The single greatest threat today to the specific if questionable mission to defeat ISIS and Boko Haram is to deny they are being defeated, that the mission is succeeding.

So the single greatest threat is ourselves, those of us who thrive on the need to be threatened: The McCains and Grahams, the Righties and Fox News who can’t see beyond their nose and believe they’re threatened from all sides until the room is nuked.

It’s exactly what the terrorists want. It is, in fact, their only hope: turning America into the quintessential suicide bomber.

Fight of the Hyaenas

Fight of the Hyaenas

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fightofthehyaenasEgypt’s bombing yesterday is proof positive that we have to get completely out of the current fight before something horrible happens.

The Egyptian president’s decision yesterday to bomb ISIS targets in Libya is a massive escalation of the current conflict. It turns it almost into something closer to the conflict in Ukraine, where tanks and SAM missiles replace swords and horses.

King Abdullah of Jordan sends a half dozen planes daily towards Syria, and now President El-Sisi is poised to send in tens of thousands of soldiers.

Egypt’s bombing was not just revenge for the ISIS beheading of 21 Egyptians several days ago. El-Sisi is just using that as a pretense.

It was not the actual beheadings that aroused El-Sisi’s attention as much as the backdrop: the Mediterranean Sea. ISIS was announcing that it had emerged from the southern deserts of Libya where it has been maneuvering to coalesce radical Islamists for more than a year.

ISIS wanted the world and especially el-Sisi to know that it is not a dumb desert phenomenon. There is little use in controlling an oil field if you can’t get the oil to port. ISIS beheadings made it to the port.

Neither was this a surprise to el-Sisi. He has been an ardent supporter of anti-Islamists in Libya, especially for General Khalifa Haftar. Haftar is an old and duplicitous face in Libyan politics who el-Sisi dusted off of the old generals’ shelf to become his proxy in Libya last year.

But despite Haftar’s several announced and only one partially successful coup against the powerless Libyan Islamic parliament, the old fighter suffered several military loses to ISIS in the last several months.

“Let those near and far know that the Egyptians have a shield that protects and preserves the security of the country, and a sword that eradicates terrorism,” the Egyptian military said.

El-Sisi is no Mother Theresa. Egypt today suffers a repression not unlike during the days of Mubarak. So whether El-Sisi’s action in Libya is good or bad or moral or immoral it’s the fact that many of us have been shouting to Americans for years:

It’s not our war. It’s theirs.

And if “they” take it up, then we can debate the sides we’d like to support, and I hope that will restrain any involvement we deem worthy because…

… there is no good side. ISIS is bad. El-Sisi in Egypt isn’t particularly good. King Abdul in Jordan isn’t your model of democracy and King Salman of Saudi Arabia stones adulterers and tears the skin off bloggers.

Al Qaeda is a grumpy old if still dangerous demon. Iraq has fallen completely apart as Sunnis and Shiias fight even within Baghdad. Afghanistan is ready to implode.

And not one of these – not all of these allied could bring the battle back to the Twin Towers. Don’t let the terrorists play on these latent fears. Not even they truly believe their religious hyperbole. America is a symbolic punching bag for all struggles, because we have nothing left to conquer than our self.

The fight in the Mideast is now distinctly, definitively not ours.

How many westerners have been beheaded? How many Egyptians?

I learned long ago as a guide in Africa that you don’t go into a hyaena fight, no matter how good the pictures might be.

The Age of Presidents

The Age of Presidents

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Today is the American Presidents’ Day holiday, and as in Africa perhaps we should think of as commemorating ‘The Age of Presidents.’

Officially marked to celebrate the birthday of our first president, George Washington, it was expanded by most of the states to also celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, which also occurs in February, hence the name.

Some southern states, though, officially celebrate Washington and the third president, Thomas Jefferson, a ridiculous and clearly racist slap at the president who ended slavery.

It occurred to me, today, that this is an unique year for presidents in Africa as well. Today the authoritarian president in Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, bombed ISIS targets in Libya after Egyptian Copts were beheaded there.

Like the King of Jordan, Abdullah II, and like Obama for that matter, these men acted unilaterally, evoking whatever powers they perceive exist but certainly not any that emanate from any democratic processes.

Today America has 10,000 troops back in the Levant. (Read the last chapter of my novel, Chasm Gorge, where I predicted this.)

It seems to me we live in a time where democracy is not working, and that often any peace or stability or prosperity that occurs does so because an authoritarian person is benevolent.

Consider Kenya’s increasingly dictatorial president overseeing an increasingly peaceful and prosperous society.

Or the best example in all of Africa, the iron fisted completely ruthless Paul Kagame of Rwanda. Few countries in Africa today are as peaceful or prosperous as Rwanda.

The six years of an Obama presidency has seen American society recover masterfully from a terrible recession, try to end foreign conflicts and reduce the tension of illegal immigrants. Yet most of this was not done in a democratic way.

Perhaps in this modern age democracy is not the will of the people, but a tool to manipulate the will of the people. Happy President’s Day!

State of Whatever

State of Whatever

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State of WhateverSouth Africa’s State of the Union last night was not “unprecedented chaos,” just theater at its best. Isn’t that what government is all about?

One longs for days past when information didn’t fire so quickly all over the place, when natural barriers – like time and party lines – filtered the nonsensical from what was important.

We all want thrills. There’s no thrill in a chief executive reciting all his accomplishments. Rather, we want to see a Congressman shouting at the President, or a void left by a Supreme Court Judge.

Last night in South Africa their State of the Union erupted into ultimate theater.

It was abjectly comical.

The main drama was when members of the country’s most revolutionary party, the Economic Freedom Fighter Party (EFF), interrupted proceedings demanding President Jacob Zuma repay the country for the millions used to refurbish one of his homes.

It’s a legitimate, major scandal.

Zuma’s own government investigators have determined wrongdoing, although no consequences have followed other than Zuma vaguely promising that he will repay. (Zuma’s life as president has been one scandal after another.)

The Speaker of Parliament then instructed the EFF – properly dressed in reddish orange jumpsuits – to shut up. The EFF refused, the decibels were raised, and then the Speaker ordered Parliamentary security to forcibly remove the EFF.

Later EFF leaders claimed seven of its members were injured by security officials.

A much more respectable party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), came to the party all dressed in glamorous black as a symbol of the death of democracy, then walked out en masse after the eviction of the EFF.

Parliament was left with the ANC and a handful of stringer-on parties, like the communists, and President Zuma dutifully continued his very boring address.

Media has pretty universally now termed last night as “chaos.” It wasn’t. It was theater.

Clearly the EFF had planned on the disruption. Clearly the DA had planned on making a point of the expected disruption. And clearly, the ANC had plans for clearing them both out.

Important security officials in the government were walking in and out of Parliament as if on cue before, during and after the eviction. Journalists’ phone and video signals were jammed inside the hallowed halls just before eviction. The white shirted bouncers strong enough to shove the EFF out of the hall were not regular Parliament employees.

This was all planned, on all sides, and it was quite a show. In fact South Africa’s State of the Union is a media spectacular not dissimilar to our Oscar’s.

Celebrities arrive wearing outlandish and lavish fashions, dip before the cameras before walking on the red carpet into the hallowed chambers. There was the grandson of Nelson Mandela in a newly created Parisian tailored suit inspired by his grandfather’s tribal garments.

There was the country’s head of the police walking awkwardly to keep in balance her newly polished chest of medals.

And there were the various parties, uniformed in chosen colors in perfectly starched arrays of dissemblance.

“It was a landmark setback for Zuma,“ one of South Africa’s major newspapers claims.

I don’t think so.

It’s just what we always expect from South Africa: just a show.

Just a little Love Song

Just a little Love Song

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by InkyBoy
by InkyBoy
Is music one clue as to why modern humans displaced Neanderthals and now reign supreme?

One of the greatest mysteries in all paleontology is why we, modern homo sapiens sapiens, appeared so suddenly in Europe 50-65,000 years ago and equally suddenly (in paleontological terms) wiped out or subsumed the Neanderthals who had reigned in Europe for so much longer.

We know one of the reasons: we had better weapons than any of the other several species of hominin we were encountering as we fled drought in Africa.

But that sort of begs the question: why did Early Us know how to make those weapons and the Big Guy didn’t?

Neanderthal had a brain as large or larger than ours. It was a much stronger, bigger person. It would be like your high school football team beating the Seahawks (provided, of course, that Marshawn Lynch wasn’t denied the ball).

The prevailing views for last couple decades are changing.

The past notion was that Neanderthals lacked language to the same extent as our ancestors, because the absence of a hyoid bone suggested their larynx didn’t descend like ours. That is what changes our voices as we grow up, and it facilitates us making hundreds of thousands of sounds we can’t when we’re little.

Too bad. Hyoids presumed descended in the larynx in Neanderthals have now been found.

In fact descended hyoids have been found in even other old species of hominin, like heidelbergensis. I don’t want to give this up completely, though, because there are also Neanderthal whose descended larynx isn’t certain, but not so in any modern human.

How about art? Early Us left a lot of graffiti. Caves, the preferred domicile 50,000 years ago, are treasure troves of wall art, some of it quite masterful.

Well, a couple months ago scientists reported very primitive cave art found in Indonesia made by homo erectus a half million years ago!

And maybe even the Big Guy after all. Last year some archaeologists insisted they found Neanderthal cave art in Gibraltar, dated to 39,000 years ago.

Like Neanderthal’s maybe descending hyoids, I think this discovery is only maybe cave art by Neanderthals, because it might actually have been done by Early Us or by some progeny of Early Us and the Big Huy.

Now scientists are focusing on music.

Spears, rock axes, even picks and primitive balls and chains – and maybe now even cave art – have been associated with all sorts of early man species, some dating back millions not thousands of years. But musical instruments?

The oldest ever found and mostly accepted as such is a 43,000 year old flute. That corresponds close enough with the time homo sapiens sapiens began wiping out or subsuming the Neanderthal. But of course we can’t be sure that the person being wiped out wasn’t the piper.

The flute discovery has flown off into the stratosphere of tangents. All sorts of scientists, now, are wondering if chimps drumming on hollow logs is the precursor to Mozart, and that only Early Us mastered that maturation.

Take a deep breath, guys.

I think what we’re learning is that the whole range of things from better weapons to more advanced artistic and linguistic capabilities gave Early Us an extremely significant leg up not just on the Big Guy but every hominin to come before.

It was no single thing, and I’m sure music was a part of it. It’s much easier to go into battle against Neanderthal if you’re singing ‘Rule Britannia,’ can encrypt your texts and have a Gatling gun to boot.

Oh, by the way, the prevailing science today suggests that we didn’t wholesale wipe out the Neanderthal. There might have been skirmishes, but there were a lot of weddings, too.

Ain’t So Edelweiss

Ain’t So Edelweiss

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

senatormuthambaEast Africans figure prominently among the leaked billionaires holding accounts with the Swiss HSBC bank, but there’s a lot more to the story.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ report of the hidden, possible illegal depositors of HSBC’s Swiss bank was released last week. As thousands of journalists mine the information it was reported yesterday that a prominent Kenyan Senator is among them.

There’s nothing in the ICIJ report to link any individual to illicit activities, although the report does explain how bank officials routinely advised investors ways to avoid paying taxes, among other methods of hiding wealth.

The report leaked information from 742 clients, but almost all of these are unnamed accounts as is the custom with high rollers banking in Switzerland. The “numbered” account is usually all that is known.

But true to form, Senator Johnston Muthama of Machakos opened at least one account in his name and eight others with other family member names. His total deposits of around $35 million seem unbalanced to his business interests in his area, but that’s impossible to prove.

His explanation to a newspaper in Kenya today was that the accounts were opened as business ventures with international capitalists and were related to his legitimate business interests in mining.

The remainder of the Kenyan accounts were unnamed and equaled $559.8 million. There were 286 Tanzanian accounts in excess of $100 million.

In today’s world there are a lot of rich people and I suppose not all of them got that way illegally. In any case. it’s not possible from the ICIJ report to prove any illegality by anyone, although the inferences are strong.

HSBC has agreed for some time to repatriate foreign funds to governments that can prove the deposits are illegal. This is a clever move by a big bank recognizing that “foreign governments” are usually controlled by the people who are its depositors!

The East African component of HSBC depositors is fractional when compared to those from the developed world, and Senator Muthama’s $35 million bank account shouldn’t give any of us pause. In the big pond of the wealthy, he’s a very small fish.

What is significant is that countries like Kenya and Tanzania are incapable of emerging from poverty in today’s world without mastering capitalism, whether they should have to or not.

Muthama’s stash is only one of hundreds — maybe thousands — from East Africa, which means that precious capital needed by East Africa is leaving it.

Several years ago professors at the University of Nairobi documented this horrible capital flight out of East Africa.

“Residents of the East Africa Community have more money stashed away in Swiss banks than those from any other region in Africa,” the report found.

The report said that more than $1.3 billion of capital generated by East Africa was at the time residing in Swiss banks.

A major reason East Africans as compared, for example, to the much bigger and more prosperous southern Africans may have more Swiss deposits is because southerners can grow their money at home often as well as abroad. In far less developed East Africa that’s more difficult: there’s less for very wealthy people to invest in.

As with this week’s expose, there was nothing in that 2012 report to prove illegality, and the 2012 report was not even trying to suggest it. Rather, it was pointing out that development requires capital and capital generated in East Africa ought to stay and be used in East Africa, not flee to Switzerland.

The ICIJ report is a national embarrassment to Kenya and possible political epitaph to Johnston Muthamba but it’s important to repeatedly acknowledge illegality is only inferred.

(Sort of the same way we wonder how a new Congressman can decorate his office like Downton Abbey.)

Secret capital in Swiss banks, on the other end, is clearly evil.

Change of the Upper Hand

Change of the Upper Hand

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BorderClosesThe row between Kenya and Tanzania over tourism last week is a strong indication that Kenyan security has improved and tourists are returning.

This little tiff has absolutely no effect on any but the most budget-minded tourists.

Nairobi has 20-25 times more international airline service than Tanzania’s northern airport, Kilimanjaro. Deal seekers who bought a $200 better air fare into Nairobi than Kilimanjaro until Friday were able to fly into Nairobi, then arrange Tanzanian transportation from the airport into Tanzania with a net savings of about $100.

That’s over. If you want a safari in Tanzania, you now either have to fly into Tanzania or take Kenyan transport from the Kenyan airport to a bus station or other transfer point.

Travel and tourism pundits, always the poorest of pundits, exclaim that Tanzania has done itself a great disservice by stonewalling the negotiations over the last three weeks aimed at finding a compromise.

Sort of, but not really given the current governments.

Obviously any easing of travel restrictions anywhere in the world can increase tourism. This year, for example, numerous countries in southern Africa began easing the restrictions for travel between them. With this incident, East Africa is moving the other way.

Here’s the essence: Tanzanian tourism suffers any time Kenyan tourism is given an entre. This is because Kenyan tourism is bigger, better and less corrupt. I find this, by the way, remarkably ironic since my own assessment is that the Tanzanian tour product – i.e., the game parks – is better than Kenya’s.

But Tanzania has squandered its treasures more than Kenya has. This isn’t to say that Kenya is lily white, hardly. But the level of corruption in Tanzanian tourism is considerably greater. The actual laws on the books in Tanzania regarding tourism, conservation and game parks, are the most complex, messed up pile of regulations this side of Riverview Park in Chicago’s mafia days.

This discourages foreign investment and that, above all, keeps business actors in the Tanzanian tourism sector small, ripe for the picking so to speak.

If the two countries opened their borders to one another, Kenya’s much better run tourism sector could virtually subsume Tanzania’s. It’s one example of the virtues of well run capitalism. I can’t think of many, but this is one.

I don’t doubt that Tanzanians will be sorry about last Friday’s outcome. Above all it shows that Kenya feels increasingly confident about its own tourism situation. Kenya had been acting unilaterally by not enforcing the 1985 agreement, seemingly only to Tanzania’s advantage.

But in the recent dire days of terrorism in Kenya, any business they could muster was helpful. Now as things are looking, Kenya realizes it’s time to muster its advantages, recognize that the better air service and lower air fares into Nairobi are reasons travelers might choose Kenya instead of Tanzania for their game viewing safari.

So why make it any easier for them to go to Tanzania, than Tanzania allows its incoming visitors to go to Kenya?

The fact is, of course, that were Tanzania to get its house in order it would have no problem competing squarely with Kenya. At that point it would greatly benefit Tanzania to ease as many restrictions between the two countries as possible.

That day will come right after we successfully sell ski vacations to Saudia Arabia.

Muddled America

Muddled America

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banksblockmeAnother bank stops money transfers to Somalia as American business continues to foment terrorism in The Horn of Africa.

As of this morning Merchant’s Bank of California will no longer process customer wire transfers to Somali .

This leaves fewer than a dozen mostly small banks left in the U.S. that still process wire transfers to Somalia.

I don’t know if it’s uncontrollable fear, explosive ego or just abject stupidity, but it’s so clear that this action will increase terrorism and any threats to America as a result.

According to Oxfam, $215 million annually is sent by Somalis in the U.S. to relatives in Somalia, equaling or exceeding the total annual U.S. foreign aid to the country.

“… millions of Somalis … are dependent on this for their daily lives,” Degan Ali, the founder of a Somali support group in Kenya told Reuters today. “We’re talking about food, shelter, medical needs, education …” she explained.

I remember my own grandfather each Saturday wiring much more than my grandmother thought appropriate to his relatives in Croatia.

Large banks like Wells Fargo and Citibank stopped the service a decade ago, citing U.S. government regulation as the reason.

In a message last week to its intermediary agents, Merchants said it had received a “Consent Order” from the Department of the Treasury requiring new procedures to ensure that the wires did not end up in terrorist’s hands, and that the procedures were either impossible to comply with or to expensive to pursue.

So which is it? Is it the U.S. government incapable of managing a regulation that determines the numbers of zeros after “$5” used either to buy a month’s worth of cornmeal or a SAM missile, or is it the banks who just don’t want to be bothered by a few more checklists?

Last April two Congressman from Minneapolis where America’s largest Somali community resides, one Democrat (Keith Ellison) and one Republican (Erik Paulsen), introduced legislation in The House to clarify and simplify these regulations.

Guess what? Boehner and company dumped it as increasing government involvement in the banking industry.

In December Oxfam published a timeline of American regulatory agency involvement in this, documenting so clearly how confused and contradictory it is.

So whether it is messed up self-destructive ideology, or messed up poorly created regulation, or both, once again America is shooting itself in the foot.

There’s no question that too much money is getting into the hands of terrorists. But the significant conduits are Saudia Arabia and other of our allies! Not expatriates in Minneapolis or Los Angeles sending chip change to struggling relatives!

That presumption is the success of terrorism. There are so few American expatriate Arabs and Muslims who feel anything less than outrage against terrorism that I feel embarrassed every time I write this sentence! Americans don’t – or don’t want to – believe this.

So the system on all sides gets muddled, we make the situation worse and worse with cockamamy wars and stops on bank transfers.

We act against our own best self-interest. Isn’t that terrorism’s first objective?

Terrorists will never defeat America. America will defeat America.

More Than Goodluck

More Than Goodluck

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goodluckvsbuhariAfrican democracies are not doing well in the face of growing terrorism, and next weekend one of the biggest tests occurs when Nigerians go to the polls.

Secretary of State John Kerry made an unannounced visit to Lagos a day ago on his way to Kiev. His message was unequivocal: pursue, protect and keep clean the upcoming elections. None of the three are likely.

The presidential election is too close to call. President Goodluck Jonathan is seeking a second term. His unexpected best challenger, Muhammadu Buhari, is seeking a return to power.

Jonathan is an avowed Christian. Buhari is an avowed Muslim.

Jonathan at least talks democracy and claims he champions it. Buhari was one of Nigeria’s most ruthless military dictators currently being investigated by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

Neither candidate talks much about the ineffective war against Boko Haram, which controls about an eighth of the country.

Both candidates publicly disavow the possibility of a military coup. Both candidates’ advisers say otherwise.

There had hardly been a more popular man in Nigeria before Goodluck Jonathan came to power in 2011. His first few years were a love fest with the nation, and Nigeria was doing very well.

As with other popularly elected Nigerian leaders, Jonathan’s most important task was to keep the military at bay. The military has ruled Nigeria for more years than civilians since Independence in 1960. Occasionally those periods have been reasonably fair and peaceful; Buhari’s was not.

Almost all the military rulers, beneficent or tyrannical, looted the country. Nigeria is only now emerging from a state of constant corruption.

Jonathan carefully emasculated his own army so that when Boko Haram emerged, a dilemma of unexpected proportions did as well.

Foot soldiers were rarely paid because the military budget was systematically reduced or reallocated. Military leaders remain firmly in control, though, so what money was left was hoarded at the top. Foot soldiers get fed and clothed and are provided with enough aura to build egos instead of pensions.

But it’s the reason Nigeria’s military mostly fled Boko Haram, rarely fighting. All the successful military operations against Boko Haram in northeastern Nigeria have come from the Chadian Army.

Which both Jonathan and Buhari say is just fine.

Despite Secretary Kerry’s noble visit, democracy is not working in Nigeria. Certainly for the moment it is not working for Nigeria’s Muslim community who is adamantly opposed to Boko Haram but getting no help from the central government.

A Buhari victory could come at the ballot box or the barracks. Either path is paved by Nigerians of all dispositions increasingly afraid of Boko Haram.

Next weekend’s elections will be unable to justly determine a winner. Jonathan’s democratic presidency achieved that goal the last time because he last won by such massive margins.

That won’t happen this time. It’s too close.

Each side has enormous resources for “getting out the vote” which means “getting out the vote as many times as you can.”

A contested election is certain and it’s hard to imagine anything peaceful. Bush vs Gore, or more appropriately, Kenyatta vs Odinga, are not models for this massively powerful and divided country besieged by terrorism.

So rumors now flourish in Lagos that Jonathan is courting military leaders to fracture any support that may exist for Buhari.

No irony ever before would match Jonathan installed in power by a military coup after losing a democratic election. That reality may be fanciful, though, as I expect the election will be inconclusive.

Let the strongest man win.

Besting Barbie

Besting Barbie

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QoAvsBarbieBaz Luhrmann said it all, and Nigerian Queens of Africa dolls are now outselling barbies.

Nigeria is a complex place, among the most difficult African countries for a westerner to visit and enjoy, much less understand its foreign or social policies. Yet Nigeria often best embodies the contest between The West and Africa. Today in Nigeria, barbie dolls are losing.

Think about it. What toys do little Russians buy? What do those cute little primary school girls in Shanghai do after school? After all those primly dressed little Indian kids get home from their expensive Delhi boarding schools, what do they play with?

Other than smartphones and xBoxes, what do nonwestern kids play with?

I know images are developing in your minds of poverty struck barefoot Africans rolling the frame of a canabalized bicylcle wheel down a dirty path. (It happens in Appalachia, too.) It happens less and less in Africa, where the majority of the population – including kids, by the way – are growing up in cities that often don’t have dead grass.

Do you remember your toys? I bet if you tried hard enough you’d be able to create a narrative of your life, today, that begins with your toys as a child.

The Queens of Africa dolls intentionally challenged the barbie doll market in Africa, and they’re winning.

They’re beginning to sell well in Brazil as well, and they would probably sell well in America if the barbie cartel weren’t blocking them. What are we afraid of?

“The ‘Queens of Africa’ [dolls] … represent progressive qualities such as endurance, peace and love, while developing literary potential in children as well as enhancing their career development for the future,” doll creator, Taofeek Okoya, told Elle Magazine.

Moulin Rouge film producer, Baz Luhrmann nailed it: “It’s not about turning into a blonde Barbie doll or becoming what you dream of being; it’s about self-revelation, becoming who you are.”

Exactly as with barbie, Queens of Africa come in upteen different styles with upteen different outfits and upteen different accessories.

Hip culture digital magainze, TakePart, said: “As Barbie sales continue to plummet, another doll is aiming to slide in and take her place,” but then unfortunately added, “– in Nigeria, that is.”

Therein lies the battle between The West and Africa. TakePart is a creation of Jeff Skoll, the first president of eBay. Skoll who is Canadian sees the world from a much more global perspective than most Americans, even though he’s now firmly entrenched in the L.A. scene.

But he can’t fanthom a future in which Africa betters The West.

Even though with dolls for kids it already has. Averaging a quarter of the cost of a barbie, and with no other discernible functional differences, Queens of Africa would devour barbie in the American market.

After all, for years black kids in America played only with white barbie dolls.

“Okoya is starting to ship more of his dolls overseas, which means it could only be a matter of time before toy shelves in America are filled with African Queens and Naija Princesses,” according to the Atlanta magazine, BlackStar.

I have some reservations, by the way. The dolls are modeled after Nigeria’s three major ethnic groups … not helpful for anti-racism. Okoya is something of a playboy, the son of a Nigerian billionaire and few Nigerian billionaires are nice people… not helpful for moral capitalism.

But I probably could find similar reservations about Mattel.

So if you got one Barbie Rambo in a ring with one Queen of Africa Sheba, who’d be on the turf first?