Month: May 2015

You Say Africa’s Corrupt?!

You Say Africa’s Corrupt?!

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

fifa_500Was South Africa the first African country to host the World Cup because it was Africa’s richest and corruptible?

South Africa was awarded the 2010 World Cup after a surprising vote in 2006 by FIFA and strong support by the then FIFA vice president Jack Warner.

The U.S. indictment Tuesday alleges that two South African co-conspirators (#15 and #16) handed Warner a briefcase of cash composed of multiple $10,000 stacks and separately connived with FIFA officials in Switzerland to divert $10 million allocated to helping South Africa prepare for the match to Warner’s personal control.

The two illegal acts of bribery and corruption, according to the U.S. indictment, secured Warner’s support and vote.

Warner later resigned from FIFA, although he kept his positions at the top of the football mafia in his native Trinidad and Tobago. In the last several years he’s been arraigned several times for various corruption charges.

He had been in jail in Trinidad earlier this week, faces more indictments from the current FBI probe, but had been released by a Trinidad judge for “exhaustion.” Hours after his release from “exhaustion” he held a raucous rally of political supporters which included the 72-year old in feverish dancing:

“’If I have been thieving FIFA money for 30 years, who give me the money? How come he is not charged?’ the 72-year-old declared.

He then charged the U.S. FBI with “only going after Third World Countries.”

It’s much easier to contain and arraign someone who is in Zurich than Trinidad.

South African officials, of course, have denied all the allegations. But the leading contenders for co-conspirator #15 or #16, including Danny Jordaan, a newly elected mayor and high-ranking ANC official, have been stone mum.

Like Brazil, South Africa’s World Cup experience was a disastrous financial experience. Like Brazil, extralegal procedures to displace people and condemn needed land and space were only controversial outside the country itself.

The cup is supposed to be played soon in Qatar, a country in a desert where summer temperatures are above 120 F. Qatar is richer, per capita, than either Brazil or South Africa, but the “slave labor” being used to build its massive stadiums for the cup have been reported now for quite a time.

The scandals surrounding FIFA officials are hardly new, either. FIFA officials regularly go in and out of jail. The organization is run like a fiefdom the same way the Olympic Committee is run, but at least until now no one cared.

This is because the prestige of the World Cup, like the Olympics, is extraordinarily huge. The outcome, the Games, trump everything that runs up to them.

The ends justify the means.

South Africa is terribly implicated although no South Africa has been yet indicted. But the story coming out about FIFA is less about South Africa than FIFA, and basically that South Africa like Brazil finally achieved enough wealth to play with the big guys.

And the Big Guys are not African.

I’ve argued for years that the charge that Africa is corrupt is a racist one, because while certainly true at some level, the scale of corruption in Africa can’t begin to reach the scale of corruption in the United States and other western countries.

Whether it’s another Dennis Haestert, Bernie Maddow, Michael Milken, or dozens if not thousands of lobbyists and PACS and corporate “deals” corruption is not an African disease, it’s an American and western disease.

And now maybe that the western world’s most cherished “not-for-profit” organization is being unmasked for what it really is, maybe now the world will admit what a bum rap Africa’s been given.

None Too Many

None Too Many

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

nonetoomanyAn exciting early man discovery published today in Nature may hopefully reverse the insane tide of opinion that hominin evolution is singular and linear.

Clearly we, homo sapiens sapiens, are the end game in a multi-million year evolution that moved step by step from one ancient creature to another, a “linear” evolution into ourselves.

But that doesn’t mean that the “family” of early men wasn’t much broader, with all sorts of other linear evolutions going hither and yon, all dead-ending but us.

I refer to doubters as “insane” because while there are wondrous moments in science where intuitive notions prove wrong, in this case intuitive is really all we need.

All the Kings of The Ecological Hills, sharks, elephants, lions, super viruses, so-called “invasive species” like garlic mustard, and yes, even cock roaches … all of these “kings” did not arrive on a singular path from times long ago.

They all had multiple ancestors, many of which evolved into dead-ends. It’s just totally counter intuitive that we – the “King of Kings” – didn’t arrive on our throne the same way.

Early early man scientists, however, had so little to work with that it really didn’t even occur to them that there could have been other post-ape, post-preman creatures, just like there’s a whole lot of birds. The few discoveries in hand spanned a period of time that could, indeed, suggest one evolved into the other: that all of them seemed in one evolutionary track.

With more and more discoveries, however, this became less plausible, particularly among the post-Australopithecine hominins.

Australopithecine creatures predate homo creatures, and the principal morphological differences are the teeth and brain size. Whether or not some Australopithecine is ancestral to some homo, both are considered incapable of having evolved into modern apes or orangutans … but they are definitely ancestors to us, or to other hominins that went extinct.

That’s the controversy: which is it? Are there other early hominins that went extinct, or is every individual early man fossil we’ve found so far a certain step in the evolutionary ladder to us?

The question really died about 15 years ago when virtually every early man scientist back then espoused a “branching” or multiple ladders theory. Those other ladders never made it to the top: their final species went extinct. We made it.

Homo erectus, in particular, was often cited as one of those dead-ends that got pretty close biologically and socially to us. He migrated all over the earth. He made tools and recent discoveries suggest he used fire.

Then he disappeared hundreds of thousands of years before we appeared.

Meanwhile, all sorts of varied homo hominins more recent than any Austraolipithecine were being discovered: heidelbergensis, floresiensis, habilis, rudolfensis and neanderthalensis. Add us (homo sapiens) and erectus and you have 7 different species, none of which were presumed ancestral to the other.

(Some scientists added others like ergaster and gautengensis, making it 9 or more.)

And then (!) there were some other early manlike creature discoveries, post Australopithecine, that were so taxonomically different they were marginalized as hominins that might even be something else:

Orrorin tugenensis, Paranthropus aethiopicus, Paranthropus boisei and perhaps the most controversial of all, Paranthropus robustus.

If you considered these to be hominin, then there were at least 11-13 or more different hominin species, none of which was ancestral to the other.

That sounded, and still sounds, right to me. As I’ve often said, with time I imagine we’ll add to this list.

Then come these scientists who find some discoveries in Georgia a few years ago which were striking for being among the most complete skulls, and for so many skulls.

The scientists’ assessment at the time was that everything that they had found was a homo erectus and they extrapolated from other details of their discovery that really homo erectus was the only hominin species predating homo sapiens!

The old question was ressurrected.

Well, time has passed and criticism has mounted and basically the consensus that has emerged is that yes, probably there are fewer different hominin species than many once suggested, but that the Georgia finds are woefully insufficient to suggest there weren’t at least some different simultaneous homo species!

And today’s publication in Nature really helps return to this belief: Scientists working in Ethiopia report the discovery of an Australopithecine (remember, the homin creature that predates homo) that was contemporary with “Lucy” (Australopithecus afarensis) but way too different to be like Lucy, so a completely new species of Australopithecine!

Since Austraolopithecine predate homo this suggests that if there are multiple Australopithecine then it’s completely plausible there are multiple homo.

Done for the moment. (Hardly for the term: Stay tuned!)

Junked Java

Junked Java

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

climatechangecoffeePerhaps this will help Senator Inhofe wake up: coffee.

Coffee prices are escalating in part because coffee production worldwide is taking a nose dive.

Some of the finest coffee in the world comes from the Kilimanjaro highlands. Or did. According to Reuters, “hundreds of farmers in the region are abandoning … coffee and cotton.”

The Reuters report is less provocative as to why than the Union of Concerned Scientists: “Climate change is threatening coffee crops in virtually every major coffee producing region of the world.”

UCS explains that coffee in particular is very sensitive to a slight increase in temperatures. Coffee also requires more stable climates with regular amounts of precipitation.

All that’s changing, and particularly in the Kilimanjaro highlands. The Tanzanian government announced a 29% decline this year in coffee production.

Farmers didn’t need the study released recently by a prestigious university in South Africa correlating the decline in coffee production to an increase in the highlands’ night time temperatures.

“Coffee beans are no longer profitable as my harvests keep on falling,” a villager in the Kilimanjaro highlands told Reuters: “I need fast-growing crops I can sell for a quick income.”

Coffee is a long-term agricultural investment. It takes at least three years, and usually five, for a new coffee tree to produce beans. After that it can continue producing for up to 50 years, but the orchard requires lots of water and constant tending.

The South African study documented an increase of a little more than 2 degrees F over a decade, enough to reduce the harvest by a third.

Large numbers of farmers throughout the East African highlands are therefore abandoning coffee for quick growing and quick selling vegetables … and flowers. The “cut flower” industry is growing in leaps and bounds in East Africa as the demand for them grows in Europe. Major European airlines now make their scheduling decisions more on the cargo of cut flowers than on passengers.

Many other farmers are turning to crops like sunflowers and casava which are less sensitive to climate change.

For the time being the crop changes will not likely effect the Tanzanian economy. The cut flower market like coffee requires high initial investment but pays off much more quickly.

Demand for food throughout Africa grows by the minute, and Tanzania remains a net exporter. The agricultural sector of its economy is growing the fastest.

So perhaps the major effect of this current news will be on Senator Inhofe, reported to love his coffee … even during droughts and floods and tornadoes.

A Simple Named Holiday

A Simple Named Holiday

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MemorialDayIt’s Memorial Day in America, similar to the Remembrance Days celebrated in many parts of Africa.

America’s holiday is intended to honor the memories of U.S. soldiers who have fought our wars. Similarly, African Remembrance Days are usually in homage to freedom fighters for independence.

America’s Memorial Day honors all dead soldiers, so in that regard our own revolutionary fighters are to be honored, too. But it began as “Decoration Day” right after the Civil War, following a petition by recently freed slaves to honor the Union soldiers who had freed them.

After World War I, it was changed to “Memorial Day” and extended as an honor to all soldiers in all conflicts.

As a young boy it was a big red-white-and-blue festival. We decorated our little red wagons and bikes, just as we would hardly a month later for July 4th. And in those days we were remembering mostly the two Great Wars: defensive wars.

Since then my own personal regard for Memorial Day has diminished. The numerous wars my country has begun since the 1960s have been unfair and unjust. And with the end of the draft when I was in university, the military has changed radically. It no longer represents society as a whole.

Today, the military is composed either of young people who can’t get any other kind of job or who need the benefits once their service is finished, or avowed militarists.

Politicians today use the military not to protect our freedoms but to protect their positions in power.

I do stop during the day and think of my relatives in the Great Wars. I think of the way the country ultimately came together to fight world tyranny.

But that was all a long time ago, before I was born. In my life time, there is little in America’s wars to be proud of. They are mostly memories I wish I didn’t have.

I do empathize with the poor soldier, but I honor her/him no more than those who marched in Selma or the hundreds of thousands of unnamed heroes who still offer their lives for human rights in Baltimore and Ferguson.

So it is a complicated day with a much too simple name.

Sick Kids in Dirty Smelly Homes

Sick Kids in Dirty Smelly Homes

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

indigenuousTourists who want to see a “primitive village” are people who know dangerously little about the outside world.

One of the most successful cocktail table books to ever be published that includes much from Africa is Jimmy Nelson’s Before They Pass Away. I’ve had the book since it’s been published and its value just increases daily.

But criticism of the book and its exponential earnings curve has reached a crescendo. Indigenous people around the world are growing more and more incensed the more popular and famous the book becomes.

The unending appearances by Nelson with his original prints, which are routinely now auctioning for more than $150,000, now regularly include indigenous people protesting outside the galleries and bookshops hosting the exhibitions.

The protest campaign is being led by Steven Cory of Survival International. The organization publishes a running critique by indigenous leaders around the world of Nelson’s book.

Cory calls the book “hokum” and “hubristic baloney.” Cory points out that the so-called “primitive people” who still exist are hardly going to “pass away” and in fact are becoming more and more politically powerful.

“If his images look like they come from the 19th century, it’s because they do,” Cory concludes. None of the peoples exist today the way Nelson portrays them: Cory documents that Nelson’s photo shoots are all carefully staged, rearranging reality to what rich westerners want to think about people in remote parts of the world.

The people who make Nelson’s book so valuable, and my clients who insist on seeing Maasai villages, are not by any means bad people. There’s a good motivation and a bad motivation resident in most of these folks’ desires.

The good motivation comes from a self-recognition, an admission if you like, of their global myopia. It’s extremely encouraging that travelers go somewhere blind, worried possibly at how little they know but hungry to know more.

The bad motivation is a deeply set racism. The tourist thinks of herself as so much more intellectual, skilled, trained and educated, than the so-called “primitive person.” She wants to see this “with her own eyes” precisely to validate this lofty presumption about herself.

Unfortunately tourism’s response is so out of whack that the initial, well-meaning desire by good folks is cast aside to the more marketable validation of primitiveness.

So there are hundreds of “villages” that charge excessively high rates that tourists dole out without a blink so that they can see sick kids in smelly, dirty homes. It’s absolutely incredible how fooled tourists can be.

It’s infinitely easier to show a tourist in a half hour a sick kid in a smelly, dirty home, than convey to them how the Maasai Environmental Resource Coalition (MERC) is saving the ecosystem for the whole world or how Twaweza is providing better education to all children in East Africa.

What I’m saying is that there would be many, many fewer sick kids in smelly, dirty homes if there weren’t so many tourists paying to see them.

Or if there weren’t so many people paying so much for Jimmy Nelson’s book.

Devilish Democracy

Devilish Democracy

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doublespeakDouble-speak infects more than Republican candidates for president. Take Obama’s undersecretary of State who just called Ethiopia “a young democracy.”

The political art of saying something you don’t believe or not saying something you believe, and then mixing it altogether to avoid responsibility for either position, is little more than a ploy that I think we all get.

For me it’s a turnoff, a reason to criticize and withdraw support. The flipside is just as definitive: it’s why I wish Americans would elect more Senator Warrens and Feingolds.

But politicians do it because it works. They bolster existing support or garner new admirers who apparently “don’t get it” that double-speak is the ploy that entraps them.

Ethiopia has an election scheduled for next month. As with all elections in communist and authoritarian states these are political shams, not real elections. There are no opposition candidates.

It is like the “caucuses” that choose the leaders for most of Chicago’s north shore communities, from mayors to school board presidents. A group of ‘learned leaders’ gets together and chooses single candidates for each position who then run in “an election” without opposition.

Obama’s Undersecretary of State, Wendy Sherman, was captured on video in Addis Ababa recently declaring that “Ethiopia is a democracy that is moving forward in an election that we expect to be free, fair and credible.”

The Washington Post called her remarks, “startling.”

The Global Peace Index ranks Ethiopia 139 of 162 countries analyzed. The index is determined by a country’s “absence of violence.”

Ms. Sherman, undaunted, replied with a letter back to the Post which began, “Ethiopia is a valuable partner in a critical region, from peacekeeping to fighting al-Shabab to pursuing peace in South Sudan. Ethiopia, among the world’s fastest-growing economies…”

Now in fairness to proponents of double-speak, it’s not known exactly what mistake Ms. Sherman made. Did she misspeak when saying Ethiopia was developing a democracy? Or did she not intend that her remarks get home? In other words was this double-speak to build a relationship with a regime that is one the most ruthless on earth?

There is no real election coming up. It will be rubber stamping the current regime with a fraudulent tabulation of presumed voters.

Human Rights Watch explains why there could not possibly be a real election:

“Thirty journalists and opposition members” are in jail for criticizing the government, “security forces responded to protests by Muslim communities with excessive force and arbitrary detentions.

“The Ethiopian government continues to forcibly resettle hundreds of thousands of rural villagers… relocating them through violence and intimidation.”

But guess what? Ethiopia’s doing well, economically. Guess what else? It doesn’t like al-Shabaab or al-Qaeda. More and more economics and the “war against terror” seem to be the sole bases by which societies most admire one other.

Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio will not say or will not not say whether invading Iraq was right or wrong, but through mastering double-speak they will say everything but. (I’m beginning to wonder if the real reason for the Iraq War was that GW knew without one we would fall into the Great Recession, which we did just as a new president was arriving to stop it.)

Here’s my dilemma with regards to Ethiopia – or China at the bottom of the scale of democracy and human rights – all the way up to the presumed clarion caller, America:

What if the electorate is fooled? What if the electorate is stupid? What if the electorate is illiterate? What if the electorate doesn’t even know what it’s voting for? What if results are misread like in Broward County in 2000?

Democracy can really screw up a good situation. As Ms. Sherman was quick to point out in her reply letter to the Post, Ethiopia is reducing poverty and providing social services to its population at a remarkable rate. Much faster, for example, than democratic Zambia or Liberia.

If suddenly all of China, including half the population that can barely read or write or even understand the native language of the candidates, were allowed to vote, what would happen?

Is democracy more valuable than children’s full stomachs? More valuable than peace?

New Travel Warning

New Travel Warning

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APTOPIX_Waco_Shooting-06698-2966In light of yesterday’s events in Texas, the Kenyan Department of State warns Kenyan citizens of the risks of travel to the United States.

Kenyan citizens living in the United States, and those considering travel to America, should be aware of continuing and recently heightened threats from terrorism and the high rate of violent crime in some areas.

Although thousands of Kenyans live and visit the U.S. each year without incident, caution and keen awareness of one’s personal security situation is vitally important. Terrorist acts can include suicide operations like the University of Oklahoma disaster, car bombings as in Times Square, New York; thousands of kidnappings, and attacks on civil aviation.

Militias in the U.S. like the affiliates in Waco, Texas, yesterday, duke it out like Shia and Suni all over the country.

Just this year alone, there have been more violent attacks involving shootings, grenades, or other explosive devices in the United States, killing tens of thousands of people and causing injury to hundreds more, clearly defining America as the most violent nation on earth.

Much involves the ease with which anyone in America can obtain a very destructive weapon. There is no other country in the world which allows such free enterprise in deadly force.

As Kenyans know well, at least two of the 6 attackers of the Westgate Mall attack came from Minneapolis.

The American FBI working with local police forces have disrupted several other terrorist plots throughout the country, which may have prevented additional deaths and injury from terrorist attacks. Although the pursuit of those responsible for previous terrorist activities continues, some of those involved remain at large and still operate in the region.

Ethnic clashes sometimes occur in various parts of America, primarily in America’s south like Ferguson, Missouri, and many parts of Florida which is otherwise considered an important tourist destination; as in Waco.

Keep in mind regarding Texas, that there was no ebola in Kenya recently, but there were several cases in Dallas.

The violent clashes in America are often fueled by disagreements over land or ownership of what militia’s call “turf.” While this violence is not directed at foreigners, ethnic clashes and protests are unpredictable and may affect non-Americans. Kenyan citizens are advised to check conditions and monitor local media reports before traveling to these areas.

Violent and sometimes fatal criminal attacks, including armed carjackings, grenade attacks, home invasions and burglaries, and kidnappings can occur at any time and in any location, particularly in large cities like Chicago which has the highest crime rate in the country, much higher than cities of similar size in other parts of the world.

Kenyan citizens in the U.S. should be extremely vigilant with regard to their personal security, particularly in crowded public places such as clubs, hotels, resorts, shopping centers, restaurants, bus stations, and places of worship. Remain alert in residential areas, at schools, and at outdoor recreational events. Use commonsense precautions at all times, to include the following practices: avoid crowded transportation venues; visit only legitimate businesses and tourist areas only during daylight hours; use well-marked taxis and be sure to lock vehicle doors and keep windows up; lock all lodging doors and windows; carry minimal amounts of cash and credit cards; do not wear jewelry which attracts undue attention; know emergency phone numbers; do not resist or antagonize armed criminals; and always be aware of your surroundings. These measures can help prevent a “wrong place, wrong time” scenario in the event of an attack as well as ensuring that your travel to America is safe and enjoyable.

* * *
There is, of course, no Kenyan “Department of State.” The spoof above was taken directly from the most recent travel warning issued by the U.S. Department of State to U.S. citizens contemplating travel to Kenya: click here.

The Man is Back

The Man is Back

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richardleakeybackRichard Leakey is back. Not as the paleontologist. Not as the politician. As head of Kenya’s Wildlife Service. Window dressing at its finest!

Leakey is a very enigmatic character. I immediately disliked him during our first meeting in the late 80s when he was flying high as the architect and czar of the movement that was successfully stopping elephant poaching.

His accomplishments were many and a few years later he would demonstrate some exceptional personal courage when he was nearly assassinated while trying to develop a progressive political party in a country that at the time was being run by an iron-fisted dictator.

But he has had a lot of missteps in a variegated career that spanned science, wildlife administration and raw politics.

That’s his critical flaw: doing too many things, so doing nothing exceptionally.

Last month Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, appointed Leakey “Chairman” of the service that he founded almost 30 years ago, the Kenya Wildlife Service.

The position is similar to the chairman of the board of a corporation, so technically Leakey is not supposed to be involved in the actual running of the now massive organization. Local observers, however, think he might have more proactive inclinations.

Nearly fifteen years ago London’s Guardian newspaper asked if “there is any more fight” left in Richard Leakey? Leakey was certainly in the nadir of his many careers then. He was never charismatic like his father, but his public persona had just taken a whipping when he mysteriously resigned from the head of a “dream team” America helped create in Kenya to battle corruption.

His health is reported even worse than when I last met him at the Field Museum in Chicago on the anniversary of his father’s 100th birthday in 2003. Then, he seemed hardly able to talk.

I think Kenyatta appointed Leakey, so soon after a stream of American celebs including Kerry and Clinton visited Kenya, to reconnect with America and the west. Leakey, and his father Louis, are adored in western circles where they had extraordinary success fund raising.

Kenya is in a bit of a slump right now. The vicissitudes of Americans not understanding the ebola situation, the recession in Europe from which the bulk of Kenyan tourists have always come, and the lingering worries about terrorism following the country’s invasion of Somali four years ago have all combined to really challenge an otherwise dynamic economy.

Kenya Airways, which I think is one of the finest if not the finest airline in Africa, came under government scrutiny today for losing more than $100 million dollars last year at a time when most global airlines were making tons of cash.

Relying more and more on outside foreign aid, particularly because of the Somali invasion, Kenya’s internal engines are sputtering and Kenyatta recognizes that only foreign investment will reverse this.

IBM, for example, has yet to fully fund a major Kenyan investment that it announced in 2012.

In my opinion none of this heralds any real crisis but simply demonstrates how susceptible a young emerging nation is to western fears.

“Poaching” is a topic that still commands American attentions. Africans understand much better than westerners that there really isn’t an elephant poaching crisis right now. But westerner’s insatiable need for crisis has narrated a different story, and Leakey is still known as the pivotal character that stopped the real elephant poaching of the 1980s.

Savvy President Kenyatta understands he has to now stroke American psyches. Appointing Leakey is part of this strategy.

Basic Burundi

Basic Burundi

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BurundiThe conflict in Burundi, as previously in Rwanda, is ethnic, aggravated by horrific colonial rule and current western disinterest.

Unfortunately my position is more aligned with global right wingers than the left-leaning media, which argues forcefully that this is not an ethnic but a political conflict.

On the surface that’s obvious. The current president, Pierre Nkurunziza, was out of the country when a coup was staged by a demoted military officer, Godefroid Niyombare, and both are Hutus. Like Rwanda, 85% of the population is Hutu, 15% Tutsi.

Niyombare staged the coup after growing unrest in the capital that followed Nkurunziza’s announcement that he would seek a third term as president in upcoming elections.

The constitution restricts individuals to two terms as president. Nkurunziza contends his first term was not really a term, since he came to power on an agreement that ended a 13-year old violent conflict between Hutus and Tutsis. He argues that since only his second term was from an election, he should be given another election chance.

Niyombare was head of the intelligence service when Nkurunziza announced this, and he publicly opposed it. The president then sacked him.

So, yes, on the surface it seems like it’s Hutu against Hutu.

Dig deeper.

The UN announced several days ago that more than 50,000 refugees were fleeing Burundi: 25,004 to Rwanda, 17,696 to Tanzania and “almost 8,000″ to the South Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Rwanda and Tanzania are considered friendly to Tutsi, and the DRC friendly to Hutu. Check the numbers. The easiest way to flee the country of Burundi is to cross over to the DRC. There are virtually no formalities on the northern route to Uvira, and more than half of the country’s western side is Lake Tanganyika, an easy crossing west to the DRC.

Why, then, so few refugees into the DRC? And so many into Rwanda and Tanzania?

The answer is obvious. Regardless of the political specifications at the surface of the current conflict, the population fears a genocide against Tutsis.

Burundi and Rwanda were originally a single colony of Germany before World War I. Like all the European colonial powers, Germany considered its mandate one of civilizing a primitive population of inferior people.

Africa colonization was aggressively driven by the private German, French, Belgian, and British businesses that were anxious to exploit the continent’s massive natural resources. European governments, however, were very reluctant to do so, but business required an ordered society and business prevailed over their weary governments.

Soon these four great European powers were competing with one another for more control and influence over the African continent, justifying the enormous cost to European electorates as a humanitarian one, creating civilization from barbarians. All the while European businesses were conducting some of the most unimaginable exploitation of people and resources.

This model for development required the colonizers to determine levels of “civilization.” European powers made public pronouncements of which ethnic groups showed more potential or initiative, and/or greater subservience to colonial oppression. In virtually all cases the local ethnic power was accepted in whatever state the European governments found it at the time colonization began.

In the Burundi/Rwanda area, the Tutsi while only 15% of the population were the most educated and most powerful. Tutsi ruled.

Following Germany’s defeat in World War I, the League of Nations divided its massive East African colony between Belgium and Britain.

Britain got what is now Tanzania, and Belgium got what is now Burundi and Rwanda. Belgium governed its area as a single colonial country, Ruandi-Urundi, and soon became the most notorious offender of human rights of the entire colonial period. Read Leopold’s Ghost.

For more than a millennium Hutus and Tutsis shared a single language and most life ways and traditions, and they intermarried frequently. But the Tutsis were always the overlords, and the Hutus were the workers and sometimes, slaves.

For centuries, some suggest two millennia, the minority Tutsi ruled the majority Hutus. More workers were needed than overlords, and whether by design or default as the centuries passed, the population of Hutus grew much faster than Tutsis.

By the time Belgium took over the area after World War I, there were between 5 and 6 times as many Hutu and Tutsi, even though the Tutsi ruled. Some claimed that over the centuries as Tutis numbers declined relative to Hutu, that the Tutsi felt they had to become more and more authoritarian.

World War II ended the colonial era.

Europe had to rebuild itself. There were no resources to continue colonization, despite the continued pressure by businesses to do so. Every colony was put on a fast track for independence.

The easiest way to do this was to further institutionalize the ethnic stratifications that had begun nearly a century before. Belgium decided the best thing to do was to create two countries and encourage the Tutsi to go to one (Burundi) and the Hutu to another (Rwanda).

Burundi was given to a Tutsi clan as a monarchy. In Rwanda, however, Belgium insisted on an election, and guess, what, the Hutus won. (The 1993 genocide changed that and Rwanda has been governed by a single Tutsi dictator ever since.)

But the division was unfair to begin with. Both countries are about the same size, yet the Tutsis were outnumbered by Hutus 5 – 6 to 1. Quite apart from the politics and attempted segregation, it’s not easy to get families and small businesses to leave homelands they’ve occupied for generations.

So essentially ever since independence the area has been in constant turmoil as the Hutu/Tutsi conflict only grows worse, not better. It was historical. It was reenforced and aggravated by colonial policies.

And Bill Clinton’s refusal to intervene and stop the 1993 Rwandan genocide before it was too late recreated the worst of this ethnic divide in the modern era.

I see no end to this ethnic divide. But if Barack Obama recommits the error of Bill Clinton should the situation in Burundi escalate, then once again we will reenforce racism, emasculating the politics that might otherwise be able to mitigate the intense hate.

Fascinating Chance

Fascinating Chance

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toolmakingbychanceTools may no longer be as important a marker of humanness as previously thought, confirming my long held belief that tool making is universal among all life forms.

Stony Brook University scientists announced a couple weeks ago that they had found stone tools in northern Kenya as old as 3.3 million years. They called them the “world’s oldest stone tools” and that they predate by almost three-quarters of a million years previously discovered tools.

Since the oldest member of our genus, Homo, was announced in March by scientists working in Ethiopia (at 2.8 million years ago) the newly announced tools must have been used by another species, perhaps an Australopithecine.

Tool making among Australopithecine, a species that dates to more than 4 million years ago, has been claimed before but remains controversial. A major problem with older tool discoveries is that the chance of finding a tool that can be properly dated and also associated with something that had been alive at the same time becomes more and more difficult the older the tool is.

Nevertheless it always seemed intuitive to me that tools were not as important a marker of humanness as was argued.

When it was first demonstrated that chimps use tools, there was a very momentary gasp after which it just seemed like common sense. At what point is something not a “tool?” When a string of Army ants bridges a divide, is that not a tool of the ant species? When an oyster catcher hammers open a mollusk with a remarkably adapted beak, can we not call that beak a tool?

A sea gull can’t flake a rock, but it can drop a mollusk high enough above the ground to crack it open. Isn’t this “tool use?”

In the early days of paleontology finding stone tools represented a real possibility of finding human-like creatures. The only reason Lewis and Mary Leakey toiled for 27 years at Olduvai Gorge searching for a hominid was because they kept finding tools.

They were right.

But the tools that early human-like creatures used may have simply reflected their anatomy and not their brains or their consciousness.

Opposable thumbs, very dexterous hands with the ability to twist a grasp might perforce lead to the creation of a stone flake.

“Just as there were different styles of body shape and bipedal mechanics among early hominins, there were likely different styles of technical traditions,“ the eminent paleontologist John Hawks contends.

It seems to me that tool making is hardly more than a life form’s extension of its anatomy. Just as the evolution of species by natural selection is a simple truth, so should we see early tool use by natural selection.

Neither is capable of modifying their outcomes, and that seems to encumber the understanding of how natural selection might apply to tool use, since tools were modified over time to become better and better.

But that modification need not necessarily be considered consciously proactive by the tool maker or user. It could – I believe it is at its most primitive levels – the same outcome by chance that species modification is.

Just as we – homo sapiens sapiens – have emerged beyond the containments of natural selection (poor eyesight is no longer an impediment to survival, because it can be corrected by our engineering) so ultimately did tool making emerge from a dynamic of chance to one driven by human consciousness.

What we’re all fascinated with is the emergence of human consciousness and certainly the analysis of early tools can assist with this exploration. But the presumption that early tools reflect human consciousness is too sweeping a generalization.

Every creature, large and small, uses or makes tools or employs tool use. It’s just, well … natural.

What if we end Malaria?

What if we end Malaria?

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

toobigtosucceedThe fight against malaria is going well, but American attitudes will have to change to achieve ultimate success.

Malaria threatens much of the world because there’s no vaccine and its threat increases proportionately with poverty.

But a successful vaccine or other efforts like bednets could actually increase poverty and disease overall.

Malaria was eradicated in most of the western world when sanitation and potable water became government responsibilities. Sanitation and the delivery of potable water reflect less poverty.

Less trash and better managed water reduces mosquitos, which transmit malaria.

The circular relationships of water and trash to malaria means that malaria will be automatically reduced – even eradicated – when better water and trash collection arrive poor communities.

A critical part of the Obama administration’s initiative to reduce malaria understands this, but it is somewhat buried in its presentation to Congress in order to avoid the expected criticism that there is too much government in such initiatives:

“The President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) works to reduce the burden of malaria while at the same time strengthening host country health systems and workforces,” in my estimation is the key ingredient, but you have to read quite deeply into the report to get to this section. The front of the report is all about nets, spraying and diagnosing, things that Congresspersons can grasp.

“You can’t fight malaria without health care workers,” the somewhat buried part of the President’s plan understands well, because these workers don’t simply instruct people on how to fight malaria, they work on social services like potable water and trash collection.

The American Congress – indeed, the American people – don’t accept the huge efforts required by government to build social institutions like public sanitation. Whenever such efforts are suggested, naysayers point to corruption and lack of private enterprise involvement.

That’s why efforts like the President’s Malaria Initiative have to fool Congress into thinking that American money is not being spent on such grand goals, but on things like nets and spray.

In America all criticism of large scale government involvement finally devolves to the insane belief that government is the problem, not the solution, and this mantra has been insidiously instilled in the American psyche ever since President Reagan said it nearly 35 years ago.

The largest private organization fighting malaria is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. While their efforts are noble, they haven’t achieved a fraction of what government-to-government aid, like the President’s Initiative, has:

Two researchers at Duke University recently concluded that “impressive progress in the fight against malaria” occurs exactly because of a “substantial increase in [government-to-government] funding,” specifically the President’s Initiative.

Private NGOs focus on possible cures like vaccines and inexpensive solutions like bednets because it’s a lot cheaper than developing public health systems.

Yet as they approach success a horrible catastrophe looms: What if the Bill Gates Foundation finds a malaria vaccine? What if enough bednets are distributed to basically reduce malaria substantially?

Many more children will live. And so without improved public health systems many more children will also die. A host of other diseases are on an alarming increase in Africa, like a huge range of gastro-intestinal diarrheas and tuberculosis.

Without delivery of potable water, none of these “children saved from malaria” will be healthy. So while malaria might be reduced substantially, overall public health will decline.

It’s simply a matter of money. Government-to-government aid for reducing malaria last year was $3 billion. Private NGO totals, including the Gates Foundation, was less than half that.

The Duke researchers suggest that $6 billion annually is necessary.

Six billion isn’t very much in western world budgets, but unless it’s used to buy bednets or underwrite specific vaccine developments, legislatures like the American Congress refuse to act, ignoring grander goals like developing public health systems.

Yet that was exactly how malaria was eradicated from the U.S.!

Until the attitude promulgated in America that government is less effective than private initiative changes, the world will not.

Gosh, it’s Google!

Gosh, it’s Google!

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googlemontageA recent interview with the head of Google Kenya highlights Africans’ growing concern about the giant.

Google rules Africa … at least according to a number of studies in South Africa. 94% of South African searches are on Google, and likely more in other countries like Kenya.

In fact, when studies were published several months ago in Kenya that 90% of all Kenyan internet searches were from mobile devices like phones, Google immediately announced it would alter its search algorithms to prioritize websites that were mobile friendly.

Just good business, eh?

Yes, and no sarcasm intended. Google is responding in Africa with the quickness of the times and the speed of its heart and soul, its search.

But the domination of a couple internet companies in the world, like Google and Facebook, begs the “too big to” whatever mantra.

More and more Africans are growing weary not of post-colonial or geopolitical policies that seem to fence them in, but of world giants like Google that dominate their economies, or at least “rule” them.

I’m not talking of the specious criticism and endless suits against Google for being the vehicle of bad information, although in both Europe and Kenya those suits are gaining some traction.

Nor am I talking about the equally endless internecine suits between the world’s internet giants.

Nor even of the fact that Europe now charges Google with being illegally too big!

“Not knowing something is fine, but thinking that you do know when you don’t is foolish,” writes Morten Jerven in African Arguments. Jorten is Associate Professor at the Simon Fraser University.

Jerven argues in a more polite way than I’m now going to summarize, that newly intellectualized African societies are taking Google searches too much for granted. The nuances that blossom real truth are being completely ignored.

Google seems to know this, but its intention is to capitalize on it, not moderate it.

“Life is 80 per cent luck and 20 per cent you taking advantage of this,” the head of Google Kenya told its main newspaper, today.

Thirty-eight year-old Charles Murito took over the reigns of Google Kenya from a predecessor who was fired for “scraping” data from a competing (and client) internet company, that was then allegedly driven into bankruptcy by Google’s actions. No legal determination was ever made.

Murito epitomizes Google’s supremacy, and its unabashed mission that “everything you do is a business. You have to think about it in dollars and cents.”

He’s proud that “I have more pairs [of shoes] than my wife. My shoes, mostly sneakers, always have to match the colour of the T-shirt I am wearing.”

When pressed for his choice of a car, which in Kenya today defines the top businessmen from the strugglers, he replied, “No. I don’t want to talk about material possessions. But I do love cars.”

Google is all business, and it’s a good one.

Perhaps, too good.

Stability at What Price?

Stability at What Price?

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freedomprosperityAre freedom and prosperity at least somewhat mutually exclusive? Why is Africa so stable, today?

There is serious turmoil in Burundi, but in the major hothouses of death and destruction, Nigeria, Somalia and South Sudan, right now there is a remarkable level of peace.

Tuesday, Secretary of State Kerry became the first high American official to visit Somalia since Blackhawk Down in 1993. Kerry justified his visit because Somalia “is turning around.”

There are many wonderful indications to suggest this is true.

There is worrisome fragility in the current Mali government, and troublesome weakness in a number of West African governments probably due to the prolonged ebola outbreak, but governments in North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa (other than Burundi) look strong and stable.
Why?

The answer is becoming clearer and clearer. Very strong military assistance mostly from the U.S. and France has propped up existing governments and laid to waste many areas of terrorism.

The starkest of the stark is Nigeria.

Literally for the last 5 years Nigeria was decimated by Boko Haram, at its worst situation (hardly a few months ago) ceding nearly 20% of its territory to terrorists.

Today Boko Haram is absolutely on the run. The explanation from one of Nigeria’s best media outlets:

“Unlike a year ago, when Nigerian troops would run away from Boko haram militants after running out of ammunition or for possessing inferior weapons, the Nigerian soldiers are now better armed, better equipped and better motivated.”

‘Better equipped’ is the understatement of the decade. The list of new equipment in the hands of Nigerian soldiers is astonishing, particularly when compared to the situation less than a half year ago.

It was not for wont of giving. The western powers were ready, as clearly demonstrated by the current situation, to arm the Nigerian military sufficiently. But a mixture of local politics and western hesitation because of the equivocal politics kept the ammunition in warehouses until now.

Legitimate concerns with protecting human rights were front-and-center in the paradigm that kept the previous Nigerian government of Goodluck Jonathan weak. These have been cast to the crows by the current president Buhari, a former general nearly imprisoned by his own society for human rights’ violations.

Ditto in South Sudan, the more “peaceful” Somali and ever more stable Kenya.

In addition to arming Africa to the teeth, Obama’s militarism these last six years has decimated terrorist cells and American drones have wiped out more than two dozen terrorist leaders.

Media freedom is a great barometer of authoritarian governments, since there has never been a government in the history of mankind that wasn’t vain.

Press freedom is under serious attack in … Nigeria, South Sudan and ever more stable Kenya.

So that’s the reason it’s safer than ever for you to travel to Africa: growingly authoritarian governments infused with western military might.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I’m troubled by this. I’m delighted that Africa is a calmer, safer, more stable place, but troubling if at the expense of freedom and the sanctity of human rights.

It seems that this age-old paradigm is near inviolable. Freedom and prosperity are at least somewhat mutually exclusive.

But wait.

Didn’t we try this, once? Weren’t there horrible South American generals and racist American governments and horribly cruel potentates that ruled the world for a long time not too long ago.

Did things get better? For whom?

Compromises Galore

Compromises Galore

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KerryInKenyaBill Clinton, John Kerry, then Barack Obama, a sort of reverse greeting line that heralds the end of frosty relations with Kenya. Let’s call it compromises galore.

Politics is so damn slimy. I know how important Kenya is in Africa. I know how exceptional its youth, in particular, is and how imaginative its culture has become.

I know that in a future world, Kenya will be much more important than it is, today.

If I know it, then Bill Clinton, John Kerry and Barack Obama know it, too. The difference between them and me is that I don’t have to ignore the travesties of human rights that Kenya’s current leaders employed in their rise to power.

Uhuru Kenyatta should not be the head of anything except a mafia, and certainly his vice president, William Ruto shouldn’t be, either.

The two orchestrated horrible violence following the 2008 elections, ironically in part against one another’s followers. When the evidence for this was gathered then meticulously catalogued, and when the individuals supplying the evidence were sequestered under witness protection in Europe, not a man in the world – except them – denied it.

Then one by one the witnesses recounted or disappeared. The evidence dissolved. The two who had been arch enemies from different tribes that historically killed one another struck an alliance and were elected to lead Kenya.

The outcome, today, is that Kenya is prospering when many African countries aren’t. One could argue that the millennial enmity between the Kalenjin (William Ruto, the vice president) and Kikuyu (Uhuru Kenyatta, the President) tribes has been laid to rest.

The War Against Terror has been successful from the point of view of the United States, because the U.S. is much safer, because Kenya became the sacrificial lamb, invading Somali with American might and dollars and taking care of more than a half million refugees.

But Kenya doesn’t mind being the sacrificial lamb because the investment – much of it military – has raised it from the 13th to the 9th largest African economy in only five years.

I think Kissinger called this Realpolitik.

They’re happy. We’re happy. So why am I not happy?

I guess because in today’s world ends do justify the means. The timeline for this dynamic, though, is historically short. The longer a view you take, the less it’s true.

The machinations, manipulations, abject brutality and horror of Kenyatta’s and Ruto’s actions to achieve power have resulted in a more stable, prosperous Kenya and one that may even be tackling the most horrid affliction of emerging cultures, corruption.

Yet in accomplishing these lofty goals some very nefarious means were employed, among which is included sacrificing their own country’s peace and stability for America’s. The sale price was pretty good, though.

So as each level compromises to achieve something good by sacrificing a bit of morality, the ladder down to iniquity is built. It becomes institutionalized.

This logic is where I strike brotherhood with the Far Right… or the Far Left. It’s where compromise is bad.

Ultimately, I guess, it’s a matter of degree – how much you compromise for what ends – a very subjective exercise and who among us can judge whose subjectivity is correct? Me? Kerry? Uhuru? Bush?

Hillary? omg