Month: December 2011

Top Ten 2011 Africa Stories

Top Ten 2011 Africa Stories

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Twevolution, the Arab Spring [by Twitter] is universally considered the most important story of the year, much less just in Africa. But I believe the Kenyan invasion of Somalia will have as lasting an effect on Africa, so I’ve considered them both Number One.

1A: KENYA INVADES SOMALIA
On October 18 Kenya invaded Somalia, where 4-5,000 of its troops remain today. Provoked by several kidnapings and other fighting in and around the rapidly growing refugee camp of Dadaab, the impression given at the time was that Kenyans had “just had enough” of al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda affiliated terrorism group in The Horn which at the time controlled approximately the southern third of Somalia. Later on, however, it became apparent that the invasion had been in the works for some time.

At the beginning of the invasion the Kenyan command announced its objective was the port city of Kismayo. To date that hasn’t happened. Aided by American drones and intelligence, and by French intelligence and naval warships, an assessment was made early on that the battle for Kismayo would be much harder than the Kenyans first assumed, and the strategy was reduced to laying siege.

That continues and remarkably, might be working. Call it what you will, but the Kenyan restraint managed to gain the support of a number of other African nations, and Kenya is now theoretically but a part of the larger African Union peacekeeping force which has been in Somali for 8 years. Moreover, the capital of Mogadishu has been pretty much secured, a task the previous peace keepers had been unable to do for 8 years.

The invasion costs Kenya dearly. The Kenyan shilling has lost about a third of its value, there are food shortages nationwide, about a half dozen terrorist attacks in retribution have occurred killing and wounding scores of people (2 in Nairobi city) and tourism – its principal source of foreign reserves – lingers around a third of what it would otherwise be had there be no invasion.

At first I considered this was just another failed “war against terrorism” albeit in this case the avowed terrorists controlled the country right next door. Moreover, I saw it as basically a proxy war by France and the U.S., which it may indeed be. But the Kenyan military restraint and the near unanimous support for the war at home, as well as the accumulation of individually marginal battle successes and outside support now coming to Kenya in assistance, all makes me wonder if once again Africans have shown us how to do it right.

That’s what makes this such an important story. The possibility that conventional military reaction to guerilla terrorism has learned a way to succeed, essentially displacing the great powers – the U.S. primarily – as the world’s best military strategists. There is as much hope in this statement as evidence, but both exist, and that alone raises this story to the top.

You may also wish to review Top al-Shabaab Leader Killed and Somali Professionals Flee as Refugees.

1B: TWEVOLUTION CHANGES EGYPT
The Egyptian uprising, unlike its Tunisian predecessor, ensured that no African government was immune to revolution, perhaps no government in the world. I called it Twevolution because especially in Egypt the moment-by-moment activities of the mass was definitely managed by Twitter.

And the particular connection to Kenya was fabulous, because the software that powered the Twitter, Facebook and other similar revolution managing tools came originally from Kenya.

Similar of course to Tunisia was the platform for any “software instructions” – the power of the people! And this in the face of the most unimaginable odds if you’re rating the brute physical force of the regime in power.

Egypt fell rather quickly and the aftermath was remarkably peaceful. Compared to the original demonstrations, later civil disobedience whether it was against the Coptics or the military, was actually quite small. So I found it particularly fascinating how world travelers reacted. Whereas tourist murders, kidnapings and muggings were common for the many years that Egypt experienced millions of visitors annually, tourists balked at coming now that such political acts against tourists no longer occurred, because the instigators were now a part of the political process! This despite incredible deals.

We wait with baited breath for the outcome in Syria, but less visible countries like Botswana and Malawi also experienced their own Twevolution. And I listed 11 dictators that I expected would ultimately fall because of the Egyptian revolution.

Like any major revolution, the path has been bumpy, the future not easily predicted. But I’m certain, for example, that the hard and often brutal tactics of the military who currently assumes the reins of state will ultimately be vindicated. And certainly this tumultuous African revolution if not the outright cause was an important factor in our own protests, like Occupy Wall Street.

3: NEW COUNTRY OF SOUTH SUDAN
The free election and emergence of South Sudan as Africa’s 54th country would have been the year’s top story if all that revolution hadn’t started further north! In the making for more than ten years, a remarkably successful diplomatic coup for the United States, this new western ally rich with natural resources was gingerly excised from of the west’s most notorious foes, The Sudan.

Even as Sudan’s president was being indicted for war crimes in Darfur, he ostensibly participated in the creation of this new entity. But because of the drama up north, the final act of the ultimate referendum in the South which set up the new republic produced no more news noise than a snap of the fingers.

Regrettably, with so much of the world’s attention focused elsewhere, the new country was hassled violently by its former parent to the north. We can only hope that this new country will forge a more humane path than its parent, and my greatest concern for Africa right now is that global attention to reigning in the brutal regime of the north will be directed elsewhere.

4: UGANDA FALTERS
Twevolution essentially effected every country in Africa in some way. Uganda’s strongman, Yoweri Museveni, looked in the early part of the last decade like he was in for life. Much was made about his attachment to American politicians on the right, and this right after he was Bill Clinton’s Africa doll child.

But even before Twevolution – or perhaps because of the same dynamics that first erupted in Tunisia and Egypt – Museveni’s opponents grew bold and his vicious suppression of their attempts to legitimately oust him from power ended with the most flawed election seen in East Africa since Independence.

But unlike in neighboring Kenya where a similar 2007 election caused nationwide turmoil and an ultimate power sharing agreement, Museveni simply jailed anyone who opposed him. At first this seemed to work but several months later the opposition resurfaced and it became apparent that the country was at a crossroads. Submit to the strongman or fight him.

Meanwhile, tourism sunk into near oblivion. And by mid-May I was predicting that Museveni was the new Mugabe and had successfully oppressed his country to his regime. But as it turned out it was a hiatus not a surrender and a month later demonstrations began, twice as strong as before. And it was sad, because they went on and on and on, and hundreds if not thousands of people were injured and jailed.

Finally towards the end of August a major demonstration seemed to alter the balance. And if it did so it was because Museveni simply wouldn’t believe what was happening.

I wish I could tell you the story continued to a happy ending, but it hasn’t, at least not yet. There is an uneasy calm in Ugandan society, one buoyed to some extent by a new voice in legislators that dares to criticize Museveni, that has begun a number of inquiries and with media that has even dared to suggest Museveni will be impeached. The U.S. deployment of 100 green berets in the country enroute the Central African Republic in October essentially seems to have actually raised Museveni’s popularity. So Uganda falters, and how it falls – either way – will dramatically alter the East African landscape for decades.

5: GLOBAL WARMING
This is a global phenomena, of course, but it is the developing world like so much of Africa which suffers the most and is least capable of dealing with it. The year began with incessant reporting by western media of droughts, then floods, in a confused misunderstanding of what global warming means.

It means both, just as in temperate climates it means colder and hotter. With statistics that questions the very name “Developed World,” America is reported to still have a third of its citizens disputing that global warming is even happening, and an even greater percentage who accept it is happening but believe man is not responsible either for it occurring or trying to change it. Even as clear and obvious events happen all around them.

Global warming is pretty simple to understand, so doubters’ only recourse is to make it much more confusing than it really is. And the most important reason that we must get everyone to understand and accept global warming, is we then must accept global responsibilities for doing something about it. I was incensed, for example, about how so much of the media described the droughts in Africa as fate when in fact they are a direct result of the developed world’s high carbon emissions.

And the news continued in a depressing way with the very bad (proponents call it “compromised”) outcome of the Durban climate talks. My take was that even the countries most effected, the developed world, were basically bought off from making a bigger stink.

Environmentalists will argue, understandably, that this is really the biggest story and will remain so until we all fry. The problem is that our lives are measured in the nano seconds of video games, and until we can embrace a long view of humanity and that our most fundamental role is to keep the world alive for those who come after us, it won’t even make the top ten for too much longer.

6: COLTAN WARS IMPEDED
This is a remarkable story that so little attention has been given. An obscure part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act essentially halved if not ultimately will end the wars in the eastern Congo which have been going on for decades.

These wars are very much like the fractional wars in Somalia before al-Shabaab began to consolidate its power, there. Numerous militias, certain ones predominant, but a series of fiefdoms up and down the eastern Congo. You can’t survive in this deepest jungle of interior Africa without money, and that money came from the sale of this area’s rich rare earth metals.

Tantalum, coltran more commonly said, is needed by virtually every cell phone, computer and communication device used today. And there are mines in the U.S. and Australia and elsewhere, but the deal came from the warlords in the eastern Congo. And Playbox masters, Sony, and computer wizards, Intel, bought illegally from these warlords because the price was right.

And that price funded guns, rape, pillaging and the destruction of the jungle. The Consumer Protection Agency, set up by the Dodd-Frank Act, now forbids these giants of technology from doing business in the U.S. unless they can prove they aren’t buying Coltran from the warlords. Done. War if not right now, soon over.

7: ELEPHANTS AND CITES
The semi-decade meeting of CITES occurred this March in Doha, Qatar, and the big fight of interest to me was over elephants. The two basic opposing positions on whether to downlist elephants from an endangered species hasn’t changed: those opposed to taking elephants off the list so that their body parts (ivory) could be traded believed that poaching was at bay, and that at least it was at bay in their country. South Africa has led this flank for years and has a compelling argument, since poaching of elephants is controlled in the south and the stockpiling of ivory, incapable of being sold, lessens the funds that might otherwise be available for wider conservation.

The east and most western countries like the U.S. and U.K. argue that while this may be true in the south, it isn’t at all true elsewhere on the continent, and that once a market is legal no matter from where, poaching will increase geometrically especially in the east where it is more difficult to control. I concur with this argument, although it is weakened by the fact that elephants are overpopulated in the east, now, and that there are no good strategic plans to do something about the increasing human/elephant conflicts, there.

But while the arguments didn’t change, the proponents themselves did. In a dramatic retreat from its East African colleagues, Tanzania sided with the south, and that put enormous strain on the negotiations. When evidence emerged that Tanzania was about the worst country in all of Africa to manage its poaching and that officials there were likely involved, the tide returned to normal and the convention voted to continue keeping elephants listed as an endangered species.

8: RHINO POACHING REACHES EXTREME LEVELS
For the first time in history, an animal product (ground rhino horn) became more expensive on illicit markets than gold.

Rhino, unlike elephant, is not doing well in the wild. It’s doing wonderfully in captivity and right next to the wild in many private reserves, but in the wild it’s too easy a take. This year’s elevation of the value of rhino horn resulted in unexpectedly high poaching, and some of it very high profile.

9: SERENGETI HIGHWAY STOPPED
This story isn’t all good, but mostly, because the Serengeti Highway project was shelved and that’s the important part. And to be sure, the success of stopping this untenable project was aided by a group called Serengeti Watch.

But after some extremely good and aggressive work, Serengeti Watch started to behave like Congress, more interested in keeping itself in place than doing the work it was intended to do. The first indication of this came when a Tanzanian government report in February, which on careful reading suggested the government was having second thoughts about the project, was identified but for some reason not carefully analyzed by Watch.

So while the highway is at least for the time being dead, Serengeti Watch which based on its original genesis should be as well, isn’t.

10: KENYAN TRANSFORMATION AND WORLD COURT
The ongoing and now seemingly endless transformation of Kenyan society and politics provoked by the widespread election violence of 2007, and which has led to a marvelous new constitution, is an ongoing top ten story for this year for sure. But more specifically, the acceptance of this new Kenyan society of the validity of the World Court has elevated the power of that controversial institution well beyond anyone’s expectations here in the west.

Following last year’s publication by the court of the principal accused of the crimes against humanity that fired the 2007 violence, it was widely expected that Kenya would simply ignore it. Not so. Politicians and current government officials of the highest profile, including the son of the founder of Kenya, dutifully traveled to The Hague to voluntarily participate in the global judicial process that ultimately has the power to incarcerate them.

The outcome, of course, remains to be seen and no telling what they’ll do if actually convicted. It’s very hard to imagine them all getting on an airplane in Nairobi to walk into a cell in Rotterdam.

But in a real switcheroo this travel to The Hague has even been spun by those accused as something positive and in fact might have boosted their political standing at home. And however it effects the specific accused, or Kenya society’s orientation to them, the main story is how it has validated a global institution’s political authority.

Save Trees Make Bricks!

Save Trees Make Bricks!

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

Rapid deforestation threatening African development has a notable South African remedy gaining wider recognition and use, compressed soil bricks.

The process which has been known since the late 80s is only now gaining traction and some economic viability. Fairly expensive but remarkably mobile machines that operate on diesel or electricity compress soil and other ingredients like ash and cement into interlocking bricks that are assembled with no mortar or further fixatives.

Most of the machines can produce one brick every 14-15 seconds, thousands of times faster than traditional kilns.

The final structures are remarkably durable and sustainable, and greatly reduce the need for inorganic materials while totally replacing the fired kiln, thereby protecting forests.

The newest machine started production in Karatu, Tanzania, last week. The area has soil perfect for making bricks, although until now these were all fired in a kiln, threatening the forests around Ngorongoro Crater.

Introduced by a local NGO, Hifadhi Mazingira (HIMAKA), the bricks are sold at a quarter of the price of traditional fired bricks provided the consumer first plants a certain number of trees based on the size of his purchase of bricks.

“We imported the Hydra-form brick making machine from South Africa to produce bricks that can be sold at very low costs of 250/- per piece compared to the usual brick prices of 1000/- or more per brick,” the NGO’s founder told a local Arusha newspaper.

According to the South African manufacturer, 2500 bricks requires 10 liters of diesel. Carbon emissions compare favorably with the wood that would otherwise be required to fire the kiln for the same number of bricks, and the cost is much less.

According to an official of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority most existing tourist lodges in the area used a minimum of 20 acres of trees to fire the kilns that created their bricks. As a result, new tourism initiatives are being directed to the interlocking hydraform bricks.

The product has found wide acceptance in India where the soil is appropriately “red” or heavily laced with copper, as in the case of Karatu, Tanzania.

Initiatives like these come to the fore when economies move them there. The price of wood in Tanzania has skyrocketed recently, because of rapid depletion. But whether hydraform bricks are really a better idea and more environmentally friendly than something else, like simple pressed wood or artificial fibers, it’s clearly a step seeking a right direction.

Vicious Village Visit

Vicious Village Visit

by Arusha ♥ 13 Comments

Why do so many safari travelers want to “see a village?” A Paris exhibition may help explain the ugly urge of many travelers to witness depravity.

The market for village visits is so strong that even today, when traditional villages just don’t exist, they are being reconstructed, and thousands of visitors return from Africa every day believing they have seen “an African village” in exactly the same way conservatives leave church each Sunday believing Satan is a Muslim.

In the early boom days of photography safari travel (1960s and 1970s) “visiting a village” was an absolutely essential ingredient of any trip and I admit having arranged hundreds. “The Invention of Human Zoos” is a brilliant exhibition in the new Quai Branly museum that helped me to understand why.

“Act I” of the exhibition chronicles the excitement and amazement of Europeans who “discovered” such new and different peoples around the world starting in the 15th century. This “otherness,” as the exhibit calls it, was a driving force for early exploration.

Brazilian Tupinambas prostrating before Henri II in Rouen in 1550, Siamese twins in the Court of Versailles in 1686, Inuits overdressed before Frederik II in Copenhagen in 1654, and the famous “Noble Savage” Omai that Captain Cook brought to England from Tahiti in 1774 were some of the first and most famous.

There was no community exhibitionism in these early moments. It was just exhilaration at finding something so different from yourself! I hope this at least partly explains myself as a young “explorer” anxious to show clients African villages in the early days.

Omai was real; Kenyan villages in the Northern Frontier were real in the 1970s.

As the age of exploration matured, “Act II” of the exhibit details how this surprise at “otherness” grows defensive. Surprise doesn’t last. The reality sets in that this “otherness” isn’t very pleasing, because it’s filled with misery. But what to do? Go out and civilize the world when we’ve got so many problems to deal with here at home?

So “otherness” becomes “wrong” or “bad” or “evil.”

Circuses, traveling villages and freak shows worldwide marketed this rationalization by “blurring the difference between the deformed and the foreign.” Soon “physical, psychological and geographical abnormalities” sold tickets.

By the 1980s and certainly 1990s Africa was developing as fast as information technology. Primitive people weren’t primitive, anymore. But primitive and “savage” and “diseased” and “deprived” were the “physical, psychological and geographical abnormalities” that could still get tourists to pay.

So easily predicted these “villages” suddenly existed right next to very swank tourist lodges and camps. “Maasai villages” which in their original form never existed longer than the rains which fell on them for a single season, suddenly were in place for decades.

“Act III” of the exhibit describes the Crystal Palace, Barnum and Bailey, Paris Folies Bergères and Berlin’s Panoptikum where visitors are thrilled by “acts of savageness” from supposed aboriginals, ‘lip-plate women’, Amazons, snake charmers, Japanese tightrope walkers and oriental belly dancers, all of whom were “made-up savages” – professional actors, not real individuals.

Exactly as in Africa, today.

One of the real catastrophes this produces in Africa is that real depravity is created where it would otherwise not exist. When traditional villages moved regularly, as most did and certainly the Maasai and Samburu always did in the early days, opportunities for disease were lessened.

Imagine today’s so-called “Maasai village” outside Samburu Lodge or Serena Lodge after one year, two years, five years and then ten years without adequate septic systems.

(The final “Act IV” is more oblique and less relevant to Africa, I think. The extreme circus and freak show begins to merge “otherness” with physical abnormality. Indeed, the rise of Felini may be an important phenomenon worth examining, but its relevance to visiting a village in Africa is slight.)

There is, however, an Act IV today in Africa.

There is this inexplicable, basest urge by travelers to Africa to see “primitive” and “depraved” and the market reigns with these reconstructed villages more than ever. If there weren’t tourists paying to see them, they wouldn’t be there.

Thousands of safari travelers, egged on even more by immoral tour companies, regularly “want to see a village.”

What do travelers really mean when they ask for that? What they mean is that they want to see poverty, disease and depravation. In a nutshell, suffering. First off, why the hell would you want to see something like that? To disabuse yourself that it might not be true?

Alas the danger with that generous presumption.

Any half educated idiot walking into one of these should be able to tell by the facility of languages the “chief” commands, the perfect and untattered costuming, rushed routine and proforma narratives, that this is a show, not a lifestyle.

So that at least subconsciously the visitor can return at least subconsciously unconvinced that suffering exists. Or has to. Or that he has any responsibility to end it.

I was absolutely incensed recently by the “Mad Travelers” Kevin Revolinsk’s “Visit to a Maasai Village”. It’s below disgusting; it’s despicable. Yet this is a popular guy, widely published and validated by much of the established media like the New York Times and National Geographic.

And I’m sure there are many more examples as Revolting as Revolinsk.

Don’t be fooled, traveler. The misery is there, beyond your imagination. But it doesn’t exist in the flies unnecessarily flitting on the poor little kid’s face, but with the internal pain of the mother who plasters a bit of cow dung on her child’s head just before the tourists arrive… because she can’t get a job in the city.

Let’s end Act IV.

Africa’s Biggest Street Party

Africa’s Biggest Street Party

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If you thought Rio’s Carnival or New Orleans’ Mardi Gras were big parties, take two: Nigeria’s Calabar festival’s climax is tonight and is the biggest music/costume/dance festival in Africa!

Calabar Carnival is the biggest gigantic collection of visual and sound culture in Africa. The scheduled events are so many that it takes 32 days of performances, which peak December 26 with the morning cultural parade and then December 27 with the Grande Finale.

Africa’s Biggest Street Party begins November 30 with the Holiday Tree-Lighting ceremony and ends with the Thanksgiving Ceremony on New Years Day.

Music and visual arts dominate, and everything is judged, prizes galore. About a dozen international musicians perform, and perhaps one of the most famous in the past was Haitian Wyclef Jean, who aroused the crowd by his impromptu performance “we have no terrorists in Nigeria” which unfortunately is not the case, particularly this year.

But with Africa’s other great festival, The Festival au Desert in Mali, essentially emasculated by area terrorists, Calabar now reigns supreme as West Africa’s greatest music festival. It’s significantly distant from the troubles in either Nigeria’s contested Muslim north or oilfields. Nevertheless it’s a pity that Africa’s extraordinary west African music has been so hampered by terrorism.

Preliminary contests earlier in the year shortlist 5 African bands which then come into town to perform in the grand finale contest. And these aren’t normal bands. Each “band” has up to 2,000 members!

And there are 10,000 “band members” involved in today’s Grande Finale march. The performances ends with individual performances by each of the bands, and then all 10,000 of them singing together!

Throughout the month-long event hundreds of organizations sponsor numerous other performances and activities including workshops and seminars focused mostly on all aspects of producing modern entertainment.

But there are also seminars on greening consumption, global warming, modern politics and virtually anything a sponsor wishes to do providing it can link to the current festival’s theme. This year, “Endless Possibilities.”

Up to 100,000 spectators and participants are in Calabar, today, although only 15,000 who can afford the ticket price of $30 get into the main stadium where the Grand Finale parade and blasting final band contest occurs. Watching separately will be 50 million views from around Africa broadcast by Nigerian television.

Maple Leaf is Oxidizing

Maple Leaf is Oxidizing

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

If you thought everything Canada is green and good, think again. Canadian mining is destroying Africa. And maybe destroying Canada.

The Canadian “extractive industry” as our Canadian cuzzes obliquely call it, is exploding. Literally, as GDP for Canada and as dynamite and gunfire in Africa. Numerous human rights violations across the continent have been documented against Canadian companies.

One of the worst incidents occurred in Tanzania in May. I’ve written about the North Mara gold mine before, operated by Canada’s Barrick Corporation. I think it how lovely now that the company’s own website lists some of the gravest allegations against itself.

In May Barrick admitted police aided by its private security forces shot to death 7 “intruders” and wounded others. Reports suggested as many as 1,000 people were involved. And clearly there is complicity by Tanzanian officials, which is now being investigated in parliament.

But it is the brashness of Canadian companies which stokes African ire. The CEO of one of Canada’s most aggressive African mining companies, IAMGOLD, recently told journalists in response to a strike called at one of his mines in Burkina Faso that he would crush the “illegal strike and as they will find out, will not tolerate anything that has a negative impact on our stakeholders.”

Well, that’s not particularly soothing PR for an industry blemishing the earth, and Canadians over the years were beginning to feel remorse. A year ago Parliament was about to pass Bill C-300, but the mining lobby and conservative Harper government managed to kill it. The bill would have imposed the same human rights regulations on Canadian companies operations in Africa as it imposes on those same company’s operations in Canada.

One unexpected result has been that groups as disparate as Burkina Faso mothers and Nigerian teachers are now suing Canadian companies broadside in Canada. The suits are so successful that there are plenty of lawyers to take them on.

So having lost that PR battle, and having lost all sorts of civil suits, the Canadian government has achieved a novel alternative.

The government has “developed a partnership” between many of these insidious mining companies and otherwise respectable NGOs. Here’s the three top:

World University Service of Canada (WUSC) has partnered Rio Tinto Alcan. Plan Canada has teamed up with IAMGOLD. And World Vision Canada has joined forces with Barrick Gold, the Tanzania devil.

A few seconds before this was announced it would have been thought an idea for the Onion or Daly Show. But it’s real. In effect the Canadian government has bought off otherwise good charities to polish up the image of its tarnished silverware. These organizations get up to a million dollars each to, in the words of WUSC CEO, “nudge along good practices.” Holy Smokes. Literally.

Each partnership is odious. Plan Canada’s mission as a principal advocate for child development has some explaining to do ever since IAMGOLD closed down operations at its Essakane mine in Burkina Faso due to strikes in part alleging illegal use of child labor.

Hm.

World Vision, one of the most aggressive religious NGOs that I’ve often claimed is one of the few excellent ones in Africa, is partnered with the gold trolls, Barrick. I just don’t think they’re going to get even an ounce for the wise men.

It’s all such a monstrous if laughable window dressing. I heard recently that not-for-profits were hurting this year. How? For money? Or mission statements?

Trucking to Nowhere

Trucking to Nowhere

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With Africa youth unemployment as high as 50% should African governments replace funding universities teaching liberal arts with those exclusively teaching employable skills like accounting?

With the Florida State budget in a nosedive, should Florida tax payers redirect support for liberal arts universities to vocational colleges?

Voice of America reported recently that Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, told an academic awards ceremony that the curriculum they were awarding was wrong. We call this letting the fox into the chicken coop. But in spite of all my other criticisms of this dictator, he moves into stark relief a question that plagues us as well.

We need truck drivers in the U.S. right now. We are still in a serious recession. Should state governments support vocational schools teaching truck driving and mechanics, or liberal arts dissecting Proust’s inner motivations?

Most of Africa is growing robustly. It needs and can often instantly employ accountants, engineers, skilled machinists and similar vocations. Should African budgets support departments of philosophy at their universities when there are as many philosophy positions opened in equatorial Africa as snow flakes on the streets?

It’s a harder question for Africa than us. We can make more policy mistakes and still come out on top. We also have infinitely more resources, and so for us, the answer should be: Support both. Despite the depth of the recession, even Mr. Tea Party knows that American innovation is born of stimulated imaginations more likely to be pricked by Proust than tossed by trucks.

Unfortunately conservatives don’t think. So the trend in the U.S. right now given the recession is to favor vocational over liberal arts. But in America I see this as a passing fancy, due to die with the Republicans very soon.

Besides, even right now if Rick Scott is successful in redirecting Florida’s educational budget towards vocational rather than liberal arts institutions, it’s unlikely he will completely gut funding the University of Florida.

Museveni, on the other hand, is implying just that: that government support – crucial to the very existence of Uganda’s Makerere University – will end unless teaching “Conflict Resolution” ends. (The university politely replied that it would study the matter.)

Uganda is the perfect contemporary society to observe the ultimate outcomes for many conservative social policies. Museveni accomplished this, for example, not so long ago by taking the issue of same-sex marriage to the point of suggesting these couples be executed.

Constrained by far fewer resources, most African societies have nevertheless developed multi-tier, varied cultures and sustained multiple approaches to both economic and social development, unlike Uganda. But they do exist in starker contrast. The rich are richer, relatively, and the poor are poorer. The divisions between the African truck driver and African philosopher are vast compared to here.

For a moment, step back from the philosophical and other fundamental (like economic) arguments that may drive these competitions for public resources. I think there’s more common sense to be applied here than intellectual strain.

I believe the principal driver of these resource competitions isn’t “the greater good” but rather a desire to divide and conquer. What we should be doing is mending the chasm between driving a truck and reading Proust, between studying conflict resolution and learning accounting.

Those like Scott and Museveni who facilely solicit public support for what they can easily argue are exigencies of stressful times are actually the devils in the details it seems so easy and even compassionate to accept. But there’s so much more to it.

The simple and so much better perspective is that we don’t want to divide then obliterate one of the options; we want to preserve both. Pointless to drive a truck to nowhere.

Kenya or America Most Corrupt?

Kenya or America Most Corrupt?

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Tables turned: America winning the bribes game while Kenya streaks ahead in the anti-corruption game. It’s all a matter of bribes.

Some bribes are paid with dollar bills. Some bribes are paid with false promises. Many bribes are paid with lies. What all these versions of bribes have in common — what makes a bribe a bribe — is that the receiver takes it knowing it’s wrong.

Here are two tales separated by oceans and continents of two different bribes. You decide which is more egregious.

Today in America:
Yesterday CBS News discovered a new campaign ad for Gingrich produced by Winning Our Future (WOF) which claims Newt (1) cut taxes; (2) created millions of jobs; and (3) reduced welfare by 60%, as well as how he stood with Reagan and battled Clinton.

These claims are spurious if not outright lies. Spurious are those about cutting taxes and creating millions of jobs, because no one person does that, and while he was Speaker of the House taxes were actually raised, not lowered. As for reducing welfare by 60%… outright lie.

The ad is paid for by a SuperPac which the Supreme Court this year released from any campaign contribution restraints in the famous case where our erudite highest court decided that corporations are people. WOF’s president is Becky Burkett, a close Gingrich ally and former employee.

Today in southern Kenya:
“I knew there was a traffic check along the way, so I was strictly driving at 80kph. On approaching the traffic check, one officer waved me down and I noticed that he wrote down my registration number on a piece of paper. He told me that I was speeding at 120kph. I laughed out loud and asked him if he was sure and to show the radar. He showed me my reg no on his paper and told me that he was given this info by his colleague a km further down. Told him that I saw him write down the number as I came closer! He handed back the DL and told me to go.”

The above report comes from a new popular internet site in Kenya called I Paid A Bribe operated by Transparency International Kenya.

I can, of course, pick and choose from literally thousands of examples in both the U.S. and Kenya, and so admittedly this is rather biased. But the point is that your average person in virtually any society on earth doesn’t condone lying and works against corruption. That’s your average Joe and you cynical idiots who might think otherwise need to read more.

That statement that the average Joe worldwide is not corrupt bristles American conservatives who thrive on the rapacious notion that other places are corrupt and they’re lily white. For years I’ve been battling this notion with constant reminders of hundreds of cases of corruption in America from Enron to Bernie Maddow, about literally hundreds of corrupt politicians like …

… well, do you remember one who was thrown out of his own party and resigned as Speaker of the House?

Two internet sites you must bookmark: FactCheck and Democracy21. Finding the truth isn’t so hard. Even when so many forces are set against you to obscure it, organizations like these will help.

Corruption is endemic anywhere that there’s enough extra money to pay someone off. And whether that be a handoff of dollar bills or a golden parachute, it’s the same. Getting something that wasn’t earned by working well, hard, ethically and …

Sorry. I can no longer add the adverb “legally” since our Supreme Court has even corrupted that.

Egypt Will Ultimately Pay for Bullies

Egypt Will Ultimately Pay for Bullies

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The Egyptian military’s unwarranted, brutal response in Tahrir Square is specifically because there aren’t enough protestors, there, anymore. The bully always pounces when his adversaries thin out.

The Tahrir Square protests right now are extremely small but extremely violent, contained almost exclusively to a ten-square block area in central Cairo. The vast majority of Egypt is carrying on with everyday life, including what had been explosive centers of the February revolution like Alexandria.

I just finished watching the live al-Jazeera report (around 11 a.m. EST) following the military’s “open” press conference regarding the current violence. The reporter explained how there seemed to be “parallel universes” between the military’s constant denial of its use of force against protestors, and the protestors YouTube posts.

Yet right behind her on Tahrir Square was a massive traffic jam as everyday Egyptians headed for home after a day of work.

There is no question in my mind that the way the military has handled this nuclear pinpoint is wrong and incendiary. But what it suggests isn’t that the current set of elections will be disrupted, or that the country is right now poised for civil war. Rather, it suggests that all that may happen later, after the elections are complete and the process of writing a constitution begins.

But not now.

The facts are easy to come by, and this alone shows how far along the road to democracy and transparency Egypt has come, and this is good:

First, the numbers of people involved in the current Tahrir Square protests is a small fraction of the revolution that toppled the Mubarak regime in February, but it is actually for its much smaller numbers much more violent.

In large part this is because of the military’s heavy handed response, far more severe than its restrained responses to much larger protests earlier in the year. And it reflects the military’s confidence that a vast majority of the overall population supports it, and this is probably true.

So this time around there are “per capita” many more petrol bombs heaved from the protestors at Tahrir Square. The protestors’ rage when unpopped seems ungoverned by any ideological strategy. At times the protestors seem to fight among themselves:

According to the Associated Press, a precious research center maintained by France since its 18th century occupation of Egypt found itself in the crossfires Saturday. The building caught on fire, and protestors joined institute officials in trying to save the precious archives.

But when fire fighting equipment arrived, other protestors barred the equipment from trying to put out the blaze.

So what’s going on?

“The military’s violence suggests it feels emboldened,” Britain’s Guardian newspaper said Monday. The paper went on to say that the elections have been the “freest and fairest elections in the country’s modern history.”

Two of the three sets of elections for the lower house of Parliament are now complete; the third one is in a month, and that is followed by an upper house of Parliament election in late February and early March. All signs currently point to the Muslim Brotherhood, which currently has just under 40% of the winners, leading a coalition government that will include at least one very radical Islamic party.

And until Thursday, the Brotherhood had supported the military’s strong handling of the electoral process. That’s changed.

Mohamed Baltegy, a senior figure in the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, called the military a “collaborator” in the disruption of Egypt’s safety and security. He charged that the military rulers “create new crisis as the time for a power transfer to civilians gets closer.”

Veteran Associated Press reporter Hamza Hendawi interviewed top military officials over the weekend who insisted the protests were caused by foreign infiltrators. He continued: “What are we supposed to do when protesters break the law? Should we invite people from abroad to govern our nation?”

This, of course, is laughable. But there is a connection to reality. The military has consistently refused to cede any power over itself to any civilian authority, now or after elections. It sees the February revolution as an endorsement of its supreme authority, and it has announced that it will solely shepherd the process of creating a new constitution.

And that it has no intention to allow any new constitution to reduce its authority, a conundrum that few political activitists in Egypt will accept.

The protests are small but violent, now. When a political, civilian authority is duly placed in power through elections, and if the military then refuses to cede control over itself to that new authority, that is when Egypt will explode.

AirZim AirGone

AirZim AirGone

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How I wish the end of Air Zimbabwe would be Mugabe’s nail in the coffin. But this vampire gives no impression of leaving before he’s melted by sunlight.

Yesterday Zimbabwe’s diaspora media broke the story: Air Zimbabwe’s one and only 767 had been impounded by the maintenance company owed $1.2 million dollars.

Then, with typical zany Zimbabwean zest, Zim moneybags apparently raised the ransom to pay off the debtor, but the plane still isn’t leaving and we’re not sure why. Well, for the facts, read the Zimbabwe government newspaper, The Herald, and then presume just the opposite:

(1) They didn’t raise the money.
(2) The staff including pilots of the airplane are too scared to return home. After all, someone will have to be punished for such an unwarranted delay.

Either way, a relatively unused although older 767 sits today on the tarmac at Gatwick airport. And you might say that about almost everything of the modern age in Zimbabwe, including the opposition leader and powerless prime minister, Morgan Tsvangira, who once led bloody protest marches but now spends his time explaining why he won’t let a woman into his house who claims to have had his child.

Everything in Zimbabwe has been coopted and drained to the core by its self-appointed evil master, Robert Mugabe. It is one of the most tragic tails in Africa: how this once prosperous, richly resourced, highly educated country can achieve nothing now but misery and comic notoriety.

The 767 is the perfect mascot. This plane often didn’t fly; usually because it had no passengers, but more often because of unpaid bills here and there. That is Robert Mugabe’s standard operating procedure: do. So when he did, but had no money to pay for it, he just waited until someone else paid for him. Usually that was South Africa, and in the case of the 767, China.

The 767’s weekly routine begins Friday night with a scheduled departure from Harare to Peking via Kuala Lumpur. There are several reasons for this bold route. First, Mugabe probably knows that one day he’s going to have to run. And to China might be the only alternative.

Mugabe is reported in some quarters to be 120 years old. In any case, he’s suffered innumerable diseases, including throat cancer, most of which have been treated in a Malaysian hospital which only takes cash. He’s managed to take Rand from South Africa and Yuan from China to pay doctors in Kuala Lumpur.

And the 767 plane is often filled with lots of cronies who have lots of other diseases, so this southern African medivac is welcomed by KL’s underpaid doctors.

Two. China never turns away a foreigner in need. So they buy our treasury bills, and they refuel the 767 and they force lower diplomats to use the airline on their way to Africa. This way China will eventually rule the world.

Three. No one notices when the plane doesn’t fly two out of three weeks or so.

The plane turns around in China and comes back to Harare arriving Sunday morning at 615a, and then Sunday morning at 8 a.m. it’s scheduled to fly to Gatwick arriving Sunday night, but that ridiculous schedule never happens.

All day Monday it’s supposed to get maintained in Gatwick – you know, oil changes and such. Then Monday night it returns to Harare arriving Tuesday morning. Then, until Friday, it’s now at the disposal of the President.

Now there’s a business plan for you! (It until recently flew midweek to Kinshasa, but that was suspended.)

Zimbabwe is an unreal, a scatological nation held together by outside forces: China as a part of its world strategy to dominate the earth; South Africa in order to keep out refugees who would overwhelm it should any real revolution begin.

So now, Mugabe’s escape is reduced to the range of a 737. AirZim might have one of those left working.

Bribed Enough To Die

Bribed Enough To Die

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In the shorter runs Africa’s got a lot more to lose faster from global warming than us, but Africa leaders are hailing the specious agreement made in Durban this week. Why?

Because they get more money.

There’s nothing wrong with that, per se. As far as I’m concerned anything that redistributes global wealth is healthy and promising. But I’m afraid that’s about it for Durban. The veritable environmental can’s been kicked a long way down the global warming road.

Everyone’s putting on happy faces about Durban, not just the organizers.

We as high and mighty liberals champion transparency and truth. Then we need to tell it like it is: the torturous so-called end game for a climate change agreement just negotiated in Durban is like a doctor telling a dying man to keep fighting. We might discover new medicines before you gasp your last breath.

And there’s nothing wrong with that, either. Never give up! But let’s call a spade a spade. The Durban agreement does nothing to slow much less reverse global warming.

Kyoto was saved .. sort of by an agreement insisting it be renegotiated within five years. Countries like Kenya and Tanzania heaved huge sighs of relief that a fund was created (or will be after national legislative processes) to underwrite their low-carbon development. And lacking any force of law, now or as I see it in the foreseeable future, the U.S. promised the sky because China promised to curb smoking.

China, the U.S. and India are the world’s greatest polluters in that order. India got on board only when the English language proved it could mean something completely different from what it spelled out in words.

Is this confusing?

It’s unbelievably confusing. Grown men and women did this! Nature magazine’s Jeff Tollefson did the best in his blog posted immediately after the early morning agreement was made. So if you want to begin the herculean task of understanding the details, read Tollefson.

My take? It’s absurd. Everyone agrees on the science. Everyone agrees that if the world doesn’t halt the increase in average temperature of 2 degrees C from preindustrial levels by 2020, that catastrophe will result. All stipulated, counselor, without caveats or objections.

But the current agreement doesn’t get anywhere near that. It’s like Betty buying a size 8 dress for the wedding when she’s a size 12 and promising to get to a size 10 before the ceremony.

And before the deal was finally signed sealed and delivered the media, between agreement at 4 a.m. and South African sunrise at 7:21a, scientists said the deal would not accomplish any of the stated temperature goals.

And even as Canada agreed to sign its sovereignty away with the rest of the world, it was simultaneously announcing withdrawal from the previous (Kyoto) agreement, which by the way, the current agreement intends to keep on life support. Is this insane?

No, according to Friends of the Earth, just “feeble”.

OK, so Africa’s on board because the new fund promised by the developed countries to help them buy wind turbines, etc., is now doubled. But why should we developed nations be on board for something so feeble, particularly if we believe the science that doomsday approaches?

I guess the first point is that Armageddon has been predicted so many times in our lives that we don’t believe in it. Population growth, DDT use, nuclear proliferation, even fluoride in the water all had credentialed critics certain of a date-specific apocalypse as a result.

And of course there were exponentially more spurious predictions by religious crazies, and I suppose ultimately we started to think Armageddon was just an unreal totally impossible thing.

Probably the most germane bad prediction came from the United Nations itself. In 2005, the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) predicted there would be 50 million climate refugees by 2010.

There weren’t and still aren’t.

But worse than these infractions of science coupled with our subconscious belief in eternity are the many who use them as certain evidence global warming will not inevitably create a mess of global proportions that we’re unlikely to be able to deal with in any currently conceivable way. And soon.

I can’t imagine anyone living anywhere today who has not experienced truly unusually severe weather. That’s stage one.

In Africa as here statistics back anecdotal experience. Floods are more severe. Droughts are more severe. Extremes are more extreme. Don’t be misled by weirdos finding one or two items that buck the trend.

Just go to our own master weather geek, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on any random day and watch the headlines flashing up on the left side of the screen.

Stage two is crisis management. We’re already doing that with earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, melting ice caps .. you name it.

But stage three is when we’re overcome with those crises to the point we have to triage with our own vital and immediate needs. That’s the mess I mean. And I believe that’s in the next 15 years.

So build up that 401K, Joe, but trigger liquidation before the ice caps do.

First Steps Baby!

First Steps Baby!

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Another breakthrough discovery credited to my forlorn African creature, the lungfish! Apparently it was you, not that obdurate Tiktaalik, that moved life out of the sea onto land! Go buddy!

Yesterday, scientists at the University of Chicago announced a study soon be formally published, proving that the itty bitty fins of the African lungfish even in today’s living species locomote in ways suggesting that the earliest animal footprint fossils could actually be from their ancestors.

And not – as until now widely presumed – from tetrapods like good ole “Tik”. Tetrapods, lungfish and another class of prehistoric sea-living creatures called coelacanths, were all candidates for the Mom that finally pushed babe out of the water, but until now the consensus was that the early lungfish were sort of dead-enders in that evolutionary contest, getting no further advanced really than those we see today in Africa. And that fully land-based walking creatures evolved from their cousins, the tetrapods.

So who cares?

Well, I do, because lungfish are still really neat living creatures many people see on safari, and because I think it helps illustrate evolution if you’re cautious. Like primates such as gorillas and baboons, it crushes in real time the theory underpinning creationists that evolution is unilinear.

“You think you’re related to that chimp?”

Well of course we didn’t come from that chimp, any more than walking creatures today were progeny of the lungfish. The chimp and humans, and the lungfish and all land walking creatures, had a common ancestor, but they diverged long ago and evolved quite differently into a host of varied creatures.

Nevertheless, it is the real time experience of common traits in our “ancient cousins” that demonstrates common ancestors existed in the first place! Long before DNA and other complex tools, all scientists had to work with was this kind of observed anatomy, and it wasn’t so bad. It produced a pretty good foundation for understanding natural selection.

But since Darwin’s and Wallace’s first explanations of natural selection, it has been massively misunderstood.

To me pointing out a chimp — or a lungfish — harnesses anyone’s intuition that there is something in common with us (man) – or anything that walks. It’s impossible to deny. And once that common understanding is reached, we can then contrast the massive differences that are equally intuitive. And the explanation for those massive differences is species divergence over long periods of time.

Unfortunately, there are no tetrapods still around, so until now I was stretching it suggesting that my dear icky slimy lungfish, squirming about in a drying up pool of mud, was demonstrating the emergence of terrestrialness.

No more! Thanks you brilliant guys in Chicago!

Heri kufa macho kuliko kufa moyo

Heri kufa macho kuliko kufa moyo

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Great circus barkers are so accomplished that they spur the tiger through the blazing ring so effortlessly it creates joy from daring. That was Ari Grammaticus.

In this case, the cheetah on the roofhatch. Ari Grammaticus died last month. His memorial service is tomorrow in Nairobi. With him goes the personal daredevil thrill that was the keystone to many early safaris to Africa.

Ari was the son of a Greek railroader who found himself in Kenya in the spring of safari travel. Film had become cheap and powerful. Air fares were cheap and numerous and Americans in particular began to travel like they never had before. And the British colony of Kenya was newly independent, reshuffling the deck of privilege and business opportunities in ways few could have imagined.

Often you never know if some successful person had a good time or not. Ari had a good time. His smile was infectious. He wasn’t a front guard but he was a big man for his time, and certainly matched any Maasai that he encountered. For some reason that became his connection, Maasailand.

Repeatedly and regularly, Ari traveled to Maasailand until he secured management of a piece of Maasailand that I doubt anyone at the time could truly value. It was on the Mara River about 20 miles north of the Tanzanian border and about 25 miles northwest from at the time the only road into this new non-hunting game reserve called the Maasai Mara.

That was in the early 70s, a year or so before my own first safari. The first place my wife, sister and brother-in-law camped was in this reserve off that main road near a place that remains the focal point for the Mara, Keekorok.

Today the Mara is Kenya’s most important game reserve, whether you measure animal viewing, game management, ease of flying in and out of (there are more than 15 flights daily from Nairobi), range of accommodations or tourist revenue streams.

But not then. The only reason we stopped there was because it was on our journey into the great Serengeti, which we did the next day at first light. The Serengeti and Mara share the political border between Kenya and Tanzania. Then, as now, you can’t really tell where one country ends and the other begins.

But today and since 1979, tourists can no longer cross that border. Until 1979, the Mara was hardly anything but a way station to get to the Serengeti. Today it’s the end of the line for Kenyan tourists, and what a fine end it is!

Ari created Governors’ Camp. (Plural today; very singular back then!) To begin with it was a brilliant name, encapsulating the colonial era with abandon. (Today it would be politically incorrect. Today’s camps all carry local names for area clans or African animal names or local geographical features like rivers and hills.)

But what Ari did was build a tourist camp that recreated the admittedly bold comforts that colonials eked out of the surrounding poverty. There was no need for an apology, then, it was the way things were. Africa was being developed, and if you wanted visitors to come see, they needed a toilet. Animals second.

And so they came. His first camp was Governors’ Camp, today referred to as Main Camp. I remember the old days at this camp before the border closed. It was luxurious by anyone’s presumption of what camping would be in those days: actual toilets (although not exactly quick flushers), hot-bucket showers, and a bed on a frame!

One of the greatest treats I as a young guide had in those days was scaring people to death about camping in Africa! Intentionally, we told them very little, or told them about our own personal camping adventures which certainly no travel insurance would have dared cover. And when they got to the camp and saw the privacy and comfort, we had customers for life!

Governors’ modernized with the times, of course, but it never went over the top, like so many did. Even today there are still pressurized gas lamps as your tent’s main source of light. The beautifully wood paneled bathroom is completely functional with modern plumbing all around and amenities of soap and shower gel and all that stuff.

And Ari modernized, too. He built several more camps nearby, including the more contemporary and luxurious Il Moran. He assumed management of a beautiful lake manor house about half way back to Nairobi, and he built a retreat on Lake Victoria.

And his last great achievement was partnering with a several local organizations and the African Wildlife Foundation to build and manage Sabyinyo Lodge in Rwanda for mountain gorilla viewing. There is absolutely no question that this is the finest property anywhere in gorilla land.

We non-Greeks have this pervading notion that Greeks are first and foremost family men. Ari’s sons now take over for him, and his grandchildren were by his side when he died. Once his friend or his customer or his employee, plan on a lifetime.

Time and again he employed one of the finest camp builders in Africa, even though time and again the builder fell off the wagon while building the roof. I was a certain critic of some of his aging driver/guides, particularly when they starting losing their sight, and of some of his cooks who I felt boiled food too long, but Ari was steadfast. Many claimed he was pinned down by the peculiar and nepotistic politics of Kenya, and that may be. But it all fit a better image:

Heri kufa macho kuliko kufa moyo.

The Swahili proverb is one of loyalty and constancy. What you see isn’t as important as what you feel. The first time I arrived the little tree barrier into Governor’s Camp, some smiling guard saluted me like I was the King of England. Since then there have been hundreds of thousands of guests that followed me. And yet today, you’ll be saluted.

But times have changed. What Ari did can’t be redone. The world has modernized too much. Travelers no longer go anywhere without insurance, cell phones and extra medication. You can’t fool them anymore with a flush toilet.

Unless, of course, granddaughter Amy decides to develop Taurus-Littrow.

Weary World Not Rejoicing

Weary World Not Rejoicing

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Nigeria thumbs its nose at the U.S. and U.K. on gay rights, Japan uses nuclear clean-up funding to hunt whales, 4 more rhinos killed in the lowveld and Durban’s in the bottom of the dirty coal tank. Oh, did I forget that Europe’s coming apart?

The weight of organic and inorganic problems on this, man’s planet, seems so stultifying at the moment that any sense of urgency any single problem might legitimately beget is evaporating like a thin pond of ice in a very cold winter.

The mind suffocates.

Over the last decade or so I’ve looked to Africa as a leading indicator of where the world is going, and it’s often not been promising, but it’s proved pretty accurate. The latest, and perhaps the final reasonable global indicator, was what I called early on twevolution and which later developed into the Arab Spring.

Many have argued it was the logical extension of the end of the Cold War, which was the logical extension of an incomplete resolution of two world wars, which was the logical extension of attempts to dominate the industrial revolution.

But remove the mechanisms of logic as drivers of the inevitable next stage, and the fundamental cause is revealed as ethnicity, or more generally, distrust of others not like you and your family. It’s the old who gets the biggest piece of the pie thing.

So, today, when we’re making 9″ instead of 10″ pies, there is even less than ever, even though the more that used to be we now understand was a fanciful creation of those who already had most. Alas, there really weren’t many 10″ pies: just a lot of TV images of the same few.

So if there’s any good news at all it’s that finally we’re fighting about reality.

Britain, Hungary and the Nordic countries may ultimately be looked upon by history as the diseased parts of the European body that finally took down the whole creature. A dysfunctional and incomplete European Union is worse than no union at all.

Japan and Asia’s intractable obsession with consumption of rare earth forms like tigers and rhinos and whales is destined to lay the planet wasted of such things in just a few years. Then what comes next for them: in place of tigers, rhinos and whales, will they start consuming Inuit, Slavs and transsexuals?

And what is the “brink of destruction” that we seem to push just a bit further away year after year as the world gets hotter and hotter. Ever see the horrible movie Waterworld?

None of this will change, if we as individuals don’t stand up and shout, “We’ll take less!” Any odds on that one?

And that’s one cold, dismal Friday morning on earth in the (is it the?) 21st century.

Bachmann or Else!

Bachmann or Else!

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From India frustrated T-Partyers unable to maneuver the legislative process to eliminate civilization have just discovered a powerful new tactic. Release deadly snakes into IRS offices, guaranteeing at the very least a temporary pause in tax collections.

I have not taken the event more out of context than most T-Party dialogues. The perpetrator was actually protesting a new Indian regulation outlawing traditional snake charmers. And I have no doubt south Georgia T-Partyers will spin this to their warped intellects.

It was only last month that a 22-year old tried to illegally buy a black mamba in the woods of southern Georgia at 2:30 in the morning. Obviously frustrated that he couldn’t find one on Amazon.com he nevertheless found a ready seller. Must happen all the time, but we found out about this one, because the kid got bit.

We’ll never know for sure if he was always a redneck, but he absolutely was when medivaced to a Jacksonville hospital. His life was saved. The snake is loose.

A half dozen times annually some idiot in the U.S. breaks a battery of laws buying or selling an African mamba. For the life of me I can’t figure out why. What kind of imbecile wants to keep such a killer?

Mambas don’t make good pets. I know. I had to sweep them out of my house at the start of the first rains or risk being swept into the next world. I have a hard time understanding people who keep non-venomous snakes as pets, but good grief, why would you want a killer?

Has to be a macho thing. Unless you think you could create a seemingly serendipitous moment serving Assam tea cakes at an afternoon guild party to knock off a maiden aunt. Why else?

Mostly a macho thing. I’ve known several wonderful reptile scientists in my life, and by the time they become real worthy herpetologists, they were no longer macho-driven, but as kids, that’s usually what motivated them. Dares to do-s.

And then there’s the whole matter of it being illegal. You cannot own, sell or buy an African mamba, green or black, in the U.S. without a permit generally reserved for zoos and medical research facilities. So this dare gets even more thrilling, because it’s illegal.

Florida is running amok with killer snakes from Africa because of imbeciles playing God.

Get a life!

Animals are Not People

Animals are Not People

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Time and again men and women unable to foster human relationships create them with animals whose only ability to resist is to kill them in return.

I love animals and always have. I expect someone watching me play with my lab/hound mix would ascribe all sorts of human characteristics to the relationship, and undoubtedly while playing or petting or observing, I can’t help but see “Morgan” in human terms.

But I won’t buy a cemetery plot for him. I won’t subscribe to PetMeds while monitoring his blood sugar and I’m even adverse to putting gooey tick repellent on him. He isn’t human. He’s a pet.

Throughout my career in Africa I’ve encountered numerous researchers who cross the rational limit of thinking of animals as humans. The most flagrant examples are those ascribed to elephants: how they return to where close relatives have died, how they sacrifice their own well-being for another individual.

Balderdash. These are human behaviors that while I concede we can never scientifically measure in an animal with the clarity that I suppose, I trust my intuition on this one. I even question whether pain as we humans understand it is anywhere similar to what animals experience.

Critics will contend I’m setting up situations that allow for animal cruelty, but that, too, is balderdash. I have a hard time understanding why people swat flies with such vengeance or unload aerosols into gardens or are amused at young boys firing beebee guns at the nearest squirrel. I have serious questions about the morality of hunting animals for sport.

But to think of an animal as a child, or parent, or human friend, is to diminish the radiance of our own place in the biology of the world. It’s a terrible shortcut for trying to understand the complexities of life and does significantly more injustice to that life form than accepting it for what it is.

And it’s so absolutely clear to me whether it’s an old man, doting spinstress, recluse or young career-minded couple that has traded procreation for a more balanced 401K – all of whom embrace their dog with the ridiculousness of human attractions — are doing so entirely, utterly and selfishly to assuage their own inadequacies, and at the horrible expense of the meaning of that dog, the beauty of its form in the biomass in which we also participate.

There are so many negatives to anthropormorphizing animals, but one overriding one is that whatever faux emotion is created in the human master, it probably decreases that person’s empathy to humans in need. It likely distracts the master from the misery of his servants.

And, then, ultimately the price is paid, in an inevitable and ultimate way.

Last month a famous relationship between a hippo and a man came to an end when the hippo killed the man.

The jolly guy, a stellar citizen and former military officer, was a farmer who adopted an estranged baby hippo. (As I once adopted an estranged baby baboon.) He raised it with tender loving care. (As I raised mine.) But when baby turned adult, when the full sense of the creature came to the fore, he couldn’t give way. He claimed again and again, to over a quarter million viewers on YouTube, that everything was just fine.

“Humphrey’s like a son to me,” Marius Els told his local South African newspaper. “He’s just like a human.”

Marius Els, 41, had no son, no viable human relationship with a child. Why doesn’t matter, but nor should he have tried to create that relationship as a shortcut with an animal. The hippo bit him multiple times, then pulled him into the river and drowned him on November 14.