Race In The US, Still A Long Way To Go

Map showing the number of active hate groups by state in 2008 from the Southern Poverty Law Center. See the interactive version of this map that lists the groups by state at http://www.splcenter.org/intel/map/hate.jsp

In Tangipahoa Parish Louisiana, slightly north of New Orleans, a white Justice of the Peace refused to marry an interracial couple:

NEW ORLEANS – Two civil and constitutional rights organizations called on a Louisiana justice of the peace to resign Friday after he refused to marry an interracial couple, saying any children the couple might have would suffer.

The leaders of the American Civil Liberties Union in Louisiana and the Center for Constitutional Rights and Justice in New York said Keith Bardwell, a white justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish in the southeastern part of the state, should quit immediately. Earlier this month, Bardwell refused to issue a marriage license to Beth Humphrey, who is white, and Terence McKay, who is black.

“Perhaps he’s worried the kids will grow up and be president,” said Bill Quigley, director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and Justice, referring to President Barack Obama, the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas.

Obama’s deputy press secretary Bill Burton echoed those sentiments.

“I’ve found that actually the children of biracial couples can do pretty good,” Burton told reporters aboard Air Force One as it flew to Texas.

Marjorie Esman of the ACLU said the group was calling on Bardwell to resign “before he infringes on the constitutional rights of another person.”
…
Humphrey and McKay were eventually married by another justice of the peace, but are now looking into legal action against Bardwell.
…
“A justice of the peace is legally obligated to serve the public, all of the public,” Quigley said. “Racial discrimination has been a violation of Louisiana and U.S. law for decades. No public official has the right to pick and choose which laws they are going to follow.”
…
Tangipahoa Parish President Gordon Burgess said Bardwell’s views were not consistent with his or those of the local government. But as an elected official, Bardwell was not under the supervision of the parish government.

“However, I am certainly very disappointed that anyone representing the people of Tangipahoa Parish, particularly an elected official, would take such a divisive stand,” Burgess said in an e-mail. “I would hope that Mr. Bardwell would consider offering his resignation if he is unable to serve all of the people of his district and our parish.”

Bardwell, a Republican, has served as justice of peace for 34 years.

Racism is still a festering wound in the United States. And every so often it bursts open, pouring out its poison. As offensive as this is, in this incident no one was hurt or threatened with physical harm. Although Mr. Bardwell has shown a lengthy pattern of painful and discriminating behavior that did not offend his voters, this couple is both able and willing to seek legal redress. That has not always been true within my lifetime.

Recently there has been an upsurge in public racist rhetoric and hate speech, even making its way into what is loosely termed “news” on television. We saw it in the people who came armed to town meetings, especially during August, bearing overtly racist signs and symbols, and the way their behavior was covered by the news. The leadership of the Republican party has allied itself with those delivering this hate speech, which has escalated and increased the real threat of violence, by making it more socially acceptable. Especially since the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Republican Party has made itself the party of white supremacy, particularly in the south. Much of Republican opposition to social programs that help all the citizens of the US, comes from resistance to the possibility that any tax money might be spent to help people of color.

We are still hearing this from members of Congress, before Obama’s speech to Congress on Health Care in September: Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) said … “I think he’s gonna have to express some humility … “ or: During President Obama’s major health care speech on Wednesday, South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson (R) yelled out “You lie!”, something that has never before happened in a presidential speech to Congress.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, SPLC, traces the history and follows the activities of hate groups, as does the blog Orcinus. Both feature thoughtful articles and in depth research.

From a recent SPLC Report: Return of the Militias:

A key difference this time is that the federal government — the entity that almost the entire radical right views as its primary enemy — is headed by a black man. That, coupled with high levels of non-white immigration and a decline in the percentage of whites overall in America, has helped to racialize the Patriot movement, which in the past was not primarily motivated by race hate. One result has been a remarkable rash of domestic terror incidents since the presidential campaign, most of them related to anger over the election of Barack Obama. At the same time, ostensibly mainstream politicians and media pundits have helped to spread Patriot and related propaganda, from conspiracy theories about a secret network of U.S. concentration camps to wholly unsubstantiated claims about the president’s country of birth.
…
Almost 10 years after it seemed to disappear from American life, there are unmistakable signs of a revival of what in the 1990s was commonly called the militia movement. …

One big difference from the militia movement of the 1990s is that the face of the federal government — the enemy that almost all parts of the extreme right see as the primary threat to freedom — is now black. And the fact that the president is an African American has injected a strong racial element into even those parts of the radical right, like the militias, that in the past were not primarily motivated by race hate. Contributing to the racial animus have been fears on the far right about the consequences of Latino immigration.
…
… “All it’s lacking is a spark. I think it’s only a matter of time before you see threats and violence.”

In reference to Congressman Wilson’s outburst, and some of the other racist incidents and behavior around the country, I think President Carter is absolutely correct when he says:

“I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African-American,” Carter told “NBC Nightly News.”

“I live in the South, and I’ve seen the South come a long way, and I’ve seen the rest of the country that shares the South’s attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African-Americans.”

President Carter grew up in racially segregated Georgia. I heard him say once in a television interview that he is good at monitoring elections around the world, because everything he has seen around the world he had already seen at home. He also knows first hand from long experience working through the civil rights struggles how to get people with uncompromisingly opposed views to talk to each other and to keep talking and to keep talking more, until some common ground and some progress can happen. We can learn a lot from his experience and wisdom. It is worth listening to what he has to say.

 

Is Obama Running US Foreign Policy? Is He Running It Off A Cliff?

It looks like Obama is marching in zombie lockstep with Bush policy in Somalia and Honduras. It also looks like a Great Leap Backward to the days of US suported military coups in Latin America, and despots propped up by US aid in Africa. In both cases the United States provides the military training and the weapons.

Follow me!

In Honduras, the leader of the coup:

… General Vasquez attended the School of the Americas and … a good part of the Honduran military were trained there and in its successor, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC).

…

… the U.S. has a military base in Honduras, gives the Honduran military a few million dollars each year, and … most of the military equipment used against the people was from the U.S.

…

… a group that openly supported the coup, “Paz and Democracia” (Peace and Democracy), received money from the USAID. (Eva Golinger reported that the USAID pumps more than 50 million dollars into the country each year.)

…

… the immediate response from Washington was tepid and non-committal. … Dan Restrepo, the presidential advisor for Latin American affairs, said the administration was waiting to see how things would play out. (The response has been stronger since then, but still seems to lack the strength other America nations have put forward in their demands.)

This is most unfortunate for the Obama administration, or for any US government and ongoing relations with Latin America. Like Africa, most people in Latin America want the military back in the barracks, and want democratic governments. A coup is not democracy. Supporting, or even tolerating a coup is a US blow against democracy. Eva Golinger writes:

Yes, I know Fox News is not the best way to judge the political scene in the US, but this video clip is a hint into the way US media is now beginning to portray the coup events in Honduras over the past few days. And note the NPR correspondent’s comments, very similar analysis as to mine over the past few days regarding Washington’s ambiguity regarding this coup so as to buy time and possibly recognize the coup government as “transitory” until the elections in November…….very dangerous.

Note, this will isolate the US/Obama Administration from the rest of Latin America and definitely show Obama is not an agent of change.

Meanwhile, in Somalia, the US is still trying to prop up the TFG, the Transitional Federal Government, in Somalia. As one Somali commentator put it, the only true word in that name is the word transitional. The TFG is neither federal, nor a government. The TFG only controls a few blocks in Mogadishu.

Reuters:  Al Shabaab and allied fighters control much of southern and central Somalia and have boxed the government and 4,300 African Union peackeepers into a few blocks of Mogadishu.

The US has stepped up arms transfers and training, ostensibly to the AMISOM troups, but in actual fact it is violating the UN arms embargo, US, EA gunrunners violating UN’s Somalia arms ban.  And the US is stepping up the training of troops in Somalia.

US violations are said to include a missile attack on a target inside Somalia along with “intensive and comprehensive military training” conducted inside Ethiopia for officers from the breakaway Somalia region known as Somaliland.

The previous incarnation of the TFG was an alliance of the oppressive warlords and the hated and oppressive Ethiopian army. The current incarnation of the TFG was engineered by the US ambassador to Kenya, Michael Ranneberger, in an election held in Djibouti. Because the TFG is under siege, and controls so little of Mogadishu, and none of the rest of Somalia, the TFG has invited the hated Ethiopians back in for help. The US, Ambassador Ranneberger, and the UN donor countries characterize the the TFG as a representative government, although they are the only ones it represents. They characterize the opposition as al Qaeda, although their only proof is to keep invoking the names of two men who bombed the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. al Qaeda has never been welcome or successful in Somalia. But as long as the US government and media say al Qaeda whenever any opposition in Somalia is mentioned, US citizens will shiver with fear and support more bombing and killing. And it looks like the US and the donor countries are stepping up their outside interference, rather than letting the Somalis settle their own affairs.

Daniel Volman writes on security policy in Somalia:

The only other indication we have about the president’s true intentions is provided by his decision to authorise the use of force to rescue the kidnapped captain of the Maersk Alabama in May 2009. When he was a candidate, President Obama declared that he believed that ‘there will be situations that require the United States to work with its partners in Africa to fight terrorism with lethal force.’ But his action during the kidnapping episode show that he is also willing to use military force in situations that have nothing to do with terrorism. According to recent news articles, a debate is currently underway within the administration about the wisdom of direct US military intervention against Somali pirates or against the al-Shabaab insurgents. Top administration officials and military officers are convinced that, in the words of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, ‘there is no purely military solution’ to piracy and political conflict in Somalia. And Johnnie Carson, the president’s new assistant secretary of state for Africa, told the BBC that ‘there would be no case of the US re-engaging on the ground with troops’ in Somalia. But some in the military and a number of prominent neo-conservative leaders contend that the United States must strike back at the pirates and the insurgents to prevent future acts of piracy and terrorism against Americans. It would be a mistake to assume that Obama will not take further military action if the situation in Somalia escalates.

If you read this transcript of the June 25 State Department daily press briefing, it sounds like the US government really does not know what it is doing in Somalia. And so far it looks like more US interference just recruits more Somali insurgents. US violence and interference will never resolve Somali problems. The US is interested in possible oil in Somalia. The EU continues to steal fish from Somali waters, and dump toxic and nuclear waste in those same waters. Keeping things unsettled in Somalia works to the advantage of all these outside meddlers.

As b real puts it:

the TFG2 has always been a weak actor in the mix. as i’ve elaborated on in multiple threads, there is more evidence that, rather than create a strong federal govt, the int’l community’s overriding objective has been to pit islamist factions against each other in order to engage them into battle amongst themselves rather than be united and [1] establish an independent govt and [2], so goes the reasoning of the unrestrained paranoid fantasies of the int’l actors, threaten & carry out ‘terrorist’ activities beyond the borders of somalia. letting them wage a war of attrition between themselves requires a minimal amount of overhead & a modicum of commitment.

their lip service to sh. sharif’s govt can be seen as an inside joke, directing, instead, the bulk of support to AMISOM and putting pressure on the UN to get more countries paying for the militarization of east africa. meanwhile, the main beneficiaries are int’l arms dealers, int’l NGOs, and, eventually, the wildcatters up through the big oil companies still comfortably playing the force majeure card.

In the long run it does not pay to be an international bully. It comes back to bite you. And the US cannot afford to garrison the entire world. It cannot afford the wars it is already waging. The proxy armies it is creating with the US Africa Command will go into business for themselves. President Obama has a lot on his plate at home. It may seem easier to let the policies that were already in place continue to run their course. In general Obama seems reluctant to get out front and lead on specific issues. If the US is going to retain its own democracy, and carry any moral weight in the world, President Obama will have to step forward and lead in the democratic direction. There is no hope and change without democratic leadership.

________
Note: the illustration above is from BibliOdyssey.

 

Ghana elections today

Voting for President in Ghana

Check for results at GhanaWeb.

 

PMCs, deregulating the military and war, just like the banks

In light of recent events and in view of my readings on AFRICOM and PMCs I realized that what Bush is doing with the military is the same thing he and the Republicans have done to the banks, deregulate them and put them beyond the reach of US or any other law.

This was also the reason to call the Geneva Conventions quaint, to set up the prison at Guantanamo, and to debase American values by trying to make torture acceptable.  The intention of Cheney, Bush, and their cronies is to put government outside the law and outside the US Constitution, not subject to any oversight or review.  They are quite happy with big government. What they don’t want is responsive government, or any accountability. In regard to PMCs and deregulating the military, Frida Berrigan documents this in her recent article: Military Industrial Complex 2.0

Top to bottom, the Pentagon’s war machine is no longer just driven by, but staffed by, corporations.

Consider the following: In fiscal year 2005 (the last year for which full data is available), the Pentagon spent more contracting for services with private companies than on supplies and equipment — including major weapons systems. This figure has been steadily rising over the past 10 years. According to a recent Government Accountability Office report, in the last decade the amount the Pentagon has paid out to private companies for services has increased by 78% in real terms. In fiscal year 2006, those services contracts totaled more than $151 billion.

Ever more frequently, we hear generals and politicians alike bemoan the state of the military. Their conclusion: The wear and tear of the President’s Global War on Terror has pushed the military to the breaking point. But private contractors are playing a different tune. Think of it this way: While the military cannot stay properly supplied, its suppliers are racking up contracts in the multi-billions. For them, it’s a matter of letting the good times roll.

…

These have been the good times for defense contractors, if not for the military itself. Since September 2001, many companies have made a quantum leap from receiving either no Pentagon contracts or just contracts in the low hundred millions to awards in the billion-dollar range.

And in the course of this:

… corruption, incompetence, and callous indifference become ever more ingrained in the military way of life.

…

Fighting wars for hire has become an essential part of the Pentagon’s MO since 2001, and the Blackwater employee gunning through Baghdad in a Kevlar vest, a kafiyah, and wrap-around shades is the ultimate symbol of the new moment.

…

But there’s another dimension of the Bush era’s privatization surge at the Pentagon that has gotten far less coverage: Private military firms are also doing the paperwork of war. …

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) looked at 21 different Pentagon offices and found that private contractors outnumbered Department of Defense employees in more than half of them. In the engineering department of the Missile Defense Agency, for example, employees from private contractors made up more than 80% of the work force. The GAO found that contractors were responsible for carrying out a wide range of tasks and were not subject to federal laws and regulations designed to prevent conflicts of interest — including the rules that concern personnel who want to take positions with companies they had awarded contracts to as federal employees.

…

Once private companies take on military and war-making tasks, where does the buck stop? It is not uncommon, for example, for a company hired to perform a service for the Pentagon to subcontract part of the job to another company, which may then subcontract part of its task to a third. Who, then, is in charge? When something goes wrong, who is culpable?

…

One result of this: The United States has ended up paying companies that are essentially enslaving Filipinos, Sri Lankans, and other “third country nationals” who drive supplies into Iraq. … these companies “openly flout U.S. labor laws by using cheap imported labor, withholding employee passports and housing workers in decrepit conditions.”

And if the U.S. military machine is now both oversized and staggeringly expensive, it is also more prone to breakdown in a more dangerous and unstable world. So think of George W. Bush’s legacy to us as a Pentagon bloated almost beyond recognition and crippled by its dependence on private military corporations.

As for Bush’s legacy to the Lockheed Martins, the KBRs and the Pentagon’s whole “Top 100″ crew, it’s been money beyond measure

This is why the PMCs and their lobbying association, the IPOA, are targeting AFRICOM.

Read the whole article here:
Military Industrial Complex 2.0
Cubicle Mercenaries, Subcontracting Warriors, and Other Phenomena of a Privatizing Pentagon
By Frida Berrigan

 

Coca-Cola as economic indicator

Carpenters with coffin in the shape of a Coca Cola bottle. You can see more pictures at Ghana Web.

The Economist has an article up about how sales of Coke track economic change in Africa:

AFRICANS buy 36 billion bottles of Coke a year. Because the price is set so low—around 20-30 American cents, less than the price of the average newspaper—and because sales are so minutely analysed by Coca-Cola, the Coke bottle may be one of the continent’s best trackers of stability and prosperity.

“We see political instability first because we go down as far as we can into the market,” says Alexander Cummings, head of Coca-Cola’s Africa division. The ups and downs during Kenya’s post-election violence this year could be traced in sales of Coke in Nairobi’s slums and in western Kenya’s villages. Events in the Middle East, such as the 2006 war between Hizbullah and Israel, can dent sales in Muslim parts of Africa, though anti-American feeling usually wears off quite quickly.

…

At a macro-level, when Coke fails, the country whose market it is trying to penetrate usually fails too. Coca-Cola’s bottling plant in Eritrea hardly works because the country’s totalitarian government makes it impossible to import the needed syrup. The factory in Somalia sputtered on heroically during years of fighting but finally gave out when its sugar was pinched by pirates and its workers were held up by gunmen. Mr Cummings admits that Coca-Cola is “on life support” in Zimbabwe.

Still, if Coca-Cola’s predictions are anything to go by, Africa’s future is mostly bright. The company expects sales in Africa to grow by an annual 10-13% over the next few years, handily outstripping economic growth.

 

The vultures are gathering

I have a new post up on at the African Loft: The Vultures are Gathering – Mercenary Corporations look to AFRICOM for new Contracts. The IPOA, the orwellianly named International Peace Operations Association is looking to AFRICOM and Africa for their next contracts. Take a look.

 

Biofuels have raised world food prices 75%

Corn in Ghana

The Guardian obtained an unpublished study by the World Bank. The reason it has not been published is probably because it would embarrass President Bush and create tensions between the World Bank and the White House. So it has been completed and sitting unpublished since April.

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% …The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government’s claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.
…
“Political leaders seem intent on suppressing and ignoring the strong evidence that biofuels are a major factor in recent food price rises,” said Robert Bailey, policy adviser at Oxfam. “It is imperative that we have the full picture. While politicians concentrate on keeping industry lobbies happy, people in poor countries cannot afford enough to eat.”

Rising food prices have pushed 100m people worldwide below the poverty line, estimates the World Bank, and have sparked riots from Bangladesh to Egypt. Government ministers here have described higher food and fuel prices as “the first real economic crisis of globalisation”.

President Bush has linked higher food prices to higher demand from India and China, but the leaked World Bank study disputes that: “Rapid income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption and was not a major factor responsible for the large price increases.”

Even successive droughts in Australia, calculates the report, have had a marginal impact. Instead, it argues that the EU and US drive for biofuels has had by far the biggest impact on food supply and prices.

… The basket of food prices examined in the study rose by 140% between 2002 and this February. The report estimates that higher energy and fertiliser prices accounted for an increase of only 15%, while biofuels have been responsible for a 75% jump over that period.

It argues that production of biofuels has distorted food markets in three main ways.

1. First, it has diverted grain away from food for fuel, with over a third of US corn now used to produce ethanol and about half of vegetable oils in the EU going towards the production of biodiesel.
2. Second, farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for biofuel production.
3. Third, it has sparked financial speculation in grains, driving prices up higher.

…
“It is clear that some biofuels have huge impacts on food prices,” said Dr David King, the government’s former chief scientific adviser, last night. “All we are doing by supporting these is subsidising higher food prices, while doing nothing to tackle climate change.”

 

AFRICOM eyeing Ghana with drugs and torture

Still from a video in which a US Contractor Leads Torture Training in Mexico.

AFRICOM plans to make Ghana its anchor in the west African version of the DoD “War on Drugs”. Drugs are the DoD (Department of Defense) tool of choice for coopting a country. Nevermind that the US “War on Drugs” has gone on for decades with no apparent success, and has often been allied with the same people who are trafficking and profiting from drugs, as in Columbia, Afghanistan and Southeast Asia.

The Drug War Expands to Western Africa describes the problems faced by Guinea-Bissau, but also states:

… DoD has identified Ghana as its “anchor country” for emerging counternarcotics efforts through AFRICOM.

Whichever is your richest and strongest government department, that is where the most opportunities for corruption lie, and where you will find people taking advantage of those opportunities. By investing heavily in African militaries, the US strengthens the opportunities and the likelihood of corruption in the countries it targets, and increases the likelihood of military coups. When the military controls the government, it is much easier to control the trade in contraband, the profits, and to protect cronies from the law.

The article describes the military complicity in Guinea-Bissau:

The military is thought to be complicit in the drug trade; last year, two military personnel were detained along with a civilian in a vehicle carrying 635 kilos of cocaine. The army secured the soldiers’ release and they have not been charged.

When Ghana had military governments they regulated the price of cocoa. Then the military smuggled cocoa across the border and sold it for higher prices, and officers pocketed the profits. There was no point in most farmers investing much in cocoa, they could not profit on their own. Strengthening the military in the face of the drug trade just provides these same opportunities to make even more money through the same practices that harm the country and enrich corrupt elites. There are passionately patriotic Ghanaians who would oppose this, within the military and without. But there are always plenty of people who are corruptible. It is very difficult to fight corruption when corruption becomes the norm.

It is the current elites in Ghana, and the NPP party in power who have been most often associated with cocaine and drug scandals in the press, such as MP Eric Amoateng, and even rumors regarding the Asantehene.

It gets a lot uglier than this. Keep in mind that the Pentagon via AFRICOM plans to use PMCs, the Private Military Corporations, that are currently gathering to feed at the AFRICOM trough, now that Iraq is passing laws that strip the PMCs of immunity for their actions, and the Iraq war may be winding down.

PMCs have been training the military and police in a number of countries. They are training in Mexico where videos of torture training for the Mexican police by an American PMC have just emerged.

Supposedly the people being tortured are trainees who “volunteered”, and they are learning how to psychologically withstand torture. But according to the account, the torture techniques they are learning are not typical of those used by the local gangs and criminals. From the article:

Leon city Police Chief Carlos Tornero told the AP that the English-speaking man in the videos is a contractor from a private US security firm. Tornero refused to elaborate on the man’s identity, details about the US company, and who contracted the company.

The government’s response has been to defend the program, attack the media for reporting on the videos, and deny the illegality of torture.

…
Mexico’s national daily La Jornada was quick to point out that torture is in fact prohibited, contrary to the public security chief’s assertions: “Torture is a crime in Guanajuato: in accordance with Article 264 of the state Penal Code, the public servant who ‘intentionally exercises violence against a person, be it in order to obtain information or constituting an illicit investigation method,’ faces a punishment of 2-10 years in prison.”

The existence of a training led by a US defense contractor to teach Mexican police
torture tactics in order to combat organized crime and the local government’s adamant defense of the program is particularly disturbing considering the US government’s recent approval of the $1.6 billion Plan Mexico, also known as the Merida Initiative. Plan Mexico is an aid package specifically designed to support President Felipe Calderón’s deadly battle against organized crime. It will fund more US training for Mexican police and military, in addition to providing them with riot gear, spy equipment, and military aircraft. Plan Mexico allows funds for the deployment of up to fifty US defense contractors to Mexico.

This is not the first time US defense contractors have directed torture in foreign countries.

Representatives of the US training other countries’ police and military how to torture is not unprecedented, but it is still deeply shocking. Contraband and coups are the legacy of the US “War on Drugs” in Latin America. We do not need to spread that. Is this what AFRICOM and the US are bringing to West Africa?

 

Food sovereignty

Cornstalk in Ghana

Yash Tandon writes at Pambazuka that there are:

… five basic guidelines, or principles, that must form the basis of any food policy. These are:

1. The Principle of food sovereignty. This is not the same as “food security”. A country can have food security through food imports. Dependence on food imports is precarious and prone to multiple risks — from price risks, to supply risks, to conditionality risks (policy conditions that come with food imports). Food sovereignty, on the other hand, implies ensuring domestic production and supply of food. It means that the nationals of the country (or at the very least nationals within the region) must primarily be responsible for ensuring that the nation and the region are first and foremost dependent on their own efforts and resources to grow their basic foods.

2. The Principle of priority of food over export crops produced by small farms sustained by state provision of the necessary infrastructure of financial credit, water, energy, extension service, transport, storage, marketing, and insurance against crop failures due to climate changes or other unforeseen circumstances.

3. The Principle of self-reliance and national ownership and control over the main resources for food production. These are land, seeds, water, energy, essential fertilizers and technology and equipment (for production, harvesting, storage and transport).

4. The Principle of food safety reserves. Each nation must maintain, through primarily domestic production and storage systems (including village storage as well as national silos) sufficient stocks of “reserve foods” to provide for emergencies.

5. The Principle of a fair and equitable distribution of “reserve foods” among the population during emergencies.

He concludes:

A proper analysis of the food crisis is a matter that cannot be left with trade negotiators, investment experts, or agricultural engineers. It is essentially a matter of political economy.

Which is very similar to what Vandana Shiva writes:

In a democracy, the economic agenda is the political agenda.

 

Naija Sunday

From Welcome to Nollywood

I had a real day off yesterday and took advantage of the chance to do nothing. There was nobody around, and no pressing things that needed to be done. My local cable tv carries MHz Networks that includes a channel of Nigerian news and features from NTA (website still needs some work.) I turned it on just by chance, and found a number of items that interested me. I watched an hour long report on Nigerian agriculture, discussing working towards food security. I enjoyed the pictures of farming, but don’t think there was much new information there. I can get Ghana TV online through a subscription, but it is nice to to get African TV coming in over the cable. SABC News from South Africa is also on MHz.

Back in the late 70s and early 80s I had a bunch of friends from Calabar. I still hear from a couple of them from time to time, but most went back to Nigeria and I lost touch. I’ve never been much at writing letters, though I do like email. I enjoyed reading recently about how Calabar is a model for a clean and well kept town, Nigeria: Calabar – Why so Clean?

Otherwise, I spent the time outside just taking in the view. It was not a productive day, but very pleasant.

I also spent some of the day listening online to Radio Palmwine, mostly the Igbo channel. All the channels are good, but I particularly enjoy the music on the Igbo channel and listen fairly regularly. It is one of the more user friendly internet radio stations.

AfroPop carried an entertaining documentary on PBS about Nollywood, Welcome to Nollywood which I recorded and watched. It will be shown on some other PBS stations around the US, schedule here.
WGBXW * 7/4/08 Fri 11:00 AM Boston MA
WETADT4 * 7/4/08 Fri 11:00 AM Washington DC
WQED * 7/6/08 Sun 5:00 PM Pittsburgh PA
WETADT4 * 7/6/08 Sun 11:00 PM Washington DC
WETADT4 * 7/7/08 Mon 10:00 AM Washington DC
WETADT4 * 7/7/08 Mon 4:00 PM Washington DC
KVIE7 * 7/15/08 Tue 12:00 AM Sacramento Stockton Modesto CA
KVIEDT2 * 7/15/08 Tue 12:00 AM Sacramento Stockton Modesto CA

From an interview with the filmmaker Jamie Meltzer:

The lessons of Nollywood that I took, and anyone making films — whether they’re documentary or not — can take, is that there’s really no excuse and no obstacle that you can’t overcome. They show that by building this industry in this completely inhospitable environment that’s actively against them in a lot of ways — the heat, the traffic, the lack of infrastructure. But they have managed to create a thriving industry that you don’t see all around the world, an industry that can stand up to the cultural influence of Hollywood and the larger film industries …

… Nollywood exists entirely due to the digital video revolution. Everything they shoot is on digital video cameras, edited on digital nonlinear [systems] and distributed on video CDs. It’s an entirely digital system, and in that sense it’s far ahead of what Hollywood is.

 

MEND’s attack on the Bonga platform – what it means

Shell’s $3.6 billion “Bonga” Floating Production, Storage, and Offloading vessel (FPSO), 120km from shore in 1000m deep water, was recently attacked by MEND militants.

The Oil Drum has a post on the significance of MEND’s recent successful attack on the Bonga offshore oil platform. I’d been wondering a bit about the implications. This article spells them out.

Analysts previously believed these offshore facilities were out of MEND’s reach.
This assumption–that far offshore facilities are beyond the reach of militants–must now be reconsidered. The week’s most successful attack, shutting in 225,000 barrels per day, came against Shell’s Bonga facility. At 120 km offshore, the Bonga attack demonstrated a new militant capability in the offshore environment. As Nigeria is one of the few states with the geological potential to significantly increase oil production and exports, the Bonga attack may prove to be an extremely important development.

…

MEND has already demonstrated its capability to shut in large portions of Nigeria’s onshore oil production, and now it is threatening to re-attack offshore facilities, urging expatriate workers to abandon them immediately. Nigeria’s onshore production is already mature, and government hopes of raising total production to 4 million barrels per day are entirely dependent on the success of the offshore sector. If MEND can continue to interrupt offshore production, the prospects for any increase in production from Nigeria look dim. The situation in Nigeria is critical as Nigeria is one of the few states with the potential to significantly increase both production and exports.

…

I predicted a year ago that MEND would increasingly focus on Nigeria’s offshore facilities for two reasons: 1) to differentiate their ideologically-grounded struggle from the privateers and criminal bunkering that is also interrupting Nigerian production; and 2) as a result of the innovation that naturally results from their decentralized structure. While this most recent attack showcases MEND’s ability to operate in the deepwater environment, it also shows MEND’s potential to greatly increase the impact of future offshore attacks. MEND’s press release stated that their goal was to gain access to and destroy the facility’s main control room, but that they were unable to do so. MEND’s limited success, however, most likely identified to the group the specific capabilities, training, and equipment it will need to better succeed in the future. This process of tactical improvement forms a larger cycle of innovation (an OODA Loop).

…

The recent attack highlights three significant and separate advances by MEND: targeting, naval equipment, and training. By attacking far-offshore infrastructure that was previously considered beyond its reach, and by selecting projects that are key to the Nigerian government’s revenue plans, MEND has accurately identified a very high return on investment target. This demonstrates an advancement in their ability to pursue “effects-based targeting”—that is, the ability to carefully select targets that produce the desired ultimate (here, political) effect. For MEND, the desired effect is to force the Nigerian government to better meet the needs of the Niger Delta peoples. Previous tactics of kidnapping and attacking pipelines were imperfect choices for several reasons: they spawned criminal activity within the Delta, they increased pollution in the already polluted Delta region, and they did not effectively compel the desired action on the part of the Nigerian government. While it is yet to be seen if the current targeting choices will be more successful, in my opinion they represent an advancement in skill.

…

Finally, it is important to discuss the potential tactical race between offshore defenses and militant offensive capability. This is a situation of competing OODA loops–whichever side can innovate and learn from past experiences most quickly will prevail. Here, MEND enjoys two significant advantages over offshore operators. First, the decentralized nature of MEND allows it to try many different approaches, accepting failure of the vast majority of attempts. MEND can try 50 different ways to attack an offshore facility–only one needs to succeed to inflict massive losses that provides a high ROI on its investment. Oil companies, on the other hand, have one opportunity to get their defenses right or they risk losing a multi-billion dollar facility. While oil companies do have the opportunity to learn from past militant mistakes, they don’t have the luxury of learning from successful militant tactics without great cost. Second, oil platforms are fixed assets. While MEND can choose the specific target, time of attack, mode of attack, and staging area at will, oil companies must defend all fixed position at all times, and as a result permanently cede the initiative to their opponents. Any armchair general will recognize that this is an unenviable situation that heavily favors MEND.

…

MEND has made it clear that its recent choice of target was not chance. It stated in its press release that “The location for today’s attack was deliberately chosen to remove any notion that off-shore oil exploration is far from our reach.” Rebels followed up the Bonga attack by announcing a unilateral truce June 22nd to “give peace and dialog another chance.” This suggests we will have at least a short break before the next offshore attack. Unfortunately, it will also allow MEND time to integrate lessons learned from the Bonga attack and to prepare for the next wave of operations. This break is also an important political step for MEND to maintain its image as legitimate and principled freedom fighters in the eyes of the Delta peoples, and not merely a group of criminal thugs. It should not be viewed as a sign of either weakness or abandoning plans to conduct further offshore attacks. This reading of the “truce” is supported by the concurrent strike by Nigerian oil workers that named Shell as an “enemy of the Nigerian people.” Assuming that the Nigerian government won’t meet MEND’s minimum demands, we are likely to find out within a few months just how much offshore capability MEND has…

There are a number of comments following the article that are noteworthy:

… The way I see it – the only answer for these governments is to do what we did during the depression – massive public works projects. Will they do it – probably not! So – look for more troubles.
…

Your point underscores two alternative “geopolitical feedback loops”:
A) In the eyes of the average citizen, government fails to adequately distribute oil revenues. Result: violence, lower production & exports at higher cost.
or
B) Government does its best to use oil wealth for the benefit of its citizens, and in doing so realizes that limiting production now to a certain extent 1) maximizes revenues, and 2) preserves oil wealth for future generations when it will likely be more valuable. Result: lower production & exports.
It’s not a strictly A or B situation, but the danger (from the sense of oil supply) of avoiding one scenario is that the alternative may be just as bad, or worse… I agree that A is the most likely, but what happens if MEND “wins”? While they may fail at pursuing their own best interest due to corruption, short-sightedness, etc., their best interest may actually be to maintain lower levels of production…

…

Not to mention if you take option B, the US will call you a tyrant and accuse you of supporting terrorism. :)

…

… (B) won’t necessarily improve the export situation either. It would, I think, greatly improve the lives of the locals, but but it violates one of my laws of human behavior: any solution that requires many people to suddenly behave better than they have in the past is doomed to failure…

…

… My opinion is that Chevron, Shell, and Nigeria will not meet MEND’s minimum demands. If it is politically tenable to do so, the Nigerian government may try to placate MEND, but if past efforts to placate militants are any indication, this will be nothing but token gestures. Likewise, Shell and Chevron will probably continue their current policy of projects among the Delta communities. These can be viewed as either genuine efforts to compensate the Delta peoples for the resource extracted and environmental damage incurred, or they can be viewed as token gestures intended to temporarily buy them off–I don’t have any insight into the intent of the policies, but I do know that both Shell and Chevron are corporations with fiduciary duties to their shareholders that trump any perceived duty to the Delta peoples. To the extent that duty to shareholders to maximize profit is mutually exclusive of duty to Delta peoples, the former will win.

In my own pipedream best case scenario, the FG would employ youth to clean and build the cities, like the massive public works projects mentioned above. That does actually work, at least it did in the US. But I don’t see much of a will for it anywhere. Even in the US the Republicans have spent half a century persuading the voters that investment in the country and its people did not work and will not work, despite the evidence. And a lot of people have bought it.

From an interview with with Mike Davis about his book, Planet of Slums:

One of the major problems, however, is: We’re building cities without urban qualities. Poor cities, in particular, are consuming the natural areas and watersheds which are essential to their functioning as environmental systems, to their ecological sustainability, and they’re consuming them either because of destructive private speculation or simply because poverty pours over into every space. All around the world, the crucial watersheds and green spaces that cities need to function ecologically and be truly urban are being urbanized by poverty and by speculative private development. Poor cities, as a result, are becoming increasingly vulnerable to disaster, pandemic, and catastrophic resource shortages, particularly of water.

Conversely, the most important step toward coping with global environmental change is to reinvest — massively — in the social and physical infrastructures of our cities, and thereby reemploy tens of millions of poor youth.

 

The seven of crocs

Kotare kindly tagged me for the latest chain blog thing. Here’s the rules:

Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog. Share seven facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

I won’t tag anyone else, although anyone reading is welcome to consider themselves tagged.

(1) I can’t reveal much about myself, because although I find anonymity a nuisance, I promised members of my family I would remain anonymous as a blogger, so that my opinions will not cause gossip or interfere with business.

(2) I have a home in Ghana where I hope to retire, but currently have a job I like, live in and am a citizen of the US.

(3) I am part of some start up small businesses in Ghana, and with another family member have several small farms, growing cocoa, chickens, sometimes pigs, and a variety of vegetables. We tried goats, but they didn’t do well.

(4) I pay school fees for a number of elementary and secondary school students. It hurts me a lot when a young person wants to go to school and is not able to afford it. Unfortunately, what I can do is only a very tiny drop in a very large bucket.

(5) I take pride in paying people well who work for us, and try to help create opportunities. People being people, sometimes that works better than others.

(6) I have studied t’ai chi since the late 70s. I am not a particularly great student, but both my principal teachers take the martial origins and applications of t’ai chi seriously and have read and studied it as a martial art. Although I have no interest in fighting at my age, I find t’ai chi does develop useful psychological skills, even for the less distinguished student. It makes it easier to stay relaxed and calm when people get angry and upset. It is useful for negotiating. And it can help defuse potentially dangerous situations when you are cool and physically relaxed.

(7) I am old enough that I observed the post independence western interference, and the rivalries and proxy wars of the cold war in Africa, when the US and Russia poured “military assistance” onto the continent, and the death and devastation that created. Friends and I used to joke about applying to Reagan and Bush 1 for military assistance to help us in our petty arguments with each other. It appeared all you needed to get military assistance was to call your enemy a Communist (now replaced by Terrorist.) AFRICOM seems designed to make it all happen again, only this time it could be far more horrible. I decided this time I would record what I see, what I learn, and what I think, hence the focus on AFRICOM in this blog.

 

Botswana’s new president – a great fit for AFRICOM’s militarization – not such a great fit for democracy

There is a biographical article about Botswana’s new president in Mmegi, At long last Khama will face his son(Mogae Legacy). It says of Khama:

The ‘Khama Agenda’ consists of three major parts: to decimate his enemies within the party and consolidate his power, to replicate the same on a national level and ultimately leave a legacy worthy of the expectation that surrounded his ascendance to the national stage.
. . .
Ian Khama’s (presidency will be) a much more authoritarian, paranoia-riddled and anti-democratic era.

Khama ascended to the presidency by means of Botswana’s practice of automatic succession. He was Vice President, President Mogae retired, and Khama became president. He has never run for office, and never won a democratic election.

The Mmegi article says of Khama:

“He has done on and off training in very challenging areas of the military. He has had some training with almost all the major intelligence organizations. The BDF, at least at the intelligence level is much closer to the Americans and Israelis so Ian would have done a number of programs in the intelligence arms of those countries” explains the source.

Military men love loyalists and Khama has surrounded himself with loyalists . . .

A Botswana Directorate of Intelligence and Security was recently legislated, and is largely seen as the work of Ian Khama.

However critics . . . noted that it gave too much power to the president and everyone else appointed by the president, the Minister, the Commanders of BDF and Commissioner of Police, and yet possessed no oversight provision.

Also according to the article, Khama is very much obsessed with intelligence, and wants to know what is going on with everyone everywhere. It is apparent he has already used intelligence gathering to help him consolidate his power within the party, and also the nation.

At the same time BDF officers started cropping up in senior positions in the public service. There has been more overt appointments like Isaac Kgosi’s appointment as Senior private Secretary to the Vice President. Part of the core Khama contingent that Khama brought from the BDF Kgosi occupies a special position in Khama’s books.

“At the government enclave, word has it that Kgosi is in reality more powerful even than the PSP himself. As the man who has access to the nerve centre of government, he has much more power than officials care to admit. To the public and everybody, he is the only bridge to the Vice President – the man seen by cynics as the de facto president” wrote Mmegi.

Kgosi is said to be poised to become the Director of that important Directorate of Security and Intelligence.

“Khama is a man who likes to follow everything to its last detail, and that’s why he likes Intelligence. He keeps records of everything that he thinks is important. He has a theory that says, ‘intelligence everywhere’, in other words, if the BCP has a central committee meeting somewhere in Shakawe, if we do not have an officer there we better have an informant there” says an inside source.

Khama is a military man who likes military toys and technology. He values secrecy, “intelligence”, and unquestioning loyalty.

Another Mmegi article, says of Khama:

Khama was a soldier from his teenage years. His major education came from the army. And his history in the party shows a man orientated in the military approach to things. In the army, there is discipline and order that is followed by all. This is the language that Khama understands.
. . .
Khama is a man with a burden. His burden is the expectations surrounding him. For that reason Khama’s failures, when they do occur, stand to be spectacular. That may be an incentive for the opposition too. By choosing to concentrate on opposition-held constituencies Khama is making an assumption that the opposition is not a strong challenger in BDP-held constituencies. This could prove disastrous.

However, a person obsessed with gathering “intelligence”, the means to gather that “intelligence”, free of oversight, and willing to use it for political purposes, can be a formidable anti democratic force.

Khama is a military man and speaks the military language. He has obviously had extensive contact with US military, as well as being trained in the UK. He will be very comfortable with the military leadership running AFRICOM, which will find his friendship, his country, and its strategic resources to be a valuable ally.

Khama is credited as the man behind Thebephatshwa air base. The exact connection between US activities and Thebephatshwa are unclear, but the articles I’ve cited indicate that Khama’s preference for secrecy is part of the reason for that lack of clarity.

With South Africa so clearly opposed to AFRICOM, gradually working towards making Thebephatshwa into a regional hq for US interests should be a very attractive possibility for the military leadership of AFRICOM.

There is nothing in any of this that will help foster democracy. Military language is not the language of democracy. Military structure and heirarchy is not democratic. A democratic government needs to listen to a broad spectrum of society, not just the most loyal and unquestioning followers. If Botswana is going to preserve democracy there will need to be effective opposition to Khama’s initiatives along the way. And Khama shows no ability to compromise, or willingness to yield or lose.

Botswana is on an electrical power tightrope. If the country is very lucky, it may move forward relatively unscathed. But if the power starts going out, business suffers, safety suffers, and the people become unhappy. That would be a major test for Botswana’s democracy.

If there is a major democratic upheaval in Botswana, who will AFRICOM support and enable? Will it be a military colleague, or a democratic process it is not designed to encourage or advantage?

 

The Rising Mercenary Industry and AFRICOM

Over at the African Loft I have a new article up on The Rising Mercenary Industry and AFRICOM. The Bush administration has created a huge industry of military and intelligence contractors. They are already operating in Africa, and looking to Africa for their next contracts. Drop by and give it a read.

 

Off to the beach

I’m off to the beach for a week. I’ll be offline, but will catch up when I return. Meanwhile, I plan to relax, read, and do some short term unscientific monitoring of local sea level.