Image Bank: infographics

E-waste sources and destinations

Image Bank: Mastheads

collection of Cultural-Revolution era imagery and propaganda.

Image Bank: infographics

an infographic on China's production in comparison to world's. (for example China produces 75% of toys in the whole world)

yellow part is production, green one- export

Image Bank: Obama/Odinga

Image Bank: War Machines

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military. These are some of their inventions.

Image Bank: Power Sharing

Kenya's opposition leader Raila Odinga (R) shakes hands with Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki (C) as former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan stands beside them during a press conference outside the presidential office on January 24, 2008 in Nairobi, Kenya. The meeting between the two rivals is the first since the disputed presidential election that led to bloodshed across the country.
(January 24, 2008 - Photo by Uriel Sinai/Getty Images News)


Source

Image Bank: Cape Times Burning Man Cover (May 19, 2008)

The Scramble for Vinyl

By Chief Boima
Spurred on by the rise of sampling in Hip Hop and electronic music and despite a downturn in vinyl production, in the 80′s and 90′s a rich vinyl collecting culture exploded in places like the U.S., Europe, and Japan. For years young hip DJs from the city, travelled to forgotten about record shops in backwater towns, the dusty basements of aging record collectors, or the back rows of an inner-city record shop looking for rarities that seemed to pop out of thin air. Collectors scoured their neighbors backyards for rare jazz, rock, and funk, motivated by unnamed sample sources, hoping to find that illusive breakbeat. The best DJs were the ones with the deepest crates. Around the early 00′s, Hip Hop stopped using samples and turned back towards synthesizers, the Internet started a deeper collective crate, and a vital source of inspiration dried up. For collectors, all the stones seemed to be overturned, the market had too many buyers, and people, starting to realize the value of what they had, turned to E-bay to make money off of their collections. With much of the rare vinyl being plundered locally, a few intrepid explorers decided to try their luck in uncharted territory. Of course, they made their way to Africa.
The above map and scenario may both be a little hyperbolic, but it does seem that the current mad-dash for rare African vinyl could be analogous to Europe’s 19th Century Scramble for Africa, a mad-dash for rare African minerals. There is a trend among rare-groove DJs to “find fortune” in the (re)discovery of musical gems in places where the value of vinyl and recorded music from the past has diminished. Just go to your local record shop (if one still exists) and peruse the display shelves to encounter dozens of new releases celebrating the recently uncovered recordings of Africa’s unknown musical heritage. The image of these guys as plundering opportunists isn’t helped by their reception in “The West”. As one music writer puts it,”Frank Gossner’s DJ sets burst with exclusive tracks that are so rare that they can’t be heard anywhere else on this planet” (from ChoiceCuts.com.) Rare music from planet Africa!?! Who wouldn’t want to get a piece of that?
Full article here.

Fuck Granta… thanks, Granta

"If I was smart, I would have waited a few years and made an iPhone app: a little satirical story about how to write about Africa every day, interactive and adaptable, for ninety-nine cents. Fuck Granta… thanks, Granta." Binyavanga Wainaina

In 1962, as many African countries were gaining independence, Heinemann’s African Writer’s Series introduced some of Africa’s most important writers to the continent, and to the world. At the time, the idea of a series spanning the continent seemed reasonable: many countries were encountering the same phenomenon, at the same time.

Almost 50 years later, the media revolution combined with the ongoing flow of immigration has opened up a chapter in African writing. A new generation of African writers has arrived Over the past six years, partly through the efforts of publishing and literary networking through institutions like Kwani (www.kwani.org), Farafina (www.kachifo.com) and Chimurenga (www.chimurenga.co.za). In 2005 Granta published The View from Africa, featuring "fresh voices from Africa, in all their differences". In the same year Bard College created the Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artists, "a world class institution that serves a new generation of African writers". The Orange Prize for Fiction was awarded in London 2007 to Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun, and the Caine Prize for African Writing has introduced new writers to agents and publishers. Writers like Chimamanda Adichie, Alain Mabanckou, Chris Abani, Petina Gapah, Marie Ndiaye and Seffi Ata are known and read in many African countries, in the African diaspora, and in Europe and America.

Soros Explains The Credit Crisis

The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 And What It Means by George Soros ($23, Public Affairs, 2008).

[George Soros is the Founder and Chairman Open Society Institute. See biography here]

With his near real-time critique of the credit crisis, George Soros has saved financial historians a lot of work. If he's right, the summer of 2007 and all of 2008 will be the topic of many an academic paper, much like how Ben Bernanke made a career out of studying the Great Depression. Soros sees this as a monumental time. It's not just a bursting housing bubble, he says. It's the end of a quarter-century of credit-driven economic expansion. We're in a whole new world.

Up until August 2007, Soros had mostly farmed out management of his hedge fund to outsiders so that he could devote his time to philanthropy, philosophy and politics. The first troubles in subprime spurred Soros back into the markets. This time his goal wasn't so much to find the next billion-dollar trade but to preserve the wealth of his foundations.

This market has been so tough that it's vexed even Soros. His book offers a broad trading diary from January 2008 through the end of March, when The New Paradigm went to the printer. Soros' investment plan was to "short U.S. and European stocks, U.S. 10-year government bonds and the U.S. dollar; long Chinese, Indian and Gulf States stocks and non-U.S. currencies."

On March 10, he noted that commodities were stronger than he thought they'd be, that the Federal Reserve acted more aggressively than he'd anticipated and that the Indian and Chinese stock markets, not quite decoupled from the U.S. economy, took major hits. On March 16, he observed that "The panic is palpable," and bought into ailing Bear Stearns (nyse: BSC - news - people ), expecting some return on a Federal Reserve brokered auction of the company. He got burned admitting that, "We forgot to take into account that Bear is disliked by the establishment, and the Fed would use the occasion to deal with a moral hazard by punishing shareholders."

For those who might be confused by Soros' analysis there, Bill Miller, manager of the Legg Mason Value Trust explains: "Bear had been very aggressive in seizing the capital of Askin Capital in 1994 and precipitating its failure. In 1998 it opted out of rescuing Long Term Capital Management. That's the kind of thing where, if you're Merrill, Citigroup or the Fed, you remember." Miller also bought shares in Bear, for the same reasons Soros did.

The trading diary ends with Soros losing money. While he wishes he could have reached a more triumphant ending, he notes that the result "may be more appropriate for the purposes of the book."

Indeed, it is. While Soros is investing actively again, he's really using the market as a laboratory where he can test his philosophical ideas, especially the notion of reflexivity--that no market participant can ever have perfect knowledge because their beliefs, and the beliefs of others, effect and distort the markets. Because investors tend to herd--they buy things that are going up and sell things that are going down--markets are constantly beset by bubbles. Irrationality reigns supreme.

Soros was once a student of the philosopher Karl Popper, who spent most of his time studying science. Popper came to the conclusion that all scientific statements must be falsifiable and that no scientific theory is ever absolutely true. They are just able to withstand people's attempts to prove them wrong. So long as a theory isn't falsified, it's as good as true. But we're 100% certain about nothing.

The turmoils we see in the markets reflect the turmoils of human thought. The implications of this go far beyond investing. It means that market fundamentalism, the idea that markets are always self-correcting and don't need regulation, is just wrong. Markets are flawed because they reflect human delusions of certainty. Banks make money by issuing loans. If they want to make more money, they need to issue more loans. Absent regulation to stop them, the banks will issue new loans in new ways. They rationalize the risk away by building models based on past experience. The risk models say that the loans are safe. The flaw? All of these new loans fuel an unprecedented housing bubble that the risk models, which are backward looking, can't account for. All of these new loans also create new levels of debt, also unprecedented in history. So the risk models, once again, miss them.

It's time, says Soros, to bring back some of the regulations that were put in place after the Great Depression and then eroded in the decades that followed. Leverage and credit creation, he says, need to be reigned in. Regulators need to start looking to control asset bubbles as they manage the economy for the more usual goals of full employment and price stability.

Soros sees a new economy, indeed a new world order emerging. If the U.S. leaves its fate to the whims of flawed markets, it will lose much of its worldwide influence. Without the dollar as the reserve currency of first choice, the U.S. really has nothing but military supremacy in order to defend its position in the world, and even that, says Soros, has been undermined by the debacle in Iraq.

Soros' message for citizens, investors, politicians and regulators is to approach this new economy and new political order with humility. Be flexible and never dogmatic. Strive to find truth while realizing it's unattainable. It's false certainty that trips us up, in both investing and life.

First published here.

Literary Agents

In a recent article Mukoma wa Ngugi (author of Nairobi Heat) spoke about a lack of serious literary agents and publishers in Africa. "A good number of us are working with Western literary agents who are familiar mostly with Western publishers. This in turn means that they are likely to represent books that will be assured a Western audience. This means that there are good books that have Africans as their primary audience that are not being published. But in the absence of viable publishing in most African countries, even African literary agents would have a problem."

Who are the literary agents currently working with writers on the continent? What do they looking for? How are they shaping writing in Africa?

The nomad’s way of doing business: A guide to Somali commerce

A story on Somali entrepreneurship in Kenya, links in with the Somali shops in SA targeted in so called xenophobic violence but also of interest are the Quran Schools as alternative education institutes and the idea of "inda adheeg" (audacity).
You step off the brightly coloured matatus; music is blaring and the touts are shouting for more passengers. Immediately you alight, a blast of hot air flashes across your face, then a wave of choking dust quickly replaces it. While you try to comprehend it all, drivers shout from their windows and horns compete for attention. Amidst it all, you grasp the syllables of an incomprehensible language and the unpleasant chorus of hawkers trading their wares. You are in Eastleigh, the commercial hub of Nairobi and the heartbeat of Somali entrepreneurship.

Here, paradox reigns supreme. Stores selling Islamic literature and recordings of the Quran sit right next to shops stocked pile high with Khat. Motorcycles ferrying goods and people are fitted with ambulance sirens in order to manoeuvre through the grid-locked traffic (here, all the rules you learnt in driving school are broken; it is probably the only place in Kenya you can drive on the right side of the road).

All this pandemonium however belies the real story of Eastleigh; that of bustling business and cut-throat competition. Capitalism may not have had quite a grip here; small businesses exist amicably alongside big establishments. They even compete!

Eating to live or living to eat?
One of the biggest enterprises that are thriving in Eastleigh is the restaurants. Somalis love their food; it stems from a long tradition of contact with Arabs and Italians, both of whom uphold the institution of food in high esteem. After many hours of hard work (shops in Eastleigh open as early as 6 AM), many businessmen close up for lunch and raid the countless restaurants that dot the landscape of Eastleigh.

You would be forgiven to announce that this neighbourhood has the most restaurants per square kilometre in Kenya. Wardheer Restaurant and Snacks, Big Mack Two, Chess Café, Al-Amin Restaurant, Gulf Palace Restaurant and the list of eateries are countless.

“One of the key investments in Eastleigh is the restaurant business,” says Paul Kioko, who is the manager of Kilimanjaro Food Court, popularly known as KFC. “We receive customers from all over Africa, Dubai and Europe, therefore, we need to be able to invest wisely and make our customers feet at home,” he added.
KFC sits primly at the epicentre of business and has become a magnet for Somali businessmen, expatriates and Kenyans looking alternative gastronomy. The food here features an all-rounded menu that includes Somali food, African dishes and an array of fast foods. Have you ever heard of Camel Pizza? It is found here. There is also the influence of Arab and Italian cuisine where menus read dishes like Spaghetti Firitato and Makaroni Al Forno.

“The day I ate in Eastleigh,” says Selma, a Moroccan student in Kenya who recently visited the area. “I felt like I was in a Moroccan wedding. The portions were huge, the meat was so tender and the spicing was perfect.”

This success story is being replicated across town. KFC has just opened another branch in Nairobi’s Upper Hill area while other restaurants such as Al-Yusra and City Star have opened up in the Central Business District (CBD).

Remittances from the diaspora have also provided the adrenalin rush that has characterized the bustle and quick-paced tempo of Somali businesses. These transfers of money are facilitated by a unique system of money-transfer known as Hawala. Companies such as Dahabshiil and Kaah Express are at the forefront of these services. The word express attached to the company’s names bear significance. Money sent from the United States is paid to the recipient instantaneously, say in Nairobi.

“Hawalas are very important when discussing Somali economics,” says Dahir Sheikh Ahmed, a member of the Eastleigh Business Community. “They are very effective and at some points, they are even able to deliver money to war-torn places like Somalia, where NGOs and UN agencies fail to reach.”

Yet, on many occasions, money-transfer companies have been come under scrutiny with accusations of money laundering, tax evasion and supporting terrorist activities. The biggest manifestation of this phenomenon came after the 9/11 attacks, when the United States forcibly shut down the operations of Al-Barakat, which was the biggest Somalia-based remittance company at the time.

Quran Schools:
While the older generation haggle over the prices of their commodities, young Somali children attend Quran schools known as 'Dugsi' in Somali. Dugsis are another prevalent facet of the Somali society and life in Eastleigh. In fact, they are the alternative curriculum of early childhood education for Somali children.

According to an article published by Bildhaan, a Somali studies journal, “Observers have noted that children who attend Quranic schools tend to pick up learning at the formal school much faster.”
Over the years, schools have opened up in Eastleigh to serve the education needs of the younger generation. It has however been hard abandoning the role of the Dugsi. Teachers have responded to this by combining both systems of education and coming up with an integrated system. Under this system, the first lesson of the morning is say, Quran then followed by science or mathematics and then a lesson in Arabic studies.

Macallin Hussein, a Quran teacher who teaches a madrassa in Nairobi says that this system of education is very limited to few estates, but might increase in the long run. “The spread of madrassas encourages this system of education,” Hussein says, “so that as students learn Quran, they also do not fall back on formal education.”

Rome wasn’t built in one day, Eastleigh was:
Buildings in Eastleigh come up like paper castles; so you would like to think. A mall here, a building there, a block of apartments to the right and more unfinished buildings everywhere you look. Here, real estate is a gem, quite literally at times. Rent rates have spiked within a short period. Land developers are sweating as they try to meet the seemingly insatiable demands of an unending list of tenants. It is an architects’ mecca, a bazaar for contractors; its like a permanent parking lot for construction equipment.

Tucked along the corners of many streets in the neighbourhood are booking offices for different bus companies. You can count as many as 10 different bus companies such as Maslah, Ocean Bus Services, Gateway, Dayah, e-coach, Bilal and many more. They link Eastleigh and its residents with different parts of the country such as Mombasa, Garissa and to refugee camps such as Kakuma and Dadaab. Airline companies such as African Airways Express, Jubba airlines and Daallo Airlines offer transport to different parts of the world.

These planes carry more than passengers and ordinary cargo. They also carry Khat, a mild stimulant and a cash cow for many Somali businessmen. Everyday at 3 PM, pick-up trucks driving at gravity defying speed make a ceremonious entry into Eastleigh carrying sacks of Khat. Some of the cargo is off-loaded and distributed locally while another batch is prepared, packaged and sent to the airport to be exported to the Middle East, Somalia and the UK. Some estimates state that up to $ 800,000 worth of the mild stimulant is exported daily by Somali businessmen.

“Khat was an important business venture during the 80’s and 90’s,” says Mr. Ahmed. “However, there is a tendency that when Somali traders make money out of it, they no longer want to work in it.”
The dislike of this business endeavour is related to the fact that khat is considered Haram or prohibited by Islam.

Globalization is causing Eastleigh to embrace the idea of diversity of businesses and division of labour. If you have a keen eye you will notice something interesting: every street in Eastleigh has at least one pharmacy, but that is on average. Kipanga Athumani Street which leads to the residential suburbs of Eastleigh has nine pharmacies, some right next to each other; call it health consciousness or blatant paranoia. I leave it to you. Did I mention cosmetic shops?

If you weren’t quite satisfied with the menus of the restaurants in Eastleigh, take a walk on the Second Avenue. On offer are Somali cookies, dates and Halwa, a sweet form of pastry, that is made wuith nuts. Everyday at 4 PM, young Somali men go around the malls selling different kinds of snacks. You never get hungry in this place. The pricing is quite convenient too. Think of it as quality food with a Chinese price tag.
Speaking of the Chinese, they are here too. They deliver textiles, electronics and a number of goods that are stocked in many shops in Eastleigh. The language of money is a universal one in case you were worried about language barriers.

“Here, success is not about the beautiful business plan you have in mind. It is about taking risks,” says Suleiman Abdullahi, a university student who has lived in Eastleigh all his life. “All the guidelines in the rulebook of entrepreneurship or broken or proven wrong. Risk plays a major component of the economy, but there is something more important; in Somali it’s called inda adheeg. Audacity.”

The ugly Eastleigh
Away from the shining malls and the warm ambience of Eastleigh’s restaurants, a different story is told by stakeholders of Eastleigh’s businesses. It is a tale of how they are forced to endure the horrid stench of raw sewer, pot-holed roads and an indifferent local authority. These factors have coupled to make Eastleigh the jewel in the dumpsite; quite literally.
Recently, a high court ruling on a case that was filed by three Somali businessmen stated that the Nairobi City Council shouldn’t collect taxes from over 3000 traders until basic services are delivered to the residents.

Traders here continue to reiterate very passionately about the role they play in the country’s economy; creating employment opportunities for thousands of Kenyans, while attracting foreign investment and finance. From Khat to clothing and hospitality, this area continues to play a role in shaping a country determined to be a middle-income nation by 2030.

“We may not be the backbone of this country’s economy but we play our bit. It would help to get a little incentive from the authorities concerned,” contends Suleiman Abdullahi whose family also runs a number of businesses in the area.

“Although it is difficult to spot how things work, one certainly feels that there is good flow or liquidity of goods,” says Joakim Arnoy about Eastleigh, a master’s student from Norway. “I enjoyed it, it really felt like a Middle-Eastern bazaar.”
First published here

A House in Zambia

This is a new book (published 2010) but the approach of looking at the history of a space/ place has resonance

House in Zambia: Recollections of the ANC and Oxfam at 250 Zambezi Road, Lusaka, 1967-97’, edited by Robin Palmer: a reflection on ‘Southern Africa’s twin struggles for political freedom and economic development’ through the window of an ordinary house with extraordinary occupants.

Review: http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/65593

This book is something rather unusual, the biography of a house. Not some aristocratic family’s great residence. An ordinary house, a modern house, but worth ‘listening to’ because of the remarkable people who lived and worked in it. 250 Zambezi Road was for over twenty years witness to the longest and most daunting of Africa’s liberation struggles – the African National Congress’s (ANC) century-long fight to bring democracy and non-racialism to South Africa. For much of that time, and afterwards, 250 was also in effect Oxfam’s operational base in Zambia, as this most famous of Britain’s development charities played its part in Africa’s other historical battle: to win a decent standard of living for the poor.


This is not an ‘academic’ book, although historian Hugh Macmillan’s ‘Story of a House’ is a fascinating account of a little known corner of South Africa’s liberation story. Most of the book is written by a diverse group of Oxfam workers, many Zambians as well as Britons, who assemble their recollections of how they worked together. The reader only gets glimpses of the difficulties the ANC faced in exile, and learns too little of Oxfam’s unfolding perspectives and strategies in its development work. But beyond the occasional and probably well justified sense of nostalgia, there is a lot to be learned, particularly about how Oxfam worked in this part of the world. Victor Pelekamoyo perhaps sums this up best: ‘As an outsider, I wondered why Oxfam laboured so much to make the partners feel that Oxfam existed because of them, and not the other way round’. Dr Robin Palmer, who pulled this book together, and his contributors are to be congratulated on a remarkable and original work, and for arranging its publication in Zambia and not distant Europe.

Guinness in Nigeria and Cameroon

Guinness ships out unfermented wort extract from Dublin, but the beverage sold in Africa is brewed on the continent, and has been for decades. While Guinness sells strongly throughout West Africa, it is wildly popular in Nigeria and Cameroon.

Nigeria consumes more Guinness than any country other than the United Kingdom, surpassing even Ireland. Nigerian Guinness is tailored to the local market. It is made from sorghum and corn (maize) rather than barley, and is bitterer, with a higher alcohol content, than the original product. Winning advertising campaigns have linked the dark brew to sexual potency.

Nigerian Guinness has been much criticized for the sexual innuendo of its ad campaigns. It is also attacked for its expense; many men exhaust their earnings on the two-dollar bottles. But Guinness Nigeria, a largely autonomous subsidiary of the global beverage giant Diageo, has plenty of defenders in the Western media. They laud it for its corporate social responsibility, noting that it finances potable water projects and supports African athletics and cultural programs. They also note that Guinness Nigeria is currently expanding, unlike most local subsidiaries of foreign multinationals. As one article put it, “A success story like Guinness in Nigeria highlights the potential for trade and foreign investment in Africa that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke about … when she addressed an African trade convention in Kenya.”

In Cameroon, as in Nigeria, the bitter beer is big. Stories of Guinness trucks venturing into Cameroonian outback over some of the world’s worst roads have an epic quality. Guinness Cameroon, a separate subsidiary, currently imports all of its grain, due to the “underdeveloped nature of Cameroonian agriculture.” The company is however, to promote “smallholder farmer production of sorghum” to procure local supplies. If successful, the project will “provide support to approximately 4,000 North Cameroonian farming families, an estimated 24,000 persons.”

Northern Cameroon, like northern Nigeria, is a predominantly Muslim area, which is potentially problematic for any beer-related venture. Most of northern Nigeria is currently under Sharia (Islamic) law, forbidding the sale of alcoholic beverages to Muslim residents. Non-Muslims are supposedly exempt, but Islamic stalwarts seek complete prohibition.

The Wikipedia’s map of global per capita beer consumption most of Africa blank. Rabobank’s more comprehensive map (see pic) shows relatively high levels of consumption in Cameroon as well as in southern Africa. All such global maps of beer consumption, however, underestimate Africa’s share, as a great deal of African beer is brewed at home or in tiny local breweries, escaping official notice.

Transport dividing the DRC?

The geographical issues that make it a challenge for DR Congo to function as a country.

The first issue is transportation. To say that overland transportation is difficult in DR Congo is a laughable understatement (see wiki map). Note how the country’s meager road system fails to link many areas; note also how many roads are classified as “earth tracks,” meaning that they become impassible mud-pits after heavy rains, which occur frequently. As brief exercise, try figuring out how to travel from Goma in the east to Mbuji-Mayi in the south-center without using an “earth track.” Eastern DR Congo is much better connected to neighboring countries in east Africa than it is to the western DR Congo. It is noteworthy, however, that China recently (2007) agreed to lend DR Congo US $5 billion to improve its transportation system, in particular by upgrading the linkages between the major mining area around Lubumbashi and the ocean port at Matadi.

The Self-Declared Republic of Ambazonia ( Anglophone-Francophone political disputes)

Most borders in sub-Saharan Africa were drawn by European imperial powers who were blithely ignorant of preexisting polities and oblivious to ethnic divisions. The resulting mismatch between the political map and the cultural map has fueled many a separatist movement, yet the status quo remains sacrosanct. The consensus among African leaders—and the global political community—is that existing states must be maintained as they are, for fear of setting a precedent that could unleash ethnic rebellion across the continent.

But not all separatist movements in Africa are based on animosity toward the boundaries imposed by Europeans. The leaders of Somaliland, not to overturn but to turn back to their region’s onetime colonial borders. They point out that a precedent for such change was established in 1993 when Eritrea, a former Italian colony, was allowed independence from Ethiopia, which had annexed it in 1951.

The leaders of the self-declared Republic of Ambazonia (or Ambazania) in western Cameroon make the same claim. Their land, they argue, was illegally incorporated into Cameroon when a small British colony was joined to a much larger French colony in 1961, a year after independence. The movement for an independent Ambazonia is non-violent, and largely ineffectual, receiving little support from other organizations. In 2005, however, it did gain membership in the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO).

The Ambazonia dispute arose from the disposition of Germany’s African colonies after World War I. From the late 1800s until 1916, Germany held sway over a vast territory it called Kamerun, geo-engineered to reach the heart of the Sahel at Lake Chad. In the post-war settlement, most of Kamerun went to France as a League of Nations Mandate (Cameroun), but Britain got the northwestern strip adjacent to its west African base in Nigeria. The British administered this new holding, which it dubbed Cameroons, through Nigeria but not as part of Nigeria; it was, in essence, a colony of a colony. Regardless of the indirect nature of British administration, English did spread through the region, just as French spread through the much larger area governed by Paris.

When Nigeria and Cameroun gained independence from Britain and France respectively in 1960, the issue of British-ruled Cameroons came to the fore. Plebiscites were held to gauge popular sentiment, giving the people of the region the choice of union with Nigeria or with Cameroun; independence was not an option. Northern Cameroons, a Muslim region, opted for union with Nigeria, whereas the largely Christian south voted for union with the former French colony. The end result was the creation of the Federal Republic of Cameroon, whose federal nature allowed considerable autonomy to the English-speaking western provinces, forestalling language-based unrest. That was to change in 1972, however, when a new constitution proclaimed the United Republic of Cameroon. With the creation of a unitary government, the people of the former British provinces began to feel marginalized. A quarter-century later, the Republic of Ambazonia was proclaimed on December 31, 1999.

The Ambazonian movement has received little attention in the global media. The Washington Times, ran an article in 2008, after representatives from the would-be country presented their case in Washington D.C. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/27/obscure-separatist-movement-seeks-support/ That story, in turn, prompted a posting on the National Review’s blog, The Corner, entitled “Ambazonia for the Ambazonias.” The post consisted of a single sentence: “Can we at least agree that the liberation struggle of Ambazonia is absolutely none of our business one way or the other?”

Anglophone-Francophone political disputes are not limited to Cameroon. Geocurrents recently explored the challenges of Vanuatu, a former British-French condominium that ended up with competing English- and French-speaking elites. Rwanda is another example: a traditionally French-speaking country that has been tending toward English ever since a Uganda-based rebel movement seized power after the genocide of 1994. Yet in Cameroon, there are signs that a linguistic accommodation may be occurring. In the country’s main cities, the two languages are hybridizing to produce a new common tongue, “Camfranglais” (from camerounais, français and anglais). The new language evidently emerged in the markets, ports, and playing fields, propelled in part by popular music. According to the BBC, in Camfranglais, "Tu as sleep hier?" means "Did you sleep well last night?", while "Tout le monde hate me, wey I no know" is "Everybody hates me, I don't know why."

Coke vs. Pepsi - Venezuela vs. Zulia

Opposition expressed via consumer choices:

Although Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has been able to secure relatively high levels of electoral support, his campaigns have faltered in the northwest. In the Andean highland zone, closely linked to neighboring Colombia, the states of Táchira and Mérida both voted “no” on Chavez’s constitutional referendum in 2009. Anti-Chavez sentiments also run strong in the northwestern lowland state of Zulia, which brackets Lake Maracaibo. The heart of Venezuela’s oil industry, Zulia has deep connections with the United States. But even beyond economics, the culture of the Maracaibo region is at odds with that of the rest of the country.

The differences between the Maracuchos—the people of the Maracaibo lowlands—and other Venezuelans are considerable. Maracaibo speech is distinctive in intonation and especially in its use of “vos” for “you.” The region’s folk music—La Gaita Zuliana—is unique, and its coconut-heavy cuisine is unlike that found elsewhere in the country. Behavior differs as well. As Edward Teveris reports, “A question in the survey my company conducted a few years back asked: "Te consideras un 'parandero'?" ("Do you consider yourself a 'showoff'?" Meaning: lots of gold watches, necklaces, and other high machista behaviors.) The ‘Maracuchos’ responded at an alarmingly higher rate than the rest of the country. When we showed that slide to our clients they laughed in agreement.”

The Maracuchos seem to have embraced an oppositional culture so pronounced that it is even reflected in consumer choices. Brands that do well in Caracas and elsewhere in the country often fail in Zulia. While most Venezuelan smokers like Belmont cigarettes, the Astor Azul brand is preferred in Maracaibo; while Polar beer is favored elsewhere, regional brews are more popular in Zulia. Perhaps most tellingly, other Venezuelans drink Coca-Cola, but Maracuchos drink Pepsi. (See “A Psychographic Profiling of Venezuelan Consumers and Society,” by Jacobo Riquelme and Edward Teveris).

The same oppositional sensibility is also encountered in politics. It is thus not surprising that in 2008 leaders in Zulia proposed launching a campaign for autonomy, modeling their proposal on efforts made in Bolivia’s Santa Cruz region. Nor is it surprising that such designs met concerted opposition from pro-Chavez forces. As one local representative responded, “we [pro-Chavez government] legislators categorically reject this separatist, secessionist proposal of the state because it goes against our values and the integral development of the country,” adding that “We, with the law, with the People in the street, and with the armed forces, will put up a fight” (from “Autonomy Proposed in State Legislature of Venezuelan Oil State Zulia,” by James Suggett, http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/3423).

Islam Versus Global Capitalism

Below a Islamic reaction to the global economic crisis, a plan to replace paper money with gold dinars, also of interest, theestablishment of Murabitun outposts in England, Indonesia, Germany, South Africa, and Mexico, where missionaries found willing converts among Mayans caught up in the Zapatista rebellion. (They now number more than three hundred there and run a pizza restaurant, carpentry workshop, and Islamic school in San Cristóbal de las Casas.)

Also see Robert Fisk on the Gulf ditching the dollar in oil trade. (see video below)

And Islam, the Mediterranean and the Rise of Capitalism - a look at how Islam shaped the tradition of early capitalism

The Golden Compass

On the morning of July 10, 2003, Umar Ibrahim Vadillo stood beside the whitewashed brick facade of the Mosque of Granada and looked out over the Darro River. Before him lay the ramparts of the Alhambra, where five hundred years earlier the legions of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had completed the Reconquista of Moorish Spain. Beyond the Alhambra, Vadillo saw the shores of the eurozone, and beyond them the citadels of world finance: Brussels, Paris, Frankfurt, London; the marble-floored temples where hedgefund managers, central bankers, and currency speculators paced and traded and plotted. Vadillo had been invited to Granada to celebrate the opening of the mosque, the first to be built in the city since the fall of Al-Andalus; the occasion was being marked by an ecumenical conference on the theme of “Islam in Europe.” Rather than invite some wizened imam promising to build bridges, or a conciliatory local politician, the organizers had invited Vadillo, a forty-sixyear- old convert and a bookish interpreter of the relationship between Islam and paper money, to deliver the keynote.

Inside the mosque’s prayer hall, an audience of two thousand local converts, Moroccan and Syrian immigrants, and North African students had gathered. When it was his turn to speak, Vadillo ambled to the center of the stage and hunched over the lectern, his hair slicked back and his ferret-like face wreathed by a trim beard. After putting his notes in order, he began a measured disputation on the origins of debt, the commodification of currency, and the proper Islamic medium of exchange. The members of the crowd sat rapt as Vadillo outlined the history of currency and its role in the subjugation of peripheral economies. Eventually he revealed how Muslims could undermine Western capitalism. “The end to the enslavement of the Muslim masses does not require a jihad in the traditional sense,” but a struggle to quit the dollar, the pound, and the euro and return to a single, gold-backed currency: the Islamic dinar. The fortresses of fiat money standing beyond the sylvan hills of Granada could be besieged by prudent investments, their walls breached by the revival of the caravan, and their treasure usurped — if only Muslims would “stop being naive about the banks and the financial institutions.”

The conference was a uniquely high-profile event, and many in the audience were new to the gospel of the gold dinar. But Vadillo had been honing his message for years. It was in Granada, in 1991, that he had first delivered his “Fatwa Concerning the Islamic Prohibition on Using Paper- Money as a Medium of Exchange.” Communism had fallen, Francis Fukayama had declared the end of history, stock markets were bustling, and the New Economy was ascendant. Where many saw the promise of a new, benevolent world order, Vadillo saw magical thinking. “The enormous debt of the countries and the even bigger debt of the individual persons to the banks DOES NOT EXIST on paper,” he wrote. “It is pure computer data.” National economies were financing growth by borrowing vast sums and manipulating their currencies. The financial system, he argued, would only exist for as long as people believed in it; once they realized it was an illusion, the global economy would collapse.

Although the Granada speech provoked controversy in the West (“The Corrosive Hagiography of Muslim Spain,” one headline read), it also buoyed the popularity of the Murabitun, the modern Sufi sect that counts Vadillo as a lieutenant. Named after an eleventh-century Spanish Islamic revival movement, the Murabitun is devoted to restoring the world to the economic and political system established by the prophet Mohammed when he governed Medina. Though militant, the Murabitun eschew violence; shortly after 9/11 they issued a statement announcing that “capitalism will not be abolished on the battlefield, but in the marketplace where it is practiced.” They consider the obsession with sexuality among Islamic fundamentalists to itself be a sign of decadence. And as discontent with globalization has peaked, the Murabitun have established outposts in England, Indonesia, Germany, South Africa, and Mexico, where missionaries found willing converts among Mayans caught up in the Zapatista rebellion. (They now number more than three hundred there and run a pizza restaurant, carpentry workshop, and Islamic school in San Cristóbal de las Casas.)

Vadillo, who declined repeated requests to be interviewed for this article, is a peripatetic finance guru, part Ali Shariati and part Joseph Schumpeter, traveling far and wide to lecture on the “mutation in social values” caused by a half-century of American imperialism underwritten by the dollar. In the past decade he has barnstormed halls of government, corporate boardrooms, and academic conferences from Kazakhstan to the Philippines, armed with PowerPoint presentations featuring outstretched hands cupping piles of glimmering currency stamped with the Dome of the Rock (his own design). The West’s prosperity is illusory, he insists, an empire of rot concealed by the veneer of the middle-class lifestyle its citizens have enjoyed. If Muslims would just turn away from the West and adopt the dinar — if Indonesian rice farmers would stop accepting paper money, if the Saudis would price oil in gold, if Iran would demand dinars for dates — it would induce a cataclysm on par with the Wall Street crash of 1929, and a golden age of Islamic trade would ensue.

Full article here.


Robert Fisk on the Gulf ditching the dollar

Size Matters

Image by Kai Krause (via Stephen Fry). Public Domain/CC

Higher Resolution can be downloaded from here.

Update: This is an updated version, the older version can be downloaded from here.

Could Soldiers Be Prosecuted for Thought Crime?

April 21, 2008

The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is funding a number of technologies that tap into the brain’s ability to detect threats before the conscious mind is able to process the information. Already, there is Pentagon-sponsored work on using the brain’s pattern detection capabilities for enhanced goggles and super-fast satellite imagery analysis. What happens, however, when the Pentagon ultimately uses this enhanced capability for targeting weapons?

This question has led Stephen White to write a fascinating article exploring the implications of a soldiers’ legal culpability for weapons that may someday tap into this "pre-conscious" brain activity. Like the Minority Report notion of "pre-crime," where someone is convicted for contemplating a criminal act they haven’t yet acted upon, this article raises the intriguing question of whether a soldier could be convicted for the mistake made by a pre-conscious brain wave.

One of the justifications for employing a brain-machine interface is that the human brain can perform image calculations in parallel and can thus recognize items, such as targets, and classify them in 200 milliseconds, a rate orders of magnitude faster than computers can perform such operations. In fact, the image processing occurs faster than the subject can become conscious of what he or she sees. Studies of patients with damage to the striate cortex possess what neuropsychologists term “blindsight,” an ability to predict accurately where objects are positioned, even when they are placed outside these patients’ field of vision. The existence of this ability suggests the operation of an unconscious visual perception system in the human brain. These blindsight patients often exhibit “levels of accuracy well beyond the performance of normal observers making judgments close to the threshold of awareness,” particularly with regard to locating ‘unseen’ objects. The speed of visual recognition varies depending on its degree of the perceived object’s multivalence; ambiguous objects take more time to process. If neuralinterfaced weapons were designed to fire at the time of recognition rather than after the disambiguation process, a process that would likely need to occur for the pilot to differentiate between combatants and protected persons, the pilot firing them presumably would lack criminal accountability for the act implicit in willful killing. Because of the way brain-interfaced weapons may interrupt the biology of consciousness, reasonable doubt may exist as to whether an actor performed a conscious act in the event of a contested incident.

Source

Face Crime

January 2008

"He did not know how long she had been looking at him, but perhaps for as much as five minutes, and it was possible that his features had not been perfectly under control. It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself—anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called." - George Orwell, 1984

Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screeners are learning to recognize a special set of forbidden facial expressions. If your face slips into one of these during a TSA inspection, you will be taken aside and given a more detailed screening:

Travelers at Sea-Tac and dozens of other major airports across America are being scrutinized by teams of TSA behavior-detection officers specially trained to discern the subtlest suspicious behaviors.

[....]

TSA officials will not reveal specific behaviors identified by the program--called SPOT (Screening Passengers by Observation Technique)--that are considered indicators of possible terrorist intent.

But a central task is to recognize microfacial expressions--a flash of feelings that in a fraction of a second reflects emotions such as fear, anger, surprise or contempt, said Carl Maccario, who helped start the program for TSA.

 Source: Daily KOS

Been-to

"I did not know how easy the coming would be. I have been with you in dreams and night wishes, but often this was only when the world was not going well with me. Aches and fears and troubles brought my thoughts running to you.

I am confessing to you now. Be kind to me: a new child coming back to you. You knew me ready to die again and enter this world those here above think so real, this world which you know is only the passing flesh of everything that lasts, the soul of our people.

Coming home to you put fear into me at times. Do not laugh at me. I did not see you clearly, and I had been so long in this other world that I had no idea but fear. I am here against the last of my veils. Take me. I am ready. You are the end. The beginning. You have have no end. I am coming."

Ayi Kwei Armah
Fragments, 1969

The flow of artists between Africa and the West is seen as one way: outa here! In recent years however we've sen a handful of artists returning, choosing to work on the continent. Riffing off Brice Wassy's observation that "something got lost" and the need to rediscover it from Africa, a look at Wanlov The Kubolor, Faustin Linyekula and well, more, more.. future etc.

*In Fragments (1971), the protagonist, Baako, is a "been-to", a man who has been to the United States and received his education there.

Serial fiction

A journalistic tradition that can be traced back to the days of Dickens, serial fiction has become steadily less prevalent in newspapers during the latter half of the 20th century, arguably due to television, radio, and other electronic media displacing newspapers as a primary source for information and entertainment.

But Serial Fiction remains popular in many newspapers on the continent eg in Tanzania Swahili tabloids such as Uwazi (Transparency), Ijumaa (Friday), Ijumaa Wikienda (Friday Weekender), Risasi (Bullet), Amani (Peace) and Championi (Champion), have one page out of twelve dedicated to serial fiction. Next in Nigeria also recently began to regularly feature fiction on its pages.

One installment of a serial fiction for the Chimurenga Chronicle?

Postal Systems in the Pre-Modern Islamic World

Postal Systems in the Pre-Modern Islamic World
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. xii + 214 pp. $101.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-85868-7

In Postal Systems in the Pre-Modern Islamic World, Adam Silverstein examines the development and evolution of networks transporting material objects, and in some cases important personalities, over long distances via stations “posted at convenient intervals along a route” (p. 1). These postal networks were (theoretically) restricted to official government usage, and were vital to the state as a means of gathering intelligence.

The book is divided chronologically into three sections. The first of these (chapter 1), covers the pre-Islamic postal systems of the Sasanians, Byzantium, and central Arabia. The purpose here is to identify the formative influences on the Arab barid (post) and offer a corrective to the widely held view that the Muslims simply appropriated the Roman/Byzantine postal system. Silverstein counters that the Arabs adopted Sasanian postal traditions when they inherited Sasanian territories. This is demonstrated by the continuing use of terms such as awwana for way-station, and by Muslim literary sources that explicitly recognize Sasanian influence. Furthermore, the Byzantine postal service (known as the Cursus Publicus) was already in severe decline by the time of the Arab conquests. While the early Umayyad caliphs may still have been acquainted with some of its features, it “was not something with which the Arabs or the populations they came to rule would have had any meaningful experience” (p. 42). Silverstein concludes that the conquering Arabs built upon their own very basic postal system by gradually integrating local structures (from Byzantine in the case of Syria and Egypt, from the Sasanians in Iraq and Iran), while drawing primarily on the Sasanian model.

In chapters 2 and 3, Silverstein focuses on the creation of a global caliphal “postal system, controlled by a bureaucratically sophisticated capital” (p. 51). Beginning with the Umayyad and stretching into the middle ‘Abbasid periods (roughly 661 through 847), chapter 2 documents the rise of the caliphal barid. Initially created through a piecemeal integration of local networks, the post was expanded and centralized under the Marwanid Umayyads (684-750). This process included the expansion and maintenance of roads, the appointment of postal chiefs, the general (empire-wide) adoption of Sasanian administrative practices, and the transformation from a public- to a government-funded institution. The latter was a particular Arab innovation that set the caliphal barid apart from both its predecessors and most of its successors (which relied on the local population for supplies and mounts). Following the collapse of the Umayyad dynasty, an event many scholars ascribed to the postal system’s failure to deliver timely and accurate intelligence, the early ‘Abbasid caliphs transformed its basic elements into a highly malleable network. The period from 750 to 847 witnessed a considerable variation in the efficiency, upkeep, reliability, and general effectiveness of the barid from caliph to caliph.

In chapter 3, Silverstein discusses the central features and eventual fragmentation of a formal centralized governmental barid led by a specific administrator, during the reign of al-Mutawakkil (847-61). In this period, the post filled a myriad of administrative functions. For instance its employees served as a secondary check on the potential abuses of local tax officials, and informed the central government of “uprisings in the provinces” and “the spread of detrimental rumours” (p. 105). The system was consolidated into an independent governmental department (diwan al-barid) and placed under the direct supervision of a high-ranking official in Baghdad. This centralization spawned similar postal diwans in the smaller political states that arose in the aftermath of ‘Abbasid decentralization. The second half of the chapter surveys a number of these successor regimes including the Fatimids in Egypt and Syria, the Samanids and Ghaznavids in eastern Iran and Afghanistan, and the Buyids and Seljuks in western Iran and Iraq.

The third and final section of the book consists of two chapters that examine the later postal systems of the Mongols and the Mamluks. Silverstein affirms the Mongol Yam’s debt to the Chinese Yi while also emphasizing its uniqueness as a largely land-based and predominantly steppe-dominated institution. He also traces its steady fragmentation and localization, which mirrored the decentralization of the Mongol empire as a whole. As for the Mamluk barid, Silverstein contests the claim that it was modeled after the Mongol system, arguing for a more interdependent relationship between the postal networks of the two empires. He emphasizes the modest territorial extent, the governmental financing, and the primarily military nature of the Mamluk system. While the Mamluks drew on aspects of both the ‘Abbasid caliphal and Mongol post, they created “an unprecedented institution” (p. 185) that withered away after the collapse of the Mongol threat.

The most impressive aspects of Silverstein’s work consist of his efforts to contextualize and compare the postal systems of pre-Islamic and early Islamic empires, specifically routes, administration, financing, and mounts. What emerges is a revealing set of patterns that distinguish individual postal networks and--in many cases--explain their eventual decline. Financing, for example, was a persistent problem, with many states placing the burden for postal supplies such as mounts on local populations. This invariably (a) led to local resentments and (b) encouraged wide-scale corruption that undermined the system’s efficacy. In this regard, the government financing of the post instituted by the ‘Abbasids is of particular interest as a unique and valuable innovation. Silverstein also highlights the corrosive effects associated with allowing civilian access to the post, as merchants abused and overtaxed the system’s resources to the point of collapse. The contrast with those systems that severely restricted civilian use through the spacing and placement of stations (e.g., the Fatimids, the Mamluks) is striking. Finally, Silverstein offers a fascinating survey of the different modes of transport utilized by each empire, ranging from human runners and homing pigeons to mules, horses, and racing camels. He presents reasoned evaluations of their speed and connects the use of certain types of transportation to the financial strains associated with maintaining an effective empire-wide postal network.

In his attention to detail, Silverstein sometimes plunges into long discussions of technical terms and the provenance of words that leave the reader a little confused. More problematic are his attempts to establish connections between postal systems on the basis of their utilization of common terms. Although he states clearly that such correlations do not necessarily imply a borrowing from one empire to another, there are instances where he seems to fall into this very trap.

The biggest questions surrounding Silverstein’s work, however, concern his widespread use of literary sources, especially with respect to the pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods. While he acknowledges the problematic provenance of these sources and cautions against assuming their historical veracity, it is virtually impossible to offer a detailed discussion of early postal systems without them. When possible, Silverstein supplements literary sources with archaeological or other corroborating evidence but there still remains considerable doubt about the conclusions of the first three chapters. These should be treated with a degree of caution.

Postal Systems in the Pre-Modern Islamic World is a valuable contribution on a subject that has not been systematically studied across time periods or comparatively analyzed across empires. In this regard, Silverstein’s work is an important step towards a broader understanding of a premodern institution central to the commercial health and military efficacy of most--if not all--premodern empires.

Africa in China

Most of the debates on China in Africa has followed the flow from China to Africa but its not all one way traffic. Areas like "Chocolate City" in Guangzhou, China attracts thousands of African traders seeking business opportunities in the East. What the view like from this perspective?

Artists Bill Kouélany & Goddy Leye recently visited "Chocolate City" as part of their Sparck residency and produced "Chocolate Banana"

Also see Farhad A.K. Sulliman KHOYRATTY (fiction writer, editor, translator; Mauritius) Journey to the West published at 2010 IWP:

"I was in Hubei province, having boarded the ship a week earlier at Shanghai, a good
few provinces east. I was heading upstream towards East Tibet. It wasn’t a ship really, more
a low‐cost transport craft, a riverboat.
This is how I describe myself: 43, elegant, an adventurer at heart. My name’s Marco,
one of the most common names among Mauritian Christians my age. I am of Black African
origin spiked with some French here and there. I was brought up a Catholic but am now as
lapsed as can be. My wife, Lakshmi, is Mauritian Hindu...." More here

Petina Gappah: How Kenya Exploded in My Heart

 February 2008

My friend Yvonne once told me that it was only when she lived in my country's capital that she understood which city Nairobi was going to be when it grew up. Harare in the 1990s was funky and groovy and uncluttered and happening. Zimbabwe in the 1990s was a country in which people still dreamed and planned with the reasonable expectation that their dreams would come true, and if they didn't, they could downgrade them to less ambitious, but still acceptable versions. There was a flow of tourist money, there were film festivals, and arts festivals, there were world-class Manchurian restaurants and people speaking of all the things they planned. There were about 20 foreign airlines bringing the world to us. Now there are only four. Yvonne's words are always with me when I think about my home city, because when I think about her home city, I see the city that Harare could have been, and in Kenya, the country mine could have been.

I once lived in a European city that had so few black people that I was most people's only encounter with Africa. I was the Africa expert, giving little seminars on the genocide in Rwanda and the promises of South Africa's rainbow nation. Throughout that time, I felt like a poser – the one African country that I really knew was Zimbabwe, the rest were as foreign to me as Slovenia or Poland. I still feel I do not know Africa. I never can, but through reading, travel and friendships, I have come to love a number of African countries.

More than these, I love Kenya.

Kenya means very specific things to me. It means my friends at Kwani?, the hip literary journal which has opened a space in which the most moving and funny and lacerating and edgy writing is exploding out into the world. I cannot separate their kwaniness from their Kenyanness. Kenya means Lamu, a place like no other that I have visited. Kenya means all the amazing people that I have met in my travels there, filmmakers, and businesswomen, civil servants, media types, hotel staff, for I have stayed mainly in hotels, so that I am one of those for whom Kenya will always be the country of the permanent karibu, a county of the friendliest people in the world, an eye-rolling cliché that is nonetheless true. I have conversed with Luo and Kalenjin and Kikuyu and, on one occasion, what I took to be Massai teenagers, but who, according to my Kenyan companions, were Kikuyu dressed as Massai for the tourist dollars. On a beach in Mombasa, I cemented my Kenyan tourist credentials: I received the flattering attentions of a reed-thin "beach boy" with beaded dreadlocks.

To add to these associations with the people I have met are all the wonderful things that happened to me in Kenya. The thrill of my first ever public reading as a writer. The young men who asked me if I had ever visited Kibera because the slum I described in my reading sounded like their home. The ground of Kenya shaking beneath my feet as I fell in love on the shores of Crater Lake.

Every time that I have been to Nairobi, I have returned with a singing soul.

And when I am not there, Kenya follows me. The smiling man I met on the Number 8 bus to the United Nations is a Kenyan, he said. I swelled with pride when Kenya's Ambassador Amina Mohammed became the first African to chair the WTO's General Council, and the first African woman to be interviewed for a spot on the WTO's Appellate Body. Whenever I met Kenyans in Geneva and other places, I felt a strong tug of kinship. And at school, my four-year-old son Kush became best friends with a little Kenyan boy called Jacob.

Like Juliet did to the love-struck Romeo in the Dire Straits song, Kenya exploded on my heart.

There was an underlying ache.

I wished we had this in Zimbabwe, that a rainbow coalition of political parties could unseat a stagnant ruling party and still have a vibrant opposition. I could not help comparing Nairobi's greenness to Harare's drought dry grasses and trees. A friend once asked me what I thought we would talk about in Zimbabwe if ever we solved our crisis. In Kenya, I found some answers. Kenyans filled the streets of Nairobi at the weekend, their bars were packed with smiling happy people, troubled, it seemed to me, by no graver political issues than the antics of their health minister Charity Ngilu. On one weekend that I was in Nairobi, the papers were given over to a discussion of the school results. There were league tables, and pictures of beaming little girls and boys and agonising editorials about why some regions were doing badly compared to others. I remember a picture of a woman with a smile that showed the insides of her teeth as she embraced her son.

Future doctor, said the caption.

For one used to headlines from the Zimbabweans papers about inflation going up to 15 000%, and newspapers filled with the President's daily screeds against "detractors and would-be colonisers" and the empty promise that Zimbabwe would never be a colony again, this all seemed achingly normal.

Then came December 2007.

And suddenly, it was not of Zimbabwe that stern-faced British prime ministers, European Union observers and American presidents were talking, but Kenya. Suddenly, Nairobi was becoming Harare, and Kenya, Zimbabwe.


 Source

Weed on Wall Street

This story is from 2009 but we could explore the lead-up

Medical Marijuana Inc. and others start pushing green on the stock exchange

April 28 (Bloomberg) -- The former Club Vivanet Inc. said it plans to use prepaid cards to manage tax collection and payment processes for marijuana dispensaries in states that allow the drug to be used for medicinal purposes, according to a release sent by Market Wire. The company, trading under the ticker MJNA, will also split its shares 10-for-1, the statement said.

States including Oregon and California allow residents to use marijuana for diseases ranging from cancer to epilepsy and glaucoma. More than 20,000 Oregon residents are registered to use the drug, based on statistics from the state’s Web site.

“This is a sizzle product,” Bruce Perlowin, Medical Marijuana’s chief executive officer, said in a telephone interview from El Paso, Texas. “We eventually want to be the McDonald’s of marijuana.”

 Via Bloomberg

Writer: Ashwin Desai

Author of The Race to Transform: Sport in Post-Apartheid South Africa

"Post-apartheid South Africa put great stock in the potential of sport to break down racial barriers and build a united nation. The 1995 Rugby World Cup victory, and Nelson Mandela’s now-famous appearance in a Springbok jersey, seemed perfect catalysts for the dream of a “rainbow nation”.

In The Race to Transform, editor Ashwin Desai and eight other authors examine elements of change in a number of sports arenas including swimming, athletics, rugby, soccer and cricket.

With kick-off to the FIFA 2010 Football World Cup mere weeks away, this timely book takes stock of sport in South Africa, and provides a pioneering exploration of how sport reflects matters such as enduring inequality, racial transformation and the making (or otherwise) of a common South African destiny. Divided into chapters delving into a diverse set of sporting codes, the book enlivens and transcends the technical debates and contestations around transformation that have become such a prominent part of sports discourse. The book places an emphasis on how South Africa’s transition has impacted on township sport. Moreover, it provides a view on the relationship between elite and grassroots sport in the context of growing economic disparities.

Writer: Andrew Jennings

Author of Foul! The Secret World of FIFA: Bribes, Vote rigging and Ticket Scandals

"FOUL! is the result of seven year's research into the dark depths of the men controlling the world's favourite game. It charts the degeneration of FIFA under the leadership of Joao Havelange and Sepp Blatter.

It reveals the vote-rigging that put Blatter in power and the cronyism and ticket rackets that keep him there. And in the background ... the relentless flow of kickbacks to selected officials in return for billion-dollar contracts.

In a sensational interview for the new and updated paperback edition an executive involved in paying the bribes reveals how the money was laundered, at regular intervals, through off-shore bank accounts.

Another chapter digs deeper into FIFA vice-president Jack Warner’s vast World Cup ticket racket. And there’s new disclosures about the disastrous decision by FIFA to lie to MasterCard and VISA, forge a signature on a backdated contract and crudely edit a tape of a FIFA committee meeting, hoping to fool a New York judge."

Paperback: 448 pages
Publisher: Harper Collins Publ. UK (April 30, 2007)
ISBN-10: 0007208693
ISBN-13: 978-0007208692