Official press release: LOS ANGELES, CA - April 30, 2009 - Hulu and The Walt Disney Company today announced that Disney, through its subsidiary ABC Enterprises Inc., has agreed to join NBC Universal, News Corporation and Providence Equity Partners as a joint venture partner and equity owner of Hulu, a leading online aggregator of video content. Upon closing, the agreement will enhance Hulu's programming line-up through the expanded online distribution of Disney's most popular current and library primetime series and library feature films.
NBC's Jeff Zucker must be griming from ear to ear these days; grabbing his crotch to show off who's the man every chance he gets. Last I visited the media wars, I remembered writing:
Gosh, I remember in 2006-7 when NBC was the petulant child suing Youtube for copyright infringement and threatening Apple that it would remove its content if Itunes did not change its pricing system. In both cases, Youtube and Apple called Zucker's bluff; actually let's not mince words, what happened was Eric Shmidt and Steve Jobs, on behalf of new media, gave Zucker and old media the finger. Zucker knew then what the problem was: new media now had bigger balls than he did and so whatever he said sounded like a .22 caliber threat in a .357 magnum world. Zucker did the smart thing. He went out and built himself some firepower by using the internet to re-think television and advertising and the result was Hulu.
Content despots--i.e. those who have survived the game changing earthquake wrought by new distribution platforms--are now, finally, peeling off the claws of the likes of YouTube and Itunes off their throats. By re-creating the realm of digital distribution to meet their needs, which is advertising, they seem to be on course to once again fulfill that old adage -- "it's all about the content, stupid." The only problem the networks now face is no longer YouTube but howthe computer-to-TV box and model, with or without taking content from Hulu, will impact their cable biz.
Hopefully soon the newspapers will figure out a micro-finance angle to this emerging shared-network platform or playground model and then they too will be in a position to re-define the internet's relationship to journalism, and who knows, maybe even re-define the relationship of the media corporation to the writer. Okay, that last one was a joke.
Just came round to seeing episode 18, season 5, of Gilmore Girls (To Die and Let Diorama -- original air date: 19 April 2005). And there it was, a barefooted Paris Geller (Liza Weil) asking passers by for change to make a phone call.
When everyone takes her for a bum, ignoring her, she flips and the scene cine-magically becomes Paris doing a dead on imitation of Gena Rowlands as Mabel Longhetti berating those other passers by from the famous "what time is it?" scene in John Cassavetes' Woman Under the Influence (1974).
The episode was written by Amy Sherman Palladino and Daniel Palladino, and Liza Weil and director Jackson "Jackson"Douglas get plenty of kudos for nailing the Cassavetes moment, from their decision to make Paris barefooted all the way down to the tree lined street. Someone should tell Ray Carney.
Yekermo Sew by Malatu Astaqé. Album: Ethiopiques, Vol. 4 : Ethio Jazz & Musique Instrumentale (1969-1974). Label: Buda, November 15, 2004.
Vibraphonist, pianist, organist, first African to attend Berklee, Mulatu Astatke is indubitably the father of Ethio-Jazz, a unique mix of jazz, Latin and Ethiopian music.
He was a pivotal figure in a great era of Ethiopian pop and jazz, from 1968 to 1974. He remains an ubiquitous presence in the Ethiopian music scene, as club owner, music school founder, radio DJ, composer, arranger, instrumentalist, and inventor.
The clip shows him performing with the The Heliocentrics Live from Cargo London 17th April 2008. Personnel: Mulatu Astatke Vibes and Percussion Malcolm Catto Drums Jake Ferguson Bass Jack Yglesias -- Adrian Owusu Guitar Finn Peters Tenor Sax Byron Wallen Trumpet Joel Yennior Trombone James Arben Baritone sax Ollie Parfitt Keyboards.
Here is a trailer of sorts for his live performance at California State University in Los Angeles on February 1, 2009.
"...this fight gives meaning to my life" -- Marc Ona Essangui, 45, winner of the 2009 Goldman Environmental Prize. Ona is president and founder of the environmental NGO Brainforest and president of the network of NGOs called Environment Gabon. Wheelchair-bound due to childhood polio, Ona also works for handicapped rights and Internet availability for Africans.
Gabon is part of the Congo Basin Rainforest, the second largest rainforest in the world... since 2002, the integrity of the national parks system has been repeatedly threatened by resource extraction and infrastructure development. Most critical is the proposed Belinga mine development project, a $3.5 billion project that includes a mine, a dam, railroads and a deep-water port facility...
a project of this scale in a national park has implications for Gabon’s wider conservation efforts, possibly leading to the declassification of the national parks system as well as leaving vulnerable ecosystems exposed to logg ing and other destructive industries...
The project highlights the growing environmental concerns about Chinese investments in the region. Many African governments are drawn to the no-strings-attached approach of the Chinese, who offer aid or loans not linked to demands for good governance, transparency or improvements in human rights, which are often required by Western governments.
In 2007, Ona located a leaked copy of the Belinga mine project agreement between the government and the Chinese company. Until then, the terms of the contract had been hidden from the Gabonese people. The contract stated that Gabon would receive only 10 percent of the mining profits while the Chinese corporation, CMEC, would receive a 25-year tax break...
...with his kids (Photo: John Antonelli)
Ona and his colleagues repeatedly called for a full environmental impact assessment of the proposed dam and advocated for an alternative site outside of the national park at Tsengué-Lélédi Falls, which they argued would be cheaper to build and of greater benefit to local communities. They also argued that the 7,700 square-kilometer Belinga concession would be excessive and would lead to damaging environmental impacts. Brainforest, along with Environment Gabon, worked to inform local communities about their rights.
Due to Ona’s efforts, the government is re-evaluating the size of the Belinga concession. The area to be affected by the dam project has been substantially reduced from 5,700 to 600 square-kilometers. The road through Ivindo Park was rerouted through less of the protected area, and President Bongo agreed to place two representatives of local NGOs from Environment Gabon on a social and environmental monitoring committee for the project.
Under intense public scrutiny led by Ona and aided by the World Bank, Gabon renegotiated the mining contract on more favourable terms in May 2008. However, the project is currently on hold, and it is unclear whether or not the Gabonese government will stand by calls for environmental responsibility and transparency.
World Malaria Day was last week and out of all the fund raising drives out there to help stem the tide of malaria related deaths in Africa, the March of Washingtons was the niftiest.
From the age of 17 to almost the end of his life, America's founding father, George Washington, was said to have had recurrent attacks of malaria. Malaria was then common in Virginia and even though an effective treatment for malaria [probably Peruvian bark] was discovered in the previous century but for some reason Washington did not receive the treatment until 1784, when he was in his 50s.
So the analogy goes: if George Washington had malaria and Washington is on the one dollar bill, Hedge Funds vs. Malaria and Pneumonia and Africa Fighting Malaria propose that for every Washington ($1) raised or donated, they will:1. Provide an African in need of a malaria treatment with a safe and effective one. 2. Conduct quality control testing of antimalarial drugs on the market in Africa.
IRIN also reportsthat pregnant women in Liberia are more at risk to contract malaria because of their lowered immunity.
Now the enthusiasm to fight malaria in the West is probably due to the perception that the answer to malaria is easy -- mosquito nets, right? But pregnant Kumba Lamin, 24, told IRIN that the Ministry of Health had given her a free insecticide-treated net, but she did not use it because it was too hot. She sold it at the local market.
Kano State became famous for its magnificent groundnut pyramids during Nigeria's period of agricultural boom in the early 1970s. The pyramids came about because licensed agents would go into the rural areas, buy up groundnut harvests and bring everything to Kano for eventual evacuation, by train, to the export facilities in Lagos.
Since there were more groundnuts than trains to carry them, a warehousing problem soon surfaced, hence the stacking up of groundnut sacks into skyscraping pyramids. So why did these iconic pyramids disappear or, better yet, what do their disappearance signify?
You cannot see groundnut pyramids again as the demand for groundnut, which used to be minimal about 50 years ago, has increased,’’ he stressed...In those days, people did not have the capacity to process groundnut and had to sell to produce boards that exported them... Today, however, people have been empowered. You will even see women processing groundnut at their backyards to extract oil for other uses,” Shekarau said.
Some blame it on the discovery of oil in the 60s, which, according to this Daily Trust article, brought on an era of negligence in the Nigerian government and a host bad policies:
Since the discovery of oil, however, these pyramids gradually disappeared after deliberate government policies [e.g. taking the African Groundnut Council headquarters from Kano where groundnuts are produced and dumping it in Lagos where they are not] relegated the agricultural sector to the background. With time, these policies killed the production of groundnut and, before long, these famous pyramids disappeared and groundnut farming was reduced to the backyard. Only a few farmers continued with production of the once leading cash crop from Northern Nigeria.
Or it could also be blamed on the death of the country's railway system, suggests another article:
Take Kano State as an instance, where railway transport was key to its transformation as an economic hub in West Africa during the period of the agricultural boom. From over 50 coaches when it was commissioned in 1914, today the Kano Railway Station boasts of only two coaches that travel the Kano-Nguru rail, and the Kano-Port Harcourt rail line...
Ahmadinejad and Calvin have something in common. They both wouldn't mind being dictators for life, and while Calvin is the leader of the Western chapter of G.R.O.S.S (Get Rid Of Slimy girlS), Ahmadinejad leads the Middle East chapter of G.R.O.S.S (Get Rid Of Slimy ISrael). By the way, like Calvin, the middle east and Latin America chapters of G.R.O.S.S hold their meetings in a tree house. The New York Times in its editorial on Monday called Mr. Ahmadinejad's speech "ugly" and commends France and other European nations for walking out in protest. But because The New York Times also doesn't want to appear to be Israel's "bitch," they hedged their opinion by adding, there are also "legitimate questions to be raised about Israel’s handling of the Gaza war, which had a disturbingly high number of civilian casualties."
By the way, FYI: at what specific number does the NY Times think civilian causalities become "disturbingly high"?
Anyway, Anthony Lerman of The Guardian thinks the Europeans should not have walked out. "Iran's president may have derailed the UN meeting," writes Lehman, "but rather than walk out, the delegates should have stayed to argue their case." He then goes on to argue:
But the boycotts by the US, Canada, Israel, Italy and others only hand a kind of victory on a plate to those who want to hijack the conference for their own, narrow political purposes. Since when has the UN been a children's tea party? It can't help for powerful countries to give the impression that they cannot make the arguments that need to be made against Ahmadinejad and his ilk. And these arguments need to be addressed to a wider world audience. And in whose interests is it for Israel to be playing the victim? Israel too is perfectly capable of making its arguments. What on earth will withdrawing its ambassador from Switzerland achieve? When the dust settles, it will be easy for other states to ask: "Why should we entertain the likes of a far right racist like your foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman?"
Juliette De Rivero, an advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, concurs and argues that by leaving the room "these governments are ceding the floor to more radical voices."
I think I'm inclined to side with Juliette and Lehman on this one.
In the presence of cameras and reporters the reason you walk out when a speech turns ugly and insulting is because you feel your presence there lends the forum some credibility, which is now being taken advantage of and used against you. It's like gracing someone with your presence and then that someone climbs the dais provided by your presence in order to get a good angle from which to spit at you.
What makes walking out on Ahmadinejad or shunning Chavez and Ortega the wrong reaction to their theatrics is that rhetorically you saying, "oh, my own hands are clean and I haven't done anything that deserves to be repudiated or spit at, and even if I have, I won't be repudiated or spit at by the likes of them." Their walking out on Ahmadinejad's diatribe is rhetorically equivalent to someone walking out of a room in protest to the fact that some people in the room had farted out loud while he or she had managed to fart undetected.
All nations, the United States included, in terms of dirty foreign policies and unfair dealings with others, have farted noticeably, many times stealthily, on numerous occasions. Why they haven't been called out on it is because they are also the nations with all the capital and financial leverage that matters in the world and whom, sooner or later, smaller GDPs have to deal with. For these nations to now walk out when someone accuses them of something, whether true or untrue, simply smacks of centuries of being spoiled by the financial leverage they wield and the unrealistic void of criticism it engenders and to which they have become accustomed to.
No doubt all these nations are still powerful and still wield tremendous amounts of sway, but all those--Chavez, Ahmadinejad, et al-- who oppose them on various issues are now, within a globalized world or one in which China continues to ascend, powerful players Europe or America cannot ignore, refuse to do business with, or even refuse to argue with--as though arguing with Ahmadinejad was beneath them or as if Ahmadinejad's "shit" stinks and theirs doesn't. Obama's Strasbourg Town Hall speech during his visit to France shows he understands the old days where an America-in-denial engages an uncritical world because she wields a big stick is so over. He said:
I know that there have been honest disagreements over policy, but we also know that there's something more that has crept into our relationship. In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.
But in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual but can also be insidious. Instead of recognizing the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans choose to blame America for much of what's bad.
On both sides of the Atlantic, these attitudes have become all too common. They are not wise. They do not represent the truth. They threaten to widen the divide across the Atlantic and leave us both more isolated. They fail to acknowledge the fundamental truth that America cannot confront the challenges of this century alone, but that Europe cannot confront them without America.
So I've come to Europe this week to renew our partnership, one in which America listens and learns from our friends and allies, but where our friends and allies bear their share of the burden. Together, we must forge common solutions to our common problems.
So let me say this as clearly as I can: America is changing, but it cannot be America alone that changes. We are confronting the greatest economic crisis since World War II. The only way to confront this unprecedented crisis is through unprecedented coordination.
What he is saying is that both of us shoud fess up to our "shit" and the fact that it stinks. You can either call this 'fessing up an "apology tour," as the GOP is prone to do, or you can call it a 21st century president aware that the West no longer enjoys the old terms of doing business with everybody else, and he has realized that the sooner America wakes up, 'fesses up, and quickly finds a way to use the emerging terms of a flattening world to her advantage, the better prepared she will be to take on the challenges that lie ahead.
Even the NY Times admits in the same editorial criticizing Ahmadinejad that Israel has its "shit" too, and it stinks, and if that is so, why are countries walking out on a critic of Israel instead of taking the stage, grabbing the mic and admitting Israel nor they are angels, and then going to debate Ahmadinejad and make sure they succeed in making their case in front of the whole world why Ahmadinejad is wrong.
Click to Enlarge
I, for one, wish one of these walk out countries takes some time off to sharpen their debating skills and then come back to take on Ahmadinejad, Tories versus Labor style:
Jacob Zuma, South Africa's own O.J Simpson and R. Kelly combined, performed just as the polls predicted in yesterday's much hyped South African general election. In a country of 48.7 million a record 23 million South Africans were registered to vote yesterday. The high turnout, writes Scott Baldauf of the Christian Science Monitor, was driven by "public enthusiasm for (or revulsion toward) ... Zuma."
So the palpable desire for dramatic change, a sentiment expressed by all social and economic levels from Jo-burg to Diesploot to Western Cape, all boiled down to whether you wanted to vote for Zuma so that you and Zuma could stick it to the man--not to mention the still fresh memory of apartheid--or whether you wanted Zuma out because you could see through all his populist charm or nonsense and, for you, it doesn't hide the fact that the his party, the ANC, have done a pretty banged up job on South Africa.
The memories of apatheid and what the ANC went through are still too fresh, and rightly so; this generation will have to be in their coffins for ANC's monopoly on South African politics to weaken enough to let anyone else through. Right now, ANC is family and family in good and bad times always stick together.
But the prayers of some that the Democratic Alliance party, led by Cape Town’s mayor, Helen Zille, will have enough of a good showing to form a coalition government to rule the Western Cape province, may have been answered by the gods of mount politics -- in spades. According to NY Times:
There does seem to be one cliffhanger in the making, however. Though the A.N.C. is winning in eight of the nation’s nine provinces, the Democratic Alliance, led by Cape Town’s mayor, Helen Zille, is ahead in the Western Cape with 52 percent. If it can maintain that majority, it could rule the province without any coalition partners.
“This would represent a shift in Western Cape politics,” said Jordin Hill-Lewis, a political aide to Ms. Zille. “It has always been characterized by instability and changing political coalitions.” The A.N.C. has governed the Western Cape since 2001.
But Ms. Zille, a former journalist and anti-apartheid activist, has been an extremely popular mayor. The racial mix of the province is decidedly different from the rest of the country, with more than 70 percent of the population either white or of mixed race.
Nationally, the Democratic Alliance was in second place, drawing 17 percent in Thursday’s early returns. In the 2004 election, it came in second with 12 percent.
Folly by The Kora Jazz Trio -- Djeli Moussa Diawara (kora/vocals, Guinea), Abdoulaye Diabaté (Piano, Senegal) and Moussa Sissokho (percussions, Senegal). Album: Kora Jazz Trio Part Two. Label: Celluloid, 2006.
Listen to Diabate's piano and Sissoko's percussions on "La musse" from their 2008 release, Part 3, and weep!
On their 2006 Part One, they cover Charlie Parker’s "Now Is the Time," on Part Two they give their version of Thelonious Monk 's “Rythm’ning,” and on Part Three they speed up Compay Segundo and Buena Vista Social Club's famous "Chan Chan."
I finally came round to seeing Scratch (2001) the other day -- mind blowing. There has been a slew of great music documentaries of late and we can go ahead, especially in light of its topic, and scribble Nirit Pelad's new documentary "Say My Name" on the list.
Produced by the creative initiative Mamamess (Nirit Pelad and David Hemmingway), "Say My Name" is a worldwide documentary project that has already visited the streets of cities in America, the UK, as well as Luanda and Ivory Coast, using film and photography to portray young and ambitious women who are using hip hop to find their voices even as they try to survive, raise families and pursue their dreams in the metropolises of our modern world.
The films will introduce women in the context of their daily lives as they deal with issues ranging the aftermath of war, to extreme poverty and HIV; from battles in America to succeed in a music industry dominated by men and in a music genre noted for misogyny; to battles in Africa to succeed in cultures dominated by male traditions. Through sharing their stories, these documentaries hope to grow into a stage for feminine lyrical expression around the world.
Personally, I like how the documentaries expand the definition of hip hop and lyricism in a way that sheds light on the postcolonial problem of utterance and enunciation.
In reference to the America staple, I have my own thoughts about misogyny and hip hop. However, a few moons back Ta-Nehisi blogged and sliced his thoughts on the issue of misogyny and hip hop and I think what these documentaries are trying to do is just butter for what he had to say:
... But there's also a bigger issue that's been plaguing me about hip-hop. The music has always caught its share of criticism for misogyny/sexism. But I actually think that doesn't quite get at the problem. When you listen to hip-hop, even much of the golden-age stuff, you get the feeling that for all the pimp talk, for all the "I'm a player" posing, you get the feeling that you're listening to a group of dudes who don't know much about women, and--worse--don't know much about themselves...
Hip-hop, it seems, is music for dudes--even when it's not. There's a lot of hip-hop that communicates being into girls, because it impresses your friends, but not as much that communicates being into girls because, uhm, you're heterosexual. I think that's because the expression of want, the communication of deeply felt need, implies vulnerability. It implies the possibility of failure, of disappointment. Hip-Hop is at its best when it gives in to that vulnerability, but that's never been the norm.
It's true hip-hop has a problem respecting women, but this is a symptom of deeper truth--the music doesn't respect men.
It doesn't respect that essentially male moment, when standing at the bus stop, when sitting in English class, when in that sales meeting, a dime-piece floats past, and cognition stops. It doesn't respect the exhilarating terror of being attracted to a woman. To cop to that violates the pimp ethos. One can't be out of control, and be the player president.
... that's what hip-hop's women issues ultimately come down. Instead of making art from that honest place of admitting your vulnerability rappers, like a lot of dude's, run from it. It's a shame. We could use more Outkast.
In the "City of God," St. Augustine tells the story of a pirate captured by Alexander the Great. The Emperor angrily demanded of him, "How dare you molest the seas?" To which the pirate replied, "How dare you molest the whole world? Because I do it with a small boat, I am called a pirate and a thief. You, with a great navy, molest the world and are called an emperor."
Tin Man by The Lionel Loueke Trio/ Gilfema: Lionel "Gilles" Loueke - guitar, Massimo Biolcati - bass, Ferenc Nemeth - drums. Album: Gilfema. Label: Obliqsound, 2003.
Loueke’s story begins in Benin, a small country in West Africa, where he was born to parents that he describes as “intellectual,” adding that “music was part of everyday life, but not in the family.” Fortunately an older brother played guitar and was part of a band that played Afro-Pop music in the style of Fela Kuti and King Sunny Ade. “I remember when I was 11 or 12 I was going to see my brother perform. I would be listening from 10pm to 3am in the morning, just looking at him playing, listening to the music.”
Finally when Loueke was 17 years old, his brother let him pick up his guitar, and he quickly realized that he had a great facility for the instrument. Besides the Afro-Pop music that he heard his brother performing, Loueke also began to be enamored with the traditional African music of Benin, as well as Nigeria, Congo, Zaire, Mali and Senegal.
However, it was an encounter with Jazz music that would set Loueke on a different course. A friend of his brother’s came to visit from Paris, bringing with him a CD of guitarist George Benson. “I listened to that and it was unreal for me. I had to transcribe every single line trying to play like him. Then I tried to check out what happened before him, Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass.” More...
Older brothers, God bless them. The beautiful sounds Loueke is able to summon from a guitar defies reason, so he goes about explaining how here.
The clicking sounds he makes immediately reminds me of why, when I was much younger and was discovering George Benson, I hated the fact that someone who could do what he did with a guitar had to spoil it by opening his mouth. It was as though I feared he would go back, re-record El Mar or California Dreaming -- and sing on them!!! But now I'm old enough to entertain the question -- what if he did? As Miles would have blown, "So What?"
In order to align self expression, skill, and the possibilities within form, an artist can't help playing with the rubik cube of music in order to align and perfect all three aspects above -- the recording is not the goal; it's the by product of the search. If the artist gets to this alignment by adding his or her voice to the mix, going electric, skating or whatever, then so be it. Audiences can't help but be slaves of certain formal interpretations of music but the artist can't help but fiddle with the cube looking for a better alignment. And in commerce the twain shall meet and compromise.
Aping the Boston Tea Party of 1773, a lot of Americans (FOX News viewers apparently) took to town squares and wherever on April 15th to protest a litany of grievances they have with the Obama administration. Neglecting the fact that the administration kept its campaign promise and issued a tax cut for 90% of Americans, these teabaggers still hold tightly to the logic that the administration's decision to spend its way out of this financial crisis equates to an increase in government spending tantamount to an expansion of government and, hence, its inevitable intrusion into their lives.
Factor in that the administration is going to raise taxes on the top 2% of the population in terms of income, is enough reason, for the teabaggers, to conclude that all their half truths about government expansion and spending = one whole truth (by the way, 2 half truths does not = a whole truth) Or = some irrefutable evidence of the evil they can sense is coming. And what is this evil Obama brings, which only they can see?
That increased spending = government expansion and, thus, its inevitable knock on their doors when Obama comes to take away their guns and other "privileges." Thus, twisting the already twisted logic even further, lets the teabaggers call this administration's reign so far tyrannous and Obama a tyrant in the making.
Jeez, an African American has been in the White House for less than 4 months cleaning up the mess left behind by an administration all these teabaggers voted for twice and, already, he is the Third Reich.
Let no one say that a little logic or a little understanding of libertarianism can be a dangerous thing.
Sullivan points out the hypocrisy or teabaggery going on here:
But it seems odd to describe this as anything but a first stab at creating opposition to the Obama administration's spending plans, manned by people who made no serious objections to George W. Bush's. When you see them holding up effigies of Bush, who was, unlike Obama, supposed to be the fiscal conservative, let me know.
The claim that they're hypocritical and partisan is a bit stronger - where were they when Bush was running up the deficit, etc.
The Daily Show's "Lord" John Oliver, slighted by the fact that, thanks to the teabaggers, Obama's status as a tyrant is rising in the American mind and might upstage the status of the original colonizing, tyrannizing gangster of the world, Great Britian, takes it as his duty to school these teabaggers about what tyranny really is:
Taking a cue from John and the Daily Show, as an African I also refuse to stand here while Obama, or even the British for that matter, try to upstage the status of Africa as the reigning producer of tyrants or the source of some of the most devious contributions to tyranny in the last couple of decades. Obama a tyrant my ass -- dude, African despots and warlords reinvented tyranny.
Has Obama, or the Queen for that matter, ever fed the GOP or the House of Lords to crocodiles? Has Obama or the British prime minister orchestrated the kind of inflation that saw the minting of the world's first 100 trillion bank note -- that's 000, 000, 000, 000 after the 100, baby. British and Belgian colonizers/tyrants did mandate the cutting off of hands to stem the occasional opposition or militant minded black troublemakers, I'll give them that. But even Leopold and Cecil Rhodes couldn't marshal a standing army of child soldiers, keep them fed and well trained on rape, pillage, and the cutting off of limbs, not to mention keeping them properly motivated by getting them addicted to a ready supply of cocaine. African tyrants, would-be tyrants, dictators and warlords have killed more non-combatants than Genghis Khan, the Nazis and the Romans combined, but who's counting.
Obama a tyrant? Please, don't make us Africans laugh.
Below, France 24's François-Xavier Freland documents a recycling initiative being used in Mopti to make more impervious bricks out of modernity's most ubiquitous waste product and Mopti's number one ecological nightmare -- disposed plastic bags.
This is a small recycling centre, based in Mopti, which manufactures the plastic pavestones. The method is simple, cheap and efficient, even though masks have to be worn for protection against the toxic fumes.
Mixed with sand, the paste makes a kind of tar that’s poured while still hot into a special mould. After leaving it for a few minutes to cool down, the pavestone is ready. And there are lots of different styles to suit different tastes: the centre has a little shop attached where you can take your pick.
Every day about ten women and children come from the local tip carrying a fresh load of dumped plastic in return for 50 CFA francs a kilo, or seven euro centimes. more...
The briefcases close. 100 Bullets comes to an end.
The last issue (#100) of 100 Bullets hits stands this week, bringing to an end what Brian Azzarello in his interview with MySpace refers to as his 2200 paged novel. To mark this epic milestone, he has been making the rounds -- NY Daily News, Wired,The Gazette...
Personally, I can't believe its been a decade since Agent Graves met Dizzy Cordova on board that L train (pic above) on her way home from prison. And for those of us who have been following Brian Azzarello's writing and Eduardo Risso's art--the greatest collaboration in comics by the way-- their streak has been a little more than a decade if one counts their 1998 test run on Johnny Double.
Asked what he did the moment after he wrote 100 Bullets' final scene/ final word, Azzarello said:
I lit a Cuban cigar, poured myself a Tequila, and toasted my partner, Eduardo Risso. Then I turned off my computer and walked to a bar. It was snowing in Chicago that night. It felt right. As for the first scene… that was set in a women’s prison shower. Funny, that felt right too.
Guardian.co.uk: Abdul Hassan, 39, is nicknamed "the one who never sleeps." His pirate group, called the Central Regional Coast Guard, was formed three years ago. It has 350 men in its ranks and about 100 speedboats. In 2008, the group attacked 29 ships, earning $10m (£6m).Abdul Hassan, who pocketed $350,000, arrives here with a small crew on a beach nearHobyo, on the border between Galmudug and Puntland states, before going on to attack another ship.
When it comes to making sense of Africa's conflicts, Aidan Hartley at the end of his book, Zanzibar Chest, provides Western empiricism with a very handy first principle -- "like everything in Africa," he writes, "the truth is somewhere in between".
This first principle applies to Nigeria's oil rich Niger Delta region, where so called militants constantly kidnap foreign oil workers , haul them off into the mangrove swamps/forests where they are held until cash soaked oil companies cough up some USD. It also applies to Somali pirates hijacking shipping vessels in the Gulf of Aden until elusive shipping families--or their insurance companies (yes, AIG)--are forced to cough up a ransom drop at sea.
In both cases the truth found in the "in between" seems to be the same: you have a Third World backdrop where for years the environmental recklessness on the part of foreign corporations have lain waste to the last resource a low-skill set people depend on. Soon the irrelevancy of their traditional skills in an industrialized world, their harboring resentment and a lack of jobs and opportunities (same goes in Hobyo and Puntland) eventually become the fertile soil from which a militancy sprouts and blossoms. And like caterpillars drawn to crops in bloom so also in the wake of a militancy comes its inevitable criminalization. In 2008, for example, the Niger Delta militants attempted to hijack a boat, carrying twelve oil workers from Ukraine and Russia, 85 nautical miles from the coast after the boat had left its naval escort. The BBC reported:
This is one of the attacks carried out furthest from Nigeria's coast, correspondents say. Until recently, they have usually operated on land or in the creeks of the Niger Delta. Nigeria's oil militants say they are campaigning for more of the country's oil wealth to be used to benefit residents of the Niger Delta. But correspondents say there are also many criminal gangs motivated by the ransom money often paid by oil companies to secure the release of their workers.
On the Somali side, William Langewiesche, in documenting the ordeal on the French luxury cruise ship Le Ponant, which was captured by Somali pirates last spring in the Gulf of Aden, wrote in last month's issue of Vanity Fair also about a coastal peoples' militancy and its evolution into organized crime. He writes that during the stand off on board the Ponant, the pirates provided small insights into their pirate careers:
They called themselves the Coast Guard, and apparently did have origins as vigilante fishermen who in the early 1990s sailed out to regulate and rob foreign boats that were smuggling all manner of contraband to and from Somalia and overfishing the coastal waters.
K'naan, a Somali musician, talks here about the dumping of nuclear waste off Somalia's shores and how years of complaints was ignored by the UN, and how everything came together to breed the militancy that was the Somali "coast guard":
..what they would do initially is whatever ships they thought was crossing illegally into Somali waters they will hijack them and hold them for ransom. Of course later on the greed and lure of money got too much and the men became legitimate pirates and there are so many of them in the ocean and they are unstoppable now.
The bullet-riddled Somali capital has endured 16 years of anarchy
and violence -- Vanity Fair/ Wang Ying/Xinhua Press/Corbis
I think one needs to keep the backdrop of the origins of coastal militancy in mind when weighing the additional evidence and broader narrative of Somalia's collapse as a country, which Jefferey Gettleman let's rip this week in a special report for FP. Gettleman, however, presents Somalia's true colors to highlight a brief period in 2006 when the Islamists held power and actually turned things around:
By June 2006, the Islamists had run the last warlords out of Mogadishu. Then something unbelievable happened: The Islamists seemed to tame the place. I saw it with my own eyes. I flew into Mogadishu in September 2006 and saw work crews picking up trash and kids swimming at the beach. For the first time in years, no gunshots rang out at night. Under the banner of Islam, the Islamists had united rival clans and disarmed much of the populace, with clan support of course. They even cracked down on piracy by using their clan connections to dissuade coastal towns from supporting the pirates. When that didn’t work, the Islamists stormed hijacked ships. According to the International Maritime Bureau in London, there were 10 pirate attacks off Somalia’s coast in 2006, which is tied for the lowest number of attacks this decade.
This brief tranquility was only to be undermined by America's fear of Al-Qaeda and terrorism. A fear that motivated Bush and the CIA to try to rout the Islamists (who were then divided along moderate and fundamentalist lines) by sponsoring an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. The invasion backfired and ended up swelling the ranks of the Somalia militants and warlords, whose skiff boat navy (one man's pirates is another man's navy anyway) we now see operating in the gulf of Aden with reckless abandon.
Tina Brown, over at The Daily Beast, draws allusions of the pirates as nimbler, sling shot wielding Davids versus the steel armor clad, McDonnell Douglas equipped Goliath or Americans. She tries to make the domestic case that companies too big to let fail (America, I guess) are actually companies too big to succeed in today's digital guerrilla environment. As Langewiedche observed of the pirates that took thePonant, their organizations "are large, fluid, clan-based alliances whose contours are inherently difficult to discern, and who derive their resilience in part from the very looseness of their structures." The argument of "looseness" as a source "resilience" can also be made for Joseph Kony and the LRA.
Another thing that can be said for coastal militancy turned criminal piracy is that, in both the Nigerian and Somalian scenarios, the pirates seem to have discovered the cold logic of that rational entity called -- the corporation. The same bereft of ethics, cold logic that allowed corporations to profit off them for decades is the same logic they've applied to their practice of commercial disruption, which they are quickly turning to an art. They know that as long as the lives of the hostages they take, if lost, mean additional costs in terms of benefits companies have to pay or payouts insurance companies have to make or damaging publicity requiring millions in PR fees to fix, corporations will logically part with a few millions in order to avoid accruing a lot more millions in costs.
The same applies to governments. Any government will rather let a oil or shipping company part with a few millions than risk the political fallout in staging a hostage rescue in which the lives of hostages will be lost. America got lucky in the case of the Maersk Alabama. If you read Langewiedche's article, one realizes that those pirate ships on the way to the Alabama--and blocked by the American navy--weren't going there to reinforce the other four pirates against the navy per se, rather they were going there to reinforce their numbers so as to triple the odds against any rescue attempt of the hostages being a 100% success -- it was standard operating/ransom negotiating procedure on their part. Once America blocked off the reinforcements from getting to the Alabama, the ball game, from the negotiating point of view, was essentially over.
Unlike the rest of us, the pirates have wrapped their heads around the iron clad rule that corporations are coldly rational and see no ethical reason or honor in incurring costs and risks they could avoid through a business transaction that costs them way, way less. The pirates don't only know that, but they have also learned to keep their minds on this iron clad rule and dismiss the warships that surround, the navy helicopters that hover overhead, and all other sideshows of Western military strength as what they really are -- political bluster. On the Ponant, Langewiesche narrates how, for the pirates, this fundamental separation of corporate logic from France's military bluster is their true source of strength:
To assist the warship already on the scene, two additional French vessels were charging into the area—a 460-foot frigate equipped to fight World War III, and a 600-foot helicopter carrier that was getting old but was armed with naval artillery and anti-ship missiles, and could launch multiple helicopters at a time. In addition were the congregations of commandos and anti-terrorist police—every one of them over-trained, under-used, and eager for action. If you added up the assets already available, or soon to be, the display of French power was impressive indeed. And it was arrayed against what?
A band of barefoot natives, Fuzzy Wuzzies in rags, hip-firing their Kalashnikovs with poor aim, and worshipping some filthy G.P.S. as if it had fallen from the sky. They should have surrendered days before, even to the Canadians. But they hadn’t, and that was the problem. They were not particularly bellicose or arrogant, but they refused to be impressed when they should have been. A warship coming at you is supposed to present an intimidating sight. But it was as if the pirates inhabited a different dimension from that of the governments confronting them. With nothing but a group of French nationals as a shield, they were enjoying meals, going back and forth between ship and shore, and negotiating directly with the Saadés in Marseille, as if the French Navy did not even exist.
The pattern was unusually frustrating to French authorities, as more recent piracy cases have been to American, Russian, and Chinese authorities. It raised disturbing questions about the relevance of governments and the exercise of power. More specifically, a suspicion crept in that these pirates knew exactly what they were doing, and that they understood the forces at play with more sophistication than had been assumed. Fuzzy Wuzzies they were, but until Paris decided it could accept casualties among the Ponant’s crew, they had stymied the French national will.
It was a serious challenge in Nicolas Sarkozy’s view because Sarkozy is the embodiment of the French national system. He stands five feet five inches tall. As an intent law-and-order man, he was opposed in principle to negotiations with the pirates, and eager to show them the fist of France. He was, however, merely a president, and like others he was less powerful than he was made out to be.
Politically it would have been difficult to order an assault on the Ponant before exhausting all alternatives. Furthermore, the ship’s owner, CMA CGM chairman Jacques Saadé, was making it clear through back channels that he intended to pay some sort of ransom. Sarkozy and Saadé were acquaintances and political allies, if not close friends. It is said that Sarkozy invoked principle to persuade Saadé not to pay, but to no avail. Saadé understood the reasoning, but in practice he had to place the safety of his crew and ship first—a decision compounded by the certainty that casualties would impose costs higher than the paltry $3 million demanded. more...
At the end of the day, for both sides, it boils down to cold, hard capitalism: lowering costs; maximizing profits.
On a side note, I'm surprised the NRA hasn't begun to run away with this piracy scourge, citing the ridiculously easy time the gun wielding pirates have in getting on board these ships in the face of the laughable attempts of gun-less sailors trying stop them from coming on board.
UPDATE: And some good news. According to the Economist:
For now, the greatest friend of merchant shipping is likely to be the weather. The south-west monsoon begins towards the end of May until about August, making the seas too rough for pirates. It cannot come too soon.
