Damn Peaceniks!

Glenn Greenwald is one of several “progressive” (USA-ian for “Social-Democratic”) commentators who have been debating Juan Cole on his tempestuous “Open Letter to the Left”.   Greenwald’s “Question of Juan Cole” takes what Cole says seriously, and applies serious criticism to the Professor’s unabashed endorsement of a U.S./NATO air war to oust Gadaffi.   The more I read, the more convinced I am that Cole is not engaging in an intra-Left debate, or even having a Hitchens Moment (a full-on defection from his principles) as some US anti-war activists have claimed.

Cole wants to go to war because he is having a strong emotional reaction to oppression. I empathize, but that’s not analysis.

He’s not interested in the Left, except that he sees the Left as the primary impediment to what he wants done.  So he belittles and abuses leftists who oppose this war with “walk and chew gum” insults, insinuations we’re Stalinist ‘tankies’ defending the suppression of Prague Spring, or nationalistic “isolationists” like the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact era Communist Party cadres.

But in the touchstones of his arguments — formal legality, individual morality as definitional of leaders of states, historical exceptionalism, rejection of motivations for imperial action beyond surface ideologies or party labels –  Professor Cole reveals himself is a centrist Obama-Clinton Democrat.

If a self identified centrist supporter of “benign imperial intervention” said all this we’d ignore it.  It might even harden opposition from the Left.  So Cole frames this as the plea of a Leftist, trying to bring us back to that magical time before we became knee-jerk ideologues, when we still (apparently) believed in imperial powers enforcing decisions of the handpicked capitalist Security Council through multi-billion dollar airborne defense systems.

Cole points to the Spanish Civil War as our inspiration.  Where powerful foreign militaries used state-of-the-art air power and blockades to shift the tide of civil war to those which might best benefit future investments.  (Oh wait, that was the Luftwaffe.)  He appeals — as a friend and comrade, mind  — to our shared better nature.

Greenwald doesn’t peg him so, but he asks the right question: how does the Professor — who’s opinions are only really of interest in that they are informed by his education and analysis — decide when a war is “justifiable”.

…regarding his test for whether war is justifiable…[Cole says] “My reply would be simple. If you are arguing for war, you don’t have to ask all these fancy questions. There are really only two questions you have to answer. The first is, would you yourself be willing to die fighting for this cause you have espoused? The second is, would you be willing to see your 18-year-old son or daughter killed for this cause?”

Related articles

• Question for Juan Cole (salon.com)
• Misinformed Commentary: A Response to Juan Cole From the Left | The Tomathon (tomathon.com)
• Juan Cole’s Open Letter to the Left on Libya (marccooper.com)
• ‘Interventions’ (hughgreen.wordpress.com)
• African Cabbie vs Juan Cole: “The French Cannot Be Trusted In Africa” vs. “Libya 2011 Is Not Like Iraq 2003? (jackandjillpolitics.com)
• A Really Progressive Alternative in Libya (radcontra.wordpress.com)
• Saad’s Revolution: Cole at Truthdig | Informed Comment (juancole.com)
• Answer to Glenn Greenwald | Informed Comment (juancole.com)
• Scarborough Hits Liberals For Libya Hypocrisy (huffingtonpost.com)
• An Open Letter to the Left on Libya | Informed Comment (juancole.com)
• Tom is Moving in on Libya (indigenist.blogspot.com)
• Libyan rebels on the run and US not far behind (thewesternexperience.com)
• Democracy Now: Juan Cole on the Protests in Egypt (crooksandliars.com)
• Dear Left: Re. Libya, Why Do You Think Obama Will Do What You Want Done? [Mike the Mad Biologist] (scienceblogs.com)

The PNDS Campaign headquarters in Niamey, photo from Niger Elections.

The 31st of January saw Niger’s Legislative elections, combined with the first round of the Presidential elections. Results are not yet known, and the top two in the Presidential race will re-run on 14 March. Here’s some tools to follow it.

The best immediate updates on the polls and count can be found at the African Elections observer site’s @NigerElections Twitter feed as well as their news site at africanelections.org/niger. Their photo gallery is also wonderful (and the source for the image above).

[UPDATE 2:40 GMT Feb 2 : There are no official results yet announced. Rumored provisional results are being passed around -- an example is here -- but their simple repetition of the urban conventional wisdom makes them either suspect or expected.

Mahamadou Issoufou (PNDS-Tarayya) in the upper 20s, followed by either Seyni Oumarou (MNSD-Nassara) and/or Hama Amadou (MODEN/FA LUMANA) from 20% to 24%.  This would match both the aggregate Municipal/Departmental election results of  January and the relative profile of the parties.  While Issoufou is the favorite, there is no accounting for tactical endorsements for the second round.  Note that an RFI reported telephone survey (seen via Sahelblog) reporting Issoufou with over 40% support seems a possible result of sample bias towards urban educated voters.  A run off is almost certain, and the questions will be how Legislative results set the stage for the new government, and whether the PNDS faces the new MODEN LUMANA or the MNDS, reversed in last years coup.  Each could color the results -- and the mandatory backroom deals -- very differently.

The reports of attacks by PNDS militants in their heartland of Tahoua, as well as unconfirmed charges by Hama of fraud and intimidation against his party in Tillaberi and Niamey, are not evidence of some general breakdown in law or a pattern of vote-rigging. Apart from 17 polling stations in Tassara (which seem to have been foiled by some local communal conflict), and reports of chronic petty delays and procedural fumbling, the poll seems to have proceeded in peace and openness.  While turnout (30%-50%) is low, it is the historical norm, and some rural areas reported record-breaking numbers of women voters.  ECOWAS observers, among 250 official NGO or foreign poll monitors, have seconded this impression.

Rather they may be a prescient image of petty  parliamentary conflict in the 7th Republic, not unlike that between the CDS and the MNSD of the early 1990s which drove the 3rd Republic into gridlock.

Regardless, it will likely be several days before we get any real numbers, and several more before more distant of the more than 2000 polling offices report. ]

You can also follow the #Niger2011 Twitter channel for updates and links to news, including some of my translations. [Update: Amadou Djibril is collecting these links in a Daily Digest here. ]

Alex Thurston’s Sahel Blog has the usual informed coverage and discussion here and here.

And of course, the best Nigerien news coverage is always collected on http://nigerdiaspora.com and http://tamtaminfo.com .

UPDATE, INTERNET CAMPAIGNING: Nigerien politics has begun to capture the social media bug, especially in the sizable diaspora community.  You can follow announcements from the two Facebook pages (here and here) of  Hama Amadou’s Mouvement Démocratique Nigérien Pour une Fédération Africaine MODEN-FA Lumana (as well as their website), the two Facebook pages for Mamadou Issoufou’s PNDS (here and here and their French section here) and their official website (a French section also has a web presence).  The MNSD, perhaps tellingly, has no Facebook presence apart from this “Free Mamadou Tandja” page.  I might also note that the official MNSD website was never updated after Hama and his supporters split form the party in 2009.

Nigerien parties and their supporters have made use of internet video in this campaign as never before.  Highly produced videos of MODEN FA LUMANA events, videos of Mahamadou Issoufou’s PNDS campaign — including scenes from his recent appearances in all corners the country (not a normal feature of campaigns) –  and MNDS rallies have appeared on You Tube and DailyMotion.  There’s even several MNSD Nassara – Seini Omarou music videos.  Wherever you come down politically, they’ll have you taping your toes. ]

Here are some of the latest news stories that caught my eye:

*AFP: 50 percent turnout in Niger polls: electoral panel

*Une élection présidentielle un peu trop calme(France24:The Observers): includes an inside look at the polling process and photo gallery.

*Democracy in action in Niger; 7 million vote in general election (Wire via India Express)

*Niger:Le pouvoir civil va reprendre la main( Courrier international)

*Niger junta says poll went on without a hitch (Africa Review)

*Le Sahel’s official statement:
“Le Président du Conseil Suprême pour la Restauration de la Démocratie, Chef de l’Etat, le Général de Corps d’Armée Djibo Salou, a procédé au lancement des opérations de vote : sous le signe de l’espoir…”

*Présidentielle au Niger : taux de participation faible à Niamey (Afrik.com)

*Niger : Mêmes hommes, mêmes intrigues ? (radio analysis from RFI): Probably, would be my answer.

Related articles

• UPDATE 1-Fraud worries overshadow peaceful Niger vote (af.reuters.com)
• allAfrica.com: Niger: Opposition Asks for Postponement of Elections (allafrica.com)
• PREVIEW-Niger races to secure poll for civilian rule | Agricultural Commodities | Reuters (af.reuters.com)
• Candidates seek new election body for Niger poll (reuters.com)
• TIMELINE-Niger holds presidential elections (af.reuters.com)
• Niger grants uranium permits to Russian Gazprombank | Reuters (af.reuters.com)

Marching in Imbaba, Cairo,
originally uploaded by RamyRaoof.

One overlooked media revelations from the Arab Revolutions of 2011 is the amount of material released with reusable copyright.

Ramy Raoof in Cairo is releasing his work with a CC Attribution license, meaning popular media, as well as outlets like Wikipedia, have access to images of these historic events.

Al Jazeera, whose coverage of the Egyptian rising has been praised as “what Baghdad 1991 was for CNN“, has released much of its coverage under a cc license. The collective around the “We are Khaled Said“, one of the prime social media instigators of the Egyptian diaspora has done the same.

This may seem a small thing. But remember that in most nations, corporate forces have been for the last three decades repeatedly extending, through force of law, ownership of writing and images far beyond the lives of their creators. The enforcement of such regimes has been strengthened, pushing past conventional understandings of free usage which existed beside copyright law. This has been a noticeable change even in my lifetime. The Xerox machine was first available to mass users in the 70s, articles and books were commonly copied and passed between readers. Such actions, even for out of print works by long dead creators, have been both criminalized and made taboo.

Most worryingly, these legal controls married to internal self censorship, are especially prevalent in academia. While academic books and journals, as well as newspapers, have been successfully digitized and shared across the internet, their diffusion has increasingly been restricted to institutions willing to pay exorbitant sums. JSTOR, the exclusive home of most humanities journals, charges as a subscriber as much as $2,450 per journal title (and there are hundreds) per year. Remember, these are are reprints of old journal articles, which had covered their costs at the time of production either by paper sales or institutional support.

We confront a world in which documents of our own history, especially the powerful medium of video, are owned by entities who punish their dissemination. Like much of the products of our society, most images made since the 1920s have been converted into commodities. Abstracted from their real value, they are mechanisms for making money, and their withholding is crucial to this status.

This, like the Arab oligarchies, is in dire need of a revolution.

Related articles

• On Al Jazeera, a Revolution Televised Despite Obstacles (nytimes.com)
• Arab media revolution spreading change (cnn.com)
• Al-Jazeera’s Revolution? Ctd (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
• The Egyptian Revolution Will not Be Tweeted: A First-Hand Report from Cairo (alternet.org)
• Shadi Hamid for Democracy Journal: The Cairo Conundrum (democracyjournal.org)
• A woman’s ordeal in Cairo #jan25 – Blog – The Arabist (arabist.net)
• Vague thoughts on the Arab Winter Uprisings ” The Moor Next Door (themoornextdoor.wordpress.com)
• Mubarak’s Secret Police “Thugs” Try to Disrupt Revolution (firedoglake.com)

The US press, even the left, seems to have taken as gospel the announced DoD budget cuts.

This is largely smoke an mirrors. The BBC correctly points out that “The defence budget was more than $700bn last year – representing the largest portion of the US federal government‘s discretionary budget.” But their purported $178b cut is not a cut at all. A $14b a year give away to private corporations to develop a future amphibious vehicle program will be dumped. Most of the rest of the reputed $100b savings will be gained over ten years, although most of that will be ‘moved around’ to other parts of the Pentagon: so we’re at less than a $24b cut to the $721b. But that $721b was going to go up for inflation and growth within individual projects.

And the Pentagon budget DOES NOT include the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, nor pensions nor VA benefits, nor Department of Energy and other government activities done under contract for the pentagon. These numbers for FY2011 top $1,398b. This dwarfs WIC payments, roads and bridges, welfare, policing, agricultural policy. The combination of these is less that %10 of the total military spending for FY2011.

The DoD provided chart gives no figures for the special war spending, or defense run programs carried out by other US agencies.  This leaves aside pensions, veteran support services, healthcare and the VA hospital system (the closest we have to a national health service).  Much of these are already woefully underfunded and will be sorely stretched by hundreds of thousands of vets returning with trauma, injuries, and facing an economy in collapse.

Ever wonder why newspapers or the TV never shows you a pie chart when rambling on about government spending? The WRL does one every year. It paints a picture rarely seen by American citizens: one which might give them pause about supporting a dozen huge multinational corporations who do nothing but survive on military contracts (and whose ranks of lobbyists are filled with former politicians).

FY2011 Federal budget: Defence in pink.

Ever wonder why this isn’t reported? Because it is rather stunning evidence that the United States government has become a mechanism of transferring wealth, under threat of foreign attack and being accused of not being patriotic, from the working poor and middle classes to the very rich.

A 10% or less cut spread out over five to ten years — one which will likely be ‘corrected’ back up in midstream — will do little to change that reality.

• See WRL’s invaluable yearly pie chart flier at the War Resisters League website.

Related articles

• Gates proposing program cuts in military budget (sfgate.com)
• Gates Makes $78 Billion in Military Cuts (drudge.com)
• Not Every Defense Dollar ‘Sacred’: Gates Announces $78B in Cuts … (executivegov.com)
• Pentagon budget to get $78bn cut (bbc.co.uk)
• Pentagon facing cuts of $78B over 5 years – Columbus Dispatch (news.google.com)
• Republican deficit hypocrisy off to a great start on defense spending (salon.com)
• Should Defense be immune from cuts? (hotair.com)

The provisional vote totals leaked to press and governments, are bad news for President Gbagbo.

Even wire reports are saying that the vote totals are confirmed, with Alassane Ouattara (representing both the conservative parties heir to Félix Houphouët-Boigny and the marginalized Muslim north) taking between 53% and 55% of the total vote. It seems this is a further lesson, if one is needed, of the inability of governments to contain bad news in the internet age.

A PDF floating around, supposedly a scan of the electoral commission totals, is making the rounds of Ivorian government offices and foreign capitals.

There’s no way of confirming this yet. There’s no meta info in the file, but it shows reasonable totals by Region and Departement (with a margin of error column to the right cut off, suggesting it is the provisional result). It seems to be a report generated from an Excel spreadsheet, as it has the distinctive Excel “division by zero” error code of “#DIV/0!” in a couple of places. There are no seals.

The results, if even close, are damning: 55.01% to ADO for 44.99% Gbagbo (the 100% suggests either completeness or falseness). In some places in the north, ADO is shown with over 80%, even over 90% of some Departements. If Gbagbo’s strategy is to contest northern results, he will have to win MANY disputed stations to make up for ADO’s competitive results elsewhere.

As with so many elections in West Africa, the ruling President Laurent Gbagbo‘s closest supporters seem determined to win at all costs. The latest rumors go that those around Gbagbo, unwilling either to give up their lucrative positions, or fearing investigation into their past dealings, are pushing for a state of emergency, declarable by the President under Article 48 of the 2000 Constitution.

Art. 48. Lorsque les Institutions de la République, l’indépendance de la Nation, l’intégrité de son territoire ou l’exécution de ses engagements internationaux sont menacées d’une manière grave et immédiate, et que le fonctionnement régulier des pouvoirs publics constitutionnels est interrompu, le Président de la République prend les mesures exceptionnelles exigées par ces circonstances après consultation obligatoire du Président de l’Assemblée nationale et de celui du Conseil constitutionnel. Il en informe la Nation par message. L’Assemblée nationale se réunit de plein droit.

Of course there is no grave and immediate threat to the Nation, Institutions of the Republic, territorial integrity, or international obligations. At least not one that has developed in the last few days or months. State TV (RTI) is reportedly been running interviews (on a 24/7 loop) with Gbagbo supporters in the north who claim grave irregularities in the areas controlled by the New Forces rebel movement of the Prime Minister. That these troops were disarmed or integrated into government forces prior to the election (at least according to the government) is one point which doesn’t ring true. That international observers are not reporting any systemic abuse at northern voting stations is another.

Gbagbo’s supporters disrupted an attempt to read provisional results by the CEI voting commission on 11/30. Today (12/1) is the last day votes may legally be chalenged, so the window of legality is closing. Time is another enemy of Gbagbo’s supporters.

Finally, the internationally community is not their friend. The UN mission there has certified the election as fair, and called on the results to be released immediately. The EU, France, The US, and a variety of foreign observers have as well. Reports are that these nations, with the help of the Burkinabe Embassy, are negotiating a climb down.

What is frightening is that Gbagbo’s cronies are the ones with the least to lose from pushing the nation back into civil war. The President is missing his chance to either retire as a statesman or head the opposition, and his exile or prosecution by the next government becomes more likely the more he resists. But the influential business people allegedly grouped around his wife, parliamentary leader Simone Ehivet Gbagbo have more to lose from allowing him to retire. Prosecutions will likely follow in the coming years, and their resources will surely dry up. Simone has already come under suspicion in the events surrounding the 2004 death of French-Canadian journalist Guy-André Kieffer, who disappeared while investigating cocoa industry corruption. The paramilitary forces of ultra nationalist thugs like Charles Blé Goudé may find a future without Gbagbo’s protection rather dangerous.

Purported Results of the Second Round

• Generally very good Wikipedia background on the 2010 election : English & French

Related articles

• UPDATE 1-Ivorian cocoa exporters shut down ahead of poll result (af.reuters.com)
• NEWSMAKER-Gbagbo plays nationalist card for Ivorian run-off (af.reuters.com)
• FACTBOX-Key political risks to watch in Ivory Coast (af.reuters.com)
• Laurent Gbagbo: “I’m here, I’m staying” | African news, analysis and opinion – The Africa Report.com (theafricareport.com)
• UPDATE 1-Poll scores delayed in Ivory Coast, security tight (af.reuters.com)
• Pressure grows on Ivory Coast to issue poll result (af.reuters.com)

In reading about the worrying and hopefully shortlived chaos attending the results of the Cote d’Ivoire elections, I was pleasantly surprised to see a photo of mine used for Radio France International’s article on Ivorian electoral history. Name’s spelled wrong in the mandatory Creative Common’s attribution, but their heart was in the right place (I’m sure).

Related articles

• RT @CrisisGroup: West African Elections: There’s too Much at Stake.: By a coincidence of delayed timetables, neighbouring West Afri… h … (crisisgroup.org)
• Carter Center to Observe Historic Cote d’Ivoire and Guinea Elections Back-To-Back ” Carter Center Blog – Latest Carter Center Peace, Health Blog Posts (cartercenter.org)

I spent the evening with the new Journal of Modern African Studies (cause I’m just that fascinating) and I highly recommend Denis M. Tull’s “Troubled state-building in the DR Congo: the challenge from the margins”.

Apart from learning things about Kongo kingdom relgio-nationality in the west of the DRC, what was most interesting was his argument that what he calls the “liberal democratic process” (democracy limited to periodic national elections in which the winner takes all) serves outside interests much more than local ones.

This ‘democratic’ process is pushed by donors and foreign entities for their ends: international legitimacy for their Congolese client “partners”, stability, business climate, foreign government support for Congo based projects. When faced with sectional, popular movements, democracy so understood must turn to repression to survive. One need look no farther than the current elections in Haiti and Guinea to see examples of this same process. Foreign entities such as the World Bank push for continuity of authoritarian central governments with the imprimatur of newly elected heads of state. Foreigners can maintain their relationships with “reliable partners” (even when not so reliable), and do not have to enter the uncertainty of continually recasting ties with a myriad of local popular leaders. This has obvious advantages for Africa’s leaders. It does not, though, look much like democracy. And we cannot be surprised when the outcomes are not very democratic.

Related articles

• Democracy for DR Congo? (theworld.org)
• Africa IMF Reports : Democratic Republic of Congo 2010 (sociolingo.com)
• The Indypendent ” Haiti Elections: A Sham in the Time of Cholera (indypendent.org)
• Dodging World Bank schizophrenia (pambazuka.org)

To the editors of the BBC,

Your appalling “Muslim Brotherhood expands westward” by Magdi Abdelhadi  seems entirely based on two writers who have no academic qualifications or credibility and one of whom has a long history of extreme right-wing religious bigotry.  The premise, pushed by Steven Emerson and several extreme right organizations like the Committee for the Present Danger and David Horowitz’s “Front Page” (the creator of “Islamo-Fascist Week”, who regularly republishes Emerson’s work), is that the Muslim Brotherhood has underground organizations plotting terror throughout the west.  It would be laughable if it were not so pernicious.

Perhaps your writer might Google Steven Emerson’s name before you base an entire story on his fantastic and hateful views.

Some examples:

“controversial terrorism expert Steve Emerson-who has been accused of sloppy journalism and with having a pervasive anti-Arab bias-and behind the scenes was remaking himself into a self-styled authority on terrorism” (Salon.com, January 19, 2002).

Emerson was the prime mover behind the extreme-right “documentary” “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” which extreme-right groups produced to be distributed during the 2008 US presidential campaign.  It argued that Islam “is threatening, with all the means at its disposal, to bow Western civilization under the yoke of its values.”

Isabel Macdonald noted of Emerson in 2008 that:

“his research has been repudiated many times over. This is an “expert” who initially blamed the Oklahoma City bombing on Middle Eastern terrorists, and who is now going around claiming that the Bush State Department is collaborating with extremists.”

From the Minnesota Independent:

Emerson has a long history of getting into hot water over his anti-Muslim rhetoric. In the 1998 nuclear standoff between India and Pakistan, Emerson fed reporters with an informant who said Pakistan was set to strike India with a nuclear weapon. The media eventually found the informant to be unreliable – but not until international media had used Emerson’s source and intensified an international crisis.

In 1990, he was accused of plagiarism in his writings about Pan Am 103.

He sued a Florida paper after it published reports that he was supplying reporters with documents he said were from the FBI. The Florida Weekly Planet reported that the documents were frauds and Emerson sued. When he couldn’t substantiate his claims, he withdrew the lawsuit.

Emerson once claimed that an extremist Muslim group put out a hit on him and that the FBI offered to put him in a witness protection program. The FBI denied that claim.

Emerson told Fox News “80% of the mosques in the United States are controlled by the Wahhabists. That’s the reality. No one wants to admit it. They’re the ones that attract terrorists.”

In March of 1995, Emerson told The Jewish Monthly, “nearly all of the Islamic organizations in the United States that define themselves as religiously or culturally Muslim in character have, today, been totally captured or dominated by radical fundamentalist elements…”

In 1998 Emerson falsely wrote that in the 1960s one of his critics, California journalist Reese Erlich, ‘was charged with conspiracy to carry out violence in support of the Black Panthers.’ Emerson apologized and paid Erlich $3,000,” (Washington Post, November 14, 2001).

Emerson had concluded  before September 11th, that “the U.S. has become occupied fundamentalist territory” (Jerusalem Post, 8/8/97)

Emerson is quoted by The Palm Springs (California) Desert Sun Newspaper as saying that “Islam’s ‘leadership and organizational superstructure’ threaten Western values” and that (radical) Muslims “want to conquer the United States. They want to conquer Europe.”

The Wall Street Journal stated in 1993, “Mr. Emerson’s prime role is to whitewash Israeli governments and revile their critics.”

Emerson appears regularly with Pamela Geller, the woman who is organizing the anti-Mosque protests in NY right now, along with another of Emerson’s regular collaborators, Robert Spencer.  Spencer, author of the “Jihadwatch” blog who regularly equates all Muslims with terrorists, and their religion is “a cult”.  With inspiration from groups like the English Defense League and Dutch neo-fascist Geert Wilders, Spencer and Geller run the group “Stop the Islamization of America”. Emerson regularly contributes to their work.  Emerson has claimed that the Imam of the Islamic Community Center proposed for lower Manhattan Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, and former GW Bush era US government advisor, is a “radical extremist cleric who cloaks himself in sheep’s clothing.”

One could go on.

What possible research could your reporter have done to afford this — controversial at best — writer the forum of an entire article showcasing his crackpot theories, which include the belief that every major Muslim-American organization are involved in terrorism though a secret ‘US Muslim Brotherhood” group?

How could someone identified as your “Middle East Editor” be so startlingly ignorant of the background of their sources?

I expect a reply,

T Miles, NY, NY

For a little background on Emerson see:

• http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1443
• http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Emerson_Steven
• http://www.cairchicago.org/2007/03/31/steven-emersons-disturbing-track-record/
• http://www.loonwatch.com/2009/05/steve-emerson-wowser/
• http://www.cairchicago.org/2009/05/05/career-hatemonger-steven-emerson-enraged-by-cair-chicago%E2%80%99s-positive-social-engagement/
• http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/42070
• http://smearcasting.com/smear_emerson.html
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/isabel-macdonald/the-anti-muslim-smear-mac_b_133695.html
• http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/08/ground_zero_mosque_imam_bush_partner_for_peace.php

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• Douglas Farah’s Delusional Delight | loonwatch.com (webcache.googleusercontent.com)
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Sometimes you just need to hear that not everyone has lost their minds.

…by complaining about the officiating.

Two hours after the US Match: Koman Coulibaly still on en.wikipedia.org's "List of bank robbers and robberies"

Also see Koman Coulibaly’s Wikipedia Page Defaced Within Minutes of US Draw

Poor Koman Coulibaly.  He had a tough match, and as much as I love Mali and Malian football, that was a goal he whistled off. I do find it interesting that he’s an anti-corruption investigator, and likely the most honest and unflamboyant fella you’ll ever meet.  So there’s really no justification for accusing the man of corruption over this, as Eric Wynalda apparently did, from the front lines of his California living room.

But what an appalling call.

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• USMNT 2, Slovenia 2 — postgame thoughts and reaction (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Did Referee Rob US of World Cup Win? (cbsnews.com)
• US Suffers From Law of the Wrestling Ring (nytimes.com)
• What was the call that ruled out Edu’s goal? No one’s saying. (g.sports.yahoo.com)
• US furious over disallowed goal (news.bbc.co.uk)
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It’s beautiful in New York, and the world if full of things to argue about. Here are three important issues I’ll have to get back to you on.

While the world goes to hell in a handbasket, I have been trying to maintain my sanity with light reading, and sunny days on the back patio. This largely precludes the production of good (or even mediocre) writing. Further political catastrophes and World Cup drama could completely rule it out.

Despite that, there are several things which should appear here soon, plus a reading recommendation.  Advice for further reading and different perspectives is always very welcome.

First, I’m working on a close reading of the latest US / West African drug arrests, this time focused on Liberia. Not to sound too paranoid, but these things never seem to hang together well when examined closely, and I’ve come to believe over the last few years that there is a commonality of interests between several right wing think tanks, a clutch of journalists and “terrorism experts”, UN Anti-Drug authorities, foreign governments, military, and local governments which play up the need for military and legal spectacle at the expense of actual work on development or ending corruption. While there is likely some real criminality going on in this case, I’m prepared to argue that this Liberian sting of aspiring West African drug runners serves more to allow these interests to further very specific political agendas.

Next, there are updates on the Nigerien political transition, with a new electoral law that has generated some controversy, while we wait for several party political and constitutional shoes to drop in Niamey (party leadership, coalitions, charges against Tandja supporters, not to mention and entirely new Constitution of the Seventh Republic that has to be written and voted on by the end of the year).

Most important to me, I’ve finally thoroughly read Dutch historian Baz Lecocq‘s 2002 dissertation, “That Desert is Our Country’: Tuareg rebellions and Competing Nationalisms in Contemporary Mali (1946-1996).“  As it is available online, I had read later chapters when I’d seen it cited some time ago.  But having stormed through from the start, I must say that it is the best thing written on the Malian Tuareg in English (easily) and arguably better than anything in French (to be fair, I’m thinking only of articles I’ve read by Georg Klute, the Bernuses, Claudot-Hawad, and Bourgeot.  I haven’t read Pierre Boilley’s “Touaregs Kel Adagh”, let alone Georg Klute’s ”Die Rebellionen der Tuareg in Mali und Niger”, which I’ve only ever seen in German). With very few changes it could be produced as a very valuable book.

Lecocq’s basic premise – which he candidly admits was not the one he began with – is that French colonialism and the process of independence heightened a pre-existing “racial” prejudice between northern and southern communities in what is today Mali, even when outsiders might be unable to easily distinguish between these groups. Independence, as well as French and upper class Tuareg resistance to the form this independence, only deepened these divisions, reinforcing mistrust on all sides, keeping these communities at daggers drawn. This has played out through profound reordering in the structures and meanings of the notoriously complex and shifting Tuareg social/political order on one side. On the other, the brutality and hamfistedness of southern politicians and military has often exacerbated conflict, frustrating Malian society.  Nine of ten Malian live in the south, and these communities, having paid dearly to create the imperfect economic development and political liberties they now enjoy, have little sympathy with Tuareg demands.

If you’re anglophone and interested in French colonialism in the Sahara, Mali’s first decades of independence, the current “Tuareg problem”, or even the more general history of cultural conflict along the interface of the Sahel, there’s tremendous value in this work.  Admittedly, Lecocq really focuses on the history of “free” clans of Tuareg in (what is now) Kidal Region’s Adagh des Ifoughas, who make up only a portion of the population of even this limited area.  But their politics and culture are central to the 1963, 1990, and 2006/7 rebellions, and all north south relations in Mali.  Without understanding this, I’ve always found the causes of fighting there hard to understand, even in relation to the Nigerien Tuareg rebellions, which seem much more enmeshed in Niger’s politics and culture.

• Current preferred time waster: tommymiles on Twitter

A herd, starved to death, in North Mali. These animals represent many years of saved wealth and future investment for Malian pastoralists.

Hopefully by now everyone knows that parts of West Africa, especially pockets of Chad and Niger, are struggling with the worst food shortages since 2005. Alex Thurston reports that international humanitarian agencies, as well as increasingly concerned governments, are now worried that this crisis is more generalized than first reported (last September), striking areas of Mauritania and Mali.

In Mali, there is a crisis in the north (mostly Kidal Region) right now, with press reports of huge numbers of animals lost to the mostly pastoralist residents. As in Niger, prices for forage have skyrocketed, prices for animals have plummeted, so that recent reports have talked of Malians trading female goats – the future of their herds – for a single bag of rice in Algerian border markets. Malian press reports talk of traveling through rural Kidal last week, counting corpse after corpse of starved livestock, the very source of pastoralist livelihoods. Those that can have moved south, increasing the pressure on pasture and farm land, surely also risking more communal tension. Kidal Region is already rife with armed unemployed men, competing smuggling rings, and simmering tribal vendettas. The overflow from this must add sparks to the already smoldering Tombuctu and Gao Regions, not to mention the areas south of the Niger where pastoralists head during the dry season. The tragic destruction of Gao market, north Mali’s largest commercial center, by fire last week has got to be a final nail in the coffin for some people, even if the rains have now started there.

There are also reports that Bamako is hoarding food aid, sending only the old supplies stashed at Mopti north and keeping the rest in the south, where the crops were good last year. True or not, people report it as such in Kidal.  On the other side, some southerners accuse Kidal politicians of profiting from the misery of their own people.   Other reports again, more neutral, document intense efforts on all sides, facing nearly insurmountable shortages and logistic impossibilities.

So things in Mali, if they receive the international focus or not, are as bad as in areas of Niger.

In Niger many more farming communities were stricken by the start-stop rains of June 2009, and the pockets of Tillaberi, Tahoua, and Maradi Regions (mostly) have long reverted to crisis mode. Men are on extended “exode”, the dry season trips abroad for wage labor. Other communities have picked up en masse, fleeing to towns, other regions, or even to Hausa northern Nigeria, where some have trade or family contacts. Others still remain, depleting the last of their food stocks, and somehow making it on less and less each day.

It’s important to differentiate between drought and famine (one may cause the other, or may not), and recognize that some places like parts of central Niger have suffered chronic seasonal malnutrition since the 1990s, and recurring drought caused famines since 1968. The causes are debated, and while climate change no doubt is happening, one should not discount the structural changes we have seen over the last 30 years. The IMF’s austerity policies which did such obvious damage to urban West Africa in the 1980s, and triggered much of the 1990-2 democratization wave thereafter, also had pernicious effects on rural areas. The “free trade” treaties of the 1990s — as Bill Clinton recently admitted in the case of Haitian farming — drove world commodity market forces into even the most protected rural communities. Subsidized western industrial agriculture can produce food and cash crops cheaper than most smallholders in the Sahel, but can also cause basic food prices to swing wildly on the back of market speculation, as we saw in 2008. As Marx famously said, in the face of commodification, structures, forms of productions, and traditions have no recourse. “All that is solid melts into air…”, and much of the rural economic structure of the developing worlds has so disintegrated in the last decades. Some areas might survive, sending farmers flooding into urban export driven production. For whatever reasons, Niger, like Haiti, never saw enough of this to absorb the mass of small farming which supports %80 of its people. They continue to literally scratch a living out of dusty millet fields, with less and less ability to turn to either community or markets when things go wrong.

Some pastoralists in North Mali and Niger never really recovered from the loss of herds in the early 1970s. They starved in 1984 because of this, and (arguably) supported armed struggle in the 1990s in part because of this. [It's more complicated that this, with longstanding communities of grievance, and militants trained abroad, but the 72-74 drought can't be discounted]. These are as much political and economic/structural problems as environmental, and they need to be treated once this hungry season passes in September.

In Niger, as grim as this is, some things have improved. Then President Tandja (and current opposition leader Hama Amadou, as well as some “progressive” westerners, for the record) purposefully denied the food shortages and deaths in 2005 were “famine”. They were seeing severe seasonal malnutrition in limited areas, and most children were dying of malnutrition related disease rather than starvation. This is how people die in famines, but the “f” word has political connotations which were painful, and so it is better to try and trivialize the suffering of the rural poor, apparently. I hope there is a special ring of hell for such people. We are not hearing that this time, in part thanks to the Nigerien Junta. Salou Djibo can play on an oft repeated trope in Niger (1974 being the model) of military rule justified by food emergencies mishandled by corrupt civilians. I would hope those in Niamey recognizing this as famine would do the same if they had been in power last year. I also hope they target the structural causes that allow this to happen, after they face the monumentally complicated distribution of food aid.

Aid Agencies (links to give, and learn more)

• Save the Children: Blog from Aid project in Niger
• Oxfam: 2010 West Africa Food Crisis
• Make a one time donation to Oxfam

Related  news articles

• Les touaregs victimes de la sécheresse… et du gouvernement? (France 24, 21/05/2010)
• Témoignages sur la crise alimentaire les zones de Kidal et Ménaka (L’Observateur, 17/05/2010)
• ReliefWeb » Document » Bulletin hebdomadaire de morbidité, de mortalité et de surveillance nutritionelle au Niger – Semaine epidémiologique no 19: du 10 au 16 mai 2010
• ReliefWeb » Document » ENQUETE SUR LA SECURITE ALIMENTAIRE DES MENAGES AU NIGER (avril 2010): RESUME EXECUTIF (mai 2010)
• ReliefWeb » Document » SAHEL ET AFRIQUE DE L’OUEST Perspectives sur la sécurité alimentaire, Avril à Septembre 2010
• Chad hunger overshadowed by Niger food crisis – UN (af.reuters.com)
• Niger junta to provide free food to one million (af.reuters.com)
• Hunger in Niger (undispatch.com)
• CORRECTED-UPDATE 1-U.N. aid agencies sound alarm on Niger food (af.reuters.com)
• Farmers, Aid Groups Call Attention To Drought, Food Shortages In West Africa (medicalnewstoday.com)
• Famine in Niger (one.org)
• Niger facing famine, millions at risk — president (af.reuters.com)
• Famine Persists in Niger, but Denial Seems in the Past (nytimes.com)
• Hunger in Niger (sahelblog.wordpress.com)
• ANALYSIS-Niger junta’s hunger alarm is break with past (af.reuters.com)

An unsigned editorial from Le Pays (Ouagadougou): A quite good reflection on the educational and other restrictions coming for future governments in Niger, but tying the famine. The papers in Niamey have little mention of the small farmers and herders Tahoua, Tillaberi, Diffa, and the north, who are long out of food and fleeing their homes. It’s evidence both that patches of famine sit beside areas which had passable crops last year, and that Nigerien politics is often quite distant from the realities of most Nigeriens. The Burkinabe writer ascribes blame for the chronic malnutrition of Niger’s citizens to both past policies and horrible governance (which is only partly the case), while leaving us with the distinctly uncomfortable vision of Niamey debating constitutional clauses while elsewhere in Niger people are dying.

Related News Links

• Niger leaders ‘must have degrees’ (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Hunger in Niger (undispatch.com)
• Niger junta to provide free food to one million (af.reuters.com)
• Famine in Niger (one.org)
• CORRECTED-UPDATE 1-U.N. aid agencies sound alarm on Niger food (af.reuters.com)
• Famine Persists in Niger, but Denial Seems in the Past (nytimes.com)
• Niger and China (sahelblog.wordpress.com)
• Niger facing famine, millions at risk — president (af.reuters.com)
• Niger calls for $123 million in food aid (af.reuters.com)
• ANALYSIS-Niger junta’s hunger alarm is break with past (af.reuters.com)

The VOA today quotes PNDS-Tarayya spokesperson Iro Sani, saying that “it has been tried once (before) and it didn’t get result(s) satisfying to the people of Niger.”

He likely refers to the the 1999 CRN Junta’s ”Fourm sur la gestion économique et financiere”, led by current junta heavyweights Col. Hima (Pele) Hamadou and Gendarme Col. Lawel Chékou Koré. Their late 1999 findings were little more than perfunctory, forcing some former regime officials to repay cash. In fact, from 1974 and 1996 coups, to Tadja’s “Mains propre” campaigns against his political enemies of 2003/2007/2009, corruption prosecutions have been symbolic and purely focused on mid level Nigeriens, never the huge neocolonial funders of the dirty system. [2007's Hama Amadou ouster as PM and later prosecution was an outlier in this, and its ripples may have doomed Tandja, fatally splitting his political machine.]

Areva and China are right to be nonplussed, as opposition leaders (who really only want payback on higher ranking foes) are skeptical. We’ll see a show but little more.

Also: The court case over who is the “real” MNSD-Nassara (the former ruling party) is winding up. The party is split between Seyni Oumarou and its Tandja appointed leadership, or the former golden boy and 2007-2009 ousted leadership under Hama Amadou. Past rulings — even under the transitory 6th republic of Tandja — favored Amadou. This would be fatal to the Tandja faction, while a loss by Hama means he would run under his new MODEN party banner, which regathers his mostly western (Tillaberi/Niamey) power base.

And Also:Junta leader / President of the CSRD/ Chef d’Escadron (“Major” in the anglo-saxon system) Djibo Salou got himself named “Général de Corps d’Armée”. While most of this junta’s actions have been studiously based upon the 1999 CRN junta, that government’s leader Daouda Malam Wanké remained Chef d’Escadron until civilain rule was re-established. In fact, the last time there even was a “Général de Corps d’Armée” was 1991, when Ali Saibou was overthrown, the only man to hold that rank in Niger’s history. This continues an interesting resuscitation of the Saibou regime, often portrayed as a failed reform government and place holder between the absolute rule of Seyni Kountché and the democratic revolution of 1991. Salou sought out the long retired Saibou for a public benediction upon the new coup shortly after taking power, and has appointed a large number of officials who had served under Saibou’s short lived single party Second Republic.

I would argue this has much to do with the broad popularity which the Kountché regime is hazily remembered today, at variance with the sometimes brutality of the time, which was also conflated with the uranium fueled vast economic expansion of the late 1970s.

But the accention to a frankly ridiculous title by CSRD President Djibo Salou raises questions about the previously humble and apolitical nature of his transition. We can only hope this says little about the recently agreed upon timetable of a return to civilian rule by the one year anniversary of the 18 February coup.

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• Niger’s junta sets election plans (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Niger junta should leave within a year–commission (af.reuters.com)
• Niger opposition calls for quick elections (cbc.ca)
• Niger: 11 Months to Transition (sahelblog.wordpress.com)
• UPDATE 1-Niger junta should leave within a year -commission (af.reuters.com)