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I would rather be talking about real things. Since September 2011, northern Mali has been on tenterhooks, waiting to see which rumors of risings, rebellions, independence struggles or gang-war will pan out. Yet I am hesitant to even write anything on the situation. I see quite clearly how those living in Kidal and Tombouctou themselves seem unsure as to who has been doing what, and even less clear on what is planned by the bulging troupe of demobbed Libyan soldiers, ex-rebels, competing local and national power networks, criminal gangs, militaries of four countries, freedom fighters, and armed salafists.

Cue Jeremy Keenan. Keenan fears nothing. He has one answer for all questions, one bad guy and one bad guy only who is behind all disorder and suffering. Scholarly rigor and any critical sense are cast aside. Keenan’s strange status — he is a “Professorial Research Associate in anthropology” who apparently does not teach classes or publish scholarly work — at School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London seems to give weight enough to see his pieces published in otherwise reputable outlets. Al Jazeera has printed a number of Keenan’s pieces, although at some point in mid 2011 they wisely moved his work from News to “Opinion”.

People who don’t know much about northern Mali would be very poorly served by reading Keenan’s increasingly odd writing. Keenan used to be a scholar of some note. His 1977 book remains the best English language text on the Ahaggar Touareg of southern Algeria. But over the last decade or two his writing has descended into screed. His 2004 collection of articles, published as “The lesser gods of the Sahara: social change and contested terrain amongst the Tuareg of Algeria”, seems his last work with any scholarly pretensions, with a dozen articles and two books since rehashing the same mix of speculation and a shallow version of anti-imperialism. And while I like a good kick against the pricks as much as the next person, his writing has also increasingly lost any critical rigor it once had. All that remains is a sort of mono-maniacal invective against the Algerian DRS. They are a good target: the Directorate of Intelligence and Security have at least as much blood on their hands as any secret police of any authoritarian state. But the increasingly unhinged supposition that their hidden hands are behind all that is bad in the west-central Saharan region is simply unsupportable. As importantly, it lets some equally bad actors off the hook. It also reduces all Touareg (who prefer the label “Kel Tamasheq” by the way), Arabs, Songhai and other people who make their homes there, to deculturated, classless, ahistoricised puppets. As many people, I had seen Keenan stumble down this unfortunate path for some time. But I never though I would hear him reconfigure the traumatic Tuareg insurgencies of the 1990s and 2000s and their leaders as window dressing for elaborate foreign plots.

And yet here we are, facing Keenan’s most recent work “A new crisis in the Sahel”, which appeared on Al Jazeera English January 3rd. Despite its title, there is nothing “new” here. New events are — in Keenan’s writings — simply another manifestation of a single conspiracy. This nefarious plot involves the Algerian state, the CIA, and literally no one else. They have invented and pay off a “terrorist” group to allow some sort of power grab by Algeria, and extension the United States. This ignores the obvious fact that the United States political elites, along with some on the Israeli right, are much closer to Algeria’s arch-foe Morocco. To read Jeremy Keenan is to know that it is here, in the midst of the Saharan desert, that a great game is being played out, in which invented armed groups pose for cameras and fight no one but sacrificial victims arranged by their handlers. Pain and suffering in the Sahara exists solely to influence the popular press in the United States, Europe and Algeria. It is essentially all for our benefit. And God knows, there is nowhere like the desert 600km north of Tombouctou to stage events which will demand the attention of American newsreaders.

When Keenan began this trip in 2003-4, his take was more plausible. Al-Qaida au Maghreb islamique (AQMI) was still the Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat (GSPC), and US spy satellites were tracking a small band of GSPC kidnappers from their homes in Algeria across much of the Sahara. Keenan was good at stating the obvious, missed by much of the press. The Algerian civil war bred unknowably complex corruption and relationships between Algerian power and its opponents. The United States military and government was keen to portray all conflict as part of its global obsession with Osama Bin Laden, no matter how contrived the links. Easily understood enemies bolstered both political powers just as it funded security services with slick appropriation pitches in Washington and backhanders from smugglers in Tamanrasset or Tindouf. By 2005 this simple linkage has overtaken all of Keenan’s former work. His writing is now almost entirely about this ever deepening, ever more complex conspiracy, the tentacles of which Keenen discovers everywhere. Every conflict, every actor must be hammered into this template. And while his work has slid from the finest academic journals into the popular press and a single journal to which he has some connection, his invitations to cocktail parties thrown by Algeria’s equally repugnant regional rivals have no doubt increased.

Might we not do better consulting other prominent scholars or (gasp) actual Malians, Nigeriens or Algerians? One consequence of Keenan’s writing is that it increasingly removes all agency, motivation, and history from Africans, replacing them with mere puppets of unseen foreign forces. While the DRS or AFRICOM have dark motives, the events he sloppily half describes in Al-Jazeera have much more to do with an actual history of a region torn by the after-effects of European colonialism, rentier-state neo-colonialism, multi-sided regional struggles (in which I suspect Keenan of having some interest), poverty, and ill-governance.

On the level of fact (for instance who Iyad Ag Ghali is and his local/national/regional ties) Keenan privileges rumor over history. And sometimes he departs from history altogether. The portrayal of the 2006 insurgency as a one day affair orchestrated by a foreign government is simply inaccurate, and the failure to mention other factions — such as those led by the late Ibrahim Ag Bahanga or the more conservative Abdoussalam ag Assalat — seem calculated by Keenan to paper over the gaping holes his statements leave. For his citation of a Le Journal du Dimanche article claiming Ag Ghali orchestrated the Hombori kidnaps, there are ten others — citing better informed sources than one anonymous Nigerien security officer — that speculate the opposite. It’s as if he read but one of the hundreds of press reports. Except that sheer poor research would hardly result in finding the single article that speculates in Keenan’s direction. Anyone following these events (again, maybe an actual African!) would tell you this immediately.

Example: why never a mention of French interests? Total just scored a large oil prospecting bloc in the Mauritanian Taoudeni basin just across the border which promises the first oil and natural gas wells in the region. Or French air and ground assets spread from Niamey to northern Burkina to Gao? Or that the Hombori kidnappees were formerly French mercenaries and political fixers for African elites close to Paris? Why not mention the communal conflicts bred of competing nationalisms, bitter caste and class histories, and the deformed half democracy of local governments? Why not mention the affiliations of the former Libyan officers or their history in the 1990s insurgency? Why not mention the extensive interlinked and competing smuggling networks of both local notables and rich men based in Bamako or Tamanrasset? Why not mention AFRICOM’s much longer involvement with Bamako than Algiers? Why not mention the fact that for the third time in six years, many desert side communities in the region are facing famine rooted in environmental degradation, disappearance of forage for herds, and price spikes driven by foreign food trade and market specualtion. These problems are real. They are complex. And they involve shades other than black and white, players unknown to most Europeans or Americans.

Keenan reduces a complicated living history and society to the maneuvers of the Algerian secret police and the CIA. Those are not nice or well intentioned people: no doubt. But the CIA and Algeria’s secret police are easily understandable by western readers. It paints a world of binary conflicts, with simple motivations, focused on Western elites and their concerns. Perhaps this is comforting for his foreign reader, but it is also a narrative that removes several million Africans from their own history, as if they all simply take orders from other white folks with whom Keenan has a beef. And I see nothing either liberating or accurate in any of it.

A Sample of Keenan’s recent work

• A new crisis in the Sahel – Opinion – Al Jazeera English
• The Dying Sahara: US Imperialism and Terror in Africa Pluto Press, 2012 ISBN 0745329616
• The dark Sahara: America’s war on terror in Africa. Pluto Press, 2009 ISBN 0745324525
• Africa unsecured? The role of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) in securing US imperial interests in Africa – Critical Studies on Terrorism – Volume 3, Issue 1 Volume 3, Issue 1, 2010
• Al-Qaeda terrorism in the Sahara? Edwin Dyer’s murder and the role of intelligence agencies – Keenan – 2009 – Anthropology Today
• US Militarization in Africa: What Anthropologists Should Know about AFRICOM. Anthropology Today, Vol. 24, No. 5 (Oct., 2008), pp. 16-20
• Uranium Goes Critical in Niger: Tuareg Rebellions Threaten Sahelian Conflagration – Review of African Political Economy – Volume 35, 2008
• The Banana Theory of Terrorism: Alternative Truths and the Collapse of the ‘Second’ (Saharan) Front in the War on Terror – Journal of Contemporary African Studies – Volume 25, Issue 1
• US Silence as Sahara Military Base Gathers Dust, Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 34, No. 113, Imperial, Neo-Liberal Africa? (Sep., 2007), pp. 588-590
• Conspiracy theories and ‘terrorists’: How the ‘war on terror’ is placing new responsibilities on anthropology . Anthropology Today, Volume 22, Issue 6, pages 4–9, December 2006
• The making of terrorists: Anthropology and the alternative truth of America’s ‘War on Terror’ in the Sahara. Focaal, Volume 2006, Number 48, Winter 2006 , pp. 144-151(8)
• Turning the Sahel on Its Head: The ‘Truth’ behind the Headliness. Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 33, No. 110, Religion, Ideology & Conflict in Africa (Sep., 2006), pp. 761-769
• Military Bases, Construction Contracts & Hydrocarbons in North Africa. Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 33, No. 109, Mainstreaming the African Environment in Development (Sep., 2006), pp. 601-608
• Ray Bush and Jeremy Keenan. Editorial: North Africa: Power, Politics & Promise, Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 33, No. 108, (Jun., 2006)
• Tuareg Take up Arms. Review of African Political Economy Vol. 33, No. 108, North Africa: Power, Politics & Promise (Jun., 2006), pp. 367-368
• Security & Insecurity in North Africa Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 33, No. 108, North Africa: Power, Politics & Promise (Jun., 2006), pp. 269-296
• Famine in Niger Is Not All That It Appears. Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 32, No. 104/105, Oiling the Wheels of Imperialism (Jun. – Sep., 2005), pp. 405-407
• Waging war on terror: The implications of America’s ‘New Imperialism’ for Saharan peoples – The Journal of North African Studies – Volume 10, Issue 3-4 2005
• Political Destabilisation & ‘Blowback’ in the Sahel. Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 31, No. 102, Agendas, Past & Future (Dec., 2004), pp. 691-698
• Terror in the Sahara: The Implications of US Imperialism for North & West Africa. Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 31, No. 101, An African Scramble? (Sep., 2004), pp. 475-496
• Americans & ‘Bad People’ in the Sahara-Sahel Americans & ‘Bad People’ in the Sahara-Sahel, Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 31, No. 99, ICTs ‘Virtual Colonisation’ & Political Economy (Mar., 2004), pp. 130-139

For those who can’t make it, some photos and videos from Liberty Square as the marchers poured in.

My images, video & reportback from 20111001 Brooklyn Bridge march.

Osama Bin Laden's house. The Pakistan Army's Dairy Farm is about 200 meters to the left, married soldiers housing for the Pakistan Military Academy in 400 meters away to the right, and a 24 hour army check point in 150 meters behind the photographer on the main road.

While the reliable press are reporting the location of Osama Bin Laden’s mansion in Abbottabad, they are so far way off.

Not even close, in fact.

Here are two examinations that are much more careful.

Honestly, it’s people like this who give me hope for basic problem solving skills. The world press just chose the location for the center of town and reported it uncritically.

After my several hours last night trolling through the press reports, I saw someone come up with this seemingly likely location.

But I’m much more convinced by the Bilal Town location, as local press reports said it was “behind” the Army Housing Scheme Flats (here ) ~ 2 km SSE of first location (and ~ 6km ENE from town center, which is the default location for the town and spot everyone is erroneously reporting). I’m also persuaded by people who noted that the house isn’t on Google earth, as sat images there are from 2001 (some from 2005) and the house was built in 2005. So Bin Laden’s house would be right about here.

Note the last two likely locations are both less than one km from and on the same road as the main gate for Pakistan’s “West Point” or Sandrington. The Kukal Road between the two has at least one permanent military checkpoint and you can’t turn around without bumping into a military installation.

There’s a couple of news photos of the actual compound, and they match with the Picassa and Panoramio pictures you can find scattered around the development called “Bilal Town”, including one of a large “new construction” that required it’s own power pylon. It will be interesting to look in the backgrounds of these mapped snapshots and see if you can find the house.

Also note that the descriptions of the attack from BEFORE we knew it involved Bin Laden (just one example here) say one helicopter shot down by men on the roof w/ an RPG, crashing and killing those aboard. This doesn’t sound like “no casualties” and suggests there were more dead on Bin Laden’s side as well.

Is this important? Only to the extent that it shows Bin Laden was hiding in the middle of a Pakistani military base, living in a building conspicuous for many reasons (no telephone or internet, high walls with barbed wire, armed guards, burned their own trash, and I’m sure much coming and going). I saw one press story on a 2009 “passing out” ceremony from the Pakistan Military Academy, where the head of the nation’s military banged on about how they were winning the “war on terror”. The article notes those graduating included cadets from central Asian dictatorships receiving special training before returning home to ‘continue the fight’. The parade ground is literally within shouting distance of Osama’s compound. Someone on the upper storey might have sat and watched the assembled cadets.

Good thing we started two wars and killed a million people while the ally that the west has been propping up for decades had him the whole time. One can’t imagine the motivation the Pakistani military (like the US military, by the way) in keeping Bin Laden lurking in the background.

Or so we think. Also good they dumped the body at sea so no one will ever prove it, and we can keep busy arguing about if this one guy is alive or dead.

The fact is, Bin Laden and his type were already on the way out in 2001. The cold war had helped destroy organizations throughout the Muslim world (and elsewhere) that genuinely expressed people’s anger at poverty, exploitation, imperialism and misrule. Right wing religious zealotry was one of the few paths left, and was funded (by the US and their clients) through the wars in Afghanistan and the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia.

But no one wanted what Bin Laden was selling when they saw it up close. It was only through distant, symbolic attacks on distant, faceless victims, that these people gained any support. That’s long been over. The “Arab Spring” protests, suppressed so brutally, should have been the answer all along. Now they show just what a dead end Bin Laden was, whatever his fate.

Why are we still killing, dying, and bankrupting ourselves when we know that?

Update:

A careful observer named Dave at Ogle Earth blog has matched photo backgrounds of the house to landscape to this exact location.  Remember, the satellite images predate the house.  This seems exactly in line with pre announcement press reports of where the fighting took place.

UPDATE 2: Here’s the confirmed location: Lat 34.1693549 Long 73.2425129 This is about 100 meters from the previous spot, and compound is visible on the 2005 imagery, along with all the walls and such that should have made it pretty obvious to the neighborhood.  Details are here, as are the US Military images that match.

More links:

• A local’s photos from nearby home towards the compound
• unidentified press photo of the compound
• Google maps at the location
• Wikimedia toolserver.org guide for this location
• Youtube video of the compound after the assault
• CIA images of the compound

Related articles

• Osama bin Laden died in 80-minute battle: witnesses – The National (thenational.ae)
• Possible Bin Laden Compound Shown Engulfed in Flames [VIDEO] (mashable.com)
• Some Thoughts on the death of Osama Bin Laden (discomaulvi.wordpress.com)

Juan Cole

Juan Cole, a smart and well-intentioned U.S. university professor, has just printed an “Open Letter to the Left“, describing objections to the U.S. taking charge of Libya’s revolution against Gadaffi as “isolationism” and knee-jerk “enemy of my enemy” ideology.

Admittedly, there are those on the Left who are unable to see outside first world struggles or understand that the US might be bombing assholes who are challenging the global hegemon out of desire to emulate them in their neocolonial adventures. I’ll wait a moment while you catch your breath from the shock of it all.

But having had every left formation who could gather a dog and a Kinko’s card force on me copies of their “Libya statement” at last week’s Left Forum, Cole’s picture of the Left opposition, as his picture of the Libyan military situation, is not the result of dispassionate study.

Overwhelmingly, Left-wing statements ( see the ISO or my own SP-USA as good examples) support the popular revolt in Libya, and support aid to the rebel forces. They have no illusions that Gadaffi is anything but a blood-soaked fascist. And left groups want sanction against his supporters and real grassroots aid for the popular revolution. We just know, as past history going back to the 1880s shows, that inviting the global imperial power to save them will enslave the Libyan people to a more subtle yoke in the coming years. This may be better than Gadaffi’s death squads, but that accepts the fallacy which goes completely unnoticed by Professor Cole that there are not simply two choices: domestic tyrant or Pax Imperia.

As to one of his other objections,  the only purpose in describing Americans as “Isolationist” is to equate them with the 1930s soft on Hitler American right.  It is not isolationist to see one of the Western Left’s most important tasks as preventing their governments from invading foreign nations.  Recent history screams that.  800,000 (or more) dead Iraqis and the mess in Afghanistan might have suggested U.S. led “coalitions” should be prevented from more adventures.  Noting this is hardly the province of Left ideologues, and is anything but isolationist.  Unless one believes America’s best interactions with the outside world come via General Dynamics.  Or that Presidential elections which bring in a “nice guy” fundamentally change the motivations and use of power by the ruling classes of states.

There is so much wrong with this piece, but I’ll try to limit myself to one overarching issue: Cole’s utter failure to accurately describe the objections leftists are making.  We either buy Gadaffi’s ridiculous propaganda, think that the revolutionaries are controlled by the right (as a tiny handful of rather pathetic individuals on both the right and left seem to), or are “absolute pacifists.” Or we question the legal basis for war.  Que? Since when does the left really care if there is a Security Council vote or not.  Perhaps PoliSci professors are concerned with the formal legality, but we are dealing with questions of morality and outcomes.

Nowhere are described the actual, sophisticated arguments being had: that air bombardments are militarily ineffective against ground forces, dangerous to civilians, and will come with long strings attached to the new government. A simple causality between the revolutionary offensive and US air-strikes is assumed in the first paragraph, even though there is little evidence  apart from CNN talking points to support it suggests Cole has made up his mind about U.S. war-making based on emotion, not fact.

It is an understandable emotion, naive as it might be.  Cole’s mention of the Soviet invasion of of Czechoslovakia in 1968 is illustrative.  While an utter disaster for Czechs, the Communist Left worldwide, and eventually even the Soviet Union, the notion that the U.S. should have rolled tanks into Prague and gone to war with the Soviets shows as much concern for unintended but entirely predicable consequences as does Cole’s support for U.S. bombing of Libya.  Apart from starting World War III, turning leftist Czech student protesters into a Cold War pawns would have just resulted in even more dead Czechs, and many foolish people with little access to accurate news rallying to the blood-soaked Soviet’s propaganda of being “defenders against outside counter-revolution.”

Surprising as it might be, there are ways to support people struggling for freedom that do not involve a United States invasion.  Again, Iraqis might have taught us this.

But bringing it up is illustrative of where Cole is coming from.  He sees the revolt against Gadaffi as a ‘Good thing’, and most in the Left agree.  That we should turn ourselves over to the tender mercies of imperial power to fix it for us shows how little Cole has gathered of the Left’s central analysis: that governments, no matter how well intentioned, work for the powerful, and the powerful are those with piles of cash.  There need be no “Neoconservative political odor” as Cole calls it, to make this the case.  The good intentions of those who urge on military intervention mean exactly nothing to the ends of that intervention.  Cole’s further explanation that:

“the Neoconservatives hate the United Nations and wanted to destroy it. They went to war on Iraq despite the lack of UNSC authorization…”

This strikes me like hearing a little boy rationalize the loss of a beloved pet with ‘Doggie Heaven’.  It’s understandable, but it’s fiction designed to make the speaker feel better about the brutal realities from which he’s suffering.  States don’t go to war because of laws or treaties or UN resolutions.  They go to war because of interest, and they carry out those wars in a manner and to ends in line with past experience and the interests of the actors.  All reporting has shown that UN Resolution 1973 was written to the specifications of the U.S. government, and that was dictated by the doctrines of the U.S. military and the objectives of U.S. political leaders.   Law and UN Charters are always a fig leaf, and believing otherwise is to conflate process with motivation.

There are many Libyans calling for United States military involvement as well, and they are perhaps more easily forgiven for demanding immediate action from whomever is offering without examining who will deliver them what and why.  But it is incumbent upon those outside and within Libya to explain just what that involvement will bring, and what it won’t.  The U.S. military is not there to fight the war for them.  It will not simply show up and shoot down fighter jets.  In fact, U.S. military doctrine is very clear.  They have first destroyed everything that looks like a missile site in the the coastal region, and attacked most airbases.  The U.S. will then patrol the nation from 30,000 feet, and shoot down Libyan fighter jets.  Those are major psychological weapons of the Gadaffi regime, but most had already been captured or destroyed.

The real bloodbath was coming from 1942 style soviet rocket trucks, armored personnel carriers, mortars, snipers, and militiamen with rifles.  The U.S. and its coalition are neither willing nor — as proved from the survival of Serbian heavy weapons after two months of U.S. air bombardment in the Kosovar War — able to destroy such forces from the air.  The more likely outcome would be that of 1991 in Iraq: the U.S. circles above while the dictator massacres his citizens on the ground.  The nation is divided, sanctions ensue, and the world has yet another open sore.  Control over important oil fields, though, are maintained by the revolution, and the exploitation of these fields quickly passes from now dissolved state companies to large corporations.

The terms of engagement have also been set similar to those so ineffective in Afghanistan.  To meet UN 1973′s second mandate, individual jet pilots will be given the discretion to intervene when they see citizens being attacked.  Which they will see how from that far up? And let’s just say that discerning friendly civilian militia from hostile civilian militia might be difficult from that distance should individual pilots really choose to act on that mandate.

Cole’s argument also accepts at face value the breathless reporting of Gadaffi’s superior military rolling over Benghazi’s defenses.  In fact, those forces still loyal to Gadaffi appeared at the beginning of U.S. involvement to number less that 10,000, and despite recent offenses to be both stretched beyond their means and operating in a society that will turn on them the moment they leave town.

In fact, Gadaffi’s regime has since the 1980s starved his military of training, provided heavy weapons mostly for propaganda value and self-aggrandizing gifting to foreign partners, and set all units in competition with one another. There is no unified command, even in the six “regime support” elite units, and no units are allowed training in combined operations, for fear it may be turned against the government.  Apart from entirely untrained thugs of the Revolutionary Committees militias, there are only six operating Brigade strength units fighting for Gadaffi. These internal security units are understrength, under trained, and still dispersed across the country for fear of new risings. Like the popular forces earlier failed advance westward on Syrte, the one and one half Brigades of paramilitary units advancing toward the east were unsupplied and overstretched. Even these elite units witnessed two company level defections (one armor company included) in the days prior to the US air-strikes. These are the causal relationships at play, not US bombing of Tripoli or antiaircraft emplacements. But Cole ignores all this.

Some flyers I picked up at the Left Forum last weekend, a Leftist "gathering of the tribes." They show unifed opposition to U.S. involvement combined with broad support for the revolution against Gadaffi. Little of Cole's description of Leftist rehtoric on Libya is in evidence.

Only the most crude sub-RCP-esqe objections are (far too easily) taken on by Cole, along with those of absolute pacifism. [note: After reading the RCP statement, an organization I deride perhaps more than I should for their sometimes inane rhetoric, I'm struck how they keep opposition to U.S. Imperialism OUT of their view of the Libyan regime, which they do NOT defend.  Apologies to the RCP et. al.] This straw-man creation belies the “let’s have a civil debate” introduction. Either Cole hasn’t bothered to read substantive left criticism, or is choosing not to engage it.

Cole also ignores the PR boon Gadaffi has been handed by the re-enactment of the 1986 bombings. Such attacks offer no support to the revolution while reminding the world of Gadaffi’s sole claim to anti-imperialist legitimacy. While it is easy to parody the crude propaganda of such a bloody buffoon, demonstrations supporting him across West Africa and elsewhere have appeared only since the US strikes began. Marches in Conakry (where the U.S. backed President felt the need to defend Gadaffi) have been followed by large rallies in Niamey, Bamako, and Dakar.  We may laugh, but the governments in each of these places have felt the need to ban such gatherings. Some are undoubtedly paid for, but why was he not able to buy such demonstrations of support over the last month?

Note too that “the Guide” keeps giving his addresses from the MUSEUM he built to commemorate the 1986 attack.  In front of a giant STATUE commemorating the 1986 attack.  Should that not have awakened some inkling to Gadaffi’s desire to repaint this revolution into the guise of Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy?

However misguided (pun intended) support for Gadaffi by PanAfricanists might be, it should not be dismissed. Outright Franco-UK-US involvement has placed Gadaffi in the position he has wanted since the popular rising of his own people began. We may regret the purpose we give his defenders, especially when we think of the more subtle and effective support we — and Libya’s neighbors — might have given his people in this fight.

Really there is so much obviously wrong here, delivered in such a backfill of professorial verbiage, that I can’t help but conclude that Cole’s intended audience is not the Left, but centrist Democrats who need a tool to dismiss growing criticism without having to actually engage it. “See Juan Cole’s piece here” Times columnists may now tweet. “It must be filled with definitive refutations of the Left because It’s so long that I can’t finish it! It must be a legitimate Left-wing position because it talks about pacifism without giggling.”

We are only beginning to learn both the real weakness of Gadaffi’s oppressive state and the real price the Libyan National Council (led by men who were regime stalwarts a month ago) may have promised the west for this destructive airshow. If professor Cole really wants to engage the Left, he will reflect on what the Libyan people will still be paying off in “anti-Islamist security structures” and sweetheart oil deals in the years to come.

UPDATE

[Rewrote first section with more detail, uncalled for 'Doggie Heaven' metaphors, correcting Eastern European revolution references, quoting Cole directly rather than from memory, and adding the bits below. 20:43 NYC time Sunday. I won't edit this further except for typos. And typos fixed at 21:00 hrs.]

Perhaps Cole was conflating the Left with this moronic screed that has been making the email and Facebook rounds of late? How anyone actually in Africa can look at the crap Gadaffi has stirred (Sierra Leone’s RUF for example) and how much African blood he’s spilled and buy this tripe is beyond me.

Credit and demerit where due, there are a handful of foreign defenses of Gadaffi out there, but they are more likely to come from the right than the left.

In fact, all the “usual suspects” of Tea Party racist Islamophobes are burning up with opposition to “Obama’s support for his Al Qaeda brothers”. Here’s a taste, most from organizations much better funded than any Marxist might dream of. One wonders, then, why Cole feels the need to sock it to the Left?

Warning, serious dumbfucks linked below.

• AL QAEDA Fighters Join Libyan Rebels – Patriot Update
• Al Qaeda offers aid to rebels in Libya – Washington Times
• Connections Between Al Qaeda And Libyan Rebels Run Deep
• Israel Matzav: Shocka: Libyan rebels admit al-Qaeda connection, steal SAM’s
• Obama and al Qaida back Libyan rebels, US may arm « Creeping Sharia
• Report: Al Qaeda ‘Islamic Emirate’ Established in Libya, Led by Former Gitmo Detainee | The Blaze
• Truth Revealed: Al Qaeda Part Of Libyan Rebels, U.S. Helping Fighters Who Killed Americans In Iraq! at Pat Dollard

End dumbfucks

Sources, Bibliography, and Related Articles

Here’s some news which might not have yet penetrated the U. S. establishment, and might go some way to describing how the Left can support both the popular revolution and oppose a U.S. military takeover.

• Libye: le président Condé s’oppose à l’intervention militaire contre le Colonel Kadhafi
• Alive in Libya: Reports from the ground
• BREAKING: Revolutionaries kill high ranking Officer from Khamees battalion | Libya February 17th
• Niger/Crise libyenne : La guerre du pétrole
• De-racialising revolutions – Opinion – Al Jazeera English
• Egypt arming Libyan rebels
• Gaddafi’s entourage sends out secret peace feelers -Reuters
• Libya and the World Left | Immanuel Wallerstein
• Libya uprising: Libyan rebels appear to take leaf from Moammar Kadafi’s playbook – latimes.com
• Libya: Stranded Foreign Workers | Human Rights Watch
• Libya: The illusion of force | Editorial | Comment is free | The Guardian
• • An ORBAT of Gadaffi’s forces on the eve of U.S. attackRegime’s ground forces comprise an equivalent of six reinforced, mechanized brigades. Five of these include at least one armoured battalion equipped with T-72s, some have battalions of SP-artillery assigned as well, and all have mechanized battalions equipped with ZSU-23-4s, BMP-1s and BTR-60s. All are also reinforced through additions of “militia” battalions driving plenty of technicals. These units are deployed roughly as follows:
  • - Sahban Brigade is operational in western Libya, primarily in Zintan area
  • - Khuwelidi al-Hammidi Brigade (minus one company of T-72s and one company of mech infantry, lost in fighting and through defections) is either securing Tripoli and Sabratha or besieging Misurata
  • - 5AB (minus at least one battalion, lost due to defections) is besieging Misurata
  • - Khamis 32AB is now at Agedabia
  • - Beni Wallid Brigade (minus nearly an equivalent of a motorised battalion, lost through defections and its attempt to enter Misurata) is somewhere between Misurata and Beni Wallid
  • - Sa’adi Tabouli Brigade is in Syrte, with parts assigned to the 32AB and fighting in Agedabia.
• Pambazuka – Opposing Gaddafi’s massacre and foreign intervention in Libya
• Pro-Gaddafi movement set up in Burkina
• The Sun never too gung ho on Twitpic
• U.S. General: We Won’t Help Libya’s Rebels (Unless We Do) | Danger Room | Wired.com
• World News Blog – Shooting first – and hitting the people they came to protect

To read more about the regime use of military forces — in classic fascist fashion — as competitive agents not as effective fighting units, see especially these works. Note that I am NOT an Arab studies expert, but I did have the common sense to actually read up on the subject before I accepted what CNN was telling me about the working of the Gadaffi regime.

• SWJ Foltz. “Libya’s Military Power,” Chapt 4 in René Lemarchand (ed) The Green and the Black: Qadhafi’s Policies in Africa. Bloomington (1988).    This is especially good, if dated, on the weird logic of an untrained and atomized military provided with huge amount of heavy armaments which they do not know how to use. Much of the failure in Chad is ascribed to this, as is the importance of the six “Central Support” Battalions (which range up to Brigade strength). These too are kept at each others throats, and apart from the officers of the Khamis and some others who are personally loyal to Gadaffi, untrained and barred from carrying out most maneuvers. Note that in the current rising prior to the US involvement, even some elements of these units had defected to the revolutionaries.  Later works (like Mattes) suggest little has changed. These all suggest notions that Gadaffi could retake the east without outside help are very unlikely.
• H Mattes. “Challenges to security sector governance in the Middle East: the Libyan case” Geneva Center for Democratic Control of Armed Forces (2004)
• William Blum. “Libya 1981-1989″ in Killing hope: US military and CIA interventions since World War II. Zed (2003)
• Millard Burr, Robert O. Collins. Darfur: the long road to disaster
  [esp. pp.139-176] Markus Wiener Publishers (3rd ed., 2008)

Also see passim in:

• Guy Arnold. The maverick state: Gaddafi and the New World Order. Cassell (1996)
• Asteris Huliaras. “Qadhafi’s comeback: Libya and sub-Saharan Africa in the 1990s.” African Affairs, (2001) 100 (398): 5-25.
• Hussein Solomon and Gerrie Swart. “Libya’s foreign policy in flux” African Affairs, (July 2005) 104 (416): 469-492.

Related articles

• allAfrica.com: North Africa: The Problem With Africans And Arabs (allafrica.com)
• Pambazuka – The world remade (pambazuka.org)
• allAfrica.com: Libya: Uprising Revives Entrenched Racism Towards Black Africans (allafrica.com)
• An RAS Guide – political change in North Africa (africanarguments.org)
• Libya: the internal dynamics of collapse (africanarguments.org)
• On Libya and “African Mercenaries” ” zunguzungu (zunguzungu.wordpress.com)
• World News Blog – Gaddafi and the seven sons, blond mercenaries and X (blogs.channel4.com)

With the miserable news from Japan taking a turn towards a science-fiction level of horror, I’m afraid I can’t get Mr. Burns of the Simpsons out of my head. In one episode, as his nuclear plant goes critical, Mr Burns is giving a phone interview to a local newscaster Kent Brockman, and happily lying about the doom bearing down upon his neighbors.

Kent: Uh, Mr. Burns, people are calling this a meltdown.

Burns: [laughs] Oh, meltdown. It’s one of those annoying buzzwords. We prefer to call it an unrequested fission surplus.

His blithe — if entirely dishonest — optimism in the safety of nuclear power is not far from what we see on American TV. CNN in particular has been egregious in it’s coverage, inviting on a string of poorly accredited cheerleaders for the nuclear industry. On March 12, as things at the Fukushima plant starting going downhill rapidly, CNN International invited on Jay Lehr “PhD” (in “Groundwater Hydrology”, c. 1960) to speak about how safe nuclear power is. Perhaps in a poorly timed fit of morality, CNN has since edited out his quotes from their written report. When asked about the risks, Lehr, introduced as “science director at the Heartland Institute in Chicago” dismissed any concern rising from these plants. “The Japanese people” he said “have enough real problems to worry about without focusing on this.” Lehr then went into a rather ill advised Cassandra mode:

“Nobody builds better power plants than Japan, because they are the most seismically active country on earth. They are built to withstand this very earthquake… I am absolutely, 100% confident that they will be able to solve the existing problem of a meltdown, if it is occurring, that they will be able to totally eliminate the escape of any radiation”

Perhaps a little stunned, the CNN anchor brought in someone in the following segment who she introduced as “active on twitter” (later discovered to be actual nuclear scientist Robert Apthorpe) via Skype from his bedroom, to tell us that “100%” predictions are “unwise.”

Contrast Lehr’s unchallenged “100% confident they will be able to totally eliminate the escape of any radiation” with these in the updated CNN story.

Japanese officials earlier told the International Atomic Energy Agency that radioactivity was “being released directly into the atmosphere”. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said earlier that he could not rule out the possibility of a meltdown at all three troubled reactors at the plant.

Lehr, appearing on Fox News the next evening summed up:

There will not be any health impacts here. The nuclear engineers in Japan are doing a magnificent job under a situation that could never be expected. And the public in Japan has enough to worry about with a horrible disaster without worrying that there is going to be a nuclear explosion.

Note, this is AFTER the third explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, when we all knew radiation was being released, and that cesium was detected outside the plant.

And when asked: “But the fear is to release a radiation, is it not?” replied:

It is but we have a containment structure that is not likely to release the radiation. And if it did release the radiation, most of the radioactive particles have a very short half life. Chernobyl was a number seven as you said. It had no containment building. It totally exploded. There was a cloud of radiation that they said was going to kill tens of thousands of people and deform children.

Ten years after the accident, the U.N. produced a 1,200-page report pointing out that there was no long-term impact on health from anybody away from the plant due to the radiation cloud. There were 1,000 cases of leukemia in the village right surrounding Chernobyl, and 998 of them were cured.

So, this idea of this radioactive cloud like a nuclear bomb is totally false. And puts stress on a population –both our country and their country — that is totally unwarned.

CNN reported the next day

“Their situation is not great,” said David Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University. “It’s pretty clear that they will be getting very high doses of radiation. There’s certainly the potential for lethal doses of radiation.”

But shouldn’t there be consequences, both for Lehr and CNN, for engaging in such willful ignorance in times of crisis?

The United States nuclear industry apparently doesn’t think so. One story described their lobbyists and uncritical cheerleaders as in “All hands on deck mode” the night of the 11th. So it is not surprising that CNN was offered a steady stream of amoral pro-Nuclear happy talk. Why did they accept?

Jay Lehr and the Heartland Institute are not unknown to them. Lou Dobbs was later widely ridiculed for interviewing Lehr (this time described as “an expert on environmental policy”) in December 2008. The theme: if global warming is real, why is it still snowing in the winter time? Lehr, unlike Dobbs, did not fail to understand the distinction between “climate” and “weather”, but just went on and told the world, incorrectly, that temperature averages had not increased since the 13th century. Use of Google might have provided the missing counterpoint.

Jay Leher with Lou Dobbs

In fact, the Heartland Institute often finds itself at odds with logic, science, and (by sheer coincidence according to them) in the corner of what’s easiest for large corporations. They’ve boldly defended big tobacco, big oil, fast food. Pretty much if it’s big, and makes lotsa cash while killing people, Heartland has taken the “principled, free-market, libertarian” stand to defend “freedom.” Have I mentioned their principled stand of not revealing their donors? Back when they were un-principled (“pre-principled”?) investigators found they were sponsored by a who’s who U.S. corporations, Exxon most notably. Heartland says they no longer receive funding from Exxon, but only small donors. Who they will not reveal.

Jay Lehr really is a perfect fit for the liberty loving Heartland Foundation. A consultant on environmental impacts of well drilling for companies and others seeking to suck things out or stick things in the water table (in the 80s the practice of drilling such wells for industrial waste disposal was all the rage), Dr. Lehr has long railed against the big government interference of the Environmental Protection Agency. Except for that time in the late 80s when he was contracted to do analysis required by the EPA. After a fraud investigation, the then prominent member of the National Water Well Association and Minnesota Ground Water Association Jay Lehr, also came to be known as “defendant”, along with a co-worker. To quote their then employers:

“the defendants Jay H. Lehr and Keith Lelux falsified and caused to be falsified the employee time sheets to reflect that the employees worked a total of 2270 hours on EPA Project Number CR-910715-02-3 when, in fact, as they knew, the employees did not work a total of 2270 hours on EPA Project Number CR-910715-02-3.”

This resulted in fraud against the taxpayers of almost $200,000. Lehr, despite weaselly protesting, plead guilty, was fined $25,000, and was sentenced to six months in a Federal Prison. So he could be considered an expert in both fleecing taxpayers and the ways in which the feds can take away your liberty.

Lehr, though, has been consistent in his criticism of the EPA. He spoke out in articles dated 1994 and just last year, Lehr has criticized the EPA as too political, and ready to be decommissioned. No one has to my knowledge charged that his legal history with the EPA predated these surely honest ideological positions.

And bold ideological defense of liberty is surely Lehr’s forte. He’s taken on the powers that be, defending the health benefits of eating red meat, the hardy independence that comes in Atrazine (a pesticide banned as dangerous to human health in the EU) in our water supply, poo-pooed those communists who worry about recycling, asbestos exposure, and stepped up against the scourge of Canadian style health care. But where Lehr has really shined, putting his 1960 degree in well digging to use, has been in fighting that boondoggle of “climate change”. In fact this is were he really is a world leader, one of the most prominent of speakers shipped around the country — and as far away as Australia — to save us from the unneeded worry over rising sea levels, melting glaciers, or limp-wristed hurricanes. Sissies!

So what is the consequence of all this?

This professional denier of reality has been given prime time exposure, lauded not challenged, in front of millions of viewers of “America’s most trusted news source,” blatantly telling us the thing that are being reported are untrue. In a sense, one can feel sorry for Lehr, even the staff at Heartland. They have to eat after all, and being unable to practice your chosen profession, it must be nice to have rich donors pay you to tell the world everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds. If I wanted to build nuclear power stations, I’m sure the Heartland Institute would be a great investment.

But one must wonder still, why would news sources put them on and treat their obvious ravings with deference? CNN would do us all a service, one that would begin to make up for this last mistake, by explaining who books these charlatans and why.

Extra

And now for your edification, several really frightening but well informed articles on the Japanese nuclear crisis, and the complete script of Mr. Burns’ TV appearance!

* Nuclear experts weigh in on GE containment system – The Washington Post

* Reactors at heart of Japanese nuclear crisis raised concerns as early as 1972, memos show – The Center for Public Integrity

* In Fuel-Cooling Pools, a Danger for the Longer Term – NYTimes.com

* Japan Woes May Impede U.S. Nuclear Push – NYTimes.com

* Stricken Reactors Defy Japan’s Best Efforts to Contain Damage – NYTimes.com

* Radiation exposure: a quick guide to what each level means | World news | guardian.co.uk

From Simpsons Episode 305: Homer Defined.

They have Monty Burns on the phone, as a picture of a badly-toupee’d Monty is shown on the screen.

Kent: On the line with us now is plant owner C. Montgomery Burns. Mr. Burns?

Burns: Oh, hello, Kent. [as loud rhythmic buzzing continues in the background] Right now, skilled nuclear energy technicians are calmly correcting a minor, piffling malfunction. [rapid-fire shots of havoc in the plant] But I can assure you and the public that there is absolutely no danger whatsoever. [air raid siren wails] Things couldn’t be more ship-shape. [cut to Burns' office, where he is busy donning a radiation suit]

Smithers: Sir, where is my radiation suit?

Burns: How the hell should I know? [covers the name `Smithers' on the suit he is wearing]

Kent: Uh, Mr. Burns, people are calling this a meltdown.

Burns: [laughs] Oh, meltdown. It’s one of those annoying buzzwords. We prefer to call it an unrequested fission surplus.

At the Retirement Castle, Abe, Jasper, and a woman watch TV…

Kent: After the meltdown, we can expect roving bands of…

Abe: Ah, I don’t like this program.

Jasper: Change the channel.

TV: Wheel! Of! Fortune!!

On TV…

Prof. John Fink: [indicating on a map] These unfortunate people here will be instantly killed. [indicating] This circle, which I am sad to say we are in, will experience a slower, considerably more painful death.

Kent: Good Lord!

At the Retirement Castle…

TV: I’d like to solve the puzzle. `Three Loins in the Fountain’. [buzz]

On TV…

Burns: [voice only] Yes, we’ve isolated the problem. Wouldn’t you know, false alarm.

Marge: Phew!

Burns: It seems a single wayward crow flew into our warning system.

Kent: Very good. Well, sir, your point about nuclear hysteria is well-taken. This reporter promises to be more trusting and less vigilant in the future.

Burns: [in his office, still wearing his radiation suit] Excellent. Well, ta!

References

• Will nuclear industry feel the fallout from Japan? – Darren Samuelsohn and Josh Voorhees – POLITICO.com
• OpEdNews – Diary: Saving Lives & Saving Hides
• Explosion rocks another Japanese nuclear reactor building – CNN.com
• Right Answers: Separating Fact from Fantasy « Intellectual Conservative Politics and Philosophy
• Heartland Institute – SourceWatch
• Jay Lehr – SourceWatch
• The Heartland Institute
• Profile Results
• Climate sceptics and fringe political groups are an unhealthy cocktail | Leo Hickman | Environment | guardian.co.uk
• A quote from another “free-thinker” prominetly praised by Lehr “Americans cannot understand that the Islamic practice of deceit and war is deemed critical to the expansion of this “religion.”
• Daily Kos :: Comments: Sometimes, In December …
• MGWA Newsletter, June 1991
• Asbestos Removal: Our Most Costly Environmental Scam – by Jay Lehr and Samuel Aldrich – Environment & Climate News
• Disposal of Toxic Waste in Wells Expected to Grow Despite Critics – Deep-Well Disposal of Waste Is Expected to Surge – Front Page – NYTimes.com
• Early environmental activist calls today’s groups too political
• Canadian Health Care Is No Model for U.S. – by Jay Lehr, Ph.D. – Health Care News
• Did the Atkins Diet Kill Robert Atkins? – by Jay H. Lehr, Ph.D. – Opeds
• THE SHINBONE STAR: December 2008
• The Washington Monthly
• Jay Lehr
• Food Supply Threat Seen in Pending Suit: Class-Action Aimed at Pesticide Atrazine – Science News – redOrbit
• Get excited about recycling? Not me :: Jeff Jacoby
• The Patriot Sheepdog: It’s Time to Sunset the EPA
• Profile Results

Related articles

• AfricaFiles | Niger: A poisoned gift (africafiles.org)

Mahamadou Issoufou of the PNDS and Seyni Oumarou of the MNSD vote for themselves, presumably.

Saturday the 12th of March will see second round voting in Niger’s Presidential elections, marking a return to civilian rule and the beginning of the Seventh Republic.  It seems certain that front runner and PNDS-Tarayya candidate Mahamadou Issoufou will become the first President of the new republic on 8 April when the military junta that deposed Mamadou Tandja on 18 February 2010 formally cedes power.

From one of several opposition parties Issoufou and the PNDS stepped remarkably into the breach left by Tandja.  The party has gone out of their way throughout this campaign to present an image of a unified body of ideas and change.  Issoufou has engaged in unprecedented face to face campaign rallies across the nation, not relying on the Nigerien tradition of local notables cobbling together coalitions to turn out votes.  The PNDS has also presented slick campaign materials, and from early days released a detailed manifesto of the process by which they will raise and spend development funds, including plans to empower local subsistence farmers (not usually a focus, but one that effects a majority of Niger’s often politically silent population).  The PNDS is undoubtedly the most ideological — social democratic — of the major parties, but it too remains mired in the traditional games of regionalism (Tahoua and Illea being the base) and constantly shifting coalition building.

The MNSD HQ in Niamey: Don't rule out the Big Baobab.

No one should discount their major rival, the MNSD-Nassara.  While bruised and bloodied by their association with disgraced President  Tandja, the MNSD predates Tandja’s leadership from 1991 to last year.  It was formed in 1987 by the military dictatorship which ruled Niger from 1974 to 1991 as a single party built on a corporatist model. Local communities, traditional leaders, elders, youth groups, and professional organizations were channeled into the MNSD, for most as their first experience of mass politics.  The politics which had led to independence in 1960 devolved rapidly into a one party state under Hamani Diori, open only to the elite and generally uninterested in popular mobilization for even the most superficial purposes.  One aspect that the MNSD did carry on from the First Republic was the drafting of traditional rulers and notables into the unitary party.  The MNSD has thus become a traditionalist, conservative and non-ideological body with tremendous support from elites, the military, and many rural communities who remember the rule of Seyni Kountché (1974-87) and his successor Ali Saibou (1987-93) as a reaction against corruption and famine which dominated civilian rule. The MNSD, for all the purges and infighting which Tandja introduced from 2007, remains for many the “Grand Baobab”, the big tent party that welcomes all who profess love of country and traditional values.  Their relative success even in the wake of an extremely popular coup against Tandja’s corruption and misrule should demonstrate the deep roots that still feed the MNSD.

This is best seen in the aftermath of the first round of these elections.  Just days before the vote, almost every political party other than the favored PNDS met to form the Alliance for National Reconciliation.  This included all but two of Issoufou’s closest allies. The ARN promised to support whichever of their number could make it to the second round against the PNDS, tipped to be either the  MNSD-Nassara or the new personal party for former MNSD Prime Minister Hama Amadou, the MODEN-FA Lumana.  Two things were stunning here.  One was that so many parties that had led marches to oust and faced repression by Tandja’s MNSD-Nassara in 2009 were willing to reconcile so quickly with their former foes.   Perhaps more stunning: Hama Amadou, the former heir apparent to the MNSD signed on so enthusiastically.  Hama had been impeached on curiously timed corruption charges in 2007, just as he seemed ready to take the party’s leadership from Tandja, and then found himself imprisoned for over a year, his supporters ejected from their party and purged from the government.  At one point Hama claimed that prison had struck him so low with disease that he feared death.  On his temporary release he fled the country, saying that the government was planning to assassinate him should he stay. And yet he was willing just a year later to literally embrace the man who led the MNSD purge of his supporters, Seyni Oumarou. Nigerien politics is nothing if not dramatic.

The question on everyone’s lips leading up to the Parliamentary and first round Presidential elections was what support Hama’s untested MODEN-FA Lumana would have.  Taking with him elements of the vaunted MNSD machine in strongholds like Tillaberi, many thought he might cruise into the second round.  In the event, Hama’s new cadre was no match for the entrenched party system.  The PNDS scored %36 in the presidential vote and 39 of the 113 assembly seats.  The MNSD followed with %23 and 26 seats, while Hama’s supporters provided a reasonable showing of 23 seats but only %19 for his presidential bid.

The first round candidates, clockwise from top left: Hama Amadou, Mahamane Ousmane, Mahamadou Issoufou, Seyni Oumarou, Ousmane Issoufou Oubandawaki, (second row, right to left) Amadou Cheiffou, Abdoulaye Amadou Traoré, Amadou Cissé, Bayard Mariama Gamatié, Moussa Moumouni Djermakoye

The following 48 hours proved again the mercenary nature of Nigerien politics.  All but two of the sizable parties in the ARN coalition again defected, clearly demonstrating that the desire to side with a winner was more important than any ideology, personal loyalty, or even shame.  Hama led the charge back to the Issoufou camp, and speculation remains rife whether he has demanded the Prime Ministership or the Presidency of the Assembly as his price.

There are several sidelines here worth noting.  Former President Mahamane Ousmane and his CDS–Rahama, once the dominant party of the 3rd Republic and a powerhouse based in Zinder collapsed completely, with %8 of the Presidential vote and only 3 seats in the assembly.  The CDS had played a pivotal role in first opposing, then supporting Tandja, while becoming a linchpin of the opposition to the President’s 2009 power grab called the 6th Republic.  Whatever the basis, Ousmane has long been among the top vote traders in the Niamey political game.   Not content to crash and burn, the CDS seemingly ripped itself apart in the post election realignment.  Elements of the youth section and the central committee fought Ousmane to remain tied to MNSD-Nassara, when he seemed to jump ship.

Signs welcoming the 2010 military coup: the year long military rule has reinforced many Nigerien's view of the military as a more trustworthy than most civilian governments.

This is important because the CDS and Ousmane represent the quintessential personal party in Niger.  It has long been assumed that most parties — with the exception of the PNDS and the MNSD — are entirely vehicles of their leaders.  There certainly is little ideological content to Nigerien parties, and the regional bases, while relied upon for a foundation, do not make most of them strictly regionalist or ethnic parties.  Nigerien parties are invariably a constellation “big men” and more quiet local traditional notables with the backing of one or two regionally important business moguls.

While much of this definition remains, the utter destruction of the CDS was mirrored in several other smaller parties that had long provided vehicles for individual party heads and their backers to demand a cut of the benefits that come with governance.

Political fixture Amadou Cheiffou’s RSD-Gaskiya disappeared from the assembly, former PM Amadou Cissé’s UDR-Tabbat fell to six seats.  And while the RDP-Jama’a  and ANDP-Zaman-Lahiya retained 7 and 8 seats respectively, these two regional parties (Agadez and Dosso) lost their charismatic leaders, and seem to survive only as supports for larger parties.  Of the former loyal PNDS coalition partners throughout the last decade (PNA-Al’ouma, PPN-RDA, and UNI), only UNI managed to win a single seat.  Publishing magnate Sanoussi Jackou’s PNA-Al’ouma has hardly caused a ripple as the last of the 35 small parties to endorse Issoufou in the second round.

The pattern here is of political coalescence.  As in the days before the second round and grand total of 35 political parties lined up with the PNDS, Niger’s political ecosystem might appear varied, there is some reason to believe two major parties and three or four major political barons are emerging to dominate.

Rumors have challenged this reading, especially from within the CDS faction fight.  There are those who claim the MNSD, after signing parties onto their ARN coalition in the first round, passed out campaign materials in areas dominated by their new partners that advised supporters of smaller parties should vote on the MNSD line, and that vote would be then divided between the coalition partners at counting.  Honestly, I have not seen a explanation of this strategy that is coherent enough to have convinced many voters.  It’s likely that it is just recriminations on the part of ARN partners, whose obvious craven maneuvering — even by Nigerien politician’s standards — drove their voters to other parties, or to abstain.

The actual institutions of the Seventh Republic are worth noting as well.  Niger has now seen three cycles of democratic rule, political deadlock, and military coup since the protests and National Convention in 1991.  Every time the new constitution has been rewritten to avoid the failure of the last.  Niger’s recent political history has been an oft-ignored constitutional laboratory unlike few others in history.  A too weak and divided semi-presidential Third Republic was revised into a more strongly Presidential Fifth.  The power grab that resulted when it was time for the President to leave has led to a more divided governing model for the Seventh Republic.  Among the more interesting innovations, the Leader of the Opposition is given formal powers, and must play a part in successful legislation.  The Prime Minister and the President of the National Assembly share powers given to the Prime Minister in a Parliamentary system, and both check the President.  Is this a recipe for gridlock? Or is this a system designed to function despite gridlock?  This last might be a healthy innovation, where no office is expected to do much alone, and therefore doesn’t feel they are being prevented.  Sadly, the success or failure of this system will once again come down to the relative personalities of a handful of political leaders, notorious for their outsized egos, and frequently the subject of whispers about personal enrichment.

It should be noted as well, that for all the talk of change, the same men (and they are almost entirely men) of the Nigerien political class were players from the beginning of Niger’s multiparty experiment in 1992-3. If Issoufou us to make good on his rhetoric of principled governance, opening the doors to every political operative with a party office is not a promising start.

Any discussion of Niger’s political future, even on a purely formal basis, would be remiss if it did not mention the majority of Nigeriens to whom politics means very little.  Three million voters came out for the first round in a nation of over fourteen million people.  The seventy or eighty percent of the population who are engaged in subsistence farming and seasonal labor abroad have no time for politics, and are rarely included in the discussion.  The PNDS has pointed out ways in which it will tackle the chronic malnutrition which has been a fact of life for many rural communities since the 1970s.  But those struggling in rural areas are more acted upon than actors.  Were they to be given real power themselves, we might see the depth of changes Niger needs.

Some background:

• NIGER: First Steps Towards the Restoration of Democracy? – IPS, Ousseini Issa: (Feb 28, 2010)
• Niger: New Constitution First Step Towards Democracy « Politics Africa: The Seventh Republic is Approved (2010)
• Sebastian Elischer: Democratization in Desperate Places: Niger’s Seventh Attempt Center for Strategic and International Studies (Jan 28, 2011)
• Niger civilians, armed forces sign stability pact: The Military goes out on a high note, signing a pact with political parties that it will not intervene in constitutional politics (2011)
• Niger Government To Feed One Million For Free « Politics Africa: The Military’s role as saviors from corrupt civilian rule is again reinforced (2010)
• Kimba & Idrissa’s recent collection: Armee et politique au Niger (9782869782167) a great collection of essays on the military’s involvement in Nigerien politics, published just before the 2010 coup.
• Jibrin Ibrahim, Abdoulaye Niandou Souley: “The rise to power of an opposition party the MNSD in Niger Republic” a fairly definitive look at the strength, and failing, of the Third Republic (1992-1995)
• Niger’s Tandja dissolves parliament (Reuters, 2009)
• CDS Rahama Breaks with Tandja, deeping his isolation (2009)
• “Constitution de la 7ème République” full text, PDF, in French, from the website of the Consultative Council which drafted it

Related articles

• UPDATE 1-Tandja ally heads into Niger presidential run-off (af.reuters.com)
• Tandja ally heads into Niger presidential run-off (af.reuters.com)
• Niger Elections: Has Mahamadou Issoufou Clenched It? (sahelblog.wordpress.com)
• CORRECTED – Niger top court validates poll, run-off March 12 (af.reuters.com)
• PREVIEW-Niger races to secure poll for civilian rule | Agricultural Commodities | Reuters (af.reuters.com)
• TIMELINE-Niger holds presidential elections (af.reuters.com)
• Niger Elections Head to Run-Off (sahelblog.wordpress.com)
• Countdown to Niger’s Elections (sahelblog.wordpress.com)
• Niger Elections: So Far, So Good? (sahelblog.wordpress.com)

Frank R. Crosswaith, labor organizer and political activist.

Here’s a fascinating new article on the history of Harlem activists A. Philip Randolph and Frank R. Crosswaith, and their involvement with the Socialist Party (riven by right and left factionalism) in the 1920s.

It places them in contrast to Black Nationalism, but highlights the abuse they were willing to put up with at the hands of some purported “comrades” for their belief that race and class struggles are inextricable.

It’s also a nice picture of the diversity of the Socialist Party of America at the time, which in the New York Socialist Party was made up of many dozens of active locals. The full text of the article is available [in html and in pdf ] for a limited time. Some excerpts are below.

The history confirms my longstanding dislike of Victor Berger and Morris Hillquit (the right wing apparatchiks that overtook the party in the 20s) and my love of Eugene Debs and Big Bill Heywood, men continually struggling with the blindness of their times.

In the wake of this, I’m also eager to read more about St.Croix born New Yorker, labor activist and socialist Frank Crosswaith. Crosswaith, although a young radical, a lifelong socialist and prominent trade union organizer, in the 30s and 40s chose the Social Democratic blind alley of Roosevelt and various anti-communist Democratic party front groups.

Cornelius L. Bynum. The New Negro and Social Democracy during the Harlem Renaissance, 1917–37 The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (2011), 10: 89-112

Randolph and Crosswaith’s assessment of socialism’s radical potential to counter racial discrimination aligned closely with the basic position that Eugene Debs took on race and the Socialist Party. Despite the clear racial animosity that both leaders and rank-and-file members openly expressed from the party’s inception, Debs recognized and strongly argued that racism and racial discrimination fundamentally violated the party’s core principles and mission. Though he was equally susceptible to the kind of personal failings on race that he so forthrightly criticized in others, Debs insisted that economic freedom and political equality went hand-in-hand. This reasoning fit with the sense of open participation at the center of Randolph and Crosswaith’s notion of social justice. Even as Socialist Party leaders and rank-and-file members continued to exhibit deep racial hostility, Deb’s position on economic justice and racial equality largely matched key aspects of Randolph and Crosswaith’s appraisal of African Americans’ plight.

…….

By the time Randolph and Crosswaith joined the Socialist Party it had lost much of the organizational cohesion of its first years. Nevertheless, they still viewed it as African Americans’ best political option. Portraying the plight of black workers as fundamentally caused by the impact of racial discrimination on their ability to “sell their labor in the market effectively,” they were convinced that the solution to this problem lay in greater labor organization and overhauling industrial capitalism. They and others maintained that the competition at capitalism’s core accentuated the economic roots of racism. The Socialist Party’s determination to redress the ills of industrial capitalism and promote unionization led Randolph and Crosswaith to believe that it was central to challenging racial discrimination and fostering the kind of social justice that they envisioned. It was this link between unionization and social justice that propelled them into the Socialist Party and became such a central component of the radical message that they preached in the postwar years.

……..

For Randolph, Crosswaith, and the small group of African Americans recruited into the New York Socialist Party‘s Twenty-first Assembly District in Harlem, this commitment to progressive reform and political mobilization was attractive. Randolph and Crosswaith in particular recognized the significant, if unintended, implications embedded in this electoral strategy for African Americans “seeking human status and full freedom.” The participatory nature inherent in drawing workers into local and regional politics fit neatly with their conception of social justice. As Crosswaith explained years later in reflecting back on his role in building interracial trade unions, he and Randolph understood that “the nation’s labor could not exist half-slave and half-free.” They looked to mobilization and interracial labor solidarity to promote the kind of industrial democracy that would ensure an “equality of responsibility and equality of benefits” for all workers. In fact, their willingness to turn a blind eye to clear racial antipathy in the party seemed largely predicated on the argument that African Americans could only “become a power to be feared and respected throughout this nation” by joining the Socialist Party. Their belief that the party’s emphasis on social and economic reform could be turned to the specific advantage of African Americans certainly seemed to have factored into Randolph’s decisions to accept the party’s nomination to run for New York state comptroller in 1920 and secretary of the state assembly in 1921. Even if Berger and Hillquit never really intended to engage an agenda of social justice for African Americans, Randolph and Crosswaith nonetheless found meaningful resonance between the reform strategies they promoted and the conception of social justice he and Crosswaith were formulating.

Randolph also found common cause with the syndicalist element of the Socialist Party concentrated in the mining and lumber states of the Mountain West. Primarily organized around William “Big Bill” Haywood’s Western Federation of Miners that gave rise to the IWW in 1905, this wing of the party endorsed industrial sabotage and violence as acceptable protest tactics and believed that workers should use the ballot to gain administrative control over government’s police powers to protect striking workers. They adamantly opposed any program of progressive reform on the grounds that it merely forestalled the inevitable workers revolution. Instead, Haywood and the IWW pushed for a general strike to reorganize society around factories, mines, and other places of production. Haywood was an especially strong advocate of industrial unionism. Focusing almost exclusively on labor’s immediate demands, he looked to organize all workers into one vast and well-disciplined labor organization with enough political power to successfully challenge their opponents. Most importantly perhaps for Randolph, Haywood and the IWW attacked all divisions of the working class—racial, religious, and ethnic—as detrimental to the cause of overthrowing of industrial capitalism. This decidedly inclusive organizational policy fit neatly with Randolph and Crosswaith’s conception of social justice and their determination to bring African Americans into the working-class fold.

……..

In the years immediately following World War I, A. Philip Randolph and Frank R. Crosswaith began devising a notion of social justice that set them apart from other African American radicals in Harlem and mainstream white socialists. Although they too believed that transforming industrial capitalism was central to combating racial discrimination, they rooted their assessment of modern industrial society in a conception of social justice that stressed the shared humanity of all and insisted that all were equally entitled to benefit from society’s advances. In fashioning their critique in these terms rather than the more standard producer theory associated with mainstream socialism, Randolph and Crosswaith articulated a position that set out to adapt the broader spirit of postwar reform to the particular conditions and concerns of Harlem. Even as their message of interracial cooperation in organized labor was simultaneously drowned out by the powerful appeal of Garveyism, ignored by white labor unions, and undermined by the Socialist Party’s inability to address the Negro question, the conception of social justice that Randolph and Crosswaith formulated in these years creatively fused black racial identity and class consciousness into an authentic and largely independent strain of black radicalism.

Related articles

• The Frank R. Crosswaith Papers, 1917-1965 at the New York Public Library.
• HW Bio: Hubert Henry Harrison A short introduction to the famous Harlem Socialist, Hubert Harrison (harlemworldblog.wordpress.com)
• Celebrating Hubert Harrison (socialistwebzine.org)
• On the Harlem Socialist activists: Afro-Americans and radical politics (From “Richard B. Moore: Caribbean Militant in Harlem,” edited by W. Burghadt Turner and Joyce Moore Turner) 1969, reprinted 1999.
• the Socialist Party of New York City (SP-USA)
• African Americans and the struggle for socialism, 1901-1925 By Abayomi Azikiwe and How Debs became a socialist by Paul D’Amato (1989) both deal with the same history from a Black Nationalist perspective (dandelionsalad.wordpress.com)
• Study Shows Depth of Unemployment for Blacks in New York – NYTimes.com a little reported survey showing the depth of the ethnic disparity still seen in a “colorblind” New York under “Business Friendly” capitalism (economix.blogs.nytimes.com)

As I write this, Saif Gaddafi is speaking to a Libyan people who have seemed to have already moved past his father’s regime.  His late and desperate attempt to scare his countrymen into rejecting a revolution which has engulfed his nation touched one element with which, seemingly, those opposing him might agree.  He blamed “crimes” on “Africans, paid by criminals” to kill Libyans.

There is a very widespread and dangerous trope being played upon when Libyans accuse Gaddafi’s crimes of being committed by “African Mercenaries”, hints of which are being picked up in the foreign media.

CNN has just prominently shown a Libyan woman, tear stained, crying out on the newly liberated streets of Egypt.  She calls for justice for her people, for the killing to end, begs Obama to intervene, and then repeats “Gaddafi is killing us with his Africans!”  She is not alone in arranging this revolution between the Libyan people on one side, and Gaddafi, his family, and dark-skinned “outsiders” on the other.

For the benefit of those unfamiliar with the use of a map, Libyans are Africans.  But Africans here means “black people” and there is a very long very pernicious racism in their part of the world towards “black Africans”, not unlike that in my part of the world.  When I see tweets like the following, I cringe.  I also see a history of fear and contempt slipping out in a time of unparalleled suffering.

Gadafi is ordering african mercenaries to break into homes in #Benghazi to RAPE Libyan women in order to detract men protesters! #Libya #Feb

20 February 2011 3:04 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@khalidAlotaibi

Khalid Alotaibi

In all honesty, I support the people of Libya’s righteous anger against the brutal Gaddafi regime.  It will not be going out on a limb at this point to say they will succeed, and that the entire region (including Tchad, Mali, & Niger) will be better off without Gaddafi’s almost constant destabilization of his African neighbors.

But like much of northern Africa, in Libya there is a long history of fear, hatred, and oppression based on skin color.  There is a distinct minority of “black” Libyans whose slave origins mean they are still regarded with contempt by some, as there is a large number of political and economic refugees in what is a relatively prosperous state.

#Libya @CNN @CBC. Confirmed the African mercenaries were raised in campus around Sabha and West Mountain since childhood as salves.

19 February 2011 11:14 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@AlMingar

MR KANADA

Foreign Fighters

And while oppression organized by skin color has a long history,  the Gaddafi regime has contributed a different angle to this prejudice: the foreign fighter.  Since the early 70s, Libya has offered aid, by degrees of openness, to revolutionary and opposition groups in most every corner of the world.  Begun as an extension of Soviet Cold War policy, Gaddafi’s involvement with foreign dissident groups — funded by the oil boom of the 1970s — has extended beyond ideology or geopolitics.  For those of us who remember the Cold War, it’s easy to see a degree of hysteria — almost equal to today’s anti-Islamist hysteria in the west — in the views current in the 1980s that Gadaffi was behind most every threat, from Belfast to Managua.   But to whatever small degree his support was really effective, most  every African nation has seen some of it’s citizens trained in Libyan camps.

Foday Sankoh, Charles Taylor, Moses Blah, Blaise Compaore trained in Libya.   Future Malian and Nigerien Tuareg rebels trained in Libya in the late 70s, recruited from refugees fleeing famine and oppression.  The band Tinariwen actually formed in one such camp.

Libya has developed a sophisticated infrastructure to support rebel groups, based around Tripoli’s “Al-mathaba al-alamiyya…” — “World Center for the fight against Imperialism Racism and Fascism“.  While support offered to leftist militants from Palestine, the Provisional IRA in Ireland, Nicaragua, and, the ANC fighting Apartheid South Africa,  may represent an ideology which matches the admirable title (at least to this leftist), most “Al-mathaba” operations have taken “anti-imperialism” to rather vaguely coincide with Gaddafi and the Libyan elite’s nationalist expansion.

The most famous local manifestation of this was surely the 1970s & 80s Tchadian war. Libya was early to bankroll FROLINAT  and it’s splits. The Soviets (most notably the GDR) helped early in this process, as part of a strategy against the undoubtedly neocolonial French supported government in Tchad.  But Libya had nationalist motivation, in particular the desire to expand control over the Uranium rich Aozou Strip. Gaddafi’s support at times made Hissène Habré and Goukouni Oueddei almost entirely creatures of Libyan policy.  Habré, now endlessly awaiting trial in Senegal for his brutality as Tchadian president, saw the flexibility of Gaddafi’s support, when Goukouni was in turn supported as insurgent leader against Habré’s government.  The U.S. backed Libyan dissidents were later set up in mirror image camps until ejected by a Tchadian ideological shift in 1991.

Since, Libya has most notably hosted Sudanese, Liberian, Sierra Leonian, Ethiopian, Eritrean, Tunisian, Egyptian, Tuareg, and Somali rebel groups. There is, in this, little discernible ideological continuity apart from a desire to maintain Libya as a player to be courted by leaders of every troubled nation in the area.

But note from the list above, dissidents hosted in the past by Gaddafi are as likely to be “white” Arabs as “Black Africans.”

RT @iyad_elbaghdadi: Reports that "African mercenaries" are from Chad, Niger, Uganda, Mali, and Burkina Faso #Libya #Feb17

19 February 2011 1:45 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@feld_art

Frank

RT @alithelady: RT @KCDalis: @samiyusuf African mercenaries infiltrate every city in Libya, carrying swords to kill. http://mtw.tl/lvjmgt

18 February 2011 1:10 pm via m.tweete.netReplyRetweetFavorite

@_iima

Halimatu Syadiah

Current numbers are even harder to discern.  Tchadian and Sudanese rebels must be the largest groups still in the country.  But even these are not huge contingents: a few hundred at most.  Some blurry photos and one video show two dozen yellow capped men identified as “African Mercenaries.” Little can actually be discerned from the photos, but assuming the poster is accurate, and these are “black Africans”, and they are working with the security forces, and they are armed, they might be wearing the yellow turbans favored by some Tchadian and Sudanese ethnic Zaghawa and some of the Darfuri Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebels.  But that is a lot of ifs.

Foreign Migrants

Large numbers of “Africans” seen in Libyan cities are much more likely to be foreign workers and those trying to reach Europe.  Libya has alternated in support and oppression directed to refugees passing into their country from the south.  These are not all “Black Africans”, but include South Asians and others, many trafficked from Nigeria, through Niger via a brutal desert crossing.  West Africans are periodically outraged by news stories of migrants deported by force, or simply dumped in the desert by Libyan government.  More scandalous are stories of robbery, abuse, and even killing by criminal gangs and (less frequently, but more disturbing) by xenophobic Libyans. Many migrants are locked up in camps across Libya, kept in conditions unmonitored by outsiders.

This has played into some of the “African Mercenary” rumors of the last few days, with reports of ever increasing amounts paid to migrants by Libyan security forces to carry out crimes against civilians.

No one should doubt that there are dark skinned men in the Libyan security forces.  Despite the unspoken assumptions of some Libyans, most are surely their fellow Libyans.  There are also, undoubtedly, foreign born guerrillas under arms in Libya, or former fighters long ago enrolled in the security services.  But again, these cannot be a large number.

Who Pulls the Trigger?

Reports of “African Mercenaries” have become, since 17 February, a staple of Libyan revolutionaries’ news feeds.  We have seen reports, repeated as fact, that almost every time Libyans have been massacred by the state security forces, “Africans” have been to blame.  “Africans” are said to have been flown into Benghazi and Tripoli to protect them for the state, 1300 by one rumor.  A widely quoted report comes from a revolutionary in Ajdabiya  saying: “The regime has sent African forces into the city but we are here waiting in the square of the martyrs. Everyone here is ready to defend the city against the mercenaries. We’ve discovered that these African mercenaries are going to land at Zouitina airport. I can assure you that everybody here is ready to fight against these traitors and African mercenaries.”  Not that he has seen any, but he believes they are coming none the less.

RT @LibyanThinker: URGENT!!! From contact in the Army: So far, 1300 African Mercenaries have arrived in #Libya to date. Cant' the World .

19 February 2011 11:40 pm via iTweet.netReplyRetweetFavorite

@raulrodriguezxD

Raul Rodriguez

Photos and videos, many horrific, have been provided of a handful (I have seen five total) dead uniformed soldiers with varying degrees of dark skin.  This is hardly proof of the hysterical rhetoric built around thousands of black Africans raping women and murdering protesters.

More reports, including those showing troops attacking civilians, point to the Army and the internal security forces. The Security Battalions (‘Kataeb al Amn’) include forces directly under the command of Colonel Massud Abdul Hafiz al-Gaddafi. Not only are these groups well armed and trained, they are carefully chosen for loyalty and ideologically motivated. If there is any truth in the “African Mercenaries” rumors, Tchadians or other former foreign guerrillas, long ago integrated into these internal security forces, would be cause. But the Libyan military and security establishment is gigantic: 50,000 regular troops and almost as many reserves, bolstered by recent spending sprees on Russian and other western equipment. It strains credulity that a few hundred, even a few thousand, “black African” mercenaries would be able to enforce submission upon the Libyan people without the participation of these forces.

On twitter, users have dubbed stories of “African Mercenaries” “Confirmed” after Al Arabiya – and later Al Jazeera – reported as unconfirmed the same stories of “African Mercenaries” twitter users had earlier broadcast.  A news agency, I should remind readers, cannot “confirm” a story by reporting that you are saying it.  It would need multiple individual, reliable, first hand sources providing consistent stories of having seen the original event themselves.  We only have inconsistent third hand reports so far.

And this is not the first time recently we have heard such stories.

In Bahrain, where the military opened fire on unarmed protesters with assault riffles, anti-aircraft weapons, and helicopter fire, some locals have accused “Iraqi”, Pakistani” or other mercenaries of having infiltrated the army.  In the recent massacres on Guinea Conakry and Abidjan, victims have blamed Liberian mercenaries for having murdered and raped protesters.  Again and again, as here in Libya, we hear the cry that “no fellow countryman would do this!”  “Gaddafi couldn’t get Libyans to kill Libyans, so he brought Mercenaries”, not Arab mercenaries, not western mercenaries, but those people who resemble the “lowest”, most “foreign” of our fellow citizens.  There have, just today, been a couple of isolated reports that North Koreans were shooting protesters in Libya, but such reports have not gotten the traction that the “African Mercenaries” have.  I must ask why this is?

Flawed Evidence

Apart form those mentioned above, the photographic evidence for “African Mercenaries” include these photos on Flickr.

I cannot help but note some possible problems with images from Libya that are said to be of an identity card carried by a Guinean captured or killed in Benghazi.  The reports are the man was fighting with Libyan government forces against citizens. That there is no direct evidence linking the man on the card with violence might be the first question.

I am not an expert but I am tempted to refer to that old internet meme: “This picture is shopped, I can tell from some of the pixels…” Honestly, my observations are no proof either way, but it raises enough questions to suggest that someone better qualified in photographic forensics should look at these images.

A %600 blowup of the bottom of one of these photos (click for larger)

Note the circled areas in one section of one of the pictures I examined.

1) Unnatural distinct blur marks, the largest in a square shape.
2) Red stamp patterns that don’t conform consistently to the fold mark.
3) The text has been sharpened.  It is dark, consistent, and the background between letters is pixelated, different from the background in other parts of the card, which is smooth.  This may merely be artifacts of a sharpening attempt so the text was made legible.  Or it is an artifact from pasting.
4) This same text lines do not conform to the card where bent.  All such text lines are parallel to one another, where the other text is skewed..
5) Artifacts where the background bleeds through the fingers which are supposed to be in front of it.

All this said, A Guinean legally in Algeria would be expected to carry a consular id card.  Guinean and Canadian government sources confirm this type of ID is issued by Guinean embassies abroad.

NEW! #Gaddafi has given the African Mercenaries full freedom in raping Libyan women. #Libya

19 February 2011 7:57 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@LibyanThinker

The Libyan Thinker

Stabbed in the Back

Everything alleged by the photographer above may be true.  But I hesitate as these stories play into a natural combination of nationalism, existing social prejudices (of low class “slave” “Blacks”) and fears (of foreign looking immigrants, familiar to xenophobic discourse in Europe and America).  They are understandable, but should they go unchallenged in the lore of this revolution, the new Libya being build risks becoming a no less cruel and unjust place, if for a smaller part of its citizens, adjudged outsiders and traitors by their skin color.

African mercenaries now in #Benghazi #Libya sources in Libya say they're chasing and killing people with knives and swords. We only fear God

17 February 2011 10:26 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@AliLePointe

Jibreel

These phobias of the “other” neglect the horrible reality that Libyans have lived for the last four decades.  They have been oppressed, murdered, tortured and exploited by their fellow Libyans.  It has been said that ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’ (A mangled false quotation of Edmond Burke, but I digress.)

The quote perhaps survives because it speaks to what Europe learned in the 20th century: oppressive states survive by fear and collusion.

The most dramatic example of this, the murder of 12 million Jews and others by Nazi Germany in the 1940s, provides some of the most despairingly stark lessons.  For decades, scholars sought some explanation, some psychological profile of those who carried out this mass murder.  I come back again and again to writers like Tim Mason, an historian of resistance and collaboration with the Nazis, and his despair in finding so much of the latter.  Or Chris Browning, whose book “Ordinary Men” showed those who took part in war crimes were neither born monsters, warped sociopaths, or cold ideologues, but victims of the pedestrian social pressures to conform, turned to the most extreme ends.

Libyans: your fellow citizens have enabled this regime to oppress you for so many years. You must come to terms with this in the aftermath of this revolution, or it will be no revolution at all.

But you have already learned the converse: you have the power to stop this oppression.  You are doing it now, and the world, awed by the bravery and audacity in the Arab world this year, stand now amazed by your fearlessness.

But Libyans, you do yourself an injustice with these fears directed at “Africans”. You, in more than one sense, are these Africans.  You cannot build a society of justice by until you learn this.

UPDATE 2011-02-21 23:49 EST

Please take a look at this VERY useful article focusing on color politics in Libya in the light of these events: Gaddafi is killing us with his Africans! by N. Thompson, published at “My Weku” Magazine, 2011-02-21 A useful look at the immigrant condition in Libya from 2000: Ethnic violence and mass deportations of immigrants in Libya By Trevor Johnson, WSWS 28 October 2000

And please read and support http://www.libyafeb17.com/ : sometimes hard to watch, but vital news from inside Libya, as the people try to get free.

Related articles

• Libya Must End Racism Against Black African Migrants and Others UN Watch Written Statement, UN Human Rights Council 13th Session, 16 February 2010
• Libya: ‘Beaten and deported to the Sahara’ Article translated from the Italian by Francesca Megna, published first on 18. Dec 2009 by :: fortresseurope.blogspot.com.
• Migrant Workers From Ghana Who Fled Libya Cite Racism Los Angeles Times
• Racism: Arab-Black African Relations in North Africa Noah Bassil, Khaldoun, 2008
• Losing Libya – Blog – The Arabist (arabist.net)
• Libyan troops defect amid crackdown – Aljazeera.net (news.google.com)
• Benghazi defies Gaddafi (independent.co.uk)
• Libya: US accuses Britain of legitimising Gaddafi (telegraph.co.uk)
• Tony Blair our very special adviser by dictator Gaddafi’s son | Mail Online (dailymail.co.uk)
• LENIN’S TOMB: Libya’s uprising (leninology.blogspot.com)
• Demonstrations in solidarity with the Libyan people February 19th, 2011 ” Enough!Khalas (enoughgaddafi.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)

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).

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• 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)

One of the many menacing street parties of South Africa, from soccerphile.com. Chilling.

As I’ll be spending most of this month tied to a TV or radio, I’ve so far noted one shocking fact: The South African World Cup is not riven by crime, corruption, shoddy workmanship, or terrorism. In fact, things are going swimmingly, the stadiums operations and infrastructure are beautiful, and the only deaths among the 450,000 visitors have been from road accident and falling off a mountain while admiring the scenery.

There’s more realistic complaints about the football itself, especially after the South African side’s almost suicidally poor performances (not to mention a drought of goals, dashed expectations for most African sides, and disastrous English, Spanish, and French performances).  But even if rose gardens have not been delivered on the field or in terms of secondary development, so much of the press run up was so negative — even years of rumors that FIFA would move the cup at the last moment — that it may come as a shock how happy foreign fans are with what they’ve found in South Africa.

One report quotes a puzzled German fan.  Puzzled because, despite the foreign press hysterics, he can go to a local bar and discover “I’m the only white guy in the room but I feel very safe.”.

South African sports reporter Peter Davies has a wonderful piece entitled An Open letter to our Foreign Media friends, marveling at the gloom of foreign media outlets who quake in terror of “machete-wielding gangs roaming the suburbs in search of tattooed, overweight Dagenham dole-queuers to ransack and leave gurgling on the pavement.” But surprise! There’s no fear in walking the streets provided you don’t hang a wad of cash out your back pocket. There are also a surprising shortage of wild animal attacks and collapsing stadia. “For instance, you will find precious few rhinos loitering on street corners, we don’t know a guy in Cairo named Dave just because we live in Johannesburg, and our stadiums are magnificent, world-class works of art.”

Andrew Harding, the BBC’s Africa correspondent, writes about tourists having “had some preconceptions overturned” as England fans descended on Phokeng. While local worried about hooligans (there were none), visitors realized they may have been misled about the dangers of “black Africa”. “We stayed at Sun City, said a couple from Leeds, sitting at [a black African run] bar. We were worried about the crime. But now we just wish we’d come and stayed here.”

Football, eh?

That said…

There are real complaints about South Africa — suffering from gross inequality and rampant poverty — throwing this much money at a World Cup party.  I do agree.  But that’s all of capitalism, not just football.  And it’s not like they were really going to spend this money on poor folks.  At best this can be an opportunity to cross borders in solidarity, to share these struggles, both in Africa and abroad.  But I for one love sport, and the joy it brings.  While those who look after the rich alone will always screw the poor, football can be our weapon as well as ours.  Here are some links to the Poor People’s Movement and The Shack Dwellers Movement in South Africa, and social struggles around the World Cup, including the brilliant “Poor People’s Alternative World Cup.”

• A Short History of Abahlali baseMjondolo, the Durban Shack Dwellers’ Movement (Abahlali baseMjondolo)
  • “Upside Down World Cup”: Raj Patel on How South Africa Has Cracked Down on the Poor and the Shack Dwellers’ Movement Ahead of the World Cup
  • The First Poor People’s World Cup on African Soil from the website of the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign
  • South Africa: World Cup for All – (Durban Social Forum)
  • SOUTH AFRICA: Poor people’s movement draws government wrath (IRIN News)
• Riot police move in as World Cup pay protests spread (The Guardian)
• Thousands protest against World Cup spending (Mail & Guardian Online)
• World Cup in South Africa: Six red cards for FIFA (Links International Journal)
• South Africa’s World Cup is a disgrace (radical africa)
• South Africa’s World Cup fest not worth the coming hangover by Patrick Bond (ZCommunications)
• Back the people of South Africa, not the football teams (newstatesman.com)
• Raj Patel: Off-Side at the World Cup (huffingtonpost.com)

Other Related articles

• The World Has Embraced Johannesburg, Influx of Tourists “Simply Amazing” (bleacherreport.com)
• Thousands protest against FIFA, World Cup excess (g.sports.yahoo.com)
• Blatter hails African effort (skysports.com)
• What will South Africa look forward to after soccer spotlight dims? (mysanantonio.com)
• Nelson Mandela’s World Cup overshadowed by death of great-granddaughter in crash (telegraph.co.uk)
• Vuvuzelas Silenced As Bafana Boys Blow It (news.sky.com)
• Home cooked (theglobeandmail.com)
• South Africa could pay penalty for unions’ Cup action (reuters.com)
• Security guards strike at World Cup matches in South Africa (cnn.com)
• ESPNsoccernet: Soccer Defeat compared to Soweto uprising (m.espn.go.com)