It’s beautiful in New York, and the world if full of things to argue about. Here are three important issues I’ll have to get back to you on.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Current preferred time waster: tommymiles on Twitter

How sad is it that I’m this excited about a book of history – polisci essays? How additionally sad is it that I’m trembling in terror over my girlfriend’s reaction that I just spent $40 on a whim?

Regardless, I’m very excited about finding a copy of “Army and Politics in Niger” (“Armee et politique au Niger”, actually) which was just published in 2008 by Codesria, but is already distributed in Europe and North America. Finding careful writing about contemporary Niger is difficult, and I’m usually sent off to local papers, Jeune Afrique, or the reference section to indulge my habit. I’d been looking for Kimba Idrissa’s “Niger: Etat et démocratie” for some time (with little luck), so imagine my joy at discovering this edited volume.

I can imagine few subjects as relevant to post independence Niger and its near future as its Army, the Forces Armées Nigeriennes (FAN). In a nation of 14 million where politics is a game played by maybe a million inhabitants of Niamey a half a dozen towns, the Army is as close to a defining institution of Nigerien nationhood as there is. The radio and Tele-Sahel may be close on the heels, but the fact remains that there have has been maybe one constitutional change of government in Niger’s history (the beginning of the Third Republic, when the Second dissolved itself) and there have been three changes of power by military coup. Something like 20 years since 1960 have been spent under direct army rule, by a force which today numbers well under 10,000. The short point is that there a lot of officers (and retired officers like the current President) who have felt it their duty to rule Niger without resort to republican niceties.

You should also ask the Tuaregs what they think of the Army. There’s been a level of impunity, noted by Amnesty and others, about killing civilians and their animals which wouldn’t make me want to share a home with some of the FAN’s officer class. And on top of that, the 1999 killing in a coup of the 1996 army coup leader/president has since revealed a degree of class and ideological factionalism within the ranks that would not induce me to hand these folks guns.

And while I’m bantering on this engaging topic, allow me to slip into the Cassandra mode I love so: The beardy weirdy Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, Boureima Moumouni, will someday try to take power, and not in a nice, 1999 “shoot-the-leader-and-call-elections” way. He’s a cut from the same cloth as Seyni Kountché, who took power in 74 and had to drop dead before anyone could suggest even a constitution. And unlike Kountché, Boureima Moumouni doesn’t seem to have that barracks mentality where he’d rather live in a quonset hut than a palace. Just a heads up.

Anyway, the publishers extract is below. The introduction is downloadable from the Africanbookscollective.com. And you can read bits at google books.

• Kimba Idrissa (Ed.) Armee et politique au Niger. Codesria: Dakar (2008) ISBN 9782869782167

Niger’s political history has lacked a synthesis on the army’s involvement in politics since independence. The country is a fertile ground for such analysis. Between 1964 and 1999, the country witnessed three successful military coups during the democratisation process (April 1974, January 1996, and April 1999) and at least four military coup attempts (1964, 1975, 1976, 1983). In its forty years of independence, Niger has been under military rule for twenty-one years. It has also experienced seven different institutional regimes while four out of the six presidents who headed the country were soldiers. Niger evolved from the Second to the Fifth Republic in less than ten years – from the national conference (November 1991) to the last military coup (April 1999). In statistical terms, Niger has been witnessing a military coup or a military coup attempt every five-years since 1974. In addition to that, the country recorded seven mutinies and various other forms of troop rebellion between December 1963 and August 2000. In terms of institutional instability, Niger’s record is unparalleled in Africa. A study on the army is therefore more needed than ever before. The recurrence with which the military appears on the political scene imposes another way of looking at Niger’s army. A critical analysis of the military phenomenon, if not an assessment, would help envisage new prospects for Niger’s future. This work, which was undertaken by a multi disciplinary team, suggests an analysis, from a historical and sociological perspective, of the long-standing involvement of the army in politics (the apparition of war leaders in the 19th century, the transition from colonial army to national army,the politicisation of the army and the emergence of ‘military-politicians’, the army sociology.). It aims at providing an answer to a key question: Why is the army so deeply involved in politics in Niger? It reveals how a significant military component has been gradually built up in Niger’s political arena to become a highly dynamic political entrepreneur, able to compete with civilian politicians. The work shows, on the one hand, the significance of socio-political and economic contexts that promote the propensity for military interventionism, and on the other hand the transformations within the army that explain its propensity to intervene. It relates two decades of ‘military rule’, analyses their modes of legitimating, organising and managing power, gives an assessment of their economic policies and sheds light on women’s role in that institution, which was thus far a men’s business. This book attempts to provide a genuine biography of independent Niger. Given the quality of the contributions, this book is a reference tool for understanding Niger today, where the country comes from and where it is heading.

The Training Shoe

The Face magazine, Vol 2 no.26, in November 1990

by Peter Hooton.

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This year marked the tenth anniversary of THE FACE, but whereas parties have been thrown to commemorate this occasion, nobody has bothered to hold a ‘do’ for the tenth anniversary of the training shoe. It could be a unique occasion (possibly hilarious) and a fitting bash to celebrate a decade that has seen trainer wear break out on a massive scale. Training shoe espionage is now big business, and sportswear conventions where new designs are revealed have stricter security and secrecy than any Tory Party Conference: it seems that bootleggers know their stuff and can rip off a design before you can tie your laces!

I’m sure Adi Dassler and his brother Rudolf didn’t know what they were starting when they began making sports shoes in Germany in the Twenties. After the war, the brothers had a row and split (good soap opera plot, this) and Adi formed Adidas and their kid formed Puma. The companies have been arch rivals ever since and it’s only fitting now that the two main rivals in the so-called ‘old school trainers’ wars are Adidas and Puma.

Much has been written about training shoes over the last couple of years, as the style magazines and the newspapers have tried to come to terms with the massive increase in the popularity of the trainer. Empires have been built and fortunes acquired during the Eighties, and most ‘lazy’ journalists have looked to the States to explain the phenomenon. Unfortunately, most of what has been written has been complete nonsense, so far from the truth that it’s not even funny. If the truth be known, the obsession with training shoes for the youth of this country began in the late Seventies and not in the late Eighties, as some would have us believe. It came from the football terraces and the council estates of the big cities, and who gives a George Best who started it – it happened and that’s a fact.

In the post-punk revolution of ’78/79, Adidas Samba ruled the terraces of Anfield and Goodison, quickly followed by Stan Smith’s, before Puma struck back with its Argentina (blue leather, white stripe) and the much sought after Puma Menotti (red leather, white stripe). Trainer wars were well underway, and European away matches were the perfect opportunity to acquire those obscure training shoes available in Germany, but not in Liverpool. Most of the training shoe addicts would never dream of getting a pair you could buy in the city centre in Liverpool. This was real fashion, and the competition was intense. A revolution was going on that had absolutely nothing to do with the streets of Brooklyn or the Bronx. In all the years that The End magazine was printed in Liverpool, we never received a single letter about ‘trainers’ in America, but we did get hundreds about the training shoes the different football crews were wearing. A football crew’s reputation could be severely damaged by giving it toes (getting chased) at Fulham Broadway, Finsbury Park or the Euston Road, but more serious damage could be done if a fatty was seen wearing a bad pair of trainers by the opposing teams’ fashion spotters.

In May 1981, Liverpool played Real Madrid in the European Cup Final in Paris. We arrived at St Lazare Station on the Sunday before the game. The next three days were spent not looking at the buildings and architecture of gay Paree but for a mythical Adidas Centre which one of my mates overheard someone talking about in hushed tones in a Liverpool snug. Naïve teenagers we may have been, but if we had found it we would have been heroes. The bemused Parisians didn’t know what the f**k we were on about when we asked for the “Adidas Centre” in several differing French accents. It was like the search for the Holy Grail, but more like the Monty Python film version.

The newspaper Paris Soir reported the antics of Liverpool supporters with some confusion. They had been drinking, but they didn’t seem to want to fight anybody. They were too busy shoplifting, with the main targets being clothes and, of course, trainers. By the morning of the game the sports shops of Paris were locked, with staff supervising the doors, allowing only two people at a time into the shop. A way of life had been born and no one had even heard of hip hop, house or rap, let alone Run DMC.

It was some time before the fashion magazines and newspapers started to write about this street culture, but when THE FACE wrote a big feature on the subject in its July 1983 issue the floodgates opened. The article, written by Kevin Sampson, concentrated on the fashion area of London’s so-called ‘Casuals’, Liverpool’s so-called ‘Scallies’ and Manchester’s ‘Perries’. Within weeks, Time Out had an article written by London playwright and football fan Mick Mahoney who got it right when he pointed out that “if Nike brought out a crocodile-skin trainer for £140, it would be a smash”. The football crowd and estate dwellers of the big cities didn’t give a monkeys what they were wearing in Harlem or anywhere else; if it looked good in the Anfield Road End, the Scoreboard Paddock or the Clock End, it was good enough for them. Over the next year, nearly every newspaper in the country, from the Mail On Sunday to New Society, had articles on this strange breed of training shoe-clad youngster.

As usual the sports firms were slow to respond, and even by the mid-Eighties you still couldn’t buy good, exclusive trainers in most cities. Europe, not the States, was still the mecca, and many shopping trips by eager Scousers willing to supply the demand in their home city went some way to doing this. (It also increased the letters from German/Swiss nicks asking for copies of The End magazine to relieve the boredom.)

It was during this period that a young buyer for Adidas based in Liverpool (but originally from Yorkshire) set up shop in a small back-street in Liverpool City Centre. He set up on his own because the company he worked for, Top Man, didn’t really know what was going on, on a street level. After travelling to the Frankfurt Sports Fair he had wanted them to stock Adidas Forest Hills (white leather, gold stripes). Adidas insisted On 500 pairs going to the ‘flagship store’ in Oxford Circus. They didn’t sell a pair and most of the reps blamed the price tag (£29.99) in 1980/81. Wade Smith knew different. After laughing at the idea of launching Forest Hills in Liverpool, Adidas let him have 500 pairs. He put them on sale in the beginning of December 1980; by Christmas they had sold out. Wade Smith was given salesman of the year in January and promptly left to set up shop on his own. He immediately set off for Germany in a van and the rest is history. His four-storey department-style store is testament to that. The shop now caters for the mainstream market, but it was built upon bringing in exclusive trainers from Germany in the early Eighties, trainers that had nothing to do with America, but a lot to do with the nomad Scousers, and Wade Smith often supplemented his stock by buying from Liverpool ‘entrepreneurs’ with time on their hands to travel to Deutschland and acquire, by various methods, the much sought after, exclusive Adidas Trim-Trab.

Judy Rumbold, the fashion editor of The Guardian, couldn’t have been more wrong when she wrote about trainers (August 21 1989): “In Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire Of The Vanities, sneakers are documented as an intrusive part of young American street style; not just symbols of black affiliation and for high performance on the dancefloor but as crucial elements in maintaining a lugubrious, rhythmic gait that Wolfe coined the Pimp Roll. That was in 1987; now the fad has soft-shoed across from the streets of Brooklyn and the Bronx and become a cult throughout Europe.” Apart from qualifying for Pseuds Corner in Private Eye and avoiding the use of plain English, what Rumbold was trying to say was that British youth had just discovered trainers in the late Eighties. The hilarious Clothes Show even declared 1987 as the “year of the training shoe”. Have these people been in a time-machine or chained in dimly-lit rooms in Beirut? This myth has got to be quashed!

Anyway, everyone knows that training shoes have gone a bit crazy in the past few years. Hilarious designs have been churned out of the factories and many a massive tongue has been laughed at. Competiton is cut-throat and it seems some of the designers have been taking some dodgy tabs (or suffering from over-worked stress syndrome), as the high-top trainer becomes more and more ridiculous.

The hilarious Clothes Show even declared 1987 as the “year of the training shoe”. Have these people been in a time-machine or chained in dimly-lit rooms in Beirut?

Bad trainers now rule the market, but it has nothing to do with ‘fashion’ it’s mass consumerism (check Tony Wilson out in his Travel Fox). The main reason people have been wearing Adidas Shell-toes and Puma States in the past year or so is because Nike, Adidas, Troop, Converse, British Knights, Travel Fox, Reebok, LA Gear, Hi-Tec, Jordache, etc, are producing some of the silliest, shittiest trainers known to man (and woman). The frantic search for trainers past is simply a reaction against the shit trainers syndrome! Thankfully, according to Wade Smith’s sales figures, Liverpool is not a great supporter of multi-coloured high-tops.

Big, bad and sad should be the companies’ mottoes. Even Michael Jackson has designed a trainer for LA Gear, imaginatively called ‘Billie Jean’. It’s big, black and has more studs than a biker’s jacket. Unbelievable! Jackson must’ve been under the effects of the anaesthetic after a nose job to come out with something so bad. It’s not whether old trainers are fashionable or not (many of the old school trainers were crap). The fact is that they are a million times better than many of the new trainers on the market and a lot harder to find.

Obviously American fashion does have an influence on the European market, but when the Sunday Mirror magazine declares “the high-top trainer rules the world and is this year’s trendiest fashion accessory. Anybody who’s anybody knows that a pair of brand new trainers – bright laces undone, tongues out, displaying that all important brand name – says more about you than a wallet full of gold credit cards”, you know it’s time to leave the county and live on a desert island in your bare feet or search the loft for your ex-issue Diadora Borg Elite or Stan Smiths.

Let’s be plain here – the Sugarhill Gang circa 1979 dressed in Huggy Bear hipsters and hairy chests were the genuine NYC article. A generation away from the British urchins who started it all. American persons who wear training shoes with suits and fur coats cannot be taken seriously. This isn’t another beautifully executed US import – it’s a slab of classic British hokum and there’s nothing LA Gear can do about it. That’s all.

P.S. Whatever happened to Gola?

* TOP TEN CLASSICS Adidas Samba
* Puma Argentina
* Adidas S.L. 80′s
* Adidas Stan Smith
* Adidas Forest Hills
* Adidas Trim Trab
* Adidas Shell-Toes
* Diadora Borg Elite
* Adidas Gazelle
* Puma States

* TOP TEN SAD TRAINERS Traval Fox Barracuda (and all others)
* Nike Air Jordans
* (black) Fila Tourissmo
* Anything by Troop
* British Knights (all ranges)
* LA Gear (hilarious)
* Reebok Pump
* Nike Air Pressure (you’ve got to pump the bastards up)
* Hi-Tec (never seen a good pair yet)
* Jordache (no exit)

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My Pathetic Homepage was first created in mid 1995 so I could hotlink Glasgow Celtic photos, post scans of people shooting nautical flares at one another, tell people what to think about politics, convince them to buy my fanzine, and get dates. The first two succeeded wonderfully, the third got dull real quick, and the last two never came off at all. Ah the dreams of the springtime of my life!

Between then and now there have been several iterations of this thing. Most have been shortlived (the boredom thing). Most have been green in color. Most have featured a picture of Peter Hooton‘s rare original 1970s Stan Smith all green colorway I ripped out of a copy of The Face sometime in the mid 1980s.

One thing has remained the same: a self-important, if jokey, response to “company name” on my pirated copy of Photoshop 3: The Tomathon.

Slouching into steady employment,

Tommy