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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.

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 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)

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aid Agencies (links to give, and learn more)

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

Related  news articles

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

The Saharan Al Qaeda – Cocaine tieup has finally hit the North American domestic news with the much trumpeted arrest by United States agents of three Malians who they allege “the direct link between dangerous terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda, and international drug trafficking that fuels their violent activities”.

I have a feeling we’ll be repeatedly discussing these arrests in the future. But at first blush these men are likely not involved in the large scale West African drug trade that has recently been in the papers, nor are they any part of any recognized AQIM groups connected to Algerian militants scattered in the Malian Sahara.

Admittedly we have very little to go on at the moment. Three Malian men, said to be in their mid 30s, were arrested by the US in Ghana, and flown to New York. Here they were disposed before a judge on drug smuggling and terrorism charges. We have the New York Times and wire articles, based entirely on the press release and a copy of the actual deposition provided by the US government. I await the reaction of the Malian press especially.

The three men are Oumar Issa, Harouna Touré and Idriss Abelrahman. Oumar Issa was contacted by a Lebanese who worked for the US in Ghana. The US informant pretended to be a criminal with Hezbollah connections, seeking to ship drugs, and looking for contacts with the “Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb”. Issa said he represents a “big boss”, Harouna Touré, from somewhere in north Mali, who “has connections in government” and who while not running a smuggling operation “collects taxes for Al Qaeda from Malian politicians.” Sounds like a big deal. But Touré’s not a current holder of any local political office (according to the last election results) and hasn’t been in the news.

One identification claims that Harouna Touré is a well known Songhai smuggler from the small village of Bamba (in Bourem on the Niger River).  This “Harouna Bamba” is known primarily for people smuggling into Morocco, as well as hashish and other common smuggled goods.  He, like the now famed Baba Ould Sheik — Mayor and mediator between the Malian government and the AQIM hostage takers — is reputed to be a member of the local “Mouvement Citoyen” of Malian President Amadou Toumani Touré.

It is likely not accidental that Bamba is one of the historic endpoints of the Taoudenni salt trade.  From here there is a well trodden route to northern Mauritania or north to Algeria and Morocco, one that people in the area have been making for at least a thousand years.  It was ancient when Ibn Battuta made the caravan trek from Morocco through Taoudenni and south to the Niger in the 1350s.   The Berabiche Arabs in particular have long been responsible for this salt route, and it would be little surprise that a Bamba merchant would have a business relationship with some of these semi-nomadic Arabs.

The area around Bamba in particular has a bad reputation for petty crime, smuggling, and ethnic violence.  In 1994, at the height of the ethnic murders of Tuaregs, Arabs, and Songhai by Army,  rebels, and Ghanda Koy militias, FIAA rebels opened fire on locals in Bamba, killing almost 50 civilians.  The local Kounta Arabs, whose historic identity is linked to a tradition of Qadiriyya Sufi scholarship have long been based in Bamba.  In 2004 their feuds with some Berabiche saw an attack on a Kunta religious leader and spilled over at a well near the town, leaving 13 dead.

Abelrahman (perhaps a variant of the more common Malian Arab family name “Abderrahmane”) is identified in the complaint as an AQIM leader,  claims to command a group of 11 men and calls himself “King of the desert”. He claims to have been “a general” in some unidentified previous insurgency, something which is as entirely unverifiable as it is grandiloquent.  Touré, claimed to be the “big man”, has been involved in the drug trade via Brasil if the US reporting of his boasts ( and his passport stamps) is to be believed. Their plan was to take cocaine via Togo to Mali or Niger, then Algeria, Morocco, the coast, and by boat to the Canary Islands. The last phase of this is described by Touré as handled by Brazilian contacts. Another description, fed by the US planners, seems to suggest an inland trip to Spain via Melilla. He also claims to have previously arranged shipments of hashish into Tunisia and South Asian migrants to Spanish territory.

I would be VERY surprised if this Idriss Abelrahman is anything more than a Arab/Maure smuggler and caravan driver,  resident somewhere between Bamba and  Taoudenni in the desert north of Mali. He probably knows some people who are related to members of some AQIM cells who move through the area, and so can probably pass by them on friendly terms. But is he Al Qaeda? Not bloody likely.

Further, if the US agents can pose as Lebanese Hezbollah and FARC, then logically, these men can not have had contacts with these organizations prior to this. Maybe these groups are involved with smuggling in West Africa, but the US didn’t arrest anyone they do business with.

We can say with some likelihood that these men are businessmen/smugglers, from somewhere  in Gao ( from the context of routes), and Oumar Issa is probably someone’s family member working in the south (he’s the contact made in Lome). But their flight from Mali via Lome and on to Ghana is arranged for and paid by the US. Toure, the reputed “big man” claims he’s going back home from Bamako at one point to “the north” where he doesn’t have email or phone. Toure is given money in Ghana to buy a truck, but buys a car instead, and the agent has to give them more cash and explain they really do need a bigger vehicle. Toure says he needs to be paid 3000 Euro a kilo for transport with %10 up front. Then says he needs US$10000 a kilo, and %50 down. And he needs it in Euros.

Pardon me, but these business deals don’t seem designed to make money. These “drug dealers” are giving three Malians 500 kilos of cocaine, and then paying the Malians a pile of cash. Won’t the Malians then go sell the drugs for even more cash.

And the complaint is littered with attempts to illicit anti-American sentiments from the marks, who rarely return with anything more damning than a “God Willing” or two. Clearly the US government expects that everyone who hates America is on the same page, plotting across ideological lines, continents, and religions to hurt us. By selling drugs. To Europeans.

The counterpoint of blind nationalism here is blind paranoia, the thought that everyone must be scheming about you behind your back, that all “evil doers” are doing evil as part of a grand conspiracy to bring you down. If you wave several million dollars in front of three people from one of the poorest countries in the world, do you think when you say “You love Al-Qaeda, right?” they’ll launch into a subtle discussion of international terror? Or will they say “Oh yeah, you’re my brother cause we hate America too! And I’ll take that %50 up front in Euros.”

But this is par for the US government anti-terrorism law enforcement. The policing enforcement of US terrorism policy is as hamfisted as the military “war on terror”, except that the policing war is usually motivated by the desire for good domestic press. They tend to create their own terrorist plots, convince criminal idiots to accede to the plans invented by the US, and then arrest the patsies. The example of the recent Bronx terror plot in which the FBI informant took several not very bright young men recently released from jail, created a plot, bought gifts for them until they agreed to help, gave them the supplies, and then arrested them as “dangerous Al Qaeda terrorists.” Of course there are real terrorists out there, but it’s much easier to disrupt plots you invent yourself.

My concern will be that this West African variant of US anti-terrorism enforcement, while attempting to win US plaudits will forget that in trying to impress Americans, they may end up alienating West Africans. If this is seen as an entrapment operation, it will eventually do more to turn Malians — who are today very positively disposed to people from the United States — against the US than it will actually disrupt real smuggling, let alone terrorism.

Meanwhile, two Italian citizens and their Mauritanian driver were kidnapped yesterday in the Mauritanian desert, near a crossing into Mali, as the returned to their home in Burkina Faso. The Mauritanian government says they are being held by the AQIM.

Related News articles

• Italian, wife missing in eastern Mauritania (af.reuters.com)
• Muslims Say F.B.I. Tactics Sow Anger and Fear (nytimes.com)
• UPDATE 2-Italian couple missing in eastern Mauritania (af.reuters.com)
• US in ‘al-Qaeda cocaine sting’ (news.bbc.co.uk)

Today marks 52 years since the first sub-Saharan African nations claimed their independence from colonialism: It’s a national holiday in Ghana, the first of two “refusniks” who grabbed the option of immediate independence without looking back, Guinee being the other.  Both gained new governments this year. Ghana by elections and Guinee by coup.  Both were steps in the right direction (in my opinion), but the two make quite a contrast.  The Accra city centre is vibrant and modern, with leafy suburbs, while Conakry last year had power for only a few hours a day, with their traffic lights and street lamps off most nights.  Leaving aside the reasons why, they both deserve better from their former colonial powers, the international economic system, and their own ruling classes.

In the eyes of too many otherwise educated Westerners, Africa is still the “Dark Continent” of colonialism, filled with famine, war, and poverty. Horrible things happen in Africa like anywhere else, and Africans face an unfair share of many of today’s hardships, but the fly covered faces of the 1980s Ethiopian famine are the exception.  It’s sad to have to say this, but Africans live perfectly “normal” lives.  They watch TV soap operas, read the newspapers, go to work, take the bus, and can’t decide if those onions in the back of the pantry are still good.  Like you.  Sure, the likelihood they will live in rural farming communities is greater than most Westerners, and that makes the lives of those communities much different, but Africa is full of cities and cars and satellite dishes as well.

And while the attempt to “report good news stories” usually activates my gag reflex, Westerners need to read a greater balance on the news from Africa.  A current blog project by two women from Nigeria, CelebrateAfrica.net, documents their travel across the continent documenting the day to day triumph and success of African societies.  While they are aiming their writing at other African readers, it gives us a good chance to look over their shoulders at a more realistic Africa.

So on Ghana Independece day, I thought I might quote from Oluchi Ogwuegbu’s blog.  Her reaction when a non African tourist scolds her for complaining about the mud huts offered as “Authentic” accommodations, at pretty steep prices, to foreign tourists in one part of rural Ghana.

“Heaven forbid, that I should complain about those lodgings because that would mean that I’m not truly African. To be truly African, I need to live in a mud-hut with a pit-latrine and if I choose properly planned sewer systems that give people a modicum of dignity – that would be inauthentic , almost …European… and we can’t have that happen.”

“I reject anything that makes it acceptable for anybody to live a helpless, filthy, poverty-stricken life all in the name of being authentic. Those same villagers who perform on demand have shea butter, cotton and pottery as a source of income. Why aren’t they being engaged in an equitable way to make money from these things and change their status?”

“To make an experience really African does not mean having to battle flies from the pit-latrine. I know many people who live in villages whose houses are very clean, not paid for by any aid agency. Are they not Africans?”  –  Celebrating Ghana

Stokley the cat in his Staten Island home, c. 2004. And yes, that is who I named him after, and it was supposed to be respectful, though it is hard when I have to get him off the kitchen counter. Apart from that I remain as big a fan of the late Kwame Toure as a pasty white man could be.