A Second Hand Conjecture

Brief except of a talk at the 92nd Street Y between Salman Rushdie and Irshad Manji, discussing the possibility of reform against extremism in the Islamic faith. Rushdie draws a fine parallel with the experience of the Western left during the Cold War. Specifically, its attempt to create a distinction between their non-existent idealized socialism, and the actuality of a destitute, totalitarian nightmarescape on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

At issue is the extent to which the Western left sought to resist criticism of existing socialism in the name of defending it as an ideal. Commendably, Rushdie has little faith in this project reapplied to Islam, much less as a promise to actualize reform.

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A depressingly confused analogy from Medvedev on US aid to Georgia:

“I wonder how they would like it if we sent humanitarian assistance using our navy to countries of the Caribbean that have suffered from the recent hurricanes.”
(AFP)

We’d welcome that. It’s distressing that the Russian government hears only our resistance, without our reasons for it. And here again, there is a certain naiveté to Medvedev that always makes one think it might someday be possible to penetrate the reality distortion field of Putinism that imprisons his imagination.

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Russia wants Saakashvili gone and then categorically rejects the French ceasefire agreement Saakashvili signed. Even while the increasingly uncomfortable Medvedev says they’re all but finished with military operations. The humiliating exposure of Medvedev’s “presidency” is one of the more comical aspects of this episode.

Putin, the master of I’m-not-you-are school of geopolitical disputation, accuses the US of a “Cold War mentality.” I would agree, of course it does tend to happen when you start acting like the Soviet Union.

He’s also rather upset that the United States flew the Georgian contingent home from Iraq. Quite literally, the absolute least we could do. One gets the feeling that an IBM sales office in Tbilisi would constitute unwarranted American influence in Georgia for Putin.

And…Estonia “the other plucky”, speaks:

‘Russia’s military strikes in Georgia toll a knell for many of Europe’s hopes, such as the possibility of sharing common fundamental values with Russia,’ Toomas Sildam said Ilves told the European Union’s foreign policy chief Javier Solana on Sunday.
(Forbes)

Enough to turn you green.

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photo: Isuru Senevi | site

And so ends Mauritania’s brief experiment with constitutional democracy. The AFP has a source in the new ruling junta who says there will be new elections in two months. We shall see.

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Sober, secular and educated new residents to New Mexico can often be found painting the frames of their doors and windows a vivid bright blue. Having seen the habit practiced on the homes of locals, the newcomers invariably assume it’s a quaint regional decorative touch. They’re unaware of course that the locals have painted their frames the color of the Virgin, and the purpose isn’t decoration, but defense.

In superstitious, Catholic New Mexico, the Virgin’s color is believed to prevent the nomadic witches that prowl the streets at night from entering the house and murdering its inhabitants. Such is the manner in which old and very sinister traditions can be unknowingly perpetuated by people who have no interest in original intents.

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Isn’t it unfortunate when a truly awful movie has a truly spectacular intro.

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Gas flaring in the Niger Delta (photo: Ellie)

John Ghazvinian is a journalist and historian of considerable insight into African affairs. He also happens to have written one of the best recent books on the emergent international struggle for African petroleum: Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil (the paperback edition is due out in April). Whilst being an enormously valuable investigation of a very serious issue, it is also a page-turning and literate adventure into exotic and dangerous places. Indeed, one that’s practically impossible to put down once you’ve picked it up.

As John writes therein, since 1990 the oil industry has invested $20 billion in oil exploration and production in Africa, with $50 billion more planned before 2010. Over the next five years Chevron alone is devoting $20 billion in investment for Africa. Taken collectively, this exercise represents the largest commercial investment in African history. But such a spectacular windfall for some of the world’s most impoverished countries can be a poisoned chalice, where the brutal economic forces of the so-called “resource curse” hollow out states, eviscerate agricultural economies and break traditional cultures.

Populous and promising Nigeria for example, is one of the oldest and most well established oil producing countries in Africa. But with the expansion of Nigeria’s oil extraction industry, she has seen only the systematic erosion of her economic and civil society. As well as witnessing the transformation of her oil bearing region in the Niger Delta (one of the richest in the world), into a vast social wasteland of extreme poverty, rapacious crime and guerrilla warfare. As John notes, “Nigeria” is now a shorthand expression in Africa for what everyone with oil desperately wants to avoid.

John took some time out of his morning yesterday to sit down with me for a telephone interview. We were able to discuss a variety of subjects related to issues raised in his book. Including among other things, US oil supply diversification, the political consequences of offshore exploration in the Gulf of Guinea, the resource curse and rentier states, instability and post-nationalist militancy in the Niger Delta, oil field subculture, the labor problem, Chinese energy strategy in Africa and the difficulty of talking about Africa “without lapsing into sanctimoniousness” (as John puts it in the preface of his book). As I did, I believe you’ll find this to be a rather rewarding and unconventional discussion.

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The tomb of Jonas Savimbi in Moxico has been looted by graverobbers. A number of items were stolen including his bronze epitaph. A bit of a sad addendum for the former US ally and UNITA leader who had battled the Soviet and Cuban backed MPLA for decades in the Angolan Civil War, but in the end was unable to stop his own ferocious impulse for the permanent war he’d know for most of life. Even when offered the Vice Presidency of the country for peace in 1998.

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(photo: Marc Nozell)

Matt Stoller at OpenLeft has a pretty interesting observation about the swing of the self-described “very liberal” constituency from Obama to Hillary over the course of the primaries:

In Iowa, Obama beat Clinton by 16 points among those who consider themselves as ‘very liberal’. In New Hampshire, they were even. And now in Nevada, Clinton simply destroyed Obama within that block by 16 points. In other words, while it’s not entirely clear who ‘won’ Nevada, whatever that means, had Obama run even with Clinton among those who describe themselves as ‘very liberal’, he would have soundly defeated her at the caucuses outright instead of having to play delegate games.
(OpenLeft via Corrente)

Matt goes on to make the argument that Obama’s recent praise of the Reagan legacy was the catalyst for Obama’s defeat. Overall Matt’s grinding old ideological axes a bit too hard here, given that this would clearly fail to answer how the trend he identified managed to precede Obama’s remarks on Reagan. But he is onto something at the margins. It would be interesting if Obama was losing the “very liberals” as Matt notes, among the aging and still resentful leftists who were adults during the Reagan era.

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