The dark continent

It's amazing the extent of bad news that Africa is generating at the moment. The current "highlights" include:

1. Zimbabwe is on "the brink of collapse" (so they say; unfortunately, the government has hovering on the brink for an awfully long time). Cholera is the latest misery being added to the appalling government generated problems:

About 6,000 people have contracted cholera in recent weeks, according to the UN, and almost 300 have died. A chronic shortage of medicine has sent hundreds of people south to seek treatment in South Africa....

In the meantime, the economy has disintegrated and the health system is close to breakdown. Four big hospitals, including two in Harare, have effectively closed their doors to new patients owing to a shortage of basic supplies and running water

2. Ethiopia. Foreign Correspondent tonight had a story on famine in Ethiopia. (The video is not up on the website yet, but should be by the end of the week.)

It was odd to see that the countryside looked incredibly green and lush after recent rains, but apparently the failure of last year's crops still means there is not enough food now. The population was said to be about 80 million, which was much higher than I would have guessed.

The story was also noteworthy for showing up the questionable reliability of World Vision. The journalist visited a 14 year old girl that he had been sponsoring for years. It appeared that she had been barely aware that she was being sponsored until recently, when she was given a jacket and a pen. Certainly, the feedback that World Vision supplies as to what the sponsored child is doing (learning english, for example) does not appear reliable.

World Vision apparently said that the sponsorship money goes to community projects that benefit the children, but it was not clear in this story what they may have done for this child's community. It was not a good look, and World Vision will certainly be hoping that this does not get much coverage.

While watching undernourished people living in the lush green countryside, it was hard to avoid the thought that this was a country that really needed help with developing modern, efficient farming. According to Wikipedia, the problems range from the small farm size, to some of the farm practices:

Since the land holdings are so small, farmers cannot allow the land to lie fallow, which reduces soil fertility.^[114] This land degradation reduces the production of fodder for livestock, which causes low amounts of milk production.^[115] Since the community burns livestock manure as fuel, rather than plowing the nutrients back into the land, the crop production is reduced.^[116] The low productivity of agriculture leads to inadequate incomes for farmers, hunger, malnutrition and disease. These unhealthy farmers have a hard time working the land and the productivity drops further.

These are problems that are in principle solvable, but it would seem none of the necessary reform is happening.

3. Somalia continues to be pirate capital. The Economist paints this grim picture:

With no proper government since 1991, it has been a bloody kaleidoscope of competing clans and fiefs. More than 1m, in a population once around 10m, have fled abroad; this year alone, the UN reckons, some 160,000 have been uprooted from Mogadishu, the capital, which has lost about two-thirds of its inhabitants over the years. The country is too dangerous for foreign charities, diplomats or journalists to function there permanently. Thousands of angry, rootless, young Somalis are proving vulnerable to the attractions of fundamentalist Islam in the guise of al-Qaeda and similar jihadist brands. The cash from piracy is probably fuelling the violence.

4. The Congo. I am currently reading "Congo Journey" by Redmond O'Hanlon, about his mid 1990's trip into the Congo. (Currently this is available as a $10 "Popular Penguin" edition in Australia.)

The corrupt, dangerous place that O'Hanlon writes about is in an even worse state now. In May this year, The Economist wrote about widespread use of rape as a weapon of war, and now the 17,000 strong UN peace keeping force needs re-enforcements that it is unlikely to get, and there is talk the place looks primed for a Rwandan style genocide.

What a depressing continent.

UPDATE: In an effort to be more upbeat, people could do worse, I suspect, than to donate to Catholic Relief Services, which appears to do a lot of work in Africa. It may just be my bias, of course, but I suspect that Catholic agencies would be pretty credible in the efficiency with which donations are used.

Out of curiosity, I just did a search for Islamic charities, and turned up Islamic Relief Worldwide, which currently features on its front page a graphic headed "donate now" that points out that "The practice of sacrificing an animal at Eid ul Adha acts as a reminder of the Prophet Ibrahim's obedience to Allah". Hmm.

UPDATE II: the BBC has this recent feature on the problem with foreign aid for Africa.

Your next weekly dose of bad ocean news

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Marine life faces 'acid threat'

Man-made pollution is raising ocean acidity at least 10 times faster than previously thought, a study says.

Researchers say carbon dioxide levels are having a marked effect on the health of shellfish such as mussels.

They sampled coastal waters off the north-west Pacific coast of the US every half-hour for eight years.

The results, published in the journal PNAS, suggest that earlier climate change models may have underestimated the rate of ocean acidification.

To be fair, some reported comments of one of the researchers involved are misleadingly expressed:

"Many sea creatures have shells or skeletons made of calcium carbonate, which the acid can dissolve," said Catherine Pfister, Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago and a co-author of the study.

That could easily be taken to mean the ocean is actually turning into an acidic pH, but ocean acidification at its worst will still leave the ocean alkaline (just significantly less alkaline than it used to be.)

Anyhow, it's still bad news, by any interpretation.

The eternal critic

Robert Fisk: Once more fear stalks the streets of Kandahar

So, Robert Fisk is reporting from Afghanistan at the moment, noting the misery suffered by the population caught between the Taliban and Western forces. (Acid throwing on girls attending school has made a recent re-appearance.)

Fisk ends the above account by the spurious advice:

Barack Obama wants to send 7,000 more American troops to this disaster zone. Does he have the slightest idea what is going on in Afghanistan? For if he did, he would send 7,000 doctors.

A letter writer to the Independent responds appropriately:

....in the absence of western forces, what is not explained is how medics and civilian contractors might operate in a region ruled by well-armed fanatics who don't want redevelopment, and who don't want schoolgirls they've maimed with acid to be treated. Even worse is the suggestion that we leave fellow members of the human race to such an appalling fate, when it is within our powers to try to help them.

But a comment made after the original article sums up Fisk perfectly, even if the spelling is lacking:

What you do Mr Fisk with your baby shaking naarratives that tunnell in on the details to obscure the big picture truth is preach a counsel of despair so the truly uncaring people of the world can continue to walk by on the other side of the road.

Exactly.

About Hillary

The last thing we need is a Clinton in charge of foreign policy. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine

Actually, given his intense dislike of all things Clinton, I think Hitchens sounds slightly restrained in this criticism of Hillary as Secretary of State.

A bunch of stuff to keep you going

Here's a quick post of links to this and that:

* Bryan Appleyard is back, and posting in amusing fashion about the rich and travel, the BBC and "risk taking", his ailments, and John Lennon's "Imagine" (he dislikes the song; so do I).

In fact, I seem to be in basic agreement with him about everything since his return. If only he didn't have that strange aberration of enjoying Olbermann!

* I have no idea whether the author of this article is a reliable pundit on China, but the picture he paints of the dramatic consequences of a serious economic slow down in China sounds plausible enough. (Basically, it's of social disruption on a pretty massive scale, as former factory workers return to the countryside to eke out a living in agriculture, or whatever.) I do get the impression that the West is overly optimistic on China being able to spend its way out of trouble.

* Victor Davis Hansen makes a list of ten politically incorrect complaints about America. Points 3 (about Hollywood being in a terrible creative slump at the moment) and 6 (about the American male accent not being what it used to be) are the most interesting. Here's a sample:

.....increasingly to meet a young American male about 25 is to hear a particular nasal stress, a much higher tone than one heard 40 years ago, and, to be frank, to listen to a precious voice often nearly indistinguishable from the female. How indeed could one make Westerns these days, when there simply is not anyone left who sounds like John Wayne, Richard Boone, Robert Duvall, or Gary Cooper much less a Struther Martin, Jack Palance, L.Q. Jones, or Ben Johnson? I watched the movie Twelve O’clock High the other day, and Gregory Peck and Dean Jagger sounded liked they were from another planet.

Certainly, having read this, I could not think of one convincing, male action hero who is currently in his prime and particularly "manly" in the way Hansen complains. Matt Damon? I don't think so.

* A lot of his commentors to this post by John Quiggin think that a carbon emissions trading scheme is too open to the abuses of a trading market, and argue a carbon tax avoids this problem. JQ does not answer them. (He may have elsewhere, but he - and nearly every other economist - just seem to be taking an ETS instead of a tax as a "given".)

* Finally: did you know that Japan has an all woman musical theatre troupe, owned by a train company (!) that has been doing large scale shows for nearly 100 years? The women play the male roles, and about 90% of the audience is women (causing much speculation as to what it is the audience is responding to.)

Anyhow, I had never heard of the Takarazuka Revue before, but there is a detailed Wikipedia entry. The shows they have put on have included such oddities (remember, it's women playing men) as adaptions of The Great Gatesby, Tom Jones, and (from "normal" theatre) The Sound of Music and West Side Story.

Very strange if you ask me.

Otherwise occupied...

For a day or two, is my guess.

Impressive storm video

Brisbane's been getting international attention for its storms this week. Fortunately, my side of town has missed the worst of it, although there is still tonight to worry about. If you want to see how bad it was in the worst hit part of town, have a look at this video. (Don't be misled by the first 90 seconds. Things really get going after that.)

Embed deleted for now.

The robot director

As I type this, SBS is showing Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange."

Not having seen it before, I have watched about 45 minutes now. It is one seriously strange movie. That great movie critic Pauline Kael hated it. Even without seeing it all, I can tell that much of her assessment seems correct.

But the main comment that I wanted to make here is this: did Stanley Kubrick ever make a movie in which the actors seemed like real humans? (I haven't seen Barry Lyndon: maybe he made a breakthrough there.)

From his work that I have seen, their most distinctive characteristic is that he always seemed to be able to get the actors to make their character appear not quite human, rather as if they were robots acting as humans. In 2001, I thought that this was perhaps deliberate, since a certain blurring of the line between human and artificial intelligence played well into the subplot about HAL . Maybe Dr Strangelove, as a black satire, didn't need good acting either. As far as I can recall, Nicholson was pretty good at acting mad in The Shining , although I caught a little of it again the other night, and some of the supporting actors had the Kubrick "not quite there"-ness about them.

The same artifice was in Eyes Wide Shut and Full Metal Jacket, when they certainly could have benefited with more naturalist acting. (The former was eccentrically memorable, if far from realistic. The latter I thought a complete failure.)

It's actually a bit puzzling as to how he achieved the robotisation of his actors. Was it because of his famous willingness to shoot the same scene tens of times over, trying to achieve some kind of perfection in detail that only he could see? One can imagine that this would drain the actors ability to appear human.

Or was it just a certain clumsiness in his scripts?

Of course, the issue of artificial intelligence was again dealt with in the Spielberg collaboration "AI". It's another peculiar movie in many respects, but A Clockwork Orange certainly removes any doubt that its strangeness sprang from Kubrick, not Spielberg. But you can see from AI that Spielberg is like the reverse Kubrick: he can get actors playing robots appear very human!

Spielberg has said in interviews that Kubrick told him the project needed his (Spielberg's) touch, and if his goal was to have the audience sympathetic to the plight of robot intelligences, this was certainly true.

Kubrick was an interesting film maker, and for all of his deficiencies, 2001 was a remarkable achievement. It's just a pity that in his other films, he showed so little sign of being able to replicate convincing human behaviour on screen.

But the Olympics looked good

ABC News: Mom in China Freed Without Forced Abortion

A six-month pregnant mother of two who faced a forced abortion by Chinese authorities has been freed and allowed to continue her pregnancy, according to Radio Free Asia. The case had attracted international attention and outrage.

The case was reported in The Age some days ago, but I had missed it.

Last year, NPR reported on a spate of forced abortions in at least one part of China, some very late term. The report notes a possible reason for such draconian action:

...the Baise government missed its family planning targets last year. The recorded birth rate was 13.61 percent, slightly higher than the goal of 13.5 percent. This is significant because the career prospects of local officials depend upon meeting these goals.

And people wonder why the Olympics left me cold.

Confusion and the Quran

A new translation of the Quran. - By Reza Aslan - Slate Magazine

I've noted before that the Quran is difficult to read as it is not a narrative, or laid out in any other logical or consistent style. This article in Slate goes into more detail about its confusing and highly uncertain nature.

I hadn't heard this before:

....Sura 4:34, which has long been interpreted as allowing husbands to beat their wives: "As for those women who might rebel against you, admonish them, abandon them in their beds, and strike them (adribuhunna)." The problem, as a number of female Quranic scholars have noted, is that adribuhunna can also mean "turn away from them." It can even mean "have sexual intercourse with them."

Well, to say the least, that's a rather wide range of possible interpretations. (Rather like the issue as to whether the martyrs are to expect virgins or grapes in Heaven.)

The article notes that an author of a new translation tries to paint this confusing and mystifying nature of the book in a positive light:

It is through the attempt to make sense of our confusions, to work through them with reason and with faith, that the Quran's dramatic monologue transforms into an eternal dialogue between humanity and God. Indeed, of all the sacred texts of the world, Khalidi argues that the Quran is perhaps the one that most self-consciously invites the reader to engage with it, to challenge it, to ponder and to debate it. After all, as the Quran itself states, only God knows what it truly means.

Well, if true, this would suggest that it's a religion primed for liberalising interpretations. But the situation in the real world is quite to the contrary.

It also seems a bit mean-spirited of God to deliver his word via a language which is (apparently) especially capable of misinterpretation.

Next action: suring for the right to leg space

Obese have right to two airline seats | Oddly Enough | Reuters

From the report:

The high court declined to hear an appeal by Canadian airlines of a decision by the Canadian Transportation Agency that people who are "functionally disabled by obesity" deserve to have two seats for one fare.

Anything in the decision preventing an airline charging a premium for the extra weight, though? Extra weight means extra fuel costs, and they already offer discounted fares for those who limit the weight of their luggage.

Indian journalism: a continuing series

Time for more examples of Indian journalism, with its amazing disregard for any sense of privacy, and delicious deadpan delivery:

1. A man diagnosed with HIV commits suicide by jumping out of a hospital window. Are you wondering why?:

Investigating officials said that they recorded his wife's statement in which she has mentioned that Jhatak had lost interest in everything and wanted to die. "It could have been the reason why he took the extreme step," said officials.

2. A nurse commits suicide in another city. Curious as to why?:

The exact reason for the suicide could not be ascertained, but her mother Mordi Devi alleged that Jagbir [the late woman's husband] was having an extramarital affair and that was why her daughter was depressed.

Jagbir says: "Thanks for sharing, mother-in-law."

3. OK, this one doesn't have anything to do with privacy, but take note. When in Delhi, watch out for the Blueline buses:

More than 70 people have been killed this year under the wheels of Blueline buses.

Last year, at least 120 people were run over by Blueline buses.

They should never have shown Death Race 2000 in India.

4. Finally, this story puts me very much in mind of Bonnie & Clyde, with the added element of pigs:

A 48-km chase for four hours and firing of 10 rounds by the police, breaking of barricades as well as running over police vehicles, and pigs being hurled at the police vehicles preceded the arrest of two suspects who allegedly stole pigs from a piggery at Sutardara.

The details are worth reading. I suspect the police actually found it kind of thrilling:

When sub-inspector Satish Shinde tried to stop the thieves by placing his jeep in the middle of the road, the tempo dashed the jeep and sped off. Near Warje octroi post also they ran over a police block and constable Amol Tanpure fired six rounds at the tempo.

"During the chase, the suspects threw stones and the stolen pigs at the police vehicle. Meanwhile, several police vehicles joined the chase.... The Dattawadi police had blocked the road near Rajaram bridge. But the tempo driver sped over the block and sub-inspector Ramakant Shinde of Dattawadi police station fired a round at the tempo," Deshmukh said....

Speaking to TOI, constable Amol Tanpure said, "We were chasing them from Sutardara. When their tempo reached the Warje octroi post, "I fired four rounds, but they managed to flee. I chased them and again fired two rounds at them."......

Sandip Mane, a relative of Jadhav, who was driving the car which was chasing the thieves, said: "At first the thieves pelted stones at my car, damaging its windscreen. Later, they hurled pigs towards us at Chandni Chowk, near Warje octroi post and on Sinhagad road. All the pigs died as they came under the wheels of the police vehicles. They even hit my car twice."

Defending Disney

Defend Disney from his Mickey Mouse critics | Daniel Finkelstein - Times Online

Finkelstein gives a spirited defence of Disney the man (and the corporation too, by the way.)

I haven't talked about Tokyo Disney yet. This weekend, maybe. Yes, I know you can't wait.

A new skin cancer fighting compound

Vitamin helps prevent skin cancer (ScienceAlert)

Ain't democracy grand?

Power Line - How Obama Got Elected

A funny/slightly disturbing article at Powerline about what Obama voters apparently knew about certain issues.

The only thing against worrying about this sort of stuff, I suppose, is that either side of politics can benefit by popularly held but mistaken beliefs. (Also, there is only so much that can be done to stop people being mistaken. I mean, do we expect the media or the Republicans to even realise that they have to keep reminding people that the Republicans already don't control Congress?)

Obama is the beneficiary of this time, but its probably all swings and roundabouts in the long run.

Avoid, avoid

Club Troppo - Another thirty minutes with Barrie Kosky

Many people who read me would also read the much more widely known Club Troppo, but in case you missed it, Nicholas Gruen's description of the 60 minutes he has accidentally seen of Barrie Kosky directed shows is pretty funny. Well, at least if you find descriptions of self indulgent modern theatre funny.

A bit of history

The Last to Die | Military Aviation | Air & Space Magazine

Air & Space Magazine has a sad but interesting story about the last American killed in air combat in World War II. It was above Tokyo, after Japan had surrendered.

(That magazine is of such high quality, and puts a lot of its content on line. Thanks, Smithsonian!)

Your weekly dose of bad ocean news

Marine dead zones set to expand rapidly : Nature News

Rising levels of carbon dioxide could increase the volume of oxygen-depleted 'dead zones' in tropical oceans by as much as 50% before the end of the century — with dire consequences for the health of ecosystems in some of the world's most productive fishing grounds....

A team led by Andreas Oschlies of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel, Germany, has now used a global model of climate, ocean circulation and biogeochemical cycling to extrapolate existing experimental results of the effects of altered carbon and nutrient chemistry on dissolved oxygen to the global ocean1. They found that a CO2-rich world will only have a small impact on waters at middle and high latitudes. But in all tropical oceans the volume of 'oxygen-minimum' zones will substantially increase as ocean bacteria feed on the algae that will flourish as a result of the elevated CO2 levels.

"Carbon dioxide fertilizes biological production," says Oschlies. "It's really like junk food for plants. When the carbon-fattened excess biomass sinks it gets decomposed by bacteria which first consume the oxygen, and then the nutrients."

In one of my earlier posts on ocean acidification, I had questioned whether algal blooms caused by more CO2 might be a bad thing for this very reason. (Some sceptics argue that more algae operating as a carbon sink will be a good thing. But obviously, it has a massive down side.)

Again, as far as I can see, this is an ocean danger story that is getting little press attention. Bah.

A danger sign hard to foresee

It takes courage to say the f-word: failure - Alan Ramsey

Hey, Alan Ramsey did us a favour last weekend by printing something I had missed earlier. Ken Henry (head of Treasury) had this to say at his Press Club lunch during the week:

"The array of financial instruments deployed within the global financial system has become so complex that it defies understanding. It's not just that nobody, no one person, understands the whole system. That would be hardly surprising. What is worrying is the very large number of senior finance sector executives who don't appear to understand the consequences of even their own decisions, of their own actions.

"The second dimension is closely related.

"It has to do with risk, it has to do with uncertainty. Complex financial instruments have been traded globally in ways that were thought to provide a more comfortable sharing of risk across the world. Instead, what they've shared is fear. People now not only don't know who they can trust, they don't even know who they need to be able to trust.

"And the third dimension I want to identify is the role played by regulation and, more broadly, the role played by governance systems. For decades to come, policy makers around the world are going to be asking why those with sufficient authority didn't, at some point, stand above the buzz of the financial markets and declare, in simple language, that all of this simply doesn't make sense."

It's the first bit about the complexity reaching a level that no one can understand that is the most interesting.

I mean, how do you judge exactly when that has happened? Which world famous economist is going to be the first to admit that he can't understand it all?

The future foreseen

One day, when the giant flying saucer arrives, it will beam an announcement to all TVs and radios, informing us that they are from the Pan Galactic Eugenics Society, and the world's smartest human must be delivered for intelligence testing via the most devious, intricate and maddening puzzle that has ever been devised. The fate of the earth will rest in that person's hands.

Inside the saucer, the chosen brainiac with mad scientist hair waits anxiously. "Here" booms the alien voice, "is the test." A curtain starts sliding open silently. "Assemble this!"

Behind the curtain is a digital flat screen TV the size of a house with 50 speaker surround sound system, disc player, three different types of media recorder and cable connection.

This is how the Earth will end.