The New Scramble for Africa

In George Orwell's 1984 three great totalitarian empires rule their respective parts of the world. They reserve Africa as the site of their interminable wars against one another, part of a psychological strategy to keep their publics unquestioningly obedient by agitating them into a perpetual state of patriotic war hysteria.

Africa has long been one of the world's chief whipping boys. For four hundred years it served as the source of the New World's slave labor. For centuries before that it filled the same role in the Islamic world. Once they had achieved unrivaled technological primacy, the nations of Europe met in 1878 at the Congress of Berlin to draw up the ground rules for the coming partition of Africa. This first "Scramble for Africa" colonialized the continent for the better part of 80 years.

Direct empire and colonial rule are a bit out of fashion these days, but informal empire for resource and commodity exploitation most decidedly are not. So it is that once again, outside powers are moving in to gain title to the continent's material goods while denying them to Africa's resident population. As the French like to say, "The more things change the more they stay the same." This time the target is farmland--millions of acres of it.

The Fall 2009 edition of "On Earth," the Journal of the Natural Resources Defense Council, the article "Africa on the Auction Block" by Bruce Stutz provides a glimpse into what has been happening lately. Motivated by the doubling of world grain prices between 2007 and 2008, "wealthy nations with growing populations dependent on agricultural imports stepped up their search for alternatives to secure their own food supplies." Chief among the buyers of some 50 million acres, "equal to all the farmland in France" have been such nations as, "the Gulf states, India and South Korea. "

The land has been bought in desperately poor and hungry countries such as Madagascar, Mozambique, Sudan and Ethiopia. Often it has taken place with little or no oversight, or with collusion and dubious motives on the part of African officials. Stutz frames the issue well: "Will the quest for food security or profit bring much-needed investments in these poor host nations? Will it bring jobs, schools, roads, hospitals, irrigation, technology, port facilities and revenue from export duties? Or will these vast 'land grabs' as some have called them mark the beginning of a new era of agricultural colonialism, in which local farmers and herders are forced off their land and left to labor on foreign-owed plantations producing food for export?"

Uganda's parliament stepped in to halt a deal when it found out it envisioned leasing 2 million acres to an Egyptian consortium. Madagascar's president had "unilaterally agreed to grant the South Korean company Daewoo Logistics a 99-year lease on 3.2 million acres--nearly half the country's arable land--to raise corn for export." Public protests and the president's ouster in a military coup followed. But more deals are in the works, including Saudi Arabia's lease of 1.2 million acres in Tanzania and South Africa's interest in 25 million acres in the Republic of Congo. It is not hard to envision a future where hunger gets even worse for Africans as foreigners buy up the region's land and ship the produce overseas.

As the article concludes, it must not be forgotten that this prospect raises "not only a land rights issue. It's also a human rights issue."

Henry T. Perea

I went to an interesting sit down with California 31st Assembly District candidate Henry T. Perea last night. The Tulare County Democratic Women's Club invited Henry to the Methodist Church in the town of Dinuba (population 21,006). The setting was intimate. Eleven of us sat around a table with Henry, who told us about himself and his ideas for serving our Central Valley area and California as a whole and answered questions for about an hour and a half. It was pretty remarkable that a fellow running for such an important position would spend so much time with such a small number of people. He left a very good impression.

Like many area Latinos, his family started out working in agriculture. His grandmother was in the bracero program in World War II canning peaches. She instilled an ethic of service into her children, and Henry was brought up in a political family. His father was the first Latino on the Fresno City Board of Education and the Fresno County Board of Supervisors. His mother was a union negotiator.

While a student at Fresno State Henry interned in the office of Democratic Congressman Cal Dooley. He ran for the Fresno City Council at the age of only 23 and won an upset victory over a wealthy and well connected Republican opponent mainly by sheer determination and hard work. The opponent was endorsed by the Fresno Bee and practically the entire establishment of power people. But he was lazy. For Henry's part, he found an issue, the lack of equal infrastructure in his south area of the city (many streets didn't even have gutters and sidewalks). Henry outworked the opposition, personally knocking on every door in his district an amazing five times. Finally, unlike his competitor, he showed up extremely well-prepared for the debate. He won the seat and has been a Fresno City Council for 7 1/2 years. As for the infrastructure issue, he is proud to report that it was completed under budget and a year ahead of schedule. Last year he lost a hard-fought campaign for Fresno mayor.

Now Henry is endorsed by most of the movers and shakers, including, almost all the district's mayors, the termed-out incumbent and State Senator Dean Florez, a local power and a leading candidate for lieutenant governor. The 31st AD is an interesting mix of a district. It is 51% Fresno city urban and 49% rural. For those who are unaware, Fresno is hardly small potatoes. It has an estimated 2009 population of 500,017, making it number 36 in the nation. But the composition of the district makes it essential to be responsive to issues of both types. This Henry certainly is. He is intelligent, personable, still young at 31, and well-spoken. He is not afraid to state his views, but is considerate and listens well to the concerns people brought up. He had some interesting and attractive takes on the issues.

Major area issues to him include water, transportation and air quality. He is for conservation and environmental protection, but feels we simply must build new dams in the nearby Sierras and a peripheral canal for more water for the valley. He said he sat down with the Sierra Club the day before and knew they weren't going to like that but he told them anyway. Any candidate in this area must be for developing more water sources. I am a Sierra Club member myself and agree with Henry on this! We have the second worst air quality in the nation and suffer high childhood asthma rates as a result. He is for extending Fresno's banning of wood burning fireplaces in new homes area wide, the commencement of two new solar energy projects and the state high-speed rail system through the valley to cut down on car traffic. As a side benefit, he'll fight for the construction of its primary maintenance facility to be located in the Valley near its midpoint. That could mean 1,000 jobs to this badly depressed economy.

Speaking of the economy, he understands the importance of diversifying the region from its traditional over-reliance on the ups and downs of agriculture. Both vocational and degree-producing educational opportunities must be greatly expanded in the valley to remediate its chronically high unemployment, now standing at upwards of 15%. A better qualified workforce will encourage more employers to locate here, he reasonably maintains. He feels the way to begin making serious headway against gangs is with job training and creation. I couldn't agree more.

In terms of California's well-known governmental dysfunction, Henry has come to the point where he favors some of the ideas of California Forward, including holding a state constitutional convention, limited to prescribed issues. He thinks we absolutely has to get rid of the two-thirds requirement to pass a budget but favors keeping that 2/3 threshold for increasing taxes. He feels that as the recently-passed redistricting proposition takes effect beginning in 2012, there will be more competitive legislative and congressional races, but the sharpest dividing line will be less Republican versus Democrat than urban versus rural. I'm not so sure about that, but time will tell.

I was quite impressed with his characterization of public service. He said those who put down politicians and say, "Get a real job!" have no idea how hard you have to work. The most work isn't done on the floor in session, it is behind the scenes reading mountains of reports and bills and meeting with allies and opponents, frequently long after regular work hours to craft solutions and forge common ground enough to move improvements forward. That is, of course, in addition to all the time one has to put in to get and keep the job itself.

There is no doubt you have to be incredibly committed and energetic to do what he is doing. On service, he also quoted the late Senator Ted Kennedy, "We believe in public service as an honorable path, to be a voice for those who have none." If the people of the 31st Assembly District, which leans Democratic, elect Henry T. Perea to represent them, they will have done themselves a favor. He is a moderate progressive, suited for the area. Most of all, he will be a sincere and dedicated public servant.

McCain Comes Around

I received a pleasant surprise this morning while watching Bob Schieffer interview Senator John McCain on Face the Nation. The surprise was the reappearance of the candid and honest John McCain we used to know before the 2008 presidential election campaign. It reminded me of the McCain of the 2000 "Straight Talk Express" days, of the man who used to be my favorite Republican. It was good to see him back.

There he was, telling Schieffer that torture is not only illegal, but immoral and ineffective. "Under torture, a prisoner will tell you anything he thinks you want to hear," said McCain, sounding like either a peacenik or a man who knows something about torture first hand.

He spoke of going to Iraq with his friend, South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. There they were allowed to talk to a man McCain referred to as, "an al Qaeda operative." The Arizona lawmaker related how he had asked the man how al Qaeda had begun making inroads in Iraq. "The first opportunity came in the general chaos after the American invasion, when there was no law and order in the country." "The second," he said, "came after the news about Abu Ghraib reached the people. Suddenly, there were thousands of young men eager to join our ranks." By relating this story it is clear that McCain gets it.

During the election campaign this McCain was nowhere to be found. The former proponent of American morality and adherence to international law and civilized behavior had adopted a strategy founded on appealing to the conservative base of the Republican Party alone. That group refuses to hear of anything the country might be able to improve upon, so during the election race McCain turned to backing the Bush-Cheney "enhanced interrogation" regime and ridiculing Obama's promise to abide by U.S. law and common decency.

It is good to see that now out of the grip of his campaign team of Rove-trained pols and an imagined need to draw distinctions with Obama even where he was clearly right, McCain has returned to sense and to his ethical center. It does not say much for the Republican base when its candidate feels he must cater to its mythologies at election time to win its votes, even when he knows they are not only erroneous but against his own principles as well. Those who will not hear the truth can never face reality and correct mistakes.

Welcome back, John. It was good to see you again.

Edward M. Kennedy, Rest in Peace

Senator Edward M. Kennedy's long battle with brain cancer ended last night. Teddy passed away at the age of 77. With the passing of the youngest Kennedy brother we come to the end of an extraordinary era in American society and politics. The famous Kennedy legacy of idealism came to be personified by perhaps its least likely protagonist these past forty-one years.

Ted was the youngest, fattest, and seemingly softest of the four sons of Joe and Rose Kennedy. He had a penchant for hedonism in some ways even beyond those of his older brothers. Yet with their untimely deaths he eventually pulled himself together, assumed the mantle of their service and came to surpass them in many important ways.

It is hard to believe that Teddy spent nearly as much time in the United States Senate as brothers Jack and Bobby lived. They joined eldest brother Joe, Jr., who died even younger flying for the Army Air Corps on a mission to take out a German V-1 rocket launching site in World War II.

They were meteors who flashed brilliantly across the public sky but were snuffed out decades too soon. He alone lived to the grayness of old age, and came to embrace the role of the incremental fight of advancing his cause by inches over the years. It was a role his early temperament did not seem suited for, but one he embraced and filled well. Today the accolades run the gamut from Al Sharpton and Howard Dean to John McCain and Nancy Reagan.

All seem to agree he was one of the last of a dying breed, the politician of conviction who could fight the good fight yet remain friends with his colleagues across the aisle. His ability to craft compromises on education, civil rights and health have been remarked upon by many of his colleagues and will be sorely missed. For though he was often vilified in earlier years by conservatives as the prototypical liberal bogeyman, he was paradoxically one who was better at the old-fashioned skill of finding enough common ground to advance his cause, incrementally, if necessary, over a long period of time.

He did not have to do any of this, of course. He could easily have retired to the easy life of Hyannis Port, sailing and dabbling in high society. Instead, this scion of wealth and prep school privilege was a tireless advocate for issues affecting women, minorities and the working class. Though they affected him little personally, he fought to increase the minimum wage to a living wage, and hardest of all for universal health coverage. His vote and his political skill in this last and currently hottest battle will be sorely missed.

Last January, after the Barack Obama win in Iowa, the Hillary Clinton victory in New Hampshire and subsequent Obama's success in South Carolina, Ted and his niece Caroline passed the Kennedy mantle to Obama, all but designating him the fifth brother. It was an unmistakable signal to the nation that Sen. Clinton's assumed advantage with the Democratic establishment may not have been as solid as it seemed. When she shortly proved unable to shake the young Illinoisan's lead on Super Tuesday, Obama was on his march to the presidency.

Most of all, Ted Kennedy's life and death bookend fifty years when one family inspired millions in the world's leading country probably more than any other. Though his style may be inimitable and his legislative accomplishments many, the youngest brother's true contribution
may have been to the nation's conscience, such as when he said at his bother Bobby's funeral, "those of us who loved him pray that what he dreamed shall come to pass."

Or as he memorably concluded at the convention after losing his party's nomination for President in 1980, the assurance that win or lose, in good times and in bad, in a world of regular people contending against powers and interests seemingly intent on keeping them down and leaving them out of many of the benefits of the society they helped build, that they were not forgotten by all the power brokers. As Teddy assured them, "The dream will never die."

Playing Politics with the Threat Level

The latest Bush Administration memoir, this one by the first Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, will soon come out with intimations of an effort by Administration heavyweights to raise the terrorism threat level on the eve of the 2004 election in an effort to arouse public fear and boost the President's re-election chances. Here you can see a synopsis in the New York Times, and go to the U.S. News & World Report "Washington Whisper" item that originally broke the story.

Sources say Ridge's soon-to-be-released book, The Test of our Times: America Under Siege and How We Can Be Safe Again, details strenuous efforts by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft to get Ridge to move the terror threat level up to "orange" the weekend before the November, 2004 election. This occurred despite unanimous opinion within the DHS that no intelligence existed to support such a finding, according to Ridge. He adds that the episode confirmed his inclination to resign immediately following the election rather than continue to be associated with those who played politics with the American people's security and fast and loose with the truth.

Ridge's book joins a growing list of tell-all revelations that have appeared from Bush Administration figures in the few months since he left office. Others have shed light on the case of the fired U.S. Attorneys, fabrications elucidated by former Press Secretary Scott McClellan and revelations that Ashcroft himself resisted pressure to approve unconstitutional actions from his sickbed in the hospital.

These confessions and accounts go far toward confirming what most on the left had been contending all along--that Bush and his team were a bunch of shamelessly manipulative liars who frequently subordinated constitutional and ethical standards to the exigencies of political gain. That is all to the good. But they also make me think about the tellers, too. It is well that the truth is finally getting out. It is something of note when men like Ridge and McClellan ostensibly give up insider positions of power as matters of conscience. But don't you wonder why they waited so long to come forward? They could have resigned and told their tales before the 2004 election. Perhaps a raft of these before the vote would have cost Bush a close election and saved the country from at least the last four years of W's misgovernance.

By coming clean, such figures act to assuage their consciences, add to the historical record and perhaps stand as cautionary examples to warn against the abuses of the future. But what they fell short of doing was acting with the complete integrity a democratic public must have in order to make an informed decision. The cold truth is that these men were more abettors than whistle blowers when it could have done the most good. And as a result, the whole nation suffered.

After the Rise of China and India

A friend writes from India that the South Asian giant is anticipating a return to 7% economic growth this year, and that China forecasts the resumption of 10% growth rate. Europe and the U.S., in contrast, are hopeful their GDPs will drop less than 1%. The rest of the prognosis is that India and China will soon run the world politically and militarily, as leading world economic powers have been doing since the modern period began. These things are indeed possibilities, but countervailing trends also admit of other likelihoods too, particularly if one has been paying attention to recent history.

The spreading of manufacturing jobs to successive waves of low-wage countries has and will continue to lift millions of people in the world's poorest societies out of abject want. India and China will advance and increase their prosperity greatly in the few decades ahead, as Japan did in the 1960s and 1970s. That is, presuming environmental disaster does not overtake the biosphere as another couple of billion humans engaging in first world consumption patterns severely tax the ecological capacity of the planet.

But even if not, nations like China and India will probably suffer much of the same stagnation that has derailed Japan since the late 1980s. This will happen for two reasons. First, production will continue to get more automated, ruthlessly paring the factory jobs that have provided the bulk of working class employment there in the current boom.

Second, as their wages rise their labor forces will fall prey to industry's subsequent move to the next wave of rock-bottom wage countries, probably Latin America and then Africa, some 20 or 30 years hence. The process is inexorable given the reduction of trade barriers and the logic of business capital. The spotlight shines but briefly on a favored region. Like a line from All Quiet on the Western Front, "Forever isn't always a long time around here."

Rules of Politics Still in Force

There is a lot of turmoil these days relating to the health care debate. The TV news is full of images of angry people mad at various aspects of reform ideas circulating in congress or from the White House. No doubt some part of it is composed of industry shills and no doubt some of the strident shouters' distrust of Obama stems from race. But proponents of humane reform who dismiss the entire display as either put-up phonies or racists do so at their peril. There is sincere doubt and real fear out there. The President and advocates of improving the system have to address these substantively in order to hold the middle and pass meaningful reform. Otherwise only an ineffectual window dressing bill will pass.

The first thing at work here is the body of American conservatism rousing itself. Some of the people shown on television are making emotional pleas to save the country from socialism. Others cite the fear of taxes and breaking the budget. Others speak of a broader set of grievances that include the end of school prayer, abortion, illegal immigrants (will they be covered?) and other such among the usual litany of conservative issues. These folks have begun shaking off the albatross of the failed Bush presidency and see the Democrats marching ahead on their agenda just as they said they would. The demoralization of defeat has given way to the determination to fight for their beliefs, threatened now as they have not been since early in the Clinton years. This is normal.

So between the conservative private citizens, the special interest publicity and the conservative media machine, the message is getting out. Most Americans know there are serious problems with the accelerating cost and lack of access for many to our health resources. They are open to positive change and reasonably generous about providing for the genuinely needy. But the great moderate middle is also wary of boondoggles. They want reform that works. The job of genuine conservative folks and their industry and ideological allies is to raise questions, or doubt and fear if you will. The job of progressives and the president, if they want real reform, is to dispel it. This isn't patty cake. It is the usual hardball politics when important interests are at stake.

Proponents of meaningful reform have two things going for them in this battle. One is the nature of the opposition and two is the need for change. First, there is a good chance the opposition is overplaying its hand with its rude, bullying tactics. Shouting down opponents and disrupting meetings in the long run may do their cause more harm than good. Recall that McCain and Palin's celebrity, socialism and communism campaign against Obama last fall fell flat. Obama spoke convincingly of the need to get past such politics and this time the negative campaigning did not work. The bullies will earn the contempt of many moderates.

Second, the opposition is, if you watch the video on it, overwhelmingly just what the Republican Party is: almost all white and disproportionally elderly. And their questions reveal an appalling ignorance and susceptibility to the most idiotically false rumors. Over and over they ask will the new bills pay for abortion, will old people be left to die, will their Medicare be taken away, will government take over all the hospitals, and so forth. The ease with which such concerns can be disproved to the objective and the open minded serves to discredit the opposition cause.

And finally, the need for some kind of strong correction is conceded by practically everyone. Not only are 47 million uninsured, but tens of millions more fear they will lose the coverage they have if they lose their job or their employer is unable to continue to pay the ever accelerating insurance rates. It's up to Obama and the Democratic leadership to show how their ideas will do this in a responsible, cost-effective and fair way. They have to get the policy right and they have to sell it right. That's how American politics works. Why would anyone think this time would be any different?