To quote from a recent BBC article:

Lee Ki-Churl, a corporation official, said he expected Tanzanians to benefit from the deal. “Some African countries export fruit and import fruit juice, or export olives and import olive oil, simply because their past colonialists did not teach them how to process food,” he told the AFP news agency. “We plan to set up an education centre for Tanzanian farmers in the food-processing zone in order to transfer agricultural know-how and irrigation expertise to them.”

I think it is both patronising and ignorant to assume that Africans don’t farm the way modern western farms operate because they are uneducated.  This almost seems to imply that Africans are too stupid to help themselves.

I’m not a purist when it comes to the “rationalism” of markets (the theory that every price includes all available information to reflect that price), but I do believe that in relatively unsophisticated African markets there are good reasons why farmers do not farm or invest in productive capacity:  weak rule of law, ineffective property rights, high taxes, bribery and corruption all add up to ensure that the cost exceeds the benefit of investment.

Anthony Mills, a soil scientist at the University of Stellenbosch contacted me regarding the difficulty of conducting development in Africa.  “The Zambian land tenure system is particularly problematic.  By law the land is owned by the President.  In practice it is owned by the chiefs.  The land is consequently probably even further from private ownership than in most developing countries.”

Yet, without any due acknowledgment of the political and legal environment standing in the way of growth and development, international projects duly waste cash on major interventions.  In 2004, the UN launched the Millennium Development Villages project in an effort to demonstrate how the goals for the Millennium Development Goals could be realised.

Promises of the Millennium

Millennium Promise was co-founded by the economist Jeffrey Sachs and the philanthropist Ray Chambers. The project work of the Millennium Villages are overseen by a Scientific Council composed of leading scientific and development authorities at the UN Millennium Project and The Earth Institute at Columbia University, both of which are headed by Sachs.

The project is a miserable example of the patronising and objectionable way in which development in Africa is imposed, as if like manna from a benevolent West.

The project hasn’t “failed” in the way a business would fail.  Jeffrey Sachs hasn’t been forced to live in a homeless shelter, and the villages themselves aren’t derelict.  My concerns have to do with the nature of the promises, and of the results.  My analysis is based using only their published information and claims (on their sites: http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/ and http://www.millenniumvillages.org/).

Their objectives are an overwhelming mish-mash of wants and desires:

“In its first 18 months, the MVP’s five main objectives were to: (i) Provide universal access and free distribution of long-lasting, insecticide treated bed nets to fight malaria; (ii) Achieve significant increases in staple crop yields; (iii) Ensure universal access to functioning health clinics; (iv) Increase primary school enrollments; and (v) Provide community access to improved and year-round water for consumption. In addition, the MVP emphasized cross-cutting interventions focused on addressing gender inequality; on community mobilization, participation and leadership; and on infrastructure for transport, energy, and information and communications technologies (ICT).”

“The Millennium Villages seek to end extreme poverty by working with the poorest of the poor, village by village throughout Africa, in partnership with governments and other committed stakeholders, providing affordable and science-based solutions to help people lift themselves out of extreme poverty.”

Ending extreme poverty is a known quantity.  Numerous countries have done it (from South Korea to Brazil) and what is required mostly boils down to accountable government and rule of law, plus sound economic principles premised on enforceable property rights.

So much for the background.  Let’s look at the viability of these projects themselves.

The region chosen

“Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda.”

According to a quick check, the bottom 20% earn roughly $350 to $450 per annum in this region.  I’m being generous here, since the MDP aims to work with the absolute poorest which the UN usually defines as people earning less than $1/day.

“Between 1990 and 2001, the number of people in sub-Saharan Africa living on less than $1 a day rose from 227 million to 313 million, and the poverty rate rose from 45 percent to 46 percent. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rate of undernourishment in the world, with one-third of the population below the minimum level of nourishment.”

This implies a total of 62 – 63,000 villages (at their requirement of 5,000 people per village) who fall into the project scope.

The investment

“Each Millennium Village requires a donor investment of $300,000 per year for five years. This includes a cost of $250,000 per village per year (5,000 villagers per village multiplied by $50 per villager) and an additional $50,000 per village per year to cover logistical and operational costs associated with implementation, community training, and monitoring and evaluation. Note that this level of external support is fully consistent with the 2005 G8 commitments for official development assistance to Africa by 2010. The other $60 per villager per year will come from village members, local and national governments and partner organizations, making for total funding of $110 per person per year.”

This is a fudge.  Firstly, sure, the global community may have promised a grand total of $50billion in support, but that usually has strings attached, and includes a wide range of other bilateral investment.  So the full amount isn’t available.  Secondly, most African governments don’t spend their own money on internal development.  Thirdly, the villages have no money (since that is the reason they were chosen).  One way or another, all of that $110 will have to be donated.

That means we are investing $550k annually for each village over a five-year period (i.e. $2.75 million).  To reach all villages in the scope requires an investment of around $172 billion.

The return on investment

So much for the background.  One of the things I’m often asked on African tourism development projects is, “Does this town/area have good tourism potential for development?”  My answer is always this:  “Are there men and women by the side of the road selling curios?  If not, then no.”

People in Africa are not poor because they are ignorant of their own needs, or of how to earn a living.  Neither are they really victims of circumstances beyond their control.  Given the right environment, Africans are as capable of supporting themselves as is anyone else. When the Zimbabwe currency was worth less than spit, inflation was several trillion % and nothing was available for sale. A few months after the Zimbabwe government abandoned the Zimbabwe dollar in exchange for the US dollar everything is available, investment is happening and production is shooting up. Zimbabwe may even be entirely self-sufficient for food again by the end of next year. And that is without any major international intervention.

So, as far as the MDP villages are concerned, my first question is this:  “Are other villages visiting the MDP villages, becoming inspired, and copying this model?”

The answer is: No.  No-one is copying the villages.  No private investor has turned up and offered to do something similar.  Scratch that, George Soros turned up and made a spot donation of $50 million in 2006 to fund 33 villages.  But that is hardly investment.

There are a whole host of reasons that I can spot:

1. The investment changes nothing about the legal and economic situation in the country at hand; governments are still corrupt, infrastructure is still non-existent.  Even if the MDV were to produce a major food surplus, who would they sell it to and how would they get it to market?
2. The project makes a great deal of the village-based ownership structure.  This is a collectivist / communist system.  If no-one owns it, then there is little incentive for individuals to work harder, since everyone will get the same outcome.  Like most projects of this nature, the output will continue as long as the expensively-paid consultants are around, then it will return to its base level.  The only reason the Kibbutz system has lasted 100 years is the donations of both the Israeli government and of outside donors.  As soon as the Israeli government cut funding, then the Kibbutzim started to close.  Now only those most hardy (or the very few who have major industries earning revenue) are still functioning.  But at least the Kibbutzim were self-created.  The MDPs rely for their energy on do-gooder outsiders.
3. Who owns the investment?  If something intangible like a “village” owns the products of individual labour and investment, then what does a person with ambition do?  Can he/she sell their stake in the village and use the money to go to university, or buy a house?  Who decides on what the profits (should there be any) be spent on?

Even in the best-case scenario, all that you achieve is that a group of famished and unhealthy people are less famished and less unhealthy.  For an investment of $2.75 million.  Is it really sufficient to take people from earning $1/day to say $2/day?

What else could you achieve with that money?

You could build a nice, labour-intensive factory for $2.75 million.  Imagine the impact of 62,000 new factories on the central African economy?  And imagine all the things that would be required for such a thing to happen … roads, rule of law, healthcare, education.  All of which would be affordable if millions of people were earning proper salaries.

This isn’t happening.  There are no investors in Africa beyond a few resources and the inevitable mobile telephony.  Africa is 2% of the world economy.  To put the MDP investment in perspective ($110 per person), foreign direct investment in Africa is worth only $19 per person per year.

Whitey Basson of Shoprite, a major African retailer, put it best last week:  “It takes 15 inches of paper to cross a border in Africa.”  Africa’s countries are regularly ranked as the most appalling and corrupt places in which to do business.

The MDP villages do not change that situation.  The agricultural techniques behind the project may be sound, but the economics are a failure.

And, if the economics are a failure, then what is the point of the project?

Competition at international sporting events is fierce and the pursuit of an edge, sometimes measured in hundredths of a second, leads some to cheat.  Steroid abuse aims to increase the strength, speed and endurance of what is natural.  But the androgens created by the body are not set to any standard.  Some people do genuinely produce more than others.  Figuring out what is normal and what is not is difficult.

And, sometimes, something else is going on.

In 1966, Erika Schinegger was the world champion women’s downhill skier.  The young Austrian was preparing for the Olympics in 1968 and a hoped-for gold medal.  However, 1968 was no ordinary year.

The politics of the time saw Communist countries forcing significant anabolic steroids on their athletes in an effort to ensure victory.  The concern was not just for the future of competitive sport, but also for the health of the athletes.  The East Germans, in particular, were serial abusers.  Manfred Ewald, architect of their doping scheme, was convicted and jailed in 2000 for his part in this.

Besides doping, though, many male athletes were entered as women to ensure an additional level of success.

Schinegger was one of the first Olympic athletes to undergo a gender test.  She discovered, to her shock, that she was actually male.  She was disqualified and had a sex-change, becoming Erik, a man.

Gender is not as simple as visually inspecting a person and deciding whether they are male or female.  Much of what we are comes down to the expression of our genes.

For hardened racists, it can be somewhat troubling and disconcerting to discover that we are both all and no races.  That a person who may live in Europe and whose family has been there for generations has components of their genetic code that prove incontrovertibly that they have African ancestors.

This doesn’t matter unless you enter a situation where hard rules are enforced, like South Africa’s racial rules of the Apartheid era.  The same is also true of gender.  It doesn’t much matter unless you wish to have children, or to compete in sporting events.

During the fertilisation of an egg by a sperm, the female egg has its X chromosome complemented by either of an X or Y chromosome from the sperm.  This results in a typical XX or XY paring.  However, in one pairing per thousand, something slightly different happens.

According to the Textbook of Sexual Medicine, “During the first weeks of development, genetic male and female fetuses are anatomically indistinguishable, with primitive gonads beginning to develop during approximately the sixth week of gestation. The gonads, in a bipotential state, may develop into either testes (the male gonads) or ovaries (the female gonads) depending on consequent events.”

The most common cause of sexual ambiguity is congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), an endocrine disorder in which the adrenal glands produce abnormally high levels of virilizing hormones.  This results in genetic females (XX chromosomes) producing male characteristics as they become extremely sensitive to male hormones.  Conversely, a genetic male (XY) could become insensitive to androgens, resulting in female characteristics.  And there are a wide range of other variations.

Milton Diamond, a prominent gender researcher, says this, “Foremost, we advocate use of the terms “typical,” “usual,” or “most frequent” where it is more common to use the term “normal.” When possible avoid expressions like maldeveloped or undeveloped, errors of development, defective genitals, abnormal, or mistakes of nature. Emphasize that all of these conditions are biologically understandable while they are statistically uncommon.”

In other words, while some of the impacts of these gender events can be disturbing for some, and statistically rare, they are all normal aspects of our genetic makeup.  Far from making race and gender simpler, modern genetics has made pure categorisation almost impossible.

All of this may be scant support for Caster Semenya as she undergoes the public scrutiny which has followed her victory in the 800 metres at the World Championships.

In every-day life, it certainly doesn’t matter what gender she may be. 

In the brutal world of competitive athletics, it is important.  This has nothing to do with the politics of gender or race, but it does with the arbitrary limitations required of competitive sport. 

Life is full of arbitrary definitions: from the legal voting age, to official retirement, to age categories for sporting events. The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) is enforcing its rules no less arbitrarily, but those happen to be the known rules for international competition.

The debate about racism or sexism is pitched as being about accepting predefined stereotypes and labels, not about chucking them in the bin.  Race is an arbitrary measure of human difference.  So is gender.  Yet we don’t throw away the labels, we just force people into them and then demand tolerance of people because of those labels.  Isn’t that discrimination as well?

The real hope of this current row over the gender of one person is that maybe we can start accepting people for what they are, rather than in stereotyping people and then choosing whether to accept or reject those stereotypes.

[Cross-posted from Africagenome.com]

Further reading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/jul/30/olympicgames2008.gender

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_differentiation

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/aug/23/caster-semenya-athletics-gender

http://www.thetimes.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=1055314

“A judge is not supposed to do that. It’s not for judges to decide on foreign policy. They don’t run government and they don’t run foreign policy. There is separation of powers. They run the judiciary. I don’t comment on the judiciary.” (This after a judge in SA’s constitutional court sided with the current minister of health that it was unadvised to prevent the Dalai Lama from visiting).

“Tutu does not run government. Remember, he said he was not going to vote. If it were up to him, there would be no elections next month.” (In response to Archbishop Desmond Tutu declaring that he would now boycott the conference.)

Which got even the usually intelligent finance minister, Trevor Manuel, involved: “Is he just the spiritual leader of the Buddhists in Tibet or is he the one who on March 28 1959 established the government of Tibet in exile in the same way Taiwan was established to counter the legality of a single China?”

“The reason why the Dalai Lama wants to be here is to make a big global political statement about the secession of Tibet from China. He wants to do it on the free soil of SA,” Manuel said.

“I am sure he is welcome to come at any other time but we should not allow him to raise the global issue that will impact on the standing of SA. Quite frankly this has nothing to do with the PSL (Professional Soccer League). It is a matter of the relationship between states and that is what we have to stand up for.”

But, back to the continuing lunacy of the foreign minister:

“Foreign policy has to be discussed and has to be understood. But at the end of the day we can’t all conduct foreign policy. I’m not casting any aspersions on anyone. But the truth of the matter that foreign policy has to be conducted at one level and has to be co-ordinated.”

“China cannot bully us. But of course, they also have their own interests. As a country, they will further their own interests. But we are not hiding the fact that we want to have good relations with China – like everybody else in the world.”

“Human rights are also about jobs, education and shelter. You can’t divorce economic interest from human rights. Our [Bill] of rights is much more broader than that of many countries.”

“But when we took a decision on his visit we looked at what is the national interest -which includes making sure that the country runs, human rights, in the broad sense, are protected, people have food, shelter and jobs. What brings stability is the combination of each of all these rights.”

Which earned the following response from Professor Geir Lundestad, director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute:

“We are disappointed that the South African government did not stand up to Chinese pressure, particularly bearing in mind the strong support the ANC got from abroad and the Norwegian Nobel Committee in its historic struggle against apartheid.”

And my take: claiming that denying the Dalai Lama entrance to a conference to discuss peace and global harmony is actually in the DEFENCE of human rights is the sort of double-speak gobbledygook you’d expect from a government with absolutely no respect for human rights. Claiming that Desmond Tutu, one of the greatest humanists alive, is in favour of the destruction of democracy because he WON’T vote in a political system that has become nothing but a collection of favouritism and corruption is just spurious bullshit.

About the only ANC/government representative who has said anything approaching sense is the current Health Minister, Barbara Hogan (who has now earned the ire of the unsackable Dlamini-Zuma): “Just the very fact that this government has refused entry to the Dalai Lama is an example of a government who is dismissive of human rights. I believe [the government] needs to apologise to the citizens of this country, because it is in your name that this great man who has struggled for the rights of his country… has been denied access.”

The government decision was, said the Dalai Lama, “another manifestation of one of the fundamental challenges to world peace as a whole: namely, a lack of understanding and mutual respect”.

“I believe religious, social and political leaders throughout the world have a responsibility to ensure principles triumph over the obsession with money and power.”

Except for the missing word “unearned” in front of “money and power”, I have no problem with those sentiments.

I admit, however, that I almost met my match in Shake Hands with the Devil, one of the most heartbreaking books you’ll ever read. Now a Canadian senator, its author, General Romeo Dallaire, you may recall, served as head of the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda, where his hands were tied by the severe limitations imposed by the UN on both the force’s numbers and its mandate.

I’ve also read more than my share of books on the Holocaust. Among my favorites: Robert Jay Lifton’s cheery tome, Nazi Doctors.

More recently, I’ve been studying the extremes to which the allies took bombing in World War II: Think Dresden, Hamburg, and Tokyo. Two outstanding recent books on the subject are Among the Dead Cities by A.C. Grayling and Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker. Then, of course, there’s Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which leads us to nuclear weapons.

Actually, it’s not nuclear weapons that I like to contemplate but the nature of the people who ponder — and promulgate, as well as propagate — nuclear weapons. For example, Mr. Megadeath himself, the late Herman Kahn. He was foremost among the men who, writes Louis Menand in a 2005 New Yorker review of two books on Kahn, “made it their business to think about the unthinkable, and to design the game plan for nuclear war.”

Menand cites the opening chapter of Kahn’s book On Thermonuclear War, which contains a “table titled ‘Tragic but Distinguishable Postwar States.’ It has two columns: one showing the number of dead, from two million up to a hundred and sixty million,” which is one category of the postwar states. Meanwhile, the other column shows the other category: “the time required for economic recuperation, from one year up to a hundred years.”

Yes, the strata of data are “tragic but [never fear] distinguishable.” But there is such a thing as putting too fine a point on it. Would that the degree to which that kind of theorizing numbs the soul led instead to a new Nuclear Freeze.

Recently, however, my son’s middle-school class has been learning about slavery, a subject which I somehow missed, either because my academic background is limited or, as you’ll see, because of unconscious avoidance. My reaction to the introduction of slavery into my consciousness (thanks to the need to quiz my son for his test) is two-fold –- flip sides of the same sentiment, actually –- feeling bad for my son, as well as myself, because we have to deal with this sorrowful subject.

Why is studying slavery more dispiriting to me than exploring an atrocity? Perhaps because it’s not an eruption of violence, a historical spasm, an aberration, like Nazi Germany and Rwanda. Instead, for hundreds of years slavery was a way of life fundamental to national economies. Many in Nazi Germany may have been in the grips of mass hysteria. But acquiescing to slavery required cultures to exist in a trance state for hundreds of years.

In the United States, certain plantation owners spurned physical punishment and no doubt formed a self-image of themselves as benevolent for providing care for “savages” who they considered childlike. As well, some believed they offered heathens a chance for salvation by introducing them to Christianity.

Making an individual your beneficiary is one thing; owning him or her another. Nor does any justification whatsoever exist for uprooting humans from their homelands and packing them like, yes, sardines on slave ships (see accompanying images).

Today, however, the tables have turned. While slavery, though still extant, has become abhorrent to us, most of us turn a blind eye to massacres, which, for a while, were a way of life in Iraq.

Once known as “The Dark Continent,” Africa boasted a romantic reputation to Westerners as an unknown place of mystery and intrigue. The moniker still holds true today, although for a different reason: Most Americans know so little about current affairs on the continent that news from African countries might as well be struggling to escape a black hole.

Fortunately, Immaculée Ilibagiza’s memoir, Left To Tell, serves as a light in the darkness—even if the darkness it illuminates is among the darkest in modern history.

Ilibagiza recounts her experience as a twenty-two-year-old woman during the 1994 Rwandan holocaust—a three-month period of ethnic slaughter that left one million Tutsis dead at the hands of extremist Hutus. An army of rebel Tutsis, fighting its way out of exile from nearby Uganda, finally brought an end to the bloodshed.

“Tutsis were supposed to be taller, lighter-skinned, and have narrower noses; while Hutus were shorter, darker, and broad-noses. But that wasn’t really true because Hutus and Tutsis had been marrying each other for centuries, so our gene pools were intermingled,” Ilibagiza explains. “Hutus and Tutsis spoke the same language…and shared the same history. We had virtually the same culture: We sang the same songs, farmed the same land, attended the same churches, and worshipped the same God. We lived in the same villages, on the same streets, and often in the same houses.”

But a century of exploitation and manipulation by European colonialists created deep divisions between the two tribes. Ethnic purges erupted between them on several occasions over the years, but the death of Rwanda’s Hutu president sparked such violence that, by the time it was finished, dead, mutilated Rwandans were left stacked like cordwood along roadsides for miles.

Ilibagiza’s tale avoids gratuitous, graphic descriptions of the carnage. Instead, she captures the horror by bringing readers into her own intimate and frequently overwhelming reactions to the violence.

“I cursed my height and wondered why being tall was such a crime in my country,” she says. “What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t stop being tall, and I couldn’t stop being a Tutsi!”

When she flees her home and goes into hiding, Ilibagiza pulls the reader along in desperate haste, and together—author and reader, both fugitives—hunker down in terror and wait for the terror to pass.

Except that it doesn’t.

For three months, Ilibagiza and seven other Tutsi women hide in a bathroom four feet long and three feet wide. A Hutu pastor sympathetic to their plight keeps them hidden, although killers ransack his home over and over, trying to find the women.

During her months sealed away in the secret room, as the holocaust rages across the countryside, Ilibagiza loses everything important to her. When she and the other refugees finally manage their escape, Ilibagiza learns the grim fates of her immediate family. She alone, she realizes, is left to tell their story—and the stories of the million other victims of the genocide.

And it is there where the book’s true miracle takes place. While cloistered in the bathroom, Ilibagiza undergoes a profound personal journey of faith. That deep spiritual transformation prepares her for when she emerges from hiding: the scope of the disaster does not freeze her into shock but spurs her into action to help other survivors of the holocaust.

Still, many readers will find Left to Tell an emotionally difficult book to read. How, they might wonder, can people do the things to each other that people did to each other in Rwanda? In that vein, “Left to Tell” stands with Elie Wiesel’s Night and Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking as disturbing tales of epic inhumanity and tragedy.

But Ilibagiza’s tale also inspires. Despite tragedy, one can find hope; despite inhumanity, man can also find—and emulate—the divine.

Although published in 2006, Ilibagiza’s book remains especially relevant: The ethnic hatred that lead to Rwanda’s holocaust has again reared its ugly head in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo. In recent weeks, civil unrest has boiled across the region. News from the Dark Continent remains dark.

Left to Tell serves as a powerful reminder that the world doesn’t have to be that way. Light still exists, and it can be found in each of us.

With the bailout of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the Reagan revolution has at last realized the robber barons’ dream: privatize the profits and socialize the debt. Nicely done, fellas.

— a letter to the editor of The New York Times from Candida Pugh of Oakland, Calif.; Sept. 10; emphasis added.

We now see the compensation wasn’t deserved. I don’t think taxpayers want their money to go to the C.E.O.’s of these very large institutions.

— Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on the exit pay packages of Daniel H. Mudd of Fannie Mae and Richard F. Syron of Freddie Mac who, The Times’ Eric Dash reports, are eligible for as much as $24 million in severance, retirement benefits and deferred compensation; Sept. 10.

The report says that eight officials in the royalty program accepted gifts from energy companies whose value exceeded limits set by ethics rules — including golf, ski and paintball outings; meals and drinks; and tickets to a Toby Keith concert, a Houston Texans football game and a Colorado Rockies baseball game.

The investigation also concluded that several of the officials “frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives.”

— from a Times story by Charlie Savage on reports filed with Congress by Earl E. Devaney, the Interior Department’s inspector general, on “wrongdoing by a dozen current and former employees of the Minerals Management Service, which collects about $10 billion in royalties annually and is one of the government’s largest sources of revenue other than taxes”; Sept. 10.

Education is obviously not the issue Senator McCain spends the most time on. He’s been a quiet and consistent supporter of parents and educators who he thinks are making a difference.

— Lisa Graham Keegan, a McCain adviser and former Arizona education commissioner, explaining the brevity of presidential candidate John McCain’s education plan but suggesting that it should not be interpreted as a lack of commitment to education; Sept. 9.

I’m really frightened. I’ve been in blizzards and tornadoes, but never a hurricane. It’s frightening, but if the Lord’s going to take you, he’s going to find you wherever you are.

— Ginger Saracco of Galveston, Texas, after watching a storm surge from Hurricane Ike slam into a seawall; Sept. 12.

That project is moving right ahead. The money for that project was not diverted anywhere else. … So (for her) to say she said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks….’ I would say she said, ‘Thanks!’

— Tony Knowles, who served as governor of Alaska from 1994 to 2002; an Anchorage Daily News story by George Bryson says Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin “still supports spending $400 million to $600 million on ‘the other Bridge to Nowhere,’ the Knik Arm Crossing, which would provide residents in Palin’s hometown of Wasilla faster access to Anchorage” according to Gov. Knowles; Sept. 11.

[Gov. Sarah Palin] strikes me as a target-rich environment.

— Saturday Night Live writer James Downey; Sept. 12.

He was on the wrong side of the rope line. It is a decision that is hard to comprehend.

— Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, D-N.J., about former Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s visibility as Republican pitchman for Sen. John McCain; Sept. 9.

YouTube was being used by Islamist terrorist organizations to recruit and train followers via the Internet and to incite terrorist attacks around the world, including right here in the United States. I expect these stronger community guidelines to decrease the number of videos on YouTube produced by al-Qaeda and affiliated Islamist terrorist organizations.

— from a statement by Sen. Joseph Lieberman exhorting YouTube to ban videos that “incite” violence; YouTube agreed to ban some content in response; Sept. 12.

Your prayers reached where they were meant to reach. The truth prevailed.

— Jacob Zuma, president of the African National Congress, as his theme song, “Bring Me My Machine Gun” played, after a South African judge threw out “racketeering, corruption, money laundering and fraud [charges] related to a multibillion rand government arms deal in the late 1990s”; a New York Times story says “A court in Durban convicted Mr. Zuma’s business adviser of funneling about $170,000 to Mr. Zuma in exchange for help in winning contracts”; Sept. 12; emphasis added.

[I will not] respond to the garbage from the American empire.

— Tarek El Aissami, appointed Venezuela’s interior minister on Monday, responding to a report by The Times‘ Alexei Barrioneuvo that “[a] conspiracy to cover up the intended recipient of a suitcase filled with $800,000 in cash found in Argentina last year reached the highest levels of Venezuela’s government, with President Hugo Chávez ordering the head of his intelligence service to handle the situation” according to court testimony; Sept. 9.

These settlements are a major step forward in cleaning up an industry where false and misleading advertising practices have been all too rampant. It is unconscionable for lenders to entice students into loans that are not best for them.

— Andrew M. Cuomo, New York’s attorney general, on a settlement with seven student loan companies that outlined a code of conduct and required that “a total of $1.4 million [be placed] into a fund to help educate students and their families about financial aid,” reported The Times‘ Johnathan D. Glater; Sept. 9.

That statute is unconstitutionally overbroad on its face because it prohibits the anonymous transmission of all unsolicited bulk e-mails including those containing political, religious or other speech protected by the First Amendment to the United State Constitution.

— from a ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court today striking down the commonwealth’s “anti-spam” law after reconsidering the conviction of Jeremy Jaynes of Raleigh, N.C., the first person tried under the law, convicted of sending tens of thousands of e-mails through America Online servers, and sentenced to nine years in prison; Sept. 12.

Q: With another anniversary of 9/11 upon us, how does the President feel about the failure to find Osama bin Laden?
MS. PERINO: President Bush has been working and directing thousands of men and women across our intelligence community to help us find Osama bin Laden, his deputies, and to disrupt plans to attack America again, wherever they might be plotted. He has not let up on that, and that fight and that hunt will continue to go on until he is brought to justice.

— exchange between reporter and press secretary Dana Perino at a White House briefing; Sept. 10.

The Republicans talk a lot about experience. When you’re the author, architect and enabler of eight years of devastating foreign policy mistakes, that’s not experience. It’s very bad judgment.

— Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., arguing that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., lacks the temperament and judgment to be president; Sen. Reid said, “Our dangerous world calls for leaders with sound judgment, not those with a temperament prone to recklessness. Our country deserves more than token shifts and lip service to change. We need to take decisive action to reverse eight years of foreign policy mistakes”; Sept. 12.

Now let me review some of the descriptive phrases that have been used by some of you that have made my own personal interfaces with the Press Corps difficult: “dictatorial and somewhat dense,” “a liar,” “a torturer” “does not get it.” In — In some cases I have never even met those that use those comments. Yet they felt qualified to make character judgments that are communicated to the world. My experience is not unique and we can find other such examples as the treatment of Secretary Brown during Katrina. In my opinion, this is the worst display of journalism imaginable by those of us that are bound by a strict value system of selfless service, honor, and integrity.

— from an address to the Military Reporters and Editors Forum Luncheon by Lieutenant General (Ret.) Ricardo S. Sanchez; Oct. 12, 2007.

Q: Is Osama bin Laden as important now as he was seven years ago?
MS. PERINO: I think that what we have tried to do is disrupt any area from becoming a safe haven where terrorists could plot and plan attacks. The leadership of al Qaeda has largely been replaced over the years, but they have more people that keep coming up through the ranks and are trained to plot and plan against us. I think — the President believes it’s important for us to hunt and track down and bring to justice Osama bin Laden. And it would be important for Americans, but it’s important for justice most of all.

— exchange between reporter and press secretary Dana Perino at a White House briefing; Sept. 10.

The rise of a free and self-governing Iraq will deny terrorists a base of operation, discredit their narrow ideology, and give momentum to reformers across the region. This will be a decisive blow to terrorism at the heart of its power, and a victory for the security of America and the civilized world.

— from an address by President Bush at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa.; May 24, 2004.

I’m sitting at Eros, a Greek diner on Seventh Avenue, loving my omelette as I seek shelter from the rain, when I see a busboy remove a container of dirty dishes — with a copy of my review in today’s paper on top. Get it while it’s hot, I guess.

— from the “On The Runway” blog of New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn; Sept. 9.

photo credits:

• Hurricane Ike hits Galveston: Associated Press
• Sen. Joseph Lieberman leaving stage: Damon Winter, The New York Times
• Sen. Lieberman mug: Alex Wong, Getty Images
• Steve Jobs: Daniel Acker, Bloomberg News
• Gap models: Marcio Madeira, Style.com

Quotabull is a weekly feature of Scholars & Rogues.

In China, size matters. People want to have a car that shows off their status in society. No one wants to buy small.

— Zhang Linsen, the 44-year-old founder of a media and graphic design company in Songjiang, China; he owns a black Hummer H2; July 28; emphasis added.

It’s a cultural thing. When the kids are hungry, they go to their mother, not their father. And when there is less food, women are the first to eat less.

— Herve Kone, director of a group that promotes development, social justice and human rights in Burkina Faso, quoted in the Washington Post Foreign Service’s Kevin Sullivan story about the impacts of the African food crisis on women and children; July 20.

Sports clubs are part of grass-roots democracy in the U.S. This structure simply does not exist in China at the moment. I think without government support there will not be high-level sports in China today.

— Susan Brownell, a professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis who is spending the year researching China and the Olympics at Beijing Sport University, arguing that the Chinese school sport system is an inevitable outgrowth of the communist state; Ariana Eunjung Cha of the Washington Post Foreign Service reports: “Modeled after those in the former Soviet Union, China’s sports schools aim to train, push and discipline more than 250,000 pupils into superstar athletes. They have produced nearly all of the Chinese Olympians who will compete this month”; Aug. 3.

It was the art historian Anne Hollander who noted that, even naked, the body is subject to fashion and that the body beautiful differs according to an era’s prevailing mores and tastes. Because the Greek word gymnasium translates as something more or less like “nuditorium,” it seems clear that few events offer a richer opportunity to see how physical beauty is currently constructed than the Beijing Games.

— from a commentary by New York Times fashion writer Guy Trebay, headlined “When Action Figures Come Out to Play”; Aug. 13.

I never imagined I could suffer such a tragedy.

— Liu Yan, 26, considered one of the China’s top classical dancers, after an accidental fall during a rehearsal 12 days before the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics that may have left her paralyzed; David Barboza of The New York Times reports: “The organizers of the opening ceremony initially asked witnesses and friends not to disclose the accident ahead of the Olympic Games on Aug. 8, according to people who have visited Liu in the hospital”; Aug. 14.

This report makes clear that too many corporations are using tax trickery to send their profits overseas and avoid paying their fair share in the United States.

— Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., on a Government Accounting Office report (pdf) that reveals, according to Lynnley Browning of The New York Times, that “[t]wo out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005″; Aug. 13.

The culture, the custom of the Cajun people, it’s gone. It’s another one of the rights that big government has taken away from the people.

— Chris Daughdrill, who breeds fighting roosters in Loranger, La.; Louisiana today becomes the last state to outlaw cockfights; the Associated Press says cockfighting remains legal in Puerto Rico, American Samoa and Guam; Aug. 10.

I think that Denver officials would be well-advised not to believe everything that the FBI warns them about. That’s how things can get out of hand, due to fabricated, exaggerated projections about violence or protest. They don’t learn. What you saw in 2000 was the claim that 75,000 anarchists were descending, the secret funding of permanent police equipment, the denial of permits for protesters. You saw the same thing in 2004. You will see the same thing in 2008. … They’ve learned nothing from 1968.

— 1968 Chicago convention protester Tom Hayden, discussing security planning for the 2008 Democratic convention: Rocky Mountain News‘ M.E. Sprengelmeyer wrote: “He thinks Big Brother posturing helps scare away peaceful protesters, gives the community a false sense of security and can, in some cases, provoke confrontations at demonstrations that would otherwise be routine and mostly peaceful”; Aug. 11.

We will have all of the standard precautions and services in place that we would at any other show, including stagehands, ushers, ticket takers, venue security, police, fire, paramedics, etc. Every event booked into the building must also meet our insurance requirements, and this show will be no exception. From our perspective, this will really be no different than any other event we book into any of our facilities.

— Jenny Schiavone of Denver’s Theaters and Arenas, on preparations for a free protest concert by Rage Against The Machine at the 10,500-seat Denver Coliseum; “Tent State University” organizers say they expect 50,000 protesters; Aug. 15.

Today, I joined my Republicans colleagues on the floor of Congress to protest against Speaker Pelosi’s decision to adjourn Congress for the rest of the summer without a vote on a comprehensive energy bill to lower gas prices and increase American-made energy. What began 10 days ago as a spontaneous uprising on the floor of the U.S. House after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) sent Congress home for a five-week break without allowing a vote on the American Energy Act, has become an unprecedented nationwide protest.

Today, I am proudly standing with my Republican colleagues, staffers, and tourists visiting the Capitol to demand action on the ‘all of the above’ energy plan that I support. I will stand with every American who expects more out of Congress and demands action now. And although the microphones and camera are turned off, our message will be heard and we will not rest until Speaker Pelosi has allowed an up-or-down vote on the American Energy Act.

— from a post titled “Blogging from the floor of the House” on the blog of Rep. John R. “Randy” Kuhl, R-N.Y., in support of the American Energy Act; Aug. 11; emphasis added.

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course, there are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.

— Alexander Solzhenitsyn, on the occasion of Class Day Afternoon Exercises at Harvard University; June 8, 1978.

MS. PERINO: Well, I would tell you that the administration at all levels has been in contact with counterparts in Georgia and Russia, including Secretary Rice and National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley. So we have ongoing conversations. I’m not at liberty to describe them, but the President — what I can tell you is President Bush has worked very hard over the years to develop good relationships with other leaders in which he can have frank and candid discussions and be very blunt about our concerns.

Q: But how does that play out — the infrastructure, if you will, that he’s built, how is that playing out now? Because he comes out in the Rose Garden and it is a strong statement of support for Georgia and some condemnation of what Russia is doing. And so did he — did the Russians know this was coming?

MS. PERINO: The public statements reflect the private conversations.

— exchange between reporter and press secretary during White House press briefing; Aug. 13; emphasis added.

[W]e must support young democracies in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. In countries like Belarus, Burma, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, and Zimbabwe, people continue to live under oppressive regimes, and we will work for the day when all these nations are free. By opposing these despots and helping young democracies grow, we will lay the foundation of peace and prosperity for generations to come. Throughout Captive Nations Week, we renew our pledge that as people across the world find their own paths to freedom, they will also find a friend in the United States of America.

— from a proclamation declaring Captive Nations Week by President Bush; July 18.

With its actions in recent days, Russia has damaged its credibility and its relations with the nations of the free world. Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century.

— President Bush on the conflict between Georgia and Russia; Aug. 15; emphasis added.

All departments and agencies have a responsibility to prepare and to provide intelligence in a manner that allows the full and free exchange of information, consistent with applicable law and presidential guidance.

— from an executive order by President Bush titled “Further Amendments to Executive Order 12333, United States Intelligence Activities”; July 31.

As low as I set the price, you’re the first person to call.

— Michael Kohan, owner of an SUV, to Times reporter Nick Bunkley, after Mr. Kohan had listed his V8-powered 2006 Land Rover LR3 (book value $31,000) with “a navigation system, xenon lights, parking assist sensors, heated leather seats and three sunroofs” for only $18,000 on eBay and Craigslist; Aug. 12

It was decided not to report the story in our news summary on the grounds that Edwards is not a candidate for public office, and not on any short list for Vice President or any other public office, so it struck us as a problem for him and his family, not the American public.

— Linda Winslow, executive producer of the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, explaining to PBS ombudsman Michael Getler why NewHour did not report former Sen. John Edwards’ admission of an affair on the day the rest of the mainstream media did; Mr. Getler wrote that the “the decision not to report the Edwards confirmation story struck me as both patronizing to people who depend on PBS for news, and journalistically mind-boggling”; Aug. 13.

The film is a platform to create indelible interactions between the long-haul trucking community and the brand and elevate the conversation beyond products and product specs.

— Mark Leger, managing director at the Chicago office of Fathom Communications, an agency that specializes in branded entertainment, online advertising and direct marketing, on a documentary called “Drive and Deliver” about long-haul trucking; The Times‘ Stuart Elliot revealed in his advertising column that the 45-minute film’s $2-million budget was underwritten by truck manufacturer Navistar to promote a new big-rig model, the LoneStar, stickered at $120,000 to $140,000; Aug. 12.

The tax on cars with engine capacities of 3 to 4 liters will rise to 25 percent from 15 percent, with the rate for engines of more than 4 liters doubling to 40 percent. The rate on cars with engines that are 1 liter or less will fall from 3 percent to 1 percent.

— from a Xinhua news story; according to a joint statement by two Chinese agencies, “We hope the new policy will help restrain the production and sales of high-emission vehicles while promoting the development of low-emission cars”; Aug. 13.

The rappers have gone in and created a lot of hit music based upon my influence. And they’ll tell you if you ask.

— Isaac Hayes, from an interview in the 1990s; Mr. Hayes died last week at 65; Aug. 10.

Most of Wearing’s work over the last decade has revolved around the experience of the individual, whether alone or in the context of family. She approaches this theme with clearheaded sensitivity and compassion, often using the work to create neutral if tightly controlled spaces in which to allow her subjects to speak for themselves.

Such is the case in the two series on view here. “Pin Ups” consists of seven roughly poster-sized paintings, each depicting a single scantily clad (or in one case nude) model in an alluring posture. Wearing found these models — two men and five women, all nonprofessionals — through an ad she placed on the Internet.

— from a Los Angeles Times review by Holly Myers of an exhibit of the work of Gillian Wearing; Aug. 15; emphasis added.

photo credits:

• Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson: Lluis Gene, AFP/Getty Images
• Tom Hayden and John Froines: University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law
• Navistar’s LoneStar: Popular Mechanics
• Isaac Hayes: Norman Seeff, Cycle Media
• Gillian Wearing’s “Rowena”: Joshua White, Regen Projects

Quotabull is a weekly feature of Scholars & Rogues.

I’ll approach Obama with fearless honesty. He’s a liberal. I oppose liberals. That’s all that’s involved here.

— Rush Limbaugh on presidential candidate Barack Obama; Mr. Limbaugh has renewed his contract with Premiere Radio Networks and Clear Channel Radio, which will pay him more than $400 million; Mr. Limbaugh once referred to Sen Obama and actor Halle Berry as “Halfrican American” on the Jan. 24, 2007, broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show; July 6.

We have sort of become a nation of whiners. You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline.

— former senator Phil Gramm, one of presidential candidate John McCain’s top economic advisers, likening the nation’s economic problems to a “mental recession“; July 10.

The baby boomers — that prominent group of middle-agers whose massive numbers invite never-ending dissection and speculation — have once again spoken. What they have said is, ” Waaaaaahhh.”

— lede from a Washington Post story by Monica Hesse reporting a Pew Research Center survey measuring “the pessimism, dissatisfaction and general curmudgeonliness of 2,413 adults in various generations”; July 10.

Why should I help you embarrass me?

— response of Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, to New York Times reporter David Kocieniewski, whose story revealed that Rep. Rangel has four rent-controlled apartments “on the 16th floor overlooking Upper Manhattan in a building owned by one of New York’s premier real estate developers … [He uses] uses his fourth apartment, six floors below, as a campaign office, despite state and city regulations that require rent-stabilized apartments to be used as a primary residence”; July 11.

There is no military solution to this war. No amount of U.S. soldiers can solve the grievances that lay at the heart of someone else’s civil war. We must begin a phased redeployment of our forces starting May 1st, with the goal of removing all combat forces by March 30th, 2008. Letting the Iraqis know that we will not be there forever is our last, best hope to pressure the Iraqis to take ownership of their country and bring an end to their conflict.

— from a press release on the campaign Web site of presidential candidate Barack Obama; March 20, 2007.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are also working through this challenging period. They play an important role in our housing markets today and need to continue to play an important role in the future. Their regulator has made clear that they are adequately capitalized.

— Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. in testimony before the House Financial Services Committee; Times reporters Stephen Labaton and Charles Duhigg reported he and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke “sought to reassure the markets about the financial health of the nation’s two largest mortgage finance companies as their stock prices plunged to their lowest level in 17 years on fears that they could face the possibility of a government bailout”; July 11.

… a significant reduction … an ambitious goal … we made progress, significant progress, toward a comprehensive approach … hope Congress funds that effort … help developing nations afford … become good stewards … We’re also taking steps to promote … we can become less dependent … we’re going to have to spend some money … to trade freely … the best way to help alleviate poverty … we had good discussions … We also made some progress on alleviating sickness … committed … pledged to provide … to help deal with … stepped forward to support … committed with partner nations … the United States is involved … working to expand our efforts … we had a comprehensive agenda … accountability is an important part of fulfilling our obligations … agreed to release detailed reports … will help ensure … we agreed on steps to deal with … increasing access … we agreed to take new steps … we accomplished a lot.

— from remarks by President Bush following the G8 summit in Toyako, Japan; July 9.

As we listened to the leaders around the room there was universal praise for the major economies process. There was universal recognition that having these countries in the room trying to find common ground was an enormous contribution to the U.N. negotiations. A declaration was adopted, and Jim will go into that. But the most significant take-away from this meeting, in addition to the very substantive leaders’ declaration, was the desire of all leaders to continue this process. And indeed, there was agreement to hold another meeting of the leaders of the major economies at next year’s summit in Italy. The meeting concluded not only with that decision, but with specific recognition for the contributions of President Bush, and a round of applause for the President for initiating this process.

— Dan Price, assistant to the president for international economic affairs and deputy national security advisor, during a White House press briefing on a two-hour-long meeting of the leaders of the major economies, also known as G8, in Toyako, Japan; July 9.

[O]ur dialogue at political, policy, and technical levels has built confidence among our nations and deepened mutual understanding of the many challenges confronting the world community as we consider next steps under the Convention and continue to mobilize political will to combat global climate change.

— from a declaration by the leaders of Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States on energy security and climate change at the G8 meeting in Toyako, Japan; July 9.

Costello: Well, then, who’s on first?
Abbott: Yes.
Costello: I mean the fellow’s name.
Abbott: Who.
Costello: The guy on first.
Abbott: Who.
Costello: The first baseman.
Abbott: Who!
Costello: The guy playing —
Abbott: Who is on first!
Costello: I’m asking YOU who’s on first.
Abbott: That’s the man’s name.
Costello: That’s who’s name?
Abbott: Yes.

— from “Who’s on first” routine by Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, reportedly translated into nearly 30 languages.

The law itself is a massive intrusion into the due process rights of all of the phone subscribers who would be a part of the suit. It is a violation of the separation of powers. It’s presidential election-year cowardice. The Democrats are afraid of looking weak on national security.

— Bruce Afran, a New Jersey lawyer representing several hundred plaintiffs suing Verizon and other companies, after the Senate voted 69 to 28 to approve what Times reporter Eric Lichtblau called “the biggest revamping of federal surveillance law in 30 years”: July 10.

I don’t think shortening the track is what’s going to help stop these events, because 99.9 percent of the time we’re not having a tough time stopping the cars. It’s just when we get in trouble and you can’t stop them. Another 320 feet isn’t going to do it, in my opinion.

— Johnny West, crew chief for Funny Car drag race Jack Beckman, on the decision to decrease the distance Funny Cars and Top Fuel dragsters race from a quarter mile — 1,320 feet — to 1,000 feet because of the 300-plus mph speeds the vehicles attain; this follows the death of drag racer Scott Kalitta on June 22; July 10.

The question then is, How can white people move to start making the major institutions that they have in this country function the way it is supposed to function? That is the real question. And can white people move inside their own community and start tearing down racism where in fact it does exist? Where it exists. It is you who live in Cicero and stop us from living there. It is white people who stop us from moving into Grenada. It is white people who make sure that we live in the ghettos of this country. it is white institutions that do that. They must change. In order — In order for America to really live on a basic principle of human relationships, a new society must be born. Racism must die, and the economic exploitation of this country of non-white peoples around the world must also die — must also die.

— Stokely Carmichael, speaking in Berkeley, Calif., in October 1966.

But, alas, they had no idea just who would come — youthful Wiffle ball players, yes, but also angry neighbors and their lawyer, the police, the town nuisance officer and tree warden and other officials in all shapes and sizes. It turns out that one kid’s field of dreams is an adult’s dangerous nuisance, liability nightmare, inappropriate usurpation of green space, unpermitted special use or drag on property values, and their Wiffle-ball Fenway has become the talk of Greenwich and a suburban Rorschach test about youthful summers past and present.

— from a New York Times story by Peter Applebome, headlined “Build a Wiffle Ball Field and Lawyers Will Come”; July 10.

Actor Pam Anderson performing a split while wearing 4-inch heels
during an appearance on Australia’s “Big Brother” program; July 10.

We are not going to discuss the steps we have taken or may take to prevent a recurrence.

— New York Times spokeswoman Catherine J. Mathis, refusing to discuss — even as workers began removal — alteration of the Times‘ building facade whose design has allowed climbers and protesters to ascend the building; July 10.

In the Congo, women develop quickly, both physically and emotionally, due to the substantial responsibility society places on them from early childhood. In Kinshasa, the vast majority of teenagers are sexually active with men that are substantially older.

— from the argument for leniency presented by ex-diplomat Gons G. Nachman, 42, convicted of having sex with teenage girls in the Congo and Brazil and taping the encounters; prosecutor Ron Walutes countered in court papers, “Children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Brazil have the same inherent value as children in the United States”; the judge delayed sentencing so that Mr. Nachman could be examined by a forensic psychologist; July 10.

photo credits:

• Rush Limbaugh: Nigel Parry, The New York Times
• Leaders of major developed nations at G8 summit in Japan: Pablo Martinez Monsivais, Associated Press
• Scott Kalitta’s souped-up Toyota Solara on fire at 300 mph: Associated Press
• Stokely Carmichael: BlackPast.org
• Wiffle ball field in Greenwich, Conn.: Rob Bennett, The New York Times
• Pamela Anderson: Reuters

Quotabull is a weekly feature of Scholars & Rogues.

Now, Judge Louis Stanton has decided to force Google/YouTube to disclose a complete set of data on all YouTube users. As TechCrunch reports: “That data includes every YouTube username, the associated IP address and the videos that user has watched on YouTube. Google will also be required to hand over copies of every video removed from Youtube for any reason (DMCA notices or user-initiated deletions). Stanton dismissed Google’s argument that the order will violate user privacy, saying such privacy concerns are merely “speculative.””

TechCrunch goes on to express concern that this throws open the opportunity for copyright holders to sue individuals for watching their materials on YouTube. That, if you’ll pardon my language, is the fucking least of anyone’s concerns.

Over the past few years democrats and other “subversives” in places like Iran, Morocco, Egypt, Zimbabwe, China and other hell-holes of civil liberties have used their camera-phones to send broadcasts directly from the front-line of vicious conflicts.

Like this one:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The video may not appear subversive, but it clearly shows empty polling stations, empty streets and V signs all over spray-painted by protestors against Robert Mugabe’s tyranny in Zimbabwe. Mugabe was inaugurated on Sunday after claiming 85% of a massive turnout voted for him.

Now imagine that Zimbabwe’s secret police get their hands on the person who posted this video… he, or she, will get more than just a lawyer’s letter. They’ll get killed.

Internet companies are more than just custodians of US civil liberties. They are now also custodians of people’s freedom all over the world. And especially in places where it is most at risk.

One Life, by Johnny Clegg, first released 2006, 16 tracks, ASIN B000I5YROM

We’re on our way home to find our freedom
and I’m on my way home to find you my friend
where we can stand in the light of the people
and breathe life into the land again.

“When the System Has Fallen,” Johnny Clegg

“If you have a patch of ground the size of a door, you can feed a family of four,” rhymes my friend, John Broom. John is well over 80 and has been involved in teaching gardening and feeding schemes in Africa for the Quaker Peace Foundation for decades. I believe him.

Africa itself is a vast and fertile land. The small state of Zimbabwe used to be the breadbasket of the Sub-Saharan region, able to supply wheat and maize to tens of millions of people. South Africa still exports some 3 million tons of cereals a year, 33% of production, while feeding a population of 45 million.

Ethiopia continues to be the poster child for starvation. Five million children a year die in Africa from malnutrition. A third of Africa’s population is malnourished. Yet this continent of 30 million square kilometres produces only 143 million tons of food cereals, less than 10% of the world total of over 2 billion tons. The US, by comparison, produces 450 million tons on less than 10 million square kilometers of land.

Clearly, there is a problem.

Pop stars of the world claim to have a solution.

The Solutions of the Stars

Bono, front-man of Irish super-group, U2, tells African countries that all they need to do is learn from Ireland. “Twenty years ago our economy was down the toilet, the IMF were telling us what to do and the World Bank were down our pants.”

Well, yes, Bono, so what African countries need to do is join the EU, collect hefty subsidies on infrastructure and agriculture, and have tariff-free access to the European market? And on which planet is this going to happen?

In other words, what we learn from an aging, fading pop star is that Africa’s future success depends entirely on what the rest of the world chooses to do. That Africa is an innocent victim of the choices of other countries.

Bono is a twit. As a friend said, “I think the only fair thing, now that Bono has become an economist, is for him to allow all of us economists to join his band.”

To which I respond, “I’m really clear on opportunity cost, comparative advantage, moral hazard and I once saw a guitar … I think I can take over from the Edge.”

Even more foolish is the pie-eyed response from Bob Geldof. Live Aid, in 1984, raised $300 million that allowed Ethiopia’s blood-drenched dictator, Mengistu Haile Mariam, and his Derg army, to butcher and destroy more people before being overthrown. Ethiopia’s new government has, 24 years later, banned journalists from visiting the worst-affected areas of renewed conflict and famine in order to avoid embarrassment. The UN’s World Food Programme estimates that 9.5 million people – 12% of Ethiopia’s population – need emergency food aid in 2008.

So humming along to, “We are the world. We are the children,” made a really big difference. I think Geldof should let me in his band too.

The world of Juluka

In 1993, Johnny Clegg released a deeply moving album, Heat and Dust and Dreams. His first album, Universal Men, was released in 1979. There are few musicians that endure for such a long period of time, and fewer still who reinvent their musical style to continue to say something both original and relevant over that period.

Heat and Dust and Dreams has the energy and originality of a first album; of a new band. Yet it has the depth of meaning and clarity of understanding that is achieved at great personal cost.

South Africa, in 1993, was a dark and terrifying place. The glacial progress towards liberation was giving way to a chaotic stampede: bomb-blasts going off all over the show; horrific violence as “liberators” wrapped “conspirators” in car tyres, covered them with petrol and set them on fire; riots and damage. No one knew if we would come out of this alive as politicians played brinkmanship.

Heat and Dust and Dreams challenged us to remember why we came here and what we were doing it for. It was an homage to those of us active in the “struggle” to keep going. And a remembrance of those who fell along the way.

In 1990, Clegg’s lead dancer – and anyone who has seen a live show will know that the Zulu war dancing is the focal-point of the music’s energy – Dudu Zulu was shot and killed while attempting to mediate in a violent dispute.

Johnny Clegg’s story is a testament to the astonishing charisma and determination of the man. Born of middle-class Jewish parents, he was captivated by the sound of township music; music produced by migrant Zulu workers drawn to Johannesburg to earn a living and work deep underground in the mines. Clegg used to sneak into the townships – where it was illegal for white people to visit – and beg to be allowed to learn how to play. Then he learned Zulu war dancing.

He took Zulu traditional themes and added a rock score and released an album. The “White Zulu” was born.

I was at a concert of Clegg’s in 1994 with kids – most of us who hadn’t even been born when he released his first album – when he lead into a song with this intro: “You know, it’s quite something when you write a song and, 21 years later, people still want to hear it.”

Then he played “Impi” and the kids tried to jump out of their skins with a roar of delight.

And here’s the thing, “Impi” isn’t a ballad or some power rock song about being a teenager. It’s a history lesson.

In 1879 Mageba, General to King Ceteswayo, led his Zulu impi to slaughter the central column of Lord Chelmsford’s army at the Battle of Isandhlwana. The British had deliberately incited the war by setting the Zulus the ultimatum of submitting to the crown and disbanding their army. Five columns of troops were sent, inappropriately dressed in their red coats and black pants, to engage Ceteswayo.

Lord Chelmsford was another of the spectacularly incompetent generals that the British enjoyed appointing to their colonial armies. He couldn’t be bothered to spy out the land, considering the Zulu to be cowardly. Far from it, the Zulu lay in wait and attacked mercilessly and without warning.

After the battle they ritually washed their spears in the blood of the fallen. The blood ran; a river into a river.

“Impi” – so joyously danced to by the descendents of British settlers – is the rebel yell of Zulus defeating a British colonial army. You can’t beat that sort of irony.

The poet within: Heat and Dust and Dreams

If that was the end of Johnny Clegg’s story that would already be the basis of an astonishing Hollywood move, but it isn’t. Clegg went on to get an Honours in Social Anthropology and went on to lecture at the Universities of the Witwatersrand and Natal. In 2007 he even received an honorary doctorate from Wits.

Go through the lyrics of his songs and you are struck by the complexity, depth of feeling and beauty of the words. Clegg’s music is so joyous, so transcendent, so musically astute and so downright danceable, that the lyrics – a mix of Zulu and English – can get overlooked. Sometimes even by the descendants of British colonists.

The opening lines of the opening song, “These Days,” on Heat and Dust and Dreams:

Yashimbawula!
(the watchman’s fire is burning)
What happened to the diamonds in your eyes,
What happened to the hunger for the day’s chase?
What happened to the electric smile
That danced your life across your face
We used to talk about changing the world
Now all you want to do is change your name
Come on baby don’t surrender now
to the empty heart of these days.
We used to talk so deep into the night
You had the heart of a wild horse running
You bared your soul to me
and we both knew these days were coming

“These Days”

A song of the determination need to achieve liberty and resonated particularly during the terrifying days before South Africa’s 1994 universal sufferance. Or how about “The Crossing,” Clegg’s tribute to Dudu and all struggle victims:

Through all the days that eat away
at every breath that I take
through all the nights I’ve lain alone
in someone else’s dream, awake
all the words in truth we have spoken
that the wind has blown away
it’s only you that remains with me
clear as the light of day
Chorus:
O Siyeza, o siyeza , sizofika webaba noma
(we are coming, we are coming, we will arrive soon)
O siyeza, o siyeza, siyagudle lomhlaba
(we are coming, we are coming, we are moving across this earth)
Siyawela lapheshaya lulezontaba ezimnyama
(we are crossing over those dark mountains)
Lapha sobheka phansi konke ukhulupheka
(where we will lay down our troubles)

“The Crossing“

I still weep when I listen to this. And there are others. My anthem in the ’90s was “Tough Enough”:

Picture the end of a cycle
here’s the fire from heaven
There’s a tired planet closing down
no more news at eleven
somewhere the last of a species has died
somewhere a child is born
when I hold you, I tremble inside
can we ride out the storm?
Are you tough enough – can you take the strain?
Are you tough enough – to walk in the burning rain
Are you tough enough – can you take the change?
Are you tough enough – baby just say!
Chorus:
Into the heart of the human dream
into a strange new world
remember me under the Tree of Man
where I first heard your words
gonna make it through, I can feel it

“Tough Enough”

Heat and Dust and Dreams was a political anthem. A declaration of what the world will be and what will be required to get there. In 2008, Clegg released One Life, looking at what all that energy has released and created. And looking forward at hope.

Johnny Clegg and the Tyrants: One Life

Anyone who has seen a Johnny Clegg performance knows that they are high-energy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

When Clegg rejoined his original partner, Sipho Mchunu, for a concert in Grahamstown in 1994 at a school hall in the middle of the local township, they danced on an old carpet.

The dust from that carpet was stomped out into the air causing Clegg to go into a coughing fit. “Haai,” said Mchunu, “the old man is tired.” A typically laconic statement from the man who left Juluka, Clegg’s original band, at the height of its success – when world popularity awaited him – to go back to rural Zululand so that he could raise a big family and watch his cows grow fat.

The concert I saw in 1995 was a one-off, and unique. Could you imagine Bono, or any of the rock legends holding an impromptu concert in a large theatre, sitting on his own with nothing but a guitar and speaking about the stories behind the songs?

Clegg sat and gave us a miraculous, beautiful insight into his life, and the history of the music. He played little musical snatches, showing how the music evolved, where it came from. He talked about Zulu dancing, Zulu music, how to rewire an accordion or a guitar to play Zulu music. Hours hurtled past as he sang and he played and he talked.

I love music. I have a lot of favourite musicians. Many of them are top European or American acts. Sting, U2, Evanescence, Nickelback, Eric Clapton, Peter Grabriel. I’m not especially interested in any of them as people. Bono and Geldof prove to me the vacuousness of most of what they have to say.

Clegg is different. He is genuinely smart, sticks entirely to what he knows and doesn’t claim to have the answers. What he does is humanise, contextualise and emotionalise the questions.

And so, via a lengthy introduction, we come to One Life.

It’s 2008. Johnny Clegg is 55 and has been performing for 29 years. He is not as popular in South Africa as he used to be. People aren’t interested in asking the hard questions anymore. He is still extremely popular in France, where the French have an oddly soft-spot for all things African. I think that Clegg has done well out of his music, but he is never going to be a super-star. That he continues to perform and write is because he loves what he does, and he still has something to say.

This album is a great album. Not just great in comparison to his own work, but a great album. And it just works so well. It has the energy and originality of a first album; of a new band. Yet it has the depth of meaning and clarity of understanding that is achieved at great personal cost. And, yes, I said that before.

This isn’t the first album that Clegg has released since Heat and Dust and Dreams, he stepped into purely traditional sounds in between with albums that weren’t especially memorable. We were all, South Africans, lulled into a pleasurable daze following the success of the 1994 democratic transition. No more.

I am a boy soldier
See my eyes’ empty stare
Each day explodes with pain
And it’s more than I can bare
The ghosts of the slain
Are the shadows in my eyes
And I dream tomorrow will come
And carry me away
Every second in No Man’s Land
I hold my life in these small hands
Every day in a world gone mad
Hard to face who I am
Chorus:
Once we were children
Once we played in the morning light
Once we were dreamers
One morning they came, the soldiers took us away

“Boy Soldier”

“Boy Soldier” opens with a hauntingly beautiful base melody. The lyrics and music evocative of lost childhood, of innocence looking out of a tortured soul. There is no anguish, just sorrow.

Clegg nods to two new languages, apart from his typical English and Zulu, and recognises two audiences that have supported him through the years: Afrikaans and French. I don’t think that Afrikaans works as a musical language. You can swear in it, but you can’t sing in it. Clegg does his best, but he really shines with French which has always blended beautifully into African music.

Can Clegg only talk about politics? No, of course not. Many of his songs are about love and the fragile strength and beauty of human relationships. Writing about one of his ballads, Clegg says, “The sun evaporates water but the sea is not scared of the sun’s flames because it’s infinite. In the same way that the sea is tested everyday by the sun, love is tested by human folly and difficult circumstances. Migrant work separates lovers far from each other over long periods of time and distance. This is the perennial problem of the life of a touring musician. Real love is like the ocean which cannot be evaporated by the burning sun.”

He can even be gently humorous:

I would like to be the sky
You could be my blue
You could be a dancing foot
And I could be your shoe
Oh, it’s hot in here and I need some air
I’ll wait outside for you
Come what may, there will be a day
I will wake up next to you…

“Bull Heart”

Lines I sent to my love, so far away from me across the sea. But Clegg is best when he is roaring defiance:

He’s a leader, talks of freedom
He knows the power of the Big Idea
He’s a dealer, he’s a seeker
Of the power that comes from fear
He gave his life to the party machine
Holding onto a secret dream
He knows better than anyone
Power comes from the barrel of a gun…
And he’s rising up against them now
And he’s rising up in country and town
Rising up against them now, rising up
Chorus:
The revolution has eaten its children
I see the river of dreams run dry
I’m so thankful I got to love you
You are the reason I survive

“The Revolution Will Eat Its Children“

The defining song of the album speaks truth to power. Don’t trust your leaders, they are human, and their motives may be entirely selfish.

“The dry old grass is made young, green and new again only by fire. This means that often hard and difficult experiences in your life make you confront and reinvent yourself giving you a new perspective. We learn some of our deepest lessons through pain,” says Clegg.

Don’t think that this album is only about struggle and survival. It isn’t. It is musically complex, while being a tremendous dance album. The instrumentation is wonderful and you’ll enjoy listening to it repeatedly as the various layers of music and lyric unfold around you.

This is an album that speaks to youth and beginning a life, with all its challenges; those of love and relationships, of loss and horror, but also of dreams and the ambition of changing the world and making it new again.

Oh! this is your time
This is your life
This is your day
Oh! look at the night
These are your stars
They show the way
I feel your heart beat
This is your time
This is your life
This is your day

“Day in the Life”

For Sam, for whom I bought this album and still haven’t actually gotten round to sending it to him. I promise it will be in the mail. Soon.

You want a dark, Goth version of Tweety Bird? Have at it.

— Lisa Gregorian, executive vice president for worldwide marketing at Warner Brothers Television, in a story about “[a]n unusually large number of classic characters for children … being freshened up and reintroduced — on store shelves, on the Internet and on television screens — as their corporate owners try to cater to parents’ nostalgia and children’s YouTube-era sensibilities”; June 11.

Your eminence, you’re looking good.

— President Bush, addressing Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican; June 13.

He should expect just like any other citizen to be stopped at a roadblock, which have been there for time immemorial, and they don’t amount to detention.

— Wayne Bvudzijena, spokesman for police in Zimbabwe, after reports that two top officials from the main opposition party were arrested; an opposition party statement said that Tendai Biti, the secretary general of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, was arrested at Harare Airport: “ten men in plain clothes whisked him away. His whereabouts are unknown,” the party said; June 13.

In the two decades that have passed since the honorary degree was awarded, Robert Mugabe has pursued policies and taken actions that are antithetical to the values and beliefs of the University of Massachusetts. I must recommend that we sever the connection that was formed when Robert Mugabe appeared to be a force for positive change in Africa. Today, that promise no longer exists.

— Jack M. Wilson, president of the University of Massachusetts, in recommending to the board of trustees that it strip Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president, of the honorary doctorate awarded him in 1986; “The unprecedented move for the university, which faced pressure from state leaders, came a year after a similar step by the University of Edinburgh. It granted Mr. Mugabe a degree in 1984. A third institution, Michigan State University, is mulling whether to take back an honorary doctorate it bestowed in 1990. Earlier this month, Britain began reviewing Mr. Mugabe’s honorary knighthood”; June 13.

When times are tough, there seems to be a tendency to say there is too much freedom. Free speech matters because it works. The world didn’t suffer because too many people read ‘Mein Kampf.’ Sending Hitler on a speaking tour of the United States would have been quite a good idea.

— Harvey Silverglate, a civil liberties lawyer in Boston, disagreeing with the argument of former New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis, a liberal, that some of the most stringent First Amendment protections ought to be relaxed “in an age when words have inspired acts of mass murder and terrorism”; June 11.

I think it’s disgusting. People are going to worry when the ambulance comes out to their house whether they are there to care for them or to take their organs.

— Michael A. Grodin, director of bioethics at Boston University, on New York City’s plans to deploy “a special ambulance to collect the bodies of people who have died suddenly from heart attacks, accidents and other emergencies and try to preserve their organs”; May 24.

The Bush administration has spent years not only talking at very senior levels with one of the world’s worst tyrants, who is responsible for genocide, but also reportedly offered the regime major concessions in exchange for minor steps and rolled out the red carpet for some of its most reprehensible officials.

— Susan E. Rice, who handled Africa policy in the Clinton administration and is a top adviser to the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama, on President Bush’s engagement with Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, whose government Mr. Bush has accused of “genocide”; May 27.

When you are dealing with people who have done really bad things, there are difficult moral and political issues that keep you awake at night. But if you see a way where you may be able to save lives and ameliorate humanitarian suffering, you test the opportunity.

— Richard S. Williamson, a special envoy of President Bush who “plans to meet with Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, whose government sheltered Osama bin Laden and pursued a scorched-earth policy in southern Sudan that resulted in more than 2 million deaths”; May 27.

Every 25 pounds we remove, we save $440,000 a year.

— Tim McGraw, Northwest’s director of corporate environmental and safety programs, on the airline’s attempts to save on fuel costs; “the nation’s airlines will collectively spend $61.2 billion this year on jet fuel — more than five times what they spent in 2002, when travel fell sharply after the September 2001 terrorist attacks”; June 11.

We [have] become a space mission company, not simply a seller of seats.

— Eric Anderson, the chief executive of Space Adventures, reporting that Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google, is likely to occupy one of the two available seats on Space Adventures’ 2011 flight; it has plans to buy a Soyuz flight all its own in 2011, with the option of buying more; June 11.

NEW ORLEANS, LA – On May 29, 2008, the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI) kicked off a two-day Gulf Coast Conference on Disaster Relief and Preparedness, exploring ways to strengthen disaster recovery efforts through expanded partnerships with America’s nonprofit sector. As part of National Hurricane Preparedness Week, the conference also emphasized the critical and increasing role of faith-based and community organizations (FBCOs), and their armies of volunteers, in response and rebuilding plans for future disasters.

— lede of a press release from the White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives.

Upon review of our assets and our need to continue to store them, we determined that they were excess to FEMA’s needs; therefore, they are being excessed from FEMA’s inventory.

— James McIntyre, FEMA’s acting press secretary, explaining why the Federal Emergency Management Agency gave away to other federal and state agencies about $85 million in household goods meant for Hurricane Katrina victims, claiming storage costs exceeded $1 million annually; June 11.

I still can’t believe that we bought a billion dollars’ worth of product with a 25-line spec. There’s not much you can do in 25 lines to protect life safety. There’s over 20,000 parts in these homes.

— Joseph Hagerman, a Federation of American Scientists expert who is leading a $275 million effort to develop new emergency housing, on how the federal government, through FEMA, with just a single page of specifications, ordered nearly $2.7 billion worth of trailers and mobile homes to house Hurricane Katrina’s victims; “industry and government experts depict the rushed procurement and construction as key failures that may have triggered a public health catastrophe among the more than 300,000 people, many of them children, who lived in FEMA homes”; May 25.

The traffickers have a paradise here. Justice does not work. The police do not work. A place where criminals can do whatever they want is not a state. It is chaos.

— Constantino Correia, a top Justice Ministry official in Guinea-Bissau who is coordinating his government’s efforts against cocaine traffickers; “Officials said some of the world’s richest criminal gangs are exploiting barely functioning countries such as Guinea-Bissau, which has 63 federal police officers, no prison and a population that still lives largely in thatched-roof homes on dirt roads with no electricity or running water”; May 25.

Jerry Daggle, who has been an Exxon dealer for two decades after working his way up from pumping gas, said he has done well. But he still cannot fathom how the oil company can charge him different wholesale gasoline prices for each of the five Northern Virginia stations he owns. The stations all sell the same Exxon-branded gasoline, delivered from the same terminal in Newington, where it arrives via the same pipeline. Sometimes, Daggle said, it’s even dropped off by the same truck and driver hours apart on the same day.

— from a Washington Post story by Steven Mufson detailing how Exxon “uses franchise agreements to maintain tight control over stations that bear its brand. The company dictates everything from the number of pumps to hygiene practices to the placement of food on convenience store shelves”; emphasis added; May 25.

I find, therefore, that adherence to the general policy of contracting only with providers that do not knowingly employ unauthorized alien workers and that have agreed to utilize an electronic employment verification system designated by the Secretary of Homeland Security to confirm the employment eligibility of their workforce will promote economy and efficiency in Federal procurement.

— from an executive order by President Bush titled “Amending Executive Order 12989, as Amended”; emphasis added; June 9.

It is impossible for any white person in the United States, no matter how sympathetic and broad, to realize what life would mean to him if his incentive to effort were suddenly snatched away. To the lack of incentive to effort, which is the awful shadow under which we live, may be traced the wreck and ruin of score of colored youth. And surely nowhere in the world do oppression and persecution based solely on the color of the skin appear more hateful and hideous than in the capital of the United States, because the chasm between the principles upon which this Government was founded, in which it still professes to believe, and those which are daily practiced under the protection of the flag, yawn so wide and deep.

— from a speech titled “What It Means to be Colored in Capital of the U.S.” delivered by Mary Church Terrell to the United Women’s Club, Washington, D.C., on Oct. 10, 1906.

People have to be ‘record men’ again. They actually have to earn a living. You get a record out there, it sells 50,000 copies over the course of 18 months. You have to work it, because they don’t buy 50,000 the first week. It’s great to see people who actually love the music back in business in these smaller concerns. I’ve never seen people take more vacations than these big record company people.

— singer-songwriter John Hiatt on the emergence of smaller, independent record labels as major labels falter; June 11.

“The American people have reason to question the judgment of a candidate who has shown he will only make the right call when under pressure from the news media,” Tucker Bounds, a McCain spokesman, said …

Mr. Obama’s spokesman, Bill Burton snapped back a few minutes later in an e-mail message: “We don’t need any lectures from a campaign that waited 15 months to purge the lobbyists from their staff, and only did so because they said it was a ‘perception problem.’ ”

— dueling statements from the campaigns of presidential candidates Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain following the resignation of James A. Johnson, the consummate Washington insider whom Senator Barack Obama tapped to head his vice-presidential search effort, … to try to silence a growing furor over his business activities”; June 13.

Sadly for Oscar de la Renta, Cindy McCain, the wife of the presumptive Republican nominee for President, spent her afternoon “just looking” at “nothing in particular” at the designer’s Seventh Avenue showroom. De la Renta is the king of First Lady couture, having done inaugural gowns for the last two grandes dames of Pennsylvania Avenue, and duds for several others. (We’re still waiting for him to come out with a lady-sized “I’m With Stupid” t-shirt for those long nights on Air Force One.) And millionairess McCain, as we all know by now, has a taste for the smart suits and kicky colors that Oscar does so well. So why didn’t she buy? Is she waiting for a discount? Or, heaven forbid, an endorsement?

— from Alexandra Marshall in “The Moment,” a daily blog that “spans the T Magazine universe of fashion, design, food and travel”; June 12.

It’s also good for me. It inspires me to be spiritual and moral in turn. If I’m holding them to such high standards, you can be sure I won’t be cheating on their mother.

— Terry Lee, 54, an attendee at the ninth annual Father-Daughter Purity Ball in Colorado Springs with his youngest daughter, Rachel, 16; at the ball, fathers read aloud a covenant “before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity”; May 19.

Our condemnation of cultural practices and beliefs in our own country that violate girls’ and young women’s dignity and most intimate personal boundaries should be no less total. For, when it comes to female chastity, much of what passes for “protection” is nothing less than sick.

— from a New York Times blog Domestic Disturbances by Judith Warner, author of “Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety”; June 12.

Men are telling us that being a good dad is important to them, and this notion of a detached guy separate from the family and who is either ignored or reviled, that’s not a message that’s going to resonate with the dads we talked to.

— John January, director of brand voice at Kansas City ad agency Sullivan Higdon & Sink and the father of three young children, on a survey of 300 men by his agency about their impressions of depictions of fathers in the media; June 12.

We’ve been saying that for 10 years. We’d like the fans to be able to go home with their teeth.

— New York Yankees pitcher Mike Mussina on a proposal for increased netting behind home plate to keep fans from being hit by shattered bats; June 13.

photo credits:

• FEMA trailer park in St. Bernard Parish, La.: Gerald Herbert, Associated Press
• Mary Church Terrell: Library of Congress
• John Hiatt: Mark Baumann, Rolling Stone
• Cindy McCain: Associated Press
• father Steve McAlpin reading pledge to daughter Courtney at Father-Daughter Purity Ball: Kevin Moloney, The New York Times

Quotabull is a weekly feature of Scholars & Rogues.

Exxon Mobil is acting like a dinosaur now, not adopting to a changing environment.

— Stephen Viederman, a New York shareholder, after “Exxon Mobil’s chairman and chief executive, Rex W. Tillerson, defeated a shareholder effort … to take away one of his jobs at an annual meeting punctuated by a debate of the company’s policy toward renewable energy and global warming”; May 28.

Despite significant challenges in the U.S. market, we continue to reshape our business for long-term success. This attrition program gives us an opportunity to restructure our U.S. work force through the entry-level wage and benefit structure for new hourly employees.

— from a statement by Troy A. Clarke, the president of G.M.’s North American operations, announcing that “19,000 hourly workers — a quarter of a unionized work force that already has been drastically pared down — have accepted buyouts“; up to 16,000 of these $28-an-hour workers may be replaced by “entry-level” non-assembly workers making $14 an hour; May 30; emphasis added.

The years of keeping Saddam in a box were coming to a close. The international consensus that he be kept isolated and unarmed had eroded to the point that many critics of military action had decided the time had come again to do business with Saddam, despite his near daily attacks on our pilots, and his refusal, until his last day in power, to allow the unrestricted inspection of his arsenal. Our choice wasn’t between a benign status quo and the bloodshed of war. It was between war and a graver threat.

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Not — Not our political opponents. Certainly not a disingenuous filmmaker who would — who would have us believe, my friends, who would have us believe that Saddam’s Iraq was an oasis of peace when in fact — when in fact it was a place of indescribable cruelty, torture chambers, mass graves, and prisons that destroyed the lives of the small children inside their walls.

— presidential candidate John McCain, from his address at the 2004 Republican National Convention.

World leaders are in a state of denial but their failure to act has a high cost. As Iraq and Afghanistan show, human rights problems are not isolated tragedies, but are like viruses that can infect and spread rapidly, endangering all of us.

— Irene Khan, the secretary general of Amnesty International, in a statement accompanying a report that “singled out for criticism China, the United States, and Russia and accused the European Union of complicity in the rendition of terrorism suspects”; May 28.

We cannot have a fair prosperity in isolation from a fair society. So I will continue to stand for a national health insurance. We must — We must not surrender — We must not surrender to the relentless medical inflation that can bankrupt almost anyone and that may soon break the budgets of government at every level. Let us insist on real controls over what doctors and hospitals can charge, and let us resolve that the state of a family’s health shall never depend on the size of a family’s wealth.

— Sen. Ted Kennedy, addressing the 1980 Democratic National Convention.

The economy has been taken hostage by people that took some very bad decisions. The answer is to pay as little ransom as possible to the least ill-deserving people we can find.

— Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chair of the House Financial Services Committee, whose “housing rescue plan, which has passed the House and is being massaged by the Senate Banking Committee, would let the Federal Housing Administration refinance distressed borrowers into government-guaranteed loans worth up to $300 billion”; May 19.

What we want to achieve in the health system is a higher individual responsibility, making the consumers more responsible for what they consume.

— Peter Pazitny, executive director and one of the founding partners at the Health Policy Institute in Bratislava, Slovakia, and formerly the principal adviser to the minister of health, defending the government’s decision to charge modest health-care fees; other Central European nations may follow suit; May 27.

We also said we shared the pain of the Chinese people and earthquake victims in Sichuan.

— a spokesman for Dior in Paris, who asked not to be identified because of company policy, on a Dior announcement that it would stop using actor Sharon Stone in its advertising in China after Ms. Stone’s comment that recent earthquakes in Sichuan Province were karmic retribution for Beijing’s treatment of Tibet; May 29.

[T]he public enemy of all mankind.

— description of Sharon Stone in an editorial by Xinhua, the state-run Chinese news agency; May 29.

Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House. For those of us who fully supported him, before, during and after he was press secretary, we are puzzled. It is sad. This is not the Scott we knew.

— White House press secretary Dana Perino, commenting on former press secretary Scott McClellan’s claims, about to be published in a book, that President Bush engaged in “self-deception,” and committed a “serious strategic blunder” in invading Iraq and decided to “to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed”; May 28; emphasis added.

This does not sound like Scott; it really doesn’t.

— former White House aide Karl Rove on Scott McClellan’s new book; May 29; emphasis added.

You’ve heard the way Scott briefed — it doesn’t sound like him.

It would be an inglorious conclusion to something that has survived wars and man’s other follies. But that is the scenario we are facing: the end of guano.

— biologist Uriel de la Torre on news that the “worldwide boom in commodities … is shifting attention to guano, an organic fertilizer once found in abundance on this island and more than 20 others off the coast of Peru”; “Guano in Peru sells for about $250 a ton while fetching $500 a ton when exported to France, Israel and the United States”; May 30.

We demand that the government severely punish the killers who caused the collapse of the school building. Please, everyone sign the petition so we can find out the truth.

— Liu Lifu, a quarry worker in in Dujiangyan, China, after he grabbed the microphone at an informal gathering of parents at Juyuan Middle School and began calling for justice; his 15-year-old daughter, Liu Li, was killed along with her entire class during a biology lesson in the earthquake in Sichuan Province; May 28.

If I could just get a warm room. I could take it from there.

— Ronald Gardner, 54, an H.I.V.-positive man who said he had never before slept on the streets until Hurricane Katrina; “a survey by advocacy groups in February showed that 86 percent were from the New Orleans area. Sixty percent said they were homeless because of Hurricane Katrina, and about 30 percent said they had received rental assistance at one time from the Federal Emergency Management Agency”; May 28.

People don’t seem to realize that political committees are big businesses that are raising significant sums of money without traditional accounting and business oversight. In politics, no one wants to be a bean counter.

— Jan Baran, an election expert at the law firm Wiley Rein in Washington, in a story about a $1 million forensic audit of the National Republican Congressional Committee following the disclosure that hundreds of thousands of dollars were missing and presumed stolen by its treasurer; May 27.

One has to assume anyone buried there had some good credentials.

— Dr. Parker Pearson, a British archeologist, on research that says Stonehenge was used as a cemetery from 3,000 B. C. well into its zenith around 2,500 B.C. with up to 240 people buried there; May 29.

This is the message of the Beatles, the Dylans of the world. [Ron Paul’s message of freedom and peace is] an ancient message — it inspired people in the 60s and 70s. I want to bring back that era of magic.

— Marc Scibilia, a 21-year-old songwriter from Buffalo, N.Y., who posted a video of his Ron Paul-themed song, “Hope Anthem,” on YouTube, and this summer will lead a 28-city “Freedom Tour” featuring other musicians; May 27.

Rwanda’s economy has risen up from the genocide and prospered greatly on the backs of our women. Bringing women out of the home and fields has been essential to our rebuilding. In that process, Rwanda has changed forever. … We are becoming a nation that understands that there are huge financial benefits to equality.

— Agnes Matilda Kalibata, minister of state in charge of agriculture in Rwanda, on the revival of the nation’s economy since the genocide of 14 years ago, when 800,000 people were killed in three months; May 16.

After two days I woke up. Birds were eating my dead children. This was too much for me. I wanted to be killed. … I felt as if I was dead, too. I did not want to go on.

— Jeanette Nyirabaganwa, 39, a minority Tutsi in Rwanda; she is now “employing eight laborers, she is growing three times as much coffee as her father and husband did. They sold their poorer-quality beans for local consumption. Her finer grade is largely for export, roasted overseas and sold in coffee shops and specialty stores in cities including London, New York, Chicago and New Orleans”; May 16.

No one likes to hear that people are using their mobile phone records. It gives one the sense that Big Brother can watch you and hear you.

— Lutz Hachmeister, director of the Institute for Media Policy in Berlin, “after an admission by Deutsche Telekom that it had surreptitiously tracked thousands of phone calls to identify the source of leaks to the news media about its internal affairs”; May 27.

Presidential candidate Obama’s speech may be formulated as follows: hunger for the nation, remittances as charitable handouts and visits to Cuba as propaganda for consumerism and the unsustainable way of life behind it. I am not questioning Obama’s great intelligence, his debating skills or his work ethic. [But] I am obliged to raise a number of delicate questions.

— former president of Cuba Fidel Castro, 81, in a column he wrote for Cuban newspapers; May 26.

I really want to know how my guests view their lives, their jobs, their friends. Are they content? What are their dreams?

— Natascha Kampusch, who spent 8 1/2 years trapped in an underground cell in the home of Austrian kidnapper Wolfgang Priklopil, on her new career as a talk-show host; May 29.

I created this site as a thank you, to you, for sharing the journey with me and to invite you to continue to explore what the future will bring.

— a message from actor Tom Cruise on his newly created Web site celebrating the 25th anniversary of the film “Risky Business”; May 29.

Really, a T-shirt with your name on it? Is it so you remember or we never forget? Maybe it should be spelled backwards because we suspect that every time she looks in the mirror there’s a split second when she wonders, “Wait, who’s Sirap?”

— Elizabeth Spiridakis in her “Very” fashion column for The New York Times; May 22.

photo credits:
• Sharon Stone: The Guardian
• Patrick Pugh and Clara Gomez outside their tent at a homeless encampment under a highway overpass in New Orleans: Lee Celano, The New York Times
• Stonehenge: Ken Geiger, National Geographic
• Paris Hilton: Beretta/Sims/Karius/RexUSA

Quotabull is a weekly feature of Scholars & Rogues.

The last few days, the world’s murder capital has cemented its place as the country where you are most likely to die in a violent attack. 22 foreign African economic migrants have been murdered by rampaging mobs around Johannesburg.

The response from government has been their usual anaemic, “We intend to investigate this thoroughly and have set up a tribunal to look in to it.” Double-speak for, “We’re burying it under a mound of bureaucracy.”

In the mean time, Zimbabwean friends – refugees from a vicious tyrant at home – are hiding in their apartments for fear of being assaulted in exile.

It makes a fascinating contrast for me, having just immigrated to the UK. There is a lot of grumbling about foreigners here too, and plenty of new government initiatives to keep us out. But the restaurant industry reports tens of thousands of unfilled positions that low-paid immigrants usually take, and so some compromise will have to be reached if the molly-coddled locals are to be served in public places.

Violence is in the news here as well after a gang-related stabbing in London. The new mayor, Boris Johnson, has promised to place metal detectors at public transport nodes to enable police to catch potential killers. “Why the panic?” I ask myself, “Only one person died, after all?” But I’m wrong. This is how a country that is serious about stamping out violence and intolerance should behave.

I phone friends at home in South Africa to tell them about the hilarity of one stabbing being taken so seriously. My business partner tells me about a friend who watched another mother get a gun pressed into her belly and robbed of her handbag outside their children’s school when she went there to pick them up.

Many are thinking of leaving. When violence becomes so pervasive that it is invisible it is time to reconsider your life and where you live.

It’s only a few weeks since I moved to the UK. Already I am surrounded by professionals who take their work seriously, and are passionate about delivering at the top of their game. It is refreshing, after being surrounded by nothing but excuses and contradictions for the past decade. Here I am expected only to deliver. In South Africa, tiered ranks of bureaucrats stand in the way of progress, coming up with excuses as to why progress cannot happen.

It is only a few weeks. And the first months are the hardest, as one has to make new decisions about every aspect of your life. There are no familiar faces, no familiar places. The person closest to me in the whole world is 10,000 kilometres away. Even the brand names of washing powder and breakfast cereal are unfamiliar. Every day is exhausting as I have to consciously think about so many different things that in familiar places are invisible: coffee shops, favourite restaurants, familiar settings, standard routes home, comfortable relationships and old friends. None of them are around and all the unfamiliarity is daunting.

It is only a few weeks. But I don’t regret being here at all.

If, despite this overwhelming demand for change, the election still goes the way of the incumbent then … well, you get events like Kenya. Previously seemingly stable countries erupt into genocide and horror.

Then we get Zimbabwe. A place that has been unstable and unpleasant almost since independence. Current president-for-life, Robert Mugabe, is responsible for massacres in Matabeleland and causing untold suffering to his people. He has rigged every election since independence. But he is gradually losing control as the economy falls apart (inflation is now 100,000% – everyone is a billionaire).

So, here we stand. The elections took place on the 29th of March. The results were due out this morning. They are not yet out. The opposition parties expect to win. So do the people. If Mugabe still wins, then the chances are that there will be outrage.

However, if Mugabe rigs it outrageously, and his well-paid army takes to the streets … well, things will go on much as they have for the past decade. Unpleasantly.

More news as it happens.

It wasn’t until I was emptying my flat as my cleaning lady took possession of most of my bits and bobs that it really hit home.

The life of a cleaning lady

There are around 15 million South Africans of working age (out of a population of 41 million). Around 8 million have jobs. The rest don’t.

For 2 million uneducated, barely literate women there really is only one choice for earning a living. They clean the homes of the people who do have jobs. These are the cleaning ladies, or “Domestic Workers”. Maids, in other words.

Sometimes they live in and cook and clean and wash. Sometimes they turn up once a week to do some ironing and basic cleaning. They’re not paid much. The minimum Government-mandated wage is less than $1 per hour.

Since most white English-speaking South Africans battle with African names, these women call themselves mundane platitudes, like Beauty, or Faith, or Monica. I think half the cleaning ladies in Cape Town are called Monica.

Nothekanti (who calls herself Monica) has been working for me every Thursday for 12 years. Aside from her annual leave I think I can count on one hand the number of days she has missed work. Last year there was a crippling transport strike that stopped busses, trains and taxis. Bang on 7 am she rang the doorbell. Khayelitsha, where she stays, is some 50 km outside Cape Town. It’s a long way to come.

On a per hour basis, I pay her significantly more than the minimum wage, and as much as some of the junior consultants at the place I work.

In her mid-40s Nothekanti supports five children on her own. She cleans in different places on different days and she works her tail off. She barely speaks English and we have never really, in all the years she’s worked for me, had a lengthy conversation. Yet we still know a great deal about each other.

I helped her get a raise from her other employers after her home burned down five years ago during one of the township’s frequent shack-fire outbreaks. That was the week after her daughter was raped, but before her son was killed in another shack fire. She suffers from high blood-pressure and, I’m sure, severe trauma.

Her life is brutal and tough by any measure you care to name. Yet she is totally professional and totally committed. I reward and honour that as best I can.

But she is still only one of 2 million women looking for work as cleaning ladies. It doesn’t matter how awesome you are at a skill if it is significantly over-supplied.

Bringing it home

As I have gradually dismantled the life I’ve created in South Africa prior to heading to the UK in April, I have tried to find homes for all my responsibilities. My employees have been absorbed into other companies. My property has been willy-nilly distributed. I have my cameras left and my car (hint, hint, for anyone who wants a bargain).

I asked Nothekanti if there was anything of mine she might like to have. She looked apprehensive and then said, “Everything?” Since all the “big” things (like my stove, fridge and washing machine) had already gone, “everything” turned out to be a few free-standing lights, my microwave, some cupboards, kitchenware and other bits and pieces.

She arrived on Easter Friday with her brother and ten-year-old son in tow. Each thing she wanted she would look at me as if to say, “Are you really doing this?” And with each thing I would nod and say, “Yes.”

It brought it home, just what it means. Looking at my stuff, standing out in the sun before being loaded, I thought: this stuff is old, frankly quite hideous, but it’s mine. She also wanted some of the things that decorate my home. Souvenirs from my travels, large photographs I’ve taken and printed as posters. Something to hang on to from 12 years of working for someone.

She’s just an employee; I’m just her boss. But 12 years starts feeling a lot like family.

This morning I dropped her at the station. The last few items of furniture and all my books (some 15 boxes of them) are being shipped to Port Elizabeth, to my family. She cleaned up the dust and detritus left behind.

We said goodbye. And that was all; there wasn’t much to say.

Leaving the life

Yesterday, driving through Cape Town, I passed a billboard: “Cape Town mourns death of Ivan Toms”. That hurt, and I was crying.

More sensitive than normal, sure. But there are few people in the world that I can point to who had any impact on me during my life. Only one had any critical impact on my future career. That person was Dr Ivan Toms.

For two years from 1993, while a science student, I had volunteered to teach biology to learners from grades 11 and 12 from township schools. This was a program run by SHAWCO, the NGO run by UCT students. Apartheid was pretty much dead, but the legacy of poor education and limited opportunities was plain to see.

At the end of 1994 I was a confused 20-year-old. I was set on a career path I wasn’t sure of and had developed a small business training course that I wanted to trial as part of the general SHAWCO offerings. The head of SHAWCO at the time was Dr Toms.

Full of doubt and apprehension, I approached Dr Toms and presented my idea. At the time, I had no business training, no background in teaching entrepreneurship. Nothing but a scientist’s methodology and approach to problem-solving. Teaching small business was a side-issue for me; something I didn’t have great confidence in or understanding of.

I was used to the standard response of teachers, community leaders or other “leaders” I had presented ideas to over the years. I was prepared for being shut down. I was not prepared for what happened next.

Dr Toms was not just a tremendously talented doctor who led through charisma and example. He had another talent so rare, I can’t say I’ve ever experienced it with anyone else. He filled you with the belief that you could achieve, that you were capable and talented in yourself. He created enormous space for others to become self-confident and achieve in their own endeavours.

That sense of self-belief and self-confidence has never left me.

I left the idea of formal, “safe” employment behind me and dedicated myself to a profession in economic development. My small business teaching course became a large-scale project. Thousands of UCT students consulted to businesses across the Western Cape through my programs. Thousands of people started businesses as a result other projects I ran.

In 1996, Dr Toms finally got the chance he had wanted and moved to a government position in charge of public health. He is one of the word’s great heroes. An anti-Apartheid campaigner who went to jail for his beliefs, a doctor who chose to work in the middle of the war-torn townships where he was the only person caring for 60,000 people. A giant.

He has died at age 55 of meningitis. I wonder if he, too, was disappointed that the freedom he fought for is represented by people who won’t even provide antiretroviral treatments to pregnant mothers. President Thabo Mbeki continues to believe that HIV is a myth.

Reasons to go, reasons to stay

I visit clients whose businesses are running non-stop on generators, their investments falling apart as the government continues to piddle about with solutions to our electricity crisis. They tell me, “It’s good that you’re going. You’re young, you’ll make it again. I’m too old to go now. You’re doing the right thing.”

The head of a large firm takes me out in the moonlight and points out where the reflected light washes over the sea. No sound but the waves, and the smell of foam crashing on the shore. The stars are lost in the vastness of the African sky. “We are the only ones who can make this work,” he says. “People like us must stay and make it happen.”

I nod. It is beautiful. And I’m almost swayed. But not really. Under Apartheid we were fighting a system of governance that was consciously evil. How does one fight a system that declares that the evil it does is in the best interests of everyone? It isn’t my fight. Economic populism is the choice open to a majority-rule government. They have chosen it.

It won’t work as it hasn’t for Robert Mugabe, Hugo Chavez or any other despot who disregards minority rights in an effort to appease the majority.

I don’t have to “make” anything work. I didn’t create the problem. I, as with so many others, committed myself to ending the legacy of Apartheid. I didn’t bargain on a legacy of a newly-created populist dictatorship.

But, still, it is a beautiful country. There are many awesome leaders, astonishing people. It is just a shame that they have to fight so hard to implement common-sense policies.

At home, the packing is complete. Now come the farewells. People I won’t see very often and some, like Nothekanti, who I will never see again.

But you also believe that you can make that journey easier for them by showing them how an addiction-free life can be, and by offering them the advantages that make it worth going cold to achieve.

At some point, though, maybe you get an inkling that the process isn’t working. Maybe it’s after they’ve come out of rehab once too often, only to go on a binge again, that you start thinking that the effort isn’t worth the stress.

Countries are like that too.

A sense of fairness

Out of my high-school class, probably only 20% are still in the country. Probably even fewer from those I graduated with in University. And there have been plenty of reasons to go.

Prior to 1994 it was because of the racist, Apartheid policies of the white-minority government which resulted in sanctions which froze out opportunities for those professionals who lived here. Then it was the violent transition to majority rule during the 1990s.

In 1994, it was because of the uncertainty of black-majority rule. In 1998 it was the transition from Nelson Mandela to Thabo Mbeki, the collapse of the currency and so on.

Right now it is the in-fighting in the ANC, the collapse of critical infrastructure (several hours of power failures every day) and the gradual shift of our politics towards communism.

All good reasons. None of them mine.

I became a communist as a child without knowing what communism was. I supported the liberation of black South Africans who I saw as being enslaved. They were regularly accused of being communists by the government media, and so I became a communist in their support.

For me, it wasn’t about leaving to pursue my own opportunities; it was about ensuring an environment in which all were free to pursue their interests. I knew that I hated slavery; no person should ever be forced to work against their own best interests.

Black South Africans were abused in ways I had no words for, but it cut deep into my sense of fairness.

I believed, and was willing to fight, for universal freedom.

When Nelson Mandela became our president he didn’t just say all the right things, he did them too. He lived tolerance, benevolence and an inclusive form of governance.

His economics were weak, but I had a genuine sense that we were all working on this project called The New South Africa together.

Creating my hopes

I have been involved in community and social development since as long as I can remember. I cut firewood at a township crèche as a 10-year-old boy-scout. I volunteered my time at the Animal Welfare and Aquarium throughout my school years.

In university I tutored township kids through high-school, complimenting the appalling Apartheid education system with all my own learning. This was before 1994. Before majority rule.

I would get ferried into the townships where the majority of South Africans lived. Places barricaded behind barbed wire and military checks. Places that it was nominally illegal for whites to visit but where Apartheid was already falling apart. Everyone knew the end was coming. No-one knew what would come next.

In 1994, before the elections, I already knew that there was an economic problem coming. I had no political affiliations, no knowledge of business or economics, but I could see the patterns. There were teeming masses of unemployed people, and not enough jobs.

I was a scientist and I asked the obvious question. How can the dreams and ambitions of the majority be satisfied if they cannot earn a living? I was smart enough to know that jobs wouldn’t fall from the sky just because we’d had a democratic revolution.

As I shouted at an ANC Youth League cadre who was demanding his rights, “How long are you prepared to wait after freedom comes? You do know that freedom includes the freedom to starve?”

So I started developing business and entrepreneurship training courses. By the time I graduated in 1998, it was my career.

Losing my dreams

Mandela, for all his genius at nation-building, was no economist. The South African business environment was weak and failing. When Thabo Mbeki succeeded him in 1998 I hoped, along with many others, that now we would start working.

But I was troubled. For all Mbeki’s impressive way of speaking, and his seemingly astute political sense, I had an uneasy feeling that something was wrong.

He had a prickly way of dealing with the opposition and disagreement. His rejection of scientific research that declared HIV a threat was astonishing. His refusal to recognise the disaster about to strike Zimbabwe. All that was a mystery.

His championing of Black Economic Empowerment – an exchange of the empowerment of white Afrikaans-speaking men for the empowerment of black men – was a serious confusion.

Looking at the whole of the difficulties of the South African economy he had identified a single cause for poverty and joblessness: being black.

Lack of education or economic growth had, in Mbeki’s eyes, nothing to do with poverty. Only skin colour. He had bought entirely into the vision of his erstwhile oppressors. Instead of punishing people for being black, now it became a symbol of victimhood and charity.

Even so I still had the feeling I could work. I could deliver.

And, largely, I did. My entrepreneurial development projects created thousands of new businesses. I lectured and taught all over the country.

But it was like being on quicksand. As fast as I could start ‘em government entitlement programs would undermine them. Cut the legs out from underneath.

The only way to get ahead was through connections, pull and the appropriate high-profile “black” business partner.

Losing my shirt

In 2004 I quit. I wanted to get into the private sector.

But the years of undermining the state, of appointing people based on their race rather than their ability, was starting to have its effects. Massive and crippling power-failures in the Western Cape put paid to my fledgling new business.

I went back into development consulting. I thought I could reverse the collapse by rating the effectiveness of development projects. I uncovered a major fraud within months of beginning.

I was certain that the value of my work would be recognised and appreciated.

It wasn’t.

The only work I have been able to get for two years now is significantly beneath my creativity and ability.

The gradual and continual undermining of the skills base; of exporting our most talented people while promoting only the most contemptible has its conclusion. What good is talent when those who would hire it no longer have the skills to appreciate it?

At the end of 2007 the logical happened. The logical that I had predicted and warned against.

Losing the light

The government claims to have been caught by surprise by the major power failures that struck South Africa in late 2007. The government’s own analysts presented a report in 1998 declaring that we’d run out of power by 2007. Most of those people were white males. They have been “empowered” by being fired and replaced by black people.

It’s very easy to be surprised when you refuse to acknowledge that there may be a downside to firing skilled people because of their race and hiring others based on their political affiliations and connections.

South Africa, far from being a non-racial society, has become entirely defined by race. It is the number one question when I apply to work. It is the only thing to bring to the table.

Thabo Mbeki was displaced by Jacob Zuma. The political party that had given us Albert Luthuli, Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela would now throw up a verminous louse of a man. A serially corrupt and abusive man who is so stupid that he thinks that a shower is sufficient to wipe off the HIV he covered himself with when raping a house-guest.

A man promoted to power by communists and unionists who believe that, once they’re in power, they can nationalise the productive parts of the economy and redistribute this money to the power. Like Cuba, but without the Latin beat.

Fergal Keane, a BBC journalist, interviewed Zuma for his documentary, “No more Mandela’s”. It is an epic and seminal piece of journalism. Here’s a brief transcript from his interview with Zuma:

KEANE: Is it not extraordinary hypocrisy for Jacob Zuma to lecture anybody about HIV and AIDS when you’re the man who stood up in a courtroom and acknowledged having unprotected sex with somebody you knew was HIV positive, and then you come out and say: “Well I took a shower and therefore thought I’d be okay.”

ZUMA: The story of the shower makes big news.

KEANE: Did you really think that would get rid of HIV, having a shower?

ZUMA: No. Did I think so? No. It’s your guys, the media who says so, who say I believed it will take out AIDS. How could I believe that?

KEANE: But do you not think that whole episode casts grave doubt on your fitness for any kind of office, let alone the presidency of South Africa?

ZUMA: No, it can’t be.. it can’t be. What happened, that case, was what happen to people. People make mistakes in their lives, and for that mistake I apologised to the people of South Africa.

KEANE: Ethically and morally are you fit to lead this country?

ZUMA: Absolutely fit. Absolutely fit. I have been fit to fight for the freedom of this country. I have been fit to be in the ANC leadership as that thing happened when I’m already in the ANC leadership and I’m still fit, and I’ve got a better lesson to tell people, don’t commit the same mistake.

KEANE: But this is still a country where the powerful can be held to account. In 2005 Zuma’s financial advisor went to jail for his role in a corrupt arms deal with a foreign company. Now Zuma has been charged with corruption.

A lot of people think you’re a crook.

ZUMA: Is that so? (laugh) Ah huh, I want to see those people and government tell me why they think I’m a crook.

KEANE: Well there’s a whole army of prosecutors clearly think it.

ZUMA: Ah huh, is that so? Oh! Serious.

KEANE: Are you a crook?

ZUMA: Me?! What? I don’t know, unless I must go to the dictionary and learn what a crook is. I’ve never been a crook.

KEANE: Somebody who takes money from other people for corrupt purposes.

ZUMA: Have I ever done so?

KEANE: I’m asking you.

ZUMA: No. I think that’s a mistake you guys make, and I’ve said I currently have two trials, a trial by the media and then trial by court. I’m saying I’m not a crook, I have never been a crook. I will never be a crook.

Government officials – especially the ANC hierarchy – are used to being treated with slavish adulation by the local press, so this was especially shocking. And Zuma looked shocked.

It is no wonder that a week later Zuma was keen to speak at a black’s-only function. Barely 14 years into democratic rule and we have a deliberately racially exclusive function. How little things change.

“I saw nothing wrong,” said ANC president Jacob Zuma when asked whether he approved of the exclusion of white journalists from an address at the Forum of Black Journalists.

I am not a slave

The truth is that I am not here out of any sense of guilt or duty. I am here to test my abilities. To see what I can achieve.

However, that comes with a rider. I can only achieve in an environment that respects my independence and desires what I can do.

South Africa is becoming a place that does neither.

I could accept the situation when we really were a dictatorship. I could even accept the situation when the ANC was still learning the ropes.

But I can accept it no longer.

I am not prepared for my talents, and the value that I generate through those talents, to be used in the service of a new dictatorship.

From 1 May 2008 I will be in the UK. I will have gone into exile from my home, joining millions of other Africans who have chosen life over brutality.

I am not a slave.

I believe my current participation could be a distraction.

— major league baseball pitcher and accused steroids and HGH cheat Roger Clemens, in withdrawing from a scheduled appearance at an “event, which takes place largely at Disney Hollywood Studios, and lets fans interact with athletes and ESPN personalities and watch live ESPN programming”; Feb. 20.

I’m very excited about watching this game. I do want to thank your coaches. Thanks for coaching. Thanks for teaching people the importance of teamwork. I like baseball a lot, so thanks for teaching them how to play baseball, too.

— from President Bush’s remarks at a “tee ball” game between the Little Dragons and the Little Saints at Ghana International School in Accra, Ghana; Feb. 20.

— the lead image on the home page of The Washington Post at 4:28 p.m. (EST) Feb. 22; it promotes a story on “Fashion Week” in Milan.

Students of color do appear to be the target.

— Jana Brown, spokeswoman for the St. Paul’s School, after many black students received threatening letters bearing their photos from the school’s internal face book with the words “bang bang get out of here” written below the photo; Feb. 21.

The more optimistic candidate won nine of the 10 elections from 1948 to 1984, according to Martin Seligman, the pooh-bah of the positive-psychology movement. More recent elections have been spottier, but the pattern holds: All things being equal, voters choose the more optimistic candidate. … Being optimistic helps candidates in two ways. Optimists are able to persevere in times of adversity, so perhaps optimistic candidates are elected because they’re able to weather setbacks during the grueling primary season. But there is also, of course, something about an optimistic candidate that voters find irresistible. Psychologists have found that we tend to like more positive people — no surprise there — so that might explain why we vote for the more optimistic candidate.

— Eric Weiner, author of “The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World,” in a Washington Post commentary headlined “Political Prozac: Why Republicans Are So Darn Happy”; Feb. 9.

— the lead image on the home page of The New York Times’ Web site at 1:55 p.m. (EST), Feb. 22; it promotes “T Magazine“: “An interview with Oscar winner Charlize Theron, above; Cathy Horyn inside the growing Comme des Garçons empire; and new names to watch and to drop.”

Sharper Image is in a severe liquidity crisis.

— Sharper Image’s chief financial officer, Rebecca Roedell, in a bankruptcy court filing, saying the company has suffered “from increased competition, narrowing margins, litigation, lower consumer and market confidence, tighter credit from suppliers, and poorly performing stores” and from “‘negative publicity’ from the litigation involving its Ionic Breeze air purifiers”; Feb. 20.

[I]t looks like it may be anointed the priciest property in America.

— The New York Sun, reporting on bids for the General Motors Building, a 50-story marble tower that overlooks Central Park, for more than $3 billion — which works out to about $1,578 a square foot.

We absolutely think this is going to change the industry.

— Michael Pilot, the head of sales for NBC, on NBC’s decision to scrap fall show debuts and announce a 52-week schedule in April; Feb. 20.

Why not? I want to look back in 20 years and feel like I looked hot on my wedding day.

— Natasha DaSilva, 26, on her wedding gown, about which a New York Times story on recent bridal fashions says: “Cut away at the rear to reveal a tattoo at the small of her back, the dress suggested a languorous night in the honeymoon suite”; Feb. 21; emphasis added.

Q: Before we get into other things, about tomorrow — what’s the mission, what’s the theme of tomorrow’s day in Ghana?
MS. PERINO: We’re going to continue to talk about malaria, obviously, and HIV/AIDS, PEPFAR and trying to support people who — support the government, who is trying to help their people make sure that they can lead healthy lives.

And then, of course, with the trade aspect of it, we’ll continue to talk about the need for responsible, sustainable development on the continent of Africa and, in particular, in Ghana. And then remember, of course, we’ve got the special guest tomorrow night of the American Idol contestant — finalist from two years ago, Melinda — I’m sorry, Jordin Sparks, the 2007 winner; she is the winner, Jordin Sparks was the winner of the 2007 American Idol and she’s going to sing tomorrow night at the Ghana event. She’s been very supportive of American Idol programs, America Gives Back, where they focus on malaria. So that will be part of the entertainment tomorrow night.

— remarks by press secretary Dana Perino at a press briefing during the President Bush’s visit to Ghana; Feb. 20; emphasis added.

— the lead image on the home page of The New York Times’ Web site at 2:27 p.m. (EST), Feb. 22.

Dynadot shall immediately clear and remove all DNS hosting records for the wikileaks.org domain name and prevent the domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or any other website or server other than a blank park page, until further order of this Court.

— from an order by a San Francisco judge that shut down Wikileaks, a Web site that anonymously posts leaked documents; Julius Baer Bank had sought an injunction after Wikileaks posted “papers purporting to show money laundering and tax evasion schemes at the bank’s Cayman Islands branch”; Feb. 22.

Among people whose immigration views I admire, Mr. Dobbs has a reputation as a hopeless blowhard. I did not dwell on that at lunch. I was his guest, and I had seen what happens if you try to skewer him with insult or accusation. Mr. Dobbs is unencumbered by self-doubt. The granite fortress of his certitude is smooth and featureless, and whatever boulders you hurl at it will end up on your head.

— from a New York Times commentary headlined “Broken Borders and Dover Sole: My Lunch With Lou Dobbs” by Lawrence Downes; Feb. 21.

When the president called, I said to him, ‘I guess I’ve moved to the top of the food chain,’ He was very persuasive.

— Baton Rouge Democratic Party loyalist Patsy Arceneaux, one of 796 “superdelegates,” after she received a phone call asking her to support Sen. Hillary Clinton from President Clinton, the man, she says, who gave her husband a job 10 years ago.

We’re not in anybody’s pocket.

— Democratic superdelegate and longtime Clinton ally Harold Ickes, whose firm, “Catalist, a broker of voter contact lists, [received] more than $125,000 last year” from the Clinton campaign; Sen Barack Obama’s “campaign also paid Ickes’s firm, spending $25,000 to rent a mailing list”; Feb. 10.

Senator Clinton is very proud to have helped New York-based projects that train nurses, improve our hospitals, help those suffering from 9/11-related health ailments, bolster our national and homeland security, and provide our brave men and women in uniform with the resources they need to achieve their mission, while keeping them safe.

— Philippe Reines, Sen. Hillary Clinton’s spokesman, defending more than $340 million in projects for New York state she placed as earmarks in last year’s spending bills; Feb. 14.

— the lead image on the home page of The New York Times’ Web site at 3:45 p.m. (EST) Feb. 22; it reefers a story headlined “Serbia Warned as Protests Continue.”

The man in the street will tell you that golf is booming because he sees Tiger Woods on TV. But we track the reality. The reality is, while we haven’t exactly tanked, the numbers have been disappointing for some time.

— Jim Kass, the research director of the National Golf Foundation, an industry group, on the declining popularity of golf; a New York Times story says “The total number of people who play has declined or remained flat each year since 2000, dropping to about 26 million from 30 million”; Feb. 21.

Even if your credit card company would subtract 1.25 percent off your monthly interest rate, if you’re revolving a balance on a high-interest credit card, it’s akin to putting a Band-Aid to a sucking chest wound.

— Joe Ridout, a spokesman for Consumer Action, in a Washington Post story that says: “The Federal Reserve’s dramatic rate cuts were expected to make it cheaper for consumers to use credit cards. But credit card interest rates remain high and in many cases have even climbed”; Feb. 11.

Can you imagine, every time Sen. Clinton says that, the licking of the lips that goes on with these health insurance executives?

— filmmaker Michael Moore, during a conference call with reporters, on Sen. Hillary Clinton’s proposal to mandate health care for all Americans; Feb. 22.

His movie notwithstanding, Michael Moore clearly doesn’t know a whole lot about how healthcare policy works.

— Clinton spokesman Jay Carson in an e-mail; Feb. 22.

— the lead image on the home page of The Washington Post at 4:32 p.m. (EST) Feb. 22; it promotes a story on “Fashion Week” in Milan.

We heard very clearly from our parents, especially parents that considered themselves middle income, that the amount that we expected from them was very difficult.

— Karen Cooper, director of financial aid at Stanford University, saying “the university would allot $21 million to financial aid, raising the aid total to $114 million”; the increase was the largest in the institution’s history; Stanford’s tuition next year is scheduled to be $36,030 with room and board adding $11,182; Feb. 21.

— the lead image on the home page of the Los Angeles Times at 4:40 p.m. (EST) Feb. 22, accompanied by this text: “Video Vigilante on the prowl: Activists like Brian Bates, who trails men soliciting prostitutes, are pointing cameras on bad behavior and posting it online.”

Photo credits:
Fashion Week: Maria Valentino | The Washington Post.
Charlize Theron: Matthias Vriens | New York Times.
Video Vigilante: Mark Zimmerman | Los Angeles Times.
Wedding gown: Joe Fornabaio | New York Times.
Kosovo border checkpoint: Srdjan Ilic | Associated Press.

Quotabull is a weekly feature of Scholars & Rogues.

What issue do you feel has not been adequately covered in the presidential debates thus far?

1: Civil liberties (26)
2: Green energy (15)
3: Media consolidation (11)
    Net neutrality (11)
5: Executive power (10)
6: Mercenary forces (9)
    Sibel Edmonds/corruption conspiracy (9)
8: Native American rights (7)
9: Infrastructure (6)
10: Student loan debt (5)
    AFRICOM/US military control of Africa’s resources (5)
12: Other (4)
13: Nuclear proliferation (3)
    Economy (3)
15: Trade policy (2)
16: Sub-prime lending crisis (0)

You’re invited to vote in our newest poll, which asks about your voting plans for November. The poll is live in the column to the right.

All S&R polls and results are non-scientific. At least, they’re not very good science. For amusement purposes only – no betting, please…

Download the podcast: China in Africa.

Scholars and Rogues is pleased to introduce the first in a series of talking and speaking type Scrogues. This Scrogcast was presented by Gavin Chait at an informal interactive gathering of analysts at Frost & Sullivan. The seminar is about 11Mb, is in MP3 format, and is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND License

Download the Scrogcast: The US dollar in Africa.