'Compassionate Slavery' Market for Africa

Notice: This is a an imaginary incident. You can call it 'Reflection of Truth'!


A WTO initiative for "full private stewardry of labor" was announced at the Wharton Business School conference on business in Africa.

World Trade Organization representative, Hanniford Schmidt said it's for the parts of Africa that have been hardest hit by the 500 years of Africa's free trade with the West.

The initiative will require Western companies doing business in some parts of Africa to own their workers outright.

Schmidt recounted how private stewardship has been successfully applied to transport, power, water, traditional knowledge, and even the human genome.

The WTO's "full private stewardry" program will extend these successes to [re]-privatize humans themselves.

"Full, untrammelled stewardry is the best available solution to African poverty, and the inevitable result of free-market theory," Schmidt said.

He added that the stewardry program was similar in many ways to slavery, but explained that just as "compassionate conservatism" has polished the rough edges on labor relations in industrialized countries, full stewardry, or "compassionate slavery," could be a similar boon to developing ones.

The audience included Prof. Charles Soludo [Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria], Dr. Laurie Ann Agama [Director for African Affairs at the Office of the US Trade Representative], and other notables.

Agama prefaced her remarks by thanking Scmidt for his macroscopic perspective, saying that the USTR view adds details to the WTO's general approach.

Nigerian Central Bank Governor Soludo also acknowledged the WTO proposal, though he did not seem to appreciate it as much as did Agama.

A system in which corporations own workers is the only free-market solution to African poverty, Schmidt said.

"Today, in African factories, the only concern a company has for the> worker is for his or her productive hours, and within his or her productive years," he said. "As soon as AIDS or pregnancy hits out the door. Get sick, get fired.

If you extend the employer's obligation to a 24/7, lifelong concern, you have an entirely different situation: get sick, get care. With each life valuable from start to finish, the AIDS scourge will be quickly contained via accords with drug manufacturers as a profitable investment in human stewardees. And educating a child for later might make more sense than working it to the bone right now."

To prove that human stewardry can work, Schmidt cited a proposal by a free-market think tank to save whales by selling them. "Those who don't like whaling can purchase rights to specific whales or groups of whales in order to stop those particular whales from getting whaled as much," he explained. Similarly, the market in Third-World humans will "empower" caring First Worlders to help them, Schmidt said.

[http://www.policynetwork.net/main/article.php?article_id=505]

One conference attendee asked what incentive employers had to remain as stewards once their employees are too old to work or reproduce. Schmidt responded that a large new biotech market would answer that worry. He then reminded the audience that this was the only possible solution under free-market theory.

There were no other questions from the audience that took issue with Schmidt's proposal. During his talk, Schmidt outlined the three phases of Africa's 500- year history of free trade with the West: slavery, colonialism, and post-colonial markets. Each time, he noted, the trade has brought tremendous wealth to the West but catastrophe to Africa, with poverty steadily deepening and ever more millions of dead.

"So far there's a pattern: Good for business, bad for people. Good for business, bad for people. Good for business, bad for people. That's why we're so happy to announce this fourth phase for business between Africa and the West: good for business--GOOD for people."

The panel on which Schmidt spoke was entitled "Trade in Africa: Enhancing Relationships to Improve Net Worth." Some of the other panels in the conference were entitled "Re-Branding Africa" and "Growing Africa's Appetite."

Throughout the comments by Schmidt and his three co-panelists, which lasted 75 minutes, Schmidt's stewardee, Thomas Bongani-Nkemdilim, remained standing at respectful attention off to the side.

"This is what free trade's all about," said Schmidt. "It's about the freedom to buy and sell anything--even people."

Abstract Aesthetic to War-Damaged Urban Fabric

Lebanese painter's new work draws inspiration from summer conflict and its aftermath
Zeina Nasr, The Daily Star, lb

It's a trying life for the Lebanese visual artist. Of course, artists everywhere have never had an easy time of it. Whether they forage for funding, endeavor to exhibit or struggle to find inspiration, their profession is simultaneously one of deeply private creation and necessarily public promotion.

The Lebanese art scene is no exception, though the small scale of the local market as well as its uncompetitive spirit may spare artists a life of commercial coups and calculations.

But there is the problem of culture. Who is truly interested in Lebanese contemporary art? Can a community of visual artists survive without the presence of serious art collectors? And how may a collective understanding of contemporary art develop without the presence of institutions to memorialize such work?

Despite an impoverished cultural climate - not to mention debilitating war and postwar economies - Raouf Rifai has done well. He has exhibited his paintings in France, Japan, Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Bangladesh and the United States. He has steadily shown his work in numerous Lebanese galleries since 1973. His paintings sell at robust prices and please the obligingly critical eye.

"The artist visibly follows a process of formal simplification and qualification that leads him to create compositions that are, without a doubt, a most compelling mix of figuration and abstraction tending toward the definition of a new visual language," says the exhibition announcement for Rifai's current show at the French Cultural Center, on view until December 22.

Such long-winded praise elevates Rifai's colorful compositions to groundbreaking innovations of the medium itself. Although his work does indeed mix figuration and abstraction, there is little in the mid-sized canvases, layered as they are in dense blocks of acrylic color, to indicate that Rifai has developed a new visual language.

Complementary color pairs characterize most of the paintings currently on show: bright orange and electric blue, olive green and brick red, mustard yellow and magenta. Accenting tones of white, black, gray and beige serve to detail and outline each block of color.

Instead of using brush strokes, Rifai drips and rolls his paint, layering saturated surfaces with grids of wavering lines. What emerges is a visual language between print patterns, abstract landscapes and primitive figuration - neither entirely developed nor notably individualized.

If anything, Rifai's work most calls to mind myriad swatches of stylish furniture fabric. His paintings are striking in their color but merely decorative in their even geometries. And if they are paintings most suited to compliment swanky interiors, Rifai is qualified to produce such work, given his position as a professor of interior design at the Lebanese University.

Also an urbanist and a staunch environmentalist, Rifai considers his current exhibition to be an expression of spatial vision. Having previously produced paintings in a more primitive style - depicting stick figures amongst trees in cluttered, childish interiors - Rifai's move to formal abstraction was propelled to completion by this past summer's war.

"I was affected by pollution - the pollution of the environment and of the city," says Rifai.
Inspired by the urban destruction of Beirut's southern suburbs and the villages of South Lebanon, Rifai wanted to depict the unexpected beauty of such a deconstructed urban landscape.

"This is how my work has developed - more toward abstraction and urban space, and because of the war, I began to see how destruction can inspire. I wanted to paint all of this urban confusion," he explains.

As to his choice of acrylic paint, Rifai says: "I like to work quickly, impulsively. My work is emotional painting, and oil takes too long to dry. It makes me lose the feeling. So I work with acrylic to make it look like oil paint."

Perhaps he works too quickly. Rifai's paintings are immediately appealing, like attractive hothouse flowers. But they lack the unsettling detail and raw emotion of more substantially "felt" compositions.

In an art scene where a grounding history and an active community have yet to evolve, the question remains: Who is truly interested in Lebanese contemporary art?

If Rifai paints by himself and essentially for himself, it is understandable that his paintings may lack conceptual substance. Perhaps he is inspired by the work of some distant masters, as in the colors of painter Mark Rothko and the lines of architect Zaha Hadid, but for whom does he paint?

With which local artists does he exchange ideas? What works does he set his own against?
Although it may be said that a genius creates beauty under any circumstances, cultural value can only be attributed to work that is validated by a favorable context. Genius or not, art is nothing but private expression until it is recognized and fit into a community of artistic endeavor.

Rifai's previous work is more firmly anchored in what may be called a Mediterranean tradition. His childish drawings are charming, each one portraying some aspect of a sunny childhood spent amidst the happy disarray of an old-time Lebanon.

It may be said that his current work is more "mature." But according to what standards? Does a move from simple figuration to simple abstraction immediately indicate artistic maturity? And why has Rifai made this move?

As there is no cultural context through which Rifai's move to decorative abstraction may be understood, his paintings remain the results of private whim.

It is not so much that Rifai's colorful urban landscapes are uninteresting, but rather, that they are culturally powerless.

Looking for Similarities Among Religions

By Faiz Khan, Daily Star

The West and the Muslim world are multi-faceted, multi-cultural, and multi-religious realms despite the narrow way they are often viewed and defined.

There are millions of Muslims in the West, and there are millions of individuals of other faiths in the "Muslim world."

There are underlying relationships between these supposed separate worlds that exist in the basic foundations of their cultures; the continual resurgence of religiosity is at the heart of both of our cultures and has been throughout history.

The goal of religiosity is piety, and a temporal consequence of piety is the insistent turning of the individual and collectivity toward those values and ethics that are universally cherished by all human beings.

Given this relationship between piety and time-honored ethics and values, anyone of goodwill, Western or not, should feel encouraged by that facet of Islamic doctrine that supports the cultivation of piety through religious practice, which elicits from its practitioner an inter-human ethic also shared by the Judeo-Christian, Hindu, Parsi and Buddhist traditions.

Therefore, similarities between cultures can be found in the religious and theocentric realm. Even seemingly clashing cultures can find common ground here. American heritage has a strong theocentric basis.

I recall, as a schoolchild, reciting daily "one nation, under God indivisible, with liberty and justice for all," as taught by the American Pledge of Allegiance. This idea is precisely Koranic.

Moreover, the sense that executive, legislative and judiciary institutions must be parochially neutral while at the same time acknowledging divinity and cultivating piety and sanctity, no matter what the outward form (be it Christian or Buddhist or Islamic, or something else), is in keeping with the operational understanding of governance as derived from Koranic principles.

These principles were elaborated on and lived by the prophet Mohammad and his apostles.
Though similarities can be drawn, the East has kept theocentric principals closer to the surface of its cultures, while the West supports a more secular culture.

There is very little the "Muslim world" needs to learn ideologically from the modern West. The making of ideologically sound governance and society lies in the application of Islamic law, or sharia, defined by the Koran and embracing pluralism.

Whether this element of the sharia is fostered and supported by the domestic or transnational geopolitical powerbrokers is an entirely different issue.

Western-based secular humanism, which views public expressions of faith or mention of God as a malignant imposition of religion, is repugnant to the Islamic paradigm. Regardless, Muslims in the West are still expected to abide by the mores and legal precedents of where they live.

Taking an extreme example, if, through due process, it is decided that religion or mention of God is purely private matter, the Muslim, by the ethic dictated by sharia, needs to comply or find somewhere else to live.

In the Muslim world, like in the rest of the developing world, the West has imposed corporate client regimes through the use of covert or overt war. The ensuing harmful sociopolitical and economic consequences have caused many segments of the population to feel deeply violated.

When these Muslim populations express themselves against very real injustices, they do so in the phraseology of a sharia ethic that promises them their rights to life, liberty, property, security and fair distribution of wealth and opportunity.

The sharia has its basis in religion; hence, religious revivalism is analogous to Americans demanding their "constitutional rights" in the face of sociopolitical and financial victimization. Various reactionary movements have their basis in this dynamic.

Religion, when practiced authentically, by definition builds bridges among its practitioners, no matter what the brand of their respective religions. The Koran explicitly addresses this phenomenon in many instances.

One of the most dangerously flawed theses is that there is something within authentic religion that is central in causing conflict along religiously parochial lines.

However, religious, racial, ethnic or any other form of bigotry is by definition a psychological perversion. Although religion, race and ethnicity are semantically linked to their respective bigotries in an existential manner, they are not causative.

A pious Jew, Christian or Muslim will behave in the same manner when it comes to inter-personal ethics. The modalities of worship may differ, but the treatment by a pious Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Parsi or Buddhist toward their fellow man will be the same.

All humans, be they theocentric or theophobic, desire to spend their time on this earth with their rights secured, free to enjoy their pursuits within a peaceful and ordered society.

This is the common bridge between believers and non-believers.

There is an underlying commonality that exists in the humanity of peoples, their cultures and religion. A massive public campaign must be waged which supports tearing down the barriers between our "two worlds."

It's time that we stop looking for differences and start paying attention to the similarities.


Faiz Khan, a medical doctor, is a writer and lecturer on Islam. He is also a co-founder of MUJCA-NET, the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth.

U.N. Peacekeepers at Record High

UPI

U.N. officials say peacekeeping forces at the end of October reached nearly 81,000 military and police and 15,000 civilians, the highest number ever.

The U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations said Friday they were deployed in 18 missions around the world and required a budget that could reach US $7 billion.

"The unprecedented growth represents a growing confidence in U.N. peacekeeping as a means to help build stability after conflict," said Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Marie Guehenno.

"These new demands have also brought unprecedented challenges to the United Nations, including in the areas of personnel, resources, management, logistical support, quality assurance, professionalism and oversight, as well as the challenge of maintaining the political engagement of (U.N.) member states," Guehenno said.

The previous peak in 58 years of U.N. peacekeeping operations was in July 1993, when 78,444 troops were deployed, almost one-third of them in the U.N. Protection Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The current surge began in October 2003, with the deployment of major operations to Burundi, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sudan and expansion of the mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Over the past three months, the newly established U.N. Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste and the increased deployment in the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon contributed to the record-breaking number of uniformed personnel in the field.

Peacekeeping is paid for by all Member States according to an agreed upon formula which they established.

The current top 10 financial contributors are: the United States at 27 per cent, Japan paying 19 per cent, Germany contributing 9 per cent, Britain giving 7 per cent, France 7 per cent, Italy 5 per cent, Canada and Spain at 3 percent each and China and the Netherlands each paying 2 per cent

Our 'Africa' Lenses

From the West, Big Labels but Little Context


By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Washington Post


Growing up in Nsukka, a small university town in eastern Nigeria, I often had malaria.

It was so commonplace that when you went to the medical center, a nurse would say, "Malaria has come again, hasn't it?"

Because I know how easily treatable malaria is, I was surprised to learn that thousands of people die from it each year.

People like the relatives of David Banda, Madonna's adopted son from Malawi.

But of course most American media do not say "Malawi"; they just say "Africa." I realized that I was African when I came to the United States. Whenever Africa came up in my college classes, everyone turned to me. It didn't matter whether the subject was Namibia or Egypt; I was expected to know, to explain.

I reject this facile compression of a varied continent into a monolithic country, but I have also come to accept that African nations do have much in common with one another. Most have a history of European colonization. Most also have a failure of leadership, a long line of presidents and prime ministers and heads of state all intent on the plunder of the state.

And so I was wearing my "African" lenses as I watched Madonna on television, cautiously, earnestly explaining the media circus around her adoption. I did not think it my place to wonder what her motivation for adoption was.

I did cringe, however, when she said that her greatest disappointment was that the media frenzy would discourage people who wanted to do the same thing that she had done: adopt an African child. She wanted people to go to Africa and see what she had seen; she wanted them, too, to adopt.

Later, watching David Banda's biological father speak about being grateful that she would give David a "better life," I could not help but look away. The power differential was so stark, so heartbreakingly sad; there was something about it that made Africa seem terribly dispensable.
Madonna will give David a better life, at least a materially better life: better food, housing, books.

Whether this will make him a happier and normatively better human being is open to debate. What really matters is not Madonna's motivation or her supposed flouting of Malawian adoption laws (as though non-celebrities would not also hasten adoption processes if they could).

Rather, it is the underlying notion that she has helped Africa by adopting David Banda, that one helps Africa by adopting Africa's children.

It is easy to romanticize poverty, to see poor people as inherently lacking agency and will. It is easy to strip them of human dignity, to reduce them to objects of pity. This has never been clearer than in the view of Africa from the American media, in which we are shown poverty and conflicts without any context.

If I were not African, I would, after watching the coverage, think of Africa as a place of magnificent wild animals in which black Africans exist as tour guides, or as a place of desperately poor people who kill or are killed by one another for little or no reason.

I once watched CNN's Anderson Cooper, who is undoubtedly well-meaning, interview a Belgian (who, we were told, was a "Congo expert") about the conflict in that country, while Congolese people stood in the background and watched.

Surely there was a Congolese who was qualified to speak about Congo. Surely there are Congolese who are working just as hard as the foreigners and who don't fit into the category of either killer or killed. Surely the future for Africa should be one in which Africans are in a position to raise their own children.

Which brings me back to Madonna. I applauded her funding of orphanages in Malawi. I wish, however, that instead of asking television viewers to go to Africa and adopt, she had asked them to send a check to malaria-eradication organizations.

I wish she had added, after one of those thoughtfully dramatic pauses, that Africa cannot depend on aid alone, that aid is like salted peanuts: The more failed leaders got, the more they wanted.

I wish she had said that she was setting up an organization to use donations as micro-credit and that this organization, by the way, would be run by locals rather than expatriate staff members who would raise rents out of the reach of the people they were supposed to be helping.

I wish she had pointed out, with suitable celebrity-style rage, that Western countries need to stop appeasing and propping up hopeless African leaders, that Western banks must stop enabling and accepting stolen money from these leaders, that Western donors who insist on the free movement of capital across borders must also insist on the free movement of labor.

I wish she had then shown, with graphs on the screen, how these things affect the father and relatives of David Banda.

Of course this isn't really about Madonna. It is about a formula that well-meaning people have adopted in looking at Africa, a surface-only, let's-ignore-the-real-reasons template that African experiences have all been forced to fit in order to be authentically "African."

If I were not African, I wonder whether it would be clear to me that Africa is a place where the people do not need limp gifts of fish but sturdy fishing rods and fair access to the pond.

I wonder whether I would realize that while African nations have a failure of leadership, they also have dynamic people with agency and voices.

I wonder whether I would know that Africa has class divisions, that wealthy Africans who have not stolen from their countries actually exist.

I wonder whether I would know that corrupt African countries are also full of fiercely honest people and that violent conflicts are about resource control in an environment of (sometimes artificial) scarcity.

Watching David Banda's father, I imagined a British David visiting him in 2021 and I wondered what they would talk about.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a novelist, is the author of "Half of a Yellow Sun."

Lack of Clean Water, a Huge Global Problem

Chantelle Benjamin, Business Day

Despite increased wealth worldwide, more than 1-billion of the world’s poor do not have access to safe water and 2,6-billion do not have adequate sanitation, says the United Nations (UN) Development Programme report.

The report, which will be released worldwide tomorrow, looks at the importance of increasing access to water for citizens and whether that has positive spinoffs to countries’ economic growth.

It looks at 175 UN member countries, including the Palestinian territories. The report says 2,6-billion people do not have access to adequate sanitation.

The report highlights the correlation between productivity and access to water, saying this affected most of the world’s malnourished people, who are small farmers, labourers and herders.

Releasing the UN 2006 Human Development Report, Kevin Watkin said safe water and sanitation were fundamental to human development.

“When people are deprived of these, they face diminished opportunities to realise their potential as human beings.” He said it was hoped that the extensive report would galvanise leaders to address “what amounts to a humanitarian emergency”.

The report contains this year’s human development index, a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education and living standards for countries, which is taken seriously by governments.

Saudi Arabia was rated 120 out of 177 countries, behind the Seychelles, Libya and Mauritius, but ahead of other sub-Saharan countries.

The top six countries were Norway, Iceland, Australia, Luxembourg, Canada and Sweden. The last three countries were Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone and Niger.

Get Rid of Explosives After War

By Stephanie Nebehay, Reuters

A global treaty obliging warring parties to remove unexploded munitions which kill and maim long after fighting ends came into force, amid moves to start negotiations to curb use of cluster bombs.

The "explosive remnants of war" pact, clinched three years ago, has been ratified by more than the 20 states needed to become legally binding.

It requires the cleaning up of deadly debris such as unexploded shells, grenades, cluster submunitions, mortars and rockets which lie in wait after the end of hostilities.

"This is the first international agreement to require the parties to an armed conflict to clear all unexploded munitions that threaten civilians, peacekeepers and humanitarian workers once the fighting is over," the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said in a statement.

"Its entry into force, finally, is a milestone," Philip Spoerri, ICRC's director of international law, told Reuters.

The humanitarian agency -- hoping to minimise death, injury and suffering from Asia to Africa -- was behind the initiative to address unexploded ordnance in 2000.

Under the pact, warring parties must mark contaminated areas after a conflict ends and warn civilians of the risks until the ordnance has been cleared.

"It creates an obligation to clean up the mess on the battlefield even if a party doesn't control the territory anymore," Mark Hiznay, of the New York-based group Human Rights Watch, told Reuters.

El Salvador and Liberia, which have emerged from conflicts, are among 26 states to have ratified the treaty so far. U.S. President George W. Bush has sent it to the Senate.

It is a protocol to the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) and its entry into force comes midway in a two-week review conference where momentum is building to address the issue of deadly cluster bombs, aid agencies say.

Cluster bombs are air- or ground-launched canisters holding up to 650 submunitions, which often fail to explode on impact. Designed for use against infantry and tanks, they sink into the ground or lie on the surface and become virtual landmines.

Israel's use of cluster bombs in its month-long war against Islamist Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon has brought a sense of urgency to halting their firing against military targets located in heavily populated areas, aid agencies say.

More than 20 people have been killed by cluster bomblets since the Aug. 14 ceasefire in Lebanon, where experts estimate that an unusually high 40 percent failed to explode on impact.

"A new treaty is needed urgently to prohibit cluster munitions, weapons that have caused documented and unacceptable harm for over 40 years. The devastation in Lebanon is just the latest example," Angelo Simonazzi, director-general of the Brussels-based Handicap International, said in a statement.

The ICRC has called for a ban on the use of cluster bombs in populated areas, where it says they cause "severe and disproportionate impact" on civilians, a call echoed by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Nearly 20 states at the Geneva meeting back an attempt by Sweden to seek the launch of negotiations on some form of treaty, according to the ICRC's Spoerri.