If you had any lingering support for the New Atheists...

...now is probably a good time to abandon it. I though Hitchens was the worst one of the bunch but Richard Seymour at Lenin's Tomb highlights a post Dawkins made in which he calls Islam unmitigated evil.

I've heard from time to time critics say atheism as an ideology is very much a first world thing and not something that can be applied globally. I still believe that is not universally the case but the New Atheism that has become very popular in the last few years does seem to have a strong first world and perhaps even a colonialist component.

And speaking of colonialism and religion in Africa I'll highlight this article by the war nerd (one of several he did on the subject in the space of a few days) which examines the situation of religious and ethnic tensions in Africa, especially West Africa. Makes it a bit clearer why Dawkins, a right winger, wants to protect Christianised Africans.

Another charmer invited to the Royal Wedding.

Al Jazeera offers a profile of King Mswati III the last absolutist monarch in Africa. Although to be fair to him he disputes this claim because he technically shares power with his mother. (This is, surprisingly, not an unheard of claim from absolutist monarchs. Empress Maria Theresa and her son of the Austro-Hungarian Empire bitterly feuded over power for much of his adult life). However while the Bahraini Crown Prince was disuaded from attending it would seem the mistreating blacks, who are after all considerably darker skinned than Arabs, is a-ok with Britain's government.

That'll show em.

In response to a leaked cable in which the British High Commissioner in Malawi said the country's ruler is increasingly autocratic and intolerant of criticism said ruler is kicking the High Commissioner out for daring to criticise him.

Also this article has a frankly unnerving picture of William Hague for no apparent reason. So enjoy that.

A boringly predictable Vietnam reference.

The British government are sending "Advisors" to Libya and whether you wrap it up in faux sarcasm or shock or whatever at the end of the day this is how the troop buildup in Vietnam began.

Oh and remember kids, the Libyan rebel's military leader is almost certainly a CIA asset.

A very British genocide.

The War Nerd on exiled.com has been doing a daily update for 25 days straight and if you haven't been reading them you are officially failing at life. Today's update covers the Mau Mau event, yeah the one involving Obama's Grandpa (not that its stopped the big O from doing just the same to other nations as President). Pretty standard for British colonialism, every evil you can imagine from mass murder on an industrial scale to horrific abuse of prisoners and all taking place years after the Holocaust and all the hand wringing and claims to moralism that entailed.

To anyone who cares to look the British Empire was probably second only to the Mongol Empire in terms of most evil organisation ever to exist. But the more worrying implication of today's update is the convincing argument it makes about British academic complicity. Now in hindsight its not really that surprising this is the case but it had simply never occurred to me, but yeah the entire British system is set up in a way to deny the utterly horrific crimes the Empire committed that we still feel the benefits from today. Still, as someone who self identifies as a historian its not nice to think the organisation I believe myself a part of is so complicit in evil.

Monstrous turtles all the way down I suppose.

It would certainly seem plausible there is a similar propaganda model for academia.

French strenuously deny they captured Gbagbo

Laurent Gbagbo, deposed president of Ivory Coast is now in the custody of former IMF man Alassane Outtara's French and UN backed forces.

His capture occurred after a French assault involving armoured vehicles and aircraft but both the French and the Outtara forces they've been heavily supporting are adamant that the French didn't capture him.

As has previously been discussed Gbagbo probably wasn't a decent person either but its always a shame to see colonial armies and their proxies triumph.

Egypt and Ethiopia (+ other countries on the upper Nile) heading for war.

Essentially about a century ago the British Empire and Italian "Empire" made a number of unilateral treaties about who could use the water resources of the Nile. Unsurprisingly both nations had a bias towards the Mediterranean and thus the nation / British colony closest to the med, Egypt got the lion's share of the water. Due to Egypt geo-political position throughout the C20th it was both politically and militarily impossible for nations on the upper Nile to get a more equitable agreement. Consequently nations like Ethiopia and D.R. Congo could not benefit economically or agriculturally from one of the most fertile rivers in the world.

Things are however changing, in 1999 the UN and World bank helped the upper Nile countries set up the Nile Basin Initiative and after a decade of negotiation are moving forward with an initiative. Egypt's ability to quash this has been limited by a number of recent events. Firstly their standing in the Arab / North African world has diminished greatly, willingly accepting US bribes to recognise and not attack Israel, a weak or non-existent stand on issues important to the region, the end of the cold war removing the need for Russia and the US to woo / appease them and the simple fact memories of Nasser have long since faded mean their clout, while still significant, is a shadow of what it once was.

Secondly Ethiopia's star is rising, their little excursion in Somalia was a solid favour for the US. In addition the War on Terror (or whatever the arms and security industry subsidy is now called) is starting to focus increasingly on the horn of Africa, Yemen is just a thin, Somali pirate infested strip of water away from the horn. While Eritrea, Ethiopia's mortal enemy, is also considered an ally by America the simple fact remains Ethiopia is Christian and most of its' neighbours are Muslim. They may not be as powerful as Egypt right now but their recent actions have likely given the Nile Basin Initiative considerable leeway.

Thirdly there is the issue of continued Chinese colonisation of East Africa and America's AFRICOM response which requires a large amount of cooperation from and with African countries given America's relative manpower shortage compared to China in the region. Again this means leeway for the NBI countries, after all there is at least five of them. It may or may not be noteworthy that Sudan, a benefactor of considerable Chinese largess, is siding with Egypt. They are also benefiting from the 1958 treaty though so I'd be wary to say its a thing. Also there is little reason for America to worry about Egypt going Chinese even if they don't back them, they have other incentives to stay friendly.

However while Egypt is unlikely to be able to get this manoeuvre quashed by my powerful agents it still seems to be trying good old fashioned violence. Is war actually likely? I'm not sure. At a very shallow level I think there are convincng reasons for Egypt to go to war and for them not to. The not to side is the fact in the conflict over a river's water supply being downstream and relying heavily on it for your economy makes you very vulnerable to upstream enemies. Plus while Ethiopia's military is definitely weaker than Egypt's it is known to be a very able fighting force and Ethiopia's terrain makes it very difficult to invade. The use of funded guerillas is workable to an extent for Egypt but sugar daddy America likely wont be too pleased about Ethiopia having to waste the War on Terror weapons and aid its been given on rebels being indirectly funded by the US also. Why bring military action? Well at this point Egypt has no real non-violent means of compulsion as aforementioned but they really do want to keep their preferential access to the Nile. It might be deeply iniquitous but their economy is and has for a considerable time been dependent on that unfairness, this is a compelling reason to use whatever means necessary to keep things as they are.

Also there is the issue of "President" Hosni Mubarak's son succeeding him as ruler of the country. While Egypt pretends to be a democracy it is in reality a brutal dictatorship and a client state of the US (ctrl+F Egypt). It seems the people of Egypt even under great repression than usual are not happy about the country's lack of democracy being thrust in their faces so brazenly. Hosni's failing health means this is a time sensitive issue. The economic impact of the NBI would just add injury to insult and make the future of the dictatorship uncertain (likely someone else would step up to be US client but for the current oligarchs that might not be a good thing). On the other hand a successful military adventure and the nations' interests protected would definitely ease the transition.

At this point it seems very likely the Nile Basin Initiative will happen which, stepping away from realpolitik for a second, is definitely a good thing for the upper Nile region and the sweeping away of a negative legacy of colonialism. What reaction this will cause from Egypt is much less certain at this time.

Nelson Mandela: Cool Guy.

Nelson Mandela angrily addressed a UK cabinet meeting in 2003 strongly opposing Tony Blair's decision to invade iraq. Nice to know some leaders aren't totally awful.

The wheezings of a Behemoth

A narrowly focused look at a couple of, admittedly major, problems facing the Catholic church with a bit of analysis. This sounds dismissive but unless the article was a several inch thick book with 8pt writing it would not be able to achieve even a shallow overview of the state of an organisation as large as the Catholic church and its' context in nearly every country on earth. Still though the article is good, it just is what it is. Most interesting is Benedict's belief that smaller congregations could be useful for the catholic church, this is an odd aspiration for an organisation that has dominated western christendom for millenia, was the inheritor of the influence of the Roman Empire and has been accurately described as the world's first corporation. A bit like Steve Ballmer hoping MS's waning power will allow them to focus on making the best possible iPhone apps. then again...

A nice accompaniment to this piece is something jonny linked me, showing that aside from the big problems that are causing Western European congregations to wither away Catholicism also faces the problem of its' consistent dickishness.

A moral grey area.

This one has been lingering in the elephant graveyard that is the ever expanding number of tabs I really am going to post about soon it was old when I was linked it about a month ago so perhaps I can get away with it being a little older still.

I understand that This American Life is quite popular with liberals in the US and this is an episode from it. It is also counter to the righteous indignation that usually characterises my posts, as the title states, this really is a moral grey area. It is about three individuals who are part of an online community that likes to scam Nigerian scammers which seems a reasonable thing to do but these three in particular have put those they target in some pretty extreme danger. Plus you have the usual problems vigilante justice brings and the nagging question of why obviously white and affluent first worlders decided the group they most needed to bring justice too was relatively poor Africans, plus their choice of terms such as "Safari" further muddies their motives. Nonetheless it is also made clear the Nigerian Scammers are really not pleasant people and false payoff the vigilantes use against the individual highlighted in this episode involves them defrauding a fictional church that is trying to distribute aid to war victims.

In the end its hard to say the Nigerian scammers they target are in any way nice people but you do still have to wonder if this is the right way to deal with them as well of the question of if two wrongs make a right.

Cops perform freelance undercover operations or "crimes".

Very much a twofer this one with examples of police crimes big and relatively small.

On the big side of things the former head of Interpol (the organisation not the band) has been convicted of accepting bribes from a drug dealer. This was a strictly South African legal case but given interpol is one of the key agencies fighthing the "war on drugs" because a supranational entity is required to fight the drug trade, which by its' very nature is international, one has to wonder if they are also corrupt, drug organisations tend to be very rich after all.

Nonetheless even without such speculation the case leads to some very unpleasant questions for South Africa with facts such as:

Vusi Pikoli, the former chief prosecutor, lost his job for charging Selebi.

and

"And here was someone who was very high, very close to the top, also at the time [very close] to the former president of this country [Thabo Mbeki]."

In a somewhat smaller case a number of Miami Police officers and an FBI agent decided to cut out the middle man and commit crimes themselves. While not specifically abusing their positions they knowingly committed fraud via straw buyers to gain fraudulent mortgages to "flip" houses so their value increased and they made a profit off of their fraudulently acquired properties.

They were in league with a prominent local lawyer, Steven Stoll, a high profile Republican in the area:

Steven Stoll and wife Rebecca are well known in Republican and philanthropic circles in Broward.

Stoll let Republican activists use his mortgage company office to phone bank for Republican candidates, and the Stolls sometimes attended fundraisers, said Bob Wolfe, a Broward Republican activist.

Stoll was one of the lawyers who fought with Broward's canvassing board about the 2000 presidential recount.

So one of the guys who opposed the recount and thus helped Bush steal the 2000 election also committed millions of dollars worth of fraud. Still I suppose it does show Republicans work better with the police.

The cost in blood of precious metals.

Something thats quite well known in environmental circles and indeed among the media classes (albeit seldom reported) is that in order to maximise profit most tech companies use precious metals acquired from the DR Congo which were mined by child slaves. This is not the only source of precious metals of course but they aren't as cheap (note the stalwart Australian media reporting on African suffering when it affects national profits).

Huffpo reports a fairly cheap looking video is trying to alter people's perceptions, still its something easy to forward and related to pop culture that it might get some notice:

Guinea has first free Election.

After the end of a brutal military dictatorship (tautology?) Guinea had its first ever free presidential election (probably, western media tends to ignore fraud if a pro-western person wins). But as the article points out Guinea has large Bauxite and Iron Ore reserves so lets hope like hell they voted in the right person or they'll likely be couped and taken back to square one.