Michael Kevane

The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma is a harrowing novel set in the 1990s.  A middle-class professional family in the town of Akure unravels, with brother killing brother.  The novel works as a metaphor for Nigeria, as a classic-style tragedy, and as a psychological family drama.  The latter reading was for me the more satisfying: places like Akure in the early 1990s, and families like that of the young narrator (a younger brother), were unlikely to have quality psychiatrists able to diagnose teenage psychotic episodes.  And the break suffered by Ikenna seems like a classic teenager whose normal sudden switch to self-centeredness, rebellion, lassitude and paranoia here becomes exaggerated as the family authority figure, the father, must take a job in a town quite far away so he only comes back occasionally (and too late).  Kids make up their worlds, is the theme, and it can sometimes be wonderful, and sometimes downright scary.  Obioma traces this wonderfully, with the four brothers paired into two sets, each orbiting a slightly different axis.

Good reviews from The New York Times and The Guardian.

Pope Francis didn’t win many friends among mainstream climate economists when his recent environmental encyclical Laudato Si’ condemned the notion of buying and selling carbon credits, suggesting that it could “lead to a new form of speculation which would not help reduce the emission of polluting gases worldwide” (¶ 171). That was seen by many economists as a direct swipe at the “cap-and-trade” systems underway or planned in places like California, Canada, Europe and (soon) China. Cap and trade works by setting limits — which get stricter over time — on the total amount of greenhouse gases that can be emitted, and then issuing pollution permits that add up to that total amount. Those who want to exceed their limits can buy permits on the open market from those who have extra permits they don’t want to use themselves. The encyclical’s policy stance received harsh reviews from such top climate economists as William Nordhaus and Robert Stavins. In a blog post here, Stavins concluded, “although there is much about the encyclical that is commendable, where it drifts into matters of public policy it is — unfortunately — not helpful.” With the news that 2015 will likely turn out to have been the hottest year on record, and the critical Paris climate talks only a week away, climate change and climate policy are back in the public eye. It seems an opportune moment to review the case for market-based climate policies and to examine the Pope’s critique: Does he mean what his critics think he means? If so, is he right?

Source: The Pope and Cap and Trade | William A. Sundstrom

Puerto Rico met its deadline for repaying $354 million in debt, the island’s development bank announced Tuesday, avoiding what some feared would be its first major default. But it was unclear how long the payments would continue or whether the Commonwealth would meet other looming deadlines between now and Jan. 1. The announcement of the repayments came as Gov. Alejandro García Padilla and other officials were testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is considering whether to give the island bankruptcy protection. The governor reiterated that Puerto Rico had run completely out of cash, and that as of Tuesday it was going to “claw back” certain revenues dedicated to paying debts, and use the money instead to provide government services and service general obligation bonds.

Source: Puerto Rico Meets Debt Deadline but Warns of Tight Finances – The New York Times

I love it when pundits write opinion pieces purporting to “explain” what something means, when they often have little or no idea, or they just copy what everyone else says.  So in that spirit, I offer three “anti- it means this” reflections.

1. There could be more, or less, corruption!  Kaboré was associated with the Compaoré government (the previous regime) for all of his political career, as were his co-defectors Salif Diallo and Simon Compaoré.  Kaboré served in several ministerial positions, including as Prime Minister, and was head of the national assembly, and also head of ex-President Compaoré’s government.  If anyone knew about corruption in Burkina Faso, and did very little about it, apparently, it would be Kaboré.  Corruption is often alleged to be massive, though the accusers rarely seem to know of an actual case.  Kaboré is an ex-banker, so corruption could get really big because surely he knows more tricks of the trade.
2. There could more, or less, political instability! I defer to Thomas Flores and Irfan Nooruddin, political scientists, who have work on the “backsliding” that follows an election intended to promote or restore democracy.  They also have a research project measuring technocrats (which Kaboré certainly is), and their effects on outcomes (they do better vis-a-vis international lenders).  The bottom line I think is that is that the literature is in its infancy.
3. Ethnicity, you ask? For sure, plenty of minority ethnic groups such as the Bisa are going to be grumbling that they will not be able to win in Burkina’s strong presidential system because too many Mossi will vote ethnically in a knee jerk way when confronted with candidates who basically have similar platforms and backgrounds (as Kaboré and Diabré did).  Will that lead to resignation or activism?

Let me add: I am full of admiration for the brave young men and women who stood up to the Compaoré security forces in the popular uprising.  They deserved this election, and they deserve a participatory and inclusive democracy that prioritizes sustainable and equitable growth.  It is a hopeful day for the country.  Uh oh, I’m starting to sound like a pundit.

I had asked Salimata to use the library’s smartphone to post some casual shots of the “library in action” to Facebook.  I thought I would repost a couple.  I like the top photo of the group reading session.  Isn’t this just what a small village library is supposed to be doing?  Salimata is a pretty extraordinary librarian.  I wish we could hire ten more like her.

Somehow I came across Percival Everett’s name, not sure exactly where.  I checked out Percival Everett by Virgil Russell from the library.  It is a very meta novel, a novel for people who really like to analyze novels… reading it I remembered a feeling that I had reading Snow White by Donald Barthelme back maybe in 1984… the feeling is: “This novel is too much like work.”  I wonder if that is a general feeling by non-literature focused academics.  We want our literature to be really smart (mostly) but once it shifts to being work, then it is like working a 12 hour day even when winding down.  Anyway, Everett is a really excellent writer, and Percival Everett by Virgil Russell has several compelling stories in it (the painter whose perhaps daughter suddenly appears, the doctor who has a horses on a ranch outside of LA who treats the perhaps meth dealing neighbor, the son and father engaged in a tricky dialogues as they write their respective stories, the old men in a nursing home, the 60s speechwriter…)  I wish I had time to figure it out.  Is it a puzzle? Is there a hidden message?  Would a second reading produce another layer of meaning?  A different mood?  I know that enough permeated me so that when I think of father-son relationships I’ll probably remember this novel. That may be enough to ask of a novel, that it does some service in one’s brain.  Everett has a bunch of other novels; I am going to read Erasure next.

A nice article in Oak North by Waringa Kamau and Kyle Ludowitz.  The main interviewee, Saré Bawaya Elisée, was FAVL’s national representative for a couple years.  And is a good friend!

Public procurement was always the place where everyone supposed the Compaoré clan was enriching itself. Now there is finally a case that might open the door to some jail time and real punishment. As far as I am aware, none of the public procurement scandals in Burkina Faso have ever led to prosecutions. A parliamentary report back in 2012 was kind of like amateur hour (to me) in that it did not follow through on really obvious questions or make much effort to really put some light (by making publicly available) data on bids and decision-making regarding determination of bids.

But now Malamine Ouédraogo, who “headed” one of Alizeta Ouédraogo’s businesses (and according to one report is her son… Alizeta’s daughter is married to Francois Compaoré, ex-President Blaise Compaoré’s younger brother), has been indicted by a grand jury and Preet Bharara, prosecutor in New York, for wire fraud. Here is the USAID summary of the case:

The alleged fraud affected a Burkinabe Ministry of Health program, supported by The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (Global Fund), which receives funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and other donors. In response to a bid request from the Ministry of Health for the distribution of more than six million insecticide-treated mosquito nets, which can help reduce the incidence of mosquito-borne disease, Ouedraogo submitted an offer on behalf two collaborating firms with which he was associated. Ouedraogo subsequently received more than $12 million to provide mosquito nets in four regions in Burkina Faso.

Rather than acquire properly-treated mosquito nets through a supplier approved by the World Health Organization, as required in his Ministry of Health contracts, Ouedraogo allegedly purchased fraudulent nets, containing little or no insecticide, from a non-approved supplier. He labeled and packaged the fraudulent nets to resemble those produced by the approved supplier, according to the indictment. Knowing the nets were fraudulent and not approved, Ouedraogo proceeded to distribute the nets to government health facilities, the U.S. Attorney stated. Mosquito nets without insecticide are less effective and pose a higher risk of exposure to mosquitos, and an increased health risk for people using them.

When I was 16, I listened to Street Hassle obsessively.  On headphones of course because certain lines would have been very embarrassing if my siblings had heard them.  I was transported from my humdrum life as a sheltered upper class shy teen in Puerto Rico to the gritty New York world of transsexuals, drugs, and tenement apartments.  But maybe more profoundly, I started to appreciate more a certain kind of nostalgic sadness for something that was “slipping away” (my own childhood, was it?).  I never really liked Springsteen’s brief monologue late in the song, though there was a certain thrill to knowing that these underground artists like Lou Reed and Patti Smith were so respected by mainstream pop artists like Springsteen that there was collaboration.

Anyway, here is a nice summary of the facts (as per the Internet…) on the monologue:

Bruce Springsteen makes a guest appearance on this song, with a brief rap during the “Slipaway” section (from 9:02 to 9:39, lyrics above in bold). He is not credited for his performance in the liner notes to Street Hassle, possibly due to his ongoing legal battles with former manager Mike Appel at the time. In an interview published in Rolling Stone magazine issue #551 (04 May 1989), journalist David Fricke asked Lou Reed how did Springsteen come to recite those lines on STREET HASSLE. Reed explained, “Because if I’d done them, they’d have come out funny. And when he did it, it sounded real. He was at the same studio, the Record Plant. It wasn’t making it with me doing it. So the engineer said, ‘Why don’t you ask Bruce to do it? He could really do that.’ So we asked Bruce to do it, and he rewrote it a little.” STREET HASSLE, or at least Springsteen’s part of the song, was recorded in October 1977 at The Record Plant in New York City, NY, when Springsteen was at the New York studio recording his Darkness On The Edge Of Town album. In the last line of the rap, Springsteen states “tramps like us, baby we were born to pay”, an altered quotation from his own song BORN TO RUN. As Reed explained to Fricke, it was him who wrote that part. “It had been written with him in mind, but he wasn’t there. I was just playing off the title.”

Way overdue.  Will eliminate possibility of changing two-term limit, and will eliminate clauses referring to Senate, which was never implemented, and that was clearly intended to be a mechnism for entrenching ex-regime loyalists and ex-regime legal political power.

Conseil national de la transition (CNT) a adopté ce 27 octobre 2015 en séance plénière le principe de la modification de la Constitution. Cette modification est inscrite à la séance du 3 novembre et devra porter sur le verrouillage de l’article 37 et la suppression du sénat. Sur les 82 votants à la séance plénière de ce 27 octobre 2015, 81 députés (il n’y a eu qu’une abstention) ont adopté le principe de la modification de la Constitution burkinabè. Cette procédure obéit à l’article 163 de la même Constitution qui requiert l’approbation de la majorité des parlementaires avant toute révision. Le CNT a en effet initié une proposition de loi portant révision de la Loi fondamentale burkinabè. Celle-ci devrait initialement conduire à l’avènement d’une cinquième République.

Source: Burkina : La Constitution sera révisée le 3 novembre 2015

I was listening to my local college radio station today and they played on their blues show “Feast of the Mau Mau” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. I suppose playing it now was intended, given Screamin’ Jay Hawkins career, as a kind of Halloween song.  For anyone who has any notion of what Mau Mau was, the song seems designed, on purpose, to play into  stereotypes of “Africa.” Because “play into” is one of those phrases that people under 30 probably never encounter, let me be more explicit.  In my opinion, the song was constructed at a time when many people in the United States (Hawkins’ audience) shared stereotypes about “primitive Africa”  (basically equal to stereotypes about voodoo) and was intended to convey a message.  Here’s the message:

“I am exaggerating how people in Africa behave to make clear to my audience that we (me and you) do not behave that way, but as a performer who is black, I am a little bit crazy like the Africans I am stereotyping and so coming to see me perform is an “experience” of being close to that stereotype, with an aura of danger in a setting (the concert hall) of safety. So please give me money if you want to experience a reinforcement of your stereotype.”

In cultural studies, everything is inverted and meta, and because Screamin’ Jay Hawkins was African-American, the song would be turned into (of course) a sly denunciation of imperialism.  He is not “playing into” stereotypes, he is “playing with” stereotypes.  (In the only published interpretation I could find on Google that is indeed the “take”.)  In the spirit of replication studies, you can judge for yourself. (It is helpful to read the lyrics while listening.)  Is he “playing into” or “playing with”?

Everyone who knows me knows I have strong philosophical objections to corporate movie-making (where a large committee is making decisions in order to maximize revenue).  Why waste my time when there are so many books to read, and auteur movies to see?  But The Martian was such a pleasure to read that I agreed to go with family.  Normally, it is something I would just wait to see on an airplane when I had 10 hours to kill.

It is, indeed, a perfectly fine movie to see on an airplane.  There is not much reason to say anything else.  But since I enjoyed the book, let me put out why I think the movie is merely an airplane movie.

• A theme of the book was just how many calculations you/me/we have to do in engineering type situations.  That is really lost in the movie. Matt Damon occasionally glances at a computer and also counts how many potatoes he has, but really that is about it.  Especially a pity when he has to make water: a scene that could have been played slowly and carefully to explain the chemical reactions involved was instead played totally for laughs as if “chemistry really is about harmlessly blowing up stuff.”
• A theme of the book was about NASA bureaucracy and leadership (and implicitly other big organizations).  With Jeff Daniels as the head of NASA, obviously that theme was going nowhere in the movie.
• A theme of the book (to me) was the more complicated emotions of regret (the commander) and loneliness.  They are basically given one sentence in the movie.  Instead, more time than necessary is spent on “feeling good” shots.

Real movie-making would have been for Ridley Scott to have talked with Andy Weir and said:

The fans here have read the book. They liked the book.  They do not need to see a Hollywood version of the book. Let’s make something really great.  Let’s make a four hour movie where the first two hours are the book, but then let’s have him not get caught by the team, and he drifts off into space and dies in two minutes (and let’s film that in real time) and let’s make another two hours be about the emotional fallout for our central cast.