Workforce Rebalancing

We recorded workforce rebalancing charges in the combined income statement
Structural actions to simplify and optimize the increase in employee exits
The allocation of corporate expenses was not meaningful

...

Structural actions
Simplify and optimize
Employee exits




After The Company's 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission

See previously: Restructuring Activities and The Annual Report

File under: language, work, life, culture, observation, perception, capitalism, office, job, culture, irony, waste, poetry, humour, The Rough Beast, Observers are worried, toli

Writing log: November 7, 2021

Prone

Trained officers
A tough job, we all know,
Policing

Jogging
Uppity
A stare
Traffic stop
Or sometimes just reaching

One wrong move
And your life slips away,
Your chest is heaving

Pleading for God and your mother
Or simply lying there
Bleeding

After the killing of Daunte Wright.

Soundtrack for this note

• Breakfast at Denny's by Buckshot Lefonque
• For Trayvon by Jose James

...

Timing is everything
Observers are worried

See previously: Goody Two Shoes

File under: outrage, murder, violence, guns, USA, police, death, grief, race, displacement, rage, culture, observation, perception, loss, waste, poetry, The Rough Beast, Observers are worried, toli

Writing log: April 13, 2021

Restructuring Activities

The blue bags were the detail that lingered and that you first noticed
As the security guards escorted the unfortunate souls out of the building
The royal blue of our corporate logo, not quite Ikea blue or Big Blue
Lovely plastic bags filled with personal belongings, photos, wages due

The rumours had been spreading for weeks, it was hard to get any work done
We'd all started to worry about bank balances and the lack of emergency funds
The sword of the corporate Damocles loomed large over our heads
Water cooler conversation circled uneasily around the shape of dread

Some started polishing LinkedIn profiles and resumes
Replying to the recruiters' emails, the curriculum vitae
Truth be told, it could have been you that day, it was a roll of the dice
You'd been on the other side previously, the experience wasn't very nice

A day later, in Skype a number of avatars had "Presence unknown" as their status
Next to the grey offline dot, that naming designation was appropriately callous
The faces of the wounded members of your tribe forcibly ejected into the unknown
The rest of you counted your blessings and continued working in the torrid zone

The corporate communications were full of inspired euphemisms
Uneasy phrases that outlined the process behind these resource actions
The passive voice reigned supreme, in this agitation there were no actors
The dry prose never assigned clear responsibility, only fudge factors

The actions were ongoing, the separations were involuntary
This opacity about the recent events and their inevitability
It was all about "the changes that we've made", those were mandatory
"The decisions we've had to make", on the other hand, were necessary

Tough love was in our future, there could be no promises about tomorrow
Indeed we were to understand that management was tinged with sorrow
And the logistics were tricky, it takes weeks to layoff thousands
When you wanted to present a human face you had to make allowances

Give them a couple of weeks severance, and explain their options
The bottom line was, we had to put this behind us, it was time to move on
A wilful erasure of the cheeriness and all the previous certainties
The stage was set, we'd simply have to endure these restructuring activities

In the aftermath of this round of layoffs, I don't quite know what possessed me
To raise my hand, and indeed, my voice at the all hands meeting with my query
I simply asked the smiling executives if they could give us any guarantees
That those who had so grossly misallocated capital in stock buybacks
Had now adopted the right strategy to put The Company on the right track

There was a stunned silence at my impertinence, who knew?
"That's a very interesting question, you're not holding back, are you?
What was your name again?", he chuckled, that's all she wrote
Uh oh, you and your big mouth, I guess they were taking notes

In the event, the answer he gave was as expected:
"Piffle, paffle, wiffle, waffle"
Said with enough empathy to leave everyone baffled
In the land of concern, we wouldn't feel neglected

"Does that answer your question?"
"Indeed, thank you sir, I've learned a great lesson"
Woe is me, I should have kept my mouth shut
My future prospects had just received a haircut

Come to think of it, I never got a raise after that outburst
Luckily they weren't vindictive, they didn't do their worst
I've had years to recover, I make a good living, I can't say that I'm bitter
These days I keep my rather mild critiques of modern day shell games to Twitter

Restructuring Activities, a playlist

A soundtrack for this pink slip, I must admit I found it difficult to get beyond Gil Scott-Heron who captured this mournful moment with uncanny accuracy. Pieces of a man collected in blue bags. (spotify version)

• Pieces of a Man by Gil Scott-Heron
• Please Don't Make Me Cry by UB40
• C'est La Vie by Robbie Nevil
• In Between Jobs by Lynden David Hall
• I Go To Work by Kool Moe Dee

...

Timing is everything
Observers are worried

File under: work, life, culture, observation, perception, capitalism, office, job, culture, irony, waste, poetry, humour, USA, language, loss, The Rough Beast, Observers are worried, toli

Writing log. Concept: November 15 2018; March 25, 2021

Early to Despair

I guess I was early to despair; don't call it prescience for, as I've noted, I'd rather be wrong.

They say misery loves company but I'd rather not have fellow travelers of gloom, it only accentuates the impotence and, indeed, the outrage.

I retired my coronavirus superspreading event timeline months ago, noting that the die was cast, that public health notions were being roundly ignored. If anything, there has been a quickening of dismay since then. While friends continue to send links of doom, there's been no joy in this repetition.

The Sturgis motorcycle rally, the White House clusters, the Swiss yodeling concert catastrophes, the Redding megachurch, the Sweet Sixteen superspreader session, the schools and universities high on their wishful thinking, the Gators, the Yale men's hockey team, and so forth.

Worse still, the continued refusal to address the meatpacking plant and food production pipeline and protect farm and other workers. I'm no Upton Sinclair, but Mr Surgeon General, Mr CDC Director et. al, you have plainly failed. Titans of failure, ship stewards of the Titanic, do you sleep at night?

I suppose if "they" won't even take simple steps to protect themselves, it was always going to be an uphill struggle for them to protect the needy, yet essential, Others.

Social living is a bridge too far for these rulers' psyches, it's the antithesis of the conqueror's catechism.

At the outset it was a parlor game, speculating on which outrage or dereliction would be the most catastrophic in the ongoing shambles. There were many candidates and, sadly, all have done their worst.

Soundtrack: Do your worst by Jaguar Wright

It gave me no pleasure to note that Ghana had managed things better than the US, UK and even France. It would be a strange kind of pride to think of celebrating that we were less inept. Dancing, as it were, on the graves of strangers. Human lives lost unnecessarily anywhere is an affront to one and all.

The notion of a Center for Disease Control is essentially a modern American invention. How many times in recent decades have American or Western logistics and expertise rolled in to save the day around the world? The modern language of public health has long followed the American script. It is confounding to watch the inaction and rank paralysis. Like students watching teachers flail, one starts to second guess all previous lessons.

And now we'll probably want to quarantine any American help. Their navy vessels are suspect viral vectors, Tyson's frozen chicken could well have RNA droplet coating; they have so little concern for their workers safety. Secretary Scalia in any case would have gutted any OSHA enforcement actions. The guys in the white hats died with their boots on.

The big asterisk of skepticism now looms over all things American.

The Brits have had longer to deal with decline and the fall from grace, and have the long history and attendant coping mechanisms to disarm the potency of perceived incompetence, if not impotence. Decades ago, the Suez imbroglio opened eyes and forced a reassessment of their stature. Still the notion that Mr Johnson's entanglements and dithering cost tens of thousands of lives ought to be hard to take.

Rude awakenings galore are in prospect in short. There will be a reckoning for "excess mortality" no matter how couched.

The saving grace culturally is the lack of reflection in America life, especially when coupled with this curious affinity for selective amnesia, mythmaking and nostalgia. Bunk and hokum at once, and the stab in the back routines have been readied to distract. The Murdoch press is well practiced.

There will be scapegoats for the shambles. It will be the usual suspects that will be said to be the blame, no matter how improbable; the stakes are simply too high for the culpable to admit responsibilty.

Still, if all you have is marketing prowess and the hard sell but fail plainly at operational excellence and execution, the world will pick and choose your wares at their leisure.

Goodwill and reputations are hard to win but easily squandered. You have to fall back to the tropes of disaster recovery once your brand in the toilet. Tough crowds abound. The downsides of a grievous decline in stature are all too severe.

I know all too well about lost decades. Ghanaians are still living down visions of Ghana must go and our basket case interludes. Reputation scrubbing is an all-consuming endeavor, if not a generational struggle.

Still, the parade of dubious decisions made, even in the face of months of increasingly dire warnings, is hard to take. You can't say that we don't know how to protect, or where transmission is likely to occur. The timeline made it obvious.

I was incandescent with rage in April that my uncle's rehab facility in Boris Johnson's austerity-ravaged NHS became his grave rather than his sanctuary. The notion that, months later, countless others are having to face this same fate, that other families are going through this unbounded grief is scandalous.

That nursing homes are still daily death traps is beyond disgrace. For shame.

Shame

Pandemic fatigue might be a thing, indeed epidemiologists incorporate it in their models, but it only really matters because so much goodwill and time has been squandered. There was no mobilization to secure equipment and resources or ramp up testing capacity.

Beyond ignorance and wishful thinking, there is the fact that people clearly assess risk and value life differently. Fine, I hear you say, it is what it is. Opinions differ, yada yada...

I would counter that, again, this is something epidemiologists model. It's the human factor: for any plan, there will be non-compliance. This is the challenge of any public health intervention. During this pandemic we may all be amateur epidemiologists, but, surely, the best practices are well known by now.

Rules and regulations should be simple and explained plainly. Most importantly, rules should be enforced, shared sacrifice demands no less. If we are all in this together, there can be no impunity, no trips to Barnard Castle.

Clear consistent communication is of the essence. Mixed metaphors are perilous and sow confusion.

The active disinformation and the weaponization of ignorance that we have seen is nigh genocidal, most certainly sociopathic, and, arguably, criminal.

I would say disgraceful if I wasn't so sure that shame was an impossibility with Trump and company.

And yet. And yet.

I'm minded that I've been writing my Things Fall Apart series for years now and should be no stranger to things indeed falling apart. I have my coping mechanisms against incipient despair; I mint playlists, I bury myself in writing and reading. I find joy in small things and optimism even in daily absurdity.

As Theodore Roethke put it in his celebrated poem:

In a dark time, the eye begins to see

Robert Lifton, writing in an atomic age, expanded on this notion and tried to achieve the psychological effect of an emetic through the juxtaposition of carefully chosen words; it's an approach I've come to embrace as an antidote to despair.

...

Years ago, I came across some paintings by Edward Munch at Harvard's Fogg art museum. It wasn't quite The Scream but they seemed in the same vein. 2020 has been a year of primal screams all around. A juxtaposition suggested itself naturally when I came across Kodjo Crobsen's satirical works which have had pride of place in my pandemic reading. The illustration of the angel that he would publish periodically in his columns, as Ghana seemed happy to go from worse to worse during our lost decades, was especially poignant. The angel's message was always the same and it was fitting:

At this point, subsequent horrific events are still reversible...

So yes, early to despair yet resilient and hopeful for a reversal of fortune. Things can be salvaged and the point of the daily struggle daily is the knowledge that there will be better days ahead.

Nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair,
Do what you may do, what, do what you may,
And wisdom is early to despair:
Be beginning; since, no, nothing can be done
To keep at bay
Age and age’s evils, hoar hair

The Leaden Echo - Gerard Manley Hopkins

Optimistic, a playlist

• Optimistic by Sounds of Blackness
• Better Days Ahead by Gil Scott Heron

This note is part of a series: In a covidious time

File under: despair, culture, observation, perception, grief, loss, waste, coronavirus, pandemic, covidious, outrage, public health, Observers are worried, toli

Broken Record

The rainy season is so-named because it comes every year, hence one would expect that the authorities would plan for it, but this was the scene on the front page of the Daily Graphic in 1960 when the rains came to Accra with the resulting floods. The headlines 56 years later will likely be the same even with last year's disaster relatively fresh in our minds.

The satirists have already laid their bets: Accra mayor begins ritual of dusting off his annual 'flood speech' as rains set in. Of course the collateral damage has already been felt this year. One prays this year's death toll will be minimized.

Now I hear you: it's complicated. Flood management is difficult even if you're not in the Third World (and you don't have to go the extreme of mentioning Katrina and Sandy and other extraordinary acts of nature to make the point). Flash floods do happen. And yes, you can't simply throw out all the people who have encroached and built on the areas that are ostensibly meant for drains. You need to find a sustainable solution. Oh sure, after every disaster, the bulldozers appear and the Accra Metropolitan Authority workers along with the police knock down the kiosks and other dwellings that have sprung up upending home and livelihood for the unfortunate. And sometimes it is just a matter of excessive garbage, blocked drains and/or the negligence of those who got the juicy contract to maintain the same. Or... I know, I know: everything is local. And anyway why worry about such things from a remove of 6,479 miles?

My mother has accumulated dozens of newspaper columns on this very topic over her 50 year career. And as evidenced by the 1960 front pages, the headlines were writing themselves long before she started. It's a matter of meteorology (it always rains heavily), geography (Kwame Nkrumah circle was always a flash point; the location of the rivers and lagoons in the city), physics and architecture (the design, placement and configuration of streets, houses, roads and drains), engineering (how well those roads and drains were constructed, whether corners were cut after the no-bid contract was awarded, whether proper materials were used) and ultimately slum politics (the perennial tension between the drainage of the Korle lagoon and the growth of the nearby slums full of voters - whether you call one of those touchpoints Agblobloshie, Old Fadama or Sodom and Gomorrah features into the lens through which one views this intractable issue).

But there is a difference between an act of god and an eminently predictable seasonal occurrence. We'll bemoan the lack of a maintenance culture, pay emergency rates for things that ought to be run-of-the mill repairs. Before and after the fact, everyone "knows" what needs to be done. At what point does damage move from collateral to intended? We cheapen Ghanaian lives and compensate with congratulatory funerals while patting ourselves on the back about our unique culture. I dissent. The refrain I've grown up with is that history should not keep repeating itself. And yet we keep sounding like a broken record when the rains come to Accra.

And for bonus points note the other headline on the 1960 front page: "Fast Train Services Planned". We're still waiting for Godot on that front. It's not as if the plans haven't been there as far as the development of Accra goes. Through each era, under each government, no matter how progressive, incompetent (as currently) or indeed how repressive (as thankfully in our past), the plans have always been there. Sisyphus must have been the patron saint of urban planners in Accra.

Lamentable, a playlist

A lamentable soundtrack for this note(spotify version)

• Gotta Broken Heart Again by Prince
  I should feel bad repurposing this sweet pop trifle but it fits better than New Edition's N.E. Heartbreak.
• From A Whisper To A Scream by Allen Toussaint
  Esther Phillip's version was my introduction to the late Allen Toussaint's great song. It's perhaps serendipitous in the context of this playlist that there's also a horror movie with that name.
• Lament by Miles Davis
  Stately yet mournful blues from my favourite album of his, Miles Ahead
• Es Lamentable by Sophy
  I hope to be proved wrong but I've found the message of this boogaloo concoction gets straight to the point.
• Soul Lament by Kenny Burrell Midnight Blue all the way. Normally part of my summer jazz playlist, I can't get enough of Kenny Burrell's sublime guitar. Note: Lonnie's Lament by John Coltrane is an adequate substitute.
• Shame by Alexander O'Neal
  The last peak of soul's finest voice paired with Jam and Lewis's immaculate production.

  I let you get over the last time, if you do it again it's a shame on me.

• It's a Crying Shame by Ruby Turner
  We'll up the stakes and end with the obvious. The album is called Paradise and yet it's a crying shame that the paradise of a well run country is denied us. I have no more tears to cry.

File under: Accra, Ghana, flood, disaster, development, infrastructure, history, waste, Africa, policy, politics, urban, strategy, environment, city, planning, culture, observation, toli

Ghanaian Fictions

"Bank of Ghana maintains policy rate at 26%". The good news? "Inflation rate declined to 18.5% in February". Let's sing the inflation calypso

If you're a retiree or living on fixed income, 18.5 percent inflation must be doing wonders to your oh-so-substantial pension. #Ghana

What kind of rate does a businesswoman get from a bank when the prime rate is 26 percent? And how do you service that loan? #Ghana

It's not as if government services are exactly stellar, not as if water and electricity are reliable, not as if... arghh I give up #Ghana

Economic fictions, electoral fictions, fictitious employees doing fictitious jobs, fictitious politicians making fictitious claims... #Ghana

How does one anesthetize oneself from fictitious realities? One answer, per Gifford, is "Ghana's New Christianity". Other growth industries?

Perhaps the reason our literary fictions have been slow in gestating is that we have a surfeit of fictions in our daily life. #Ghana

Ghana seems to be in a state of fiction - we must have all agreed to the author's premises. Suspension of disbelief is our coping mechanism.

"To understand what a mafia state is, we need to imagine a state run by, and resembling, organized crime" #Ghana?

If amnesia and nostalgia are preferred US coping mechanisms, Kwesi Brew dryly noted Ghana's Philosophy of Survival

Soundtrack for this note

Nancy Wilson - Easy Living
I prefer the version on her masterpiece: But Beautiful. It must be easy to live in Ghana, such beautiful fictions.

Sidenote: I've been cheating a bit these days imparting my toli in tweets. Like all writing mediums, the constraints of the very short form can be liberating. Still I will try to collect the occasional bite-sized nuggets here.

File under: Ghana, economics, politics, rogues, strategy, culture, observation, perception, waste, Africa, toli

A Resource Action

You've been surplussed.
That was the word used.

This is a resource action.
That was the phrase used.

Leave. Or find another position.
That was the message.

You have 30 days,
The clock is ticking.

They read the script.
Over the phone.

Out of sight.
Out of mind.

You were checking in the code,
Rushing to meet the deadline.
Heads down, juggling things.
Bugs, emails, instant messages, ideas.
Plans: car, house, family, books.

Then: there was a resource action.

Blindsided.
"12 years of my life"

It's over.
Simple as that.

You're not mad;
You're merely sad.

You thought you were a resource,
But then there was an action.

Unemotional:
The Corporation.

Cold:
The language.

"Rebalancing... efficiencies...
Your responsibility..."

The workings of capital
The theory of surplus value

This is a dark matter.

...

Note the time. Start writing.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007, 12:14:05 PM

You hang up the phone
A fleeting thought:
"No wonder they never sent the new monitor".
And the fuss about that expense report
Hmm

You fire up the browser
"Let's get some more news about this thing... this... this... 'resource action'".
The blog loads and renders.
7,000 words stare at you.
Written the previous day.

Unsolicited: your contribution.
Unrequited: your capital.

Extracted: your labour.
Redundant: your value.

Ironies are many

No matter.
You check in the code.
Respond to the instant message.
Answer the emails.
You are a resource.

You finish.
Break for lunch.

Things fall apart

This is a dark matter.

...

You call The Wife.
You need a comfort suite,
And some soul insurance.

This is a dark matter.

...

So.

The first plank of the web style:
Identify all important resources.

First pass at a resume:
Enumerate skills and experience

Second pass:
Strive for brevity

You can have me in 30 days.
The clock is ticking.

This is a dark matter.

...

You get back to work.

Email arrives. Inbox:
"The Company's Africa work sounds so cool!"

Indeed.
So. Africa. The Company. Work. Sounds. This! Cool?

You have 30 days,
The clock is ticking.

You're still a resource

No.
No!

Enough

You were a resource
But they've taken an action
A judgement of value: surplus.

No.
Yes.
No matter.

It's your turn now.
You'll publish another resource.
Add value to the global surplus.
Your hyperlinked testimony,
Your resource action.

This is a dark matter.

...

Music. Pet Shop Boys:
"There's lots of opportunities.
If there aren't, you can make them"

Resilience

Music. Vesta Williams:
"Once bitten, twice shy"

Adaptability

Music. Gil Scott-Heron.
"She could hardly understand
that she was really sweeping up
pieces of a man."

This is a dark matter.

...

An awful conversation
An untimely disruption
A broken connection

A fractured dislocation
An involuntary termination
An extraordinary rendition

A resource manipulation
An ironic meditation
A redundant representation

A corporate decision
Announced with euphemism:
Call it a resource action

Best to rethink things.
After all: "You have 30 days".
The clock is ticking.

This is a dark matter.

...

Before: they paid you to stay.
Now: they'll pay you to leave?

Ironies are many

Strictly business,
Don't take it personal.
You're not alone.

A full frontal stare,
You dare not flinch.
You're all alone.

A temporary inconvenience
and a matter of soul.
Put your game face on:
"Be humble but be bold"

Timing is everything.
Must be more to the story.

No condition is permanent.
Observers are worried.

This is a dark matter.

...

It's time to save things
Let's see, the folder: web
The filename: resource-action.txt

That's enough.
Don't be precious,
You'll add the links later.

Note the time. Stop. It's all wasted time.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007, 1:45 PM

You get back to work.

[ this space intentionally left blank ]

This is a resource action
This is the school of hard knocks

This is a dark matter.

File under: work, life, IBM, culture, irony, waste, job, loss, USA, personal, language, perception, observation, poetry, The Rough Beast, Things Fall Apart, toli

Electoral Fictions

Shamelessness is an essential component of the how to hand over to yourself blueprint but, as our Ivorian brethren are currently demonstrating, there is still room for innovation within that framework, and depths of crassness that can yet be plumbed. We live in a world of politics as theater and where elections are the ultimate in stage-managed human drama. Suspension of disbelief is essential in any fiction, and disingenuousness mandatory in electoral fictions.

I write this of course after watching events in Côte D'Ivoire over the past few weeks. The initial emotion was bemusement and indeed laughter - how can one not laugh at the spectacle of someone literally tearing up election results to prevent them from being declared. Still the inept antics only brought back the automatic, unrequited cringe I've had at Ivorian politics for the past decade. I remembered that I'd even awarded Laurent Gbagbo, his wife and their death squads an award of sorts, and looking over their 2004-5 citation, all the elements were there: the needless waste of everyone's time, the hubris, the threats and the violence. Still I have been holding my breath, a neighbour's house is still on fire.

Of course we've long since moved beyond laughter to the realm of tears. It's the usual litany, the West African yearning for normalcy: why should the conduct of elections be cause for fraught headlines? Why seal borders? And those death squads and the obligatory evacuation of foreign nationals? And so forth, it's a depressing lament. Most Ghanaians are gearing up to receive the refugees who have already started leaving the place. Sidenote: if refugees are leaving Côte D'Ivoire to go to Guinea and even Liberia, a country recovering from 14 years of civil war, how many more can we expect in ostensibly stable and oil-producing Ghana?

Incidentally, we were on notice as to how ugly things might turn out. Recall if you will, the September story about that Ivorian man arrested in California attempting to buy arms to smuggle in contravention of the UN embargo. The salient quote:

"$1.9 million wired to the US as a 50 percent downpayment on the weapons... the shipment of 4,000 handguns, 200,000 rounds of ammunition and 50,000 tear gas grenades to Ivory Coast."

As you watch the distressing news footage, imagine the additional damage this consignment would have wrought in light of the violence, reports of militias, mercenaries and nighttime disappearances. The fact also that millions of dollars were so readily transferred surely indicates the importance the old government placed on the military option and indeed the kind of planning that was involved (the International Criminal Court should take note). But anyway all that is a matter of ruthlessness, let's deal with lighter topics: shamelessness, political theater and electoral fictions.

We have seen problematic elections in this season - consider Burma as the archetype, or might you prefer the thuggish Egyptian variant held on the same day, or perhaps even the Belarusian just this past weekend. It is striking that Ivory Coast takes the cake even in such abject company. The usual saying goes that "It's not who votes that counts but it's who counts the votes"; we are witnessing new clauses being added to that formulation. Call the Ivorian innovation on this front the Gbagbo Imbroglio, if you will. Their singular contribution to the body of electoral fictions is nothing less than the fictitious election.

The usual practice when handing over to oneself is to hold back declaring results in your strongholds and wait until you know how many votes you need. In Chicago or Kansas City in the past, this was a matter of figuring out how many cemeteries to mine for the requisite ghost names. In Ghana in the 1990s, results from the Volta region always came in suspiciously late, later even than the Northern regions, and 98 percent votes in favour of the incumbent and 100 percent turnout (or more) would be the norm - shades of Mobutu or perhaps referendums in Stalin's time.

Gbagbo and company couldn't manage to do this, indeed the electoral commission that this sitting government had put in place took its job seriously and was remarkably independent - as well it should since a tremendous amount of effort had been put in place by Ivorians and the international community to stage these elections. The resort, then, was to say that the electoral commission did not have the right to declare the results. Which brings me again to that video clip I noted earlier that I've been stewing over ever since (and hopefully the BBC won't mind my using their image, I recommend to everyone their closing line: "the elections have been canceled six times in the past five years."). I haven't seen a more perfect piece of political theater in years. Every actor played their part brilliantly.

When the next day, the head of the electoral commission did manage to sneak out and declare the results, the Gbagbo camp would remark that the declaration was invalid since it hadn't been made within the requisite timeframe. In other words, the declaration that could have been made the prior night had turned into Cinderella's carriage once midnight had passed.

What then followed would clearly demonstrate that Ivory Coast has had a fictitious election.

It would only be after the election results were declared that a 'Constitutional Council' would throw out the votes of 12 percent of the country so that the "results" would be in Gbagbo's favour. Surely this must be the most innovative response to an electoral contest. I can't imagine a greater slap in the face short of actual physical slaps in the face - and these have since been forthcoming.

First for 15 years ago, you say that a large part of your countrymen are not Ivorians, then you say that they are but that they can't register, then you delay for 5 years, then you allow only some to register as you then delay registration and again delay the vote. Then the whole country votes and even your folks vote against you so that the opposition win. And now you go and nullify their votes even though most of the irregularities were in your strongholds. Words fail me.

When Laurent Gbagbo would wrap himself in the flag and declare himself president, it would only bring to mind coronations of yore.

The question at the outset was whether Gbagbo's generals would follow the Burma blueprint and make his opponent, Outtara, an Aung San Suu Kyi of sorts. Burma of course outdoored its own electoral fictions recently - said elections were timed to occur while the Nobel laureate was under house arrest serving her expediently conferred and lengthy sentence. Just to make sure of the outcome, her party was essentially banned in any case.

Earlier on, one wondered if it would it be the Algerian Algorithm that would be applied: simply don't hold the second round since you know how it would go.

There was also the option of the Abacha Abrogation - with Nigerian bluntness, simply call things off.

The Baker barrage - I'm referring to the slickness of the Bush-Gore 2000 business where James Baker was consigliere: run the clock down. Recall that group of Republican lawyer types that stormed counting offices in Florida. Then the Supreme twist - a legal opinion that should not be construed as a precedent, mutterings about irreparable harm notwithstanding.

A close counterpart is the Mugabe Mutation, a variant of the rope a dope: lose in the first round of elections and resort to the 'or else'.

Finally I suppose there is the Lukashenko option

Perhaps six out of nine Belarusian presidential candidates were in jail. One of them, Uladzimir Neklyayev, was beaten unconscious and then dragged away from the hospital wrapped in blankets.

Laurent Gbagbo has already served an extra term as President - five whole years beyond the end of his mandate. We have been on notice as to his willfulness and are watching in almost despair as he does his worst, hoping against hope. I have a pet theory that someone who has been a political prisoner will do exactly what he wants to do (pace Mugabe, and Mandela notwithstanding). It is vain to think he will do otherwise.

The irony is that Gbagbo was on the receiving end of a famously rigged election. When I wrote my 1993 piece, I was in awe of the slick manner in which Houphouët-Boigny had used his considerable powers of incumbency and dealt with his opposition in 1990.

Given all the precedents one had expected a certain finesse or perhaps panache in the electoral strategy. As a Wikileaked cable from the US embassy in Abidjan put it in July 2009, "There will not be an election unless President Gbagbo is confident that he will win it -- and he is not yet confident of the outcome."

As well he should have been. The cable also noted that it was unlikely the elections would be held in early 2010 as expected since Gbagbo would undoubtedly want to preside over the jubilee ceremonies of 50 years of independence. "The prestige and celebrity that goes with hosting such an historic event" was insufficient as we have seen.

All of that came to pass. This was a long game and Laurent Gbagbo has never missed an opportunity to disappoint. The exasperating and novelistic playbook has been followed to a fault. Delay, suborn, browbeat, bludgeon, deny, wrap yourself in the flag, bluster, and, if need, be suppress and kill - those death squads.

We tell ourselves stories about elections, but it isn't often that the reality surpasses the myth. It has been a colossal waste of everyone's time. We have gone from electoral fictions to fictitious elections.

File under: rogues, Ivory Coast, Côte D'Ivoire, strategy, politics, election, fraud, waste, culture, observation, Africa, toli

Of No Fixed Abode

My initial response to the 2005 London bombings was in the vein of whimsy: London's got soul, a trilogy celebrating the place, my favourite town. I then considered a case of identity theft last year to kick off the present Things Fall Apart series. After the news of the past few days, I can now give you the second part of a trilogy focused on the people. This time a look at my "fourth man": the fifth bomber, a man of no fixed abode. Some notes ripped from the headlines, a few musings and some poetry...

• "Thought to be Bukhari": A Paper Trail
• A Redacted Note
• Reflection
• "Of No Fixed Abode"

"Thought to be Bukhari": A Paper Trail

You lived with him
You stole his name...

They trained you well
Your name is cursed...

No one knows the identity of this man who performed the identity theft.

— Identity Theft

---

Identity:

[Redacted] 32, from West London. A Ghanaian, his real name is thought to be Bukhari. Said to have abandoned his bomb at Little Wormwood Scrubs after losing his nerve. Represented by Stephen Kamlish, QC.

— 21/7: the trial, January 16, 2007

---

Motivation:

Mr Kamlish, representing [redacted], said to Mr Ibrahim: "You wanted to do a copycat of 7/7 - four bombs on 7/7, four bombs two weeks later on 21/7. That was your plan.

"We say your 21/7 bombs were to be bigger and better in your twisted thinking than that of 7/7.

"Four real bombs on the Tube and one block of flats, a tower, destroyed, going up in a ball of flames. That was your plan, wasn't it?"

— Man 'planned tower block blast', March 22 2007

---

During the trial the man I called cursed continued to be referred to by his alias and that inevitable suffix, "of no fixed abode".

Tricksters, gremlins and parasites; who is which?

Mr Kamlish said his client - who the jury was told was really called Sumailia Abubakhari - was "used and abused" by Mr Ibrahim who was a "cowardly, manipulative schemer".

21/7 suspect 'saved tower block', April 17 2007

---

On Tuesday, he took to the witness box for the first time and told the court his real name was in fact Sumaila Abubakhari and that he is 28 - not 34. Wearing a crisp white shirt, dark blue tie and grey suit, [redacted] said he came to the UK in December 2003 using a passport in someone else's name and applied for the Army. He said he did not consider what countries he might be sent to on active service.

— Ghanaian suicide bomber 'wanted to join Army', April 17 2007

Muddied waters:

A terror suspect dismantled a bomb and saved the lives of people living in a tower block, his lawyers have claimed...

Prosecuters say he was the fifth bomber who allegedly lost his nerve at the last minute.

But Stephen Kamlish QC, defending, said his client had ditched his bomb - made of hydrogen peroxide and chapatti flour - at Little Wormwood Scrubs after "making it safe".

Woolwich Crown Court heard claims he also dismantled a booby-trapped sideboard at a "bomb factory" allegedly set up by a co-defendant in Curtis House, New Southgate, north London.

Mr Kamlish said: "He's not asking for any applause, but if he hadn't have done it and it was a bomb that actually worked ... he was in fact responsible - potentially - for saving the block and all the people in it."

Mr Kamlish said his client - who the jury heard was really called Sumailia Abubakhari - was "used and abused" by Ibrahim, a "cowardly manipulative schemer".

The barrister told the jury that [redacted] had been under intense pressure, and was even threatened by another defendant, since deciding to "break ranks".

He described his client as a "decent" and "somewhat childlike, sometimes naive" man.

— 'Not Asking For Applause', Sky News, April 17 2007

---

A theatrical man, he makes good copy with his African emotions; consider the headlines generated in under an hour a few months ago:

• 21/7 suspect 'is a devious liar', BBC, April 17 2007
• 21/7 suspect 'encouraged to lie', BBC, April 17 2007
• Accused breaks down in court, BBC, April 17 2007
• 21/7 suspect 'defused booby-trap', BBC, April 17 2007
• 21/7 suspect 'saved tower block', BBC, April 17 2007
• 21/7 suspect's claim 'is amazing', BBC, April 17 2007
• 'Bomber' admits lying to police, BBC, April 17 2007

A compromised man:

Anthony Jennings QC, defending Hussain Osman, accused Mr [redacted] of crying when he told police about his supposedly dead father.

Mr [Redacted] has since admitted that his father is still alive.

"You were doing exactly what you were trying to do to this jury, which is pull the wool over their eyes by starting to cry when you were lying," said Mr Jennings.

The barrister went on to accuse Mr [redacted] of being a "self-confessed liar", a "fraudster", and a "sly and devious liar".

Mr [Redacted] denied lying, saying: "I was remembering the time as I'm staring death in my face and you're telling me not to cry?"

— 21/7 suspect 'is a devious liar', BBC, April 17 2007

---

Bukhari or Abubakari?

The prosecution says his real name might be Sumaila Abubakari but his nationality is unclear.

'Bomb plot' trial, BBC, April 17 2007

Bukhari or the other moniker Abubakari are Muslim names typically found in West Africa (from Northern Ghana, Nigeria to Sierra Leone). In Ghana at least, the north is much poorer and less developed than the rest of the country. Northern muslims tend to settle in the zongos (slums). Regardless of nationality, the experience of these dwellers is much like that in the slums of Nima, rough and hardscrabble lives. As an often itinerant people, they are deliberately opaque and insular. This served them well in their dealings with the colonials and beyond but this opacity gives rise to much uncertainty as in the present case. We simply don't know what the nationality is.

---

• 21/7 suspect speaks of fear (video)
• 21/7 suspect 'not a fanatic' (video)

Emotional:

Mr [Redacted], who is said by the prosecution to have lost his nerve and dumped his device, has said he was not a "fanatic".

He told the court he left the device he was given in a west London park as he "just wanted to get rid of it".

He said Mr Ibrahim had told him the devices would "not hurt anyone".

He told the jury: "It didn't make sense to me. I didn't know whether this was hoax or real or anything to do with terrorists.

"But I didn't want anything where the police got involved in it.

"I thought: 'I don't want to listen no more. I have heard enough. I just don't want to have anything to do with it." ...

At one point, Mr [redacted] needed several minutes to compose himself in the witness box.

He broke down after telling the court of how Mr Ibrahim demonstrated the rucksack device on the morning of 21 July 2005 - two weeks after suicide bombers struck in London on 7 July 2005.

"He started to explain for the first time as if he has been talking to me before," Mr [redacted] told the court.

"I was waiting for him to tell me if this was a suicide bombing or not.

"This was my belief, that this was going to be a suicide bombing because it just happened two weeks ago."

He told the court: "I wanted to live. I wanted to have a good life. I wanted to support my family. It is just something that I have never thought of in my life."

— 21/7 accused breaks down in court

Lies and Truths:

But he agreed with Mr Sweeney's description that he had lied to police on an "epic" scale, including not telling them his real name, religion or background, about buying the peroxide or what he did after the "attacks" had failed.

He said: "It is unbelievable when I look back at these lies...I lied about the whole day of July 21."

Mr Sweeney said: "You lied through your teeth as to who the bombers were."

[Redacted] replied: "Yes I did. I did not want to associate myself with them after realising what they had put me through."

[Redacted] denied lying to cover up his own guilt, maintaining that he was initially manipulated by co-defendant Muktar Said Ibrahim to follow the story that the attacks were meant only to be a hoax but realised once the trial had started that he had to tell the truth.

— 21/7 suspect 'lied on epic scale' April 27, 2007

---

Assessment

The jury deliberating the cases of the alleged July 21 bomb plotters was today discharged after failing to reach a verdict on the final two defendants.

The decision by the trial judge, Mr Justice Fulford QC, came during the eighth day of deliberations by the jury at Woolwich crown court in south-east London.

He asked prosecutors to decide by tomorrow whether they want to seek a retrial for [redacted].

— Jurors fail to reach verdicts on two 21/7 defendants, Guardian, July 10, 2007

• Jury deadlocked in UK transit bomb case, AP, July 10, 2007

The jury was discharged yesterday after failing to reach a decision on two other defendants, [redacted], both of whom deny conspiracy to murder.

[Redacted], 34, of no fixed address, ... will face a retrial, prosecutors said today.

— Four July 21 plotters jailed for life, The Guardian, July 11, 2007

A Redacted Note

It has been known since September 2005 that the man I called cursed, a man of "no fixed abode" and now "thought to be Bukhari" was not the man his identity papers claimed, yet in the proceedings of the trial and the journalistic coverage, he is continually referred to with his stolen name. Perhaps this is as it should be, the slow workings of the law and the wheels of justice, an administrative decision. Yet each mention of the name is an open wound for a family in Ghana and London, a reminder about the continuing trauma in their lives. We are all collateral damage, the walking wounded of these interesting times.

I'll note in passing that the western journalistic tic of attaching an age and provenance to every name leads to the stilted formulations of the copy we have seen. Indeed these details detract from the heart of the matter and obscure rather than enlighten the complexities of this very human story. As we have seen, the name, age and nationality are still undetermined and the reporting has been wrong throughout. The only certainty is that he is "of no fixed abode". If we do have to name, place and date in tangible words, I suggest in this case that we stick to the following:

"[redacted], undetermined age, unclear nationality, of no fixed abode"

Reflection

A few more leading indicators to round off our notes:

Al-Qaeda has responded to the U.S. intelligence focus on young Arab men as potential risks, he says, by recruiting "jihadists with different backgrounds. I am convinced the next major attack against the United States may well be conducted by people with Asian or African faces, not the ones that many Americans are alert to."

— George Tenet: Tenet Details Efforts to Justify Invading Iraq, April 28, 2007

No country is immune from these things, consider this clipping from last summer:

Two Nigerians, whose identities were not disclosed at press time, have become victims of the exchange of artillery fire between Israeli authorities and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon.

Two Nigerians Confirmed Killed in Lebanon bombings, July 24, 2006

The footsoldiers of The Great Game know no boundaries, indeed their variety is a historical commonplace.

So when I watched the recent protests in Kyrgyzstan, I thought not to the recent people-power outings in Ukraine and Georgia or even to the collective courage that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall (not pope-inspired by the way). Rather I thought back to Christmas 1990 sitting in Nancy, France, watching images from Bucharest alongside a true-believer socialist as his worldview finally succumbed to that ineffable and unrelenting pull of gravity.

It is no comfort to have learnt, as I did a few years later, that there were Ghanaians who died fighting for that reptilian man, Nicolae Ceausescu, alongside his Securitate during the Romanian overthrow of that macabre communist regime. I thought about the kind of world in which someone would send young Ghanaian men to train in interrogation techniques in far-flung places like Cuba, East Germany and Romania to come back and oppress their people.

I thought about what it meant for a young man to find himself in that position, in a foreign land, dodging bullets and shooting at people, in their own country mind you, trying to overthrow a rotten regime. I thought about how miserable and brutish their lives must have been to have undergone that kind of journey. And what about their peers who did come back from their various schools of grist to wreck havoc on their compatriots? I'm sure that some of these trained killers are among those who carry out weekly armed robberies in our towns.

— Strange Bedfellows and the Journalistic Impulse

Perusing these notes, the obvious questions remain unanswered. Depending on where you stand, the actors range from convenient scapegoats like John Walker Lindh, to the convinced and morally convicted ciphers such as Richard Reid, to the more ambiguous cases like that of the man I call cursed. There is perhaps a full spectrum of responses: from moral courage, through the mistaken and misguided indiscretions of youth, to moral midgetry. That is the terrain of fallen angels.

As with all things about the human factor and the theatre of our existence, our fall from grace perhaps renders this melancholy mystery unknowable. One cannot but stare at the trainwreck when it comes. But how does one equip oneself to face the abyss? Where does one buy soul insurance? In a dark time, perhaps social living is the best.

"Of No Fixed Abode"

Identity theft
Open wounds

Fallen angels
Damaged goods

Brutish living
Scarred consciences

Devious schemers
Lost nerves

Enemy combatants
Collateral damage

Modern travelers
Prison shelters

Stolen verdicts
Jury deadlocks

Bomb factories
Moral blinders

Hostile lives
Fractured dislocations

Cultural interplay
Social living

The aliases of exiled souls
Alienated, "of no fixed abode"

Soundtrack for this note

Of No Fixed Abode, a playlist

• Antibalas - Indictment
  An angry afro-beat meditation with dissonant horns that presents a bill of goods, if not some articles of impeachment, on our current situation. The song is also a humourous indictment of all those rogues in a musical court of law. One wished everyone expressed their grievances in music or words. The cover art is prescient about the flight of that man "thought to be Bukhari", the confusion and urgency are the same, as is the mistaken resort to violence. It is the mask of a man of no name, of indeterminate age, of unclear nationality and of no fixed abode. The only missing thing is the discarded, bomb-laden rucksack.
  
  
  
• Prince - Reflection
  A simple song: light drums and an acoustic guitar that sticks in your head and gets you singing along before you know it. The melody is wistful and, befits the title, reflective. We're reminiscing about innocence lost, the good old days when decisions were without consequence and life itself was carefree. Not everyone has that luxury but we can all empathize with that sentiment

  Sometimes I just want to sit out on the stoop, play my guitar just watch all the cars go by

• Angie Stone - Soul Insurance
  Her warm voice endears as does the music; Angie assures you that she has got your back. Soul assurance. Soul insurance. Where do I sign up for mahogany soul?

Update August 29, 2007

The following passage should give much pause for those sympathetic to this man "thought to be Bukhari"

He said that Mr Omar had offered a bed to a mentally ill African refugee, took in a homeless Indian man and paid visits to people in hospital. He never heard Mr Omar speak out in support of any act of terrorism. Mr Dixon said: "He was against the Iraq war, but... he said nothing radical." Mr Dixon became an unwitting helper of the alleged conspirators when he accompanied Mr [Redacted] on a trip to buy dozens of litres of hydrogen peroxide, the chemical that formed the key ingredient of the rucksack bombs.

— Witness was unwitting helper with 21/7 purchase

So not only did [redacted] use people unwittingly to help buy bombmaking equipment but, if my reading is correct, he also stole the identity of that "mentally ill African refugee" who his accomplice had taken in. No one has connected these particular dots but I would lay even odds that said refugee was indeed the man who woke up to learn that the police were calling him a bomber. That would certainly round out the circle of infamy of tricksters using anyone who falls into their orbit. One wonders if there really are any more shades of gray to this story.

Next: Ode to Betty Brown

File under: London, Ghana, bombing, terrorism, loss, waste, crime, anomie, identity, theft, reflection, globalization, Africa, culture, immigrant, diaspora, observation, perception, poetry, Fallen Angels, Things Fall Apart, toli

Angola

Part 7 of the Things Fall Apart series... Perhaps I've read far too much James Ellroy and enjoyed his paranoid style, or is it that I admired that dark series, Millennium, spawn of the conspiratorial X-Files, at the end of the last century? In any case, consider yourselves Marlow travelling down the river Congo. You may not like the encounter with Kurtz... But here goes, you were warned. This one is for my good friend Sozi...

A package was slipped under my door late one night, a year ago today. Enough time has passed for me to share its contents. I think you'll understand the delay as you read. It was marked Angola, and had a note scribbled on it in crimson red that read, "You like strange bedfellows, don't you?"

• Cover Letter
• The Dossier
• Renewal

Cover Letter

From: Anne Aliste, Research Dept.
To: [Redacted] - Director, Toli inc.
Date: April 12, 2005

What an extraordinary dossier. I've never had to do a workup on such curious material, and apparently this is just the tip of the iceberg. Anyway this preliminary analysis is based on the first stack of pages, We're working on decoding the rest. We've managed to discern (at least) 4 source documents

• Marburg and Ebola Musings
  Briefing material on recent outbreaks of those hemorrhagic fevers caused by those newfangled viruses.
• Ronald Reagan: Forward For Freedom
  The text of Ronald Reagan's celebrated speech from 1986. Verbatim.
• Lizards and Bullets
  Extracts from a report recounting the proceedings of a rogues' gallery operating alternatively in the US and Africa. Lots of clippings to digest. Details of the operation are murky; your basic black ops but the connection seems to be Angola. Some of the names are very interesting, Savimbi seems to be a key figure (he's safely dead). The reference to lizards is an ancient Ghanaian proverb scribbled on the reverse of one of the clippings: "Just because a lizard nods its head doesn't mean it's happy". Similarly, the reference to bullets is a Gambian proverb: "Words are like bullets. When you release them, you can't call them back". More research is needed on these connections.
• American Tabloid
  The preface to James Ellroy's novel on the Kennedy years, he writes your garden variety pulp fiction, think L.A. Confidential. Mostly anodyne stuff.

I've annotated where appropriate but it should be easy to follow. Put together, it's an interesting analysis, almost an alternate history. The authors (and there are multiple) seem to have taken to heart a recent missive about voices inside and the effect is akin to a Greek chorus. We're doing textual analysis to unscramble the idiosyncratic code.

We're revisiting our files in light of this material but it will take a few weeks to do a thorough workup. You might want to do a blind release to one of those non-traditional outlets, an African blog or something, see if it shakes anything out. This stuff is going to come out eventually, we should prepare our response and scrub things thoroughly.

A.A., Research Dept.
Attached: dossier and annotated clippings.

The Dossier

Ronald Reagan - Forward For Freedom

"But I do want to make a comment here on some recent history and let you draw your own conclusions."

Charles Barkley

"I don't know anything about Angola, but I know they're in trouble."

Africa was never innocent. All that cradle of mankind jazz... Whatever. There were always those willing to play The Great Game of power and expediency. Safaris for the kids? [redacted] Feed the children? Yeah right.

Europe was never innocent. All that White Man's Burden crap. God, Gold and Glory? Spanish Inquisition more like.

GTFOOHWTB.

[Note: this might be some kind of codename, we're checking.]

James Ellroy - American Tabloid:

"America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets."

Item: Marburg hemorrhagic fever is a rare, severe type of hemorrhagic fever which affects both humans and non-human primates.

Item: Ronald Reagan was the fortieth President of the United States.

Dig: Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days.

Item: The Marburg virus was first recognized in 1967, when outbreaks of hemorrhagic fever occurred simultaneously in laboratories in Marburg and Frankfurt, Germany and in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now Serbia).

Dig: They called it Operation Quarantine.

[Note: We know of no operation of that name. Might be a referral to obscure author Jim Crace who wrote an alternate history of that biblical fable. He's already on our subversive file but we'll refer him to the Homeland guys]

Item: The exact origin, locations, and natural reservoir of the Ebola virus remain unknown. Current suspicions are founded on cynomolgous monkeys, civets or bats.

Item: There was an outbreak of the Marburg virus in Angola in April 2005.

Clipping A [source appears to be Victoria Brittain's obituary of Jonas Savimbi. Note: we've used her in the past: Museveni, Rawlings etc.]

"It was a long fall from his heyday in the 1980s, when Chester Crocker, the longest serving US Assistant Secretary of State, and the Reagan administration's top official for Africa described him as "one of the most talented and charismatic of leaders in modern African history"."

American Tabloid

"You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception."

Item: Jonas Savimbi, was nicknamed "The Black Cockerel" by his supporters.

Dig: Jesse Helms, the US Senator from North Carolina, was Jonas Savimbi's biggest promoter.

Item: The armies of 13 countries have been in the Congo as Mobutu's regime crumbled and the Rwandan genocide and its aftershocks played out.

Item: An outbreak of Ebola occurred in 1995 in Kikwit, Congo and surrounding areas.

Dig: Dr. Matthew's Passion [NYT]

"Biomedical researchers admit profound ignorance about Ebola, a viral bleeding fever that first appeared in Africa in the late 1970's. There is no cure, and researchers do not know where the virus hides between human outbreaks. They do know, though, that the blood of an acutely ill Ebola patient is one of the most infectious and deadly substances on earth.

Ronald Reagan

"Last September, at the Lomba River in southern Angola, when a force of UNITA rebels met an overwhelmingly superior force of government troops directly supported by the Soviet bloc, the UNITA forces defeated the government troops and drove them and their Communist allies from the field"."

Item: Jesse Helms became Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1995. His later nickname was "Senator No".

Dig: The pressure of marauding warlords roaming the bush has forced many to start eating animals that had previously been left alone in the bush.

Clipping B [source appears to be BBC article Angola's town of fear and lonely death - known foreign liberal outlet]

"They looked like spacemen, utterly out of place in this poor neighbourhood on the edge of Uige. It is no wonder that some local people fear the health workers, believing they are wizards or sorcerers.

They entered the hut, but not before spraying the door with chlorinated water. Then they picked up the tiny body, and wrapped it in white plastic."

Item: In 1980, George H.W. Bush became Ronald Reagan's presidential running mate despite earlier criticism of Reagan's "voodoo economics". He had previously been Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Item: The South African regime combined with UNITA to invade Angola in August 1975, six months after that country's independence was gained from Portugal to kick its civil war into high gear. War would rage on and off for the next two decades.

Clipping A

"Savimbi was the toast of the Reagan White House, feted by the rightwing establishment in many countries and a friend to African tyrants. He was a willing tool of the cold war, the key figure in America's and apartheid South Africa's destruction of independent Angola's nationalist ambitions, and responsible for suffering and death on a scale barely comprehensible outside his ruined country."

American Tabloid

"Mass-market hagiography gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight."

Item: The Rwandan genocide took place in 100 days starting in April 1994. The Red Cross stopped counting bodies at 800,000. Remnants of the génocidaires fled across the border into Congo taking millions of Hutu with them.

Item: In 1998, an outbreak of Marburg fever occurred in Durba, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Item: It is said that along with eating tainted meats, traditional funeral practices in Angola and Congo exacerbate the spread of the Marburg and Ebola viruses. Hear it from the Gray Lady:

But Angolans have resisted the public health messages, because they do not want loved ones taken away and put into isolation wards where family cannot visit and because they resent interference with funeral traditions of washing the body and kissing it goodbye. Funerals must be conducted properly to show respect and affection for the deceased and to avoid neglecting spirits who might turn vengeful.

Dig: Joseph Mobutu (a.k.a. Mobutu Sese Seko amongst other honorifics) was the most prized CIA asset in Africa from the 1960s until his death in 1997. He was a friend to every CIA director in his lifetime.

Clipping C [source appears to be subversive article, The terrible legacy of the Reagan years, The Guardian, known liberal UK newspaper]

"Over the Atlantic and down a bit, and we have Reagan welcoming Jonas Savimbi of the Unita organisation to the White House and speaking of his murderous outfit in Angola."

Ronald Reagan - Forward For Freedom

"In the history of revolutionary struggles or movements for true national liberation, there is often a victory like this that electrifies the world and brings great sympathy and assistance from other nations to those struggling for freedom. Past American Presidents, past American Congresses, and always, of course, the American people have offered help to others fighting in the freedom cause that we began. So, tonight, each of us joins in saluting the heroes of the Lomba River and their leader, the hope of Angola, Jonas Savimbi."

Item: Angola has oil, diamonds and more. Congo has reserves of gold, copper, tin, tantalite, coltan and almost every valuable mineral that exists.

Item: The Angolan army were in Congo chasing UNITA. The Rwandans and Ugandans were there too chasing the génocidaires and the Lords Resistance Army respectively. Mugabe sent a crew from Zimbabwe too, as did Sudan (both sides), Chad (all sides) and others. Various soldiers of fortune from Ukraine, Serbia and elsewhere came to ply their trade.

Dig: They say at least 3 million people have died, mostly of starvation, during Africa's World War centered on Congo.

Dig: The mines have continued operating throughout the conflict.

Dig the scene: Stalking a Deadly Virus, Battling a Town's Fears [NYT]

"For the people of Uíge, rampant death is now joined by the near equivalent of a space invasion: health workers encased in masks, goggles, zip-up jump suits, rubberized aprons and rubber boots as they collect corpses in the stifling heat. The garb is all white, a symbol of witchcraft here."

Chew on this one: [Zaire's Mobutu Visits America - Heritage Foundation Research. Our people!]

"In Angola, Mobutu has been a catalyst, in supporting the U.S. objective of reconciliation between Angola's warring parties and, though he denies playing such a role, reportedly in assisting the U.S. in supplying Jonas Savimbi's UNITA Freedom Fighters."

Item: The Bush and Mobutu families spent vacations together.

Clipping C

Actually what Savimbi was doing was prolonging a civil war in which the UN estimates that 300,000 children died directly or indirectly during the Reagan years, and Angola was covered in landmines. Human Rights Watch reports that UNITA's indiscriminate use of landmines, caused there to be more than 15,000 amputees in the country by 1988, ranking the country alongside Afghanistan and Cambodia in the league of blown-off limbs.

American Tabloid

"Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight."

Ronald Reagan - Forward For Freedom

"So, you see, like the Panama Canal in 1976, foreign policy issues like defense spending and aid to the freedom fighters may prove the sleeper issues of the year."

Dig the locals:

"When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers." - Angolan proverb.

Dig: The symbol of the Republican Party (a.k.a. the Grand Old Party, GOP) in the United States is the elephant.

Item: The Soviet Union, and later Russia, was a key financial and logistical backer of the MPLA movement in Angola. Cuba also provided significant military aid up until the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Clipping D [source appears be report on Operation Babushka - ref. [redacted] Bantustan. TPMCafe, known subversive outlet.]

"The [International Freedom Foundation] IFF was ostensibly founded as a conservative think-tank, but was in reality part of an elaborate South African military intelligence operation, code-named Operation Babushka. Established to combat sanctions and undermine the African National Congress, it also supported Jonas Savimbi and his rebel Angolan movement, Unita."

Item: Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison, mostly doing hard labour on Robben Island, South Africa.

American Tabloid

"They were rogue cops and shakedown artists. They were wiretappers and soldiers of fortune and [redacted] lounge entertainers. Had one second of their lives deviated off course, American History would not exist as we know it."

Clipping D

"From '85-'88, Grover Norquist, who worked with [Jack] Abramoff at the College Republicans, served as Savimbi's Economic Advisor and was registered with the Justice Department as a foreign agent of Angola. [PK]" [Note: we're investigating the PK initials, spin it: Paul Krugman?]

Clipping E [A blast from the past - Mail & Guardian, South Africa]

"For several years after its launch in 1985, [Jack] Abramoff (47) was the Washington face of Pacman, code name for the International Freedom Foundation (IFF). In 1995, the New Nation reported former security policeman Paul Erasmus as describing the IFF as a stratcom-military intelligence (MI) project designed to sway world opinion against the anti-apartheid movement."

Clipping D

"In 1995, [Williamson] described the IFF to Newsday as an instrument for "political warfare" whose job was "undercutting ANC credibility". The operation was constructed to prevent people knowing "they were involved with a foreign [South African] government. They ran their own organisation, but we steered them"."

Item: Claude Allen was Jesse Helms' campaign spokesman in 1984.

Dig: Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher argued vociferously against sanctions imposed on the South African apartheid regime by the United Nations.

Dig the locals:

"A woman who wants a child doesn't sleep in her clothes" - Angolan proverb.

Ronald Reagan

"So, let me urge you all to return to your organizations and communities and to tell your volunteers and your contributors that the President said that they're needed now as never before, that the crucial hour is approaching, that the choice before the American people this year is of overwhelming importance: whether to hand the government back to the liberals or move forward with the conservative agenda into the 1990s."

Clipping E [Jonas Savimbi, Unita's local boy - BBC]

"Some of the harshest criticism has come from those who once knew and admired Savimbi, but have since admitted they were duped by his charisma into overlooking serious character flaws. [Note: suggest we follow this talking point]

A former backer in Washington once conceded ruefully: "Savimbi is probably the most brilliant man I've ever met, but he's also dangerous, even psychotic"."

Clipping F [Jonas Savimbi profile Final Call, 2002 - Detroit)

Depending upon when and where he was interviewed, Savimbi appealed to tribalism, nationalism, anti-communism, or revolution, whichever suited his needs at the time. When speaking to Black American audiences, he would claim friendship with Malcolm X, and with international revolutionaries, he would invoke the spirit of the Argentine, Che Guevara, who became a leader of the Cuban Revolution. In European capitals and in Washington, D.C., Savimbi became the darling of the most racist right wing elements, and they handsomely financed his terrorist struggle against the peoples throughout southern Africa for nearly 30 years.

Item: Jesse Helms was chairman of Senate Agriculture Committee in the 1980s.

Dig: Claude Allen was appointed as Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy in January 2005

Clipping D

"After quitting the IFF in 1989, [Jack] Abramoff released Red Scorpion, an action movie that portrayed a Savimbi-like anti-communist guerrilla commander supported by Washington and Pretoria. Crystal said the IFF was not involved in the film's production. According to Williamson, however, it was "funded by our guys", who also provided military trucks, equipment and soldiers as extras."

Dig: Swedish actor Dolph Lungdren tends to play Russian roles. He is best known as Ivan Drago in Rocky IV. In Red Scorpion, he plays a KGB agent Nikolai. [Undetermined significance.]

Item: The Tale of Red Scorpion: "The manager of one of the major cast members, who did not want to be named, said that, according to her client, many of the actors and crew were never paid at all"

Dig: There was a Red Scorpion 2. "It went straight to video in 1994 and did not star Lundgren."

Ronald Reagan - Forward For Freedom

"My fellow conservatives, let's get the message out loud and clear. The Washington liberals and the San Francisco Democrats aren't extinct; they're just in hiding, waiting for another try. Well, let's make it clear to the American people that they must choose this year between those who are enemies of big government and the friends of the freedom fighters and, on the other hand, those who are advocates of Federal power and a foreign policy of illusion. So, let the choice be clear. Will it be "blame America first," or will it be "On to Democracy" and "Forward for Freedom"?"

Clipping G [Africa's Gems: Warfare's Best Friend - New York Times, 2000]

"Diamond money paid for Unita offensives that in the 1990's elevated Angola's civil war to a new plateau of savagery. Highland cities like Cuito and Huambo were all but flattened by artillery shells. More than half a million Angolans were killed. Land mines maimed about 90,000. Fighting displaced 4 million Angolans, and about 1 million continue to depend on foreign food aid. The United Nations Children's Fund now ranks Angola as the worst place on earth to be a child."

Item: "Just because a lizard nods its head doesn't mean it's happy." - Ghanaian proverb.

Ronald Reagan

"And freedom is the issue. The stakes are that high. You know, recently Nancy and I saw together a moving new film, the story of Eleni. It's a true story. A woman at the end of World War II, caught in the Greek civil war, a mother who, because she smuggled her children out to safety, eventually to America, was tried, tortured, and shot by the Greek Communists."

American Tabloid

"The real Trinity of Camelot was Look Good, Kick Ass, Get Laid. [Jack Kennedy] was the mythological front man for a particularly juicy slice of our history. He talked a slick line and wore a world-class haircut."

Ronald Reagan

"It is also the story of her son, Nicholas Gage, who grew up to become an investigative reporter with the New York Times and who, when he returned to Greece, secretly vowed to take vengeance on the man who had sent his mother to her death."

Dig: Claude Allen oversaw the White House Task Force that coordinated the response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Item: Bird flu found in stone marten in Germany [Associated Press]

"A weasel-like animal called a stone marten was infected with the deadly bird flu virus, marking the disease's spread to another mammal species... Cats are believed to have caught the virus by eating infected birds. Given the species' similar eating habits, Ulrich Arnold, a scientist at the University of Marburg's Institute for Medical Microbiology, said the discovery was "no new situation for Germany"."

Dig: Laurent Desiré Kabila, installed as President of Congo by Rwanda and Uganda in 1997, was murdered by his bodyguard 3 days after the inauguration of the 43rd American president in 2001. His "adopted son", Joseph Kabila, assumed power after his death.

Ronald Reagan

"But at the dramatic end of the story, Nick Gage finds he cannot extract the vengeance he has promised himself. To do so, Mr. Gage writes, would have relieved the pain that had filled him for so many years, but it would also have broken the one bridge still connecting him to his mother and the part of him most like her. As he tells it: ".. her final cry, before the bullets of the firing squad tore into her, was not a curse on her killers but an invocation of what she died for, a declaration" how that cry was echoed across the centuries, her cry was a cry of love "My children!" A cry for all the children of the world, a hope that all of them may someday live in peace and freedom."

Dig: The B-Movie Theory [known African-American subversive poet/singer Gil Scott-Heron, we've got a workup ready on him]

The idea concerns the fact that this country wants nostalgia.

And when America found itself having a hard time facing the future, they looked for people like John Wayne.
But since John Wayne was no longer available, they settled for Ronald Reagan
And it has placed us in a situation that we can only look at like a "B" movie

Ronald Reagan

"And how many times have I heard it in the Oval Office while tryng to comfort those who have lost a son in the service of our nation and the cause of freedom. "He didn't want to die," the wife of Major Nicholson said at Fort Belvoir last year about her husband, "and we didn't want to lose him, but he would gladly lay down his life again for America"."

Clipping H [source appears to be Africa's Gems: Warfare's Best Friend - New York Times, April 2000]

"At Andulo, Unita's headquarters in the central highlands of Angola, Mr. Savimbi personally haggled with arms merchants and diamond traders who flew in from Europe. The rebel boss bargained using small bags of diamonds, each of which contained several million dollars worth of gems."

American Tabloid

"Lies continue to swirl around his eternal flame. It's time to dislodge his urn and cast light on a few men who attended his ascent and facillitated his fall."

Ronald Reagan

"So, we owe something to them, you and I. To those who've gone before - Major Nicholson, Eleni, the heroes at the Lomba River - and to the living as well - Andrei Sakharov, Lech Walesa, Adolfo Calero, Jonas Savimbi - their hopes reside in us as ours do in them."

Item: The battle of Cuito Cuanavale (1987-1988) in Angola was critical in the Angolan civil war, one in which the marxist MPLA, helped by the Cuban army, faced off against UNITA and the South African army. Each side played the indecisive military outcome off as a propaganda victory. The costs to Cuba and South Africa were primarily political and economic.

Dig: In 1990, Nelson Mandela was freed from captivity after 27 years. He had been having secret negotiations with the South African government. The first formal meeting was in May 1988.

Ronald Reagan - Forward For Freedom

"Some 20 years ago I told my fellow conservatives that "You and I have a rendezvous with destiny." And tonight that rendezvous is upon us. Our destiny is now. Our cause is still, as it was then, the cause of human freedom. Let us be proud that we serve together, and brave in our resolve to push on now toward that final victory so long sought by the heroes of our past and present and now so near at hand."

Item: "Words are like bullets. When you release them, you can't call them back" - Gambian proverb.

Item: Angola is the seventh most important source of oil for the United States which imports 433,000 barrels per day from it.

Dig the profile for Angola:

"The top foreign oil companies operating in Angola are US-based ChevronTexaco and ExxonMobil, France's Total, UK's BP, UK/Dutch Shell, and Italian Agip/Eni Oil Company."

Dig the headline: China expands ties with oil-rich Angola [CNN]

Clipping I [Columbia University press release]

"Researchers at the Greene Infectious Disease Laboratory at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, led by Thomas Briese, associate professor of epidemiology, have developed a rapid, comprehensive diagnostic test for viral hemorrhagic fevers caused by the Ebola and Marburg viruses, as well as others."

Clipping J [Jonas Savimbi profile - London Review of Books, March 2002]

Jonas Savimbi stole just about everything and he should not be pitied. His greatest wish was to take possession of Angola, not as a common felon but as a feudal grandee, a Naipaulian Big Man, who would stride out of the bush, fully empowered by elections or force majeure - it didn't much matter - and preside over the capital Luanda, the decadent enemy heartland of half-castes, Marxists, philanderers and oil-profiteers. This was not possible. In the attempt, which lasted roughly thirty years, he robbed Angolan peasants of just about everything and several well-known politicians of their plausibility. Jeane Kirkpatrick, the Reagan Administration's henchperson at the UN, described him as 'one of the authentic heroes of our time', and Reagan himself is reported to have likened him to Abraham Lincoln.

Even as he ceased to serve the purposes of Washington and Pretoria at the end of the Cold War, he continued to persuade Western right-wing lobbyists and anti-Communist crusaders to part with their money: 'hearts, minds and purses' was the Savimbi strategy on this front and it paid off handsomely. He also pilfered and cannibalised greater reputations to advance or tweak his own: he proclaimed himself a Maoist before Maoism became an anathema and a devotee of Che when fashion features in the Face were still decking out pretty boys from Epping or Harrogate to look like jungle revolutionaries. Ingenuity, coupled with immense reserves of courage, cruelty and amour propre, was the ingredient that allowed him to continue his 'armed struggle' in Angola for so long, and to turn the country into one of the unhappiest on earth. At the same time, he was a consequence of Angola's place in the Cold War jigsaw, and the speed at which the Angolan anti-colonial struggle became an internationalised civil war fought by large numbers of non-nationals.

Dig: The civil war in Angola lasted for 26 years.

Item: George H.W. Bush served one term as president of the US. His eldest son is currently in his 5th year as president of the US, Jeb Bush is currently governor of Florida and Neil Bush leads a relatively charmed life.

Dig: Jesse Helms retired from the US Senate in 2003, in his latter years he was pursued in a charm offensive by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. The two were said to have become quite good friends and made a curious couple around Washington.

Dig: Jack Abramoff pled guilty on January 3, 2006 to three criminal felony counts in federal court related to the defrauding of Native American tribes. "Jack Abramoff and a former business partner were sentenced to five years and 10 months in prison for fraud related to their 2000 purchase of the SunCruz Casinos gambling fleet. The sentences were the minimum under their plea agreement in the case." 266 eminent persons including congressmen submitted character references for his sentencing. In his plea bargain biography, he claimed to be "appalled at the violence in Red Scorpion". There is no word on his feelings on the sequel that he produced, nor indeed any reference to Jonas Savimbi, Angola, Nelson Mandela or South Africa.

Item: Claude Allen, who resigned in February 2006 as President Bush's top domestic policy adviser, was arrested March 2006 in Montgomery County for allegedly swindling Target and Hecht's stores out of more than $5,000 in a refund scheme, police said.

Dig: Grover Norquist is president of the anti-tax lobbying group Americans for Tax Reform with close connections to the White House. He is most famous as the architect of the political strategy known as Starve the Beast.

American Tabloid

"It's time to demythologize an era and build a new myth from the gutter to the stars. It's time to embrace bad men and the price they paid to secretly define their time.

Here's to them."

Dig: Jonas Savimbi was shot to death, his body riddled with bullets in February 2002 after being chased down by Angolan troops. Within weeks, UNITA sued for peace and the decades-long civil war was nominally over.

Ronald Reagan

"Thank you. God bless you."

Dig: There are stories that the remnants of UNITA are still roaming around the forests in Congo and Angola, serving as soldiers of fortune in that ongoing Great Scramble. They have company in the Rwandan Hutu génocidaires and the Ugandan Lords Resistance Army among other miscreants.

Item: Ronald Reagan passed away in June 2004 after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease. He was "the most fascinating person of the last quarter-century", according to a Top 25 list compiled by CNN and editors at Time magazine in 2005.

Dig: George W. Bush was fourth in that survey.

Renewal

Angola is a state of mind.

In the United States, it refers to Angola, Louisiana, the prison state of hard knocks and cruel disappointment that Gil Scott-Heron sang about or that gritty late night documentary you might have watched on cable television - Gary Tyler and all that. Angola used to be a slave plantation but it is now a maximum security prison.

There is more to the story of Angola however. There's that other story, of that other Angola, over there on that "Dark Continent", that other place called Africa. That story is of the civil war that raged for decades, fomented by opportunistic gremlins and parasites. Oh they had themselves a field day of collateral damage. Russia, Cuba, South Africa, the United States and their willing local companions.

Yet somehow, Angola has prevailed even as things fell apart. You can hear it in the music, see it in their eyes. The Angola that I know has resilience that illuminates that moral abyss and ineffable loss. The landmines that dot its territory are intermixed with diamonds, oil and, at its heart, a spirited people. The marauders will always be fighting for the loot but they will never extinguish the soul of Angola

There is much pain still, and we have returning war heroes contemplating the landscape; a generation striving to regain their footing. Like their Mozambiquan neighbours, it's a case of getting back to the farms and manning the factories. In short, a time to rebuild. Missing limbs are a matter of course but ingenuity abounds, and perhaps with kind words, good will, and a decade of quiet, the potential will be fulfilled.

Now there is investment galore, millions to be made, they say. Angola is a US ally, there's Big Oil, Texan bankers and that War against Terror. Hell, the Chinese have joined in the fun. Hell indeed. We can no longer tolerate those inconvenient remnants of the UNITA movement roving around as soldiers of fortune. We're buying them off one at a time, they too need a piece of the proverbial pie. Reconciliation they call it. If properly directed, petrodollars should go some way to assuaging any latent guilt and restoring lost limbs.

Well let's just say that's the prevailing script: all is well, let us forget. Still, no one comes out of a civil war untainted, let alone the vicious, dirty proxy war waged for so long in that land.

I read the dossier.
I buried it for a year.
It's the Heart Of Darkness.

I saw a man raise his eyes to the sky.
I remembered another man's face.
I heard a rousing speech.

I want to believe.
Believe me.
I want to believe.

I take comfort in the Angola that I know, the one that is full of visions of hope. I treasure it in my sleepless nights. And even if those dreams founder, I know we'll always have Carnaval in Angola, glorious, exuberant and joyous.

To cap things off, last year Angola qualified for the first time for the 2006 World Cup to be held in Germany. I so look forward to this summer.

Dig this last one: the town of Marburg is at the center of the triangle of towns in which Angola is due to play its first round matches.

Print version

Next in Part 8: Huhudious (or Silly Season)

File under: Angola, Africa, Marburg, Ebola, Congo, Savimbi, Reagan, politics, war, history, rogues, neocons, waste, loss, Mobutu, USA, America, James Ellroy, literature, perception, observation, image, Great Game, hardboiled, paranoia, documentary, storytelling, essay, Abramoff, B-movie, writing, noir, Heart Of Darkness, Things Fall Apart, toli