The France IBM Connection

An allegorical foray wherein I suggest that one of the better analogies for IBM, and particularly its Software Group, is to consider it akin to France. Sacré bleu: a touch of whimsy on Bastille Day. As they say

Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité

• The French Connection
• Why We Are Rebelling Against The Old Guard
• Le Cinema
• La Bibliothèque
• Le Cabaret

The French Connection

I've been getting a little reflective as my 10 year anniversary at Lotus/IBM comes up next week. I'm not normally one for anniversaries but lots of things have been coming together (or falling apart) that make this a good time for some musing.

As I've written previously, this is an interesting moment in the technology world. After a quite severe retrenchment and some stagnation, all of a sudden there is a glimmer of light. Many companies are lighting a fire of innovation and building useful things on the web based on very simple primitives. We have absorbed the lessons of 10 years of Moore's Law in the data center, and as Joe Kraus has noted, it is a great time to be an entrepreneur (Mark Fletcher has piped in too). Still, lots of companies have lemons to sell and are falling back onto the hard sell of tone-deaf marketing to compensate for a lack of substance.

As an amateur historian of technology, I've been trying to consider where my company falls within this continuum. I like arguments by analogy and hence have been searching for a metaphor to describe the tribes of IBM.

The Governor of Redmonk characterized IBM as a broad church, a bazaar and melting pot

All views are present (and correct). All views are tolerated.

Others would have it be a cathedral, full of dogma and staid and obsolete blue-shirted mandates. In the 1990s, as that self-congratulatory pablum from Lou Gerstner went, it was about "trying to make an elephant dance", slashing and burning jobs, focusing on services and huge outsourcing deals rather than products and technology (the reviews in the previous link are quite revelatory). All of these characterizations are unsatisfactory, yet each have a grain of truth as with all coinages. Big Blue is all of these things and much more.

In conversations with colleagues and in reading the internal forums and blogs at IBM, there is an undercurrent of introspection and lot of soul searching. Sometimes this is even more critical and severe than from the outside. A sample:

Caring only about making the work numbers add up rather than actually improving the product doesn't seem to be real great way to a) run a business or b) get your developers to be passionate about their work.

Hopefully all of you will win your own innovation vs. mediocrity skirmishes in the future, and help that stock price edge higher :)

When I meet new people and tell them what I do for a living and who I work for, they are universally impressed yet each will have some story about how we could do better.

Cringely recently commented on dropping an applet developed by IBM and had this to say

"There was nothing wrong with IBM. Far from it - IBM Research was a terrific partner. But big companies have big licensing issues and smaller organizations sometimes give more personal support."

Might this be a trend, who knows? One must admit however that there is a perception of complexity, unnecesary layers or of bureaucratic overhead.

My only comment about a strategy that focuses on services is that

• There is a straight line from complexity to consultants
• No one really wants consultants

Per contra, as someone hired by Lotus, I have always wanted to work on things that people inherently want to use and buy rather than something they grudgingly accept. Aside from the effect in the market, there's that little matter of motivation for the day job in what is ultimately a creative endeavor.

In observing IBM Software Group's dealing with the Lotus portfolio over the years, I can say that it hasn't always been pretty and that the things that seem to be rewarded are very different from the aesthetic that actually seems to be "getting things done". In an era of mass layoffs and belt-tightening (raises anyone?), this is a little puzzling. Still it is a work in progress and we should simply strive to be more effective advocates and lead with running code as we play The Great Game. Thus I come to the France-IBM connection...

During my recent trip to London, I came across an article that I believe best expresses some of what I've been thinking about IBM, I reproduce it below. It is actually also one of the most illuminating pieces about France in the current moment. In reading it with my French cousins, we remarked that it was ironic that we had to read something so perceptive about France in English, and in London rather than in France. 5 very crucial years of my life were spent in France thus I empathize with the sentiment of the piece.

I'm suggesting then, that the correct analogy for IBM is to consider it akin to France.

Like all analogies, the France-IBM connection has its problems and I should say at the outset that it more precisely fits the IBM Software Group which is only a sliver of IBM. There are many parts of IBM that are completely alien to me. Handwaving a little, one can start by saying that France, like IBM in the technology world, is a Great Power with much clout. The grass typically pays close attention to what elephants are doing. Still, it is also the case that as a Great Power, it has seen better days and it can't fall back on the gravy trains of yore from its colonies and the dwindling list of post-colonial proxies. Its dirigiste economy might be like the "mandates from on high" and "Roadmaps ™" that I hear about but never actually read, or indeed follow. A colleague recently quipped that it was typical of IBM that a "roadmap would be put in place for radical simplification".

In my whimsical story, PITTs: Naming an Aesthetic where I struggled to label my own outlook on technology, I mentioned that William Pitt The Elder's ingenuity in The Seven Year War

"destroyed the military prestige which repeated experience has shown to be in France as in no other country the very life of monarchy, and thus was not the least considerable of the many influences that slowly brought about the French Revolution."

The analogue of England and Pitt for France, might be the rise of Microsoft, Intel and Sun in the past and all of those snappy web companies in the present for IBM. This has meant that the "No one ever got fired for buying IBM" line is no longer quite so true. In times of retrenchment, we are all picky about what we choose and will build it ourselves if possible.

I don't know much about the hardware side of IBM, but one could perhaps also handwave a little and compare IBM's losing out to Intel on supplying Apple to be reminiscent of Paris losing the bid for the Olympics to London. In this analogy, like France we were ever confident that we had the better facilities and roadmap, we were all about the enterprise and the high end. Perhaps with a touch of noblesse oblige, we ignored The Low End Theory. Was IBM simply Marie-Antoinette saying "Let them eat cake"?

In any case, this is just an allegory, let's see how well it works.

"Aux armes citoyens."

Why we are rebelling against the old guard

As France prepares to turn its back on the latest vision of Europe, a French writer vents his fury with his country's 'arrogant' elite.

by Renaud Fessaguet
The Observer, Sunday May 29, 2005

I travelled recently to London with a French television crew to try to discover what makes Britain such a success story. Sounds unlikely? Thirty years ago, British journalists used to cross the Channel in search of inspiration from the French. Does it mean that we are in urgent need of inspiration and of new models? Perhaps.

I've been thinking about the various approaches to software development inside IBM and comparing them to what our competitors and especially our users actually do when they put technology to work for them. Many others have been advocating pragmatism internally and that IBM should do business much like the rest of the world is doing.

More certainly, it signifies that the republican model is experiencing a profound crisis. Oddly enough, France remains one of the wealthiest countries in the world, one that everyone lauds for the quality of its workforce and infrastructures.

IBM is the largest technology company in the world. Annual revenues tend to be around $100 billion.

But it is also true that l'esprit France doesn't work any more. The passion and energy have gone. The Gauls are tired, depressed and entrenched in their 'village'. Above all, the French are afraid of everything: the summer heat, the outside world ... and the stirring rhetoric that has guided us for so long.

See also: overheard. 13,000 employees laid off. Beating inflation these days?

Liberalism, pragmatism, flexibility ... all have become tainted and entered into the already chunky dictionary of taboos. For so many things are taboo in modern France. For instance, it is taboo to point out that our political elite is ageing, arrogant and cynical. Like most French people, it takes no interest in new technology, in sharing power or knowledge - remember President Chirac, puzzled by a computer mouse?

What's the web? What's a feed? What's RSS/Atom? What are blogs? What are wikis?

It is taboo to claim the French elite has recklessly seized all the levers of power and is running the country in an inefficient, if not inept, way.

"What feature is it you might ask? there was no way to bookmark anything in WebSphere Portal?"

Hundreds of French leaders, including diplomats and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, don't speak English, an ignorance which makes them unable to understand the buzz of the global world, forcing them to depend on secondhand information.

What does it mean to be on the web?

It is taboo to say the French elite has found shelter in comfortable niches high up within the administration or on big company boards, both private and public. Isn't it amazing, for instance, that none of the leaders of the left-wing parties campaigned against the increase in food prices after the euro launch in 2002, which has resulted in increases as high as 6.5 per cent.

Buzzwords, buses, frameworks.

The dictatorship of diplomas, the system which demands a formal qualification for any job, which ignores raw talent, however extraordinary it might be, has produced a terrible paradox, empowering mediocrity and irresponsibility, a whole mentality overshadowing the schools, judiciary, media and, ultimately, our national life.

For diplomas, substitute patents and a concern for good products.

This last, the tyranny of patents is worth dwelling on. If one looks at software as a fungible thing and just as a springboard for career advancement, then you will have the notion of viewing the development organization as merely a technology incubator and treat it accordingly. There appear to be perverse incentives in what is rewarded by the organization. These incentives leads to a lack of balance between innovation as expressed in amassing a portfolio of defensive software patents, and innovation that comes from developing lightweight solutions and products that solve problems. The result is technology for technology's sake in other words, and a plethora of frameworks and buzzwords that ignores the effects of said technology on those who are simply trying to get on with things and have problems to solve. A little too often and, as the indoctrination of new hires attests, what is loudly trumpeted is that the way to advance, the way to grab the Fistful of Dollars at IBM, is by filing patents. Those slow pokes contemplating solid products and services are so passé.

See also: Why You Need a Degree to Work For BigCo

It is taboo to point out that the media establishment is timid and has surrendered to the politicians for economic reasons, since it lives mainly on public subsidies and junkets.

It is taboo to discuss the sacred retirement age of 55 or 60, when growing life expectancy will create a tremendous disruption in the pensions system.

We have inherited the most stubborn unions - does that sound familiar to you? - together with the stingiest of employers. In an obscene complicity, they are fossilising the whole social system and perpetuating one of the most rigid labour markets. But mentioning this is again taboo.

Just a paycheck, non?

It is considered unacceptable to argue for easier procedures for company start-ups, and unheard of to complain about the heavy, complicated and inefficient tax system.

File under bureaucracy. See also: "Make sure to call the legal department before you ______." Breathe?

It is vulgar to say that technical skills might be useful for new generations. French families will prefer to call on the famous Polish plumber - or his Ukrainian colleague - obviously paid for in the black economy.

Busloads of consultants or software that enables Glue Layer People? I volunteer a few of these good folks and various others as the Polish plumbers of IBM (some even look the part).

Will they get turned away from Bordeaux like those Romanians who come to help with the wine crop are? To give some context, the French have erected internal border posts at the gates of Bordeaux to triage "Eastern European foreigners coming to work". Unlike the Brits who are welcoming new ideas and labour, the French are navel-gazing.

But one of the biggest indignities is inflicted upon French youth, viewed by the elite with contempt. Youngsters are the usual and permanent suspects to the establishment, which prefers parking them at extremely high social and financial cost in crammed and impoverished universities - mentally and structurally. The list of taboos is endless.

"We seem to only be hiring interns these days" - [redacted]
"The word is is that they can be more easily 'molded'." - [redacted]

The interns and the new hires (mostly computer scientists these days) are being treated as cannon fodder, made to work insane hours and to forget about the big picture... Any glory that comes will be on the manager who found them who can bask in the glow of being the only grown up around. You then hear talk about "One of so-and-so's 'finds'". As a colleague put it in another poetic analogy,

"At the end-of-summer country fair, managers will get to show off their prize vegetables. He who has the best manured fields claims the prize."

I asked, "do those people actually eat those vegetables or is it just for show?". The reply

Usually the larger they get the less flavor they have. All looks, no substance. Like California strawberries in February, great color on the outside, not flavor on the inside.

With tongue in cheek I would submit that it's a case of "The man from Del Monte, he said 'Yes'".

I belong to a generation impatiently fidgeting at the gates of innovation, modernity and creation. No wonder that more and more courageous and talented French people don't waste time with the unreal political scene. Don't expect them to vote on the referendum. They will most probably enjoy today meeting new challenges all over the planet.

Tessa reluctantly wrote about pragmatism, and I'll quote her again, if she doesn't mind, she is ever-quotable.

"I do whatever works. I strive to fail faster. It's the results that matter, and simplicity (stripping layers) is celebrated because time is precious. We don't have time to waste on complexity and buzzwords; we're already behind on inventing the future."

I have met remarkable French men and women in China, South Africa, America and now in London, where 250,000 of them live and work. This is a very new rift among the French: between those risking to take their chances on the global front and those clinging to a fossilised society at home.

Kubi, Bowstreet...

This crisis suggests that France is just waking up from a long dream and facing the fact that the old myths of the postwar era and of the Resistance - social security, public jobs, a certain idea of fraternity and solidarity - are no longer enough.

I just hit 45 and I am not ready to live without dreams or expectations in a stuffy France. This is why I will voice a frank and staunch yes to the European constitution.

We urgently need fresh air, the winds of modernity and pragmatism blowing on the banks of the Seine. But who will dare open the window?

I repeat my challenge:

"Are we prepared to change our corporate structure and have profits come more from well-designed and usable software as opposed to consultantware? Are we prepared to eat our babies and make products that have much lower operational costs?"

Renaud Fessaguet is a television journalist and producer.

Postscript

Even though the French said non on the inconsequential EU treaty, there's a great chance they will continue to reward Chirac and his cronies in the next elections. As a quote, put it,

Danielle shrugs: 'Les Français, ils sont un peu con. Ils sont jamais contents.' Roughly translated: 'They're awkward sods, the French. They're never happy.'

I am happy however. I was raised by a village called Lotus. As a native son, I make my own call to arms to that village and hopefully I will find fertile soil. The rest of France, well that is for others.

Le Cinema

The French will never let us forget that it was Les frères Lumière who invented le cinema. Still on this Bastille day, I'll rather celebrate France not with Truffaut, Melville or Godard but rather with a list of films by foreigners.

• Paths of Glory
  
  
  
  Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece and one of the best war films. It also happens to be one of the most-powerful anti-war films I've seen. Quite relevant apropos central command, cannon fodder, the career advancement imperative, sacrifice, and idées fixes. The story of the French elite during the First World War is much the same today, this time however it is sclerotism and unemployment rather than those muddy trenches and mustard gas.
• A View to a Kill
  
  
  
  This great B-movie, the prototypical James Bond flick isn't all about France even if the Tour Eiffel is among the scenic locations where Roger Moore fights it out with Christopher Walken & Grace Jones. Still the good and bad guys pass France by. Instead of being the name of the game it is just an occasional backdrop. Also note Duran Duran's excellent theme song of hubris.
• L'Afrance
  
  
  
  
  
  L'Afrance is Alain Gomin's wonderful 2001 film about France, Africa, immigration and ultimately alienation. It is simply the best African film of the past 5 years and perhaps even the past decade. A no-frills parable about identity, culture and belonging, it continues to resonate strongly with me. Perhaps because it's the African immigrant who through bureaucratic ineptitude finds himself "out of status" and becomes an illegal alien. A great view of the frayed ends in French and African societies much like Dirty Pretty Things illuminated the underbelly of London. You can order the French dvd if you can handle dvd region coding.
• The French Connection & The French Connection II
  
  
  
  
  
  In each of these classic films, France is the subtext. In the first, the French villains are aloof, methodical and malevolent but the action takes place in the US. Director, William Friedkin, serves us the best and most manic car chase of all time. In the sequel, Gene Hackman's driven cop is lured over to France as bait in pursuit of those who got away, but gets caught by the bad guys and loaded up with drugs. The scenes of him trying to kick the heroin habit are among the most harrowing ones the silver screen has seen. Ironically, the chase that ends it all is of him on foot chasing cars and boats. John Frankenheimer is a genius.

La Bibliotheque

Some further reading on the France IBM connection:

• The Soul of a Company
• Act your age

  The key is to find a Pragmatist who is desperate, or as Moore says, a "Pragmatist in Pain". They have a problem, and they need it solved very badly. In fact, they are so desperate for a solution that they are willing to break ranks with their Pragmatist peers and be the first of their kind to try your product.

  I'm wishing that IBM were a pragmatist in pain, instead I've been seeing only pain from my lowly vantage point.
• The Organization Man by William H. Whyte
  Thanks Tessa for the pointer to this book and that chapter about "The Fight Against Genius". Very illuminating.
  
  
  
• Office Politics by Wilfred Sheed
  
  I came across this novel through a delightful appreciation piece in the Washington Post and it seemed like a parable of sorts. I had to order immediately even though it has gone out of print. I don't know why reading this synopsis hit home, it couldn't possibly have wider applicability. It's just a novel after all and anyway it's not about France so I hope you'll pardon this juxtaposition.

  "...George is no longer sure there's much at the Outsider worth believing in. Its charismatic editor, a transplanted Brit named Gilbert Twining, has loads of facile charm and wields a keen editorial pen, but whether there's anything behind the charm is open to question. The rest of the magazine's tiny staff is a conglomeration of oddballs and misfits "hand-picked" by Twining, apparently "on some principle of interlocking incompatibility." One editor, Brian Fine, is "chubby and small" and, beneath a veneer of amiability, seethes with bitterness and frustrated ambition. Another, Fritz Tyler, is thin, supercilious and cynical. The accountant, Olga Marplate, longs to be a tyrannical efficiency expert, while the advertising man, Philo Sonnabend, wanders around in a fog of dotty incompetence.
  
  Individually and collectively they are spineless -- if Twining raised an eyebrow in his direction, "Brian Fine would topple over like a doll with a round base" - yet the office positively crackles with rivalry and intrigue. Brian invites George to lunch one day and lays out the alignment of forces - the alignment, that is, as Brian chooses to see it - in the course of which he says that Twining suffers from the "weakness of great men to keep their subordinates from growing." George is nonplussed. He thinks:
  
  "Wait a minute, you're supposed to be on their side. Don't you understand the game? Olga and Philo and one editor against Twining and me and the office boy. George found that the game, as game, was getting a stronger grip on him. CBS politics had been played on too large a field, so you couldn't see the players at the far end. This stadium was just the right size."
  
  So off they all go, conniving and conspiring and back-stabbing and all the other things that make life in the office - any office - so endlessly delightful and produce such delicious streams of office gossip. George tries to explain it to his wife: "Let's take an example: the office. A, let's say, wants to get rid of B. C agrees, but not on A's terms. They both approach D --" and when she interrupts with what he regards as quibbling objections, he insists that "the equation goes on all over town." Okay, he says, "just go down to any playground, and what do you find? A, B and C again. One leader, one whiner, one mischief-maker. . . . Sometimes there's a tricycle to fight about on the playground, and sometimes there's a nickel on the ground. But the jockeying of ego is the real story."

• Why smart people defend bad ideas
• Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes
  
  
  
  

  C'est moi.

  This remains one of my favourite novels.
• The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

  I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

• "Sharp-elbowed bureaucratic maneuvering"
• On the limitations of Lotus Notes on the web
• Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  Well you can't exactly leave the bibliotheque without Hugo, that's like England without Dickens.

Le Cabaret

We need a cabaret soundtrack for this histoire. Évidemment.

• La Marseillaise

  Aux armes citoyens

• Edith Piaf - Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien

  Non, Rien de rien

• Serge Gainsbourg - Je t'aime... moi non plus (ft. Jane Birkin)
• Plastic Bertrand - Stop Ou Encore
  Europop defined and a concentrated encapsulation of wit, alienation and the soul searching of youth
• Charlotte Gainsbourg - Lemon Incest
  Still a shocker as befits a father-daughter duo, talk about eating babies.
• Barbara - Mon pote le gitan
  From the woman who gave the world Ne me quitte pas comes this revelatory tome about "her buddy the gypsy". Condescension, racial attitudes and idées fixes have never sounded so good.
• Albert Marcoeur - C'est raté C'est raté
  hat tip to Mr Feinberg for this great track

  C’est raté, c’est raté, quand on s’énerve on rate toujours

  If you get angry you always mess things up.
• Cameo - Rigor Mortis
  The funky sound of Technical Arteriosclerosis.
• Les Nubians - Demain
  The French are asking what tomorrow will bring.
• Teena Marie - Ooo La La La
  We have to end with Teena Marie's greatest ballad

  Sweet thing You've got me singing
  Ooo La La La

Have a bottle of Bordeaux today. A bientôt...

File under: France, IBM, whimsy, technology, history, culture, Lotus, software, satire, parable, patents, best practices, development, movies, literature, observation, Office Politics, bureaucracy, toli

Head Nods - Toli Turns One

The toli turns one year old today... Hence some anniversary musings and some head nods...

"The 15 people for whom I'm famous are a very diverse lot and pull me in lots of directions."

"Koranteng is also a little bit nuts, which is appealing." - The Guv'nor

"I should probably only listen to one voice at a time."

"I'm all about the synthesis; I welcome the cacophony." - Tessa Lau

"novel-length diatribes" - Sam Ruby?

"Koranteng provides an explanation, a, er, interesting powerpoint and further links." - David Lobb

"novella length efforts" - Mr Feinberg

"on the written page you are so ... prolific .. that it's sometimes a bit overwhelming" - Justin

"verbose is the word... 'you need an editor' is the comment" - self

"you are obviously interested in writing... I guess writers are a different breed and have to satisify their muses" - Aaron Reed

"We need an emoticon that represents 'nod in agreement'." - JP Morgenthal

Toli Turns One

So I started posting toli at this location a year ago and it has been quite a trip. Some statistics: 115 posts, a little over 2 a week although I've picked up the pace of late to make up for that 2 month existential crisis. 37 pieces on technology toli, 29 on musical toli, 26 on African toli (although one post covered the ground of 15 lengthy posts), 24 on political toli (although this was mostly tangential, I'm not normally overtly political), 20 on literary toli (literature has been scarce of late, something that should be remedied), the rest has been a miscellany of toli of life, whimsy and more including 12 on life in Cambridge which have been very heartfelt. If you add everything up you'll recognize that I very seldom write monographs and, even when I do, I bring a lot of other perspectives to the table.

The archetypal toli intervention consists of snap judgement, changing the frame, case studies and arguments by analogy. When weaving these strands together, I tend to play with which aspects I emphasize and of late it has been more fun to go with the satirical parables to make my points. Sadly I've become more verbose and perhaps this is because I haven't been submitting to the discipline of an editor or a deadline. I'll try to remedy that and aim for shorter cuts; I do realize you don't have to explore absolutely every angle of a thing. As I've been told, you can easily verge into "that stream of consciousness effect and Proust" (thanks for that polite intervention by the way Justin). Also I might play with the layout of the blog to make things a little more approachable.

If I go by del.icio.us, it's the rich web application trail that first drew people and my writing on technology and its effects continues to tickle a certain audience perhaps because it's a little different from the norm. The music intrigues a few; if you vibe with Abbey Lincoln, cook with Rokia Traoré and are musically obsessed, you will strike a chord. Cross-posting at blogcritics also brought an audience my way.

A surprise to me is that per Furl, the most viewed post is about a blanket of soul, a post which actually got no feedback. A little disconcerting but that is ranked by views; by contrast the most bookmarked at Furl are what I expected the Gmail and DHTML architecture bit, my 3rd State of the DOM address (everything is better in version 3.0) and Cultural Sensitivity in Technology which I'm quite proud of. I wish Blogger would give some statistics so I could do some metrics.

[update] I had mislabelled some posts... It turns out that the most viewed post by far, according to Furl, is Merlene Ottey - Ageless Wonder, in which I confessed a crush on that Jamaican regal goddess of athletics which just goes to show that sex sells. Or perhaps it's a commentary about those who use Furl.

I do love music and have a stack of reviews and playlists to share and I'll be sure to repeat the Toli Music Awards in a few months.

Next most popular per Furl is that visual introduction to Ghana. That, I can understand: a photo essay is easier to digest than the 10,000 word rant it was meant to augment although that latter post has been a manifesto of sorts for those interested in Africa and the journalistic impulse. Thus the writings on Africa also tend to be very popular. The travel journalism and the more heartfelt personal writing also gain some kudos from some corners. On the whole though, most of my writing has struck a chord with someone, somewhere and, to the extent that I get feedback in whatever forum, that is a real pleasure.

Of course, I was writing long before this blog, it's a hobby that clears my mind as I mull things over. Writing feeds my curiousity and inquisitiveness. It informs my outlook on life. Still it could be said that I had previously been hoarding my jaundiced prose out of some sense of timidity. You really want to be ready before the scrutiny of others turns on you, just ask Howard Dean about premature exposure of inchoate thinking. Even though the web isn't quite like a political campaign, there's still a leap you have to take to start to engage the world and think aloud in public conversation which is what this blog has been about. A year later, I'm glad I joined the conversation.

Head Nods

If you've interacted with me in the past few months, in person, by phone, instant messaging or email, and apart from the one withering email, the conversation would have inevitably turned to head nods. I've been in such an elated mood of late that I'm all about reaching out and making connections and, when doing that, I nod my head.

I like head nods. I find that we don't do enough of them. Head nods, like hugs, give strength and comfort. These are strange days, full of heartache and the incongruous, the whole world needs some nod heads. There's even a song and dance about head nods that I'll relate at the end of this post. It turns out also that my last appreciation post was a long time ago, about Martin Geddes whose Telepocalypse is still end-to-end perfection.

In no particular order then, here are some long-overdue head nods.

I'm in such a prolific phase right now that I'm a little scared I'll burn out. Working through code, designs and architecture is easy these days, and writing of all sorts is pouring out of me. Indeed my cup runneth over with product ideas, book proposals and the like. You could do worse than grab me for half an hour and pick my brain on any subject matter. Curiously, one of the reasons for this tsunami of creativity is a little matter of a chair, thus I'll start with a head nod to the folks at Humanscale who designed the Freedom Chair that I bought as my birthday present to myself this year (I wonder if the name was an allusion to Freedom Fries). It's the most expensive purchase I've made in a long while (I'm quite frugal) and given how much I paid, I've convinced myself it's worth it. Let me shill: "the chair has transformed my life". Seriously, it happens to be the most comfortable place in my wretched bachelor pad (more comfortable even than the bed or those utilitarian prison futons). Thus you'll find me on it at 5 am and late at night; visitors are surprised that I sit in the chair when I greet them. I'm sure there are other reasons for the creative spark but the chair deserves a head nod.

To Justin Grunau, a great friend, linguist, book lover, ardent opinion-monger, technologist and prolific writer - also a late adopter to blog/wiki/social bookmarking world, but my goodness slow down. You're my sanity preservation lifejacket. And those zingers: "Is Charlie Brown fantasizing this time or did Lucy really let him kick the football for the first time in 30 years?"

To Monsieur Feinberg, dogeared Liquid Preller, duct tape wielder and "polish plumber" of technology. You've been adopted into the toli family, bro. I want to hear the sound of Floot Loops.

To the ever-insightful James Governor, keep instigating at Redmonk, maybe you'll get the good guys at these companies to stop the madness and "think about the children", those long-forgotten users. Sidenote: why is there so much testosterone in the technology industry? Even that disaster named Carly was all testosterone and no substance, why is that? It's all warlike rhetoric. Can't we all just get along? We need to get out of Deadwood. By the way you never did say whether you minded being called The Guv'nor of Redmonk, the cockneyism is intended as a term of endearment but not everyone likes name calling. I don't want my toli to be perceived like Dubya's: always giving nicknames... Anyway head nod at you, Guv. Oh and yes Maggie Thatcher deserves a savaging too and I will oblige eventually but how's this gotcha for a start.

To Tessa Lau, fellow pragmatist and skilled artisan of the Dark Matter of Technology. The IBM tribe has a gem in your Glue-layer Leadership and Unbridled Excellence (GLUE), machine-learning bravado and structure-infering hackery. I should stop gushing but I won't, I'd rather tilt my head askew and nod. Keep leading the way.

To Uche Ogbuji, I was reading something from your blog to The Girlfriend and she couldn't tell what you wrote apart from my writing. "You guys are so similar." She worries that when we eventually meet, we'll have a fatal personality clash because the shared aesthetic and interests seem too good to be true. And I will review Common at some point even though you did it all for me. A technology, Okayplayer, West-African immigrant head nod to you.

To James Fallows, many thanks for the head nod and encouragement, it came at a most opportune time. I'll be keeping my mid-Atlantic toli going and will strive to continue to "deftly walk the technology/culture line". We should talk about Kente, Guinea Fowl, and Grasscutter (Akrantie) and your time in Busia's Ghana (I too have tales about Bolgatanga). Did you know that Ghanaians won't eat imported chicken these days? We should also talk technology. I was reading one of your Techno-files pieces in The Times (from a few months ago, I'm so behind), Finally, Sisyphus, There's Help for those Internet Forms, I thought you'd appreciate my take on these things: the folktales, B-movies, coinages and thoughts on bleach.

To Jackie Malone who got me to moonlight at Inside Lotus (which I've sadly been neglecting) and whose encouragement, enthusiasm and kind words about my writing were so liberating. I'm still working on the pitch for IBM Press, O'Reilly and Wired. And yes I do need an editor. I hope you're enjoying your retirement. As you know, I love tomorrow.

To Jon Udell, I'm enjoying this great conversation we're participating in on technology and its effects. From the big picture to the little things that matter, you lay it out with clarity and verve. Let's do dinner at some point when you pass round this way. A head nod from the back of the bus.

To Hanna Russo, Rob Weir and Margaret O'Connell, my Axis of Empathy throughout my professional career. The best-kept secrets at Lotus, glad to see you blowing up IBM Software Group, God knows it needs some manhole explosions.

To Ethan Zuckerman, so much to say. Well we'll be having our beers shortly... Thanks for prompting the Chris Lydon connection. My heart's in Accra too. A head nod from North Kaneshie.

To Sam Ruby, you atomic radical simplifier you, a head nod: +1

To the powerful Richard Schwartz, let's do this crypto thing.

To James Snell: REST By Example. A Show Me The Code head nod to you.

To Mark Pilgrim, your groove made me start this blogging toli. I'm sure I'm not the first to ask, but how about diving back into blogs now that the skunkworks of monkeyed grease is done? The Unloved HTML button and other Folktales is only an African version of your Headers and soul.

To Martin Romano now at Bowstreet, the unsung hero of Bleached Unobtrusive DOM Scripting (BUDS) and many other theatrics from Freelance Graphics, to eSuite to K-station, who built rich web applications before they were called bleach. I still have the emails where the visions were laid out and will publish them for historians of technology to ponder prescience and innovation. I stand on your broad shoulders and nod my head to you. Regards to Sue and the baby.

To Chis Anderson, the Long Tail is where it's wired. I was very flattered about you calling this joint "deep but beautifully written". I don't quite know about the "clearly a genius of some sort" characterization; that's a hard standard to live up to, but I'll take all the praise I get, "of some sort" being the operative phrase. Oh, and I'll be laying "The Pitch" on you at the end of the year if my writing keeps on track.

To Noel Weichbrodt, a Barely Legal Programmer, I appreciate what you do and with style. Plus you hipped me to Cobb thus an Afro head nod to you. And with The Wife blogging hmmm, watch out.

To Sokari Ekine, Paa Kwesi Imbeah, Kenya Hudson, Akinyi Arunga, Bubu, Ory, Kwasi, Afromusing and all the others writing about Africa. The sound of your voices gives me great comfort.

To all my friends at Lotus who have made work mostly a matter of play from GPG to eSuite, to K-station to WebSphere Portal to ODC to Forms to Workplace and beyond. Elena, Chris, Lily, Ping, Willie, Angela, Adam, Joyce, Paul, MaryEllen, Bill, Mary, Eric, Asima and the list goes on and let's not forget Theresa who didn't make it but who lives on for all of us. You've all been a source of strength and learning, it continues to be a pleasure. When I recount to others that my experience of software development with you has one of collaboration with historians, linguists, dancers, physicists, musicians, artists and only the rare computer scientist many can't fathom that I am talking about the same profession. And that's the point, good software engineers are not fungible. It will be 10 years at Lotus/IBM on Sunday and I'm proud of what we've built. I hope we can stand up and take credit for our achievements and continue pushing collaboration, communities and ultimately, cool and usable software. We are fighting the Good Fight Against Technical Arteriosclerosis ©, unthinking careerism, the Boltons of the world and rank bureaucracy because we recognize the primacy of those who who use our products.

I am no one's "find". I was raised by a village called Lotus.

To some of my ever quotable fellow travellers in technology pragmatism: Coté, Reginald Braithwaite-Lee, Bill de hóra, Ryan Tomayko, Les Orchard, Mark Baker, Bob Haugen, Robert Sayre, David Lobb, Phil Wainewright, Adam Bosworth, JP Morganthal and others, Rest well and nod your heads.

A belated head nod to the View Sourcerer in Chief, Joe Gregorio. I point everyone to the RESTful web you're weaving.

To T.V. Raman, Mark Birbeck and Aaron Reed, the XForms dream draws nearer... I'll stay on the case. A distilled pattern head nod to you.

To my latest IBM connections... Dale Schultz, I'm with you in the fight against the curse of the ampersand, the hyphenated parable, the mangling of euro symbols or Rokia Traoré, a globalized head nod to you. Chris Ferris, rant on you standards natterer you, Bill Higgins, grassroots pragmatism is the thing, let's do this and David Singer, I'm with you.

On a personal note, to Sozi and Meriel who are Philly bound, you are a few of my favourite things. A cheese-steak laden head nod to you.

To "Ennis", it's so hard to believe you're not Ghanaian. And deconstructing politics and strange bedfellows like you do is a rare skill. I'm digging Sepia Mutiny. Have some waatche and a head nod on me.

To Frances who brought my voice back. See you in the building. Lights Out.

To the two Mikes, forever nodding.

To Kukua, Kweku, Ebo, Zai, Kobi, Rita, Dela, Sanyade, Russ and the rest of London crew, you've got soul.

To the Boston crew, as Digable Planets said last week, "Beantown is Red Hot".

To the French crew, on dit quoi?

To the two Brians, Stout and Sangudi, friends who keep me on the straight and narrow. Two head nods apiece.

To my family, I revel in the joy of small things and our still waters do indeed run deep. I hope my toli lets you know what I get up to when I forget to call.

And to my favourite Historian of Science who will be joining me in matrimony, a loving head nod. I'm so excited to no longer be Mr Flinchy. Bitter Roots was great accomplishment, next stop Oprah's Book Club, West Nile Blues, Atomic Junction and Berkeley next year. I can't wait.

And finally a big head nod to all who I haven't mentioned, the Readers Of The Lost Toli. It seems there are over 100 of you in Bloglines. Extrapolating a little, Bloglines is said to have 40% of the aggregator market share, that means that perhaps 250 people have been tolerating my meandering musings. That is well over the 15 I had expected. Heck, Blogshares even values this joint at $6,807.57, maybe I'll cash in and buy myself some Schnapps. Thank you all for pulling me in the directions you do, and helping me find my voice. I'll try to be more focused in the future, and briefer. Head nods all around.

Nod Your Head To This

And for the obligatory musical coda...

One of my favourite songs is Nod your Head to This by the Kings of Swing (full lyrics).

There was a dance that we used to do to this song in London clubs circa 1990-91, which was something like the tilted heads in Michael Jackson's Thriller video crossed with the robot in Herbie Hancock's Rockit joint if you can imagine such a thing. Picture if you will a dancefloor having a case of collective hip-hop epilepsy. Fire up your file-shaing app and download, this is yet another track in the long tail of music that record companies are ignoring...

And Yes, I'm Comin Fully Charged,
Equipped And Packed
To Make Your Head Bob And Weave
And Swing Forth And Back
It's Like A Tyson Bout
And This Is Main Event
And I'm Electrifyin The Minds
Of All The Ladies And Gents
Cold Swingin Things
The Way It's Supposed To Be
To Make You Nod Your Head,
Yo, Simultaneously
To A Groove That Makes You Move
And Keeps You In Sync
Just Like You're Tappin Your Feet,
Yo, You Do Not Think
About What You're Doin,
But You Can't Resist
The Kings Of Swing Is In The House,
And Hey Yo, Nod Your Head To This

Nod Your Head To This
Nod Your Head To This

It Sounds Funky

Nod Your Head To This
Nod Your Head To This

My Toli Sounds Funky

File under: blogging, appreciation, Head Nods, life, friends, family, writing, toli

Erustication and The Italian Job

• Erustication Defined
• The Italian Job
• An Erusticated Playlist

erustication n:

1. Extraordinary Rendition to Uzbekistan, Syria or similar by the US government for the purposes of torture and intelligence "extraction". This program was instituted by the CIA in the 1990s and pursued with increased vigour after September 11th
2. A lighter meaning: the sense of bewilderment, heartache and violation that comes from being subject to the capricious whims of a strongman who happens to have authority over you. Close synonym of The Full Bolton.

erusticated v.

1. being subject to erustication.

Most subjected to erustication turn out to have been entirely innocent and simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even those who are no choirboys are tainted; the evidence gathered through torture is rightly rejected in countries with laws, it goes against every sound principle of decency. One hopes that the intelligence gathered did indeed prevent ticking bombs but one should be skeptical about the effectiveness of the policy. Still the compromise of democratic and moral values that erustication implies, the cynicism it breeds in the body politic are heavy prices to pay. When your human rights record can be placed in the same company as Egypt's, how can you claim to lecture a rogue like Robert Mugabe?

I like erustication because like the dental extraction, waterboarding, electric shock therapy and worse that it presages, the word also sounds like the flagellation one would receive from a medieval instrument of torture something like The Rack (Iraq?) used in the Inquisitions of yore. And the effectiveness of the policy is similarly in question. Witchhunts of the Kingdoms of Heaven have a way of casting an unflattering light of hypocrisy on those who might consider themselves righteous puritans. The lessons from Salem to McCarthyism are all about hysteria and opportunism that debase the social fabric of the society. In such times, what was meant to be "extraordinary" becomes customary and a matter of rounding up The Usual Suspects ® and people of "little intelligence value" with results that we know.

Ironically the milder form of erustication was a sentiment felt by quite a number of State Department, CIA and other intelligence analysts who had to deal with John Bolton. The notion that some of the mild-mannered people in the organizations that developed and instituted this practice, felt some of the psychological pressure and bewilderment of the practice tickles my mind. Thus, erusticated is a close synonym to that that other fine American neologism, boltoned.

e.g. "I was erusticated in the past 6 months at work" is a touch edgier and harsher than "I was boltoned by the new boss".

Being erusticated is obviously not for the faint of heart and the ordeal might leave you broken, an empty shell. You have to waste time trying to justify yourself and might even start to blame yourself for your predicament and confess to what "they" want to hear. Rendition also reminds one of the worst practices of the meat rendering industry which we know indubitably leads one down the path to Mad Cow Square. In literature, Kafka and Orwell have described the sense of alienation that than envelops you when in the trials of erustication (and would it they were rather in their "last throes" although per Dick Cheney, "if you look at what the dictionary says about throes, it can still be a violent period"). If you're lucky you'll find some kind godfather to step in and defend you but, more often than not, you are alone in the tangled web in which a moral compass is optional and indeed frowned upon.

The lighter meaning, boltoned, is similarly discomfiting as unfortunately I can also attest. The vituperations and glee of those bullies who delight in giving you The Full Bolton treatment is also par-for-the-course. The small-mindedness of bullies is deeply rooted in playground impunity. Boltoned is onomatopoeic perfection in that it sounds like doors being thunderously slammed repeatedly on your fingernails for no reason. You want to say, "What have I done to deserve this? No Ingles! It wasn't me!". And on being boltoned, this article I came across a few months ago seemed quite serendipitous: Is your boss a psychopath?

Many have asked what countries like Egypt, Uzbekistan, Syria, Kazakhstan, Israel and Pakistan get from erustication and the answer is quite clear: the moral compromise lets the leaders of those countries carry on with often egregious domestic policies without fear of reprimand as we have seen repeatedly. Franklin D. Roosevelt's "He's our sonofabitch" quip applies to many of the leaders of the aforementioned countries and not just Karimov or Mubarak.

Michael Scheuer recently argued that the policy has actually been quite effective and I suppose he would be one of those close enough to judge the value of the "extracted information" living as he did in the shadowy world of the CIA. And there's one fairly famous case where the threat of being erusticated and "rendered to Israel and the hands of the Mossad" got startling results and broke a hardened terrorist into cooperation. I can understand threatening, but surely delivering someone to unbounded violence crosses some line. The kind of police cooperation which everyone agrees is needed in the action against nihilists that the entire world must confront is very different from winking at interrogation at the electric shocks and the institutionalized beatings of the Battle of Algiers. Even Scheuer however, must now admit now that, the application of the policy has been very far from judicious since 9/11 let alone extraordinary. I would contend that the logic of outsourcing "wet work" is a proverbial race to the bottom of the moral barrel.

On human rights I'm an absolutist, and I err on the side of preventing even the slightest collateral damage because the costs to the innocents and the concomitant debasement of the society in question are, in my judgment, a far too heavy burden. This issue is close to home for me because of the stories of both of my parents but that excursion into personal history deserves separate amplification...

Maher Arar's case is only the most prominent evidence of the living costs of erustication and the fear and cynicism engendered in a society: The true purpose of torture

In a rare public speech, Arar addressed this fear directly. He told the audience that an independent commissioner has been trying to gather evidence of law-enforcement officials breaking the rules when investigating Muslim Canadians. The commissioner has heard dozens of stories of threats, harassment and inappropriate home visits. But, Arar said, "not a single person made a public complaint. Fear prevented them from doing so." Fear of being the next Maher Arar. The fear is even thicker among Muslims in the United States, where the Patriot Act gives police the power to seize the records of any mosque, school, library or community group on mere suspicion of terrorist links. When this intense surveillance is paired with the ever-present threat of torture, the message is clear: you are being watched, your neighbour may be a spy, the government can find out anything about you. If you misstep, you could disappear on to a plane bound for Syria, or into "the deep dark hole that is Guantánamo Bay", to borrow a phrase from Michael Ratner, president of the Centre for Constitutional Rights. But this fear has to be finely calibrated. The people being intimidated need to know enough to be afraid but not so much that they demand justice.

For the historical record, I coined the word erustication as an aside in PITTs: Naming an Aesthetic which was a typical sojourn in metaphorical excess to coin new buzzwords in the technology world. The slightly updated money quote came when I considered the concept of a Loyal Opposition:

In any case, as recent history, and the success of the Cheney, Rusmfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Bolton, Cambone, Generals Miller (Gitmo-lite) and Sanchez Axis of Righteous Neocon NefarIousnEss (ARNIE) has shown, being loyal oppositionists accounts for squat in these States. We might get tortured in Guantanamo, Bagram and Abu-Ghraib or get a little Extraordinary Rendition to Uzbekistan or Syria (ERUStication?) if we aren't careful.

I've since reconsidered ARNIE as Axis of Righteous Neocon Infamy and Excess but believe that erustication is of more lasting value for the language.

Erustication. Run with it. You heard it here first.

The Italian Job

I'm now promoting erustication to the English language because of one of those curious stories that the journalist in me wishes wouldn't get buried in wake of the events of the past week, namely The Italian Job.

To give some context, I am referring to the 13 to 19 CIA agents who kidnapped an Egyptian cleric, Abu Omar from Italy and took him to Egypt where "he was subjected to electroshock treatment" and "lost the hearing in one ear". In these days of "gloves coming off" this is a sadly all-too-common story: Italy Orders Arrest of 13 CIA Operatives.

But there are many twists to the tale, the Italian security services had this cleric under extensive surveillance and were building up a profile of his network, indeed they were likely to have arrested him and his affiliates in short order. Erustication ended all of that work and we are none the wiser about what, if anything, has been gained.

When I first read about this affair, In Italy, Anger at U.S. Tactics Colors Spy Case, the lead sentence was

The extraordinary decisions by an Italian judge to order the arrest of 13 people linked to the Central Intelligence Agency on charges of kidnapping a terrorism suspect here dramatizes a growing rift between American counterterrorism officials and their counterparts in Europe.

Apparently it is extraordinary to prosecute people who break the laws of your country. What cheek! Just because it's Americans who break the law they should not be prosecuted?

As someone intensely interested in strange bedfellows, I appreciate the way the story is playing out, you don't know whether to laugh or cry. Indeed the only other story that has got my journalistic juices flowing of late is the one quietly playing out in Chile, At Cult's Enclave In Chile, Guns And Intelligence Files, a story which very nicely packages apocalyptic religious cults, intelligence services, grim torture, Augusto Pinochet and crew, financial looteries, the School of Americas and ultimately Nixon, Kissinger, Reagan and Bush the Elder. I hope those Chilean prosecutors and journalists take their time and pursue the paper trail because I haven't seen such fertile soil in a long while to expose the unseemly side of global politics and nor indeed the outright criminality that prevails over bromides of bon mots.

The Italian Job is the kind of story that should steadily drip into the public's consciousness and arouse outrage and the headlines already tell the tale about the effect it is having in Italy - Italy seethes at US abduction of Imam. It really should have a larger impact in the USA as a case study about the direction of the country, that is if only it is reported by the media.

Unfortunately I don't speak Italian so I haven't gotten the full flavour of the revelations but others have stepped in and especially Robert's Stochastic Thoughts has more than adequately covered the various aspects of the case. Berlusconi who is the anti-choirboy personified knows that if the threads of these stories are pursued to their sleazy end it won't be pretty. So now there is no doubt that Italians will definitely be pulling out of Iraq as we heard. There was already pressure for a pull-out but this story broke the proverbial camel's back.

For the first time in a year I agree with a column by Jim Hoagland. This is a scary thing because Hoagland is normally a reliable indicator of exactly what not to believe. Indeed my political barometer has him calibrated as a polar opposite. I love to read people I disagree with if only to sharpen my arguments and to try to see things from their point of view. Still even he has come to see that erustication is no longer working, indeed he terms it Pricey Rendition:

Is this covert act really worth the likely consequences?

Indeed the erusticated Italian Job perfectly illuminates my Joy in Repetition prescription for opposing the rogues who currently govern the US simply repeat:

• The policy is wrong.
• It's not working. Indeed it's counter-productive, alienates friends and foes alike and worsens things.
• This is how we would change it.

It gets worse when you look closer, as Robert explains, the Italians "are stressing that the CIA has sabotaged the war against terror and that the CIA agents are totally incompetent and self indulgent."

See Italians Detail Lavish CIA Operation and also CIA Said to Leave Trail in Abduction

They ran up tabs of thousands of dollars at some of Milan's best hotels and restaurants. They chatted easily on their cellular telephones and gave out passport, frequent-flier and driver's license numbers when booking flights or renting cars.

And now they are fugitives...

The Milan crew seemed to have made little effort to keep a low profile. Although much of the information they provided may have been false, they seemed to have left a trail worthy of Hansel and Gretel.

Arriving individually or in pairs during the weeks leading up to Abu Omar's disappearance in February 2003, they checked into some of the city's finest hotels: the $450-a-night Prince of Savoy on Milan's grand Piazza della Repubblica, the Westin Palace, the Milan Hilton. They ate at good restaurants and rented cellphones and cars. They offered up their frequent-flier account numbers as well as their passports, Visa and Diner's Club credit cards and driver's licenses....

In hotel bills alone, the group ran up a tab of $150,000, the court papers indicate.

Once the rendition was completed, several of the agents traveled to Venice for a celebration, also at a luxurious five-star hotel, the court papers say. Four others took a vacation along the picturesque Mediterranean coast north of Tuscany.

Italian judicial officials say they are perhaps most angry with the American operation because it ruined their own efforts to crack the cell and arrest numerous terrorism suspects in Italy.

"Not only was Abu Omar's kidnapping illegal in having seriously violated Italian sovereignty, but it was also an inauspicious act that has contaminated the overall fight against terrorism," Judge Guido Salvini said in issuing a separate indictment on the Egyptian-born cleric.

And it gets worse, see Technical illiteracy at the CIA, it turns out that the agents used a pool cell phone from the US embassy which was then returned to the embassy and was later used by embassy staff. Such is the competence of those warriors who are defending you for whom we should curtail our freedoms.

The Italian Job is one of the best B-movies in the canon, a film full of wit and panache. As someone who loves heists, I have watched it more times than I can count. It has some of the best car chases and stunts that we have ever seen and what a heist. Michael Caine and Noel Coward are cheeky sods and simply brilliant. The flag-waving politics are skewered as is the British nationalism and self-importance.

Still we should also remember that Caine and crew were a bunch of Criminals And Thugs (Cats) and their motives are simply mercenary. At the end of the movie, Caine and crew have indeed pulled off their caper against the odds but all that loot is left dangling as the bus itself is perched precariously on a cliff. As the camera cuts away we know what to expect: the slightest wind or a even a bird dropping will push it over the edge strewing those dollars and lira all over those Alpine rocks:

Mission Accomplished

An Erusticated Playlist

The sounds of erustication are normally screams of agony or of gritted teeth. Still one has to find some music if only to oppose it. Thus I give you Live Erustication: The Concert, like Prince said,

"Put the right letters together and make a better day"

• The Jacksons - Torture

  It Was On A Street So Evil
  So Bad That Even Hell Disowned It
  Every Single Step Was Trouble
  For The Fool Who Stumbled On It
  Eyes Within The Dark Were Watching
  I Felt The Sudden Chill Of Danger
  Something Told Me Keep On Walking
  Told Me I Should Not Have Come There

  The sounds of whips, albeit propulsive and soulful whips, start out our erusticated musical journey. Ironically this wonderful song is the lead track of the Victory album which as we know in the case of erustication is always pyrrhic.
  
  
  
  
  I was going to nominate another track from the album, State of Shock the rocked out collaboration with Mick Jagger, but I thought the connection to electroshock might be a bit too much. For the more reflective, the Victory album also has one of the best ballads of all time, One More Chance, Randy Jackson's masterpiece and Michael Jackson's most heartfelt song, Be Not Always, with lonely, mournful acoustic guitar.
• The Supremes - Stop In The Name Of Love

  Before You Break My Heart.
  Think It O-Over.

  Please do Messers Bush and Cheney.
• Rockwell - Somebody's Watching Me
  Paranoia has never been so sublime or soulful. And with Michael Jackson's chorus who can fault it?

  "I always feel like somebody's watching me"

• Full Circle - Workin' Up A Sweat
  It gives me great pause to deploy one of my all-time favourite club songs in the service of erustication but, well, it had to be done. This is one of those obscure hits in the Long Tail of Music that you can now only find on compilations in England even though it is by an American band that recorded for EMI America. Record companies are clueless. Full Circle were perhaps a one hit wonder but there is such wonder in this track.

  Working Up A Sweat
  Over You
  The Way You Make Me Feel
  You Know The Deal

• MC Hammer - Turn This Mutha Out
  I don't quite think that Hammer intended an extraordinary rendition remix of the song that that brought him to fame but this was a burst of energy that matched James Brown at his most fervent. Perhaps it is apt that what later transpired after this debut was B-movie ineptitude
• Massive Attack - Spying Glass
  From one of the top 10 albums of the 90s, Protection, comes this brilliant confection of trip hop dub. The Mad Professor remix is also essential but the lyrics tell the erusticated story.
  
  
  
  
  

  You Live In The City
  You Mind Your Own Business
  What You See, You Don't See
  But Some People, They Always See
  They Never Mind Their Own Business
  
  You Move To The Country
  You Live In The Hills
  You Think You're Far From The Wicked
  When You Check It, Them-a Use Spying Glass
  They Want To Know Rasta Business
  Spying Glass

• Peter Gabriel - Sledgehammer

  "I'll be anything you need"

  Well if a sledgehammer is your policy and the literal tool you're using against me, I'll confess to anything you need.

  This will be my testimony

• Michael Jackson - The Way You Make Me Feel
  I was going to use Scream or Leave Me Alone as MJ's erusticated contribution to the debate since he himself has been through quite a bit in recent months. But I think this soulful bad and funky track is just the right touch and one of my favourite songs of his.

  You knock me off my feet

• The Roots - Break you off (ft Musiq)

  We're coming to Break You Off

  Yep, erustication is in the realm of phrenology.
  
  


• Eugene McDaniel - Headless Heroes and Freedom Death Dance
  These two much sampled tracks off the Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse album are in the cut.

  Better Git It Together
  And See What's Happening
  We Are The Canon Fodder
  Nobody Knows Who The Enemy Is
  

  The Freedom Death Dance is bleaker as would befit the title.
• INXS - Never Tear Us Apart
  Let's hope they don't. I worry that the Australian authorities wouldn't be averse to some extraordinary rendition given the chance.
• Was (Not Was) - Spy in the house of love
  

  I'll Tap Your Phone
  You're Never Alone

• The Last Poets - This Is Madness
  A primal scream off the aptly named Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Cool album. We are all prisoners snatched away to be branded by red hot irons.
• United Future Organization - Spy's Spice (Mon Espionage)
  In the vein of a dark and dank world of derring-do and covert snatches this fits the bill.
• The Police - Every Breath You Take
  This more properly belongs in a Patriot Act soundtrack of surveillance but since we have that practice of waterboarding "in which a detainee is strapped down, dunked under water and made to believe that he might be drowned." and that is all about the loss of the breath of life, I suppose it deserves to be included to round off the infamy

And to conclude, let's be clear about what I'm talking about without euphemisms or snarky commentary, your taxes are paying for scenes like this, the only difference is that under erustication, the burly guards and dogs are not American unlike in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo. The techniques might even be grimmer, if you can imagine that.

[Update] a little too shocking for some, hence a link... Dog and Prisoner See also:

• The Immoral Relativists of the Bush Administration
• On The Importance of Biting Satire

File under: erustication, Extraordinary Rendition, CIA, neocons, rogues, torture, policy, usa, CIA, politics, excess, waste, bolton, The Italian Job, neologism, human rights, Italy, B-movie, Berlusconi, Pinochet, grim, Chile, Strange Bedfellows, Nixon, Kissinger, toli

London's Got Soul

So I'm about 5 weeks behind on everything and indeed it is ironic that today is the day I was about to begin blogging on my recent London trip. As I wait for a number of friends to respond to my increasingly frantic attempts to reach them (members of my family are all safe and a cousin is somehow trying to make it home), the phone system can't cope and, as in 2001, I'm relying on the more resilient internet, email and instant messaging and the web.

London has got more soul than any town I've lived in. Friends and family alike have remarked on how refreshed I was when I returned from that 4 day expedition on that Bank Holiday weekend at the end of May. There's a reason that the Olympics are going to be held there (despite the evident payola deployed by Chirac on behalf of Paris' bid) and a reason why the nihilists have now attacked it. But in talking with family members and listening to the news, it is clear that Londoners are stoic types. I too lived under the depredations of the IRA in the 80s and 90s so instead of wallowing in the undoubted horror of the moment, I'm going to be celebrating the flavour of the place. Expect more on London in the next couple of weeks in what I'm calling the London's Got Soul Trilogy.

The only loot I managed to get from the 4 day trip:

• A stack of newspapers (and tabloids for my cousins)
• 3 packets of tea (Tetleys, Twinings English Breakfast and Earl Grey)
• 10 novels including the latest from Tom Sharpe
• 1 Noir magazine for The Girlfriend
• 1 Drifter chocolate bar
• 1 Lion chocolate bar
• £10 at the National Lottery, my first ever win
• 283 photos
• Friends, family and a lot of soul

The London's Got Soul Trilogy

1. Catford Bridge
2. Bullet From A Gun
3. Kente, Lace And Champagne

I'll update this spot with the blog journalism but for now you can peruse the photographic record:

• London 2005, A Family Odyssey
• Catford Bridge
  South London's got soul.
• London Eye
  The best £25 my mum and I have spent in a long while.
  
• London Bridge Clink

This became part of The London Bombings Collection

File under: London, England, soul, life, friends, family, flavour, travel, journalism, immigration, culture, toli

Koranteng's Toli On The Radio

So Christopher Lydon called me up at 1pm yesterday wanting me to be on his radio show that evening to discuss the G8 summit, Live 8, Africa, debts, Ghana etc.

This came from out of the blue but I guess that's what having a blog and writing about all manner of things will do; one's jaundiced prose will occasionally hit fertile soil. I believe Ethan, who called in to the program also had something to do with making that connection, my first foray into punditry.

It was an hour long show and I was in the studio with Chris and Calestous Juma, a Kenyan professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. The Girlfriend was along for moral support and watched from the control room so I later got a fuller version of the way the show was put together.

Lydon's program is called Open Source and the topic was ostensibly Is Aid Enough?.

You can download an mp3 of the show (it's a big file 24MB, but it should stream in your browser).

I'm surprised I came off okay... I suspect I'm better on the written page than in person. Mostly I was hungry. For some reason, the only thing I had eaten all day was a bar of candy I picked up just before we got to the studio... I don't think it was just nerves, my stomach really was growling.

At a certain point, it seemed that the discussion was turning into a dichotomy of NGOs or universities/technology which I found discomfiting since those are not the only alternatives facing Africa. As an unknown quantity on my first gig as a pundit, I didn't want to jump in and change the frame of the conversation. I'm a little diffident and there's also the respect for elders aspect, in retrospect I should have been a little bolder.

I would have liked to have a couple of women in the mix to bring wider viewpoints to the table. For example, Sokari Ekine of Black Looks, would have brought a far more nuanced dialog, although it turns out that she is in Spain and not Boston like I had long thought. When Chris called and asked for suggestions for what he billed as a dinner party conversation on Africa, I was a little at a loss to point out those others who I read and enjoy. I guess the onus would be on folks like me to have 5 names at the tip of the tongue so that those voices would be called on in the same way that I was picked up into punditry...

I think I made a couple of cogent points during the program which discussed Africa, luggage, aid, debt, cell phones, radio, universities and various other things.

On Luggage

Africans typically travel with huge amounts of luggage - we have lots of responsibilities to our extended families. When I was a teenager, I once had to carry a television as hand luggage for an aunt of mine, she didn't even blink when the airline agent was almost incredulous that she would make a youngster attempt to carry that beast. My aunt simply wasn't about to pay any excess luggage fees and it worked, the agent took pity on me and checked in that piece for free. Another aunt used to say as she packed what seemed like the world into her suitcase,

"You just have to make sure you don't show the strain when you carry the bag."

Thus I mentioned the following.

• The luggage allowance on British Airways flights from London to Ghana is 40 lbs for economy fares and 60 lbs if you travel business class.
• The normal trans-Atlantic allowance is 70 lbs for economy fares on all airlines (say London to Boston).
• On the other hand, on British Airways flights from London to Lagos, Nigeria, the allowance is now 120 pounds per piece.

"It’s a matter of pricing power. They [the Nigerians] have the numbers, they have the economic activity, and because of that, British Airways, which 5 years ago did not even allow you to get frequent flyer miles to travel to Africa, now not only do that, but now for Nigeria, they will let you have almost double the luggage allowance that trans-Atlantic flights would have. So the Nigerians are moving."

I truly believe this. Ghana might be a current darling of the international community but with a population of 20 million, we simply do not have the kind of internal market that will allow us to weather oil at $60 a barrel like the US is doing without much pain. We are "helped" now that many of our neighbours are basket cases, and consequently this focuses a lot of development activity on us, but ultimately we'll never have the kind of pricing power that 100 million Nigerians will have.

I didn't mention the other statistic that underlies my point about Nigeria moving: the installation of 1 million cell phone lines in Nigeria in the past year. And anyone who has had to deal with the acumen of Nigerians in whatever sphere knows that if that society decides to advance, it will change in very short order. It will still be difficult, unwieldy and disorderly, but it will move and possibly even faster than India or China will.

In my Strange Bedfellows and the Journalistic Impulse piece, I asked

"Why can't we be like the Indians for whom it increasingly makes a lot of sense to stay put back home or to even head back from abroad?"

Chris picked up on that and pressed me to address that very same point; it's a question that I ponder daily but have no satisfactory answer for.

I alluded to my manifesto about what is taking place in many African countries and you'll notice nary a mention of aid, debt or the West, even though all those can play a part in the answer

The messy business of development is about countries where three centuries of history are simultaneously taking place. The challenge is to creatively find ways to move the laggards into this century and the next. Giving goat herders mobile phones is only a first step.

I managed to get in a couple of customary toli zingers during the program:

"It takes two to do the corruption tango"

when the discussion inevitably turned to charity, handouts and rogues. The corruption tango is something I addressed in passing earlier on. It deserves a fuller treatment at some point. Right after that comment, someone called in (an American businessman) talking about trying to do business in Nigeria and how everyone wanted handouts and paraphrasing here "how he had to pay if he wanted to get anything done" and the "mentality of the people on the street". The juxtaposition was inspired and all credit is due to David Miller who is a great producer. A great corrective was then supplied by Ethan who mentioned that in all his dealings, and there have been many, he has never paid any bribes.
And:

"I’ve never seen money return from Swiss banks."

Despite the amount of shaming that the Swiss and others have endured in recent years (at the expense of the Holocaust lobby and others), I can guarantee you that the bulk of Mobutu, Savimbi or Abacha's money (let alone what we know about General Pinochet's dealings with Riggs bank and the like) will never be seen in their native countries, it is destined to be played with by Swiss and American bankers. I hope to be proved wrong but if you believe that all the money will be repatriated perhaps you're still waiting for the discovery of Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Anyway it was a great experience, I want to do more...

It's funny, I'm more interested in the process of putting the show together than on the show itself. So I was completely at ease in the studio or chatting with Chris. As I've mentioned before, I've seen my mum do this countless times: at 1pm call around and try to put together a show for the evening - figure out who's in town, try to gather names of "interesting" folks, sounding them out quickly to see if they can talk, if they are quotable, quick-witted or ponderous all the while thinking about what the framing device will be etc.

In many ways the conversation I had when Chris cold-called me was even more interesting than what was ultimately broadcast, and looser also because there wasn't a particular angle that he had in mind. As you might know I too have a roving mind... We have a shared love of journalism in general, and radio in particular, and it was a great thing to see him at work. I think I mentioned the impact that mobile phones and FM radio stations had on ensuring clean elections in Ghana in the 2000 elections. It takes a lot of nerve to steal ballot boxes if your car license plates and description are likely to be phoned in and broadcast on various FM stations. I have long been a fan of his interviewing style and it seems that he got a lot out of his time in Ghana. I hope to continue the conversations we begun.

I believe I had the last word in the program; the question was something about what one would say if one was able to have 30 seconds with President Bush at the G8 summit. I started to say something about wanting "a level playing field" in world affairs but midway through my sentence, reality struck me, a level playing field is a tall order in the light of manifest destiny or The Long Thief in the Night. Thus I cut my thought short and simply ended with

"Just listen."

That's really all that that one can hope for from them. Lots of people have opinions on Africa, and many are quick to pontificate and prescribe solutions. But it would be good to hear the breadth of ideas that come from the continent itself; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's is only one of many. That's what makes me add my voice to the cacophony of the blogosphere, not that I have any particular insight, but rather that I can add value to the ongoing conversation. Maybe somewhere, someone will indeed "just listen".

Soundtrack for this joint

• Ice T - Radio Suckers
  I love radio, it can be more vital even than almost any medium and Ice T here samples that great line from Public Enemy's Rebel Without A Pause

  Radio Suckers Never Play Me

  Now that there's a little toli on the radio I can't complain
• Video might have killed the radio star as Buggles proclaimed but blogging is reinventing her as Chris Lydon is showing with Open Source. It's a lot of fun.
• Musiq - Juslisen
  Are you listening Messers Bush, Blair, Chirac and Schroeder? Is this a conversation or is it just one party talking?

See also: Chris Lydon Radio Toli

File under: Chris Lydon, Calestous Juma, WGBH, Open Source, radio, Africa, Cambridge, Boston, G8, aid, Ghana, debt, corruption, globalization, global voices, web, blogging, politics, economics, toli