On March 4, voters in Togo for the first time ever will have a choice between two young-ish leaders, as a new generation of politicians is slowly emerging from the shadows of the aging post-colonial crop of politicians. At least they are supposed to be able to choose. Considering that the election committee that oversees the contest is deeply enmeshed with the ruling party RPT, they can hardly be considered impartial. Nevertheless, this is an interesting and important election because it pits two interesting candidates against each other: President Faure Essozimna Gnassingbé and the main opposition candidate Jean-Pierre Fabre.

They both represent a new generation of politicians, albeit at different ends of the political spectrum. Faure Gnassingbe just took over the family business of ruling Togo after the death of his dad Gnassingbe Eyadema in 2005. Eyadema made a name for himself for staging Africa’s first post-colonial coup d’etat in 1963, and killing Togo’s first and only freely elected president Sylvanus Olympio. Eyadema ruled Togo with an iron fist for over 40 38 years. His rule included all the classic ingredients of African dictatorship: purges and prison-camps, tanks in the streets and death squads knocking down doors in the middle of the night. Under Faure’s management Togo has become much less repressive and some of the ethnic tension has abated. Still, last April (while we were visiting Togo) Faure had his brother Kpatcha arrested for treason. Kpatcha was charged with attempting to overthrow Faure and was locked away. Also the last election was pretty much a farce, and this time around, too, several candidates had their papers rejected on flimsy pretenses, probably because they were considered too popular. Yet – in comparison to his dad, Sorbonne educated Faure presents a new approach to dictatorship. An new, gentler dictator.

Fabre, 14 years older than Faure, is still downright youthful among the anciens combattants of Togo’s fragmented opposition, like 74-year-old Olympio, 80-year-old Emmanuel Bob-Akitani, 74-year-old Edem Kodjo, or 67-year-old Yawovi Agboyibo. No disrespect to these men. They have fought their battles valiantly, and, I’m sure, in the best interest of their country. But they also had to spend most of their lives in exile – thanks to Eyadema and his thugs. Fabre, however, returned to Togo after his studies in France, taught at the Universite du Benin in Lome, edited several newspapers, and was founding member of Olympios UFC in 1992. Since then, Fabre was one of the opposition’s main work horses, albeit in the shadow of Gilchrist Olympio,  president of the UFC and son of Togo’s first president Sylvanus Olympio. Yes – the guy Faure Gnassingbe’s dad killed in 1963. And now that Olympio junior himself is too old and too ill to run, it is time for Fabre to step out of his shadow and run for president.

I think it is unlikely that the opposition will actually win. The reality is that a fractured opposition and a UFC fraught with internal disagreements is hardly in a position to wrest power from the deeply entrenched RPT and the “heir to the throne” Faure Gnassingbe who is backed by the military establishment. Yet, there is movement in the political landscape. A new generation is taking over and things will change. If Fabre can mobilize the voters and the international observers can prevent egregious fraud, then maybe a stronger showing of the opposition can wrest some concessions from Gnassingbe Junior. Maybe they can begin to loosen the grip of the Gnassingbe clan. And maybe, just maybe, Faure can eventually become the Gorbachev of Togo.

[Correction – Eyadema ruled Togo for 38 years, not “over 40.” After he killed Olympio, his associate Nicolas Grunitzky ran Togo from 1963 – 1967]

The last few days we had a bit of a spring-teaser and I was able to go out and run on some new and interesting ground. Friday (50F/10C sunny, dry) I did another lunch run in town, from my office to my favorite bar. And today (65F/18C sunny, dry) I did my first real trail run on the 3-mile Ridge Trail at Little River Park. Some of the sidewalks in the old neighborhoods in Durham are just as challenging to run on as the trails in the woods – old tree roots have pushed up the asphalt or concrete and some sidewalks are cleaner than others. Whether you run in the woods or on the city, you really have to be alert and pay attention to where you put your feet and how you put them there. And that’s part of the fun.

The Ridge Trail at Little River is not terribly technical overall – a nice, single-track wooded hiking trail that varies between gravel, leaf-litter, pine needles, some muddy patches and some rocky areas. It’s mostly rolling hills with a couple of steeper descents and climbs. Along the river, the trail is sandy and soft, which feels really nice. The biggest hazards I found are pointy rocks hidden in the leaf litter and pine cones. I learned quickly to tread lightly on the leaf litter, because you often just don’t know what’s hiding underneath. And those damn pine cones! Pointy, sneaky booby traps! I think I have one of those spikes stuck in my foot right now. Still, running barefoot in the woods is fun. The rocks and roots teach you to lift your feet. The pine cones teach you … to look out for pine cones. And if you tread lightly you glide quietly through the woods like a deer.

Last Thursday around lunchtime a truck with a huge industrial freezer crashed into the Gregson St railroad trestle – the “truck guillotine”  as some are calling it. This time I was there and I had my camera with me, so in addition to the actual crash footage I also shot some footage of the crash aftermath and the “extraction” of the truck from under the bridge. Well, technically it was really wedged under the crash beam the NCDOT railroad division installed in 2003. If you’re not familiar with my collection of truck crash videos, you should know that this is a regular occurrence at this underpass. Enjoy :)

Also, for the record, I missed a crash that happened on Dec. 26 – I was out of the office for while around the holidays, and by the time I found out about the crash the video file had been overwritten. Sorry …

The North Carolina constitution actually bars atheists from public office – in Article VI, Section 8:

Sec. 8.  Disqualifications for office.

The following persons shall be disqualified for office:

First, any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God.

(…)

NC Constitution, Article VI, Section 8

This, and all other religious tests for public office were invalidated by the Supreme Court of the United States in the 1961 decision in Torcaso v. Watkins. That means that the people who are trying to deny Asheville City Councilman Cecil Bowell and the citizens of Asheville their electoral rights have really no legal leg to stand on. They argue that because Bowell is an atheist he is not eligible for public office in NC. Of course the SCOTUS invalidated that  bigoted “argument” half a century ago. (Full story on Alternet)

But it’s time the NC Constitution be updated for the 21st Century. Nonsense like this should be repealed and struck from the books, once and for all, so that hard-working, honest godless folk can serve in North Carolina without getting hassled by the hypocrites and bigots.

It was bad enough when the convoy of  Togo’s national football team was machine-gunned by a rebel army in Angola’s Cabinda Province as the team was traveling to the Cup of African Nations. Two staff members and the Angolan driver died. Several are still in the hospital and it seems clear that the whole team was traumatized by this tragedy.

But the spat that followed between the Togolese government and the Confederation of African Football (CAF) had consequences that added insult to injury for the team. After some finger-pointing, and heated phone calls between the Togolese government and CAF officials, Togo’s President ordered the national team to come home. Saturday, the CAF issues a statement that Togo is banned from the next 2 CAN tournaments and imposed a fine of $50,000 on Togo’s team. CAF’s rationale for this decision is that the team had decided to play, but the Togolese government intervened and ordered them home. Political interference is a very touchy issue in African sports, where most national football federations depend on government funds, and the CAF has very strict rules prohibiting political meddling in CAF events.

However, neither the Togo’s Football Federation nor the CAF are renown for their diplomatic skill, and so it seems to me that some big egos on both sides got bruised in the aftermath of the tragedy in Cabinda, and now they are using the team in a stupid power play. Sadly, no one will win this game. Togo’s football functionaries managed, yet again, to get the Hawks into non-football related headlines and the CAF looks like a bunch of total jerks for punishing a team that was attacked on the way to a CAF event. AND they look stupid for issuing that press release a day before the CAN final. That way they had BOTH the tournament opener AND the final overshadowed by headlines that make them look bad.

Way to manage the image of African football.

The team and their staff and families meanwhile mourn those they lost. I am sure it causes them additional grief to be treated like this – as pawns in a powerplay of some bruised bureaucrat’s egos.

The BBC’s Pier Edwards has some interesting insight into one of those egos:

When I asked Caf President Issa Hayatou earlier this month whether he regretted bringing the Nations Cup to Angola following the Togolese tragedy, his answer was enlightening.

For the Cameroonian proceeded to explain that there was no real problem having only three teams in Group B after Togo’s withdrawal as it had happened before (when Nigeria withdrew from South Africa in 1996).

At that point, an aide came over to explain that the question had actually been about the deaths – whereupon Hayatou addressed the attack with little empathy.

BBC – Piers Edwards Blog – 30 January 2010

Seems like that is a pretty typical attitude among football functionaries – the players are just pawns, and it’s all “the show must go on.”

But maybe there are some football officials out there who can muster some empathy and will invite Togo to their regional tournament. One of the comments to Edward’s story points out that CONMEBOL has invited other nations to the Copa America. I personally think that – if this decision stands – UEFA would make a bold and very positive statement inviting Togo to the next Euro Cup. I know, I know … but a guy can dream, right?

P.S. – congratulations to Egypt … and congrats to the Black Stars for making the Pharaos sweat in the final :-)

On January 21, the Supreme Court of the United States produced a ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that removes any regulation of what corporations can say, and when they can “say” it to influence elections in the United States. Corporations are now free to pump as much cash into the political process as they desire, whenever they desire. The majority’s rationale for this ruling is based on the legal notion that corporations are “persons” under the law and that therefore the First Amendment right to free speech applies to such persons. And, as we all know now, speech = money.

This ruling reverses 100 years of legal precedent and pulls the rug out from 100 years of efforts to stem the tide of corporate cash in the American political process.  This ruling will drown what was left of Democracy in this country in a flash flood of cash from the rich coporate giants in America – the likes of Walmart, Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil, Google, GE, AT&T … etcetera.

If you have been following the health care reform debacle last year, you witnessed the healthcare companies fighting against health care reform – with one arm tied behind their back.

Were you bothered by the recklessness of the Wall-Street speculators who almost drove this country’s economy over the cliff? Were you put off by their complete shamelessness to accept tax-payer bailout money only to pay themselves bonuses from these funds? That was the banking industry manipulating Washington with one arm tied behind its back.

The SCOTUS just untied their arms, and and the arms of all corporate interests, and handed them the keys to Washington. This ruling paves the way for a hostile takeover of the US government by corporate America – a corporatist coup of sorts – in the next couple of elections. Lobbyists can now march into any elected official’s office and tell them how to vote, because they can threaten to march into their district or state and unleash a firestorm of propaganda that will end that politician’s career.

In addition, the SCOTUS left wide open the important question of the status of US subsidiaries of foreign corporations. It is very conceivable that the US subsidiaries of Chinese, Venezuelan or Saudi state-owned corporations (to name just a few examples) could wield significant influence on US elections and government.

Fundamentally, though, the absurdity of the legal notion of personhood for corporations has to be explored. A corporation is an abstract, legal entity, that has exactly the rights that the law confers upon it. No more, no less. It has no inherent moral right – no inalienable or natural rights. Incorporating is nowhere near as exciting and magical as birth (unless you’re a lawyer). Dissolving a corporation is no more murder than putting a car in a crusher, and I know more cars that have a personality than corporations.

It makes a lot more sense to discuss the inalienable rights and personhood  of trees than those of corporations. A tree growing on US soil is a singular, natural being and as  such it probably has more natural right to protection as a “person” under the constitution than a corporation. A corporation is an  artificial, virtual entity that can change shape faster than a shape-shifter, and that can move off-shore with the stroke of a pen. The tree has a firm allegiance to this country because it is literally rooted in American soil. A corporation’s allegiance is solely to its owners or shareholders. So many of the natural creatures in this country just barely have the right to exist, but they are not afforded any “inalienable rights” under the constitution. Yet, these are real, living, breathing creatures on American soil. Not some abstract legal construct that really only exists to facilitate commerce.

As a person, I find the notion of personhood for corporations offensive. This absurd ruling makes a mockery of the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. It effectively legalizes bribery and political blackmail. This ruling has now cemented the Corporate States of America – with a government of the people, by the people, for the corporations.

… this year has been a bit of a pisser!

Most of all in Haiti, of course. Please contribute what you can afford to relief organizations who work in Haiti. My favorite is Doctors without Borders; they seem quite efficient, appropriately god-less, and they were helping in Haiti before the earthquake. And also reach out to the Haitians in your community.

Just days before that, rebels in Angola carried out a the deadly attack on the convoy of the  Togo Nat’l Team on it’s way to the CAN in Angola

But also the crazy, unusually cold weather, the death of health care reform, the demise of AirAmerica and the Supreme Court’s slaughter of American Democracy (that pale, skinny child of the American Revolution) on the altar of Corporatism. Damn it!

Once again, the idea that a new year brings some sense of renewal has been thoroughly debunked. 2010 picked up where 2009 left off – hang on … it’ll be a wild ride.

2010 should be a great year for African football, but so far it has come off to a bad start, after Friday’s attack on the bus of Togo’s National Team in Angola’s Cabinda Province. The team was traveling to the CAN venue in Cabinda City in a bus with a police escort. The convoy was attacked by Cabinda’s separatist rebels, the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC). A gun battle ensued between the FLEC and the police escort in which the Angolan bus driver and two of the team’s staff died. This horrible attack has cast a shadow of security concerns over the Cup of African Nations, which began today.

It appears as though the organizers made a mistake locating a venue for the event in the troubled province of Cabinda. The organizers said they did not expect anyone traveling overland to Cabinda Province (which is separated from the rest of Angola), and they insist that the city is perfectly safe. Yet, this incident makes me question their judgment with regards to the safety of the players. Cabinda Province has a long tradition of separatist ambitions, and the FLEC has a long history of guerrilla attacks for the cause of independence. So either the Angolan organizers totally underestimated the potential for violence, or they ignored it. Either way, this does not bode well for the CAN, and especially the events in Cabinda. Togo decided to withdraw the team and send the players home, as it appears that the organizers were not able to convince them that they would be safe.

Quite unfairly, this tragedy has also cast a shadow over the World Cup in South Africa this year. Clearly, the situation in South Africa is very different from Angola, and from Cabinda in particular. But to many outside Africa this raises questions about the wisdom of locating a major international event anywhere on the African continent. To many, Africa is synonymous with social unrest and violent conflict, to a large degree because that’s all the media ever report about Africa.  Would anyone ever seriously consider not locating a major international event in, say, North America, because a terrorist tried to blow up a US-bound plane?

Of course, South Africa is not Germany, Japan, Korea or the United States. The crime statistics are a lot worse and traffic is more accident-prone than in those countries. I can say that from personal experience, having driven in South Africa, as well as all over Europe, the US and large parts of North and West Africa. But I think that South Africa also has the resources to deal with these issues and make sure that visitors are safe. I think the biggest challenge will be to beef up the emergency response resources. Police, medical and fire-fighting resources seemed sorely lacking in South Africa, especially in the countryside. And SA organizers have to ensure that when an accident occurs, well-trained first responders are available in reasonable time.

Despite the tragedy in Cabinda, I think there is still hope for South Africa to show the world a different side of Africa, and for African football for have a great, successful year.

For now, however, we extend our condolences to the families of the victims of the attack, and to the Togolese team.

… took a lot of energy. This was not a bad year for me, but it did wear me out a bit. The first half was dominated by our trip to Togo and Ghana. It took a lot of preparation to get ready. The trip itself was great, but quite exhausting. Work turned a bit hellish last summer, as we were tasked with replacing the entire server infrastructure at our lab and replacing our Netware systems with Microsoft and Linux. Finally, the holiday shopping season at Laura’s store was intense and tiring. Laura worked long hours and I tried to hold down the fort at home. All in all, though, it was not a bad year. We’re all healthy, we both still have jobs, the kids are doing well in school, and we got to do some pretty cool stuff.

The coolest thing we got to do last year was our trip to Togo and Ghana – back to the village in Togo where Laura and I met all these years ago. It was a lot of fun to show Jacob and Julia the place they had heard about so much, and about which they had so very much no concept. And our friends in the village were happy to see us, and our children, and to renew the connection. We spent 10 days around Easter in the village, and so there were already many celebrations planned. Easter is a time when many folks return from the city where they live and work to their ancestral villages. So many major celebrations, like weddings and memorials, take place during that time.  Our arrival called for yet more celebration and drinking and speeches and feasts and libations for the ancestors. It was fun, it was intense, and it was really interesting.

Perhaps the most interesting thing to me was how relatively easy it really is now to travel to West Africa from the U.S. Ghana has really pretty good infrastructure and the 11 hr flight from JFK to Kotoka is long, but not brutal, like the flight to JoBurg (SA). I think that if you’re in the US, and you want to visit Africa, go to Ghana – no question. Ghana has pretty good infrastructure, low crime rates, decent resources and is politically and economically stable. Of course there are many many other absolutely worthwhile destinations around this vast, warm and rich continent. But from the US, Ghana is the closest and safest.

Talking about travel – I’d like to point out that in 2009 I made 750 Gal (3000 liters) of fuel from used fryer oil. That amount of biodiesel replaced roughly 17,000 pounds of fossil CO2 regular diesel fuel would have produced. So our relatively carbon-neutral modes of every-day transportation somewhat balance out the roughly 16,000 pound CO2 footprint for our unusually distant travel destination. Most of this (15,000 #) is the plane trip. We drove our borrowed BMW less than 1,000 miles in country and we only had A/C a couple of days at the beginning and the end of the trip.

Work was a bit of a drag last summer. Long hours, lots of weekend work, several nerve-wracking migrations. But all in all it went well. We had to rip out our old Netware servers and replace them with Windows and Linux machines. The OS switch was not the real issue, though. The real challenge was the change away from eDirectory to Microsoft’s Active Directory, and the fact that there were simply no resources allocated to train the people who had to make the switch. We were basically supposed to implement A/D security by trial and error (and Google).

An interesting snag we ran into happened during our mail server migration from Netware-based Netmail to Linux-based Postfix. The folks who sell Netmail make a big deal of how the product is all “standards-based” and it is, but all messages sent ot more than 5 recipients on the system are not stored in the standard(s-based) mbox format, but in a separate, centralized “Single Copy Message Store (SCMS)” which is very efficient, but makes the migration much, much more complicated.

Anyway – after a summer of trial and error and intense use of Google, we now run several VMWare-based virtual Linux (Ubuntu) and WIndows machines on a couple of Ubuntu host systems. And we’re now using Duke’s Enterprise A/D – for better or for worse.

But enough with the geek talk.

Sports: Jacob and I diligently (more or less) pursued or martial arts training in Shito-Ryu Karatedo and we’re working on getting ready for our next belt test. I built Julia a pair of stilts and she can now walk the driveway up and down on her stilts. Jacob has shown quite an interest in archery, so he got an archery set for Christmas. Let’s see if he sticks with it.

As I have discussed previously, I discovered barefoot running last summer, and I alternate that with my martial arts training. I guess at my age, I just need something to keep me on my toes (other than my kids). As soon as I took off my shoes, I got it. It’s just so much more fun to be able to feel the ground you’re treading on. Of course you’re also much more vulnerable to that ground, and so you have to be quite alert while you’re running and avoid any sharp or otherwise harmful objects. And you have to run gently and tread lightly, so as to avoid injury. Yet you can learn to run very swiftly and efficiently that way. Right now, I don’t run much because it’s too friggin’ cold (I know – I’m a whimp). But as soon as ithe temperatures are above 40 F (5C) again, I’m out running again. I have to stay in shape because I want to run the Doughman in May barefoot – especially since I could not get my act together for the 2009 edition. I have a team together for next year, and we will be ready.

What else were we up to?

Read the rest of this entry »

I am getting cold feet. I knew this was going to happen – it’s the fundamental reason we do wear shoes. They protect our feet from the elements. And I am a wimp that way … I hate it when my feet are cold. Cold, wet feet is the worst. So yesterday I did just that – I got my feet really cold and wet. Ughh!

It snowed here on Friday, and yesterday the temperature was just around freezing all day. The roads in the neighborhood were wet from melting snow and partly covered in slush. Great day for running barefoot. Not really, but I figured I’d try it anyway. I know I can run barefoot reasonably comfortably down to about 40 F (4.4 Deg. Celsius) air temperature, especially if it’s sunny and the sun warms the pavement a bit. So this was an opportunity to push that limit. And it was also an opportunity to see if my Sanuks would work as running shoes to help keep my feet warm in such conditions.

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A few weeks ago our bathroom flooded and the cheap, beige linoleum flooring was completely destroyed. So we ripped out the linoleum and we ended up ripping out the vanity and the toilet as well. We got new bamboo flooring and a new dual-flush toilet from Costco, and a great bamboo vanity from bathandgranite4less.com. Last week we got a faucet, towel hangers and a light from Home Depot and we put it all together.  On Saturday I spent 3 hours on the threshold and some smaller wood working stuff and now it’s finished!

Except for the biodiesel production, this was so far our biggest DIY project in the new house. We really like the way it turned out. The bamboo looks great and seems like a really sturdy material. And it’s a fast-growing, low-impact resource.This is also a bit of an experiment – we’ll see how the bamboo flooring holds up in the bathroom. Then we’ll decide whether to install more bamboo around the house.

(more pictures below)

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Less than Six Months to the Doughman – the race is on May 29 – so I figured I’d kick off Doughman Season  with a nice lunch-run to Dain’s Place. Oh yeah, baby! Lunchtime rolled around on Friday, I got into my running shorts and jogged the 1.1 Miles to 9th Street. Barefoot, of course.

Pretty interesting, running in town. This was my first time, and it’s a completely different experience from running in our semi-rural neighborhood or along a highway. You really have to watch your step. There’s dog poo, broken  glass, traffic lights … however, most of the run to 9th Street is along a nice trail on Duke’s East Campus. So it’s really not bad.

But running after a healthy meal – wow, that’s something else! Biking after scarfing down a meal was not so bad – you just have to will your muscles through the first mile or two. But running is hard. Your legs feel like lead and your stomach is filled with hot ball bearings! I had a cheese steak sandwich (with blue cheese and jalapenos) and a Seeing Double for lunch and I let that settle for about 30 Minutes. On the run back I was considerably slower – but that’s why I am starting to train now …

Photo of Scott Jurek and Arnulfo Quimare in Copper Canyon, 2006. Courtesy Luis Escobar.

Do humans suck at running? Apparently that’s what many experts in sports medicine think. Or is the human body actually perfectly adapted to endurance running and a lot of the running injuries are due to bad technique and expensive running shoes?

In his book  “Born to Run”  Christopher McDougall explores these questions, and from the title you can guess to what conclusion he comes. But as much as this book is about laying out an argument that running fast and very long distances actually shaped the human body on an evolutionary scale, its also a breathless, engaging tale of a personal quest with a colorful cast of lightfooted characters. Essentially the book chronicles the history of the Copper Canyon Ultra Marathon which every year joins members of the Raramuri (Tarahumara) native tribe with members of the gringo ultra-marathon tribe in a 50 mile (80 KM) race in the rugged Copper Canyon in Mexico.

Besides being an easy, fun read, this book also presents an important argument that running is a very natural activity for humans. It complements the “minimalist” or back-to-the-roots ideas of barefooters like Ken Bob and almost-Barefoot Ted. McDougall presents quite a bit of evidence that all the high-tech shoes with support and cushioning are ruining runners’ feet. His argument jives perfectly with the barefooters – we don’t need fancy shoes, we need proper technique, we need to take care of our feet and we need a good attitude for healthy, successful running exercise.

Not sure if this is funny or just sad … a middle school in Goldsboro, NC had the brilliant idea to try selling grades as a school fundraiser. Yes – $20 gets you 20 point on your next test. That can turn a B into an A or an F(ail) into a D (=pass).

Jay Leno thought it was outrageously funny and turned this story into a joke.

” A – it sends the wrong message to children … B – it penalizes poor children who don’t have 20 bucks … and C – whatever happened to cheating off the kid next to you?”

I think it’s a bit sad that the principal and a group of parents thought this would be a good idea. I am not (sadly) totally surprised, though. Everything seems to be for sale these days. And the public schools are really, really desperate for money!

Once the plan became public, the school district administration stopped it and directed the school to return any funds collected.

(For you dang for’ners: U.S. public schools regularly try to collect money from the community [=the parents] by making the children sell cookies, magazines or misc. useless crap. The children are enticed to do this by prizes for certain amounts of crap sold.  Of course all of this is run by an entire “school-fundraising” industry, which skims the profits and chucks the schools some money after the children sold the useless crap for free. Perfect example of “trickle-down” economics.)

Of course the schools are forced to try to raise money because they are so underfunded. So I guess the folks at Rosewood Middle School decided to sell the one real asset a school has: Grades. Integrity. Decency. Morality (?).

Twenty years after the border between East Germany and West Germany was breached, we now know that in that fateful press conference Schabowski simply read the wrong memo. But after Schabowski, a member of the Central Commitee of the SED,  had announced that all travel restrictions had been lifted for all East Germans – effective immediately – there was no turning back. At least not without violence. And I suppose that is really the miracle of the 9th November 1989. One can easily imagine an East German border guard commander ordering his troops to fire. Instead, though, they finally gave in to the thousands of people who were demanding to cross the border and opened the gates. First at Bornholmer Strasse, then everywhere.

I suspect that they saw that the winds of history were blowing in their face and that they might just be held accountable by someone else than the Stalinists who used to give them orders. They – the SED bosses – did not really get it yet. Schabowski himself was just like “oops” but he did not realize what had just happened. Yes, the big guys like to take credit for taking down the wall. Bush Sr, Helmut “Birne” Kohl and Gorbatchow like to pat their own shoulders for “taking down the wall.” But to me it looks like the crack that breached the wall and brought the Stalinist regime down was just a clerical error. “Ooops – wrong memo, guys.” Schabowski then just plowed ahead with his “effective immediately” bit.

The thing about this is that his announcement contradicted the orders of the border guards. They heard his pronouncement on the news. But they still had orders to shoot anyone who tried to leave. Their superiors tried to contain the situation by ordering the border guards to tell people to come back tomorrow. Yeah right! Then they started letting people cross and marked their passports – with the intention of refusing them re-entry. But this was too slow and thousands of people were converging on the border crossings, surging toward the boom that was still held shut by machinegun-toting border guards.

This was going to be the moment of truth. And I like to think that his humanity was the motivation in Harald Jäger to decide to open the boom at the Checkpoint Bornholmer Strasse and let the people go.

That was it. One after the other the border crossings were opened and the border guards were watching as thousands and thousands of people started surging across the border they had so faithfully guarded as a Stalinist bulwark against the evils of Capitalism and Fascism. I wonder what went through their heads as the relevance of their work was swept aside by history. The wall was breached 20 years ago – effective immediately – it fell and with it the German Democratic Republic. This was the end of the Cold War and the GDR was incorporated into the Federal Republic of Germany 3rd October 1990.

Congratulations to Ghana’s U20 football team!

At the U20 Worldcup final in Cairo on Friday Ghana beat 4-time champion Brazil despite being one player down due to a red card in the 37th Minute. Neither team scored during regulation time and overtime, and so penalty kicks decided this game. This is the first time Ghana won this tournament and having accomplished this historic feat on African soil is especially significant.

Ghana’s exuberant coach, Sellas Tetteh, said victory would inspire the continent before next year’s World Cup in South Africa, and also help African teams lose the label of being physically strong but tactically weak.

“This is a wonderful historic event for Africa. Now Africans can believe in themselves that they can do it,” Tetteh said.

“We’ve shown them the way. Africa will surely have a lot of hope and confidence (at the World Cup) that they can do it like we did here.”

Ghanaweb.com, Sunday, 18 Oct. 2009

This is a very significant feat for Ghana and for football in Africa. Developing new talent is absolutely critical to success. I know that this victory will build even more excitement for next year’s Senior Worldcup in South Africa across the continent.

Last weekend I made batch #40, which means that over the last 3 years I turned 2000 Gallons (8000 liters) of fryer oil into fuel for my cars, using my fuel production setup in the basement. Currently I collect oil from these restaurants in Durham: ElRodeo, Piazza Italia (at Brightleaf), Dain’s Place and the Down Under Pub. I share the oil with a friend, who makes fuel for his Ram truck. In an average month we probably collect 200 Gallons of good-quality used oil from all these places. That’s a great energy resource that won’t get trucked away to be turned into lipstick.

Today, I ran 3 one-mile stretches on the beach. Sand is a great training tool because your feet give you instant feedback at every step. On asphalt you get feedback, but sometimes only too late, when you already got that blister. In sand you can feel how deep your feet sink in and where. That tells you at every step whether you’re “pounding” the ground or tip-toeing. I found it interesting to see – on my way back – whether the heels or the toes of my old footprints had been washed out by the water first.  The only problem with sand I found is that it’s easy to get sloppy with your cadence because the ground is soft. But when you hit really soft sand you get back into a nice fast cadence, because you can feel the wasted energy from pounding into the deep sand.

Also, Sand is not boring at all. Every stretch of beach has a bit of a different character. More shells or fewer, softer  sand or harder sand etc…. Avoiding the shells is an interesting exercise – you have to focus on every step. That keeps your mind busy and distracts you from any pain …

Not sure if this is good news or bad news: Trafigura, the company responsible for the Probo Koala toxic waste scandal 3 years ago, settled with the lawyers representing the Ivorian victims for $46 Million – that’s a little over $1,500 per person.

Yes, that’s real money for most folks in Cote d’Ivoire – a bit less than the annual per capita GDP of $1,700 (2008 – #191 of 229 countries). And perhaps that’s about as good as one could expect from the multi-national petro-behemoth Trafigura when it comes to owning up to its responsibility and compensating the victims of its atrocities in West Africa. After all, there is not much precedent for large corporations ruining people’s lives and then owning up to that and making things right. Consider that Trafigura’s annual revenue is roughly equivalent to Cote d’Ivoire’s annual Gross Domestic Product ($33 Billion) – so 46 Million is pocket change for them and this settlement represents little more than a slap on the wrist.

So from that perspective that’s not really justice. A company that hurts thousands and kills dozens of people as a direct result of greed and a callous disregard for life deserves a more severe punishment than a  slap on the wrist. I think these criminals should be put out of business for good and their assets given to the victims and to charity. Dumping hundreds of tons of highly toxic waste into the sewers and waterways of a city does not only violate laws, it is an act so unconscionable and egregious that it should be classified not as a mere crime, but as “terrorism” or “mass murder.”

This is especially true considering Trafigura’s attempts at downplaying this disaster and covering up its responsibility for it, which has been well documented by several investigative reports, specifically by the NY Times, the Guardian and in a thorough documentary by the BBC in May 2009.

Just recently, the BBC found clear evidence that Trafigura knew how toxic the waste was and that its representatives were only interested in the cheapest way to get rid of it:

Trafigura chartered the Probo Koala and while the ship was off the coast of Gibraltar poured tons of caustic soda and a catalyst into the dirty oil to clean it – a rough and ready process known as “caustic washing”.

The method is cheap, but it generates such dangerous waste that it is effectively banned in most places around the world.

The e-mails obtained by Newsnight show that in the months before the waste was dumped the company knew about the difficulties they would face in disposing of the waste.

“This operation is no longer allowed in the European Union, the United States and Singapore” it is “banned in most countries due to the ‘hazardous nature of the waste'”, one e-mail warns.

Another e-mail points out that “environmental agencies do not allow disposal of the toxic caustic”.

The process left a toxic sulphurous sludge in the tanks of the Probo Koala.

BBC Newsnight, 16 September 2009

The emails Newsnight obtained, document clearly the utter disregard of the people in charge of this operation for laws or responsibility and expose their total focus on the cheapest solution to dispose of the toxic waste. Such cynical disregard for the health of others should be punished much more severely.

Next Tuesday, on the sidelines of a meeting of the UN General Assembly, President Obama will meet with several African heads of state for a working breakfast. According to (fr) the Togolese state news website RepublicOfTogo.com, President Faure Gnassingbe has been invited, too. Apparently the criterion for the invitation is troop contributions to UN peacekeeping. Togo contributes more than 800 troops (pdf) to the Blue Helmets – 10 times  the US contribution from a country of 5 Million people. So it seems like the President of Togo should definitely be invited to this meeting with Obama.