The Compound

Most people in this town survive on agriculture. I mean, we ALL survive on agriculture, but in this town people survive directly on agriculture. Sure there is some basic industry, and a bit of imported technology — mostly cell phones — but otherwise people live as they always have, by building their own structures, and eating food harvested by themselves, their families, or by people they know by name.

The Road

On my last day in the village we walked around town greeting and saying goodbye to friends. This involves mostly visiting family compounds, since this is the basic unit of residence in rural Mali. A family compound consists of a number of small buildings and walls of mud, brick or cement. The structures are generally built in a circle, or rectangle, enclosing an open area, which contains one or two mango trees, perhaps a small crop,  a well, and in more prominent villages, a single water spout coming out of the ground, that connects to a rudimentary city water supply. The whole compound is usually the size of a baseball diamond.  The buildings are either mud huts with grass roofs or small concrete buildings with tin roofs: bedrooms, storage, bathrooms. But the most important component of the compound, by  far, isn’t a structure, but is the open area in the center, where four generations of family, in addition to any other compound members who are adopted to the family, congregate at all hours of the day. In this central area many things happen: food is prepared and cooked over coal and eaten, card games are played, familial conflict brews and resolves, business is negotiated, medical care is administered, religious ritual performed… And it all takes place in the open, with the witness and love of all members of the compound. In rural Mali, the living room, dining room, nursery and nursing home are all one place where everyone takes part, and it all happens above the red dirt of Africa and below the common stars.  Who would want to go inside?

Anyways, on my last day we visited a number of compounds. At one visit there was a boy, maybe eight years old, who had an obvious injury on his foot. His older cousin told us that he had been bitten by a snake, a week ago, while working in the fields harvesting

Halloween?

peanuts for his family. His foot didn’t look “ok,” to me, but as we visited with his family he sat quietly and listened to our conversation, as if the world owed him nothing, at the mercy of nature, not completely sure that he would be ok, but not resentful of his fate.  The entire time he waved at his foot as if it were hot…

Snake bites are quite common in rural areas of West Africa, where people spend a lot of time in fields for subsistence, and people often die from them.  If you were to attend a church or mosque on any given week you can be sure to hear several people pleading for help for a family member who has been biten. Nevertheless the boy’s cousin told us that, in this case, he would be ok.

On my way out of town the rain clouds rolled over Mali. The clouds always come in imposingly from the east, Burkina Faso, towards Senegal. Along the drive to the Bamako I watched many small, sad villages roll past, bustling with life while wilting under the wild African rain. I somehow thought of rainy days in rural Idaho, and the small sad farms along similar two lane farm highways.

A night of over priced Indian food (probably the only in Mali) was followed by the inevitable emotional airport goodbyes. Of course one never knows whether their flight will actually leave the Bamako airport as planned (or at all), especially with the discount airlines that I frequently utilize, and after two hours of delay (with no update on as to whether the

Making tea at the bike shop

plane would actually leave)… well… I arrived in Barcelona. Due to the delay I missed my second flight, and I found myself moved to a later flight and, to first class!  After a few minutes atop the hill at Park Güell, mesmerized by the view of the city and the sea, and by a Spanish guitar duo that happened to be practicing behind me, I rushed back to the airport.  Cut to a few hours later, I sit in first class with the taste of fine Swiss chocolate and wine and a gourmet dinner still on my tounge, I looked down on an indescribable view of the french alps, with glaciers snaking down away in every direction from the vaulted peaks, and a thin layer of clouds haloing Mont Blanc as if it were the geographical incarnation of the protestant patron saint of Geneva. But my sublime moment was shattered by the most whiney voice imaginable screeching “but now I can’t see the movie!” …the voice of a young American boy approximately the age of the boy with the snake bite from earlier.

And well, contradictions stirred up around in my brain.

Amadou showing me the Mosque

I am arbitrarily born in a particular geographical region. So why is it possible for me to drop in to the center of West Africa for ten days and fly out aboard a five star restaurant (when I’m not even hungry), but it isn’t legal for an African to risk their life to take a boat across the Mediterranean to Italy? Are these imaginary lines in the earth that we call borders serving as an excuse to uphold a global aristocracy, which is something that western countries suffered many revolutions to eliminate?  Why is the resource-rich continent of Africa still having so much trouble meeting the needs of its citizens sixty years after the end of colonialism?

A few weeks ago I visited a solar power plant in rural Mali, West Africa.  The plant became operational within the last year, replacing mainly gasoline generated power.  The plant is in a small town called Ouelessebougou, which, together with surrounding towns has about 12000 residents, most of whom live off of a few dollar a day.

The plant is actually a hybrid of solar power and gasoline power.  At night, or during a cloudy day, after the battery farm has been depleted, power is switched to gas generators.  Mali has no significant petroleum reserves, and gasoline is about $5USD per gallon, so presumably the investment in the solar field will be economical (not to mention environmental benefits).  One knows when energy is being switched between solar and gas because power is cut to the entire village for a few seconds while the operator turns a giant switch (picture of switch missing).

The distribution of solar and gas power is about 50/50.  On the day that I visited, the town consumed about 6000 KWH of energy, with about 3000 coming from solar and about 3000 coming petroleum (to the best I could estimate from the hand written log books that I looked at).  Assuming that  10% of households in and around Ouelessebougou have access to electricity, this puts their consumption is about 5KWH per day.

By contrast, the average american consumes 238 KWH per day.    This doesn’t represent the total amount of energy consumed, as 90% of energy in Mali comes from wood fuel.  But speaking only of electricity, one can see why the continent is dark.  While Africa benefits from higher intensity sunlight than America or Europe, higher temperatures effect the efficiency of solar panels, and I was told that energy prices have gone up significantly with the inauguration of the power plant, to pay for its construction.

I read on an NGO website  that solar power in sub-saharan Africa would help cut down CO2 emissions as people began cooking with electricity instead of wood and coal.  But of course the people I encountered were more concerned with having access to TV and computers than more environmentally friendly cooking,  a choice I don’t think any of us could criticize.

“The principal lesson we learned from Nuremberg is that a war of aggression — that means, a war in violation of international law, in violation of the UN charter, and not in self-defense — is the supreme international crime, because all the other crimes happen in war.  And every leader who is responsible for planning and perpetrating that crime should be held to account in a court of law, and the law applies equally to everyone.”

So it is unfortunate that Obama has exculpated, and even shielded from investigation, or even criticism, anyone from the Bush era involved in the infamous crimes of the era:  torture, detainee abuse, domestic spying, and most of all misrepresenting intelligence in order to lead us in to a war of aggression with Iraq.   In hindsight it appears that he did this so that he could take part, and even  extend, these same abuses during his own presidency.  But more likely this was simply a side benefit and his real reason was to circumvent radical right-wing criticism during his election that such investigations would hobble the intelligence and defense communities by giving them fear of future prosecution for breaking laws (but his actual reasons for doing this is another subject altogether).

We do know a lot about the Bush era.  So I was surprised to see, a few months ago, that Donald Rumsfeld  appeared on the Daily Show to promote a book. I remember thinking: “why?”  …Why have a war criminal on your show only so that he can peddle his book and ignore your questions about his well-documented crimes in the folksiest, midwestiest language humanly possible?  Why give him a forum so that he can win over the 40% or so of people that are gullible enough.  Or, if you are going to give him a forum in which to hide in plain sight, why not at least invite Pat Tillman’s brother as a surprise co-guest?  (Pat Tillman was an NFL football player turned marine who lost his life due to friendly fire while in Iraq.  The defense dept., under the command of Donald Rumsfeld, covered up the nature of his dealth to avoid embarrassment.)

Robert Fisk’s latest column, Beware men of power who turn to writing books, about warlord who write books, reminds me of Rummy:

“And I owe it to Alexandre Najjar to raise in the literary section of the French-language L’Orient Le Jour the weird parallels between Gaddafi’s novels and short stories and some of his latest ravings. Saddam wrote the execrable Zabiba and the King. Old Syrian General Mustapha Tlass wrote about 40, some close to being anti-Semitic, along with a deeply embarrassing set of poems for Gina Lollobrigida. They write books, these guys, you know.”

And of course who can forget OJ Simpson’s literary achievement, If I Did It.

Writing a book doesn’t make you innocent, but it is a good way to convince people and maybe even yourself, that you are innocent.  You can write from the first person perspective, show what you were feeling at the time, present yourself in a noble light and screen any part of the story that you are uncomfortable with. Like OJ, Rumsfeld should be living in shame somewhere.  Instead he is allowed to distance himself from his crimes with talk-show publicity.  For illegally and recklessly coaxing the country in to a devastating war of aggression (a crime as Ferencz pointed out), and for many of his negligent executive decisions during that war, the only attention he deserves is prosecution.

‎”I have asked the Pentagon whether or not the the procedures that have been taken in terms of his condition are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assure me that they are. I can’t go into details about some of their concerns, but some of this has to do with Private Manning’s safety as well,”

Or, to paraphrase:

“Thousands of people and respected international human rights organizations have pointed to wrongdoing within a branch of my administration. Well, I asked the people who are accused of performing the wrongdoing and they said they weren’t doing anything wrong, so everything is OK.”

This incident paints a sad picture of the Obama administration, as I can draw only two possible conclusions from this incident:

1. Obama has lost control of his administration, or at least of the military.

2. Obama or someone surrounding him is directing the military to treat Manning is this reprehensible way.

The second conclusion would not be surprising.  His presidency has not been one of transparency, reining in executive power, or the rule of law. Rather it been one of extending the Bush (and previous recent president’s) expanded executive power justified on the basis of national security and shielding executive actions from criticism by the use of way more secrecy than is healthy.  In fact, as a democrat he finds it much easier to defend such actions than did George W Bush.  A good portion of the left is only concerned with pointing such faults when they are perpetrated by the right, but could care less if they are carried out by a democrat.  More telling is the response to department of justice spokesman P.J. Crowley’s statement of the obvious (that Manning’s torture is “ridiculous and stupid”).  Crowley was promptly sacked for not echoing the official smokescreen.   Manning has forcefully accomplished what Obama promised to do on his campaign, but subsequently refused to do: increase government transparency.  Now he is being punished with borderline torture in order to break him mentally.

The first conclusion seems more surprising when you consider Obama’s relationship to the military.  After claiming to be against the invasion of Iraq in 2003, candidate Obama promised to escalate the Afghanistan war.  He did this in order to pacify the military and their cheerleading war hawks, and to appear strong on defense.  It was a campaign tactic — and shows that he and his strategists knew at an early stage that they couldn’t appear to scale back the military or to control the it too much.  Promising to rekindle the Afghanistan war was a calculated decision made to neutralize a possible electoral opponent.  Clinton engaged in similar displays of useless military force  in order to silence would-be critics who would otherwise be accusing him of being weak on defense.  These liberal displays of power are always tragic for soldiers and for civilians of Asia or the Middle East.

But that was campaign time, now Obama is theoretically the commander-in-chief of the military.  Obama’s lack of leverage over the military would show that maintaining or increasing useless military aggression is simply a necessary requirement for gaining the presidency, but is not sufficient to exercise meaningful control over the military.  It would be worrisome, but perhaps not astonishing to find that the largest military on the planet (by a factor of 10) is not something that can be controlled, even by its commander.

Seattle – New Years Day 2010!
Tallahassee – Digesting Quantum Field Theory
Ft Walton Beach
Atlanta – May Stanhope show with Dianna and Russ
Amelia Island – same trip
LA/Long Beach/Venice (CA) – failed surfing trip
Boise/Ontario – June visit
Geneva, Switzerland
St Genis Pouilly, France/CERN
Lauterbad, Germany
Prague, CR
Vienna, Austria
Tallahassee
Tampa – Stanhope Show
Bari, Italy
Venice (Italy)
Rome – New Years 2011!

I am quite aware that we have just now lightheartedly expelled in imagination many excellent men who are largely, perhaps chiefly, responsible for the buildings of the temple of science; and in many cases our angel would find it a pretty ticklish job to decide. But of one thing I feel sure: if the types we have just expelled were the only types there were, the temple would never have come to be, any more than a forest can grow which consists of nothing but creepers. For these people any sphere of human activity will do, if it comes to a point; whether they become engineers, officers, tradesmen, or scientists depends on circumstances. Now let us have another look at those who have found favor with the angel. Most of them are somewhat odd, uncommunicative, solitary fellows, really less like each other, in spite of these common characteristics, than the hosts of the rejected. What has brought them to the temple? That is a difficult question and no single answer will cover it. To begin with, I believe with Schopenhauer that one of the strongest motives that leads men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one’s own ever shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from personal life into the world of objective perception and thought; this desire may be compared with the townsman’s irresistible longing to escape from his noisy, cramped surroundings into the silence of high mountains, where the eye ranges freely through the still, pure air and fondly traces out the restful contours apparently built for eternity.

With this negative motive there goes a positive one. Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it. This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientist do, each in his own fashion. Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way the peace and security which he cannot find in tbe narrow whirlpool of personal experience.

What place does the theoretical physicist’s picture of the world occupy among all these possible pictures? It demands the highest possible standard of rigorous precision in the description of relations, such as only the use of mathematical language can give. In regard to his subject matter, on the other hand, the physicist has to limit himself very severely: he must content himself with describing the most simple events which can be brought within the domain of our experience; all events of a more complex order are beyond the power of the human intellect to reconstruct with the subtle accuracy and logical perfection which the theoretical physicist demands. Supreme purity, clarity, and certainty at the cost of completeness. But what can be the attraction of getting to know such a tiny section of nature thoroughly, while one leaves everything subtler and more complex shyly and timidly alone? Does the product of such a modest effort deserve to be called by the proud name of a theory of the universe?

In my belief the name is justified; for the general laws on which the structure of theoretical physics is based claim to be valid for any natural phenomenon whatsoever. With them, it ought to be possible to arrive at the description, that is to say, the theory, of every natural process, including life, by means of pure deduction, if that process of deduction were not far beyond the capacity of the human intellect. The physicist’s renunciation of completeness for his cosmos is therefore not a matter of fundamental principle.

The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction. There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them. In this methodological uncertainty, one might suppose that there were any number of possible systems of theoretical physics all equally well justified; and this opinion is no doubt correct, theoretically. But the development of physics has shown that at any given moment, out of all conceivable constructions, a single one has always proved itself decidedly superior to all the rest. Nobody who has really gone deeply into the matter will deny that in practice the world of phenomena uniquely determines the theoretical system, in spite of the fact that there is no logical bridge between phenomena and their theoretical principles; this is what Leibnitz described so happily as a “pre-established harmony.” Physicists often accuse epistemologists of not paying sufficient attention to this fact. Here, it seems to me, lie the roots of the controversy carried on some years ago between Mach and Planck.

The longing to behold this pre-established harmony is the source of the inexhaustible patience and perseverance with which Planck has devoted himself, as we see, to the most general problems of our science, refusing to let himself be diverted to more grateful and more easily attained ends. I have often heard colleagues try to attribute this attitude of his to extraordinary will-power and discipline — wrongly, in my opinion. The state of mind which enables a man to do work of this kind is akin to that of the religious worshiper or the lover; the daily effort comes from no deliberate intention or program, but straight from the heart. There he sits, our beloved Planck, and smiles inside himself at my childish playing-about with the lantern of Diogenes. Our affection for him needs no threadbare explanation. May the love of science continue to illumine his path in the future and lead him to the solution of the most important problem in present-day physics, which he has himself posed and done so much to solve. May he succeed in uniting quantum theory with electrodynamics and mechanics in a single logical system.

Which is pretty sweet.  But I prefer the vending machine that we found at our hotel in Germany:

… which of course served cold beer (or wine).