Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

Aam de business bro

Surprise, surprise. Sudanese strongman and would-be break-dancing king Omar al-Bashir has won re-election in the country’s presidential elections. Now isn’t that a turn up for the books?

 Al-Bashir is a wanted war criminal, so he can’t travel that much outside of his country, except to visit other despots. He had been hoping for a relaxation on British travel restrictions, as he had set his heart on taking part in this year’s Strictly Come while Dancing. Being honest Omar, you’ll have to put in more practice before you could get by Len Goodman. Brucie wouldn’t mind you though. You could even stay in his gaff. Augusto Pinochet was his neighbour for a while, so he’s used to living beside blood-thirsty dictators.

The Irish government has announced that it is withdrawing its contingent among the peacekeeping force stationed in Chad.

 Reducing commitment to the peacekeeping operation really sends the wrong signals. The long serving Chadian dictator, Idriss Deby, would dearly like to see the back of it so that he an his cronies could get on with siphoning the country’s wealth into their own pockets. Over the years Ireland’s reputation as a country has been immensely enhanced by our presence in UN peacekeeping missions.

 The trimming of overseas involvement is in line with the McCarthy report. This canonical document’s author is wedded to the maintenance of useless state frippery like armies.  If he was really committed to worthwhile savings he would have recommended the disbandment of the army altogether.

 What does it do? Does anyone really think it’s capable of putting up a fight were this country to be invaded. Maybe against the armed forces of somewhere like Sao Tome e Principe or the Swiss Guard if they were pissed.

 And look at the amount that the government would save. Not only would there be no army salaries to pay but barracks could be closed and sold off for development as brothels and alternative health resorts, while the increasingly obsolete equipment could be hawked to film crews. Fishery protection vessels could be turned into prison hulks (most of them are leaking anyway), while search-and-rescue helicopters could be knocked off to people wanting to leave the country in a hurry and on the QT. What’s more no armed forces, no need for a Department of Defence, and even better a minister of Defence. The savings would be mega….

 But the McCarthy report didn’t recommend this because, in spite of all their uselessness, McCarthy and Co. see the armed forces as potentially having an important role in Ireland’s future. It might come in useful in case those lefties ever seemed capable of introducing real change here. In that even the army could be relied upon to step in and restore law and order.

 And let’s face it none of the boys themselves really mind leaving Chad. It’s all desert and it must be murder getting a pint there, and as visiting government delegations have found it’s too far from the coast to be a serious junket destination.

Mad uncle Frank

Francisco Macias Nguema, was Equatorial Guinea’s first president. In the eleven years he held the post he was responsible for the deaths of 50,000 people, as well as sending thousands of others into exile. Before his overthrow and murder by his nephew, Teodoro Obiang Nguema (who is still in power) the country had earned the unwelcome epithet of “the Dachau of Africa”. Amnesty International’s annual report were full of the heinous acts of human rights violations carried out by Macias, not t mention the crimes against humanity to be laid at his successor’s door. He oversaw one of the most bizarre personality cults in history – so bizarre because it was so unmerited. He adored bestowing grandiose titles on himself, yet he was barely literate. It is said he failed the colonial exams to become an office clerk three times and was only successful on the fourth because of some positive discrimination. He was given to violent swings of personality and received treatment in Spain and the United States for unspecified psychiatric problems; towards the latter years of his life he had acquired some unidentifiable disease

Not really like his uncle?

which may have been AIDS-related.

His hold on power was maintained through fear, not only of his loyal thugs but of Macias personally. He deliberately cultivated the belief that his father had been a witch doctor and sorcerer, and that he had inherited many of these gifts. He was rumoured to have drunk the blood of some of his political opponents, and he kept a large stockpile of human skulls at his presidential compound, alongside all of the country’s foreign currency reserves and medical supplies. Macias loved the dark and detested light; a Spanish airline pilot was arrested and tortured when he accidentally shone his ‘plane’s headlights on Macias’ jet as it sat on the airport tarmac one night. In 1977 a visiting researcher was told that “… you may be against Macias while the sun shines, but after dark you have to be for him,” Even when overthrown and sentenced to death, no locals could be found to man the firing squad, and the task had to be performed by Moroccan soldiers.

Macias  Nguema’s preference for the dark reminds me of the activities of a solicitor employed by the Irish health Service Executive, who is sadly well-known to her victims, and who seems to delight in working in the hours of night, well after “The Bard’’s witching hour. Does she feel that her victim are more cowed by the inky blackness, and less able to put up a defence to her machinations when they are awoken suddenly by the headlights of the garda cars ferrying her to the scene of her nocturnal sacrifices? or is there a yet more sinister reason for this, tied up perhaps with practice of the dark arts?

While the sun shines it is easy to be against Ms Helen (or is it Ellinor?) Stone, but after dark …

I wonder what she’s doing for Halloween?

The tragic events in Conakry demonstrate how anarchic the country is, and how nearly eight months after seizing power Dadis Camara is not fully in control of the situation.

 Guinea, like many similar African states, shows the truth of Mao Zedong’s belief that power comes from the barrel of a gun. When you give the power that a loaded automatic weapon confers, to illiterate or semi-literate soldiers who may have very short-term but pressing grievances over things like pay, the results can be disastrous.

 No one can excuse what happened in Conakry. I am not going to seek to defend Camara, but the image that is painted of him by the western media, including the BBC, is slightly inaccurate. One recent biographical profile told how he was born in a very remote village but was lure by the bright lights (never that bright considering the omnipresent power-cuts), but far from finding riches, he encountered a different form of poverty, which he sought to allay by selling kola nuts on the street. This attempts to place him in the historical mould of pat leaders like Idi Amin and Samuel Doe, who found that they were able to grab and hold onto power, even though they were barely literate.

 But there’s one big difference. Camara studied law at Conakry’s university, which may not be Oxford or Cambridge does impose certain standards – higher, it must be said, than some institutions calling themselves universities in Nigeria.

 Then we hear about Camara’s quirks of personality and his short temper. This may be true, but such peculiarities are certainly better than the habits of many African leaders, such as lounging in air-conditioned luxury in antique chairs and doing no more than putting out their hands to grasp the most expensive vintage champagnes served in Baccarat goblets – all paid for by their desperately poor compatriots.

(this post also appears on my African Violets blog)

The reaction of the international community and many commentators to last December’s coup in Guinea shows woeful lack of understanding for African developments. Looking at the event through a really narrow and legalistic framework it has been characterised as an example of a step backward from “democratic” development to a world dominated by men with guns. But where was democracy in Guinea? It was a country whose many resources were being freely pillaged by a corrupt coterie close to the increasingly incapacitated President Conteh. While there were voices raised in opposition to his regime they were too feeble and badly organised to mount any effective resistance, and you got the feeling that, given half the chance, these civilian voices would be just as adept at the grand larceny of the state’s resources.

  Captain Dadis Camara’s coup has the potential of wrenching the country out of this quagmire and offering Guinea and its people an alternative.

 Elections are to be held later this year; indeed Camara wanted to hold them next year when the basic infrastructure for holding a poll might have been put in place, but the solicitous international community insisted that they be held sooner rather than better – as if going through the motions of holding a ballot can introduce democracy in a country with high levels of illiteracy and with no experience of casting ballots or counting them.

 Captain Camara is not standing in the elections. This is a pity, because he has shown himself to have vision beyond what passes for vision among many of Guinea’s politicians – getting rich quickly. He joined the army after his university education, so he must be set apart from semi-literate thugs of the past like Samuel Doe or Idi Amin who used the army as a means of gaining power quite literally through the barrel of a gun.

 He has pledged to hand over power to civilian politicians. Because such people wear business suits the international community feels more comfortable with them than uniformed soldiers. That such besuited figures are often thieves doesn’t seem to worry them – indeed it may be a further common feature.

G’day chuck feeders! Been chokin’ a darkie in the dunny recently?

 Fate can be a really weird thing, the way it can unite people in a

Guinea-Bissau's first president

 cruel and absurd way when it comes to cashing in your chips in this world and collecting vouchers for the next. Take the political leadership of that sad country Guinea-Bissau, now viewed by many commentators as a basket case, a narco-state. Its first president was a guy called Luiz Almeida de Cabral. His brother had headed the independence movement until he was assassinated by fascist Portuguese hit-men in 1973. Luiz was an eternal optimist – he had to be when he became president of one of the poorest countries in the world. He tried to institute educational reform – the Portuguese hadn’t bothered their arses. Sadly, someone up there didn’t like him and in the late ‘70s his country was hit by natural disasters. His prime minister, Joao do Vieira, felt he could do a better job, so in November 1980 he seized power, throwing Luiz into jail for a while.

 Now this is where it gets a bit wild. Vieira crawled back into the presidency through a democratic election, but not everyone liked him in the country. This March he was murdered in controversial circumstances by soldiers who believed he’d been behind the death of their commanding officer. And then last week Luiz passes away, in a far more peaceful setting – leafy Lisbon where he’d been in exile.

 So you can imagine what might happen if they happen to meet in the great VIP lounge in the sky. What will they have to say to each other? Nice to see you to see you nice?

 Anyone seeking enlightenment about the meaning of the first line of this post should seek help from the museum’s curator.

On the topic of blogs I’d really love if some of my readers would pay a visit to my

Afriican Violets blog, looking at contemporary African news. And that is what it deals with, no hidden subliminal messages about the so-called great and not-so-good of Cavan. There is a wider world out there.

I have set up two more blogs.

The first is dedicated to events in Africa. It’s called

• African violets

The second is concerned with discussions about business and strategic management topics. It’s called

• Building Cathedrals

Don’t forget to pay either or both of them a visit.

… the answer is no one knows – yet!

But let’s see what we do know. Relations between president Nina Vieira, and army chief-of-staff Batista Tigme Na Wai have been strained for a long time. The reasons may be personal, but then there may have been suspicion on the part of one or other of the actors of collusion with drug traffickers who’ve been using the impoverished nation as an entrepot between Latin America and Europe. Even though Vieira was an army man himself and came to power in a coup in 1980, there’s never been too much love lost between him and his top soldiers.

So, early in the morning of March 1st a bomb goes off at army headquarters, killing General Tigme Na Wai. Some of his officers smell a rat and drive to the president’s private residence with a rocket, which they fire at the house after polite knocking failed to raise the occupants. They go in and challenge the president as to whether he had anything to do with General Tigme na Wai’s death. Here details become a bit sketchy. According to one account Vieira said something like “It’s a fair cop, it wus me wot did it!” whereupon he’s shot by the soldiers and his body was taken away.

Has a military coup taken place? Who’s in charge? The radio station’s off the air, apparently under military control and the people are scared. Schools are closed, as are most shops, and it seems Bissau’s residents want to sit out the crisis. They’re afraid of getting caught in the cross-fire if a shooting war breaks out among sections of the armed forces.

This present turn of events is shocking in its violence, but then institutions are so weak in the country that anyone with a gun – whether loaded or not – can cause a lot of mayhem. Vieira may well be the “democratically elected” head of state, but he’s far from popular. A coup against his rule has been anticipated for years. Still pity  the poor people.

I’m sorry I haven’t been blogging for a while. In truth, I’m too exhausted to write much; even an e-mail seems to take it out of me. Anyway I’ve got the feeling that nothing I say matters much. The world continues turning, war and distress multiply and I seem to earn nothing but the smirks of Cavan’s corner-boys.

In Somalia the ship MV Fain that was taken hostage by pirates is being released by its captors, no doubt after the payment of a huge ransom. Anyway what were the pirates going to do with the cargo? You can’t really get rid of dozens of tanks on the “black market”. A new president has been elected but whether he can make a reality of the Somali state, ruled by anarchy for nearly two decades, is anyone’s guess.

In Guinea Dadis Camara seems to be pursuing a policy of questioning the way in which the country’s wealth has been siphoned off, usually into the pockets of multinational mining companies who throw some baksheesh to local officials who ferret the sums away in foreign bank accounts.

And in Zimbabwe a national unity government has finally been agreed between the autumnal patriarch Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai. The country is fucked, there’s 90 per cent unemployment and a major cholera outbreak. What’s more inflation has rendered the national currency into a joke. The perpetrators of political violence still walk tall and their directors are sitting down at last with their victims. The decision by Mugabe to grant Tsvangirai the job of Prime Minister is a little like an offer of a lift in someone’s broken down car.

There are so many wars and conflicts. We all know of the genocide in Gaza, but other wars go unrecorded, such as that in Sri Lanka, which sees the civilian population often made into unwilling human shields by either the Sri Lankan government or the ever more desperate Tamil Tigers.

In the borderlands of Uganda and the Not-So-Democratic Republic of Congo (NDRSC), the grim antics of the Lord’s Resistance Army, has spread from its original nursery bed in the north of Uganda the northeast of the NSDRC. This leaves in its wake burned villages and massacres of church-goers. The LRA has a “no-frills” approach to recruiting soldiers; no one can accuse them of ageism – the younger the better. Indeed their approach to winning friends and influencing people is basic – after seeing your loved ones raped and chopped into pieces, you’ve got two choices – join us or join them.

And as for events closer to home all I can say is that they’re just like a demented pantomime. But then everyone knows this. I don’t know whether anyone else has noticed how incredibly well-fed the pantomime managers are. Our Minister for Finance, for example, who may well tell everyone else to tighten their belts, but can he without giving himself a hernia? The same is true of our prime minister. None of them are showing any signs of the financial squeeze – far from it. A few weeks’ ago there was an edition of RTE’s rural programme Ear to the Ground, in which it was mentioned that the present financial straits affecting many people had led to greater demand from Irish butchers for cheaper cuts of meat. I was glad to see a restaurant critic who said that many of these cuts have a far better taste than the more expensive joints. But something tells me that none of our senior politicians or civil servants are tucking in to oxtail stew. And as for our minister for health! Look, no more nudge-nudge, wink-win, sexist jokes about fatsoes. But the fact is she is obese. Obesity is a medical condition which can be alleviated, but what’s she doing about it? And then there’s her husband, the man who was for so long implicated in the exorbitantly costly mix of Hi-De-Hi and Absolutely Fabulous which was FAS. They were supposed to be finding jobs and training opportunities for the unemployed, but I feel that if Mr Harney had ever been told that he might meet an unemployed youth, maybe from “the wrong side of the tracks”, his response would have been “Heaven forbid.”

Our rulers try to look statesman-like, but they always come across as at best incompetent idiots, at worse as three-card cheats. There was a particularly heart-wrenching interview with a senior banker today in which he revealed that due to the economic downturn his “disclosed” renumeration package would probably be less than 2 million euro this year. Think of it – less than 50 thousand euro a week, ten thousand a day. How can anyone survive on that? Picture his poor children, his desperate spouse no doubt tearing her false blond hair from its roots as all of them have to wrestle with the indignity of approaching the local Vincent de Paul. And with everybody in a bind there is no possibility of picking up some week-end work mowing grass, while the little chizzlers will look in vain for any paper rounds.