WhirledView

Big Cheezy Swiss Bites Out of the African Economy

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

President Barak Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have sung the same song in Africa: you can’t have the prosperity Africans need and deserve without good governance; you won’t have good governance or development when your leaders are stealing you blind. 

So better leadership is needed, yet corrupt leaders wouldn’t have much incentive if there were nothing to embezzle in Africa’s poorly run countries.  In fact, there’s plenty to steal.  Also, once greedy leaders have got their hands on what doesn’t properly belong to them, they have a problem.  They need a safe place to hide it, to stash it.  For this they need enablers—and they get them.  At every stage of the wealth-siphoning process, foreigners tend to be complicit.  Ordinary Africans are cheated.  Foreigners profit.

Here a key passage from President Obama’s speech in Accra, Ghana:

...too many [African] nations, even those that have elections, are plagued by problems that condemn their people to poverty.  No country is going to crate wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves–(applause)–or if police can be bought off by drug traffickers. (Applause.) No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top–(applause)—or the head of the Port Authority is corrupt.  No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery.

And this version is from the Secretary of State’s address in Nairobi:

True economic progress—(applause)—depends not only on the hard work of millions of people who get up every day and do the best they can, often under overwhelming circumstances; it also depends on responsible governments that reject corruption, enforce the rule of law, and deliver results for their people.  This is not just about good governance; this is about good business.  Investors will be attracted to states that do this, and they will not be attracted to states with failed or weak leadership, or crime and civil unrest or corruption that taints every transaction and decision.

Ordinary people, including many parliamentarians and middle class meritocrats, applauded during these speeches, because they, as well as service-starved subsistence farmers, need the fruits of better governance.  Practically everyone’s standard of living suffers while the kleptocrats, who get a cut from sales of natural resources to foreign companies, who skim as much as they can from international aid packages, whose greed inflates the cost of imports, live lavishly and still have plenty left for luxury living when the rainy days come.  It used to be that African despots could count on “retiring” to a villa in southern France.  The Francophones could, anyway. Anything to get rid of them!  And then their successors, often elected as “reformers,” proved to be no better.  The cycle was discouraging and debilitating to those who dreamed of an Africa that could hold its head up (so to speak) in the world.

For too long there have been too many excuses for Africa’s degradation.  We naive, well-meaning foreigners bought them, because African history was full of terrible chapters our own ancestors had played an unsavory role in.  The slave trade depopulated Africa.  Colonialism exploited Africa.  Raw capitalism drained its resources.  All of these things happened, and even if there was a certain amount of African complicity at each stage, Africa was more sinned against than sinning.  Thus, we in the West were  paralyzed by shame.  We must make up for our crimes and sins, we cried.  Give!  Give!  Give!

Reality, of course, was not so simple. As Barak Obama noted of his father’s country, “Countries like Kenya had a per capital economy larger than South Korea’s when I was born.  They have been badly outpaced.”  Yes.  Outpaced not only by South Korea, but by other Asian tigers, most of them seen as hopeless basket cases when their racist European colonial masters were forced to exit.  When I first went to Africa, Nairobi was admired as the city that worked.  Journalists covering the whole continent worked out of Nairobi.  Unfortunately, Kenya caught the corruption disease and dissolved into bloody tribal warfare during last year’s elections.  

Farmer's Market Veggies for As-You-Like-It Sambar Soup

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Sambar is a spicy lentil soup that’s served with masala dosa or idli in South India.  Usually a fresh coconut chutney is also served. 

What’s a dosa?  It’s a huge ghee-crisp crèpe that is folded around several dollops of curried potato. Normally you eat dosa with your hands, like a burrito, but the fastidious non-Indian may reach for a fork, especially after a lot of sambar has been poured over and around it.  I don’t know of anyone who’s eaten a dosa and not fallen in love.

Idlis are another matter.  Even I didn’t think much of idli for breakfast when I first encountered them.  Where’s the dosa? I thought.  Both idli and dosa begin with a batter composed of lentils and rice that have been softened by soaking, ground together in a blender, then left to ferment a bit.  Eventually the dosa gets cooked in ghee on a griddle, while the idlis are steamed in a special steamer (one tray of which is illustrated here). 

After a session in the steamer, the idli emerge–moist, delicate, ever so subtly flavored, the perfect foil for the contrastive flavors of spicy hot sambar and cooling coconut chutney. In some ways, I actually prefer idli to dosa now, which doesn’t mean I’d ever refuse a dosa, if offered.  Another very attractive attribute of idli: there’s no fat involved in preparation. 

I’ve never managed to make an acceptable dosa.  My batter looks fine, but I can’t seem to cook them. Of course, I don’t have a huge, shelf-sized griddle like the one at the terrific idli place in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where I often met friends for lunch.  Or the griddle at the upstairs hole-in-the-wall just down the street from my work place in Kolkata, West Bengal, India.  Whoa! Colombo and Kolkata aren’t in Tamilnadu, you might protest.  Exactly.  Dosa is as insidious as pizza.  It wins over gourmands and gluttons everywhere. 

The spicy potato stuffing is part of a dosa’s appeal.  Most any Indian cookbook has a recipe, and every formula is well nigh fail safe: boiled potatoes added to onions fried to the transparent stage in peanut oil or any other essentially tasteless cooking oil, turmeric and some spices of the South Indian persuasion.  Samosas, also popular with foreigners as well as Indians, get a similar  filling, except the spice mix is different, because samosas originate from the more northerly parts of the country.  Take a small uncooked chapati, cut it in half, wrap it around a generous tablespoon of spiced potato and deep fry it. Yum. Great hors d’oeuvres for parties.  Great any time snack. 

To sum up:  dosas are almost impossible for amateurs to get right.  Idli involve the nuisance of steaming.  Samosas are easy to fry, but tedious to construct. And coconut chutney that’s edible requires messing around with fresh not frozen or dried coconut.

That leaves sambar, which is easy to prepare and absolutely delicious.  You don’t have to eat it over a dosa or an idli either.  Sambar alone makes a perfectly slurp-worthy soup, another farmers’ market special with a flavor entirely different from last week’s chicken vegetable soup.  What makes sambar particularly easy is that you can buy a jar of sambar spice mix from any shop that carries

Monument Valley: Bouncing Along Nostalgia Road

By Patricia H. Kushlis

I’ve never been a western movie aficionado. Nevertheless, growing up in the West and having a grandfather who had been a sheriff in California’s San Joaquin Valley for over twenty years, I got more than my fill of classic westerns at the local movie theater (Photo: Monument Valley by P. H. Kushlis, April 13, 2009) on Saturday afternoons - not to mention numerous tales of real life in California’s early West at home.

So when I toured Monument Valley in April this year for the first time, the scenery was not unexpected. But it was far more spectacular than I had remembered from the celluloid screen years ago.

A reality-based movie set

Monument Valley, the setting of several of John Ford’s classic cowboys and Indians stagecoach shoot ‘em ups, really does exist. So too do the incredible rock formations and the shapes and colors of their ever changing shadows that creep across the desert expanse as the sun slides from East to West over this northern most part of Arizona with only a small slice across the Utah line.

This is no fake setting manufactured on the back lot of some Hollywood studio.

Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park

It is an incredible place – a movie set smack-dab in the middle of the Navajo Nation. Monument Valley is the Navajos own and until earlier this year, lodging for visitors was confined to tiny towns at least a few miles drive away.

Effective Public Diplomacy in India?

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

WhirledView has taken a generally dim view of public diplomacy leadership in the State Department over the past few years.  Nor have we been impressed, so far, with the pronouncements of Judith McHale, who assumed the portfolio not so long ago.

However, a report by David J. Karl which appears on Asia Times Online says this of Hillary Clinton’s recent trip to India, noting importantly that the media in general confined itself to reporting agreements on nukes and disagreements about global warming.  Herd and horse race journalism!  All too alive and well!  Be that as it may, Karl has studied her schedule in detail, and he's impressed by the breadth and depth of her engagement with India:

Clinton was very attentive to the private-sector and societal linkages that are the foundation for the new era in US-India affairs. Headlines about nuclear cooperation, expanding military ties and convergent geopolitical interests obscure the critical role that these non-governmental connections play in building ties. [During her visit] Clinton spent a good part of her visit away from the Indian capital and made a conscious effort to engage a wider range of people than traveling secretaries of state usually do. For example, corporate chieftains, film stars, village artisans, educators, agricultural researchers, green technology enthusiasts and university students.

All in all, concludes Karl, the trip accentuated

the often-ignored factors that create an important stake in enduring ties, and which limit the risk that momentary political and diplomatic aggravations could disrupt the overall US-India partnership.

I couldn’t have made a better case for persistent, well-balanced public diplomacy myself.

Obviously the mission in New Delhi and its consulates did a good job for Clinton.  I hope she noticed and will work to rebuild PD on the Washington end so that field work can be properly supported.  Even when the boss isn’t around to be impressed.

Ambassadorial Appointments

By Guest Contributor Hans N. Tuch

Hans Tuch retired from the U.S. Foreign Service as a Career Minister in 1985. He also taught at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Georgetown University and the University of Missouri-Kansas City in the disciplines of Public Diplomacy and Inter-Cultural Communications.

A true story, identities and location changed: A friend of mine, serving as chief of mission in an Eastern European country, entertained an American four-star admiral on an official visit in his residence.

The admiral, impressed with the attractiveness of the ambassador's official home, commented that when he retired, he would seek an appointment as ambassador so that he could live in a nice home provided by the US government in a foreign country. The ambassador responded that when he retired, he might ask the president to appoint him commander of the Seventh Fleet so that he could live in the admiral's house on the U.S. Naval Base on Hawaii.

Ridiculous story?

The practice of giving ambassadorial appointments to non-professional people solely as a reward for their political contributions to the president's campaign is as stupid and potentially dangerous to the national interest as if the president were to appoint the contributor to a high command in the military.

The position of US chief of mission in a foreign country requires the training, long professional experience and wide knowledge of American foreign policy as well as acquaintance with the history, culture and current policies of the country of assignment. Appointing an inexperienced person to represent the U.S. in a foreign country merely on the basis of his or her financial contribution for the election of the president may seriously compromise our foreign relations and potentially endanger our security. It may affect negatively our national interests in a manner similar to the appointment of an unqualified civilian to a high military position.

Qualifications and Pertinent Experience Needed

Of course, there have been highly effective and renown non-career ambassadors serving as the president's representatives abroad: Ellsworth Bunker in Vietnam, Mike Mansfield in Japan, Arthur Burns in Germany. But they represented qualities and experience specifically pertinent to the assignment. The president should realize that he is doing a disservice to the country by appointing unqualified persons to represent the United States abroad.

Global Intentions Local Results – Book Review Essay

By Patricia H. Kushlis

The subtitle of William P. Kiehl’s comparative study about the international activities of three Pennsylvania colleges is entitled How Colleges Can Create International Communities. Whether this subtitle should have ended with a question mark and been rephrased to read “How Can Colleges Create International Communities – Or Can They and Should They?” is a question worth asking. Each of the three private colleges in question approaches the problem of internationalization differently.

These colleges range from Dickinson College (Carlisle) with its decades old international orientation which attracts a nationwide student body to Elizabethtown and Gettysburg Colleges both of which have been – and remain - more inwardly focused. This, despite their recent attempts to jump – albeit half-heartedly - on the “internationalization” bandwagon in the aftermath of 9/11. Gettysburg College has been the more successful of the two – but both have far to go before they even reach – in my view - the 50 yard line.

In all fairness, Dickinson’s student body is far more diverse geographically. Students are attracted to the college because of its long term focus on international affairs as opposed to either of the two other colleges included in Kiehl’s study. In contrast, Elizabethtown in particular but also Gettysburg College has mostly appealed to students locally.

Town vs. Gown: Parallel not Mutually Supportive Universes

Minorities, Part Four: The Maoists in Eastern India

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

These masks are used by Chhau dancers in the tribal areas of West Bengal.  Chhau is a very acrobatic dance form which also, often, tells tales from the great Indian epics.  When I made an official visit to Purulia and was invited to see Chhau in situ, we visitors also had to watch out for two off-stage threats: insurgents and/or elephants.  In the midst of a very dramatic after-dark Chhau performance, the news arrived that a small herd of elephants was going to cut me and my party off from the guesthouse where we were to sleep.  We left in a flash—very frustrating!—and never saw the least shadow of an elephant in the teak forest.  No insurgents either.

Hostages for Jharkhand

Later I actually was kidnapped (aka involuntarily detained) by tribals.  It was in 2000.  A big strike for the creation of a new state to be called Jharkhand was underway.  The experience didn’t last more than half a day, and I never told the Consul General, because I knew I’d lose the little freedom of movement I’d retained since he’d arrived to embody, arrogantly, aggressively, the State Department takeover of U.S.I.A.   So far as he was concerned, we public diplomacy people were no longer of any significance to the mission.  (Note to all bosses: if you want to be well informed, treat people with respect.)

What happened that day is this:  I needed to travel from Kolkata in West Bengal to Bhubaneshwar in Orissa, where we were opening an impressive exhibit of photos by an American photographer.  I’d decided to drive—a matter of 5 or 6 hours, as I remember—so I could familiarize myself with a part of the country I’d never set foot on.  Then the strike was called and a road closure was announced, on a portion of the national highway I’d have to traverse.  What to do?  I had to reach Bhubaneshwar, but it was too late to obtain train or air tickets.  “Let’s go,” I said to my driver, who spoke Hindi, Oriya and Bengali as well as English.  “We have Consular Corps plates.  No one will stop a diplomat.”  My driver was game.  Off we drove.

How wrong I was.  We were waved off the road and forced to park in a large muddy area that fronted a cluster of shops, eateries, mechanics, etc., all the usual commercial necessities for travelers.  Several other cars had also been pulled off the road.  My driver explained, in all his languages, the usual rules for diplomats.  Useless.  I looked around to get a better idea of who might be in charge.  No principle of organization was obvious or made known to us.  Some young demonstrators seemed more like university nerds than radicals. Others carried bows and arrows that did not look like toys—or like the archery equipment used in modern competitions.  These were tribal weapons and dangerous.  Machetes were also in evidence.  A noisy procession came along.  We appealed to the woman politician who appeared to be leading it.  All she could think of was the new state.  She couldn’t care less about hostages.  The procession disappeared.  Hours passed.  The experience was fascinating, at first, but  boring as time wore on.  We kept appealing. " I’m a diplomat.  We have to get to Bhubaneshwar, etc."  We didn’t dare to start the car and make a dash for it because I didn’t want to run over anyone and cause a diplomatic incident.  Besides the road was still blocked in both directions.  I wasn’t sure the car could blast through.

Then the drinking began.  Behavior changed.   Respect for womankind disappeared.  A definitely tipsy yokel came up to the car and tried to touch my face.  That was the end of the boredom and the beginning of anxiety.  Drunk demonstrators are definitely not to be trusted.  Finally a couple of the student types in trousers and buttoned-down shirts approached us.  They, too, had noticed the change in mood.  They too were worried.  “Trust us,” they said.  They began shouting and pointing toward the jungle behind the shops.  Then they got into the car and told my driver to steer, not for the road, but into the forest, along a rutted dirt road.  I told the driver to obey.  It was our best hope, even though the potential for ending up in an even worse situation was not absent.  Several bumpy miles later, the young men told the driver to stop the car. They got out.  In two more miles, they said, the dirt road would rejoin the highway. The young men would not accept payment.  They were embarrassed, they said.  “You should not have been detained.”  And then they disappeared. 

Yummy. Economical, Healthy Special Recipe for Santa Fe Farmer’s Market Chicken Vegetable Soup

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

I love to eat soup.  I even like to make soup.  And I adore shopping for fresh vegetables, so Saturday mornings at the Farmers Market in Santa Fe are pure pleasure.   Pleasure for the eye.  Pleasure chatting with farmers and with friends I happen to bump into. Pleasure just sauntering around.  And pleasure anticipating that first spoonful from the soup bowl.

Before I get down to business, let me linger on a few of the sights and sounds of the Farmers Market.  I didn’t buy any flowers today, but I could have---dahlias, zinnias, gladiolas, lavender---plus all sorts of edible or decorative plants for my garden, were I in a dig-and-sweat mood. I gave a wave to the guy who recycles iris tubers.  For practically nothing you can have elegant prize-winning varieties in your own garden.  I stopped to tap my foot in time with the fiddler and grinned at the  jolly fellow singing old Hispanic songs.  Violin case and hat were filling nicely with green stuff, I noted.  Then my mouth was watering full flow as I lingered over fresh pastries and pies, which I usually don’t buy for two reasons.  One, calories.  Two, I do my own baking, except for croissants or the occasional cheese Danish at my favorite breakfast spots.  Bread is another matter.  I can’t improve on the breads I find at Sage Bakery, which also supplies many restaurants in town.

The farmers market is a great place for carnivores as well as herbi-vores.  Free range beef.  Pork from pigs who don’t live in crates.  Poultry from chickens who get to run around all day outside. Plus goat and yak and bison/American buffalo. And if you love cheese,  this is the place.  I’ve served Sweetwoods goat cheese to a Brit married to a French woman and resident in France.  His reaction: nothing better of that particular variety of fromage  in France.     

But today I am mostly buying vegetables, because I am making soup.  I bought a pound of each of the following: baby squash, fingerling potatoes, vidalia onions, carrots, skinny green beans.  Except for the beans, the cost was $2.00 a pound, so that’s $8.00 for the vegetables, plus 50¢ for the celery I had to buy at the super-market and $3.00 more for a half pound of the beans.   Total veggie cost for the soup: $11.50.