Welcome. Let’s see what’s going on in the world this week. Today is Saturday, September 2, 2023.
Today, the prospects for BRICS-Plus, the smoldering mess in formerly French West Africa, Sudan’s civil war, Climate v. Money: a grudge match, and then Sarkozy, Navalny, Putin, Guatemala, China maps and gosh golly darn it, ya just gotta love American politicians.
BRICS: Relic alliances like the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States and the halfhearted Russia/China Shanghai Cooperation Organization languish unloved, but BRICS has hopeful new members clamoring on its front step.
It’s hard to see much common interest among as disparate group of countries as the proposed BRICS-Plus. There are established (mostly) democracies Argentina, Brazil and India, totalitarians China and Russia and outright despotic regimes like Egypt and Iran. Ethiopia, until recently a shining example of hope for the future in Africa, is in turmoil.
India is loosely aligned with the United States, (Iran’s Great Satan), most recently through a new confection called the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, aka the Quad. Saudi Arabia and Iran are regional opponents early in a long process of reconciliation, and Egypt and Ethiopia are at a standoff over water security around Addis Ababa’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam project. How does such a disparate group work together?
”BRICS is not a counterweight to the West or NATO. But it is growing in reaction to NATO’s globalization. Why? Because it is the only place where nations not interested in participating in the new Cold War, or even in a possible hot war between the superpowers, can “runaway” in order not to have to choose sides.”
Another thing the new roster can agree on: its opposition to the Western-dominated financial system. The poorer countries in particular, say, Ethiopia and Iran, would welcome "alternative lending streams without Western conditions attached.”
Most experts think that challenges to the dollar constitute a longer term project, but the new proposed BRICS-Plus seems to take the view that it’s high time to get started.
•••••
FRANÇAFRIQUE WOBBLES, GABON MAKES NOISE:
2023 is shaping up as Africa’s 1848.
”LIBREVILLE, Aug 30 (Reuters) - Military officers in oil-producing Gabon said they had seized power on Wednesday and had put President Ali Bongo under house arrest, stepping in minutes after the Central African state's election body announced he had won a third term.
The officers who said they represented the armed forces declared on television that the election results were cancelled, borders were closed and state institutions were dissolved, after a tense vote without international observers that was set to extend the Bongo family's more than half century in power.”
The apparent coup in Gabon on Wednesday brings President Macron and France to an entirely new place in its suddenly woeful relations with West Africa – a place looking a lot like a smoldering ruin.
Extraordinarily, and tellingly, former President Bongo seems to have judged it best not to use French in his English plea for help, here:
(Must stop here one second: gotta say, here is a despot with dignified, understated design sense.)
•
Gabon is not in the Sahel region, which is physically defined by its arid grasslands. Farther to the south, below Nigeria and Cameroon, Gabon is largely jungle, home of forest elephants, lowland gorillas and exotic mandrills.
And significantly, extensive French oil-drilling and other interests. Paris-based TotalEnergies, one of the world’s six or seven supermajor oil companies, runs seven Gabonaise oil extraction sites. Oil company Perenco is also active there, and mining group Eramet employs 8,000, extracting manganese ore. In all, Gabon hosts some 12-14,000 French jobs and 400 French troops.
Since 2000 about two thirds of all successful coups in Africa have been in francophone countries and since 2020, it’s seven out of eight. After recent coups in former colonies Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and now Gabon, now might be a good time to ask the French leadership, ‘Who lost Africa?’
•
When is a military coup a good thing? While the answer may be never, some coup attempts are surely more righteous than others. Ali Bongo Ondimba, 64, is son of former President Omar Bongo, and the family has ruled the country since 1967.
A coup attempt in 2019 was put down straightaway, but the zeitgeist in the region today is clearly more sympathetic toward a coup. There have been eight coups in west and central Africa since 2020.
Unlike in Niger a few weeks back, Gabon’s self-declared interim leaders aren’t an anonymous grouping of former security officials. General Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema is said to be one of the most influential figures in Gabon, once close to Ali Bongo's father, the previous President Omar Bongo, and head of the Gabonese version of the Secret Service. None of these coups appear to have been spontaneous mass uprisings. This one looks like a palace coup.
Spare a moment of sympathy for an associate professor of economics at Omar Bongo University named Albert Ondo Ossa, the candidate of a group called “Alternance 2023 Collective” and the prime election opponent of Bongo, who probably won the most votes but from whom victory was stolen not just by Bongo but now, apparently, by a new, illegal ruling junta.
(Meanwhile late in the week, the newly self-installed junta in Niger revoked the French ambassador’s diplomatic immunity and ordered him out of the country. Contending that France doesn’t accept the legitimacy of the junta and thus doesn’t accept its authority to expel people, as of yesterday Ambassador Sylvain Itte was still at his compound, urging ECOWAS to get more involved.)
•••••
SARKOZY: Elsewhere in France world, from the Times of London:
“Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French president, has been ordered to stand trial on allegations that he helped Colonel Gaddafi in his quest for international respectability because the Libyan despot had bankrolled his election campaign.
“Investigating magistrates have decided to put Sarkozy in the dock for alleged corruption, embezzlement, illegal campaign financing and participating in a criminal enterprise. He faces a maximum sentence of ten years in prison if found guilty at a trial scheduled for early 2025.
Sarkozy, 68, has denied the charges. “I did not embezzle a cent,” he said on French television this week. In the Disgraced Politician Hall of Fame, “I did not embezzle a cent” stands shoulder to shoulder with “I am not a crook.”
His remarks, incidentally, came in an interview to promote yet another volume of his memoirs, Le Temps des Combats.
•••••
SUDAN: In the civil war this week Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, the head of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), one of the two main Sudanese belligerents, proposed a ten point peace plan, including “a new, apolitical and unified Sudanese army built from merging existing forces that would have civilian oversight and conform to internationally recognised foundations.”
Thing is, this war started back in April when Hemedti balked at integrating his RSF into the regular national army led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. This, in turn, was putatively part of a process to return Sudan to civilian rule that no one, in truth, expected to happen.
Meanwhile Hemedti, whose militia grew out of the Darfur genocide of the early 2000s, stands accused of new war crimes there. Darfur is also part of the Sahel, which now accounts for nearly half of the world’s terrorism deaths.
•••••
GRUDGE MATCH. GLOBAL WARMING VERSUS MONEY:
There’s no snow in Ilulissat, Greenland, at 69.22 north latitude: Live webcam
Or Longyearbyen, Svalbard, at 77.88 degrees north latitude: Live webcam
Sea levels in the southern US are rising much faster than predicted. “Federal tide gauge data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggest that the sea level, as measured by tide gauge at Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans, is eight inches higher than it was in 2006, just after Hurricane Katrina,” the Washington Post says.
Maybe that’s in part because the extent of retreat of Antarctic sea ice shown in charts like this:
Scientific American has an absorbing article about how scientists measure ocean temperature. In the past they’ve used a “variety of error-prone methods such as using open buckets, lamb’s wool–wrapped thermometers, and canvas bags.” Now that they’ve worked out a standardized system they find these ad hoc measures were, predictably, wrong. And not in a good way. They’ve found that
“the underwater melting that is driving disintegration of ice sheets and glaciers is occurring far faster than predicted by theory—as much as two orders of magnitude faster—throwing current model projections of sea level rise further in doubt.”
It’s discouraging.
•
It’s not often you find the Financial Times championing further governmental involvement in the private sector. Is the prospect of climate change big enough to stir even titans of finance? An ungated Financial Times article titled The energy transition will be volatile comes as a final missive from reporter Derek Browder, who has spent three and a half years as the FT’s US energy editor. He says:
“Capitalism won’t deliver the energy transition fast enough . . . There’s too much to do, and given the urgency and the need to get the solution right, this isn’t a task for your favourite ESG-focused portfolio manager or the tech bros. The sheer scale of the physical infrastructure that must be revamped, demolished or replaced is almost beyond comprehension. Governments, not BlackRock, will have to lead this new Marshall Plan. And keep doing it. The western nations that did so much of the damage will have to finance the transition in the developing world — it is astonishing that this idea is still debated. Massive deficit spending will be necessary, not a new ETF. For all the cleantech advances and renewable deployment in recent decades, fossil fuels’ share of total global energy use was 86 per cent in 2000 and 82 per cent last year. . . .
Remington was good at typewriters, but not the personal computer. Why expect ExxonMobil or Saudi Aramco to lead — or even survive — a shift from their core business of digging up fossil fuels and selling them? And do you really want them to? In the US, the Joe Biden administration has implored drillers to pump more oil, not less; liquefy more shale gas for export, not less. Shell’s and BP’s share prices have risen since they said they would slow down their retreat from oil.”
•
What’s good for General Motors just might not pair well with global warming. Axios reported that here locally “The average Atlanta metro area household traveled nearly 36,000 miles in 2022.” If true, that’s about one and a half times around the earth at the equator. On average for each household.
I keep going back over these numbers because it feels like they can’t possibly be right. There are 221,171 households in metro Atlanta. That works out to Atlantans driving the equivalent of 331756.5 times around the equator, or, 7,962,156,000 miles, or about 43 trips to the sun and back. Every year. In one metro area.
Do we really, really need to drive that much?
•••••
If you’re reading this as an email your provider may clip this post before the end. Try clicking on ‘view entire message’ to see the whole thing, or you can always read all content at Common Sense and Whiskey online.
•••••
CHINA: India, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan have protested the 2023 Standard Map of China published by the Chinese government last week indicating China’s sovereignty in areas contested by each country. Russia, too, may be expected to object to the depiction of an island along the Amur River, previously understood to be shared, as wholly Chinese.
•••••
GUATEMALA: Looks like entrenched interests are resisting change after Bernardo Arevalo, center-left son of a former president, was certified winner of the presidential runoff last week. Al-Jazeera says Arevalo defeated “former First Lady Sandra Torres in a landslide, as Guatemalans voted in droves for change.”
Turmoil immediately ensued as another governmental body called the the Electoral Registry ordered a temporary suspension of Arevalo’s Seed Party’s legal registration, calling into doubt the standing of the nearly two dozen members of the party who were elected to parliament.
Arevalo, who is scheduled to take office on January 14th, defeated Ms. Torres with 60.9 percent of the vote to 37.2 for Ms. Torres.
•••••
RUSSIA: An investigative anti-corruption group published evidence, in the form of an email, that Vladimir Putin demanded immediate transport of a $100 million yacht from Hamburg back to Russia days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Guardian reports that an 82-metre superyacht, called Graceful, left Hamburg, where it was being renovated, on February 7th, 2022 bound for Kaliningrad. It isn’t the largest yacht whose ownership is attributed to Putin – that would be the $700 million Scheherazade – but Scheherazade has been impounded in the Italian port of Marina di Carrara. Here is the email, from the website navalny.com:
Most surprising might be that such a thing as an investigative anti-corruption group still exists in Russia.
•••••
CAMPAIGNS: Mayor, we hardly knew you. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez suspended his Republican presidential campaign last week, after failing to get into the first GOP debate the previous week. The Federal Election Commission doesn’t consider a campaign over until its debts are settled, so candidates ‘suspend’ them rather than end them outright in order to use the campaign organization to continue soliciting donors. But he’s out, and becomes the first Republican casualty of the campaign.
•••••
MIKE PENCE IS A SERIOUS MAN:
I don’t have a story to go with this. You can imagine how much former president Trump practiced in front of a mirror for his mugshot, right? Who knows how much mirror time former VP Mike Pence spends, but here’s what it looks like when your gravitas pose goes off the rails.
•••••
HOW DO THEY KNOW THIS? The Washington Post has decided that:
“Through the month-long marathon of the women’s World Cup, players from 32 countries logged so many miles on the field that their combined efforts could cover the distance between Sydney and Seattle.
It’s an inconsequential statistic yet a reminder of the physical load on players. Because when combined, the distance becomes enormous. Across 64 World Cup games, the players collectively traveled 8,753 miles.”
•••••
NAME OF THE WEEK: The governor of the Bangkok Remand Prison, where former PM Thaksin was sent on his return from self exile, is Nastee Thongplad.
•••••
WEEKEND READING
Every weekend I suggest worthwhile reading that’s guaranteed to improve your posture, your online dating prospects, and make you an all around better person. Read a dozen articles, lose five pounds. Here we go:
The Greenland Ice Sheet contributes more to rising oceans than any other ice mass on the planet. If it all disappeared, it would raise global sea levels by 24 feet, devastating coastlines that are home to about half the world’s population. Yet computer simulations and modern observations alone can’t precisely predict how Greenland might melt. Researchers are still unsure whether rising temperatures have already pushed the ice sheet into irreversible decline. Buried Under the Ice
•
The creator of Calvin and Hobbes is back, but the mystery is why he disappeared in the first place. Why Bill Watterson Vanished
•
There is a widespread tendency for humans to believe that we are not only superior to animals, but that we are not animals at all. This denial may be our undoing, for it is only by understanding our true natural heritage that we can begin to change the runaway path we are on. The Elephant in the Garden
•
A nice reckoning with the US’s abandonment of its Afghanistan project. Joe Biden was determined to get out of Afghanistan—no matter the cost. The Final Days
•
How ancient peoples learned to keep a tally. The Early History of Counting
•
A mostly fun and ungated Harper’s magazine article with lots of content consumers of boomer-era music will enjoy. Anthem for an aging cohort. My Generation
•
Nobody gives it a second thought, but if we pay close attention, we can see the biggest things – time, death and life itself. Empire of dust: what the tiniest specks reveal about the world
•
Some twenty years ago the radio program This American Life asked listeners which of two superpowers they would choose: flight or invisibility. This essay ‘looks at’ invisibility. What are its prospects? Nothing to See Here
•
From repurposed sewer pipes to pod rooms, these accommodations prove style comes in many different sizes. Micro Hotels: Inside the World’s 5 Smallest Hotel Rooms
•
Why do we stick our tongues out when we’re concentrating?You know who you are. The Hidden Brain Connections Between Our Hands and Tongues
•
Last and probably least, Clone-a Lisa: an in-browser game where you have 60 seconds to paint a forgery of the Mona Lisa.
•••••
Thank you for reading Common Sense and Whiskey. This post is public so feel free to share it.
While you’re here, why not sign up for a subscription? You get three posts a week and subscriptions start at the entirely reasonable rate of free.
Common Sense and Whiskey is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Something like 20,000 of my travel photos, currently from 113 countries and territories, are on EarthPhotos.com. And join 2,100 people who follow my constantly updated Twitter list of 200 experts whose job it is to follow Russia’s War on Ukraine.
For Tuesday’s travel tale we’ll explore the power of the petty bureaucrat and his stamp at pass control. Good weekend. See you then.