Crook of the week

You don't get better than this. It reads as if it could be science but it's as "the great Professor Richard Feynman described Melanesian religious activities 30 years ago: "During the war they saw aeroplanes with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head as headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas - he's the controller - and they wait for the aeroplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No aeroplanes land."

It's no coincidence I've nicked the Feynman quote from the Grauniad article about Gillian McKeith. Both she and Kazmer Ujvarosy (who's an 'Academia Consultant') are great believers in truthiness. However, at least Gillian McKeith doesn't suggest injecting your own sperm.

Hat tip, Sal

South Africa to get its own George W. Bush?

This story about a candidate for the South African presidency somehow reminds me of something.

I don't know why. Could it be the fact that a political movement that was once a standard-bearer in the struggle for racial equality has been reduced to tawdry influence-peddling? Nah.

Let's start with how Tokyo Sexwale (what an unfortunate name!) made his money. In the diamond mining industry. Given his background as first a political activist and then as a provincial governor, I doubt that his diamond mines were successful because of his prospecting skills and geological savvy. What he was able to provide was government goodwill in an industry that is almost completely dependent on it. Now he wants to use the money to buy his way back into politics.

Ah, now I see it. George Bush also made his money in the natural resource industry. He was involved with a series of oil companies, showed no talent at actually finding oil but somehow managed to make money. Then he bought the US Presidency.

Minerals (including oil) come out of the ground with relatively little effort on the part of the mining industry. The difficult part of this business is getting access to the ground with the minerals under it. In a few well-run countries like Norway this just means paying very high taxes. In most of the world, this means that the natural resources industry ends up giving money to well-connected people in non-transparent ways.

In America this is called "paying $2.2 million for Spectrum 7 even though it has only dry wells." In South Africa it is called "Black Economic Empowerment". On Forceful and Moderate it is called "graft".

Dog bites man

And, in other news, the police admitted at the time (but since deny) that they knew De Menenzes, the Brazilian electrician shot by mistake at Stockwell tube, was innocent all along.

I am not surprised. Given the circumstances as they were (police tail man from a large block of flats which is under observation because one of about 100 tenants is a known terrorist, he buys ticket legally and walks calmly down to the platform, police jump him and shoot him, then lie about it), it is blindingly obvious that they knew they had the wrong man. If they had the right man, they would not have put so much effort into fibbing to the public about jumping turnstiles and unseasonal coats.

When I were a lad, shooting innocent people at tube stations for no reason was called "murder" and carried a life sentence.