The coming new year

Optimism is something that you acquire as a survival skill in Africa. I especially try to be optimistic when starting a new year which will happen in a couple of days. I am hoping that this next year that I can make some solid accomplishments.Converting those accomplishments into money, however, is another matter and considerably more difficult and less probable. Nevertheless, I am going to follow the advice of the quotation in the little square to the right here. If anybody has any suggestions on making this belief a reality please put them in the comments.

Happy Boxing Day

Today is Boxing Day which has an official status in most Commonwealth countries. When I was very young and first saw it on calendars I thought it referred to the sport of boxing. But, in reality it refers to boxing up left overs and giving them to the hired help.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to the half a dozen people that will see this blog post.

The Revival of Internal Colonialism as a Scholarly Model?

Between about 1980 and 2009 or so it seemed that the concept of internal colonialism completely disappeared from contemporary scholarship. However, in recent years I have seen an increasing revival of the concept. I am not sure what to make of this. I personally think the concept is a lot more useful than most social science models. But, for what ever reason it wasn't very popular in the 1980s, 1990s, or the first decade of the 21st century. Its recent revival also seems puzzling since there doesn't seem to be any single origin or inspiration for the new crop of scholarship making use of the model. If anybody has any insights into the reasons behind this new interest in a model that had seemingly died in the 1980s please leave comment below. My own contribution to the use of internal colonialism as a model for understanding the relationship between marginalized ethnic groups and their surrounding society and ruling government is here.

The Future

The year is coming to an end. As with most years I did not accomplish as much as a I wanted to. But, I did get some stuff done which is a lot better than getting nothing done. Next year I am hoping to figure out a way to greatly increase my productivity. Apparently a decent raise with promotion does not occur until one makes full professor which requires more publications to get at the University of Ghana than at any other institution in the world. So I should really be aiming at writing at least one journal article a month next year. Otherwise I could reach the mandatory retirement age of 60 before I make it up through the ranks from lecturer to senior lecturer to associate professor to full professor. I applied for promotion from lecturer to senior lecturer in April but apparently that will only increase my salary by about $200 a month. Whereas reaching full professor would more than double it to about $2,000 a month. I would still be making only about 10% of what US based professors make. But, that is a lot better than the less than 5% I am currently earning. If I make a serious push I might be able to make it to full professor in another five years. I just need to publish a whole bunch and submit for the next promotion as soon as the last one is approved.

Violence in Burundi

There are predictions that the recent violence in Burundi might escalate into a civil war or even another genocide like happened in neighboring Rwanda a little over twenty years ago. The African Union is threatening to intervene with a force of 5,000 peace keepers regardless of the wishes of the current government of Burundi. This in the wake of 87 deaths last week in an increasing spiral of violence. Since April more than 400 people have been killed in political violence in Burundi, 3,500 arrested, and 220,000 have fled the country. Violence of course is nothing new to Burundi which has been plagued by conflict between Hutus and Tutsis since gaining independence from Belgium. The silence by media, politicians, pundits, intellectuals, and others in the US is not new either. African lives just do not seem to concern them.

13 December 1955

Yesterday was the 60th anniversary of the decree from the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet removing the last of the ethnic Germans in the USSR from the restrictions of the special settlement regime.

On Lifting the Restrictions on the Legal Status of Germans and Members of their Families, found in special settlements. 

Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR from 13 December 1955

Having learned that the existing restrictions on the legal status of special settler-Germans and members of their families, exiled to various regions of the country, are no longer deemed necessary, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet resolves: 

1. To lift from the count of special settlement and free from administrative surveillance of the organs of the MVD Germans and members of their families, exiled as special settlers in the period of the Great Fatherland War, and also Germans - citizens of the USSR, that after repatriation  from Germany were moved to special settlements.

2. Establishes, that the lifting from Germans of the restrictions of special settlement will not lead to the return of property confiscated during exile, and that they do not have the right to return to the places from which they were exiled.  

Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR

K. Voroshilov

Secretary of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR

N. Pegov

Translated to English from Russian by J. Otto Pohl.

A.A. German and O. Iu. Silant'evoi, eds., "Navechno, bez prava: Ochevidtsy i issledovateli o nemetskom spetsposelenni v SSSR: Sb. nauchn. statei i vospominanii (Moscow: MSNK-Press, 2015), doc. 7, p. 99.

An Idea

I am wondering if maybe I should print out the better blog entries here and compile them into a book form. Or maybe print out the whole thing just to have it in book form? For me personally the journal like entries are the most interesting reread not the essays. Maybe I should make a couple of copies for family members? I am not exactly sure about the technical details that would be involved but I am pretty sure it is doable. If nothing else it could go into the family archives for anybody wishing to do research in the future. It is just an idea right now, however, I am thinking a bound copy of the blog would be nice to have around.

A Dying Breed

At this point this blog is a barely living dinosaur. It is the last politically reactionary blog written by a US citizen with a UK PhD in Oriental history in the world I believe. There were never very many academic right wing blogs. Academic blogs were for the most part dominated by the left and extreme left with almost all of the more moderate ones dying in recent years leaving only a few radical socialist group blogs still around. My readership was never large. But, it has gotten smaller as the years have gone by. It is now to the point where I can reach more people faster by e-mail or a phone call than I can with this blog. At this point I have completely given up on trying to get any readers other than the six I currently have. Other people on this planet who read English and have access to the internet obviously do not share any of my interests. If I wanted to be rich and famous I should have taken the opposite stand on everything from what I did. But, I am just too stubborn to do that.

Free Crimea

Writing about the mundane?

I am thinking about maybe trying to write something for commercial publication about my life and work in Ghana. I am not sure if there would be any interest by any periodicals in such a piece or not. Certainly, articles on life in Africa as normal rather than exotic are rather lacking in the US and other Western countries but, maybe such a piece would be different enough that I could sell it? I mean there has been some writing and film showing work and life in South Africa in this manner. Of course South Africa especially in cities like Johannesburg is much more economically developed and prosperous than Ghana. Nonetheless, in many ways Ghana even at its most mundane probably appears more exotic to many Americans than South Africa. In large part this is because there is not any settler population here with a standard and way of life comparable to North America or Europe. The population here is almost entirely black and the vast majority of them are not living nearly as well as most white people anywhere in purely material terms. On the other hand the stereotype of extreme poverty that many westerners have of Africa is for the most part not applicable to Ghanaians living in urban and especially exurban areas. If anybody has any suggestions leave them in the comments please.

Blogging for one

At this point the main function of this blog is to provide notes to myself so I don't lose them. It really is just a private journal in cyberspace.  It is true that theoretically people other than myself can read it. But, in reality except for a very few exceptions such as my parents I don't think I actually have to worry about other people actually ever reading it. I once thought I could get a dozen regular readers for this blog. But, after more than a decade I am pretty sure now that is an impossible goal.

HOPE

Africa of course is the continent of eternal hope and optimism. But, today I have a strange feeling that eventually Babylon will fall. It will not fall tomorrow or the day after, but my instinct tells me its days are numbered. I will outlive Babylon and be freed from its chains.

End of Semester Update for Fall 2015

I have now finished all my lectures for the semester. Classes went fairly well. I have now gotten to the point where I don't have to put in a lot of preparation to teach them. I have been teaching the same classes for almost five years now. I now have some time between now and February to catch up on some writing. These are the types of things I have been writing about for the past decade. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be anybody in the world willing to fund my research and writing about such things. Yet alone attending conferences. So far I have come up with nothing in my search for research funding. If you know of any possible sources of funding I might be eligible to receive please let me know. Given that due to the collapse of the cedi in 2014 and again this year my salary is now less than $900 a month any additional funding would help enormously. Even grants of only a few hundred dollars would greatly assist me.

Solidarity with the Students and Workers of SOAS

Demonstrations at SOAS

I did both my MA and PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Nobody in the US has ever heard of the place, especially not American academics, but it is very well known in the former British colonies throughout Africa and Asia. It was at one time the premiere institution of higher education in the English speaking world for the study of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Now the administration is seeking to cut 184 courses and the students are protesting. The local unions, most notably Unison have been in full support of the students over this issue. This has been happening at the same time as a major labor dispute at SOAS over the pay and conditions for the cleaning staff. This has led the administration to retaliate by suspending Unison branch secretary Sandy Nicoll from his IT job at the university. Cutting the courses at SOAS is stupid. Nicoll should not have been suspended and should be reinstated. I actually knew Sandy Nicoll. I can recall a conversation with him where he strongly argued with a third person that the advances in medical care and education in Cuba since 1959 in no way justified its political dictatorship and repression of dissidents. It was a very low bar. After all even the capitalist UK had state provided medical care and at that time still education. I bring this up because it is the only conversation I can remember having with Sandy Nicoll although I am sure there were a couple of others and it demonstrated to me that he was a morally serious person.

Some very good news (Centre for the Study of Asia at University of Ghana, Legon)

Today I got a letter from the Dean that the proposed Centre for the Study of Asia would encompass all of Asia and not just the Pacific rim. This means that Central Asia will be part of the mandate of the centre. This is very good news. It means that I will potentially be able to use the facilities and resources of the centre to assist in my research, writing, and teaching on the area. It remains to see how this plays out in practice. But, my initial fear that Central Asia was going to be deliberately, permanently, and completely excluded from the mandate and mission statement has now passed. The centre will be dedicated to the study of all areas of Asia including Central Asia. Since a lot of my work deals with Central Asia I am very happy about this outcome.

Can somebody decipher these numbers for me?

Okay something strange has been going on with my cite meter for the last week. Usually the largest number of hits come from the US followed by Ghana. The Ghanaian ones almost all being my own. But, the country division of hits on this blog for the last week shows Russia almost outnumbering the US by two to one. Here is the ranking of hits by country for the last week.

Russia       406
US             274
France         99
Ghana         52
Germany     38
Canada        23
China            9
UK                7
Austria          5
Ukraine         5

It would be flattering to think that the Russian FSB has assigned a living breathing agent to monitor my blog. But, I seriously doubt I am considered important enough for them to ever consider such surveillance. I am also not sure what is going on with the high number of hits from France.

NGO Parasites and High Housing Costs in Accra

I saw recently that American NGO parasites coming to Ghana get around $1200 a month just for rent. Lecturers at the University of Ghana get $75 a month for rent and our monthly salary is only three quarters of the rent subsidy that the parasites receive. This has resulted in the rents in the greater Accra region, particularly in the centre of the city, skyrocketing to London and Manhattan levels and driving many professionals many miles away into exurbs and even other cities. Many people commute to Accra from as far away as Winneba, driving four hours to work and four hours back everyday. The housing crises and with it the attendant transportation problems of traffic, pollution, and motor vehicle fatalities is in significant part driven by the neocolonial settlement of the centre of Accra by rich NGO parasites and the creation of a housing market that only they and the small indigenous elite that collaborates with them can afford.

UTAG (University Teachers Association of Ghana) Affairs

Today I voted in the elections for new leaders for our faculty union, UTAG. Only one of the four positions had more than one person running for it. So it was not a particularly robust example of union democracy. More importantly is the fact that despite not getting our book and research allowance which is now 15 months late the union leadership did not renew the strike on 30 September 2015 like it promised. So we have been working and still have not received last year's book and research allowance. This year's book and research allowance which was due at the end of July hasn't even made it into round one of negotiations with the government. I hope that the new UTAG leadership is better at communicating and representing the interests of the rank and file membership than the old one was. The union really needs to make it a priority that the book and research allowance is paid into every members bank account by 31 July each year or we go on strike until the money is received.