PBS has recently released a documentary, titled “T-Shirt Travels”, which looks at the economic phenomenon of used Western clothing sold in Africa. The filmmaker, Shantha Bloemen, became interested in the phenomenon when she was working with a humanitarian agency in rural Zambia. She was amazed – as many travellers are – to find that most of the people she lived and worked with primarily wore Western fashions instead of traditional African dress.

As Bloemen observes, the reasons for this pervasive fashion choice are as much economic as aesthetic. When charities in the US and Europe like the Salvation Army, Goodwill or Oxfam receive donated clothing, they sell only a small amount of it in local stores. The vast majority is sold to textile recyclers, who sort it into various grades, pack it into shipping containers and sell bundles to wholesalers in Africa, Eastern Europe, South Asia and the Carribean. Local wholesalers sell single bundles – usually between 40-100kg – to retailers, who sell clothes in local markets.

Now that the process has moved, in part, online, it’s easier for observers to get a sense for the dynamics of the trade. Recycle.net has a special Africa section where textile recycling is prominently featured. Recent offerings ranged from jeans at $1 a pair (the very high end) to unsorted clothing at $900 per ton (small orders) or as low as $0.10 a pound in orders of 40,000 pounds or more. (Recycle.net is an interesting question to a lot of questions I’ve had about African commerce. Where do folks buy used tires? Right here, at $2.50 each. How about recycled steel I-Beams? Got them too – structural I-beams at $300 a ton. And Pentium IIs are going by the palletload…)

Americans give their clothes to charity, keeping them out of landfills, and Africans get inexpensive clothing. So what’s the problem? Well, there’s the very real possibility that this trade is killing fledgling textile industries in developing nations. As the spokesman for the Manufacturers Association of Zambia observes: “How can we compete with clothes given away as charity?” If fashionable, high quality clothing is available from America at lower prices than domestic fashions and fabrics, will domestic textile makers, tailors and fashion designers be able to compete?

The Swiss government has obviously heard this question more than once. Their charming FAQ on textile recycling includes the question: “Do exports of used clothing to sub-Saharan Africa damage local economies?”. The answer is interesting:

Following criticism of exports, Texaid commissioned a scientific investigation of the phenomenon of used clothing in Africa. On the basis of empirical evidence, the study shows that the importance of the used textile sector does not hamper the development of the local textile and clothing industry, either in Ghana or in Tunisia. On the contrary, the used clothing sector has become an essential part of the economy in both instances, providing a livelihood for more than 100,000 people in the countries studied. In addition, used clothing enjoys a high level of acceptance in all social classes in both countries, and a ban on imports would have serious implications for broad sections of the population.

Unfortunately, the “scientific investigation” using “empirical evidence” is not available online, and it’s unclear whether the 100,000 people employed in the industry have sub-minimal wage “jobs” selling used clothing in markets rather than unionized jobs in textile factories.

As for the impact on the clothing industry in Ghana, Andrew Lawson begs to differ. He’s the executive director of the Association of Ghanaian Industry, and he reports that 60% of jobs in the textile industry have been lost in the last decade and that 30 firms have folded in Ghana, in part due to competition from recycled goods.

Lawson is pushing anti-dumping legislation and other protectionist policies. But he’s also got a very creative way of promoting locally-made goods – an initiative to get public officials to wear traditional clothing on Fridays. It’s certainly an interesting political twist on casual Fridays…

So what to do with that old, used t-shirt? If I give it to Goodwill, am I subverting the economies I’m so interested in supporting? Personally, I’m thinking of taking up quilting…

BBC is reporting that the 70 alleged mercenaries seized in Zimbabwe are now being charged with conspiracy to kill Teodoro Obiang Nguema, the president of Equatorial Guinea. The men had previously been charged with violating immigration and firearms laws. None of those charges would merit the death penalty, which Zimbabwean foreign minister Stan Mudenge has threatened the men might face. It is possible that the conspiracy charge has been added so that one or more of the men could be charged with a capital crime. Their lawyer, Jonathan Samkange, describes the conspiracy charge as “fictional” and points out that, if a conspiracy took place, it occurred in South Africa where the flight originated and plans were made.

In the meantime, other nations are pulling their nationals out of Equatorial Guinea, including Ghana, which sent an air force plane to retrieve several dozen citizens and plans to evacuate more by sea. Hundreds of Cameroonians are also fleeing the country, reporting that they are being pressured out by the Nguema government.

The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that the plane seized by Zimbabwe was headed for the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and that the passengers were to engage in mining operations there. They had stopped in Zimbabwe, according to Charles Burrow of Logo Logistics, who chartered the plane, to purchase mining equipment in Zimbabwe, where it was cheaper than in South Africa.

Reuters is reporting that the government of Equatorial Guinea has arrested fifteen “mercenaries” – white South Africans, black South Africans of Angolan descent, Armenians, a German and some Kazakhs – who it says were the “advance force” of the 64 “mercenaries” detained in Zimbabwe. Given the human rights record of Equatorial Guinea and the ongoing paranoia over a possible coup due to interfamilial tensions in President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo’s family, it’s a bit dangerous to take the government’s statement at face value.

In other words, the guys sneaking into DRC through Zimbabwe to engage in (probably illegal) diamond or coltan mining are probably unrelated to the folks who may or may not be trying to overthrow Equatorial Guinea’s despotic, oil-soaked government. And the US doesn’t seem to be trying to invade Zimbabwe using South African mercenaries armed with bolt cutters. In other words, Africa as usual…

added:

In typically insightful fashion, Calixte’s African Oil Politics has an excellent background piece on the situation in Equatorial Guinea.

Sunday night, an aircraft carrying 64 suspected mercenaries and “military cargo” was seized in Harare, Zimbabwe and impounded.

Reuters and the AP are both covering the story, and both have chosen to cover an odd angle: the U.S. State Department’s claim that the plane is not U.S. registered and not connected to the U.S. government.

News24 in Cape Town has a significantly more interesting take on the story. They offer speculation from the South African intelligence community that the plane was headed from South Africa to Equatorial Guinea, and that “The flight can possibly be connected with an imminent coup de etat in Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea.” The South African government expressed “concern” that some of the men aboard appear to be South Africans.

BBC reports that Equatorial Guinea is under a “coup alert”. A number of West African embassies have been surrounded to prevent anyone seeking refuge, and some foreigners staying at hotels were arrested.

It will be interesting for the African media watchers out there to see whether this story gets any additional attention in the non-African press if it turns out to involve only African actors – i.e., South African mercenaries coming to Equatorial Guinea – and none of those perpetually newsworthy Americans.

I’ve been neglecting XDev, a group blog Andrew McLaughlin and I tried to get off the ground last fall. Given that the blog runs on Moveable Type 2.64 and that I didn’t have anti-spam plug-ins installed, I expected to need to trim a few weeds before attempting to revive it.

But I didn’t expect 2,200 comment spams. Wow. BlogAfrica was comment spammed recently and I thought the 250 spams it generated in a week constituted a heavy attack. I guess the Google Juice of cyber.law.harvard.edu makes XDev a tempting target.

I installed Jay Allen’s lovely MT-Blacklist and was able to lop off 1,800 spams in a single pass. But that left me with 400 spams not yet detected by Jay’s blacklist. So I spent a decent amount of time combing through spam, creating keywords and adding them to my blacklist.

Early in the process, I discovered a couple hundred spams posted by the same IP address, all using a variant on the email address “theplazacenter1@yahoo.com”. Most were promoting various online casinos. But a few dozen looked decidedly different:

Tom’s Blog: The answer to the bleeding hearts, the liberals, the tree-huggers, and those who prefer Soy to Whole Milk….Sorry, I guess it’s pretty obvious what my sentiments are, but joking a part, yes I think it’s time for a reality check and such a check takes the form of a little conservativism…and there’s nothing wrong with that, let me assure you.

I’m reluctant to censor dissenting voices, so I checked out the site. It looks like a personal blog focused on issues of legalizing gambling – lots of news stories about video lottery terminals and local battles over casinos. Midway down the page, there’s an “blogroll” which contains dozens of links to online casinos, and a couple of links to other “blogs”, with names like hanksblog.us, harrysblog.us, ryansblog.us, and so on.

It’s a search engine trap. Linked to dozens of times from my blog – and from other people’s blogs – it’s got exactly the sort of content engines are most vulnerable to – actual human-written text on the subject at hand – and it’s got dozens of links to the sites the author is trying to promote. The dozen or so .us “blogs” I found all contain the identical text and links, despite different, creative descriptions when they’re posted to my blog as comments.

The author appears to be Brendan Meehan, the proprietor of “The Plaza Marketing Group”, allegedly of Cheshire, CT. The phone number he provided to the dot.us registry through his registrations at GoDaddy matches an address in Cheshire, an Edmund Meehan, Jr., but given that the spams were emerging from an OpenTransit IP in Miami, I decided not to call Ed, who may well be Brendan’s father or brother.

I am, however, having a hard time resisting posting to Brendan’s blogs. You see, while Brendan was smart enough to install Moveable Type 2.661, tweaked to help prevent blog spam, he wasn’t smart enough to change the default usernames and passwords. So if one were to, for example, go to http://www.go4itblog.us/cgi-bin/mt.cgi and log in with Username “Melody” and Password “Nelson”, one would have full control over that Moveable Type server, including the ability to shut out the administrator and create one’s own password-protected blogs. This would appear to work on any of Brendan’s sites, including tomsblog.us, ryansblog.us, perspectivesblog.us, newsblog.us, jerrysblog.us, ikesblog.us, harrysblog.us, hanksblog.us, generalnewsblog.us, dicksblog.us, bobosblog.us, artsblog.us, archiesblog.us.

I am, of course, not advocating electronic trespass or any other illegal activity. Just observing that internet vandals should consider locking their doors lest they find themselves vandalized in turn.

Anyone looking at a map might wonder why President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, fleeing political violence in Haiti, would choose to flee to the Central African Republic. Colin Powell had one explanation: the first nation Aristide chose wouldn’t receive him. He may have been referring to Antigua, where the aircraft carrying Aristide refueled, or to Morocco, which refused the request for asylum. He might also have been referring to South Africa, expected to be Aristide’s final destination. However, Mbeki, who recieved a great deal of public criticism for being the only African leader to attend the bicentenial of Haitian independence, is likely receiving too much political heat for his support of Mugabe to take in another unpopular public figure.

Even with Morocco and South Africa’s refusals, C.A.R. seems like an odd choice for a place to leave Aristide. The U.S. broke off diplomatic relations with C.A.R. in late 2002, when Francis Bozize seized power from Ange-Felix Patasse, the country’s democractically elected president. The U.S. State Department maintains a travel warning, strongly discouraging Americans from traveling to C.A.R.

C.A.R.’s foreign minister, Charles Wenezoui, has another explanation for hosting Aristide: “…the Central African Republic had taken him in because of its legendary hospitality…”.

That’s odd. I’d always thought of C.A.R. as legendary for political chaos and surreally bad government. For more than three quarters of its independence from France, CAR has been governed by military governments. The most memorable of these was that of President, later Emperor, then Apostle Bokassa who, when he was finally overthrown in 1979 was tried for corruption, treason, murder… and cannibalism. (He was acquitted of cannibalism charges, despite the discovery of body parts of children killed in a protest over the high cost of school uniforms, in the freezer in his kitchen.)

So why did the State department deposit a deposed, democractically-elected leader in a far-off nation ruled by the deposers of a democratically-elected government, leaving observers to ponder the irony? UN IRIN offers speculation that C.A.R. offered refuge to help improve its’ own standing in the international community. Given the difficulty the U.S. and France had in finding refuge for Aristide, they now end up owing Bozize a favor, perhaps recognition of his government.

Robert White, a former U.S. ambassador has a more sinister take on the situation. He tells Newsday: Why would Aristide go to Bangui? I have to believe that getting Aristide to the most remote spot in the world was a way of controlling him.” White goes on to speculate that Aristide would never willingly surrendered power: “I truly believe he would have rather met death than to go out and resign.” Is it possible that Aristide was taken to Bangui, instead of Panama, which also offered asylum, because the U.S. was afraid he might try to retake power? Or did the wonderfully-named (Colonel?) Kenn Kurtz, CEO of the “risk management company” that accompanied Aristide to C.A.R. simply want an excuse to find himself back in the Heart of Darkness?

When two of the web’s smartest thinkers note a visual resemblence between you and a certain plump, bald founding father, should you be flattered, or call the guys at Queer Eye for the Straight Guy to schedule a makeover?

Alas, guys, you’re not the first to note the resemblance. Brad Stegner of the Willamette Weekly beat you to the punch the last time I was brave enough to show up to an O’Reilly conference. And my loving wife found a Ben Franklin action figure to go in my Christmas stocking.

My one consolation – ol’ Ben was a smart dude. He found time to invest bifocals, swim fins, the glass harmonica, a high-efficiency stove and the post office, while helping draft the declaration of independence and serving as the US’s first foreign service officer. Perhaps it’s time to by a small pair of wire rims and proudly embrace my secret identity…