Another globalisation success story

Africans have always been exploited for cheap labour. Back in the bad old days of the slave trade, you had to bring the Africans to the work. In the modern era, in the "knowledge economy," you can bring the work to the Africans!

You must admit the optics are way better; no chains, no slave auctions or slaveships. It's all good... just check out this story at BBC.

Rumour has it the brain trust behind Samasource was originally going to call their company Sambosource, but that didn't fly with the focus groups they ran it by. Thank God for focus groups! That would have been a PR nightmare...

Sambosource.

What a brilliant business plan... set up an outsourcing company that lets companies like Google and Microsoft outsource their work to IT professionals in Kenya who work for nine dollars... A DAY!!! We're talking about serious efficiencies here, folks! You can bet there'll be a few folks over here getting richer on the backs of the nine-dollars-a-day folks over there.

Just imagine the bags 'o boodle Google and Microsoft can add to their offshored hundreds of billions stashed in offshore tax havens by paying nine bucks a day for work they used to do in America! As everyone knows, US workers have long been way too precious, pampered, and lazy to even consider working for such a wage, whereas Kenyans couldn't be happier with these crumbs from the Big Tech banquet table.

And look how progressive Sambosource is; they even provide lactating rooms for their female staff! That's what happens when the upper echelons of an American company are predominantly female; they bring progressive workplace policies right into the heart of the Dark Continent!... for nine dollars a day.


That truly is a heart-warming globalisation success story!

Netanyahu offers to coach Kenya in war on towel-heads of terror

That's got to be welcome news for the beleaguered Uhuru Kenyatta, who has been having a tough time passing his family fiefdom off as a stable and modern democracy. Every time you turn around the towellers of terror from next door are pulling some headline grabbing stunt to sully the reputation of one of our most staunch allies in all Africa.

As with virtually all terror outfits, the al-Shabaabers have come up with some flimsy excuse to justify their mayhem. In this case, it's the fact that Kenya has troops in Somalia. Well, of course they do! How else is democracy and good governance to take root in that benighted land? Of course, the Kenyan intervention is doubly good because it is being carried out at the behest of the Nations of Virtue.

Now that Netanyahu is aboard, expect the Shabaabers to exit stage right in the very near future. After all, look at how the visionary stewardship of the "greatest leader since Moses" has brought peace and prosperity to the Holy Land.

Does anyone believe Kenya killed 100 militants?

Our favourites in the Dark Continent certainly know how to treat themselves well.

Apparently, Mr. Goodluck over there in Nigeria runs a government whose legislators are the best paid in the world!

And our dear buddy in Kenya, that Uhuru Kenyatta fellow who's been busy bobbing and weaving to avoid the long arm of the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges, comes in second!

Oddly enough, our two bestest besties in the Dark Continent are facing down "Islamic insurgencies."

Now a cynic might be inclined to suggest that the reason these countries are besieged by "insurgencies" is because they are cesspools of graft and corruption.

But no. We are informed day after day by the media Big Dogs that both Kenya and Nigeria are beset by Islamic radicals, and they must therefore be given a free pass for any minor abuses of civil rights, human rights, etc. that may come up in the course of "fighting terror."

Both the Boko Haram and Shabaab terror outfits just sprung up out of nowhere, and neither have anything to do with the endemic corruption that cripples meaningful development in both Nigeria and Kenya.

Kenya scored a PR coup of sorts with the news that they have killed 100 Shabaab militants since yesterday's Shabaab attack on a bus. That's made headlines throughout the Nations of Virtue.

That's a major win in the PR department.

In the real world, even if some of those killed were in fact "militants," that merely primes the pump for the next round of violence.

The reason that radical groups like BH and the Shabaab get traction in Africa is because the populace is more than fed up with the corrupt West-friendly stooges who have been looting their countries for years.

What the Pentagon budget cuts really mean

Chuck Hagel's proposed budget cuts at the Pentagon have unleashed a carnival of hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing.

Relax. It's all window dressing.

First of all, Hagel isn't actually pitching hard numbers. He's proposing very modest reductions of troop numbers and the mothballing of some hardware that is reaching the outer margins of its useful life anyway.

The very idea of large standing armies is so 19th century. In the modern era, if the US government needs boots on the ground, the company formerly known as Blackwater or one of its many rivals can provide them quickly and cost-effectively. You'll also notice that quick-reaction special forces numbers are scheduled to go up rather than down, for those special occasions where "America's strategic interests" just can't be farmed out to the private sector or local proxies.

For routine invasions and occupations, "local proxies" like the armed forces of Kenya or Uganda or Ethiopia are a much more cost-effective way of pacifying restless locals than sending the US Army into some African backwater that happens to sit astride vast mineral or oil wealth.

What Hagel is really signalling is this; American military spending going forward will be much more focussed on buying the latest hardware. Not necessarily last-century hardware like ships and planes and tanks, but new-age "intelligent" hardware, that special niche of technology where Silicon valley meets the Valley of Death.

So rather than mourn lost Pentagon funding, patriotic investors need to do their homework and sniff out those high-tech start-ups whose products can thrive in that niche.

There's a new high-tech boom on the horizon!

The rehabilitation of Uruhu Kenyatta

Kenyatta has gone from international pariah to president of Kenya to esteemed chappie having secret meetings with John Kerry in remarkably short order.

This is bound to frost the do-gooders at Amnesty and HRW, who have been braying for the crucifiction of Kenyatta since 2007.

And it serves to underline what's really important to the Big Dogs of the West; we are quite prepared to overlook a man's crimes against humanity if he can be of use to us.

Congo tango

Wasn't that long ago that our standard expectation of our allies in the dark continent was that when Uncle Sam said "jump" they'd ask, how high?

Nowadays the more frequent reply to an Uncle Sam request is "how much?" As in how much are you going to give us in money and guns.

But the reality on the ground is that even those days are numbered. We are soon going to see a new African reality. When Uncle Sam says "jump", his African allies will say "fuck you."

We're getting a hint of that already with the brouhaha over Ugandan support for the M23 rebels in the Congo. A UN report leaked a few weeks ago fingers both Uganda and Rwanda as being the prime movers behind the M23 group, which has succeeded in routing the Congolese army from a large swath of mineral-rich north eastern Congo.

Uganda has responded by threatening to quit the Western-backed coalition that has managed to install a puppet government in Somalia. Reuter's reports that the puppet PM has sent an urgent plea to the Ugandans; please don't go.

This is Uganda playing hardball. What they're saying is that if we want them to do our dirty work fighting the Shabaab in Somalia, then we're going to have to look the other way when it comes to their hanky-panky in Congo.

Who do they think they are?

You'd almost think they see themselves as an independent nation or something!