How Hillary could have won

The NYT International Weekly had a front page story yesterday about how Ellen Johnson Sirleaf became the President of Liberia. Liberia is an impoverished African nation of some four million, where 80% of the population lives in poverty, and the rest, including many members of Johnson Sirleaf's extended family, work for the government.

Here's writer Helene Johnson;  Now, as American women grapple with the whys of Hillary Clinton's loss in November's election, the story of how Liberia's women upended centuries of male rule is newly relevant.

That in itself is a dubious proposition. Did Margaret Thatcher's stint as PM of the UK upend centuries of male rule there?

Like most African heads of state, Johnson Sirleaf is a member of the elite Bintu tribe. Collectively they've been to the elite universities of the West and spent quality time networking their careers forward through the corridors of the most prestigious Western financial institutions. In Sirleaf's case, she's been to Harvard, Citibank and the World Bank. It's a pedigree that opens doors among the Western elites.

Couple that with the fact the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy has been meddling in Liberia's politics since the 1980's, and you'd think her election victory would have been a slam dunk.

But it wasn't. It took all that plus dirty tricks galore;

...the women had their own tricks. "You want beer? Just give me your voter ID card and I will buy you beer." A group of women stationed at a bar near a major intersection lured young men in a time honored fashion.

Hmm... what do you suppose that means? Maybe the Clinton campaign was on the right track when they had Madonna offering free blowjobs, but even there they messed up. Madonna is almost sixty years old. If the Dems had had the foresight to offer blowjobs by Katy Perry AND free beer, Hillary would be in the White House today!

Another evil dictator unveiled as CIA asset

It's interesting how stories this juicy can become what are technically referred to as "yawners" in the journalism business.

The story of Charles Taylor starts off remarkably like that of Eddie Murphy's character in Coming to America. After a well-rounded liberal education in Boston area schools Charles was well on his way to becoming just another Massachusetts moderate when the hand of fate intervened.

The hand of fate in this case was the hand of Taylor's CIA handler, who thought Taylor might just be the kind of up-and-coming go-getter who might be helpful in doing God's work on the dark continent.

Taylor returned to Liberia and worked his way into the political elite. Not content with his CIA stipend he found himself on the run accused of embezzling millions of dollars from his impoverished country.

He found himself back in Boston where authorities locked him up pending extradition. He then masterminded the first ever successful escape from the Plymouth House of Correction, an escape he now claims was arranged by his CIA sponsors.

Returning again to Africa he pal'd up with the late Monster of the Maghreb to train a rebel army which he would use to overthrow the government of Liberia. From this point on he was working both for the CIA and Gadaffi simultaneously.

There followed one of the most vicious civil wars in history which took at least a quarter million lives in Sierra Leone and Liberia, and which was rampant with the most lurid human rights violations.

Child rape, child murder, cannibalism, hacking childrens' limbs off in front of their parents; it was all in a days work for our man in Africa. Sure enough, both the US and Gadaffi had put their money on a winning horse. In 1997 Taylor, still on the CIA payroll, became president of Liberia.

Today he's sitting in a cell in The Hague, in a trial that doesn't generate a lot of headlines on this side of the Atlantic.

Which is a shame, because it's a very compelling story.