Karma in its most overt form

Tiger Woods and his many skanks.

All the Olympic sprinters and their designer doping kits.

That Hans Ritter UN weapons inspector chap who just got busted trying to seduce what he thought was a kid.

Why do they do it? What makes them think they're going to get away with it?

Ego is obviously one reason. (Because I can.)

That at least accounts for the first skank, the first steroid injection, the first - um - inappropriate internet contact with a minor.

But why keep doing it (whatever it is)? Why not quit the cheating (or whatever) once you've tried it and satisfied the curiosity?

Perhaps the answer lies in Mr Ritter's back history. This is not the first time he's been found trying to arrange sex dates with minors, it seems. In fact, he's been at this crack for years.

He's no moron. He almost-singlehandedly took on the Bush Administration at one point. So what made him think he could possibly get away with continually behaving like he has?

Probably the same reason that made Ben Johnson and the other sprinters keep taking the 'roids, even though they have to undergo regular and unannounced drug tests.

The same reason Tiger kept chasing hoochie-mama skirt even though there was a press pack never far away.

Because they got away with it once, that first ego-driven, curiosity-spiked time. But they don't think 'God, I was lucky to get away with that. Better not risk it in future, since I've so much else to lose.'

These people believe they are so intelligent, so smart, and so powerful that they will NEVER be caught. Having got away with it once, they are almost compelled to repeat, because they genuinely believe they won't be caught.

Which makes them get sloppy, which gets them caught.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how karma functions in its most overt form. What the ego drives us to do, the ego ensures we make amends for.

UN prohibitionist website hacked

The UN office on Drugs and Crime, long run by notorious "Drugs are baaaad, mkay?" moron Antonio Costa, has had its website wonderfully hacked.

Before normal prohibitionist service is resumed, I thought I'd take a screengrab of their hacked jobs page for all to see and enjoy.

While it's still up, feel free to enjoy reading some sense about drugs policies on the UNODC's website for possibly the first time ever here.

But you better be quick. They'll be back to hiring shills to sell the world on prohibition very soon.

Congrats to the publicly minded IT wizards behind this splendid hack.

A Vision for Africa

This is Robert Mugabe's new house:

It cost around $26 million dollars and took five years to build, five years during which Zimbabwe's economy completely fell apart, inflation spiralled up to hundreds of thousands of per cent per year, and thousands of the poorest lost their shanty shack homes in slum clearances ordered by Mugabe.

But Robert sleeps well at night:

He dines well too. Even though 80% of the population are without work in Zimbabwe, Mugabe's kitchen and chefs ensure that he and his Zanu cronies are well fed:

And they can always relax later for cocktails by the pool, and discuss perhaps the pressing matters of the day.

Like the election they lost then stole back. Like the tens of thousands of citizens who've fled the country. Like the fact that they'll get away with it because the only people able to enforce change in Zimbabwe are other African leaders who are as corrupt as Mugabe and who in general owe him one.

Like Thabo Mbeki, for example.

Despots like Mugabe continue to pose as post-colonial heroes throughout the continent, even as their policies following independence from European Imperialism have caused unending poverty, disease and corruption:

But I have a vision for Africa. A way out for the billion or more who are denied a chance at life due to the horrific and disgusting corruption of pondlife like Mugabe.

It's time to redraw all the borders.

The colonial borders slice through tribes and lands willy-nilly, creating many of the internecine problems in Africa. End the conflicts, the fears, the mistrust, and you create the conditions to deal with all the other problems afflicting the continent.

Time to recolonise too.

It is self-evident from a quick read of any decent African political history such as 'The State of Africa', that corruption has been endemic in every single African state following independence and up to the present day in preposterous amounts.

Instead of aid, we need to send governmental ability. Yes, I am talking recolonisation. Temporary recolonisation, with African interests rather than European ones at the centre of the project.

I reckon that the UN needs to found an African border commission to ascertain what lands should go with what, according to the desires of those living there.

Then the current post-colonial states can be dissolved and reconstituted into forms which will not be so prone to the sort of tribal outrage we've seen recently in Kenya and in pretty much every sub-Saharan state at some point.

The UN could provide security during an interim period and initial elections. It might also be beneficial, while these new national entities are still bedding in, to beef up the African Union to the level of an EU, with oversight abilities, democratic representation and the ability to institute relevant continent-wide legislation and negotiate as a trade bloc.

Then a 'Peace Corps' type intervention would be necessary to assist the foundation of governments and state agencies, as well as ensuring the operation of critical services like hospitals during the transitional period.

A single currency would be strongly advisable, as well as an African central bank. Logic dictates that the Rand function as one or as the basis of one, and Joburg as the location of the other.

And all of this would be needed just to turn things around.

After that, the problems of HIV, malaria, education, life expectancy, development and famine would still remain to be addressed.

But in the sort of context that I envisage, at least the inter-tribal strife would be largely circumvented, which itself impacts on all the other problems.

And the foundation, in terms of a stronger African union, and smaller nation states, for consensus action, mutual dependency, group negotiation and single currency, would be in place for real development potential.

Aid doesn't work, trading with despots like Mugabe only funds elites like Zanu, and the level of military intervention the West has involved itself in thus far often only delays further conflict.

It's time to address the mistakes of the colonial and the post-colonial era. It will require a global effort, not just from former imperial powers but from other powers, such as the EU, US, Russia, China and Japan.

The alternative, of course, is to remain in our bubble of affluence in Europe, watching them starve and kill each other, while they try to gain illegal access to our affluence, for another sixty years.

Did the BBC invent a famine for ratings?

Everyone over a certain age (let's say 30) can recall the harrowing impact of Michael Buerk's first reports of a famine in Ethiopia in 1984.

The sheer biblical images of starving black children - their hollow eyes pleading for food to placate their empty, distended bellies, their ribs stretching their thin skins, their limbs shrivelled to mere bones and skin - shocked the West in our relative affluence.

What followed was Band Aid, Live Aid, and the growth of global consciousness in relation to the appalling poverty suffered on the African continent.

Since then, charities have reported 'donation fatigue' and the diminishing returns of shock footage of African carnage or disaster. Mass rape and child slavery in Darfur barely stirs us now. Burma is flooded, and we can barely bother to put a hand in our pockets.

But surely it is a new low in the quest for ratings to actually invent a famine where none exists?

This is the allegation a Norwegian TV documentary team have levelled at the BBC.

After the documentary aired in Norway, it won awards and raised serious questions about the BBC's role in reporting a famine in Niger in 2005. It accused the BBC and the United Nations of acting in tandem to create a climate of intervention where none was required.

That suited the UN, who apparently wanted into Niger, and suited the BBC who wanted a good exclusive story, as journalists are wont to do.

Niger is a desert land in the Southern Sahara. But it is rich with uranium and other resources, and its population are predominantly nomadic, like the Touaregs (see above). They are used to moving around to obtain food. It's not like the pasture lands of Ethiopia failing at all.

But after the documentary aired in Norway, the BBC pulled the rights to their own footage, meaning that the documentary had to air in Sweden in a shorter, much less impactful form. It hasn't been seen elsewhere yet.

Auntie Beeb pleads innocence, and claims all the Norwegians need to do is ask politely for the rights to the footage and they can have it.

So perhaps we might yet get to see this interesting Norwegian film, controversially titled 'The Famine Scam.'

I fervently hope that the buyers in RTE will make a point of picking up this documentary and showing it during prime time viewing.

Then we will be able to decide for ourselves if the BBC and UN were right and there was a famine in Niger.

Or we might find that 'Niger's prime minister, local residents, doctors working in the region, a US aid organisation spokesman and other journalists' are more plausible when they say that no famine ever occurred.