mali stats

The vast majority of the population of Mali is less than 20 years old. LESS THAN 20! The median age is like 16. The average life expectancy is a little more than 50 years. There're more than 6 babies born for every woman there. 43% of the men and 20% of the women are literate. The most recent estimate on unemployment there, from 2004, put the figure at 30%. 

apparently 30% of mali's trade is with china. what role's china playing there? or is it just handy dandy commerce?

mali!

whenever there's some little terrorist, radical, supremely shitty group of people like those over in mali, there are only ever a few of them. there are apparently 800 or 900 of these monsters who've taken over a region the size of texas. EIGHT OR NINE HUNDRED! this is preposterously few people. what makes it possible for so few people, however marvelously armed and tough and passionate, is some sort of sympathy from the population. if the pop's not into stoning adulterers and all that, then at least getting a paycheck from those who are. there are SO FEW OF THEM. they've gotta have the sympathy of the population. so don't let them get the sympathy of the population. which is to say, instead of expecting a war to be a cakewalk, make cakewalks, not war. for so you'll win the hearts of the locals, and good will reign, LOCALLY!

i mean, there's lots of potential recruits! mali is like 90% muslim. and even if 98% of that 90% is totally unsympathetic, there're liable to be a few people who are, especially if westerners show up and do their terror-fighting, collateral murder thing

just finished twin peaks. terrfic ending, squeezing the tooth paste into the sink, headbutting the mirror, "how's annie?" so so so fucking good. up to that point, less so. big ol' soap. also, super terrible politically. pretty sure annie straight up refers to "indians" as "red men" in her speech about environmental preservation. also, all that miss twin peaks shit is atrocious and pretty completely uncritical. norma is the WORST character. and im glad james got sent away.

lynch is super weird, sure. he has as his subject all this americana gone vile. the black lodge, the pit of all evil, is a nightclub, basically. miss twin peaks becomes a competition to be the devil's wife. but then there's so much love: coffee and cherry pie is the greatest joy in the world, and there's nothing like the relationship between a man and his waitress.

mali!

oh man shit is so interesting over there. apparently the country's got a north and a south. the north's a big desert about the size of france. recently there was an uprising in which this nomadic group called the tuaregs took over the north and claimed it for themselves. this development had something to do with the revolution in libya; gaddafi messed regularly with neighboring countries, using tuaregs as a proxy military of sorts. like right after, though, these islamic militants took over what the tuaregs took over from the tuaregs, so now they're in charge. they've been stoning fornicating couples and amputating hands, and now france has invaded to help out the official malian government. the official malian government, however, is a military dictatorship that's been abducting journalists and beating down civilian prime ministers and not doing a tremendous job of governing. the french had some initial success beating back the islamists but now they're back again. coverage has said like eight or nine hundred heavily armed fellows overran some semi formal boundary between the north and the south and now things are see-sawing. there are like 16 million people in mali all together. western countries are concerned about northern mali ending up like afghanistan, a training ground for terrorists. one does get the impression it's pretty sparsely populated up there, with "tricky desert terrain." but what about these tuaregs?

i've got some questions about all this. how many people in the north are keen on stoning fornicators, or a little sympathetic to it? how many are muslims, at least? what do they think of these "islamic militants?" are they home grown, charismatic fellows, or foreigners with guns who just swept in? whadda people think of the official malian government? does it have any religious aspect to it, or is it ecumenically oppressive? 27% of the men and 12% of the women are literate. is this a situation where everyone's starving and being an islamic militant is reliable work?  the tuaregs, despite being "routed," are still in the north. what to do they have to do with all this going forward? about 90,000 people have apparently already peaced out of the north. what's happening with them? what're the plans for dealing with people still there who want to leave?

i gotta talk to natalie about this. never am much interested in any place until it's a fat disaster.

thinking about pacifism: the goal's to have most everybody be sufficiently free from ignorance and want  because people like that don't go in for wars and oppression so much, at least not personally.

so imagine this agent of oppression in some police state. there's this guy with a big gun making you less free and life less good. he's got a gun because the state operates based on the assumption that the threat of violence is the only thing keeping the state together. it's LUNACY to attack this guy, ESPECIALLY with a gun or something like it, because it plays precisely into the expectations of the state, it's presumption that the state would violently fall apart without that guy. it legitimates, in the perverse logic of this lousy, hypothetical state, a violent response, because what other response could there possibly be.

And the agent of oppression with the big gun is a person too, with lots of people like him, and probably a significant, privileged minority of the population that's very invested in his monopoly on big guns. Using a gun against that person mobilizes all those people to get bigger guns, because it validates their fear. now they, absurdly, have gotta protect themselves!

also, economic sanctions are warfare. they're like a siege. they make people hungrier and more ignorant and so more liable to want to have a war and so become even hungrier and ignorant.