UKIP: 'DON'T PANIC, MR CAMERON, DON'T PANIC!'

Oh, what a lovely war. A couple of days from the local elections and the Tories are in a blue funk. And all because of a personable geezer called Farage.

 

Tory Central Office is resorting to the dirty tricks that we associate more with the Blair/Brown regime. They have been scouring 1700 UKIP candidates’ twitter accounts and Facebook messages to see what muck they can rake. A couple of stories have already been published about ‘racists’ and advocates of lynch-law for kiddy-fiddlers, but have not managed to get much traction. The average reader would probably say ‘Yeah. Right’, recognising this stuff for what it is. It is unlikely that anyone ‘shocked’ by such miserable revelations would vote for UKIP anyway.

 

Then we have Ken Clarke showering UKIP with abuse, overlooking the fact that he also implies that anyone who votes UKIP i.e. a Tory. Is unhinged. Not good PR or politics, Ken. But who listens to him anymore? He is a figure of fun, with his Brussels-worship, his hush puppies, and his whiffs. He is a man with a great future behind him!

 

Next we have Dan Hodges, the Telegraph’s teen-aged scribbler, pouring even more abuse on UKIP in a whole column of name-calling – Farage is a big girl’s blouse, he tells us. But he only managed to find 3 reprehensible candidates, one of whom congratulated Russia on banning a gay pride march, a move that many natural Tories might support. Hodges claims to be the only Blairite on the Telegraph staff – not something to boast about, surely.

 

Boris Johnson got it about right. This is what he says in his comment piece:
 

‘…….the problem we Tories face when confronted with these chaps from Ukip. Take Nigel Farage, whom I met years ago and who has always struck me as a rather engaging geezer. He’s anti-pomposity, he’s anti-political correctness, he’s anti-loony Brussels regulation. He’s in favour of low tax, and sticking up for small business, and sticking up for Britain.
 

We Tories look at him – with his pint and cigar and sense of humour – and we instinctively recognise someone who is fundamentally indistinguishable from us. He’s a blooming Conservative, for heaven’s sake; and yet he’s in our constituencies, wooing our audiences, nicking our votes, and threatening to put our councillors out of office. We feel the panic of a man confronted by his Doppelgänger’.
 

The Tories are giving UKIP the oxygen of publicity, doubly welcome in a party against which there seems to have been a media conspiracy of silence, as if not talking about the buggane will make him go away. If Dave wishes to see-off UNIP he must steal Nigel’ clothes.
 

And another thing.
 

Every two weeks Private Eye fills a whole page with ‘Rotten Boroughs’, tales of corruption, sexual misbehavior, fiddling expenses, dirty deals with developers and a multitude of other sins committed by Councillors of all stripes.
 

Two can play at this game.

 

Hope for Africa, and about time, too!

When the scramble out of Africa started in around 1960, we old colonials reckoned the ‘wind of change’ would blow everything away.

 

How right we were. Very quickly we were dishing out blankets and food to the thousands of Belgians who legged it over the Congo  border from a war that has never ended. The ensuing decades have seen the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse galloping in, spreading civil war, invasions, famine, disease and millions of deaths over vast swathes of the  continent.

 

It has taken 50 years to begin to see a glimmer of hope.

 

Africans are not fighting Africans on the earlier scale. The Congo remains in its usual state of violence, together with parts of the Sahel and much of Somalia, but  the seemingly endless conflicts from the 1960’s to the 1990’s hopefully are past. This is partly due to the end of the cold war and the supply of arms by Russia and the US to buy influence with whichever dictator was in power, and partly due to simple war-weariness. And perhaps because there are fewer people left to kill.

 

Only nine countries have out-and-out authoritarian regimes. The others are either democracies or  getting there. And most of the Big Men have gone.

 

Government competence has improved markedly, so perhaps the efforts of we development consultants over many years have not been entirely in vain. The public services generally are better administered by better educated civil servants. Admittedly they continue to have their hands in the till, but the kleptocrats generally are fewer in number, and they no longer steal the whole Treasury. In Nigeria they still help themselves to between $4 and 8 billion every year, but they are experts. It is estimated that $380 billion has gone walkabout from there since independence.

 

And there have been real improvements in civil society.

 

Health has improved. Child mortality is still unacceptably high, but is falling quite rapidly. Malaria is down 30%, and AIDS by a remarkable 75%. Even South Africa appears to have the infection under control, despite the legacy of Mbeki.

 

Secondary school attendance increased by nearly 50% in 8 years. Income has increased by 30% in a decade. Internet access is available to 60% of households, and mobile phone penetration is a staggering 80%. In South Africa, a mobile is called ‘the Gauteng earing’ because every kid seems to have one as a permanent attachment to the ear.

 

One of the important developments has been the growth of banking via mobile for people who have never before been able to open a bank account due to remoteness from a bank, or simply by being of no interest to conventional banks

 

Economically, Africa is the fastest growing continent, and 15 African countries are in the top 50 growth economies (EU had negative growth in 2012).

 

The wealthiest countries by GDPpp are Equatorial Guinea ($36,000), Seychelles ($28,000), Gabon ($16,000), Mauritius ($15,000), Botswana ($13,000), and South Africa ($10,000), which puts them on a par with some Eastern European countries. Three-quarters of African countries are ranked as ‘middle income’. (EU = $32,000).

 

Foreign investment in Africa has increased from $15 billion to $46 billion in 10 years (the downside to this being capital flight to tax havens equal to the whole of foreign aid, according to some authorities). Exports rose from $80 billion to $450 billion in the same period, during which exports to China alone increased from $11 billion to $166 billion.

 

Oil has been discovered in commercial quantities in Sudan, Uganda, and Kenya; and gas in Tanzania.

 

An emerging problem is excessive reliance on commodities, such as Zambian copper which has boomed but is subject to quite violent market fluctuations. Botswana, recognising that the diamonds may run out in 20 years or less, has persuaded De Beers to shift its sorting operations from London to Gaborone. And the ‘curse of oil’ may make it a mixed blessing.

 

There is still a long way to go, but the future looks more promising

 

It has all been a long time  a’coming!

Damascus & Dhaka......

There are so many red lines being drawn on the political map that I am in a sea of confusion over who might have crossed one and when. O himself is a bundle of worry now that he has to come up with his promised punitive action against Syria for having crossed the red line relating to the use of chemical weapons.

 

Israel too has proclaimed red lines were crossed by Syria and Iran in relation to weapons shipments. Too many red lines and too many politicians thumping their chests.

 

Judging from the collapse of yet another sub-continental building, India and Bangladesh need a complete physical overhaul.

 

Having worked in Dhaka, I am not surprised. The city looks rundown and the tall new building that I was in looked to be poorly constructed with a lot of mismatched joints and unevenness. I was on the 15th floor and had a perpetual battle with columns of ants invading my space.

 

The working conditions there remind one of the early  days of the Industrial revolution in Europe what with long shifts, child labor, bad ventilation and unsympathetic owners.

'We're doomed, all doomed......'

Let us now consider Professor Sir John Beddington, the former Chief Scientific Advisor.

 

His parting shot was that even if we achieve our present carbon reduction targets we will be stuck with climate change for the next 25 years.

 

He says that there will also be another 1 billion people on the planet and that we will be facing a crisis in energy security, food and water. So let’s see if this stands up to a bit of common sense.

 

First, population.

 

The trouble with population predictions is that people are unpredictable. They change their habits and lifestyle as they become more affluent; they have fewer children both because improving medical care avoids the breeding of large families in case of losses, but more importantly because they no longer need large families as their pensions. More than 200 million people have been lifted out of poverty in the past decade. A known consequence of this is that the fertility rate is falling in many countries, sometimes dramatically. For example, in Thailand the fertility rate has fallen from around 9 to less than the replacement rate of 2.2. With the exception of Britain and the US, which are on the cusp, almost all western countries are experiencing negative replacement rates.

 

Instead we will be facing a quite different problem, that of ageing populations with a declining workforce.

 

The rate of population growth is slowing. It is estimated to peak at about 9 billion by 2075 from the present 7 billion and then slowly decline. But this does not take into account rapid changes in the fertility rate in poor countries where it is currently very high.

 

And so to food.

 

The most compelling aspect of the world food situation is ‘waste’.

 

It is estimated that almost 50% of food production is lost due to poor harvesting techniques, spoilage in transit, and improvident shoppers; a peep in a supermarket skip comes as something of a shock when one sees the amount of food that is thrown away. The idiocy of ‘ sell by’ and ‘best before’ dates is a major factor in unnecessary food waste. And of course there is simple gluttony.

 

Most of the cultivatable land on the planet is either not cultivated at all or cultivated badly. Africa is a case in point. In much of the continent, peasant farmers have not progressed even as far as the ox-plough. There is insufficient investment due mainly to lack of security of land title. The decline in farming by Europeans in parts of Africa has reduced production in some areas; for example, Rhodesia was once a major exporter of maize and the highest quality beef. Zimbabwe is not. South African food production is under threat because of the murder of white farmers – 3000 according to some estimates.

 

Elsewhere there is over-production, of rice in Thailand where the government has an intervention mechanism to stop prices tanking, sugar in tropical countries which is scarcely competitive on world markets due to unfair competition from the EU which adds to surplus production by subsidising sugar beet, and elsewhere. Large areas of farmland are taken out of production under EU set-aside arrangements and we have the ultimate absurdity of farmers being paid not to farm.

 

And, of course, we have food – corn and sugar especially – being converted into biofuels, notwithstanding that there is negative carbon benefit because of the power needed in the conversion process or that this also harms beef production.

 

Far from there being a future famine threat, a combination of better agriculture and land use should provide more than sufficient food  for future populations.

 

Now for energy.

 

Proven reserves of fossil fuels are known to be in excess of future demand. This does not take into account nuclear power or the greatest unexploited resource, the sea. Neither does it recognise the fact that the world reserves of coal are vast. I don’t think the lights will be going out any time soon, despite endless claptrap from the green lobbies.

 

So instead of Private Frazier (we’re doomed) it should be Corporal Jones (don’t panic)!

Boston and beyond.....

The crescendo of last weeks national emotions have fallen as quickly as they rose. With some magnificent help from the FBI the brothers Tsarnaev have been neutralized after managing to burn their initials into the flesh of Boston. The remainder of Americans join Bostonians in awesome praise of the coordination and cooperation exemplified by the various levels of police from national to municipal.

 

There was some speculation that the surviving Chechnyan may be tried by a military tribunal. That ended abruptly when the lad was read his Miranda Rights. He will certainly lawyer up and will probably tell all in return for not being executed.

 

In the meantime, the broken lives and limbs are healing with boatloads of spunk shown by some of the invalided victims.

 

In his own curing move, O is off to West, Texas for a memorial service for the victims of the fertilizer plant meltdown. West is but a few hours from where we live. It is a suburb of Waco which, after having visited the city, is on my drive by list. I cannot imagine West would have had much to offer the visitor. From what I understand, it is pretty much gone. Sad.

 

Given the rate at which we have been shooting each other and blowing things up here in the USA, it should not be long before another incident occurs. The Canadians just caught a group of would-be terrorists plotting to blow up some Canadian trains. I cannot understand why as Canada as a nations still retains it virginity.

 

Climate change? It's all hockeysticks!

The hockey stick is back to prove beyond peradventure by analysing climate change over 13,000 years that we are definitely getting warmer.

 

Temperatures have only been recorded since 1863, so how do they know?

 

Well, it seems that they have been examining the rings of tree trunks. I didn’t know trees grew to that age but obviously they do, and to get hard evidence they must have examined thousands of them from all over the world. You learn something new every day!

 

The hockey stick , as published in the New Scientist, shows gradual warming up to medieval times then a downwards trend, what NS calls a ‘downwards drift’ .

 

From then until  about the 18^th Century the earth was cooling very rapidly. This is what the NS says:

‘The gradual drift before the 19th century was driven by changes in Earth's axis of rotation: the planet's tilt increased early in the Holocene before decreasing again. It sort of wobbles. A greater tilt leads to more sunlight at the poles in summer, and this keeps the planet warmer.

If humans had not begun warming the planet by releasing greenhouse gases, Earth would eventually return to an ice age. If we were following the orbital trend we'd still be cooling’.

 

It looks to me as if there was not ‘gradual drift’ but a pronounced drop from medieval times onwards which is borne out by history, such as constant crop failures and the Thames freezing over. Then came the Industrial Revolution which created vast amounts of atmospheric carbon which stopped the Ice Age in its tracks.

 

Latest trends show that there has been no discernible change in earth temperature over the last decade, but its seems that if the warmists have their way it is going to get very chilly out there.

 

 

 

It's your fault too,Fritz!

Greece is right down the Sewanee. Cyprus has just joined its fellow Hellenes. Slovenia is almost certainly next. Portugal is not far off. Italy doesn’t even have a government and should change its National Anthem to ‘Bring on the clowns’. Spain borders on civil disturbance, and the French economy needs a spell in intensive care.

 

The German taxpayer is anguished at the mess of the Eurozone domino, seeing endless raids on German money to keep the EMS on life support when a visit to Dignitas might be the kinder option.

 

And it’s all the fault of the improvident, feckless, tax dodging Club Med.

 

Well, up to a point, Lord Copper.

 

The basic cause of the crash has been a conflict between supply-side economics (Germany) and demand-side (Club Med), or, to put it more simply, borrowing German money to buy German goods until the bailiffs moved in.

 

The Germans are not like us. They export furiously. Exports grew by about 115% in 12 years. They make things. They have little truck with nancy-boy stuff like financial services. Their bankers were innocents who would never believe that Wall Street would sell them worthless sub-prime crap, so they were stitched-up.

 

Unlike the British, they have never fallen into the trap of regarding housing as a store of wealth, so they have never had a ruinous housing bubble. Rented housing is about 60% of the stock (in Berlin it is 90%). In Britain, 70% is owner-occupied. Over the past 10years, house prices have only risen by 2 or 3%, whereas they have nearly doubled here. Ironically, Germans are ‘poor’ because property value is a  major item in computing individual wealth.

 

Their success is based on the Euro for the simple reason it is cheap money for them but for the Club Med it is not. Had there been no EMS, the DM would have risen in value to reflect Germany’s economic success. The consequence is a disastrous gap between Germany the producer and Club Med the consumer.

 

Germans buy little from the Club Med in relative terms, and this is yet another factor that leads to distorted trade balances. German domestic consumption is weak. Part of Germany’s economic strength is that following reunification it clamped down on wages, so production costs are very competitive, but the penalty has been that living standards have not risen in 20 years. We all had a ball during the boom years and racked up a huge amount of domestic debt. The Germans didn’t; they don’t do debt - even credit cards are looked upon with some scorn.

 

After a dip at the end of last year when it looked as if the German economy was in trouble, it has started to pick up again, and it is running a budget surplus. Unemployment is amongst the lowest in Europe and 42 million Germans are in work, the highest ever. The imminent closure of Opel seems a minor and temporary glitch.

 

So how to get out of the present Catch 22 situation which demands austerity as the treatment  in the failing economies but which may end up killing the patient?

 

Germany needs a very large increase in domestic consumption; to loosen up, to enjoy themselves more, to spend more. They need to be a bit more like us.

 

And we need to be a bit more like them!

 

 

 

 

The Boston bombing.......and others.

My reaction to the Boston bombing was tempered somewhat by remembrance of the part that Boston, and the US generally, played in the IRA campaign. Large donations to NORAID were collected from Irish pubs and elsewhere, and the  US was the  main source of arms for the IRA, along with Libya. Not a single IRA suspect was ever extradited from America.

 
And this went on for nearly 30 years – 40 if we include the Border campaign of the 1950’s.

 
It featured indiscriminate killings, using car bombs in crowded areas such as pubs and shopping malls. The very elderly Lord Mountbatten was murdered, along with an old lady and two young boys. There were bomb attacks in Manchester and Warrington specifically targeting civilians, office blocks in London, and the slaughter of Army bandsmen and horses in Hyde Park. The total casualties in England were 215 killed and more than 2000 injured.

Perhaps the worst atrocity was the Omagh bombing which killed 29 people, including 6 children, 6 teenagers, a woman pregnant with twins and a number of tourists.

 
In total nearly 2000 people were killed and perhaps 10,000  injured.

 
So perhaps it is timely in this momentous week to recall Margaret Thatcher’s words about one man’s terrorist being another man’s freedom fighter.

 
She said ‘Terrorism is indivisible’.

Maggie, guns and bombs.........

The BBC World Service broadcast the entire Thatcher funeral service at St. Paul's. They did a good job as did BBC America in their daily international news telecast.

 

The weak American representation at the funeral  was hardly mentioned in the media with the exception of at least one right wing talk show host who noted that we sent a delegation to President Hugo Chavez' funeral last month but no such delegation to London. These type of talk show hosts lack credibility and are thereby suspect when they say anything. The unforgivable fact is that our mainline media neglected the issue of representation altogether.

 

Our Public Broadcasting System news briefly covered the funeral and did focus on Americans attending such as Henry Kissinger and Newt Gingrich, but did not mention whether they represented the US or were there privately. O did send two former Secretaries of State, the 90 year old George Schultz and the octogenarian James Baker. I also read that George Bush the elder was asked to attend, but refused owing to a previous commitment. The same source noted that Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton did the same.

 

The story goes that O is antipathetic toward the UK because his father related stories to O of abuses toward Kenyans during the colonial era. This is the reason given for O's having returned the bust of Winston Churchill that was presented to the USprior to his becoming president.

 

 

If these stories are true, O is carrying an historical grudge a bit too far and much to the discredit of the USA. He has certainly gone far to poison our relationship in spite of his protestations to the contrary.

 

Much to O's credit, he did give the US Senate hell for failing to come up with enough votes to pass the latest and heavily watered down version of the gun control bill. He specifically referred to the gun lobby having won the day. Spelled out, this means that the National Rifle Association as the chief representative and lobbyist of our gun and ammunition industry was able to influence (i.e. pay off) our Senators to vote against the bill.

 

Reportedly, a healthy majority of Americans favor the proposed legislation but were not listened to by their delegates in Washington. This situation epitomizes our modern legislative branch dilemma; our senators and representatives serve for themselves and not their constituencies.

 

 

The major sickness in American government today is not the Office of the President, but the Legislature.

 

Meanwhile, everyone is focused on the Boston bomber(s) and the havoc their action caused during the Boston Marathon. We are getting tired of being shot at and blown apart here at home. Passions are rising and most people believe the bombing stemmed from Muslim terrorists.

 

 

This translates into a growing and pervasive anti-Muslim attitude across the country.

 

 

Ironically, this attitude hurts Obama given his relatively accommodating policy toward Muslim countries. If, however, the terrorists turn out to be non-Muslim Americans, then the blame will go to the political right and all their extremist baggage.

 

We keep hearing news about the FBI having film of the culprits, having seen them, having identified them and having arrested them, but at the time of writing no names or descriptions have been forthcoming. The media is fit to be tied with all the false and perhaps not so false leads they obtained for their own reliable sources.

 

 

The reporting of the bombings will be the subject of much future conversation and will certainly engender retrospection on the role of the media in reporting ongoing criminal events, their relationship with their sources and above all their relationship with law enforcement authorities.

 

 

Often, information given the media in confidence and not for publication is treated without regard to these caveats.

 

We both need another Maggie.

Thatcher: truths & lies

The massive media outpourings on the death of Margaret Thatcher have been long on opinion but short on fact, so I will try to redress the balance.

 

Anti-Europe? This is far from the truth. She was anti the notion of Europe as a political entity. This is what she said.

 

“The President of the Commission, Mr. Delors, said  that he wanted the European Parliament to be the democratic body of the Community, he wanted the Commission to be the Executive and he wanted the Council of Ministers to be the Senate. No. No. No."

 

"What is the point of trying to get elected to Parliament only to hand over sterling and the powers of this House to Europe?” 

 

“Europe is not the creation of the Treaty of Rome. Nor is the European idea the property of any group or institution. We British are as much heirs to the legacy of European culture as any other nation. Our links to the rest of Europe, the continent of Europe, have been the dominant factor in our history…"

 

“Let Europe be a family of nations, understanding each other better, appreciating each other more, doing more together but relishing our national identity no less than our common European endeavour. Let us have a Europe which plays its full part in the wider world, which looks outward not inward, and which preserves that Atlantic community—that Europe on both sides of the Atlantic—which is our noblest inheritance and our greatest strength.” 

 

She was anti the Euro and the abandonment of national currencies, but she was not averse to the Ecu as a European trading monetary unit, which was how it operated until the Euro was introduced .

 

She received endorsement of her stand just a few days ago from a Eurocrat.

 

Former Dutch Internal Market Commissioner Frits Bolkesten :"The Netherlands has to exit the euro as quickly as possible... The monetary union has totally failed. The euro turned out to be a sleeping pill which made Europe doze off instead of thinking about our competitiveness... Let’s stop with the euro and instead strengthen the Single Market... We don't need the euro for that."

 

Pit closures?

 

Wilson closed 211 mines in 5 years. MT closed 154 in 11 years. There was no alternative, to use one of her favourite phrases. British coal cost more to produce than its selling price. It was 3 times the cost of imported Polish coal. And North Sea oil provided a plentiful and cheap alternative.

 

The miners’ strike?

 

This was not industrial action. It was ideological class warfare by Scargill and the NUM. Maggie did not provoke it, as many would have us believe. I recall that there were  three ballots all of which rejected strike action. But Scargill, the Marxist who allegedly took money from Gadaffi for strike funds, ignored them.

 

It is said that she ‘decimated’ industry. In fact, in the decade after MT became PM, manufacturing grew at an exceptionally rapid rate. This was the era that brought Nissan, Toyota, Honda and other major manufacturers to the UK.

 

Because of industrial relations laws introduced during that time, private sector strikes are now minimal as a consequence of the requirement for strike ballots. And she banned ‘flying pickets’ whereby unions interfered in disputes with which they had no direct interest.

 

Divisive? Of course; that is what the British political tradition is all about. Consensus politics is for the political class alone: it enables them to share out the spoils.  Her constituency was the aspirational working class, Mondeo man, the ‘class traitors’ who wanted to get on.

 

We forget what the UK was like before Thatcher; top rate of tax of 83%; exchange controls; incessant strikes that gained Britain the sobriquet of the Sick Man of Europe. ‘Thatcherism’ has made sure that there is no going back.

 

Thatcher: an American view........

The dark side of UK life is highly unattractive when viewed from the perspective of reactions to Margaret Thatcher's passing.

 

It is incredulous to we Americans that our forefathers and the chief architects and engineers of our country could be so cold, ghoulish and sadistic when it comes to burying a paragon of British leadership.

 

 

I imagine we are talking about a small minority, but its magnification by the likes of the BBC for airing Ding Dong the Witch is Dead gives us the impression that Death Party guests represent a major slice of the UK population.

 

Why, we ask, is the most highly acclaimed Prime Minister since Winston Churchill so dreadfully unappreciated and detested by segments of the population.

 

We silently credit Margaret with bolstering our Ronald Reagan both intellectually and in terms of his fortitude. And Americans have come to love and respect Reagan and his brand of political conservatism.

 

Maggie's towering strength was slow to manifest itself here in the former colony, but once we realized what we were dealing with vast amounts of credit and appreciation were bestowed, especially with respect to her taming the unions.

 

There will be no death parties here and our most liberal media will follow and report the funeral.

Madonna mad at Malawi (or vice versa).

What a great cat-fight!

 

Madonna, that great benefactress of the African poor, has got into a ballistic battle of words with  the indomitable President Joyce Banda of Malawi. It seems that the great lady (Madonna, that is) and her large entourage were made to queue with the hoi polloi and general riff-raff when leaving Lilongwe Airport, instead of going through the VIP lounge.

 

Ms Banda accused Madonna of bigging-up her schools-building charity, saying that she had not actually built any, but had only carried out some improvements and extensions and that generally she was an arrogant pain in the arse.

 

Madonna’s riposte was to call the President a liar and virtually accused her sister of fiddling the books when she was in charge of Madonna’s schools charity.

 

The inevitable outcome might be that Madonna’s status is changed from VIP to PI (prohibited immigrant).

 

We will probably never hear the truth above the din, but I have a sneaking sympathy for Banda’s resentment of celeb do-gooders using charitable missions to whip-up self-serving publicity. As she pointed out, there had been many visits by such as David Beckham who sought neither publicity nor special treatment, although it must be admitted that Madonna got both, even if not in quite the way she intended.

 

I have to admit to feeling somewhat queasy about celebs adopting trophy-children. Madonna has two Malawians. The rules were waived for her; in Malawi foreign adoptions are not allowed until the adopter has 18 months residence, to prevent people-trafficking. The father of one said that he thought that Madonna was going to be only the child’s carer, not adoptive mother. Human rights people got involved and there was big controversy.

 

As to her charity, it looks as if there is a bit of pot and kettle here. She raised $3.8 million. So far, only $850,000 has arrived in Malawi. And $3 million is back in LA, allegedly  unaccounted for in 2011.

 

The Malawi Government gave her a large swathe of land to build her project. Nothing has happened except the eviction of the peasant farmers.

 

‘The road to hell is paved……..’