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G21 AFRICA:

Mori in Africa

Keen interest was bound to be aroused in diplomatic circles as soon as word went round that Japan's Prime Minister, Mr. Yoshiro Mori, was scheduled to visit three of black Africa's most prominent nations--South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria 7 - 12 January of 2001.

And it was. Here, for the first time, was an incumbent Japanese head of government, with all the clout of the world's second greatest economy, touring Africa. In the United States, the European Union, the Russian Federation, as well as in China, all three stops by Mori were observed keenly, coming as they did at a critical juncture in international relations and the global economy.

Who was this man who had decided to go where no other Japanese Premier has gone while in office? Perhaps the fact that Mori had been a journalist before joining politics way back in 1969 had something to do with his horizons being broader than those of all his predecessors. A member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Mori, 63, became prime minister in April last year after his predecessor, Mr Keizo Obuchi, suffered a stroke and went into a coma.

Now at the tail end of a decade of economic recession in Japan, when signs of recovery were just becoming evident, and certainly no stranger to constitutional issues, economic recession and the strategic calculations that go into unequal trading partnerships, it was this seasoned political operative who toured Africa, a part of the world where constitutionality, poverty and trade gaps are seemingly intractable problems... More

POWERSSOUND:

Sonny & The Bridge

Every week my e-mail contains a report from Terri Hinte, who handles publicity duties for the prestigious Fantasy Records out on the energy-deprived West Coast. I couldn't help but borrow these comments that come from the most recent release:

"No film footage exists of Sonny Rollins practicing on the Williamsburg Bridge in 1959, but this enduring bit of jazz lore made its way into the Ken Burns 'Jazz' segment on Rollins via atmospheric black and white images of the bridge itself. In fact, few stories on Rollins fail to mention the saxophonist's famous bridge practice sessions, and this month in GQ magazine, writer Tim Sultan addresses the topic in a piece called 'Take It to the Bridge.'

"'Sonny had been looking for a place to practice that wouldn't disturb his neighbors, and 'he soon solved his dilemma when, walking past the nearby Williamsburg Bridge, he spotted a set of steps at the base. They led to a catwalk. 'It was a perfect area,' he recalls, 'a private, unseen expanse high above the cars, the train and the boats blowing their horns below. A space to practice, to jog, even to do chin-ups on the railings overhead. I had found my Shangri-la.'"

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DAY ONE:

Munich Legacy

It is difficult in hindsight to imagine how relieved Great Britain and its allies were when Neville Chamberlain signed his supposed peace accord with Hitler at Munich in 1938.

Not only was there an understandable reluctance, after the First World War, to participate in another conflict, it was also recognised that the longer it could be delayed the better chance there was that Germany would not get all its own way. There was, however, another set of entwined factors, in Britain at least.

For a combination of reasons stretching back to the Norman 'conquest' of Britain, its people were more inclined to like the Germans and dislike the French, using "like" in that vague sense of adopting a prejudice out of the intellectual and social atmosphere without having any good reason for it.

There had been 500 years of dynastic and feudal entanglement with France which reached a crisis in the Hundred Years War. England had become Protestant as had parts of Germany while the French, for all their ingrained anti-clericalism, were nominally Catholic. Shakespeare reinterpreted history through such popular speeches as: "Once more unto the breach". Although Britain spasmodically fought with the Dutch we much more regularly fought with the French between the Reformation and the accession to the English and Scottish thrones of first a Dutch couple and then a line of Hanoverians. The clincher was Queen Victoria's Prince Albert.

The British establishment, particularly the courtly and aristocratic parts of it, did not want to fight with France against Germany in 1914 but were left with no choice. By 1938 to this historical catalogue was to be added the admiration of much of the British aristocracy for Hitler's mode of government and a general dislike, sometimes amounting to hatred, of Jews...More

TABLOID HART: : Fellow Sanitation Engineers, last week Mark Burnett, CBS and a couple of the old contestants from the low-life island was smacked with lawsuits by a disgruntled Stacey Stillman, that lawyer gal from San Francisco what got her butt kicked off the island early on. I couldah told that ole boy, Mark Burnett who created that "Survivor" show for CBS last year that the very last thang he wanted to do was put a damned lawyer on the island. But like most Hollyweird types, Burnett wouldn'tah listened to me anyways. So now it's come back to bite him square in the hiney!

And talk about a whiner! She's claimin' the show was rigged to keep that old wingnut Rudy on until the end so's old folks would have somebody to identify with and keep watching the yawnfest.

Hey, Stacey! Listen up! Everybody in America knows that old folks fall asleep in a New York minute soon as you feed 'em and plops 'em in them Lazy Boys(tm) in front of TV set! But I guess you already exterminated all your senior citizens out there in San Fran --- or else chased 'em outtah town, right?...."Hooray for Hollyweird!" THOMAS HART More

They launched on 4 January, 2001, but have been in communication with G21: The World Magazine since last autumn. They invited us to be one of their original Partners. We invite you to visit them when you're not with us. It makes sense.

COMING MONDAY

KEVIN CAREY's commentary on the right-wing effort to demolish the secular state in DAY ONE.