The Price of Empire - a conversation with Col Larry Wilkerson from the DiscernThis podcast

Lonzo Cook is the host of DiscernThisPod.com please subscribe to the YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJIrYFwYf2M "Russia is not going to lose"- "Climate change is the greatest threat"

Our guest today is Colonel Larry Wilkerson. Colonel Wilkerson served for 31 years in the US Army, starting as a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War. Later in his career, he was chief of staff to US Secretary of State Colin Powell. Colonel Wilkinson taught at William and Mary College and at George Washington University in 2020. He was named a nonresident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a think tank in Washington, D.C.. King Wilkerson, thank you for coming on the podcast.

Thank you for having me.

You've had a distinguished career in military and public service centered on identifying and mitigating threats faced by the country. In your opinion, what is the greatest threat facing the United States?

Today. It's as easy as it ever was during the Cold War, if it was easy during that time, and that is nuclear weapons and climate. Those are the two threats confronting the world that are existential right now. We have abandoned all arms control. We did it primarily. We abandoned the ABM Treaty under my administration, as we were George W Bush. And then we proceeded to abandon everything else, including Colin Powell signature achievement, which he often reminded me of under Ronald Reagan when he was deputy and then national security adviser early on after me, which eliminated it. So he would always say it statically an entire class of nuclear weapons, the most dangerous class, as a matter of fact. And we're on the verge of eliminating the last vestige of nuclear arms control, the new START treaty, which I dare say Vladimir Putin, given the language passing between Washington and Moscow right now, will not be willing to renew.

I hope I'm wrong, but that's just colossally dangerous. We're back at a time, for example, where I hear general officers, admirals, as I heard, read about. I actually heard one or two in the early fifties because I was privy to it. My father was in the military. They talk about nuclear weapons now, as they did in the early fifties, as battlefield weapons, as having utility on the battlefield. The Russians have actually, as I understand it, from the fans and the Swedes who monitor it pretty closely, put it in their written doctrine that tactical nuclear weapons have battlefield utility. This is very dangerous. We're back at a time where some would say we're as dangerous with regard to nuclear weapons as a 1962 Cuban missile crisis or in my estimation, a far more dangerous crisis, as most Americans knew very little about the Berlin crisis of the same timeframe where we actually watched over the East Germans as they built the The Wall of Shame, the Berlin Wall. Because we knew if they didn't build that wall, the 10,000 people leaving the GDR every week would soon drain the GDR of any human people. So, you know, that was strategic with Russia. Cuba was a gamble. Berlin was strategic, fundamentally strategic for both of us. So I think that was an even more dangerous crisis. And yet I think today we're back in those kind of times again.

Lonzo: I'd like to you know, you mentioned battlefield tactical nukes, and that's certainly come up in the discussion over Russia and Ukraine. I'd like to turn to that conflict. As you look at the the conflict from the build up to the crisis and then the outbreak of kinetic warfare, if you were to issue a report card to the Biden administration for it on how it's if you were to issue a report card to the Biden administration on how it's handled the conflict, what would that report card say?

I think it would be a D to a D minus, with some parenthetical exceptions for the president himself. As a matter of fact, when Biden is Biden most, most as Powell used to describe him, kind of not necessarily consistent, even being ambiguous from time to time. Those are not necessarily bad qualities for a president. So as he has wandered through the ambiguity and the statements that seem like his followers have to retract or modify, after which he's actually been pretty cogent saying one thing for Vladimir Putin. Another thing for his domestic political audience. And yet another thing for reality.

So I credit him with that. I don't credit Tony Blinken at all, Jake Solomon at all, or anybody else in the diplomatic corps that I've heard talk they are as bad as Western media from London to Washington to I shouldn't say Tokyo though from times Tokyo can get into it. Warmongering media. I've never seen anything like it. I didn't live through Teddy Roosevelt, William Randolph Hearst, and all those good guys. You find me the war and I'll sell it for you, that sort of thing. But this is terrible what the media is doing. It has become, oh, it's white Christians. Oh, my God, they're Ukrainians living in the United States. This is a war we can love. And it's been that way. And no one's telling the truth. The truth is very much different from what Moscow's media is putting out and what Washington and other Western media is putting out. It's very different. The reality is significantly different from what both sides are saying. And if you understand that the only way to resolve this crisis and it should be resolved yesterday is diplomacy, then that really leaves you wanting a great deal. No one seems to be interested in.

Lonzo: I'd like to drill down a little bit on that. What are the truths that the media in Moscow and Washington are not sharing with the public?

The most glaring one is that Russia is not going to lose. Period. Russia has strategic depth. 11 times. It's like no other country on earth. Russia has absorbed invasions in the past. Don't go to Munich, for example. Go to Napoleon, go to the Nazis. There's your examples for the staying power of Russia. Even in 1917, when Russia was bruised and battered in World War One and then bruised and battered at home. I wouldn't have wanted to walk in the Russia as some did the white Russians, for example, Britain and others, even us, and try to fight them. It's just not something you do. So Russia first. Russia is not going to lose. I don't care what Zelensky does. I don't care what NATO's does.

Russia is not going to lose. Now, if NATO's were to come out with a full might, then we'd have nuclear war and with all those. So that that's hardly a victory. It's not even a Pyrrhic victory. We all lose just a few nuclear weapons. We now know physicists and others have instructed us throughout the Cold War explain it to got them to back down a little bit. And we began to do some things that. Really stunning they hadn't done. For example, we introduced them to permissive action laws which go on your nuclear weapons and keep people from using them inadvertently or at least give you a better chance of that. And we introduced them to escalation, control and deterrence theory and all these things that we learned during the Cold War and now have apparently forgot, by the way, we're dealing with Ukraine and Putin. So that's part of it, is they're just not pitching the war. Right. So if it's an endless contest in the heart of Europe with people dying every day, what's your solution? Sit down and talk. Let's stop this stupid conflict. No one's going to win, Zelensky.

Lonzo: I'd like to turn now to China. How would you assess the strategic threat posed by China to the United States?

Ever since Carter made it official, President Carter made it official. And Nixon and Kissinger and Mao Zedong. And Joe and I talked in Beijing and effected a sort of rapprochement between China and the United States. We. Essentially said, we recognize there's only one shot. And they essentially said, we recognize you have a relationship with Taiwan. And we said, okay, as long as you never use force against Taiwan, we will not make Taiwan an independent state in an internationally legal sense. Right. Things like that. Now we've got people like Richard HAASS, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, my old boss on the policy planning staff at State, saying we should have strategic clarity. Richard, you're a lunatic. It's worked for 40 years. Why would you want to stop until it is effectively not working? Then you might want to stop and have strategic clarity. But strategic clarity is lunacy because we couldn't beat China or China to use military force against Taiwan, ergo, nuclear weapons.

I mean, you talk about the American people waking up tomorrow morning. You'd have 100,000 casualties in the first ten weeks. You'd have immediately two carriers on the bottom of the ocean. That's 5000 men and women. That's 10,000. My God, let's say to 2000 with one carrier strike group survived. And they're in the water. They're survivors in the water like World War Two flames. And these are all your sets. You couldn't pick them up because the escort ships for a carrier today do not have sufficient berth space to take them on board. You'd have. You'd have to have some kind of special vessels going to trucks. Take a look at the Chinese fishing fleet. Sometimes it's 15 times bigger than the United States Navy, and most of those boats are armed. This is an incredible flotilla that the Chinese have, and we could never in the South China Sea think that we could beat them, maybe tie them because our technology is better, our missiles are better, or some things are better. Chinese have pretty damn good torpedoes.

And very good, very good short to ship missiles.

Which they absolutely lose to gosh, just blocks of them. In Fujian province alone. They could shoot 600 at Taiwan tomorrow morning and not even over their coffee. So this is preposterous. Strategic ambiguity is working. We should keep it that way. But people seem to think in the Congress and in the White House that clarity is what is necessary. They're going to wake up one day and all of a sudden they have to do it. It's not going to be fun. It's going to be dangerous. And I suspect we won't do it. I suspect it'll all be rhetoric.

Lonzo: I guess we should explain for our listeners unfamiliar with the phrase that strategic ambiguity refers to the the lack of definitive clarity over where the U.S. would go to war to defend Taiwan. I'd like to double click on one aspect of your answer. You know, on China, are you saying the United States would likely lose a conflict with China if it went to war over Taiwan?

I think if the United States went to war with Russia on exterior lines in Europe, it would lose. The first six weeks, surely they'd lose badly. And the American people would have to be confronted with 10,000 casualties a day, something they have been confronted with in their lifetime. I think in China, it would be very much the same, maybe even worse. And every war game or simulation that I participated in when I was in the military over 60. When we wound up with that sort of thing years ago when the Chinese didn't have the formidable capabilities that they do today, years ago, we wound up with that sort of situation.

You wound up contemplating the use of nuclear weapons, because what you had done is you had taken out their air force, you had taken out their navy, or it had become a fleet in being, which is a military term for they went to port and wouldn't come out. And we're looking at mounting an invasion of China. Now, we've taken a lot of attrition in our Air Force and Navy to not quite as badly as the Chinese, but pretty bad. And we're thinking about mounting an invasion of China. Anyone who does that is an idiot. Ever watch The Princess Bride? You do not want to put land forces in China? We don't. Our army right now is smaller than the army of Bangladesh, and they fell 27,000 recruits short of their recruiting goal this past year. The Navy just announced it would start taking 40 year olds as recruits. That's how desperate the all volunteer force is for people today. So and China doesn't have any problem, but in two and a half, 3 million men and women now. So you'd never invade China. So what do you do? I'll tell you what you do. You sit there and wargaming, you contemplate using a tactical nuclear weapon, China or some other city where the Chinese will really notice it. And you think to yourself they won't shoot back.

Well, that's crazy. That's crazy. They will shoot back. And why are the Chinese now thinking about and probably going to implement an entirely new nuclear posture because they have thought about this and they have said Mao was wrong. So Deng said, I don't like nuclear weapons. I don't want too many couple hundred dollars. I need just to deter others. Now, the Chinese are probably going to break out and build lots of nuclear weapons in all classes, and they want to be able to ride out that first strike and retaliate. So we've made the world that much more dangerous with regard to numbers of nuclear weapons.

I'd like to pull back the lens a bit to within the United States. In your opinion, what is the greatest threat to democracy in the United States?

Americans. No question about it in my mind. I mean, I'm watching the elections right now and have been since last night. It's not as bad as I thought it was going to be. And I don't necessarily mean that simply because Democrats seem to be holding their own, but because Republicans are losing. And the Republicans that are losing are the kind of Republicans that should not be allowed in the race in the first place. They're the three out of five candidates. Three out of five candidates denied Biden won the 2020 election. This is threatening democracy and I know there are a number of people out there, but Republican after all, there are a number of people in my party, as I told a bunch of Democrats not too long ago who were sitting around talking about how to make free and fair elections that the American people would accept the results of, as I said. Just remember remember that in hotel rooms and corporate lounges and so forth all around this country,.

Matt Foley sitting down thinking the opposite is really, how can it beat you? How can it illegally beat you if necessary? How can it gerrymander to beat you? How can it get in the 80 piece, 80 piece systems and close races and buy 50,000 votes here and 50,000 votes there? How can achieve our cannot win period. Which is all my party cares about. Look at their record over the last 20 years. They haven't accomplished anything except opposition. And if you get in power, they want to accomplish anything, either as they were previously. They just oppose. This is a tragic situation because. In our system. Paltry. Sometimes I think it is. We need two parties, two viable political parties. I'd like to see four or five. Two political parties is minimal and it's so traditional. I think the American people would have a hard time with a major change that put more parties out there with viability. You need to healthy. And right now, we have a second and we have another one that is too bought out by the Deep State. And the deep state is not what a lot of people say it is. The deep state is people like Elon Musk and George Soros and Charles Coke and all those other people who have billions and billions of dollars to spend on ruining your country.

What is the legacy of the last presidential administration on U.S. foreign policy?

That's an interesting question. And more on that. My answer will probably star some people. I don't think Trump really moved too far from what U.S. foreign policy already was and what U.S. foreign policy had really dramatically morphed into post 911. What 911 did what the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon in New York. What they did was they put a group of people into both the deep state and into actual office in the government who had been around for a long time. I call them the Hitler ites in waiting, the Jacobins in waiting, the Trotsky, whatever radical term you want to use because they are radicals.

They're not conservatives, they're radicals. It puts them in positions of power all across the government and all across the country. And frankly, I suspect there are quite a few of them that would love to have a fascist state, at least an authoritarian state. And the names that would come to my lips of some of these people might astonish you. One of them just got reelected governor of Florida, for example. These people frighten me because they don't think democracy works. They don't think democracy can work. They believe that democracy exercised the way we are exercising it and have exercised it. They would say, since roughly the Earl Warren Supreme Court, for example, does anything but turn into mob ocracy, that there are too many people with the vote, there are too many people that have the vote that don't understand what it is to own land and to have property and to be working hard towards being that billionaire and so forth. And so they want everyone to be that way. Not too many competitors, mind you, but they want everyone to feel that way and to vote that way, and they see it going the other way completely.

What's the legacy of Donald Trump on democracy in the United States?

I think he did it. I hope not irreparable. But what could be irreparable damage? But as I said, I don't think he was the only one that did that. I think he was just a concealment of what was happening in the hustings anyway. And it came together at a time when no one suspected it would come together. And so it had a lot of shock power. But he really didn't do a whole lot. He didn't even do what he said he would do, which I found very. I won't say I have a hard time saying anything favorable about Donald Trump, but when he was talking about the Iraq war, the second Iraq war being a farce and a mistake and so forth, and telling everyone that he was anti war, that was before I knew categorically that he told anyone any time what they want to hear. I was actually in favor of it because I saw I went in favor of women have to go vote for it, but too many other crazy things.

But when he said he was anti war and said the Iraq war was terrible, was I said, well, that's something that should be happening. We always have had that kind of wing in the Republican Party, whether it was those who even opposed well, they opposed World War One rather, rather powerfully. Wilson's entry into that war, and then they opposed for a time or two after Pearl Harbor was pretty much gone. But we've always had a wing in the Republican Party that was not foreign adventuring, particularly military foreign adventuring. And it's gone. It's disappeared. And that looked like something Trump was trying to bring back. So that was part of his campaigning. Anyway, that appealed to me. I soon learned that he didn't mean anything. He said. He said, What are you said for political opportunism. But he created that that MAGA movement that coalesced, what, 75 million Americans in this desire that I just spoke of earlier, but in color, inchoate in some respects, I don't know what the ones who stand up and talk like Lauren Boebert Boebert and others who stand up and talk about Christian nationalism. The ones in the military who say, yes, we should have a Christian nation and we should be its warriors, we should be soldiers of Christ.

He sort of consolidated all those people and showed them that if they worked together, they could elect Herschel Walker in Georgia. They could get people who would deny an election, even though the election was probably one of the freest and fairest we've had in this lie on the 2020 election. I know a monitor from the National Task Force on election crises for two years with some of the most astute political scientist and legal experts in America. It was a very free and fair election with very little for all, very little cheating. And that it did happen was summarily done away with by the states who took their action that they should act. And so Trump did that. That's his legacy. I think he left this dissension and this. Desire to secede from the union, even in some respects, he left it very cogent, powerful, intact, and ready to act the game with a better leader. A smarter leader.

Lonzo: Col Wilkerson as we come towards the end of our interview. I wanted to ask you, are there any particular risks that you see in the militarization of U.S. foreign policy, the the increasing use of military assets to accomplish what are ostensibly civilian goals, and also the appointment of former military officers or serving military officers into what used to be exclusively civilian occupations in the administration.

I think, you know, I think it's very dangerous, particularly the latter point you make. These military officers going out in civilian occupations like Secretary Alston. I don't know what else. And I suspect he's an honorable man. But I would never make a uniformed military officer, secretary of defense, as a reason why we were doing that, reason why George Marshall was the only exception with regard to the ten year I think it was then. Then we attenuated it to seven years and five years out of uniform. Now, I think would probably do it and get a waiver from Congress. That's very dangerous, I think, because it brings that military mindset into what should be a civilian mindset, a role that a civilian should fill. The. The other aspect of it, the militarization of U.S. foreign policy, does something very, very counter to our genuine interest. It dulls the knife of diplomacy. It makes diplomacy second fiddle.

Even now, today, it's fourth or fifth fiddle. It doesn't even really exist. We have no diplomacy is what we have is people who make the way for military action, whether it's Tony Blinken, the ultimate diplomat, is supposedly he's not. Show me an inkling of diplomacy ability. Jake Sullivan has not shown me anything one year. And certainly Lavrov, by contrast, are supremely confident. Deployment is and this is true, these guys are up against. So what do you use? You use the military in a certain way because your diplomacy doesn't work very well. You don't want it to work well. Then the third thing, the rest of the world in history screams this out as the rest of the world tires of this after a while. What is a while? Centuries? Is it decades? What is it? And it bands together. At least its most formidable components. Think the other near-peer powers. And it gets you.

It takes you down. It becomes collectively against you. And in this case, it could be economically and financially that it does this not necessarily militarily. The Chinese are already hard at work on regional, and I suspect they have global implications for this currency replacement banking system replacement. Financial system replacement. Think swift, for example. They don't like being treated like third and fourth class citizens within our financial network. Any time we decide we want to do that. Sanctions being the leading instrument we use. So they're working on alternatives. One day these alternatives will start to grow to the point where they compete and where they even surpass. And that's how you go down kind of.

Wilkerson. Thank you very much for joining us today.

Thanks for having me.

Morocco’s Template for Counter-Terror Success

How an improved relationship with the USA with Morocco helps combat extremism

Africa has replaced the Middle East as the epicenter of global terrorist threats, according to a recent analysis by the United Nations Office for Counter Terrorism. The area of greatest concern is the Sahel and the broader region of West Africa, where terrorism and political instability are on a sharp upward trend.

Morocco, which sees itself is a bulwark against extremism and a reliable partner to the U.S. and other European countries in west Africa and the Sahel, has pursued a multidimensional approach to counterterrorism.

The Kingdom’s counter-terror strategy embodies a “whole of government” and a “whole of society” approach. This combines socioeconomic, religious, and legal strands, into a coherent fabric that is both strong and flexible.

The genesis of many aspects of the strategy were the 2003 Casablanca terror attacks. The atrocity of these attacks underscored that the threat of extremism and Al Qaeda reached to Morocco. It also brought to an abrupt end the assumption that the Kingdom’s religious culture, based on an open and tolerant approach to Sunni Islam, would protect it from the terror scourge afflicting the Arab Middle East.

The attacks prompted a series of legislative reforms which overhauled and strengthened the country’s legal counterterrorism framework. A new law expanded the definition of terrorism to include incitement. It also introduced sentencing for active participation in terrorist-related activities.

Morocco also recognized the importance of robust socioeconomic development policies to forestall the appeal of terrorist groups to vulnerable populations. In launching the National Initiative for Human Development (INDH), the Kingdom committed to supporting and protecting vulnerable populations by improving their educational and socio-economic conditions and opportunities.

To combat Islamic extremism from grassroots on a fundamental level, Morocco accelerated efforts, begun in the 1990s, to promulgate a tolerant vision of Islam. One of the most visible examples of this policy was the creation of the Mohammed VI Institute for the Training of Imams, Morchidines and Morchidates.

Opened in the capital Rabat in 2015, the Institute crucially includes the training of women as religious instructors and preachers, reflecting the progressive view of King Mohammed VI that women are an essential part of the solution to religious extremism. The United Nations Office for Counter Terrorism has lauded Morocco policy of integrating women in the countering and prevention of violent extremism, calling it best practice in the Arab and wider world.

On an institutional level, Morocco renovated its security apparatus. The Central Bureau of Judicial Investigations (BCIJ) was created as an analogue to the F.B.I. in the United States. Operating under the supervision of the General Prosecutor, the BCIJ coordinates all the various arms of the Morocco’s national security and police agencies.

More and more cooperation with the USA is also evident; recently the Director General of National Security and Territorial Surveillance, Mr. Abdellatif Hammouchi met recently with US National Intelligence Director Avril Haines in Rabat. It follows similar meetings Mr Hammouchi had in Washington DC, in June, with William Burns, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Christopher Wray, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Recognizing that terrorism and extremism are as likely to come from outside its borders, Morocco has also played an active role in multilateral antiterrorist efforts. The country is currently co-chair of the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF) and is an active participant in the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS.

As part of the GCTF, Morocco has engaged with the U.S. to in conducting successful initiatives to address foreign terrorists and enhance border security. The two countries are also co-chairs of the Africa Focus Group, which addresses the challenges of terrorism on the African continent, within the framework of the Global Coalition to defeat ISIS.

An area of particular concern has been the flow of Moroccan nationals going abroad to join the Islamic States and other jihadist groups. Ongoing efforts to reduce the number of Moroccans joining extremist groups outside the country, have been combined with efforts to reduce the threat of those returnees.

Morocco’s multidimensional counter-terrorism policies have played a key role in the country’s stability and relative safety in the region. According to the United Nations Office for Counter Terrorism, over the last 20 years the Kingdom has dismantled more than 200 terrorist cells and prevented more than 300 terrorist attacks.

With the success of its “whole of society” counter-terrorism strategy, other countries in the region and in the Middle East have been looking at Morocco’s experience and drawing upon its expertise to keep populations safe from the threat of terrorism

.

Africa Rising: Morocco is Leading the Way

Why the U.S engagement in Africa is so critical now & how Morocco can help

Asia and China have defined the idea of economic miracles as they boot-strapped their way to growth over the last 50 years. 

Africa has barely been in the conversation in the United States, where engagement with the continent has been on a stop start roller-coaster for decades. 

That does not mean Africa’s 54 countries have not been transformed over the last two decades. Perceptions of Africa need a rapid update.  As many of the speakers at last week’s Corporate Council on Africa’s U.S.-Africa Business Summit in Marrakech shared, it’s time to shift perceptions from Africa as a problem, to being the solution to global challenges.

Six of the world’s 10 fastest growing countries are in Africa.  Seventy percent of its population is under 30 and what may come as the biggest surprise technology is one of the continent’s many superpowers. Having made the leap to mobile technologies, e-commerce, banking and access to the internet ahead in general through small screens. 

Even the cognoscenti may be surprised that Africa is focused on content, streaming and broadband access for hard-to-reach populations – decidedly first world technology issues. Africa’s technology miracle is powering economic growth, mergers and acquisitions across the continent and industrial production creating jobs for an expanding middle class.

Morocco, strategically positioned in North Africa’s Mediterranean coast, is at the forefront of the continents’ economic revolution. The visionary steps it has taken over the last two decades under King Mohammed VI to invest in public private partnership-based industrial zones and infrastructure are being used as a model for the continent. 

In a region known as a provider of resources for other industrialized economies, over the last 15 years the country has developed an automotive industry with major European & Japanese partners that is today the largest exporter of vehicles to Europe. It’s important to pause here. Morocco’s automotive plants build more cars for export to Europe than Japan and any other nation. It’s not just assembling vehicles – 65 percent of the parts are made in Morocco as part of a thriving automotive ecosystem. Fifteen years ago, there was nothing and today 200,000 Moroccans are employed in the industry. The $7 billion revenues from auto manufacturing today exceed its revenues from its phosphate fertilizer industry.

The combination of economic, political, and social stability, visionary leadership, investor-friendly climate, and dynamic business environment has enabled Morocco to build from a clean-sheet an expanding industrial base across manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, technology and agriculture. On the principle of health equals wealth, as it grows its industrial base, it is building out new healthcare and social systems to meet its people’s needs. 

Morocco’s industrial economic miracle is being used and seen as a template for other countries on the African Continent, as is its approach to free trade.  Morocco’s free trade agreement with the United States, with which it has a special relationship - it was the first country to recognize America’s independence – has offered a model for the ambitious Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement. 

With 43 countries having signed up and more on the way, the AfCFTA promises to unlock trade not only within the Africa but provide greater opportunities for the block to collaborate across borders and industries to be able to compete more effectively in global marketplaces.  With Africa accounting for almost a fifth of the world’s population yet currently only 4% of its trade, there is nowhere to go but up, propelled by its young, talented workforce.

Africa’s leaders in Marrakech for the Business Summit outlined that work still needs to be done and that challenges lie ahead, but unanimously underscored the confidence in the opportunity, the strength of talent, and the potential of its people, industries and agriculture to have a role in addressing global challenges.

There is also a clear recognition for the value and benefits from partnerships with U.S. and European companies, technologies and solutions that can be leveraged to accelerate the continued transformation of Africa’s economies. Continued investment in infrastructure to, for example, increased solar electricity production, freedom of trade, unlocking the economic potential of women, enhancing the educational opportunities, reducing barriers to the free flow of people and partnerships based on mutual respect and benefits are just some of the areas of focus,

If the 20th century was defined by Asia’s economic miracle, the 21st will be defined by Africa’s – with Morocco leading the way in North Africa. The U.S. will have an important role to play, but it needs to stay engaged. The U.S. government’s announcement that it will hold the next U.S. Africa Leaders Forum this December – the first since the Obama Administration in 2014 – is a significant and important step in this process.  One that will build on the work of the State Department, the Millennium Capital Corporation and growing numbers of U.S. companies engaging in with the Continent.

There have been many false starts, but this time Africa is off and running.                         

Going FedEx... and the day football (soccer) died

Did you know there is a global garden gnome shortage?

Between February 3rd of this year and September 16th of last, there were no school shootings.

Why? Because the schools were closed and on a different kind of lockdown.

Education Week is tracking school shootings and the statistics are chilling.

Elsewhere in the world (according to Wikipedia), a comparison looks something like this:

• Germany: eight shootings since 1913

• Lithuania: one in 1925

• Sweden: one in 1961

• United Kingdom: three since 1967 and none after the 1996 massacre (Dunblane massacre)

• Finland: three since 1989

• The Netherlands: two, in 1999 and 2004

• Denmark: one in 1994

• Greece: one in 2009

• Norway: one in 2009 (no deaths)

• Hungary: one in 2009

• France: two, one in 2012 and one in 2017

• Estonia: one in 2014

• Spain: one in 2015

• Russia: three since 2014

• Crimea: one in 2018

• Poland: one in 2019 (no deaths)

And?

Still not getting it: ok, so did shootings go down during lockdown or not?

No they didn’t - per the NYTimes: ‘the shootings never stopped during the coronavirus pandemic, they just became less public, researchers say.’

President Biden has called it a ‘national embarrassment’; google ‘is gun crime a disease’ and you get some incredibly good articles- this quote stood out for me:

“Gun violence is America’s most preventable disease. I say that because it’s almost entirely preventable and the numbers of people affected are so high.”

Judy Schaechter, MD, MBA
University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine

The last time I wrote about gun violence in America a reader asked me, so, what’s the solution. I said, ‘don’t sell guns’. Then comes the second amendment, understandable for those needing to hunt or shoot bears who are coming for their honey, but really, why do we need over 300 million guns in the USA?

Instead of discussing the banning of guns, perhaps let’s look to see if A) it is a disease, and B) can we cure it.

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AMCC) thinks we can.

‘The consensus among top medical organizations is that gun violence is a public health epidemic, and doctors and other health professionals could and should be on the frontlines to prevent it. To that end, the AAMC was one of more than 40 medical and injury prevention organizations that met in February 2019 at the American College of Surgeon’s Medical Summit on Firearm Injury Prevention to develop a comprehensive roadmap for tackling gun violence using a public health approach.’

America’s most preventable disease

‘While they dominate the news headlines, mass shootings are only a fraction of the gun violence problem. Since 1966, 1,196 people have died in mass shooting incidents, including 190 children. The shootings in El Paso, Texas; Dayton, Ohio; and Gilroy, California, are just the latest of these public tragedies.

Far more common are firearms-related deaths and injuries. In 2019 alone, 8,793 people died and 17,479 injured, according to Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks all incidents of gun-related violence in the United States. In 2018, there were 14,769 deaths and 28,236 injuries due to gun violence.

These figures strikingly do not include the 22,000 annual deaths due to suicide. And access to firearms makes suicide attempts that much more deadly. A study led by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health found that suicide attempts with a gun are 42% more effective than suicides by any other means, including drug overdoses.’

Wow.

So here we are.

In 2012, Dr Schaechter led a coalition against the Firearm Owners’ Privacy Act in Florida, which banned doctors from asking patients about the presence of guns in their homes. That law was eventually overturned. It is a medical necessity to ask patients about access to guns in the hope of preventing suicide and mass shootings.

Schaechter regularly speaks to mostly second-year classes in medical school about gun safety. Among other issues, she talks to students about the epidemiology of bullet wounds and what socio-economic factors are involved in gun violence.

The best part about this research is that it’s trying not to get into politics:

In the Family Medicine department at McGovern Medical School Rebecca Lunstroth, JD, MA, along with a student, developed an elective course called Gun Violence and Physicians: What You Need to Know. The course addresses mental health, advocacy, public health, and conversations students and doctors might have inside the clinic with patients about safe storage.

“Our goal is for participants to walk away from this class understanding the large-scale extent of the problem, the mental impact on both the patient and the physician, what happens when a bullet hits a body, how can you use your voice as a physician to make a difference, and how to talk to your patients about guns,” the course description states. “We understand that this is an issue where people have strong opinions and our goal is to avoid wading into the political debate regarding firearms.”

Talking of strong opinions… here’s what the future King of England (and Aston Villa fan) had to say about the Super (soccer) League.

Writing on the official Duke and Duchess of Cambridge Twitter account, William said:

“Now, more than ever, we must protect the entire football community - from the top level to the grassroots - and the values of competition and fairness at its core.

“I share the concerns of fans about the proposed Super League and the damage it risks causing to the game we love."

The idea of breaking up the Premier League, with its 6 top teams to join 3 teams from Spain and 3 from Italy, is all about money and nothing to do with the game itself, that brings so much joy to so many people. Say it isn’t so.

And finally… I know how to keep an audience engaged.

I leave you with this:

per the BBC

‘Supply chain issues and the popularity of garden centres during lockdown are causing a shortage of garden gnomes.

The ornaments are in short supply with raw materials hard to come by and the recent blockage of the Suez Canal contributing to the national shortage.

Ian Byrne, assistant manager of Highfield Garden World in Whitminster, said there had been a "massive upswing" in the sales of garden gnomes.

"We haven't seen a gnome in six months now unfortunately," he said.