There has been a myth doing the rounds since the late 1990s, which links the location of wars around the world to the availability of greasy American franchised burgers.
The line goes like this: there have been no wars between any two countries which both have a McDonalds restaurant at the time of the conflict.
It's called the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention.
The rationale being that, once a country is stable, 'sophisticated', capitalist, and 'western' enough to support a Maccas, it will refrain from the silliness of war.
Pure, unadulterated, pro-American bollocks.
I encountered this urban legend again today, when a letter to the editor in the Sydney Morning Herald pointed out that the recent Georgia-Russia war was the first two-Maccas conflict.
I couldn't quite believe this was true, so I looked into some recent wars, and then looked at whether they both had a McDonalds at the time they were kicking the shit out of each other.
Here's the results. I have given the year of the war, followed by the two nations, with the years that they got their first Maccas in brackets. I think you'll agree that all of the following count as wars.
2008: Russia (1990) and Georgia (1999) 2006: Israel (1993) and Lebanon (1998) 1999: India (1996) and Pakistan (1998) 1999: Serbia (1988) and USA/NATO (1940) 1989: USA (1940) and Panama (1971)
Big Macs don't stop wars, I'm afraid.
I wonder when we'll have our first war instigated by McDonalds? The Great Hamburger War of 2044 will be a whopper, I'm sure. Sorry, bad pun.
Just a quick one today. News is hitting the world today that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has thrown in the towel, resigning to avoid inevitable impeachment and possible imprisonment.
The myth has arisen that this guy is some sort of quasi-democrat, a friend of the West and a saviour of freedom in Pakistan, who has been essential in the fight against terrorism. He has been committed to helping us against the evil-doers, and is therefore welcome into our 'club' of acceptable leaders.
Utter shite. The man was a military dictator who trampled on the few freedoms left to ordinary Pakistanis. He dismantled democracy when it didn't work for him, and has overseen his country's descent into near- civil war.
Good riddance to the Perv, I say. Enjoy Saudi Arabia.
“All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner."
So said our mate John F. Kennedy, at the height of the Cold War back in June 1963, to an adoring crowd of Berliners. Obviously, he was telling them he was one of them. But did he actually make a gigantic gaffe, and tell them all that he was a jam doughnut?
This is one of those historical tidbits that has become accepted fact. I even tell my kids at school all about JFK and his oratorical faux pas.
The story goes like this: Berliner, rather than being the German word for ‘person from Berlin’, actually means, ‘jam-filled pastry from Berlin’ (in much the same way as a Wiener is a sausage from Vienna, ora frankfurter is a sausage from Frankfurt). Kennedy’s crowd being almost solely German, they would have instantly picked up on his mistake, and found his assertion ridiculous, embarrassing, and funny.
It all makes for a great laugh. The sad thing is, it’s not true. Bugger.
He definitely said it. And he got it spot-on.
A Berliner is, indeed, a pastry from Berlin. But only to Germans who come from outside of Berlin. Berliners call their jam doughnuts pfannkuchen (pancakes).
The problem for scholars of German, is Kennedy’s use of the indefinite article ein (a). A true Berlin citizen would have said, ‘Ich bin Berliner”, without the ein. By using ein, he was implying that he was a non-human Berliner, and therefore a doughnut.
However, as a non-citizen of the city, expressing his figurative solidarity with its people, the use of ein was necessary. Being a US President with a strong Boston accent, he was most evidently not a true Berliner. By using ein, he was sort of saying, ‘I am an American who identifies with the struggles of the people of Berlin’.
Kennedy did make the phrase up at the last minute, and inserted it twice into his landmark speech, in the newly-divided city. But he ran it past his official interpreter, and practised it (in front of Germans) in the office of then Mayor Willy Brandt.
So where did the myth come from? It seems that it didn’t really take off until 20 years after the speech, when the incident was mentioned in Len Deighton’s spy thriller, Berlin Game. The story’s protagonist, Bernard Samson, refers to the jam doughnut gaffe as follows:
“'Ich bin ein Berliner,' I said. It was a joke. A Berliner is a doughnut. The day after President Kennedy made his famous proclamation, Berlin cartoonists had a field day with talking doughnuts.”
A couple of book reviews then mentioned the story, and all of a sudden, it became gospel fact.
Now, god knows where Deighton got the idea from, but he has gone on the record as saying that the character of Bernard Samson is prone to exaggerate and joke, and not everything he says should be taken seriously. So it could be an example of the playful Deighton sparking off an urban legend, via the playful character of Bernard Samson.
Wherever the myth is from, I can tell you one thing: I am mightily annoyed at finding out that JFK didn’t stuff up, because it means I have one less slightly-interesting anecdote to bore my Year 12 kids with. Damn.
Ah, Africa. Another day, another illegal seizure of power. The news is just coming through that there has been a coup in Mauritania, with the President taken hostage and whisked away to places unknown by the country's leading generals. The news has jarred me a little, seeing as I was in Mauritania a little over a year ago, and I did take quite a shine to this nation of 3 million people and Allah-knows how many camels. Despite being a largely unpopulated expanse of Saharan sand, the country has its fair share of political problems, most stemming from its position on the fault-line between Arab- and sub-Saharan Africa, its recent embrace of fundamentalist Islamic causes, and its sad history as a French colony.
I wish les Maures all the best, and I hope nobody gets hurt in this calamity. Doubtless the dust (or sand) will settle, and the long-suffering population will find themselves under the control of yet another corrupt and unelected leader, and simply get on with the job of surviving. Then, a few years down the track, there will be a push for greater democracy, followed by some flawed elections, then a period of misrule by the new government, and then, to correct the balance...another coup.
Which brings me to my topic for today - coups in Africa. What a stereotype. They have become so cliched in that continent, that now, whenever I see the word 'coup', I instantly presume that it has happened in one of Africa's 53 nations. (Quick digression - why do the French have a word for coup, and we don't, having to use theirs? And why do we use the Spanish word for junta? Surely we can come up with some English alternatives? Suggestions, please...)
Military takeovers do seem to happen a lot in Africa. Or, at least, most people think they do. I am guilty of such presumption, and I was in Africa for ten months last year. I travelled through 20 countries, and didn't see one coup. Admittedly, there was a contested election in Kenya a few months after I was there, but no direct throwing-over of any ruling parties.
So what are the stats? Well, they're actually pretty interesting.
From 1960 until 2001, there were 191 attempted coups in Africa, or roughly 5 annually. 82 were successful, or about 2 per year. That means each country in Africa has experienced roughly 1.5 coups in the past 40 years. The success rate of coups has declined since the 1960s, but is still at around 40%.
Europe has had the fewest coups - 18 between 1946-2006, or roughly one every three years. All of those coups were in just 8 countries. Now, the fun part - see if you can name them!
The Americas was by far the most coup-prone region, in the 1940s and 1950s.
The five (confirmed) coups since 2000 have been in - Fiji (twice), the Solomons, Thailand, and the Philippines. So it looks like our backyard is the new place to put on a putsch!
Coups tend to happen where they have happened before - 78% of countries that experienced a coup, actually experienced more than one.
Sub-Saharan Africa alone has accounted for 44% of the world's coups since 1946. Add on North Africa and the figure shoots up to 55% or so.
There are now roughly 6 coup attempts worldwide every year (with four of those in Africa). In the 1970s, the world average was 13.
Only three countries in sub-Saharan Africa have never had a coup - and two of them are island nations away from the mainland (Cape Verde, Mauritius, and Botswana)
The world's most coup-prone country? Bolivia, with 22 coups since 1946. The runners-up are Syria (20), Sudan (18), Nigeria (15), Iraq (15) Comoros (13, including three in one year), Benin (12), and Mauritania (12). Well, maybe we should put Mauritania up into joint 6th place now...
So it seems that Africa does get a lot of coups. It has a quarter of the world's nations, most of them independent only since the 1960s, yet it accounts for over half the coups since the 1940s. And even though it is not Number One, it still has 5 nations in the Top Eight.
And why does it happen so much in Africa? Well, there's a topic for another blog...
