Democracy Kills: What’s So Good About Having The Vote  has been endorsed by none other that Parag Khanna, author of the internationally best-selling Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order,  chosen for the New York Times Year in Ideas. Parag himself has been named as one  of Esquire’s 75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century. This is what he says:-

A brilliant work.  Tersely written and bracing in argument, perhaps only a distinguished, veteran traveler-journalist like Humphrey Hawksley could have written such a book. Democracy Kills is not only a first-hand tour de force review of the last two decades of hotspots, but it also frames one of today’s great global debates with nuance and wit.”

One quick answer to why I didn’t get the flak at Edinburgh from John Nicholson, writing in the Mirror and calling for a revolution among the audience that he describes as “a sleepy and consenual crowd.” 

“Everyone at least pretends to be on the same side, or isn’t interested, has no opinion or doesn’t care and its about as vibrant as custard. There is rarely real debate.”

He’s definitely half right. Afterwards, a elderly lady approached and said: “You wouldn’t be talking like that if you’d lived in Spain under Franco.”

Great point, but why didn’t she say it out loud during the session.

A full house at the Edinburgh Literary Festival for the launch for my new book Democracy Kills: What’s So Good About Having the Vote.  But I was completely thrown because no-one disagreed with the argument — and this was a highly-intelligent, thoughtful, liberal audience.   A hadn’t known what to expect — but not such overwhelming support.  

At the end I put to them the question of whether — if they had only two choices of a country to live with their loved ones, their children and grand children — dictatorial Cuba or democratic Haiti — which one would it be.

Any guesses which one prevailed?

 Click here: Democracy Kills       

With the wonders of BBC technology, it’s possible to watch Dancing with the Devil on the I-Player

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00mb190/Our_World_Dancing_with_the_Devil/

This is the deal. All you can eat in two hours, then you get thrown out. The food is freshly cooked in a special boiling hot-pot soup in the middle of the table that can only seat six. We had Alberta, triple A-Grade and snowflake beef; pig skin that looked like honeycomb; oysters from Washington State; fresh mushrooms, lettuce, san choi and bakchoi; beef, pork and fish balls; New Zealand muscles; fishmeet noodles; prawns;  dried fishskin; tea and Kokanee glacier ice beer on the table. Underneath the table we kept a bottle of (with apologies to Palling) Sumac Ridge 2006 Merlot Cabernet and Blasted Church Sauvingon Blanc poured into tea cups from under the table. The cost including tip was $25 a head and the place is at 8391 Alexandra Road, Richmond, BC,  Canada. 

For many, many years, I have hoped to come across an old-style Chinese dinner/dance restaurant, a flavour of pre-Mao Shanghai with an edge and a whiff of mischief,  such as has been partly replicated in David Tang’s China Club in Hong Kong and Shanghai Blues in London.   But these excellent venues are for the well-heeled and up market. So it was with huge surprise and pleasure that I walked up the gilded staircase of Royal Dinner and Dance in Richmond, British Columbia — where the cover charge is $15 a head including food — not the best but at that price; the guests bring their own microphones and pay $7 to perform and song– this is a serious hobby; the dancers are meticulous, many quite brilliant and would stand their ground in Strictly Come Dancing; the music is live, the staff relaxed and efficient and (I was told) after a certain hour good-looking young men arrive to partner those women left alone at their tables.

www.royaldinnerdance.com    

In 1935, the writer Graham Greene set off on a journey through Sierra Leone and Liberia. In his book Journey without Maps, Greene asked what were the Europeans doing there? What did the slogans about civilising the natives actually mean? Humphrey Hawksley has been there to retrace Graham Greene’s journey.

BBC News Channel  

Sat 22nd August 2009  – 0530 and 1430 bst

Sun 23rd  August 2009 – 0330, 1030, 1430 and 2330 bst

Less than a year after the end of the Second World War, the West began drawing up the sophisticated policy of containment that eventually defeated global communism. Eight years after September 11, there is not yet a similar concept in dealing with the threat from failed states – even though it is these societies that have been the driving force of American foreign policy and its current wars.

Read more in Yale Global http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=12686

In 1935, the writer Graham Greene set off on a journey through Sierra Leone and Liberia. In his book Journey without Maps, Greene asked what were the Europeans doing there? What did the slogans about civilising the natives actually mean? Humphrey Hawksley has been there to retrace Graham Greene’s journey.

Shortly after dark as the solitary stilted “devil dancer” walked back into the Liberian forest, we headed off, but soon found the road blocked and in the darkness it was difficult to see why.

My torch beam picked up piles of bananas on the side of the road. I call it a road, but it was more like a farm track.

I then saw sacks of rice, a huddle of people – maybe 20 or 30 – they were passengers from a blue flatbed truck that was skewed across the route, its front wheels trapped in a ditch.

I heard what I thought was a baby’s cry and ran forward only to find that four bleating goats were part of the truck’s cargo. They were strapped onto the side, hanging and wrapped in brown cotton sheeting.

“We’ll have to return to the village,” I muttered to my Liberian driver, Mickey.

“No, we’ll fix it,” he said. “The chief back in the village is happy because we gave him some dash. So the devil is happy. So soon we’ll go.”

Dash is an old word for gift that the writer Graham Greene handed out to village chiefs when he walked through Liberia in 1935. I was tracing his route to see how much had changed.

Spiritual power

Today, disease is still rampant, although the yellow fever of Greene’s day has been overtaken by Aids. Pot-bellied children run around villages that are controlled by paramount chiefs. Christian missionaries still run much of the health service.

That morning, I had stood outside a small, stone church – such as you would find in any English village – at the entrance to the United Methodist Mission in the town of Ganta.

It was far in the northern interior of Liberia, and in Greene’s day the inadequate map had simply marked the area as being inhabited by cannibal tribes.

Greene had stayed at this mission station as a guest of a Dr Harley who had built the church, set up a clinic and was an expert in the secret societies and spiritual ways of the devil that Mickey and I had just been discussing with the village chief.

One of Dr Harley’s successors was Sue Porter, a quietly spoken and thoughtful American missionary nurse, who explained that many Liberians felt they had one foot in the bush and one in the modern world. And it was the same with their belief in God.

“When you talk about spiritual power here, it’s about the power or an ability to do something whether it is good or bad,” she said as we sat in the shade of a tree in the mission school grounds.

“Our Western culture doesn’t allow us to see it as a dual-sided figure.”

“It’s our bush society,” said Victor, the Liberian mission hospital administrator.

“The secret societies are meant to make you a good citizen, so the devil reminds you that if you are bad you can be punished.”

Devil dance

Mickey and I had gone on to the village of Zorgorwee, where a “devil dancer” was to be performing at dusk.

The village chief, dressed in a bright yellow and brown robe, said he was too hungry to speak to me, until Mickey gave him some dash – a packet of biscuits from our car. Then the chief summoned a translator.

“My name is Jacob Kermon,” he said in a booming voice that carried above the sound of singing and drums heralding the arrival of the devil. “And Jesus Christ is my personal saviour.”

“Then, why are we here worshipping the devil?” I asked, slightly confused.

“When the devil comes out people feel good,” he said. “He brings happiness and reconciliation within the community.”

As the sun dropped and villagers lit fires, a stilted dancer walked in from the forest.

He stood six metres high. His face was covered with a black mask, his head rimmed with shells. He was dressed in orange pyjamas, his hands sealed within the cotton.

One by one the devil plucked us from the crowd.

I had to stretch up my hands to hold his, staring through wood smoke at the mask and on to a star-filled sky, as he twirled me round and round.

“In the Christian world,” wrote Greene, “we have grown accustomed to the idea of a spiritual war, of God and Satan.”

But, he added, in this supernatural world there was “neither good nor evil”, simply power, a concept that was beyond our “sympathetic comprehension.”

But it was not beyond that of Mickey, my driver.

He was a wiry, powerful, young man, expert in making things work when they should not.

He had already used soapy water to replace leaking brake fluid and found petrol hidden in mayonnaise jars in a town where we were told it had run out.

Now he stalked around the hapless flatbed truck, speaking softly to some people, raising his voice to others.

Tree branches went under the wheels. Men lined up to push. The driver waited for a cue, which was delayed while the bleating goats were unhooked from the side.

Then with a heave, the wheels spun and caught. The truck lurched, and to much cheering, it bounced back onto the road.

Mickey gave me a knowing look. “As the chief told us,” he said, “if you dance with the devil, the devil will be nice to you.”

For the last week, I’ve been working on a Mac computer. Could someone please tell me why these are supposed to be so brilliant?