Many roads to Mecca

Saudi Arabian women may not drive cars and are supposed to cover up in black if walking in the street. Bikes for girls are frowned upon. Meanwhile a friend of ours was recently in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, meeting a trader in textiles. He required that she hang back three feet behind when walking through town. Last night we saw again the wonderful play by South African playwright, Athol Fugard, probably his best, put on by the Muizenberg Amateur Dramatic Society at the local Masque Theatre, just a few hundred meters from my favourite beach. It's called the 'Road to Mecca' and features two highly independent, clear-thinking women. One's an artist who conjures up a 'light-filled, glittering Mecca' out of her little home in a small South African village; the other is her best friend who teaches in Cape Town, hundreds of miles away. The irony of Miss Helen's 'Mecca' is that it is a holy place for her but a source of ridicule for the villagers around her. Its 'holiness' is not of the religious kind but a celebration of free thinking and creativity. It struck me that no woman in Mecca would dare and certainly would not be allowed to do what Miss Helen does. And at another level, such issues would never be aired on stage for general consumption. A society that treats its women so can only be poorer for it: masses of talent suppressed - not allowed to bloom and never discovered.  The lovely QSL card is from Radio Tashkent heard in Cape Town way back in 1968. In those days Communist countries had 100% verification records, no need to send return postage. 

Reelin' and rockin' with the Fed

Chairman Ben is doing a spot of game fishing. The fish has had a long run out to sea; time to put the brake on and start to reel it in. After the last Fed meeting, Bernanke made a hawkish statement about tapering the current bout of quantitative easing. Markets swooned. Bonds and equities sold off. The journos starting fretting about how banks were going to hit the wall as their bond holdings plunged. Then within 24 hours, Fed governors were on the stump, attenuating the message, insisting that they would not pull back too hard. This was echoed across the pond by Bank of England and European Central Bank officials . Almost immediately some analysts were saying markets had over-reacted. But Bernanke had achieved his objective. The first stage of  bond market normalisation was done. In due course, stand by for another tug on the line, just to remind us that the fish will eventually end up in the boat. Of course, despite the maxim, 'Don't fight the Fed', central bankers are not gods. In game fishing, sometimes the black marlin can end up sinking the boat. Sometimes you play out too much line, others you yank too much in. But the Fed has been very careful to accumulate a range of tools to scale back the huge liquidity bulge it has created since Lehman's went down. Stand by for more reelin' and rockin' and hope the fish is landed safely. Cairns in Queensland bills itself as the black marlin capital of the world. The QSL is from 4QD Emerald in Queensland, some way south of Cairns, heard in Morgan Bay on AM in 1987, 11000 km away.

How would Snowden manage Managua?

I once worked for a firm with an open plan office design and atrium from floor to roof, with glass lifts. We used to joke that management could watch our every move. "Employee number #3462, return to your desk immediately." Maybe it's  not so funny when you realise that Big Brother is able to track our phone calls, Facebook messages, Skype contacts and who knows what else, even if you live 1000s of miles away. Not that there really are ranks of analysts poring over our every :) text and holiday snap. Even so, Edward Snowden has a point. He has certainly polarised opinion, with some calling for him to receive a presidential pardon or even the Congressional Medal of Honour, while others berate him for breaking the law and oath of secrecy. But if you decide to become a whistle-blower you must first think about where you want to live. His preferred choice appears to have been Iceland but this didn't work because to apply for asylum there you actually need to be in the country. His choices have been whittled down to just three: Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua. None are going to be that easy to get to from Moscow. He would probably find Nicaragua quite strange given he was brought up in North Carolina and appears to have no Latin American experience. Managua seems like quite a pleasant place as long as you stay on the right side of town but it's pretty hot and muggy especially in summer. Living there would surely put him in close touch with people who really dislike America. Daniel Ortega, the president, is a friend of Iran and supported Muammar Gaddafi. How to square that with Snowden's stand on human rights? (I need not mention the irony of Snowden's current sojourn in Moscow, where human rights are two dirty words). The QSL is one of my best:  a friendly letter from Radio Miskut in Puerto Cabezas on the Nicaraguan coast, heard in Kent in 1997, using just 1 kiloWatt. They were playing Jim Reeves songs which helped to compile the reception report. The Director of Operations, Evaristo Mercado Pérez, also kindly signed my self-made card and filled in the details.

Obama - here, in the Deep South

Five choppers suddenly loomed above Muizenberg, heading directly for us. I switched my radio to the civilian aircraft frequency and heard a quick communication between 'Night Hawk' and the Cape Town Airport traffic control tower. The choppers were moving much faster than aircraft usually do around Cape Town. They swooped down over St James and disappeared into the cleft in the mountain that joins Fish Hoek to Sun Valley. Obama was in town! Two days earlier the forward party had descended on the airport in the form of six C-17 Globemasters, which proceeded to disgorge the tandem rotor Boeing Vertol C-46 transport choppers and Sikorsky VH-60 Night Hawks. When we saw them, the choppers were going to none other than Masiphumelele, where Desmond Tutu has set up an HIV clinic, just around the corner from us. From there the Pres was just a stone's throw from Long Beach, Kommetjie, one of the best surfing spots in town. They could have popped out for a quick wave! Later on we saw a long cavalcade of cars, with blue lights flashing, whooshing down the Simon's Town road en route to dinner with President Zuma at Groote Schuur. The Pres, in Simon's Town, right by our house! They must have done a quick swing by Cape Point. After dinner he popped over the road to present to students at UCT. The speech was a bit cumbersome and far too long but Obama is an orator and impresses with his ability to talk off the cuff without notes. (Here's a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9QWco281OA). He had memorised things like greetings in local SA languages (including 'How's it?') and the name of a big local township, Khayelitsha ("I'm still working on this", he quipped). Boeing Vertol's HQ was in Morton, Pennsylvania. The QSL is from WTKZ, Allentown, PA heard in 1996. In his friendly letter, the president, Arthur Holt, mentions his links with the old Swazi Music Radio as well as the pop music station, LM Radio in Mozambique, and the SABC.