the deadly vicious circle in Tunisia

A bit more than two years after the revolution spawned by a Tunisian street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, who set himself afire because he was being harassed by the government, the authorities have cracked down even more strenuously on street selling. Now, another street hawker has paid the price. Adel Khazri, a 27-year-old vendor in Tunis who set himself on fire yesterday because the police would not let him sell cigarettes on the street, died in the hospital this morning. Tunisialive has the sad details.

system D semiotics in Cape Town

Semantics or substance? That's the question street vendors are asking now that Cape Town has moved the office authority over the informal economy from the city's Safety and Security Directorate to the Economic, Environment and Spatial Planning Department.

West Cape News reports on the change. “We need to ensure support and enabling for those enterprises in order to make sure tangible opportunities are available,” Garreth Bloor, who controls the Economic agency, told the paper.

neutron bomb urbanism

the remnants in Badia: this is all that's left of people's homes

For a man who professes to treasure his city, Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola has adopted a punitive attitude towards its people. He's already razed the street market at Oshodi, criminalized street hawking, and attempted to demolish the waterside shack community of Makoko. Now, as The New York Times reports, he's taken a backhoe to Badia.

"More than one million of the city’s poor have been forcibly ejected from their homes in largely unannounced, government slum clearances," the Times reports. Of smashing down the Badia East neighborhood that was home to more than 10,000 people, the Lagos State commissioner of housing, Adedeji Olatubosun Jeje, told the Times, "What we removed was just shanties. Nobody was even living in those shanties. Maybe we had a couple of squatters living there.”

That comment shows just how brazen Fashola's people are. It's neutron bomb urban renewal: polishing the city by punishing the people, yet pretending the people don't exist.

I'll be in Lagos later this month and will report back on what I find.

a young street vendor, in life and death

A 12-year-old sweet potato vendor was senselessly shot to death by an Egyptian soldier on Feb. 3rd. Open Democracy offers an appreciation, and some context regarding the life and death of Omar Salah.

• Omar’s tragedy highlights, once again, the catastrophic extent to which Egypt’s poor are put up on the frontlines as canon fodder to bear the worst of Egypt’s unforgiving socio-economic terrain and lawlessness.

• We don’t think twice about why is a 12 year old boy doing this job, can he read and write, what his survival strategies are – as Omar once sadly told his father, “whenever I’m asked if I have a father, I say you died, so it can elicit sympathy and reduce [the chances of] me being robbed.”

Socialism Failed, Capitalism is Bankrupt. What comes Next?

Austrian artist Oliver Ressler makes provocative works about power relationships in contemporary society. Here's part of one work -- a 19-minute film he made in Bangladesh, a street market in Yerevan, Armenia in 2010.

"Mobilization goes hand-in-hand with projecting a utopia," Ressler says in his bio. Interesting stuff.

(praise be Andrea for cluing me in.)

the profit shift game

Are massive American multinational companies behaving like some System D merchants and cheating on their taxes?

Yes, according to a recent study by the Congressional Research Service that was posted online by the Federation of American Scientists. According to the report, which was based on 2008 data compiled by the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S.-based global firms bookkeep 43 percent of their foreign earnings in Bermuda, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, countries where they will pay low taxes, though those countries account for only 4 percent of their foreign employment and 7 percent of their foreign investment. According to the report, U.S.-based multinationals may be sheltering close to half a trillion dollars in income in these low-tax nations.

By contrast, Australia, Canada, Germany, Mexico and the United Kingdom--which do not offer low tax rates--accounted for 14% of US multinational corporations' overseas profits, but 40% of foreign hired labor and 34% of foreign investment.

The report suggests that this practice of moving the location of foreign income from high tax to low tax countries--commonly known as profit shifting--increased between 2002 and 2008. Unfortunately, it's impossible to tell if profit shifting has continued to increase since 2008.

It's clear, though, that pursuing small-scale System D entrepreneurs for not paying taxes is really unfair. The big boys cheat on their taxes with impunity.

food blackouts in Kinshasa

The New York Times reports on a new and outrageous form of power outage: délestage, the way ordinary people balance money and meals in Congo (Kinshasa.)

"If today we eat, tomorrow we’ll drink tea," said Dieudonné Nsala, a father of five who earns $60 a month as an administrator at the Education Ministry. Rent is $120 a month; the numbers, Mr. Nsala pointed out, simply do not add up. Are there days when his children do not eat? "Of course!" Mr. Nsala answered, puzzled at the question. "It can be two days a week," he said.

It's not that the numbers don't add up. It's that they're impossible. Income of $60. Rent of $120. Unless there's a huge source of other income, not only will there be no food, but there'll be no home either.Which leads to the suspicion that coop -- the Kinois version of System D/informality -- is how most people cope, including administrators at government agencies.

Congo is rich in minerals -- but last on the global hunger list. Talk about an extractive economy.