49ers Game Plan

I know, I know, I live in Oakland across the Bay, but like most Bay Area folks I'll be rooting for the cross-town SF 49ers on Superbowl Sunday. Here's my game-plan for the day:

1] The 49ers must go with the ground-game, grinding out the yards on short-yardage plays. They have the league's premier short-yardage back, Frank Gore, a running-back who runs like a full-back (straight-up-the-middle).

2] The Niners must run the ball on most downs, pounding out the yards, and to do this they have to control the line-of-scrimmage. If they control the line-of-scrimmage and run the ball on most downs (keeping the ball out of the hands of Ravens' QB Joe Flacco) then victory is assured. Possession football is what I'm talking about here.

3] Niners QB Colin Kaepernick should only throw on third downs and he mustn't gun it long either. Remember, it's all about possession football. Kaepernick must not get into a shootout with the Ravens QB Joe Flacco, who can air it out. Furthermore (on throwing downs) the Niners should go with a version of the WestCoast Offense, dumping the ball off to the Tight-End (Vernon Davis) or to any of the backs coming out of the backfield.

4]. All Kaepernick has to do to ensure victory is to spend the afternoon handing the ball to Frank Gore and (on third downs) dumping the ball off to the tight-end, Vernon Davis. That's all!

Mali's Descent Into Hell: Deja-Vu All Over Again

Watching Mali descend into chaos gives me a sense of deja-vu. Wasn't it only too recently that Mali was held up as an African, democratic success-story? For the past ten years all Afro-optimists blurted out "Mali" when they wanted to show a democratic, multi-ethnic, and religiously-tolerant African state. In hindsight, we can now see that it was all an illusion. We were blind to glaring reality. The Malian political elites were just as bad as the rest of their Continental cousins, busy engaging themselves in massive looting of public coffers, corruption and even facilitating drug-smuggling.

I've seen this movie before, and it's all too familiar. A creeping case of deja-vu, all over again. In the 80s and early 90s, Ivory Coast was held up by all Afro-optimists as the sole success story (in French-speaking) Africa. "Paris" was the word blurted out to describe the shiny veneer of Abidjan, and all Afro-optimists pointed out to Ivory-Coast as the one African state "that worked". Well, we now know that all the shiny veneer of the famed Hotel Ivoire in Abidjan was nothing but an illusion.

An overvalued currency allowed the Frenchified elites of Abidjan to import all their basic needs from France (even toilet-paper!) and keep up the appearances of living in a modern (i.e. French) state. The structural imbalances of the economy and political system were glaring and were cruelly exposed after the death of the 1st President, Houphouet-Boigny. What we witnessed with Ivory Coast in the 90s, we're now witnessing again in Mali. A nation thought to be successful, but with deep structural imbalances in its economic and political system, has been cruelly exposed and brought to its knees. I weep for my beloved Africa.