NickS writes: Doug Muir has another post about USAID which goes into more detail about the organizations involved. It's one of the best things I've read in a while describing what progress looks like, and the work involved. I see a number of pieces written from the perspective of, "it may be necessary to build new institutions and new communities because the existing structures of power are corrupt and insensitive to people's experience. While there is no shortage of corruption and insensitivity in the world; this is a good description of the value of a moderately fair and well-functioning institution.

The East African Community (EAC) is a free trade zone in East Africa. It was originally built around Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda but has now expanded to include eight countries across the region. Here's a map:

The EAC includes a customs union, harmonization of commercial laws and regulations, the lowering and eventual disappearance of barriers to trade, and free movement of people across the region. They also coordinate on everything from plant protection rules to building new highways. And every year they're making it easier for East Africans to live, work and study in neighboring countries.

But the other five countries are really serious and are working hard to reduce barriers and build a no-kidding free trade zone. And this is actually happening, and with remarkable speed. The EAC is a real thing, and it's already having a pretty significant impact. People living in those core five countries are very aware of the EAC.

Right now the EAC is barely known outside East Africa. But I don't think that will last. Most of the core members have very rapidly growing economies. They're still poor, but they're no longer desperately poor, and in the 2030s they'll be moving into lower middle income status.

...

But in recent years, all that has been changing. Manufacturing and services have been growing fast across the region. So, a modern house in Rwanda might get its window frames and fuse box from China and its copper wiring from Australia -- but the PVC piping can be produced in Tanzania, the cement for the concrete can come from Kenya, and the roof tiles and paint can be produced locally in Rwanda. And the mortgage would probably also come from a Rwandan bank, although that bank would be looking for capital abroad -- traditionally in Hong Kong, Brussels or London, but these days more likely Johannesburg or Chennai.

For most EAC countries, trade within the EAC region has been growing very rapidly, if from a very low base. The Rwandan government is particularly enthusiastic about this. Under colonialism, and for a long time afterwards, Rwanda produced coffee and exported that to pay for goods and services. This is, as everyone knows, a pretty crap way to run an economy. In the particular case of Rwanda, crashing coffee prices back in the late 1980s and 1990s helped destabilize the government, which was one of the drivers of the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. Everyone in Rwanda remembers that. So they're extremely keen on diversifying their economy -- more and different exports, more and different trading partners.

...

Yeah, okay, but why do this KIND of project? Why should American taxpayers care about cross-border trade in Rwanda?

Because a peaceful, prosperous world is good for everyone.

Heebie's take: Go read it! It's interesting!

Is this a horrible new bright line that's been crossed? Or is deporting political protesters already a thing that happened in the first Trump admin, and this example is just more high profile?

As a right-thinking generally lazy person who loathes being told to download corporate apps, I will say that I make an exception for airlines. Goddamnit if they haven't rigged things so that it's in your best interests to have the Delta app or the American app or whatever. I've capitulated.

Kevin has died. Condolences to Marian and the rest of his family.

Many of us followed him, maybe corresponded with him a bit, and will miss him a lot. His work made it possible to live with one fewer layer of bullshit in one's life, and there's just no one else who does that work with the same consistency and alacrity.

He brought the lead/crime hypothesis to the mainstream, was talking about AI when most of us thought that was nuts, and he was a standard bearer for a sensible, data-backed optimism that we really need. I'll be clicking through to his site for many months before the sad day that the habit breaks.

And somehow, despite sharing political opinions in public for twenty years, and defending his views vigorously when challenged, he was never an asshole to anyone. He maintained his poise and acumen even as cancer wore him down. A really decent man, a role model, and a lovely mind. Rest in peace, Kevin.

Ok, I am sometimes the last to know, but I found this interview on NPR to be wild.

Basically maybe 100,000 people somehow found themselves kidnapped on the Myanmar border:

BROOMBY: Well, these really are people from all across the globe. There are dozens of countries represented here. And they're people with language skills, sometimes people with masters educations and Ph.D.s. And many of them, they applied for jobs. They sent in CVs. They had multiple interviews. They even negotiated and signed contracts with HRs all for jobs in Thailand that they thought they were going to be going to but that never actually existed...

AMY MILLER: Often, it starts with them receiving either an ad on Facebook, on Telegram, on WeChat. They go on a website. They go through an interview process that often looks very legitimate. They are given a flight to Bangkok, paid for, and then all of a sudden, they're driven six or eight hours up to our border line.

BROOMBY: And once they're taken up to the border, it's really too late for them essentially. Many of them don't even realize that they've crossed the border until their phone doesn't have any connection and until they're surrounded by militia and by soldiers in Myanmar, and by that time, it's really too late.

Then when they get there, they're chained to a desk and forced to text you different scam scripts:

DETROW: And just to help us understand this, are these call centers behind this increased proliferation in random texts that people get? You know, hi - I lost your number. Who are you? Or is it a wide range of different schemes?

BROOMBY: That really is - if you're getting messages like that, that really is one of the playbooks that these scam centers have been operating. Now, there are different scam centers. We think there are up to 70 of them just in the stretch across Mae Sot, the border town that I'm in now, across the 70-kilometer stretch on the other side.

The people running the compounds are different militia groups from Myanmar's civil war. Apparently they had not read Slaughterhouse-Five and found out the lesson about not messing with well-connected people, because they accidentally kidnapped a Chinese celebrity.

This caused a big stink in China, which then put pressure on Thailand, which then shut off electricity and gas to the region, which then caused the militias to slightly crack down on the compounds, which then caused 7000 people to be released, but now they're stuck in limbo because no one is exactly sure who to negotiate with to get them home.