Oppenheim Arts & Letters

Praise the (War) Lord and Pass the Ammunition . . . .

YouTube Reference URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4kxSpIBago&eurl=http://karmalised.com/.

I don't know what we're viewing, but about the conversation --

Last week, the U.S. military suspended its $300 million contract with 22-year-old Miami-based arms dealer Efraim Diveroli after discovering--err, fielding complaints from Afghani forces--that shipments of ammo from Diveroli's company, AEY, arrived aged by decades, potentially unreliable, and with origins in China, politicaly unpalatable, not to mention illegal.

While the press concentrates on who, what, why, when, and how young Efraim got his gig (and the back of the basement goods), one may wonder how much old arms stock remains in the markets (and how much new enters it as well).

Hand wringing aside, we know someone posted the above video, essentially feeding it into the global media and removing a layer of cover from a business best done quietly, whether legitimately or not, for who in the used arms market has so many millions--not tens, thousands, or hundreds of thousands, but millions--of rounds stockpiled back in the barn from some kind of good old and arms plentiful days?

Efraim Diveroli's story dovetails with another in March's arms trade coverage: the arrest of the legendary Viktor Bout in Thailand. [11, 12]

At the intersection of Bout and Afghanistan in 2002, Frontline reported, "On August 25, 1995, Agence France Presse reported that an Aerostan plane leased by Bout's company Transavia was forced to land in Kandahar, Afghanistan by a Taliban jet fighter. Taliban officials impounded "30-odd tons of AK-47 small arms ammunition" meant for government forces in Kabul." [13]

Update Bout, 2004: "Viktor Vasilevich Bout, one of the world's most notorious arms merchants with proven links to the Taliban, has become a valued partner of the US as it grapples with the insurgency in Iraq."  So wrote John C.k. Daly, lowercase "k" as printed online, in the Jamestown Foundation Terrorism Monitor and posted online at the Global Policy Forum. [14]

While combatants worldwide fret over the meaning of courage, faith, family, and honor and while governments try to control information to shield their constituents from some ugly truths--or the private agendas of the powerful or audacious--another term may be similarly suited for cultural, linguistic, and political scrutiny as well as personal introspection and insight: integrity.

Efraim Diveroli and Viktor Bout sold arms.

Leave it at that.

Afghani military and police need NATO rounds for their Kalashnikovs?

Buy and ship new.

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1. "U.S. military suspends Afghanistan ammunition deal."  Reuters, March 27, 2008.

2. "$298M to AEY for Ammo in Afghanistan."  March 21, 2007.

3. "AEY ammunitions shutdown."  The Firing Line, misc. thread posts, March 27-28, 2008.

4. Chivers, C.J. "Afghans Sent Obsolete Ammunition."  The New York Times, March 29, 2008.

5. Beyerstein, Lindsay.  "More on Efraim Diveroli and Michael Diveroli." Majikthise, March 28, 2008.

6. Worldwide Tactical, LLC.

7. Kiel, Paul.  "Today's Must Read."  TPM Muckraker, March 27, 2008.

8. Niccol, Andrew.  Lord of War.  Film, starring Nicholas Cage. 2005.  IMDB reference.

9. "Albanian Politics: "Transcript of Diveroli - Trebicka Conversation."  Albanian Canadian League Information Service.  March 21, 2008.

10. "Biseda telefonike Trebicka-Diveroli per trafikun e armeve!" Recorded telephone conversation.  Origin credited to Qeveriadoteu: http://www.youtube.com/user/qeveriadoteu.

11. George, Pavithra.  "Arms dealer arrested in Thailand."  Reuters, March 6, 2008.

12. "Viktor Bout."  Wikipediai, as experienced April 1, 2008.

13. Burnwasser, Mattew.  "Victor Anatoliyevich Bout--The Embargo Buster: Fueling Bloody Civil Wars."  Frontline World under the PBS web site, May 2002.

14. Daly, John C.k.  "Viktor Bout: From International Outlaw to Valued Partner."  Global Policy Forum, October 21, 2004.

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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The Truth, for Goodness Sake

And then Shirzai come out with his second local proverb, the import of which stayed with me for weeks.  "Kill me," the governor said.  "But don't put out in the sun."

Better dead than exposed.  It was a notion that cut to the core of the worst cultural clash I confronted in this land I had adopted: its utterly incomprehensible relationship with the truth.  Words were not all that important, it seemed, sine people lied so systematically.  And yet words were terribly important, since they outlasted deeds; so the battles that counted were about getting the last word.  I could not make it compute.  Tome words were precious and weighty--but only in their power to communicate the truth.  For the truth, once communicated, was a potent force for good.  So I thought.

The governor repeated his kind invitation.  "Any time, day or night," he effused, "if you have something to say to me, you come here.  If I'm asleep, slap me on the ass and wake me up." [1]

I'll have some things to say about Sarah Chayes' book, The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban, but the above passage so fit into the OA&L bin, "Conflict, Culture, and Language" I thought to rush the process and give it play.

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1. Chayes, Sarah.  The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban.  p. 391.  New York: The Penguin Press, 2006.

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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How Different Are We, Really?

I just surfed to Peace Now on the wings of a Google search for "Yariv Oppenheimer"--another close enough with a name not quite like "Smith" or "Jones": one day, I'll start with a note here with international law scholar Lassa Oppenheim and close with the old U.S. leftie, James Steven--and found this little bit of gold.

U.S. Left Wing sentiment toward "Dubya" aside, one may wonder whether the social tolerance of warrior classes may not be as much an issue as interest in Al Qaeda and terrorism.  "Thugocracy" plays an enormous role across many of what I've titled "Conflict Cultures".  Islam has no monopoly on it either.  Revisit Sierra Leone's civil war, for example, or drop by Kenya where the wizened old butting heads seem to be trying to head off the devolution of the modern state into a tribal quagmire.

Here, what I think I could call "young people" without insulting any ask how or why they can get along for two days with their would-be enemies while the political parties and powers involved have not other than force for maintaining state or cultural integrity and security.

I have a simple answer: the cultural stakes in warfare may either not be apparent to them in colloquy or, and given a certain degree of comfort, dignity, and security, not so important as items of contention.

Perhaps as a species we'll improve how we define and distill this thing called "enemy" and over time discover that the propensity to create war and sustain violence has more to do with what used to be called "war lovers" (also delinquints,dictators, gangsters, racketeers, etc.) than with any of the various systems of belief. 

Pogo's "We have met the enemy and it is us" may become universally "We have discovered the enemy, and it is some of us."

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1. "Peace Now Student Dialogue." Video.  YouTube, September 2007.

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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Somalia, Where War is Personal (and Deeply Impersonal)

It's unfair to single out Somalia today for this lesson in the Islamic Small Wars (and probably others), but the news is so atrocious that it will do as a whipping post for this most gentle of remonstrance:

• War is Personal for Its Leaders and Their Buddies
• War is Deeply Impersonal for Those Who Don't Care Much For It

While Somalia's powers that want to be--government officials, warlords, "Islamists", also brigands, pirates, and youth gangs--find mission joy in the staccato bursts of Kalashnikov fire, The People suffer and die in every miserable circumstance and situation possible.

Of course there's no news in that.

All outside the maelstrom, including, one might suggest, more comfortable government officials, warlords, Islamists, brigands, pirates, and youth gangs, must wonder at the ego, fear, and vanity that energizes so many combatants in ways that guaranty their own ruin through whatever version of "winning" they have in their heads.

These wars destroy value--and define "value" any way you wish: economic, political, spiritual.

Not to bloggerbate too much on Somalia this morning--I've got some book reports (Peter Arnett, Ann Jones, Sarah Chayes) coming up quick--the true and only battleground in Somalia resides in the heads of men with guns--all of them, Ethiopians and AU peacekeepers included--and peace between them may not be forged piecemeal.

If one could idealistically and romantically get to the Next Beginning today, it would feature one of each caricature of an exhausted criminal or warrior meeting amid the smoking ruins and acknowledging that whatever they had been up to just plain hadn't worked out so well.

That's not going to happen for a while yet.

Empathy may be universal among the writerly classes, but it sure is not among the political and warrior ones.  Let's count the negative ways:

1. Ethiopian troops seem to take being fired upon personally; shooting back turns out much less of a problem.  My first note in that vein involved the immediate vicinity hunt for perpetrators in the wake of a roadside bombing of a transport vehicle and the summary house-to-house search leading to the selection and execution of two brothers.  This morning's AlertNet report tells of troops stopping a bus, receiving fire from a single pistolero within it, and hammering back full force.
2. Whever the Islamists go, the forces of the Transitional National Federal Government have been sure to follow, and the incessant contention about showing The Local People what could be called The Way, divine or profane, inevitably means showing them death first.  In Somalia, the armory itself has become a dreaded character, a villain set loose by many trigger fingers and always to devestating effect.  According to Aweys Yusuf, Reuters, the Islamists have promised to engage more closely with government forces to spare civilian lives, but, but, but . . . there they travel hither and yon to enforce God's will, as they perceive it, with bombs, rockets, and Kalashnikovs always inviting others to exercise the same privilege using similar means (plus drones).
3. Did I mention armed drones?  The U.S. has found a way to wiggle--more like yaw and roll--across international boundaries without setting a known uniformed foot, alive or dead, on the other guy's turf: just send out a radio controlled and not-far-from model airplane with interesting electronics and munitions aboard.  The more business like, professional, sterile, the better.

The Combined Air & Space Operations Center, about which Mark Benjamin has written for Salon [3] may do a fine job with the Predator drone but would, really, the military and everyone else understand the minds of combatant targets and change them, influence them, transform their codes to more progressive interests, say producing food, medicine, and shelter for whole regional populations, and then, I guess, building the sophisticated communications systems, hospitals, and roads that support agriculture, education, and environmental health in general--but then all of that would threaten to invite resentment leading to something like the Mugabe Effect, that is the rejection of positive outcomes in trade for the grown up's version of "Mother, I'd rather do it myself" (and my immediate people--cronies, family, like-minded if not similarly colored associates), and that all the way back to impressing others with arms, intimidation, and violence without end.

While the humanitarians and UN envoys bleat about the depth of the crisis in Somalia, the peacocks who have fouled the countryside for gore and glory have become exactly what they intended: The Power--that is, all of the boys with toys together representing War to the exclusion of all else. 

There's not a "force majeur" on the planet capable of reverseing the damage done by armies, however small or large, or civic, criminal, or religious, grinding toward one another through death and suffering and absent of compassion.

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1. Sheikh, Abdi, Aweys Yusuf.  "Displaced Somalis loot food aid in Mogadishu."  Reuters AlertNet, March 28, 2008.

2. Yusuf, Aweys.  "Somali Islamists plot more hit-and-run raids."  Reuters AlertNet, March 27, 2008.

3. Benjamin, Mark.  "Killing 'Bubba' from the skies."  Salon, February 15, 2008.

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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Baghdad Mayhem

Photography and medical issues have my attention today, but posting this latest from Reuters seems unavoidable.

A conventional analysis might say of the uptick in attacks against the Green Zone in Baghdad and so many random act of senseless violence against Muslims (by Muslims) that U.S. battle fatigue in Iraq plus improvements in the Democratic profile for upcoming U.S. elections have invited renewed mortar, rocket, and drive-by "Jihad".

In some corners of the history of warfare, more lives have been lost in retreat than in battle.

However, rather than take that view, I would want to learn about oscillation in violence and quality of tactics over time. 

Have insurgents, whatever their identity or cause given the fragmented nature of the effort, been able to launch and sustain a conventional scenario? 

Has the violence forced or otherwise produced a predicted political response?  Has that response held? 

Over time, has the violence projected gathered momentum (ferocity x frequency) or has it merely promoted and sustained a certain agony for the innocent, unsuspecting, and pious?

One gentleman asks how many weapons could get through so many checkpoints: off-hand, with modern weapons, disassembly, smuggling in vehicle interiors or framework, and such will do it (time to revisit The French Connection for the popular origin of that idea). 

Better asked: who among Muslims wants to work so hard at killing those who best represent Islam?

Whether for practical or symbolic purposes, lobbing rockets into the Green Zone has a conventional sensibility to it; butchering civilians who live in small houses with children and doubtless know their Koran--that's going to be a mystery for a while.

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1. Tewari, Suranjana.  "Violence escalates in Baghdad."  Video.  Reuters, March 23, 2008.

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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Afghanistan: Open Intolerance

What for citizens of all of the world's open societies would be a 15-second experience of newspaper op-ed page art continues to play on the main stage in Afghanistan.  As the "We've been insulted," behavior becomes more the message than the message spoken, something else may be happening as regards the management of the perception of Islam in a core conflict culture: the viel held in place by various political leaders--those considered allies as well as those not--may be slipping.

Reading on deck for my eyes:

Chayes, Sarah. The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban.  New York: The Penguin Press, 2006.

Jones, Ann.  Kabul in Winter.  New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, 2006.

We are told, of course, that wherever the U.S. goes, democracy thrives and economic development, education, equality, and justice--clear, consistently administered, humane, sensible--must certainly follow, but the western journalism derived from around 2005 for publishing in books in 2006, and I'm making this observation from about half way through Ann Jones' book, is that Afghani culture itself may be overwhelmingly characterized by the abuse and enslavement of women, by corruption in virtually every aspect of bureaucracy and business, and by intolerance.

But then, you know how women get . . . .

:)

That's all the facetious bonding I'm going to do.

The problem is the same observations may repeat themselves through many eyes and possibly across the Small Wars landscape: then what--more war?  Better salesmanship by "the west"?  More trade (or bribery in the form of aid that makes it into every pocket but the ones that need it most)?

I suspect I'll be reading more unpleasant reporting out of Afghanistan (and Pakistan) on cultural issues havng a direct impact on development and the provision of legal, health, and social services. 

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The irony of printing a cartoon, an art form inherently critical of facets of political culture, suggestive of an explosive state of affairs and having it matched by video illustrating the same in protest of it seems inescapable.

Language, Dutch, English, or Dari, should prove flexible and universal enough to resolve issues having to do with vanity, power, and respect, but clearly it does not.

Languages display metonymy, or, within each language culture, the natural affilations and affinities formed in the mind through commonly held symbols, starting with words but including also the elements of expression across modes: sketches, photographs, dances, songs.  Here there's the cartoon, the insult, the robust response, and back of that the whole weight of a threatened patriarchal fascism unable to field, absorb, dismiss, or, alternatively, counter the slight with similarly creative, perhaps even entertaining, ridicule.

As I may not take Ann Jones' scathing portrayal of Afghani culture as final say (but you can bet I'll be looking for its echoes in the Sarah Chayes' book), I may be as skeptical as regards the Reuters' video as representing the response of all Afghani men to adverse political cartooning. 

However, where language transmission and reception and related behavior are concerned, I may also wonder whether Afghani men have either intellectual choice or wherewithal as regards their reception of and response to a common enough political cartoon that owes its continuing presence in their lives directly to the attention they continue to give it.

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1. Allen, Benet.  "Muslims protest over cartoons." Video.  Reuters, March 21, 2008.

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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Zimbabwe: Robert Mugabe's Birthday

Chapter I. An Outline for Study of Agricultural Development in Southern Rhodesia.

Chapter II. The Part of Agriculture in the National Economy of Southern Rhodesia.

Para 3. Contrirction to the National Food Supply

"Contrirction" seems now an archaic legal term having to do with debt, but even my 40-year-old Webster's Unabridged seems not to have it.

Para. 4. Adequacy of Food Supply

Para. 9. Suitability of Food Supply

10. Crop and Livestock Comparisons

12. Fruit

13. Vegetables.

14. Canning and Dehydration of Fruit and Vegetables

15. Fats

19. Protein

21. Trends in Native Diet

. . . .

Chapter VI. Agricultural Policy and Development

Para. 2. The Physical Setting

Para. 7. The Economic Setting

Para. 13.  The Objective of Development

Para. 14. Policy Proper to the Chosen Objectives

16. Economic Security

18. Guarantees in Relation to Policy

21. Price Basis and Price Structure

24. Subsidies for land Improvement and Equipment

26. Policy and Farming Systems

The botanist who cared enough and worked long to contribute to what would become for a while the bread basket--rather than the basket case--of Africa was Professor Sir Frank Engledow, "Knight Agriculturalist Local Historian" [3].

The above posted (and truncated) table of contents comes from Sir Engledow's Report to the Minister of Agriculture and Lands on The Agricultural Development of Southern Rhodesia, as presented to the Legislative Assembly, 1950. [1]

Back in the day, for this note the early 1960's, Nuffield [2] scholar Gordon Pullar, now the 82-year-old owner of a New Zealand bed & breakfast, Crichton Lodge, had the privilege of encountering Sir Engledow as a student.  As this is now a belated birthday comment, there should be no harm in making it just a few more minutes late by noting Gordon Pullar's own lifetime accomplishments in agriculture started from very near to scratch.  I quote here from his speech in 2006 to the Nuffield Conference in New Zealand:

"I had left high school at the end of my fourth form year, December 1941, to go home to drive a six- horse team to annually plough, cultivate and sow 230 acres of swedes, oats and new grass.

"My Father employed one farm worker. One after the other three of them had been called up for war service. Thus the war spelt the end of my formal education.

"I found the writing of my report a difficult task. It took me nine long months of very late nights. Sir Frank Engledow an Agriculture Lecturer of considerable standing as well as a Nuffield Director and Advisor, wrote in his acceptance letter “Late but excellent!”

"I knew the late was appropriate!" [5]

Whatever the resources given, how we work them has much to do with their return.

Responding to my request for comment, the Gordon's through e-mail [4]:

"Sir Frank met with we Agriculture Nuffield Scholars from the commonwealth ie Canada, Australia, and the then named Southern Rhodesia and from Northern Rhodesia. (two from each country) at the beginning of our three week study tour of England, Scotland and Wales. We were greatly impressed by his wide knowledge of British agriculture and Research Centres combined with his remarkable in depth knowledge of the countries we each represented. He had the ability to focus accurately upon the agricultural issues, challenges, controversies and proposals of the time. 1962. What ever we asked he appeared to be able to respond with in depth knowledge.

"He encouraged us to look widely as we travelled, not to concentrate only upon agricultural issues and instead to seek a balanced, comprehensive view of what we experienced. He emphasized the importance of including local culture, history, industry and art in our perception."

Would I were budgeted for purchasing academic journal articles or subscriptions: I'm sure I would have that much more to say about the character of contemporary scholars, Anglo and other, engaged in the business of getting people fed. 

Even narrowed down to getting merely Zimbabwe fed would, I am sure, generate an angry wealth of observation on my part.

Neither the professoriat of God and country nor of the "peasant" has disappeared, but the capacity to implement and sustain a productive agrarian practice against the vicissitudes brought about through political angling for gain and power has in some quarters quite vanished.  From last year's World Food Programme comment on Zimbabwe:

"The poor harvest coupled with the worsening economic crisis will leave 2.1 million people facing food shortages as early as the third quarter of 2007 – a figure that will rise to 4.1 million at the peak of the crisis in the months before the next main harvest in April 2008." [9]

Sir Frank Engledow had by 1950 laid out a productive, profitable agricultural assessment and plan for the Rhodesia that was to become Zimbabwe, and it had helped produce a cornucopia.

Other of my notes on Zimbabwe here:

"A Little More on Zimbabwe." February 19, 2008.

"Zimbabwe: Peter Godwin's Book and How a Country Deconstructs."  February 19, 2008.

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1. Engledow, Sir Frank.  Report to the Minister of Agriculture and Lands on The Agricultural Development of Southern Rhodesia.  Presented to the Legislative Assembly, 1950.  Table-of-Contents retrieved courtesy of the librarian, St. Johns College Library, Cambridge: http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/library/special_collections/personal_papers/engledow/.

2. The Nuffield Trust.

3. Engledow, Sir Frank Leonard (1890--1985) Knight Agriculturalist Local Historian. National Register of Archives. 

4. Pullar, Margaret.  "Re. Sir Frank Egledow."  Private correspondence, March 14, 2008.

5. Pullar, Gordon.  "Speech: Gordon Pullar."  May 2006 Nuffield Conference.

6. Thornycroft, Peta.  "White farmers in court for growing crops."  Telegraph.co.uk, June 10, 2007.

7.  Weiner, Daniel, Barry Munslow, Sam Moyo.  "Energy for Sustainable Agricultural Development in Zimbabwe."  Abstract. Growth and Change: A Journal of Urban and Regional Policy. 23:3, 335-362, July 1992.

8. Relief Web.  "Zimbabwe: IRIN interview with land expert Sam Moyo."  August 14, 2001.

9. World Food Programme.  "Where We Work - Zimbabwe". 2007.

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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Photography, Hagerstown, Maryland

I am shameless!

:D

This blog gets better webbot service than my Communicating Arts website: http://www.communicating-arts.com, the effect of which produces a lot of hits, especially this week, for, say, Heinrich Boll's short story, "Murke's Collected Silences," but not much for what I do (for money) -- i.e., that would be photography out of Hagerstown, Maryland, a fine point of departure for the rest of the Cumberland Valley, western Maryland, West Virginia, south central Pennsylvania, also Virginia, and Maryland in general.

Business and Commercial Services: on-location recording for annual reports and web sites, executive portraiture, catalog and product photogrpahy, and industrial real estate and technology; architectural photography's a possibility -- e- me.

Journalism: general assignment -- fast turnaround close to base in Hagerstown; fair weather, Mustang-friendly regional travelability excellent by Interstate.  I like: celebrity, culture, gardens!

Personal Services: environmental and general portraiture (intimate character work, always); weddings (affordable).

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Main Business Web: Communicating Arts: http://www.communicating-arts.com.

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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Ah, A Glimpse of Civilization

Why not just shoot 'em?

Never mind who shoots and who gets shot.

It doesn't matter.

This is just so much more civilized: "Muslim Weekly" Apologizes to Daniel Pipes -- http://www.meforum.org/press/1866.