It's hard to beat Reuters for level-headed and ever polite video coverage of the occasional beating.
Typepad today seems to want to revise the Reuters video code and then hang, so I may only invite you to use the URL noted in this brief post's reference section.
1. Chapman, Paul. "Farmers suffer Zimbabwe violence". Reuters, July 1, 2008.
Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim
The world knows Zimbabwe is burning.
It knows its refugees dare crocodiles to survive its hardships by seeking work elsewhere.
It knows its money, hyperinflated into near useless ink and paper, represents not more than a dictator, his cronies, and their thugs.
And it knows, this most important of all, that protests and sanctions send a message to aged, deafened, and hardened ears.
As most do who have nothing to offer their countrymen apart from thievery, fingers point always to the most convenient and toothless scapegoat: in Zimbabwe, that would be white farmers.
Reuters reports three white farmers "abducted, assaulted, and thrown off a moving vehicle" in a district 62 miles west of Harare. [1]
In Zimbabwe, there is no justice, for not only does the state care not for its white farmers, it presents itself as blind and immune to the desparation and hunger of the tens upon tens of thousands of its citizens fleeing its burnt fields for greener ones better managed elsewhere.
Backwardness prevails where despots rule.
Despots prevail where courage fails.
In Zimbabwe, no white farmer, MDC opposition leader or follower, or job seeker, the kind who braves crocodiles on the long walk to work, has ever lacked for courage.
From some African countries, one may expect agreable noise and purposeful inaction. [2]
From continental Europe, Great Britain, and the United States one may similarly expect agreable noise and, so it would seem to this point, token actions (in the form of gummy sanctions).
From South Africa, which bears its share of Zimbabwean refugees, comes this caution: "South African President Thabo Mbeki on Wednesday rejected an EU position that it will only accept a Zimbabwean government led by opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai" [3]. In the article cited, President Mbeki is quoted as having said earlier today (Wednesday), ""So we are fully supportive of the cooperation and dialogue among political parties to find a solution to the challenges they face."
Having for some time witnessed through the news the marvel of Zimbabwean political cooperation, one may only wonder what a truly earnest disinterest in accommodation on the part of the Mugabe government might look like.
I'll grant you this: knowing where misery lives may not mean fully knowing how it works, and that, I think, the message where not even the most aggrieved and refugee-hosting neighbor cares to look too closely, honestly, or coureagously over the fence--or if having looked, talk about it.
Let Zimbabwe be Zimbabwe!
Whatever that may be, credit President Robert Mugabe, for no one else would wish to be responsible.
1. Banya, Nelson. "White farmers attacked and wounded in Zimbabwe." Reuters, July 1, 2008.
3. IC Publications, 24-Hour News. "SAfrica's Mbeki rejects EU demand on Zimbabwe govt."
Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim
You really have to watch the movies--and appreciate them--to get this post:
"Two rival motorcycle gangs terrorize a small town after one of their leaders is thrown in jail," says the IMDB plot summary.
Looking so very young, vulnerable, threatening and tough in leather--ain't that youth?--Brando and gang do with bikes and beer much of what their inverted mirrors have been doing in Somalia: they ride into town, humiliate the authorities, terrorize the citizens, and get gone before the cops show up in full and overwhelming force.
Across cultures and generations, removal of the surface posturing, whether the business of being out for "kicks" or out to impose Kalashnikov Sharia, leave the romantic and identity-forming plots of the old movie and the onling and moving reality looking quite the same.
Brando's character betrays a laudible nobility despite the rebel posturing, but let's be careful here: a movie is a thing scripted to "educate, entertain, and delight" its audience; in this particular cross-culture inversion in "realspace", the posturing is noble--the gang's out to save Islam in Somalia--but so many of the actions steal innocent Islamic lives, not only the police but any Moslem unfortunate enough to catch attention or crossfire in the fighting, that The Cause becomes a bewildering front, a thin mantle belying other compulsions, forces, and needs residing in the personalities of its warriors.
As with Brando's biker troops, tearing up the town for a spell and taking care of it prove quite different things.
In the living theater of war that contestants have made of Somalia, a similar thing applies: the shoot-em-up followed by a disappearing act is easy--administering, caring for, employing, feeding, housing all who care not to take up arms proves hard.
To be fair, or perhaps not, to Somalia's Transitional Federal Government and "Islamists" (and assorted warlords), nature plays a third part in Somalia's suffering.
While fighting over little more than rightful male assertion hasn't been doing anyone much good, such, for all its fury, well may be dwarfed by combined environmental and social carrying capacity issues: The country would present a culturally and physically tough challenge to international community interest in development and health were civic peace its most shining product.
That the delivery of humanitarian assistance, especially of food and medical attention, have been hampered by violence keep the same from having to prove heroic in effect.
Brando and gang, full of themselves, took pains not to reveal too much interest in the well being of others.
Somalia's Islamist warrior bands look much the same, but the bullets, grenades, and rockets are real and the suffering immense of those less interested in their own glory and most in need of the benefits certain to come with peace.
1. Benedek, László. The Wild One. Feature film starring Marlon Brando. 1953.
2. UNHCR Somalia. "Internally Displaced Persons in Somalia as of February 2008." PDF.
Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim
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.
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.
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.
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.
Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim
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."
1. "Peace Now Student Dialogue." Video. YouTube, September 2007.
Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim
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:
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:
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.
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.
Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim
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.
1. Tewari, Suranjana. "Violence escalates in Baghdad." Video. Reuters, March 23, 2008.
Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim
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.
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/.
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.
8. Relief Web. "Zimbabwe: IRIN interview with land expert Sam Moyo." August 14, 2001.
9. World Food Programme. "Where We Work - Zimbabwe". 2007.
Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim
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.
Military casualties: 3 dead -- the army's chief medical officer and two aids.
Civilian bystander casualties: 5 dead -- no warning, no affiliation, no animosity, no threat, no point.
1. McDill, Stuart. "Blast kills top Pakistani army medic." Video. Reuters, February 27, 2008.
Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim
