Oppenheim Arts & Letters

Absent of Government

Farmers cut into river embankments to irrigate their land, which contributes to the flooding, according to local residents.

The situation has been exacerbated by the fact that since 1991, when the Somali government collapsed, the riverbed has not been de-silted and the sluice gates on the rivers or adjoining canals remain unmanned. [1]

There's a bit of Garrett Hardin's tragedy of the commons [2] working through each of the conflict zones--private interest trumps public, most of the time, and to some extent, public action or accomplishment enables greater disaster.

The near first paragraphs of IRIN's report on this latest setback for Somalia may infer that efforts to expand agricultural yield by managing a river have been undermined both by private action--crudely channeling river water to irrigate crops--and by a much distracted government's inability to apply money and manpower to other than security programming.

Wind through the cycle: reduced food stocks; more "internally displaced people" (better at the hand of nature than man, I would think, but the effects would seem about the same).

There's a comment a couple of threads back contributing to what might be called "how things really work around here", and it too may reflect a problem of similar design: although of a different order, the compelling, immediate, and personal interests of parties adds to the challenge of addressing common cause and exacerbates the general misery suffered by the population at large.

Today in Afghanistan, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports "Thousands flee Taliban, aerial bombing in the south": for parties caught in the middle (between the Taleban and President Karzai's government), a similar design applies.

"Many displaced civilians who have flocked into Kandahar city say they left their homes because Taliban insurgents tried to force them to join their ranks, feed and care for their wounded fighters and provide financial support for their campaign.

"Hundreds of families have also been displaced because of intense aerial bombing by international forces in their bid to defeat Taliban rebels in the southern provinces, displaced people in Kandahar said." [3]

Assume for a moment the Taliban represents a kind of private party (guerrilla fighters privately commandeering local resources to sustain their effort) and through its warfare a force of nature, and the opposing international force may be experienced momentarily as a force of nature (careless, dispassionate, violent--no different from an earthquake or hurricane) itself: there is no one defended and no lot improved in the physics as experienced by the inhabiting or resident population.

We say, oh, well, that's war.

I am starting to wonder if it is that or some other thing, near sighted and fit to a pattern.

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1. IRIN.  "SOMALIA: Villages cut off as floods inundate Middle Shabelle."  Reuters, September 19, 2007.

2. Hardin, Garrett.  "The Tragedy of the Commons."  Science, 162:1243-1248, December 13, 1968.

3. "Thousands flee Taliban, aerial bombing int he south."  IRIN, September 29, 2007.

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Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim

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The Second Row Seat to History

The first thing I expect any real "journo" out there to say is, "Ain't nothin' like the front row!"

I believe it.

But then I might think, "The front row gets kind of bumpy, and you have to drink the water . . . and whatever's coming off the field, watch out."

This is so much more comfortable: click--over to Burma; click--catch the story on de-mining at Nahr al-Bared, Lebanon; click--Hamas launches rockets against Israel, Israel responds (darned re-runs!); click--Somalia: the misery channel; click--Afghanistan (say, whatever happened to last week's kidnapped ICRC workers? Freed: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/ISL272480.htm).

Drudge, so I've heard, made up the news and sometimes legitimately beat the real thing to the punch.

Oppenheim, et al: Reuters sends us "alerts", rough and ready first "graphs" of what's coming in from the field: hey, batter batter, hey!

Front row: get over to county records and find out who owns the building, the company, the land, the mineral rights, air rights; follow the money back to the owners, lenders, investors; learn something about each; look again at the deed: whatever the story, is it starting to make sense?

Second row: accept the field report; corroborate it, if possible; look further into the information woven into the Internet; any patterns? what is the material--action, clues, commentary--trying to tell you? are you "getting" it?

And, my favorite, how far from the first row is the second row, really?

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Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim

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Political Work

Children: look away
Adults--do not speak
Conscience . . . do not listen.

ad hoc

Possibly, probably, there's a scholar Out There who might suggest that new technologies inevitably create or motivate new wars.  In that light, the Internet might be seen as a mighty weapon.  It's certainly getting some tests.

For Burma, it's turning up a big, "We don't really like you" for the ruling junta, but it's also eliciting an equally large, "So what are you going to do about it?"

Hmmm.

The Old Press, whatever the cost in lost newspaper sales, has never had so much fun: ever skeptical, ever pointing the finger, ever eager to capture attention with someone else's spilled blood, it knows no shortage either of targets or materials.

I once said here of Somalia, there are no slow news days.

With the proliferation of English language blogs and translated media, for English speakers and no doubt the same and other solutions for other language cultures, the world itself has no "slow days"--and the whole spinning thing is here on our desks every day.

What we're missing would seem to be new frameworks and solutions through which to filter old problems, and nowhere may that be especially so than in each of the conflict zones, some loosely tied together, others swimming around in their own murky pools of percieved or quite real injustice.

We're going to need a much better tool kit by way of language and other cultural technologies to re-frame differences in such a way as to make so many issues generated solveable and then free that much more energy for common cause.

That's my prayer for the day.

Attack Continuing on Shabelle Media, Somalia

On September 17 or 18--

I will admit this right now: the "second row seat to history" does not see as well as the front row--

Somali national army forces attacked and layed siege, of a sort, to the office building housing Shabelle Media in Mogadishu. [1]

Yesterday, Reuters reported 18 staff "briefly arrested" at that point.

On the 26th, journalist or deputy director (or both, one's inferred, the other title I've seen on Google's report for his name) Mohamed Amiin published a diatribe on the matter at http://www.shabelle.net/news/ne3760.htm: "Somalia's media is diminishing under the blazing guns of mad soldiers." [2]

It has been common in dissident tactics to draw on a melange of American sentiments--about Native Americans, about "how America does business", about autocracy, especially Orwell's disutopian version of it, etc.--to build support for other causes that may be equally ham handed and ruthless.  Here, with Somalia, the states-of-affairs are so clouded that I hesitate to ascribe integrity to either the President Ahmed's Administration or Shabelle Media's ". . . simple journalists with microphones, book notes, pens, and the desire to lead freedom of speech in a country of nowhere to go."

I've queried the U.S. State Department for cause (what is a proto-democratic state doing attacking a radio station -- and by the way, according to Amiin, the state's weapons fire has been sufficient enough to damage its broadcasting hardware and related capability) and if I don't find his e-mail address online first, I certainly invite Mohamed Amiin to explain how or why Shabelle Media produced so much interest on the part of President Ahmed's government.

The way through cant and propaganda is to obtain a complete, coherent, and verifiable (seven ways to Sunday) story that plain makes cultural, emotional, political, and psychological sense.

I don't have that story.

What I have are Dutch writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali's accounts of growing up in Somalia (popular books now: The Caged Virgin and Infidel); various and common histories of warfare, including Walter Laqueur's classic Guerrilla; and apart from that a couple of Masters' degrees (one in English, the other in "outdoor recreation resources management" aka the social psychology of the wilderness experience). 

:-)

"The prepartors are still at the main gate of Shabelle Media Network," Amiin stated in his Shabelle.Net post on the 26th.

I'll take the report of the fact at face value: but come on, world--give me information that makes that kind of fact make sense!

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1. "Press group deplores attack on Somali media boss."  Reuters, September 27, 2007.

2. Amiin, Mohamed.  "Somalia's media is diminishing under the blazing guns of mad soldiers."  Shabelle.Net, September 26, 2007.

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Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim

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Meanwhile, Back in Somalia . . . .

The first time the government closed three broadcasting units (June 2007), I took an interest; on the second go-round, I marked a note here [4]. 

For the record, last week, according to Reuters, two gunmen, unidentified and unafilliated, attempted to murder Jafar Kukay, a manager with Shabelle Media, a broadcast and online news vendor; the government not only failed to follow-up with an investigation, it raided Shabelle Media, "briefly arresting" 18 staff.  Its troops sprayed down the building with gunfire afterward. [3]

The natural evolution and related temptation for governments installed by arms is generally to eliminate their enemies outright, not a bad thing when the enemies aren't talking either.

Since the Ethiopian army's route of the Islamic Courts Council (ICC) in Somalia, Mogadishu has been plagued by violence. 

Some of that has been called "Iraqi-style"--roadside bombs, assasinations, random mayhem in marketplaces and theaters (grenades tossed; automatic weapons fire; etc.)--and related to ICC remnants.  What part comes from other sources, one may wonder.

The response by President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed may have been called to this point, "standard operating procedure": lay the foundation for a national reconciliation conference; in concert with Ethiopian  and AU peacekeeping troops from Uganda, disarm the population; hunt out the remaining ICC in Mogadishu and elsewhere; restore security, tranquility even, to the capital.

Instead, against a mix, probably, of ICC-related violence as well as the static produced by anarchic violence (for vendetta, for the hell of it), the government may have produced the more Draconian measures its enemies wished it to in order to turn constituent opinion against it.

One may get the sense that if the state stalls, it's enemies will turn around and eat it alive; if it advances, it harms those it most intended to defend.

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As a U.S. citizen and blogger, I go with an old patriotic saw: "Without the First Amendment, all of the others are meaningless."

As a former college-level English instructor, I also believe in responsible rhetoric.

As a blogger with what I call the "second row seat to history", I believe in integrity in journalism, including this opinion-making part of the art.

Finally, globally, I would paraphrase Hemingway's remark about hunters: all writers are one writer.

With all of that in mind, what possible excuse could there be for shuttering what seemed to me a responsible but hamstrung news operation?

What I would get from visiting http://www.shabelle.net/news/english.htm would be reports of murders and other violence with little follow-up, if any, which I took as an indicator that journalists like Aweys Osman Yusuf--I always enjoyed his stuff--may have felt caught between the expectations of a newly installed government and the scrutiny of the "Islamists."

Over some months now of reading about Islam and surfing across the sea of related conflicts, I'm inclined to think there's more of "design" involved in inter-Islamic violence than political or religious motivation. 

In fact, the recurring themes--e.g., response and regard for authority; male honor and pride; clan and tribal relationships and related unquestioned nepotism; and practices relating to the ownership of women--predate Islam.

Don't blame Somalian anarchy on The English (or the Italians): the cultural endowment that drives a leader to drive out a resident population in search of a handful of true committed enemies may run bone deep.

Kabul in Afghanistan and portions of Baghdad and surrounds have become quiet, or less violent, one may say, as government forces and allies have found ways to incorporate opposition apart from the Al Qaeda movement while producing tactics that better draw out and identify AQ-type fighters.

One may hope that vacate-cordon-and-sweep works in Mogadishu, but I feel the more difficult struggle may be with the autocratic, one may even say the "California-F", contribution ingrained in Somali culture.

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1. "11,000 fled Mogadishu fighting in September-UNHCR."  Reuters, September 28, 2007.

2.  Oppenheim, James S.  "No News Somalia, 3."  Oppenheim Arts & Letters, June 6, 2007.

3. "Press group deplores attack on Somali media boss." Reuters, September 27, 2007.

4. Oppenheim, James S. "Live the New Life of Danger--Journalist."  Oppenheim Arts & Letters, September 27, 2007.

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Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim

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Blogging Another Different Kind of War

Ko Htike, according to the BBC, blogs from London with many contacts in Burma getting some information out. [1]

For others sourcing information channels: http://ko-htike.blogspot.com/.

It's not what's on the page that matters so much to readers; it's that the page exists and the world is there not only to approve and access it but also provide its moral and spiritual support.

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1. Holmes, Stephanie.  "Burma's cyber-dissidents."  BBC News, September 27, 2007.

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Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim

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Update: Burma's Crippled Information Channels

I won't be standing by all day--I seem to have other interests, whether I like it or not--but Michael Dobie's "Junta tightens media screw" seemed worth a comment.

In addition to blocking Burma's Internet backbone, Dobie reports, "Telephone lines and mobile phone signals to monasteries, opposition politicians and student leaders have been cut." [1]

The military in Burma serves to defend its ruling class and the steps taken to silence opposition  underscores the stance.

The military's interference extends to attacking the communicating channels, starting with cell phone signals, used by foreign journalists.

Watch Burma go black.

In the UN Security Council, both China and Russia have been reported as treating Burma's growing conflict as an internal matter unimportant to regional peace and stability.  I wonder if this may not be the last time we hear that: in computer-network-ese, if the world is not directly engaged, it's listening with great sensitivity.

"Despite the government's best efforts to drown out independent voices, images and uncensored information are still getting out of Burma.

"Some people in Burma are circumventing the government's firewalls by uploading pictures directly to data hosting sites, which are harder to trace, instead of sending images by e-mail, says Moe Myint from the BBC Burmese Service." [1]

Among other things, the whole wide world has drowned itself in two technologies: arms and communications.

One feels for the people of Burma who appear to have been cowed en masse, denied the economic opportunities made available to citizens in surrounding states, and here in this round, rendered almost but perhaps not quite voiceless.

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1. Dobie, Michael.  "Junta tightens media screw."  BBC News, September 27, 2007.

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Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim

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Burma, the Noun

Google "Burma".

How is that possible?  Isn't it, wasn't it, will it not be "Myanmar"?

From the top of the list (bold emphasis mine):

The Times Online reports "Internet access "cut off" in attempt to silence Burma."

The Washington Post reports, "Burma's Revolt of the Spirit."

The Bangkok Post report, "UN envoy to begin Burma trip Saturday."

The BBC News leads with "Burma, also known as Myanmar . . ." to frame its "Country Profile: Burma."

Etc.

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Updated: October 2, 2007

1. "Should it be Burma or Myanmar?"  BBC News, UK, The Magazine, September 26, 2007.

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Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim

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Big Bird Smothers Juvenilebirds

"Burma's military regime is suspected of cutting public internet access today to prevent news and images of its violent repression of pro-democracy protests leaking out." [1]

Tactics!

For Juvenilebirds, the young videographer (http://www.youtube.com/user/JUVENILEBIRDS), this may be where "broadcast yourself" ends.

As in days of old, perhaps a decade ago, the professionals and the spies may have satellite uplinking capability through their news outfits (provided those organizations maintained those assets): we will certainly see if that turns out so.

How can anyone or anything hide the agony of 50 million people?

Rosalind Russell, a Western journalist in Rangoon, told Sky News: "We have been told that the internet is down for maintenance. There is only one server in the country. "When that is down, no one has access to the internet or the ability to send out news reports or pictures." [1]

That's how.

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1. Booth, Jenny and agencies in Rangoon.  "Internet access 'cut off' in an attempt to silence Burma." Times Online, September 28, 2007.

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Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim

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