Communicating Arts - Main Web SiteWhat is Oppenheim Arts & Letters but a way of recording a reasonably eductaed American Everyman's perception of and response to news zipping around the Internet?
I don't know whether I had in mind the virtual heart of darkness when I started this blog, but certainly I was drawn to Somalia because of its "Black Hawk Down" noteriety combined with its relative obscurity in the pecking order of hot spots covered in the paper press.
Today, with RSS feeds, newsie alerts from Reuters, and other build-your-own-reality technologies, Somalia, and every other person or place on the planet, may be made as prominant or invisible as the reader wants to make it.
Well . . . I'm still "watching" Somalia but feel there's not much my blog can do as regards its issues and its violence. Essentially, my reading, Somalia may be the English and Italian mad political scientist's experiment with transforming a feudal society defined by family relationships and internecine feuds into some sort of "modern" (quotes much needed) federated meritocracy.
Instead, the western adventurers left a healthy looking infant, or so it may have been made to look to their peers back home, with a lot of monsters still floating around in its blood: the post-colonial aftermath has been a horror as well as a deep shame perhaps to all active and generous in spirit in their lives as public figures and politicians.
Luke Baker's piece today in Reuters, "INTERVIEW-Threats and death stalk Somali journalists," [1] touches on the intractability of Somalia's violence.
The message: ain't no one going to be happy with the Fourth Estate.
That wouldn't be such a problem, but in Mogadishu, the leadership (please take your pick: [ ] Clan [ ] Transitional Government [ ] Islamic Courts [ ] Independent Other) seems not to want to sit down and fire off a nasty letter to the snitch who gave them some media play.
Oh, no--firing off letters is not what adversaries prefer to fire in Mogadishu.
"I was getting threatening calls from both sides. They all wanted to kill me," Adde told Reuters as he sat in a cafe in London, where he recently moved to seek political asylum. [1]
Often, the ability to cobble together a story, to frame events and fill in details that make sense (and that may be corroborated and verified through multiple channels and means) presumes some healthy conditions for doing so, and those conditions seem not the conditions afforded in zones where the press may be regarded as merely another tool for one's (anyone's) pet agitprop and agenda.
In his memoir, Where War Lives, Canadian journalist Paul Watson touches on the idea that it's not what people say that probes the heart of a story but rather what they don't say--i.e., the story's missing information, the items left alone, the knowledge left unspoken.
So it goes in Baghdad, Mogadishu, probably Khartoum, and doubtless elsewhere.
None of the Islamic Small Wars are nationally cohesive or visible off the standing government's side, which at least makes an effort to field uniformed personnel. Moreover, all have been marked by fracturing in the ranks of those opposed to recognized government as well as an obsidian opacity in methods overall.
The once boyish (but girls die too) thrill afforded the intrepid in Kipling's wake seems to serve up less in the way of exclusive access and industry scoop and more in the way of kidnappings and murders by any number of aggrieved parties, not only the guys with the Big Obvious Labels above their heads but just as obscure bandits, bit players, and cabals.
"Soon everyone who has any ability to tell the Somalia story will have left. Then the world will definitely never know," says Nadara, looking out intensely from behind super-thick glasses."
Nadara is "Abdulkadir Nadara", described as a "presenter on Universal TV" [2].
It's not so important that a reader like myself know "the Somalia story" but rather that those who hold or would ascend to power, and so many of them often "off the screen", know their own reflection in the culture, language, and life of the country, a thing that cannot be done out of the light of day.
Contraray to belief, in open societies, histories are not written by "the winners".
Usually, and in open societies, they're cobbled back together by down-in-the-mouth (and once upon a time ink-stained) wretches who living meagerly on academic, government, or private stipends follow their curiosity into the sea of records left by old bureaucracies and transient journalists.
May a few be left with trustworthy notes, even out of Somalia.
1. Baker, Luke. "INTERVIEW-Threats and death stalk Somali journalists." Reuters, October 16, 2007.
Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim
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