Timepieces

I present the following item from the Remembrance of Rogues Past collection: a campaign watch for the YEAA '98 campaign, namely the Youth Energetically Advocating Abacha shell organization that supposedly was spontaneously formed to campaign for that suffocating, murderous and dictatorial rogue, General Sani Abacha — late, unlamented and so forth.

I'm a avid collector of this kind of historical artifact and you'll sometimes find me bidding for a mint copy of the Franco sings for Mobutu album, to take a recent example and different rogue (quite a good album actually). The Abacha watch, while in the mode of praise singers and sycophants, is not your standard piece of dictator chic, it's much more functional and thus perhaps more insidious. In any case, it's worth some brief notes.

Back in the twilight zone of military rule in Nigeria circa 1998, it appeared that the dictator was feeling some pressure to make gestures towards democracy. The response was of course to think about how to hand over to himself, accordingly he devised lots of gestures. Having outlawed all organized opposition, the general decided to organize two approved political parties, "one a little to the left and the other a little to the right". Manifestos and constitutions were written, ostensible political philosophies were crafted and so forth, all by the military. The remaining question was who would lead these newfangled parties and there were any number of sycophants auditioning for the right to head these organic parties sometime in the future, if indeed elections would ever be held.

This is where the Youth Energetically Advocating Abacha came in.

The first order of business, as if this stage managing wasn't enough, was to start a whisper campaign urging both parties to nominate said dictator as their flagbearer. When more than whispers were needed, YEAA was to be the public face of the campaign, ready to whip naysayers into place. The idea was to coronate Abacha and win by acclamation the nomination from both of the parties a little to the left and right. A man of the people, he simply wanted to underlie that the youth wanted him to serve them and, moreover, that they were energetic — an obvious warning to anyone who might oppose the general. The thought was that he would face off with himself in new elections and succeed himself, or something of the sort - the main point was to hold elections.

On the one hand these actions were crude and ridiculous, on the other, they are simply sad. Whenever I look at the watch I think to the whole contingent of lobbyist firms, replete with consultants, who came up with the strategy and the inspirational name (Yeah!), the graphic designers called in to design the logo with the arrow and the wheel mechanism (perhaps fitting, for Nigeria under Abacha was on a road to nowhere), the coinage of the snappy slogan, the time spent uploading artwork and discussing typography with the design firm in California, the negotiations with Singapore factories for the production of watches and other insignia (for there were many containers worth of this stuff produced, T-shirts, key tags etc.), the shipments to Nigeria, the distribution of this largess around the country... The watch is like an open wound in the Nigerian body politic, testimony to the workings of a global criminal enterprise.

No one advocated for Abacha unless they were paid. Youth Energetically Advocating Abacha is a simple byword for coercion, cynicism and an illustration of the lengths to which people can go when in the grip of greed. The depressing thing is the sheer energy of this huhudious regime and the scale of the graft (billions of dollars were stolen for sure) — one wonders how many millions were spent on similar minor accoutrements. What a waste but perhaps such is the world of riches.

From all accounts Nigeria is much changed these days and a few of the victims of the regime are even (belatedly) getting their day in court. Perhaps it's best to move on and call this ancient history, perhaps one's outrage should be curtailed; let's leave it for the historians.

For the record, the battery never worked.

II. Measuring Time

Helon Habila in his second novel Measuring Time continues to make a claim for prominence in the roster of young lions in African literature. Instead of the claustrophobia of Waiting for an Angel (which I recently discussed) he stretches his shoulders and decides to take on entire decades of African history.

His writes in a deceptively simple style and focuses on storytelling. There's no overt lyricism; he'd claim that he is simply channeling the many stories that come to him. Still his is an ambitious agenda and he covers a lot of territory, after all his subject is modernity in Africa and all that means.

The options available to the two twins who tell the story of Measuring Time is a simple statement about Nigerian society. On the one hand, there is life as a mercenary soldier following warlords like Charles Taylor from Chad and Libya to the messy Liberian civil war. For a political junkie like me, this would be enough to focus on for an entire novel, for Habila this is merely interstitial.

On the other hand, the bulk of the book and the other twin's story is about stagnation and making do at home. There is lots of striving but precious little light. Yet the stories of the past need to be told, the politics need be engaged in - however programmatic they may be, the youth need to be taught, we all need to fall in love. There's no time to dance or to succumb to navel gazing. Life has to be lived in full.

In his populist writing mode Helon Habila is perhaps heir to Cyprian Ekwensi whose favourite subject was city life. Like Ekwensi he has a talent for empathy with his characters and draws you in with detailed portraits. He really knows how to capture moments in time. I am also reminded in this novel of another ambitious second novel that packed a lot of ideas albeit in a different genre, Colson Whitehead's John Henry Days. But perhaps we shouldn't tie a talent like Habila to others. He's writing delicate novels of ideas disguised as unvarnished, personal stories of Nigeria; the whole world is his.

III. Wasted Time (a soundtrack)

Me'Shell NdegeOcello - Wasted Time

Wasted Time, my favourite song from her appropriately-titled album, Bitter, finds Me'Shell in a suitably bitter mood. She has an unerring way of capturing an atmosphere in song. Bitterness is a transient emotion but one that is intense when one is in its grip. It's the only vaguely uptempo song of the album, building up the groove slowly as she reflects on a break-up. It's not quite a lament and she hasn't yet resolved the episode. It is a raw meditation on wasted effort. Fittingly the song cuts off abruptly, unsettling the listener. Wasted time never to be recovered.

Update: A good friend sends along a Cambodian twist for the collection: a Dictator Hun Sen "fashion" watch. He notes, "Never tried wearing it. Battery assumed dead".

File under: Nigeria, rogues, Africa, corruption, politics, history, memory, culture, cynicism, literature, toli

Africa, 1999

I thought I'd share this poster of African leaders circa 1999 which has been lying around my study for just such an occasion — actually, I was cleaning things and stumbled upon it...

I've been mulling a piece on Africa in 1989 to give some depth to my ongoing series and trying without success to find the equivalent poster from that year - the high mark of rogues in Africa, hence I'll start with a request: does anyone have any similar photos from 1989? Photos of any OAU meeting would work for my purposes. As to the matter at hand, I suppose the more recent history of 1999 will do as a stopgap measure.

So. Africa. 1999. Here goes...

Posters of this sort are quite popular in Africa (large size), you'll find them at many of our newstands. I don't quite believe in the Great Man theory but, when it comes to Africa in 1999, one has to admit that leadership still mattered a lot unlike in other regions of the world. To take an obvious example, no one in their right mind would be putting up similar photos of EU leaders on the walls of their houses. Public apathy to leadership in the West is rightly the norm - modulo the occasional gremlin. In West Africa especially, where we know all too well about Big Men - and they are all men in the calendar, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was barely on the horizon at that point, these posters serve as a kind of palliative: "Get to know your local strongman", wear their political cloths and so forth.

Even the good guys were larger than life in 1999; that was the year Nelson Mandela stepped down as president of the New South Africa proving his George Washington bonafides, the Good "Father of the nation" as the poster notes. In 1999, we didn't have many technocratic Thabo Mbeki or John Kufuor types as we do presently. Instead you'll note a lot of military uniforms and panache. The 2007 contingent are a mostly dour bunch other than say, He of The Little Green Book - Gaddafi that is, or Robert Mugabe, and Bad Bob has always worn a gray suit since hanging up his rebel spurs. That dourness is paradoxical progress, you don't want to live in revolutionary times. By contrast the typical words used in the western press about our leaders in 1999 were things like "mercurial, flair and flamboyant".

Strictly speaking it's not 1999, the calendar was produced in late 1998 as evidenced by the presence of the late, unlamented General Sani Abacha of Nigeria on the right hand side who died just months earlier. When people literally celebrate your demise to the point of dancing in the streets (as they did even in nearby Accra, Ghana), you've obviously been smothering them.

Still the 1999 crop of African leaders were a definite improvement on the 1989 crop but you could still see a high percentage of strongmen, thieves and incompetents. Even with the comforting gaze of Kofi Annan and Desmond Tutu (Julius Nyerere and Kwame Nkrumah are on hand to round out the nostalgia quotient), there is precious little comfort in this poster.

The Rogues Gallery

Charles Taylor (top left) was then president of Liberia, a decade after starting his mischief in the sub-continent. He had reached his peak of warlord power having coerced a terrorized populace into voting for him or else. And it was a case of "or else" that he proceeded to display: the white suits were flowing, the timber and blood diamonds were in abundance, the concessions had been granted to Pat Robertson, and the flowering friendships with Jesse Jackson and company proceeded apace. But he wanted it all, so Sierra Leone, Guinea and even Cote d'Ivoire would pay the price. May he suffer a lifetime of legal action, and the company of lawyers and bureaucrats.

Laurent Kabila the First, had been installed a couple of years earlier in Congo and was taking bids on concessions in the fashion of his predecessors in mischief, Mobutu and King Leopold... He was a disappointment to his Rwandan and Ugandan sponsors, refusing to deal with the Hutu génocidaires and indeed allying himself with them at times. The consequence of the free-for-all his inaction spawned was that the armies of 13 countries would scramble to get the spoils of Congo in the middle of Africa's world war. Sadly the headlines are much the same almost a decade later. The heart of darkness...

Gnassingbé Eyadema, the Prince of Darkness is ominous at the bottom right and for once depicted without his dark shades. To this day none of my Togolese friends discuss politics with me, so long a shadow does he (and now his progeny) cast.

Jonas Savimbi, Jerry Rawlings and Gaddafi are their customary gremlin selves - merchants of grist.

Jammeh of Gambia, in army gear (red cap just above the Africa maps), is holding up a little prop (sorry, I meant a little boy) - he wasn't claiming to cure AIDS back then (as was the case last year), but the visions of grandeur and the lucrative arms smuggling were going well.

The leaders of the various Guinea countries were grim. Conte of Guinea was simply corrupt - he still is. Joao Bernado Viera of Guinea-Bissau, having survived a 1998 coup and minor civil war, was cracking down on the opposition - he would fall in mid 1999 (he is back in power currently). The less said about Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea the better - 1999 was a typical year for his brand of malfeasance.

Al-Bashir of Sudan with the army uniforms behind him headed no-nonsense and efficient killers.

Buyoya of Burundi wasn't up to much good.

The military leader of Niger, Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara would be assasinated in April 1999. His replacement wasn't much better.

Kleptocrats and Autocrats

The usual suspects are there. Daniel Arap Moi of Kenya - stylish and mercenary, Paul Biya (and Wife) looting Cameroon, Hosni Mubarak the Egyptian hardman as usual. Like Mubarak, Ben Ali of Tunisia and bad old King Hassan of Morocco kept a lid on things in their countries. Too exuberant your expression of liberty and you risked the secret police. Algeria too was in the midst of that savage civil war; Liamine Zeroual, backed by the army — "Les décideurs" was what members of that cabal were called, was deciding for everyone. Idris Deby of Chad was caught between a rock and a desert and had no imagination. Blaise Campaore of Burkina Faso and Didier Ratsiraka, the canonical Big Man of Madagascar (the nickname: the Red Admiral) had quiet years. Omar Bongo was as usual enjoying and corrupting, spreading enough money around to compromise any opposition - as he continues to do, the Head Suborner. Nothing much to see here, let's move on...

The Disappointments

The biggest disappointment was Henri Konan Bédié of Cote d'Ivoire who was ensconced in that most comfortable chair. Despite being groomed for decades by Houphouët Boigny, he wasn't up to the task. His country is still paying the price for his small-mindedness.

Frederick Chiluba of Zambia (arms crossed and self-confident) was quickly losing his democratic lustre - he would be voted out of office a few years later and continues to face corruption charges.

Abdou Diouf of Senegal is an odd one. Ostensibly a democrat, he eventually handed over but he was increasingly autocratic the longer he was in power.

The Ethiopians (Zenawi) and Eritreans (Afewerki) decided they needed to engage in pointless border wars and old-fashioned trench warfare ensued. Tens of thousands perished.

Museveni was sowing his mustard seed in Uganda - democracy was for chumps in his considered opinion. One party state, baby.

Kerekou of Benin still can't point to any thing that he's done for his country; in 1999, the priorities were clear, it was all about the money.

The Mistakes

These posters are of the cut and paste variety and were put together in a hurry; sometimes one forgets to update things or misattributes. Thus Habayarima Juvenal of Rwanda, who had been killed to kick off the 1994 genocide, is still listed. Paul Kagame should be annoyed.

For Burkina Faso there is also the image of supposedly saintly Thomas Sankara, killed a decade earlier. File under misplaced nostalgia.

The Swazi king and the Lesotho prime ministers aren't listed for whatever reason.

Complications

Sierra Leone in 1999 was all complexity. President Tejan Kabba clearly had a precarious grip on power, the evidence being the enigmatic "Sierra Leonean rebel leader" in green beret and army fatigues on the left hand side who appears ominously on the same poster. And indeed Sierra Leone was in the midst of its long civil war.

Sidenote: the only unambiguous good deed in foreign policy of Tony Blair's tenure would come a few years later when he sent a detachment of British troops to save the day in Sierra Leone. For that alone, one might arguably cut him some amount of slack for the later hubris on Iraq. Arguably... But you won't get that argument from me, my litmus test was his eloquent silence as Israel was bombarding Lebanon last summer until the atrocities crossed his very flexible threshold of manufactured disgust. He did do the right thing on Sierra Leone, Africans will give him that...

In the other Congo, the situation was confused and confusing. Patrick Lissouba is depicted in the poster although he had been overthrown by that other gun runner Sassou-Nguesso; his militia did came close to overrunning Brazzaville that year. Years later, one assumes he is still itching for a return from exile.

Somalia, after a decade as a failed state, gets any number of warlords on the poster: Aideed, Ali Mahdi are the convenient stooges.

Not depicted is Monsieur Bin Laden who brought his brand of collateral damage to the continent in the 1998 Al Qaeda attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The grass always suffers... Back in 1998/99, he didn't care much for the limelight.

Passing grades

I wouldn't want my jaundiced commentary to give the impression that there were no good leaders on the poster or in Africa in 1999. Indeed there were many good things happening on the continent and often inspite of the leaders. Also, and this is the great virtue of Africa at that moment, much of the action on the continent was in civil society, in entrepreneurs, in schools and in business. Governments mattered less.

Ange Felix Patasse of the Central African Republic and Miguel Trovada of Sao Tome and Principe could argue for a passing grade in 1999 (later is a different question). Similarly Konaré of Mali - a country that probably has the strongest democracy on the continent, did good. The leaders of Malawi (Muluzi), Tanzania (Mkapa) and Botswana (Masire) were all sense and sensibility. Heck even Chisano of Mozambique was proving reasonable in reconciling his countrymen after their long civil war. For what it's worth also, Sam Nujoma of Namibia did no harm in 1999.

Waiting for an Angel: Reading Africa in 1999

Between a Dream and a Nightmare was how Human Rights Watch described Africa in their 1999 world report. There's a touch of hyperbole perhaps, but there is much to commend in their lyrical commentary. Africa in 1999 was a case of baby steps.

Sidenote: Boston University had the idea to find sinecures for African leaders so that they would have something to do when they retired - basically give lectures about their embezzlement, grand visions and such. When I lived in the Boston area, I never attended the various symposiums that were organized - it irked me no end that these rogues would be feted instead of jailed. Perhaps I've mellowed somewhat, but I now think such efforts are a step in the right direction. Baby steps...

Back to reading 1999... There was the matter of angels and demons, and I've previously pointed to contemporaneous posters showing the way in which religion had gotten a big boost in much of Africa. We were in need of much faith healing and the reason was leadership. Popular culture and the literature reflected as much.

Nigeria, by virtue of heft, sets the tone for much of Africa hence, for the best reading material on Africa circa 1999, I'll turn to Helon Habila's Waiting For An Angel. This was actually a far more assured debut than that of The Anointed One in that is a novel that really sought to capture the totality of a society's experience of that moment.

Habila is an ambitious writer and he presents a series of shifting but interlocking stories - the glue is a doomed journalist and a few students, but he covers considerable territory in his lyrical pages. In a sense it is the moral dilemma of Ayi Kwei Armah's The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, updated for the fin de siecle: will no one do the right thing?

His laconic tone and journalistic eye really captures the mood: the sense of dread and inevitability of life under Abacha. Simply put it was a time of suffocation, of repression and of corruption. To call what Abacha wrought in Nigerian society bad behaviour is to give bad behaviour a bad name. What took place in Nigeria was greed beyond belief and utter wickedness, leavened periodically with tawdry murders. Murder was most foul, theft was most blatant, and all relationships were corrupted.

I can also point to some maternal toli with observations about this period; in 1999, it was a matter of confidence in Nigeria. Nigerians are still picking up the pieces years later.

I haven't dwelled much on the francophone aspects but perhaps a few words are in order. France these days is having a touch of buyer's remorse at its back-scratching enablement of African rogues. One then should also add to the reading list Ahmadou Kourouma's En Attendant Le Vote Des Betes Sauvages completed in 1998. That too takes on the Eyadema figures (and many of those other knaves I've listed). Magic realism was our lot and the great wordsmith doesn't disappoint in his cultural observations.

Where Habila is waiting for an angel, Kourouma is waiting for the wild beasts to vote. A clear eyed look at the poster and at those leaders should explain why these two great stylists of African prose would write as they did about waiting for the next shoe to drop. If the one hoped for change for the better, the other was more cynical about the prospects - and perhaps given the slow pace of change in Africa, Kourouma had the clearer eyes. But as a matter of policy, I'll side with Habila; demons may have more fun but angels are more likely to inherit the earth.

Between a dream and a nightmare is a twilight zone of opportunity; that is the terrain of the great game and the temptions of the rough beast. As we have seen, leaders do matter, but I'd hazard that people matter more. It wasn't so in 1999 but with baby steps, perhaps it is more so today. Would it always be so.

Soundtrack for this note

• Eric B. & Rakim - Follow the Leader
  Braggadocio and inner turmoil never sounded so good. Certainly Rakim never sounded so good, a microphone fiend he handed allcomers a musical massacre with his lyrics of fury. Follow the money, follow the leader.
• Prince - 1999
  A double album opus with Linn drum programming mastery, the obvious line to contribute to the playlist is from the title track: "Party over, oops, out of time". I quite like some of the other, lesser-played songs on 1999: Delirious and the very apt Something In The Water (Does Not Compute). What say you Dear Reader?
• Femi Kuti - Plenty Nonsense
  I was going to pick a Fela track to round of this playlist, perhaps Unknown Soldier - the line about Government Magic always gets me, but I think Femi had already proven himself by then and a more contemporaneous song was warranted. The title should speak loudly to my point: we're doing better these days but we all need to be vigilant about the plenty nonsense that goes on in our lands.

Baby steps.

P.S. It's been suggested that I should get some technology toli out the door, we'll see what we can come up with. Stay tuned...

File under: Africa, politics, poster, leaders, observation, history, culture, rogues, Fallen Angels, Things Fall Apart, toli

Excellent Discussions

Sour — Sweet

I. Blood Brothers

Apropos strange bedfellows, I came across the following report this week:

Tripoli. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte left Libya on Wednesday without meeting leader Muammar Gaddafi after becoming the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the country in half a century, officials said.

Negroponte said he held "excellent" discussions with Foreign Minister Mohammed Abdel-Rahman Shalgam and Ali Triki, Libya's envoy on Chad and Sudan, during a 24-hour visit aimed principally at discussing the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region.

Dig: Gaddafi presumably refused to meet Negroponte because the esteemed cold warrior was involved in Ronald Reagan's attempt to kill him in the 1980s (the bombing ostensibly killed Gaddafi's adopted daughter amongst others). There is honor among rogues it seems, and there are still some lines that mustn't be crossed. As we have seen, "he tried to kill my dad" was cited as a motivating factor in the geo-politics of the past 6 years. It stands to reason that "he tried to kill me" would provoke scruples even among those not noted for possessing consciences.

Tom Stoppard in Travesties imagined the scene in 1917 in the Zurich public library at the point where Vladimir Lenin, James Joyce (working on Ulysses) and Tristan Tzara (father of the Dada movement) might have run into each other. The result was inspiration itself.

In this vein I imagine Gaddafi, Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan, and Negroponte all in the same room. You might think that it is unfair to place Negroponte in such exalted company since he's an enforcer and not an idea man; a mere civil servant and career diplomat. He's just doing his job after all, scion of John Foster Dulles. And yes, it would be unfair, not to mention a case of "insinuendo" as it were. And a matter of blood.

Still, Negroponte floating the "El Salvador option" in Iraq in recent years was iconic, and his statements were followed in the ensuing months by, well lets put it this way, a plethora of death squads dumping dead bodies at night with gruesome efficiency in the streets of that sad country. I'm reminded that General "Gitmo" Miller's visit to Iraq and emphasis on Gitmo-izing things obviously had nothing to do with all that Abu Ghraib hullabaloo that also followed. Several Pentagon investigations affirm that insight, right? There's no proven connection. It's all shades of gray when the gloves come off. Necessary exoneration.

One wonders what happens when these lords of war get together. Oh to be a fly on the wall of such encounters. Imagine: the architect of the CIA in El Salvador meeting with the architect of almost every malfeasance in the Middle East and Africa for a good generation. The Good Shepherd meets El Capo, rogue division. Death squads in Latin America meet death squads in West Africa. On Monday: mighty masters of macabre mayhem. The high priests of collateral damage tangle in the desert. Live exclusively on pay-per-view. The Great Game.

Further one wonders: are they truly ideologues? At what point does collateral damage itself become the prime motivation for their misdeeds? What ultimately separates these guys from the blood lust of Ayman al-Zawari and company? There is a difference to be sure. But is it simply style or rhetoric? The panache or subtlety with which they dispatch enemies, real and imagined? For indeed, even at a remove and intentions notwithstanding, their body counts are impressive.

And could one even shed a micro-tear for a millisecond for al-Bashir? Good Lord, you prompted Negroponte to seek out Gaddafi, the first high level meeting in decades. What world class malfeasance must you be orchestrating in Darfur? Carnage of champions. Hell froze over. The enemy of my enemy and all that. The rough beast.

I've often wondered what it was like to attend, say, an OAU meeting circa 1989. That must surely have been a rogues gallery sans pareil. Could you shake hands with everyone in that room and look at yourself in the mirror the next day? For that matter, could you sleep that night? And what did the small talk of the nifty fifty sound like? Scratch that, what exactly was their big talk? Inquiring minds want to know.

Comparing notes about fiscal looteries past
Idle boasts of military efficiencies
The minutiae of collateral damage

II. Excellent Discussions

The following is a rush transcript of the secret meeting held between John Negroponte and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya on Wednesday April 18, 2007. The videotape was leaked to the toli and was immediately handed over to the relevant authorities for authentication. All transcription errors are mine.

[Inside a tent. Decor is well appointed, if not luxurious. Purple silks, indigo cloths etc. Soothing sounds. Negroponte and an aide are shown in by Libyan foreign minister and envoy. Inaudible exchange of pleasantries as they take up seats and are served cups of tea. After a minute or so Gaddafi walks in, flowing robes as usual. Takes up his seat opposite Negroponte. Stares. Long silence... They appear to be sizing each other up. Eventually, after a few false starts, they begin their conversation.]

Gaddafi: Brother Leader of the Great Socialist Arab People's Jamahiriya.

Negroponte: Deputy Secretary of State

Gaddafi: Guide of the Revolution

Negroponte: Director of National Intelligence

Gaddafi: Grand Commander of The Order Al-Fatah

Negroponte: US ambassador to Iraq and Honduras

Gaddafi [indignant]: He of The Little Green Book

Negroponte [impressed, but not wanting to show it.]: Skull and Bones... [Low steady voice] Death squads in Honduras.

Gaddafi: Death squads in Liberia.

Negroponte: Massacres in El Salvador.

Gaddafi: Small boy units. Charles Taylor. 'Nuff said.

[both men seem to relax... become expansive in their gestures]

Negroponte: El Mozote.

Gaddafi: Sierra Leonean amputations. Heard about Foday Sankoh? Trained a few miles from here.

Negroponte: Special intelligence units, Nicaragua..

Gaddafi: Semtex for the IRA. Provisional and Real IRA. Training camps.

Negroponte: Weapons for Savimbi. Hosting Unita via Mobutu. Heck: Mobutu. The fat lady sang.

Gaddafi [absentmindedly]: Those Basque separatists... um... what's their name, again?

Negroponte [interrupts]: Noriega!

Gaddafi: Oh yeah. ETA.

Negroponte: Paraguay!

Gaddafi [nodding... fondly]: ETA.

Negroponte: The El Salvador Option. Iraq. The latest. Militias. Pershmerga. Shia. Badr corps.

Gaddafi: Propped up Idi Amin.

Negroponte [whistles]: Ancient history... Death squads in Guatemala.

Gaddafi: A pattern. Let's see: Jammeh in Gambia, even gave him a medal.

Negroponte [air quotes]: "Dedication to democracy".

Gaddafi: Operation No Living Thing

Negroponte: Our "special project"

Gaddafi [curt]: Chad.

Negroponte [smiles broadly]: Nicaragua. Iran/Contra baby.

Gaddafi: Mengistu.

Negroponte: Old school... Hmm. School of the Americas.

Gaddafi: Rawlings... Campaore in Burkina Faso.

Negroponte: Small fry. New school. Black ops. Extraordinary rendition.

Gaddafi: No. No. Beat this: Carlos the Jackal.

Negroponte [a brief pause for reflection, then triumphant]: Pinochet!

[It looks like a stalemate... Both men pause to reassess. It's almost as if they are racking their brains for something that could top the other. Negroponte sips his tea. Almost a minute passes... several false starts]

Negroponte [curious]: So... was Black September one of your... affairs?

Gaddafi [wagging his finger]: No. No. Room and board only... Abu Nidal. That guy, now there was a wild one... Black September. Black ops... Let me ask: Abu Ghraib?

Negroponte [quickly]: Rumsfeld, Cambone, Miller. Axis of- [cuts himself off]... Mugabe?

Gaddafi [shaking head]: Nope, strictly business with Bob. Mining interests.

Negroponte: Yes, yes. We also have interests. The United States only has interests.

Gaddafi: Pawns.

Negroponte: Allies.

Gaddafi: Proxies.

Negroponte: Cut-outs. Drill bits.

Gaddafi: Valued partners.

Negroponte: Plausible deniability.

Gaddafi: No fingerprints.

Negroponte: Our hands are clean.

Gaddafi: Clean hands.

Negroponte: Strictly business.

Gaddafi: Only interests.

Negroponte [nods]: Only interests.

Gaddafi: Pragmatism.

Negroponte: Realism.

Gaddafi: Breadth.

Negroponte: Depth.

Gaddafi: Burden of responsibility.

Negroponte: Noblesse oblige.

[leaning closer together]

Gaddafi: Revolutionary sanctions.

Negroponte: Executive orders.

Gaddafi: Decisive principles.

Negroponte: Deterrent facilities.

Gaddafi: Resistance procedures.

Negroponte: Presidential findings.

Gaddafi: Fraternal solidarity.

Negroponte: Covert capabilities.

Gaddafi: Preventive action.

Negroponte: Policy imperatives.

Gaddafi: Independent agitation.

Negroponte: Unitary executive.

Gaddafi: Area of operations.

Negroponte: Spheres of influence.

Gaddafi: Vanguard strategies.

Negroponte: Trade. Lower barriers.

Gaddafi: Uh-uh. Business.

[pregnant pause]

Gaddafi: Business. Never personal.

Negroponte: Strictly business.

Gaddafi: Strictly business.

[A bodyguard peeks into the tent, checking on her charge. Her appearance seems to reminds Muammar of something]

Gaddafi: Oh yeah. The hare- [gestures] Bodyguards. Personally dedi-

Negroponte [nonplussed]: Women from Honduran villages. Just ask Wilkes. Congressmen, agents. They all want more.

Gaddafi [suppresses a look of admiration... then]: Back to business.

Negroponte: The other business.

Gaddafi: Unfinished business.

Negroponte: Business as usual.

Gaddafi: Liberation movements.

Negroponte: Preserve our liberties.

Gaddafi: Unity in freedom.

Negroponte [quickly]: Democracy.

Gaddafi: Liberation.

Negroponte: Manifest destiny.

Gaddafi: Diplomacy.

Negroponte: Diplomacy.

Gaddafi: Freedom fighters.

Negroponte: Freedom fighters.

[louder]

Gaddafi: Weapons.

Negroponte: Weapons systems.

[louder still]

Gaddafi: Blood.

Negroponte: Blood.

Gaddafi: Blood!

Negroponte: Blood!

Gaddafi [infuriated]: Lockerbie.

Negroponte [shocked, then recovers, coldly]: Your daughter.

Gaddafi [smiles inwardly at first, then acts hurt]: Blo- ... I feel... Need to...
[recovers]
Clean hands... That will do.
[shakes his head]
Business. Never personal.

Negroponte: Strictly business.

[Gaddafi gets up and begins to walk out... Imperceptible nod to subordinates who look attentive and acknowledge him. As he reaches the tent exit, he turns.]

Gaddafi: We never met.

Negroponte [nods]: You refused. We never met.

Gaddafi: We never met.

Negroponte : We never met.

[Gaddafi leaves]

[Negroponte sports a self-satisfied smile. He believes he got the better of the exchange. Turns towards aide. Nods. Finishes his tea. Pauses. Then hands his portfolio to aide and starts to walk out. His aide follows.]

Negroponte [to subalterns]: I think we can do business.

Foreign minister and envoy: [inaudible]

[At the exit]

Negroponte: A good meeting. Excellent. Excellent discussions.

[exits the tent]

[A song has been playing in the background throughout. Provisionally identified as Wynton Marsalis - Blood on the Fields. Revisit.]

[end of transcription]

---

Strange bedfellows are among my favourite subjects. Consider this note part of an occasional series. The banner is Fallen Angels.

Part III. By Way of Ionesco

Next: He of The Little Green Book

Possibly related: Recent Non-Specific General Threats

File under: Gaddafi, Negroponte, rogues, Libya, USA, Africa, war, blood, arms, politics, strategy, language, policy, play, satire, absurd, theatre, literature, hatchet job, imperialism, crime, neocons, waste, CIA, cold war, Great Game, Strange Bedfellows, Fallen Angels, toli

The Great Game

Whatever happens we have got
The Maxim Gun, and they have not

— Hilaire Belloc in The Modern Traveller, 1898

---

Have no fear of atomic energy
For none of them can stop the time

— Bob Marley - Redemption Song, 1980

---

Iraq isn't Africa, Iraqis shoot back.

— Robert Baer in Iraq's Mercenary King: Politics & Power, 2007

---

We see Africa as probably the greatest open field of manoeuvre in the worldwide competition between the [communist] bloc and the non-communist.

— President John F. Kennedy, 1962

---

All for you
It is all for you

— E.T. Mensah & The Tempos - All For You, 1948

Cecil Rhodes - From Cairo to Capetown

---

How long shall they kill our prophets
While we stand aside and look?
Some say it's just a part of it
We've got to fulfil the book

— Bob Marley - Redemption Song

---

When you came you had the Bible and we had the land. Now you have the land and we have the Bible.

— Unknown 'native', 19th century

---

And freedom is the issue. The stakes are that high.

— Ronald Reagan, 1986

---

There are no rules in [this] game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. If [redacted] is to survive, longstanding American concepts of "fair play" must be reconsidered... It may become necessary that the American people be made acquainted with, understand and support this fundamentally repugnant philosophy.

— Report of the United States Hoover Commision, 1950

---

One man struggles while another relaxes.

— Massive Attack - Hymn of the Big Wheel

Beirut, Lebanon, summer 2006

---

A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual. It makes use against the enemy not only of the accepted ruses de guerre, but of deliberate lying and the deception as well - and to a degree which seems to exceed the usage of former wars.

— Sigmund Freud - Thoughts for the Times on War and Death, 1915

---

There are only people behaving, and sometimes behaving monstrously.

— Ian McEwan disputing the notion of evil, 2002

---

Takes behaviour to get along.
Lots of behaviour to get along.
Do you really, really know that?
Social Living is the best

Do you know? Social Living is the best

— Burning Spear - Social Living

---

Honam mu nni nhanoa
(Humanity has no boundary)

— Akan proverb, Ghana

---

Ex Africa simper aliquid novi
(Always something new out of Africa)

— Pliny the Elder, 1st Century Rome

Cultural interplay is the name of the Great Game.
I wonder: who is writing today's script?


This note is part of the Things Fall Apart series under the banner of the rough beast.

Next: The Modern Traveller (Reclaiming the Maxim Gun)

File under: interplay, Social Living, Africa, perception, quotes, insight, culture, history, politics, power, empire, perspective, observation, values, morality, philosophy, Great Game, Things Fall Apart, The Rough Beast, toli, sociology, strategy, policy

The Busia Papers

Is democracy of universal application?

Not exactly small talk, yet that was the kind of question I imagined being thrown around the table in my virtual dinner party. Last year's series on Social Living didn't get very far, only personal and whimsical pieces made it past the draft stage; I never quite managed to flesh out my guided tour of Ghanaian historical engagement with that theme and didn't gave voice to my dinner companions. Which leads me belatedly to the Busia papers...

One of my side-projects, much neglected in the years since I came upon this material, is the editing of a collection of the writings and speeches of Dr. Kofi Abrefa Busia, the former Prime Minister of Ghana. In the spirit of Ghana's Jubilee Year, our 50 years of independence, I thought it would be worth sharing a few of the articles in the collection. I hope some might be of interest.

• Is Democracy of Universal Application?
  This essay, published in 1979, is taken from a special volume of articles on democracy on the occasion of Werner Kaägi's 70th birthday. Tightly argued, it cogently distills a lifetime of insight on the eternal topic. It is one of Busia's last published works and was written in exile only months before his death in 1978.

Ghanaians seem to like grappling with cultural sensitivities. I'll note in passing that our recent great export is that world citizen: Kofi Annan. For Busia, the issue was social change and democracy, its shape and its efficacy in our environs. Similarly you'll find our philosophers expounding on cultural universals and particulars (Wiredu) or whether there is virtue in cosmopolitanism (Appiah) or modernity (Gyekye). Our writers worry about mimicry (Sekyi), our historians, journalists and lawyers about tradition, our musicians, artists and even our engineers all seem to worry about communities. It's not very sexy but it befits the outlook of a small country. Still, I suppose there are worse brands than cultural interpreters.

Busia lead the country during the Second Republic from 1969 to 1972, and was overthrown by a military coup on January 13, 1972. An eminent sociologist, he had turned to politics out of necessity and his brand of conversational politics has had a lasting legacy in Ghana. His writings however have not been as widely disseminated as they should and, sadly, many are now out of print.

Busia interests me as a prime example of Ghanaians as cultural interpreters and modern travellers. His academic career was distinguished and the scholarly works were numerous. Along with the public intellectual persona, there was the family man, the religious man. Of course there was also the politician and his was a lifelong struggle for Ghana.

There was the anti-colonial struggle along with J.B. Danquah and others. There was the post-colonial struggle and disappointment - he had to live in exile from Nkrumah's one party rule watching the country decay and his friends and colleagues detained and persecuted. There was the elation of the return in 1966 and gaining power in the 1969 elections with the promise of putting the country back on the right footing. Then again, in the bitterest setback, his government was overthrown and he was exiled again. Thus he was treated to the sight of the looting and worse of his country in his dying years.

His political progeny are currently in ascendance in Ghana, and his positions have on the whole been vindicated. Still, having foresight and being right in politics while ending up on the "wrong" side is little consolation. I find comfort however in Busia's tenacity as things fell apart. He continued to question, to argue and to persuade. There was strengh in his conviction, in the words of another of his writings, that "Ghana will be truly free and happy".

The thread that runs through the writings is the working of an extraordinary and methodical mind. One sees the intellectual energy and deep thought of a great academic. It is the great curiousity of the sociologist coupled with keen political instincts. At the same time, like many Ghanaians, he was a great storyteller, he knew how to give a speech, with biting wit that cut to the chase.

Consider the celebrated lecture on The Prospects for Democracy in Africa delivered at the Eighteenth Christmas Holiday Lectures and Discussions for Tomorrow's Citizens organized by The Council for Education in World Citizenship in London on 4th January 1961. Note well the 'world citizen' motif. Here we have Busia as the ultimate cosmopolitan, advocating democracy and methodically taking apart the often spurious arguments of expedience profered about democracy in Africa. This is fairly representative of his style, rebutting at once the opportunists at home and the faint-hearted democrats in the West that chose, then and now, to prop up authoritarian regimes.

Explaining his turn to politics:

I loved my work as a teacher, but what was the use of sitting down in the University of Ghana trying to teach people on the basis that they will go and work in a Free Society which would have respect for their ability, whatever it was, and give them the opportunity to serve their country. What was the use of doing that when I knew that they were going to go into a built-up dictatorship that would enslave their minds.

He worried that

today we have a band of leaders, some of them so anxious to strain for the big buildings, big cars and motor cycles and destructive weapons that they have forgotten that the one important contribution that the African can make to the world is to keep reminding everyone that it is out of sympathy and the love for one another that we can build eventually what is valuable and peaceful.

"People matter" was his favourite talking point. He was willing to sacrifice some measure of rapid economic development on the altar of social living. As he put it:

I am in the camp of those who place a higher value on democracy than on material value. I therefore do not think that countries should develop more rapidly, even if they could, than is feasible within a democratic framework. This is based on the belief that human beings are what matter most in the world.

His legacy is thus all about conversational politics, about maintaining an openness to participation even when it is not expedient. There's even the minor controversy he raised later on about "not ruling out 'dialogue'" with the apartheid regime of South Africa. Even if his nuanced position would foreshadow the negotiations that transpired 20 years later, it was not a popular position for an African head of state in 1971.

As I've gone through the collection I've often found the letters and more offbeat material as illuminating as the more formal works. Discussing the encounter between Christianity and African cultures, he turns the customary question around and asks instead: "has the Christian faith been adequately presented?". Or take Ghana Since Independence - a reply for example. This was a short letter to the editor in The Friends' Quarterly (January 1965) setting the record straight about the situation in Ghana then at the height of Nkrumah's one-party rule. You get a sense of his exasperation at the amount of misinformation and cheerleading of "Socialism with an African Personality", personality cults and the like. These were stark years as I considered previously.

More heartfelt also are his reflections on one-party government in Ghana, a 1964 speech to Ghanaian students. He notes:

My political career is motivated by one thing above all. By the firm conviction that I have in my heart and my mind that all men share a common humanity. That irrespective of a man's colour he is a man; and that in Africa too, we have people who, given the right kind of leadership and the right kind of opportunity, can rise to the highest that man has risen to anywhere in the world.

The rest of that speech is full of similar insight and his appeal is very direct. It is fitting that his inaugural address would reiterate this consistent theme: a "yearning concern for every individual citizen".

The final piece I'll highlight is a pamphlet titled Judge for Yourself. It was written in June 1956 as a companion to the party manifesto on the eve of the elections that would lead to independence the next year. It laid out the opposition's position on the Constitution, raising "the issue of Moral Standards" and questioning the CPP's "unwise and innefficient administration". Months later, in a memorandum titled Gold Coast Independence, he expands on the point that "there is no provision for any checks and balances" in the political structure of the First Republic. The prescient worries that "there should be provisions in the Constitution before Independence to safeguard regional and minority rights" sadly went unheeded and Ghana paid the price.

The lengthy arguments made in the years before independence were not about the necessity of independence - that was a given. Instead Busia and others focused on ensuring that the days after independence and beyond would bear the promise of communal living and achievement that Ghanaians had every right to expect. He concluded with words that are worth pondering 50 years later:

"The eyes of the world are upon us; the rest of suffering Africa looks to us for an inspired leadership and we dare not let them down. We must be prepared to give everything, life itself, to ensure that we lay sound foundations for the future happiness, greatness and prosperity of our country. Our independence must have moral foundations on which we can build our heritage of the future."

See: The Busia Papers

File under: Busia, Ghana, Africa, history, politics, culture, ideas, insight, democracy, independence, human rights, Social Living, Things Fall Apart, toli

The Game of the Rough Beast

This is an open letter.
This is a game.
This is a poem.

To The Editors,
Dear Mr Reporter,
This is my second draft.

First I wrote to The Editors,
Then it was to you.
Now it's a different beast.

A parlour game in your honour.
I tried it out on a friend.
A political junkie, he likes toli.

He said it was rough,
That it needed work.
Bear with me, I'm wrangling with this thing.

I'm a child of the web.
First an adventure in hypertext
Now prose and some poetry.

William Butler Yeats.
Recall what he wrote:
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold"

This is part of a series.
I hope you'll play.
It's about The Second Coming

1. Cut and Paste
2. Cause and Effect
3. The Game of the Rough Beast

Cut and paste

A game for you.
Simple instructions.
A test of comprehension.

Phase 1: Cut

Read the following passage.
It's from the New York Times
Some questions when you are done

In the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, thousands of Palestinians mourned the death of most of the Ghaliya family and wept as Huda Ghaliya, 7, kneeled to kiss her dead father before he, her mother and four siblings were buried. All were killed when the Israeli shell struck the beach where they were having a picnic. Huda had been playing nearby on the beach at the time. On Saturday, she asked mourners, "Please do not leave me alone."

The Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniya of Hamas, who called the incident "a war crime," said he would adopt the girl. Later, Mr. Abbas, who called the incident "a dangerous, horrible, ugly crime against civilians," issued a presidential order adopting her.

The dead included Ali Ghaliya, 49, and his wife, Raisa, 35, and their children Ilham, 15, Sabreen, 7, Hanadi, 1, and Haihsam, 4 months. Mr. Ghaliya's first wife survived, said Ayyam Ghaliya, 20, one of Mr. Ghaliya's surviving children.

Questions (Phase 1)

• Imagine that you wrote this passage, what title would you use when you submitted the article?
• Imagine that you were the editor of this newspaper and received this article, what title would you use when you published it?
• Bonus question: What page would you run this article on?

Phase 2: Paste

Read the following passage,
it's from the same article.
Some questions when you are done

Hamas fired at least 15 Qassam rockets from Gaza into Israel on Saturday, ending a tattered 16-month truce with Israel, a day after eight Palestinians were killed on a Gaza beach, apparently by an errant Israeli shell.

Later on Saturday, in Ramallah, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, announced he had set July 26 for an unprecedented Palestinian referendum on the principles of a unified political platform agreed upon by Palestinian prisoners, which calls for a Palestinian state in pre-1967 boundaries alongside Israel.

Spokesmen for the ruling Hamas movement said they rejected the referendum decree and were studying their options, raising the prospect of further confrontation.

Questions (Phase 2)

• Imagine that you wrote this passage, what title would you use when you submitted the article?
• If you were the editor of this newspaper and received this article, what title would you use when you published it?
• Bonus question. How well do these passages flow?

Cause and Effect

I made your second passage my first.
If you read the published article,
You'll no doubt see the reverse.

These were my friend's answers:
"Orphaned girl adopted by President"
"Random stuff about Palestine"

He saw two different stories:
"Death of family leads to end of truce"
"Hamas breaks cease-fire to distract attention from political confrontation with the President"

This was the published title:
Hamas Fires Rockets Into Israel, Ending 16-Month Truce
My friend then wrote "The perfidy of the press is one subject you should be used to"

It was a late night
The Wife saw me reading
Something in my face

"Why are you reading this Israel-Palestine stuff?"
Then I showed her your second passage,
I now call it the second coming.

"But they've buried it.
I would have never read past the beginning.
What page is it on? ... The whole thing is hidden..."

The Guidelines
They said:
Avoid politics

The Guidelines
They said:
Don't pick fights

Common sense,
Empirical evidence:
Steer clear of the Israel-Palestine matter

Still: I'm a journalist's son
You've given me an opening
I can't resist the temptation

The journalistic impulse
I seek out strange bedfellows
A student of editorial decisions

I'm in awe of what you've accomplished
You wrote the strongest fourth, fifth and sixth paragraphs I can imagine.
You ought to be a hero.

You covered a textbook massacre
Wrote in the strongest language
And yet: the story was buried.

A skillful presentation
You reported eight deaths
You shouldn't be accused of mendacity

And yet: the story was buried.
It's lost. Misrepresented at best.
The Reporter and The Editors.

Intentional and artful rather than inept:
The page, the wording, the images, the placement.
And calculation: the title. Best left unread.

Below the fold.
The Reporter's byline.
Those delicately arranged passages

A terrain of uncertainty
Did The Editors ask you for balance?
Were there two separate stories?

Who chose the title?
And are you proud of it?
I'd rather be wrong.

I would be grateful if you could comment
On words hidden in plain sight.
I had the most dreadful time that night.

A young girl has been taught
An awful lesson in life:
Death, the school of hard knocks

I lost faith that night
At this brutish spectacle
What kind of world is this?

A perplexing script:
Business as usual,
There go those Palestinians again.

My first draft:

Your article published on Sunday June 11, 2006 in the New York Times newspaper is by my measure the most skillful piece of journalism in the past year. I applaud the care you have taken in your endeavours, the craft with which either yourself and your editors combined to tell a story. It is so skillful that I feel obliged to write to you.

My second draft:

Your article published on Sunday June 11, 2006 on page 6 in the New York Times newspaper is by my measure the most skillful piece of misdirection I have witnessed in journalism in the past year. The phrase intelligent design does not do justice to the craft with which either yourself and/or your editors combined to bury a story of outrage. I applaud the care you have taken in your endeavours. It is so skillful that I feel obliged to write to you. You should win a Pullitzer for it.

I attempted to play your game
Exercising editorial discretion
And tried my hand at misdirection

The rest of the article
The same clarity of structure
3 paragraphs to muddy, 3 paragraphs to disarm

The Reporter and The Editors
I haven't slept since that day.
I assume someone didn't sleep round your way

The cameras must have been rolling
Slightly different story the next day
Hmmm, a new reporter.

The Game of the Rough Beast

Cut and paste.
Cause and effect.
The logical structure of perfidy.

The Reporter
The Editors
Me

Integrity
Mendacity
Whimsy

A question
An exclamation
A period

Inquiry
Slander
A fine line

Cognitive dissonance
Misdirection
Fair and balanced

Paragraphs: 1-2-3
Paragraphs: 4-5-6
Jackson 5: "ABC. Easy as 1-2-3"

I want to think the best of you.
I want to think the worst of you.
This is all a big muddle.

I want to think the best of The Reporter.
I want to think the worst of The Editors.
Resistance or deception? I'm unmoored, bereft.

Israel
Palestine
[ this space intentionally left blank ]

The beach at Beit Lahiya.
The soul of a reporter.
The policies of The Editors.

"From Gaza into Israel"
"On a Gaza beach"
First movement and action, then the passive, a mere location.

"Hamas... launched at least 15 Qassam rockets"
"An errant Israeli shell"
First actor then action, then the passive. There's no actor.

Curtis Mayfield spoke the truth
We lost him, I miss him
This is what he sang:

They're all political actors... but they all know
If there's a hell below
We're all going to go

The logical structure of perfidy.
An awful reversal of causality.
The strange architecture of misdirection.

Normally effect follows cause.
Outrage is directed at cause,
And understanding attaches itself to effect.

In the human infrastructure of misdirection,
Cause follows effect,
And cause is itself an effect.

In those middle pages of your newspaper,
Cause is buried by effect,
And outrage attaches itself to effect

All that remains is effect.
Your byline, your story, the passive tense
The Editors, The Gray Lady

Back to front, the story is buried.
Eight dead bodies replaced by abstraction
Grim reality meets editorial necessity

I can't work out this puzzle.
I don't know which facts to dwell on.
I like to play this puzzle at night.

I don't know how to order these paragraphs.
Cut and paste. Cause and effect.
I don't want to play the game.

Do you sleep at night Mr Reporter?
Do you think The Editors sleep at night?
I rewrite your article at night

Her name is Huda Ghaliya.
Her family is dead.
They died on the beach in front of her.

It was a picnic. On the beach.
A shell.
They are all dead.

She cried.
They died.
I cried.

I suspect you cried
Did The Editors cry?
And were the cameras rolling?

Did the world cry?
Errant Israeli shell
15 Qassam rockets

June 11, 2006
Page 6 of the New York Times
The title, your story: buried.

The beach, the picnic, the shell
The cameras, the family: the coffins
The rockets, the funeral, the story

June 12, 2006
Page 8 of the New York Times
New title, the story: gasping.

Night. Sleep. Day
Black. White. Gray.
The Reporter. The Editors. The Gray Lady.

New York Times.
Steven Erlanger.
Hamas Fires Rockets Into Israel, Ending 16-Month Truce

Haeretz.
The spin.
Peretz: Gaza beach blast may have internal Palestinian cause

New York Times
George Azar. Politics as Theatre.
Errant Shell Turns Girl Into Palestinian Icon

This is what I read that night
This is what I saw
This is the fog of war

Do you know each other?
Do your editors know the other editors?
This is such a muddle.

My original title: Abject mendacity of New York Times Editors
My draft title: On misdirection and injustice
My published title: The Game of the Rough Beast

I wanted to avenge her.
Instead I wrote a parlour game.
It is my only act of resistance.

I want to stare directly at the heart of darkness.
I hope I won't flinch.
I don't trust myself.

I wonder if you've come close to the rough beast.
I think you've come close to the rough beast.
Have you come close to the rough beast?

I want to know what he looks like.
I don't want to know what he looks like.
I know he's there.

I can only hope that one day you will do a follow-up story on her loss.
I can only hope that one day you will do a follow-up story on the Hamas shelling.
A follow-up story with the same editors.

I can only hope you'll play the game again
The game of cut and paste
The game of cause and effect

Then maybe I'll sleep at night
Then maybe I'll know the rough beast
Then maybe I'll make my own accomodations

I have only my pen to wield
I wonder if you've read this far
I hope you haven't read this far

He is close
I can hear him
A neighbour's house is on fire

I hear her cries.
I see her face.
I play my music

"It's 2am when the party's over
All I wanna do, all I wanna do
I wanna be with you"

Cut and paste.
Cause and effect.
The logical structure of perfidy.

Her name is Huda Ghaliya.
Her family is dead.
They died on the beach in front of her.

I want to avenge her.
Bring them back to the picnic.
Maybe it is better this way.

What kind of injustice is this?
Who is writing the script?
And who is editing it?

What are the names of your editors?
Did you have an editor at all?
I prefer to know them as The Editors.

Let's hear it from the poets
William Blake: Til we have built Jerusalem
William Butler Yeats: Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

Yeats's first cut,
A quotable sort
Everyone remembers this:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

But it's about The Second Coming
The story written afterwards
And everyone forgets it:

The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouching towards Bethlehem to be born?

My thesis as it is:
In the School of Hard Knocks
Things Fall Apart beats Heart of Darkness

More practical, bear with me.
Heart of Darkness: Angola, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Congo, Chile, Somalia, El Salvador
Things Fall Apart: Soviet Union, Nigeria...

Try it again, your neck of the woods.
Heart of Darkness: 9/11, Baghdad, Al Zarqawi, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Haditha...
Things Fall Apart: Katrina, Enron, Abramoff, Cunningham...

When I read your article
I was reminded of the poem
"A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun"

I seek a comfort suite
And pray for peace and quiet
The cement of my society

To be out of sight
To live out of mind
A chance to recover

I try to stare at the sun
I want to look into his eyes
Confront him head on:

The rough beast.
Observe his contours
Resist nostalgia

I hope I don't flinch.
I want to cover my eyes
I fall asleep

Help me, Mr Reporter.
Her name is Huda Ghaliya.
The rough beast, The Editors

This thing's a puzzle.
I'm tired of the game.
Where are The Editors?

I wake up on the beach at Beit Lahiya
Where are you, Mr Reporter?
And who are The Editors?

The rough beast lies next to me.
William Blake: Among those dark Satanic Mills
William Butler Yeats: Slouching towards Bethlehem to be born

Yours sincerely.
Sincerely yours.
I'd like some answers.

---

The Game of the Rough Beast
The Reporter and The Editors
The beach at Beit Lahiya

The Second Coming

The Ghaliya family lost four members less than two years ago when an Israeli Army shell hit their farm in Beit Lahiya. Then, as now, the army said it was shelling to try to stop Palestinian fire into Israel.

The Rough Beast

File under: journalism, misdirection, framing, New York Times, editorial, decisions, poetry, literature, Yeats, war, crime, writing, conflict, politics, media, language, deception, observation, loss, waste, grief, spin, outrage, reflection, bias, tone, NYT, Israel, Palestine, Things Fall Apart, The Rough Beast, toli

Recent Non-Specific General Threats

In which we consider homelands and security, and specifics and generality... A digression in the Things Fall Apart series, an entry under the banner of The Rough Beast...

The letter that I reproduce below was slipped under the door to my apartment about a month before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. It originated from the NAA, which I learnt stands for the National Apartment Association. It's a form letter that my landlords didn't bother to customize with their identifying details - they don't believe in the new formula. It was sent to them by said association and they in turn simply photocopied and distributed it to all the tenants in the apartment building. Thus we all returned home after another cold Bostonian work-day and bent down to pick up our unadulterated advisory. We considered, with alternatively concern and bemusement, the message of the day from The Authorities on the slightly-faded ink of their overtaxed fax machines and photocopiers.

Recent

The letter concerned "recent non-specific general threats to apartment buildings" by Al Qaeda and the like. It was all there: the terrain of uncertainty, the exquisite precision of the language, the advisability of duct tape and social living in our communal relationships, not to mention the knowledge that The Authorities would deign to helpfully provide warnings about our homelands and security. Suffice to say that our little apartment community would have something to discuss in ensuing months.

When the histories of the 2003 Iraq war (the second or third Gulf War depending on who is counting) and the so-called Global War on Terror are written, I hope historians and anthropologists alike can use some of this material. Where others ponder the significance of Downing Street Memos and parse notions of fixed intelligence, I'll instead focus on the small things that troubled me and my neighbours.

As they search for colourful anecdotes about these trying times, I hope they might consider delineating the contours of the strange infrastructure of fear, the bureaucracy, the homelands and the security that we have seen. Perhaps like the vintage 1950s drills about jumping underneath your school desk, or hurtling into designated nuclear fallout shelters when the atomic bomb sirens sounded and that godless enemy attacked heating up that Cold War, these letters will come to be seen as quaint as some currently see the Geneva Conventions.

The cynics might also consider just how fear can be manipulated and to what ends. It is surely a matter of pure coincidence that just two days earlier the then Secretary of State, Colin Powell, had made his legendary speech apropos Saddam Hussein's purported Weapons of Mass Destruction to the United Nations. Now safely retired after long and loyal service to his country and two generations of Bush Presidents, the good General has apparently let it be known via an aide that the WMD speech was the "lowest point in my life". I find comfort that the terrorist infrastructure of those heady days reached out to affect not just apartment dwellers in Cambridge but also the high-powered politicians and fiercesome soldiers.

It gives one pause; timing is everything in life. The world got ominous tomes and Powerpoint presentations about aluminium tubes, uranium and specific bioweapon trailers during prime time; the next day we got advisories about threats to our apartment communities. But let me not digress about burnt-out cases and fallen angels like Colin Powell even though these are some of my favourite topics, instead I thought I'd share some historical marginalia. Make of it what you will.

SAMPLE LETTER TO RESIDENTS ON RECENT NON-SPECIFIC, GENERAL THREAT TO APARTMENT BUILDINGS

From NAA 02/07/03 6:28PM p. 2 of 2

February 7, 2003

Dear Resident:

Your apartment operator has been notified by the National Apartment Association of a possible terrorist threat targeting apartments and hotels. This alert closely parallels a similar alert in May of 2002. Attorney General John Ashcroft, Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and FBI Director Robert Mueller raised the national terrorism threat-level to "orange" indicating a "high risk of terrorist attacks".

Ashcroft described the non-specific threat. 'Recent intelligence reports suggest that al Qaeda leaders have emphasized planning for attacks on apartment buildings, hotels and other soft or lightly secured targets in the United States."

At this time, we want to emphasize that this is not a specific threat against any particular apartment building, nor is there a particular time frame or location identified. Please keep abreast of local and national news for emergency information and updates.

All residents are asked to be aware of any suspicious activities and report them to the local FBI Field Office <go to http://www.fbi.gov/contact/fo/fo.htm to find the field office that is closest to you> and then to the apartment management office <insert the phone number and names of on-site personnels>. If you believe the activity is an emergency, call 911 immediately, and then report it to the apartment management office.

Here are some tips that can help make a difference at your apartment community.

• Report suspicious people or activities at the apartment community to the management. For example, vehicles, visitors, unusual traffic, noise, solicitors, abandoned packages, residents changing their own locks.
• Get to know your neighbors. Terrorists can succeed through the anonymity that apartment communities may provide.
• Keep apartment keys, access cards and amenity access cards in a secure location and let management know if any have been lost.
• Do not provide building access or access codes to persons unknown to you.
• Do not open your door for service/maintenance personnel without first obtaining proper identification.
• Make sure the emergency contact information that we have on file for you is up-to-date.
• Know the emergency evacuation procedures for your apartment home, if one is required. <apartment operator you may want to attach evacuation procedures to this letter, or instruct residents what to do.>
• Adopt a Family Disaster Plan. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has developed a model plan for you to use ([now a broken link - a copy at the Internet Archive])

The federal government issues these alerts to raise awareness among Americans in hopes that a vigilant community can help thwart terrorist actions. Many potential threats here and abroad have already been halted because residents like you have seen and reported suspicious activity.

Sincerely,

<Apartment Operator: Insert your standard closing>

Non-Specific

I've been wondering of late how these things are propagated, that is, how the opaquely named Department of Homeland Security gets the word out. What I wondered is the relationship between said department and the National Apartment Association? From all appearances in the letter, the NAA is simply acting as as an agent of the government but nowhere is the exact connection explicated. The NAA and its authority are simply facts on the ground.

The thrust of the letter is about vigilance against things falling apart. The "be prepared" rhetoric doesn't go too far into the demonization of the amorphous enemy but the undertone is there. The possible threat, we are advised, "closely parallels" an earlier scare. There are the injunctions to report suspicious people or activities (echoes of McCarthyism) although here it is tempered with the eminently sensible "get to know your neighbours" proposition. There's the listing of officious officials and authority figures, the reassuring comfort of the names of Messers John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge - now safely consulting and lobbying said departments in lucrative private practice. The complete impersonality of this bureaucratic note should be noted, it is the language of Homeland Security. Oh well...

Ponder the title again, I'll remove the caps:

"Sample letter to residents on recent non-specific, general threat to apartment buildings"

I can't think of a better example of non-specific bureaucratese. There's a musical logic in its various clauses, or is it the poetic cadences that one should celebrate? One wonders how many other sample letters exist in the association's portfolio on any number of different topics and to any number of different audiences. One wonders also what the difference would be if the threat were old or indeed specific instead of recent and non-specific, and if the message would be more finely calibrated.

Consider also this comforting sentence with some emphasis on what someone who skimmed might take away

At this time, we want to emphasize that this is not a specific threat against any particular apartment building, nor is there a particular time frame or location identified.

One doesn't want to dwell on a cynical reading of these things because there must have been a fairly well-founded fear. I am well-versed in the anonymity in apartment life and, not to get all existential, that life can be impersonal and anomic. We could all spend more time building communities. The problem is having officialdom mandate the effort. There is only a fine line between the tame "be friendly" admonition and the hectoring "spy on your neighbours" proposition, and the plain reading of the message goes beyond "be vigilant" to "be scared".

General

Fear is a funny thing and in small doses it can be a great motivator; its close counte