Including Toy Guns

At approximately 1:30 this afternoon, a student brandished a gel blaster gun and began using it in the hallways. The student was immediately apprehended by staff and was detained by our Student Resource Officer. The campus was placed on a "Hold" from 1:30–1:55 p.m. while staff and [redacted] police made sure the area was safe.

Please remind your children about the dangers of students bringing certain items, including toy guns, to school. Possession of any type of weapon — including a toy — is a serious violation of the [redacted] Student Code of Conduct.

...

We need to have a talk, my children
You're old enough to hear the deal

You do remember, we've had the sex talk already
All that stuff about the birds and the bees

We've had the race talk also, a puzzler that one
When I brought up ignorance, that social disease

But, mark my words, I'm raising you in America
That land of opportunity, with all that it means

Cringe, I know, your father's message, but hear me out on this
Lest I ever hear of you saying that you can't breathe

Far too many lives have been lost, consigned to thoughts and prayers
People just like you, brought low for the most dubious of reasons

Truth be told, this society is funeral minded
I can barely keep up, the litany of hazards we face daily

Knocking on the wrong door, jogging, or simply reaching
We can now add another, but this one is easily avoided

The subject is weapons, the danger is the perception
Some might say that it's a matter of possession

Albeit you might be having a little bit of fun
Careful of the things you carry including toy guns

True, in our family, we've always held that education is war
But the new warfare is metaphorical, don't bring in bows and arrows

I kid you not, it's unfortunate, there's no foolproof protection
Even a raised umbrella can cause no small amount of trouble

So if you must wield a weapon, let it be in the form of your thoughts
And express them judiciously, for no one is promised tomorrow

Your words will carry you but remember
It doesn't cost much to bite your tongue

Do go out of your way to make others comfortable
Proudly wear, as you do, that mask of civility

But make sure that it is only heartfelt outrage
That causes you to be accused of disturbing tranquility

That's all I have for now, I cry at night that you can be viewed as a threat
Despite all of our efforts, this country decidedly fails to protect

That we live in this strange world full of perils including toy guns
Carry on as you were, you're my favorite daughter and son

See previously: Prone, Action Items and Response Consultant

File under: USA, blood, violence, absurd, culture, observation, weapons, modernity, perception, language, bureaucracy, life, poetry, outrage, guns, The Rough Beast, Observers are worried, toli

Writing log. May 8, 2023

End-User Certificates

End-user certificates
Squalid bureaucracy

Did you ever wonder what was in those planes?

Contractual obligations
Roaring trade in ammunition

Did you ever worry about the company you keep?

Warlord clientele
Improvised identities

Did you think it would come to this?

Cult of corruption
Merchants of death

Did you see what they left in their wake?

Bulletproof warriors
Small boy units

Did you ever wonder about the price we all paid?

Cargo of weapons
Shipments from Belarus

Did you realize the tangled web they wove?

Profitable transactions
Collateral damage

Did it mean anything to you?

Neutral brokers
Two-sided networks

Did it really seem innocent?

Equal opportunity
Excess revenues

Did you ever wonder how they sleep at night?

International transfers
Dealers of deceit

Did you remember how it all started?

Final recipients
Embargo detours

Did the excuses really stand up?

Supply chain lubrication
Undesired buyers

Did you get everything that you wanted?

Victims everywhere
Blood and sin victorious

Did you ever wonder why these men are smiling?

Clean hands
Indelible ink

Did they leave a trace?

Rebel militia
Intractable conflicts

Do you ever wonder when this will end?

After: Blood from Stones by Douglas Farah, Darwin's Nightmare and that pulp piece, Lord of War.

End-User Certificates, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Guns are Drawn by The Roots
• Bullet From A Gun by Derek B
• Certified by Guru
• Machine Gun by Portishead
• Sword + Gun by Jose James and Hindi Zahra
• Because of Guns (Hey Joe Redux) by Vijay Iyer

...

Timing is everything
Observers are worried

See previously: Arms on Ghana Plane

File under: arms, weapons, rogues, terrorism, crime, war, Strange Bedfellows, Observers are worried, poetry, culture, observation, toli

Writing log: January 1, 2022

Blue Sand

The headline was striking sixty odd years later
The dust was said to be returning to sender
Swirling dervishes on magic carpets, a blanket of fine particles
Radiation straight from the souk, the message in a bottle

A sixties affair held, not in Provence,
   but rather in the Sahara
Uncharted territory
   in what they then called French Algeria
A convenient location,
   just a few Berber nomads around at best
The fruits of settler colonialism,
   a prime spot for a nuclear test

A case of droit de seigneur, this was the desert after all
Proud of his entrée to the nuclear club was General de Gaulle
Still, it's not something that one could sweep under the rug,
   this thing
Indeed, the test rather embodied a literal carpet bombing

First, the sharp flash of the detonation
Then, later, shock waves and the almighty sound
The scientists marveled at the novel reaction
The blueish fire that preceded the mushroom cloud

Ground zero, the impact crater, the hole in the dunes
The military had assigned a codename: Gerboise Bleue
The desert rodent of Reggane would be baptized in blue
The blue of the tricolor harkened to Saint Martin de Tours

In the aftermath, as expected, came the fallout in all its forms
The uproar was swift,
   later tests would have to be moved underground
Expressions of surprise
   that radiation would drift west and south
Significant traces detected
   in Upper Volta, Ghana and even Senegal

Ballistic rockets launched primed for nuclear payloads
The initial fear was of fission and Strontium 90 isotopes
Decay was all, the main byproduct was rather Caesium
It is an ill wind that blows no good, this reckoning

We are all casualties in the torrid zone of this triangle of fire
That, in a new century, nature had decided to share the wealth
Donations of micro doses spreading irony across the land
A radioactive gift to posterity, a legacy of blue sand



After: Irony as Saharan dust returns radiation from French nuclear tests in the 1960s (March 1, 2021)

Blue Sand, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note. (spotify version)

• You Dropped A Bomb On Me by Gap Band
• Ill Wind by Ben Webster
• Midnite Blue by Count Basie
  Taken from The Complete Atomic Basie, the album cover is telling
• Dust by Van Hunt
• Inherit the Wind by Wilton Felder
• Dust in the Wind by Eric Benet
• Ill Wind by Lee Morgan
• Oh Lord Don't Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb On Me by Charles Mingus
• Ill Wind by Milt Jackson
• Ill Wind (You're Blowin' Me No Good) by Ella Fitzgerald

...

The Wife's history of Atomic Junction dug up lots of interesting material. Here's a 1960 speech by by Tawia Adamafio denouncing French Nuclear Tests in the Sahara. See also a few more clippings from Ghanaian newspapers of the time.

File under: nuclear, France, violence, colonialism, war, environment, Algeria, irony, culture, observation, science, weapons, Africa, politics, power, perception, public health, poetry, Observers are worried, toli

Writing log: December 16, 2021

Arms on Ghana Plane

I came across this clipping from the spy swap issue in Talking Drums magazine, published in December 1985 when Ghana and the US swapped spies. It's almost an afterthought from the rest of the issue but the story ticks off all my buttons.

The headline, tucked in the back pages, reads Arms on Ghana Plane. You would likely miss it if you focused on the cover story which was full of spy intrigue.

The plane that was found at Dublin airport last week with arms on board has been confirmed as a Ghana-registered plane owned by a Viennese company.

Irish police had been baffled about why equipment similar to that used by the IRA should be on a Ghana plane...

The Boeing 707... is owned by an import-export company called Penetex owned in turn by a Viennese conservative councillor Peter Neuman and registered in Ghana. He is said to have acquired the plane three years ago as payment of a debt.

The plane is said to be regularly used by the Libyan international show jumping team and had just returned from Libya. Police fear that Libya had started supplying arms to the IRA again.

Now, now, now. What do we have here? A small tale of strange bedfellows, arms dealers, rogues, terrorists, Ghanaian coup makers, Austrian politicians, the IRA, British and Irish police, and, of course, He of the Little Green Book

There's surely a novel or script to be written about the escapades of the Libyan show jumping team and their travels in the 1980s, John Le Carre had a surfeit of material to draw on and a cast of characters that couldn't be beaten.

Or perhaps consider this as a James Bond joint, for the mechanics of the affair are piquant. You can imagine the tradecraft at work, the setup of the shell company, the cutouts, the forged documentation and the vaguely plausible backstory. Throw in say Viktor Bout in the mix to heighten the tension. The background of a showjumping or polo competition would be highlighted, the thoroughbreds at work, the elites and the monied, the crates with hidden bottoms and so forth. Great heists have been made out of lesser material.

Ghanaians like to think they are at the periphery of world affairs and keep a low profile - we tend to go for opacity culturally, but the Rawlings-Tsikata crew were neck deep in all manner of dodgy dealings, being convinced ideologues and unafraid of blood. You can find their bloody fingerprints all over the continent. The most explicit was the support for Thomas Sankara's coup in Burkina Faso but elsewhere they were allies with many unsavoury regimes notably the Congo-Brazzaville lot, the Angola heavyweights and so forth. Here though, Ghana was featuring (and being used as a front) in the big leagues; Gaddafi and the IRA are about as high profile in infamy as one can get. The Semtex especially that wasn't intercepted by the British during this period - when Libyan assistance was at it most munificent, made a tangible difference to the terrrorists, and many paid the price with their lives in the ensuing years. Living in exile in London as I did at the time, I can testify to the baleful effect of the emboldened Irish terrorists.

For the longest time in the 1980s, the Ghana government made a quite lucrative trade in end-user certificates. Planes from Eastern Europe carrying weapons destined for hotspots like Angola would fly in to Ghana and briefly pause to satisfy the fraudulent paperwork and turn around to fly to their ultimate destination a few hours later. Episodes like this discovery on the Ghana plane would bring great scrutiny from the great powers.

Sidenote: if Ghanaian planes were used by Libyans to supply the IRA with weapons in 1985, we shouldn't be too shocked to learn that one of the Al Qaeda plotters passed through Ghana on his way to the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, and stayed overnight in a government safehouse. Once you entertain the company of rogues, indeed if you actively court their shenanigans, you open the door to deviousness that you can't control. The prospect of being a scapegoat or collateral damage in other people's wars is not something that most would seek out.

Anyway, I've been here before: He of the Little Green Book

Thus, ever since the Flight Lieutenant's arrival
We'd had to develop a new philosophy of survival

At markets, we would fight over corned beef and sardine tins
Throughout I kept asking myself: why are these men laughing?

I suppose this in keeping with the Excellent Discussions they were having.

The moral of course is be careful with the company you keep. Rawlings and company simply failed to heed the Ewe proverb, the goat does not pass the leopard's door.

...

Contraband

In the cutthroat world of elite sports
Many go to great lengths to seek out advantages
A few grams shaved off here and there
Aerodynamic styling in Formula One cars
The steroidal cocktails - liquid gold at that,
That underlay the nutrition of East German athletes
Designer drugs, custom feeding regimens
All is fair to avoid defeat

He of the Little Green Book, for his part,
Hearkened all the way back to Buda's wagon
For he was quite minded for revenge
Plastic explosives would be his secret weapon
The show jumping team entered the competition
They would show the world that Libya was best
Albeit with the hidden cargo on the Ghana plane
They also delivered a load of Semtex

Arms on Ghana Plane, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• We have Explosive by The Future Sound of London
• The Show Jumping Competition by Simon Kolle
• Weapon of Choice by Fatboy Slim
• Show Jumping by Gold Age
• The Way of the Explosive by Finley Quaye

Bonus beats: You Dropped a Bomb on Me by Gap Band

...

Timing is everything
Observers are worried

(We'll get to the spy swap in due course, that's another story ...)

File under: arms, weapons, Libya, rogues, terrorism, Ghana, history, Africa, Ireland, England, IRA, crime, Gaddafi, Strange Bedfellows, Observers are worried, toli

Writing log: May 30, 2021

The New Warfare

I shouldn't make light of it since lives have been lost, but the most significant development in international affairs this millennium is China's decision to send a squad of martial artists to deal with its border dispute with India. All wars henceforth should be hand to hand combat.

I know the military industrial complex is finding this covidious interlude frustrating, what with a mere virus taking over their Grim Reaper duties. Needless to say, this pandemic kind of thing is bad for business. What more the spectre of hand to hand combat to settle international disputes? Diplomacy is being thoroughly disrupted.

Bruce Lee already wrote the script in Enter the Dragon, so we could line up all the actors in this political theatre. Hollywood and Madison Avenue are currently idled, and are itching to spring back into action. This could be the most effective way to revive The Grand Reopening of Texas in this silly season. Mister Trump has even appeared in wrestling bouts in his earlier youthful indiscretions, surely, this is something he could get behind, especially as the attempt to inaugurate a Space Force was too little too late. No, hand to hand combat is just the Grand Guignol spectacle to relieve our lockdown ennui. Bill it as the Game of Death, the Game of Thrones was so last year's must see TV.

Sure, it would be a transfer of wealth from Raytheon and company to Comcast and the Disney contingent, but let's face it, it's the same oligarchs ultimately behind the scenes, and it would be more entertaining than what warfare has been for the human race throughout history. The surplus to society of bread and circuses instead of the constant saber rattling and brandishing of missile systems, nuclear weapons and the like would be immense. The betting industry would love nothing better than taking wagers on India versus China in the global ring. Why have expensive nuclear weapon programs when what is really required is some Shaolin monks bent on revenge? Moreover, the shadow economy is in dire need of a stimulus package. Let the dollar circulate, Secretary Mnuchin, pitch it to your boss. The possibilities are endless.

Mind you, there is no guarantee that China would come out top in the contest. Bollywood already has counters to Chinese expertise. The catapult scene from Bahubali 2 stands up in extravagance to almost any action movie I've seen. Albeit Pakistan might welcome the depletion of Indian resources and send some commandos to Kashmir. In any case, I would venture that Hong Kong's elite martial artists might boycott the fight and perhaps Beijing might reconsider imposing their national security law.

Ghana will happily take on Cote d'Ivoire with a squad of Bukom bombers. Ike "Bazooka" Quartey and The Professor himself Azumah Nelson, even in retirement, will deal promptly with anything our western brothers can come up with. The offshore oil is ours my friends.

Senegal and Nigeria can send competing squads of wrestlers to finally settle the issue of Ecowas's common currency, although I suppose Anthony Joshua can be a substitute boxer on the Nigerian side (divided loyalties Your Majesty), but I think Senegal will have the upper hand. Aminatta Sow Fall did write L’Appel des arènes after all, and who can compete with the strength of her African letters. Also: better jollof.

South and North Korea will duke it out in Taekwondo across the line of control, it goes without saying. The North's cashflow problems would be resolved based on gambling receipts alone. No need for starvation wages for the populace, North Korean consulates the world over would breath easier. No more counterfeiting for one.

Russia's judo squad can jawbone with Turkish oil wrestlers instead of the malign standoff we currently have between Emperors Putin and Erdogan disrupting countries all the way from Syria to Libya in The Great Game.

Egypt and Ethiopia will settle this business about the new dam on the Nile river instead of engaging in nation-state sponsored cyber attacks. The female Arbegnoch fighters of yore can certainly joust with the best Egyptian UFC fighters, not to mention they are very pleasing on the eye. I might give the Ethiopians the edge, their president just won the Nobel prize while no one will be motivated to fight for General Sisi, who must be the most garden variety of garden variety dictators - he doesn't even try, no personality cult, come on Sisi.

With a hotspot like Nagorno-Karabakh heating up and starred generals perishing after 3 days of fighting on the borders, Azerbaijan and Armenia would do well to look towards their neigbour, Mongolia's Nadaam festival - such 'manly games' would fit the bill, in what is "traditionally seen as a celebration of its three 'men's games' of wrestling, horse-racing and archery". The archers wore masks and the usual crowds were missing this year, but now that everyone in the world has a mobile phone they were still a success even with social distancing.

Companies like my employer, instead of designing newfangled infantry squad vehicles for quarter billion dollar contracts, might get to apply their supply chain expertise to more essential pursuits. The public relation rewards and goodwill that accrue are priceless.

My vision of the new warfare is no less improbable than the infectious sounds and scenario of Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney fighting over a girl in The Girl is Mine. Now who could resist that piece of pop magic? Everyone goes for the obvious hits when it comes decoding the success of Thriller, but it is the one-two punch of Baby Be Mine and The Girl is Mine that is the unappreciated genius stroke of the album.

"Michael, we're not going to fight"
"Paul, I think I told you, I'm a lover not a fighter."

Even if you think or thought that it was syrupy or that he'd lost his mind, you couldn't resist imagining the spectacle let alone the music (remember there was no video for the track). The song disarmed you with its ingenousness and burrowed its way through your ears into global consciousness.

And finally, Osama bin Laden could have saved all of us so much heartache by simply pitting his team of assassins against the 2001 US contingent: Bernard Hopkins, Roy Jones Jr, Floyd Mayweather Jr, Arturo Gatti, Oscar de la Hoya, Shane Mosely, and Evander Holyfield. True, de la Hoya was the weak link of that lineup (conflicted loyalties again). Instead we are stuck with asymetrical warfare and the attendant security theater of Recent Non-Specific General Threats.

Here's awaiting your suggestions for potential matchups in the new warfare, Dear Reader. There's plenty of room for innovation here. What? You've really got something better to do than engage in mindless speculation in these covidious times? Come on... I've left you an opening, the floor is yours...

A closing quote

Diplomacy means the art of nearly deceiving all your friends, but not quite deceiving all your enemies.

— Kofi Abrefa Busia

The New Warfare, a playlist

As usual, a soundtrack for this note (also on Spotify, albeit less complete, who owns the rights to The Electric Spanking of War Babies these days?).

• War Hero by Antibalas
• I Declare War by Kool G Rap & DJ Polo
• War by The Temptations
• Back from the War by Fried
• War of the Hearts by Sade
• Stop War Make Love by Omar
  The original version has a more pointed title and the purest falsetto when he sings the lyric

  How many people have to die?

• Let The Dollar Circulate by Billy Paul
• Warrior by Jose James
• War by Bob Marley
• Bells of War by Wu-Tang Clan
• War by Mos Def
• I Declare War by Ghostface Killah & Adriane Younge
• War by Outkast (Big Boi)
• I Declare War by Ghostface Killah & Masta Killa
• Electric Spanking of War Babies by Funkadelic
• Cold War by Janelle Monae
• The Girl is Mine by Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney
  

  "The doggone girl is mine"

• F*ck war make love by Omar
  I truly appreciate the various live versions that we've been graced with over the years, Omar throws down whenever he performs and this song is always a celebration.

File under: absurd, war, weapons arms, diplomacy, politics, humour, satire, culture, observation, perception, strategy, Great Game, Observers are worried, toli