Connor Coyne

Over the last several weeks, as part of my research for Urbantasm, I’ve been reading about countries in southern Africa. So far I’ve taken in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and presently, Mozambique.

I don’t really have an argument or a bone of contention in this post… but it is one of those subjects where questions lead to more questions. The history courses I took in junior high and high school spent almost no time on the history of Africa which meant that for a long time I had only the popular images of blight and war, coup d’etats and apartheid. In college I quickly learned that most things that seem as though they ought to be complicated actually are, and realized that each tribe, each city, each country, each region had their own dilemmas, traditions, and histories. But that was as specific as I got. With the exception of a few articles I’ve read here and there and stories that friends have brought home from abroad, this is the first time I’ve taken a closer look at Africa.

One thing that immediately strikes me is the paradoxical relationship of South Africa to its neighbors since independence. In the early days, when apartheid was in full swing, South Africa’s neighbors confronted it (often with the encouragement of the competing West and Soviet states)… while it’s debatable what the upshot for the great powers would be, South Africa’s retaliation was often devastating to its neighbors. For example, South African support of Mozambican insurgents led to that country’s long civil war, which killed or displaced almost 25% of the population. Most South Africans are, themselves, very poor. But the economic engines of Cape Town and Johannesburg are forces to be reckoned with, and easily eclipse that of South Africa’s neighbors. This would seem to be why apartheid, in addition to being a human rights nightmare by virtue of what it was, had an outsized impact on southern Africa as a whole. Of course, something that Wikipedia doesn’t discuss in detail, but which I suspect is worth considering, is the fact that, as with most proxy wars, the West expressed concern for African states only as nebulously coherent allies. Our only investment was a military investment, and when we did engage in markets there it was in the most rapacious and predatory ways we could. So it’s also Europe and America’s fault that southern Africa is in the bind that it is today.

I know that these countries are often criticized as undemocratic and oligarchic. In the case of Zimbabwe, the worst observations would seem to hold, even as South Africa itself has come the furthest toward true democracy. But my attention is most held by the other two I’ve considered here: Zambia and Mozambique. Zambia is diversifying its economy, and Mozambique has joined just about every association from the Commonwealth of Nations to the Community of Portuguese Language Countries as a way to augment their post-civil war influence. Considering the Pandora’s box of troubles these states have had to grapple with in living memory, it astonishes me that any sort of functioning state is possible… in some ways, this achievement is more audacious and commendable than the maintenance of the status quo in the relatively safe, powerful, and prosperous U.S.

But this opinion is largely limited and even hazardously uninformed. It is necessarily bookish. So please, comment on this!

We here at Blue Skies Falling understand that to most of the world, the issue of Norris the Gray’s influence over Kuto’s Well is an open-and-shut case; at the best he’s a squatter, and at the worst he’s a thief, guilty of robbery and aggrivated battery. But circumstances also compel us to observe that Norris has undeniably been operating under some amount of pressure, and this might plausibly have influenced his leadership.

We don’t know how his career originated, but with recent reappropriations committees setting up in the Slums from New Phlan, the population pressure in the Kuto’s Well region is considerable. It would be disengenuous to a rational policy to assume that Norris is not in pursuit of some legitimate political power; he very likely considers himself to be an alderman of sorts over Kuto’s Well. It is known that he has cultivated support among the Orcs living there, and perhaps he plans to use this to consolidate his base in both the Slums and Podol Plaza. It remains, however, that firing arrows at others from hiding and then running away is going to strain the most even-keeled of diplomats, nor do his proclamations of “surrender or die” endear him to many outside of his immediate following. But for us, the most telling of Norris’ controversial statements is his refusal to assist Sokal Keep against the gentrifying hordes of New Phlan, unless he gets to lead. Do the undead repel him? Somehow I doubt it. Rather, it would seem that Norris has written Sokal Keep off since it is likely to remain outside of his direct political influence. He sees collaboration as a waste of his time, money, as well as that of his Ogre retainer. Norris the Gray has appealed to a fickle and fanatical base in the hopes of creating an unlikely groundswell of support; in so marginalizing himself, he has hastened his own political obsolesence.

New York Times: Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations.

Yeah, I know that a subject so often repeated loses its viscerality.
I also know that a lack of progress or change inspires a feeling of futility.
And I know that the more drastic a comparison is, the more cliche and stale it seems.

Still, we have to recognize the importance of these things, no matter how frequent we hear it and how futile we might feel. Because they’re still doing it. All of it. Secretly. Behind closed doors. In freezing, wet, clamorous rooms.

Significantly, one needn’t fall back on a cliche likening this administration’s “interpretation” of the law to a Soviet political purge. They’ve taken that step themselves:

With virtually no experience in interrogations, the C.I.A. had constructed its program in a few harried months by consulting Egyptian and Saudi intelligence officials and copying Soviet interrogation methods long used in training American servicemen to withstand capture. The agency officers questioning prisoners constantly sought advice from lawyers thousands of miles away.

It may be that the closest we ever get to a real sense of what the C.I.A. has been doing is this.

Here is, for your mollification, a list of Democrats who voted for the Military Commissions Act, a piece of legislation that allegedly “dealt” with these abominations once and for all, while quite capably taking the matter out of the hands of the U.S. Courts.

SENATE
Carper (D-DE)
Johnson (D-SD)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Lieberman (D-CT)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Salazar (D-CO)
Stabenow (D-MI)

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Andrews
Barrows
Bean
Bishop (GA)
Boren
Boswell
Boyd
Brown
Chandler
Cramer
Cuellar
Davis (AL)
Davis (TN)
Edwards
Etheridge
Ford
Gordon
Herseth
Higgins
Holden
Marshall
Matheson
McIntyre
Moore
Peterson (MN)
Pomeroy
Ross
Salazar
Scott (GA)
Spratt
Tanner
Taylor (MS)

May we never have to accuse anyone of waterboarding our captured troops. It will be a difficult argument to make.

Evidently, Sallust was also familiar with a General Petraeus:

When he had satisfied himself on every point, Petreius sounded the signal and ordered the cohorts to advance slowly, and the same movement was made by the enemy. On reaching a distance at which the light troops could engage, the two armies raised a great shout and charged each other, standard to standard.

All they have in common is their name, however.

Sallust‘s Petreius was sent into war by Cicero, one of the greatest political minds of all time, in a decisive strike against Catiline, a wealthy citizen who had successfully raised an army in insurrection against Rome.

Our Petraeus, on the other hand, was sent into war by Bush, one of the most persistantly one-sided political minds of all time, in an decisive bid against Congress to continue a war waged for reasons subject to an unprecedented case of national amnesia.

I wonder what Sallust would write about our Petraeus.

from bill-in-portland-maine:

Most of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, yet that country has paid no price for producing and harboring terrorists. Neither has Pakistan, the country in which Osama bin Laden is now hiding.

The PDB said: Bin Laden determined to Strike in U.S.

Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq.

Sitting in a classroom for seven minutes after being told “America is under attack” is a poor display of leadership, especially if you’re America’s president.

If the administration had tried to sell the Iraq war based on anything other than the fear of weapons of mass destruction, we never would have invaded.

Colin Powell, the most trusted man in the administration, said: “My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.”

There were no WMDs. Not “in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat,” and not even in the Oval Office “somewhere.”

Four and a half years after declaring that “major combat operations have ended,” major combat operations have not ended.

Taunting the insurgents by sneering “Bring ‘em on” was really dumb because the insurgents brought it on.

The insurgency wasn’t “in its last throes” then, and it isn’t in its last throes now.

The Taliban has bounced back in Afghanistan. The Maliki government has flatlined in Iraq.

Osama bin Laden has not been caught, either dead or alive. He is still making videos.

And here’s a bonus from Bill Maher:

New Rule: If you were surprised that the Chinese don’t care about toy safety, then the child who needs protecting is you. Over the last couple of months, American consumers have been learning a shocking lesson about supply and demand: if you demand products that don’t cost anything, people will make them out of poison, mud and shit. … They don’t care if your precious little Britney sucks a little lead. Because in China, their kids aren’t playing with the toys, they’re the ones in the factory all day making them. …

In America, there is nothing more sacred than a bargain. And that even includes the war. Yeah, there’s too much lead in the kids’ toys, but not nearly enough on the Humvees in Iraq. “Let’s have a war and cut taxes; what could go wrong?” “Let’s give mortgages to the homeless. Sounds like a plan.” “Let’s buy toys from a Communist police state. You just know they’ll put in a little extra love.”

Speaking of which, you know why today’s modern Chinese capitalist puts lead in the paint that goes on toys? Because it makes colors brighter. You’ve got to love America, a country that’s literally being killed by the stuff that makes objects shiny.