Category Archives: History

History, Poetry, Security

Tsegaye Gebre-Medhin

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The Guardian has a brief, but suggestive, obit for Ethiopia’s poet laureate:

his 1960s decision to write about the common man, rather than religion and royalty, marked the beginning of modern Ethiopian theatre

Meskot posted an obituary from the poet’s family (PDF), which gives a slightly different and far more revealing insight:

From 1961 to 1971, Tsegaye was Artistic Director of the Ethiopian National Theatre, and editor at the office of Oxford University Press in Addis Ababa through 1972. In 1973, he served as General Manager of the Ethiopian National Theatre, and was later appointed Vice-Minister of Culture and Sports in 1975. A year later, Tsegaye was arrested as a result of the military government’s reaction to his plays, and was imprisoned without formal charges being brought against him.

Food, History, Security

Iraqi bakers and barbers under attack

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The BBC has an interesting first-person story — just a taste of violence in Iraq:

bakers have become the latest casualties in Iraq’s seemingly unstoppable slide into communal blood-letting.

The reason is simple – traditionally most bakeries in the city have been run by Shia families.

So, for Sunni insurgents trying to stir the sectarian demon, or seeking revenge for Shia attacks on their own communities, bakers make an easy target.

They do not say why bakers are usually Shia, but the “easy target” comment is very revealing as it spells out the widening chasm of domestic conflict. My guess is that a baker is as much an economic target as a religious one, as the insurgents are trying to disrupt daily lives/routines and establish control of neighborhood supply-lines. Barbers apparently also work in fear of attack:

in recent months, a growing number of barbers have been killed or intimidated – on religious grounds.

They are accused of breaking Islamic codes by cutting hair in a certain way and shaving men’s beards, an echo of similar edicts issued by the Taleban in Afghanistan.

The threats are coming from both Sunni and Shia extremists – the same people are behind much of the sectarian violence.

This seems more related to religious extremism than the baker killings, but the barber also shared his memory of how business was before the US invaded:

“It’s very sad,” he says. “Before the war, we would just cut hair the way people wanted. Now we’re not allowed to.”

And he went on: “Before we would never talk about whether someone was Sunni or Shia or Christian. You would never hear those words, we all lived peacefully. I don’t know what is going to happen now.”

Will the bakers and barbers stop working or will they stock weapons and hire “protection” and add it to the cost of goods? That might have been the question three or four years ago, but the market is so broken now and the violence escalating so much that it is a wonder anyone goes to work in the open or identifies themselves as a baker. I wonder what bank security must look like:

On Sunday, a day after at least 36 people were killed in a spate of bombings in Baghdad, gunmen stormed a city bakery and kidnapped the ten employees in the early morning hours.

“Gunmen in five civilian cars stormed the bakery in the Shiite neighborhood of Kadhimiyah and took away the ten employees,� an interior ministry official said.

Police also found nine bodies of men who were tortured to death, an indication that sectarian killings were continuing without halt between the Shiite and Sunni communities.

When the US first invaded, they accused anyone who was in the Ba’athist Party of being a loyalist to Saddam. Nevermind the fact that people working in the public sector (schools, hospitals, etc.) had no choice but to publically support Saddam, since he required their loyalty and punished dissent. Sadly, instead of bringing freedom to these people, the Bush administration policy led by Bremer was to remove all “loyalists” and create a flat, open market. Into this vacuum rushed the extremists and resistance fighters and thus became the foundation for violence today. Moreover, I think it important to note that the resistance forces appear to be taking the same tactics as the Bush administration and declaring anyone with any affiliation to the government a potential target:

Electricity is a big problem. Many big private generating sets are providing homes with power. The terrorists forbid the operators to do their work because they think this will strengthen the government position.

It is the same with other services. Even Shia bakers are being killed, they don’t want them to feed Shias.

History, Security

Militant turned peacemaker

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Interesting story of a man who left his violent and prejudiced upbringing to settle down and develop peaceful roots:

“My whole dream was to die as a shaheed [martyr]. At demonstrations I would open my shirt hoping to be shot – but the Israelis would never shoot at the body, so I never succeeded,” he said.

One day, in the middle of a riot, Walid was part of a group which snatched an Israeli soldier who was trying to quell the violence.

They beat him senseless and tried to lynch him, before he was rescued by troops and the group fled.

“We ran to a monastery where the nuns protected us – even they hated the Jews!”

Walid was eventually caught and imprisoned in the Muscovite Prison in Jerusalem, but was released after a few weeks.

He returned to violence straight away, bombing an Israeli bank in Bethlehem.

The story credits a visit to the US, higher education, and falling in love with a non-militant woman of a different faith as his path to redemption.

“I chose to speak out because I was a victim, as a child I was a victim of this horror. Now I see other victims, millions of them, kids.

“I was taught songs about killing Jews. You need to get rid of the education system where they are teaching this type of thing and get rid of the terrorist groups. It will take a generation, but until then, there’s not going to be peace, it doesn’t matter what kind of land settlement you have.”

A militant-turned-peacemaker, Walid wants to meet the Israel soldier he tried to kill almost 30 years ago.

His voice cracking with emotion, Walid said he would offer the soldier his hand and say to him: “‘Please understand, we were just children, brainwashed to kill you, to hate you.’ I would seek his forgiveness.”

With regard to the TTB fallacy from a few days ago, this illustrates why a universal definition of “grave moral consequences” is so hard to pin down if you try and account for people who carry deep prejudice in their heart. Remove the prejudice and it becomes much easier to see genuine threats to common values of humanity.

History, Security

The ticking time bomb fallacy

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W

Bruce posted a brief excerpt from the Balkan blog. I especially appreciated the comments by Sparohok. They brought to mind President Bush’s message last month at a news conference:

[Our interrogators] don’t want to be tried as war criminals. … They expect our government to give them clarity about what is right and what is wrong.

While this makes sense, Sparohok clearly refutes the Bush approach to finding clarity — arguably Vice President Cheney’s position. A relaxation of laws against torture will make them far more complex to decipher. Sadly, that could be the reason that Bush is putting up a fight with the Geneva convention. Generating more confusion in the matter of what is to be considered torture while calling it a campaign for “clarity” sounds like a very slick ruse dreamed up by Cheney himself to side-step any risk of accountability.

Too bad Bush flip-flopped from his December 2005 statement that he supported the McCain bill against torture:

The new legislation, Bush said, will now ”make it clear to the world that this government does not torture and that we adhere to the international convention of torture, whether it be here at home or abroad.”

But it turns out he was just giving lip service, perhaps because he knew he could not win the debate fairly. Instead he quietly appended one of his infamous signing statements to the bill after signing that said he would only enforce the ban “in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the president” that would still allow “protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks.”

Clarity indeed…what appears to be happening is Bush is playing a desperate political game, surely with Cheney in the drivers seat, to hide folly and shirk accountability:

There has been growing uneasiness among these national security professionals at some of what they have been asked to do, and at the seeming unconcern among civilian leaders at the Pentagon and the CIA for the consequences of administration decisions. […] The quiet revolt of the generals at the Pentagon is a big reason U.S. policy in Iraq has been changing, far more than Bush’s stay-the-course speeches might suggest. […] A similar revolt is evident at the CIA. Professional intelligence officers are furious at the politicized leadership brought to the agency […] The CIA, like the military, wants clear and sustainable rules of engagement. Agency employees don’t want their careers ruined by future congressional or legal investigations of actions they thought were authorized.

Thus, to the point of the Balkin blog, imagine yourself in the TTB scenario wondering if your superior is an incompetant political appointee giving you orders with the intent to dispose of your career to further their own, especially when the chips are down. You’re being told to torture because it’s just “the way we do things around here; you’re either with us or against us”. Would you torture? Would you believe them when they say it’s up to you to save the millions?

In point of fact, without conclusive hard evidence that millions are at risk, it seems uninmaginable that a professional would kill or even torture a detainee.

We should not forget, however, how Bush justified the pre-emptive strike on Iraq:

QUESTION: As you know, not everyone shares your optimistic vision of how [the invasion of Iraq] might play out. Do you ever worry, maybe in the wee, small hours, that you might be wrong and they might be right in thinking that this could lead to more terrorism, more anti-American sentiment, more instability in the Middle East?

BUSH: I think, first of all, it’s hard to envision more terror on America than September the 11th, 2001. We did nothing to provoke that terrorist attack. It came upon us because there is an enemy which hates America. They hate what we stand for. We love freedom, and we’re not changing.

And therefore, so long as there’s a terrorist network like al Qaeda and others willing to fund them, finance them, equip them, we’re at war.

And so I — you know, obviously I’ve thought long and hard about the use of troops. I think about it all of the time. It is my responsibility to commit the troops.

[…]

This is society, Ron, who — which has been decimated by his murderous ways, his torture. He doesn’t allow dissent. He doesn’t believe in the values we believe in.

I believe this society — the Iraqi society can develop in a much better way. I think of the risks, calculated the costs of inaction versus the cost of action. And I’m firmly convinced, if we have to, we will act in the name of peace and in the name of freedom.

The cost of inaction — the ticking time bomb risks — were raised by the President and repeated ad nauseum. “They have WMD. We must take action now. They are lying. We are in danger…but there is a simple solution. If we hurt them enough, we will find and eliminate the risks…”:

QUESTION: Thank you, sir.

Mr. President, millions of Americans can recall a time when leaders from both parties set this country on a mission of regime change in Vietnam. Fifty-thousand Americans died. The regime is still there in Hanoi and it hasn’t harmed or threatened a single American in 30 years since the war ended.

What can you say tonight, sir, to the sons and the daughters of the Americans who served in Vietnam to assure them that you will not lead this country down a similar path in Iraq?

BUSH: It’s a great question.

Our mission is clear in Iraq. Should we have to go in, our mission is very clear: disarmament.

In order to disarm, it will mean regime change. I’m confident that we’ll be able to achieve that objective in a way that minimizes the loss of life.

No doubt there’s risks with any military operation. I know that. But it’s very clear what we intend to do. And our mission won’t change. The mission is precisely what I just stated. We’ve got a plan that will achieve that mission should we need to send forces in.

Sage question. The fact appears to be that if Iraq had continued under international pressure for inspectors and further review, Americans would have been as safe if not more safe from harm than they are today.

Missing