FAO Quotables

"But being right, even morally right, isn't everything. It is also important to be competent, to be consistent, and to be knowledgeable. It's important for your soldiers and diplomats to speak the language of the people you want to influence. It's important to understand the ethnic and tribal divisions of the place you hope to assist."
-Anne Applebaum

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Iran's "America Can't Do a Damn Thing" Billboard

We are studying Iran's 1979 Revolution this week in my Islamic Fundamentalism class.  It reminded me of a picture a friend took back in 2005.  This billboard sits along the Iran/Iraq border, close to the mouth of the river (Khor Abdullah).

We always got a kick out of Khomeini's giant middle finger to the United States!

beach 048


Iran/Iraq border

Monday, July 30, 2012

FUUO Poet of the Week from Namibia: Mvula ya Nangolo

FUUO Poet of the Week from Namibia: Mvula ya Nangolo


             Nangolo is widely acknowledged as the national poet of Namibia.  He studied in Europe for several years before returning to Africa in the mid 60's.  An active member of SWAPO (South West Africa Peoples Organization), a political liberation movement, the South African government sentenced him (after a year in solitary confinement without being charged) along with a large group of his compatriots.  He spent 16 years (of a 20 year sentence) in Robben Island beginning in 1968.

             After his release in 1984, he remained active in the Namibian independence movement and in the Namibian government after the country's independence in 1990.  He continues to write today.

            Nangolo's second poem, Guerilla Promise is GANGSTER!  These lyrics could very well have been spit by NWA or ICE-T back in the days.


Robben Island


Dedicated to comrade Andimba Toivo ya Toivo who spent eighteen years of a twenty year sentence on Robben island.  


Just how far is Robben Island from a black child at play?
What forces take his father there with all the world between?
Oh! Mother caution your warrior son again
or else he'll show his might

Just how far is Robben Island from the United Nations
   headquarters?
Have I time to ponder now when patriots are drilling fast?
Spears are flying and the shields are once more bloody
for the drums of war are beating again

Just how far is Robben Island from the London Stock Exchange?
You couldn't hear my talking war drums
for uselessly loud is the enemy's cannon roar

Just how far is Robben Island from the Yankee's White House?
I have no sight for I do not speak languages so foreign
the stars and zebra stripes are dazzling me
the US President speaks--his foreign secretary cheats

Then just how far is Robben Island from the field of Waterloo?
A few bushes away
a village or two in between
and the warrior son will take you there.




Guerilla Promise

I'll rush upon you
like escaping newborn sunray
that dazzle you with my lethal swiftness
'cause I'm the Fight
As unknown as an unborn battle
labouring with steel and hand grenade
I'm death conceived
'til my moment arrives
with pain...blood and terror
I'm a soldier of this realm
I'm a poisoned arrow
I'm a string-bow
I'm a sharpened spear
I'm a sword
waiting in my sheath
only for your death.


Robben Island












Toivo

















Nangolo














LINKS:
http://www.brownturtlepress.com/authors/nangolo.html
http://www.klausdierks.com/Biographies/Biographies_T.htm
http://allafrica.com/stories/201205030140.html

Some of my favorite poetry books:

10 African Olympians to Watch

Good article.




http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18976540

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Gunpowder and Lead on Islamism--best thing I've read all month (BTIRAM)

Gunpowder and Lead on Islamism--best thing I've read all month (BTIRAM)

     How I would rue the day were I to draw the ire of Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Lauren Morgan.  In Miranda Lambert's blog the security affairs blog Gunpowder and Lead, the two authors take issue demolish David Briggs' poorly constructed attempt to draw a parallel between Islamists and American politicians.
   
      The most important thing to take away from their post is that Islamism is not a monolithic movement--it manifests differently in each country (and more often than not, it has several manifestations in each country).  Unfortunately this distinction is most often lost in the majority of political rhetoric.

Following is their opening paragraph.  You can read it in its entirety here:


The term “Islamist” has been bandied about frequently since revolutionary events gripped the Arab world last year. It is a term meant to signify those, including political parties, that wish to incorporate their understanding of Islamic law into the laws of the state. Political parties commonly described as Islamist won significant victories in Tunisia and Egypt, and were narrowly defeated in the recent Libyan elections. But is the term Islamist appropriate at all to describe these parties and politicians? In arecent piece for the Huffington Post entitled “Is It Time to Reconsider the Term Islamist?” David Briggs argues that the answer is no. His argument is confused, drifting without apparent direction from a terminological critique to the argument that the Islamist political program isn’t really as immoderate as is generally believed. Flaws aside, Briggs’s piece plays upon some more widely-held misconceptions about the political program embraced by Islamists that are worth addressing.
Briggs’s article itself has the distinction of interweaving major factual or analytical errors into virtually every paragraph, and is an exemplar of how not to approach these issues analytically . . . 


LINKS:

http://gunpowderandlead.org/2012/07/islamism-in-the-popular-imagination/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-briggs/islamist-is-it-time-to-reconsider-the-term_b_1624319.html

Brooks stumbles in her "Socialist Military"--are we getting punk'd by Foreign Policy?

UPDATE:  I have decided to cut Brooks some slack.  The more I read her initial blog posts, the more I think readers must view her writing as a research-project-in-work.  Brooks is beginning her posts with a research question and a thesis statement of sorts that will no doubt be revised and fine-tuned in the coming months.  She is very open to comments/emails/critiques and I am confident her research sources and analysis will continue to improve.




Original Post:


Rosa Brooks' Welfare State: Meet America's Socialist Military annoyed me to no end because her analysis was so arbitrary and meandering.  Reading her follow up blog posts and her lack of research rigor (she uses USA Today as a source), I have to wonder whether we are getting punked by Foreign Policy??  If, however, FP's aim was to drive readership and begin a dialogue on military spending--WELL DONE.

Her basic thesis was (from what I could tell) that,

"These days, the same could be said of the American military. Is the military different from the rest of us? Yes -- it has more money."

And while she stated she was only looking for the facts, she obviously skewed those facts to favor her hypothesis.  There were two commenters that most aptly captured the main issues with her article.

Here's googooyou's (an unfortunate screen name that should not distract from his insight) great comments :

1. CBO caveats comparing military to federal civilian compensation and rightly so.  The biggest glaring example is that military are salaried whereas civilians are hourly.  Let's punch the time clock to see what soldiers actually are paid on an hourly basis and then see where compensation falls.  Interesting that the CBO report cited did not include postal, legislative, and judicial employees and excluded warrant officers from the military.
2. CBO in this report also analyzed enlisted soldiers versus federal civilians with high school diploma.  Given that today's enlisted personnel by the time they are NCOs will have a college degree, let's then make an accurate comparison of their pay for years in service and college degree versus federal civilian with college degree, and let's see how much less they actually make in comparison.
3. CBO's officer comparison is also off, since most officers will have a master's degree, so let's actually compare salaries of federal employees with master's degrees versus straight bachelor's.  Also, considering my small scope on things, having had many GS14-GS15's work for me who have half the time in service and less education than me, making more than me sure seems to go against what CBO is reporting here. Not to mention my comrades in State and other Agencies who make more than me with less time in service.
4. CBO reports are biased, not because CBO is necessarily biased, because CBO only goes off the parameters requested by the asking party.  In this case, it was from Dem Whip.  At least CBO dedicates an entire page to explaining reasons why comparison is difficult, although it makes some stupid assessments about intangible benefits like solidarity offsetting real costs of things like moving your family every 1-3 years.
5. Let's get a real estimate of what soldiers' compensation should be by just looking at what the government is willing, rather has to pay, security personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc as well as what the government has to pay federal civilians in those areas, then compare against military pay.  Let's start with security personnel making $160-$200 per day versus E-5 and below pay/compensation.  For equivalent college educated personnel at State and other Federal Agencies with the 75% plus compensation and other amenities on top of regular pay, versus junior office with equivalent college education.
6. Just because there are noncash benefits does not mean that all soldiers are able to use them.  Given housing costs in various areas, it is cost prohibitive to go to the commissary.  I also disagree with the cost comparison of the commissaries since I don't know where they get the figures since it seems where I shop on the economy is cheaper than the commissary, even if going to one wasn't cost prohibitive.  Plus, the commissary is famous for saying that you don't pay tax, but there is a surcharge, not to mention the baggage fees.  Same applies for recreation centers etc.  Medical care is a whole different animal considering, as anon12 said so well, it isn't so much a benefit as it is a requirement for readiness.  Given that it takes so many appointments to get anything done in the military health system these days, the costs seem to be more administrative bureaucratic ones rather than quality health care.  That cost should not be spread across as some compensation to military personnel.  I'd really like to see how CBO or other people actually calculate noncash benefits, because this is where the real fluff goes when trying to compare.

The English major in me loved Morgan Rock's comments:
I think the author needs to have a talk with her husband.  It seems she has a misunderstanding of the term "dangerous job".  I don't really understand how anyone with the slightest bit of understanding about the way the military works could write this article.  It seems like the kind of thing I would have seen over a decade ago in my high school AP english class... as an example of how not to write well-reasoned, coherent analysis pieces.  The title barely makes any sense in context with the article, and there doesn't seem to be one actual argument or theme to the whole thing.

Here's what I saw in the article (not all inclusive):
- The military gets too much money
- The military gets much more money than the State Department
- The military's benefits are unjustly higher than those in other civilian professions
- Civilians don't understand the military
- Civilians reflexively revere the military, with reverence approaching that of religion
- The military is being asked to do too much
- The military is overworked and deployed too much, too often
Which of these statements are the primary point of the article?  How does she reconcile the contradictory ideas?  Why should civilians NOT revere the military?  How SHOULD the military be compensated (or should civilians get the same "unsustainable" social programs)?  Good lord, this article is a mess.






















LINKS:


Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Week in Review: Maghreb, Poetry, Cocaine, East Africa, Nigeria and Flip Flops

MAGHREB
Breaking News : News of police violent repression against demonstration in  this evening. Several injuries and detainees
 court jails Feb20 activist/jobless grads group member Hakim Baqqali for 4 years, fines him $12,500 after Beni Bouayach protests

Morocco To Start 4G Licence Process 


Fascinating  report from Maghnia, on the not-so "closed" Algerian/Moroccan border: 

POETRY
The deafness of the world.Night turns Homewards,sheathed in notes of solace,pleats The broken silence of the heart. 


don't hold your breath -  meeting on  coming up


Sometimes prayer feels like dry ground longing for rain. Sometimes I don't really feel how dry I really am until I've started to pray.


Your heart thumps —/ as if she were already/ at your door./ Or — as if expecting her —/ all the birds in . . . 

Et nous baignerons,mon amie,dans une présence Africaine Des tapis étincelants et doux de Tombouctou.  


Maybe - though I do not bleed - I am wounded, walking along one of the rays of your life. 


Dangerous To Know: On Philip Larkin’s Complete Poems


DRUGS
Washington's response to LatAm-Africa-US drug trafficking triangle will cause more problems than it'll solve, I fear 


EAST AFRICA
New blog post: East Africa’s Oil/Gas Rush Highlights Kenya-Somalia Maritime Border Dispute -   


 thanks Christians for protection and solidarity during crackdown  


What could possibly go wrong? RT : U.S. to Provide Kenya With Drones to Fight Militants 

Exploring the oft-mentioned 'animists' in South Sudan. Oh, wait - there aren't any.  Illuminating blog by 


This young man in Kenya, who was able to open a business & look after his siblings thanks to a cash transfer. Video: 

The Life of An Outlaw (aka A Kenyan Matatu Driver): Anyone who has spent significant time in East...  (new post)

OTHER
Nigeria's iPad :The man behind Africa's low-cost tablet computer (     ) 

Dissecting the Nigerian pop princess: 

new blog post: China Provides Another $20 Billion to Africa 


's defunct school in  to be converted into heroes acre / cemetery   "I have a problem..."


This org has 52 projects on our Horn of Africa Aid Map () working on both short term recovery and long term development


forecasting civil conflict onsets is hard, especially in countries with other ongoing disputes. 


"The brutal force they are using is against the basic principles of Islam.” A useful stance from Mali's Muslim notables 



FUN
27 of history's strangest inventions, in archival photographs 


Way better than TOM'S, hipster flip flops made in Kabul.


So cool! RT 
: Getting married? Have an anniversary coming up? Let me turn your vows into art. 



Added to my wish list! A Labyrinth of Kingdoms: 10,000 Miles through Islamic Africa...+