Category Archives: Poetry

History, Poetry, Security

Eritrea Accused of Proxy War Through Somalia

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This is one of those moments when I feel the urge to say “I told you so” or scream in frustration, or something similar.

The UN is trying to point out to those who will listen that Eritrea is believed to be funneling arms into Somalia.

No kidding. That was my main concern last December when the US foolishly pushed Ethiopia back into direct confrontation in the Ogaden region and crushed the Somali peace.

Anyone familiar with the history of conflict in the region could predict that the most recent Ethiopian-led US-backed operation of whacking the bees nest known as the Horn of Africa with a big stick would undermine the nascent government in Somalia and return the region to a hotbed of militarized destablization and bloody terrorism.

Eritrea, of course, denies any involvement in the proliferation of arms:

Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu told Associated Press news agency his country had not provided any assistance to the Shabab.

“It is a total fabrication and the intention of the report is to depict it as if there is a proxy war between Eritrea and Ethiopia,” Mr Abdu said.

The Bush administration has been caught lying under oath now so many times, that I imagine it would be hard for them to try and point a finger at any other country and demand accountability. I doubt they could even bring up the term corruption without losing all credibility. But I digress…

It does seem plausable that Eritrea has continued their historic fight with Ethiopia by arming former allies in Somalia. In fact, I was having a hard time understanding why they did not resist the Ethiopian incursion. Now, in retrospect, it makes a lot of sense that they waited for the conventional forces to move in and get bogged down before initiating a protracted resistance movement. That is what they are most famous for and how they defeated Mengistu’s giant Soviet/Chinese/Cuban-backed army over 30 years — the largest standing force in the world at the time.

I think people forget that a tank has become a sign of former security (control) capability, not present or future.

My best guess as to why the Bush administration has been so unbelievably counter-productive in foreign policy in the Horn is that they are still stuck in a fantasy of the Cold War mentality. They think that Reagan won, when in fact it was the other side unilaterally attempting to take a path of greater accountability for a failed and corrupt economic system, as I’ve mentioned before too.

The idea under Reagan was to stop the Communists at any cost. Destablizing a region meant potentially bringing down a group that could fall, or already was, into the “hands of the Reds”. Unfortunately, this strategy in today’s world brings about the opposite effect, leading regions into a harsh anti-establishment highly-distributed position as the discontent of rubble is a power-vacuum more easly filled by “the Fundies” (religious fundamentalists and other extremists) than blue-jeans and Coca Cola.

Saying that the US can send in their heavy forces to reconnect with the outliers once they have had their network plugs pulled is like saying IBM will convince iPhone users that they want to connect to their mainframe. Sadly, the current big-blue thinkers in the White House just don’t get it.

Poetry, Security

San Francisco International Poetry Festival

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Sabah Mohsen Jasim, the Iraqi activist, is quoted in The City Star saying “To be a poet one must pay much.” Visa complications have prevented her from attending the San Francisco International Poetry Festival that started tonight. US national security at work.

I was really hoping to hear Ferlinghetti, and the international lineup is exciting, but as Jasim put it “routine seems a real foe”.

Indeed. With everything going on right now I can only hope I have a free moment to attend. As I told a friend recently, “I’ve had to be both a morning/night person lately, so ring whenever. If I answer, then that’s what I’ll be.”

WWSCD? (What would Schrödinger’s cat do?)

The Equation

But seriously, I wonder what Jack Hirschman has up his sleeve for the next couple of days.

Poetry, Security

Ode to a Paranoid

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I just heard news of the tragic and untimely death of a former colleague due to a motorcycle accident.

I did not ask for many details, but it had the sounds of a hit-and-run.

Here’s an elegy to the memory of a fellow security professional, and all he did to make the world a better place…

Panic On
by Madder Rose

What I want
Is what I hope to find
But I drift up in the air

See the trees
Way up in the sky
That is where I plan to make my station

So panic on
You really panic on
But I don’t need that confrontation

By the light
One night in the dark
It won’t show you too much of the future

Let it go
Let it fall behind
I would never count on human nature

So panic on
You really panic on
But I don’t need that confrontation

So panic on
You really panic on
But you’ll find out sooner or later

Food, History, Poetry, Security

WWI Spirits Unearthed in Gradesnica

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Soon after I wrote about the potential value of beer to Vikings (greater than gold?), I find a story extolling a historic French soldier brandy find as the “nectar of the gods”.

Farmers in Gradesnica have unearthed what they say are cases of spirits from trenches once used by French soldiers.

Spirits of those killed by artillery. This Eau de vie gets a new lease on life.

Valued at thousands of euros a bottle, it is said to have survived a German shell strike that killed many soldiers.

The first case of 15 bottles was reportedly unearthed by villagers in the south of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia about 15 years ago.

Several further batches, containing about 12 bottles each, are said to have been found in subsequent digs.

What drives the price so high? Rarity, surely. It also might be something like the phenomenon of product cycles, as Wikipedia suggests the modern value of Cognac sales is linked to interest from young Americans.

Many have credited hip-hop culture as the savior of cognac sales in the USA; after nearly floundering in 1998 due to economic crisis in Asia—cognac’s #1 export market at the time…

Reminds me of the time I discovered no one in Milwaukee would be caught dead drinking a particular drink if their parents enjoyed one, but they were more than happy to try it if it was from their grandparents’ or older generation. The old stuff becomes new again eventually.

Incidentally, if you are ever lucky enough to find a tender who still keeps a pot of Door County cherry mash with spices melting in a pot behind the bar, I highly recommend ordering an Old Fashioned. Soda-water, if they ask. Don’t believe anyone who says a cube of sugar or even a maraschino cherry is involved in achieving the appropriate flavor. They might as well call grape juice with aspartame a variety of brandy.

Granted, the Wikipedia is referring to American sales, and surely the interest in the Gradesnica bottles will be driven by those painfully aware of the region’s social as well as military history, or experts in the trade of fine spirits. But on the other hand, with all the silly XO, VS and VSS labels on cognac today, I wonder if a new label will appear to commemorates the survival of the French cache as the ultimate in exclusivity. The marketing for something like this is superfluous, but perhaps someone will still propose a label or even a brand.

Maybe we can expect Busta Rhymes to come out with a Courvoisier remix — “pass the Gradesnica” — with the sensibilities of the Clash’s Spanish Bombs. Andalucia is known for an Eau de vie made from aniseed. Hmmm, I see a theme here…battle booze.