Zimbabwe: enough is enough
Via the Flickr "Democracy in Action" photo pool, I ran across a blog by Zimbabweans called "This is Zimbabwe" this evening.

The blog is run by Sokwanele, described as a "popular underground movement in Zimbabwe" in Wikipedia. Sokwanele means "enough is enough"; it appears to be credible enough for many news organizations seeking up-to-date information about the situation in Zimbabwe.

The blog reports that in the wake of the recent election -- which the opposition appears to have won, but which Mugabe is seeking to undo via a run-off -- Mugabe's police have resumed their practice of vicious beatings of opposition voters and party members; a photo of one of the victims, taken yesterday, is on the right. The group also maintains a map of election conditions across Zimbabwe. The legend includes symbols for murder, food supply, political violence, and abduction, to name a few.

The latest development is that Zambian government has called for a weekend meeting of the SADC, a Southern African regional group, to discuss the crisis, and that both elected leader Tsvangirai and Robert Mugabe will attend. Sokwanele requests that supporters of human rights and democracy politely contact a number of official e-mail addresses in the Zambian government, the South African government, and the SADC, and tell them that "Zimbabweans have the right to live in a democratic, free and peaceful country.... we voted for change, we got change, and we want change now."

It seems like a small enough request by people who deserve the support of decent people everywhere. We may have our own house to clean up here in the United States, but we can surely spare a moment to help our friends elsewhere too.


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SEE ALSO other posts about Zimbabwe at this site.
UPDATE, 4/11: African history scholar and professor Timothy Burke has forgotten more than I'll ever know about Zimbabwe, so for continued coverage that's a better place to go than here; the link leads to a discussion of a recent NYTimes op-ed. Burke thinks Mugabe's security apparatus -- that is, not necessarily Mugabe -- is what's really in control of the Zimbabwean government. Via Jim Henley.
UPDATE, 4/11: An online petition via AVAAZ.org will be presented to South African president Thabo Mbeki when he visits the UN next week. Mbeki is considered one of the few people who might have influence on Mugabe.

We sign to support the democratic and human rights of the people of Zimbabwe. Election results must be released immediately, verified independently, and--if approved as legitimate--accepted by all parties. If a run-off is required, it should be monitored by international observers and be kept free of violence, fraud, and intimidation. World leaders, including South African President Thabo Mbeki, should do all they can to ensure a just result.

UPDATE, 4/12: Two makes a blogswarm! Nell Lancaster ("A Lovely Promise") notes Mbeki's incredible "no crisis" statement, under a title that says it all: "Let them know they're not alone".
UPDATE, 4/14: General strike tomorrow. More at American Street, where Nell's title gets another blog home.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:20:00 PM -- |  

 
Among the netroots
I went to a "Netroots Nation" fundraiser yesterday at the Mott House near the Capitol. The price was pretty reasonable as fundraisers go, and there was the prospect of seeing some friends and hearing from some of the good guys in Washington, D.C., including Senator Russ Feingold. The entry price went to support expenses for the Yearly Kos meeting in Austin this summer; that seemed like a pretty good cause.

Several online friends of mine were there, including KCinDC, altHippo, and WorldWideWeber. (Not sure anonymity is important to all of them, but I'll go with the pseudonyms just in case.)

The first order of business was hearing from Feingold and others. Feingold -- an Obama voter and likely supporter as superdelegate -- surprised me a little by saying that "January 21, 2009 is as important as January 20", meaning that it wouldn't just matter who's elected, but how the next president actually proceeds. He continued that it was important that the online progressive community held Washington's feet to the fire. The subtext really seemed to be that even if Obama was elected, Feingold felt the "netroots" audience would need to continue putting pressure on DC to do the right thing. In a followup, a questioner mentioned Jim Webb and his disappointing votes on FISA. Feingold didn't spit fire and brimstone, of course, but he said he felt the questioner needed to keep the pressure on -- "not saying get rid of him", but keep the pressure on.

Other speakers included Representatives Lloyd Doggett (TX-25), Steve Cohen (TN-9), Brad Miller (NC-13), and Rush Holt (NJ-12). Several had a bit of trouble drowning out a single songbird that was just singing his heart out as dusk gathered. But all of them made a very good impression on me. Cohen mentioned he was going to speak up for Barack Obama at a meeting of the Anti-Defamation League -- which drew strong applause; I'm not saying Clinton supporters would have booed that, but my impression was that if polled, the crowd would probably have favored Obama by a wide margin. Miller noted that all incoming House members try to pick an obscure topic to become expert in that won't step on anyone else's toes - his was mortgage lending, and he was emphatic that in his view lenders had gone into the subprime loan business with a view to "stripping equity" from their customers.

Weber and I wound up having a long talk with altHippo. AH wondered what I thought of what he's calling the "great 2008 rift" in the lefty blogosphere, as Obama and Clinton partisans duke it out online, and suggested it was (again paraphrasing) the end of an era of community of lefty bloggers who had made objectivity their goal rather than propaganda. I allowed that was a concern, but offered a couple of countertheories; one, that like Feingold was suggesting, some bloggers are putting down markers for being ready to go into opposition if (or when) Obama or Clinton disappoint -- should one of them be elected, knock on wood.

A second thought was that as the Bush years have worn on, enraging so many of us, and as the established opinion media have at best failed to oppose him, the leftish blogosphere has put a premium on rhetorical feistiness. Some of that no-holds barred anger has maybe carried over to a Democratic campaign where neither remaining candidate looks like a progressive savior, so as people wind up choosing sides, there's little reason to hold back with all the firepower gained from doing our "rhetorical pushups", as I called it, over the years.

I had and have few ready quotes or links to point to in support of any of the above. On a third point, however, I do; an observation by Obsidian Wings reader "callimaco" about the Ohio primary rang true. I'll leave it an excerpt, but the whole thing was very good:

More, [working class voters] don't want to "join" anything. They want a “transaction”. That’s the “vote for me” model of political action. The transaction is this: we will vote for you and you will fight for us. Clinton offered them that transaction and they voted for her.

Maybe there's a way to square that with my feeling that sometimes, perhaps given all the imponderables, the fight between online Obama and Clinton supporters often seems to turn on more on their evaluation of eachother than of the candidates. Many of us have faced or face a difficult choice between candidates, one involving weighing their Iraq, healthcare and other policy positions, the kind of campaign they run, the kind of support they've built, and the kind of advocate and president they might be. Once we've made our choices, the conflicts with others may "simply" reflect personality types and personal priorities.

There's nothing wrong with that -- I just hope we'll all see there was nothing all that wrong with picking the other candidate either. Or that our preferred one may not be all he or she is cracked up to be. Come November, it's going to need to be good enough that McCain and the Bush tradition he intends to carry forward is much worse. But like Feingold said, come January 21, 2009, our job won't be over even if McCain loses.


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* I'm paraphrasing Feingold's remarks from memory; while the gist is accurate, they may not be the precise remark Feingold made.
EDIT, 4/10: next to last paragraph edited a couple of times, to little avail.

UPDATE, 4/11: altHippo discusses the event and our discussion as well, and provides an example of an arguably unproductive Obama critique at Talkleft. Matthew Yglesias was there, too (fundraiser, not our discussion), and was glad of the reminder that there are some bona fide good guys in Congress.
UPDATE, 4/14:: Welcome Air America readers -- and thanks for the link(s), Avedon.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 6:01:00 PM -- |  

 
Moral authority is for a**holes, not players
Your former Undersecretary of Defense and mine, Douglas Feith, speaking with Philippe Sands ("The Green Light," Vanity Fair about the good old days when he played a role in approving torture:

"This year I was really a player," Feith said, thinking back on 2002 and relishing the memory. I asked him whether, in the end, he was at all concerned that the Geneva decision might have diminished America’s moral authority. He was not. "The problem with moral authority," he said, was "people who should know better, like yourself, siding with the assholes, to put it crudely."

Crudely indeed. This rings a couple of bells for me. One is Sir Richard Rich in Robert Bolt's "A Man for All Seasons." Early on in the story he disdains a mere teaching position Thomas More offers him, preferring the wealth and glamour of being a player in the time of Henry VIII. Ultimately he perjures himself to send Thomas More to the executioner's block and gain, in return for an appointment to high office.

As Bolt has More put it, Sir Rich gave his soul not even for the whole world, but for Wales. Feith gave his... for what? The chance to brag to a disgusted interviewer. And, I suppose, for a teaching position at Georgetown.

The other memory the statement evoked is still a sad one for me: Eric Alterman's recent remark, at a book reading I attended, that "principles are a form of moral vanity." Alterman might well argue that opposing impeachment as inopportune and impolitic is not the same as undermining solemn treaty and human rights obligations. On the other hand, it's precisely the latter transgressions that impeachment would punish (or would have punished). Which is worse -- mocking the principle of human rights, or mocking the principle that justice should be done for abrogating those rights?

I'll add that I've been reading Alterman's book -- not his most recent one, but the more scholarly and interesting "When Presidents Lie." More on that another time, maybe. Suffice it to say two thumbs up, and one reader still puzzled by Alterman's concluding advice to presidents in that book ("...do not, under any circumstances, lie"), set against his allergic reaction to the remedy of impeachment for those who do so and worse.


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EDIT, 4/10: asterisks in title. I had no complaints, but the title appears via RSS feed in aggregators and some blogs, so a belated effort not to offend others seemed called for.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:30:00 PM -- |  

 
Memory almost full

(Self-updating listing of my "del.icio.us" links)

This blog is parked at an ISP home page site granting about 16MB of space. After about six and half years(!) of blogging, that space is almost full; you might say newsrack blog is approaching the "one more wafer" stage. I've been moving images (they really are worth a thousand words!) and various documents over to Photobucket and Google Docs, but soon that won't do the trick either.

So (while I've said it before) expect a move to a new host in the nearish future, other higher priority chores permitting. I'll redate this post to the front page as I undertake that transition, and will eventually add a link to the blog's new location. That blog will probably be remodeled a bit; I'll take suggestions again here, and will bear in mind the ones people have made in the past. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:30:00 PM -- |