Like many whites in South Africa, we had a maid from the moment we moved into our new house near Pinetown, Durban in around 1989 or so. Roughly 8% of South Africa’s workforce are thought to be domestic workers, the vast majority of whom are now earning R1000 or less per month (2003 figures). As late as 1999, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) estimated that the average wage for domestic workers was between R369 and R549. The large domestic labour force reflects both South Africa’s apartheid past and its current struggle with job creation, poverty and unemployment, where “Between 1994 and 2003, unemployment rose by 153 percent … Unemployment is still 115 percent higher than it was in 1994.”

But our maid was not just a statistic, or someone who had to make the bed.

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A new addition to the site: lowfatbrains’ mind, which is basically my own little store that I set up on Amazon using their new aStore feature available for their associates. If you go and have a look, it opens a new window (it seems their iframe code doesn’t fit in nicely with my site; it’s still in beta, so maybe that’ll change in future) and you’ll get a list of my featured books. At the moment they only allow nine books to be displayed, with no ability to add books to categories or sub-categories, so I’ll try and change the featured page on a fairly regular basis.

Moonrise through the branches of a Baobab Tree at Mopani camp in the Kruger National Park. From Wikipedia:

The baobab (Adansonia), or monkey bread tree are a genus of eight species of trees, native to Madagascar (the centre of diversity, with six species), and mainland Africa and Australia (one species in each). The mainland African species also occurs in Madagascar, but it is not a native of that country. The species reach heights of between 5�??25 m (exceptionally 30 m) tall, and up to 7 m (exceptionally 11 m) in trunk diameter. They are noted for storing water inside the swollen trunk, with the capacity to store up to 120,000 litres of water to endure the harsh drought conditions particular to each region [1]. All occur in seasonally arid areas, and are deciduous, shedding their leaves during the dry season. Some are reputed to be many thousands of years old, though as the wood does not produce annual growth rings, this is impossible to verify; few botanists give any credence to these claims of extreme age.

The Malagasy species are important components of the Madagascar dry deciduous forests. Within that biome, A. madagascariensis and A. rubrostipa occur specifically in the Anjajavy Forest, sometimes growing out of the tsingy limestone itself.

The leaves are also common as a leaf vegetable throughout the area of mainland African distribution, including Malawi, Zimbabwe, and the Sahel. They are eaten both fresh and in the form of a dry powder. In Nigeria, the leaves are locally known as kuka, and are used to make kuka soup. The dry pulp of the fruit, after separation from the seeds and fibers, is eaten directly or mixed into porridge or milk. The seeds are most used as a thickener for soups, but may also be fermented into a seasoning, roasted for direct consumption, or pounded to extract vegetable oil. The tree also provides a source of fibre, dye, and fuel.

The Boab was used by Indigenous Australians as a source of water and food; the leaves were used medicinally. They also painted and carved the outside of the fruits, and wore them as ornaments. A very large, hollow boab south of Derby, Western Australia was used in the 1890s as a lockup for Aboriginal prisoners on their way to Derby for sentencing. The Boab Prison Tree still stands and is now a tourist attraction.

Some recovered history here, one of my favourite pieces: the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It’s nothing “new” if you follow these things, but it’s worth writing down. Anyway, the “official” doctrine for many years had it that the USSR invaded long before the CIA began funding their opponents that later went on to become the Taliban. In fact, the CIA’s own website still refers to the invasion as being an “intelligence failure”: “Earlier intelligence reports on activities by the Soviet military units had not been accompanied by warnings that this activity might indicate Moscow’s intent to launch a major military intervention.” It goes on to say that:

“while the United States continued strict adherence to [US] President Carter’s injunction against direct US assistance and the use of US weapons to support the Afghan insurgency, the CIA did consult with the Pakistan Government on its support to the opposition forces”

The reality was very different, however. According to Eric Alterman, writing in The Nation, “former Director of Central Intelligence Robert Gates [revealed] in his 1996 memoir From the Shadows, the $500 million in nonlethal aid was designed to counter the billions the Soviets were pouring into the puppet regime they had installed in Kabul.”

According to Gates’s recounting, a key meeting took place on March 30, 1979. Under Secretary of Defense Walter Slocumbe wondered aloud whether “there was value in keeping the Afghan insurgency going, ’sucking the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire.’” Arnold Horelick, CIA Soviet expert, warned that this was just what we could expect.

National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski also revealed that, on the 3rd of July 1979, “President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul”, which in Brzezinski’s opinion would “induce a Soviet military intervention”.

We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

All of this is rather amusing when you then go and read The Scholarship Editions’ “Afghanistan” declaring that “Soviet officials had made extensive efforts to frighten [Aghanistan’s Prime Minister Amin and the Revolutionary Council] about an imaginary danger directed at Afghanistan.”

But the Soviet government as well as the Karmal regime have fabricated stories contrary to this conclusion. In December 1979 Soviet officials told Amin that the �??revolution�?� was in danger from the United States, which was about to launch a massive assault from the Persian Gulf. To meet the assault, Afghanistan should be prepared militarily.

That’s not to say that the US were about to launch an assault from the Gulf, but their fears were hardly “imaginary”. (Oh, and I couldn’t find any reference to Brzezinski’s admission, either). The irony, of course, is when Brzezinski was questioned as to whether or not he regretted laying the Afghanistan trap, he answered:

Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, in substance: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire. … What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war? … It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn’t a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.

Oops. Bet he forgot ever saying that. In fact, John Pilger reported that Brzezinski denied that this strategy was the beginning for al-Qaeda and terrorism; he said it was the Russian’s fault. Nevertheless, this was arguably the beginning of militarizing Islam to use as a US geo-political tool, something that continued long after the Soviets left Afghanistan.

Alternet has an interesting interview with historian Greg Grandin discussing his new book, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism, and “how ‘militant anti-Communists’ in the Reagan administration developed the model for the Bush doctrine.” (There is an excerpt from the book also available here on Alternet). As he explains, the book tries to “look at how U.S. corporate elites — the Guggenheims, the Rockefellers and so forth — first established themselves in Latin America with their overseas subsidiaries and how U.S. political elites viewed the region as the first place to project American power.” Another great quote from the interview:

The war on terror or its component parts — gaining public acceptance of torture, for example, or rendition or the war in Iraq — is as much a domestic affair as it is a foreign one. If you read the writings of neocon intellectuals like Christopher Caldwell or William Kristol, it�??s all about steeling America�??s domestic culture and making the population more resistant to pain, both ours and the pain we inflict on others. And it seems that it�??s not just that they look at America�??s political culture and see dissent or anti-militarism, but they really see a culture of weakness, and they expected that the war on terror would bring about a restoration of American strength.

I’ve ear-marked this book myself for future reading as it looks pretty interesting. I first stumbled across Greg Grandin while searching around for information of American involvement in South America during the Cold War. He’d given an interview to the University of Chicago about another book he wrote entitled The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War, which argued that “the spread of Latin America’s guerrilla movements was driven by the frustration of efforts to consolidate post-World War II social democracies.” In particular, he points out that “The overthrow of Arbenz” in Guatemala “was an important milestone” in the transformation of Latin America from having “a degree of political liberalization” to US-backed repression of “domestic dissent”, whereby “The already cramped space for political negotiation became even more restricted.”

The overthrow of Arbenz convinced many Latin American reformers, democrats, and nationalists that the United States was less a model to be emulated than a danger to be feared. Che Guevara, for example, was in Guatemala working as a doctor and witnessed firsthand the effects of US intervention. He fled to Mexico, where he would meet Fidel Castro and go on to lead the Cuban Revolution. He taunted the United States repeatedly in his speeches by saying that “Cuba will not be Guatemala.” For its part, the United States promised to turn Guatemala into a “showcase for democracy” but instead created a laboratory of repression. Practices institutionalized there�??such as death squad killings conducted by professionalized intelligence agencies�??spread throughout Latin America in the coming decades.

He’s a fairly regular writer at The Nation, is a teacher of Latin American history (New York University), and also helped contribute to the UN report on human-rights violations in Guatemala during their civil war. You can read his articles for the Nation here.

In a recent report, Human Rights Watch condemned Hezbollah’s practice of packing their rockets with “hundreds of metal ball bearings that are of limited use against military targets but cause great harm to civilians and civilian property. The ball bearings lodge in the body and cause serious harm.” It’s worth looking at this point, to illustrate exactly why Hezbollah, Hamas and Israel are the same.

The accusation that this is a war crime is entirely legitimate, and is routinely mentioned and described in press reports. For the example, the BBC reported about casualties in the Israeli city of Haifa, commenting that “Many of the casualties have been wounded by some 14kg of ball-bearings packed into the missile warheads, designed to cause maximum damage.”

Alan Dershowitz, whom I’ve mentioned before, has referred to this terrible practice, stating that “Hezbollah and Hamas want to maximize civilian casualties on both sides” by “deliberately [operating] military wings out of densely populated areas”, “[launching] antipersonnel missiles with ball-bearing shrapnel, designed by Syria and Iran to maximize civilian casualties”. He concludes that “Israel must be allowed to finish the fight that Hamas and Hezbollah started, even if that means civilian casualties in Gaza and Lebanon. A democracy is entitled to prefer the lives of its own innocents over the lives of the civilians of an aggressor, especially if the latter group contains many who are complicit in terrorism.”

Firstly, it is highly questionable that Hezbollah do, in fact, use Lebanese civilians as shields. In a recent article for Salon.com about this “myth”, Mitch Prothero reports that “Hezbollah fighters — as opposed to the much more numerous Hezbollah political members, and the vastly more numerous Hezbollah sympathizers — avoid civilians … This is not for humanitarian reasons … but for military ones”, namely because they’re afraid of collaborators that can betray them.

“Israel” Prothero adds, “has chosen to treat the political members of Hezbollah as if they were fighters. And by targeting the civilian wing of the group, which supplies much of the humanitarian aid and social protection for the poorest people in the south, they are targeting civilians.” In comparison, this is the same as Hezbollah targetting and bombing all groups supplying “humanitarian aid and social protection” for people in Israel, something which no doubt would be condemned but, for Israel, it is considered entirely legitimate.

Secondly, as I’ve stated before, even if Hezbollah are using civilians as shields - a terrible act - this does not remove the character of the civilian population under international law, yet Israel clearly disregards this, viewing civilian infrastructure as a legitimate target and that the killing of civilians is morally legitimate, too. Since both Hamas and Hezbollah consider the targeting of civilians as legitimate, the terrorist tag is equally applicable to Israel. In comparison, it would be laughable to consider reading in the press no criticism over Hamas and Hezbollah’s claims that their attacks on civilians in Haifa in Israel are “morally justified” because they had “warned the civilians and gave them enough time to leave, and that the civilians who remained chose, themselves, not to leave” before raining rockets down on them (quotes from Professor Asa Kasher, the author of the Israeli Defense Force’s code of ethics). It’s also worth asking, if all the transportation networks had been destroyed preventing Israelis to leave Haifa, would the media also have no comment about whether or not they could actually leave?

Thirdly, if we are to condemn Hezbollah’s practice of filling their missiles with ball-bearings and use this as evidence of their terrorism and barbarism seperating them from the Israelis who do “everything reasonable to minimize civilian casualties” (Dershowitz), what are we to make of the accusation made by the General Manager of Ambulances and Emergencies for the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Dr. Muawiya Hassanei, that “The Israeli forces are using internationally prohibited missiles that contain chemical materials and burning metals and in addition, have shrapnel in the shape of nails”.

He pointed out that the injuries received in the hospitals as a result of these missiles are very dangerous because the human tissues and muscles are torn and in addition, the injured suffer from severe bleeding, loss of limbs and broken bones.

The International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC) gained interviews with several doctors working in different hospitals in the Gaza strip, and all confirmed the use of non-conventional weapons. One of the doctors, Dr. Saeed Jodah, said, “When the Shrapnel hits the body, it causes very strong burns that destroy the tissues around the bones. When this shrapnel enters the body, it burns and destroys internal organs, like the liver, kidneys, the spleen and other organs, and makes saving the wounded almost impossible. As a surgeon, I have seen thousands of wounds during the Intifada, but nothing was like this weapon.”

The latest case that matched these symptoms was Muhammad Muhra, 17, from Al Bureij refugee camp. He was killed on Thursday. His body arrived at the hospital in an almost unrecognizable condition.

This went unreported in Western media, and a search on Google News showed this mentioned only in the International Middle East Media Center (see also Google Cache).

Where are the voices of condemnation from Dershowitz and others who (rightly) complain about Hezbollah’s “antipersonnel missiles with ball-bearing shrapnel” being designed “to maximize civilian casualties”? And, since Palestinians voted in a democratic election (but are still under occupation) and the Lebanese voted in a democratic election, while Israel clearly supports terrorism against Lebanese and Gazian civilians, does this then justify Hamas and Hezbollah in using Dershowitz’s argument to say they “prefer the lives of its own innocents over the lives of the civilians of an aggressor, especially if the latter group contains many who are complicit in terrorism”?

I’ve expanded a bit more on some of the themes I wrote about in my recent article, Israel’s Rational Prospect. You can read it here.

As Lebanon is bombed by Israel, I was shocked (but not surprised) to watch the BBC talk calmly on TV a few days ago - with computer generated graphics to demonstrate - how Israel was conducting war crimes (not said as such, obviously) by targetting Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure, a mirror image of Hizbollah’s repeated war crimes against Israel in Haifa and elsewhere.

Israel have so far targetted: “highway bridges, residential buildings, and an electrical sub-station“; Beirut airport, “the fuel stores of the Jiyyeh power plant”; three factories producing household goods; “production facilities of at least five companies in key industrial sectors - including the country’s largest dairy farm, Liban Lait; a paper mill; a packaging firm and a pharmaceutical plant” that “will cripple the economy for decades to come”; churches; a hospital; apparent Hezbollah TV and radio stations; highways, and more. This mimics the usual Israeli strategy of collective punishment, as carried out in the recent Gaza attacks which “included the cutting off of water and power supplies, the destruction of bridges and damaged sanitation for local Palestinians.” As Amnesty International pointed out, “The wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure and property and the disproportionate restrictions imposed on civilians by Israeli forces amount to collective punishment on the entire population of the Gaza Strip, a violation of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits punishing protected persons for offences they have not committed.”
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weave, one

Originally uploaded by lowfatbrains.

One of the things I like to do is to look at everyday objects and try to make a photo out of it. I’m also particularly interested in minimalist/texture based photos. This was actually the back of a chair at Kew Gardens in the patio area near one of the main gates. As Bill Moyers said, “Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.”

hoppers

Originally uploaded by lowfatbrains.

“Nature makes the locust with an appetite for crops; man would have made him with an appetite for sand”

- Mark Twain