Scribbles

Blackwater Worldwide has played a substantial role during the Iraq War as a contractor for the United States government. In 2003, Blackwater attained its first high-profile contract when it received a $21 million no-bid contract for guarding the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, L. Paul Bremer. Since June 2004, Blackwater has been paid more than $320 million out of a $1 billion, five-year State Department budget for the Worldwide Personal Protective Service, which protects U.S. officials and some foreign officials in conflict zones. In 2006, Blackwater won the renumerative contract to protect the U.S. embassy in Iraq, the largest American embassy in the world.

Blackwater is a privately held company and does not publish much information about internal affairs. Who are the key people?

Blackwater’s owner and founder Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL, attended the Naval Academy, graduated from Hillsdale College, and was an intern in George H.W. Bush’s White House. Prince is a major financial supporter of Republican Party causes and candidates.
Cofer Black, the company’s current vice chairman, was director of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center (CTC) at the time of the September 11, 2001 attacks. He was the United States Department of State coordinator for counterterrorism with the rank of ambassador at large from December 2002 to November 2004. After leaving public service, Black became chairman of the privately owned intelligence gathering company Total Intelligence Solutions, Inc., as well as vice chairman for Blackwater.
Joseph E. Schmitz holds an executive position in Blackwater’s holding company, Prince Group. He was previously inspector general of the Department of Defense, an appointment of George W. Bush.
Robert Richer was vice president of intelligence until January 2007, when he formed Total Intelligence Solutions. He was formerly the head of the CIA’s Near East Division.

Are you surprised Blackwater opened the door to lucrative government contracts through a no-bid contract? Are you surprised they received immunity from prosecution after killing 17 Iraqi civilians a year ago?

More interesting reading on Blackwater: The Whores of War

Source: Wikipedia and others
Cartoon courtesy News Sophisticate

The front page of the Russian Tvoi Den (“Your Day”) newspaper today makes no secret of what it thinks of the West. “TAK YOU” means “F**K YOU”
The text below the picture reads: “For the first time in many years Russia has clearly shown to the West we are not going to live by its order.”

Tensions between Russia and the US has been raising since a while. I wrote about this on The Road a year ago.
It seems after their battle of words on Iraq, Iran, the US missile shield, blabla, the two superpowers are now ready to rattle swords and have picked Georgia as their playing ground.

After the skirmishes between Georgia and its break-away or autonomous (depending who you ask) republics, Russia went in with full military force, knowing the US would take sides.
The US poked Russia by putting the US military in charge of “the humanitarian relief mission in Georgia” (more), and moved US warships with “humanitarian supplies” into the Black Sea.

Russian president Dmitry Medvedev deepened the Georgia crisis yesterday by insisting that South Ossetia and Abkhazia should be independent nations, adding: “We are not afraid of anything, including the prospect of a new Cold War.”
Russia’s NATO envoy then declared that military aid to Georgia for use against South Ossetia and Abkhazia would be seen as a “declaration of war”. (Full)

Phew…

And you know what bugs me? Who will be the victim of this rattle of words or swords? The ordinary people. Some things never change.

Source: International Aid Workers Today
Pictures courtesy This Is London and San Francisco Sentinel

Warning. This piece is highly opinionated and reflects my personal views.

Letter to the Editor of the New York Times (Source)

Re “For Terrorists, a War on Aid Groups” by Samantha Power (Op-Ed, Aug. 19): As an aid worker who has worked in the Middle East for more than 10 years, I applaud Ms. Power’s call for more protection for nongovernmental organization workers in conflict zones, but she doesn’t mention an important element. In recent years, the United States government has both contracted out for more aspects of development and humanitarian assistance in conflict zones and connected this foreign aid more closely than ever with strategic and military goals. By publicly linking these objectives, the United States government has placed aid workers in the position where they may not be seen as neutral development professionals working solely for the benefit of the people in host countries, and has caused some people, especially in places where the United States military is involved, to see aid workers as representatives of an unpopular foreign policy or as part of an occupation administration, making them more vulnerable to attack. Garrett Dorer, Cairo Aug. 20 2008

This letter represents the view many humanitarian workers have, since 9/11. The US unilaterally invaded two sovereign countries, Afghanistan and Iraq. The humanitarian workers were given all the financial resources needed to provide relief aid during and after these military actions.

And we, the aid workers, were effective: no-one saw children starving on the television. There were no reports of massive deaths due to the outbreak of diseases. Food, medical aid and shelter were flown in and distributed as almost a school example of how humanitarian assistance should be run. Did that directly or indirectly soften the public’s opinion about the military actions?

As the humanitarians proved to be effective in their Afghanistan and Iraq aid efforts, how far have they brought down the threshold for any country to take unilateral military action against the other? And even worse: how far have they aligned themselves with military actions? Part of the planning for military actions? How far are aid workers seen as accomplices.
Consequently, up to what level are we, aid workers, now seen as “representatives” of an unpopular foreign policy of one country? And consequently, up to what level are we, aid workers, now targeted by terrorism and other hostilities as much as the US is?

For us, UN aid workers, we always half-jokingly say: “Between the US and the UN, there is more than a one letter difference”, but that is not how it looks like to the outside world.

Picture courtesy Robert Kasca

As soon as we landed in the Seychelles, we saw displays of one of their national symbols: the unique Seychellois coconut: the “Cocofesse” or “Coco de Mer”.

For centuries these unique coconuts washed ashore on the beaches of India, Maldives and Sri Lanka. The suggestive shape of the world’s largest plant seed – about 40-50 cm diameter, weighing up to 20 kg – made it famous, and they were sold the world over as a symbol of fertility. They were often expensively decorated with gems, gold and silver becoming the prized possession of kings and rulers.

Originally, this coconut was thought to be the fruit of enormous trees that grew underwater in the great whirlpool of the oceans, and were therefor called “Sea Coconuts” – “Coco de mer”. It was not until 1768 when the first actual Cocofesse plants were discovered on the Seychelles: A surveyor aboard the French vessel “Marion Dufresne” found the trees on the island of Praslin, and brought them back with him to Mauritius.

The Cocofesse has a male and a female plant. They are the largest palm tree in the world: the male goes up to 30m, and the female to 24m high.

The male catkin -once again an erotic symbol- can be as thick as a person’s arm and grow 50 cm long.

The seed itself grows for 6-7 years in a husk, after which it falls on the ground where it lays dormant for about six months.

It takes one year after germination before the first leaf appears from the seed. The young Coco de Mer palms can reach 14 meters and are nothing but massive leaves, as it takes about 15 years before the first signs of a trunk appears. It takes 20 to 40 years before the plant is mature. A tree can grow for 200 to 400 years.

The haven of the Coco de Mer palms is the Vallee de Mai on Praslin, a nature reserve and one of the smallest UNESCO World Heritage sites.

As the male palm is much taller than the female, it often seems like it protects its ‘mate’. Locals legends say that when the moon is full, the male moves over to the female and they make love. No-one has ever reported this first hand, as the story goes, if you witness it you are instantly turned into a black parrot.

More posts on the Road about the Seychelles.

First two pictures courtesy brlsi.org and wikipedia

I am at Brussels airport, waiting for my flight back to Rome. After six weeks with the family, we are off on our own again. The kids go off to sports camp, Tine starts working in Belgium and I am off to Italy, back to saving the hungry in the world.

Hey, they have new roadsigns at the airport, saying “Kiss and Drive”, meant to guide people to a passenger drop off zone.
I am not sure if the combination of kissing and driving is really safe, but I am all for it. However, maybe “Park and Kiss” would have been more appropriate!

So far for the smileys.

At check-in it seems they have changed the system for self check-in: you will need your reservation number. You can’t check in via your name, passport scan (as in Rome), or credit card swipe. No, you need your reservation number. Damned if I would take out my computer, boot it up, and check my email for it. Damned if I would print it out on paper before I come. Thought eTicketing was all about paperless and effortless booking and checking in? Not so with Brussels Airlines, it seems. Nope you need your reservation number, sir!.

Ok, so I try to check in at the “Express check-in”, thinking “I only have hand luggage, so I guess this is ‘express check-in’ “? Not so. A young man stopped me asking for my boarding pass. I told him “No, I am checking in, and am following the signs.” He said: “No checking in here, you need to follow that line”, and pointed to another row of check-in counters.
I told him this was confusing. He just shrugged his shoulders and looked the other way, ignoring my comments. He told a colleague who approached me to explain and said: “Ignore him, difficult customer!”
He then turned to someone else, who wanted to do the same thing as I: check in through the express check-in. And another, and another.. Soon enough we were standing with 4-5 people complaining about the confusing signs. I just stood by and smiled. Ah the sweet taste of a little revenge! Life can be so sweet…

So, I am checking in. They ask to weigh my hand luggage, which is a compact trolley with my computer bag in it. In the bag some small chargers, my laptop and a book: 9.6 kg.
“Sorry sir, you are only allowed 5 kg handluggage, you will have to check it in”, she said.
Dah. Checking in a computer bag? To Rome? Rrrrright. *If* it would arrive, i’d have to wait for 90 minutes at the luggage belt.
“Nope”, I said, “I can show you one kilo of handluggage and then shop and buy 50 kgs of duty free goods, and you would not even know. So…”
She let me go… I *am” a difficult customer!

Anyways, last thought of the day: Did you know the Brussels Airlines logo originally had 13 balls on it. People said it would bring bad luck, so they added a 14th ball at the last minute. Some planes were already painted with 13 balls, so the 14th came with some expense. You don’t believe me? It is true, as it was in the papers!“!