I’ve been off for a few days gardening, celebrating the Fourth, and a trip to attend the first worship service led by a good friend after a leukemia diagnosis a year ago and a successful stem cell transplant in November. What a celebration it was!  

Catching up on some of the issues I’ve been following for the last six months, several things caught my eye. I’ll be writing briefly about some of them in the next few days. One of them was Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed column in Sunday’s New York Times.  Kristof called for a "Truth Commission."

When a distinguished American military commander accuses the United States of committing war crimes in its handling of detainees, you know that we need a new way forward.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day, so it was only a matter of time that this broken administration did something right.

Now let us do something right and follow Mandela's lead and set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Mandela off U.S. terrorism watch list

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former South African President Nelson Mandela is to be removed from a U.S. terrorism watch list under a bill President Bush signed Tuesday.
...
South Africa's apartheid government had designated the ANC a terrorist organization during the group's decades-long struggle against whites-only rule. Its members have been barred from receiving U.S. visas without special permission, and the bill Bush signed will lift that requirement, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said.
...
Mandela shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 with F. W. de Klerk, the South African president and National Party leader who worked with Mandela to end apartheid. Mandela replaced him as president in 1994 and served until 1999.

When Mandela took office he did a daring and wonderful thing: His administration created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu

For all our petty discussion about who or what a politician said in America, we are forgetting the fact that saying nothing is even more harmful.

Thabo Mbeki of South Africa has repeatedly ignored and made excuses for the acts of Robert Mugabe's dictatorial rule in Zimbabwe. This is not just a matter of one man, but the entire ANC that has chosen to keep this out of the order and ignore that Apartheid is occurring against fellow Africans.

I'm 43 today. If you're a fan of Douglas Adams, you know I'm no longer the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. (For the last year, my children have been reassuring me I wasn't then, either.) But it's been a MUCH better birthday for me than, say, 36 years ago. I mean, I remember it as a fine day for me, as a 7-year-old, but it was also the day of the Watergate break-in. By comparison, things are definitely looking up this year.

A South African woman named Sonnet Ehlers has invented what she calls an "anti-rape" condom.  Rape-aXe (formerly called Rape-X) is a "latex sheath, which contains razor-sharp barbs."  When the attacker penetrates the victim's vagina with his penis the barbs dig into his penis causing extreme pain.  The device will then be attached to the man's penis and requires surgical removal.

On Ehlers' website she claims that the device is intended to "[aid] in the prevention rapes."  She also claims that the device can be used to identify the attacker because it requires surgical removal.

Rape is a horrible crime that must be taken seriously.  I commend Ms. Ehlers for her efforts, but I think the "anti-rape" condom is a bad idea, and I especially do not think that it will prevent anything.  I'll explain why below the fold.

I'm not stirring up discord today for the hell of it.  I'm doing so because people are dying.

Like Barack Obama, I'm not against all wars.  I'm against dumb wars and, beyond that, ones that are unnecessary and unjust.

I think that the time may be approaching when we have to invade Zimbabwe.

If that sounds shocking, it should.  I do not say it lightly.

By "we," I do not mean the United States.  I do not mean the United States leading a fig-leaf "Coalition of the Willing."  I mean we, the rest of the world, acting through the United Nations in cooperation with South Africa and the African Union.  The United States, obviously, would be part of that effort; simply put, it would not happen without our leadership.

I know that this sort of talk will not be popular here -- nor should people too-readily accept it -- so I will try to make my case.

On Thursday the US Ambassador to Zimbabwe and embassy officials were traveling to the North of the capital Harare to investigate reports of political violence. As far as can be learnt from the slightly confused reporting, the two car convoy was ordered to report to a police station. When they refused, attempts were made to run his vehicle off the road.

The cars were then stopped at a road block and the tires slashed. The occupants were ordered from the vehicles under threat of them being set fire. A local Zimbabwean driver was assaulted and a camera and satellite telephone stolen. Officials from the British embassy were also involved in the incident. The affair is to be discussed at the UN Security Council as it represents a gross breach of the Vienna Convention.

The Zimbabwean government has now banned all aid groups and NGOs from distributing food aid. Over 4  million are facing "severe food deficit". The President, Robert Mugabe is currently in Rome attending a WFO meeting on the world food crisis.

A wave of xenophobic violence swept the country, leaving 62 dead and at least 50,000 foreign nationals displaced from their homes in South Africa. A couple of weeks ago, an image of an immigrant being burnt alive was published across South Africa. It had a huge impact, but the violence continued for another week,  and the South African government is unable to help the refugees, who were terrorized while the government failed to respond adequately to the crisis.  The UN must provide help URGENTLY; it is what these people want and need.

Yesterday, the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Council of Churches (among other civil society organizations) sent an appeal to the international community asking that organizations "demand that the UN and UNHCR acts with speed."

pls digg their appeal to the international community.  [Better yet, send the appeal to any international organizations (or people, who work in one) that you're friendly with]

In South Africa we have a saying:

"Strike a woman, strike a rock."

I've cross posted this diary to my blog, where you'll find a photo of the minister who gave the talk, along with links to his ministry in South Africa and the BAR story.

How disgusting is this?

Nobel Peace Prize winner and international symbol of freedom Nelson Mandela is flagged on U.S. terrorist watch lists and needs special permission to visit the USA. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calls the situation "embarrassing," and some members of Congress vow to fix it.

Does anyone really believe this is an accident? It's not just Mandela who's on the list, but all members of the African National Congress (ANC). You know, those wicked terrorists who wanted to end Apartheid.

What have we become? As FairyTale commented, "what we have always been."

I'm currently taking an badass foreign policy class at the University of Washington, proffed by Aseem Prakash, and had to write a brief on short-term and long-term foreign policy development between the United States and South Africa with regard to three policy areas.  I choose to focus on the following.

1. 21st century Energy

2. USA and Bush co. defaulting on the Millenium Fund and 2/3 of Bill Clinton's tireless foreign policy work on reducing poverty

3. The rising political tensions in Zimbabwe and what policy the United States should adopt in accordance with South Africa as Zimbabwe's greatest ally.

Right now, there is a ship loaded with small arms trying to deliver to Zimbabwe, to the tyrannical regime of Robert Mugabe. It is likely he's ready to put down the opposition with violence, after his election turned out not to be sufficiently well rigged to let him win. Mugabe is already quite capable of brutal repression of his opposition. Several tons of armaments may  turn the situation into a civil war, or a series of massacres.

Many of you will have read DHinMI's frontpage story about this yesterday, or even my diary from late Friday night, highlighting the principled stand of the dockworkers in Durban who refused to unload the ship. However, that has only delayed the delivery. They'll try again. But maybe we can help stop them at the next port, and maybe save lives.

Go to this page for up-to-date information on the ship as people find it, and for discussion of how to take action - and links.

Edited by request to put the important stuff first.

Right now there's a ship with a cargo of armaments, trying to deliver them to Zimbabwe, pretty clearly with the intent of helping Mugabe put down the opposition after the elections he apparently couldn't win by hook or by crook. They've been turned away in South Africa, but they'll try again by way of Mozambique or elsewhere. I'd intended to hold off posting this till tomorrow morning, but the situation is dire and progressing, and action may help, so I'm posting it now.

UPDATE: The New York Times just posted a more thorough article on this even than the BBC's report. (Thanks to The Distillery for noticing it.)

UPDATE Saturday morning: The ship may be on its way to Angola now. See the end of the diary for more information and a link to the story.

More below the fold...

Guys sorry for interrupting your political discourse. There are so many hot topics to discuss on this beautiful weekend day as far as US politics is concerned but my conscience would not allow me to ignore what is going on half a world away in a country known as Zimbabwe on the African continent. It seems to me that the world is allowing Robert Mugabe to get away with strangling the life out of his people in broad daylight. It's like watching your neighbor beat the heck out of his wife and turning a blind eye to it on the grounds that it's none of your business and that they'll sort out their problems somehow by themselves. You hear the screams and the cries for help but you turn up the volume on your television set and close your windows. You have too many other things concerning your life right now to be minding your neighbor's business, you tell yourself. You don't even have the decency to call the police, you see your neighbors as nothing but low-lives and couldn't care less if they killed each other.  

Recently a haunting question keeps coming up.  If the Obama family lived in South Africa during Apartheid, would the family have been split up?  South Africa's system of Appartheid was notorious for tearing families apart, so would Obama because he is 50% white have to live in the Coloured part of town while Michelle and their two daughters have to live in the black side of town.  

Earlier this month I wroteabout how South Africa's war into Mozambique has contributed to Mozambique checking in at one of the poorest countries in the world. It seems that the apartheid past is still too close at hand to allow Mozambique ample space to regain its footing.