When you sit with people from other countries, it is important to have some fall back, standardized way to explain where you are from. Of course we all have these icons, these posters, these fleeting images that remind ourselves of where we came from and are readily recalled by our frontal cortex when asked to explain ourselves. When we trust the person and we know that the question is meant because the other conversant(s) truly does want to understand us, then we are more easily able to open up and to tell the truth.

When I want to explain American rock music, and in a little bit the America that I know and love, to people who only know of America from what their news and Hollywood tells them I have a go to band. My icon for all that is great and wonderful about American rock music. Wax Fang.

These are three dudes from Louisville who just build face melting rock and roll music. It is fast, aggressive, in your face, and musically delicious. In something like 2006 or so I saw them at Exit In for what was then known as Next Big Nashville. I think we were going to see a different band and just happened upon Wax Fang. They melted my face. Since then I’ve seen them a couple of times at the Basement. Always I’ve left with a melted face.

Three dudes who know how to play their instruments really damn well, who don’t hide behind loops and over-reverb and autotuners. They play straight-forward. The guitarist has some David Gilmour, some Bowie. The bassist is just rock solid. And the drummer may be one of my favorite contemporary drummers. When I put on their La La Land album (particularly while driving because what could be more American than that), and drive all I can do is think of this all screwed up, dirty, aggressive, lovely, caring, wonderful country that we’ve built for ourselves and smile. So without further ramblings…. Wax Fang.

So there was some chatter Friday on my Twitter feed about how EU NAVFOR (the EU’s Naval Forces) would be authorized to attack on land. For example:

My thoughts were quickly to escalation. Escalation is important not only for reasons that anyone who feels attacked or invaded would be willing to increase the violence to protect their stuff, but also because Somalis feel incredibly threatened right now. With four other countries operating uninvited in their country along with a bunch of other global jihadists who have very little – but not non-negligible – constituencies within Somali areas. If ever there was a time to beat the hornet’s nest, when they already are upset is not the time.

Apparently this chatter was due to a press release by the EU which is available here (title: EU Extends Counter Piracy Mission Off Coast of Somalia). Their complete release (my emphasis):

On Friday 23 March 2012 the Council of the European Union confirmed its intention to extend the EU Naval Force (EU NAVFOR) counter-piracy mission, Operation ATLANATA off the Somali coast until December 2014.  At the same time the Council also extended the area of operations to include Somali coastal territory and internal waters.

Today’s decision will enable Operation Atalanta Forces to work directly with the Transitional  Federal Government and other Somali entities to support their fight against piracy in the coastal areas.  In accordance with the relevant UN Security Council resolutions, the Somali government has notified the UN Secretary General of its acceptance of the EU’s offer for this new collaboration.

Speaking about the extension of the mandate and area of operations, Rear Admiral Duncan Potts, who is the Operational Commander of the EU Naval Force, said “The extension of the mandate until the end of 2014 confirms the EU’s commitment to fighting piracy off the Horn of Africa. Piracy has caused so much misery to the Somali people and to the crews of ships transiting the area and it is right that we continue to move forward in our efforts”.

Those five words towards the end of the first paragraph and those eight words at the end of that small press release are important. ICTY was set up because of just about as many words.

The BBC ran an article headlined “Somalia pirates: EU approves attacks on land bases.” Here’s the highlights from the article:

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo told reporters: “The EU plan is to allow attacks on land installations when ships are assaulted at sea,” adding that “much care” would be taken to avoid civilian deaths….

Rear Admiral Duncan Potts, the operation commander for the EU Naval Force in Somalia, said … ”At sea we’ve had an effect on the pirates’ ability to operate but we haven’t changed the strategic conditions, which is why we want to target every stage of their operations.”

The Minister seems to be implying that only self-defence combined with hot pursuit would be a trigger for attack of land targets; whereas the EU’s commander is seemingly signalling something entirely different that the EU is interested in attacking more strategically to disrupt the entire ecosystem’s operation. That disparity aside, what is difficult to contemplate is what will actually happen with this. We don’t have the actual directive at this point (if you have a copy I’d love to see it) so how can we tell legally what the heck is going on?

There are also problems (in my mind at least) with the use of force at all, but at least on the high seas to stop an operation in progress we can skirt around many of the IHL issues that could be invoked. IHL is the acronym for International Humanitarian Law which is known by many laypersons as the Law of War. There are two sets of basic sets of rules that can be used to regulate the activities of the piracy enforcement regime. IHL is one. I do not think that it is involved. After living and lawyering in the Somali region for four years, I remain deeply skeptical as to the purported links between those accused of acts of piracy and those involved in the conflict not of an international character between the various factions on land within South-Central Somalia. From time to time there are reports that Shabaab is somehow involved, but I have yet to see those sufficiently substantiated (at least in my mind). This is important, because without these linkages then IHL will not be operative and another body of law will control the piracy enforcement regime: International Human Rights Law (IHRL).

It is much more complex then this, but let me simplify for the purposes of this post: IHL is very lenient set of rules compared to IHRL in the area of the application of violence. The language used by the Rear Admiral above is very much in keeping with IHL norms that allow military commanders to target and attack based on the overall military advantage of such attacks. In other words, German industrial towns pose no direct threat to the allies during WWII, but the allies legally leveled these cities due to the overall military advantage of shutting down the industrial system that was supplying German troops with arms and ammunition. Human rights law has a very different take on the application of violence due to the paramount importance that it places on the right to life alongside fair trial rights. Human rights law does not allow the application of violence with such a sweeping scope as IHL. It requires a much more surgical approach along with some provocation. The standard under IHRL is that there must be an immediate threat to life in order for a law enforcement officer to kill a suspect, or else the suspect must be taken to court where fair trial rights can be invoked to decide of the suspect can be put to death.

Beth Van Schaack wrote an Opinion Juris post about this IHL\IHRL issue about a while ago (November, 2010):

[Professor Guilfoyle] concludes that in the majority of circumstances, piracy is a law enforcement problem, not a law of war problem.

The seemingly facile conclusion of the article, however, dodges the more difficult question of the impact of a potential nexus between acts of piracy and the ongoing non-international armed conflict in Somalia between the beleaguered Transitional Federal Government and a loose coalition of fundamentalist militias. If such a link is eventually established or confirmed, IHL may apply to some acts of piracy committed in order to fund organized armed groups or regional warlords engaged in the protracted insurgency against the government of Somalia. The article would have made a more significant contribution had it focused more searchingly on this question of what type or degree of war nexus would be necessary to trigger the application of IHL.

One implication of such a nexus would be that attacks on commercial vessels such as we have seen in the Gulf of Aden may become prosecutable as war crimes (viz, violence to life and person or the taking of hostages)….

Regardless of the application of IHL, the international community should not lose sight of the fact that international human rights law remains applicable to the collective international response to acts of piracy. In a companion piece, Professor Guilfoyle focuses on the law governing the extraterritorial application of human rights law, the principle of non-refoulement, the prohibition of arbitrary detention, and due process protections (see Douglas Guilfoyle, Counter-Piracy Law Enforcement and Human Rights, 59 Int’l & Comp L Q 141 (2010)). In addition, the prohibitions of summary execution and other arbitrary deprivations of the right to life also establish limitations of necessity and proportionality on uses of force against individuals in the exercise of national and international police powers (see McCann v UK, 21 EHRR 97 (1996)).

The distinction between the two sets of rules are important not only because they have very different rules in how they authorize law enforcement or military personnel to apply violence towards a given situation, but also they are important to our understanding of the cultural dynamics of a given situation. When we think something is regulated by IHL we mentally apply a militaristic point of view to a situation. This is the problem when we call it the War on Terrorism when in my opinion it should be more properly characterized as a law enforcement situation against acts of terrorism. In any event, the conflict between the US and Al Qaeda aside, when it comes to Somalis the law enforcement versus military lens is extraordinarily important because as I said earlier Somalis already feel they are under attack. Largely there is a perception that the pirates are basically Robin Hood.

Sending military task forces to attack land targets in Eyl or any of the other pirate areas would be disastrous foreign policy as it would not only endanger all of us Westerners that operate in the Somali region but it would also have a counter effect to the desired end state. The Somali society has been turning against the pirate culture slowly by slowly, but attacks on land targets would allow them to leverage the nationalistic undercurrents within Somali culture to regain their cultural momentum.

I can basically think of no policy which would be worse than this policy and I truly hope that when the EUNAVFOR implements it, they take a close look at both the legal and cultural effects of what they are doing.

~ # ~

Here’s to the embarkation on a great journey. Here’s to a massive flop or a spectacular success. Here’s to nothing in between. Here’s to risk. Here’s to reward. Here’s to taking a chance. Here’s to never being satisfied with what is. Here’s to questioning. Here’s to listening. Here’s to excellence. Here’s to professionalism. Here’s to helping everywhere we can in every way we can to everyone we can. Here’s to solving problems. Here’s to trust in unwavering allies. And most of all. Here’s doing our best to impact in those we touch in some small way that truly speaking tomorrow is going to be a better day.

For almost four years now I’ve been a careful observer of Somali politicians. For three of those years I was paid to try to be their lawyer. To provide them expert international legal assistance tied to a deep network full of some of the finest international practitioners and thinkers in the world. But they rarely, if ever, wanted that help. So largely I invented work, I went into meetings and had a product to sell. I can’t buy you new computers, but I how about I help you write that legal framework that Parliament has required you to do?

I’ve spent a lot of time with Somali politicians, and I also spend a lot of time with other people who spend a lot of their time with Somali politicians. This is an expat’s life when you live in a pretty small town. I reference Hargeisa, a town of, oh, 500,00 to 1M people depending on who’s estimating as a small town.

And that it truly is. This is one of the most amazing things when you really get to know an African town. To learn how inter-connected things are is fascinating. This is what makes me do something foolish like invest everything I have into starting a law firm in a country which has very little (if any) law. Judges routinely dismiss cases with little to no justification. Parliamentarians make no estimates, and rarely even discuss, what the effects of this law will be in the next month, much less the next year – so legislation (a lot of it quite decent) is routinely ignored.

And yet things work. I don’t believe in libertarianism – much to my father’s chagrin – it is incredibly unjust and inefficient. But I can say the Somalis are teaching me how to respect it, and how to work within its boundaries. I know a little but more importantly I truly care deeply about this place. I have spent more time in this place than I had in any one place since I was in college. I have joined, in many ways, the ranks of the diaspora (only the opposite way that that term is used).

For a long time, when I first arrived, it seemed like no one really got what the hell was happening down here. See Nairobi is a long way away. And after the 2008 Hargeisa bombings, when pretty much all of the expats left the connections between Hargeisa and Nairobi were even more tenuous. So a disconnect really felt like it developed. Luckily, over the course of the previous year it has felt like “Nairobi” is starting to get it. I don’t agree with everything I’m hearing coming out of the high level cluster meetings and typical other rumor mill stuff, but I must say that I agree with a lot of it (see, e.g., this initiative by the UK’s government).

I did not think that a harder military strategy off the coast would reduce piracy. I really felt that a tribunal in Somaliland along with a huge police building effort in Puntland was the best possible shot at fixing things (basically pirate DDR is what needs to happen); I still feel this needs to happen, but the military situation seems to be putting a recent damper on the number of attacks. So they may be right, they may be wrong, but at least they aren’t dead wrong. Not the way they were dead wrong in the early nighties when everyone that knew anything about Somalia would tell you how clearly wrong some of the actions were.

Nairobi (by which I mean the big money and big – even if distant – powers), seems to be starting to understand two things: there has to be some element of external assistance to stabilize the situation, BUT the Somalis want to have assurances that this isn’t an invasion or their territorial fires start overheating. To do that largely means staying the hell out of the politics BUT also helping to create the conditions of stability long enough for the Somalis to figure out how they will be represented and what the terms are – which can often take months or years – even where you have a majority clan conferences these things take lots of time.

Most Somali analysts are quick to point out that the reason the South cannot seem to fix itself is that the Italians castrated the clan leader system. The problem has been for a long time that no one had the moral authority – among the Southern clans – to stand up to the gangsters that kept hijacking clan resources, state resources, international resources. They just continued to gobble them up like locusts and when they reached an end to their resources they just started gobbling each other. From the early warlord phase into the ICU takeover this is what continued happening.

But a couple of other things were happening also beneath the surface of that. For twenty years there seems to have been an identity crisis within much of the Somali community. This identity, just like lots of things in our lives, runs to the safest place it can find when it is threatened. For most Somalis that is somewhere around one or two or three or four or five clans below the major clan level. It varies by the individual and their experience where this safe place is. One thing I can say for sure, that for most people I’ve met in four years Northerners, Southerners, Easterners and Westerners, for the vast vast percentage of these people that place is no where even close to the pan-Somali level. This is and will for a long time remain the invalidity in the argument that the pan-Somali movement was a viable option without a dictator.

Even after twenty years Somaliland politicians bicker nearly continuously; lack of trust within Somaliland is rife. The same can be said, only the distrust rises as you go clockwise around the circle.This deep distrust is deep seated in Somali lore going back to way before the mad mullah. By the time you get to Isaaq’s grandsons, they were already fighting with each other. I don’t like all my cousins, but I certainly know I’m not ready to fight with them.

Luckily the Somalilanders – at the end and often despite this distrust – they make it work. Things haven’t fallen apart here and actually are going pretty well. It has taken a long time to solidify the post-conflict gains and to begin the development phase of their state building, but it is going. And, perhaps more importantly, it is going at a Somali pace. Somaliland really did have to retract after it separated from the South into basically a federated microstate solution. Sure there was a central government created at the Burco conference. But the amount of power and influence of that government was marginal. One cannot compare the power that Silanyo has with the power that Tuur had. The central government was present, but it has taken almost two decades of steady work before anyone gives it any mind about being anything other than a minor inconvenience.

This is another incredibly fascinating thing about being here now, this is the point where the Somaliland Government is really figuring itself and really trying to exert some will.

This gets us to the microstate solution. In my view, it should be endorsed as it is probably the best viable option currently. Some of the donors seem to be realizing that – as reflected in much of the language coming from the UK as well as the US’s two-track policy shift. In my opinion, the donors need to throttle back the incentives for state capture. When the mandate for the TFG ends UNDP needs to have the political courage to stop paying Parliamentarian salaries, and other than emergency aid the rest of the money flowing into the South needs to end. Then the donors need to let the Somalis work from their grassroots (microstate) levels up.

Equal with this the Somalis have to take ownership. They really have to stop blaming all of their problems on the international community and take ownership for their own mistakes. I can fully accept many Somalis gripes about the prior actions of external actors. And I fully understand their paranoia about external interventions in their problems. But equally they have to trust a bit more. And they have to take a lot more ownership. This is, at its most elemental, a Somali problem, and they have to be the ones to figure the solutions out.

I am cautiously optimistic about London Conference. A lot of the right things appear to being said. We will see what will happen but if the donors really wanted to get to the roots of the problems, they need to just shut up and they need to hold their next conference in a place which is neutral enough to get all of the important-to-Somalis people under a great big, giant ass tree and then they need to not show up and to not pay. And then let them stay there until they figure it out. It will take a hell of a long time, but it will get done.

It has taken the fine work of a lot of Somalis and Westerners for the awareness to be sufficiently raised as to why we’re here and what the hell can we do about it. I must say for the first time in a while I’m cautiously optimistic about all of the Somali region.

For more perspective on the London Conference here are a few articles I thought highly incisive, particularly from the Somaliland view point: Article 1, Article 2.

The other day, my dad asked me to write a short piece about what my daily life is like in Somaliland. I usually refrain from such things, but I think it is a good opportunity to show how normal everything is here. With a few caveats.

I generally awake between 9 and 10. Although this is late for a work day, if you read to the end you’ll see why. Mostly everyone else is out of the office in the morning either in court or meetings or taking care of personal errands. This is great for me, since I’m a slow waker so I like the peacefulness in the mornings as it lets me wake at a reasonable pace. In many ways the afternoons and mornings are sort of flipped around from life in the US. Things start slowly here for almost everyone. Although I used to have my own house that I rented, these days I’m spending less long stretches in Hargeisa and so we have built a sleeping room here at the office for me to use when I’m here and for the team to use after a late night working when I’m not.

After a freezing cold shower that although painful is effective at getting your juices flowing, I head into our office. I share and office with Hassan, my Vice President, but he is rarely there in the mornings. I like to begin my day with a cup of coffee and some news, as many others do. Here that comes in a flask of Ethiopian coffee my watchman brings from our close Ethiopian tin shack shop and accompanied by my scans of my Google Reader (using Feedly’s skin), Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr feeds. I generally do a more or less quick scan in the mornings. I read a few smaller articles from my feeds, but I just generally skim the headlines and then mark the longer articles that seem interesting for my Readability queue.

After I’m finished with the news, I then usually begin working on whatever lies in front of me. I usually try to start the working day with the mundane admin tasks that don’t require as much thought as my client work. About 12:30 or 1:00 I’ll realize that I’m hungry and ask my watchman to go bring my lunch. We have a hotel about two blocks away that serves a decently nice chicken sandwich and edible fries (which is my typical lunch order). When I reach a stopping point in my work then I take a small break and migrate into our chewing room. This usually involves several trips to get all of the waste baskets in the office, rearrange the cushions in the room, make sure the tea cups and ashtrays are brought in, and also that all my accoutrement is ready.

I like to eat in the relaxation of the sitting room while listening to either some music or a podcast. The rest of the gang usually arrives somewhere between 2 and 3. Our majlis is almost always open to people if they are interested in coming to chat with us. The only times we ask people not to come are when we have a meeting planned. On a typical afternoon, we’ll have 7 to 10 people with us for varying lengths of time.

Chewing sessions are interesting. You make an effort to prepare your spot so everything you’ll need for the next 6 to 12 hours is within your reach. You make sure that your water, your tea, your soft drinks, your fake beer, your chat, your phone, your computer (and cord), your wallet, keys, everything is just around you. At our office, we developed a habit of using our wastebaskets as small tables for our laptops. It works fantastically as the laptop doesn’t overhead and when you’re sitting on the floor it is at a really good height so your back does not get jarred. Also it is quite easy to move when you are changing the way that you sit.

Chewing sessions generally start quite festive and then steadily deteriorate into quietness. Everyone usually is chatting at the beginning, or reading some news, or checking their facebook. Then after everyone is more or less settled in they begin work. In many offices, not only ours, the real work takes place at chewing sessions. Although many expats in Hargeisa are very much against qat (for admittedly valid reasons) the argument that it makes people lazy I simply don’t buy. For me, it focuses me and I actually work quite well when I’ve had a normal dosage of qat. The high you get from qat, if one can even call it a high, is very subtle and take a long time to settle in.

Some people join us but do not have work that day so they will chat or listen to Somali songs or watch TV depending on their moods. The rest of us either put on headphones or we just listen as we are working. It is not unlike a co-working space.

The great thing about a chewing session is that when you need a break or if you have a question you just ask or you just visit with people. If something comes on the news people will generally discuss. If there had been a big political incident earlier that day it will get analyzed in detail. And sometimes people will just work or chat on facebook. It is a very relaxed environment.

Usually people leave between 9 and 10. At this point in the night, I’m usually getting my best work done and so I will often stay going until about 2 or 3 when I snoozily saunter to the sleeping room. Then the cycle starts all over again. So that’s a typical Somaliland day. With a few pictures.

~ # ~

When I was in college my friend Dave and I would often fall asleep at some point during our millionth screening of Braveheart. We would often put the film on after the bars had closed and we had grabbed our drunken treat of the night and were not yet ready for bed. At the time we were training to be Marine officers and very interested in learning what it took to be a good leader. Near the beginning of the film there was a quote which I often thought about (at still think about):

You admire this man, this William Wallace. Uncompromising men are easy to admire. He has courage; so does a dog. But it is exactly the ability to compromise that makes a man noble. And understand this: Edward Longshanks is the most ruthless king ever to sit on the throne of England. And none of us, and nothing of Scotland will remain, unless we are as ruthless. Give ear to our nobles. Knowing their minds is the key to the throne.

We would scoff at this quote. In our youth and lack of exposure to the world we felt that uncompromising was the way of the greatest leaders. That may still be true, but I have learned that it definitely is not true of the greatest rulers. Indeed, the greatest rulers are often those that are the greatest to compromise. Human nature being what it is, you will very rarely have complete agreement with a course of action. Multiply the amount of people a decision will affect and you necessarily multiply the different opinions (both rational and irrational) which will impact your decision before it is taken and laud or critique it after it is taken. This is a fundamental “problem” with ruling in a democracy.

Ryan Lizza has written a fantastically interesting piece for The New Yorker. He dives deeply into a trove of memos which circulated the Obama White House during the first term of that administration. He assembles a very interesting piece which does a great job of detailing the tensions that any President may face. I encourage everyone to read it, here.

It is interesting for me, given my current diaspora state (relatively torn between Europe, America, and Africa), to compare the political processes which take place in a very new, somewhat inchoate democracy – Somaliland – to a very old, overly complex democracy – the US – while comparing both, which I view as an insider, to the relatively “clean” democratic processes that the Europeans embody. One of the difficult things in an independent executive system, where the governing functions of creating laws and putting those laws into action are separated between two branches of government, is that we tend to blame the “big man” for all of the problems. This happens in Somaliland just as often as it happens in the US. The realities of Presidential campaigns often do a disservice by blurring the lines. Much of the debate during a Presidential campaign revolves around big or small policy ideas that the President will have very little to no control over. As I was telling someone the other day, a President has an ability to stop a legislative action it doesn’t want to allow but it has little ability to make a legislative body do something that that body does not want to do. Yet these big policy ideas are a function of modern politics. Firstly they are easier to discuss than the minutae of what a President really does. Secondly, it is a method of acting somewhat uniformly in our very much decentralized system.

Personally, reading the piece shows me what I was hoping to see. A President who has learned how to do what is possibly the most difficult and complex job on the planet. A President who remains willing to make compromises, but also has learned how to work the system. A President who still has standards and struggles to balance a bowing to the political winds with a deep devotion to his ideals.

While Obama cannot get a large piece of greenhouse gas passed through (right now) domestically, he has floated a ton of money for research, innovation, and implementation of greenhouse reduction initiatives in other countries. While Obama faces complete stonewalling from his own legislators on jobs (right now), he has figured out how to incentivize job growth and business creation in other countries with entrepreneurial grants and collaborative agreements dominating much of the AID/DOS grants I’ve seen lately. While Obama cannot push forward comprehensive immigration reform (right now), he has put in place policies which make it much easier to get US visas (while remaining within the legislative caps mandated by various amendments to the Immigration and Nationalization Act) and illegal immigration flows are down – particularly from Mexico. These are largely international examples for a couple of reasons. First it is my area of interest so I follow it closer. Second the President has fundamentally more power over foreign policy than domestic policy. Third, Hillary – despite how divisive she may or may not be – is a brilliant bureaucrat and many of these initiatives are coming from her shop.

No government is perfect, but where the President and his team have a reasonable amount of power I am genuinely pleased with what I see. There’s much to disagree with, but there is much more that I agree with. As we turn towards a full scale assault on us all with respect to choosing our next President one thing I would encourage everyone to do is to not get tricked by the red herrings of advertisements and debates and to focus on what the President can and does actually do on a daily / weekly / monthly / yearly basis. Choose wisely.

~ # ~

We are smack in the middle of a heck of a travelling ten days. Left Chattanooga where we had Christmas for Glasgow where we had New Years via Atlanta (shuttle), London (plane), and Edinburgh (rental car). Then down to L’s farm in Southwest corner of Scotland. Then up to Edinburgh for a nap then to Den Haag via Amsterdam (plane and train). Thursday I trek down to Hargeisa via Zurich, Dubai, and Berbera.
Since I only have a very limited time here in the Hague before I return to Hargeisa, today I had to go get my haircut. I had been in the states for a few months and L wasn’t sure about the state of my hair upon arriving for the Christmas celebrations. The current outlook was grim at any rate. I had purposely delayed getting it cut (and my beard closely trimmed) because I am sometimes incredibly neglgent at life but also because I quite like my Turkish barber here in the Hague.
One thing I am learning about myself is how important patronage is. When I view it through the lens of community formation, patronage becomes exceedingly important to me. The word patron is a funny word. Reconciling medieval notions of artists who had patrons with more modern exclamatories of “don’t patronize me” leaves quite an imterpretive swath. Yet, the patronage I mean I to give someone your business more or less on a regular basis. Sometimes it is an exclusive arrangement; sometimes not. In others words I mean it in the same sense as to become a regular.
Some of the difficulties of living a nomad’s life are eased by assembling small pockets of communities where you are known. But communities, are living things and thereby require engagement in order to survive and to thrive. If you don’t participate in and engage with your communities the linkages between you and them whither. Sometimes it takes an extraordinarily long time for the connections to whither – as I found upon a trip to visit old, grand friends in September after too long apart. Sometimes it doesn’t take long at all for connections to whither – as I found out upon numerous trips to the same Panera where they never once gave me a singular look of recognition.
When the barber was almost ready for me, one of his partners walked in and asked me into his chair. I politely refused the earliest available barber for my guy. My guy speals not a lick of English and I not a lick of Dutch. So we have said very little to one another besides yes / no and some serious sign language. And yet, I feel (perhaps it is one sided) that we have a connection. When I saw me walk in there was a look of recognition on his face. Perhaps he’s just a good actor, but either way it made me feel quite happy to be a known commodity instead of an unknown commodity briefly flitting into and out of existence.
When I first sat in his chair on our first meeting, he looked at my hair for a second, realized I didn’t speak Dutch and then just  grabbed some of my hair indicated a length, I said no, he went shorter, I said yes. That was it until the end when I smiled and rubbed my chin. He used his finger and thumb to indicate short, medium, or long. I said medium with my fingers. Then I gave him the money and went on my way happier for the nice relax and small nap I had gotten while at the barber. Many like to go to their barbers for the news and gossip. I like to go to close my eyes and have a bit of relax. To turn my brain off for a split second. After that first cut, when L saw it, she said it was the best cut I had received in ages. This sealed the deal. So now I am his customer.
I have been a few times since that first time and every time I enjoy the ridiculous Turkish sappy pop songs and the fifties traditional decorating scheme with its marble and glass shelves and perfume bottles and potted plants and overall uptown Manhattan feel circa 1950. But also I get a really great haircut. So now I am willing to get a bit feral in order to wait till I can get back to the Hague to see my barber.
This is a pretty normal way of living ones life it seems to me. Most people I know have a favorite haircutter. It is a funny profession in that way. So universal. It should be known as the fourth or fifth oldest profession. Every community on earth has a barber shop and for a vast majority of the communities the barber shop is a hub of the community. A gathering point for gossip and discussion. A place which did not require the time or effort that a pub required. A place which you never know who you would run into. I like that even if I cannot gossip about who recently married whom at my barber shop, that I can at least walk in and he knows what to do.
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Sitting in a concrete cube, impersonal and loud with tiled floor and cinder walls that echo his fears, frustrations, and rage my friend is pacing in a provincial town in Somalia. He waits for a call that he hopes will end the worst purgatory he has ever felt. He waits for a call that will shatter his world. Will it be ne or the other, or the continuation of time stiff arming his attempts to do….something. Anything. For fuck’s sake this happens to other people, not to my people. I know these things because I know my friend. I know he will not sleep tonight, even though I told him to. I know this because I can see the green dot of presence when I incessant check facebook, just as impotently emasculated as he. For news. Of something.

No one doubts that aid work is hard. We bitch and moan about lack of food, shitty water, lack of fast internet and all the rest of it. But it is the times like this when the real shit happens. These are the times when it is truly hard. when doing your job puts your family and closest of friends at risk. Why the fuck do we do what we do? For them? For us? For a job?

I want with 95% of my soul to jump on a plane. But what on earth will that accomplish? Nothing. So instead of channeling my own rage for the angst and suffering of my friends I am left to watch the list of ‘Praying for you”s grow on a facebook wall. There is no way to reason through it. There is nothing to do. I can put my head in my hands. I can support. And that’s it.

So instead, I write this. I write about friendship. Because in aid, unlike in any other industry I know of, you forge friendships which are simply impossible in other worlds. After spending a week with someone laughing at your inability to leave the compound because the threat of terrorists attacks is too high (even for risk takers from small NGOs). After drinking yourself stupid after the most vicious of weeks imaginable. After chuckling at the little absurdities and cultural incongruities. After talking politics of a country not your own. After vacationing to the most beautiful little tucked away shitholes in the world. After wine at sunset. And dogs at dusk. After making bread, and canning peppers, and christmas dinner for all you know together. After these and a million other memories which you cherish for the rest of your life. You come to know people.

I have no thoughts which are greater than this. I have been unable to think today. My thoughts are in a place far from here. My brain is non-existent. And I wait. And I hope. And maybe, just maybe, for the first time in a long time. I pray.

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I just finished watching the jobs speech and my first thought was “were have you been”? The historian-poet-preacher in him which I fell in love with in the Yes We Can and Race speeches (collectively rather than individually) had found his groove tonight.

Every artist struggles with finding their artistic voice, but for me, at this moment, this was balm to my soul. Someone, somewhere, does actually get it. But before I get to what I liked about the speech let me take a small detour and talk about how I think about my relationship between me and my government.

I’m currently staying at my brother’s, @kuhlman, house and he has a great dane. Due to our pomo lives we missed each other. He is off on a construction job overnight and I just returned from an overnight job myself. We missed each other and were not able to pass a key back and forth. When we were texting each other as to our current statuses and how we could coordinate this changeover, I asked him whether the house was locked. He responded, “Maggie’s the lock.”

Now Maggie is a wonderful bitch (which I mean literally). This bitch has a bark that will tear your hair off when she gets scared. I have no idea whether she has the bite to match it, and I like that I don’t know that, because her bark is scary enough. She is the perfect lock. See locks are on-off switches. But living, breathing beings are able to differentiate between when on is OK and off is OK. Sometimes the best lock is the one that can differentiate between when to bark and when to be happy because your friend is here to let you out to go take a piss.

And this is how I want my government to be. I don’t want to rely on my government unnecessarily. I understand that my successes and my failures are my own. But sometimes you want to know that if you are forced, due to the situations of living your life, to deviate from your normal patterns, that there will be a being there to have your back. You don’t want something that is impersonal and cannot differentiate between friend and foe. You want a bitch there that is both happy to see you and happy to go have a poo in the yard.

That story said, there were many things that I loved about the Obama speech.

First, he chastised both sides. He told some hard truths. These words were his preacher robes which I have not seen him don for a long, long time. Too long. And it was needed. Both sides of the political aisle have been being babies for a while now and the only people suffering are the middle class of America. This must change. The only way to get shit done is to sometimes put aside the differences and realize that the betterment of the country is at stake. Since I’ve spent so much time in African countries where politics is so personality based I am especially receptive to the in-out-group mechanisms which operate in such an environment. And if you want to actually help, if you want to get something done in this world you’re going to have to figure out a compromise. Because, as the President of the United States, said “No single individual built America on their own. We built it together. .” What a great line. Sometimes we have to act as a community. Individualism is great, but no one at no time has EVER acted completely in isolation as an individual. We call those beings the last creature of their species. What is required, from time to time, is looking out for those that may not be as smart, or have the opportunities, or whatever as we fancy of ourselves. And in that vein, next week I hope to go pound some nails to help members of my family’s community who were affected by the tornadoes earlier this year.

Second, it was perhaps the most patriotic speech which has been given during my lifetime. It was a call to action. It was competitive (which we Americans love). It told us that there was going to be some hard days ahead. This was the poet that I’ve been longing for. This was the inspiration that I’ve been hoping for. This was the America that I have studied and that I love. Just turn off your brain (I’ll get to the wonky stuff in a moment) and listen to the words of his speech and tell me that you are not inspired by something, or even anything in this speech. No matter your political affiliation this man gets that he was “hired” to execute the laws in the best interest of us all.

Third, it cut through all the bullshit, stupid rhetoric which neither matters nor helps. He has learned from his own failures to properly leverage both the power of his position and the wave of people power which put him in that chair. This was a pragmatic speech to its core. What he said is exactly, exactly, what economists have proven matter for the economic development of your country. There are many opinions as to the best, but almost every economist will agree that what is necessary for economic development (this comes from my international development perspective) is: infrastructure, education, jobs for low-skilled individuals, and healthcare. We’ll leave aside for now the reasons why each of these exist. Similarly I’m going to take a mulligan on healthcare because I don’t have the energy to enter that debate as to why people that don’t have millions in the bank don’t deserve to not feel awful all the time, but if you care about that watch Sicko and shutup. But see here’s the thing. Our schools are falling apart. While we prosecute irrational wars overseas (which I’ve participated in and have some modicum of epistemic authority here), we’re not able to give the support that our teachers require to educate our children. Our infrastructure is subpar. Visit Europe and try to convince me that we are still number one. Drill, Baby, Drill.

So this is a short review, but my early take (before reading any punditry) is that it was brilliant and one of Obama’s best performances. On a personal level I’m happy for three reasons: (1) the poet I wanted is finding his voice, (2) the pragmatist we all need is finally leveraging his platform, and (3) the wonk in me is reassured that someone up there will bark when necessary and greet when necessary.

There were many great moments of this speech for me. But the one that stands out. The one that I will think of tomorrow. Is this.

No single individual built America on their own. We built it together. We have been, and always will be, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all; a nation with responsibilities to ourselves and with responsibilities to one another. Members of Congress, it is time for us to meet our responsibilities.

What did you think of the speech?

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I walked to work this morning. While I was getting ready for work my phone was streaming an album which I found last night to be ultra-enjoyable. My headphones were with me; so, I plugged them into the phone and started walking. Got to work; sat down at my desk computer to type this; the album is still playing. Seamlessly it has flown to my ears via 4G wireless and .11n wireless. I have not purchased this album, but I’m going to see the band in about 10 days if I’m able.

This is our wonderful, vibrant, modern world. Where pop music is crowd-sourced and GOOD. No more do we need to rely on corporate people with obvious biases and conflicting inclinations, torn between their artistic roots and boardroom future, who push out to the masses bubblegum crap. These days bubblegum crap still does OK, but nothing like it did in the 90′s. These days, if you don’t have a real soul, if you lack authenticity, you are less likely to “make” it than in the past. I listened to a Moth podcast by one of the Milli Vanilli guys earlier this week who was talking about how things went down for them. I cannot even imagine that happening. Even the corporate music world (I think) understands that it takes more than a pretty face, great hair, and an ability to dance to make it. Unless you want to be a dancer – which you can. I love it.

When you wanted to impress a girl you brought her over, and if she was artsy you figured out a way to let her see your music collection. CDs organized on metal or wooden racks prominently displayed in your room. This is how it was done for decades. Because as was said in High Fidelity, “music, art, television, these things matter, they connect us.” It was a shorthand way to tell her your story in a really interesting way. The tingles of “ohhhhhh, I looooooove this album” and you knew that you had made a connection. Those things were real. Although we are losing the physical objects, it seems to me that the social interaction portion is still very much alive and well.

Now we get to spotify. My friend Frank sent me an invite a couple of weeks ago, and I must say it is only alright if you don’t pay. But then I said let me try their pay service. And a whole new world opened up. It is unbelievable. They have figured out the perfect marriage of a huge library, vibrant community of humans I actually know, along with all my music. What I love about it, is that to be cool on spotify doesn’t matter how big your record collection is, because everyone is operating on the same exact set of tunes. It doesn’t matter if you are a rich person who can afford to spend hundreds on tons of new CD’s or if you are dirt poor and just want to listen to great stuff. You both are operating on the same pay model and have access to the same stuff. We Americans love our individuality and there is something to be said for that, but the Europeans have gone much further than we have in figuring out how to manage communities by sharing. So what does matter on Spotify. I’m not sure as I’m really new to the community, but I suspect what really matters is not the size or breadth of the money that you have spent on albums but on what you have put together, what you have created, mashed up, and collated. It is is your playlists idiot.

That’s how I’m going to judge you in our amazing, cloudy, pomo world. Have a great day everyone, find some good art, enjoy the hell out of it, smile at your neighbors and dance for no reason.

And if you want to know what album I was loving, check out this band.

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