Without the King

The King of Swaziland

Now playing at the Quad Cinema in New York, Michael Skolnik’s documentary “Without the King” is a study of Swaziland, the poorest country on the African continent and the last absolute monarchy on earth. It has a lot in common with another monarchy in Africa–Ethiopia–whose ruler also lived in opulence while his subjects suffered in abject misery.

Swaziland is ruled by King Mswati III, who has fourteen wives each with their own palace, owns a fleet of Mercedes Benzes, wears designer clothing and sends his 22 children abroad for schooling, including his eldest daughter Princess Sikhayiso, aka Pashu. Along with her father, Pashu dominates Skolnik’s penetrating examination of the wages of greed. She is utterly oblivious to the plight of her fellow Swazis, who have the lowest life expectancy in the world (31 years) and suffer from the highest incidence of AIDS (42.6%). Sounding like the typical airhead that show up on reality shows on the cable networks in the U.S., Pashu portrays being King as hard work: “You have to listen to people all the time, any time of day or night.”

Princess Pashu

As the film progresses, we learn that the King might listen to all sorts of people, but not the poor who make up 99 percent of the population. Skolnik allows a number of them, including one activist who is forced to cover his face for self-preservation, to make their case against the monarchy. Although paying high taxes (relative to their meager income), they get nothing back in return from the government. Villagers have no access to running water and are forced to drink from stagnant ponds. While any government should be in the forefront of the fight against AIDS in the face of such abysmal statistics, King Mswati has neither promoted safe sex nor has he provided the kind of medical care that is needed for its victims. In the course of the film, we learn that he inherited a Swiss bank account totaling billions of dollars from his father. Since the total population of Swaziland is only 1.1 million (the country is about the size of New Jersey), that bank account can go a long way to reducing the misery of his people.

Towards the end of the film, the reality of life in Swaziland begins to sink in on Princess Pashu. Even though she participates (barebreasted) in a ritual dance of 75,000 virgins for the benefit of her father, she eventually feels disgusted by the whole thing, especially her father picking two teenaged brides out of the procession. She spits out, “They were younger than me.” Her alienation deepens when she visits an orphanage for children whose parents died of AIDS. Her disillusionment has reached the point where she openly entertains the possibility of, if not the need for, revolution.

AIDS orphans in Swaziland

Swaziland is embedded between South Africa and Mozambique. I strongly suspect that its continuing existence as a feudal society can be explained by the failure of the revolutionary process to reach a natural conclusion in the bordering countries. Mozambique was torn apart by apartheid South Africa-backed terrorist counter-revolutionaries (RENAMO) and post-apartheid South Africa has not challenged the property relations that keep the overwhelming Black majority impoverished. This is not to speak of President Thabo Mbeki’s failure to adequately address his own country’s AIDS crisis. Such a political environment is not conducive to change in Swaziland, although the fearless and dedicated activists in Skolnik’s documentary remain undaunted. For them, it is a choice of dying in struggle or dying from poverty.

While it is understandable that “Without the King” could not immerse itself in Swazi history, there are lessons to be learned about why the country’s ruling class chooses to emphasize tradition. Indeed, in interviews with the King and with Pashu (before she begins to wise up), there are constant references to “Swazi ways”. While the British were working overtime to impose forced labor on the population, they never forcibly assimilated the Swazis into British culture. Men were permitted to wear animal skins and carry spears as long as they didn’t challenge white capitalist exploitation.

The residue of feudal culture persisted into the 1960s when the country gained its independence as a monarchy. In these turbulent times, the elite felt threatened by the South African liberation movement to its West and forged an alliance with white settlers and multinational business interests. Both the King and the settlers were suspicious of slogans like “one man, one vote”. As you watch the modern day activists marching rhymically-almost dancelike-in the streets against the Swazi monarchy, you will be reminded of the ANC toyi toyi.

Sierra Leone Refugee All Stars

Last night I attended a special screening of “Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars” at the IFC theater in New York that was graced by the presence of the band who played for the audience after the documentary ended. Co-Director Banker White, who took questions from the audience, was joined by Ishmael Beah, the author of “A Long Way Gone,” a memoir about being forced to be a teenage soldier in Sierra Leone. At this point, the film is not scheduled for theatrical release but can be rented from Netflix, which produced the film.

Unlike “The Empire in Africa“, the film does not attempt to analyze the civil war in Sierra Leone. It instead approaches its subjects–a group of musicians led by Reuben Koroma–in the same way that the directors of “Lost Boys of the Sudan” approached their subject. Namely, it is a tale of dislocation and grief. When Koroma left war-torn Sierra Leone for a refugee camp in Guinea, he was in the same boat as the other residents. Their days were marked by a sense of futility and loss. Even though they were safe from the mutilation, torture and murder of the civil war, each day was characterized by boredom and alienation. That inspired Koroma to form a band in the camp composed of refugees like him, including those who encountered the loss of limb and family members. The goal was to bring some joy into the lives of the refugees. The film’s website notes that a vocalist named Abdul “Jah Voice” Kamara for his perfect high pitch was forced to watch rebels kill his father before they cut off his arm at the shoulder and left for dead. Another, named Mohammed Bangura, had similarly been forced to watch the murder of his parents, wife, and infant child before having his hand severed.

The musicians are not focused on trying to understand the causes of this terrible tragedy, which in some ways defy conventional social and political analysis–including my own. Instead they affirm the spirit of humanity and solidarity that was all but lost in the civil war. This is not to say that they were unaware of the deep social and economic contradictions that led to the slaughter. During the Q&A, Koroma stated that Sierra Leone did need a revolution, but a positive one.

Like “Buena Vista Social Club” or “Gypsy Caravan,” “Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars” basically combines performances with behind-the-scenes interviews with the various musicians. Their music can best be described as a mixture of West African highlife, a lilting style that emerged in Ghana during the 1950s and reggae. The band also includes a youthful rapper named Alhadji Jeffrey Kamara, aka “Black Nature,” who was orphaned by the war and tortured by police in Guinea.

Although Guinea was a haven for the musicians and their fellow countrymen, it was not a place they felt at home in. The final scenes in the documentary describe a tour of Sierra Leone by the group, who were encouraged to see the post-war situation for themselves in 2004. Wary at first, they eventually became convinced that it was possible to return home and set an example for other refugees who followed their example. The band’s CD is available from Anti records, whose website includes a number of audio and video clips of the band in performance.

Official film website: http://www.refugeeallstars.org/

Band website: http://www.sierraleonesrefugeeallstars.com/

 

 

Bush and the war in Algeria

Bush’s latest reading material

Out of morbid curiosity, I watched Scott Pelley’s interview with George W. Bush last Sunday night on “Sixty Minutes”. It included the following:

PELLEY: (Voiceover) Mr. Bush, realizing he’d never had a TV camera on-board, urged us to catch the Washington Monument going by. He’d been reading a book on the history of the city and pointed out landmarks along Pennsylvania Avenue. He told us he’s reading another book, a historical parallel to Iraq about France’s long, losing fight against insurgents in Algeria. Henry Kissinger had recommended it. Within minutes, we had reached Andrews Air Force Base and Air Force One.

I strongly suspected when hearing this that the book in question is Alistair Horne’s “A Savage War of Peace” that I cite in my “Battle of Algiers” review on MRZine. I subsequently learned from Eli Stephens that CNN is reporting that Bush is indeed reading Horne’s book for lessons on what to do in Iraq.

My review of “The Battle of Algiers” began with a similar use of the “lessons” of Algeria:

Challenged by terrorist tactics and guerrilla warfare in Iraq, the Pentagon recently held a screening of “The Battle of Algiers,” the film that in the late 1960’s was required viewing and something of a teaching tool for radicalized Americans and revolutionary wannabes opposing the Vietnam War.

Back in those days the young audiences that often sat through several showings of Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1965 re-enactment of the urban struggle between French troops and Algerian nationalists, shared the director’s sympathies for the guerrillas of the F.L.N., Algeria’s National Liberation Front. Those viewers identified with and even cheered for Ali La Pointe, the streetwise operator who drew on his underworld connections to organize a network of terrorist cells and entrenched it within the Casbah, the city’s old Muslim section. In the same way they would hiss Colonel Mathieu, the character based on Jacques Massu, the actual commander of the French forces.

The Pentagon’s showing drew a more professionally detached audience of about 40 officers and civilian experts who were urged to consider and discuss the implicit issues at the core of the film — the problematic but alluring efficacy of brutal and repressive means in fighting clandestine terrorists in places like Algeria and Iraq. Or more specifically, the advantages and costs of resorting to torture and intimidation in seeking vital human intelligence about enemy plans.

Michael T. Kaufman, “What Does the Pentagon See in ‘Battle of Algiers’?” (The New York Times, September 7, 2003)

Horne’s book is a devastating indictment of colonialism. It has now been reissued as a paperback and I strongly recommend it. Here’s a review by Thomas Ricks, the Washington Post author of “Fiasco”, a celebrated attack on the war in Iraq.

The Washington Post November 19, 2006 Sunday Aftershocks; A classic on France’s losing fight against Arab rebels contains troubling echoes of Iraq today.

Reviewed by Thomas E. Ricks

A SAVAGE WAR OF PEACE Algeria 1954-1962
By Alistair Horne
New York Review Books. 608 pp. Paperback, $19.95

When Americans talk about the raging insurgency in Iraq, they often draw parallels with the Vietnam War, but a better analogy is probably the French war against nationalist rebels in Algeria from 1954 to 1962. That’s one reason why the landmark history of that conflict, Alistair Horne’s A Savage War of Peace, has been an underground bestseller among U.S. military officers over the last three years, with used copies selling on Amazon.com for $150. Indeed, “Algeria” has become almost a codeword among U.S. counterinsurgency specialists — a shorthand for the depth and complexity of the mess we face in Iraq. Earlier this year, I referred to Horne’s book while conversing with one such expert in Taji, Iraq, and got a grim nod of agreement.

Now a new paperback edition of Horne’s 1977 classic has been issued, cutting the price of wisdom to a more reasonable $19.95. In a new preface, Horne makes the connection to Iraq explicit. First, he notes, the Algerian insurgents fighting to end France’s colonial control over the country avoided taking on the French army directly; instead, they attacked the police and other more vulnerable targets, thereby demoralizing local supporters of the French presence. Second, Algeria’s porous borders greatly aided the insurgents, who could receive reinforcements, arms and sanctuary from neighboring countries such as Tunisia and Morocco. Third, and most emphatically, he writes that “torture should never, never, never be resorted to by any Western society.”

Those three parallels are provocative enough, as far as they go. But many other, perhaps less obvious points in Horne’s lucid, well-organized history may do even more to deepen our understanding of the Iraq War.

Again and again, Horne wrote passages about the French in Algeria that could describe the U.S. military in Iraq. As I wrote about the U.S. Army’s big “cordon-and-sweep” operations that detained tens of thousands of civilian Iraqi males in the Sunni Triangle in the fall of 2003, I remembered Horne: “This is the way an administration caught with its pants down reacts under such circumstances. . . . First comes the mass indiscriminate round-up of suspects, most of them innocent but converted into ardent militants by the fact of their imprisonment.”

Like the Americans in Iraq, the French in Algeria consistently misunderstood the nature of the opposition, focusing too much on supposed foreign support and too little on the local roots of the insurgency. Horne also detected a distinctly familiar pattern of official optimism among French officials, who were quick to declare their war “virtually over” four years before it ended in their defeat.

Moreover, A Savage War of Peace draws an important distinction between torture by the police and torture by the military. The former damages mainly individuals and need not be hugely damaging to the war effort; the latter, Horne quotes a former French officer as saying, involves the honor of the nation — as it did at Abu Ghraib and other facilities where Iraqis were abused by American soldiers in 2003-04.

Along the way, Horne offers three other comments that are not particularly encouraging. First, when considering the Bush administration’s policy of having U.S. forces stand down as newly trained Iraqi forces stand up, it is worth noting that throughout the eight years of the Algerian war, more Algerians were fighting on the French side than on the rebel side — and the French still lost.

Second, when trying to understand Iraq’s current violence, it is good to recall Horne’s comment that “such a simultaneous internal ‘civil war’ ” often rages alongside a “revolutionary struggle against an external enemy.”

Finally, when we hear U.S. military officers arguing that they achieved their mission in Iraq but that the rest of the U.S. government failed or the will of the American people faltered, remember Horne’s quotation from a French general, Jacques de Bollardière, who was critical of his army’s performance: “Instead of coldly analysing with courageous lucidity its tactical and strategic errors, it gave itself up to a too human inclination and tried — not without reason, however — to excuse its mistakes by the faults of civil authority and public opinion.”

 

To be sure, there are huge differences between the two wars. Most notably, the United States isn’t a colonial power in Iraq, seeking to maintain a presence of troops and settlers as long as possible. Rather, in Iraq, victory would consist of getting U.S. personnel out while leaving behind a relatively friendly, open, stable and independent government. And while elements of the French military tried to assassinate French President Charles de Gaulle for pulling out from what he termed “a bottomless quagmire,” there is little fear that U.S. officers will go down that rebellious road.

But there are numerous suggestive parallels — mainly relating to conventional Western militaries fighting primarily urban insurgencies in Arab cultures while support for their wars dwindles back home and while the insurgents hope to outlast their better-armed opponents. As such, anyone interested in Iraq should read this book immediately.

Thomas E. Ricks, a Washington Post military correspondent who has reported frequently from Iraq, is the author of “Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq.”

UPDATE:

The New York Times, January 17, 2007 Wednesday
Aux Barricades!
By Maureen Dowd

Being president can be really, really hard.

”Sometimes you’re the commander in chief,” W. explained to Scott Pelley on ”60 Minutes.” ”Sometimes you’re the educator in chief, and a lot of times you’re both when it comes to war.”

President Bush has been dutifully making the rounds of TV news shows, trying to make the case that victory in Iraq is ”doable.” He thinks the public will support the Surge if he can simply illuminate a few things that we may have been too thick to understand. For instance, he says he needs to ”explain to people that what happens in the Middle East will affect the future of this country.” Yes, Mr. President, we get it.

He also told Jim Lehrer last night that in 20 years, radical Shiites could be warring with radical Sunnis and Middle Eastern oil could fall into the hands of radicals, who might also get weapons of mass destruction.

So after scaring Americans into backing the Sack of Iraq by warning that radicals could get W.M.D., now he’s trying to scare Americans into supporting the Surge in Iraq by warning that radicals could get W.M.D.

So many deaths, so little progress.

It’s unnerving to be tutored by an educator in chief who is himself being tutored. The president elucidating the Iraqi insurgency for us is learning about the Algerian insurgency from the man who failed to quell the Vietcong insurgency.

During his ”60 Minutes” interview, Mr. Bush mentioned that he was reading Alistair Horne’s classic history, ”A Savage War of Peace,” about why the French suffered a colonial disaster in a guerrilla war against Muslims in Algiers from 1954 to 1962.

The book was recommended to W. by Henry Kissinger, who is working on an official biography of himself with Mr. Horne.

Mr. Horne recalled that Dr. Kissinger told him: ”The president’s one of my best students. He reads all the books I send him.” The author asked the president’s foreign affairs adviser if W. ever wrote any essays on the books. ”Henry just laughed,” Mr. Horne said.

It seems far too late for Mr. Bush to begin studying about counterinsurgency now that Iraq has cratered into civil war. Can’t someone get the president a copy of ”Gone With the Wind”?

Maybe it was inevitable, once W. started reading Camus’s ”L’Etranger,” set in Algeria, that he would move on to Mr. Horne. As The Washington Post military correspondent Tom Ricks wrote in November, the Horne book has been an underground best-seller among U.S. military officers for three years, and ”Algeria” has become almost a code word among counterinsurgency specialists for the mess in Iraq. The Pentagon screened the 1966 movie ”The Battle of Algiers” in 2003, but the commander in chief must have missed it.

I asked Mr. Horne, who was at his home in a small village outside Oxford, England, what the president could learn from his book.

”The depressing problem of getting entangled in the Muslim world,” he replied. ”Algeria was a thoroughly bloodthirsty war that ended horribly and cost the lives of about 20,000 Frenchmen and a million Algerians. There was a terrible civil war. De Gaulle ended up giving literally everything away and left without his pants.”

President de Gaulle had all the same misconceptions as W., that his prestige could persuade the Muslims to accept his terms; that the guerrillas would recognize military defeat and accept sensible compromise; and that, as Mr. Horne writes, ”time would wait while he found the correct formula and then imposed peace with it.”

Mr. Horne also sees sad parallels in the torture issue: ”The French had experience under the Nazis in the occupation and practiced methods the Germans used in Algeria and extracted information that helped them win the Battle of Algiers. But in the long run it lost the war, because it caused such revulsion in France when the news came out, and there was huge opposition to the war from Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.”

In May 2005, Mr. Horne gave a copy of his book to Rummy, with passages about torture underlined. ”I got a savage letter back from him,” the author said.

The best thing now, he said, is to try to ”get around the mullahs” and ”get non-Christian forces in there as quickly as possible, mercenaries. As Henry said the other day, if only we had two brigades of Gurkhas to send to Baghdad.”

Meanwhile, maybe W. should move on to reading Sartre. ”No Exit,” perhaps.

UPDATE #2

Inside Higher Ed, Jan. 24

Facing the Question

By Scott McLemee

“Sixty Minutes” reported a couple of weeks ago that George W. Bush is now, on the advice of Henry Kissinger, reading a book about the Algerian War.

My new year’s resolutions preclude taking any of the various cheap shots made conveniently easy by this bit of news. No, mustn’t. Instead, it’s worth dwelling on an interesting fact there, between the lines. Even someone with a pretty slight knowledge of the literature on the Algerian conflict (okay, I confess it) will immediately know which book Kissinger recommended to the president. It’s obvious.First published 30 years ago, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962, by Alistair Horne, very quickly established itself as the standard account of that period available in any language.

Read full article here.

Days of Glory (Indìgenes)

With an Algerian director and North African lead actors, “Days of Glory” (Indìgenes) tells the story of four soldiers in the colonial African Army during WWII who fight to liberate France from Nazi occupation and to secure their own rights against racist French officers. While this is sufficient reason to see the film, it has the additional distinction of being one of the finest war movies in recent years. With a budget that is a less than a quarter than that of “Saving Private Ryan,” it is many times more powerful. Indeed, the final scene of “Days of Glory” is a virtual reprise of Spielberg’s film with the four principal characters fighting heroically against a far larger German force, but with much more dramatic impact.

In some ways, “Days of Glory” is a very old-fashioned film in the mold of “A Walk in the Sun” or other WWII classics. You take a cross-section of men, put them in the crucible of battle and allow them to react to a variety of challenges, both from the enemy and from within their own ranks. “Days of Glory” has a couple of antecedents that are worth mentioning. One is the similarly named “Glory”, which is about the American Civil War’s first all-Black regiment and the other is Senegalese Director Ousmane Sembene’s “Camp de Thiaroye,” a semi-autobiographical film about Black soldiers detained in a French prison camp during WWII after they protest racist treatment.

In Sembene’s masterpiece, a Senegalese soldier disguises himself as an American GI to gain entry into a segregated brothel, but is turned away after they discover he is African. It is entirely possible that “Days of Glory” director Rachid Bouchareb was inspired by this incident to create the character Messaoud Souni (Roschdy Zem), who dons an American uniform in the hopes that he will be seen as more than a “native” (indìgene). Like Sembene’s soldier, he discovers that white women are off-limits. After Messouad begins corresponding with a French woman with whom he spent a night, military censors intercept and destroy the love letters he sends to her.

Messaoud takes out his frustrations on Saïd Larbi (Jamel Debbouze), an illiterate Moroccan peasant who has joined the military out of economic necessity rather than a desire to “liberate France.” Soon after his training has begun, he is asked where he is from. His answer: “total poverty.” After Saïd becomes a manservant to their sergeant, Messaoud begins calling him Aïcha–a girl’s name–in the barracks. He only stops after Yassir holds a knife to a throat and swears that he will kill him if he does so again.

Corporal Abdelkader Bellaïdi (Sami Bouajila) pulls Yassir away and warns Messaoud to stop provoking Yassir. Unlike Yassir, Abdelkader can read and write. In his spare moments, he reads military training manuals in the hope of gaining the proficiency he needs to be promoted to sergeant, his only ambition in life. In the press notes, director Rachid Bouchareb states that Abdelkader “is inspired by characters such as Ben Bella, who fought in WWII, was disillusioned and became a nationalist.”

Joining the three men above in the film’s climactic battle with the Germans is Yassir Allaoui (Samy Nacèri), a Berber peasant who has joined the military in order to avoid forced labor imposed by the French colonizers. He has almost no interest in “liberating France” and sees the war mainly as an opportunity to make a petty profit as he removes watches, rings and wallets from dead Nazi soldiers. In one of the most powerful scenes in the film, Yassir and a fellow Berber enter a cathedral in a French town they have just liberated. After Yassir begins to loot the donation box, his comrade, who has been standing in awe of religious iconography on the walls, urges him to stop because it is “a sin.”

In distinction to the standard patriotic Hollywood fare, “Days of Glory” treats WWII as a job for these men and nothing more. No matter how many times they talk about “liberating France,” you understand that they are far more interested in proving to their masters that they are not mere indìgenes and deserve full equality. Shooting Nazis is not that much different than putting out forest fires or any other dangerous job that requires a strong back and physical courage. In one key scene, just as the four principals are about to enter a French village in Alsace where they will confront the Nazis, a German plane showers them with leaflets. It addresses them as Muslims and promises them freedom if they defect to the other side. As Yassir studies the leaflet with obvious interest, he is upbraided by Corporal Abdelkader who reminds him that they are there to fight Germans. The beauty of this film is that it depicts a man like Yassir as a genuine hero, even though his devotion to patriotic abstractions is understandably limited.

“Days of Glory” has inspired a grass roots movement against French attempts to betray the Africans who laid down their lives to liberate their country. In the early 1960s, after decolonization was completed, France then decided to freeze the pensions of veterans of the African Army. In 1996, a Senegalese ex-Staff Sergeant, Amadou Diop, sued the French government. After serving in the army from 1937 to 1959, he was dismissed after Senegal became independent and only received a third of the pension he was entitled to. In 2001, the Council of State ruled in his favor posthumously but in 2003 the French government put a new freeze on the pensions. Despite homages to colonial troops made by Jacques Chirac in 2004, the question of “frozen” pensions has not been resolved, a matter that the film addresses in an onscreen postscript.

In a departure from standard film release practices, the Weinstein Company has scheduled press screenings even though the film is now being shown at the Angelika Theatre in New York City on a “trial basis”. If this is a bid to get a wider audience for this noteworthy film, I can only do my part by urging everybody who reads this review in the New York area to see this landmark film. It is a masterpiece.

The Empire in Africa

Philippe Diaz’s documentary “The Empire in Africa” opens in NYC, Los Angeles and Madison, Wisconsin theaters this Friday. It is not to be missed. Focused on the bloody civil war in Sierra Leone, it is the perfect rejoinder to those who believe that the West has some kind of obligation to provide law and order through a “humanitarian” military intervention of the sort that NY Timesman Nicholas Kristof contributor calls for in Darfur or that Harvard professor Samantha Powers called for in Rwanda. Using interviews with the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a rebel group widely portrayed as the Sierra Leone equivalent of the Janjaweed in Darfur, as well as supporters of military intervention against it, Diaz uncovers a rescue mission much more about rescuing diamond mining profits than lives.

“The Empire in Africa” makes no attempt to prettify the RUF, opening with a ghastly display of Sierra Leoneans who have had hands or legs chopped off by the rebels. We eventually learn that these acts were carried out as a reprisal against villagers who were implicated in government-sponsored murders against the group. Although the film does not make the specific connection with Iraq, the violence in Sierra Leone seems to have had the same kind of spiraling, out-of-control, vendetta-like quality seen in Iraq today but without the religious sectarian split. The RUF appears to be like many armed African resistance groups that begin with progressive goals but somehow get derailed in the process. While by no means as retrograde as the Khmer Rouge, the RUF gives the overall impression of a force that has allowed the gun and the machete to prevail over politics. That being said, interviews with at least one militant in the film reveals them to be bent on ridding Sierra Leone of imperialist predators and making the country’s riches, diamonds in particular, a basis for a more just economic development path.

As the violence deepened in Sierra Leone, the UN “came to the rescue”, just as the expensive full-page savedarfur.org ads in the NY Times call for now. Using Western funding from aboveground and clandestine sources, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was elected President with a clear mandate to stop the killing. A long-time employee of the UN, he had the enthusiastic support of the US, Great Britain and France who understand how to manipulate the international body to their own devices. He also had support from ECOMOG, an armed force made up of contingents from a number of African nations, with Nigeria supplying most of the muscle. In other words, Sierra Leone was a model for what is called for in Darfur. As those who urge “humanitarian” intervention in Darfur keep telling us, an effective fighting force made up UN and or African nations is all that is needed to save innocent lives. Nobody should have any such illusions after watching “The Empire in Africa”.

As Diaz’s footage makes clear, ECOMOG soldiers were as brutal as the RUF that they had been called into save the Sierra Leoneans from, if not more so. The camera reveals them to be total thugs, shooting people on the spot and mercilessly beating those that they do not kill. Why anybody would expect anything different from Nigerian soldiers is the mystery of all times. With its bloody suppression of the Ogoni people, they had plenty of experience in terrorizing a civilian population before coming into Sierra Leone. As for the British and their other “civilized” partners, their record in Africa going back to the late 1800s has been undiminished cruelty in the pursuit of profits. Asking Western Europeans, Americans and Nigerians to act selflessly on behalf of some kind of rescue mission is like asking Al Capone to look after your life savings.

With the support of the UN and the West, Kabbah was able to suppress the RUF and guarantee continued access to the country’s diamonds by outside interests.

Philippe Diaz came to Sierra Leone in 1991 with a commitment to getting beneath the official version of what was happening there. On the film’s website, he states:

The government had made it clear to us that we should not interview the rebels because our safety couldn’t be assured and as one minister put it, “they are so illiterate anyway, they wouldn’t be able to talk to you.” It took us a long time to establish a connection to the rebels, not because we didn’t know where to find them – they were officially in town – but because they had decided to not give any interviews to foreign journalists that “had manipulated the truth” for many years. It took us almost a month to convince them that we were not here to demonize them but to tell the truth. Once they believed us, they were all willing to tell their side of the story… and were perfectly able to do so. For “illiterate” people, I must say some of them were the most knowledgeable people I had met in the country with an analysis of world politics that was much more developed than that of some of the current ministers we had met. Our safety was never in jeopardy in their campground, even if we didn’t feel too at ease being surrounded by young soldiers, some teenagers, armed with AK-47.

It took a tremendous amount of courage for Diaz to make such a film. Not only does he deserve credit for debunking myths that have circulated about the “humanitarian rescue” in Sierra Leone, he has made a compelling film that ranks with some of the finest I have seen about the problems of war in Third World countries.

This is a film that will stick with you long after you have seen it. It is not only must viewing for political activists, but for anybody trying to understand the problems of war and peace in a continent that has become an obsession for liberals with a missionary complex. Africans indeed deserve better and Philippe Diaz has made a powerful contribution toward that end with “The Empire in Africa”.

Film website and scheduling information

 

Lion of the Desert

A couple of months ago, an old friend who works at the World Bank (yes, we are everywhere) recommended “Lion of the Desert” to me. I finally got around to watching it this week and can strongly recommend it as one of the finer anti-colonial films of recent years and one that like “Battle of Algiers” resonates strongly with the struggle now taking place in Iraq.

Made in 1979, “Lion of the Desert” is a historically faithful study of the guerrilla struggle against the Italian fascist occupation of Libya led over a 20 year period by Omar Mukhtar, who is played by Anthony Quinn. In keeping with the film’s respect for historical accuracy, Quinn, who was 64 at the time, is a perfect choice to play Mukhtar who was 69 when he was captured by the fascists. With his naturally white hair and beard, Quinn seems an unlikely choice to play the stereotypical warrior but the historical Mukhtar was no stereotype.

 

Omar Mukhtar in captivity

As the film progresses, we discover that the character relied more on wile than on physical prowess, just as was the case in real life. Quinn’s character wears eyeglasses that fall from his face during his final combat, just as took place historically. This is not a Braveheart type treatment that depicts the oppressed Libyans as defeating much larger and much better equipped armies through sheer courage, but rather one that is marked frequently by exhaustion and defeat. We remember Omar Mukhtar today less for his ability to foil the fascists than for his inner resourcefulness and his belief in freedom. He might be a lion, but he is also a human being.

The Italians colonized Libya, Somalia and Ethiopia as part of an attempt to get up to speed with their more “advanced” Western European rivals who had a toehold in Africa for some time. Mukhtar was a leader of the Senusi people who lived in the Cyrenaica region in Eastern Libya before it had become a modern state. Described as Bedouin in the film, they appear to have the same kind of fiercely independent streak as the Algerian Kabyle (Berbers) who challenged the French in Algeria in the 1950s.

When we first meet Mukhtar Omar in the film, he is giving lessons in the Quran to young boys in a Senusi village. Throughout the film, the character’s religious faith goes hand in hand with his determination to resist the occupation. His Islamic beliefs in the brotherhood of man also lead him to avoid treating Italian prisoners with the same kind of cruelty that his own fighters endured.

Anthony Quinn as Omar Mukhtar explaining the Quran

His main adversary in the film is Gen. Rodolfo Graziani (Oliver Reed), who was hand-picked by Mussolini to quash the Senusi rebellion and who eventually succeeded. His methods included herding the Senusi into concentration camps and erecting a long barbed-wire fence between Libya and Egypt in order to cut off supplies. Historians estimate that between 30,000 and 70,000 Senusis were killed by the occupiers. With a population numbering about 185,000 in 1923, we are talking about a slaughter of epic proportions.

Shortly after the fascists hung Omar Mukhtar, his followers issued a statement that could be a rallying cry for the Iraqi resistance today:

The Fascists believed that the condemnation of Omar al-Mukhtar to death would make it easier for them to occupy the country, but unfortunately for them the souls of the martyrs are an eternal flame which inspires the national spirit in the hearts of the people still living.

The martyr of the Tripoli-Barce nation is not dead, for he has left his people with an immortal monument of heroism which will be inherited by future generations.

This sad monument, built by the Fascist assassins’ hands, will remain for ever and will never be forgotten because it has left mortal wounds in our hearts.

Woe to those oppressors who do not respect the age, the courage and the incomparable heroism of Omar al-Mukhtar: but they cannot understand the significance of this quality.

The years cannot wipe out the horror of this crime, which struck the heart of all Arabs, and which will always remain as a stain on their history, washed as it is in the blood of innocents, of women, of men, of the aged and of children.

People of Tripoli and Barce!

Always remember that day when that greatest of misfortunes occurred.

You must always retain this memory so as to learn a lesson that will serve in future to tell you how to avenge yourselves for your martyrs.

In that memory there is a lesson that will encourage and bring about the vengeance on those who have colonized your country and who deprived you of your rights and who have killed and driven far away many of your men.

On this day we ask the Arab nation and its patriots to join with us in grief and sadness for the misfortune that we commemorate today.

Omar al-Mukhtar was not only the martyr of the Tripoli-Barce people, but he was the martyr of the whole Arab nation. The lessons of heroism and courage that he gave the Fascist armies do honour to all Arabs, because the Arab people are like one body united in their griefs and joys, and this truth should be known to westerners, who should know that we are united. This memory must not be forgotten, it must be kept in your hearts until the day when the Fascists have to account to the Arab nation for this assassination, unheard of in the history of the world.

Since Hollywood has always been hostile to the Arab cause, the fact that a film such as “Lion of the Desert” could be made at all is noteworthy. No doubt, without Moustapha Akkad’s involvement both as producer and director the film would have never seen the light of day. This Syrian, who was born in 1930, had a fascinating film career. In addition to the pro-Arab “Lion of the Desert,” he also produced “The Message” in 1976, a biography of the prophet Mohammad (again with Anthony Quinn in the cast as Mohammad’s uncle Hamza). In keeping with Muslim rules, the image of the prophet does not appear on screen but we hear his words.

While there is an obvious connection between “Lion of the Desert” and “The Message,” it is amazing to consider that Akkad also produced the Halloween horror movies! He died last November 12^th, 2005 in circumstances that expose the contradictions now standing in the way of the emancipation of the Arab peoples called for by Omar Mukhtar’s supporters:

For a generation of Arabs, Moustapha Akkad’s historical epics became cultural icons the same way “Star Wars” did in the West.

Mr. Akkad was best-known in the United States as the executive producer and driving force behind the “Halloween” horror-movie series. But in the Arab world, he was known as the director of two much-admired films: a history of Islam and the story of a Libyan nationalist leader.

Mr. Akkad, 75, died Friday in a Jordanian hospital from injuries he sustained in one of the suicide bombings that struck three hotels Wednesday in Amman, the capital. The filmmaker and his daughter, Rima Akkad Monla, 34, were attending a wedding reception at the Radisson SAS hotel. She died Wednesday night, leaving behind a husband and two children. Mr. Akkad, who was divorced, also had three sons.

Hours after his death was announced, one Arab satellite channel broadcast his most famous movie, “The Message,” a sweeping history of Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. Released in 1976, the three-hour film gained a wide audience in the Arab world because of its sophisticated production and cinematography. The movie cost $17 million, a huge investment for a film at that time.

” `The Message’ came out at time when most Arab historical films were shoddy and had low budgets,” said Ali Abdullah, a Lebanese writer and critic. “Akkad made his film into an epic by using technology, large sets and thousands of extras.”

To reach Western audiences, Mr. Akkad refused to subtitle the Arabic film. Instead, he made a separate English version starring Anthony Quinn.

Religious leaders praised the movie for its positive portrayal of Islam. For example, Islamic tradition dictates that the prophet cannot be depicted on screen nor can his voice be heard. Throughout the film, actors who interact with Muhammad speak directly to the camera and then nod to unheard dialogue.

“I did this film because it was a personal thing for me,” Mr. Akkad told a newspaper in 1998. “Being a Muslim myself who lived in the West, I felt that it was my obligation, my duty, to tell the truth about Islam.”

The Seattle Times, November 12, 2005

Black Girl

“Black Girl” (La Noire de…) is Ousmane Sembene’s first feature film. Made in 1966, it incorporates two of the elements that can be found in all of his subsequent work: deep empathy for his female characters and outrage over colonialism with its lingering impact in a period of formal national independence.

The main character is Diouana, an impoverished young woman who is lured into taking a slave-like housekeeping job in France by a couple she meets in Dakar. Played by Mbissine Thérèse Diop, a nonprofessional, Diouana is first seen going door to door in the wealthy white quarters looking for a job. Eventually she learns that there is a special location on a downtown curb where prospective employers can pick out a domestic. Anybody who is familiar with hiring practices for gardeners, construction workers and other day laborers in places like Los Angeles or Long Island will be struck by the similarity.

The French couple promise Diouana the world. If she returns to Antibes with them, she will have no other duties except looking after their three children. In her spare time, she will be able to go sightseeing on the French Riviera. In the opening scene, we see her walking down the gangplank to meet her boss. In view of what awaits her, she might as well have been transported there in chains.

As soon as she arrives at the couple’s apartment, they demand that she serve as cook and maid as well. They keep her working every minute of the day and punish her when she doesn’t meet their expectations in a kind of racist version of Cinderella.

In some ways, Diouna is a kind of trophy brought back from Africa, like the mounted head of a slain beast. When her employers invite over a bunch of friends for a lunch of Senegalese-style rice that she is instructed to whip together on a moment’s notice, one of the men plants an uninvited kiss on her cheek and announces “Now I know what it feels like to kiss a Black!”

Diouna initially shows her gratitude to the couple by presenting them with an authentic tribal mask that they display on their living-room wall. After she decides that she can no longer work for them, she takes the mask back. This simple act dramatizes the refusal of the postcolonial subject to cooperate with their own subjugation. After despair drives Diouna to take her life, the French husband returns to Senegal with her belongings, including the mask and several week’s wages, with the intention of presenting them to her mother. When a local schoolteacher (played by Ousmane Sembene) translates his words into Wolof, her mother refuses to accept the money and throws it on the ground. Despite Sembene’s Marxist convictions, this is frequently how his films end–on a note of passive resistance in the face of palpable defeat.

In an interview contained in “Dialogues with Critics and Writers,” Sembene explains the importance of “refusal” in his work:

“In a given situation, there will always be characters who will say no. It would not be accurate to say that a whole people accepted or refused, but I work with types of characters and I am sympathetic with those who refuse. Some things are simply not to be accepted. Human beings reach greatness only to the extent that they refuse these things and assume themselves. In fact, when a human being refuses, he/she takes charge of himself/herself. For what you reject in one place will be conquered elsewhere with your own strength.”

Darfur activism?

Organisations supporting the Global Day for Darfur include Waging Peace:

Waging Peace campaigns against British support for dictators. Where there is currently inadequate pressure regarding specific countries, we lobby decision-makers to change diplomatic and corporate relationships with unsavoury regimes.

From the Waging Peace website:

TESS FINCH-LEES

Director, is an anti-discrimination specialist and social commentator. She has lived and worked overseas and speaks Spanish and French. Tess publishes regularly in the press including: The Telegraph, The Financial Times, The Irish Times, The Voice and The Guardian. At Waging Peace Tess is responsible for, and has successfully led, a number of high profile media campaigns in relation to Darfur. As Director of The Global Effectiveness Group, Tess frequently chairs and presents at international Diversity and Corporate Social Responsibility conferences. She has advised organizations such as: BP, Barclays and The Royal Mail. Tess has an MSc in Organisational Behaviour.

 

Tess Finch-Lees, Director

From the Global Effectiveness Group website:

Tess Finch-Lees is Irish and has lived and worked in the UK, Colombia, and France. She speaks English, Spanish, and French and has an MSc in Organisational Behaviour from the University of London.

Whilst in the UK , Tess developed team building workshops, as well as workshops in stress management, assertiveness for women, and managing conflict. In Colombia she worked as an organisational consultant for BP Exploration, where she designed and implemented programmes on multi-cultural teamwork, as well as providing workshops on cultural adaptation for Colombian employees in preparation for expatriation. Tess also acted as a strategic advisor to Diageo PLC and was the Andean region representative for Saville & Holdsworth Ltd in South America. More recently, she has led the design and development of a “Diversity Leadership Questionnaire” which was successfully piloted for a major pharmaceutical client and which has become a widely used and respected tool. As part of her ongoing work with FTSE 100 companies, Tess provides coaching and strategic support at board level and has extensive experience of project and people management.

Until recently Tess managed the “Global Diversity Network”, a knowledge-sharing forum for global heads of diversity including Barclays, BP, Cable and Wireless, Dow Chemicals, Hewlett Packard, Kodak, the Philip Morris Company, & Shell.

The Independent (London)

June 18, 2005, Saturday

SECTION: First Edition; NEWS

COLOMBIAN OIL PIPELINE: FARMERS ‘TERRIFIED OUT OF THEIR HOMES’ TO SUE BP FOR £15M

BY ROBERT VERKAIK

Martin Day, right, is acting for farmers who say the pipeline has brought them destitution and, in some cases, eviction by paramilitaries

BP is facing a £15m compensation claim from a group of Colombian farmers who say that the British oil company took advantage of a regime of terror by government paramilitaries to profit from the construction of a 450-mile pipeline.

In what will be a landmark human rights case in the UK, the farmers allege that the pipeline destroyed their land and forced them into destitution.

A British law firm representing the farmers has written to BP, accusing the company of benefiting from harassment and intimidation meted out by Colombian paramilitaries employed by the government to guard the pipeline.

Xala

“Xala” is a Wolof word for sexual impotence, but it might just as well mean political impotence in Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene’s view. This 1975 film is a scathing satire on his nation’s elite personified by the sexual failure of his main character, a corrupt middle-aged businessman who can’t “get it up” for his brand-new third wife, who is younger than the daughter of his first marriage, on their wedding night.

 

El Hadji Aboucader Beye and his first two wives

“Xala” lays bare all of Senegal’s class inequality, built on the bogus principles of “African Socialism” and the heavy-handed rule of “Negritude” poet Leopold Senghor, whose name is not mentioned once in the film but whose troubled legacy clearly disgusts the Marxist Sembene.

Before the film’s credits roll across the screen, Sembene establishes the underlying premise. On the day of national independence, the French and the local bourgeoisie are sitting opposite each other around a conference table in the capitol building in Dakar. After the Blacks make a few statements about how a new day of “African socialism” is dawning, the French push attaché cases across the table filled with cash.

One of the recipients is an importer and government deputy named El Hadji Aboucader Beye (Thierno Leye) who is a typical Sembene character, not quite a villain but more of a self-important and ignorant foil to female characters, who always come off as more in touch with the real world. This includes Rama, his college student daughter from his first marriage, who tells him that polygamists are liars. When he challenges her to repeat this charge, she does so and is slapped to the ground for her honesty. El Hadji reminds her that polygamy is part of their national patrimony, as if having multiple wives is the same thing as the right to bear arms or to vote.

Sembene, a Marxist, skewers the pretensions of this peculiar comprador bourgeoisie that has adopted some of his movement’s phraseology, but none of its class principles. When El Hadji meets with senior government officials in a kind of trial over his financial misdeeds (he is an extraordinary crook, not an ordinary one like him), the meeting almost breaks down with mutual recriminations, including the charge of being a “feudalist”. When El Hadji decides to make his case in Wolof, he is accused of being “racist, sectarian and reactionary”. For veterans of the sectarian Marxist left, El Hadji’s trial will certainly be a reminder of things that they have experienced in party purges.

Sembene is equally outraged at the tendency of this upper crust to adopt European habits and values, despite lip-service to African nationalism. El Hadji constantly brags about his European connections and insists on speaking French to his colleagues. So enthralled by the notion of European superiority that he has his chauffeur wash the car and fill the radiator with bottles of Evian kept in the trunk of his Mercedes sedan.

The various wives hold El Hadji in complete contempt. For them, the marriage is simply a means to avoid the grinding poverty of Senegal. For people like El Hadji and his fellow government crooks, the poor are an inconvenient reminder of Senegal’s reality. When a band of lepers and polio victims show up outside his store, he calls the cops to remove them. At the end of the film, they take their vengeance on him.

If his European pretensions are not enough to condemn El Hadji, they are complemented by a foolish belief in witch doctor cures for his impotence. When his chauffeur takes him to a village on the outskirts of Dakar to be cured of Xala, we understand that Senegal’s elite is as hobbled by indigenous superstition as it is by belief in European superiority. There are no Marxist happy endings in Sembene’s films. A hapless victim of thievery and corruption looks incredulously at a postman who urges collective action to change Senegalese society at the conclusion of “Mandabi”. Similarly, “Xala” ends on a note of despair, the only ray of hope perhaps found in El Hadji’s ruin at the hands of creditors and the beggars he has victimized.

The government of Senegal did not like what it saw in “Xala” and forced Sembene to make 11 cuts. Unlike Senghor, Sembene has no interest in romanticizing the past. He has subjected native polytheism as well as Islam to ridicule. This has not been an obstacle to popular acceptance based on the fact that his films are universally revered in Africa.

“Xala” is based on Sembene’s novel of the same name. His career was informed by his participation in the French Communist Party and by his experiences as a writer. The former gave him a keen insight into class relationships, while the latter helped him to approach film-making with a higher level of understanding about plot, character development and other nuances frequently absent in screenwriting.

A short essay on the novel by postcolonial scholar Phoebe Koch reveals the complexity of Sembene’s approach:

Muslim women are often envisioned as playing the role of humble servant to a dominating male figure. While El Hadji certainly orders his wives around, they are by no means the docile and submissive characters of western popular imagination. El Hadji’s second wife, Oumi N’Doye, employs powerful skills of persuasion and mental torture to exact what she wants from her husband. Often, it appears as if El Hadji simply plays the role of economic provider for his three families, enjoying neither the love nor companionship of his wives and children. His eleven children unanimously greet him with hands outstretched, demanding money. The degree of fairness with which El Hadji treats his two families provides a constant source of chagrin for the members of each, and results in his being hounded daily. The extent to which his economic support provides the only link between El Hadji and his dependents becomes clear towards the end of Ousmane’s fable. When El Hadji loses his money, he loses his wives along with it. Only his first wife, perhaps because she herself owns her villa, remains until the end.

Once again I am reminded of the quote from Engels’s “Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State” that I incorporated into my review of “Mandabi”:

The modern individual family is founded on the open or concealed domestic slavery of the wife, and modern society is a mass composed of these individual families as its molecules… Within the family, he [the husband] is the bourgeois, and the wife represents the proletariat.

Mandabi

When Ibrahim Dieng (Makhouredia Gueye, an untrained actor that director Ousmane Sembene found working near an airport in Senegal) receives a letter and a money order (mandabi) worth 25,000 francs from his nephew who is working in Paris, he is delighted. All he has to do is cash it and dispense the funds to various family members, with a sizable chunk going to him.

This windfall couldn’t have come at a better time. As someone who hasn’t held a job in four years and who has two wives and seven children to support, he is constantly in debt. His penury does not seem to get in the way of a comfortable life-style, albeit one with limited horizons. As the film starts, Dieng is getting a shave and a haircut in the street in his Dakar neighborhood, which the barber tops off by grooming his nostril hairs. When he returns home, he attacks an enormous lunch of seasoned rice that leaves him groaning and sweating. His wives attend to his comfort by fanning him and washing his feet in cold water. One is reminded of Engels’s observation in “Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State”:

“The modern individual family is founded on the open or concealed domestic slavery of the wife, and modern society is a mass composed of these individual families as its molecules… Within the family, he [the husband] is the bourgeois, and the wife represents the proletariat.”

Dieng sets off to the post office to cash the money order and to have somebody read the nephew’s letter (he is completely illiterate.) In his typically acerbic wit, Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene positions a poster of Che Guevara on the desk of the clerk whose job it is to read letters to the illiterate for 50 francs. When Dieng attempts to leave the post office without paying the clerk, he manhandles him at the door, calling him a thief. It turns out that Dieng could not cash the money order without an identity card. He promises to pay the clerk as soon as he has cashed it.

This scene sets the tone for the remainder of the film, which consists of a series of comic mishaps involving Dieng’s futile attempts to get an identity card. He also has to fend off, usually unsuccessfully, attempts by family members and friends to get a piece of his nephew’s fortune. In the streets of Dakar, gaining a modest sum such as 25,000 francs is akin to winning the lottery.

Dakar seems divided between those who are inside and outside the cash economy. Another nephew, who speaks French, dresses in Western clothes and has a white-collar job, writes Dieng a check to tide him over until the money order is cashed. The check presents almost as many problems as the money order and Dieng falls victim to a street hustler outside the bank who “helps” him cash it for a fee of 300 francs.

 

Ousmane Sembene

Dieng’s world falls through the crack between traditional African society and the new capitalist social relationships that are disintegrating the bonds that kept people together. When “Mandabi” was made in 1968, Senegal was like most African nations trying to adjust to postcolonial norms. It was betwixt and between. Sembene, a Marxist philosophically, almost throws up his hands in this film at the dog-eat-dog world of his beloved country. Everybody is either screwing somebody or being screwed. At the conclusion of the film, Dieng resolves to become a thief and a liar himself since that is the only way to survive. After a postman arrives with another letter from the nephew in Paris, he listens to Dieng’s tale of woe. The postman assures him that they must work to change society, which evokes a puzzled reaction from Dieng. What can they possibly do to change such a rotten society? In a Spring, 1973 interview with Film Quarterly, Sembene was asked, “Are you satisfied with your conclusion to Mandabi?” He replied:

I don’t think I really have to like the ending. It’s only up to me to give the situation. The ending is linked to the evolution of Senegalese society, thus it is as ambiguous. As the postman says, either we will have to bring about certain changes or we will remain corrupt. I don’t know. Do you like the ending?

The next question was about whether an artist should go beyond presenting a picture of corruption and offer a vision of the future. Semembe’s answer was about as precise a statement of the relationship between art and revolution as can be imagined:

The role of the artist is not to say what is good, but to be able to denounce. He must feel the heartbeat of society and be able to create the image society gives to him. He can orient society, he can say it is exaggerating, going overboard, but the power to decide escapes every artist.

I live in a capitalist society and I can’t go any further than the people. Those for change are only a handful, a minority, and we don’t have that Don Quixote attitude that we can transform society. One work cannot instigate change. I don’t think that in history there has been a single revolutionary work that has brought the people to create a revolution. It’s not having read Marx or Lenin that you go out and make a revolution. It’s not after reading Marcuse in America. All the works are just a point of reference in history. And that’s all. Before the end of an act of creation, society usually has already surpassed it.

All that an artist can do is bring the people to the point of having an idea of the thing, an idea in their heads that they share, and that helps. People have killed and died for an idea.

If I understand your criticism, then I’m happy. I had no belief that after people saw “Mandabi,” they would go out and make a revolution. But people liked the film and talked about it, though my government didn’t. They wanted to censor the movie at the point where it said that “Honesty is a crime in Senegal.”

People discussed “Mandabi” in the post office or in the market and decided they were not going to pay out their money like the person in my movie. They reported those trying to victimize them, which led to many arrests. But when they denounced the crooks, they would say it was not the person but the government which was corrupt. And they would say they were going to change the country.

I know my own limits. But through nothing more than just supplying these people with ides, I am participating in their awareness.