Business ethics - just an excuse to act up

It is becoming more and more common for philosophy professors to teach business ethics. The University of Pennsylvania, for example, has four philosophy professors in its business ethics school within the philosophy department. Robert Solomon at UT Austin, better known for his work in existentialism, in his later years started teaching business ethics too.

The problem with business ethics is that is forces the same criteria it uses for business management down the throats of ethics professors. Because of this, ethical standards are viewed as a means to an end; they are determined by their 'performance' in the marketplace, and are scrutinized under cost benefit analysis.

Business professionals learn to think of ethics as something which serves their business, rather than the other way around. When ignoring ethical norms would prove disastrous for the business, your business should speak up about the company's reputation for high ethical standards, or how the company goes beyond compliance with the law, or how any unethical actions do not reflect the company's code of conduct, etc.

Philosophy can lend itself easily to this problem because philosophy is not instructive, and other academic pursuits are. More often, what business professionals glean from philosophy is how to argue their way out of nasty moral dilemmas. A philosophy professor typically will not want to pontificate "the answer" to a difficult moral dilemma, unless they want to defend or entertain a particular perspective. Philosophy does not teach teach truths and values, but to puts them into a perspective, and argues for the superiority of that perspective.

On the other hand, the business ethic perspective frames ethics in terms of business - "How valuable are ethics to my business?" This is not philosophy, it is business. The superiority of the business perspective is totally taken for granted. What happens, then, is that philosophy becomes the handmaiden to business professionals - the age-old sophist tendency.



To illustrate this point I want to mention the work of HIV/AIDS activists and the effect it had on business practices. The group Act Up - originally started by the friends of Michel Foucault to raise awareness and dispel myths about AIDS - made its way into an International Marketing textbook authored by Terpstra, Sarathy, and Russow, in a chapter titled "Ethics and Global Marketing".

A little bit of background. Africans account for 25.4 million of the 39.4 million people around the world who have HIV/AIDS. Naturally, the place to bring HIV/AIDS prevention drugs would be Africa. In 2005 the US drug manufacturer Gilead needed to determine whether its drug, tenofovir (marketed as Viread), could prevent HIV/AIDS in a similar way to a vaccine. The drug was thought to prevent an exposed person from contracting HIV/AIDS. Once Viread passed the clinical trial test, it would then be sold globally at a premium prices. African prostitutes would be the proverbial guinea pigs in the clinical trial process.

The cost of AIDS "cocktail" drugs, which stop the progress of AIDS and allows patients to achieve some level of stability, averages over $10,000 a year. This is well beyond the reach of most Africans. Viread, while cheaper than some, costs around $17 a day and must be taken daily, which is roughly $6,400 a year. Still beyond the reach of many AIDS-affected Africans. Remember, a billion people in the world live on a dollar a day, many of them live in Africa.

The group Act Up-Paris, after perusing Gilead's clinical trial's research reports, decided that this needed to be protested, stopped, and added that the African trial participants "got too little information and care for their participation" - a legal claim that would stop the trial. The Wall Street Journal reported that "Act Up claims that by holding trials in Africa, '[Gilead knows] they will find...women willing to let them carry out a trial at minimal cost.'"

A probable side-effect of the drug is kidney dysfunction. It was not known whether the drug would cause kidney problems, or worsen existing kidney trouble. Gilead decided it would go ahead and test female prostitutes from Ghana, Nigeria, Malawi, Cameroon, and Cambodia. The unfortunate five women who contracted HIV/AIDS in Cameroon during the study were promised long-term access to therapy.

On the flipside, WSJ commentator, Roger Bate, said,

"Act Up is being flat-out hypocritical in its attempts to keep the trials from being conducted in low-cost environments. Activists are always complaining about the high price of drugs, and the best way to keep prices down is for trials--the most expensive part of any drug development--to be as cheap as possible."

Now, as a student of marketing, let's look to our textbook to learn more about this ethical problem.

Our International Marketing textbook says that "ethical conflicts can arise when the only access to health care for low-income patients is through participation in such clinical trials." This was certainly the case for Viread. But other than this, the text doesn't come close to a stance on whether this practice set ethical standards high or low, or whether Gilead went "beyond compliance with the law." It does not even provide a list of key international legal frameworks to judge Gilead's practices by.

Instead it ends the section on ethical international research with a quote from a pro-Africa-testing AIDS group called Treatment Action, which decried Act Up-Paris's actions as "ethical imperialism", and backs up the study by mentioning that the clinical trials were supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. Certainly, if other activists are complaining about the work of activists in Paris, it must not be legitimate. And certainly if philanthrocapitalists support the AIDS research then it must have been carried out in an ethical way, or at least had the right intentions.

In the next section, the authors advise that an ethical move would be to employ market segmentation for poorer people, or what author K. Prahalad calls "inclusive capitalism", so that "companies can do well financially and and develop new sources of value." This means lowering the price of products in emerging markets, in order to find an entry path into that market. Proctor & Gamble (their example) sells bottles of shampoo in India for a penny a piece, which allows them to outsell competitors and maintain dominance. By including Africans in its clinical trial, by analogy, they are saying it was an act of inclusive capitalism.

On one hand, I can appreciate the moral complexity of the problem Act Up-Paris and Gilead Sciences have dealt with. Eventually the clinical trial was canceled due to pressure from Act Up-Paris. But is providing 400 prostitutes with a little bit of retro-viral drugs, just to take them away and sell them to rich people in the First World, a fair practice? Who is John Rawls? Who is Ronald Dworkin? Who is Derek Parfit? The only question I have boggling in my mind is, "Is this 'inclusive capitalism'??" Do the authors really think Gilead would have provided 25 million people with affordable Viread? But isn't that what they should have done? And what about the four people who got AIDS from the clinical study itself? Where was Immanuel Kant when all of this went down?

On the other hand, what is the value of a textbook that proclaims to know something about business ethics, when it cannot provide a solid philosophical basis for judging the right course of action? Instead, the text is more like a set of clues to form better strategies for further exploitation. It teaches the marketing student how to get around ethical norms, how to promote an image of ethical leadership, and to think in terms of what is better for the business, without ever explicitly mentioning that this is what the text is here for.

If we say that the textbook neither agrees nor disagrees with those activists who criticize certain business practices, we're right about that. It only tells the reader how the business operation was affected by the activist criticism, and then asks the reader to form an opinion. The point I am making is subtle. The textbook wants you to see its literature reviews as objective information, but by limiting the scope to the business perspective, they imply that the only implied ethical criterion is the business's reputation and profit.

Here are a few questions at the end of the chapter related to this problem.


Questions and Research

1. How can concerns over ethical behavior affect global business practices? Provide examples.
2. Why should a firm be concerned about ethics in international marketing activities?
3. How can a firm connect moral principles to the development of ethical standards that would govern its international activities?
4. How do ethical issues affect the clinical testing of new pharmaceutical drugs in emerging markets?

They Re-scrambled Africa

It is not only in the Middle East where the empire of oil is seeking to regain lost territory, look at Africa:

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George Bush said Africa's greatest resource is "not its oil, it's not its diamonds, it is the talent and creativity".

But the reason why the U.S. military setup the new African military command station in 2007, called AFRICOM, was to control oil in the region, which means defending oil extraction. This project is praised by policy insiders. It was "long overdue" given that Africa supplies the U.S. with "nearly 20 percent of its petroleum needs" according to a writer for World Defense Review. Today, ExxonMobil operates in Angola, Cameroon, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, and Nigeria, and is set to begin work in Libya. Its African holdings account for nearly 17% of the company’s global oil reserves. Africa is the final frontier as far as the world's energy and natural supplies are concerned.

Review of African Political Economy:

"In the next 15 to 20 years, most of the new oil entering the world market is going to be coming from African fields."

As radical indigenist groups like MEND, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, have an armed populist resistance movement ready to strike against all foreign oil companies in their land, especially Shell and Chevron, AFRICOM has been arming and training the militaries of Angola, Algeria, Botwana, Chad, Cote d'Iviore, Republic of Congo, Equitorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Kenya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Sudan and Uganda.

What Africa has is a classic overseas expansion of American military and economic power, whereby the business interests control the military interests, whereby global military competitiveness is an extension of global business competitiveness. The connection between military and economic power are even more entangled: alliances within the core of the developed OECD economies, permitted by organizations like the G8, the World Bank, NATO and various military cooperation structures, make domination of the global "periphery" inevitable. Political scientists Leo Panitch and Samuel Gindin hold variations of this view.

Being the U.S. military means your duty is to ensure a subdued and supportive African continent. It means expressing the interests of the global economy in terms of Africa's economic and humanitarian needs. Just to be fair, the U.S. will provide professional military assistance against rebellious African separatist and indigenist elements. It will "enable" democracy, and facilitate oil exports. The American military is there to rebuild, assist, and ultimately help the people of Africa improve their standard of living. Can they keep a straight face?

Being Exxon or Shell or Chevron or BP means never having to apologize for the kind of work you do. It means divvying up African into boundaries along pipelines and labor divisions, bypassing people and made-up national borders. It means asking friendly military powers to protect your professional practices. Big Oil wants to take an active role in the exploitation of global resources against the determination of the people who have historic entitlement, but the people there have no means of justifying their argument under the imperialist rubric.

Hence, it's safe to say the new scramble for Africa is an oil and military scramble. But the story of the scrambles are as old as the European fascination with Africa: resources - whether human or natural - will always take priority over anything else so long as white people with flags and guns have anything to do with it.

Rebellious Pixels:

Comment on "Anarchy" in Somalia

Somalia is making headlines for all the wrong reasons. While international eyes scorn the recent hijackings of over 40 shipping vessels off Somalia's coast and berate the perceived "lawlessness" of the pirates who hold them for millions of dollars ransom, the pirates have accused European multi-national corporations (specifically, Swiss and Italian) of dumping toxic waste (radioactive uranium, lead, cadmium, and mercury) off the coast of Somalia.

One pirate crew is demanding $8 million for a Ukranian ship which was hijacked while moving tanks to fractious Sudan and claims the money will go towards toxic clean-up. Other ships, like the Sirius Star - a tanker carrying 2 million barrels of Saudi crude oil - are being held for over $30 million ransom.

"The Somali coastline has been destroyed, and we believe this money is nothing compared to the devastation that we have seen on the seas."

- Somali Pirate

When the 2004 tsunami hit Indonesia, it washed up toxic materials onto the shores of Puntland, a semi-autonomous region of Somalia where some of the hijackers live, exposing decades of cheap and out-of-sight dumping that took place in the Horn of Africa since the 1980s. The people of Puntland have radiation sickness now. They report skin infections, abdominal bleeding, and strange bleedings at the mouth. Animals, fish and livestock have also become sick and died. And with such an untidy brew of chemicals in the sea this may only be the beginning of a long and drawn-out health crisis. Nick Nuttall, a United Nations Environmental Program spokesperson, reiterated the pirates' point, adding that

"There is also industrial waste, and there are hospital wastes, chemical wastes – you name it."

- Nick Nuttall, UNEP

This all came to light by 2005 at the latest, and no one took action against it. A UN report was prepared and buried under dozens of other UN reports chronicling the devastation of humanity.

On the one hand we have a bunch of starving people with guns. And on the other, you have very wealthy people without guns going right past them on big boats. Any system tends to equilibrium, and so, before too long, a balance was struck whereby the hungry people got something to eat, while the wealthy people got the guns pointed in their faces.

But "the last thing the world needs right now," says the Economist Magazine, "is disruption of one of its busiest shipping lanes and a spike in insurance premiums." You can see more double-dealings with Africa glossed over elsewhere in the mainstream press. Some are saying this is the most booty ever captured by pirates anywhere at any time in history. It's worth pointing out, however, that the Sirius Star is carrying only about a quarter of the daily output of Saudi oil. Either the world business community can continue to view the disruption as an "outrageous" act of opportunistic thievery, or it can view the disruption as the price they must pay for years of negative externalities.

What else? Blood money and weapons sent by the CIA to finance secular Somali clans empowered "the same Islamic groups it was intended to marginalize" since the 1990s. And because the American chain-of-command is so impervious to criticism, when a US State Department official, Michael Zorzick, criticized the CIA-backed warlordism in Somalia, he was transferred to Chad from his post in Mogadishu. Arms, military matériel and financial support continue to "flow like a river to these various actors," according to a UN Security Council report in 2006. Even as the CIA is secretly encouraging carnage all over the country, armed American, British, Ethiopian, and Eritrean forces (as well as private security contractors) have been very openly blasting Somali fishing villages to pieces in their search for shadowy bin Ladens.

The recent leak of the Al Qaeda Network Exord stated that US forces had long been operating "frequently" in 15 to 20 countries without Congressional approval, and against ineffective UN rulings. One of those 15 to 20 countries had been Somalia. The New York Times wrote that "members of a classified unit called Task Force 88 crossed repeatedly into Somalia to hunt senior members of al Qaeda". Firing missiles into villages from remote locations, as the Times article states, American forces just "occasionally" dropped in to assess air strike results.

Curiously, the mainstream media conclude that the cause of Somalia's problems is the persistence of none of the aforementioned injustices, but "anarchy". Now that they have mine and your attention, Somalia is an opportunity for anarchists and anti-authoritarians to unveil the facade of "peace-keeping" imperialism in Africa and the effects of environmental racism all over the world. The comments of anarchists are relevant. Anarchist Derrick Jensen, in his book Endgame, writes,

"Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims."

The Abatwa

Just posted yesterday, this is the second video in a series by one of the Pepperspray producers, Patricia Boiko. The first program examined the genocide in Rwanda, and how people heal from a horror like that.

This piece looks at the Abatwa people, better known in the US as the Pygmies. The Abatwa, who are the indigenous people of the region, have suffered unspeakably and unnoticed by all except themselves.

Traditional hunters, they were kicked off their ancestral lands when that area was made into an animal preserve. The unintended consequence of an environmental victory was great destruction to Abatwa culture, and the loss of many lives.

Later, during the period of the Rwandan genocide, they lost 30% of their population. Nobody noticed because the Abatwa were not important to anybody but themselves.

The Abatwa are an example of the phenomenon feared by Subcomandante Marcos and the indigenous communities of the Chiapas region of Mexico, that of being so marginalized as a people that you just don't matter any more.

http://caurwa.org

http://hdirwanda.org

http://healthleadershipinternational.org

Never Again Rwanda This short, also by Patricia Boiko, captures a little presentation in a community trying to heal from and prevent future genocide.

http://neveragainrwanda.org

http://winningpicturesllc.org

The Congo: Male Concepts of War

A while back I read a book by Croatian essayist Dubravka Ugrešić titled Culture of Lies: Antipolitical Essays. The book, published in 1998, detailed some of most gruesome aspects of the war in the former Yugoslavia and the new media wars. With the bitter humanism and political interesse of the European critical theorist style, Ugrešić wrote some of the most profound descriptions and metaphors of political rape and misogyny I have read. "War is shooting and shagging, screwing and killing," she writes that a returnee from the front announced.

As the war spread throughout society in the former Yugoslavia, "War and sex were richly intertwined." The society that embraced war "simply activated what had always existed in the male mindset." Her analysis of the "traditional war-pornographic rhetoric" extended to the names of weapons (often women's names), war photographs, (ex.g. fighters with rifles sticking out or embracing the barrel of a fieldpiece), the subculture of war (cartoons, literature, jokes, humor), and the new media war over image, (symbolic exchange for Baudrillard).

This, for Ugrešić, is the male concept of war, where the homeland (a feminine word as in 'the mother country') is fought over with weapons of the male imagination. A "deeply homosexual war came about," she writes, "and the strategy of rape became a cruel everyday reality."

And since "in these lands every lie becomes a truth in the end," the silence about the war in the Congo has likewise become a truth. Many are unaware that the country is six years into a brutal conflict (though ten years since the new conflict began) in which up to 4.7 million people have died: the highest number of fatalities in any conflict since World War II says the Economist.

In her essays, Ugrešić is not talking about Croatian society in particular; the Culture of Lying is a global society. The myth of national priority allegiance is the myth of global media attention.

Harvard researcher Ethan Zuckerman has devised a useful "Global Attention Profile" that documents the amount of reporting that is done throughout the world in order to compare with points of interest. Looking at a timeline of this project, pan-African issues are systematically underrepresented. Our own struggle with irrationality is marked by inadequacies transmitted from the mythical national prioritization of state heads to the mythical faces of media and news management.

An article in The Nation describes several common ways in which marauding militias transmit the male message in the DRC. Unspared infants and old widows, for example, are brutally raped and left to die in the bushes. The men use the phallic barrels of rifles, bayonets, and "chunks of wood" to gang rape young women, piercing and padlocking their labias, and infecting them with HIV/AIDS (which 60% of the combatants carry.) One of these accounts tells the story of a 70 year-old woman whose entire family was murdered. But the armed men were not finished.

"They grabbed me, tied my legs apart like a goat before slaughter, and then raped me one after another."

Then,

"they stuck sticks inside me until I fainted."

This woman was left with a massive fistula and permanent incontinence, and her story is a common one. In an interview with filmmaker Lisa Jackson, she tells us that Congolese men who walk into their homes while their wives are being raped will often not interfere if it is done 'for the sake of the motherland'.

For the thousands of women who were raped in the Croatian homeland, Ugrešić writes that their bodies simply served "as a medium for the transmission of male messages," signals written by and sent to other men. It is a numbing 'procession of simulacra' from our perspective, to turn Baudrillard's phrase, but an everyday ministry of pain for the Congolese women.

The media desert is certainly not barren when it comes to information about the rape epidemic in the Congo. It is rather the trahison des clercs of the modern mainstream media which buries and re-prioritizes this information to fit the priorities of prominent heads of state. The "major-league press follows the geopolitical map," says a spokesperson from the UN World Food Program. The snake chews its own tail; we are all followers of each other's information. Even now, the links I provide are linking elsewhere, and the 'chain of signifiers' is unending.

During the conflict in Bosnia alone, NATO peacekeeping troops numbered 65,000, "and even that wasn't enough," a UN major said. Today, there are only 5,000 UN troops in the DRC, an area which is roughly the size of Western Europe, and most of the time peacekeeping forces are outnumbered by the warring militias.

"Never before have we found as many victims of rape in conflict situations as we are discovering in the DRC," said the UNWFP. It's "like Rwanda, only worse."

Fighters from six countries--Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia--have been fighting proxy wars in the DRC for years, plundering the country's tremendous mineral wealth to fill their pockets in a neo-mercantilist struggle for wealth accumulation: another male concept of war wherein the 'homeland' of the other becomes the object of immense jealousy and territories for spilling seeds of rape and war. The commerce of the "blood" minerals, such as coltan, is used in cell phones and laptops, and uranium, drives the conflict. Enriched Congolese uranium was used by the U.S. in the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Since the old truth is that the West determines global priorities, is the new truth that the West simply does not care? Perhaps, but the West in fact has never prioritized Africa. Early on the Western powers, the U.S. included, used strongman imperialist tactics to rape the Congo 'motherland' for its resources: diamonds, rubber, tin, gold, silver, tungsten, manganese, uranium, palm oil, timber, etc. American professors, venture capitalists, colonialists and the like had all struck asymmetric bargains with the Congo since its 'invention'.

And now, as it was said by Kwame Nkrumah, the new colonialism is the highest stage of imperialism. We are constantly "running back again."

This, by the way, is how the Dictionary of Literary Terms defines the word palindrome. It is a running back of words and symbols. Ugrešić introduces us to her work with an analysis of the palindrome as a metaphor for political discourse. "In our normal understanding," she writes, "it is normal for there to be two sides, right and left, East and West, and it doesn't cross anyone's mind to suggest that they're identical."

The palindromic reality that is Africa today is that we are intimately connected to the region through globalization: our cellphones and laptops depend on this war. And it doesn't cross anyone's mind to suggest the interdependent relationship. With every cellphone minute used, we speak "the devil's verse", the language of the palindrome.

- Which is at once subversive and utopian. For Ugrešić the palindrome suggests the abolition of binary opposites and a commitment to sameness. "Shall we destroy each other, will the 'atom furl' us all in the end," she writes, "Will we be left with one single, final palindromic wail - kisik!"

In Croatian this means "oxygen".

The struggle for oxygen continues. There cannot be recrudescence in Africa when we are constantly "running back again" palindromatically but redefining our terms alphagrammatically as we go along.

One of Ugrešić's enigmatic verses ends this way:

"'Madam I'm Adam,' said Adam to Eve, and she introduced herself equally palindromatically: 'Eve.'"

Ready, Set, Congo!

I heard (through the blogvine) about an interesting blog event through Black Women Who Vote. Bloggers are calling for other bloggers to research and write about the rape epidemic in the Congo on Sunday, April 13th. Since April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month (see Document the Silence) this is a relevant duty for bloggers.

Staying Vigilant for "Democracy" in Zimbabwe

While many of us recognize that elections and election cycles are not ideas to define democracy by, when nation-states built around the workability of electoral politics have trouble achieving the resemblance of a democratic election by popular vote, there is greater cause for worry.

Robert Mugabe, the incumbent President of Zimbabwe, has been known to actively support political cronyism, violence against the people of Zimbabwe, murderous suppression of public protest, and the enforcement of crippling social policies. This once prosperous South African neighbor is currently experiencing the worst inflation rate in the world, now pegged at over 150,000 percent. Zimbabwe also has the lowest life expectancy in the world. Female life expectancy stands at 34 years, while for males it is 37 years. And Zimbabwe has one of the world's worst AIDS epidemics, with little or no access to antiretroviral drugs.

The late results from the elections held on Saturday in Zimbabwe were announced yesterday, yet the ZANU-PF government reported that since no clear winner was found, runoff voting will take place on April 19th. This has raised levels of tension and anticipation within the country and internationally. Sokwanele.com is the website for an independent election watching organization in Zimbabwe. They also appear to support the opposition party, the MDC. Based on their data, the candidate from the MDC has already achieved the 50% margin needed to take office. The Zimbabwe Election Support Network, another independent group, said the results were 49% MDC and 42% ZANU-PF.

Everyone is confused. All over the blogosphere, bloggers are calling for Zimbabweans to exercise peace and calm till the next results are announced so as not to give Mugabe the justification to unleash violence against the people using the state's armed forces.

After 28 years of "Rule by Mugabe", many expected him to be voted out of office. Yet the time lag for the election results were suspicious. "It's clear that [Mugabe] has lost the vote," said Dumisani Muleya, a political reporter at the Zimbabwe Independent newspaper.

Advocating change, Martin Meenagh said on sokwanele.com that "It might be that in the dark, you reconcile yourself to the idea that your light is the only one in the darkness, and that it must be hidden behind your eyes because the winds would blow it out."

Bright Matonga, the government's Deputy Information Minister, told the BBC that the opposition was being "irresponsible" and "mischievous." Only the electoral commission has the legal privilege to announce results in Zimbabwe. ZANU-PF officials have threatened to punish anyone who makes their own representation about vote results and totals, as the opposition has in fact already done.

Matonga said the opposition thinks it can "provoke ZANU-PF and the police and the army."

Al Jazeera reported that state police were seen "manning a number of roadblocks" for checkpoint security in the capital today, but no other signs of oppressive police planning are known as of yet. The South African indymedia website occasionally mentions the ongoing political crisis and violence in Zimbabwe, and may be a valuable source of information if another crackdown does occur.

What Has Washington To Do With Harare?

The only topic at the National Model United Nations Conference in Washington D.C. my committee spoke on was the Crisis in Zimbabwe. Much to the chagrin of Cuba, whom I was representing, the topic “the use of torture in the War on Terror” was not even touched. The Zimbabwe debate, however, was fertile and only Cuba and a few other nations (Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea) spoke out against the imperialism of other countries, including many so-called progressive African nations, who wished to intervene politically in Zimbabwe. Venezuela and Bolivia were not present. Altogether about 500 students were present at the SAIS (School of Advanced International Studies) conference on Embassy Row on Massachusetts Avenue.

This situation in Zimbabwe was created in colonial times when blacks were forced off their ancestral lands. “The land question” was a major cause of the guerrilla war which led to Zimbabwe's independence in 1980.

As much as I disagree with Mugabe's reforms, which disproportionately skewed production, transformed the employment structure, and set the country into spiraling inflation, I spoke out in favor of Operation Clean-Up and the land reform policies. Cuba wishes to see the establishment of a “Unified Socialist Zimbabwe”, I maintained, and thus the land reform policy -- much like the first and second Agrarian Reforms in Cuba in the 1960s -- is something that Havana would like to see emulated in other Pan-African nations and the Diasporan community.

As Cuba, I spoke out against what I see are the sins of colonialism. And of neocolonialism, the highest stage of imperialism. Africa herself has seen centuries of land abuse. The Land Apportionment Act of 1930 in Zimbabwe barred African land ownership outside the reserves, except in a special freehold purchase area. Africans not needed for labor on white farms were forced to move to the reserves, which became increasingly congested. Independence saw the transfer of power from whites to blacks, but not land. Thousands of settlers opted for Zimbabwean nationality after independence. Now, since 1997, Mugabe is bringing the land back to the African peoples in a form of intense reparations that have shocked the country. He announced a hit list of 1,500 farms set for compulsory acquisition, and said Britain should foot the bill for compensating the white farmers because Rhodesian colonists had stolen the land from blacks in the first place.

The Arab-Persian bloc drafted a resolution to end the sanctions from the World Bank and the IMF that would open Zimbabwe up for loans. This was ridiculous, I said, since Mugabe would never accept the conditions upon which the loans are offered, and the conditions themselves have destroyed numerous other countries. I mentioned the Venezuelan-based Bank of the South as a viable option. Other nations proposed reinforcing the sanctions that forbid Mugabe from diplomatic immunity in many nations and other visa bans. This was also ridiculous, I said, since it violates hundreds of years of international custom and ICJ statutes. Restricting a foreign head of state during a crisis is also not helpful -- shuttle diplomacy during the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict has been effective. That was the genius of Kissinger whether he was a genius or not.

Another group of nations said we ought to reinforce the arms embargo which prevents any weapons from entering Zimbabwe. Cuba said, however, that this would only prevent a Pan-African leader from protecting the work of socialism and fighting the imperialists. Mugabe, after all, has helped many other nations fight their independence wars. Most notably in the Congo. And for other nations to deny him weapons would only confirm their own neo-colonialism and imperialist policies towards Africa.

In the end it was an enjoyable conference, although somewhat less satisfying than the Berkeley Model UN conference, which is much less restricted, encouraging free exploration and academic freedom which is conducive to creative expression. The Washington Conference restricted many of the things I had been used to at Berkeley, such as an un-moderated caucus, which is very helpful in debate. However, I'm not that if UPS put on a conference it could have been any better.

Cuba and the Pan-African Struggle

Next month I will be attending the national Model United Nations conference in Washington D.C., representing The Republic of Cuba in the General Assembly's 3rd Committee on Human Rights. Having studied the way in which Cuba representatives, as well as Fidel and Raul Castro, speak towards the United Nations and towards other socialist countries, I have articulated a speech I will give on the subject of the crisis in Zimbabwe. Fidel Castro, a gadfly figure at the UN body, has historically taken several hours of time to give speeches at the United Nations, while most keep it down to one hour. For the purpose of being succinct, I have articled a short Pan-African history lesson and a message of solidarity for Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF government in the following way:

As Africa herself must be the land base for the pan-African Movement, it is crucial for there to be at least one beacon of revolutionary progress and resistance against imperialism for the people of Africa, scattered and suffering around the world. Zimbabwe’s anti-imperialist stance makes her that beacon. Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of Ghana and an influential Marxist, referred to such bases as liberated zones and urged pan-African revolutionaries to protect our liberated zones at all costs. This is because such zones are to serve as the launching pads of the struggle for a Unified Socialist Africa.

Zimbabwe has a very pivotal role in this neo-colonial phase of the pan-African Movement for several reasons. Not the least of which are the land reforms that have boldly swept the country. Nowhere on the continent have Africans taken as radical a measure toward land reform as in Zimbabwe, and not only have Zimbabwe’s land reforms been an inspiration for people in other African states, they have gained respect in Diasporan countries such as Venezuela and Bolivia. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban President Fidel Castro have publicly praised Zimbabwe’s land reform process as a model we would like to see emulated in other countries. Another thing that makes Zimbabwe pivotal is its role regarding our sister states: such as aiding Mozambique against the foreign inspired counter insurgency of RENAMO; military assistance for SWAPO’s liberation struggle in Namibia; recently helping the Congo to secure its borders against CIA backed incursions; and lending troops to the AU mission to stabilize Sudan. In this sense, Zimbabwe is taking on the role of commitment and leadership in social change that Cuba historically has. Historically, Cuban doctors and fighters have fought alongside Africans in independence revolutions and struggles against imperialism, for example, the independence revolutions in Angola and Algeria. No other African state is upholding such a cooperative position at this time as Zimbabwe, which even strategically held off on its land reforms at the request of South Africa and other Southern African states, so not to strengthen the belligerence of white settler colonialists in those countries. And they did this at great cost to the integrity of their own struggle. These things are concrete expressions of pan-African cooperation.

Politically, Zimbabwe is in an intriguing situation that is grossly misrepresented by the Western World and even by too many so-called progressives, Africans alike. Claims of an atmosphere of repression and volatility that are propagated by British and U.S. media are pure lies. From what Cubans who are currently working in Zimbabwe have seen, life is relatively peaceful in Zimbabwe. The police do not even carry guns, as they a do in the United States. What kind of dictator or repressive government is it when the police do not even carry guns? In fact, there is hardly any uniformed police presence in the cities. They are mostly on the main roads where they had checkpoints trying to catch smugglers of currency and foreign exchange.

Furthermore, President Mugabe is a leader who also publicly keeps the inspiration of a Unified Socialist Africa alive. That is, not only have all the aforementioned things been done under the leadership of Mugabe, he also often mentions pan-Africanists like Nkrumah and his ideals in speeches addressing other Africans. He is not afraid to speak of socialism at a time when no other African leader dares utter the word. President Mugabe openly condemns imperialism with the boldness and clarity we have only come to expect from leaders such as Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez. That is why President Mugabe receives such resounding applause wherever he goes on the continent of Africa or when he speaks at UN or AU summits. No other African leader is doing what he is doing right now, and because he is, Zimbabwe stands as an inspiration to African people the world over. We need to see and hear such things. They serve as political education for pan-Africanism and examples of the courageous political work of socialism everywhere.

The Only Anarcho-Capitalist City in the World

Somalia fell apart in 1991, when several clan militias clubbed together to remove a dictator, Mohamed Siad Barre (who was a proponent of what he called "scientific socalism" i.e. Marxism) and then turned on each other. A year later US peace-keeping forces fought with Aidid's forces in Mogadishu, chronicled by the film Black Hawk Down. By 1995 the US and the UN had removed themselves from Somalia, leaving the country to continue fighting. Aidid was killed in 1996 in a gunfight.

Two northern regions, Somaliland and Puntland, seceded from Somalia in the 1990s but remain internationally unrecognized. Some have commented that Mogadishu is the only "anarcho-capitalist" regime in the world. But that is false because the city has no legal foundation whatsoever. One cannot have an utterly lawless regime and call that capitalism. It fails even the classical definitions put forth by Smith. Somalia is simply a failed state, which is entirely different in its ambitions and in its purposes.

But Somalia is a resilient failed state, and has some anarcho-capitalist features. Consider its amazing currency, the Somali shilling, which has operated for 14 years without a central bank or reserves of any kind, save the will of ordinary Somalis. Though the country has lacked a government, it has never quite ceased to exist.

Numerous attempts to revive the state, mostly backed by rich-country donors, have failed. A transistional government backed by Ethiopian forces, created in 2004 in the alternative capital city of Jowhar, began with a lot of ambition. But by June 2006, it had lost out to Islamist militias in Mogadishu, whose power is spreading. The Straussian Policymakers at Heritage have linked these forces to Al Qaeda. For any hope of stability in the region, engagement with political moderates would be necessary. There are too many extreme forces in Somalia. The Islamists are fiercely opposed to foreign troops – particularly their neighboring Ethiopians – in Somalia. Since November, war between Islamists and Ethiopians seemed very possible.

Ethiopia has just this week, on Christmas Day in fact, bombed the airport in Mogadishu. The battles now fought are between an alliance of Mogadishu warlords known as the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT) and a militia loyal to Union of Islamic Courts (UIC).

Habitat, a UN agency that tries to provide housing and shelter, is struggling to bring some order here and in other Somali towns. But it is more trade, not aid, that might improve things the most. Saudi Arabia could help by restoring its imports of Somali livestock that were stopped in 2000, and Somalia needs help developing its offshore fishing waters, which are being plundered by foreign boats. The country also has some untapped oil reserves, which foreigners are too weary to explore for fear of violence. Trading oil wouldn't necessary turn Somalia into a healthy anarcho-capitalist regime, or even a healthy liberal democracy. Would we prefer living in Riyadh over Mogadishu? Islamist militias would most likely still fight over its oil, but the foreign investment this would bring is going to be worth the risk.