Outsourced!

by Alfred P. Loafward IX
President pro tempore, Erratum Terrium Board of Directors

Today is a sad day for me, and a happy day, I must imagine, for Hernando de Soto. When I inherited the post of President pro tempore of the Erratum Terrium Board of Directors from my late uncle-in-law, who also happened to be an oft-needed tax attorney, I never imagined a day like this might come. To lay this narrative more squarely in the vein of honesty, this inheritance fell to me several weeks before my emergence from the womb, and my imagination was limited to the sequencing of kicks I delivered to the inside of my mother's swollen midsection. One such kick disturbed her so that she spilled her cup of tea all over her conversation companion, her suitor-of-the-moment, A. Mitchell Palmer. I have been made to believe that this incident, and the ensuing cloth-napkin intervention debacle, led almost directly to the First Red Scare.

Current international affairs have been with me all my life, and so, as previously stated, today is a sad day for me. Just hours ago I dispatched a courier with a parcel of signed papers, with the result of my signature on said papers being the final sale of all Erratum Terrium assets and properties to an international consortium of nose-hair-trimmer salesmen (very popular in Turkey, I understand). This consortium, in turn, transferred everything to a shell company in the the Bahamas, who in turn collateralized our substantial debt into securities backed solely by the mortgage on my third cousin Debbie's St. Augustine, Florida BBQ restaurant -- which, to remain in the vein of honesty, was run out of business and burned down in 1964 after she attempted solve race relations by refusing to serve both whites and blacks equally. These collateralized debt obligations were passed like hepatitis C from one investment banker to the next. To the best of my information Lloyd Blankfein used them accidentally as toilet paper on a restroom break from sworn testimony in front of the U.S. Senate, and then, upon realizing his error, tweeted "...using crap to wipe up crap". This was 30 minutes ago.

The papers, now covered in Blankfein crap, were found in the unflushed toilet 3 minutes later by Justo Rufino Estrada Cabrera, a Guatemalan national employed under a false Social Security number to clean restrooms in the Capitol building. Not speaking more than a few choice words in English, Mr. Estrada Cabrera immediately understood the value of the papers he held in his wisely-gloved hands, wiped off the Blankfein crap, and faxed a copy to his third cousin, a lawyer in Guatemala.

And so, as of May 1st, 2010, Erratum Terrium has been outsourced to Guatemala. I can only hope they continue the same worthy journalistic tradition. After all, neighboring El Salvador was the first country in the world to elect a former CNN anchor as its head of state! And what higher tradition of journalism is there than that found at CNN!

Please excuse the sarcasm. I get cranky when I don't take my daily fish oil supplement. Last night, in the midst of my anxious decision-making process, I went to see my speech therapist (my late mother, spurned in her youth by a haughty Carl Jung, forbid anyone in my family from seeing psychiatrists, speech therapy is the closest I can get) for some advice. "Erratum Terrium is like my child," I told him, "I have put my whole life into it, and I don't want to see it changed." The good doctor took a few long pulls from his thick, dark cigar, removed his sunglasses to reveal his bloodshot blue eyes, and asked the topless masseuse to leave the room. Exhaling smoke dramatically, he said: "If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves." He then leaned towards the glass table and, using a rolled-up $100 bill, snorted a line of cocaine from South America imported by Mexican cartels through Guatemala. The significance of which, lost at the time in the contemplance of the good doctor's wise words, is clear to me only now.



Dictated, not read
May 1st, 2010
Location undisclosed

A Clearing in the Jungle

On the day in question, a wet heat had already settled on the jungle, portending the arrival of the rains after an especially difficult dry season. Not even the slightest of winds drifted through the yellow-frayed leaves. Bird calls and monkey shrieks echoed, growing closer. All the animals were gathered in the clearing, milling around, clustered in quietly whispering groups, eyes glancing ever so often towards the great ceiba tree.

The howler monkeys finally arrived, swinging into the great ceiba. Their piercing cries called all attention, whispers ceasing, and necks turned towards the tree. The great owl sat perched on a thick low branch. He ruffled his feathers calmly, and then began.

"It is time for us to choose once again. For four years now Snake has been our leader. His time has come to a close. We must choose a new leader. In this time of great crisis, we must choose wisely. First, we will hear from each of the candidates. Then the voting will commence. First to speak will be Wolf."

Wolf approached the great tree slowly. For those who were not close enough to see his wide slimy grin, it might have seemed that he was nervous.

"Thank you, Wise Owl. Animals of the jungle, under my rule you can look forward to four years of stability. We must come together to defeat Fear. Over the past four years, who among us has felt fear simply walking through the forest? Who among us has had terrible nightmares about our family members when they have not returned by nightfall? We would not feel this fear if I had been chosen four years ago. We can now correct that mistake. Feel safe again. Choose Wolf."

A thunderous applause erupted among a few animals. A few more booed, while most stayed silent. Wolf bowed slightly, slimy grin never leaving his face.

"Now we will hear from Vulture."

Vulture floated softly onto a high branch of the ceiba. She looked down at Snake, one of her biggest supporters, and smiled.

"Thank you, Wise Owl. We must continue the great work of Snake. We must make sure that no animal goes hungry in the jungle. We must make sure that every animal in the jungle has a place to live and can go to school. We must have pride in our heritage. My opponent, although his words are so smooth, cannot make you forget the atrocities of the past. He does not want to get rid of fear, but merely replace the fear of the criminals with the fear of the government. We cannot allow his type to take control again. We must build a better government, and a better jungle. Unity is our shield, and love is our weapon. Choose Vulture. Thank you."

The large majority of animals applauded quietly. A few of Wolf's supporters booed loudly and one threw a small volcanic rock at Vulture, missing by several meters.

"Thank you, Vulture," said Owl, "now you have heard the candidates speak. It is is time for you to make your voices heard..."
"Wait!" cried a small voice from the back of the crowd, "There is one candidate who has not had a chance to speak yet!"
"There are only two real candidates, Worm," said Owl sternly, "it is time to vote."
"Ant must be allowed to speak," said Worm, summoning as much courage as a worm can summon.
"There is no time," said Vulture, "we still have much to do."
"Ant has no right to speak here," added Wolf, "his views are backwards and dangerous."
Owl paused a moment and appeared to be thinking deeply.
"We will give Ant a voice," said Owl finally, "as our custom has always been to allow free speech."

A narrow crease appeared in the crowd as Ant made his way to the front. Animals began to grumble in low voices. Shouts rang out from Wolf's supporters:
"Stomp him!"
"Crush him!"
"Get a magnifying glass!"
Laughter followed. Ant crawled up to the base of the great ceiba tree, took a deep breath, and began to speak.

"Thank you, brothers and sisters. I stand before you not because I want to be your leader, but because I want you all to be leaders. Our jungle has suffered for too long under the yoke of a government bent on dominating our minds, chipping away at our heritage and our dreams until we are no more than dry leaves felled by the autumn winds. We should be gathering here not to choose the next oppressor, but instead to take back what was once ours. But we cannot stand alone against the oppression and inequality rendered by the forces of history. Only through true unity -- not unity under a flag or political party, but unity as brother and sisters in the same struggle -- can we reclaim our history and take hold of our future. Do not choose Vulture or Wolf. Choose your neighbors, your brothers and sisters. Choose yourself. Thank you."

Ant stopped and looked out at the animals. There was no applause, no boos, no response at all. The animals had not been paying attention. Vulture and Snake and Wolf and their powerful supporters were talking quietly together, smiling comfortable smiles and laughing at re-told jokes. The majority of the animals, not powerful enough to be in this inner circle were standing in small groups, distracted, looking over often at the inner circle trying to understand why they were smiling and what the jokes were and why they were funny. Beyond them were even more animals, mostly the smaller ones, who had to stand on each other's shoulders or help each other climb trees just to see what was going on. No one who could hear Ant had listened, and no one who wanted to listen could hear. Ant let out a familiar deep sigh. He looked up at Owl, hoping at least one animal had heard him. Owl had been listening. He smiled curtly, perfunctorily, at Ant, and then turned his attention back to the crowd.

"Now it is time to choose. Those who would choose Vulture, move to the left side of the clearing. Those who would choose Wolf, to the right."

No one moved.

"Now," said Owl with finality.

About half of the animals moved immediately to one side or the other. The supporters of Wolf and Vulture began to move through the animals that had not already chosen. Wolf's supporters brandished weapons and formed threatening circles around a group of animals until they moved towards Wolf's side. Vulture's supporters moved through the crowd, reminding the animals of all the delicious food they had received from Snake and would continue to receive under Vulture. And they showed them black list -- the list of Wolf's supporters who would receive nothing if Vulture won.

Eventually all the animals either chose a side or left the clearing confused as to why they had come in the first place. Owl set out to count the sides and name the new leader. Ant and Worm stayed for a while, hiding under some leaves near the edge of the clearing. Worm became impatient as the sun started to set.

"Let's leave," she said.
"No," said Ant, "I want to see who wins. Owl is almost finished. It looks like Wolf will win. I think people are tired of Snake's corruption and they don't remember so well the atrocities under Wolf's cousins. They fear Fear more than they love Love, I guess," he finished with a wry chuckle.
"Don't you see?" whispered Worm, "don't you see that it doesn't matter who wins? Nothing will ever change here in the jungle."
They were both silent for a long minute. A slight drizzle began to fall, tap-tapping on the yellow-frayed leaves above them.
"You're right, but" said Ant with determination, "if we stop believing that change is possible, then it will certainly become impossible. I will die with my delusions before submitting to that despair."
There was another silence, cut short this time by a mass of whooping and shouting from the clearing. Someone had won, again.

Such Nice Young Men...

The two young men pictured above are both from sub-Saharan Africa, and both traveled to the United States in their twenties -- with different reasons and different results.

On the right: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a young Nigerian who, holding a valid U.S. visa, attempted to murder over 200 civilians on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, apparently on behalf of an extremist Al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen. He now sits in jail, subject to federal interrogation but spared federal torture by the results of the 2008 Presidential election.

On the left: Deogratias Niyizonkiza, a now middle-aged Burudian who, in 1993 immigrated illegally to the U.S. to escape ethnic cleansing in his home country -- and has now returned to Burundi to open up medical clinics with the non-profit organization he helped to found. He is the subject of "Strength in What Remains", a new book by Tracy Kidder.

What drives people to do the things they do? Can we possibly know where someone, even ourselves, will end up? We have been a self-aware species for millions of years now. Are we close to any answers? Physical laws give us fairly reliable and accurate predictions about the path of matter through its environment. These are crucial to understanding and improving our world, but give us little help to understand and improve ourselves. Social science attempts to use the proven scientific logic of physical laws to predict how the large mass of matter which makes up a human will act in its environment. Yet despite all of its academic and statistical rigor, social science has often been wrong and sometimes twisted to justify terrible things. Religious laws aim not to predict, but to guide. They do not tell us what we will do (as only the divine can know that), but instead what we should do. These as well have been twisted into justification. In short: we cannot predict ourselves or others, and attempts to predict have often been mutated into attempts to control.

Let us fall back to a real-world situation, and take this discussion out of the theoretical and into the practical. An immigration official reviews the two young men upon their arrival to the United States and must decide whether to allow them entrance. There is no room for intellectual vacillation here, there is only a Yes or a No, a friendly "Go Ahead" or a call to airport security. And let us imagine this official has all the information we have. How do they decide who to let in?

Desgratias is first. He steps up to the official's booth and presents his letter which introduces him as the agent for a coffee company in Burundi. The official knows Burundi has just broken out in civil war (late 1993: Hutu militas vs. Tutsi army -- Rwanda will erupt several months later along the same ethnic lines). Desgratias grew up in a very poor family herding cows, and was only allowed to attend school because his grades were the very top in his class and he happened to be classified as a Tutsi, and not a Hutu. The official can guess that this letter is a forgery, but also that this disheveled young man standing at the booth is in real need of a safe place. In 1993 Desgratias is granted a business visa. Would that still be the decision made today?

Umar steps up to the booth. He is from a wealthy, well-connected Nigerian family. He has the proper credentials. He looks a little shabby for the son of the former head of Nigeria's Central Bank, but he was educated in the poshest British schools available. Umar is granted entrance to the United States. Is that decision defensible?

Okay, okay, point taken. Desgratias is poor and needy -- he should be given as much support as possible. Umar shouldn't be treated any better just because his family is wealthy and well-connected -- his associations should be examined just like a poor Yemeni student's would be. And Desgratias, despite having legitimate grievances with Burundi's colonizers in Belgium or the Hutu militias which tried to kill him, never strapped a bomb to himself to try to exact revenge. Meanwhile, Umar strapped a bomb to himself to try and kill Americans and Europeans -- the same people who had funded his own high-class education and lifestyle. People are unpredictable, we need to do a better job of trying to understand them and not judge them based on superficialities. Point taken.

What then, can we do? We know that we don't understand everything about people, that we can't reliably guide one person -- let alone hundreds, thousands, millions -- to some certain outcome through a logical, scientific process. Nor can we rely on the moral guidance of religion to assure peace, prosperity, or predictability. The world will keep spinning. There will be a thousand more Desgratiases and Umars at our door tomorrow. What can we do?

And now, the long-awaited, extra-mildly wise answer...

We must engage with globalization not only as a market transformation, but as an opportunity to effectively utilize resources to create a better world. there is no doubt that the current trend towards hyper-capitalism is dangerous. There is no doubt that indigenous societies lived, and to some extent, live, a simpler life which represent an antidote to the risk-taking and consumerism which fuels hyper-capitalism. However to phrase the conflict as globalization/future versus simplicity/past solves nothing. Clocks only go in one direction. Denying the future will not help us create a better one. We must engage with the world -- and I don't mean "we" as in the U.S. government, I mean "we" as in "all of us" -- on every level, in every city, every remote mountaintop village, and every social networking site. Borders are irrelevant -- the stories of Desgratias and Umar demonstrate this.

And we must stop assuming that "rich" = "better" or "happy". Sure, we know it in our own personal lives. But we still believe that a country is improving when its economic growth rate goes up. And we believe that angry poor people are the most likely to become terrorists. The truth of the matter, especially in a ever more complex world, rarely stands up and declares itself in the media.

We must search it out, the truth. Each one of us a technological-age Indiana Jones, metaphorical whip and scepticism at the ready. Desgratias and Umar and all of the world's migrants and travelers will keep moving, growing, shifting, cross borders, bumping into each other. And we certainly can't "beat" them. So join'em!

Hiatus!

And you thought it would never happen...

As the Great Economic Machine formerly known as America quivers, Erratum Terrium's pigeons have come home to roost. Literally, in some cases.

Having brought you geologically instantaneous analysis and commentary on world events for the past two and one-half years, we, the shadowy cabal formerly known as the Erratum Terrium Board of Directors, announce a hiatus from the news-publishing industry. This hiatus is, as of yet, undefined in length. We are searching for, as of yet, an unrecognized destination. Supposedly there are several other sources for world events analysis and commentary. You may peruse the links on the right side of your computer screen -- but do so at your own great risk, corporeal and ideological.

For the time being there is only one website we consider safe. It is that of our multi-talented paper boy / part-time gaffer / sculpture model Gabriel. He has eloped on a world-conquering mission, and remains in contact with the real world via the Internet. More specifically, his so-called "travel blog", which can be found at:
lastierrasdesconocidas.blogspot.com

Please oblige his regrettably dillusional rantings. He was the only Erratum Terrium employee not to quit outright when we proposed shifting our compensation system from "hourly and salaried" to "totalitarian digital work camps".

May God(s) bless you, Faithful Readers, and May you wander forth in quixotic ignorance.

Sincerely,

The Board

No Justice, No Peace?

The International Criminal Court is expected to issue an arrest warrant tomorrow for Omar Al-Bashir, the President of Sudan, in connection with his involvement in the ongoing violence in Darfur. This would be the first arrest warrant ever issued by the ICC for a sitting head of state, and this precedent has been accompanied by a maelstrom of controversy. The issue is not, as is often the case in the justice system, one of guilt versus innocence. The debate over the arrest warrant has taken the shape of justice versus peace.

These two positions are argued eloquently in two editorials in today's New York Times. Archbishop Desmond Tutu takes the side of justice, while Franklin Graham, a champion of evangelical charity work in Sudan, takes the side of peace. It is no easy task arguing against Archbishop Tutu, but Mr. Graham makes some compelling arguments. To summarize briefly, he argues that because President Al-Bashir is a key figure in ongoing peace talks, removing or antagonising him would be detrimental to those peace talks. It is a utilitarian argument, that more lives will be saved and improved by the success of those peace talks than will be helped by Mr. Al-Bashir being brought to justice -- not to mention that any real judicial punishment is highly unlikely, at least until after Al-Bashir is no longer in power in Sudan (the ICC has no power to physically extradite defendants and relies instead on the state in which that defendant resides to hand them over voluntarily).

Archbishop Tutu argues that Africa must call Al-Bashir to account for his crimes because to not do so would be setting a terrible precedent for justice worldwide. There cannot be real peace without justice, he says. The Erratum Terrium editorial board endorses Archbishop Tutu on this issue, and not solely to curry favor with the Nobel Committee.

At this point we will unleash the analogy of all analogies. Please take two steps back and cover the eyes and ears of any children in the vicinity.

Imagine if the ICC had been functioning in 1943. In this alternate history Hitler has ceased aggression because the Allied military has shown massive superiority while his own armed forces are weakened and demoralized. Hitler is negotiating limited autonomy for the conquered territories as part of a cease fire with Britain and America. Meanwhile the Nazi regime continues to murderously and mechanically purge millions of Jews, gays, gypsies, the disabled, and any political opponents -- all with the full knowledge of the outside world. Should the ICC issue an arrest warrant for Adolf Hitler and other responsible members of the Nazi regime? Or should we be satisfied with a world at peace, an olive wreath resting on a pile of burnt corpses?

This example is not meant to be a dramatization. Mr. Graham can argue until the coming of the Rapture about setting priorities, but to not pursue justice against Mr. Al-Bashir is to avert our eyes from the genocide in Darfur. If there is such a thing as common humanity, let it be heard now. Genocide will continue as long as its perpetrators do not fear justice. Peace and justice in Sudan are not mutually exclusive. We can have both, and we must have both. The people of Sudan, the victims of genocide, past, present, and future, deserve no less than our full efforts and our loudest voices.