Stygius

Mogadishu chaos

Make sure this is on your radar screen.

Update: The Sunday New York Times has a more detailed piece on the dynamics of the conflict, and the US's complex relationship with the clan warlords fighting Islamist elements.

Pfizer's children

An undercurrent of violence  runs through these initial grafs of the Washington Post's piece on Pfizer's tests on children in Nigeria:

A panel of Nigerian medical experts has concluded that Pfizer Inc. violated international law during a 1996 epidemic by testing an unapproved drug on children with brain infections at a field hospital.

That finding is detailed in a lengthy Nigerian government report that has remained unreleased for five years, despite inquiries from the children's attorneys and from the media. The Washington Post recently obtained a copy of the confidential report, which is attracting congressional interest. It was provided by a source who asked to remain anonymous because of personal safety concerns.

Doctors Without Borders was already treating children at the hospital in which Pfizer tested infants and children suffering form meningitis; so one can't make the pseudo-philanthropic It's better than no medicine at all-argument.

Pfizer's experiment was "an illegal trial of an unregistered drug," the Nigerian panel concluded, and a "clear case of exploitation of the ignorant."

Nauseatingly:

Pfizer contended that its researchers traveled to Kano with a purely philanthropic motive, to help fight the epidemic, which ultimately killed more than 15,000 Africans. The committee rejected that explanation, pointing out that Pfizer physicians completed their trial and left while "the epidemic was still raging."

The panel said an oral form of Trovan, the Pfizer drug used in the test, had apparently never been given to children with meningitis.

And it's not like they were performing these tests with the intent to get the drug approved.  There's no way any government would have accepted the results. Instead, it was a test to see whether it was worth bothering to seek a legitimate field trial for ultimate approval. If not, then the enormous time and expense of such a trial could be avoided. (About one in five developed drugs makes it through the entire process to get to market. That's a 20% success rate, while companies have to absorb the associated costs of the 80% of drugs that don't get to market and make a return. )

Hence, there was obviously sufficient doubt among Pfizer's scientists that made seeking child-administered approval too risky. This was about risk management and keeping costs down.

Mugabe starves Zimbabwe

One of the most wretched regimes in the world continues its imposition of death and chaos on its own people. The Times of London reports on Mugabe's unrelenting destruction of  Zimbabwe, as its children are "dying like flies":

THE first time Knowledge Mbanda found a dead baby in the drains of Harare, he was horrified. "It is completely against our culture to abandon children," he said. "I thought it must be of a woman who had been raped or a prostitute."

But now he and fellow council workers find at least 20 corpses of newborn babies each week, thrown away or even flushed down the lavatories of Zimbabwe’s capital.

The dumping of babies, along with what doctors describe as a "dramatic" increase in malnourished children in city hospitals, is the most shocking illustration of the economic collapse of a country that was once the breadbasket of southern Africa.

Mugabe has long used food as a weapon. But there is something even more pathological at work, it seems: The pathology of totalitarianism. From it, we are now seeing the results of Mugabe's destruction of Zimbabwe's food security.

According to Africa’s food security early warning system, Zimbabwe will harvest only 600,000 tons of maize this season. The country consumes an annual average of 1.8m tons, leaving it the highest cereal deficit in southern Africa.

Zimbabwe will also have to import 200,000 tons of wheat, 40,000 tons of sorghum and 6,000 tons of rice to avert widespread deaths related to starvation.

The government has no money to pay for this and Mugabe has consistently refused to appeal for food aid. To do so would mean admitting the failure of his land distribution programme.

I'm too sick with rage to comment further. Get more precise detail on Zimbabwe's food security at USAID's Famine Early Warning System. Given production implosion, combined with 1000% inflation, things are only going to get worse.

I blog this topic occasionally, for those who want more context. Some previous posts:

• Zimbabwe's "cleanup costs" (22 June 2005)
• Zimbabwe going hungry (1 June 2005)
• Zimbabwe vote already lost? (28 March 2005)

Uganda's misery

What is happening to the world? The Colorado State University paper, the Collegian ('an on-going joke since 1891'), has long been the object of campus ridicule and is a student-subsidized proving ground for compliant hack journalism. (Recently they splashed a huge, under-the-mast piece titled "There's a Theif Among Us". I'm not making that up.) It's generally incomptently edited, uninformative drivel written by Gannett drone wannabes. Reading it is often a soul-crushing experience, and their "news" is often reported two weeks late. In contrast, CU's The Advocate promotes investigative reporting, intelligence,  relevance, timeliness, and editorial writing worthy of the name.

So today I'm wondering if hell has frozen over, since there is a three-part series in the Collegian of an immensely powerful nature; a mature and superbly written narrative that will actually inform students. It's worthy of the Christian Science Monitor. It's mostly based on the experiences of a CSU grad student from Uganda, but the reporter gives crucial context to the cruelties used to attack entire populations.

Reporter Emily Lance's three-part series on Uganda is worth your time:

• "Death of a Society"
• "A Step Backward: The politics of genocide"
• "Ending the Apathy"

Kofi does diplomacy: 'Um...please?'

Those fighting the good fight against a one world dictatorship under the United Nations can take heart. The invasion force needs a little work. From Joe Katzman:

Q: What do you get when you put Belgium, the U.N., and a military endeavour together in one place?

On February 3, 2006, it was reported that 15 of Belgium's Pandur armored personnel carriers were stolen, together with radio equipment and field kitchens. Those 15 APCs represent fully one quarter of Belgium's Pandur inventory.

Kofi Annan is now mustering the awesome force of his moral and diplomatic might to ask Equatorial Guinea, 'Please, can we have them back?' Full details at Defense Industry Daily.

Shell shocked in Nigeria

I hope folks are paying attention to the latest attacks on Shell's facilities in Nigeria's Niger Delta, considering that area's oil is supposedly an "alternative" to Mideast dependence, and is often powering American vehicles and utilities.

This isn't some rabble trying to steal a few gallons of sweet, sweet crude; by all indications their attacks have been planned, coordinated, and sustained. As far as West Africa goes, that's about all it takes to be a viable political alternative to the current regime. The responsible group calls itself Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). Financial Times:

The group has called for the release of a local militia leader who had been arrested for calling for the break up of the Nigerian state, and whose troops fought the Nigerian military from his jungle hideaway in the delta in 2004.

It has also demanded the release of a Nigerian state governor who had called for more oil revenues to be distributed to oil producing states, but who was subsequently impeached and arrested on charges relating to money laundering.

While Shell dutifully insists it has no plans to pull out of the country, the point remains that if this group continues to demonstrate political cohesiveness and some military competence, it may not be up to Shell at the end of the day. If -- as seems apparent -- it can't rely on government forces to protect it, will the company bring in a professional mercenary force? If so, the political implications could be very interesting.

For more background on Nigeria, its people, its oil, and our companies, make sure to check out Steve Inskeep's recent, excellent series.

Totalitarianism now

I was in the midst of writing a long thing on the latest Ethiopia-Eritrea border spat, and the regional implications, when I decided I hadn't done enough reading and had no business posting it.

That said, I did want to ask you to  make sure to listen to Scott Simon's powerful critique of the Ethiopian government. The Australian has a piece on how the ham-handed police state is trying to use the stigma of "genocide" to isolate and -- apparently -- eliminate the opposition.

NPR series on Horn of Africa

Although I'm too busy to have listened to it yet, I'm excited that National Public Radio is doing a series on the security situation in the Horn of Africa.

Bolton blocks Darfur briefing

Via nadezhda's links, Reuters:

Ambassador John Bolton blocked a U.N. envoy on Monday from briefing the Security Council on grave human rights violations in Sudan's Darfur region, saying the council had to act against atrocities and not just talk about them.

How the man is able to talk out of three sides of his mouth always amazes me.

Bolton said he had objected to the briefing to make the point the council should be "talking more about the steps it can take to do something about the deteriorating security situation" in Darfur. He gave no new proposals.

"How many officials from the secretariat does it take to give a briefing?" he said, noting the council had just concluded a briefing on Darfur from Hedi Annabi, the assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping operations.

Mendez, who visited Darfur for a week in late September, later briefed reporters on his findings. He said Sudanese officials were taking only cosmetic steps to prevent systematic human rights abuses there that might amount to genocide. crimes against humanity or war crimes.

Let's take a moment to remember what kind of "action" Bolton prefers in the face of atrocity and genocide.

Update: Steve Clemons weighs in; also has more links. Meanwhile, Darfur backslides into chaos. The Boston Globe and Washington Post have more on what Mendez wanted to tell the Security Council.

Steve reminds that this is certainly vindication for Senator Russ Feingold, whose disgust at Bolton's "passivity" towards genocide solidified his 'No' vote.

[Poster from Catedral]

A river of oil in Nigeria

Steve Inskeep of NPR has just concluded his series on the oil industry in Nigeria. I briefly mentioned it in an earlier post. He travelled to the Niger River delta for a first-hand look at the politics and economics of oil in a corrupt, impoverished, and oil-rich country.