I Concede: A Coronacolumn

Posted on by TSA Press

(Image via Getty)

Here are three thoughts about the novel coronavirus.

First, the novel coronavirus was present at the Mar-a-Lago birthday celebration for Donald Trump Jr.’s girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle. How many of you, like me, read this story and immediately thought of The Masque of the Red Death?

Second, in a sane corporation, who gets the praise?

In case that question wasn’t as rhetorical as I thought it was, the answer is:  “The lower-level employees.”

The seven people at the top of the corporation do not take the stage at large corporate events to congratulate each other and give each other awards.

The seven people at the top of the law department do not run town halls at which they praise their own leadership and give each other bonuses.

This is bad form.

No one does it.

If awards are to be handed out, or accolades bestowed, you eliminate the top-ranking people from consideration. Those people don’t need awards. They’re recognized as leaders; they’re paid a great deal of money; they’re running the joint. The leaders recognize and reward the lower-level employees, both because lower-level employees do the work and because one morale is maintained by talking about people other than yourself.

So why am I watching all of these press conferences where Vice President Mike Pence first says what a great job the president has done and then says we should all recognize the heroic efforts of those on stage with Pence?

This is not how it’s done. The leaders should recognize the efforts of the thousands of hardworking people who are not standing on the stage; those are the people who deserve kudos. Those people don’t get the spotlight or the fame; you give them recognition.

Everyone knows this.  (Except, perhaps, politicians and jerks. Or do I repeat myself?)  Can’t someone mention this to Pence?

Finally, do you think something good (on the legal front) might come of this crisis?

Take annual meetings, as just one example. Corporations hold annual meetings at big hotels in New York for a reason. Anyone who wants to ask a question of the executives must travel to New York, pay for a hotel, and then stand up in a big room and ask a question. That’s hard, and it tends to suppress the questioning. (Maybe corporations conduct annual meetings this way for a reason, no?)

If corporations conducted virtual annual meetings, then anyone could submit a question costlessly. That would encourage shareholder participation and make annual meetings more meaningful.

COVID-19 may force some corporations to hold virtual annual meetings.

And people may well decide that virtual annual meetings make sense (for shareholders, anyway). That could be the wave of the future.

Annual meetings are not the only thing that may be improved by the novel coronavirus. I suspect that many corporations are learning that employees can conveniently and effectively work from home. More employees may work from home after the crisis ends.

Similarly, many corporations may realize that “nonessential” business travel is actually “nonessential.” Companies that forbid all nonessential travel will fare just fine in the marketplace and incur lower costs. Perhaps we’ll see less nonessential business travel after this ends.

It’s novel that a virus had to crash the party to teach us those things.

Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now deputy general counsel at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.

Morning Docket: 03.23.20

Posted on by TSA Press

* An attorney has sued the Governor of Florida for not closing Florida’s beaches earlier. So this is the guy who cancelled Spring Break? [CBS News]

* New York courts are having a difficult time administering justice in the current environment. [New York Times]

* The Ohio Attorney General has sent letters to abortion clinics telling them to stop all non-essential abortions. [Cleavland.com]

* The Supreme Court has reported that all nine justices are healthly, and all participated in the most recent conference. [Fox News]

* The maker of Purell is facing a class action lawsuit alleging that it misled customers when it said that Purell can kill 99.9% of germs. Any recovery would simply be a fraction of the money Purell is printing right now because of the COVID-19 pandemic. [NBC News]

Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.

Zimbabwe farmers turn to smart solutions to fight climate change – The Zimbabwean

Posted on by TSA Press

Linda Ncube has migrated from flood irrigation to drip irrigation which saves nutrients and water in the wake of recurrent droughts [Farai Matiashe/Al Jazeera]

Lupane, Zimbabwe – For decades, Linda Ncube, a small-scale farmer in northwestern Zimbabwe, relied on the water that flowed from Tshongokwe dam into dug-out trenches to irrigate her maize crops.

But when some two years ago the dam dried up due to poor rainfall and siltation, the impact on the 56-year-old and the other smallholder farmers at Tshongokwe Irrigation Scheme, a small community farm in Lupane district, was severe.

“The temperatures were so high that our maize crop could not survive,” said Ncube, a widowed mother of two who now lives with her three grandchildren. “It is not only us humans that suffered but (even) our livestock as drinking water dried and grazing lands got depleted.”

Over the past decade, many smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe have suffered poor harvests due to drought, exacerbating an already dire situation for millions of people in need of food assistance.

With the dam below capacity and climate change increasingly bringing unfavourable farming conditions, the community at Tshongokwe in 2018 realised it needed to find effective solutions to the crisis.

“The drought was not only affecting farmers in the scheme but even our market,” Soneni Dube, the chair of Tshongokwe Irrigation Scheme committee, said.

“We looked for assistance from NGOs who provided us with capacity building and financial assistance to resuscitate our farming activities,” she added.

Zimbabwe farmers getting creative within city limits (2:26)

‘Climate-smart agriculture the answer’

The community decided to join Sizimele-Action for Resilience Building in Zimbabwe, a three-year consortium project aimed at boosting diversified agricultural production for more than 30,000 at-risk households in the districts of Matobo, Insiza and Lupane with assistance from NGOs and international partners, including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

At the Tshongokwe Irrigation Scheme, whose 24 hectares of land are shared among 63 farmers, the programme drilled two solar-powered boreholes that store water in two 10,000-litre tanks. Flowing from the tanks, the water goes through underground pipes onto the drip lines to irrigate the farmers’ crops.

“We have shifted from the old ways of doing things to the new ways,” Dube said. “We have stopped using flood irrigation because it does not only waste water but it washes away plant nutrients such as fertilisers. We are now using drip irrigation which saves water and nutrients critical for crop growth.”

Also, the programme installed a weather station that provides early warning and in-weather season forecasts and also records surface and underground temperatures, as well as wind speed.

The station has a manual rain gauge used by the farmers daily at 8am and an automated rain gauge that sends data to the Meteorological Services Department of Zimbabwe which then issues early warning messages if needed.

“We combine this technology with our local traditional ways of weather monitoring to check if the amount of rainfall is good for us to grow which types of crops and when. It also helps the nation to monitor weather in this area,” said Tshongokwe Irrigation Scheme vice-chairperson Ozins Ncube.

By February 20, Lupane district had received 226.1 millimetres of rainfall, which is far below the average expected level in a normal farming season running from November to April.

“There has been farming here since 1980 with no problems but now there is climate change. Climate-smart agriculture is the answer [to the farmers’ problems),” said Ahunna Eziakonwa, the UNDP’s assistant administrator and regional director.

“Drought cannot be prevented but can be predicted – and by predicting it, the impact can be reduced (thereby) reducing humanitarian needs.”

As drought continue to ravages most parts of Zimbabwe, smallholder farmers are using solar-powered boreholes for irrigation [Farai Matiashe/Al Jazeera]

‘Feed the nation’

Along with weather monitoring and the usage of water-efficient drip irrigation systems, the participants at the Tshongokwe scheme have adapted to the challenging climate conditions by growing drought-tolerant crops that not only grow fast but also have high yields.

“Each farmer here has about 0.4 hectares [of land]. The area covered by the irrigation was divided into small pieces to accommodate everyone. We rotate crops. Last year I grew tomatoes and sold to buyers from Hwange, Bulawayo and Victoria Falls,” said Ncube, who currently has Michigan pea beans in her plot.

The farmers also pay a monthly sum into the scheme to cover the drilling of more boreholes until all hectares are covered by drip irrigation.

They have also set up a marketing team to attract customers for their products in nearby areas and have struck deals with big private companies that buy their produce at an agreed off-take price, according to Douglas Sayers, the scheme’s secretary-general.

Ncube said the earnings from her produce help her sustain her family and pay her grandchildren’s school fees. Another smallholder farmer, Stella Mudzindiko, 64, said she uses profits to buy vaccines for her cattle, goats and donkeys.

“Our cattle at times suffers from various diseases. So, I use the money from the plot to buy vaccines such as tick grease [a poisonous cream applied on animal skins to kill ticks]. After harvest, we use the remains from the crops as livestock feed,” she said.

As for Ncube, she hopes that in the years ahead she will be able to get consistently good harvests to attract even larger private-sector demand.

“I am confident, with more solar-powered boreholes, I will feed the nation,” she said.

Virus stops Vigil – Zimbabwe Vigil Diary – The Zimbabwean

Posted on by TSA Press

With the death toll from the disease mounting exponentially, the UK government has banned public gatherings, closed cafes and bars and advised that social interaction and travel be kept to a minimum. Scientists and medical experts here say conditions may be relaxed in four months but warn that it may be a year before normal life resumes.

Vigil activists want to continue the campaign for a better Zimbabwe and the Vigil is looking at ways we can do this without physically meeting on the street. We are particularly anxious to continue fundraising for our sister organsation Restoration of Human Rights in Zimbabwe.

We will keep you informed through the Vigil diary, which will continue to comment on how we see the situation in Zimbabwe, which appears to be reaching another crunch point with the arrival of the coronavirus, apart from the ever-devaluing currency and ever-rising inflation (now put at over 1,000% by American observer Professor Steve Hanke).

All shall be well says President Mnangagwa but can you trust his word?  He has just flown off to Namibia for the inauguration of President Hage Geingob despite having said the government would observe a travel ban (See: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/10/365721/World/Africa/Zimbabwe-president-defies-own-travel-ban-over-coro.aspx).

This week he also banned all public gatherings attended by more than 100 people but the next day he addressed a rally attended by thousands of supporters (see: https://www.newsday.co.zw/2020/03/ed-breaks-own-covid-19-decree/).

Earlier he told visitors to his farm: ‘At this farm, we have plenty of livestock including cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and countless poultry. From all those we eat whatever we want when we feel like’ – this despite recently telling Zimbabweans to eat vegetables and potatoes because ‘meat is not good for you’ (see: https://nehandaradio.com/2020/03/14/i-eat-plenty-of-meat-at-my-farm-mnangagwa-tells-starving-villagers/).

At least Mnangagwa is consistently inconsistent!

Other points

EVENTS AND NOTICES:

  • The Restoration of Human Rights in Zimbabwe (ROHR) is the Vigil’s partner organization based in Zimbabwe. ROHR grew out of the need for the Vigil to have an organization on the ground in Zimbabwe which reflected the Vigil’s mission statement in a practical way. ROHR in the UK actively fundraises through membership subscriptions, events, sales etc to support the activities of ROHR in Zimbabwe. Please note that the official website of ROHR Zimbabwe is http://www.rohrzimbabwe.org/. Any other website claiming to be the official website of ROHR in no way represents us.
  • The Vigil’s book ‘Zimbabwe Emergency’ is based on our weekly diaries. It records how events in Zimbabwe have unfolded as seen by the diaspora in the UK. It chronicles the economic disintegration, violence, growing oppression and political manoeuvring – and the tragic human cost involved. It is available at the Vigil. All proceeds go to the Vigil and our sister organisation the Restoration of Human Rights in Zimbabwe’s work in Zimbabwe. The book is also available from Amazon.
  • Facebook pages:

Post published in: Featured

Zimbabwe never retrieved the 82 bodies swept away a year ago by Cyclone Idai – The Zimbabwean

Posted on by TSA Press

Landslides wiped out entire hillside villages in Zimbabwe. Many people who lived there were plunged along with their homes into rivers that soon rose high enough to sweep away yet more villages in the lowlands and deposit lifeless bodies as high up as the canopies of the trees of the flood plain of central Mozambique’s Buzi River.

At least 82 Zimbabweans were swept into Mozambique, where locals promptly buried them, thinking of the dignity of the dead, rendered unrecognizable by the vicious torrent. But family members have yearned for the bodies of their loved ones to be returned. The government made promises to retrieve the bodies, no matter the challenge of identifying them.

A year later, not one body has been retrieved, and the families that survived have all but given up hope of ever knowing the fates of their kin.

“We need closure. The truth will set us free,” said Julliet Machangira, 26, who lost her two sons, Tadiwanashe, 4, and Lovemore Maute, 12. She and thousands of others remain in camps run jointly by the United Nations and the Zimbabwean government.

“The government promised us money to go to Mozambique to do our own search, but that was the last we heard about it,” she said. “I want to talk to the locals who buried the floating bodies to identify my sons.”

The government minister tasked with repatriation and reburial, July Moyo, did not respond to repeated calls and messages.

Because of the haphazard burials that mixed bodies from Mozambique and Zimbabwe, the cyclone’s true death toll is unknown, but it is likely that more than 1,000 died. Many were swept down the river to the sea, making retrieval even harder in some cases. Yet more may have been eaten by the river’s crocodiles.

Families conduct traditional rituals at a grave site for victims of Cyclone Idai that hit Ngangu, a township of Chimanimani, in March 2019.Families conduct traditional rituals at a grave site for victims of Cyclone Idai that hit Ngangu, a township of Chimanimani, in March 2019. (Zinyange Auntony/AFP/Getty Images)

Only one forensically trained body recovery specialist, Stephen Fonseca of the International Committee of the Red Cross, worked in Mozambique after the cyclone. With the help of locals, he tracked down where hundreds of victims were buried and recorded coordinates of the sites, leaving open the possibility that they could one day be unearthed and identified. But the challenges go beyond simply finding the bodies.

“This disaster was the opposite of a plane crash, where you know the passengers’ names, you know how many there were,” Fonseca said. “Simply put: not everybody will be found. We don’t know and we will never know how many were swept away, or stuck under debris in the riverbed, for instance. And even if you know where the bodies are, which ones do you exhume? How could you know which ones came from Zimbabwe?”

Heat and moisture also damage DNA over time, and most if not all of the bodies would have been subjected to extremes of both in Mozambique’s tropical climate.

Identification of the bodies might in some cases still be possible, but Zimbabwe’s promise to the victims’ families was a long shot from the start.

In this photo supplied by United Nations Capital Development Fund, children and a teacher walk past a United Nations Population Fund health center on Feb. 28, in the Mandruzi resettlement neighborhood, in Beira, Mozambique, for people displaced by last year’s cyclone.In this photo supplied by United Nations Capital Development Fund, children and a teacher walk past a United Nations Population Fund health center on Feb. 28, in the Mandruzi resettlement neighborhood, in Beira, Mozambique, for people displaced by last year’s cyclone. (Karel Prinsloo/Arete for UNCDF Mozambique/AP)

Kuda Ndima, 37, also lost two children during the storm — her 12-year-old son, and a baby she was five months pregnant with, which she miscarried after she was swept 300 yards downstream and hit a boulder. The sense of loss she feels is compounded by the government’s inaction.

“They lied to us saying they would help with the repatriation and reburial, but they are doing nothing about it,” she said. “We wish they could even make a grave for the unknown victims, like a memorial. Instead, they are just folding their hands as if nothing has happened.”

Moyo’s local government ministry had also promised survivors new homes, which never materialized — the same goes for many roads and bridges in the region. Along with hundreds of thousands in Mozambique, Zimbabwe’s survivors still live in camps. Most of the displaced were subsistence farmers, and the World Food Program forecast another lost harvest season ahead.

“The upcoming April-May harvest is expected to be relatively good in the region, but few of the 250,000 families whose homes were damaged by the cyclone have been able to return to their villages, let alone rebuild,” said Deborah Nguyen, a WFP spokeswoman. “Most are enduring high levels of food insecurity, meaning they do not eat enough, borrow what they can from relatives or friends, forage for less-than-nourishing wild foods, and continue to need outside help to survive.”

An aerial view taken in Beira, Mozambique, on April 1, 2019, shows the Picoco refugee camp where 2,000 displaced people were looking for shelter.An aerial view taken in Beira, Mozambique, on April 1, 2019, shows the Picoco refugee camp where 2,000 displaced people were looking for shelter. (Guillem Sartorio/AFP/Getty Images)

Both Mozambique and Zimbabwe have weak governments that rely on humanitarian aid to feed large portions of their populations, despite ample agricultural land. Successive floods and droughts have diminished output, but government mismanagement has led to widespread food and water shortages, especially in Zimbabwe.

Since the ouster of former president Robert Mugabe in late 2017, Zimbabwe has been run by Emmerson Mnangagwa, one of Mugabe’s closest allies. He has been accused of the same cronyism and patronage politics that kept Mugabe in power for nearly four decades, and his government faces steep international sanctions that have damaged the local currency and left the economy in tatters.

Mnangagwa’s wife, Auxillia, released a statement on Sunday that marked the cyclone’s anniversary in which she admitted that little has been done to help the victims.

“A year on, we are reminded that the effort needed for survivors whose homes and livelihoods were destroyed is still enormous. There are thousands who are still in makeshift shelters who need proper homes,” she said. “There are thousands who need food and clothing and even thousands more who need economic support to engage in farming.”

A story from Zimbabwe’s campfire – The Zimbabwean

Posted on by TSA Press

This is not a letter about Cornavirus, it’s one for the campfire when next you get there and I write it today for everyone struggling to save lives in this dark time in our history.

On a steaming hot night when even the thinnest sheet was too heavy and wet with sweat, a friend and I decided to drag our mattresses outside and sleep under the stars. It had been a scorching day with temperatures up in the 40’s (Celsius) and finding respite from the sun hadn’t been easy with the trees still mostly bare of leaves and hardly a breath of air stirring in the late September sky.

Tales around the campfire earlier that evening had of course included allegations, denials and much laughter about our last trip here when allegedly I and my two girl friends had gone on a mega bird watching foray the moment we arrived because someone had seen the Narina Trogon. When we got back to unload the car an hour later, babbling and excited, our old friend Steve had unpacked everything on his own and was not amused; not even placated by our scores of photographs of the magnificent bird or our assurances that people came to Zimbabwe from all over the world to see the Narina Trogon.

For a while it went quiet in the darkness as the four of us watched the fireflies flickering their silent signals to their mates and then a Pookie (Night Ape) came down a thick vine and ever so carefully lifted a chicken bone off the braai with its long fingers before hastily disappearing back into the darkness. Pookies eat meat? That was a first for me and a reminder that there’s always something new to learn if you take the time to watch.

It wasn’t long after we’d all turned in for the night that Steve and I carried our mattresses outside. Steve wanted to go under the trees but I wanted to see the stars so we lay looking up at the spectacle in the night sky. Watching for shooting stars I fell into a deep sleep and was woken by the sound of urgent whispering: “hippo, hippo!” In the direct beam of the torch light two huge hippo were grazing about 25 metres away and obviously coming in our direction. “Switch that ***** torch off!” I exclaimed knowing from past encounters that hippos, elephants and bright lights at night don’t end up at all well. What happened next is a bit of blur. I said run and in the pith black we ran, I tripped over and lay on the ground desperately calling: “help, help I’ve fallen down.” A foot hit my hip, a hand came down and rescued me and we ran, staggered and stumbled in the direction the chalet, almost going through the wall when we got there. From the safety of the verandah, hearts pumping, Adrenalin racing we shone the torch low so as not to dazzle them and the two hippo, completely unconcerned by our absurd midnight dash, were grazing ever closer to our abandoned beds.

It was going to be some time before we could rescue our beds and taking turns to swig from a bottle of Amarula seemed as good a way as any to pass the time,  steady our heart rates, giggle at our stupidity and swop more tales about adventures and encounters in our beautiful Zimbabwe. The next morning when the others emerged from the chalet and found us headachy and hung over on the verandah the story of the hippos in our beds grew ever more exaggerated in the re-telling.

Wherever you are in the world today, I hope you can find a happy memory to make you smile and give you hope. I especially want to thank all the people who can’t go to into isolation at this time as they work to keep people alive, systems functioning and maintain the essentials of modern life that we usually take for granted. Thank you to so many people in so many countries for years and years of reading my Letters from Zimbabwe and my books about life in this beautiful, temporarily broken country. With love from Cathy. 22 March 2020. Copyright © Cathy Buckle.  http://cathybuckle.co.zw/
For information on my books about Zimbabwe go to www.lulu.com/spotlight/ CathyBuckle2018 . For archives of Letters From Zimbabwe, to subscribe/unsubscribe or to contact me please visit my website http://cathybuckle.co.zw/

Post published in: Featured

Traveling without maps – The Zimbabwean

Posted on by TSA Press

The Corona Virus has crept up on us – as it were from behind – and jumped on us and now we are scrambling with the consequences. I have read one theory – it is no more than a theory – that there is a connection between fertility rates and the immune system. So, the theory suggests, the artificially induced low fertility rate, with its consequent aging population, in China – the one child policy which was obligatory until four years ago – may have something to do with the origins and high incidence of this disease. This theory may prove to have no basis but at least it has the merit of alerting us to the possible consequences of artificially upsetting the fine balance that exists in nature.

I am always awed by the fact that there is only a tiny slice of the universe where life can exist. If you travel up into the sky beyond 11 kilometres or so, you cannot breathe without elaborate mechanical back up. The same applies if you plunge into the depths of the sea.  We are limited beings and jump our boundaries at risk.

That is why the news that the waters of Lake Kariba, the largest man-made lake in the world, have dropped six meters in the past three years, fills us with concern. In our drought prone region of Africa it is unlikely that the waters will rise again to their normal level any time soon.  What is more likely is that they will continue to drop. What if the Zambezi were to dry up? We, the Jesuits of Southern Africa, have a prayer we say about our growing integration in the SADCC region. ‘Nourished by the waters of the Zambezi, the tree of faith grew and spread its roots …’ It is a nice fudge of physical and spiritual images but it does express our consciousness of this vital source of life: the river that runs through us.  One of our countries has even taken its name from the river. But soon we may no longer ‘be nourished’ by those waters.

For the first time in history we live in a world ‘on edge’: we can destroy ourselves. In the late twentieth century we had the nuclear threat and then the HIV pandemic. In this century we have already experienced the financial crash, global warming – and now this. In John’s gospel, chapter 9, there is a powerful story of a man born blind. He represents us.  What is striking in John is that Jesus does not just cure him and the man goes off home happy.  He discovers that he can see not only with his eyes but with his mind and heart.  He has to fight his way through opposition from the bystanders, his own parents and the rulers of the time. These last abuse him and make him an outcast but this only strengthens his resolve. He ends up strong and sure of himself.

The crisis we face can do the same for us.

22 March 2020                        Lent Sunday 4 A

1 Samuel 16:1…13      Ephesians 5:8-14         John 9:1-41

Post published in: Featured

The Law Firm Coronavirus Layoffs Are Here — See Also

Posted on by TSA Press
The Legal Industry Feels The COVID-19 Pinch: Law firm layoffs.

How’d They Think We Wouldn’t Notice? Of course the public would find out when senators dumped stock before the pandemic reached a fevered pitch.

Technology Is The Worst: Judges learn the hard way.

What If The Bar Passes On Itself: Are we gonna have this test?

Lessons In The Law Of Defamation: Sean Hannity edition.

Rich Weber Dies Of Coronavirus Complications: Rest in peace.

The World Is Not Canceled

Posted on by TSA Press

Olga V. Mack is the CEO of Parley Pro, a next-generation contract management company that has pioneered online negotiation technology. Olga embraces legal innovation and had dedicated her career to improving and shaping the future of law. She is convinced that the legal profession will emerge even stronger, more resilient, and more inclusive than before by embracing technology.  Olga is also an award-winning general counsel, operations professional, startup advisor, public speaker, adjunct professor, and entrepreneur. She founded the Women Serve on Boards movement that advocates for women to participate on corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies. She authored Get on Board: Earning Your Ticket to a Corporate Board Seat and Fundamentals of Smart Contract Security. You can follow Olga on Twitter @olgavmack.