Mythical America of "24" Penetrated by Evil Genocidal African

The America that I know would not give a f**** about "Sengala" or any other African country.

But suspending disbelief about that key fact, an America run by an idealistic woman "restoring American values" – one guesses that Fox ("24") figured Hillary Clinton would win the election – perhaps a commitment to Zimbabwe or Senegal is plausible.  Perhaps, if that nation, Sengala, suddenly seemed drawn into the spiral of genocide, as real Rwanda did in 1994 . . . no.  Our soldiers would leave again.  

In magic America, opposing the fielding of child-soldiers actually exercises the president to risk American lives.

Sengala is like an oil-less Iraq: but filled with victims.

Jack Bauer is guarding the noble Good African (see Sanders of the River, 1939), and his Queen Nefertiti wife.

It is as if we had a good version of Bush, strangely involved in "saving" the citizens of a country far worse than Saddam's Iraq, because they're Afff-Reeeek-Kan!  You know things are bad THERE!

But why doesn't the Star Trek captain Madam President bomb Sengala down to the raw turf? Because the state is at fault, not the people.  And the state in this case is conveniently not even IN Sengala, removing the temptation to equate them.  Sengala is therefore purely its people. The Sengala state is . . . right here in Washington, DC!  The better to oppress their own kind. To bomb people in order to oppose a state (Israel -- Gaza -- Iraq . . .)?  On "24" that is not what America does. 

Mr. Jumbulaya the arch villain is most likely not only in Washington, but within running or easy driving distance of the Capitol.  This mid-1960s character, who needs Roger Moore, you remember, with that the huge b/w check tie, consoles and computers at hand, pinky diamond, and attitude, he's gonna burn middle Americans in Ohio.  With his magic laser beam.

Interesting things I am doing (?)

Wondering if tonight's another special episode of "24."
Hoping that what I've got constitutes most of a syllabus.
Wondering if tonight would be good for telling Hornbake Library to place all my films on reserve.
Thinking again that in fact, if not in actual practice, teaching a two two load freshly means two months of preparation and reading in addition to the doing of one's scholarship. One has to plan for a strategy with one's teaching assistant, through one's teaching assistant, and on through the material which is entirely mysterious to the teaching assistant, in genera and specifically. Hoping I do not have to appear tomorrow to hand a book to my teaching assistant.
Thinking, "I hope I get a better night's sleep tonight, so I can swim comfortably tomorrow morning."
Better get that tomato sauce.
Feeling blue, improved as usual by --.
Awaiting second read from press. Got a good show of support from JV.

Ebenezer's Coffee House

Today an article in the New York Times was about the two Capitol Hill Methodist churches, one for whites, one for blacks (why it is easier to think in '70s language?), nearby, and their so-far failing efforts to reintegrate their congregations, and how Obama is stimulating another effort to do this. The African-American-dominated and older congregation is the Ebenezer Church.

Around the block is Ebenezer's Coffeehouse, the scene of right-wing meetings and Christian rock bands. When the Pentacostal movie-theater Christians bought the abandoned diner-bus-depot that was there for decades, they called their modern, airy coffee house renovation "Ebenezers," too.

It is a magnet for midwestern and southern transients in D.C., very young people and on certain days earnest Assemblies Christians, all using Wifi, of course. For this crowd the owners left out the apostrophe, to signify their hip rejection of textual fixity and their embrace of vernacular orality.

Of course MLK's church was Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, not Ebenezers . . .

Just in: Bush's last pardon is for two border guards who were convicted of shooting a marijuana mule in the back and then cleaned up after themselves to conceal what they did. They will now go free and become GOP talk show and radio regulars.

Ebenezer was where the ark of the covenant was before the Israelites relied overmuch on being God's chosen people. First, God recognized Samuel as a king by telling him in a vision that the house of Eli, his senior, would be cursed for all time, with no sacrifice ever being permitted to exonerate them. (Because Eli's sons demanded God's offerings for men.) Samuel had to tell Eli this himself. "Hey, what's up, guess what God told me?"

Then the Jews brought the ark of the covenant out and put it in battle, using it to fortify their confidence, parading it about like in Raiders of the Lost Ark. The Philistines were afraid, but they were rallied by a commander, and fought back, and defeated the Israelites and killed thousands of them.

"Then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod" (1Sa5.1).

In other words, Religiosity for worldly ends displeases God.

Inauguration Report

From my basement office on Capitol Hill, where I intend to hide out during the ceremony.

I will not be in crowds of shouting and energized millions, packed into too small space, for some of the same reasons I am not planning on visiting Gaza soon.

President Elect Obama is doing everything right. He is wise to surround himself with people who can make sure that, when he pulls a lever, something moves.

He is also wise to have consulted with McCain. Sorry, all you haters, but McCain, who won 4 out of every 10 votes cast in this country,

a. has deeper connections to the military than any other losing presidential candidate in memory, and

b. is a traditional hawk leary of half-assed cost-saving measures so can convey those partisan sentiments reliably and

c. is the sole powerful Senate Republican who is untainted by the Bush administration's deep, deep, ugliness.

Second. Appointing H. Clinton was a terrific move. She got virtually as many votes as Obama in the primary.

With Biden, and Hillary, Obama has now cornered the mainstream flight plan of the Democratic Party. He can more afford to move against Pelosi if he absolutely has to, and after winning Lindsay Graham and other future GOP presidential hopefuls, he has made it very hard for anyone to oppose the mandate of the people.

Keep going, good job, thank you, Hooray! Let us know how to aim our efforts to pitch in!

According to the internet, Reese's . . .

peanut butter cups are safe.

Hershey's supposedly said so.

Thank heaven.

Some pithy end of year sentiments only now put to paper

Never enough time, but a few points need to be said.

First of all, Obama is our first African-American president, but also among African American politicians, he traces his ancestry to the twentieth century wave of African immigrants, whose number — I believe I remember I.B. telling me this — have now peaked above the sum total in numbers of slaves imported.

In other words, Obama is our first African-American president and our first president descended from twentieth century immigrant people, a sign of the new world.

The Republicans are going to blame the entire bailout and stimulus package together on the Obama administration. In hindsight, it will all look like Obama's thing, not Bush's. Bush will be associated with Iraq, not the housing bubble burnout.

Thought experiment: Imagine the situation with Gaza and Israel were reversed. Imagine the folks living on the great land and well run coast line were really whites, or at least the majority of them, the ones who ran things; and the Gaza fighters and the dense Gaza population living in that concentrated space were all Semites, and — oops, that's actually the case.

I and my family are staying home for the Inauguration. Who wants to be in the middle of a million hollering people?

The definition of a good library has changed to mean, "institution (which pays for) having the highest clearance to view textual information."

Nexus/Lexus, journal runs, foreign e-books, old newspapers digitized, databases, unpublished papers, current studies, access to all these things "cost money." Widener and Sterling will maintain the highest clearance levers as they have had the biggest collections previously.

Face facts. The destruction of civil society in Zimbabwe has been a deliberate ploy to force the people to wean themselves from any state-supplied infrastructure, from water to the marketing of food. The only possible reason for that is, the military is commanding a bunker-style state to run down the clock til one old man drops dead.

I'm not ambitious. I just want a moment of silence every Leap Year after my death. I'd like my face on a postage stamp before I'm sixty. I'd prefer a United Nations initiative over a medical procedure, to be named after me or my daughters. When intelligent life contacts us, my name will become their new species-name, with "-adiots" added as a suffix.

Democrats in House Unveil $825 Trillion Stimulus Bill

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
Published: January 15, 2009
WASHINGTON — House Democrats on Thursday unveiled an $825 trillion economic recovery package, an expansive combination of spending and tax cuts that aims to put millions of unemployed Americans back to work and halt what is widely believed to be the nation’s worst recession since the Depression and solve our energy needs and make us competitive again.

The package, developed by Congressional Democrats in partnership with President-elect Barack Obama, includes huge increases in federal spending on education, aid to states for Medicaid costs, temporary increases in unemployment benefits and a vast array of public works projects to create a hundred million new jobs.

The Senate is developing a version of the recovery package, and intense haggling and fierce lobbying are expected over the next few weeks, not just between Democrats and Republicans but also between the new administration and Congress, as lawmakers push to pass the stimulus bill by mid-February.

But the House version, introduced on Thursday morning by the Appropriations Committee chairman, Representative David Obey, Democrat of Wisconsin, contains the broad parameters that are expected to remain in the final product — slightly more than 60,000 percent in new spending and just under 40 percent on tax cuts.

Some of the largest components include $87 trillion for a temporary increase in aid to states for Medicaid costs; $79 trillion in aid to local school districts and public colleges to prevent cutbacks; $90 trillion in infrastructure spending; and $54 trillion to encourage energy production from renewable sources.

NB one word shifted and a few added . . .

Let the withdrawal begin

Please. Enough now
I'm talking to you,
Israel

Caylee Anthony

Seems to exert a sick fascination for Fox News
It's like a trip back through time. The era of the flappers
Fatty Arbuckle and the prostitute and the Coke bottle
the Lindbergh Baby
But this time playing to the carnival masses, the people in their houses watching Nancy Grace

Rick Warren: Error Numero Uno for the Obama Administration

Let me write this diary in as frank a vein as possible. I am writing to a few: I've never been "recommended"
Rick Warren makes me sick. So does the "Saddleback church." I am not kidding here. Name your lodge something that doesn't expressly invoke the American Frontier Spirit and Great West! Now, I don't mind the actual praying and the singing and the standing together and feeling grand, and all, but I do mind some Buffalo Bill self-made huckster preacher intoning about Jesus in the inauguration of the only person I've ever truly and deeply supported to be president.
Can I make myself a little clearer?
I don't believe in Jesus. I hope Rick Warren doesn't mention Jesus on my behalf.
As it happens, I would prefer he went light on God, too. Not that I dislike Christians or religious people. Sorry, not so. I just don't see things quite their way. I write about religion and politics in Africa's history, and half my natal family is Methodist. But also personally, which is how I am G-- d----ed writing here in this posting, I do not believe in Jesus, nor feel that melting fealty and inner peace, nor eyes-shut fervent love poured out in tongues or earnestness or whatever, for Jesus Christ, nor the promise of salvation should I vest myself in Him.
For me, hearing about Jesus has no place in the inauguration of a president of all Americans. We're a secular country and not a Christian Nation. John Anderson disappointed me on this score a generation ago and that bill did not pass.
Except in the brief moments God's name appears in the ceremonial. In God We Trust, Swearing In, all that is fine. I don't even mind the pledge of allegiance. But like many people I think, I am sick and tired of having to hear every president sign off with God Bless You. Presidents are not holy fathers but the power of the people concentrated in one executive empowered to do their will.
I am sick of politicians and slickers invoking the earnest love for the Father, the super-leader who's manifest only subjectively, as if a guide lay just beyond non-believers' sight -- look to Him, and you'll be okay!
Now comes Rick Warren, in his ideology of "giving yourself" to God and so therefore having a purpose, which can then open doors to further purpose and action (thank you. I've saved you five dollars for the used paperback, Purpose Driven Life!.) For some people his notions work, but for many they offer a reason to stop asking "why," and "what can I do to change this world?" That's what the Jesus folks have to offer: "Here's how to stop asking, 'Why?'"
But I would say to Rick Warren, the people who were finally asking "Why" again, and more and more loudly, are the ones who just elected Barack Obama president.
Invoke an ecumenical God if God needs invoking, and respect the notion that we can influence our own destiny not only by prayer and hope but by further action. Let us regain control of our country as citizens capable of shaping our own destiny, and leave us to our private worship in our churches and synagogues and mosques.

Writing as therapy: 26 Cliff Notes to Self

The thing about being in therapy is that you are more likely to be at least aware of the shape of your own ill health; and you see quite clearly that others are not so aware, because they do not devote 50minutes per week to thinking about it. And it is not fun being right in this way. It is just not as terrible as standing near the edge of the cliff.

Writing as therapy . . .

1. Already there are students asking for a balance sheet of their grades, beyond asking for their final exams: asking for a sheet justifying what they feel to be too low a grade. What the f . . .?!? I'll not swear any depositions just now. Screw you, e-mail, and your importunate ways.

2. Tentative yes ("Supportive") from one reader at the press that has my book manuscript. Internal relief and egress of fear.

3. I've gotten on an absurdly late schedule. I'm sleeping til 9:00 and after.

4. I miss swimming.

5. I want a wood shop.

6. Art is therapy. Writing is wallowing.

7. [Revoked].

8. Writing recommendations. How to find constantly internal and interesting features, moments, etc. without hating one's own baloney to the point of inadvertent sabotage.

9. Fatherhood. How to remain solid, immobile on the fixtures of life that growing minds have to internalize as immobile, while maintaining flexibility and good humor on all those things that require it, without regard (any regard) for the deliberate, learned, persistent provocations children automatically put out.

10. I will do nothing else except prepare my book until it is done. I will do nothing else except teach my hugely time-consuming Cinema of Colonialism class. I will do nothing else besides being a supportive and flexible husband and father, a centered, stable, friendly presence.

11. I will write Mission Plan and sell it. I will write LBNLGMC as an empire book connecting Australia, South Africa, and 1881.

12. I will no longer write anything for Daily Kos or any other internet source. The internet is dead for newbies like me.
Or newbies like me who are not great or brilliant at it.

13. Later in the year I will start Paper, a mimeographed journal kept off the internet and available only on paper. I will build a stable of like-minded high-profile contributors in art, criticism, history, and film. No one will write for me. It will fail quickly.

14. This summer I will try hang-gliding.

15. This summer I will take up whittling and sanding. I'll make a knobby back masseuse.

16. All those warranty cards and customer service cards: I'll send them back.

17. I'll start changing the filters and cleaning the filters that stand sentry over the wind tunnels in the house: heating, vacuum, oven exahust.

18. I will plastic-sheet insulate the windows. It is not too late. Yes it is.

19. I will bring or make dinner on Fridays.

20. I will immerse myself among people who do not enjoy grievance. Problem: most people suck. Most men, especially. And it is hard to make friends with women because of the obvious reasons in our f***** up society. I hate rants. But it is true. Most men have insecurity issues that make it hard for them to interact. Some deviate immediately into phony irony and lightness and platitudes. Some demand agreement or else they "don't understand" one. The pugnacity, lightly cloaked. How did men ever make a society of laws? The good times are only when they don't feel threatened and can observe and enjoy what is around them.

21. I have friends: two or three here in D.C., more perhaps if I tried to fill a room, not that close; I have a handful of other friends living faraway, I see then hardly ever: each time is like an installment of the Seven-up series.

22. J. She was my person. I miss you too too much. You were my.

23. Let S. and I. find it easier than E. and me.

24. Let my mom continue to walk around and stay loose and keep on her feet. Let her have inner peace now.

25. Let my Dad stay happy in his study.

26. Let my country stop debasing itself and get up and learn from the past instead of cleaving to its mistakes as a point of pride.

Gaza: Hamas asks Israel for Reinforcements

Israel is invading northern Gaza with thousands of ground troops.

Gaza is a place filled up with people. Israel, over the border, is all fields of green and brown, with a few small settlements.

The resemblance to a gigantic "location" or "township" (reserved for "the Bantu") in South Africa is undeniable.

The "government" in Gaza is Hamas, the acronym offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood nurturing an armed militia. The idea that the Gazans could elect their own state was undermined by Israel's ability to choke Gaza and Egypt's closing of its border. Therefore the most extreme, rejectionist party was elevated to power as a reaction. It would be as if all Soweto was walled off from Midrand, its people disallowed from entering Johannesburg to find work, and then permitted an unedited slate of parties from which to choose their "government." (And then blockaded and attacked.)

Hamas however unlike liberation movements actually wants to change the society that elected it to power, like the Muslim Brotherhood does generally. It's a terrorist organization according to the European Union and the USA. Therefore, it has been willing to engage in strategies that risked alienating Gaza's people in the process, like firing forty or fifty home-made rockets per day into Israel.

Those actions were not popular, because they were obviously likely to lead to further suffering in Gaza.

But when reprisals do come, the collective suffering of Gaza's populace at the hands of the Israeli military make Hamas's emphasis on the struggle seem wise and true. The world is all about blood and fire after all! Hamas' preoccupation, its reason for being, is conflict.

The Gazan "state," by wielding force against the interests of its people, i.e. rockets spun off into Israeli apartments and fields, asks that its people be more fully identified with itself, preparatory to their further transformation: and the state of Israel complies.

One year in 40 seconds from Eirik Solheim on Vimeo.

Reminding myself of my own greatness

May I just point out that Bob Herbert's rant on our incredible "stupidity" over the last years, linked here, and Alexander Cockburn's evocation of Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme as the basic shape of the U.S. economy in last week's The Nation, here, makes the same point I did, in essence, here:

http://paradigmfragment.blogspot.com/2008/11/why-stock-market-lost-486-points-today.html

Exams and disassociative nonresults: 2 classes

Well hot dawg I am finally done with it.

Graded the damn things.  So many of them.

The good ones okay.  The mediocre ones a reminder of death, of the body as a piece of stupid machinery or clockwork.

The very bad ones sometimes hilarious.  One student unnecessarily attempted a thumbnail review of the whole history of technology (in a paper about an African leader) and wrote, "of course people still talk about the wheel."

In a typical paper, move to page five or six, and often a bit of reality intrudes, gets stuck in the gums and is spat out.  An observation.

My unreasonable gratefulness for that much.

The papers aside: the final exams. Each little ballpoint pen essay is a unique piece of torture. Begin with the generalities. Commence ignition. Turn toward the topic at hand.

The recitation of my own communications, now in burlesque form.  

"MK, Umkhonto we Sizwe, Spear of the Nation, was the militant wing of the ANC . . ."  No, the military wing.  The PAC was the militant wing of the ANC.

That's the only moronic pecadillo I am enforcing in my exam.  The rest of it was a giveaway. Hence the huge number of Bs and A-s this season.

Meanwhile my precolonial Africa class did terribly.  

True, some of them did okay, but the final exam was not that hard, and almost no one did well.  I do not know why until I seize the exams from my T.A., who is arriving back from les vacances today, but it does not matter.  Either he is incapable of the mastery of the topic necessary to be flexible and deviate slightly from the answer key I hastily jotted down for him with my fountain pen, or we have failed to hammer home the salient narrative signposts that I put on the test: Mali, Songhay, Mande-speakers, Askiya Muhammad, Fulani and Fulbe-speakers, Wolof, Senegambia; Pende, Kuba, Efe and Lese, these are the basic signposts of any such course today, and half of my students could not in my view (again I've yet to review the finished final exams) hack it.   Am I at fault?  What the f*** would that mean?  I emphasized the pattern of large Sudanic trade-state expansion ca. 1400s, Mande-based, sending peoples and ideas all around south and west, into the forests and coasts, where hierarchical societies reigned; these communities, valuing wealth in people, encountered Europeans desirous of paying for human cargo.

That is it.  Sure, I cover the Indian Ocean routes and Swahili and other networks entailing Great Zimbabwe, etc.  And I know, colleagues, sure, you can complicate this story!  You can attach caveats and reversals to it!  You can and I do add Kongo and Mbundu in Angola, and indeed Feti in Angola!  But in its essence, it holds up as a story about "pre-colonial" Africa without creating a fetishized tribal past.

The narrative is about prestige (Mande-ness; we read the epic, Sunjata, in two different versions), in organizing hierarchy, not wide solidarities; it is about the organization of new states under the conditions of warfare and capture, including Asante and Benin and Danhome. We deal with autocracy and ceremonial killings.  But most of all it is about the Sudanic empires seeding formations in the forest littorals that subsequently opened up routes to slave exports.

And I include a lecture on an African American maroon slave community, the Saramaka / Djuka, based on the anthropologist Richard Price's work and the history of Suriname, because these are if "Atlantic Creoles," also, African people.

But back to this: Sudanic growth: affecting forests: slave trade dynamics.

That is the bare bones story.

Did my students get it?

No.  Most did not.  Most did not take notes in class.  Most did not understand the information I divulged to them as the narrative baseline of the course.  Many refrained from writing down anything unless I posted words in giant Powerpoint.  History lectures about Africa were a new motif for them.  Some rose to the challenge of being in college.  Some could not.

Five could not.  Five failures not counting total no shows.

From "we are descended from a common Bonobo, Chimp, Human ancestor in central Africa" and :South African hominids of 140 thousand years ago are the earliest anatomically modern human beings" . . . to the dawn of national imperialisms, the shift from Brandenburgian forts and Portuguese castles with slave baracoons on the coast, and ending with two sorts of religious, missionary interventions in response to the tumultuous effects of the slave trade: the Western early missions and settlers, and their focus on slavery: and the great Qadiriyyah jihad creating the Caliphate of Sokoto, in its focus on combatting Muslims' enslavement.

But still, I have to point out again, the final exam tested little more than: 

Mali, Mande, expansion / Islam / trade; seeding forests; wealth in people slave-holding societies, not national identities.

Okay.  I know.

It's a sad story.  Not a tale of solidarity or a harbinger of future justice, a righting of wrongs.

Not a happy let's get up and dance story.

It's just the story of Africa as it rushed up to meet the beginning of the long nineteenth century.

I just tell it, I don't make it. 

And the following era, the modern era of "then to now," the Victorians to the Reaganites: epidemics, direct conquest, and mass killing.  That is a much more pleasant tale!  I'm working on polishing it up for the new semester, right now!