Tag Archives: History

Friendly-fire loss in Malibu

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Castle Kashan owned by Lilly Lawrence
Two Malibu outcrops stood out like sore thumbs in the fabled community not lauded for its architecture (or history). Not counting Rockford’s trailer park in Paradise Cove.

The Hughes Aircraft offices sit incredibly in the midst of Malibu’s most expensive estates. Howard Hughes installed his company in Malibu Canyon back when the Malibu Movie Colony stretched only along the beach.

The other standout was a kind of a castle, ramparts, arches and all, built in the 70s and unmatched in garishness, its large faux stones aerated by picture windows to present a visual oxymoron akin to a whiffle ball made of lead. But like a real castle it looked down on everyone, and obviously all had to look up at it.

Lord of the castle was Lilly Lawrence, daughter of an ex-Iranian oil minister and self-proclaimed “international beauty,” who instead of buying an English title at auction, went right for Princess Di’s. From beneficiary of Shah cronyism, Lawrence went to “people’s princess” of Castle Kashan.

If you’ve lived in Malibu, you might wonder why I refer to the castle in the past tense. Although the fire still rages, threatening Sweetwater Canyon from its origin in the Knolls, its first victim is now being described as a “landmark.”

Every time Malibu would suffer a wildfire, residents would lament their neighbor’s losses, particularly the scorched backdrop, but we’d always crane our heads hopeful that this time the flames might reach the castle. Really. You’d curse the fire that caused you to have to pack all your valuables into the car, haul the furniture out to the green lawn where fire would likely never reach it, and leave your home a mess of soot and soggy mud prints from the emergency housemoving. Invariably the fire never consumed the castle, and we would genuinely curse that.

Attila Day for Hungarian-Americans

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Arawak Indians who did not collect enough gold for Columbus had both their hands cut off. Notice the hills strewn with bodies
What if one day immigrants from Mongolia seeking respect for their heritage decide to have Americans celebrate Genghis Khan, the irrepressible explorer, if also despoiler, and would-be conqueror of what they thought to be the heathen west, Europe, us?
 
Are you sure Chris Columbus merits a national holiday, let alone a parade? What fictional account of his life are you clinging to? Let it go.

Italian Americans want to celebrate their national holiday in peace, and hold their parade. Never mind who is offended by the celebration of the man who unleashed genocide on Native America. Columbus didn’t just bring the Spaniards, or plague. He brought slavery and genocide. He promised his financial backers that he would return with gold and slaves. He subjugated every Arawak he encountered and commanded them to return with gold. If they didn’t, he had both their hands cut off. Hard to apply a tourniquet with no hands, so they would bleed to death, as examples. The rest were hunted, burnt or fed to dogs. No indigenous peoples survived the European invasion.

So Columbia is a country, Columbus a popular town name. It would be hard to undo those. But Columbus needn’t be a holiday and for damn sure he doesn’t need a parade. Is Columbus the only Italian that Italian-Americans can dignify with a parade?! Irish Americans sought to counter the anti-immigrant anti-Irish-Catholic sentiment prevalent over the turn of the century. They established St Patrick’s Day and held parades as sort of coming-out Irish-pride events. It worked, soon “everyone was Irish” and Americans were funding the IRA against our traditional enemy, the English.

Are Italian Americans trying to counter the bad rap they get for the Godfather and the Sopranos with a pride parade of their own? And Christopher Columbus is the best they can do? Give it up. Haiti is still suffering in the hell of its 15th Century invaders.

Masked crusader of illiterary legend

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America humiliates Mexico for the Zimmerman Telegram
All Pikes Peak Reads has chosen this year’s library recommendation: ZORRO! Did you know that was a work of literature? Dumas, you think? R.L.S.? This choice follows To Kill a Mockingbird, Frankenstein, Treasure Island, and Alice in Wonderland. All accessible to younger readers to be sure, and literary to boot. I have no argument with Isabel Allende’s Zorro [prequel], to entice the participation of Pikes Peak area adults, but what for the children? Charles Lamb? Harold Lamb? Did Zorro capture their prolific imagination? No, the kids get to read not the Legend of Zorro, but ABOUT the legend of Zorro. Great, so it’s not literature, at least it’s history. Is it?

Not even.

It turns out Zorro sprung from a post-WWI pulp serial The Curse of Capistrano written by screenwriter Johnston McCulley. The black mask and cape were added by Douglas Fairbanks in his 1920 portrayal, and the rest is [film] history. So Zorro is Tinseltown legend, and the historical setting inverts itself from there. The Hispanic colonial rule of California against which Zorro rebelled never existed in that too-rural territory. But it sure creates a convenient boogey man from which the United States can feel better liberating the early Californians. Zorro, in Spanish “The Fox” being the surrogate advance scout, extending justice over the objections of the despicable Spaniards until the cavalry can arrive. The adventure published on the heels of US belligerent fight-picking with Mexico. So much for history.

A Zorro legend lacks even for historical precursors. Robin Hood might be the closest example, except according to legend, Robin Hood was a man of the people, not a rich man robbing for the poor. Zorro’s Don Diego follows more the Alexander Dumas model of The Count of Monte Cristo, avenging having been usurped of his noble birthright. Since the Enlightenment and the suspicions it cast on the divinity of monarchist rule, official chroniclers have been tasked to remind the masses that a “fox” could never be more cunning than his betters unless he was of uncommon blood. Noble deeds can only be expected of noblemen, hence the term. This stereotype has always trumped the Puss in Boots or Horatio Alger stories coming from steerage. The Count begat Zorro begat Batman begat the Green Hornet begat the George Soros secret funding mystique. Now we even speculate that Robin Hood, had he existed, must have been a disenfranchised noble. Likewise Jack the Ripper. Common man can’t even get credit for crime.

To be clear, the oligarchs know their people won’t buy rule by divine right, but we do respect Darwin’s survival of the fittest. And certainly fitness and advantage are hereditary. Only those fit shall rule.

I extend this deference of heritage to my real life heros, but is it warranted? Che Guevara was from the privileged class and is lauded by the counter-culture as the most heroic revolutionary figure of our time. But ultimately, and conveniently, a tragic failure. On the other hand, the truly effective populist reformers of modern times have all been of ordinary birth. Counting backward, Morales, Chavez, Mandela, King, Lumumba, Castro, Gandhi, Mao, Lenin, Marx.

Would Zorro stand up as an Easop’s fable or does he subvert man’s self-wisdom? Gotham cannot fend off its criminal elements without super-just Richie-Rich Bruce Wayne, thankfully completely benign in his vigilante despotism and not the least bit a corrupted-absolutely Nero or perverted Gilles de Rais, donning a Blue[-blood] Beard to mask his nightly reconfiguration of injustice.

Pikes Peak Reads is part of Laura Bush’s unholy surge, the library extension of the Every Child Left Behind travesty devastating our education system. Even if the choice of reading about a fictional legend was made locally, it doesn’t surprise me. The third grade of our well-regarded elementary last year followed The Legend of Sleepy Hollow with a lesser known Washington Irving legend: Batman! The former coincided with a Discovery Channel premiere of Sleepy Hallow and the latter turned up at the megaplex, it was: Holy tie-in with the H.E.W. Batman! A new beginning!

I’ll eat Zorro’s hat if Isabel Allende’s precursor, Zorro, a new beginning, isn’t coming to the screen this year, or isn’t precursing a sequel, which would make it what, a cursor[y] Hollywood incarnation? Next year the Pikes Peak pick, left for the children to decide, will be the legend of another masked, caped crusader, a legendary Italian everyman, and ever too mortal, Mario of the Brothers franchise.

Blackwater, Aegis and the body of Khan

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Contractor mercenaries in their white SUVs
When Genghis Khan died, his body had to be returned from the battlefront to his birthplace in Outer Mongolia. Two factors determined how the Mongols decided to accomplish this. First, his successors hoped to keep word of the great Khan’s death from spreading panic across his empire, lest recently conquered vassals fall to the temptation of insurrection. Second, the Mongols were concerned not to be observed choosing their leader’s final resting place, to circumvent thieves trying to retrieve the treasures to be buried with him. Here’s the plan they developed: don’t let anyone see you.

But Genghis Khan’s escort could not disguise a cortege befitting the ruler of the then known world. Whoever came out of the woods or over the hill or out of the garden or along the trail to see the fantastic procession, was killed on the spot.

It’s thought that envoys were sent out to warn villagers away from their path. The Mongols also took care to pass through back roads where they would attract the least attention. They had no interest in a scorched earth policy on lands which belonged to them, whose prosperity paid their tribute and enhanced their Khan’s wealth.

IRAQ
American modern-day mercenaries in Iraq, sent out on missions in barely-armored white SUVs, face a similar imperative to quash witnesses who could report what they saw to forces better prepared to lay in ambush. To this end, the mercenaries post a warning on their vehicles that anyone coming too close will be shot. Trophy videos have found their way to the internet showing the shooting sprees this task sometimes has entailed. Men from AEGIS or BLACKWATER shoot approaching cars, even if their Iraqi drivers have not gotten close enough to read the printed warning.

It speaks to the volatility of Iraq, that our occupation forces, through the mercenaries they employ, find it better to annihilate bystanders sooner than administrate the lands and reap the rewards of protective stewardship.

Conspiracy theory is history of bastards

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The law has no problem accusing its challengers of being conspirators, the easier to convict and imprison them. There’s a young black man on death row in Texas who unwittingly drove a car from which a passenger leapt to commit murder. He had no foreknowledge of the crime, yet has been sentenced to death, tied to the homicide by conspiracy. There’s Jose Padilla, who’s been found guilty of conspiracy to support terrorism. No crime, no incident, no plan, no illegal act except conspiracy. This is the best they could get out of him after years of unconstitutional detention and psychologist-approved mind-crushing interrogation.

From the public side looking in however, none dare call what our rulers are doing as conspiracy. To look at the collusion, secret meetings, manipulating the economy, media talking-points, media black-outs, election fraud, non-transparent government, private sector grand larceny, and investigation cover-ups, and dare call it conspiracy, is to face being labeled a lunatic. Conspiracy theorists are called conspiracy nuts, but it’s the complicit media doing the name-calling.

The definition of conspiracy theory is also conveniently predefined to mean a plurality of theories, like so many implausible alternative versions of events. Leaving out the UFO-tabloid genre, every conspiracy theory I’ve ever studied, from Kennedy’s assassination to the truth behind 9/11, fits very neatly together. Secret LSD experiments and black helicopters: compare these to revelations emerging from FOIAs or whistle-blower leaks. What is too difficult to believe?

The theories share the same conspirators, because it’s the same conspiracy. They form the events which tell the same story. They represent the reexamination of modern history outside of the official narrative, because the authorized version omits what the ruling elite want you to understand of the dastard inhumanity of their hold on power.
Source materials for the history of our time

Jena 6 Update

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Those who support the Saint Patrick’s Day Seven here in Colorado Springs are not making a fetish out of this case. There are many other worthy causes out there we support, too. Everywhere the US Judicial System is miscarrying justice. Below is an appeal from supporters of The Jena Six of the lousy state of Louisiana.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Dear Supporter,

On September 20th, Mychal Bell–the first of the Jena 6 to be convicted–is scheduled for sentencing. If the District Attorney has his way, Mychal will face 22 years in prison. It’s a horrifying moment for Mychal, his parents, and the rest of the Jena 6 families. It’s also a perfect time for those who can to come to Jena, in person, and stand with them. We know it’s a serious time and financial commitment, but we wanted to give you the opportunity to join the hundreds of people who have already emailed us to say that they will come. If you can join us, please click on the link below to RSVP:

http://colorofchange.org/jena/rsvp.html

Our presence in Jena–in large numbers–will help focus media attention on the situation in Jena, escalate pressure on Louisiana public officials, and most importantly, show the families of the Jena 6, especially Mychal Bell and his parents, that we will stand with them in the face of this injustice.

On July 31st, with only a few days to prepare, 300 people from across the country rallied at the Jena Courthouse. We delivered a petition signed by 43,000 ColorOfChange.org members to the District Attorney demanding that he drop the charges against the Jena 6. It was a powerful day that made it clear that the Jena 6 and their families won’t have to fight on their own. Since then, more than 100,000 people have taken action and contacted the Governor, media attention to the case has grown, and we have an even bigger opportunity to make a profound impact.

As we plan for this event, we want to get a sense of how many people can commit to coming to Jena. Below are some details about getting there, so you can figure out if you’ll be able to join us.

Details

If you’re flying to Louisiana, the closest airports to Jena are Alexandria (45 minute drive) and Monroe (1.5 hour drive). You can also fly to Lafayette (2.25 hour drive), Shreveport (2.75 hour drive), Baton Rouge (3 hour drive), New Orleans (4.25 hour drive), or Houston (about a 5 hour drive). The closest hotels are in Pineville and Alexandria. As they fill up, we’d recommend staying at hotels near the airports above.

If travelling from out of town, you’ll want to get to Louisiana the night before, as things will start early in the morning, probably by 8am or 9am. Organizers will meet you when you arrive at a central location in Jena and get you situated for the day. We will be providing maps, organizers’ cell phone numbers, and other information closer to the day-of; you will be able to reach someone in case you have any problems, need directions, or have questions along the way.

RSVP

Once you’re confident you can come, please rsvp at the following:

http://colorofchange.org/jena/rsvp.html

If you have questions, you can send them to jena@colorofchange.org.

If you can’t come, don’t worry. We’ll be sending emails soon with more ways to take action between now and the 20th. Whatever your participation, we thank you for your ongoing commitment to justice for the Jena 6. It continues to be our privilege to be part of such a powerful community of support for these young men.

Thanks and Peace,

— James Rucker
Executive Director, ColorOfChange.org
August 28th, 2007

Sen. Salazar surveys the public opinion

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Ken Salazar has called a meeting at the COS City Council chambers Wednesday Aug 29 to solicit the opinion of local area representatives about the proposed Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site expansion. The public is invited to attend (10am tomorrow) but the 15 representatives have already been selected. Invited to speak are:

Mayor Lionel Rivera (introductions).

County Commissioner Chair Dennis Hisey (of Fountain).

State Senator John Morse.

State Representative Bob Gardner.

Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments Chair Commissioner Wayne Williams (military and transportation issues).

Veteran’s Committee Chair Retired Gen. Bentley Rayburn (Vet cemetery and other Vet issues).

Chair of Chamber Military Affairs Council Retired General Wes Clark (defense contractor as President of SAIC near Peterson, will talk about history).

Chair of Chamber Military Affairs Council’s Pinon Canyon committee, Retired General Ed Anderson (former Ft. Carson Commander).

President of CS Chamber Military Affairs Division, Brian Binn (will talk about local economic drivers).

CEO of the Colorado Springs Economic Development Council, Mike Kazmierski (will talk about competition from other cities and BRAC).

Chair of Defense Mission Coalition Tony Koren

CEO of Pueblo Chamber, Rod Slyhoff.

Chair of the Pueblo Economic Council Marv Stein.

Assistant City Manager Greg Nyhoff (will talk about how City Development processes and the Airport relate to encroachment issues at bases).

County Development Director Carl Schuller to talk about processes and encroachment issues in the County.

Department of Defense and History

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A Pack O Lies NowBush is invoking the lessons of Vietnam as a reason to persevere in Iraq, highlighting opinions of historians apparently. The media describes them as heroic revisionist historians who are opposed by anti-war historians. Has academia betrayed history?
 
Who is historian Mark Moyar, author of Triumph Forsaken (how we could have won in Vietnam etc)? Associate professor at the U.S. Marine Corps University.
 
Who is historian Lewis Sorley, author of A Better War, Honorable Warrior (and other favorable accounts of Vietnam)? Civilian official of the Central Intelligence Agency, then Secretary of the Board of Directors of the Army Historical Foundation and Executive Director of the Association of Military Colleges and Schools of the United States.
 
Who are the anti-war historians? Everybody else.

The Pottery Barn community service rule

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What is going to happen when this war unravels? Do Americans have any notion of the consequences of losing a war? US bad guyNo one made us apologize for Vietnam. We don’t know! Imagine when we have to make up to everyone for Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s going to mean paying war reparations with a debilitating effect on our economy. And can it mean worse?

It’s the urban-mythologized-product-placement “Pottery Barn Rule,” you break it, you buy it, and the don’t-have-enough-money-to-pay-for-dinner victim restitution principle, where you have to wash the dishes.

At the end of WWII, Russia quietly rounded up all the German ex-soldiers and shipped them off in nighttime trains to Siberian work camps where they remained as captive laborers for as long as a decade after the war. Have our weekend reservists considered that eventuality in their future? Sorry dudes. We’ll be supporting you troops ten years from now, sending off care packages to the Middle East to secret reconstruction camps, location unknown.

A glimmer of light

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In my post, The Madness of King George, I wrote about the recently approved changes to FISA. I won’t reiterate here.
 
The ACLU, God bless ’em, has mobilized quickly to contest the constitutionality of the proposed changes. Please sign their
petition and make your opinion known. I understand this is a bit like tax planning….boring at the time, but rewarding in the end. Do it. Please. Congress needs to know that we are watching. And we won’t stand for their capitulation any longer.
 
George is the cowboy. We are the Indians. Isn’t it time to revise history? Give us back our land, you mother fuckers.

Grandpa’s kind eyes

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He was a quiet man who twitched and hesitated as he spoke.
I don’t remember his words, only the sounds between them
and the tone which gave away, if not his disapproval
then most often his uncertainty.
But his actions were always kind, filling us with pancakes
doting on my grandmother, moving around the house
like a friendly ghost.
Only his eyes had something else to say
and you were drawn to them like a soft light in a dark room
hoping they would reveal something more.

He was an old man with a twitch who seemed to vanish in
and out of the rooms he occupied. He had very little physical presence.
The only times I ever saw him move quickly was in his church
popping up and down during prayers
making sure he was the first on his feet
or the first on his knees. He did it as if he needed to convince his god
that he could follow directions and maybe even lead the crowd
if he was quick enough.

I never noticed that he had ever been a younger man.
I never even saw him as a father to his children.
He never even left me wondering who he was,
until he was dead.

Now I have only the things he left behind to know him.
His children have kind eyes like him and walk quietly.
At his funeral his life history did not show up on their lips
only in boxes in the basement for me to find.

His photos reveal a very present man. A man that may have had
a sense of humor, that may have had something to say, a man
who may have loved deeply. But in his photos I also see my grandfather
tilting his head saying maybe not.

Sioux Falls South Dakota

Never forget remember no thinking

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Clever quilt but misguided like the rest of us.
A commercial van passes our noon vigil on occasion, its driver giving us one of our diminishing no-confidence gestures. On the back window of the van is a “9-11” sticker of the twin towers, the American flag and the admonition ALWAYS REMEMBER. Frequently I’ve seen this slogan prefixed with NEVER FORGET, so we know the dullards they are addressing.
 
Do you REMEMBER THE ALAMO?
Hot headed American expansionists moved to annex Mexican land and their “sacrifice” at San Antonio legitimized American Manifest Destiny over Spain’s.

Do you REMEMBER THE MAINE?
An American battleship blew up in Cuba, fueling the jingoist call to take Spain’s remaining colonies for America. The Maine was later found to have exploded from the inside.

Do you REMEMBER THE LUSITANIA?
The German U-Boat sinking of an innocent ocean liner brought isolationist America into the First World War. It turns out the Lusitania was bringing US-made weapons and ammunition to England.

Do you REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR?
The Japanese sneak attack galvanized public support to fight WWII. FDR knew about the coming attack, sent the most important ships out on maneuvers, and stood down to play the victim.

Remember the Gulf of Tonkin with which we contrived an excuse to attack the Vietnamese? Remember WMDs? Remember the Sudetenland? False-flag ops all. Always remember. Never learn.

I am my own muse

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Dave and Marie
Opposites attract? Maybe if one feels a lack.
 
When my husband and I were in our mid-twenties, we worked out at a hip club in Denver. We did aerobics for cardiovascular health and lifted weights to stave off osteoporosis. We had a group of friends, like-minded couples, who were our workout buddies. We went to the club several times a week for years. We were an integral square on the yuppie quilt.

Once Dave and I had an unexpected encounter at the water fountain. Maybe it was my long wavy 80s hair, or my leg warmers and matching scrunchie, but Dave was overcome by passion and gave me a big smooch. I returned to my class and he to his weights. One of our friends said to him, “Did I just see you kiss your sister?” Dave, horrified, said, “That isn’t my sister, that’s my wife!”

Hmmmm. Rather telling. Why did I choose Dave as a mate? Well, because he grew up here in Colorado Springs; we shared a common history. He was smart and funny, edgy and difficult, driven, athletic, competitive, decisive. He loved George Jones and Hank Williams, not Flock of Seagulls or Tears for Fears. He followed sports with a passion that defied rationality. He wanted a big family and a successful career.

Or was that me?

After many years of marriage, we divorced. We’d grown apart. We had irreconcilable differences. Simply put, he no longer resembled the me that I love.

Now I have another. He is a writer, a musician, introspective, analytical, sensual, a world traveler. Intelligent, strong-willed. He has an outward focus and a knowledge of history and the arts. He has no interest in sports or money, but has an affinity for children and cares about the planet. He has sophisticated taste, and a distaste for the inequities between earth’s inhabitants.

Or is that me?

Opposites don’t attract. Like attracts like. I’d marry myself if I could.

The Good Samaritan in few of us

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I sat in the church pew absolutely shocked to be reminded how many times the word peace is mentioned at mass. I was struck mainly to think that American church-goers pay lip service to this word every weekend, year by year at war, and yet our military aggression persists without congregations raising their voices to protest. What kind of peace are they praying for? You know it of course, for peace at the barrel of a gun.

These churchgoers also listen every week to readings and homilies about religious virtues. What context is piety given in the midst of deliberate war and economic predation?

Last Sunday I was treated to the parable of the good Samaritan. Probably you know it, Jesus’ answer to how we should treat our neighbor. Jesus told of a man fallen victim to brigands, left for dead at the side of the road. A priest passed unmoved, so too a fellow Jew, crossing to the other side to avoid the man in need. Finally the Samaritan, an ethnic origin unchosen by God and held in general suspicion and disdain, interrupted his journey and the rest is history, well biblical history. The Samaritans might have been dog-fighting Nazi bastards every last one, until Jesus immortalized the hypothetical actions of one and now Samaritan is synonymous with good.

Today we hear the story about the traveller in need and think it’s a no brainer. We liken ourselves to natural Samaritans and can all but visualize our fellow parishioners lining up to help as readily as we queue for communion. But would that be true? Why were the original passersby so reluctant to help? I wondered if our priest sermonizing on the moral was prepared to explain his ancient colleague’s un-priestly callousness.

Perhaps the priest and the other unhelpful fellow formed a particular opinion about the denuded victim. Maybe he was thought to have been damn foolish or careless to have fallen victim to the bandits. What good does it do to help a person who doesn’t have sense enough to help himself? Give him money and it will likely flow directly to the next bandits on the trail. Perhaps that’s what the passersby were thinking. The Samaritan knew better, he knew that true compassion shows itself toward your enemy. Compassion toward your brother or compatriot is just teamsmanship. Real compassion is finding sympathy for someone unlike you out of kinship for all beings.

It’s certainly time to update the parable. How likely is it for any of us today to encounter a denuded mugging victim? Of course we’d be on board, but we’re never tested. What if, however, the victim is a welfare recipient beaten down by the system? Or a fat person on food stamps duped out of an understanding of health and self-preservation by predatory capitalism? What about a drunken derelict whose self-destructiveness is owed to some demon and now he’s likely to medicate himself to death and even rob you of more than your assistance to do it?

What if it’s a drug pusher or pimp or gang banger, who’s been given no other option? Perhaps a gambler who’ll throw away the last cent meant for his baby’s formula? Or perhaps a well-fed hag who runs a windowless bordello full of girls abducted from the countryside, she herself dying of cancer, a victim of tobacco brigands or chemical pollution robber barons? That person. Would you stop to help that person, as Jesus asks, as a good neighbor?

Ward Churchill unholy heretic

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Renegade professor of ethnic studiesIn bygone days of God’s absolute truth, we used to burn heretics at the stake, to keep their heresies from infecting fragile minds with ideas against the prevailing wisdom. Today we recoil in horror at the torturing of scientists who would suggest that the earth revolves around the sun. How medieval! In UN-lightened times, heretics might have advocated for peasant rights or regional autonomy. In modern times, could you recognize a heretic if one bit you in the ego?

It might be appropriate to note that the judges and pontiffs who fended off heresies weren’t erratic or irrational in their pronouncements. Heretics were condemned in harmony with the ardent wrath of the people. As full-fledged cogs in today’s hierarchies, could you or I be able to differentiate a heresy from a damnable lie?!

What does it take to be a heretic these days? The same as always. In the Department of History, heretics reveal themselves as aspiring revisionists to the official account of how events have come to be, the version to which the majority have invested the foundation of our relative perspectives. Revisions which need to happen more often.

History, we all know, is written by the victor. If I ruled the world, I’d want historians to record that I acquired it friendly-like. It wouldn’t be a history that would inform and instruct, but the tale would make me feel good, and reinforce public acquiescence to my pre-eminence.

Later when I am too dead to take offense, and my heirs have fallen enough out of favor, historians can creep forward to revise the glowing tribute to reflect something closer to what happened. That account can record how I really came to power and how mankind might aspire to learn to keep tyrants from screwing the world over like I did.

We all would probably prefer for fact to catch up with fiction sooner than it does, instead of subjecting generations of people to historic transitional untruths. However, when truth-loving scholars rush in before the powers that be are still at their deeds, the scholars are reviled as revisionists. In academic terms that’s heresy.

At my graduation I remember noting the faculty assembled in their various colored robes, with assorted stripes and sashes denoting rank or whatever. I would not have been able to tell them from high priests or Grand Poobahs.

So what’s Ward Churchill done to get himself fired from the University of Colorado? To quote the Dean, retired senator Chuck Brown:

He was caught creating academic fraud, literally making up history and fraudulently planting stories and misrepresenting sources to change the history of this country.

Churchill is content to rest his case on the truth he has spoken to power.

Gold in them thar hills

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Darfur has undiscovered water! Water you say? In The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Humphrey Bogart discovered that no fortune in gold could buy what he really needed in the desert, water!

Precipitating a gold rush has been a traditional underhanded mechanism to conquer and settle new lands, for America’s westward expansion especially, at the tricky impasse of land already deeded to the Indians.

Facing troops and lawmakers showing a moral reluctance to annihilate his red-skinned foes, George Custer played up claims of gold in the Black Hills and the land grab was on, poor white opportunists scrambling to invade Indian lands without anyone being able, if they wanted, to stop them. The betrayed Sioux were all but goaded into war and were soon displaced.

Now someone’s rallying the carpetbaggers to mine the water of Sudan. True, the circumstances are more complex. It’s not our greed they’re preying upon, but our eagerness to see a humanitarian solution. It’s been all to easy to feel there’s nothing to be done to help the Sudan because Africa’s troubles appear perpetual. But with water of course salvation is at hand, even though it’s a panacea.

The march to drill wells in the Sudan may not seem to be for our immediate gain, but let’s not forget that the real fortunes made in gold discoveries weren’t made by miners, but by those who sold them the pick axes and shovels. The drive to Drill 1,000 Wells For Darfur will reap a lot of pick axes and shovels.

Plus we’ll need to protect those projects, to make sure the new water supplies don’t fall into the schemes of evil warlords, so we’ll be authorizing troops to protect, not the black people, but our wells. And amid the militarized destabilization, the west will be able to wrestle China for Sudan’s proven reserves, oil.

Is there water in Darfur? Of course there is. Is there a subterranean reservoir the size of Lake Erie? Five thousand years ago. Experts are skeptical as to what remains. Professor Farouk El-Baz’s previous water divinations in the 80’s yielded 350 wells drilled in Egypt, but no accounts mention finding a rush of water.

Deathly Hollow Spoiler Alert

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Ethiopian flight 961
Author JK Rowling is taking issue with (2) too early book reviews of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Neither the Baltimore Sun nor the NYT reveal who dies or which loose ends end. Still Rowling scolds:

“I am staggered that some American newspapers have decided to publish purported spoilers in the form of reviews in complete disregard of the wishes of literally millions of readers, particularly children, who wanted to reach Harry’s final destination by themselves, in their own time. I am incredibly grateful to all those newspapers, booksellers and others who have chosen not to attempt to spoil Harry’s last adventure for fans.”

Wherever does the billionaire impresario get the idea that the world marches to her timetable? I’m sorry, has she offered Harry Potter to the public domain? Is everyone beneficiary to its income stream? I fail to see how Rowling, or TV reality shows as another example, can treat the news of what they are generating as proprietary information, and in addition, everyone’s obligation to safeguard.

TV reality shows purport to represent real life events. Why should their authorized reveal be protected from enterprising journalists whose job it is to get the scoop? Ms. Rowling writes fiction, but its effect is fact, and much of the hype is self-generated. If Rowling wanted to present her oeuvre such that all can experience it at the same time, perhaps she should have chosen the medium of David Copperfield, television.

Doesn’t a book reviewer play something of a consumer’s guide for readers who may or may not want to spend hours or dollars on a book? Does Rowling ask that no one inform themselves before buying her product? If it was free I’d feel a little more in the Potter spirit.

Much PR was made about the security efforts surrounding the Potter release. Online distributer deepdiscount.com is in trouble for having shipped copies ahead of schedule -well worth the publicity for themselves I expect. Now Scholastic reps have been phoning the thousand or so recipients to ask them to kindly refrain from opening their volumes until Potter time.

Luckily copies have found their way online and made it into the papers. The Toronto Star now tells all, hopefully saving as many as possible the tedious 800 pages and midnight queue. If Rowling fears the only reason people read her books is to get to the end, her tollway deserves a bypass.

Meanwhile, by coincidence I’ve stumbled on a real spoiler for you. Read no further.

Perhaps you too have had this nagging doubt about air travel over seas? I looked it up. This finding applies to young and old, young minds especially I suppose, who are dragged unto planes by their parents to fly over vast bodies of water. When you hear the safety preamble:

“In the event of an emergency water landing…”

and your attention is directed to flotation devices and the inflatable rafts to be awaiting you outside the exit doors, in the history of aviation the number of wide-bodied aircraft that have made successful landings on water is zero.

J.K. Rowling and the Dead Zone

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With author J.K. Rowling declaring she’s written the last of the Harry Potter titles, there’s a panic coming from the publishing world that there will be nothing to take Harry’s place. I suppose this fear anticipates the readership’s sadness, it certainly expresses the commercial concern, but it cloaks itself in a [Scholastic] librarian’s voice: whatever now will the children find interest in reading?
 
Harry Potter has been around for ten years. Educators like to credit him for pulling children from the terminus of their gaming consoles. If Potter has created an upsurge in reading, I ask you, to where has it led? Ten years is enough to have nourished the new generation. Over 325 million Rowling books have been sold. The first Harry Potter readers are already graduated from college. What are they doing?

It’s a leading question, because I haven’t an answer. It’s not discernible. Blogs, Myspace, trivia-tourism, what? I’ll confer with college professors and get back to you, but it certainly isn’t the Peace Corps.

I would purport that the Scholastic [1] worship of Harry betrays a lack of faith in what it means to read. Do children need to be rewarded for reading? Is not escaping into the abstract a pleasure unto itself? I thought it was a fundamental need that even distinguishes us as human beings. Do we have to offer candy bars to induce people to eat? I’m sure humans can run themselves out of gas out of sheer distraction, but I know appetite is inherent.

A key is to educate children that there’s a world beyond theirs, an abstraction beyond their horizon, which can be explored through reading. Much of it, history, thought, imagination, lies only in books. Travel and science can lie beyond if they wish. Those subjects are taught in school, via reading. Teachers who suspect their students haven’t bought into reading are obviously not grading to challenging standards.

Through books lies an existence of infinite proportion, as n approaches the finite lifetime. Are the Potters hypothesizing that children must be coaxed into this world, without regard that it might be form over substance? Do children whose thumbs twitch for video games need to be lured by books that feel like video games which lead, like arcades and the pool halls before them, nowhere? With Harry Potter, are we creating readers or are we killing them off? Form has become the new substance, which to some sounds clever and new, but really means empty is the new full.

Dead Zone
There’s something happening outside the Mississippi Delta where man’s agricultural runoff, waste and industrial pollutants meet the sea. It’s being called a Dead Zone, which describes it literally, and it’s growing. The phenomena is a total collapse of the ecosystem leaving Hypoxia, the absence of oxygen in the water. It starts with the algae, then never mind every next link in the food chain [2]. We’ve measured it only since 20 years ago. Doubtless it started earlier. Doubtless too it’s happening exponentially in every estuary downstream of overpopulation. I read about Hypoxia overtaking Lake Victoria in Africa, rendering it a sinkhole, the social repercussions of which match Dante.

I cannot but wonder if such a consequence of pollution cannot manifest itself on the human population. Could not our minds become sink holes? Could not a culture or generation be faced with a Dead Zone?

Debilitating, not irreversible in the grand scheme, but certainly final, like stunted growth. Generations of minds shrunk below capacity, below what we might have wished for them, like fingers crippled by the early industrial age. A dead zone of thought, of initiative or motivation, of energy needed to get out of the dead zone. Why it’s called a dead zone, not merely an empty one.

Booksellers seem happy as snakes to see our children want sugar instead of oxygen.

Footnotes
1. The publishers of Harry Potter, Scholastic Press, is a commercial enterprise, not an educational concern as the name implies. It’s like the pseudo-junk food company Subway, owned their ads say, by Doctors Associates, Inc.
2. Overuse of synthetic fertilizers has been causing rising hypoxia on every coast. The excess nitrates lead to blooms of algae which pull all the oxygen from the water, knocking the breath from all other living things. So my analogy is closer than I intended.

Harry Potter meets Laura Bush

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The role she was born to play.I wanted to hate Harry Potter’s latest movie but for one happy surprise: the villainous Dolores Umbridge, played not as a malignant Mimi Bobeck, but instead a spot-on incarnation of First Librarian/Educator guess who?! The First Lady played herself, a smiling headmistress pulling a no-child-left-behind clear-skies-initiative at Hogwarts to subvert the education process lest new skilled wizards graduate to jeopardize the duplicitous aims of the state ministry. With a saccharin plastic grimace and trademark twinkle in her eye, Ms Bush thwarted the young wizards’ magic lessons and exacted Kafka’s Penal Colony punishment on her unresisting subjects.

The unflinching First Lady caricature lent this Potter adventure a semblance of social commentary, but betrayed us thereafter, offering nothing else resembling Muggle/human nature or societal fabric to give a viewer insight into their own lives. Except maybe the ugly scarves at Christmas for comic relief. Otherwise Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was pure entertainment at the cost of two hours of your imagination on idle, but I’ve read no more than a page of Potter, so what do I know?

I also really don’t know enough about Dungeons & Dragons or Tolkien to be able to judge the genre. Is it enough to appreciate J.K. Rowling’s fanciful parallel world like an elaborate puzzle or computer fractal marvel? It’s not my resistance to trivial minutia, it’s that all the clever pieces form an intricate lattice holding up nothing. This is my usual rant against videogame storytelling, always swimming upstream against currents of obstacles, pocketing clues. It’s myth-telling void of any wisdom, natural or historical, unless you count history as keeping a bread crumb trail of Harry’s info quests.

The forces of darkness and light in Harry Potter’s Tatooine lack for every dimension except on/off amplitude, even there without shades of grey. The characters’ actions are driven by neither sociobiology nor mortality. Only at the film’s close does our young Jedi/Chosen One offer an afterthought about team spirit to buoy his friends as they contemplate the battle with evil coming in the next installment: “Unlike Voldemort, we have something to fight for.”

Really? To my mind, anticipating that great evil fights for no reason misjudges its relentless zeal. The misdirection echoes the New World Order fear-mongering against Moslem Evildoers, terrorists apparently who act “because they hate us.”

Surely this underestimates the selfishness or desperation that makes the real world go ’round, motives neatly incomprehensible to young altruist minds. Real evil is an infinitely more ruthless force which preys already on the Harry Potter generation outside the theater doors. That evil is systemic, its motive is greed, and it perpetrates dehumanization. Also like the movie’s corporate makers, it employs misdirection just like Dolores Umbridge Bush to neutralize Harry and his friends.

That said, Imelda Staunton’s flawless turn as our Cretin-in-Chief’s cretinous better half was gloriously, fearlessly in-somebody’s-face.

‘Save Darfur’ interventionists seem bloody ignorant about Africa, its culture, and its history- Save Lado, too, Comrades!

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Free Tibet, Stop Genocide in Kosovo, Liberate East Timor, and now Save Darfur with that ‘genocide’ tag being thrown around again. And lots of vitriol against Arabs and China mixed in. There seems to be all sorts of poorly thought out comments and ill considered positions going around town concerning this issue of ‘Darfur’, currently in the national spotlight ala Paris Hilton.

One local activist recently claimed on his web site that the Sudanese government was a US puppet state. Talk about getting it totally backwards! The reality is it’s the independence of the Sudanese government from DC control that Another activist here in the Springs was cheer-leading Democratic Party Colorado Governor Ritter for taking steps to firm up the US campaign beginning an economic war against Sudan. Colorado will not do bizness with bad Africans! Oh, Whoopee, Guvnor! I’ll bet my bottom dollar that you will do business helping your political buddies commit GENOCIDE against Palestinians and Iraqis, though. Am I right?

Right now, the Colorado Springs pro-peace people seem to be stumbling around in the dark on many fronts. The police attack on the St Patrick’s Day parade participants has them stumbling, and the anemia of the national Pro Peace folk hasn’t helped either. So why not jump on the ‘Save Darfur’ bandwagon? It makes sense. I guess there is just not enough problems on the home-front at this time? So let’s go save some Black folk from the evil Arabs and Chinese! And we’ll be led by Dubya, who will correct his problems in Iraq by changing a letter and nuking Iran.

The Justice and Peace had ourselves up a booth at Juneteenth today. They placed us right next to our old buddies, the storm troopers under the command of Police Chief Liars Myers. We’re getting to be almost family at this point. And on our nice little table we had some lit about Saving Darfur.

No, nobody had brought any material saying it might be nice saving all of Africa by getting the US the fuck out of their. I felt in a genteel mood and just sat for a while chitchatting and smelling the bbq. The Gazette was Heiled as being so very generous for poor Black folk by having ‘given generously’ with the publicity. It felt so good, so why be contentious? I just couldn’t…

I had my sign ‘Stop US War on Somalia’ with me, but Aw Shucks. Why confuse folk still trying to decide whether the Dar is for the Fur, or the Fur is for the Dar? And every body’s Albanian is still not much up to par And what’s the national language of island nation of East Timor anyway? Uh sorry, I meant the half island nation of East Timor. Hey, why shouldn’t we demand liberation and independence for West Timor, too? And what’s the next half-island down the shore? The world is complex, but you can speed read it if you are a liberal interventionist, for sure! I would have felt like a simpleton with my sign at the picnic.

There were some pamphlets to help you out on this with Darfur on our table. Did you know that Darfur was once an independent nation? Until the British defeated them of course.

Believe me, you will never learn this sort of stuff from the ‘Save Darfur’ crowd. They just don’t know it. That’s right. Darfur was pasted onto Sudan by the British. Those who paste on may want to peel the paste on back off, though. For humanitarian reasons, no doubt. From Blair to Brown to Save Darfur!

By the way, I am thinking of starting up a Colorado Springs society to save the Lado people. Don’t know about them? Hey, they’re just right down the road from Darfur. And guess what? They are victims of genocide, too. Save Lado! Is it pronounced like in Spanish, or like ‘lad oh!’ in English? It’s always fun when nobody can pronounce the name of the place we’re headed to ‘intervene’ into. Makes it more fun to watch the TV news!

I’m not making this up, so do the research on your own and let’s then get together and start a group (or 2 or 3) at Colorado College and get some sweet chickens (let me know if the use of ‘chickens’ here is not pc, like headless chickens) to help us out. What do you say? This is America, is it not? Anything can happen. We’re a good people for sure. So let’s do something for the Lado people right now! Start the propaganda, uh I meant ‘education’ going and we’ll get the troops in as soon as we can!

Meanwhile, let the conservatives increase the military budget a tad more, so that we’ll all then be ready to move into action together.

Save Lado!