Cobb

Damascus Coalition?

Here's a quick question which I beg regarding the provocative statement by Israel's Ambassador to the UN who says:

The Bush Administration understands that this not just a war for the security of Israel's north, this is the opening  round of the war between Iran and the West, and therefore if Israel manges to set the stage for the defeat of Hezbollah in Lebonon that won't only improve Israeli security but it will be a mojor blow to Iran's efforts to acheive regional hegemony.

I think we have to be very clear if the Lebanese are going to be the Magyars here. That is to say are they going to be the abandoned allies who get overrun?

If Damascus and Iran have some say outside of the UN as to what conditions apply to a ceasefire, I think we have every reason to believe that their interests are material. That is to say if I were Sec'y Rice and I had anything to do with the negotiations, I would create a situation in which the Syrian and Iranian machinations on behalf of Hezbollah were made manifestly clear. It's something our newspapers don't seem willing or able to say, especially the dimwit Dickey in today's interview with Terry Gross. I mean he's spinning exactly like the Left is with regard to this 'stalemate' when he ought to know that relative to Israel's military strength, they haven't even begun to put a fraction of the force they are capable of. I mean he literally implied that the mighty Israel who defeated three Arab nations in the Six Day War is now incapable of handling the 3k fighters of Hezbollah. Now I'm suspicious all the time I'm listening but I listen to the glib way he's speaking and I know he's talking down (if he were capable of handling more detail), and until I hear Amb. Gold saying only battallions are being called up not divisions, that I realize how hesitant Israel is in really pounding Hezbollah.

So it seems to be what pressure our domestic politics are brought to bear on Bush and therefore by the US against Israel's possibility of using the Powell Doctrine and smash Hezbollah.

So the alternative seems to be to let Assad-like bash and smash backdoor diplomacy go forward. That is to say let Muslims go and kill the muslims so we don't get blamed for it. Or to let Israel bite the bullet and back its take-few-prisoners approach to southern Lebanon if the Israelis are ready to go that far for a few months. Lebanon doesn't have much of a choice in this.. they're not sovereign really.

Damascus and Tehran don't want to let this be a bilateral ceasefire. So is Nasrallah the man or not? Probably not. So let's not pretend that they're not in it. Hezbollah has to go down because there is nothing stopping Iran from working through them to pick at Israel. There is no land for peace. That direction of appeasement is dead. Now the prices must be paid, and countries need to step up and say what they stand for.

The entire question of Lebanon is a pawn in this battle. If Syria or Hezbollah wins, Lebanon loses. Well, maybe Lebanon is a goner either way, seeing as they are motivated against Israel. Their opportunity to be free of Nasrallah was lost six years ago after the pullout, and yeah I think part of that lies squarely with the UNIFIL.

Greenwood's AfAm Resource

There's a new online resource in town. I don't know how much it costs, but they're talking big.   

The widest ranging and easiest-to-use online collection on African American life ever assembled, The African American Experience is the definitive electronic research tool for African American history and culture from one of the most respected publishers in the field. The two primary goals: to provide rock-solid information from authorities in the field, and to allow African Americans to speak for themselves through a wealth of primary sources. Drawing on over 300 titles, and designed under the guidance of leading librarians, this database gives voice to the black experience from its African origins to the present day.

I signed up for a trial. More later.

Right Enemies of the Right

Every once in a while, I get a lot of barf on me that was aimed at some Conservative or Republican I don't know or can't stand. This is very typical of the 'Uncle Tom' attacks. Starting this week, I'm going to repurpose some of my history in service to Conservatism, basically making a Conservatism category in the blog. The hope is that I can bring some clarity and focus to my own developing conservatism and some things that apply in particular to the Old School but may not apply to the Right, Conservatives and the GOP (and vice versa).

In the meantime, here's some interesting gruel to chew on, people whom the Right dislike who are also on the Right. I was invited but missed participation in this poll. My selections would have been Buchanan, Coulter, Robertson, DeLay and Rove, but I'm also starting to dislike Andrew Sullivan based on signals i'm getting from people I like. Oddly enough, I'm starting to enjoy listening to Michael Savage, which must be proof that I'm not getting enough of something that's good for my soul.

Dhimmitude 101

I haven't really looked so closely at what the Islamicists might have in mind for Christians such as myself, but I have acknowledged a few things I like about Islam. It's simplicity for one, and its ritual discipline for another. Furthermore and probably most of all, I admire that Islam is not anthropomorphic.

As I drove into work this morning, Rush Limbaugh was railing against the studied ignorance of his journalistic colleagues, spun as they are for the purposes of Hezbollah apologies. Liberals! Yeah but we have to live with the Hollywood limousine light loafer'd liberals. They are, nationally speaking, us. But what if the godless sybarites among us suddenly got religion, and it wasn't christianity? What would it take for them to sell us out completely? We being the American red-blooded right? Is it conceievable that the same twisted logic that yeilds Bush Derangement Syndrome has not been completely manifest - that we are in the early stages of a much more deadly disease which will prepare them completely for dhimmitude?

You see, my sweet respites of knowledge and logic are coming these days from the broad/podcasts of Hugh Hewitt and the blogging of Counterterrorismblog.org and The Belmont Club. I cannot find any better and more coherent sources. And yet Nulan, my respected interlocutor and verbal nemesis is hard set on a plane of moral rectitude that I think simply doesn't apply. And I think it goes deeply to the question of the extent to which masses are moral and so motivated. I see in the arc of history he presents a central dynamic and enabling moral force which overcomes inevitably. I don't see it that way, rather as a history of *doing* and restive peace interspersed where thinking about doing can flourish. And now at this moment of history we can maintain coteries of people who think about doing while others actually *do*. We here in the blogosphere illustrate the intellectual appeal of thinking about doing. Those of us who can't do, and teach (and preach) are of necessity held in thrall by those who actually do what we're merely talking about. But sometimes we get caught up in the beauty of our own little nasty worlds, and so e can believe without recourse that the rationale we propose is what truly motivates the doers we blab on about. All of this is to say that I sense that there is some logical path which supports the intent of Hezbollah's warmaking which is to shut us red-blooded righties and our global capitalist conspiracy down.

I think that it goes without saying that to crush our intent is to send the world back into Dark Ages, but if there is a moral argument for that which coincides with the bloodthirsty perfidy of Jihadis, then this should be the nexus of focus. It will be where people who seem to belong within the folds of the modern West have taken there dissent too far, and where they will look diligently for the good in Islam to conquer the 'evil' manifest in our Judeo-Christian world.

In other words, be on the lookout for Dhimmi spies.

Seattle, Hate Crime & Terrorism

In the news today, six Jews were shot in Seattle by a Muslim suspect. Based upon what I've read so far, this is not only a hate crime, it is terrorism too. In fact, I don't see much difference between the two.

Several years ago, when I was a host at Cafe Utne, I came up with the Boohabian Hate Crime Standard. It went a little something like this:

To win a hate crime prosecution, the prosecution has to show a clear   expression of group hatred through the felony. It is not a "hate crime"   merely because the perpetrator hates people of that group. The crime has to   be intended to communicate that hatred of the group to the victim. The idea   that police search for hidden hate motivations is antithetical to the notion   of hate crime. Hate crime statutes don't enhance your punishment merely for   thinking bad thoughts. They enhance your punishment for committing your   crime in a manner that creates added psychological injury to the victim and   society.

The bolds are in the original; I would probably find another way to express the term 'psychological injury' today. What I mean by that would extend to such things as ritualized execution such as beheading or burning at a stake. In South Africa, a necklace would be considered a hate crime according to my standard. But in any case, the import of the method is that it is used to communicate something either to the victim or to those who would discover the victim. A hate crime is means to an end and the passion of the perpetrator is not satisfied by the act itself but upon the import of the inevitable discovery of the act. In this case, it's clear that walking into a building in broad daylight and shooting up the place was intended to be an act in clear view of the public.

Terrorism is merely the coordination of hate crimes by a conspiracy or syndicate.

I think that the formality of that coordination is important in dealing with matters of justice. In the case of Seattle, I think there is no question that this is a terrorist act, but that the formal ties of the individual are not evident, and may not be provable. But there is no formal 'right blogosphere' and any blogger might behave consistently with that definition and yet not be a part of the 'Blogdom of God' or 'Fighting Keyboardists'. That's an informal conspiracy which could be considered influential but not controlling. So it's not fair to call the Seattle killer a 'lone nut'. It's difficult for me to believe that his plot was merely coincidental, and I would hope that his testimony thus far can be publicized in order to show this. I don't want any formal action to investigate such an informal conspiracy, I simply want acknowledgement that he wasn't acting out of some sort of clinical delusion - that he, for example, thought he was at the zoo killing escaped rabid penguins. That he knew he was on a mission to kill Jews in the context of the situation in the Middle East.

I think it's important for me to go down this road because it outlines the guidelines that I would want the government to pursue in its war on terror. I think it would be reasonable, although relatively fruitless, to take this guy's phone records and trace them back to a possible influencer, or network. But I wouldn't want his family or associates to suffer anything more than a normal questioning in search of formal terror cells. Such an investigation should not yeild any ghost detainees, for example.

There is no question that the message has been heard - I'll be checking Richard Silverstien.

Soft Targets, Soft Heads

I just had a violent lunch with Michael Medved and his Lebanese interlocutor. The Lebanese guy implicitly defended Hezbollah and Medved was giving him hell about it. Medved had implicitly attacked Muslims and the Lebanese guy was giving him hell about it. Hellified stuff, but it didn't make my Carl's Jr burger any less appetizing as I chilled in the WalMart parking lot with the AC on full blast.

As I continued part of the conversation in my own head on my way back to this beloved keyboard, I wondered whether in fact we are spending the right amount of money on Homeland Security and if we should worry about Hezbollah here. I think not. I don't see what Hezbollah might seek to gain by doing their dirt here. I mean there's nothing about the geography anywhere near the mythical Caliphate sought by islamic fascists. Now that they've pissed off the Lion and bit off more than they can chew in their own backyard, what makes them think they can do any damage here? Maybe they're just that crazy, but I'm really not concerned. Still, if anything comes of this latest threat it only goes to prove that Hezbollah is hardly interested in defense, but in offense.

But on the subject of Homeland Security, it is by definition a measured response. Homeland Security wouldn't get any money if we were an old style nation. I mean let's overuse the whole WW2 analogy for a moment. Why do we have Gitmo at all? Because we believe at base that Zawahiri and Bin Laden can be found and it's worth torturing and rending combattants for torture so we can bust up the AQ Cells and Leadership. Yeah we say we don't but there is a real intelligence operation going. Yeah we take them off the battlefield and hold them indefinitely, and we're way within our rights to do so even post-Hamdan. But we wanna ask them tough, even torturous questions and that's a good thing. Why? Because the alternative to extracting pinpoint information is bombing civilians. Huh?

I really want people who are outraged at the number of civilian casualties in Lebanon to consider this question very seriously. Is it better to have a systematic system of torture for the purposes of finding tactical information on the location and facilities of the enemy, or to bomb extra hard and hope your bombs hit the right targets?

Did we spend a whole lot of time looking for Hitler? No. We didn't care about finding Hitler. We do care about finding Osama. So the GWOT is still proceding like a heavy-handed roughneck police action. The alternative is to do proxy battles (as we may be doing through Israel, now) and bombing civilians. But we are not bombing the states that support AQ and Global Islamic Fascism although we've clearly called them Outlaw States. We're not doing to Muslims what the Russians have done to Chechans. We are not doing to Muslim states what Bosnians have done to each other.

But we may have tortured a few dozen suspects, and that's much better.

Of course that's too much for those who put the priorities of civil liberty over those of national defense. And while I agree that our national defense is not under dire, clear and present danger, we are at war in two states, and the threats against us continue. The erosions of civil liberty don't seem dire either.

So what can we do? We can bomb outlaw states, we can fight proxy wars, we can torture captives, we can bug and search telephone records. We're doing the least noxious of all.

I can't end on that note because the fact that we are relatively restrained in our processing of this conflict is not the best justification, and our overproductions and straight out blunders cannot be adequately judged from that perspective. And I'm not necessarily going to take anybody's word that we're doing the best we can do under the circumstances. So over the next few weeks I'm going to attempt to get a closer look at what's going on in Iraq and how that relates to the GWOT in light of what Israel's doing. I think I'm bound to be disappointed, because I was struck by something I heard yesterday, basically that Iraq is now mired in the very sectarian warfare that was the aim of the insurgency. I want to know what is the balance of power in Iraq on a kind of Lebanon scale. How destabilized could Iraq become after an American pullout?

Floyd Landis: Asshat

The Tour De France didn't get much airplay in my house this year. It's the first time in three years. Even as it went on, I didn't hear any familiar names winning stages, so I never got around to it. I heard that Floyd Landis won and it was all a 'big whoop' to me. Even though I'm a cycling fan, the World Cup was where my sporto attention went this summer.

So now the news is that Landis has failed his drug test.

I suppose that after Armstrong's dynasty, the only way the Tour could go was down, but this is ridiculous. This is a huge scandal on the scale of Ben Johnson. What a disgrace. Floyd Landis you asshat! You should retire to Siberia. Now.

White Flight Friday

(from the archives July 1992)

Perhaps that was Greg Tate in the audience. The black voice I heard among few others in response to my call about Don Jackson and Ron Settles resonates from his direction in my imagination. Somehow I believe that he had to have been there. The rest, whose voices I had exhorted failingly, mumbled as if the language against police brutality had somehow taken Babel's turn. I have thought in times since that I might have dropped a line from PE about "rocking the boulevard", but I was so miffed about not communicating something of Patricia J. Williams' concept of lost standing in my opening line about me as a black man hating videotape, that it seemed not to matter. Though I'm probably not the type to fit the hype, I marched all the way to Thompkins Square Park on White Flight  Friday.

New York, in my informal analysis, had failed, as has present-day American civilization by polemic extension - the only dimension that seems of value to me these days. If I needed a clue to tell me to stop wishing that American would gather up and do right, the relative silence of Times Square of all places was it. There often seems no noble arena worthy of my seeking entrance. All is being reduced to the existential challenge of remaining visible, insurgent and free. The city has failed to muster any support for Los Angeles in any real public way. The thing I am missing now days is the Lifeboat reality that has emerged in my hometown.

My brother tells me of his eyewitness of a poorly dressed elderly black man having a heart attack a few days ago on Crenshaw Boulevard. He lay in the sidewalk, Reagan era fashion, urine staining his dirty brown trousers. People stopped their cars and got out to help. They dialed 911 from their cellular phones. Minutes later as he continued his bike tour of the hood, the paramedics passed by. He mouthed, "heart attack", clutching is chest and got an affirmative thumbs up from the rescuers. New York, a city I have found to be extraordinarily provincial thus far, has remained so and seems much less destined than even Pasadena - where my brother has seen at least one preppy who reminded him of Herman's intelligence, pump NWA's "Fuck The Police" - to remain a great tinderbox.

Obviously this is something New Yorkers know. This, after all, was White Flight Friday where rumors of black marchers sent the political majority stampeding (oops let me not dehumanize the oppressor, after all this is not City College) running en mass to commuter trains. I still ponder the nature of the network that emptied midtown Manhattan. Coming back from a late lunch in Bryant Park I was breathlessly informed of massing police and impending terror off Times Square. I didn't smell anything in the air a few blocks away, but I am new to the city and often still doubt my impressions nonetheless. The building at which I am gainfully employed was to close in quick and orderly fashion at 2pm; upon whose orders remains a mystery. Yet it gives me a perverse sense of patriotic pride to know that the LIRR wasn't in the loop. To this day I suffer through diatribes of discomfort. Mere 6 car trains served those wishing escape from New York. Technology fails. No Exit. I took the opportunity to run to Brooklyn and put on my homeboy suit. From each according to his talents, on each according to his appropriate tastes. I, a perversely unmonotheistic black man know that one mack does not fit all though I still don't wear X gear. I came prepared for shoutin'. And so we did.

The Powell Doctrine for Israel

Let me be the first to remind everyone that the Powell Doctrine for Israel makes sense. Why? Because it's war.

I have not engaged in a great number of debates over troop strength and resupply for American armed forces in Iraq. My gut tells me that the generals on the field are going to get what they need and that there needn't be any political debate about tactics any of us civilians really don't understand. All the Left cares is that it's not Halliburton anyway. But as things drag on in Iraq, we have had the opportunity to review whether or not our capability at nation building is sustaining political support. Like it or not GWBush's incursion into Iraq defies his campaign promises and old school conservative opinion on nation building. There is a serious conflict between Rumsfeld's ideas and those of Colin Powell.

I don't consider Powell a neocon in any sense. Rather he is an old soldier who hates having to do what he has to do, but dammit if he has to, he'll make sure it stays done. Rumsfeld is all about the future of warcraft and would craft the Army in such a way that some section of it is on permanent alert and deployment. Because 'you never know' when you're going to have to strike some odd corner of the globe. Call Powell the Imperial Destroyer; call Rumsfeld the Perennial Punisher.

Now that Israel has boots on Lebanese soil, there's a presumption here that I admit I feel a bit ambiguous about. On the one hand, there is no reason why a conflict at this level could not be mediated into oblivion. So from the perspective of peacekeeping I think it is reasonable that certain parties would call for a ceasefire and talks. But the problem is that Hezbollah's provocation is itself an escalation, and it is an escalation that is not likely to be negotiated away. Hezbollah is ideologically not going to stray from the things that motivated it to kidnap Israeli soldiers, which by any definition is an act of war. I firmly believe that Hezbollah felt that it was within its operating perameters to kidnap an Israeli soldier every now and then in order to hold them as collateral for prisoner exchanges. This to me is the crux of the matter and it is the thing that has to be held in account when anyone uses the term 'disproportionate'. If we call for a ceasefire and Israel complies, it would suggest to me that they are going the Rumsfeld direction: hit and occupy. Fight a protracted set of skirmishes then back down, circle back and fight tit for tat. Keep a low level presence as long as possible all the while negotiating some permanent political arrangement. That''s what's going on in Iraq. I prefer the Powell Doctrine.

There is no 'disproportionate response' in war. There are simply acts of those more and less powerful. Certainly there are nuclear, chemical and biological exceptions, but those are exceptions woven into the fabric of the truce between the West and itself. There are conventions for African wars and border conflicts that we in the West probably don't recognize, and there are conventions in the Middle East that we don't want to recognize. Was Saddam's move against Kuwait 'naked aggression' or was it just because we said so in the West? I'm saying we in America are not under any responsibility to recognize these conventions of conflict. So we can arbitrarily determine that Hezbollah is an outlaw 'state' and as 'proportionate' as it feels its militant gripe is against Israel, we needn't accept their terms.

So now that war is here, now that the brink has been stepped over, should Israel try and stay proportional and negotiate some kind of new political arrangement amongst those civilians caught in the battlefield? I say no. They should completely unload both barrels at Hezbollah, give them the Mother of all Smackdowns and ruin the ground they walked on. Israel should take all of their fury to their enemy until it becomes patently obvious that Hezbollah are incapable of fighting back without getting support from other states. In other words, burn the Bekaa to the ground.

This has the unfortunate consequence of making enemies of the people who depended on Hezbollah for their education, medical care and other welfare. But this is how it is in war, ultimately the blood and treasure of one group of people is pitted against that of another. Whether you like it or not, enemies of GWBush who would make war because of him don't care about your 'Don't Blame Me' bumper sticker. You're an American target, and so Israelis, not matter their politics (or religion, or age or sex) are the targets of Hezbollah.

What is proportionate? Anything short of Hama. (OK so I exaggerate a bit)

Not Gay Friendly

As people try to triangulate the nexus of Old School conservative blacks, the GOP and mainstream social conservatives lots of odd things happen. It's a non-trivial exercise and most folks aren't so keen and dotting all those Is. Since I represent, I have to do the t-crossing and i-dotting, but it's quite liberating when somebody else does it for me. So it is with some pleasure that I concede a new victory in writing over to my existential partner Jimi Izrael, who for the second time in memory has given a most gracious yet well-placed and stinging verbal smack to the overproductions of gay advocacy.

Where I basically stand is here:

For me, homosexuality is not wrong, just thoroughly distasteful, yet not offensively so. And gayness is neither threat nor menace, it's just damned annoying. And so as I approach these new new appellations I wonder if they might be substantial enough to support my own sentiments in the area. But I can already tell you that I won't use them, not the least because I already have my own hermetic system of knowledge and I don't need to borrow the terms. Still, I might hold out some ray of hope that those who do use them are not as homophobic as they sound, or perhaps the liberalization of our culture requires such terms in common conversation because we are called upon more often to voice our particular angles on the gay life.

I'm a civil libertarian and don't want to see gays bashed any more than I want to see Mojados lynched, and you can generally count on me to speak out against racism in immigration and homophobia in civil rights. But you can't count on me to support illegal immigration or gay marriage. I'm against both. But I'm even more aggravated by the unchecked suggestion that because I'm against those two issues that I am so for the ugly reasons. This is the legacy of political shallowness also known as 'correctness' which has abused its moral 'authority' on the subjects and rightly deserves all the backlash thoughtful people consider worth spewing.

So on the gay question, you can call me gay respectful but not gay friendly.

Demise of the Long Hot Summer

Once upon a time in America, the phrase 'long hot summer' meant basically one thing. Blackfolks getting crazy out of hand because of their grievances. You don't hear that phrase any longer. 'Black leaders' don't use it as a threat. White liberals don't fear it. Conservatives don't dig in against it. It doesn't happen any longer.

I'm not going to go into any histrionics about it or the significance of it. I'm quite satisfied with the simple explanation. African Americans are middle class, and middle class folks don't 'take it to the streets'.

Clerks 2

Pops was telling me something he thought I didn't know, which was that Hezbollah has hospitals. Yes, Hezbollah has hospitals. Everybody has hospitals. Everybody has children. You can pretty much bet that no matter how sleazy, depraved, evil, wicked, mean and nasty people are, if they get ill they'll want to be healed.

What has this got to do with Clerks 2, the latest from Kevin Smith? Everything. Because in the end, his characters, lost & confused, perverted & lackadaisical, idiotic & profane all have souls that need to be healed. What Smith has done is something of a minor miracle. He has taken several degrees of witless and dysfunctional characters and made an almost heartwarming story littered with brazen hilarity. He has provided healing and closure for Dante Hicks, the man who wasn't supposed to be there.

It's hard to imagine that even in a nation so large as ours, that there could possibly be individuals so lost in the moment that they spend 10 years working at a convenience store in defiance of their own dreams and ambitions. And yet Hicks, whose decency and restraint has left him as the only responsible person, has survived on this thin gruel of New Jersey existence with a decent part of his self-respect intact. He is one step above loser, and his best friend Randall, is a loser, in fact God of Losers who insures that everyone else on the loser totem pole stays in their rightful place.

If America has within its borders, a nation of misfits, slackers, addicts, perverts and idiots with very few socially redeeming characteristics or ambitions, then director Kevin Smith is the poet laureate of that nation. His dialog is a perfectly suited vehicle, rather in the style of the Coen Brothers' 'Raising Arizona', for the overly worded protestations of the semi-intelligent. And in that way, they bring his characters to life in ways that so many other films cannot do. But make no mistake about it, Smith has no ambitions to elevate any of our sensibilities above the inane. This is what makes 'Clerks 2' the ultimate movie to stage a dweeb smackdown about the great fanboy rivalry Lord of the Rings vs Star Wars.

I have to admit that I wasn't dressed down properly for going to this film, and hadn't ingested quite the right complement of (contraband) pre-movie fare. Plus I had to keep my buddha on to keep from smacking the kid behind me kicking my chair. Still, if you're looking for a flick to take your head out of civilization and you have a stomach for the extremely crude, than Clerks 2 is a great way to kill a couple hours. By View Askew standards, this one gets 4 out of 5 stars.

Ray Bowen Helps Maryland Public Television

OWENS MILLS, MD, June 25 – Volunteers from all over Maryland come to operate the phones for Maryland Public Television’s (MPT) donation drives. This Sunday, several employees of Exceptional Software Strategies, Inc. were among the volunteers taking pledges to support MPT’s array of cultural, educational, and family programming.
             
              Exceptional’s Co-founder, Ray Bowen, was pulled aside by MPT for a brief interview to talk about the volunteer effort:
             
              MPT Spokesperson: “I don’t think you’ve ever been up here to answer our phones before. What made you decide to come up and volunteer?”
             
              Ray Bowen: “Well, we don’t have the opportunity—because of the work that we do—to be in the public. So this is a great opportunity to put a face to the company and allow us to volunteer and do good things.”
             
              Click the link to view the full video of Ray’s interview on MPT.
             

Is It Just Me or Dunbar?

You know I dig big ideas. Well, here's one that I've not heard before and it actually sounds fairly big. I like it. There is a congnitive limit to the amount of real relationships that people can maintain, and depending on the circumstances it peaks out at about 150. Give or take. The blogger who is all over this theory is a gent named Christopher Allen who is newly on my short list.

I'll be bringing up, as time goes by, certain observations with regard to this limit and my experiences in cyber- and meatspace. Right away the first thing I notice is no matter how many new networking circles I join, personal and professional, I seem to bump into the same universe of people. So I'm interested in pushing those boundaries and estimating the costs of expansion.

Socially, I think of this in terms of that annoying occurance when you find yourself at a dinner conversation with people, and you wonder how the hell you wound up with them. And you look around and realize you've spent a relatively large amount of time with them, and you get the 'eeww' feeling. At least I do, present company excepted. Personally, this is why I think I have the temperament of a consultant. Despite the fact that I gripe that I don't get to have refrigerator neighbors, 18 months of anything is just about all I can stand. I gotta keep moving. And I think that in some ways I must be telegraphing such cues visually. But there have got to be some non-personal dynamics of social networking that we simply haven't looked closely enough... Anybody remember 'Hatester' the anti-social network?

Here's Allen:

Ultimately social networking services -- be it LinkedIn, Tribe.Net, Orkut, or LiveJournal -- are making the problem worse, not solving it. Any engineer or information theorist can tell you that a system that only has amplifiers will be out of balance, and that you need attenuators in the system as well. Our current breed of social networking services have focused on amplifying our contacts not only because it serves us, but because it serves them. The more contacts that you make, the more people they potentially have in their service. However, in the long run this is unsustainable -- a social networking service also has to be useful -- merely amplifying your contacts isn't enough.

Thus the problem becomes not just one unique to me, where my friends network is overextended, but rather one that's endemic to the current generation of social networking services. In order to solve it we need to look at the traditional cultural answers to the problem, compare them to technical solutions, both current and to-be-invented, and then see how a new generation of social networking services can be designed that molds the two ideas together into a more cohesive whole.

This is really good stuff.

 

This African

Today on Flickr, a young man from Kigali, Rwanda invited me into his circle of photo-friends. I haven't yet responded, but I was suddenly reminded of how few Africans I meet from off this continent. Here in cyberspace, I'm only in odd moments of communication with Abiola. Basically I read his blog and occasionally comment. He's one of the more intelligent folks anyone is likely to meet. But the prejudice I have is the wonderful character of the African.

What I'm thinking about is generosity and kindness of the sort that is noticable. I'm thinking of a guileless sweetness.  I haven't met any African like that and yet it is something I'm expecting to find in large quantities somewhere. I should know better, perhaps. And yet the idea is still strong with me. I expect to find an African child who would be incorruptable and unspoilable here in the US were I to adopt him.

I don't know where these ideas come from exactly. Perhaps Ladysmith Black Mombazo or the film Sarafina!. Maybe it was the surprisingly soft sound of the Ibo language on my friend's tongue that night of beers at Friday's. Maybe it was my Ethiopian friends from the 80s. They were royalty, and so they seemed, all British educated. Perhaps it was the simple naivete of Mark Mathabane who came to America to play tennis and escape his world.

Somehow I've always felt responsible to Africans with whom African Americans are on notoriously bad grounds. One can hardly expect us domestic blackfolks to control an agenda around our image. It's impossible. And so everybody comes here to the US with old lies about who we are and what we do. They get updated with fresh lies and headlines. And so I've noted the kind of surprise with which I have been greeted by some Africans over the years. Maybe I've wanted to get some of that African goodness. I don't know. I haven't thought about it in a long time.

The long time has been defined by a brief affair with an African woman way back in the 90s - a time when the phrase 'New World Afrikan' was in vogue. I recall a trip to Paris in the days when hiphop fashion was just beginning to hit haute couture runways, and the models were (as models tend to be) young and hot. I remember trying to assume a place in that international jet set, just as some of my friends in academia were eager to parlay the Brixton chic of the day. We were the guys whow were going to be more serious than Milli Vanilli and that Fine Young Cannibal. We were going to be New Generation. Very little of that happened, not that I had the dough to sustain the illusion. Sure I got invited to the Hamptons once, but I was a bit too busy being boho and wearing my baseball cap backwards to face that crowd. Yeah I met a son-of-a-diplomat and he promised to show me the 'real' Africa. I was close to some aesthetes who dreamed of revolutionizing the style of the young, gifted, moneyed and black, worldwide. But I missed the boat that Puffy sailed in on.  I like to think that if we would have had our way, things might have been a bit more sophisticated and bouyant. A bit more Angelique Kidjo, a bit less Notorious BIG.

Now I have no idea what American and African black money looks like in the fashionable spots. I have no illusions about the political and economic impact of our emergence, and I don't have the phone number of that incredible dark, tall,  model from the fashion show in Paris. My French has degenerated and I wear red plaid boxer shorts more often than even bloggers should admit.

I just spent the last four days in the 115 degree heat off a lake in California admitedly jealous of blacknecks and rednecks with fishing boats, huge trailers and dually Dodge trucks. I enjoyed myself as only BBQ loving guys who love to wear boots and sleep under a million stars do. But I'm thinking about those Africans. I'm thinking about myself as an African and if I was (or am) part of a positive difference for the ideas and images we inherit and create.

No conclusion.

Applause Times 61

Here is the text of Bush's Speech to the NAACP. I only skimmed it, but it sounds like rhetorical patronage to me. The headline fore the story I downloaded says Bush acknowledged that 'racism exists'. What courage! Judge for yourself.

I don't expect Bush or anybody to do anything for the NAACP. So, basically, whatever to the whole thing. There is no black legislative agenda.

You will note that the crowd applauded 61 times. I'm on vacation. See you Sunday.

Download president_bush_addresses_naacp_convention.pdf

Hie Thee Home

I heard the John & Ken show yesterday afternoon on KFI, and I was rather blown away by the conversation with the little old lady from Florida who was trying to get back home from Lebanon. What blew me away was how consistent her story was with everything Conservatives have been saying about the nature of the conflict now escalating between Hezbollah and the IDF. I was secondarily miffed about the clear lack of responsiveness that this evidently smart and resourceful woman recieved from the State Department in trying to get out.

So when Doc emailed me a note saying that Pelosi of all people had proposed something or other to help Americans flee the country, I scratched my head for a minute and then figured, well maybe she has one decent bone in her body after all. This morning it is all clear. The BDS meme is that the Administration will be incompetent to evacuate Beirut just like.... KATRINA.

I thought I was cynical.

So here's the pre-emptive. The dastardly Bush Administration will provoke Hezbollah freedom fighters into killing Americans in order to justify support of the evil Zionists and their Halliburton-fueled interests in the region.

Seriously, I'm very interested to hear what Condi will say, and I'm glad she was on the ball to insure that Americans get a free ride home, because yeah they were slacking yesterday. The French and the Germans had already hightailed it out of there. I have no gripes against Americans who go to Lebanon or any other danger zone. More power to them, I say.

Richard Cohen is a Mistake

" We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.."

There are still people today who would discount the validity of this axiom because the man who penned them was white and a slaveholder. Among them and behind them scribbling up excuses and broadening the reasons for which people's rights should be abnigated is one Richard Cohen. You see he wrote stuff like this:

The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself.

The basic import of this vector? Israel should not exist. Why not? Because it exists in proximity to people who by definition should hate them. This is nothing more or less than racist essentialism. If you are a European Jew, there can be no kind of arrangement through which essential differences can be mediated with Arab Muslims. Not only is it a racist slam, but a direct refutation of the value of nations and governments instituted among men. Hezbollah is not a nation and has made, as far as I can tell, no effort to get recognition as one. The leaders of Hezbollah are content to occupy South Lebanon in the wake of its civil war, un-disarmed, provocative and abetted in principle by misguided cretins like Richard Cohen.

Over at Whizbang are more excerpts of this spew.

Shameless Blackification

Somewhere I got notified that the first African American, Sophia Danenberg, has ascended Everest. I had no idea that it hadn't been done already and am rather surprised. I mean if I had known that title was up for grabs, I might have tried it while I was still single back in the late 80s early 90s. It just never occured to me that it wasn't a done deal. I suppose with a little poking and prodding, one could find a whle bunch of first black milestones that haven't been done or even approached, not that anybody is keeping score.

Or are they?

Now some cat named Bill Pinkney sailed around the world solo and is getting his props. I can get behind him, because truth be told I only had three serious black heroes when I was a kid. First and foremost among them was Mathew Henson, who went to the North Pole with Peary. But I'm not sure there's much significance in this beyond inspiration for kids. In other words, this blackification of events is not doing DuBois' work.

But really I say there is very little political or social uplift to be gotten in tracking such events. Not that they aren't interesting or inspiring to youth, but they simply don't serve DuBois' purposes. Despite the fact that I have a gripe against the whole role-monkey business, I don't believe anyone is being consistent in this kind of appropriation. I mean, if you are the first black to accomplish anything, the entire significance of it is that you represent the unlimited potential of blackfolks. But that only makes sense in the political context of oppression and suppression. I mean it's obvious that blackfolks are endowed by their creater with certain undeniable humanity, so why bother counting the first nose? Well, only because it means that black person is bogarding and a pioneer having accomplished something others before have failed at because of racist descrimination.

But are those the kinds of celebrations we see in praise of diversity? I percieve a kind of checkboxification going on and a reflexive statement about 'race relations' etc. Everybody plays this game. My token is more representative than your token. But I don't think it is fair to the achiever, the achievement or to the audiences. And now I'm going to dump some verbiage in from David Brooks:

..the liberal writer Michael Tomasky published ''Left for Dead,'' which argued that the progressive movement was being ruined by multicultural identity politics. Democrats have lost the ability to talk to Americans collectively, Tomasky wrote, and seem to be a collection of aggrieved out-groups: feminists, blacks, gays and so on.

At the time, Bernstein and Tomasky were lonely voices on the left, and the multiculturalists struck back. For example, Martin Duberman slammed Tomasky's book in The Nation, and defended multiculturalism:

''The radical redefinitions of gender and sexuality that are under discussion in feminist and queer circles contain a potentially transformative challenge to all 'regimes of the normal.' The work of theorists like Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Jeffrey Weeks, Marjorie Garber and Judith Butler represents a deliberate systemic affront to fixed modes of being and patterns of power. They offer brilliant (if not incontrovertible) postulates about such universal matters as the historicity and fluidity of sexual desire, the performative nature of gender, and the multiplicity of impulses, narratives and loyalties that lie within us all.''

Duberman insisted that postmodern multicultural theorizing would transform politics, but today his gaseous review reads as if it came from a different era, like an embarrassing glimpse of leisure suits in an old home movie.

So what I'm saying is that I resent and resist the racial symbolism of every African American achievment being piled into some massive calculation for the purposes of multiculturalism.

If Mr. Pinkney or Ms. Danenberg seek out notariety as Black, that's fine. It's their achievement and their privilege. I'm just not comfortable that it should be done for them. And what I certainly don't want to see, which seems inevitable is whether some question of their political fidelity arises automatically, which it must if we are talking about The Struggle.

Black history itself is apolitical. I seriously doubt that those we have traditionally celebrated every February would survive the political litmus tests we have today about what legitimately passes for Black Politics or Multicultural Politics. So here's to hope that African American acheivement remains apolitical.

In Re Profanity at Cobb

The other day at Booker Rising I posted lyrics to a Fishbone song which was quite ragingly profane as an example of why Fishbone rocks harder than Living Colour (a little fan rivalry between myself and Shay Riley). I know there are many folks who read this blog and see the occasional f bomb, and during various points of my publication I have wrestled with my willingness to use dirty words. And so while I challenge myself as a writer to be variantly expressive, in the end I must admit that Lenny Bruce has the last word.

"There is a difference, you know, between a big piece of art with a little shit in the middle and a big piece of shit with a little art in the middle. One is a big piece of art and the other is a big piece of shit."

While I have no problems apologizing for the occasional turd, I do hope readers will find Cobb to be a big piece of art.

Me'Shell, Gay Black Creativity & Undismissable Symbolism

This afternoon, I'm doing a little bit of thinking about Me'Shell Ndegeocello and her music. Rather in the vibe of my last post about Speahead, I'm thinking about the fate of the art of hiphop from the perspective of the vibe between those I considered the best and their critical acceptance by the masses and the elites.

Like with Spearhead, even moreso, I found Me'Shelle's music overwhelmed by her message. Or another way to put it is that if I could get an instrumental of her stuff I'd be quite relieve, instead I have to suffer through lyrics I find objectionable. If anybody wants to come at me with the hardline about whether Conservatism closes my mind, this would be a good part to start. Cause I had a serious problem with 'Cookie', more than 'Bitter'. On her first album, I had no such qualms. In fact, it was a breath of fresh freshness, that came swinging with the funk and deep soulful stuff that's blue as all getout.

I'm not certain about anything about MO's sexuality except that it's not certain, but the more I listen to her songs, the more unclear things become. It's hard to imagine anyone so 'alternative' on every perspective. She sings songs taunting Jesus from the perspective of the cursed of Ham. She sings of longing for marriage to a man she knows has other lovers. She questions the fidelity of her man in a stunning reversal of 'Who is He and What is He to You". We can only guess if she was 'studio gangsta' in that regard. I mean she can write a song like that begins:

My mother used to whore herself
And my father would reap the benefits of her labor
It was almost as if she was absent
Absent form her own life.

I remember she would scrub the floors
for the white folks
Just to come home
To cook and clean for the man who broke her.

In her debut album with the slammin' hit "If That's Your Boyfriend", she cut a daring hottie profile. I'm sure I'm not the only one who thought, man she needs a man like me, as we "hets" often brag. But what kind of expectations are brought to the surface or subliminated when a rocker goes ambidextrous on us? To pose the question a bit more broadly, what if anything should we expect from gay artists? Is there something fundamentally alienating about obscure sexual preferences that feed the rebellion of rock? If so aren't we begging the wrong questions of art or people?  I approached this from a sorta different angle before:

But as an old conservative, not simply because I have a brain, I am a critic of the youth with poisoned and empty minds. Furthermore I am a critic of Rock for the sake of Rock. Permanent rebellion, permanent sensitivity to the injustices that plague us is not growth. And one has to ask how long is that dangling cigarette and caustic cynicism useful? Sure Mick Jaggar and Bob Dylan are in their 60s and people still come back for more. I say that there's something wrong with that - something's wrong with the person who remains a bleating sheep for a generation instead of becoming a sheepdog. Rap and Rock both are at their best when they are ragged and renegade. There is something Papa Roach has that outdoes Punk. There was something Marilyn Manson did that unseated all before him. Rock always needs a more jagged little pill. But after a while it gets hard to swallow. What good is all that rebellion?

More importantly what state of mind does it take to preside over an artform that at its best brings forth the raw emotions righteous indignation and contempt for the status quo? This manifest in a social disease of chronic dissatisfaction. There is nothing quite as sad as an old hippie whose revolution never happened. And you cannot listen to 'Give a Monkey a Brain' without feeling the strains of a grand dissolution of society.

And Shay presents Andre Perry who asks:

"While today's black indie rockers don't have much of a black-rock tradition to plug into, we do have considerable freedom in defining the poses black musicians can assume in modern rock. When a white frontman emerges from the underground, he will undoubtedly have to weather references to his predecessors (David Byrne, Mick Jagger, etc....) If Aristotle questioned how many new stories could actually be told, then consider how many new white rock n' roll icons can their actually be? No matter how hard Coldplay's Chris Martin tries, Radiohead's Thom Yorke will eternally have beaten him to the punch. In contrast, the black modern rocker moves in a space where expectations of certain racial performance have yet to be erected. People simply don't expect to see black people playing rock and roll. It defies racial expectations.

So are we supposed to be defying racial and sexual expectations through Rock & Roll or are we just more of the same commercialized rebellion? Don't we just engrain the alienation of Gay by doing gay rock? Don't we just reinforce the idea of blacks on the outside of society when Black Rock means "anything but Hootie"?

Nobody quite embodies such questions as Me'Shell Ndegeocello who is practically a musical instantiation of Audre Lourde's 'Sister Outsider' idea. Because her talent is undeniable, she forces us to look at stuff. We want her to be one of ours, but is she? Does she want to be? Is it us or is it her?

I don't have to have a conclusion right now for a couple reasons. I'm sure to revisit the subject. I'm still at work and I have a lot of things to do. Art doesn't require closure, just undismissable symbolism.

An Unbroken World

I took Boy to the Hear Music store on the Santa Monica Promenade yesterday and let him burn his own CD from their collection. As we departed I promised him I'd blast his cuts, and so it was that in Venice at the giant traffic circle as a black man in dreads crosswalked in front of our stopped, blaring vehicle that I almost crumbled. You see at that particular moment the song bumping our trunk was 'Larger Than Life' by the Backstreet Boys.

I survived the moment and suppressed the desire to turn down the volume or change the the Paul Schwartz that I bought for me, but then waxed philosophical. It was a gift for him, this loud joyride that included BEP's "My Humps", ELO's "Mr Blue Sky" and Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red White and Blue" which is apparently his very favorite song these days. I'm letting him represent.

But the Backstreet Boys? Damn.

It is perfectly clear to me that the only thing I have to worry about with regard to my son's upbringing is the collapse of society and my own financing of his minority. He still wants to be a musician and a chef, he still bangs out the As in Math and Science, he still washes the dishes and vacuums the house without making faces and he still leans over lovingly onto my shoulder when we watch TV together. In other words, he shows no sign whatsoever of all those things American teenaged boys are feared for. He is by no means perfect - he's only about 75% of a Johnny Quest, but he's got character, the kind of character one would expect of a kid raised in an unbroken world. His world is unbroken and the hardest challenges he faces are verb agreement and making more friends than he already has.

There have been many before me who have held the conceit of being 'the last real black man'. And I've read stories about people who feel compelled to take their suburban kids back to the 'hood and ghetto to 'toughen them up'. Boy knows how to slapbox (well, he's not afraid to slapbox with me but he hasn't touched me yet) and excels in the game of Kung Fu Grip. But I'm not interested in introducing him to the street injustice that made such skills mandatory for me. And yet I find him remarkably absent in the kind of attitude common in black boys growing up when I did. Call it 'mannish'; the ability to look at adults (including and especially cops, merchants and teachers) straight in the eye and talk shit, the incredible vigilance for personal respect borne out of marathon games of 'open chest', 'suicide' and 'bb britches' where the punishment for laxity is a punch in the chest. Is my son soft or am I just overly hard?

The answer to that question is relative to the time and circumstance, and yet in raising our children we all aim to give them something of transcendant value. So I will remain comfortable and confident in their ability to manage their friendships and their nascent spirituality, their respectfulness and their smiles. Boy is no trouble, and he's not headed there. As much as I might grumble about his taste for the Backstreet Boys, I'm sure there are parents out there who would give their arm to have their kids prefer them over Fiddy or Eminem. There is no question that Boy is a patriot. I'm sure it comes easier for him than it did for me and for that I'm proud and grateful. Yesterday as he was ironing my shirts and singing Toby Keith, I figured that after 12 years, the odds are in our favor.

Bring It On: Part Two

Al-Sadr, the Wanker of Iraq is talking smack again:

The firebrand Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr said on today that Iraqis would not “sit by with folded hands” while Israel struck at Lebanon, signaling a possible increase in attacks from his mercurial militia, the Mahdi Army.

Mr. Sadr made it clear in a written statement that he considered the United States culpable in the conflict unfolding in Lebanon, since America is the largest foreign ally of Israel. Mr. Sadr’s incitement, which was repeated at his mosques across Iraq during Friday prayers, could ignite further attacks against American troops here. Tensions have been rising in recent weeks between the American military and the Mahdi Army, with American forces carrying out raids against Mahdi hideouts and arresting senior leaders.

But it doesn't stop with him. The head of Hezbollah, a group I was heretofore willing to give some small benefit of doubt has jumped in with both feet:

Sheikh Nasrallah threatened Israel, saying: "You wanted an open war and we are ready for an open war."

The Hezbollah leader promised "war on every level". He said the Israeli coastal city of Haifa would come under attack, "and believe me, even beyond Haifa".

So there it is. Now is the time for good old-fashioned pacification. I can only hope that the militants of the region are willing to fight to the death, until they are too depleted to resist.

Best School Days Ever

NYT: What Day Is It?

I haven't been one to jump all over the NYT in particular, but today's front page photo really indicates how twisted their editorial decisions can be.

The caption reads: "A family from Beirut's suburbs, which were attacked by Israeli warplanes, sought refuge in a park." This has got to be the most deceptive coverage imaginable. Of all the parties involved in this conflict, the decision to put those least involved in creating or ending the hostilities on the front page just strikes me as more than irresponsible but misleading. It's nothing more than editorializing that it's Israel's jets against innocents. Deplorable.

Look back at this day in history. The front page cover is a family eating in the outdoors.

What a Week!

OK so the Dow is more than 400 points under it's 50 day average this week. Bombs and missiles are flying all over the Middle East, this time including Israel and Lebanon. Wildfires are burning out of control 40 miles east of Los Angeles. India is stepping up its rhetoric against Pakistan in the wake of 6 deadly train bombings. The Civil Rights Bill passed overwhelmingly in Congress. GM is in talks to merge with Nissan & Renault. Tennessee and Nebraska get harsh on Gay Marriage. Colorado passed the toughest anti-illegal legislation in the country.

So you know what my Yahoo Alert tells me? Michelle Wie is too sick to play golf today.

Israel: One State Coming

I have long had a pet theory that the only way that the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza get any peace will be when they are assimilated into a greater Israeli state. The best they can hope for is Civil Rights, not sovereignty. I'm no geopolitical scholar by any stretch, informed as I am only by news, blogs and Socratic dialog. But one doesn't need to be a scholar to see that the days of Hamas and Hezbollah are numbered.

There's nothing quite so annoying as the drip, drip, drip of civilian body counts in the twos and threes as mad bombers do their dirty desparate deeds. It has long been a staple of NPR's reporting. We know too many details of this morbidity and not where it leads. But if it can raise my anger and disgust half a planet away, I can guarantee you some folks like me over there are at their wit's end. The problem is that only one half of the folks over there have a government worth beans and an army worth fearing. So now we have come to the moment at which the penultimate if not the very last tripwire holding back the full rage of Israel has been snapped.

Right radio is right. Israel nearly went ballistic on itself as it unilaterally uprooted its own citizens and relocated them so that the Palestinians might have more land. What ever went wrong with Land for Peace? The election of Hamas, of course. I had imagined that the malfeasance of a Hamas government would doom the Palestinians within a year. I figured that without international assistance and no economic program, Hamas was doomed to humiliating dependence on Israel. Maybe they figured the same thing, and maybe the only gifts they are ever going to get are those of weapons from profiteers and voyeuristic Islamicists. Maybe they figured to act on that. Fools. Utter fools.

I think it's quite telling that last week the world's attention was focused on a bitter European rivalry. It ended with a headbutt, and there were people from almost every corner willing to suggest that attack was shamefully inexplicable and utterly unforgivable. Now is the time for those phrases dear pundits. Hamas has, in a mere six months, completely ruined the prospects of nationhood for Palestine. With any luck this war will last more than six days and they will truly pay the price.

The difference between Hamas and Hezbollah at this point are irrelevant. They are two heads of the same masochistic beast to whose necks too many innocent Arabs' fate is leashed. They have, like a rabid mongrel, charged at a larger and more deadly dog whom had been sleeping with one eye open. And now this pityable situation is nothing more or less than War. War for keeps, apparently.

We are now clearly in the era in which the dreams of Arab nationalism hang in the balance. The fragile peace once moderated by the late King Hussein of Jordan is now finally over. The operation of such fraternal systems as Hezbollah is now to be put to the ultimate test. Can it survive war? The dominoes are wobbling and the future is bloody. Perhaps this is what it takes to draw out all of the ignorant dreamers of Caliphate into a contest for their lives and ambitions. Were that they were all uniformed nations. No, They will strike and withdraw. They will be purged and then watched. They will reform and restrike and the cycle will begin again. Or maybe Israel has a plan to end that cycle once and for all.

Israel will perservere. They are our strategic ally and thus we will make it so. And it may be that if this conflict escalates, of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Israel, only one nation will remain. I hope it doesn't come to that. But any such organization that can singlehandedly draw its nation into war with its neighbor is the defacto government. And Hamas and Hezbollah are now playing high stakes poker with stolen chips. It's time to play out the entire hand. Their bluff has been called.

Caught Without An Umbrella

Ooh I'm turning red
Who could this be?
-- Tweet

This weekend for the second time in memory, although there may be a repressed one or two uncounted, I reprised my role as DJ Dad. You can't win.

One of the most frustrating and yet rewarding jobs is that of a live party DJ. There is a constant tension between musical taste, workmanship, the demands of the crowd and the power of radio. At least that's what I went through this weekend djing at Doc's summer gig. It's probably more difficult for me because there isn't much music I don't like. So it's kinda troubling that you know only a few songs are going to get people on the floor, and then you have to be sparing with those..unless of course you're a club DJ and you've got beats. I had no beats, so I was not able to take Usher and remix it myself in realtime. After the last 'Yeah' I had to go to the next song.

The surprising bit was that once I got the party started (it took a little Missy Elliot, right after Mystikal) I was right there with the party people. That's a hard feat because I get so tired of that whole Dancing With Sluts groove. I don't like it, but I understand it, and no matter where you want to go in life, you never forget what you understand well. And if the mood is right, it can put you right into the frame of mind where you let it all rush back. I was halfway there.. it being a house party there simply wasn't enough humanity to bring be all the way.

You see, what you want in the club is the ability to set the mood with the minimum of effort. You want passive seduction, and it's the DJ's job to create and sustain that mood. All the less effort for the dudes and chicks in the mix. The mood is about vertical friction which leads to horizontal, without the need for doing much more than grabbing your partner's hand and taking her out to the dance floor. Your clothes, your walk, your attitude and the music do all the talking. Your voice can't be heard in the club anyway. It's all about saying, I'm hot, you're hot, let's be hot together. Simple.

But the pretense of sophistication has fallen away, and what was once Marvin Gaye is now considered practically gay. These days it's all about the big Dirty. And it turns out, somewhat surprisingly that I have about 8 hours of Dirty on my iTunes. I have enough Lil Kim, Missy Elliot, Nelly, 50 Cent, Mystikal, Outkast, Jermain Dupri, Lil Jon and assorted others including the Yi Yi Twins and Tweet, to keep mothers' hands over their kids' ears and party people humpin' and bumpin' until all hours. It took me most of the afternoon to cull those hundred songs from my collection of about 12k songs, but I found myself pleased with the results. Not only because I kept the adult party rockin' for what it was worth, but I kept the G rated stuff going long enough for the kids to have fun too.

The kids? Yeah. It was a family party. Or a new extended family party so therefore there had to be a Will Smith interlude. That was the only Soul Train Line at the gig. As it turned out, it was only the narrow demographic that engaged in this bit of club culture. But I had to provide dinner music, background music and old school domino slammin' music as well. The task truly tested me.

Spearhead's Michael Franti wrote 'Memories come down on me once again./ I'm caught without an umbrella', in a bittersweet tale of a suicide gone wrong (which was good). And for good while there, I was caught. Something about the music got into my pants and suddenly I was doing my moves like back in the days of Giant Step in the Village when acid jazz was new and hiphop had just discovered instruments. It wasn't long before I remembered that I run out of breath and that pleasant sweat breaks out a little too soon on my middle aged frame.

390 to 33: Any Questions?

According to the NYT:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House voted Thursday to renew the 1965 Voting Rights Act, rejecting efforts by Southern conservatives to relax federal oversight of their states in a debate haunted by the ghosts of the civil rights movement.

The 390-33 vote sent to the Senate a bill that represented a Republican appeal to minority voters who doubt the GOP's ''big-tent'' image. Southern conservatives had complained that the act punishes their states for racist voting histories they say they've overcome.

There were basically two provisions in question.  Renewal every 25 years and English only ballots. Neither one of them is worth a fight in today's political environment when so many minorities *feel* like minorities.

I don't see how the renewal matter became an issue. But I would have voted for the English only ballots on principle as did 185 other house members when that vote was called. Considering the gist, that the GOP wanted to show that it is in no way hostile to Civil Rights, those 33 standouts are, by definition those who are. I think that very accurately describes exactly where America stands.

8.4%  AGAINST
91.6% FOR

I'll say once again what I've been saying since day one at Cobb. Black politics needs to move beyond the politics of Civil Rights and on to the politics of social power.

Oh BTW, I got a PDF copy of today's "history lesson" from Bruce Dixon, editor at The Black Commentator, just in case you need proof of how out of step some folks are on such matters. If he's got any ego, he'll be deleting that story soon out of embarrassment.

Gangstas (Not) Played

Snoop Dogg just got fired.

simoniker writes "Midway CMO Steve Allison has been talking about why he thinks the urban game genre isn't worth entering, suggesting of the cancelled Snoop Dogg/John Singleton collaboration Fear & Respect, which was in development at Midway: 'We killed Fear and Respect... because we have enough data-points to know the hood thing is basically dead. It would be dead before it came out. And you don't want to come out on a dead vibe.' Do people really not care about GTA-style urban shooters any more?"

Anything that empties the future pockets of John Singleton & Snoop Dogg is cool with me. I think they played themselves. It's time for their time to be over. Snoop hasn't said anything in rap worth saying since Gin & Juice and Singleton's attempts at gritty urban drama in 'Four Brothers' just doesn't cut it. So anything that gets them out of future markets with their same tired formulas is just peachy.

Having said so, I enjoyed the hell out of the experience of being low man on the ghetto pole in GTA San Andreas, for about ohh 30 maybe 40 hours of play. Then the grind of Do or Die just became tiresome, just as did the suspension of morality one has to engage to enjoy shooting cops and trifling bangers. Not that destruction in and of itself should be off-limits in gaming, just that doing so on the wrong side of the battle of good vs evil is something I simply can't sustain, nor much recommend. Revulsion gets you in the end, and for those who don't have this problem, well, the smaller that market the better.

A Successful War on Drugs

What if you could do this in the real world?

Electronic Arts has announced that it has confiscated approximately 15 trillion gold pieces from within its long running PC massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) Ultima Online, which the company claims was obtained “through the abuse of bugs or exploitation of game mechanics”.

In relation to this, in a statement posted on the game's official website, the company noted that it has canceled over 180 user accounts that it found connected to the accumulation of what EA referred to as “dirty money.”

Inside the Joke

Tuesday is my new regular volleyball game with the Old Men.

Truth be told, I'm the second oldest in the bunch about half of which are over 40. That's old for just about any sport including volleyball. What we lack in speed we make up for in humor and no matter how old you are, it's always good to be on the beach in a California summer and watch the girls jog by. And of course since we're all old, we take a less time perfecting our game and a little more time observing the traffic.

As a former resident of Hermosa Beach and host to legendary beach parties during my young adulthood, I personally know more black beach volleyball players than most people imagine even exist. Back in the late 80s when I first started playing, I imagine it was something of a novelty, but we did win gold in Sydney with a black player.

Anyway there was something that got me to thinking about corporate culture vis a vis socialization skills. Ahh, I remember. It was this discussion over at Dell Gines.

Blacks are at a fundemental disadvantage, because managers tend to hire in their own image. In an America largely still segregated by neighborhood, it’s harder for white managers to see black (or Hispanic for that matter) subordinates as peers. Further, it’s more difficult for minority subordinates to “connect”. That isn’t racism - it’s human nature.

And during one of our games Tuesday evening I had one of those brief moments when I thought to myself "Hey, I'm the black guy". To make a short story long, for some reason the Old Men (all of whose names I haven't yet memorized since this is only my 5th outing) decided to start naming each other animals. Somehow, I became 'Flea', which immediately made me think of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and images of myself onstage naked except for a tube sock. Then my second thought went directly to the old Richard Pryor routine about Dracula in which Pryor says "Dracula? What kind of name is that fo' nigga?". Flea? And so I had no response to the appellation as my mind drifted away from the game. The rationale was about my vertical leap, a compliment, so I'll let it stick, but I'm going to have to indicate that to the Old Men next week. But all that existential stuff doesn't concern me in the least, except on the rare occasion when I wonder what it might be like to have known somebody from the neighborhood I grew up in as a professional colleague. Why? Because the world of business partnerships is hella dicey. Nevertheless, in business as in volleyball, I am perfectly comfortable and without much more than an iota of self-doubt. Mostly that iota comes from the fact of my 36 waist, but that's going away soon.

Still, I have to note the exceptionalism of my ability to code switch. And really for me it's not hard, it's just expected. The other tangent to this discussion is how comfortable latinos think they are around whitefolks yet how alien whitefolks percieve latinos to be, meanwhile blacks and white get along much better comparably speaking. The study was at Booker Rising.

Only 9.3% of whites said few blacks work hard, only 8.4% said few or no blacks are hard to get along with and only 9.6% said few if any blacks can be trusted. 78% of Latino respondents said that they have more in common with whites than blacks. However, white respondents said they have more in common with blacks -- 45.9%, as opposed to 22.2% saying they have more in common with Latinos.

Thirdly and finally yesterday an old colleague wrote me an email saying "I'm not dead yet" a reference to the Monty Python skit "Bring Out Your Dead". And so it occurs to me...oops, there's one more side reference that contributes to the vibe I'm setting up here. Damn you Typepad for giving me intellectual constipation being down all yesterday. The other reference is Abiola Lapite's destruction of Japanese 'inscrutability' through the actual deep learning of the language. He says it takes 3 years, if you're serious. If you're not, then you are doomed to be a go-between who still really doesn't get it.

To my mind, in no field is the lack of solid Japanese language skills more glaring than that of journalism. The general quality of English-language reporting written by foreign correspondents in the country is simply abysmal, either concentrating on the lewd and sensationalistic or seizing on the odd anecdote to puff up the old clichés about Inscrutable Japan™; if more foreign journalists actually spoke and read Japanese at a decent level, perhaps they'd actually begin doing some investigate journalism of their own for a change rather than filing tired "Wacky Japan" stories.

Last night the Spousal Unit was watching, for the first time, The 40 Year Old Virgin, and it was at the part where the two (white) guys were playing Mortal Combat and having the "ya know how I know you're gay" argument. I'm cracking up.. that's still a hilariously funny movie to me. She's not. And so I began this post thinking about listing all of the dumb movies that make perfect sense to a black man who is effortlessly socialized with the white male upper middle class and a few that don't. But now I think that's not so interesting as the tangents.  Ahh nevermind.

I will never like Caddyshack, period. I don't think Chevy Chase is cool or funny. I don't relate to Harold Ramis the actor, though he's directed some damned good stuff. Bill Maher I get. Bill Murray is a genius and as Steve Zissou in Life Aquatic as well as that movie about the actor in Japan, what is it 'Lost in Translation'? Perfect. I'm right there. Steve Martin? No. Bruce Willis? Absolutely. Monty Python? Of course. Firesign Theatre, not hardly. Howard Stern? Once upon a time. Doctor Demento? Always and forever.

The subtext of integration is a critical appreciation and identification with the artifacts of cultural sensibilities. It's much more than skills on the job. I say critical appreciation, not wholesale assimilation.

Oh yeah, and nothing says whitebread like when the Asian guy at your table orders food for you in the Asian restaurant and asks, 'are you sure you want spicy?' You can be sure that never happens to me.

Matarazzi's Perfidy

\PUR-fuh-dee\, noun:

The act of violating faith or allegiance; violation of a promise or vow; faithlessness; treachery.

The blogosphere is finally piping up and most of the sneering is against France in general and Zidane in particular. What a stupid meme. Personally, I blame Brent Musberger, who went high-handed on Zidane's headbutt during and after the World Cup Final yesterday. Every American who was 'shocked, just shocked' owes something of that sentiment to the pantywaist commentary of Brent and his lickspittle colleagues at ABC. The unforgivable word in all of this is 'unforgivable', although I'm equally disgusted with 'inexcusable'.

Every American who has been muttering under his breath about 'flopping' as a reason to continue their loud disrespect of the sport is now caught in a splutter about how Zidane's act was inexcuseable. If that's inexcuseable, so is all of hockey, all of football, boxing, wrestling, karate, sumo... I could go on but why bother? Zidane's red card is inexplicable to Americans because we don't play soccer. Let me try to give the clueless an analogy: Shaq Attack. The red card is as much a part of soccer as is fouling out in basketball, and every coach worth his salary knows that he can play tactics to his advantage. I'm not suggesting that this was the case, but if Zadane's headbutt went beyond the pale in soccer, then we would be talking criminal charges. It's a technical foul, period.

Now you can call me a brute because I'm pro-war and yes I did defend Ron Artest when he went into the stands. But I think there's a time for playing by the rules, and I think there's a time for somebody to get stomped. And I firmly believe, especially as the word comes down, that Matarazzi said something that went beyond the Shaq Attacks of world class soccer. So the high minded moralists will have to re-evaluate their pompous pronouncements if and when Zidane gives full disclosure.

Considering that it happened on the field of play, thoughtful people should ask, when should unsportsmanlike conduct be met with roughneck retaliation? Take it as a given that Matarazzi uttered fighting words, what right does he have in an athletic competition to say them on the field? None. He started the fight, and if all was fair, he would have been given the red card as well. But that didn't happen and Zidane decided to even the score himself.

Now I don't expect that sportos need to comport themselves as gentlemen. So long as they don't break the law or cheat in the game, I'm happy with any kind of personality they may display - that is if their on-field skills merit. I liked Dennis Rodman as much as any non-fan could, and more than many fans did. Let accountants be boring, sports stars should never be boring. With that in mind, I'm not going to make any suggestions about how Zidane need recover his 'dignity'. Nevertheless, the coolest thing he could do here, with regard to manly ethics, is to simply say that nobody needs to know what Matarazzi said - that the issue has been settled.

But it won't be because everybody is going to opinionate on the matter. Still I think that anyone who remembers what manhood is essentially all about needs to leave that matter between Zidane and Matarazzi. The rest is just talk.

BTW, Yes I am using 'perfidy' in the same context as asymmetrical warfare, Sadrist Militias and Breaker Morant, if you're curious. And I bet you Matarazzi won't make that same mistake again.

Deborah Frisch: Left Wing Depravity

I'm reprinting Patterico's note on Deborah Frisch to show my solidarity against this mockery of free speech.

I got a lot of chuckles from Jeff's baby pictures as well as his one way interviews. We've also had a disagreement or two.  But there's no way that anybody deserves this kind of harrassment, and that goes double for Jeff Goldstein who is a very valuable contributor to the blogosphere and elevated social & political dialog and commentary.

I think it goes without saying that the derangement of the Left wignuts is bodering on psychotic. What kind of person threatens kids?

Zindane's Red Card

What did Marco Matarazzi say?

Well Z cast the vote over this final with his second powerful 'header'. With he and Henry out, my enthusiasm rather deflated. Buffon's incredible save must have done it.

Spearhead: Hiphop's Apotheosis

As part of the continuing fascination with the blackity black part of my intellect, a thought occurred to me that resides like a splinter in my mind. It is the greatness that is Michael Franti.

I cannot remember when I first heard of Franti, as I never really got so very deeply into the Disposable Heroes (or Digable Planets for that matter). But I think it must have been sometime around my boohabian phase. Hard to say. What I do recall specifically was that one of my online friends was telling me that my writes (what you know about my writes?) resembled those of Franti. Full disclosure: before I was married, whilst living in Brooklyn, I believe that I had the potential to save hiphop from itself. I was one and a half degrees of separation from Brooklyn Moon, Fez Cafe, Nuyorican, The Freestyle Fellowship and Greg Tate's band. Get me drunk and I'll tell you what I did at a reverse poetry slam. So when I heard that compliment, a bit too late, it still went to my head. So I had to hear what this dude was all about.

If you ask me, Spearhead 'Home' has to be one of the greatest hiphop albums ever. Everything about it is close to perfection. It spun on my player many, many times, and despite and perhaps because of the difficulty in just grooving to cuts with serious themes like 'Positive' and 'Caught Without an Umbrella' it never got really tired. Franti pushed the envelope even further with 'Chocolate Supa Highway', his follow-up album, moving into a realm of art far beyond the groove.

I listened only once to the album that came after CSH. I think Franti just went off the edge of edgy into the realm of radicalization - he practically went Gangsta where the beats were just sublimated to the power of harsh words. Or maybe I was on my way to a right turn and it hurt my neck to turn my head and listen to his left direction. I mean I can get into an artist with the humor and wisdom to say within the same song 'fuck the police / we can keep the peace / we can make love and conquer that disease'  and then 'throw your hands in the air / let me see your armpit hair', as he did on the Home album but after listening to Gas Guage for the fifth or sixth time, it just gets a bit too depressing.

But the fact that Franti can, with wit and style evoke such heart rending stories is testament to his craft and the possibilities of hiphop. His is true poetry, the kind you can't simply bob your head to without it rattling your brain. He handles mature subjects with maturity, and beyond that with respect for the genre of hiphop and a real flair for the right groove. His deadpan delivery strikes the perfect balance of coolness and gravity, his music a mix of funkified, ganjafied instrumental fusion. You never once get the impression with Spearhead that he has poked his head outside of a life of elevated blackified consciousness. I say without any sense of exaggeration that if anyone deserves to inherit the mantle of the crown worn by the late Curtis Mayfield, it would be Franti. And while I am just a bit too pragmatic in my politics to cosign all the stuff he's saying, he's got the right flavor. The only reason I don't compare him to Gil-Scott Heron is because I think Franti's life is more together. Check out this sample:

I am not a muslim but I read the final call
because within it's pages there is something for us all
and I am not a professional, but I love basketball
the squeakin of the sneakers they echo in the hall
But if I don't have enemies I'm not doin' my job
I might throw out a curve ball but I never throw a lob
people criticize me but I know it's not the end
I try to kick the truth not just to make friends

(chorus)
but hey diddle diddle
to the people in the middle
we got hot wax
and it's cookin' on the griddle
Got the guitar strummin
the drummer drummin
the people all hummin
and the vibe was lovin
on and on and on
'till the breakadawn

That's the kind of jam I expect from a righteous black brother. Except. Michael Franti doesn't fit the genetic profile.

I would not be so bold to suggest anything beyond the obvious. Franti's pedigree, as perfect as it stands within the context of the art, has not endeared him to a mass audience. And I'm surely not the first person to think what a tragic irony it is for hiphop to make a greater star out of Eminem than Franti. Which goes to the real meat of this piece aside from my intent to communicate how cool I think he is.

One of the most oft-quoted bits of popular wisdom about hiphop's commercial success is that is that it owes to the listening habits of white suburban teenage boys. I'm going to step out on a limb and suggest that I'm something of an expert of this dynamic. Or at least I'm willing to say that sometimes it's real easy as a man to see what's going on in boy heads. I'll reduce it to a simple concept, over-mothering. The reason suburban teen boys go for the dirrty is because they can't get dirty at home and their parents are trying desparately to raise little princes. Stereotypical enough? That is essentially the gut of the 'frat boy' audience of rap. I'm not trying to raise this analysis to anything about the suburbs or whitefolks except to the extent as it is not what we are inclined to think about as the core audience for hiphop. But let me keep it real, I'm talking about my hiphop. After all it was my generation that wore the bandannas on our Chucks in 1985. We were the ones responsible for overloading it with significance in our desparation not to be completely subsumed into New Wave and sick and tired of that same old funk.

Then again, we had a cultural agenda and we were mad successful. American pop culture is blacker because we did our part, but please distinguish between our producers (Jimmy Jam, Babyface, Full Force, Prince) and those running sh*t today. Franti inherits the mantle of those people who listened to groups like Madhouse, oh yeah and like I said, Curtis Mayfield and Gil Scott-Heron.

So let me be so bold as to beat the dead horse of black cultural nationalism again and ask if hiphop is black in the sense of demographics or in terms of a constructed and maintained aesthetic. I, of course, would prefer the latter taking Culture seriously. For those reasons I promote Franti over just about every hiphop artist out there save Chuck D, Dres, Wycleff, Andre 3K, QTip and Posdnous. And still I say Franti is the most mature and thoughtful of the bunch. I call his art black consciousness in  and quite frankly you can't get any more explicit than Dream Team:

Well Chuck D'sannouncin'/ Flava's doin' color
halftime enterntainment by Dre and Ed Lover
Malcolm X is the coach he's drawin' up the strategy
he's choppin up America's anatomy
'cause they're the ones/ we're up against of course
are general manager is Chief Crazy Horse
Huey Newton/ 'cause he was extra hard
he's the one/ who would be playin at the shootin' guard
I dreamed Charles Barkley would be
played by Marcus Garvey
he'd be throwin people off his back and makin
sure they never got a rebound rebound / and
he'd throw it to the outlet
Nat Turner/ 'cause he can turn the corner when
he's out there
he be flyin through the air/ throwin passes like
he really doesn't care/behind the back /and in
between the legs
he's handlin the rock /as gently as an egg
he's throwin it in/ to Angela Davis's neighborhood
she's postin up down in the extra hard wood

So there you have it. To the extent that hiphop is political culture, nobody exemplifies it like Franti. I disagree with him of course, but he's an artist and his statements are clear, his art is nuanced and he's a smart rebel. He has respect for the genre and extends and expands it, and quite frankly, he knows how to jam. None of it would be worth a dime if he didn't, and so he gets props.

I'll just leave it this way. If there were more artists like him hiphop wouldn't be so sorry. We can only hope for the sake of what it might have been, that more of the younger set grow up with Franti's example in mind.

PSP vs Essentialism

Image is Nothing. Obey Your Thirst.
-- Sprite

There's some jabber going around about alleged racial stereotypes in PSP advertisements. Obviously they're not taking direction from Sprite. Or maybe they are, and they're just thirsty for nonsense. It's all over this ad and some like it. Joystiq has the other two as well. I see what the big deal is, I guess. It's controversial. Why? Because it's using a black woman to represent a videogame. What nerve! I mean black women (tm) are only supposed to be represented in ways and means approved by the Black Women's Collective. I know they have an address on K Street but I left it on my other PC. For the time being we have to listen to every loser with a laptop express their concern for the images of black women.

But seriously, you can only give folks so much time with this kind of silliness. The serious criticism is pretty much the same as I made against the Washington Post, people are always ready to substitute new stereotypes for old ones about blackfolks. Why? Because they don't know enough black diversity to subsume those fictions. The only 'real' blackfolks they know are those who conform to some racial stereotype, and thus provides a robust set of embarrassments and false platitudes about black capability. But this is not about black people at all, but a black colored video game.

So the people who should be the least upset about these are blackfolks themselves. Why? Because we know more than enough real blackfolks to dismiss stereotypes. But what exactly is the stereotype here? Black submission? I'm really not going to guess, because anybody who wants to take the symbolism out to that level needs to have their head checked. You can't do that without recognizing that (gasp) the first PSPs, a killer product, were black. Blacks were here first! Big whoop. This is all about fashion, not sociology. No amount of whinging can change that.. or maybe it already did.

Speaking of fashion what is going on with sunglasses? I mean here in California, all the rage is these big fat Jackie O looking goggle-riffic wraparound sunglasses? It's so 80s. I'm kinda wishing I had a big vocab about the pieces and parts of glasses. You know where the over the ear part meets the front part of the frame. Usually they're skinny, now they're as fat as the kind geezers with cataracts wear. Basically, you can't see people's eyeballs any longer, not even from the side. I think that means people are basically getting more insecure about being seen in public. It's the perfect accessory for the Hummer crowd.

A Show of Hands

I started a big firestorm at P6 the other day because I asked some questions. I have determined that it wasn't the nature of the questions, rather it was the fact that I was the one asking them. I have been informed that I am personna non-grata. The feeling is not mutual and I have invited any and all of them to engage here.

Anyway,  since I haven't had any of my questions answered. I'll try again from a slightly different angle. You see I began speaking about blackness as an intellectual construct maintained by elites by making reference to a series of books that I read in order to inform and liberate myself. Nobody talked about those books at all. Nevertheless it was the very first paragraph I wrote:

Several years ago before blogging existed in any significant form, I was getting my writing fix from Amazon.com. Even there I rose in the critical sphere to an appreciable level, and doing so, I indulged in several exercises in intellectual blackness. They were Black Mental Liberation and For the Race Man. Wow. That seems so long ago.

I've been called more or less an arrogant prick for being argumentative about the subject of blackness. Unfortunately I'm just too thick skinned to care. I'll fumble around and flip around until I can get a constructive response. My intent to to get some answers. And if hurt feelings are the barrier to inquiry, then I simply assume that folks don't care enough about the answers if getting them causes offense or embarrassment, not that it is ever my intent to be offensive.

So I got my ideas about black politics and consciousness from the books listed in those two links. I've read many others but these are those I consider most central. So are these books out of date? Are they important? What do they represent?

Moreover what effect might books like these have on the future direction of black politics? Does anyone study race in this manner such that some intellectual synergy is forthcoming?

Here at Cobb, I have a collection of Negro Digest Covers. I don't think there is any magazine in circulation in America that addresses and updates the issues raised in those very pages. It may very well be because issues of anti-racism and blackness themselves are simply not as important any longer. It may be for any number of reasons.

I segue for a moment also to Spence because he has described a useful distinction between black politics and black cultural politics:

Where are the politics in hip-hop? Here Watkins provides some interesting anecdotes…but here’s where I become “conservative.” My quick definition of politics borrowed from Adolph Reed…politics refers to the process by which individuals and/or groups compete over state resources. Now in as much as any organization or sphere of influence allocates resources (be it material or non-material) there are politics in various spheres. Politics within an NBA team for example (players compete over playing time for example). But we’ve got to be real clear and make a distinction between politics and cultural politics.

With that in mind I am inclined to say that the battles over blackness are those of cultural politics. I certainly have made a great deal of hay over the matters of hiphop and the significance of Cosby, but they are not so much battles over resouces allocated. And it's reasonable to say that the significance of blacks in the Republican party are largely cultural too, and that there is a significant cultural gap between those (if I can generalize folks like myself) middle class and professional blacks educated at major universites, and those blackfolks on the other side of those same defining tracks.

I don't see either party engaged in a black agenda that hews close to an organically developed line of demands from African America. And only the Democrats bother to dole out rhetorical patronage. But the real patronage from the parties, I believe, is going to come from the same direction to the same kinds of targets. That is to say along the lines of broad mainstream ambition. A cursory piece will come in the form of entitlements such a 'perscription drug benefit', another in the form of 'middle class tax breaks' like the earned income credit, another piece in the form of relief for the rich and wealthy such as inheritance and capital gains tax abatements. Then there's the whole tangle of corporate tax evasions and subsidies and god only knows what whoring at the state block grant level. But if it can be said that the net demand of black politics is anti-racism, it doesn't seem apparent to me that either party is going to do anything beyond the normative at the EEOC, and US Attorney's office for enforcement of anti-discrimination law. That may be good enough for me, but certainly not for those whose experience with Class Three and Class Two Racism takes a bigger chunk out of their lives. (Class One, I think everybody gets a fair hearing). Nevertheless the emnity and opposition to those efforts at justice are minimal, and pushback doesn't come against the base (with the possible exception of Ward Connorly's crusade) but against the expansion of anti-discrimination towards uplift.

Bottom line, neither party is going to engage an agenda of black uplift. And when Connorly poops out we will be at a state of equilibrium. Except you know that cats like our friend at Discriminations will keep chipping away at Grutter etc. (I wonder where are the black legal bloggers).

At any rate I just wanted to get these last thoughts out and wondered if anyone would be so kind as to list some parallel books or make some comments on those I mentioned. I was going to leave the entire subject alone, but then I stumbled on something related which (argh) might have me giving Shelby Steele more credibility. I wrote this, way back when:

What if the only real difference between black and white is the persistence of perception along the lines Steele describes? What if blackfolk and whitefolk take on these roles uncritically? What if blackness is not an active, dynamic intellectual construct - that it is just an adopted set of attitudes one inherits blindly from their parents and the same for whiteness? Then whites no more stand for white supremacy than blacks stand for black cultural nationalism - they just expect *something* to operate those machines of advantage for them, and they retain the same attitudes as if something were going to change.

 

The bolded emphasis is mine. As little evidence as I have to the contrary, I still refuse to believe that blackness is as static as whiteness. At the same time, it's difficult for a layman like me to track the positive developments of black identity, especially if people largely concede that Hiphop is Black.

Speaking of which... nah I'll take that separately.

Hamdan, Networked Organizations & Creeping Standing

We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.
-- Benjamin Franklin

The discussion at the Belmont Club on the possible implications of the Hamdan decision are, without question, some of the most mindblowing arguments I've ever encountered. As a nationalist with a great deal of respect for the possibilities outlined by Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age, I am really conflicted by the possible demise of the Nation-State.

At the very beginning of this conflict I rather hastily predicted the demise of the nation, and it wasn't until Colin Powell's very convincing argument that I came to agree that nations are more important than ever. And so I have never really questioned the wisdom of GWBush to declare an enemy any state that harbors or supports terrorists. But the Supreme Court decision effectively grants 'national' rights unilaterally to the enemies of nations. It arrogates the privileges of treaties to non-signers, and it essentially defeats recourse in kind. While I am fascinated by the development of the idea, it scares the mess out of me. As a commenter notes:

The Supreme Court’s “Hamdan v. Rumsfeld” decision, if I understand the commentary and selected quotes, holds that since al-Qaeda is known to have operated within the territories of various signatories to the Geneva Conventions, each of those signatories is therefor bound to treat al-Qaeda or any person suspected of being associated with al-Qaeda according to the limits and constraints of the conventions, regardless of where they encounter them. [My emphasis] Where battlefield prisoners have been taken into custody in parts of the world where repressive and terrorist regimes otherwise reject all the niceties of both the U.S. constitution and the Geneva Conventions, the wise ones of the court have declared that the rule of the U.S. constitution and the Geneva Conventions SUPERSEDE any other law.

But, Wait! Every Islamic Jihadist is by definition a member of a group that operates in all territories of all the signatories to the Geneva Convention. The court’s reasoning essentially means that any MUSLIM terrorist can claim to have the full protection of the Geneva Conventions, simply on that basis. Of course, the inexorable extention of the court’s logic is that anyone who opposes the U.S. on any basis, being a human is thereby a member of a group that operates in all the territories of signatories to the Conventions, and so is fully protected by those Conventions.

You see I remain a witness to the power of decentralization and peer communications.. a revolution across my career as a programmer of business intelligence systems. And quite frankly I do believe that the paradigm of hierarchical organizations is gravely threatened by cells and networks. But I have yet to find, in virtual networks, the humanized aspect of trust we seem to understand implicitly in hierarchies. Think of Henry V at Agincourt speaking to the troops. He breaks ranks and travels undercover to establish trust with the troops, a classic kind of network move. But it is as he reveals himself as King that he truly and finally rallies his organization. A true cell or networked organization works based on the basis of a disconnected and implicit trust, the unit works based on it autonomy and adaptability. But what would a unit do when common sense says it's beaten? What rallies it beyond the ordinary to extraordinary? Would a cell sacrifice itself autonomously if that was not the original plan? I don't think so. I think it goes against human nature to sacrifice anonymously, it violates Thucydides' principle of nations being primarily motivated by Fear, Honor and Self-Interest.  So does network or cell organization only useful for death cults? It begs the question 'death'. If a cell's self-destruction is just an exit strategy, that the members disband spontaneously (Or as DeNiro says,"Do not allow anything into your life that you cannot walk out on in thirty seconds flat if you spot the heat around the corner.") then perhaps you can beat Thucydides. You simply have to be willing not to know if you are serving a higher purpose.

So basically we have this random fidelity to Islam serving as a proxy for membership in AQ, (but it needn't be AQ and it needn't be Islam), it merely needs to be some identifyable enemy of the state, and they are now given standing by attacking the US or any signatory to Geneva. See?

Now there's a patriotic side of me that thinks, this is just what Perot ordered. You remember his privately organized rescue of hostages. But really we do not want to go there unless we are ready to concede that uniformed armies cannot win. That will then be the end of nations. So again, I have to harken back to my call for the American Empire. We need to put nations to the test - our constitutional system against theirs. The will of our people against theirs. I salute GWBush for making the US Army go to Iraq as opposed to sending some unidentifyable commandos to capture Saddam. But maybe he too is stopping too short as did the Gulf War. Maybe the only way to win wars as a nation is to destroy the people, occupy the territory, send in colonists and rejigger the borders. If we fail to do this as nations, we will do it as entities smaller than nations, as Red States or Blue States or Christian Rightists or Islamic Jihadists or as the People's Militant Vanguard of the Vaguely Central Right Formerly Citizens of the Nation Known as the USA.

Back From The Woods

And blogging will continue apace. What a vacation!

Left Critics Made Hiphop Keep It Real

There's a bit of a discussion about the romanticism of Old School Hiphop over at Blackprof. I weigh in. (and wish they would turn on trackbacks)

The Old School of hiphop was not politically expressive, it was dance music, and those of us who got sick of those annoying talk boxes used by Midnight Starr and Newcleus couldn't be happier. There was no real message in hiphop until De La Soul and Public Enemy around 88. Before that, the'deepest' message from hiphop were the exceptions of 'The Message' and then 'Friends' by Whodini. (Produced by the late lamented Arif Mardin, who also worked with Herbie Hancock at the time). If there was a renaissance in hiphop towards the 'intellectual' it was the now long dead era of 'gods and earths' exemplified by groups such as Brand Nubian, Rakim, Wu-Tang, X-Clan et-al. On the more popular side were Arrested Development and PM Dawn (yes PM Dawn). All of this was done in closer communication with the Spoken Word movement, and if there ever was a golden age of conscious rap, it was right there between 90 and 92. Including Gangstarr and ATCQ, Latifah and the Native Tongues, who through Jimmy Jay started to take rap international and bring non-English speaking rappers into the American fold.

But the death of that era came with the LA Riots and the incredicble concession that Ice Cube and NWA were prophetic, that Gangsta was more in touch with the 'reality' of blackfolks than somebody like Speech from Arrested Development. That KRS-1's militant posturing was an authentic expression of the deep seated frustrations that plague inner-city at risk youth in America today.. you've heard it a million times.

So if hiphop became prostituted into violent misogyny and to quote the now vindicated Cornel West 'nihilism', it is because so many left intellectuals conceded to the artistic expressions of those hard streets. All it took was a modicum of talent (Tupac) and then no matter what rappers like Onyx said, the critical response was "I ain't mad at ya".

Left critics are responsible as any for cosigning that which was 'keeping it real'.

There were some bright spots of hard resistance to the ugly directions of hiphop, most notably the protestations and steam roller of C. Dolores Tucker. I honestly can't remember what my reaction was at the time, but I've always had a gripe about the distance critics had from it. The only person I thought who really had a handle on all of the implications of the messages and artistic sensibilities of hiphop was Greg Tate. If anybody on the planet ought to be blogging, it should be Greg Tate,. I should find out where he stands on this particular issue. I'm sure his ideas are not static. Obviously I didn't read The Source or much of Vibe so I was never hip to Danyel until I became informed by Jimi. I'm sure there was an anti-censorship contingent making noise at the time, but it was too late for Tucker anyway.  Black critics didn't nurture hiphopers and so there was no stopping them by the time they became commercially successful.

Remember that even in the heyday of Public Enemy, hiphop's longevity was still in question. Quincy was still trying to make that point when 'Back on the Block' came out. But the Tevin Campbells of the world were sunk by the time there was a body of critical literature on the genre. At this point, the intrigues of the The Source, Vibe and the hiphop industry are a fasciating subject, and Jimi Izrael is the online factotum.

The cultural revolution that is the bomb that hiphop dropped on American pop is a mixed blessing for sure. In one way it formed a multi-racial context for American youth culture that was once only sustained by the Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder and EWF. In another way it hardened anti-black stereotypes and corrupted the very idea of what is legitimately political. In that context despite the complete destruction of KRS-1 by a black female intellectual whose name escapes me, I find the Left responsible for goosing along these rebels.

The Right on the other hand has been completely dismissive of rap as not music at all. And their alramist predictions about Public Enemy as well as their advocacy of political harrassment of Ice Cube by the FBI was reactionary and foolish. In the end they were no more wrong than Tucker or Tipper Gore, too much of rap is in fact degenerate and has, without question, lowered the standards of decency of commercial radio. But their default in delivering that message in a manner appropriate to music criticism is yet another great failure.            

One is left to wonder how much energy of American youth has been misdirected into the 'politics' of hiphop. I tend to believe that it is another species of ignorant and youthful rebellion given too much attention and gnashing of middle class teeth, like the most lightweight of 'radical' hippies of the 60s.

In the wake of this legitimation of the commercial aspects of youth culture, we are left with 'Kidz Bop' and other mindless pap. Maybe country music will save us from ourselves.

Neither Sources Nor Methods

USA Today has been duped. They are now retracting their claims after retracing their steps. Apparently, they cannot come up with any evidence of a contractual agreement between the accused telcos and the NSA.

Based on its reporting after the May 11 article, USA TODAY has now concluded that while the NSA has built a massive domestic calls record database involving the domestic call records of telecommunications companies, the newspaper cannot confirm that BellSouth or Verizon contracted with the NSA to provide bulk calling records to that database.

Now if I was a spymaster at the NSA and it was my job to give the agency plausible deniability, this would be a happy day for me. And you can be sure that if Arthur Andersen can shred records for Enron, the spymasters who may have arranged to suck the data out of the telcos are an order of magnitude more stealthy.

What I've learned from reading Kolb is that there are pros in the world of stealth that know how to make money rather untraceable. And it seems to me that one of the first things one would do in order to make such trails hard to find is to use proprietaries and cutouts. A proprietary is a company that does the business for an agency like a subcontractor. A cutout is a person that does a job but doesn't necessarily know who he is doing it for. Then of course there are just theives for hire or blackmail. Somebody who does a bit of dirty work and then is gone.

So here's how you do it. Maybe. You set up a company, say in Italy. It's a telecom and you buy the super sniffing hardware and software. You get your engineers to customize the software. You fold the company and disperse the assets to a cutout. The cutout's well-insured building burns down and the insurance claim says 'electonic equipment'. Now the asset is effectively destroyed. Only it didn't. It just disappeared and what burned in the fire was an ordinary PBX.

Next you find out interesting places where contractors and subcontractors have access to ports of entry into telecom and one day one of the normal contractors is out sick and your replacement dude puts in the wires. 'Out sick' means maybe he accidently got a flat tire and the 'dispatcher' said don't worry we'll send another guy.

Now you've got the super hardware in place, you've got the deniability on the actual asset sold by the legitimate sniffer company. Now you paper up your front-end. Which is to say, you make official overtures to try and accomplish through above board channels what you've already secretively done. This insulates both parties whether or not such overtures are accepted. If they are, all the better, you have a second source with which to validate your secret source.

I would be ashamed and embarrassed if our intelligence organizations weren't clever enough to jack USA Today and the NYT. So let the NYT have its moment of treacherous glory. Remember, the more incompetent the CIA appears, the more dangerous it actually becomes.

John J. Emerson: Ideocentric

You gotta love someone with the audacity to write:

Along with the positivism, the contemporary university seems to have an abhorrence of mixed writing. This is probably the heritage of the methodologism and paradigmatization which flourished during the fifties and thereafter. There’s no real reason that a single book on a piece of literature couldn’t be structuralist, historicist, appreciative, politically engaged, and post-modernist (fill in your own isms)—all at the same time or in alternation. It might also even be well-written and fun to read. But this would be harder to do than the supposedly rigorous single-track expositions that the university demands. (And again, single-track writing has a lot to do with turf wars.)

I think I've found a new hero. Check out his project.

My plan from here on out, dog willing, is to write       and self-publish 2,000 words a week for the next ten years or so       (approximately until I'm 70). Of these million words, I hope for 200,000       to be longer pieces of substantial permanent interest. The rest will be       lighter and less ambition, but few of them will be time-dependent and I       expect that 80% of them will retain their interest.

I seem to recall however some philosophical underpinnings of Conservatism that made it sound rather Positivist and argued that it will inevitably take over the rational world. I'm going to create a Conservatism category to further disambiguate 'Critical Theory', so maybe I'll find it somewhere in there.

We Need Chloe

I am Chloe.

Everyday at work, and sometimes during lunchtime on my Treo and often at home, I am working IT systems to the bone. I'm usually the guy who understands what's going on in the log files and other strange places where users and developers don't go. I swear just the other day, I was looking to see if a particular employee tasked to our project was responsible for erasing data in one of our many databases. I was getting an IM from the guy who asked for this information just as said employee was walking into my office.

Maureen Dowd is right about one thing. There's a whole lot of rebooting going on. But these systems are far more capable, sophisticated and flaky than most people can even think of understanding.

At the moment I am struck about how those interpreting the '24' fantasy of CTU as a club against the awkward reality of the FBI and their inability to connect the dots. For the sake of hypocrisy, I hope these aren't the same people who grumble aloud about domestic surveillance. When it comes to domestic surveillance, critics seem to think the intelligence agencies are capable of panoptic evil, ie spying on you and me and knowing who is on our friends and family calling plan. But when it comes to finding Osama, the intelligence agencies are bumbling Keystone Kops of the first order.

I was thinking about the difference inserting an anonymizing lookup table in the middle of a downselect for terror suspects or other data mining targets. In theory, such a thing is relatively simple. In practice, it's just another moving part. As we in the systems business know, everything that can go wrong, will go wrong, and the more moving parts you have, the more likely something is to go wrong, the harder it's going to be to figure out what went wrong, and the more difficult it is to fix when it does. Beyond that, when things go wrong, the temptation is always to fix, rather than redesign and rebuild. That's what gets us systems guys in trouble.

But anybody who watched the famous hacker qualification scene in the film 'Swordfish' knows the kinds of situations that we systems people are put in when somebody wants something done NOW. If you haven't, suffice it to say that the pressure can be enormous, and often unrealistic.

So it came as no surprise that one of the earlier versions of the domestic surveillance programs did indeed have the provision for anonymization of records to be searched but the idea was dropped. But the simple insertion or deletion of such anonymization procedures isn't all that has to be done when a functional decision is made to go one way or another. There are consequences of being willfully blind in a system designed to find thing for you.