RattlerGator Blog

Traveling to Havana, Cuba

Thanks to a sister who should have attended the University of Florida but got scooped up by the Ivy League (Penn) and never left Philadelphia after graduation, I'm headed with she and the Penn Alumni Travel group to Havana, Cuba on Saturday for a solid week of cultural exchange lectures and performances.

This trip was planned a year ago, long before Barack made his executive decision. My sister has now retired and come back to Jax; this trip is her retirement gift to herself and she invited me to tag along. I said, of course, heck yeah! We'll be staying at various times at the Hotel Saratoga and the Melia Marina Varadero and I'm very pleased with the looks of the accommodations.

I'm a fan of Marco Rubio and tend to agree with his position on American outreach to Cuba but I do see the other side as well. Greater interaction could be our friend, as long as we aren't primarily propping up the dictatorship.

More in the coming weeks.

Englishville, Georgia and Andersonville

Last weekend my oldest sister (Cyndi) and I made a quick trip into the upper reaches of South Georgia, back to the land where both of our parents were born (Jimmy Carter Country), to meet with a father and daughter -- white folks -- who may turn out to be family members.

Map of the Area:

 

We met at the Windsor Hotel in Americus:

It turned out to be a fantastic meeting, both Dean and Maxie were tremendous hosts and fun company. They drove us all around the area, all of us told stories from our past and became better acquainted with one another. I'll have more in a week or so, after I return from a week-long trip to Havana, Cuba (thank you, Cyndi!). Hopefully I'll have more then on that trip as well.

But I can tell you right now that I'm approaching this era of discovery (I've opened up an ancestry.com account) with a spirit of reconciliation and acceptance, along with a whole bunch of other feelings -- including excitement. I've known all of my life that people are people, and that most folks are good folks. We may find what we suspect; direct links between our two lines. There may be heartbreak and apparent cruelty, there may be benevolence, goodness, benign neglect -- who the heck knows? But we're going to try and find out what we can.

So, without further adieu . . .

Cyndi and Maxie on the porch of the old home that will soon become, the good Lord willing, an English Family Museum:

The Outhouse!

Barn dating back to the late 1800s:

Heartbreak in the Cemetery:

There you have it; as I indicated earlier, I hope to have more on this journey of discovery in the coming weeks. It may prove to be uniquely American, uniquely Southern, and uniquely Florida-Georgia all in one.

Later, Gators!

2014 11.19 Africa Review

Courtesy of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, the U.S. National Defense University, and the United States Department of Defense, here are a representative sample of articles on African matters, either from around the African continent or about Africa-related activities: 

The 'Caliphate's' Colonies: Islamic State's Gradual Expansion into North Africa
The caliphate has a beach. It is located on the Mediterranean Sea around 300 kilometers (186 miles) south of Crete in Darna. The eastern Libya city has a population of around 80,000, a beautiful old town and an 18th century mosque, from which the black flag of the Islamic State flies. The port city is equipped with Sharia courts and an "Islamic Police" force which patrols the streets in all-terrain vehicles. A wall has been built in the university to separate female students from their male counterparts and the disciplines of law, natural sciences and languages have all been abolished. Those who would question the city's new societal order risk death. Darna has become a colony of terror, and it is the first Islamic State enclave in North Africa. The conditions in Libya are perfect for the radical Islamists: a disintegrating state, a location that is strategically well situated and home to the largest oil reserves on the continent. Should Islamic State (IS) manage to establish control over a significant portion of Libya, it could trigger the destabilization of the entire Arab world. Der Spiegle

Al Qaeda branch releases video of French, Dutch hostages
Al Qaeda's North African branch, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), released a video Monday purporting to show a French and a Dutch hostage who have been held in the Sahara since being kidnapped separately in Mali in November 2011. In an online video identified by the private SITE jihadist monitoring group, French national Serge Lazarevic and a man identifying himself as Sjaak Rijke appeal to their governments to negotiate their release from the AQIM militants. There is nothing in the footage of Lazarevic to suggest when it was shot, but Rijke says he is speaking on September 26 this year and refers to a US-Taliban prisoner exchange conducted in May. France 24

Mali: Last Chance in Algiers
As northern Mali experiences renewed violence, peace negotiations in Algiers offer a unique opportunity to resolve the crisis. But after almost two months of negotiations, peace remains a distant hope. The Malian government and participating armed groups have struggled to find common ground. Influential radical groups that are absent from the negotiating table are tempted to resort to violence to derail the process. Conflict resolution will require reconciliation of competing interests regarding security in the Sahara, organisation of the Malian state structure and local balance of power between divided communities in the north. In the face of armed clashes, it is tempting for mediators to move quickly to achieve a deal that would only guarantee security in the short term. But rushing the process will not help. Time is needed to build the foundations of sustainable peace. After months of deadlock, Algeria arranged international mediation that had long been handicapped by institutional rivalries. The mediation team led by Algeria should maintain this momentum and take the time necessary to build broad consensus for a future agreement. International Crisis Group

Islamic State Allegiance Could Cost Egypt's Sinai Jihadis Popular Support
Last week, the Egyptian militant group Ansar Beit al-Maqdis (ABM), which operates primarily in the Sinai Peninsula, pledged its loyalty to the so-called Islamic State (IS). In an email interview, Zack Gold, a visiting fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, discussed the implications for Egypt.WPR: What are the major armed groups operating in Sinai, to what degree do they coordinate activities and do they have any foreign support? Zack Gold:Egypt's Sinai Peninsula has been a base of armed activity, both militancy and smuggling, for many years. Following the uprising of 2011, however, the remnants of smaller jihadi groups amalgamated into Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, the "Supporters of Jerusalem." World Politic Review

Sinai caught in the middle of Egypt's 'war on terror'
With soldiers firing warning shots to herald the nightly curfew and jihadist militants beheading informants, Sinai's residents find themselves caught in the middle of Egypt's "war on terror". The Sinai Peninsula has become a hotbed of Islamist militancy after decades of neglect under former president Hosni Mubarak, and amid a security vacuum triggered by the army's ouster last year of his successor Mohamed Morsi. Militant attacks remain commonplace almost two years since the military launched its "war on terrorism" in northern Sinai bordering Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip. A brazen suicide bombing on 24 October killed 30 soldiers near the North Sinai capital El-Arish, sparking a state of emergency and a curfew being slapped on several areas of the province. News 24

 Subcommittee Hearing: Fighting Ebola: A Ground-Level View (video)
Witnesses: Mr. Rabih Torbay, Senior Vice President for International Operations International Medical Corps - Mr. Brett Sedgewick, Technical Advisor for Food Security and Livelihoods Global Communities - Darius Mans, Ph.D. President Africare. House Comittee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations

Obama on Ebola in West Africa: 'We are nowhere out of the woods'
President Obama said Tuesday that despite progress, West Africa is "nowhere near out of the woods" on Ebola. "It underscores how important it is to continue to push forward until we stamp out this disease entirely in that region," Obama said before a meeting on the virus with national security and public health officials. "Until we do, there are threats if additional outbreaks, and given the nature of international travel, it means that everybody has some measure of risk." White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said later that the president was referring to the country of Mali, which was declared free of the virus, only to see it come back. Obama said that attention on the virus in the United States has ebbed in the past week, "the challenge remains." The Washington Post

Guarding The Ebola Border
On a map, a border is a solid black line. On the ground, it can feel like a fiction. I'm standing on the edge of a shallow stream through the forest that separates two West African countries: Ivory Coast and Liberia. Here there is no fence. No sign. No border guard to prevent my crossing. On either side of this stream, people speak the same local language, Yokuba, a language incomprehensible to most of their countrymen. They share the same currency, the West African CFA franc, as well as a currency of trust built up over generations of intermarriage and communal life. There's even one tribal king who can settle disputes on both sides. Ebola changed all that. NPR

Army names new units that will deploy to Africa
The Minnesota National Guard's 34th Infantry Division headquarters and soldiers from 11 other states will deploy this spring to support U.S. Ebola response operations in West Africa, officials announced Sunday. In all, about 2,100 soldiers from the National Guard and Army Reserve are expected to deploy to Liberia and Senegal to relieve troops who deployed to the region in September and October as part of Operation United Assistance. The deployment of the Guard and Reserve soldiers was announced Friday. Army officials released the list of specific units tapped for the deployment on Sunday after notifying soldiers and their families. The soldiers, as well as those already in country, are expected to be deployed for six months. About 1,200 Guard soldiers are expected to deploy from these units. ArmyTimes

Algeria opposition calls for new elections
A coalition of Algerian opposition parties and political figures has called for new presidential elections because of the continued hospitalizations of the country's leader. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, 77, was elected to a fourth term in April, but he has rarely appeared in public since suffering from a stroke in 2013. He was briefly hospitalized in France last weekend. Tuesday's opposition statement said the leader's absence is a sign of the "serious crisis in the country." The coalition, which includes Islamist and secular opposition parties, and former government ministers, also called for an independent commission to oversee elections. AP on Yahoo News

Tunisia: Political comeback of Ben Ali's cohort a setback to democracy 
The political party Nidaa Tounes has won 85 seats in the newly-elected 217-member Tunisian parliament. This compares with the 69 seats won by the Islamist party Ennahdha, which after the last election in 2011 held the majority in the Constituent Assembly. The elections on October 26th were welcomed by most Arab, African and international media observers who saw in them a model of democracy for a region torn by strife and dictatorship. Lebanese columnist Rami Khouri described the elections as "the most significant domestic and national political development in the modern history of the Arab world". Despite social unrest and severe economic challenges, Tunisia's political factions were able to agree and compromise for the sake of national unity, "in sharp contrast with the hysteria and hallucinatory emotional excesses" in Egypt where the army overthrew the elected Islamist president to great popular acclaim, Khouri wrote in the Daily Star. African Arguments

Tunisia 2.0 - from revolution to republic
For someone who has not been sleeping much, and working punishing hours for months, 27-year old Anis Smaali is in an extraordinarily good mood. He is running a team of 5,000 election observers for Mourakiboun - a group that monitored Tunisia's parliamentary elections in October and on Sunday will be observing the first freely contested presidential election in the country's history. "These are the most important elections in the history of Tunisia," he says with a broad smile. "After this we will have a real government with a five-year mandate. Tunisia is showing that a real and sustainable democracy is possible in the Arab world." Less than four years ago, Mr Smaali was among hundreds of thousands demonstrating outside the Interior Ministry, calling for an end to dictatorship. BBC

Nigeria: Policing the Police
[...] The population of the police is about 370,000, a minuscule fraction of Nigeria's 167m. If the police are unable to manage police affairs, how do we expect them to protect millions of Nigerians? How many other cases, like Banor's, are in police's files? Could Banor have acted alone? We are wondering if the police realise the implications of what they are telling the public. Are they confirming stories about dismissed police officers making their way back to service? Could it be that the police take finger prints of criminals, but do not have finger prints of their personnel? Why is the police pay roll not computerised as has been the case with the Nigeria Immigration Service since 2006? How are the police using the technologies that are available to them? How did Banor's matter get to the stage of the allegations against him? Is his case common in the police? Vanguard on allAfrica

Cameroon under pressure from Boko Haram
Cameroon's military are battling cross-border raids by Nigeria's militant Islamist group Boko Haram, as the BBC's Thomas Fessy found out when he joined soldiers on a patrol. A soldier is standing on the back of a flatbed pick-up truck leading the convoy. His high-powered twin-barrelled gun is turned towards Nigeria. In reality, though, the weapon is aimed at what Boko Haram call their "caliphate", or Islamic state. The border village of Amchide is mostly deserted. Only a handful of people can be seen as we drive through. They are hastily throwing a few belongings on a cart as they prepare to leave. They probably did not have time to take anything when they fled during an attack, and came back to recover their possessions. BBC

Zambia to hold presidential by-election January 20
Zambia's interim leader announced a presidential by-election on Jan. 20 and called for calm and tolerance amid concerns about a tense contest to succeed President Michael Sata, who died in office last month. Interim president Guy Scott, who became the continent's first white leader since the 1994 end of apartheid in South Africa, said he hoped all contestants, both from the ruling Patriotic Front (PF) and opposition parties, would desist from violence. "It is my prayer that peace continues during the campaigning and the presidential by-elections," he told a news conference. Questions about the stability of Africa's second-biggest copper producer arose when Scott fired a presidential front-runner, Edgar Lungu, as PF secretary-general on Nov. 3, without explaining why. Reuters

The real value of the Zimbabwe torture ruling
The South African Police Service (SAPS) really doesn't want to investigate torture in Zimbabwe. When the Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC) and the Zimbabwean Exiles Forum (ZEF) first asked it to do so in 2008, even giving detectives a dossier of evidence to get them started, the police took no action. When a court action (brought by SALC) forced it to do so, it appealed. When it lost that appeal, it appealed again. All to no avail. In late October, the Constitutional Court - the highest court in the land - ruled that SAPS must investigate the complaint. Failure to do so would violate South Africa's obligations under both domestic and international law. For SALC and international justice campaigners, the verdict was vindication after a long and difficult fight. ISS

'White Widow alive and well' in Somalia: report
Dubbed the "White Widow," Samantha Lewthwaite - a British convert to Islam who is said to have been involved in the Kenya mall attack last year - is reportedly living in Somalia with her jihadist husband, Marco Costa, a wanted Al-Qaeda suspect, the Daily Mail quoted Kenyan sources as saying. The sources said Lewthwaite was 'alive and well' and living in the south Somalia, the daily reported. The paper said it had obtained a forged Mozambican passport bearing Costa's picture. The document clearly identifies him as Jamal Salim, who the paper said was on the run from Kenyan police since he shot and killed two police officers in Nairobi in 2011. Lewthwaite has previously used a false South African passport and alias. The couple, according to the Daily Mail, also appears in a selfie taken at their home, adding that police are using these and pictures of their two children as part of a countrywide manhunt for the suspects. Al Arabiya

Ivory Coast tells soldiers to return to barracks 
The Ivory Coast government is calling on disgruntled soldiers to return to their barracks after they protested in the streets over their benefits. The Defense Ministry said it would make concessions the soldiers, whose complaints earlierTuesday had raised the specter of widespread unrest. The demands of the soldiers - dominated by former rebels who brought the current president to power - include increased health care benefits and improved opportunities for career advancement in the military. Defense Minister Paul Koffi Koffi said the government will address those issues. Ivory Coast is still recovering from a bitter political standoff that left about 3,000 people dead after a disputed December 2010 election. AP on Stars and Stripes

DR Congo's Katanga 'catastrophic' as 71,000 flee homes: UN
The UN refugee agency said it was "deeply concerned about the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Katanga". Rampant violence in the mineral-rich southern region has uprooted about 400,000 people since 2012, and brought the total number of people internally displaced to nearly 600,000, UNHCR said. In October alone, the agency said it had registered 1,737 "incidents" in the territories of Kalemie and the so-called "triangle of death" comprising Manono, Mitwaba and Pweto in northern Katanga. The violence is mainly attributed to the Mai Mai rebel group which is fighting for a better distribution between the north and south of the wealth from the province's immense natural resources. Times Live

Food on Hold, Ex-Rebels in Bangui Face Bleak Future 
Ex-rebels in the Central African Republic have been threatening to blow themselves up to protest a government attempt to relocate them from camps in the capital, Bangui. The rebels are under pressure to move - an international aid agency says their food supply has been put on hold while talks about their relocation continue. Tensions are running high in the streets of Bangui around two camps containing ex-rebels, as negotiations over their future drag on. Peacekeepers from the United Nations mission MINUSCA have deployed to the area to prevent clashes between the ex-Seleka rebels inside the camps and anti-Balaka militia outside. VOA

Traffickers turn to teenagers to drive migrant boats across Mediterranean 
Traffickers in Egypt and Libya are increasingly using children to drive boats of migrants to Italy. Many of these teenagers are then detained and imprisoned by the Italian authorities, facing up to 15 years in jail and fines of hundreds of thousands of euros. This year, 18 children have been sent to jail in Catania, Sicily, on trafficking charges. Others are being held in juvenile detention centres in Agrigento, Palermo, Siracusa and Reggio Calabria. Lawyers in Sicily say more and more minors are being charged with offences as traffickers attempt to evade Italian authorities by sending children in their place. Said, now 19, was only 15 when he was jailed in Italy on charges of aiding and abetting illegal immigration and criminal association. The Guardian

Habyarimana case: the new Rwandan witness disappeared 
The new witness in the case of the attack against the plane of former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana - April 6, 1994 on the eve of the genocide - has been missing since Thursday, November 13. He was to be heard soon by the judges Nathalie Poux and Marc Trévidic. According to testimonies collected by RFI, Emile Gafirita was abducted in Nairobi, Kenya, outside his home shortly before midnight. He was stopped by two men who handcuffed him and forced him into their vehicle. No news since. Kenyan police ensures not have arrested him and they are investigating this matter. Emmanuel Mughisa had moved there two months ago, in the district of Dagoretti, Nairobi.Rwandan " without history, rather friendly and open , "according to nearby residents. [...] According to his French lawyer, Maître François Cantier Emile Gafirita had just received his call when he was removed on Thursday, but his name as a witness was known for several weeks by all parties, including the Rwandan regime figures charged in this case. The ProxyLake

 Global report says 36 million people enslaved: Mauritania is biggest offender 
[...] "From the Thai fisherman trawling fishmeal, to the Congolese boy mining diamonds, from the Uzbek child picking cotton, to the Indian girl stitching footballs ... their forced labour is what we consume," read the report. The biggest offender, with the highest proportion of its population enslaved, remains the west African nation Mauritania, where slavery of black Moors by Berber Arabs is an entrenched part of society. Mauritania has anti-slavery legislation but it is rarely enforced and a special tribunal set up in March has yet to prosecute any cases, the report said. In second place was Uzbekistan where, every autumn, the government forces over one million people, including children, to harvest cotton. Countries like Qatar in the Middle East were a major destination for men and women from Africa and Asia who are lured with promises of well-paid jobs only to find themselves exploited as domestic workers or in the construction industry, the report found. Al Jazeera

America: forging partnerships for Africa's future.

 

To Hell with Richard Sherman, Go Seahawks!

I have to add a comment to the controversy du jour leading up to the Super Bowl.

 

Richard Sherman, of course.

 

What was so wrong with this conduct, many casual as well as passionate football fans have asked. Well, he (Richard Sherman) didn't just tap Crabtree on the shoulder to congratulate him at the end of the game -- he patted him on his ass, and then went with the fake "helluava game, helluva game" bull schiesse. Big difference in my book, given the disparity in outcomes that was being dealt with by Crabtree at that moment.

 

The acknowledged rule is that your play on the field speaks for you in a moment like that, especially if you feel you've been disrespected leading up to the contest.

 

Scoreboard!

 

It saddens me that so many are backing up Sherman on this punkish move he pulled off. A move that was completely orchestrated. Not only was it unsportsmanlike, it was all me-me-me.

 

No, Clay Travis and others, it isn't a good thing that he went all WWF / WWE. And it doesn't have anything to do with class or graciousness. It's called respect.

 

Here's a smart black man from Compton (who has probably heard his share of "why you talking like a white boy?" in his youth) now perpetrating as a thug (and make no mistake, it was purposeful, and purposely thuggish) and acting all ignorant to advance his personal brand. By laying hands on, and disrespecting, another player. 

 

And it's working.

 

That's sad, and damn near sick. ESPN and more than a few media folk have what they crave. 

 

Sigh.

 

I love the player and his audacious nature on the field. He is the role model for what shouldn't be an aberration but much more of the norm. Academics and athletics do complement one another. But now, in keeping with this era when people seem to have lost all sense of decorum and boundaries and -- most troubling -- pay no apparent penalty for the forgetting or the disrespecting, he knowingly goes down the ignorant route.

 

I'll likely be cheering for the Seahawks in the Super Bowl. But give me Russell Wilson (and Percy Harvin), thank you very much. To hell with Richard Sherman. Contrary to what Michael Irvin (a Florida Boy I love, faults and all) and others have insisted, this kind of conduct is *not* what you get when you shove a microphone and camera in a players face directly after a physical and very important game. That's nothing more than a convenient excuse. 

 

He's a professional, and he unquestionably knew better.

 

In my preferred outcome, the Seahawks put up mucho points and Richard Sherman gets toasted early and often by Peyton Manning with Russell-Wilson-to-Percy-Harvin proving to be the difference maker in the fourth quarter. 

 

Seahawks, 38-35.

Decorum? Not so much!

There's a number of videos making the rounds of Fall Commencement this year at Grambling State University in Louisiana. It's ummmm, uh, well -- the fact of the matter is, you have to see it to believe it:

Video 1

Video 2:

Wow.

I am so incredibly conflicted by that video. I love the celebration, the collective party (and that "Neck" tune has become EXTREMELY popular with almost all black college bands these days and the fact of the matter is that I love it, too) but -- Grambling !!! -- this makes a mockery of the graduation exercise.

How in the hell does the administration at Grambling not understand that?

What the hell are they doing allowing the band to play "Neck" at graduation !?!

Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries !!!

So many folks these days can't quite seem to grasp the necessity of not only boundaries but the wisdom of the all-important social conventions of time, place, and manner. In short: decorum. I say this all the time to friends and acquaintances when we're bitching about the sorry state of so many kids these days. This video, however, says many folks in my generation and niche culture (adults in their 40s and 50s who are either administrators at black colleges or married to folks who are) can be faulted for being just as guilty.

Damn.

The problem, of course, isn't limited to black culture (although I honestly can't imagine a white university having this kind of problem display at graduation -- a different kind of problem display, yes, but not this). It's just that "Neck" bubbled up out of black culture and, well, sadly it has to be admitted that there's something very familiar about this kind of excess.

That said, check out the problem they have at LSU with the playing of "Neck" at their football games. They, too, have fallen in love with the song and their irreverent kids have changed the lyrics from "heyyyyyyyyyyyy ohhhh, talking out the side of your neck" and "neckkkkkkkkkk, you talking out the side of your neck" to something quite, quite different:

Once again, boundaries. Once again, decorum.

As for the song that inspired the college compositions, here's the version released by Cameo:

Talkin' Out the Side of Your Neck

The college stuff is much better, wouldn't you say? They took a very catchy riff, played it up, and left all the rest alone. It may be stretching things beyond all genuine comprehension but I suspect (wish?) there's a broader decorum lesson found in the musical process by which an average, at best, song was transformed into something quite memorable via the contemplation -- in part -- of time, place and manner restrictions.

Nelson Mandela Tribute

1918 - 2013

First, a musical selection in tribute to the great man. South Africa's national anthem performed by Miriam Makeba, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and Paul Simon among others:

Second, on this, the day of his burial, I want to post something from a stranger to Nelson Mandela. The gentleman is also a stranger to me. In fact, his represent (I believe) the words of a generic white man who is apparently a Son of the South (apparently a Carolinian), clearly a fan of Mandela, probably liberal, and likely infused with perhaps an unhealthy dose of white guilt. Whatever the case, his words, however conceived *or* received, have merit. They arguably ring true. To me, at least. Here is what the guy who calls himself Sintax.the.Terrific (you can also find him on Facebook) had to say about this towering figure:

I have one take on Mandela, and I’ve made it to others many times before.

I am unaware of any other human in all of history who was oppressed so absolutely and then was given so absolutely the power to invert that oppression on millions of lives in justifiable retribution and yet declined. Not Ghandi or Dr. King or Mother Theresa. All of these individuals, righteous and consistent in their pacisifism, never actually gloved the reigns to violent power that must have tempted Mandela. They were always subject to power, maybe power they declined, but power they never possessed in the way he did. He was the undisputed psychological Monarch of South Africa upon his election. Had he chosen to change the country’s language to Mongolian Chinese and require men to birth the nation’s children he would have had widespread support.

Call it strategic or contrived, he elected, in the face of significant opposition from his own and victimized people, to largely integrate and accommodate. If you notice, throughout much of the rest of the developing world, when abused society obtains power they return the abuse.

The only parallel is in the lives of famous religious figures, like Christ. They are disqualified from this conversation insofar as they profess either actual divinity or divine authority or x-ray vision. As far as we can tell, Mandela was not any kind of incarnation or supernatural peeping tom.

Just a man who chose to do right in the face of so much opportunity to do wrong.

Maybe the greatest human that ever lived. Seriously.

That's a powerful testimony on the mystical reach of the legend that is Nelson Mandela.

Finally, a poem commissioned by the United States Department of State in anticipation of Nelson Mandela's death:

His Day Is Done

By Maya Angelou

His day is done.
Is done.

The news came on the wings of a wind
Reluctant to carry its burden.

Nelson Mandela’s day is done.

The news, expected and still unwelcome
Reached us in the United States and suddenly

Our world became somber.
Our skies were leadened

His day is done.

We see you, South African people
Standing speechless at the slamming
Of that final door
Through which no traveler returns.

Our spirits reach out to you
Bantu, Zulu, Xhosa, Boer

We think of you
And your Son of Africa,
Your father
Your One More Wonder of the World.

We send our souls to you
As you reflect upon
Your David armed with
A mere stone facing down

The Mighty Goliath,
Man of strength Gideon,
Emerging Triumphant

Although born into the brutal embrace of Apartheid
Scarred by the savage atmosphere of racism,
Unjustly imprisoned
In the bloody maws of South African dungeons.

Would the man survive?
Could the man survive?

His answer strengthened men and women
Around the world.

In the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas
On the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco,
In Chicago’s loop
In New Orleans Mardi Gras
In New York City’s Times Square

We watched as the hope of Africa sprang
Through the prison’s doors

His stupendous heart intact
His gargantuan will
Hale and hearty

He had not been crippled by brutes
Nor was his passion for the rights
Of human beings
Diminished by twenty-seven years of imprisonment

Even here in America
We felt the cool
Refreshing breeze of freedom

When Nelson Mandela took
The seat of Presidency
In his Country
Where formerly he was not even allowed to vote
We were enlarged by tears of pride
As we saw Nelson Mandela’s
Former prison guards
Invited, courteously, by him to watch
From the front rows
His inauguration.

We saw him accept
The world’s award in Norway
With the grace and gratitude
Of the Solon in Ancient Roman Courts
And the confidence of African Chiefs
From ancient royal stools.

No sun outlasts its sunset
But will rise again
And bring the dawn

Yes, Mandela’s day is done,

Yet we, his inheritors
Will open the gates wider
For reconciliation and we will respond
Generously to the cries
Of Blacks and Whites,
Asian, Hispanics,
The poor who live piteously
On the floor of our planet
He has offered us understanding
We will not withhold forgiveness
Even from those who do not ask

Nelson Mandela’s day is done

We confess it in tearful voices
Yet we lift our own to say

Thank You.
Thank You, Our Gideon.
Thank You, Our David.
Our great courageous man

We will not forget you
We will not dishonor you
We will remember and be glad
That you lived among us

That you taught us
And
That you loved us
All !!!

-- The End --

There are difficult days ahead for South Africa. Political pettiness has already reared its ugly head, and a brutal dose of reality is surely on the agenda in the coming days. Many are reflecting on a different path that could have been taken, a disastrous path taken by Zimbabwe. Can they hold their country together?

I hope and pray they can. Just as Mandela did.

Mandela, Spear of the Nation: Spear of the World

Take your leave, old Soldier. A gratefull community pauses around the globe to marvel at your legacy.

Words fail me at the moment, so I can only fall back and present here some iconic images of the great man:

The youthful Mandela:

Mandela released from prison:

Mandela speaks before a special session of the United States Congress:

Catullus 101

Wandering through many countries and over many seas
   I come, my brother, to these sorrowful obsequies,
to present you with the last guerdon of death,
   and speak, though in vain, to your silent ashes,
since fortune has taken your own self away from me
   alas, my brother, so cruelly torn from me!
Yet now meanwhile take these offerings, which by the custom of our fathers
   have been handed down -- a sorrowful tribute -- for a funeral sacrifice;
take them, wet with many tears of a brother,
   and for ever, O my brother, hail and farewell!

Umkhonto we Sizwe.

African-American Navel-Gazing

I first want to apologize to Victor Davis Hanson; I'm reproducing below a recent opinion piece he wrote for National Review Online / The Corner in full. He writes of Oprah Winfrey but, in actuality, it just as easily could have been written about the vast majority of Black America. It's all about the insistence (without any real examination) that President Barack Obama has somehow suffered some disproportionate level of disrespect because of his race. Here's VDH on The Moral Decline of Oprah:

Multi-billionaire Oprah Winfrey, after her surreal $38,000 handbag “racism” encounter in Switzerland, has just weighed in again on race and the presidency, as yet the nth way of hyping her new film: “There’s a level of disrespect for the office that occurs. And that occurs in some cases and maybe even many cases because he’s African American. There’s no question about that and it’s the kind of thing nobody ever says but everybody’s thinking it.”

Nobody ever says? Has she read a newspaper columnist or turned on MSNBC lately?

Aside from her historical ignorance, Oprah Winfrey has increasingly turned to the race card to explain the president’s plummeting polls. In her race-obsessed world, Syria, Benghazi, the NSA, IRS, AP, and ACA messes do not explain why a reelected president crashes from a recent 60 percent approval rating to less than 40 percent in less than a year.

Instead, in Oprah’s no-win, racialist world, to the degree that Obama is popular, Americans are considered for the time being as not racist; to the degree that he is not, the country suddenly is collectively under suspicion (e.g., “everybody’s thinking it”).

That Obama might be utterly inexperienced in the manner of Jimmy Carter, less than veracious in the manner of the impeached Bill Clinton, or suffering the same second-term blues of Ronald Reagan during Iran-Contra or popularity crash of George W. Bush after Katrina simply cannot for Oprah be true of an African-American president, who for some reason must not suffer the same fate and treatment as almost all who have held the highest office. Instead, in this raciallyobsessed world of Oprah, that Obama is faring no different from his predecessors is now the country’s fault. And as remedy, he must be given deference if the country wishes to avoid the latest therapeutic rant from Oprah.

In fact, Oprah has no record of worrying about the level of disrespect shown the office. If she did, she might have said something a few years ago when her president was routinely being compared to a Nazi, and often by her own fellow celebrities, writers, politicians, civil-rights activists, and filmmakers. That she said nothing then, but now says a lot, explains not America’s problem with race, but her own race obsessions, which have blinded her to her own prejudices and hypocrisies.

I don’t recall Oprah objecting when Bush was routinely shouted down. Did she deplore Al Gore calling the Bush team “digital brownshirts”? Or maybe John Glenn invoking the Nazis (“It’s the old Hitler business”) to talk about her president? Nor do I remember her weighing in on Linda Ronstadt’s claim that the Bush administration was “a new bunch of Hitlers.” Harry Belafonte and Julian Bond both routinely labeled their conservative opponents as little more than Nazis or KKK racists. Nor did Oprah note that “there’s a level of disrespect for the office that occurs” when Barbra Streisand compared Bush to Hermann Goering. Was she worried when Alfred A. Knopf published a novel about musing how to kill Bush? Or by a prize-winning docudrama film imagining the killing of Bush? What was her reaction a New York play, “I’m Gonna Kill the President,” was produced? Did Oprah once give a similar BBC interview about the office of the president and disrespect shown it in 2004 when a guest columnist in the Guardian, Charles Brooker, wrote: “On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod’s law dictates he’ll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. — where are you now that we need you?”

What might explain her outrage now about criticism shown Obama, but silence just recently when abject hatred and dreams of violence were voiced against her president? That answer may explain a lot about what Oprah has become. (bold added for emphasis)

Absolutely true, and it's distressing as hell. I love Oprah and all of her accomplishments. I need not agree with her on everything, and I don't, but I ordinarily defend her. She's one of the most impressive people of my lifetime. But this navel-gazing thing has to be called out, and it needs to stop. There is no possible objective review that demonstrates Barack Obama has been more disrespected than previous Presidents. None. In fact, it's quite the opposite.

The one incident that is usually cited as the highlight of unprecedented disrespect toward President Obama is the 2009 State of the Union speech where Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina interrupted the President's speech and exclaimed "You lie" twice while the President was discussing a pending bill on health insurance legislation that he supported (this preceded the 2010 ObamaCare legislation). However, the President was -- in fact -- telling a rather audacious bald-faced lie. Representative Wilson was correct.

Prior to Obama's 2009 State of the Union speech, Democrats had twice rejected amendments to the bill requiring documentation of legal status in the United States in order to receive benefits under the proposed plan, contending that a more complex application process would delay or prevent citizens from receiving health care. So their sleight-of-hand maneuver was to exclude the language that would have clearly blocked illegal immigrants from being insured on the rather phony premise of concern for quick and unfettered provision of services once the bill actually become law.

It's precisely this type of duplicity that infuriates so many Republicans. Citizenship, or legal residency, and the proof thereof, is somehow -- and bizarrely -- castigated as onerous. Such language was included, however, days after the outburst in the Senate Finance Committee's version of the bill, America's Healthy Future Act.

When the history of President Obama's tenure is written, I suspect Representative Joe Wilson's outburst will be seen as a first warning signal of what was to come from this administration. Especially the then-upcoming "Affordable Care Act" (ObamaCare) that, in what would have been an unprecedented action, they first slotted for procedural passage after having been "deemed to have passed" with no one in Congress having read the bill. Instead, they scrapped that deemed-to-have-passed idea and instead passed the bill on a straight-party vote with no Republican support. And, still without having read the bill. History will never look at these actions kindly. And historians will have to answer this question: Did President Obama first disrespect the history of the State of the Union speech with unprecedented partisanship and thereby elicit the unprecedented rebuke from a member of Congress during the speech? I say yes.

My point: disrespect cuts both ways when it comes to President Barack Obama, but it isn't race-based. Less navel-gazing would help Black America at least admit this one fact and allow the community to move on to other, more legitimate, points of contention.

I'm Ashamed of Black America, and You Should be Too

I'll likely write much more in the coming weeks regarding why I'm so ashamed of Black America but suffice it to say -- for now -- that it will be quite some time before we as African Americans live down the outrageous lie perpetrated in our name by the hustlers pimping the Trayvon Martin nonsense. Bill Whittle does a good job explaining why:

He's clearly outraged, and he should be. I'm not sure I've ever seen anything like it. The level of willing ignorance is stunning. Absolutely stunning. And all across our community, good people have fallen for the lie because leaders they trust have failed them. The failures by our leadership class occurred for varying reasons. Some did so cynically, some did so unknowingly, some did so with the most evil of intentions.

Whatever the case may be, our admirable instinct to defend the defenseless -- here, a young black boy gunned down (by a white boy with a concealed weapon) for the crime of simply walking in white boys' neighborhood -- has been played for the fool. In truth, that admirable instinct has been manipulated by black and white hustlers for reasons that have nothing to do with justice. That's the cold, hard truth. And it's painful.

Enough is enough, and it has to stop. It has to. As the historic victims of unspeakable crimes at the hands of mob rule, it is especially sickening that we've now put ourselves in the position of essentially demanding mob rule when it comes to George Zimmerman.

How crazy is that? How sick is that?

Quite crazy. Quite sick.

Are black clergy honestly not troubled by this craziness? Are black Democrats completely blind to where they are leading us? Are white Democrats seriously unconcerned about throwing someone who voted for Obama (Zimmerman) under the bus, all because some personal injury trial lawyers working with and for the Democrat party told them to do so?

Really?

Heaven help us.

King James of the Basketball Court

It has been a few weeks now and I thought I'd post a somewhat irreverent celebration of the Miami Heat's third championship finals in a row and their back-to-back NBA titles that I heard while listening to 790 The Ticket on the day after the second championship. This morning, I had the satisfaction of watching Mike & Mike on ESPN admitting the obvious: the crazed lynch mob that trashed LeBron James after "The Decision" was wrong.

Bigtime. And yes, LeBron has had the last laugh.

That admission now leads nicely into these two videos produced by Dan Lebetard and DJ Valentine down in Miami after each of the last two championship years. I can only hope some of you enjoy the radio rants and the videos that accompany them as much as I did. So, without further adieu, here is the tribute rant from Dan LeBatard of 790 The Ticket in Miami in 2012:

And here's the tribute rant in honor of another Miami Heat championship from Dan LeBatard in 2013:

Yes, I genuinely loved both rants. The Florida Boy in me absolutely loved both of them. Especially that line about "not one, not two, not three . . . " no longer resembling a joke so much as a threat.

Indeed.

And how about LeBatard's Papi telling all the haters and doubters to "eat it with mayonnaise," etc. That's some real Florida Boy smack for your natural-born behind right there, son!

How about the greatness that is LeBron James, huh? How about it? I'm going to do a separate post on the subject but until then, this is from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald in a curious piece where he first asserts LeBron has had to devour a bakery full of humble pie just to begin recovering from the fallout from "The Decision" but, in the same piece, goes on to say:

ESPN.com had a piece examining why LeBron has not appeared in more TV endorsements. Hmm. He is all over Nike ads. He pitched Beats by Dre during the playoffs. He has major deals with McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, State Farm and Samsung, and he makes more money in endorsements — $50 million-plus per year — than any other American athlete. But other than that!

So, why in the hell would Greg Cote assert that LeBron is only now -- after devouring all kinds of humble pie -- only now! recovering from how he announced his decision to come to Miami ???

Apparently, when it comes to King James of the Basketball Court, people have the hardest time thinking logically and from a consistent frame of reference.