Category Archives: History

Pot. Kettle. Black.

I was reading a critique of literature this morning and noticed that the author was being rather negative and critical of others for being too negative and critical. S/he seemed oblivious to the contradiction, as their writing bemoaned the lack of more positive writing.

A stark problem with the success of the 419 fraud schemes is that the perpetrators often say they do nothing more than let people give them money. The victims fall into a trap of optimism, believing that they have actually found something for nothing. Alas, a little more critical thinking might be just what the doctor ordered for the new and less familiar risks people face online or to deal with a world where common hallmarks of universal rights are being seriously challenged (i.e. the Geneva convention):

Torture may be worse now in Iraq than under former leader Saddam Hussein, the UN’s chief anti-torture expert says.

[…]

Victims come from prisons run by US-led multinational forces as well as by the ministries of interior and defence and private militias, the report said.

Writing will be positive when people feel safe and prosperous (again). On what basis would a person manufacture a positive outlook in the face of great moral, financial or even physical danger? Conversely, prosperity and positivity also brings heightened risk in the forms of threats and vulnerabilities, painfully illustrated by the tragedy of the Cathars. Should proper caution and controls lead to a more universally safe and stable foundation, positive writing may again someday flourish. Until then, attacking people for being too negative is little more than the pot calling the kettle black.

Words That Comfort and 9/11

I like the idea of poets reaching out and sharing their perspective with a wider audience, but I wonder if Cristin’s work was really was as introspective as this news blurb sounds? The Philadelphia Weekly reports:

“I don’t think a news break alert can flash on our televisions without people thinking it’ll be somehow linked to a terrorist attack,” says 28-year-old author, screenwriter and slam poet Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, who’s appeared on the HBO series Def Poetry Jam. Aptowicz will present her updated speech “Words That Comfort” at the Kelly Writers House on the fifth anniversary of the attacks. Originally presented at a symposium on terrorism at Hastings College in Nebraska in fall 2005, the speech explores the effects of 9/11 on a community of poets from the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Well, news flashes linked to terrorists or the weather… Here are some other poems of 9/11.

The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
(An extract of a performance by Danny Solis can be found on Poetry Slam)

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,–
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm.”

Then he said “Good-night!” and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend through alley and street
Wanders and watches, with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade,–
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town
And the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, “All is well!”
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay,–
A line of black that bends and floats
On the rising tide like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse’s side,
Now he gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns.

A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet;
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer’s dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.

It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, black and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.

It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadow brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket ball.

You know the rest. In the books you have read
How the British Regulars fired and fled,–
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard wall,
Chasing the redcoats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,–
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

More tragic evidence of the Bush spoils system

The Washington Post has a blistering condemnation of the Bush administration’s reconstruction of Iraq. They point out that the long-condemned spoils system was not only favored, but taken to a new extreme:

Many of those chosen by O’Beirne’s office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq’s government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance — but had applied for a White House job — was sent to reopen Baghdad’s stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq’s $13 billion budget, even though they didn’t have a background in accounting.

[…]

Many of the basic tasks Americans struggle to accomplish today in Iraq — training the army, vetting the police, increasing electricity generation — could have been performed far more effectively in 2003 by the CPA.

But many CPA staff members were more interested in other things: in instituting a flat tax, in selling off government assets, in ending food rations and otherwise fashioning a new nation that looked a lot like the United States. Many of them spent their days cloistered in the Green Zone, a walled-off enclave in central Baghdad with towering palms, posh villas, well-stocked bars and resort-size swimming pools.

The level of arrogance and incompetance is absolutely stunning. With a vaccum of integrity in the current Republican leadership, America’s image and security is dangerously waning. Who will or can win it back?

One of the most difficult jobs in security is to stand up to executive management and tell them that things are not what they seem. In the early days of Iraq, the voice of the men and women with this position and with the most insight into the risks were drowned under a charismatic and aloof figurehead:

Kerik authorized the formation of a hundred-man Iraqi police paramilitary unit to pursue criminal syndicates that had formed since the war, and he often joined the group on nighttime raids, departing the Green Zone at midnight and returning at dawn, in time to attend Bremer’s senior staff meeting, where he would crack a few jokes, describe the night’s adventures and read off the latest crime statistics prepared by an aide. The unit did bust a few kidnapping gangs and car-theft rings, generating a stream of positive news stories that Kerik basked in and Bremer applauded. But the all-nighters meant Kerik wasn’t around to supervise the Interior Ministry during the day. He was sleeping.

Several members of the CPA’s Interior Ministry team wanted to blow the whistle on Kerik, but they concluded any complaints would be brushed off. “Bremer’s staff thought he was the silver bullet,” a member of the Justice Department assessment mission said. “Nobody wanted to question the [man who was] police chief during 9/11.”