At least he’s not harbored in a harbor, if you know what I mean.

I was just reading about runaway inflation in Zimbabwe, where bread costs about 30% more than last week — $66,000 Zimbabwean per loaf (that’s 66 US cents, if you can believe it). I was trying to get a better sense of the situation when I happened to read an op-ed piece in The Herald:

The case of Luis Posada Carriles has become an international embarrassment for the Bush administration. Ever since Posada illegally entered the US using a false passport and showed up in Miami in March 2005 expecting to be granted political asylum for his early career as a CIA anti-Castro agent, his presence in the United States has created a major quandary for the White House.

I do not remember hearing much about the Carriles case, you? And yet the Herald makes it seem like Bush himself is worried.

Here’s a little more background from the Washington Post:

Trained by the CIA in the use of explosives as part of the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion, Posada has been linked through the years with the bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner that killed 73 people; bombings in Cuban tourist hotels that killed an Italian tourist and injured 11 other people; and a 2000 plot to assassinate Castro in Panama.

Does that make him a terrorist? To be frank, and according to the CIA definition, yes.

Just to confuse things a little there appears to be plenty of documentation linking Carriles to the CIA, so I would expect some might try and suggest he is a patriot for blowing up civilian aircraft…although President Bush himself declared “Any nation that harbors terrorists are as responsible as the terrorists themselves.”

José Pertierra, a lawyer representing the government of Venezuela in the extradition case of Carriles, had this perspective on the situation:

There are enough laws in the United States to keep this terrorist in jail. What is lacking is the political will to do so. From the beginning of this drama, George W. Bush has wanted to shelter, rather than prosecute, the terrorist. Somewhere in a drawer in the Department of State are the pleadings filed by Venezuela, asking for his preventive detention as well as his extradition. The Bush Administration thus far ignores them and instead mocks U.S. law, as well as three separate extradition treaties signed, ratified and conveniently used by the government of the United States in other cases in its war on terror.

Hmmm. It is not as though relations between Chavez and Bush are warm right now, and an ex-CIA operative must have some importance/relevance to Bush Senior (not to mention Cheney and Rumsfeld), but what is Bush Junior’s position on this guy? With articles like this one from the Foreign Policy in Focus, it will be interesting to see whether the mainstream press picks up on the debate:

Posada has confided to journalists and others that for four decades he had worked on and off with the CIA to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro. In 1976, Posada teamed up with Orlando Bosch, another obsessed Castro-hater, and hired two Venezuelan killers to detonate a bomb on board a commercial Cubana flight over Barbados. Seventy-three passengers and crew members died. This was a blatant terrorist act. The hired weasels ratted on Posada to the police, landing him in a Venezuelan prison.

After a decade of inconclusive judicial proceedings, Posada’s Miami buddies bribed the prison officials and Posada “escaped” to Central America, where he worked for Lt. Col. Oliver North in supplying the Contras in their CIA-backed attempt to overthrow the Nicaraguan government.

In 1990 in Guatemala, an unknown gunman shot Posada in the face. He recovered, but didn’t regain full use of his voice. Even that didn’t stop him. In 1997, he recruited a Salvadoran to bomb hotels in Cuba. One bomb killed an Italian tourist. Cuban cops grabbed the Salvadoran, who named Posada as his employer.

Posada even boasted about his violence against Cuban tourism to two New York Times reporters in July 1998. How did he feel about killing the innocent civilian, they asked? “I sleep like a baby,” he replied.

*Sigh* I think I was hoping to live life without ever hearing the name “Oliver North” again, especially in relation to a current US President’s foreign policy in Latin America. I see an historic theme emerging here, however, and a recent briefing by Wayne Smith, Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy indicates that the US not only allowed Carriles into the country, but enabled him to do so:

Posada Carriles is in the United States thanks to the intervention of Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Congressmen Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart, all of whom petitioned the then-president of Panama, Mireya Moscoso, to pardon him and three other Cuban exile terrorists—which she did, as one of her last acts before leaving office.

So the US government supposedly helped get Carriles out of jail in Panama, and then “discovered” him trying to enter the US, and now refuses to extradite him to Venezuela? January 24th, 2006 was the deadline for his release, but I do not see any news at all in February on the subject. I assume he is still in US custody, but who is reporting on this issue now and what is the Bush Administration position? Will Carriles be tried for his crimes, let alone extradited?

This news really has to make you wonder about what’s wrong with some people in Kansas:

Many Manhattan High School alumni fondly recall the ceramic mosaic of an Indian head — the school’s symbol — that was formerly in the floor in front of the school gymnasium.

Now they’re hoping to restore the Indian to its former glory and install it in a place of honor at the school.

The history of when the Indian mosaic was taken out of the floor — and eventually relegated to storage — is a little hazy at this point. But alums say they recall the mosaic as a source of pride — and torment.

“The seniors used to make the underclassmen shine it,” said alumna Cam Feltner. She recalled as well that it was understood that no one was to step on the Indian at any cost.

There’s something creepy about their used of the phrase “restore the Indian to its former glory”. This is not a shrine to Indians, it will not refer to the origin of the mascot, or the people who the mascot represents. So what “glory” do they mean, exactly?

At one point in the early 1970s, some students brought teacher and coach Earl Gritton’s Volkswagen in through the gym and pushed it part way onto the Indian. Gritton’s wife Lois said the students chickened out and ran off before they got the car fully on top of the mascot.

By the time MHS alum Larry McCarthy arrived at the school in 1973, the Indian was protected by the aforementioned fence. McCarthy heard tales, though, of seniors throwing sophomores onto the fenced-in Indian and making them spit shine it either with their rear-end or a rag.

It would be one thing if they decided to explore the significance of the mosaic in relation to the fate of the Arapaho, Comanche, Kansa, Kiowa, Osage, or Pawnee tribes (all natives of the area that became Kansas). Maybe they could review how Indians served to protect Kansans, such as Pélathé’s famous ride to the city of Lawrence to warn them of raiders from Missouri.

But no, this group apparently not only thinks it honorable to have an “Indian head” as a plain mascot, but to enshrine it as a symbol of years of maltreatment and disrepect. Needless to say, this is a fine example of how some public school “associations” can be so far out of touch with modern values and progress in diversity that they grasp for comfort in historic symbols of how/when they “ruled” their roost. This reminds me of the colonials who never could adjust or recover from the news that they were misinformed about inequality of race, color, creed…

“We’re pretty sure we’re going to take it on as a project,” said Fiser. “Quite a few of the officers and directors have said, ‘let’s take this on.’ We think it’s a great thing to do to preserve history and tradition for our high school.”

I can think of a hundred other things an alumni association should do to preserve a real history and tradition of their school, instead of futzing around with a controversial mosaic that plays up cluelessness and insensitivity.

Call David Fiser if you would like to give him your opinion about the project and the mascot: 913-537-9123

Ironically, the Indian model of using resources without claiming exclusive rights has become a hot topic again today. Groups around the world, such as IndiCare, are joining together to debate and fight against digital rights legislation that criminalizes sharing, with the French leading the way within the Western legal system. Do they have the strength and courage to stand up to the recording industry?

As far as the history of this sort of conflict goes, we can only hope that the DRM battle does not end with the industry bringing in some big guns. Now that historians are reporting how the West was really won, PBS provides some chilling insight of the method of extermination practiced by soldiers “protecting” their territory:

Big Foot decided to lead his people away from the possibility of further violence at neighboring Standing Rock and headed farther south toward the reservation at Pine Ridge, hoping to find safety there. Increasingly ill with pneumonia, he had no intention of fighting and was flying a white flag when soldiers patrolling for roving bands caught up with him on December 28, 1890. That night Big Foot and his people camped near Wounded Knee Creek, surrounded on all sides by soldiers.

The next morning, the soldiers set up several large Hotchkiss guns on a hill overlooking the camp and began confiscating the Indians’ weapons. When a gun accidentally went off, they opened fire, and within a few minutes, some 370 Lakota lay dead, many of them cut down by the deadly Hotchkiss guns as they sought shelter against a creek bank. The soldiers even pursued fleeing women and children, shooting some as far as two miles from the site of the original confrontation. One Indian witness remembered:

A mother was shot down with her infant; the child not knowing that its mother was dead was still nursing… The women as they were fleeing with their babies were killed together… and after most of them had been killed a cry was made that all those who were not killed or wounded should come forth and they would be safe. Little boys… came out of their places of refuge, and as soon as they came in sight a number of soldiers surrounded them and butchered them there.

Right. The question of heritage is not so simple. Is the Indian head mascot a celebration of positive contributions and diverse opinions, or displays of egregious power and disrespect? And aside from that, is the money spent restoring a mosaic from a gym really helping promote a positive heritage and contributing to a richer sense of community for students, let alone the school alumni?

1939 was the year Solomon Linda recorded “Mbube” with The Evening Birds. 3rd Ear Music Forum has a nice write-up of the man who wrote the song commonly known as “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”:

This one’s for Solomon Linda, then, a Zulu who wrote a melody that earned untold millions for white men but died so poor that his widow couldn’t afford a stone for his grave. Let’s take it from the top, as they say in the trade.

[…]

What might all this represent in songwriter royalties and associated revenues? I put the question to lawyers around the world, and they scratched their heads. Around 160 recordings of three versions? Thirteen movies? Half a dozen TV commercials and a hit play? Number Seven on Val Pak’s semi-authoritative ranking of the most-beloved golden oldies, and ceaseless radio airplay in every corner of the planet? It was impossible to accurately calculate, to be sure, but no one blanched at $15 million. Some said 10, some said 20, but most felt that $15 million was in the ball park.

Which raises an even more interesting question: What happened to all that loot?

The problem with information is the ease of transfer. For example “identity theft” means someone else can profit by taking your identity and using it for their own financial gain without authorization. We all have multiple identities, if you will (e.g. father, brother, friend, son, boss) and an artist’s identity is often their business (singer, writer, comedian, etc.). The difference here seems to be that Solomon Linda was somehow convinced to transfer his identity/creation for only ten shillings.

Part Four: in which a moral is considered Once upon a time, a long time ago, a Zulu man stepped up to a microphone and improvised a melody that earned in the region of $15 million. That Solomon Linda got almost none of it was probably inevitable. He was a black man in white-ruled South Africa, but his American peers fared little better. Robert Johnson’s contribution to the blues went largely unrewarded. Leadbelly lost half of his publishing to his white “patrons.” DJ Alan Freed refused to play Chuck Berry’s “Maybellene” until he was given a songwriter’s cut. Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” was nicked off Willie Dixon. All musicians were minnows in the pop-music food chain, but blacks were most vulnerable, and Solomon Linda, an illiterate tribesman from a wild valley where lions roamed, was totally defenseless against sophisticated predators.