Celebrating My Birthday

I can't think of a better way to commemorate my birthday.

"Nothing has been more moving to me than this desire, realized imperfectly but repeatedly, to connect across differences, to be a community, to make a better world, to embrace each other. This desire is what lies behind those messy camps, those raucous demonstrations, those cardboard signs and long conversations. Young activists have spoken to me about the extraordinary richness of their experiences at Occupy, and they call it love." Rebecca Solnit

Miss Angola Leila Lopes crowned Miss Universe

Congratulations to Leila Lopes! There is more to her story, however, which you will likely not find in the pages of the western press. It needs to be told: The source is in SPANISH, and I have translated it:

Of parents from Cienfuegos, Cuba, and born in Angola, the new Miss Universe, Leila Lopes, has been the victim of vicious racist verbal attacks.

The messages, written in Portuguese and English, were reported by the Stormfront webpage, whose authors define themselves as a "white nationalist community", that is under investigation by the Brazilian Federal Police on suspicion of links with neo-Nazi groups.

Even before learning of the abuse, Leila Lopes had said in a press conference at dawn on Tuesday, to not feel affected by racism.

"Racism does not affect me. The racists are the ones that need help, because it is not normal for a person to [harbor such ideas]... in the XXI century. There is no basis for any kind of prejudice," said the beautiful young 25 year old.

The organizers of the competition held Monday evening in Sao Paulo gave no immediate comment on the racist attacks by members of Stormfront, who also questioned the "racial purity" of European candidates for the title.

Beautifully said, Leila. Short, sweet and to the point! Bravo!

The Legacy of 9-11 on its Tenth Anniversary

I agree wholeheartedly with Tom Engelhardt:

Let's just can it...
Ask yourself this: ten years into the post-9/11 era, haven't we had enough of ourselves? If we have any respect for history or humanity or decency left, isn’t it time to rip the Band-Aid off the wound, to remove 9/11 from our collective consciousness? No more invocations of those attacks to explain otherwise inexplicable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and our oh-so-global war on terror. No more invocations of 9/11 to keep the Pentagon and the national security state flooded with money. No more invocations of 9/11 to justify every encroachment on liberty, every new step in the surveillance of Americans, every advance in pat-downs and wand-downs and strip downs that keeps fear high and the homeland security state afloat.

I have expressed myself already on the handling of the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9-11, so there is no need to revisit that. If we must remember something on this day, it should be the following:

It's hardly controversial to suggest that the mainstream media's performance in the lead-up to the Iraq War was a disaster. In retrospect, many journalists and pundits wish they had been more skeptical of the White House's claims about Iraq, particularly its allegations about weapons of mass destruction. At the same time, though, media apologists suggest that the press could not have done much better, since "everyone" was in agreement on the intelligence regarding Iraq's weapons threat. This was never the case. Critical journalists and analysts raised serious questions at the time about what the White House was saying. Often, however, their warnings were ignored by the bulk of the corporate press.

This timeline is an attempt to recall some of the worst moments in journalism, from the fall of 2002 and into the early weeks of the Iraq War. It is not an exhaustive catalog, but a useful reference point for understanding the media's performance. The timeline also points to missed opportunities, when courageous journalists—working inside the mainstream and the alternative media—uncovered stories that should have made the front pages of daily newspapers, or provided fodder for TV talk shows. By reading mainstream media critically and tuning into the alternative press, citizens can see that the notion that "everyone" was wrong about Iraq was—and is—just another deception.

Hypocrisy

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Earl Neal Creque

The final months of the year 2000 were devastating for the West Indian side my family. In October, I lost my mother while in December I lost the last two of my uncles on my mother's side of the family: Marvin and Neal. Uncle Neal passed away around December 1 and it is him I want to remember with this post.

My uncle was born Earl Neal Creque on April 13, 1940, in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, the last of eight children born to my grandfather (Cyril Creque) and grandmother (Leonie Sewer). He began taking piano lessons at age five and from around nine to sixteen years of age he studied classical piano with Edris Stakemann. Since a biographical sketch of Neal can be accessed on-line, I will not reproduce what is already available. I just want to add that my Uncle Neal was a prolific composer, having reportedly composed over 3,000 compositions (not all of them Jazz), and a teacher, having been on the faculty of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and Cleveland State University. Although he didn't leave an extensive legacy of commercial recordings, his compositions have been widely appreciated (and recorded) by top-caliber musicians that knew him, from Mongo Santamaria to Ramsey Lewis, among many others.

What I want to do is commit to writing some scattered memories of my own and combine them with an interview my Uncle Neal granted to the Cleveland Plain Dealer late in his career. First, a bit of personal background is in order. I have a vivid recollection of my Uncle Marvin and Aunt Marilyn's household (whose entire family I grew up with, you could say, since I visited them with regularity from my early childhood days). The house was filled with music (both live and recorded Jazz Music*), given that instruments were always available, which fellow musician friends of my uncle would stop by to play at any hour of the day or night. My Uncle Marvin had learned piano and could belt out a tune from memory although he never pursued a career in music. In fact, the Marvin Creque household had garnered a reputation throughout Charlotte Amalie as a sort of impromptu Jazz studio. Those were joyous days for me and, while I did not recognize it at the moment, they would have a profound impact on me later in life. Hence from my early days, I came to "absorb" Jazz (by osmosis, if you will) and associate it with my Uncle Marvin, though I was only able to fully appreciate the genre later in life.

Although all my mother's siblings were musically trained at some points in their lives, the only one (other than herself) to have made a career out of music was my Uncle Neal. While I had met Uncle Neal during my childhood, it wasn't until I went to Oberlin College (from 1977 to 1981) that I got to know and appreciate his talent as a Jazz musician. It was also during that period that I was finally able to fully appreciate the genre of Jazz, to the extent that I consider it my first love above all other musical genres. Uncle Neal, at the time, was firmly established in nearby Cleveland and I (of course) took advantage of the proximity to visit him on occasion.

It was at my insistence (I believe), that Uncle Neal came to Oberlin for the first time. During my student days, there was a cultural activity of sorts being organized by the Black Students Association on campus for which students were asked to suggest artists. I jumped at the idea of having Uncle Neal play since by then I had come to love his music and, with him being in the vicinity, it wouldn't cost much to bring him. He brought a trio and wowed the students, but it wasn't until after I graduated that I learned that he had returned to Oberlin and eventually gotten a faculty appointment at the Jazz studies Department of the famed Oberlin Conservatory. I was so proud for him and for many years thought I had somehow managed to facilitate that job opportunity by inviting him to Oberlin during my student years. Ironically, I had bragged for many a year that my crowning achievement in Oberlin wasn't the fact that I obtained my bachelor's degree, but that I had unsuspectingly hooked Uncle Neal up with the prestigious conservatory of music!). I learned, shortly before his death that it was actually the Director Wendell Logan of the Oberlin Jazz Studies Department that had witnessed Neal (on another occasion) and beckoned him to (eventually) come to Oberlin.

Regardless of how he arrived at Oberlin, we were all so happy for him because it got him off the Jazz clubbing circuit. It is truly heartbreaking to witness the tragic history of many of Jazz's finest musicians and composers, who unable to make much money, are forced to constantly be on the road seeking gigs at (often seedy) night clubs, a lifestyle that leads to early burn-out in their careers and often to an early death. While most musicians don't have it good, the Jazz musician's lot in particular is terrible (although it has changed for the better in recent years). Hence, the steady job afforded Uncle Neal the opportunity to give loose reign to his creative powers without the economic knife at his throat. He also relished the opportunity to teach and was able to go back to one of his great loves - classical composition.

Uncle Neal expressed his outlook in an interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer - He devotes more and more time to teaching at Oberlin College and Cleveland State University and writing classical music. What he tries to convey in his music, Creque says, "is the hope that the kids coming up in music respect the educational system that is afforded them today. A lot of things that are available to them, if they had been present years ago, no telling how far Jazz might have advanced. You can be studying at Oberlin and the talent can come in from all over the country to perform," he says. (…) As for the clubs, Creque doesn't miss them. "I think my interests have grown in a different direction", he says. "My original love was classical music and I'm back to that. Between performing and composing classical works and teaching, you get a chance to see an extension of yourself in terms of the student. When you see what you have accomplished, and pass some of that on, it's a marvelous thing."

Footnote and a requiem: My Uncle Marvin, more than any of us, loved Uncle Neal, perhaps because he saw in him the realization of what he had always wanted to do. We used to anguish over Uncle Neal's aversion to the recording studio. Despite being a prolific composer, Uncle Neal only left a handful of commercial recordings and most of these were made early in his career (which is one reason he is not well known on the Jazz circuit).

Neal did keep us readily supplied, however, with tape recordings of his concerts as well as some studio quality recordings. This would sometimes frustrate us even more because we (especially Uncle Marvin) would listen to these fantastic recordings and lament that they were not available on the commercial market (thus garnering him wider recognition). In an effort at garnering him wider recognition, I once even contacted the host Marian MacPartland of the popular radio program Piano Jazz to try to get him on the show, only to be told (after I mailed up a selection of his recordings) that a prerequisite for being invited to the show was that the artist have made a recent commercial recording. Shortly thereafter, we all learned that Uncle Neal had contracted cancer and I was (we all were) devastated.

I make no joke when I say that Uncle Neal is my favorite musician. I would say so even if he were no relative of mine. The fact that he was related to me was a source of immense pride and joy beyond description. I cherish the tapes and videos he diligently sent us over the years and preserve the copies of the classical pieces he composed late in his career, copies of which he had sent my mother. As a tribute, view the YouTube of Uncle Neal and Howie Smith playing Neal's composition "Slightly Monkish". I have a particular love for this piece because, aside from being a tribute to the all-time great Jazz icon (and favorite of mine!) Thelonious Monk, it has the calypso rhythm of our West Indian heritage in the Virgin Islands. God Bless You Uncle Neal.

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Here Comes your Non-Violent Resistance

A defining moment for all parties involved:

"FOR many years now, we've heard American commentators bemoan the violence of the Palestinian national movement. If only Palestinians had learned the lessons of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, we hear, they'd have had their state long ago. Surely no Israeli government would have violently suppressed a non-violent Palestinian movement of national liberation seeking only the universally recognised right of self-determination...So now we have an opportunity to see how Americans will react. We've asked the Palestinians to lay down their arms. We've told them their lack of a state is their own fault; if only they would embrace non-violence, a reasonable and unprejudiced world would see the merit of their claims. Over the weekend, tens of thousands of them did just that, and it seems likely to continue. If crowds of tens of thousands of non-violent Palestinian protesters continue to march, and if Israel continues to shoot at them, what will we do? Will we make good on our rhetoric, and press Israel to give them their state? Or will it turn out that our paeans to non-violence were just cynical tactics in an amoral international power contest staged by militaristic Israeli and American right-wing groups whose elective affinities lead them to shape a common narrative of the alien Arab/Muslim threat? Will we even bother to acknowledge that the Palestinians are protesting non-violently? Or will we soldier on with the same empty decades-old rhetoric, now drained of any truth or meaning, because it protects established relationships of power? What will it take to make Americans recognise that the real Martin Luther King-style non-violent Palestinian protesters have arrived, and that Israeli soldiers are shooting them with real bullets?"

Fukushima Nuclear Disaster- You won't hear this on the Main Stream News.

Obama Is Helping Iran

Most people I know are having difficulties figuring out what is happening in the Middle East and why. This is understandable, given the Western (and especially US) mainstream media's tendency to hand out the propaganda that Washington wants deployed precisely for domestic consumption. Hence, I feel compelled to highlight the following article by authors Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett. Flynt Leverett, who is about my age, is no light-weight. He:

...is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. and a professor at the Pennsylvania State University School of International Affairs. From March 2002 to March 2003, he served as the senior director for Middle East affairs on the National Security Council. Prior to serving on the NSC, he was a counterterrorism expert on the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, and before that he served as a CIA senior analyst for eight years. Since leaving government service, Leverett served as a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy before becoming the director of the Geopolitics of Energy Initiative in the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation.

So, if you would like some insight about the Middle East and what is happening and likely to continue happening there, then do yourself a favor and read his article in Foreign Policy. Here are some excerpts:

On Obama's watch, the regional balance of influence and power has shifted even further away from the United States and toward Iran and its allies. The Islamic Republic has continued to deepen its alliances with Syria and Turkey and expand its influence in Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine. Public opinion polls, for example, continue to show that the key leaders in the Middle East's resistance bloc -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syrian President Bashar Assad, Lebanon's Hassan Nasrallah, Hamas's Khaled Mishaal, and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan -- are all vastly more popular across the region than their counterparts in closely U.S.-aligned and supported regimes in Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, and Saudi Arabia.
(...)
From literally the day after Iran's 2009 presidential election, we pointed out that the Green Movement could not succeed in bringing down the Islamic Republic, for two basic reasons: The movement did not represent anything close to a majority of Iranian society, and a majority of Iranians still support the idea of an Islamic Republic. Two additional factors are in play today, which make it even less likely that those who organized and participated in scattered demonstrations in Iran over the past week will be able to catalyze "regime change" there.
(...)

Go to the original article at Foreign Policy to discover what those "two additional factors" are. For further antidotes to the US mainstream media, I recommend Juan Cole and The Arabist.