Islam is at the heart of an emerging global anti-hegemonic culture that combines diasporic and local cultural elements, and blends Arab, Islamic, black and Hispanic factors to generate "a revolutionary black, Asian and Hispanic globalization, with its own dynamic counter-modernity constructed in order to fight global imperialism. (say what!)
Thanks to Netflix I finally finished seeing the second season of Sleeper Cell (definitely less engaging and realistic than the first). The first season was kept going by the conflicting challenges faced by the protagonist (Darwyn) to do his job as an FBI agent and to hold on to his integrity as a Muslim all while not blowing his cover. In the second season, Darwyn's faith was de-emphasized and the pressure to maintain his cover was less intense (since he had established his credibility as a terrorist in the first season). So now, after simply doing his job, Darwyn seems primarily motivated by his affection for the two (white) women in his life, his handler and his girlfriend. As I said before, Traitor was a lot more interesting to watch.
Before I start this poem, I'd like to ask you to join me In a moment of silence In honour of those who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last September 11th. I would also like to ask you To offer up a moment of silence For all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned, disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes, For the victims in both Afghanistan and the US
And if I could just add one more thing...
A full day of silence For the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the hands of US-backed Israeli forces over decades of occupation. Six months of silence for the million and-a-half Iraqi people, mostly children, who have died of malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 11-year US embargo against the country.
Before I begin this poem,
Two months of silence for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa, Where homeland security made them aliens in their own country. Nine months of silence for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Where death rained down and peeled back every layer of concrete, steel, earth and skin And the survivors went on as if alive. A year of silence for the millions of dead in Vietnam - a people, not a war - for those who know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their relatives' bones buried in it, their babies born of it. A year of silence for the dead in Cambodia and Laos, victims of a secret war .... ssssshhhhh.... Say nothing ... we don't want them to learn that they are dead. Two months of silence for the decades of dead in Colombia, Whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have piled up and slipped off our tongues.
Before I begin this poem.
An hour of silence for El Salvador ... An afternoon of silence for Nicaragua ... Two days of silence for the Guatemaltecos ... None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years. 45 seconds of silence for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas 25 years of silence for the hundred million Africans who found their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could poke into the sky. There will be no DNA testing or dental records to identify their remains. And for those who were strung and swung from the heights of sycamore trees in the south, the north, the east, and the west...
100 years of silence...
For the hundreds of millions of indigenous peoples from this half of right here, Whose land and lives were stolen, In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears. Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the refrigerator of our consciousness ...
So you want a moment of silence? And we are all left speechless Our tongues snatched from our mouths Our eyes stapled shut A moment of silence And the poets have all been laid to rest The drums disintegrating into dust.
Before I begin this poem, You want a moment of silence You mourn now as if the world will never be the same And the rest of us hope to hell it won't be. Not like it always has been.
Because this is not a 9/11 poem. This is a 9/10 poem, It is a 9/9 poem, A 9/8 poem, A 9/7 poem This is a 1492 poem.
This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written. And if this is a 9/11 poem, then: This is a September 11th poem for Chile, 1971. This is a September 12th poem for Steven Biko in South Africa, 1977. This is a September 13th poem for the brothers at Attica Prison, New York, 1971.
This is a September 14th poem for Somalia, 1992.
This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground in ashes This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told The 110 stories that history chose not to write in textbooks The 110 stories that CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and Newsweek ignored. This is a poem for interrupting this program.
And still you want a moment of silence for your dead? We could give you lifetimes of empty: The unmarked graves The lost languages The uprooted trees and histories The dead stares on the faces of nameless children Before I start this poem we could be silent forever Or just long enough to hunger, For the dust to bury us And you would still ask us For more of our silence.
If you want a moment of silence Then stop the oil pumps Turn off the engines and the televisions Sink the cruise ships Crash the stock markets Unplug the marquee lights, Delete the instant messages, Derail the trains, the light rail transit.
If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window of Taco Bell, And pay the workers for wages lost. Tear down the liquor stores, The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the Penthouses and the Playboys.
If you want a moment of silence, Then take it On Super Bowl Sunday, The Fourth of July During Dayton's 13 hour sale Or the next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful people have gathered.
You want a moment of silence Then take it NOW, Before this poem begins. Here, in the echo of my voice, In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand, In the space between bodies in embrace, Here is your silence. Take it. But take it all... Don't cut in line. Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime. But we, Tonight we will keep right on singing... For our dead.
Here's one of my favorite 9/11 poems. I've posted links to the text before but they have since expired. Here is a clip of an actual performance. To be honest, when I read the poem I imagine a more lively delivery in my head, but it is still powerful to see Suheir Hammad recite her own work. Here is "first writing since".
Associated Press: W.D. Mohammed dies; son of Nation of Islam founder 12 hours ago
CHICAGO (AP) — A nephew says Imam W.D. Mohammed, the son of Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad, has died.
Sultan Muhammad says his uncle died Tuesday. He didn't immediately give further details but says the family will issue a statement.
W.D. Mohammed moved thousands of blacks into mainstream Islam after breaking with the group his father founded. He went by both Warith Deen Mohammed and Wallace Muhammad.
The Cook County Medical Examiner confirmed receiving the body of a 74-year-old Wallace Mohammed.
I caught part of the Republican Convention on Tuesday night and it reminded me of an old Boondocks strip:
Caesar [holding a newspaper]: Joe Lieberman say's he's the only Democrat who could beat George Bush. Huey: He's right - wait - did he say "beat" or "be"? Caesar: Beat. Huey: Oh, never mind. He's crazy
So today for the third week in a row I've unsuccessfully tried to see the local production of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. (Once it was due to a misunderstanding about the date, but the other two times the show was canceled altogether). (Unfortunately today was the last potential show so I'm basically out of luck for now... maybe later on I'll write a reflection piece on the position of Judas in Islam)
Instead, this afternoon I went to a multiplex to catch Don Cheadle in Traitor. I don't want to give any spoilers but I will say that I mostly enjoyed the movie. In fact, except for the swearing and a few other bits, I might even recommend it as a great movie for Muslims to see in Ramadan. In many respects it covered some of the same ground as the television series Sleeper Cell... although Don Cheadle's performance was far superior to Michael Ealy's, and the other terrorist characters in Traitor (at least, those with lines) were more realistic and less cartoonish than those in Sleeper Cell.
Given the current political situation, I suspect that we have seen neither the last nor the best of such stories in tv and film. In fact, I think it would be amazing to see a film along the lines of No Way Out which had an African-American Muslim central character whose ultimate agenda wasn't as clear as the protagonists in the previous examples.
Wow, I don't feel ready. It will either start tomorrow or the day after. I think I need to do some thoughtful grocery shopping tonight along with some spiritual inventory-taking.
I should say that I still definitely plan on voting for Obama and I think that some of Heru's criticisms are a bit misdirected. On the other hand, I often think that the United States would be better off with with a parliament so that other voices (for example, like those represented by Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente) could have a voice in the government.
At the same time, it is a bit unclear to me how things would shake out after all the political dust settled under a parliament: There would be Greens and Socialists but there would also be Libertarians. The Democratic Party might clarify its status as a center-left labor party. But then Republicans would probably break-up into an economic and a social conservative group. And you'd also see a more vocal (possibly separate) role for anti-immigrant voices, the hawks, the theocrats and others. More later?
I don't believe that all those "Clinton supporters" are really defecting over to McCain... some of those have to be Republicans who are just trying to mess with the polls. After all, why wouldn't the angry progressive left-of-center women (other than Rosanne) go over to Cynthia McKinney & Rosa Clemente?
Shoot, if Hillary had gotten the nomination and I didn't feel cool about how it went down and I lived in a "safe" state, I would totally vote for them. An African-American woman for prez with an Afro-Latina for VP running on a totally progressive platform?
I just added a number of posts to Third Resurrection which you might like to check out (including the one below) and I'll probably put a few more up in a couple of days.
I recently discovered the blog Fire of Ashk which posted a clip of some Naqshbandi followers of Shaykh Nazim doing dhikr in a circle, where one excited brother starts to breakdance:
You may have heard of Jerome Corsi's Obama Nation which represent's his attempt to "Swiftboat" the Democratic presidential candidate. If so you might also be interested in checking out the pdf of Unfit for Publication which is a point-by-point rebuttal of many of the dishonest claims in Corsi's work. Corsi himself seems to be a pretty foul kind of bigot who compares Islam to a virus and makes a number of negative comments about "rag heads" and Catholics.
With the help of Netflix and the bargain bin at Blockbuster I've finally finished seeing the George Romero zombie oeuvre (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead plus their remakes, along with the more recent Land of the Dead and Diary of the Dead).
In my opinion, the remake of Night of the Living Dead is the best of the lot, followed by Diary of the Dead. I think the original versions of Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead were better than their remakes. (The social commentary is more effectively delivered and I prefer the original "slow zombies" to the new "fast zombies").
Land of the Dead is somewhere in between. To be honest, it was a bit disappointing but mainly because I had hyped it up in my mind (it was the last Romero movie I had left to see and it was a bit hard to find) but still, it was an interesting allegory of the Bush administration (at least that was Romero's stated intention) and in some ways, quite Grenada-esque.
John Edwards isn't running for president and currently does not hold any public office while the media seems to be paying a lot of attention to this whole John Edwards adultery story (either that or I'm watching too much FOX) On the other hand, John McCain is running for president and does currently hold public office and yet there seems to be very little discussion of the character questions raised by McCain's treatment of his first wife.
And then on top of that you have Cindy McCain's own issues... I don't mean her drug addiction (which is basically a medical question) but stealing drugs from her own charity in order to get satisfy that addiction is a serious ethical lapse.
... but with all the news reports about Russia attacking Georgia, has anyone else been thinking about renting Red Dawn at the videostore? While we are on the subject, does anyone else remember the mini-series Amerika?
McCain: This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.
I was just thinking about this statement the other day. Even if we grant that McCain is willing to adopt unpopular stances regarding the Iraq Waq it definitely doesn't follow that he is making objective decisions based only on what is best for the United States. McCain is also a Vietnam veteran with a son currently in Iraq. So his emotional investment in the conflict is certainly sufficient to explain some of his positions as well.
1. After Obama'sFISA vote I'm finally starting to wish that McKinney had a chance of winning this election. Obama's still my choice but his vote took some of the shine off. Before this I basically viewed him as someone whose ideals I strongly agreed with, but who occasionally had to make some difficult pragmatic compromises with current political reality in order to get elected. Now I'm slightly less certain of where his real convictions lie.
2. This mantra that "the surge worked" seems really silly to me. From the perspective of anyone who opposed the Iraq War on philosophical or ideological grounds (e.g. because they are pacifists, because the conflict didn't satisfy their particular conditions for a just war, because they don't believe the US should be an empire, etc.) the surge's "success" just demonstrates our own technical proficiency in doing the wrong thing. It's like complimenting the DC sniper for his marksmanship.
I've previously mentioned Anida Yeou Esguerra on Planet Grenada (see the day after and anida esguerra. And also check out atomicshotgun.com). Here is a spoken word piece, "Morning Papers" from Marlon Unas Esguerra on Def Poetry Jam. I don't know about specific theologies but it is my understanding that both identify as Asian American and Muslim spoken word artists.
And, if you are in a time-and-zombie-killing mood, you might want to check out Sean T. Cooper's simple, but entertaining series of free online Boxhead Games.
Also, you may have seen some of the books in Open Court Publishing Company's series on Popular Culture and Philosophy which brings together a group of authors to philosophically unpack the content behind the Harry Potter novels, South Park and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I'm in the middle of checking out The Undead and Philosophy: Chicken Soup for the Soulless. (I'll probably do a review in part two of this blog entry once I'm done)
For some reason zombies and zombie movies have been more on my radar these days. Both Shaun of the Dead and the remake of Romero's Dawn of the Dead were on tv earlier today. And a few weeks back Land of the Dead (starring John Leguizamo) was on. And during the days in between I've been making ample use of the bargain DVD bins at Walmart and Blockbuster in order to further explore the genre.
To begin with, I would argue that George Romero's 1990 remake of his own Night of the Living Dead is actually one of the all-time greatest films (one of my favorites in any case). It is a well-crafted story centering around seven personalities who arrive at a farmhouse while being threatened by zombies all around them. In spite of the small cast (not counting the zombies of course) and minimal setting, Romero manages to pack a surprisingly rich set of interactions and relationships, invoking issues of race, gender, age, family into a story full of suspense, conflict, social commentary and irony.
Most subsequent zombie films are similar in the sense that they explore zombie outbreaks in the confines of a specific (even if large) area such as a shopping mall (Dawn of the Dead), an army base (Day of the Dead), in and around a graveyard/mortuary/medical warehouse (Return of the Living Dead) and an airplane (Flight of the Living Dead... which could have just as easily been called Zombies on a Plane).
An interesting exception is George Romero's Diary of the Dead. The somewhat self-referential movie follows a group of film students and their professor who were working on a horror picture out in the woods when they get news of the zombie outbreak. But since the group has at their disposal a Winnebago full of gasoline and video equipment, the characters are able to travel to different locations and settings sense of the impacts of the zombie phenomena. (a hospital, a militia headquarters, a middle-class home, an upper-class home, etc.) which gives a more varied and global sense of the scope of the zombie problem. In fact, unlike many zombie films which portray localized outbreaks caused by some mysterious virus or chemical spill, in the Diary of the Dead the cause leans more to the theological. The basic rules of life and death seemed to have changed all over the world simultaneously. As one of the characters in another Romero zombie film explains, "When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth." In any case, Diary... contains a bit more social criticism and philosophical reflection than most of the other films in the genre, and I would argue that after Night... it is the second-best zombie film I've ever seen.
