Got a Minute to Read This? Or are you Too Busy??

The ‘Busy’ Trap

By TIM KREIDER

June 30, 2012, 3:15 am — Updated: 2:53 pm

If you live in America in the 21st century you've probably had to listen to a lot of people tell you how busy they are. It's become the default response when you ask anyone how they're doing: "Busy!" "So busy." "Crazy busy." It is, pretty obviously, a boast disguised as a complaint. And the stock response is a kind of congratulation: "That's a good problem to have," or "Better than the opposite."

Notice it isn't generally people pulling back-to-back shifts in the I.C.U. or commuting by bus to three minimum-wage jobs who tell you how busy they are; what those people are is not busy but tired. Exhausted. Dead on their feet. It's almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they've taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they've "encouraged" their kids to participate in. They're busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they're addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence.

Almost everyone I know is busy. They feel anxious and guilty when they aren't either working or doing something to promote their work. They schedule in time with friends the way students with 4.0 G.P.A.'s make sure to sign up for community service because it looks good on their college applications. I recently wrote a friend to ask if he wanted to do something this week, and he answered that he didn't have a lot of time but if something was going on to let him know and maybe he could ditch work for a few hours. I wanted to clarify that my question had not been a preliminary heads-up to some future invitation; this was the invitation. But his busyness was like some vast churning noise through which he was shouting out at me, and I gave up trying to shout back over it.

Even children are busy now, scheduled down to the half-hour with classes and extracurricular activities. They come home at the end of the day as tired as grown-ups. I was a member of the latchkey generation and had three hours of totally unstructured, largely unsupervised time every afternoon, time I used to do everything from surfing the World Book Encyclopedia to making animated films to getting together with friends in the woods to chuck dirt clods directly into one another's eyes, all of which provided me with important skills and insights that remain valuable to this day. Those free hours became the model for how I wanted to live the rest of my life.

The present hysteria is not a necessary or inevitable condition of life; it's something we've chosen, if only by our acquiescence to it. Not long ago I Skyped with a friend who was driven out of the city by high rent and now has an artist's residency in a small town in the south of France. She described herself as happy and relaxed for the first time in years. She still gets her work done, but it doesn't consume her entire day and brain. She says it feels like college - she has a big circle of friends who all go out to the cafe together every night. She has a boyfriend again. (She once ruefully summarized dating in New York: "Everyone's too busy and everyone thinks they can do better.") What she had mistakenly assumed was her personality - driven, cranky, anxious and sad - turned out to be a deformative effect of her environment. It's not as if any of us wants to live like this, any more than any one person wants to be part of a traffic jam or stadium trampling or the hierarchy of cruelty in high school - it's something we collectively force one another to do.

Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day. I once knew a woman who interned at a magazine where she wasn't allowed to take lunch hours out, lest she be urgently needed for some reason. This was an entertainment magazine whose raison d'être was obviated when "menu" buttons appeared on remotes, so it's hard to see this pretense of indispensability as anything other than a form of institutional self-delusion. More and more people in this country no longer make or do anything tangible; if your job wasn't performed by a cat or a boa constrictor in a Richard Scarry book I'm not sure I believe it's necessary. I can't help but wonder whether all this histrionic exhaustion isn't a way of covering up the fact that most of what we do doesn't matter.

I am not busy. I am the laziest ambitious person I know. Like most writers, I feel like a reprobate who does not deserve to live on any day that I do not write, but I also feel that four or five hours is enough to earn my stay on the planet for one more day. On the best ordinary days of my life, I write in the morning, go for a long bike ride and run errands in the afternoon, and in the evening I see friends, read or watch a movie. This, it seems to me, is a sane and pleasant pace for a day. And if you call me up and ask whether I won't maybe blow off work and check out the new American Wing at the Met or ogle girls in Central Park or just drink chilled pink minty cocktails all day long, I will say, what time?

But just in the last few months, I've insidiously started, because of professional obligations, to become busy. For the first time I was able to tell people, with a straight face, that I was "too busy" to do this or that thing they wanted me to do. I could see why people enjoy this complaint; it makes you feel important, sought-after and put-upon. Except that I hate actually being busy. Every morning my in-box was full of e-mails asking me to do things I did not want to do or presenting me with problems that I now had to solve. It got more and more intolerable until finally I fled town to the Undisclosed Location from which I'm writing this.

Here I am largely unmolested by obligations. There is no TV. To check e-mail I have to drive to the library. I go a week at a time without seeing anyone I know. I've remembered about buttercups, stink bugs and the stars. I read. And I'm finally getting some real writing done for the first time in months. It's hard to find anything to say about life without immersing yourself in the world, but it's also just about impossible to figure out what it might be, or how best to say it, without getting the hell out of it again.

Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration - it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done. "Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do," wrote Thomas Pynchon in his essay on sloth. Archimedes' "Eureka" in the bath, Newton's apple, Jekyll & Hyde and the benzene ring: history is full of stories of inspirations that come in idle moments and dreams. It almost makes you wonder whether loafers, goldbricks and no-accounts aren't responsible for more of the world's great ideas, inventions and masterpieces than the hardworking.

"The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That's why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system." This may sound like the pronouncement of some bong-smoking anarchist, but it was actually Arthur C. Clarke, who found time between scuba diving and pinball games to write "Childhood's End" and think up communications satellites. My old colleague Ted Rall recently wrote a column proposing that we divorce income from work and give each citizen a guaranteed paycheck, which sounds like the kind of lunatic notion that'll be considered a basic human right in about a century, like abolition, universal suffrage and eight-hour workdays. The Puritans turned work into a virtue, evidently forgetting that God invented it as a punishment.

Perhaps the world would soon slide to ruin if everyone behaved as I do. But I would suggest that an ideal human life lies somewhere between my own defiant indolence and the rest of the world's endless frenetic hustle. My role is just to be a bad influence, the kid standing outside the classroom window making faces at you at your desk, urging you to just this once make some excuse and get out of there, come outside and play. My own resolute idleness has mostly been a luxury rather than a virtue, but I did make a conscious decision, a long time ago, to choose time over money, since I've always understood that the best investment of my limited time on earth was to spend it with people I love. I suppose it's possible I'll lie on my deathbed regretting that I didn't work harder and say everything I had to say, but I think what I'll really wish is that I could have one more beer with Chris, another long talk with Megan, one last good hard laugh with Boyd. Life is too short to be busy.

(Anxiety welcomes submissions at anxiety@nytimes.com.)
Tim Kreider is the author of "We Learn Nothing," a collection of essays and cartoons. His cartoon, "The Pain - When Will It End?" has been collected in three books by Fantagraphics.

Kenyan Authorities to Arrest Lion Killers

Kenyan Wildlife Service (KWS) spokesman Paul Mbugua speaks to journalists in Nairobi, Kenya, Friday, June 22, 2012. Maasai warriors who speared to death six lions in the outskirts of Nairobi will be arrested because they did it to satisfy a cultural tradition that ranks killing a lion with a spear as one of the highest honors a man can achieve, Mbugua said Friday.

Photo: Khalil Senosi / AP

BY TOM ODULA Associated Press News Fuze
Updated Friday June 22, 2012

NAIROBI, Kenya—Maasai warriors who speared to death six lions in the outskirts of Nairobi will be arrested for killing wildlife, which is a crime in Kenya, an official said Friday.

The warriors killed the lions to satisfy a cultural tradition that ranks killing a lion with a spear as one of the highest honors a man can achieve, said Paul Mbugua, a spokesman with Kenya's wildlife authority, the Kenya Wildlife Service. After the warriors killed the lions they cut off the end of their tails to keep as trophies of their achievement, said Mbugua.

The Maasai of Ilkeek-Lemedung'I village—a collection of mud, stone and iron-sheeting homes 40 kilometers (25 miles) outside Nairobi near edges of Nairobi National Park —said Wednesday they grew tired of waiting for veterinarians to arrive while the lions devoured their goats, a precious commodity in their community.

Mbugua said the warriors did not heed calls by rangers to wait for vets to tranquilize the lions. Two adult lionesses, two younger lions and two cubs were then killed.

"We are reviewing footage and pictures from the killing to identify who did it. Even the perpetrators of the heinous act know that they have done wrong and have taken to their heels," Mbugua said.

According to U.S.-based Maasai Association, a group trying to preserve Maasai culture, lion hunting is a sign of bravery and personal achievement but hunting a female lion is prohibited unless she has posed a threat to humans or livestock. The association's website says that when the lion population was high, the community encouraged solo lion hunting.

Early Friday, one male lion killed a donkey a few miles (kilometers) from where the goats were killed, said Michael Mbithi of the conservation group Friends of Nairobi National Park. Kenya Wildlife Service rangers prevented members of the community from killing the lion in retaliation.

As Nairobi continues to grow, small towns on its outskirts are cropping up and expanding, in part fuelled by the demand for low-cost housing from the city's working class.

As Nairobi enjoys a boom in apartment and road construction, an expanding population center is putting heavy pressure on the animals, especially big cats. Nairobi National Park is the only wildlife park in the world that lies in a country's capital.

Killing lions is a crime in Kenya, but those who lose livestock to big cats frequently retaliate. About 100 lions are killed each year, and the country's lion population has dropped to about 2,000. Lions, especially ones who leave Nairobi National Park, which is not completely fenced in, are at risk. After Wednesday's killings, the park had 37 left, Kenya Wildlife Service estimates.

Black Folks - Ya'll ain't even thought about in this~ WHITE WORKING CHAOS

Where do you see yourself in the America that is taking shape out of the current resources and collective consciousness that will make the future?

You might have gotten jubilant, shoutin' and singing Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come" when Obama got elected. So how are you feeling now? The past couple of years have been a good example of how silly it is to make judgements based only on appearances. The need to sharpen one's ability to see more clearly beneathe the surface of social and political games has never been more critical.

Clarity and strength was the message I received from a hexagram of a recent IChing reading. I know how to interpret that message for my life. How about how it might apply to your Dear Life?

Be sure you are able to identify old negative paradigms arising again. Whether they are your own negative thoughts and habits, or something you experience in your external environment, inwardly say, "No" to these. Now is the time to pay attention to your inner guidance, in order that from a position of solid conviction and confidence, you can take the right actions so that YOUR Life thrives, as it has always been meant to do. Here's some information to integrate in your understanding.

I'm also attaching links to two other stories that I feel tie in with this issue. And that is the issue of how America is changing, and basically, what this will mean for white people unable to shed their notions of white supremacy operating at some levels in their lives.

never forget to say I
lovu,
Kentke



The Untold Future of American Politics
By ZOLTAN HAJNAL and TAEKU LEE
June 4, 2012, 10:05 pm — Updated: 9:04 am -->68 Comments
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/04/the-untold-future-of-american-politics/?nl=opinion&emc=edit_ty_20120605

Hello, Heterogeneity
By THOMAS B. EDSALL
June 4, 2012, 12:05 am — Updated: 1:12 pm -->182 Comments
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/04/hello-heterogeneity/

White Working Chaos

June 25, 2012, 12:13 am

Sorry that the graphs did not copy over to my blog, so Click here for the article where you can see the four graphs that illustrate the statistics presented here. But more important, skim through the Comments of NY Times readers at the article's end. They are most interesting:


http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/white-working-chaos/


By THOMAS B. EDSALL
122 Comments

Political analysts, journalists and academics are fighting over white working-class voters – over how to define them and what their political significance is. Part of the reason for the furious tone of the argument is that this is an issue of central importance in American politics. And it’s not just crucial for the presidential election: understanding what the white working class is and where it is going is fundamental if we want to understand where the country is going.

One side of the argument contends that the Democratic coalition retains much of its low-to-middle-income white working-class core. The other side argues that this alliance has been fractured by the defection of working-class whites and that the traditional Democratic coalition is permanently gone.

Part of the problem is that different people mean different things when they are talking about the working class. Is this cohort made up of those without college degrees; those in the bottom third of the income distribution; or those in occupations described by the federal government as “blue-collar”? (The government’s list of blue-collar jobs includes “heavy mobile equipment mechanic,” “pipefitter,” “welder” and “food service” workers.)

Whites without college degrees have been steadily shrinking as a percentage of the electorate, but they remain a very substantial block: in 2008, they made up 39 percent of all voters
The current outbreak of hostilities within an all-star team of academics over the political allegiance of the white working class and even the definition of the white working class began with the publication on June 5 of an essay in the left-leaning British newspaper, The Guardian, “Why Working-class People Vote Conservative,” by Jonathan Haidt, author of “The Righteous Mind” and a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

Unfortunately, as Haidt quickly acknowledged, he made the “careless mistake” of failing to specify that he “was talking only about the WHITE working-class.”

Before Haidt posted his correction, Andrew Gelman, a professor of statistics and political science at Columbia University, posted a critique of Haidt on June 8 on Monkey Cage, a forum for politically-inclined academics. Gelman’s piece was titled, “Lamentably ignorant psychology researcher spews political platitudes without realizing that he’s trying to explain a phenomenon that does not exist.” Gelman included a link to his own blog with the intriguing headline, “Stop me before I aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.”

Gelman pointed out that:
Ronald Reagan did about 20 percentage points better among voters in the upper third of income, compared to voters in the lower third. The relation between income and voting since 1980 is about the same as it was in the 1940s.

Gelman defines “working-class” as those in the bottom third of the income distribution. He is also including all races and ethnicities and not focusing on whites. This will prove important in the debate.

On June 17 Haidt amended his argument to refer specifically to white working-class voters. He broke white voters into four categories: those without college degrees who were working; those without degrees who were not working; those with college degrees and a job; and those with degrees but without a job.

Tracking Democratic and Republican self-identification among these four groups of whites, using findings from the American National Election Studies surveys conducted over four decades beginning in the 1970s, Haidt concentrated his attention specifically on employed whites without college degrees.

As a way of defining the white working-class, this category — whites without college who are working — has the advantage of eliminating students, the retired, those unable to work because of disability and those on welfare. The disadvantages of this definition include the failure to count unemployed blue-collar workers, who are certainly working-class, and the inclusion of highly successful businessmen who do not have college degrees. Bill Gates, for example, would be included in this category.

Nonetheless, Haidt’s results are striking. Democratic self-identification among employed whites without degrees (the red line) nosedives from roughly 37 percent to 25 percent over four decades.

Republican self-identification over the same period, among these same voters, grows from roughly 21 percent in the 1970s to 30 percent in the 2000s:
Courtesy of Jonathan Haidt
After Haidt posted his amended analysis, Larry Bartels, a political scientist at Vanderbilt, weighed in on the debate, posting an essay on Monkey Cage on June 17 called “The Party of the American Working Man and Woman.”

“How did a nice psychologist like Haidt wander into this minefield?” Bartels asked:
Ah, the white working-class, yet again. I wish some psychologist would study why this particular topic generates so much interest and emotion. Perhaps it has something to do with the resonance of the term ‘working-class’ — and with the flexibility of that term in successive iterations of the debate.

Bartels went on to raise a key question: is the white working-class defection limited to the South, and primarily an issue of race, or is the defection national in scope, involving the broader social, cultural, and moral revolutions of the past 50 years.

Bartels produced the following graphic to argue that the defection is entirely southern:

"While southern working whites without college degrees have become more Republican in their presidential voting behavior (by 4.5% per decade), non-southern working whites without college degrees have become more Democratic (by 1.6% per decade),” Bartels wrote.
Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist from Emory University who has written extensively about the changing composition of the two parties, countered Bartels in an e-mail to participants in the debate:

My view is that the single best indicator of ‘working-class’ status is occupation—white-collar vs. blue-collar. This excludes non-working respondents. And when you look at northern whites over time there is a very clear pattern — there has been a sharp decline in Democratic identification among blue-collar whites while Democratic identification among white-collar whites has remained stable.

A similar trend is evident when it comes to House voting. When it comes to presidential voting, there is a lot of year to year variation, but blue-collar whites used to be much more Democratic than white-collar whites. Recently, however, they have voted almost identically.

Abramowitz produced the following two charts to show that the sharp movement away from the Democratic Party by white working-class voters occurred in the North as well as the South.
First, by party identification:
Party Identification by DecadeNorthern Whites Blue-collar (green line) White-collar (blue line)
Courtesy of Alan Abramowitz
Second, in actual voting:
House VoteNorthern Whites
Courtesy of Alan Abramowitz

Enter Sam Best, of the University of Connecticut, and Brian Krueger, of the University of Rhode Island, political scientists who work with election day exit polls conducted by television networks and cable news stations. Best and Krueger provided exit poll evidence to The Times supporting the argument made by Abramowitz that white working class support for the Democratic Party declined across the board, but that it declined at a much sharper rate in the South than in the North. They show that in two election years, 1984, with Reagan at the top of the ticket, and in 1994, when Newt Gingrich loyalists gave the Republican party control of the House for the first time in 40 years, that Democratic House candidates took a beating in both the North and South.

In the South, Democratic House candidates in 1984 lost the white non-college vote by 39.7 – 60.3, and by 35.6 – 64.4 in 1994. In the North, Midwest and West, the white non-college vote for Democratic House candidates was just 44 – 56 in 1984, and fell to 40.8 – 59.2 in 1994. Since 1994, according to the Best- Krueger data, Democrats have not been able to break 50 percent with either group, losing northern non-college whites by an average of 46.9 – 53.1 and southern non-college whites by 34.4 – 65.6.

Although this is an intra-academic dispute, the stakes are high. Differing stands determine competing interpretations of the past 40 years of American politics, conflicting analyses of the 2012 election, and alternative projections of the near-term future of American politics.
White working class voting trends are obviously of vital interest to key players in this November’s election. Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, noted that last year Obama’s already weak support among non-college whites was dropping. “Working-class white voters were a Republican opportunity,” Garin said in an interview with The Times.

In 2010 – the year of a decisive Democratic rout — non-college whites, North and South, cast only 33 percent of their ballots for House Democratic candidates, the lowest level in exit poll history.

With that constituency ready and waiting, “Republicans this year picked their worst possible candidate,” Garin argues, contending that Romney’s wealth and background provoke animosity to Republican elites among white working-class voters, partially counterbalancing the hostility of many of these voters to President Obama.

William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, published a study last month assuming three different scenarios for turnout and voting margins among whites and minorities in the upcoming November election.

In the first of Frey’s scenarios, 2012 will replicate the turnout and voting patterns of 2008 among both whites and minorities. “If that occurs, Obama wins with 29 states and 358 electoral votes,” Frey writes.

The second Frey scenario provides that both white and black turnout and voting patterns of 2004 are repeated in 2012. Under this Frey scenario, Romney beats Obama with 286 electoral votes in 30 states.

The third Frey scenario calls for white turnout and voting patterns to replicate those of 2004, and for minority turnout and voting patterns to replicate 2008 — “something closer to what this year’s election promises – strong partisan participation by both whites and minorities.” In this case, Frey writes, “results favor an Obama win – but barely.”

According to Frey’s third scenario, “Obama squeaks by with 292 electoral votes spread among 24 states,” but his victory depends on winning by very slim margins in four key states — Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Oregon — which together have 66 electoral college votes, far more than enough to tip the contest to Romney if they go the other way.

Frey’s analysis demonstrates a crucial fact about current presidential politics: that white voters (76 percent) and minorities (24 percent), despite making up vastly different percentages of the electorate, are both key to the outcome. Little shifts in behavior in either group matter.

In an e-mail to The Times, Bartels described the strategic choices facing both campaigns:
If the Democratic Party can do something to win one more non-college white vote, without alienating anyone else, it is exactly one vote closer to winning. If it can do something to win one more college white vote, or Latino vote, or Asian vote, without alienating anyone else, it is exactly one vote closer to winning. If it wins one more non-college white vote and loses one college white vote, or Latino vote, or Asian vote in the process, it is not any closer to winning.

The interesting strategic questions have entirely to do with the marginal shifts in vote probabilities produced in different groups by different sorts of appeals, and their collateral political costs (whether alienation or opportunity costs).

In other words, the white electorate remains central to the strategic choices of both the Romney and Obama campaigns, but so does every other significant slice of the population.



Thomas B. Edsall, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, is the author of the book “The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics,” which was published in January.

The First Family: A New Glimpse of Michelle Obama’s White Ancestors

Henry Wells Shields is the man with the white beard. His wife, Christian Patterson Shields, sits to his right. Charles Marion Shields is the third man standing from the right.
Courtesy of Jarrod Shields, in honor of Melvin Shields

New York Times
Friday, June 22, 2012

We knew that the Sunday article (noted below) about Mrs. Obama’s white ancestors would stir considerable interest so we decided to invite readers to pose questions and make comments. We never imagined that one of those readers would provide us with the first glimpse of two key figures in the first lady’s family tree: The white man who owned Mrs. Obama’s great-great-great grandmother, Melvinia Shields, and his son, who most likely fathered Melvinia’s child.

The photograph of those two men and their relatives, which is believed to have been taken in Georgia sometime around 1884, is being published here for the first time.

The slaveowner was Henry Wells Shields, who inherited Melvinia when his father-in-law died in 1852. DNA testing and research indicate that he and his wife, Christian Patterson Shields, are the first lady’s great-great-great-great grandparents.

Their son, Charles Marion Shields, worked as a farmer and a teacher. DNA testing and research point to him as the father of Melvinia’s son, Dolphus Shields. That would make Charles Mrs. Obama’s great-great-great grandfather.

The photo came from Jarrod Shields, a science teacher at a community college in Alabama who also happens to be the great-great-great grandson of Henry Wells Shields. He was getting ready to mow the lawn when his wife, Tonya, got a call about the article and called him to come inside. Jarrod had grown up knowing that his family had once owned slaves and always wondered what happened to their descendants. His wife sent me an e-mail this week, outlining her husband’s connection to the Shields family, along with the photograph.

When I spoke to Jarrod by phone, he told me that he hoped that he might be able to meet his extended black family, he said of the descendants of the slaves his ancestors had owned. “I always really wanted to say I was sorry. I also wanted to let them know that we’re glad that you’re part of our family, however it came about.’’ — Rachel L. Swarns

Sunday’s article is adapted from “American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama” by Rachel L. Swarns, published by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Readers wrote the author and asked many questions after the article was published. She was kind enough to answer many of their queries, and they add deeper insight into the issues raised by this history. I present them for you here and you can also click this link should provide direct access to the article.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/06/22/us/first-lady-family-q-and-a.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120623#/#1

Mrs. Obama’s Participation
Did Mrs. Obama concede to this research?

"I suspect that there will be many more books to come about Mrs. Obama, given her historic role. ”
Mrs. Obama has a policy of not participating in book projects so unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to interview her. I did interview members of her family – an aunt, an uncle, a great-aunt, a great-uncle, some cousins and some more distant relatives. I also briefed the first lady’s staff periodically on my research and gave Mrs. Obama and her aides copies of the book prior to publication. Americans are fascinated by their first ladies and there have been books written about Laura Bush, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Eleanor Roosevelt, just to name a few. I suspect that there will be many more books to come about Mrs. Obama, given her historic role as the first African American first lady.

Family Tree
It would be helpful if a family tree diagram were provided.

Yes, there is a detailed family tree in my book, “American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama.” The family tree in the enhanced ebook is interactive and includes photos and historical documents along with the names of the first lady’s ancestors.

Making the Connection
Who decided to pursue the DNA and connection between this lady in Georgia and Mrs. Obama?

"Many Americans are doing this now, using DNA testing to find out more about their origins. ”
I suspected that the white father of Dolphus Shields, Mrs. Obama’s great-great grandfather, was probably a member of the Georgia family who owned him. So I tracked down as many descendants of that family – the white Shields family -- as I could. In the end, three agreed to be tested. Many Americans are doing this now, using DNA testing to find out more about their origins and their families. It allows people to take their research a step further than your grandfather could."

Other Cousins
I wonder if they're interested in meeting their not so famous black cousins?

Both Sherry George and Joan Tribble, who are the descendants of the man who owned Mrs. Obama’s ancestors, would like to meet Mrs. Obama as well as their black relatives who are not famous.

The Moten Side
Can you tell us more about the Moten side of the family?

"The spelling of their names changed at times in the census. ”
The Motens are on Mrs. Obama’s paternal line. Her great-grandmother was Phoebe Moten, who was born in Villa Ridge, Ill. in 1879. Her great-great-grandparents were Nelson and Mary Moten, who arrived in southern Illinois sometime during the 1860s. The spelling of their names changed at times in the census; sometimes they appeared as Morten; other times as Moulton. But Mrs. Obama’s relatives say that they spelled it Moten.

DNA Testing
If you don't have close male relatives, what can you find out from female DNA alone? How do you go about getting tested?

These days, you can find out a good deal about your family line without having close male relatives. Companies like FamilyTreeDNA and 23andMe, among others, do such testing.
Jewish Connection

I’d be interested in reading about Michelle Obama’s Jewish ancestors.

"The surname Cohen suggests a possible link to the white Cohen family, a very prominent Jewish family in Georgetown in the early 1800s. ”
Mrs. Obama’s paternal great-grandmother was Rosella Cohen of Georgetown, S.C., and her origins remain something of a mystery. We can’t say with certitude who Rosella’s parents were, but some historical documents suggest that they were Caeser and Tira Cohen, who were born into slavery in Georgetown. The surname Cohen suggests a possible link to the white Cohen family, a very prominent Jewish family in Georgetown in the early 1800s. Moises Cohen, who emigrated from London to South Carolina around 1750, was the first chief rabbi of Charleston’s Congregation of Beth Elohim, the birthplace of Reform Judaism in the United States. His two sons, Abraham and Solomon, moved to Georgetown and became deeply involved in its civic and political life. Abraham, who fought in the Revolutionary War and served as the town’s postmaster, met with George Washington when the American president visited Georgetown in 1791. Solomon was a director of the Bank of the State of South Carolina and his son, Solomon Jr., was elected to the South Carolina State Senate in 1831. Several Cohens were also slave owners. Most of the Cohens eventually left Georgetown for Charleston, but before they did, it is possible that a member of this prominent Jewish family owned Caeser or his parents.

African Ancestry
Were any DNA tests conducted on the white Shields family to determine whether any of them have African ancestry?

None of the white Shields descendants who were tested had African origins. You’re absolutely right that there’s a long history of “passing” in this country.

European Ancestors
Out of curiosity, what percentage of Mrs. Obama's ancestors are European?

"I do know that all four of her grandparents had multiracial roots. ”
Growing numbers of Americans are coming to terms with these issues as they learn more about their origins through genealogy and DNA testing. It’s not always easy for people to find out that their ancestors were slaveholders. These can be difficult things to confront. But it is our history. As for Mrs. Obama, I don’t know what percentage of her ancestors are European. But I do know that all four of her grandparents had multiracial roots: In addition to African ancestry, some had Irish American ancestry; some claimed Cherokee ancestry and others were simply described as mixed-race or mulatto without any specific reference to their European roots.

Issue of Consent
Why does this article give so much credence to the idea that a slave woman could have had a consensual relationship with her owner?

"We will never know whether there was any affection between the two of them. ”
Slave masters, their sons and overseers often preyed on their female slaves. Georgia instituted the death penalty for any man of color who raped a white woman. But white men who raped black women were not considered criminals; such assaults were not deemed crimes under Georgia’s criminal code. No one knows what happened to Melvinia, but given the frequency of sexual assaults against enslaved women at the time, it is quite likely that she was raped. However, the descendants of Melvinia’s slave owners – and some of her own descendants – hope that there was some affection between Melvinia and the white man who fathered her child.

Melvinia continued to have biracial children as a free woman, after slavery was over. She also continued to live close to the Shields family and to the man who fathered her son years after slavery ended. We will never know whether there was any affection between the two of them, or whether she stayed because she was brutalized and too terrified to leave or because she was dependent on his financial support.

Michelle Obama Family History - A Book Review

Dolphus Shields, seated, with relatives in Birmingham, Ala., was born into slavery on a Georgia farm. He was Michelle Obama's maternal great-great-grandfather.
Notice how the little girl next to Mr. Shields resembles the Obama girls.

The First Lady’s Family
By EDWARD BALL

AMERICAN TAPESTRY
The Story of the Black, White, and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama
By Rachel L. Swarns
Illustrated. 391 pp.
Amistad/HarperCollins Publishers.
$27.99.

I encourage you to order by phone from Esowan Books in Los Angeles, or Marcus Book Stores, San Francisco, or Oakland. For decades, these California bookstores have excelled at providing literature by Black authors and all genres of reading material related to Black life.They are businesses and cultural institutions that are truly worthy of your support.


Twelve American presidents were slaveholders, and perhaps another dozen (including the two named George Bush) came from families that once upon a time owned slaves. In common with many of our most venerable institutions, the presidency has ample connection to “slavery time”: the White House is like an Internet link that, if you click on it, bounces you to the lawn of a plantation.

For 42 million Americans — African-Americans — having slaves in the family tree is almost a given, but this fact wasn’t relevant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue until the current first family. Michelle Robinson Obama happens to descend from people once enslaved in South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia and Kentucky. She can peer at American history from that far side of the looking glass. Her husband, with no slaves in the family, may not see America in quite the same way.

After the president’s term began, one expected to hear more in the press and from the Obamas about blackness, whiteness and the nation’s never-ending debates about race and class. But Barack and Michelle Obama have not made theirs into a “black” White House. An exception jumped up for two nights last winter, when the commander in chief, on camera, sang the opening lines of a Robert Johnson blues standard, “Sweet Home Chicago,” and Al Green’s R&B ballad “Let’s Stay Together” — the kind of songs that used to be called “race music.”

“American Tapestry,” a fascinating account of the first lady’s family, corrects the omission of race from the Obama White House. No political memoir has ever looked or sounded like this one: the book spans several generations of Mrs. Obama’s people and reads like a panorama of black life.

Rachel L. Swarns, a reporter for The New York Times, has uncovered the story of an ordinary black American family, typical in so many details: generations of forced work on Southern farms; sexual exploitation; children born half white; attempts to flee slavery; emancipation at the end of a rifle barrel; terrorization by the Klan during Reconstruction; futility stirred in with pleasure and church in the 1900s; a stepladder into the working class — and finally, the opportunity that allowed for Michelle Obama’s superior education and unlocked 150 years of bolted doors.

The book is nonfiction, but with some 30 characters competing for space it’s like a saga or perhaps a mini-series, minus the dialogue. It starts wide, intercutting the stories of four families in four Southern states during the early 1900s. Each of them deposits Northern-bound migrants, refugees from the Jim Crow South, into the growing black neighborhood of South Chicago, where, after chance meetings, dates and marriage, they produce all of Mrs. Obama’s grandparents. The book then turns around and stitches together the back stories of the first lady’s family lines during the 1800s, in slavery and out of it.

Some of Mrs. Obama’s people lived as human property at Weymouth plantation, near Georgetown, S.C., owned by Ralph Izard, from an old family of rice planters. They became sharecroppers after the Civil War. A couple on her father’s side, Mary and Nelson Moten, with a young daughter named Cora, achieved that rarest of feats — they escaped slavery on the Underground Railroad. Living in Kentucky, not far from the town of Lexington, the Motens managed to make their way about 300 miles west during the Civil War and sneak across the Ohio River to Illinois. They settled in Pulaski County, north of the town of Cairo, and waited for the general emancipation.

But the hero of the book is Melvinia, Mrs. Obama’s great-great-great-grandmother, who in 1852 was an enslaved 8-year-old girl living on a farm in Spartanburg, S.C., along with 20 other slaves. When her owner, David Patterson, died, Melvinia was appraised at $475, taken from her parents and shipped to another Patterson family property, south of Atlanta. And there, seven or eight years later, the child who had been snatched from her family was raped by, or consented to sex with, her owner or one of his relatives, and gave birth to a boy named Dolphus. Swarns digs out from Mrs. Obama’s background this cruel vignette, along with many others like it, and pushes them front and center. “ ‘Mulatto’ forebears pop up all across Mrs. Obama’s family tree,” she writes. Melvinia’s life goes a long way toward explaining what Mrs. Obama means when she says, regarding her family’s tendency to speak softly about the past, “A lot of times these stories get buried, because sometimes the pain of them makes it hard to want to remember.”

Swarns persuaded a number of Mrs. Obama’s relatives to sit for interviews, but the first lady herself did not, and she seems to have given only passive consent to the herculean investigations made on her behalf. Some of the stories here will be news, one suspects, even to members of Michelle Obama’s family. There can be little doubt that she, and the president, will savor this book, but political necessity requires that she not publicly “own” her family’s slave history, which conceivably could cost her husband votes in the coming election.

The book is not about the living family in the White House. It’s about the dead: the field hands, housekeepers, single mothers, sharecroppers, brick workers, postmen, shoe repairmen, Pullman porters and maids — Mrs. Obama’s relatives all, plain people who owned no property and left no writings. Theirs was mostly a bitter tale, full of abandonments, early death, poverty, orphans and illiteracy. Yet it is also an occasionally sweet story of church, home-buying, business-founding and weddings.

Swarns struggles to answer the question of how many of the first lady’s female ancestors were compelled to have sex with white men, a common occurrence in the Old South (the most famous instance being Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings), though one that black families still find it hard to talk about — and that’s to say nothing of the descendants of slave owners. Swarns is at her best when airing such painful matters and the contradictory emotions they release — pity, shame, curiosity, revulsion. She gives less attention to other signal moments of Mrs. Obama’s family history, like how Melvinia was freed, at age 21, after Gen. William T. Sherman’s 60,000 troops swept toward Atlanta and burned her master’s town in August 1864.

The first lady has said that growing up, she talked about “almost everything” with her parents, and spent summer vacations in South Carolina within shouting distance of the plantations where some in her family may once have worked as slaves, but as for slavery, “we didn’t talk about that.” Swarns wrestles with this phenomenon, which might be compared to the Holocaust effect, “an almost willful, collective forgetting, an intentional loss of memory,” and finally accepts it as the necessary censorship of trauma.

A drawback of the book is that Mrs. Obama’s ancestors are presented as having an obsession with uplift. They seem always to be seeking and striving. One “stepped eagerly into her new future,” another is “poised to seize the widening opportunities,” a third was “nurtured by a family that strived for success.” Personal journeying is not what ordinary folks, swamped with work and kids and grief and laughter — and weighed down by the additional burden of racism — have tended to do. Striving is a sentiment we like to project back onto the dead.

Another problem is the heavy use of plot points that “probably” happened. In the absence of letters and written remembrance, Swarns relies too much on the conditional mood. Characters “would have,” “could have” and “may have” done things, until speculation becomes a stylistic tic.
But the narrative line of “American Tapestry” is extraordinary because, at least some of the time, we see the first lady as indisputably “black.” No decorous White House hostess — from Mamie Eisenhower to Jackie Kennedy to Barbara or Laura Bush — has anything to compare with Mrs. Obama’s sturdy timber of a family story. Few important women come from such raw places. The book makes you remember why the Obamas, four years ago, seemed so new, so implausible.

Edward Ball is the author of “Slaves in the Family” and other books. “The Inventor and the Tycoon” — his account of the partnership between Eadweard Muybridge, the motion picture pioneer and admitted killer, and Leland Stanford, the Western railroad baron — is forthcoming.

The Original Original Gangsta

Ice-T and Chuck D in Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap

Ice-T talks about his Star-Studded Directorial Debut, his Famous Affiliates and Life with Coco in New York

By Ben Westhoff
published: June 14, 2012
L A Weekly

Like fellow local hip-hop legend Snoop Dogg, Ice-T has made a career out of cashing in on his former street credibility. It's understandably lucrative, as audiences never seem to grow tired of seeing the former heist specialist and pimp in fish-out-of-water scenarios, be it as detective "Fin" Tutuola on Law & Order: SVU or as a married, domestic guy on E! reality show Ice Loves Coco.

One could almost forget that he was (arguably) the first gangsta rapper, but hip-hop remains close to Ice-T's heart. His documentary, Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap — which he directed, partly funded and hosts — explores the nuances of his original craft. For the film, which opens at about 150 theaters nationwide on June 15, he went deep into his Rolodex and traversed the country to secure interviews with the genre's biggest names — Eminem, Kanye West, Dr. Dre — many of whom perform on-the-spot freestyles.

Speaking out against "pop rap," he commiserates with the genre's originators; scenes with such practically forgotten trailblazers as Grandmaster Caz and Doug E. Fresh are particularly memorable.

We caught up with Ice-T at the Beverly Hills Montage hotel, where he was promoting the film. Looking fit and sporting a diamond bracelet and red Adidas, he discoursed on everything from Dr. Dre's luxurious new house and the LAPD to his curvaceous wife, Coco, at times standing up to act out the scenes he was describing and even rapping old verses. Below are highlights from our conversation.

L.A. WEEKLY: You got practically everyone notable in rap for this documentary. How long did it take to film?

ICE-T: Two years. We shot [the trailer] and got the film funded, got a few hundred thousand dollars, and now we can get helicopters, we can step it up. Then, we had to triangulate, which means get the film crew guys from London, the artists and myself — who's doing Law & Order full-time — in the same place on a particular day at a particular time. You have no idea how hard it is to get a rapper to stop moving.

Who was the hardest person to get, logistically?

We had to go to Detroit to get Eminem, but then when he's ready, I'm not because I'm working, or the guys in London are doing their thing. So we had to fly out there, and we actually had to get the aerial footage another time. We really wanted to shoot Eminem in Detroit because we wanted to use that movement across the country. But he gave me unparalleled access.

[We used] no stock footage. We don't want rappers to say anything they've said before. Basically you're making a movie of talking heads. How do you make a movie of people talking for two hours without making it boring? So you shoot them, you get the shoes, you get the feet, get the hands. Some of the best shots are when you see that we both have the same sneakers on. The aerial shots are to let the movie breathe, so you don't feel so claustrophobic.

The aerial shots of Dr. Dre's house are especially cool.

We wanted to show something from nothing. The [shot] starts off grimy, and then it ends up in Beverly Hills. I thought Dre's house said it all. It's his new house, the $13 million house, with a view of downtown to the beach, unobstructed. It's the craziest view ever. I was, like, "OK, you make N.W.A, you make Tupac, you make Eminem, you make The Game, you make 50 Cent, you get a $13 million house."

Beyond the freestyles, the film featured tons of classic, and I'd imagine very expensive, hip-hop songs. How'd you get the rights to all of them?

We did a "favored nations" scenario. It's something they do on compilations, where they say that everyone gets paid the same. So with the soundtrack, we told everybody, "We have this much for each song, and we're paying everyone the same — do you want to be on the soundtrack?" The only people who had a problem were the sample licensees who aren't hip-hop.

The film goes out of its way to emphasize the craft of hip-hop, rather than pop-oriented rap.
Pop was always the enemy. You heard Mos Def say in the film, "Rap is not pop. If you think it is, you need to stop." Quincy Jones taught me that pop is doing what everyone else wants you to do. Art is doing what you want to fuckin' do. If you're just saying what everyone wants, you're being pop. If you say, "I don't give a fuck," then you're rocking. ...

Here's my comment. If you have more words in your hook than in your rap, you're not rappin', you're hookin'. [Laughs.]

What was Coco's role in the documentary?

She was rollin' right behind me every day, on the phone. While I'm on the camera, somebody needs to be wrangling artists. Today, actually, she would be here, but she's doing RuPaul's Drag Race. Coco's been there for years, like my executive secretary. She helps me handle everything. I have to give her credit because she sat through every interview.

Do you two have a place in L.A. anymore?

I sold my house in L.A. It was up on Sunset Plaza. So now we have the house in Arizona, New York and a spot in Miami. Even after I [moved to New York] I used to have a house in L.A., and I let my buddy live there. I would call him and be, like, "How's my house?" I'd hear people in the background laughing, jumping into the pool, and he's like, "Hold on." I'm going, "Motherfucker, it's my house!" It was cool. It was documented on MTV Cribs, but there's no sense in my holding that property. ...

We figured out we want to plant our roots in New York. I operate out of New York a little bit better than L.A. L.A.'s cool, but people move slow here compared to New York. I like the grind of New York. Now I live in Edgewater, N.J., which is facing Manhattan over the Hudson. When I first got to New York I was staying there, but then I was like, "They got the good view of Manhattan." We're actually building a house over there now; we live in a condo now.

You've talked about how L.A.'s changed since the riots. Do you think the aftermath ultimately compelled the cops to be more respectful to inner-city residents?

People have to police the government just like the government polices us. When we break the law, there's a consequence. When they break the law, there should be a consequence, or else they'll keep doing it. Like with the Occupy Wall Street thing, they have to know that people aren't going to take it. Like, if I take your pad and I take [your recorder], I'm going to keep taking things until you stand up [for yourself].

LAPD only checked themselves when the people demanded it. Now, when a cop pulls you over, other people might pull over and watch, too. We need to police the police. That's how we gotta be, because they're not all good.

That's the way that the world should operate. We need to watch everyone else, like even with a Neighborhood Watch. You're just supposed to make the phone call; it's not "neighborhood hunt." Everybody has to be accountable for everybody else.

Again Individuals in Israel Demonstrate a Change of Heart

In this June 11, 2012 photo, Andre Pshenichnikov, a 23-year-old immigrant from Tajikistan who was recently detained by Israeli police for residing illegally in the Dheishe Refugee Camp near Bethlehem, poses for a picture in Bat Yam near Tel Aviv, Israel. In what has to be considered one of the oddest twists to the never-ending Israeli-Palestinian saga, Pshenichnikov has embarked on a new fight: renouncing his Israeli citizenship and moving to a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank. It's incredibly rare for Israelis to seek living under Palestinian rule, only a few precedents of Israelis who have done so are known. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All right reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Ex-Israeli soldier seeks Palestinian citizenship

Jun 14, 3:40 AM (ET)

By DALIA NAMMARI

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) - In an odd twist to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian saga, a former Israeli soldier has embarked on a new fight: He wants to renounce his Israeli citizenship and move to a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank.

Andre Pshenichnikov, a 23-year-old Jewish immigrant from Tajikistan, was recently detained by Israeli police for residing illegally in the Deheishe Refugee Camp near Bethlehem. There he told police that he wants to break all ties with Israel, give up his Israeli citizenship and obtain a Palestinian one instead.

Pshenichnikov is currently traveling in Europe for two months. When he returns, he hopes to move to the West Bank.

It's incredibly rare for Israelis to seek to live under Palestinian rule. There are only a few known cases of Jewish Israelis who have done so, mostly ones who have married Palestinians, as well as a journalist for the Israeli daily Haaretz who moved to Ramallah and reports from there. None are known to have renounced Israeli citizenship - though some Israelis living abroad have. Nor are any known to have sought Palestinian residency instead. People are not allowed to be dual citizens.

Reached at his Israeli home, Pshenichnikov's mother Svetlana said she was troubled by her son's plans.

"I'm his mother and I am trying to support him like a mother should," she said. "But I don't support his war."

The family immigrated to Israel when Pshenichnikov was 13. Israel grants automatic citizenship to anyone who is Jewish. He later completed his three years of mandatory military service, enlisting as a computer programmer in the army's signals corps, and even served an additional year and a half as a career soldier.

But sometime during his military service, he began to question Israel's relationship with the Palestinians. Since then, he has completely rejected his adopted country. After his service ended, he moved to the refugee camp in April and worked as a waiter in a Bethlehem hotel and as a construction worker in Deheishe.

"I hate Zionism ... I want to be part of the Palestinian resistance," Pshenichnikov told The Associated Press. "I call for other Israelis who support the existence of a state of Palestine to do the same, to come live in the West Bank or Gaza as Palestinians."

The Palestinians want to make the West Bank part of an independent state. For the time being, in accordance with past agreements with Israel, they technically don't have a Palestinian citizenship but the self-rule authority issues I.D. residency cards and Palestinian passports.
Pshenichnikov said he chose to live near Bethlehem in hopes of taking advantage of his fluency in Russian to guide Russian tourists in Jesus' traditional hometown.

Residents say he was initially treated with suspicion. Many Palestinians suspected him of being an Israeli spy and Palestinian officials eventually handed him over to Israeli authorities. But Pshenichnikov remained undeterred, returning to Deheishe where was apprehended by Palestinian forces and handed over to Israel again.

Israeli police released him under restrictive conditions and banned him from entering the Palestinian-controlled areas pending the end of legal proceedings against him.
Tareq Abu Sheikha, who rented Pshenichnikov a room for a month, said he was "suspicious and not honest."

Abu Sheikha said Pshenichnikov presented himself as a Russian foreign activist and was even seen throwing stones at Israeli soldiers during demonstrations. But he was also heard speaking in Hebrew on his phone and carried his old military I.D. card with him.

"We don't have a problem with any Israeli coming to be one of us. We'll be honored and give them an I.D. card, but this young man was suspicious and he lied and that's why we handed him to the Israelis," he said.

Officially renouncing Israeli citizenship is a lengthy, complicated process. Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sabine Hadad said that one has to file a request at an Israeli representative office overseas, prove that one has another citizenship and then await a ruling, which is not always granted. She said she wasn't familiar with Pshenichnikov's case, but that only few hundred people have their citizenship revoked each year.

The Israeli military declined to comment on Pshenichnikov.
Abdel-Fatah Hamayel, the governor of Bethlehem, said that in principle there should be no problem granting Pshenichnikov Palestinian citizenship, but that it would have to go through the proper legal channels.

"He wasn't supposed to come illegally. If people knew his true identity, there's no guarantee for his safety. He should have informed the Palestinian side with an official request and his request would be considered," he said.

Finally.....a glimmer of sanity coming out of Israel

Ex-Security Chief in Israel Questions Current Leadership

By JODI RUDOREN
Published: April 28, 2012
New York Times

JERUSALEM — The recently retired chief of Israel’s internal security agency said on Friday night that he had “no faith” in the ability of the current leadership to handle the Iranian nuclear threat, ratcheting up the criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak from the defense and intelligence communities.

"I don’t believe in a leadership that makes decisions based on messianic feelings,” said Yuval Diskin, who stepped down last May after six years running the Shin Bet, Israel’s version of the F.B.I. “I have observed them from up close,” Mr. Diskin said. “I fear very much that these are not the people I’d want at the wheel.”

Echoing Meir Dagan, the former head of the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, Mr. Diskin also said that the government was “misleading the public” about the likely effectiveness of an aerial strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“A lot of experts have long been saying that one of the results of an Israeli attack on Iran could be a dramatic acceleration of the Iranian nuclear program,” Mr. Diskin said at a community forum in Kfar Saba, a central Israeli city. “What the Iranians prefer to do today slowly and quietly, they would have the legitimacy to do quickly and in a much shorter time.”

The comments followed interviews published last week in which the current chief of the Israeli Defense Force, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, appeared to be taking a more moderate approach on Iran than Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Barak, although aides to all three men later insisted that they were on the same page.

Mr. Diskin has been widely thought to share the views of Mr. Dagan — who has been harshly attacking the government’s approach in speeches and interviews for nearly a year — but this is the first time he has spoken about it publicly. Shin Bet does not deal with foreign affairs, and Mr. Diskin was careful to say that he was not saying that attacking Iran “is not a legitimate decision,” but was instead questioning the leaders’ abilities and their motives for their hawkish policies. Still, his biting statements, coming so soon after Mr. Gantz’s remarks, suggest that Mr. Netanyahu might be facing more of a challenge of his policy on Iran than before.

Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Barak have made clear for months that they believe urgent action is needed to stop Iran from building a bomb, and that they consider themselves the main decision makers on whether to stage a pre-emptive strike on Iran.

Ronen Bergman, an Israeli analyst and author of the 2008 book “The Secret War With Iran,” said in an interview that Mr. Diskin’s comments were significant because he left the government in good standing with Mr. Netanyahu — unlike Mr. Dagan, who was forced out — and because he was widely respected “for being professional and honest and completely disconnected from politics.”

Still, Mr. Bergman noted the growing chorus of criticisms: “They have an impact, but I wouldn’t say that this is a crucial factor in the decision-making process. The opinion of the current chief of Shin Bet and the chief of Mossad and the current chief of the military are much more critical when it comes to whether to strike Iran or not.”

Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-Israeli who runs the blog Middle East Analyst, said Mr. Diskin, in his comments, offered an insider’s view of the motivations and decision-making processes of the nation’s leadership. “Israel’s citizens would be forgiven for thinking that when it comes to addressing the Iranian nuclear threat, Netanyahu and Barak rely more on their own self-created image as the messiahs,” Mr. Javedanfar wrote in an e-mail, “than mounting evidence and warnings that such an attack could be counterproductive.”

“The public nature of such warnings by former intelligence officials puts pressure on Netanyahu and Barak,” he added, “because if they attack Iran and it backfires, such warnings could be used against both of them in postwar commissions.”

The prime minister’s office was expected to respond to the comments on Saturday night. A vice prime minister, Silvan Shalom, hinted in an interview with Israel Radio that Mr. Diskin might have political motives, and promised that any decision on attacking Iran would not be made by Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Barak alone, but in a wider forum.

Indeed, Mr. Diskin did not limit his critique to the policy on Iran. He said Israel had in recent years become “more and more racist,” and, invoking the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, said there were many extremist Jews today who “would be willing to take up arms against their Jewish brothers.”



Isabel Kershner contributed reporting.

Sho Nuf'! Sho Nuf'!

Good Food for your thoughts~

N Y Times Book Review:

Race, the Remix ‘The Grey Album,’

 by Kevin Young

By DAVID SHIELDS

Published: April 20, 2012

From the first slave ship arriving in harbor, America stole and judged blacks. Black life that didn’t fit into white logic was commercially exploited or lynched. Slave bodies lied to their masters. Denied dancing and musical instruments, slaves expressed a hidden tradition of musicality and poetics by tongue and signal. The trickster was born. In his new work of literary and cultural criticism, “The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness,” the accomplished poet Kevin Young unearths, orchestrates, improvises and imagines lies and more lies — in short, American history.

Kevin Young

THE GREY ALBUM

On the Blackness of Blackness

By Kevin Young

483 pp. Graywolf Press. Paper, $25.

Young places the trickster near the axis of black American culture. “A tradition of counterfeit and fiction, of storying,” he writes, “has just as much place in African-­American letters as our rituals of church or prayer or music.” Separated from their families, blacks created a communal story from fragments. Condescended to, suppressed, effaced, ripped off and covered, black artists have resorted throughout American history to subversive styles of artistic expression largely revolving around the “trickster” as mask and music. How much of Young the Author is in the trickster tradition? He’s escaping even as he’s explaining. “The desire to escape America is as American as you can get,” a friend warns him.

One rides Young’s groove from slavery to hip-hop, a line that looks like this: the slave poet Phillis Wheatley, whose authorship had to be proved by white “experts” before her book could be published; another slave poet, George ­Moses Horton, who sold his poetry in thwarted attempts to buy his own freedom; the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, in whom Young sees “modernism’s not-so-modest beginnings”; Zora Neale Hurston, who “collected ‘lies’ as a folklorist but lied just to get by”; Robert Johnson, evoked via W. E. B. Du Bois’s description of “two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder”; Louis Armstrong (“entertainer is no less a mask than cool is for those who came later”); bebop, which Young sees as the early flowering of a “postmodern black aesthetic”; the obscured Beat poet Bob Kaufman (“anonymity is not indeterminacy, but rather, namelessness as a state of grace, an acceptance of being part of the unnameable universe”); Otis Redding, who reverse-engineered the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction,” laying bare its black influences; Jimi Hendrix, who commandeered the national anthem, turning it into a “benediction”; Afrika Bambaataa, sampler of Kraftwerk, who “renamed himself in order to craft something interplanetary, his earlier identity erased so effectively few if any know it”; Lauryn Hill, whose “Mis­education” album represents “the possibilities of a post-soul aesthetic”; Jay-Z (“the maker as mogul, translating the street game to the corporate one — and making this somehow the stuff of realness”); N.W.A., following in the Jamaican and African-American tradition of “bragging and hyperbole as a form of critique”; Danger Mouse, the D.J. who merged the vocals from Jay-Z’s “Black Album” with the unlicensed beats from the Beatles’ “White Album” to create his own illicit “Grey Album,” which gives Young’s book its name.

What does the trickster-curator want? For one thing, to overthrow the literary executor of black writing. To Young, white critics who read slave narratives “simply in terms of authenticity do two quite damaging things: first, they read (white) skepticism back into the slave’s writing and thus limit the ‘freedom’ of black authorship; second, they ignore or downplay the African-American trickster tradition, itself related to black rhetorical strategies like lying.” It is not just creation per se but specifically creation of the counterfeit that “provides a means of black acquisition of authority (even as so-called authenticity is called into question).”

The figure in the carpet is “the notion of lying — the artful dodge, faking it till you make it — the forging of black lives and selves in all their forms.” This lying can manifest in the “storying” of Hurston, “the ‘lies’ black folks tell to amuse themselves and to explain their origins,” or in “counterfeiting,” a term Young uses to “discuss ways in which black writers create their own authority in order to craft their own, alternative system of literary currency and value, so to speak, functioning both within and without the dominant, supposed gold-standard system of American culture. . . . For the black author, and even the ex-slave narrator, creativity has often lain with the lie — forging an identity, ‘making’ one, but ‘lying’ about one too.” Young is “interested in the ways in which black folks use fiction in its various forms to free themselves from the bounds of fact.”

The problem is, one reads the scholarship and misses the party. A potentially incendiary throw-down gets lost in a redundancy of too-long, too-close readings. Black life has taught America how revolutionary pleasure is against the capitalism of the Pilgrim, the plantation and plagiarism. “Pleasure is a revolutionary act in the face of pain,” Young argues. “Hip-hop at its zenith insists on thinking and dancing simultaneously. In fact, it sees them as synonymous.” The historical remix is in session. Do you hear the thrumming bass line?

A core conviction of the book is “the centrality of black people to the American experience, to the dream of America.” Young understands that language is a weapon and that black self-defense necessitates a radical reimagining of the English language. “We are, after all, not immigrants but imports to this experiment America, lending not just everyday artifice to our experience in English but true violence” — dismembering and reassembling the master narrative.

To complete the remix, Young needs to remake modernism and postmodernism. He nominates the blues as a fount of modernist artistic impulses, and he promotes James Weldon Johnson’s “Book of American Negro Poetry” as a gathering that “should be thought of as one of the heights of modernism.” Young wonders if the “it” in Ezra Pound’s dictum “Make it new” might refer not to “tradition but the Negro.” “White folks projected back onto blacks the kind of pastiche or ‘blank copy’ that Fredric Jameson saw as one of the fundamental qualities of postmodernism — a full century before the idea took hold. In this, those of us in the postmodern era may glimpse a fascinating, racialized aspect of the postmodern — its possible black origins.” Young wants what everybody else wants. He wants the zeitgeist (the stealth-made man’s moment is now). He wants it all.

The party is on, but it’s deadly serious. The curatorial trickster claims American language as black music. “At our peril we ignore the fact that black vernacular, like the blues, both has a form and performs. . . . For just as there would be no American music without black folks, there would be very little of our American language.” The mask drops; Young exercises power. “It is black culture that is the dominant culture. English broken here.” This Young is a musician with muscle.

The story could be called “How Blacks Invented America.” In the end, the trickster’s desire isn’t to replace white America (which, after all, the trickster’s black America helped construct), but instead to remix the destroyed dream of integration as panacea and say, as Dr. King said, “I must confess that I am not afraid of the word ‘tension.’ ” Did I dream this book or did it just kill me and the dream? America is built on the tension between black and white. “The Grey Album” is angular scholarship for whites, a storying songbook for blacks. Who is the liar, who the thief, who is telling whose history, and who is keeping score? Young forces us to contemplate who controls the music.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Photo: By Todd Martens


lovu,
Kentke
 
 
 

Nature at It's Best

Need a lift for your Heart?

Hit the link, start the video and feel good about being a human being.

lovu,

Kentke

This happened on a beach in Brazil~

http://elcomercio.pe/player/1384898

For Angelenos~ Don't Miss "The Many Mistresses Of Martin Luther King" and the politics of race in America

Click this link~
The Many Mistresses Of Martin Luther King and the politics of race in America

Yea!!! It's Winter - Get Out and Play!!!

I know many of you have been skiing for years, but for others looking for new ways to experience the winter months, let yourself be inspired by the article below. I hope you're enjoying each season and all climates, no matter where you find yourself on our awesome planet!

Have fun,

Kentke

New York Ski Club Adds Black Faces to the Slopes

By LIZ LEYDEN
Published: February 20, 2012


QUEENSBURY, N.Y. — It was nearly time for lessons to begin, but Marcel and Kwesi could not be found. The West Mountain ski school director hurried into the rental shop looking for the missing students. Other members of the Nubian Empire Ski Club filled the benches, snapping stiff buckles into place.

Omoye Cooper, the club’s president, stood among the bent bodies, sorting tickets and fielding questions, including this latest: Where were Marcel and Kwesi?

Ms. Cooper pointed out the window toward the base lodge.

“You’ll see them,” she said, laughing. “They’re probably the only brown boys in there.”
At the small mountain about an hour north of Albany, the faces buried beneath helmets and neck gaiters were mostly white. But scattered among them were the Nubians, whose mission is to coax more African-Americans onto skis.

When Phil Littlejohn moved to the Albany area around 2001, he immediately saw what was missing. Mr. Littlejohn, 74, who first skied in the Poconos when he was 28, had joined black ski clubs wherever he lived.

“In Albany, there was no black ski club, and this is the gateway to ski country,” he said. The problem, he said, was “lack of exposure.”

“So many African-Americans don’t know what a great, great addition to their life skiing becomes,” he said.

In 2001, he and a skiing novice, Peggie Allen, persuaded a dozen people who had never skied to try. They named the group in honor of the black people of southern Egypt, and so began what Mr. Littlejohn described as a “labor of love.”

The Nubian Empire Ski Club, which is based in Albany, has since grown to more than 40 members: experts and beginners, first graders and retirees, professors and accountants. They have skied most mountains in New York and as far away as Chamonix-Mont-Blanc in the French Alps.

This season, despite a lack of snow, the club’s youth program has drawn nine participants. On a recent Sunday they gathered on the bunny trail at West Mountain for their second lesson of the season. Brown grass edged the trails, but no one seemed to mind, soon caught up in the silly language of learning: Pizza stop. Duck walk. Sit low to slow.

Do you remember when we couldn’t even turn?” one little girl shouted to the boy beside her. “When we used to fall and fall?”

Nisha Thomas, a 31-year-old employee in the state comptroller’s office, was one of three adults in the group of beginners. That Ms. Thomas ignored an oncoming cold to do so was as surprising to her as was the fact that she let Ms. Cooper, her mother-in-law, talk her into skiing at all.

“I’m from the Caribbean,” said Ms. Thomas, who lives in Albany. “I didn’t grow up dreaming about snow. I think this club helps because it’s a sort of mentorship.”

The Nubian Web site brims with instructions that people accustomed to winter sports take for granted, like layering on synthetic clothes and sunscreen, as well as the reason for buying water-resistant snow pants: “Your first day will acquaint your butt with the snow. Keep it warm and dry!”

Off-season, club members appear wherever they might find new recruits, visiting Kwanzaa and Juneteenth celebrations and setting up information booths in Walmarts.

When skeptics tell them “black people don’t ski,” Ms. Cooper notes that the National Brotherhood of Skiers, a black organization that formed in 1973, has 3,000 members. It has 59 member clubs, including three in New York City.

Kimberly Barksdale, executive secretary of the group, said that for people who did not grow up with snow sports, the clubs provided critical support.

“Our people in the clubs love to ski, and they also love to help others learn to,” Ms. Barksdale said. “They walk them through everything and really make sure they have a good time. And that sense of camaraderie makes it so much more likely that people stay with the sport.”

Of 67,000 skiers who responded to a question in a survey conducted by the National Ski Areas Association at the end of the 2010-11 season, 2 percent identified themselves as African-American.

Audrey Bennett, a communications professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, said she heard about the Nubians through word of mouth two years ago. Though her son Marcel was sure he would hate skiing, Ms. Bennett, 40, pushed him to try it. Now, Marcel, 14, races giant slalom and is applying to ski academies.

“I loved it after the first run,” he said. “I felt like I was free, like I was flying down the mountain. All my stresses disappeared.”

By noon, most everyone on the beginner slope at West Mountain had turned toward the lodge for lunch — everyone but three small children who scooted back for one more run.

“Look, they snuck back up,” Ms. Cooper said, smiling. She watched the three, remembering her own beginnings on skis.

“I wanted to conquer that hill, not let it conquer me,” she said. “And then I was going to quit.”
But it was too late. “It was too addictive,” she said.

The children snaked down the hill. Wide smiles filled their faces as they reached the bottom without falling. Before they could jump back in line, Ms. Cooper glided toward them.

“Do not go back up,” she said. “We are going in for lunch. Exit stage left. Don’t worry. We’ll be back out.”

Click this link to view the 10 photo slide show:

The Nubian Empire Ski Club

Websites:

Nubian Empire Ski Club - http://www.nubianempireski.org/
National Brotherhood of Skiers - http://www.nbs.org/

Oakland Museum of California's Question Bridge Panel Delves Deep into Black Manhood (Review/Reflection)

Arnold Perkins and Joshua Merchant ruminate during the Question Bridge panel discussion.

Published on Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Oakland Local Online

By Eric K. Arnold


One of the deeper discussions on black male identity in recent memory took place this past Saturday at the Oakland Museum of California. The event - a roundtable panel discussion between several generations of black me, age 17-70 – was part of OMCA’s programming around Question Bridge: Black Males, an exhibit currently showing simultaneously at the Brooklyn Museum, Salt Lake City Arts Center and Atlanta’s Castain Arts gallery (earlier this year, it also was shown at the Sundance Film Festival).

Question Bridge is somewhat of an onomatopoeia of a video installation: It’s exactly what it sounds like – a Q&A exchange, which bridges the generation gap among African-American men from the hip-hop and Civil Rights generations. The installation, which runs through July 8 at OMCA, consists of 1,500 video exchanges between 150 black men recruited from 11 cities, including Oakland and San Francisco, along with Chicago, New York, New Orleans, Birmingham, Atlanta and Philadelphia, and collected by Chris Johnson, Hank Willis Thomas, Kamal Sinclair and Oakland’s own Bayete Ross-Smith.

Why is this a big deal? Well, for one, it shatters many commonly-held stereotypes about black men - that they are angry, unemotional, non-communicative, inarticulate and blame racism for everything that has happened to them. Watching the exhibit, one is forced to reexamine one’s perceptions about African-American males. It’s a big rethink.


The afternoon began with a performance by Motif Performance Project with choreographer Rashad Pridgen, developed especially for Question Bridge, followed by a roundtable forum, which recreated much of the format of the exhibit, but in 3-D (rather than the two-dimensional back and forth of the video screens) with real, live, actual black men.


The panel included moderator Chris Chatmon, the Oakland Unified School District's executive officer of African-American Male Achievement, and a stellar group of panelists, including actor Delroy Lindo; spoken word artists Ise Lyfe and Joshua “Adonis” Merchant; photographer Pendarvis Harshaw; educators Greg Hodge; youth worker Abbas Khalid; social justice activist Abel Habtegeorgis; retired public health official Arnold Perkins; and student Sean Johnson.


If anything, the panel discussion - whose starting point was the question, "Why didn’t you leave us with the blueprint,” posed by a hip-hop generationer to a Civil Rights-era veteran - went even deeper into the African-American male psyche than the exhibit. Instead of a singular or small group learning experience, as might be expected of a museum viewing, the presence of an audience made for a more public experience and a stronger connection to community. Additionally, follow-up questions were asked and answered in real time.


Before the panel began, Question Bridge co-director Chris Johnson explained how speaking about the topic “really articulated truths” about the generational divide between black men, while addressing the lack of a “direct connection” between the hip-hop and Civil Rights eras.
If the purpose of Question Bridge was to address that disconnect and repair the hurt caused by it, it succeeded. First, the younger generation asked questions of the elders; then the elders asked questions from younger people. But who qualified as what wasn’t immediately apparent. Habtegeorgis noted that he was included in the group of community elders, yet was only 27.



Hodge cleared that up, however, by noting that “everybody here is somebody’s elder.”


During the panel, several revealing exchanges between the participants occurred, such as when Harshaw queried, “When do you learn how to tie a tie?”


“That is so profound,” Lindo replied, before recounting an anecdote about being on the way to rapper Heavy D’s funeral and being asked by a young black man he was riding with to tie his tie. Lyfe followed with his own anecdote, about being 22 years old, being invited to a black-tie event to accept an award and realizing he didn’t know how to tie a tie.


“I was so embarrassed,” he recalled. Later, he went to the library and checked out an etiquette book.


Johnson, the youngest panelist, discussed when he considered dropping out of high school. When asked why, he mentioned poor math grades and noted that Skyline has almost 500 juniors and just one counselor for them. Other panelists chimed in with supportive words.


“Frederick Douglass cajoled his education out of white people. Get the help,” Hodge said.


The difference, Lyfe said, between being 17 and 27 was having perspective on life.
“You can’t condemn yourself to a moment,” he added.


The panel resulted in many other quotable soundbites. Here are a few of the most notable and profound quips:

“Who are we considering young [people]?” (Lindo)
“If I’m 20 and a brother’s 80, asking me what to do … You had a 60-year-head start. That’s terrifying.” (Lyfe)
“Do my skinny jeans and non-prescription glasses make me safer walking around my neighborhood?” (Merchant)
“When will sagging go out of style?” (Hodge)
[As black men,] “We’re all going to be judged, all the time.” (Lindo)
“Why is it so hard for us to call ourselves African?” (Perkins)
“I am of African descent, but I am from Oakland” (Harshaw)
“It’s so normalized, not having your father in your life.” (Lyfe)
“Seventy-five percent of people I know, their father hasn’t been in their lives.” (Khalid)
“Since I was in the sixth grade, my dad has been in and out of jail.” (Khalid)
“We have to break the cycle.” (Khalid)
“Even [white people’s] resistance … is full of valor and vigor and privilege: ‘We occupying this.’” (Lyfe)
“Why are so many black people dying in Chicago when Barack Obama’s in office?” (Harshaw)
“For me, the blueprint is education because it created tremendous power in daily life.” (Perkins)
“Our charge is to be that continuum.” (Harshaw)
“What I need from elders and community leaders is the play.” (Lyfe)
“The fact of the matter is the goal posts shift all the time.” (Lindo)


An audience member asks a question as Chris Chatmon and Delroy Lindo look on.

Overall, the panel discussion offered two solid hours of deep reflection, brutal honesty, brave vulnerability – and a glimpse behind the cool pose and beyond the mean mug. It transcended both the saggy-pants conundrum and the Cosby-syndrome of misunderstanding. It created, as intended, the blueprint for discourse, giving hope that the elder generation and the youth will one day be able to see eye to eye.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this landmark intergenerational dialogue? Not once was the word “racism” mentioned.

Click here to visit the article, for a slideshow of images from the video installation.
Kentke
http://oaklandlocal.com/article/omca’s-question-bridge-panel-delves-deep-black-manhood-reviewreflection


About Eric K Arnold
Eric K. Arnold has been writing about urban music culture since the mid-1990s, when he was the Managing Editor of now-defunct 4080 Magazine. Since then, he’s been a columnist for such publications as The Source, XXL, Murder Dog, Africana.com, and the East Bay Express; his work has also appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Vibe, Wax Poetics, SF Weekly, XLR8R, the Village Voice and Jamrock, as well as the academic anthologies Total Chaos and The Vinyl Ain’t Final. Eric began his journalistic career while DJing on college radio station KZSC, and remembers well the early days of hip-hop radio, before consolidation, and commercialization set in. He currently lives in Oakland, California.