connecting*the*dots

(originally uploaded by JaciVico)

Harlem, New York

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Keith Robinson dropping science and experiences on the crowd last week at the C37Words production, Poetry GSO Slam, in Greensboro, NC.

If you felt that as much as I did in person, I’ll leave it up to you to transcribe the lyrics in the comment field.

(originally uploaded by LeggNet)

On Dying In Virginia
The Black Iris of Jordan

I was kind of shocked and saddened to hear about the shooting in Virginia Tech that has dominated western media in the past 48 hours, especially the Internet. I tend to pay close attention to how such incidents unravel in the media and the public eye. The number 30 was splashed across home pages of the BBC and CNN for quite some time and it’s just one of those things where one cannot help but take a step back and realize how important those 30 lives were. I mean for instance 30 is the new 20 in Iraq; daily bombings and slaughters inspire at least that much.

One could easily cast this aside as another orientalist view of the world: that their lives are worth more than our lives. I mean I’m sure it plays a role, after all, a day after the shooting the “30 dead� headline was replaced with “South Korean gunman�, as if origin mattered; as if this was the opportunity the US was waiting for all along to invade North Korea (because their names sound suspiciously similar). But maybe there’s more to it.

In between hoping the gunman isn’t Arab, there is a common denominator to consider.

There’s something to be said about the storm that breaks the quiet; when tranquility is disturbed and replaced with chaos, which of course inspires fear, confusion and anger.

When you’re used to chaos, more if it is simply nothing new. One becomes accustomed to death. If I turned on the TV to hear that there were no new deaths in Occupied Palestine or Iraq or Darfur, then I would rush to the window to make sure the apocalypse wasn’t being ushered in with falling meteors from the sky.

You get used to certain things.

But then Virginia isn’t Palestine.

Virginia isn’t Iraq.

And yes, an American isn’t a Palestinian, isn’t an Iraqi. If anything, the media makes sure to remind us of that time and time again.

The irony of this I suppose is that if anyone on the face of the Earth right now knows what it means to have innocent life taken from them; to know what it feels to have that tranquility disturbed, if anyone right now knows that feeling, those people are in Iraq and Palestine.

The only difference is hope.

The US seems to have plenty of it. There is always that light at the end of the tunnel; the recovery, the moving on, the getting over the initial shock, the coming to terms with it, coming to grips with it.

Here in the Middle East, hope is as scarce as water these days (i.e. roughly half a century to be more accurate). There is no getting over the shock; there’s just not enough time to recover from loss before another comes along to replace it. There are no recovery stories here. No learning-how-to-move-on tales to be told. Yesterday is today; today is tomorrow.

Hope doesn’t live here anymore.

Maybe there should be a cultural exchange: we could teach Americans a thing or two about how to deal with the shock of loss and maybe they could teach us a thing or two about hope.

Being that they control the world supply of hope: maybe they would be kind enough to just lend us some.

Just for the weekend.

30 is 30, just as 30,000 is 30,000, just as insanity is insanity.

While I fully realize I live in a much more stable world than a majority of human beings on this earth — that the chances of me or my loved ones falling victim to random acts of violence are slim at best — I still feel the need to cling to my sense of hope.

Because for me, that sense of hope isn’t relegated solely to my circle of friends, family and neighbor’s well being — it’s continuously extending outwards to people who deal with depravity and destruction on a daily basis.

This week, it’s extended to my neighbors in Virginia.

Every other week, it seems to bounce between folks caught up in the system at home and folks caught up in the violence around the world, particularly in the Middle-East and Africa.

And I know I’m not alone.

Hopefully, Nas and his neighbors will one day receive a pause from the cycle of violence to breathe in and digest this reality.

Hopefully.

It goes real deep.

(originally uploaded by TJOY)

If so, man, does that guy have a set of balls on him; he plays God and then quotes a reference to God’s will to back his devilish actions?

Forget a comma — that’s !^&*$%.

(originally uploaded by tgbusill)

The Mercury News
Senate reports say Saddam rejected cooperating with terrorists
by Warren P. Strobel and Margaret Talev

WASHINGTON - Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein rejected pleas for assistance from Osama bin Laden and tried to capture terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi when he was in Iraq, a Senate Intelligence Committee report released Friday found, casting further doubt on the Bush administration’s rationale for invading Iraq.

President Bush and other administration officials repeatedly cited Saddam’s alleged ties to radical Islamic terrorists before the March 2003 invasion as one reason to take military action against Iraq.

The 150-page report said the administration’s claims were untrue. “Postwar findings indicate that Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al-Qaida and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from al-Qaida to provide material or operational support,” the report said.

The report was released along with a second one that said false information from the exile group Iraqi National Congress, led by Ahmad Chalabi, was widely distributed in prewar intelligence reports and used to support intelligence assessments about Iraq’s weapons and links to terrorism. Intelligence officials repeatedly warned that the INC was unreliable, but White House and Pentagon officials ignored the warnings.

The reports are part of a five-report study that the Senate Intelligence Committee has undertaken into the Bush administration’s use of intelligence before the invasion of Iraq.

The study has left the committee badly divided. Three reports remain classified, including one comparing prewar statements by Bush administration officials to intelligence available at the time. Democrats have accused Republicans of delaying the reports until after the November congressional elections.

[…]

Ain’t it grand that it took the Senate Intelligence Committee only 3.5 years, close to 3,000 dead US soldiers, more than 50,000 dead Iraqi civilians and upwards of $500 billion dollars floating in the wind to confirm what mid-east experts have been saying since 2003? Everyone and their mother knew that Saddam wanted nothing to do with al Qaeda; I mean, even Hardball scooped these jokers a year ago.

Alright, so it’s official. Now, which Senator is going to put country ahead of political aspirations and make a eloquent, yet vociferous call for the arrest of both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney?

People get locked up in America every day for the dumbest of reasons, all the while this administration knowingly schemed to wage war under false pretenses, which directly caused the deaths of upwards of a hundred thousand people… and there’s no chance of accountability.

I’m dead serious; which of these elected representatives is going to step up and make a passionate call for accountability? I mean, after the mid-term elections of course…

And people ask me why I’m so cynical. Now excuse me while I go throw up my dinner.

Israeli girls write messages in Hebrew on shells ready to be fired toward Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon.

The smile on her face makes her look like she’s writing a holiday card. Wow.