connecting*the*dots

A few months ago, Ndesanjo and I kicked back at a local pub and after a few drinks, began exchanging stories of past mentors that forever changed our lives.

I told Ndesanjo a few stories about Bill Readings, my revolutionary Contemporary Literary Theory professor from Syracuse University. That man completely altered the way I looked at both language and the world around me by planting his signature Deconstructionism seed in my skull. Without the experience of his class (and conversation over pints at Chucks), I’d be a completely different person today — processing both information and reality sans an apperception filter.

Ndesanjo spoke of Dr. Abdul Alkalimat, his former professor at the University of Toledo. He touched upon Dr. Alkalimat’s 40 years worth of work in the American Civil Rights movement, but even more importantly his forward-thinking thesis for bridging the digital divide and building local/global communities.

Last week, Ndesanjo passed me a speech Dr. Alkalimat gave at the 2004 Black Media Congress. If you have 20 minutes, take a listen — you won’t be disappointed.

Two words: On. Point.

(via neatorama)

(originally uploaded by wmchu)

Donald Rumsfeld spoke at The American Legion National Convention in Salt Lake City, Utah the other day (full transcript), attempting to solidify the position of this administration’s war on terror; that we are fighting an enemy similar to Adolf Hitler — an Islamofascist.

Analogies to the attitudes years prior to WWII ebbed and flowed with the greatest of ease from Rumsfeld, all pointing to the absolute righteousness of this administration in their self-assigned task to rid the world of the threat of terrorism.

As a resident of New York City on 9/11, I’d be extremely satisfied with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda lying in ruins before treading any deeper in potentially self-polluting waters, but apparently this administration doesn’t care what me and my former neighbors think about the matter at hand:

[…]

Over the next decades, a sentiment took root that contended that if only the growing threats that had begun to emerge in Europe and Asia could be accommodated, then the carnage and the destruction of then recent memory of WWI, could be avoided.

It was a time when a certain amount of cynicism and moral confusion set in among western democracies. When those who warned about a coming crisis — the rise of fascism and Nazism — they were ridiculed, or ignored.

Indeed, in the decades before World War II, a great many argued that the fascist threat was exaggerated.

[…]

I recount that history because, once again we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism.

Today, another enemy, a different kind of enemy, has made clear its intentions with attacks in places like New York and Washington D.C., Bali, London, Moscow and so many other places. But some seem not to have learned history’s lessons.

We need to consider the following questions, I would submit:

With the growing lethality, and the increasing availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that somehow, someway, vicious extremists can be appeased?

[…]

I have many thoughts on this line of reasoning, but first, take a listen to Keith Olberman’s perspective on the matter:

[…]

That about what Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this:

This is a democracy, still. Sometimes, just barely. And as such, all voices count. Not just his. Had he or his president, perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience — about Osama bin Laden’s plans 5 years ago; about Saddam Hussein’s weapon’s 4 years ago; about Hurricane Katrina’s impact 1 year ago — we all might be able to swallow hard and accept their omniscience as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris. Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina to flu vaccine shortages to the entire fog of fear that continues to envelop our nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and their cronies have, inadvertently or intentionally, profited or benefited, either personally or politically,

And yet he can stand up in public and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask for the receipt for the Emperor’s New Clothes.

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United States of America?

[…]

Rumsfeld, in his eagerness to equate this administration’s strategy in Iraq with Winston Churchill’s call to watch Hitler and a Germany on the rise to destructive power once again, misses the mark entirely. But let’s not waste energy with generalizations; instead, let’s speak to historical fact regarding the nation of Iraq and Saddam Hussein.

The facts are that the United States of America financially backed Iraq in the early 1980’s. President Reagan sent this very same Donald Rumsfeld to speak with Saddam Hussein in December of 1983, during the peak of the Iraq-Iran war, to ensure that all was well in the struggle against that decade’s flavor of tyranny.

Only one month prior to the visit, Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against both Iranian soldiers and his own people. Even though our intelligence confirmed such actions, nothing was said by Rumsfeld at the time.

Donald Rumsfeld doesn’t have a leg to stand on in a comparison with Winston Churchill. If anything, he is complicit in the build-up of aggression that “islamofascists” have against our nation.

Similarly, America, circa 1980 to 2006, is in no way analogous to a European continent that fell into conflict with a powerful, internal rogue state and their techniques of propaganda, fear mongering, terrorism, territorial occupation and mass executions.

If anything, this speech by Rumsfeld — one that holds both loaded arguments and misconstrued analogies of the highest order — is closer itself to propaganda than “the beacon of light in times of darkness” message that both he and this administration so very wishes to convince us of believing.

Olbermann, who might not speak for political analysts, but does for millions of Americans with quelled voices in this nation, put it best when he directly challenged this administration’s self-righteous claim to ownership of truth, by saying:

“And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a new type of fascism. As he was correct to remind us as how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that, though probably not in the way he thought he meant it. This country faces a new type of fascism, indeed.”

The only problem is that if you’re a student of history, it really isn’t that new.

You have to love it when the guy behind “President Bush” starts snacking on a bag of potato chips.

(via Matthew Gross)