baldilocks

For the Progeny

Uptownsteve asks:

What will you black conservatives tell your grandchildren?

It’s a question which I take to imply that, somehow, our grandchildren will presume to vilify us for voting against the man who will become the first black president of the United States. It’s a very easy question to answer, actually: we believe that political, social, moral and spiritual principles take precedence over ethnic tribalism and we followed through on that assertion. But I’m guessing that Steve needs things spelled out a bit more, so I’ll do it for him and for my great nieces and nephews and—perhaps—any grandchildren I might have through being a step-mother. Here goes.

When a voter picks a candidate to serve in an office, that voter is essentially saying “Of all the choices available, I think that this person will do a better job in that office that all of the other available candidates.” In this case we are, of course, talking about the office of President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces. We are talking about a person whose job it is to support and defend the U.S. Constitution, the American land and the American people.

In order to make that decision the American voters need information and during the campaign season we are presented with information designed to allow the voters to make an informed decision as to which of the candidates will be the most competent in fulfilling the objective particulars of that office. By November 4th, we are supposed to come to a conclusion about this matter and record that conclusion in the voting booth.

While we are evaluating all of the information which can indicate a candidate’s competency at supporting and defending the U.S. Constitution, the American land and the American people, we have to take the information we receive and decide whether that information is relevant to the particulars of the office in question. Additionally, we have to decide whether the positive information outweighs the negative. And on top of that, we have to decide which candidate’s positive-negative ratio is better than that all of the others.

I concluded that the things which I know about Barack Obama which are relevant to his possible abilities to adequately support and defend the U.S. Constitution, the American land and the American people —his political background, his expressed political/social ideas and his overall judgment were either of lower quality than John McCain’s or that those things would be overtly detrimental to the well-being of this nation. I also concluded that either man’s ethnicity/race/color was insignificant factor in making a judgment as who was able to better serve this nation and, therefore, was irrelevant to making that decision.

I made my decision by making judgments about the following:

• Barack Obama’s decisions about the Surge conducted in Iraq
• His words regarding the success of that Surge
• His words about the US Constitution in 2001
• His words to Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher.
• His voting record in the Illinois Senate
• His voting record in the US Senate
• His words about his association with domestic terrorist William Ayers
• His adherence to Black Liberation Theology as formulated by James Cone and as articulated by Jeremiah Wright, Emeritus pastor of Trinity United Church of “Christ”
• His claim to not know the nature of Wright’s theological stance and to not have heard the latter’s more incendiary sermons after sitting in the pews of Wright’s church for twenty years.
• His stance on abortion and on the “Born Alive” provision in Illinois law.
• His stated intention to conduct presidential-level negotiations with rogue heads of state
• His promise to accept public funding for his campaign

There are many more factors but I hope that I have formed a picture---I did not like Barack Obama's words and/or subsequent actions regarding the above topics. And I would state such to the younger members of my family without hesitation. And if my sisters and my brother-in-law are doing their jobs properly, their children will understand that if a presidential candidate goes against every dearly-held ideology and principle in which you believe but is your same color, it’s a no-brainer to make the decision to vote against him/her.

Because if a candidate’s political, social and moral values are an anathema to a given voter but that voter chooses that candidate anyway solely because the voter shares race/ethnicity with the candidate and/or because of historical precedent, that voter has exchanged principle for emotion and for carnality. The voter has exchanged political, moral and spiritual values for pride of tribe (blacks) or to assuage tribal guilt (whites).

And that, good sir, is the very illustration of a selling-out.

However, if one’s “principles” are for sale, I guess that’s not such a big deal. And if one has no principles, we all know what’s being exchanged, what’s being sold: one’s very person. One's soul.

I’ll tell the kids that I retained mine.

UPDATE: Unfortunately, uptownsteve is banned. Pearls, swine, you know.

UPDATE: Welcome, friends from Ace of Spades HQ!

Relative Poverty

Before today, I’ve never posted anything about Barack Obama’s half-brother, George Onyango Obama, a resident of one of Nairobi's worst slums. The reason: unlike many, I don’t think that it is automatically the senator’s responsibility to support those whom he has taken no part in creating. And even if it is discovered that there was some agreement between the two brothers, it would be one made between individual adult members of a family and, therefore, none of my business.

In contrast, I took on the responsibility of supporting Obama-Kogelo School with the assistance of many others, because a public promise was made to many children. Some of these children may have the chance to fulfill the same type of dreams which Barack Obama Sr. and Philip Ochieng had a half century ago.

I do understand why some of the senator’s political opponents have made an issue of the fact that Senator Obama has done nothing to lift his younger brother up from his degraded existence, one which is light-years removed from that of a Harvard-educated lawyer and US Senator. (And now it has been discovered that the senator has an aunt on his father’s side--Zeituni Onyango--living Boston public housing.) Senator Obama is the sponsor of the Global Poverty Act (S. 2433)—a proposed law designed to feed all the hungry children of the world and funded by American tax dollars, naturally. In other words Barack Obama would legally compel Americans to give even more to the poor of the entire world even while he made the choice not to do so for his own flesh and blood. The two stances are hypocritical on their faces. Conservative pundit Dinesh D’Souza thinks so as well and has been raising money for the immigration and upkeep of George Obama.

One wonders, however, if the senator, believing that he will win next week’s election, thinks that his proposal will take care of all the George Obamas and Zeituni Onyangos of the world. Senator Obama seems to think that he can solve all of the problems of this country by forcing American workers to give their proceeds to those who cannot or will not work. Why shouldn’t the ideal be applicable worldwide?

But to me, Barack Obama’s advocacy of GPA and D’Souza’s efforts to “save” George Obama represent the same sort of futility. If the parents of the world will not do enough to feed their own children and the George Obamas of the world—especially the American ones—will not do everything in their power to improve their individual situation and that of their kinsmen and their countrymen, nothing will change. All these charitable endeavors will just be like tossing money into the furnace.

With these thoughts in mind, I am thinking of disbanding Save Senator Obama Kogelo School, Inc. Because the organization is a non-profit, I am obliged to either refund the money or donate it to another charitable organization and that’s what I am likely to do next week, but I haven't made up my mind at this point.

At any rate, it is likely that the school will be built/remodeled after the election by an organization which prefers to remain anonymous to avoid the politicization of it all. And in the event of an Obama victory I suspect that Obama kinsman Kenya Prime Minister Raila Odinga will take it upon himself to upgrade the Obama ancestral village all around. Such is the way of countries where semi-strongman politics is present—if you win, your relatives and your hometown win also.

I almost disbanded my effort immediately after reading my father’s September op-ed on D’Souza’s actions. After all, in email, he said something similar—but less stinging--to me about my effort.

[W]here was this latter-day savior before Barack appeared in the news pages? Why is it that he's only interested in helping the relative of a celebrity, whereas hunger is rasping millions of other Kenyans?

If he were a genuine savior, wouldn't he organize an institution - like Father Grol's Undugu Society - to channel publicly collected funds to benefit more human beings? Granted, he has a right to choose to help only a single individual.

As we know, this is something I actually did do.

But in the event, why not do so privately?

How is the heck are people supposed to know that they can give to a particular charity if the holder of that charity doesn’t tell anyone about it?

My prideful response: if you all are so smart, build your own schools, feed your own countrymen. After all, Mboya’s efforts to educate Obama Sr., Ochieng Sr., and hundreds of other Kenyans back in the day seem to have borne fruit for the individual students and their American offspring, but it didn’t do much for the country that it was intended to benefit.

"You" are merely trying to embarrass the Senator. The urge in your puny mind is to convince the world that Barack is a skinflint who cares nothing about helping his own brother out of a quagmire.

That’s correct. And after the discovery of the existence of the American aunt, this image is reinforced--not because of D'Souza's actions but because of Obama's.

You are telling Americans that the man seeking their votes is a sadist whose entire paternal clan in Kenya is perishing from hunger.

Years ago, in my ignorance, I asked my father why the poor in Nairobi’s slums don’t have indoor plumbing. He never answered me. Now I think that I know the ‘whys’ of both. And, more than ever, I'm inclined to agree with Kenyan economist James Shikwati: the kindest thing that the West could do for Africa is to cease all aid. It would be a great compliment to the competence of all the ethnic groups on the continent.

I’ll post my decision next week and inform the donors.

Through the Looking Glass

Max Taves of LA Weekly interviews me about my parallel/mirror life with Obama and about my effort to save the school in the senator's father's hometown and named in his honor. The profile is pretty accurate, though I don't recall saying that I "worry about my bills." And I have never met my father face-to-face, though we do talk by phone and e-mail.

I've already been called irresponsible by an Obama supporter for "naming" the school "Barack Obama's School" and advised that I needed to "re-think" that decision. I received no apology for all the erroneous assumptions in the friendly advice, however, when I pointed out that it was the residents of Nyang'oma-Kogelo, Kenya who dubbed their secondary school 'Senator Obama Kogelo Secondary School.'

(And, yes, I hate the picture. The bougainvillea were swelling me up yeah, I've gotten fatter since this latest bout of not-smoking--ten months.)

(Thanks to Michael Bowen, Patrick Frey and Jill Stewart)

Al Qaeda's 1998 Attacks on Africa

Ten years ago today--using the time-tested truck-bomb method--Islamists blew up the American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The toll: in Nairobi 213 dead—of that number 12 were American; in Dar es Salaam 11 dead—all Africans—and 85 wounded.

From the Kenya attack, over 4500 were wounded, 150 were blinded.

From the Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower:

Beyond the obvious goal of calling attention to the existence of al Qaeda, the point of the bombings was vague and confusing. The Nairobi operation was named after the Holy Kaaba in Mecca; the Dar es Salaam bombing was called al-Aqsa, after the mosque in Jerusalem; neither had an obvious connection to the American embassies in Africa. Bin Laden put forward several explanations for the attack. He initially said that the sites had been target because of the “invasion” of Somalia; then he described an American plan to partition Sudan, which he said was hatched in the embassy in Nairobi. He also told his followers that the genocide in Rwanda had been planned inside the two American embassies.

That would be funny if it didn't make me nauseous.

Muslims all over the world greeted the bombings with horror and dismay. The deaths of so many people, most of them Africans, many of them Muslims, created a furor. Bin Laden said that the bombings gave the Americans a taste of the atrocities that Muslims had experienced. But to most of the world and even to some members of al-Qaeda, the attacks seemed pointless, a showy act of mass murder with no conceivable effect on American policy except to provoke a massive response.

But that, as it turned out, was exactly the point.

Wright says that bin Laden had been trying to get the Americans to come and get him in Afghanistan, figuring that, if he killed enough Americans we would. (We know what happened afterward and what is still happening, but I don’t want to make this post too much about Americans.)

I contend that there was another point. Al Qaeda did it for the same reason they do everything else. Evil is almost always its own point.

Kenya’s Daily Nation has, of course, been commemorating the attacks.

Nairobi’s Day of Horror Recalled

Nairobi. 10:40am. Friday August 7, 1998. First came two explosions, then the mighty sonic boom, the ground shook and the skies over a corner of the city darkened with a mushroom cloud.

As the smoke and dust cleared, tonnes of paper thrown up by the blast wafted lazily over the city, coming down in slow pirouettes that belied the force of the explosion that had sent them into the sky. By the time New York got its 9/11, Nairobi already had its August 7, a date of horror etched in the collective memory of millions of Kenyans.

When the dust had cleared 213 innocents, nearly all of them Kenyans, lay dead.

The target of the terrorist attack, the US embassy, a stout, solid, fortress by the Haile Sellasie Avenue-Moi Avenue-Kenya Railways roundabout, was still standing defiant, but a mere shell gutted into the insides. Twelve American and 31 other embassy staff, nearly all Kenyans, lost their lives.

Adjacent to the embassy building, the taller 7-story Ufundi Cooperative House [containing a secretarial college], not constructed to withstand bomb attacks, had crumbled to the ground.

(Emphasis mine.)

Sound familiar?

More:

How the Nairobi Terror Attack was Planned

Victims: Only the Scars Have Died
“We forgive you, but we have not forgotten.”

Personally speaking, I learned quickly that none of my immediate family had been injured. Though I had never met any of them at the time, this was a great relief to me. The American response to the attack, however, made my then ongoing transformation from Democrat to Republican irreversible.

Many things were galling about the attacks, but one was the fact that Africans—Kenyans and Tanzanians—weren’t even the targets of the bombings but took most of the casualties. (This was also the case with the 2002 Mombasa attacks; Israelis were the targets.)

To quote myself:

I liken [al-Qaeda attitude toward the terror attacks in Africa] to a demolition company destroying a building. Who cares if the "vermin" in it are destroyed along with the building? For that is the cultural view that [many? most?] Arab Muslims hold for blacks, even for those blacks who are foolish enough to believe that being Muslims themselves will save them. Sudan, anyone?

At any rate, my heart goes out to those who are still feeling the physical, emotional and spiritual pain caused by those attacks. At least one of your American friends is thinking of you today, Kenya, and I know for a fact that I am far from alone.

Berlin Airlift

Today is the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Berlin Airlift. I wrote a piece for Pajamas Media commemorating the anniversary. Check it out!

The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade

I wish that I would have found the following a couple of months ago. However, there's no time like the present.

Here's a little something for those who would urge God to damn America for her real and perceived sins against her citizens who are of black African descent.

The worst, most inhumane and most diabolical institution of the black African slave trade was initiated, refined, perpetrated and implemented by the Mohammedan Arabs and later aided and abetted by the black converts to Mohammedan Islam.

I predict that, as usual, the two subcultures--those of denial of facts and of political correctness will attack us without once disproving a single statement and/or conclusion that we make.

--John Alembillah Azumah, author of The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-religious Dialogue

Obama Birth Rumors

Ed Morrissey asks:

Was Barack Obama born in Hawaii or somewhere else, or did he just change a name?

Ed cites Jim Geraghty, who thinks that the Obama Campaign’s failure to produce the candidate’s birth certificate has caused these rumors to fly:

1. Obama was not born in the US, but in Kenya.
2. Obama’s middle name was Mohammed, not Hussein (but then why change it to another Arabic name?)
3. His real first name is “Barry”.

Of these, only one is serious.

My first instinct is to call Bravo Sierra on this story, since it’s most likely an ever-mutating product of the malignant imagination of a guy named Kenneth Lamb who saw fit to make up lies about my tribe—the same tribe that Obama stems from. Lamb claims that our tribe is an Arab tribe. Yes, really. The goal in creating this fiction is to refute the idea that Obama, whose mother was a white American, is a “legal” “African American,” whatever the heck that is. (I suppose that, by this logic, I am half “African American” since my mother is a black American.)

See the guy on the right? That’s my father, journalist Philip Ochieng, a Kenyan Luo like the senior Barack Obama. The two were also friends (something which Father's beginning to rue since he's being inundated by American media requests of late). Does he look like an Arab to you?

Obama has produced so many gaffes—both about his personal life and about American history—that I’m beginning to wonder whether anything he says is something which he hasn’t learned rote from a script. However, allowing this fantasy about the Luo tribe--one born of ignorance regarding African countries--to mix in with real, live concrete issues regarding a prospective Barack Obama presidency hurts the opposition to that candidacy. That it p*sses me off is beside the point.

Make no mistake, Lamb’s novella is the origin of these rumors.

Proper Burial

Instapundit, who has this photo up today, taken in a Tennessee town

jokes that

I thought we'd at least have until the Democrats took the White House before these things started popping up.

If those who empty it are intending to give unserviceable flags (torn, dirty, stained) a proper funeral--by ceremonially burning them--then the container is a good thing.

It's far better and less upsetting than finding them in a dumpster or a trash heap.

Glenn knows this undoubtedly, but I thought it needed to be said for those who don't and who may be sending him nasty-grams this second.

UPDATE: Some folks thoght that Glenn's picture was a Photoshop creation, so he posts another view of the "mail" box with its surroundings visible.

Interesting how different human perspective is on the idea of flag disposal. Those who knew little about flag protocol thought that the photo was fake; those who know more about it found the concept entirely plausible.

Odyssey

Tom Mboya’s passion*—to provide the ‘elite’ of his nation with Western education so that they might come back home and build on the home turf—has borne some unforeseen fruit, both large and small.

Because of Obama’s prominence, Mboya’s endeavor has recently received the type of publicity of which the latter could have only dreamed back in the late fifties. However, it seems that, whether in America or Africa, Mboya operated by Jesus Christ’s axiom that when one asks, he/she shall receive. And it appears that Obama and I have many earthly beings to thank for the providence of being born American. One such being is American expatriate Gloria Hagberg.

From a 2005 profile:

Resting on a couch at the United Kenya Club in Nairobi, 92-year-old Gloria Hagberg is a lady at peace with the heavens and all below.

She came to Kenya 50 years ago and fell in love with the country and its people. Now in the sunset of her life, she spends her day going through scrapbooks and photo albums of her rich career as an educationist.

And she is not about to leave Kenya. "This is the only home I know," she insists.

Her best memories are of the time when she and her late husband, Gordon Hagberg, helped about 5,000 Kenyan students go to America for studies in what is commonly known as the airlifts between 1958 and 1962.

Among them were two future vice presidents of Kenya, the late Dr Josephat Karanja and Professor George Saitoti.

Others who passed through her hands later became senior politicians and some members of the Cabinet. They include Arthur Magugu, Dr Adhu Awiti, Samuel Adoyo and Kimani wa Nyoike.

She also nurtured journalists Hilary Ng’weno and Philip Ochieng before they took up their scholarships in the US. [SNIP]

Her role in the airlift project was to conduct pre-airlift classes for students who had qualified for the scholarships and to make their flight arrangements.

The classes were mainly to introduce them to America and counsel them on how to make it as students in a foreign country.

"It was not as easy as it sounds," she recalls. "Many of them had never been to Nairobi, let alone fly to New York." [SNIP]

Her husband’s memoirs capture the hectic moments in the following words: "Students flocked to the office where Sumat Patel and J.K. Jani were coping with the restless line. These two gentlemen were among the many who gave their time and money to get the airlift off the ground. Their energetic resourcefulness was later to be described as something akin to a miracle by the time the third airlift had safely delivered its passengers across the Atlantic."

But to get the job done, they were able to get tickets at fares that were half of the normal amount.

Gloria recalls a 5,000-plus crowd gathering at the airport that evening. They were members of family and well-wishers who had come to witness the historic day. She, her husband and the late Cabinet ministers Mboya and Gikonyo Kiano stood with the crowd to wave Kwaheri.

"The excitement was so high you could feel it in the air. The crowds were cheering and dancing, almost causing a stampede at the waving bay. Security people had to intervene to stop the frenzied crowds from jumping into the restricted area," she remembers.

Two days later the students arrived in New York flying via London. Gloria had already confirmed their bookings at the Hotel Martinique on 32nd Street at Broadway. Here the travel-weary students found tens of journalists waiting to report the event.

"I was so delighted to receive a cable that the students had landed safely in the US and were headed for their respective colleges. My husband and I went for a special dinner to celebrate the achievement." [SNIP]

Gloria recalls the second airlift taking place in September 1960. This one had 148 students who she had taken through her pre-flight course. They arrived in New York on September 13 aboard two DC-4 aircrafts. Fifty compatriots from the first airlift were at hand to meet the new arrivals.[SNIP]

Within 10 days of the arrival of the second group came a further 242 students.

"It was like a military invasion with hundreds of Kenyans landing in the US every week," she recalls with delight.

(Emphasis mine.)

How about that? I highlighted the instances of flight to show that, unless one is looking at a roster of passengers, it would be easy to confuse who was on which flight. Additionally, there were many, many people who provided resources--financial and otherwise--to bring these students to America. I tip my not-wig to them and, of those gone on, to their memories.

My source wondered whether Mrs. Hagberg was still alive. As of February, she was indeed--riding out the turmoil in her adopted homeland in relative safety (scroll down). February 1 was her 95th birthday.

I wonder how many Americans there are who are descended from these “invaders.” Obama and I may be the most narcissistic ones, but it's not possible that we're the only ones.

(A most heartfelt thanks to Buy Danish)

*Part of the airlift timeline is here.

Back to Africa Again

UPDATE (February 9, 2016): This whole post is one big [sic]. Barack Obama Senior was not on the Kennedy/Mboya airlift.

ORIGINAL: The airlift which brought my father--Philip Ochieng--and Barack Obama, Sr. to America is back in the news again. Originally discussed this time last year after Obama, Jr.'s Selma speech--which saw the senator curiously attribute some of the events surrounding his 1961 birth to the 1964 Selma march—Obama asserted that the airlift in question was due to the efforts of John F. Kennedy. Observers threw the BS flag on that as well since Obama had already been conceived by the time JFK was sworn in as POTUS. However, when I found out that my father had been on the same plane as Obama Senior, I did some digging and discovered that JFK had indeed been responsible for an airlift of students from Kenya before he became president. An op-ed written by my father in 2004 seemed to confirm this.

Like Obama Senior, I too went to the US on the famous Tom Mboya Airlift of 1959 [when hundreds of Kenyan students were given scholarships to American universities]. I first met Obama Senior in Tom Mboya's Nairobi office [Mboya was then the secretary general of the Kenya Federation of Labour]. Obama and I met up again on returning to Nairobi and remained drinking buddies for many years.

(Emphasis mine. That will be important in a moment.) Note that my father calls the trip the ‘Tom Mboya Airlift.’ However, the 1960 article in TIME magazine calls it the ‘Kennedy Airlift.’ At first I chalked the difference up to cultural pride--of course, each nation would want to give their countryman the credit. After that, it seemed that the bit of history was settled. (Obama was on his own as far as the Selma issue went, however.)

Then, last week, I received an email from a gentleman named Gregory Gelembiuk who provided yet more info about the airlift. Mr. Gelembiuk contended that Senator Obama was deliberately lying about the Kennedy connection because the Ivy-educated senator was more used to doing in-depth research than I am, because he has access to more information than I do and because the senator has a history of, shall we say, selective recall. All are true but I was merely going by what my father had said.

Later in the week I received an email from the Washington Post’s Michael Dobbs who asked about the same information, so I provided him with my father’s email address and at least one link, courtesy of Mr. Gelembiuk. I don’t know whether either was useful to Mr. Dobbs, but today’s Post contains his piece entitled “Obama Overstates Kennedys' Role in Helping His Father.”

Contrary to Obama's claims in speeches in January at American University and in Selma last year, the Kennedy family did not provide the funding for a September 1959 airlift of 81 Kenyan students to the United States that included Obama's father. According to historical records and interviews with participants, the Kennedys were first approached for support for the program nearly a year later, in July 1960. The family responded with a $100,000 donation, most of which went to pay for a second airlift in September 1960. [SNIP]

A more accurate version of the story would begin not with the Kennedys but with a Kenyan nationalist leader named Tom Mboya, who traveled to the United States in 1959 and 1960 to persuade thousands of Americans to support his efforts to educate a new African elite. Mboya did not approach the Kennedys for financial support until Obama Sr. was already studying in Hawaii.

So the problem is that there was more than one sortie in the airlift and Obama--and Hot Air's Allahpundit and myself--got one of the Kennedy-funded trips confused with earlier ones which had different funding--an easy thing to do since none of us were born yet when the events in question occurred.

Personally I didn't even know about the airlifts until Obama mentioned it last year and I asked my father about it afterward. Compounding the confusion, my father innocently bunches all of the sorties together when telling of the endeavor in his 2004 column. He speaks of hundreds of students being the beneficiaries of Mboya’s idea rather than the eighty-one students in the singular year of 1959, among them himself and Obama Sr.

In 1959 Mboya coordinated an “airlift” of 81 Kenyan students to the United States to attend college, and shortly after attending the “Africa Freedom Dinner,” Mboya wrote [Dr. Martin Luther] King requesting financial assistance for a Kenyan student who was to enter Tuskegee Institute in the fall.

In an 8 November 1959 letter to the New York Times Mboya explained: “Nothing constitutes a greater contribution to the struggle against poverty, disease and political subjection in Africa more than the contribution made towards our peoples’ educational advancement.” With the help of the African American Students Foundation and its sponsors, Harry Belafonte, Jackie Robinson, and Sidney Poitier, Mboya raised sufficient funds to cover the students’ travel expenses.

Believing that Africans and African Americans shared “a common struggle” against colonialism and segregation King took an active interest in the education of African students. He encouraged college presidents in the United States to expand financial aid options available to Africans. He arranged for the Montgomery Improvement Association and other Montgomery organizations to fund five Kenyan students to study at American universities and pledged the SCLC and Dexter Avenue Baptist Church to fund the living expenses for Kenyan student, Nicholas Raballa, who was admitted to Tuskegee Institute.

(It is interesting to know that Mboya went to the black glitterati of the era for help and good to know that they came through. Upon discovering this new information, I briefly considered being nicer to Mr. Belafonte from now on, then discarded the notion. After all, who knows who else will be discovered to have been responsible for Obama's and my presence in this country?)

The bottom line is this: I dissent from Misters Gelembiuk, Dobbs and Morrissey in that I think the discrepancies in the airlift story are an innocent mistake on Obama's part. Of course I understand why they do not believe this-- they're thinking of all the not-so-innocent mistakes on topics large and small which the good senator has made. I, too, would have come to a similar conclusion if it weren't for the mitigating circumstances which I've highlighted.

But "I ain't mad at" the above gentlemen if they're not convinced. See, that's the problem with chronic dissembling. Even when you make an honest-to-goodness oopsie, no one believes that it stems from honesty or goodness. [Re-edited]

How "Blackness" Came To Be

Regarding my post “Is Obama Black or White? Yes,” reader Salt Lick has a few questions—the answers of which I think would be useful for all to see. For clarity’s sake, the lines from the original post are block-quoted, Salt Lick’s questions or comments are in bold and my answers/comments are in normal font. Let’s have at it, shall we?

Hello Baldi -- I've been reading and rereading your post for over a half-hour, trying to understand your central point. It seems to me that you are not defending Sinbad's attitude so much as asking his critics to consider the reasons underlying it. You are mostly annoyed that "some" people are saying Obama's race shouldn't matter because it's convenient for them, not because they really want to ignore his race (whatever that is). Am I right? Yes. I do think that some whites feel slighted because Obama calls himself black--either because they "love" him so much and view the self-ID as exclusionary from them. Or it's another straw for the camel's back, as it were (more about this in the next post). I've seen some say that he's racist for calling himself 'black.' On the contrary, he's merely following tradition--not an obscure seldom-seen one, but one one that's in practice everyday in 2008 among black Americans without any second thought.

I'm still not sure, however, I understand some of your specific points:

Glenn Reynolds adds this point from one of his readers: "Let me see if I've got this straight: a white man is not allowed to portray a half-white man (Barack Obama) on SNL, but a black man is?" Glenn’s other reader must not have been paying attention to the racial conventions in this country; conventions which have existed since the country has existed.

But a reader could be quite familiar with those conventions and still ask the question, right? Regardless of history, the question can stand by itself. On the contrary, a question like that cannot be separated from the history of how race is thought of by those who were upset—like Sinbad--that Obama was portrayed by a white man. They were upset because to them, Obama is not a white man, but a black one. (His partial whiteness makes no difference to them because almost all black Americans have some white ancestry.) To see why this is so, the history must be spelled out and considered. As for question posed by Glenn’s reader, implicit in it is the erroneous assumption that Barack Obama—or others like him--would be considered white just as often as he would be considered black. The fact that he/she makes that assumption says to me that he/she is unfamiliar with how racial conventions have gone in this country for generations (as I said) or is ignoring it. The person can certainly ask the question, however, and I can critique it--which certainly doesn't hinder the former.

The point is that we cannot have it all ways. Either he’s a) black or b) white or c) half-black and half-white or d) an American and who-gives-a-damn about his ethnicity. I’m sure that a lot of us would pick option ‘d’ or even ‘b.’ However, let’s quit pretending that those who would pick option ‘a’ aren’t merely following a well-known American tradition.

Who do you see as "those who would pick option 'a'"? Those who are following the racial conventions as they have been followed up until recently.

Do you think that's OK? Sure. I did say that later in the post.

Does the acceptability of that choice vary depending on their race? Probably. I do think that younger white Americans are largely unfamiliar with how it got to be so that persons with half or less African ancestry got to be considered black. Therefore when this group observes these mini-dramas like the SNL controversy and wonders why Obama calls himself black and not something else and why black Americans view this as a given, many of the former chalk it up to black racism--which is understandable if the historical context isn’t provided.

If one wants to break with that tradition, the first step is to be honest about it.

I'm not clear whether you think we should break with "that tradition" because you later write "...race rules fast enough for some; but that isn't due to the same white supremacy that gave birth to the rules. It's just the way we've always thought about ourselves and those who are usually members of our family." So it's OK to see yourself as "black" or "white" as long as it's not because of "the convention?" I said: “That many white people don't want to follow [the old racial conventions] any more is most definitely progress.” I also said: “If some [mixed-race persons] want to think of themselves in a different manner--like, say, Tiger Woods or one of my nieces or one of Glenn's nephews--I say fantastic; if not, also fantastic.” Therefore, I’m of the who-gives-a-damn school of thought on the matter. It's not a matter of "should." However, it is here where I probably could have provided more clarity, so I’ll give it a shot.

An assumption: Glenn’s reader seemed taken aback that some blacks believe that a person who is in reality, half-black and half-white should be considered black and that, therefore only a black actor should portray him and not a white one. That reader believed the attitude to stem from a black racism that is a mirror image to white supremacy--another assumption on my part. Such racism does exist, of course, but I contended that this isn't an example of it, but “just the way we've always thought about ourselves and those who are usually members of our family” and provided the historical context--about which a lot of young white people seem not to know. This isn’t an OK/not-OK issue; it just is. All I’m trying to do is to correct a misconception about this subject—a misconception about its origin.

I think that black people have, for the greater part, willingly gone along with the convention. That many white people don't want to follow it any more is most definitely progress. But two things should be kept in mind: 1) Until relatively recently, white persons--in America at least--have always decided who was considered 'white'; IOW they made the rules in that area. ...don't pretend as if another rule isn't being made by "whites" that "blacks" have to follow or suffer some sort of censure.

That seems to say that the relatively recent notion of doing away with race as important is only a white idea. I made no value judgment as to the idea’s importance; rather to the decision of when it’s time to change and to the identity of the *decision-makers.* Yes it’s a bit of pride; not the racial kind per se but the standard issue. Black Americans have had their societal role defined by whites and other Americans from the beginning. In the bad old days, when a black person stepped out of his fixed role, he was “censured” harshly. Nowadays other Americans want to redefine that role, but if some black persons want to go with the old definitions, they are censured infinitely less harshly, but censured nonetheless--told that they’re being racist and not moving fast enough. I'm saying this: until all racial classifications are repudiated altogether, that a person should decide for herself on the matter of self-ID.

2) That the rules are to be dropped now seems a tad convenient.

And the rejoinder from "others" is that it seems a tad convenient that some want to hold on to the old rule, which used to be abhorrent, but is useful now. Who said anything about any of this abhorrent? Abhorrent to whom? Useful to whom and how? I see inferences not implied by this blogger. I explained to you some things that have always been taken for granted by black people until recently--like the last ten years. Are you calling me a liar?

Isn't this the drag on all social progress -- old grudges and resentments drag it down. Considering one's self 'black' as one has always done is a grudge now? Some sort of resentment? My mother has lighter skin that Obama and has hazel eyes to boot (Obama's are brown). It’s interesting to know that it’s nursing some sort of “old grudge and resentment” that we consider her black. I've heard it remarked that the concept of black always conjures negatively notions, but you, sir, have taken it to a new level.

Everyone wants "justice." Because anything else is unfair. I am reminded of a two-year-old post at Wizbang which featured the Conservative Brotherhood—an informal blog alliance composed of black conservative bloggers--in a positive context. Some of the commenters, however, contended that we CB members were “holding ourselves back” by even congregating or that we were asserting that our writing was better because we were black! IOW they were using their own preconceived notions to define the group rather that letting us define ourselves. They were letting their stereotypes about blackness and of what it meant when black Americans chose to form alliances with each other get in the way of what any of us were saying. It was almost as if they weren't even seeing the word 'conservative.'

When I write here, I’m not doing so in a vacuum. Each post may be on a singular subject but, after having written for a bit, I would like to think that regular readers would have at least some sort of idea of how I think; of what is important to me and what isn’t. That you would think that “justice” and “fairness” were somehow a part of this says to me that you’re not taking me as an individual blogger, but are taking my measure using some other standard.

With that in mind, let my say this: I do not give a rat’s hairy backside about “justice” or "fairness” with regard to this topic. The concepts I’ve put down here exist. Reality exists and all I’m exhorting others to do is to accept it, rather than making up their context-free version of it. If “some” cannot do that without imbuing some less-than-savory motives on my part, then I’ll have to get over it because I've long accepted that life is manifestly unfair. If you don't embrace anything else I say, embrace that.

Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant I take my not-wig off to you. I can be...harsh..with those who disagree with me--especially when they're putting words in my mouth. Thanks for the opportunity to clarify my points.

Is Obama Black or White? Yes (UPDATE)

Today it’s all about race. Again. This time it’s Sinbad jumping into the fray, complaining that a white man has been continuously slotted to portray Barack Obama on Saturday Night Live. ::::cough::: Eddie Murphy :::cough::: Whatever.

However, in his commentary on the subject, Glenn Reynolds adds this point from one of his readers:

Let me see if I've got this straight: a white man is not allowed to portray a half-white man (Barack Obama) on SNL, but a black man is?

Glenn’s other reader must not have been paying attention to the racial conventions in this country; conventions which have existed since the country has existed. Rightly or wrongly, a person who has a certain amount of African ancestry has been considered black and, during the slavery and Jim Crow years and many of the the mere forty-plus year beyond that, treated accordingly. The short version? Any child gotten upon a black slave by any white man was still considered black and therefore also a slave. (And when one thinks about this dispassionately, it makes sense financially.) Later on, post-bellum, the driving force for the convention was white supremacy--keeping the race pure. (Some folks refer to this as the ‘one-drop rule.’ However, it would not apply to Obama since he has a great deal more that one drop of black African ancestry. It would be more applicable to someone like my grandmother.)

Now I'm all for ignoring conventions which have white supremacy as progenitor, as I'm sure Glenn is. But some folks act as if this concept originated with black people. And they also act as if no one would have turned a hair had Obama presented himself to the American electorate as white—that is, making no mention of race whatsoever unless asked. (Of course that would mean that Mrs. O. would have to pipe down and that they would have to belong to a different church, but that's beside the point.)

The point is that we cannot have it all ways. Either he’s a) black or b) white or c) half-black and half-white or d) an American and who-gives-a-damn about his ethnicity. I’m sure that a lot of us would pick option ‘d’ or even ‘b.’ However, let’s quit pretending that those who would pick option ‘a’ aren’t merely following a well-known American tradition.

If one wants to break with that tradition, the first step is to be honest about it.

UPDATE: Thanks to Glenn for the link and the comment:

I'm well aware of the one-drop rule. What's changed, though, is who seems most interested in enforcing it.

Again, Obama doesn't qualify. Additionally, I think that black people have, for the greater part, willingly gone along with the convention. That many white people don't want to follow it any more is most definitely progress. But two things should be kept in mind:

1) Until relatively recently, white persons--in America at least--have always decided who was considered 'white'; IOW they made the rules in that area. (I'm told that those of Irish and Italian descent weren't always part of the "club.") Many mixed-raced Americans of African descent--which means darn near every black American including me--aren't subscribing to the new race rules fast enough for some; but that isn't due to the same white supremacy that gave birth to the rules. It's just the way we've always thought about ourselves and those who are usually members of our family. If some want to think of themselves in a different manner--like, say, Tiger Woods or one of my nieces or one of Glenn's nephews--I say fantastic; if not, also fantastic. But don't pretend as if another rule isn't being made by "whites" that "blacks" have to follow or suffer some sort of censure.

2) That the rules are to be dropped now seems a tad convenient. Why not with Colin Powell or Julian Bond or dozens of other famous visibly mixed-raced Americans of African descent?

More later. Maybe.

Blast From the Past

Today is a day of violence. It's also an anniversary of what would have been a significant attack on our military. Instead the 1970 incident turnout to be a mere "work accident."

Three members of the radical activist group known as the Weather Underground, Diana Oughton, Ted Gold and Terry Robbins, blew themselves straight to hell when the bomb they were building, which was intended to blow up a dance at Fort Dix, exploded in an otherwise quiet New York neighborhood.

Rest in Pieces.

Oughton had been the girlfriend of fellow WU member Williams Ayers--the same William Ayers who, during a interview intended to promote his book Fugitive Days (sorry, no Amazon link for that from me), spouted off about blowing up the Pentagon. The interview "coincidentally" appeared in the New York Times on the morning of September 11, 2001 (and some say that there's no God).

This is, indeed, the same William Ayers who has an admittedly tenuous connection to Barack Obama. The problem with that connection is this, however: it cannot be considered as just another isolated fact. It cannot be view as a thing which has no relation to all of the other things which are just a little "off" about Senator Obama.

Again, I urge all of you who are considering voting for the senator to be discerning enough to know what to take in consideration and know what to throw out when it comes to evaluating the package of policies, personality and history in which Barack Obama presents himself to us, the American electorate.

Is that too much to ask?

(Thanks to Ace Of Spades HQ)

UPDATE: More violence. Don't forget--this is still his world.

Why Ask Why?

Over at the blog iSteve, Steve Sailer has been blogging Obama for some time. He happened to come upon the work I've done regarding the situation in Kenya, featured it and, as a result, I'm getting a nice little traffic upswing. Thanks and I take my not-wig off to you, sir.

Steve finds it fascinating that Obama and I managed to develop polar opposite political philosophies while having frighteningly similar (but obviously not the same) origins. But long-time readers of this blog will know that our political philosophies were not so opposite once upon a time.

I don't know why I went one way and Obama went the other. Some might think that his Ivy League education is the factor. Perhaps. However, I suspect that there are three additional issues which make up part of the difference: 1) my upbringing was not foreign (his was partially), 2) I grew up without the type of identity crises which the senator seems to have experienced* and 3) my parents are still around for me to argue with.

But, of course, these factors by themselves or even considered as a whole don't necessarily lead to conservatism. Sometimes the answers to such questions aren't immediately at hand. Sometimes the answer is--Grace.

[Re-edited with more caffeine]

*IMO, this is due to his being biracial. Now, careful. I'm not saying that all--or even most--biracial persons experience this. But his biracial-ness coupled with the fact that both parents essentially abandoned him had to cause him to ask "who am I" for quite some time.

Exhortation From My Father

Normally, I don't post full articles/essays. But considering the by-line and the subject, you'll understand why I made an exception in this case.

Live for your country, don’t die for it

Story by PHILIP OCHIENG
Publication Date: 2/3/2008

I am a displaced person. Originally, I refused to move. After dispatching my family to various places, I locked myself up in my house to go on with my work. I had convinced myself that finishing the books I am writing was much more important than my safety.

Moreover, I thought that, at 70, if I died I would have lived a full life. But how illogical I was! If a fanatic killed me, how could I now dedicate my books to society? I recalled the philosopher’s admonition that no cause at all is worth dying for.

If you are so convinced that an ideal is vital for your society, then shouldn’t you make it your duty to live long enough to help your society to realise it? Once you are dead, of what use are you?

Thus only dastards can join battle with such swashbuckling as: “I am ready to die for democracy,” or: “I will die fighting for Kibaki.”

Nobody denies you your right to fight for Kibaki (or Odinga, Musyoka and Ruto).

The point is to do it intelligently. None of these individuals is worth your life.

Isaac Asimov, the American biochemist, once produced what he called “Three Laws of Robotics” to be written into the logico-mathematical pathways of each of his “positronic brains” to ensure that robots served human beings absolutely safely.

The third law is that a robot must keep itself intact every time it is deployed — unless this contradicts the first law (which is never to cause or allow any harm to a human user).

All the laws are actually central to all tool-making in human history. The third one makes the boomerang of the Australian native the most ingenious of all the tools ever made.

But, clearly, a soldier is much more important than a tool. That is why the law on self-preservation is even more significant to humans. Sure, a good soldier fights bravely in battle. But his bravery must include every stratagem that helps him to return to base unharmed.

Only then can he be available for another battle. Hence the saying: Live for your country: never deliberately die for it.

Patriotism is mental and manual commitment to one’s country for as long as possible. To die willingly, even in your country’s name, is treason.

Chest-thumping

To go to battle with chest-thumping carelessness – making yourself an easy prey to the enemy’s shrapnel — is to succumb to Shakespearean resignation: “Come what come may/Time and hour runs through the roughest day.” This is fatalism. Time has become your master, whereas time must flow in your own terms.

That is why, in the destructiveness of the present battle, you must protect yourself. There is no cowardice in dashing into hiding when necessary. Whatever the immediate factor, you save your life and make yourself available for a much more worthwhile battle.

If you die, I lose the chance to convince you that, at the moment, your weapons are aimed in the wrong direction. It is not the Kikuyu or the Kisii who have plunged us into Armageddon.

And, whoever it is, his targets are not the Kalenjin, the Luhya, the Luo or the Swahili.

No. Only individuals are guilty. Though they seek to hide under tribal labels, they have not done it to benefit their tribe but only themselves as individuals.

By taking arms to injure other Kenyans on the basis of their tribes, you are only making it easier for the culprits to hide under those labels. If Mr Samuel Fulani is the culprit, why attack the Swahili?

Indeed, you endanger your own lives. The crisis has revealed how desperately interdependent we are as tribes. Everything we do to another tribe boomerangs badly on us. However powerful its leaders may be, no tribe lives in a castle surrounded by a moat.

Every time you attack members of a tribe living in your area, you are digging the graves of your own relatives living in other tribal areas.

Once the revenge game begins, there can be no end to it. Why have we failed to learn even a single lesson from Somalia right next door? Yes, we wronged innocent Kikuyus and Kisiis. But, as Lewis Nguyai, my new MP, was telling my fellow constituents, a small spark of stupid reprisal is sure to turn into a national conflagration in which the arsonist himself is most likely to burn.

In other words, not a single tribe can gain even pesa nane from it. That was why I ran into safety – to be able, through writing, to continue to offer such advice. Maybe Robert Frost had Kenya and myself in mind when he wrote:

The wood is lovely, dark and deep;
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep.

The Kenya Crisis

The President Stands By Saddam WMD Claim

...on this day in 1998, and, um, it's not the president you thought it was.

(Thanks to Gateway Pundit and to the Anchoress)

Puzzle Pieces

A few years back, veteran editor Tina Brown opined that “bloggers were the new Stasi.” In response, I opined that if our journalistic betters were going to hurl epithets at us that it wasn’t too much to ask that they know what those epithets mean so that they could be sure that the epithet was appropriate before hurling it. “Stasi” is German shorthand for Staatssicherheit— literally ‘state security,’ the late East Germany’s infamous and feared secret police force. Think of all the images and concepts conjured by the phrase “secret police force in a communist country.”

The Stasi not only embodied those images and concepts, it defined them. As far as I know, bloggers have not banded together to kick down doors and drag ideological enemies away for interrogation and/or confinement. Banding together to fact-check and trade information on the public writings of our betters as we imbibe adult beverages is another story, however. But now, I can see where Brown’s comparison made some semblance of sense; the Stasi watched the every move of every citizen and visitor in German Democratic Republic* and bloggers watch every move of professional journalists.

One might also argue that with all of the personal cameras and microphones lurking around every corner to capture images of everything happening that some bloggers are fast approaching the Stasi’s level of nosiness. But Brown’s metaphor was still a very imperfect one that shouldn’t have been used. I thought that journalists wanted their offerings read and dissected. :::snark:::

Anyway, that’s a setup to point you to the fascinating story of the Stasi’s legacy, dark-sided as it is and the attempts to preserve that very tangible legacy as a reminder. Embodying stereotype of German efficiency, the Stasi kept meticulous records of everyone they surveilled. In the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall, they succeed in destroying roughly 5% of it.

That might not sound like much, but the agency had generated perhaps more paper than any other bureaucracy in history — possibly a billion pages of surveillance records, informant accounting, reports on espionage, analyses of foreign press, personnel records, and useless minutiae. There's a record for every time anyone drove across the border.

Which means I have one.

In the chaos of the days leading up to the actual destruction of the wall and the fall of East Germany's communist government, frantic Stasi agents sent trucks full of documents to the Papierwolfs and Reisswolfs — literally "paper-wolves" and "rip-wolves," German for shredders. As pressure mounted, agents turned to office shredders, and when the motors burned out, they started tearing pages by hand — 45 million of them, ripped into approximately 600 million scraps of paper.

There's no way to know what bombshells those files hide. For a country still trying to come to terms with its role in World War II and its life under a totalitarian regime, that half-destroyed paperwork is a tantalizing secret.

The machine-shredded stuff is confetti, largely unrecoverable. But in May 2007, a team of German computer scientists in Berlin announced that after four years of work, they had completed a system to digitally tape together the torn fragments. Engineers hope their software and scanners can do the job in less than five years — even taking into account the varying textures and durability of paper, the different sizes and shapes of the fragments, the assortment of printing (from handwriting to dot matrix) and the range of edges (from razor sharp to ragged and handmade.) "The numbers are tremendous. If you imagine putting together a jigsaw puzzle at home, you have maybe 1,000 pieces and a picture of what it should look like at the end," project manager Jan Schneider says. "We have many millions of pieces and no idea what they should look like when we're done."

The wholesale destruction of the files was prevented by the East German citizens themselves.

In several small cities, rumors started circulating that records were being destroyed. Smoke, fires, and departing trucks confirmed the fears of angry Germans, who rushed in to their local Stasi offices, stopped the destruction, and spontaneously organized citizen committees that could post guards to secure the archives. Demonstrators spray-painted the walls with slogans like "The files belong to us" and "Stasi get out." Finally, on the evening of January 15, 1990, thousands of demonstrators pushed in the front gate of the Stasi's fortified Berlin compound.

It's long, but very interesting--especially in light of the fact that some of our betters seem to be forgetting the inefficiencies and abuses inherent in socialist/communist governments--or hoping that the average citizens forgets. Read the whole thing.

(Thanks to Instapundit)

*In an important tie to my ongoing Kenya series, Kenya’s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) opposition leader Raila Odinga received a degree in mechanical engineering from what is now Otto von Guericke University of Magdeburg in Magdeburg, Germany. Magdeburg was part of East Germany when Odinga was a student there.

Happy Birthday

...to the Renaissance Man.

There Are Walls, Then There Are Walls

Previously, I made an analogy using the already-mandated but yet-to-be built wall on the southern US border to the unlamented Berlin Wall, saying that such a US border wall should have “the ease and efficiency of surveillance which the architects of the Berlin Wall would have envied.” However, I hope that no one would read it and make the erroneous assumption that the two barriers would have the same purpose.

It seems that Jeff Jacoby, however, would have readers believe that the builders of the two had/have identical intent and, for this reason, that President Reagan--were he alive and whole--would be an advocate of the Illegal Immigration Compromise (my coinage).

Twenty years ago this week in Berlin, President Reagan uttered his memorable challenge: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Conservatives who extol Reagan's legacy might ask themselves what he would have thought of the idea that our response to hard-working risk-takers so eager for a piece of the American Dream that they endanger life and limb to come here should be a Berlin-style wall of our own.

(Emphasis mine.)

But for the analogy to make sense, a US border fence’s main purpose would be to keep US citizens from escaping to a freer country, not the other way around. (To be fair, I suggested here—borrowing the idea from Victor Davis Hanson--that a secondary purpose of a border fence would be somewhat similar to that of the Berlin Wall; that it would make it more difficult for Mexican nationals living in the US to travel back to their country of origin, and thusly, be one of the prongs which could force them to at least try to assimilate to their new home’s culture and society.)

Here’s another area in which the analogy breaks down. The Federal Republic of Germany’s (then known as West Germany) pre-1989 policy towards its Soviet-controlled brethren to the East was always geared toward reunification (Articles 23 and 146 in West Germany’s Grundgesetz; roughly translated as ‘Constitution.’*)--especially after the 1960-1961 Soviet construction of the Berlin Wall between French, UK and USA-controlled West Berlin and Soviet-controlled East Berlin. Therefore, any escapees from the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and from East Berlin specifically were treated as West German citizens. Additionally, West Germany’s legendary Chancellor Willy Brandt (previously mayor of West Berlin during the construction of the Berlin Wall and, subsequent to that, West Germany's foreign minister) was the architect of Ostpolitik--a policy to normalize diplomatic, economic and cultural relations with the Soviet Union, Poland and, most importantly, East Germany—something which was very controversial at time, to understate things. However, today the policy is viewed as another important step in the path toward the subsequent political reunion of the two countries.

With that history in mind, Jeff Jacoby’s idea that Ronald Reagan would view the intent of a proposed US border fence on either or both borders the same as the intent of the Berlin Wall makes plausible the idea that our betters have a plan similar to that of the rather tin-foil hattish North American Union—a political union between Canada, the USA and Mexico. Is that what he is suggesting is being prevented? Probably not; though I've been wrong before.

(Thanks to Newsbusters)

*A more accurate translation: ‘Basic Law.’ IIRC, my German language teachers said that the difference between a Grundgesetz and a Verfassung (Constitution) was that the latter could only exist in a country that was whole. However, the Grundgesetz remains in force today.

Regarding Another Wall

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

As many here know, I was stationed in Berlin in the late 1980s and was in town—though on duty--when President Reagan made his famous June 12, 1988 request to Mikhail Gorbachev in the shadow of the Brandenburger Tor. In hindsight, it almost seems as if the sound of Reagan's voice terminally weakened the Berlin Wall to the point that it "crumbled" on its own a mere fifteen months later, like the wall of Jericho at the sound of the footsteps of Joshua's host.

I belong to several news groups which are composed of Air Force veterans who were stationed in Berlin before 1989. Some of the members were part of the USAF detail assigned to the arrival of the president and told some less-than-flattering stories about our lack of practice in military Drill and Ceremonies, especially as compared to that of their Berlin Brigade (Army) counterparts. There’s a reason that the other services make fun of us. Most of the time we laugh it off, but that one sounded like an occasion for real embarrassment.

UPDATE:GWB speech at the dedication of the Victims of Communism Memorial:

We dedicate this memorial because we have an obligation to those who died, to acknowledge their lives and honor their memory. The Czech writer Milan Kundera once described the struggle against Communism as "the struggle of memory against forgetting." Communist regimes did more than take their victims' lives; they sought to steal their humanity and erase their memory. With this memorial, we restore their humanity and we reclaim their memory. With this memorial, we say of Communism's innocent and anonymous victims, these men and women lived and they shall not be forgotten.

Men of Old

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.

If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!

O kinsmen we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,

Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

--Claude McKay (1889-1948)

Men of Not-So-Old: Read the story of a Former Hostage--a retired US Marine who was one of the 52 taken by Iran in 1979.

A Warning To The Right (UPDATED: February 15, 2008)

I’m tired of it all.

I’m tired of the insinuations about Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) because his dead father was a Muslim. I’m tired of the insinuations about his middle name—Hussein—and the racist/bigoted insinuations that I’ve seen on the Right that flow from there. I’m even tired of the assertion that the senator isn’t even really a black American (whatever that means to a group of people who are demonstrably of mixed-race for the most part) because he has a white mother and a non-American black—i.e. African—father and, yes, since his father and my father were/are of the same tribe and nationality, I take that last bit of information quite personally.

Like me, Senator Obama wasn’t even raised by his biological father* and, though he had an Indonesian step-father who was probably a Muslim, he says that he is a Christian. And, like me, Obama has been long interested in knowing more about his heritage--probably since, like me, Obama was born and raised here in our beloved USA with a zero amount of it, outside of our middle and surnames. And, unlike most black Americans, the senator and I are blessed enough to know at least some part of our African heritage--something that is very prized among the mostly slave-descended black American population.

But Debbie Schlussel determines such interest as something else. Well, guess what. I was raised as a Muslim also. My mother and (black American) step-father subscribed to the creed of the Nation of Islam back in the day. And like Obama, I went to a Muslim school—for longer than he did. I even have a high school diploma from Clara Muhammad Elementary and Secondary School, obtained when I was fifteen, since the school didn’t take summer breaks.

But things change. Both my mom and my step-dad are now Bible-believing Christians, as am I. Dad is now even a Methodist pastor. However, I wonder whether our conversions will be questioned as Senator Obama’s is being even now by Schlussel, who calls the senator’s middle name “a Muslim name.” Well, no. It’s an Arabic name. And there are many Arab Christians who, obviously, have Arabic names. Here’s one. Here’s another one.

In spite of our shared heritage, I wouldn’t dream of voting for Senator Obama, no matter how "well-spoken" and "handsome" he is. (And, in my opinion he isn't "all that.") His stances on abortion, economics and the Global War on Terror--to name a few issues--are an anathema to me, though they are no more Left-leaning than, say, Senator Dick Durbin's (D-IL). However, when I look at many conservative opinions on the man in question--he who appears to be being groomed for the number-two slot for the Democrats in the 2008 presidential election--I see all too much bigotry being put forth as reasons not to vote for the candidate who will probably be Senator Hillary Clinton’s choice for running mate.

Is that how the Right wants to portray itself?

BTW, there are a lot of black Americans with Arabic first names—my youngest sister is one of them. She was born in the late seventies when my parents were still “Muslims,” but she is also now a Christian. She and millions of other black Americans were dubbed names like “Ayisha,” “Amira,” “Jamal,” and “Malik,” but are no more Muslim than is Lt. General John Abizaid (aka "the Mad Arab"). Does the Right want to alienate such people?

Considering that most black Americans vote Democrat anyway, perhaps some on the Right believe that black America is a lost cause as it relates to bringing a substantial portion of that number over to the Republican Party. Well, if some of you keep going down the road you’re going with respect to Senator Obama, you can count on that number approaching 100% and kiss the White House goodbye. As a conservative Republican, I couldn’t bring myself to vote for a ticket with the too-Liberal/Leftist senator on it. However, no group of people can stand having his/her heritage being insulted for very long—an issue for which any person has no choice.

Vote for the person who stands for what you believe in—and leave the bigotry at home.

(Thanks to Hot Air)

* My biological father is an atheist. Note how much that affected my belief in a deity.

UPDATE: Not really related, but since General Abizaid is mentioned here, I'd like to note that he's retiring in March of next year, after thirty-four years of service. Wonder if he's interested in running for president. :-)

UPDATE (February 15, 2008): I notice that as Kenya implodes and as Obama's campaign surges, I'm getting some hits on this year-old post. Well, a couple more items for readers to chew on are here and here. While you're reading these items, remember this axiom: if the rock didn't hit you, don't yelp. --JAO

Fighting the Last War

Any military man knows you shouldn't do this; and then they go ahead and train, equip, and set up the logistics for the last war.  History is a bloody testament to our inability to MOVE ALONG.  It's bewildering that right now, in spite of widespread information on Fighting The Last War Syndrome, we're being inundated with new examples.  Maybe 2007 is going to be the "Year of The Last War."  From the ridiculous to the bizarre and the over-the-top to the truly frightening, here are some famous last wars currently being fought:

Europeans are still seeking to bring the worker's paradise to the continent, while the Democratic National Committee considers getting behind that hot new defense scheme, NATO:  (Via Breitbart:)

OPORTO, Portugal (Reuters) - European Socialists promised on Thursday to work to rebuild Europe's strategic alliance with the United States now that the Democrats control Congress after last month's elections.

Socialist leaders attending a meeting of the European Socialist Party pledged that with the Democrats on the rise, strong ties could be renewed with the United States after years of cool relations with Republican President George W. Bush.

Howard Dean, chairman of the national committee of the U.S. Democratic Party, is attending the two-day conference together with the leaders of leftist governments of several countries and party leaders from across Europe.

Then there's Britney Spears, perpetually trying to peel off the goody-two-shoes image.  (No links needed, unfortunately, everyone on the planet has seen her antics already.)  Uh, Brit, we got it that you're not a Mouseketeer anymore.  Can we talk now about the job of MOTHER?

A strong contender for Last War champion has got to be Nancy Pelosi. Here's a woman who hasn't even taken delivery yet on the Emperor's New Clothes and already she's defaulted back to Haight-Ashbury.  Every time she opens her mouth I expect her to channel Timothy O'Leary and start telling us to "Tune In, Turn On and Drop Out."  The rest of America got over the sixties by, at the very latest, the eighties, but Nancy just can't find her way off the Viet Nam War protest lines.  She just knows if she finds the right magic committee chair appointments, we'll FINALLY achieve peace in our time. 

Nancy is so strongly saturated with Last War Syndrome that her followers are similarly afflicted just from breathing her fumes. Completely forgetting that girls started wearing jeans to school before most of them were born, Nancy's fawning media accolytes recently almost wet themselves in their excitement about how STUNNING and MODERN Nancy looked in her pantsuit.

My God, next thing you know, she'll be using her new powers to de-criminalize THE PILL! 

And we can't forget Hillary Clinton, manic in her attempts to triangulate past Bobbie Ann - Polly Kyle - Gennifer Flowers - Whitewater - Susan McDougal - Cookie Baking Boycotts - Paula Jones - Monica Lewinski - Health Care - The Iraq War yes no yes no -  Dick Morris - Barack Obama - whew, have to catch my breath here. 

Hillary can't put down the triangulation tool because that would leave nothing but her basic personality.  Which presumably was torched by Bill on the way to the Governor's Mansion in Arkansas, and has been MIA ever since.  Except for temper tantrums, blaming of underlings and smarmy ex-cheerleader impersonations at campaign events, of course.  Can't medical researchers find a fast-forward button for people? We all know Hillary's bound for oblivion and footnote hell in the shadow of Bill.  Why can't we just get it done NOW?

The upcoming presidential campaign will be a mind-numbing sinkhole of Hillary reprising the high-speed 180, ad nauseum.  The prospect makes a diet of Polonium 210  look kind.

And speaking of poisonings and incomprehensibly ornate plots, have you placed your bets for the Kremlin's 3,783rd round of  spy / military / diplomat / gulag tag?  Those madcap boys in the mink hats just never get tired of it, do they?  I'd worry more about the unsporting switch from good old cyanide to dioxins and now to radioactives, but they're still slipping the goods into the same old vodka, so what the heck!

I'll make only passing note of the "economic justice" crowd agitating for the thousandth time about living wages and economic opportunity;  on their way to notch up the minimum wage for the 78th, and still ineffective, time. 

We'll leave the stoned silly academic censors, now going into their third decade of honoring free speech by trying to shut down the communications of everyone who disagrees with them.  50 and 60 year old professors rant at their puzzled students, who wonder how a tenured, beemer driving grandfather can deprecate "the man" with a straight face. 

Radical feminists are forever locked in a battle against wage inequalities and Playboy style porn. They marginalize themselves and sell out their principles in an outdated effort to appear "inclusive."  Their daughters laugh at them, then take up the entrepreneur's cross and worry about date rape drugs and the genital mutilations of millions of their Muslim sisters. 

Women's Studies programs all across American anxiously count the number of female authors in literature class anthologies.  Genuine revolutionary women are trying to come to grips with the fact anti-culture Islamists are outbreeding, intimidating and murdering all the rest of us. Their serious and urgent fear is that every scrap of western literature, regardless the sex of the author, will be lost to the tides of Jihad.

But you get the picture.  Fighting the Last War is certainly all the rage.  Problem is, the next war has already started and we are already losing.  This is a war for civilization, a war for the souls of men, a war for freedom, prosperity and dignity.  Jihad seeks to unplug the reformation, the industrial revolution, the divine light of the rights of individuals.  We can't fight this one like we've ever fought before.  And our learning curve must be short.  The lights are already going out in Europe, Africa, South East Asia and the Middle East. 

So back to those who get their news from "People" magazine.  Perhaps we could fight terror with tarnished bling.  Let's put burkas on Britney, Paris, Rosie, Katie, Hillary, Nancy and every radical feminist in the country, wire them up with speed and caffeine so they can't stop talking, then smuggle them into select women's compounds. 

Ahmadinejad et al would surrender within days. 

 

What is your perspective? (Baklava)

The Challenge Results
Good! Seven out of ten answers were correct.
You have a good grip on reality. No need to see a therapist.
GO TAKE THE TEST. It's FREE.... and fun.

HOT AIR VIDEO
Before this video is banned from You Tube, watch it! It is the blogosphere doing the job that journalists fail to do. Topic? Iraq.

This week I've had fun guest blogging for Baldilocks. I don't know how many people view this blog but I hope somebody is enjoying themselves reading what I'm writing or getting something out of it at least. I know that I can't post consistently enough to have my own blog so I'm appreciative of the graciousness of using Baldilock's space.

Things hit me sometimes. Just like when I first brought my daughters to karate a few months ago it dawned me that my girls are learning about life here. They were learning to be aware and to listen. A parent can't instill some things to their kids. Just like a husband or wife can't tell their spouse somethings sometimes. Once that spouse hears something from a third party though they hear it. Kids are that way. It's not out of disrespect. We may love and care for the ones we are around more often but it is human nature to not hear them as thoroughly I suppose because we hear them so much.

As I wrote about earlier, my best friend and love of my life passed away on July 8th. I am so thankful for what she taught me. There wasn't a way to half way listen to her. One of her qualities was that she was intense. It took me more than a year to get used to her intensity. Well... I'd say I never got used to her intensity. She surprised me through the last month. I learned to like it about her. She made life crazy good. She was creative and full of life. I have paintings in my house that she made and I appreciate so much what she has done for me and what I have learned from her. There are other great qualities that she had but I just wanted to talk about this one right now.

Last week, I mentioned that Joey was voted off of Dancing with the Stars. That left two dancers. The results are in. Emmitt Smith WON !! I was talking to a friend on the phone tonight about Dancing with the Stars. Dancing with the Stars stresses her out. The competition and the losing aspect gets to her. But I see it the other way around. Monique, Joey, Mario and Emmitt were all winners for getting as far as they have. They each had the perspective that they have 1) enjoyed themselves 2) learned so much 3) had such a wonderful time 4) were winners already. The finale and finding out who won is a glorious event when the people involved have such great attitudes. It is similar to the attitudes of those on American Idol the last season. Once you get to that top 3 or 4 singers or dancers, the talent is sooo good that any one of them could've won. And what makes them winners is their attitude and the amount of effort they have put into their craft.

It's inspiring. It is why I just cannot understand defeatist rhetoric about Iraq and the talk about pulling our troops out. I've talked about the negligence of the drive-by legacy media. The New York Times gives us this piece today. In it retired genearls (the same ones asking for Rumsfeld to resign) and Kenneth M. Pollack (an expert at the Brookings Institution who served on the staff of the National Security Council during the Clinton administration) are all making the case that "redeployment" of our troops would be the wrong thing to do and in fact what we should do is increase troop levels. Is this what America was led to believe Democrats were going to do? Whatever the case, I hope we finish the job in Iraq. We need to be responsible for removing Iraq's government just like after WW2 we stayed in Japan and Germany for 7 and 10 years to reestablish a new government. I believe redeploying would lead to a humanitarian crisis and that would be the worst option.

Let's try to accept what is is ... that we are in Iraq and then all move towards accomplishing and completing the job in Iraq. Is that something we can all do? There may be differences of opinion on how to finish but redeploying is not finishing.

There's No Way I'd Miss It

Happy Birthday, Uncle John.

Aging Well

The left photo is of my mom, circa 1955--when she was thirteen--and the other was taken by me in 2003.

Though I am the spirit and image of my father, here's hoping that I got a little of those non-aging genes. Happy Mother's Day, Mom! And don't let those wild grandchildren of yours do what your wild daughters failed to do--wear you down. Love ya.

Never Going Back

Here's a fascinating commentary in Kenya’s Daily Nation by Simwogerere Kyazze exploring the mindset of the African Diaspora. Using Irish-American novelist Frank McCourt’s works Angela’s Ashes and ‘Tis as templates for the “voluntary” emigration of necessity (leave the homeland or die), Mr. Kyazze, a Ugandan, fears that Africa’s best and brightest are permanently abandoning her and will never come home.

It is through stories such as Angela's Ashes and 'Tis that one appreciates the trauma of forced migration as well as the fierce determination of people to hold onto what they think is 'home'. As such US citizens have turned their hyphenated existences into an oxymoron – Irish-Americans; African-Americans; Asian-Americans; Jewish-Americans; Vietnamese-Americans; Cuban-Americans; etc.

As with Mr. McCourt's Irish-Americans, most hyphenated Americans, Britons and other citizens in the North emigrated to escape (with the exceptions of the African-Americans, descendants of African slaves forcibly transplanted from the continent). They were escaping famine (the Irish), genocide (the Jews), or war (the Vietnamese). Not only were they welcomed in their new homes, many flourished too.

The new millennium is going to be about the emptying of the African continent, yet the difference between our search for a new home, and those of years past is that the continent is blighted by the entire gamut of things that forced other peoples to emigrate.

Mr. Kyazze cites an article in The New African, "Killing Us Softly," which states that:

The problem is not that the continent cannot produce highly-trained and skilled human resources, the problem is that today they are being taken away faster than Africa can replenish them. Various estimates suggest that between 20% and 50% of the top African brains and skilled personnel now reside outside the continent, and most maintain minimal professional contact with the motherland. Numerically speaking, this translates into tens of thousands of experienced, highly trained and skilled doctors, nurses, pharmacists, engineers, writers, scientists, business people, university lecturers, accountants, administrators, computer experts, artists, lawyers, town planners, etc. They, their children and their children’s children are lost to the continent as they are almost certain to stay in their new adopted countries in the West.

Though Mr. Kyazze recounts incidents of racism to which many Africans most certainly are subject in their various adopted homelands, he still contends that most will never entertain the thought of making a permanent return to their places of birth because,

[T]he reason why people can leave Vietnam and still go back with their families is because it had a war, which ended. They leave Korea and return because it had a war, which ended. They leave Ireland and return because it had a famine, which ended. They leave wherever and return because in each of these places the social upheaval starts. And ends.

Not so in Africa. What would an Eritrean go back to; an Egyptian; a Tunisian; a Sudanese; an Ethiopian; a Nigerian?

Occasional racism is better than death, it seems.

Many Africans who leave cannot envision an end to the constant turmoil—the wars, the genocides, the starvation episodes, the plagues and the corruption—which seem to have an unshakeable grip on virtually that entire continent.

As a counterexample, upon his matriculation from an American university, my father went back to his native Kenya while the new nation was in the midst of being born--gaining its independence from the UK. However, it is easy to see why and how the idealism which he undoubtedly possessed back then--as a man in his twenties—has morphed into the type of grim cynicism realism which he expresses in his weekly Daily Nation columns. Even in Kenya, which has the reputation of having one of the most stable and reasonably democratic of governments in Africa (not an incredibly high standard), tribalism and bribery are the norms.

In spite of these realities, I hope and pray for the best for Kenya in its latest quest toward reform. Could it spread?

Cool Picture

Here's something interesting I found just lying around.

The gentleman in the center was my great-uncle, David Jenkins (my maternal grandmother's brother). The back of the photo reads "Toulon, France 9-44."

It isn't apparent from the photo, but Uncle David was very light-skinned; so much so that he was originally put in an all-white unit (remember that the Armed Forces were segregated back then). Legend has it that he corrected that "error" with a quickness.

It's nice not to be living in the same sort of 'interesting times' in which Uncle David lived.

UPDATE: Uncle David and friends were probably a part of Operation Dragoon.

Operation Dragoon was the Allied invasion of southern France, on 15 August 1944, as part of World War II. The invasion took place between Toulon and Cannes. During the planning stages, the operation was known as Anvil, to compliment Operation Hammer, which was at that time the codename for the invasion of Normandy. Subsequently both plans were renamed, the latter becoming Operation Overlord, the former becoming Operation Dragoon; a name supposedly picked by Winston Churchill, who was opposed to the plan, and claimed to having been "dragooned" into accepting it.

Hah!

First Things First

Happy Birthday, Uncle John (a Texan).

Ambivalent Anniversary

The United States dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and one on Nagasaki two days later, with a death and injury total over 200,000.

Why they were dropped.

Nuclear weapons are often said to pose a unique threat to humanity, and in the wrong hands they do. But when President Truman gave the go-ahead to deploy Fat Man and Little Boy, what those big bombs chiefly represented was salvation: salvation for young Lt. Fussell and all the GIs; salvation for the tens of thousands of Allied POWs the Japanese intended to execute in the event of an invasion; salvation for the grotesquely used Korean "comfort women"; salvation for millions of Asians enslaved by the Japanese.

Not least, and despite the terrible irony, the bombings were salvation for Japan, since they prompted Emperor Hirohito to intervene with his bitterly divided government to end the war, thus laying the groundwork for America's beneficent occupation and the country's subsequent prosperity. To understand the roots of modern Japan's pacifist mentality, so at variance with its old warrior culture, one need only visit Hiroshima's peace park.

Kate of Small Dead Animals posts a pair of photographs of bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki….or so it may seem at first.

Here’s an interesting article on Japan’s Self Defense Force of today--a member of the Coalition of the Willing.

Victor Davis Hanson considers Hiroshima.

[O]ur own generation has more recently once again grappled with Hiroshima, and so the debate rages on in the new age of terrorism and handheld weapons of mass destruction, brought home after an attack on our shores worse than Pearl Harbor — with more promised to come. Perhaps the horror of the suicide bombers of Japan does not seem so distant any more. Nor does the notion of an extreme perversion of an otherwise mainstream religion filling millions with hatred of a supposedly decadent West.

And up close and personal with “Fat Man” on the ill-fated Indianapolis.

(Thanks to The Truman Library)

Diagnosis

Historian Paul Johnson: The Anti-Semitic Disease:

What strikes the historian surveying anti-Semitism worldwide over more than two millennia is its fundamental irrationality. [SNIP]

Asked to explain why they hate Jews, anti-Semites contradict themselves. Jews are always showing off; they are hermetic and secretive. They will not assimilate; they assimilate only too well. They are too religious; they are too materialistic, and a threat to religion. They are uncultured; they have too much culture. They avoid manual work; they work too hard. They are miserly; they are ostentatious spenders. They are inveterate capitalists; they are born Communists. And so on. In all its myriad manifestations, the language of anti-Semitism through the ages is a dictionary of non-sequiturs and antonyms, a thesaurus of illogic and inconsistency.

The great thing about reading this historian’s work is that you don’t have to be a PhD to understand it. He doesn’t talk down; he merely talks sense. Here he indicts Queen Isabella’s fifteenth century Spain for its antipathy towards the Jews, along with the rest of Europe, from that era up to the end of the Third Reich. Then there is nineteenth and twentieth century Russia/Soviet Union. Lastly and presently, there is nearly the entire Arab/Muslim world.

In pointing out these phenomena, Mr. Johnson isn’t shy about stating what the outcome usually is for those who scapegoat the Jews for their own misfortunes and bad judgment. At the very least, the nation or tribe that hates on the Jews becomes a shadow of itself if it had any greatness—see Spain. At most, it is obliterated or conquered brutally and partitioned—see Ancient Egypt or Nazi Germany.

Coming to his point, Mr. Johnson compares anti-Semitism to anti-Americanism, and states his fear of Europe returning to its old ways—especially Germany, for obvious reasons.

[A]nti-Semitism and anti-Americanism have proceeded hand in hand in today’s Europe just as they once did in Hitler’s mind (as the unpublished second half of Mein Kampf decisively shows). [SNIP]

Especially disturbing is the spread of the cult in Germany. There, in the 1920’s, anti-Semitism was a feature of the social demoralization produced by defeat in World War I. Germany is now becoming demoralized again, for a variety of reasons: appallingly high unemployment; falling living standards relative to the U.S., Britain, and other advanced nations; declining population figures, giving rise to anxiety about the future of the workforce and the security of the pension system; and the inability of the country’s leaders to address any of these problems.

Read it and learn something.

Clarification

Army Times does a story on miltary members who blog, including a link to me.

Soldiers are trying to make sure their version of the truth from Iraq gets out.
Even though for many, that truth doesn’t include revealing their identities, their online diaries are becoming an increasingly popular way for anyone with an Internet connection to “listen in” on the war zone.

Blogs provide a vehicle for soldiers to speak their minds and tell their personal stories. But the information medium also poses new dangers that the Army is still trying to come to terms with.
Some soldiers have found that blogging can have great benefits, and others have discovered the hard way that there can be consequences for posting things their commanders don’t approve of. Nonetheless, the number of soldiers who blog continues to grow. [SNIP]

• Baldilocks.

A member of the Air Force who comments on just about everything except the Air Force.

If you check my “About” link, you’ll find that I retired in October 2003, which also explains why you'll find my real my real name there. Additionally, I have posted some of my recollections regarding the Air Force under the categories “Military” and “Memories of the First Life.”

Otherwise, thanks for the link, Good People at the Army Times, and keep on rolling.

European Weekend

Mark Steyn thinks Europe as we know it is on its way to ruin. As an aside, he remarks on the tonnage of the soon-to-be ratified European Union (EU) constitution.

Many Americans wander round with the constitution in their pocket so they can whip it out and chastise over-reaching congressmen and senators at a moment's notice. Try going round with the European Constitution in your pocket and you'll be walking with a limp after two hours: It's 511 pages, which is 500 longer than the U.S. version. It's full of stuff about European space policy, Slovakian nuclear plants, water resources, free expression for children, the right to housing assistance, preventive action on the environment, etc.

Sounds like a monument to micro-management, no?

President Ronald Reagan liked to say, ''We are a nation that has a government -- not the other way around.''[SNIP]

Europe's problems -- its unaffordable social programs, its deathbed demographics, its dependence on immigration numbers that no stable nation (not even America in the Ellis Island era) has ever successfully absorbed -- are all of Europe's making. By some projections, the EU's population will be 40 percent Muslim by 2025. Already, more people each week attend Friday prayers at British mosques than Sunday service at Christian churches -- and in a country where Anglican bishops have permanent seats in the national legislature.

Some of us think an Islamic Europe will be easier for America to deal with than the present Europe of cynical, wily, duplicitous pseudo-allies. But getting there is certain to be messy, and violent.

At least Americans will unequivocally know where we stand.

*****

Meanwhile, there’s some background the question posed to President Bush by Interfax journalist Alex Amishkov. In private, Russian President Vladimir Putin had this remark for the POTUS:

When Bush confronted his Russian counterpart about the freedom of the press in Russia, Putin shot back with an attack of his own: "We didn't criticize you when you fired those reporters at CBS."

It's not clear how well Putin understands the controversy that led to the dismissal of four CBS journalists over the discredited report on Bush's National Guard service. Yet it's all too clear how Putin sees the relationship between Bush and the American media—just like his own. [SNIP]

Bush's aides have long feared that former KGB officers in Putin's inner circle are painting a twisted picture of U.S. policy. So Bush explained how he had no power to fire American journalists. It made little difference. When the two presidents emerged for their joint press conference, one Russian reporter [Amishkov] repeated Putin's language about journalists getting fired.

Most assuredly, while occupying his former post, President Putin read the US Constitution countless times. (Whether he understood it is a separate question. One might argue that, if he had, he’d have defected to the US in the eighties, rather than staying on to become president of his country in its present form.)

But, regardless of whether he believes that the US has a government-controlled press or not, this is the former head of the KGB we’re talking about here; a guy who understands the value of information, or, rather, disinformation. That is, disinformation administered to his own countrymen. That’s what it was all about.

*****

And, on the historical front, I watched an episode of The History Channel’s “Days that Shook the World” yesterday while doing the humdrum, but necessary Saturday clean-up. The episode featured attempted assassinations of a pair of twentieth-century heads of state: Adolph Hitler and Charles de Gaulle.

Most notable were the divergent motivations of the sets of would-be assassins. Count (Colonel) Claus von Stauffenberg’s--and his conspirators'--motive was to disengage Hilter’s grip on Europe and to halt his attempt to exterminate various groups—most infamously, Europe’s Jews.

But, the Algerian Secret Army (OAS) wanted to prevent de Gaulle from disengaging his country’s grip on Algeria.

Extremely fascinating stuff, like a movie (And, no, I never read The Day of the Jackal or saw either movie version). You find yourself rooting for Stauffenberg and, conversely, rooting for de Gaulle. His would-be assassins came off rather Keystone Cop-ish in the dramatization: hundreds of shots fired with not one striking anyone, much less the target.

Always fun to learn new things.

(Thanks to Roger L. Simon and LGF)

Kiddies

So my sister sends me a pic of her--and my brother-in-law’s--newest little project.

Jadyn Grace, born May 17, 2004

But of course she had *better* send me photos of Jadyn’s brothers and sister, even if they are from last year. :-)

Wow! Fifteen Years

Vodkapundit reminds us that today is the fifteenth anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. I had been stationed in Berlin for three years and had returned to the states a mere month before this tremendous crack in the seemingly-unshakable Soviet edifice. As we know, the rest of the Warsaw Pact would follow and, not long afterward, the Soviet Union would be no more.

The lessons are many, but here are some simple ones:

• Sometimes people can free themselves; on other occasions, they may need help.
• A bully will talk a lot, but if you’re tougher and more tenacious than he is, he will go only so far.
• Never spend more than you can afford.
• Never leave town right before the fun starts (okay, that's my personal lesson). :-)

Here’s to more liberty.

(Old Berlin map found here.)

UPDATE: One night in Berlin.

Call Guinness

Talking to my dad last night, I had a revelation.

The conversation consisted mostly of what’s happening this election cycle, around the country, and around the world in general. Dad, being an imposing but easy-going sort, often gets into exchanges with others about politics. He’s not the type to start these conversations, but his seemingly laid-back demeanor invites others to start them.

He is laid-back, but not timid. As a conservative Christian and a Republican, he will inform the questioner what he’s about, how he sees the world around him and for whom he will cast his vote on November second. Having known the guy for nearly forty years, I can picture him doing it: all done in a calm, even, yet straight-forward manner, in much the same way that he used to lay down the law to yours truly way back when.

Dad hasn’t read much of my blog—unlike Mom, he’ll only go near a computer on a bet—but he and I have come to nearly identical conclusions about things, nearly independently of each other. Dad’s a very smart guy. ;-)

Both my parents are big fans of Ann Coulter. (Tough-minded, opinionated women are the rule and are celebrated in my family, as some may have ascertained. Dad was raised by one.) At present, Dad’s reading Ms. Coulter’s latest work How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must) : The World According to Ann Coulter. I haven’t read any of her work yet, not because I don’t like her, but because I’ve found most of the long written works penned by pundits—liberal, conservative or whatever—to be less than scintillating reads.

Be that as it may, the title brought out this thought: a black conservative can rarely avoid talking to liberals, since, usually, many members of that conservative’s family are liberals. When I mentioned this to Dad, he sighed in assent and mentioned the travails of having political conversations with some of our relatives.

But then he pointed out something that brought the revelation. There are five members of our family that are conservative Republicans: Dad, Mom, one of my sisters, her husband and me. Five members of a black family. (Technicality alert: my brother-in-law—native Texan and military--is white. But, no, he didn’t use his evil white-man mind-control powers on us. Not that I can tell, at any rate.)

That’s got to be some kind of record, no?

It’s a blessing not to have to tangle with my parents for ideological reasons. We’ve done enough of that over other matters as it is. Heh. It’s also amazing how smart your parents get when you started having to wear reading glasses and start seeing those first gray hairs on your head.

UPDATE: LaShawn writes about a conversation with an older black man who plans to vote for John Kerry. Interesting reading. When Dad and I were discussing our liberal family members, the two whose attitudes we found the most puzzling were that of my granddad (his dad) and my great-aunt (my maternal grandmother's sister). Both in their eighties, they actually had the experience of living with Jim Crow and know the party of the majority of those who perpetrated that institution. Both are deeply Christian. Both worked hard from their youth to retirement for everything they have today, in spite of the obstacles set before them back then. And both have stressed hard work, rather than hand-outs to their children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews. Yet they are the two that display the most intransigence against voting for a Republican, any Republican. A head-shaker, for sure.

This Day Remains Special

Happy Birthday, Uncle John.

Shameless Rug Rat Pic

Here are my two oldest, big-noggin nephews, Reed and Julian (left to right) some twelve or so years ago.

They are first cousins and are now a couple of big, rough, football- and hockey-playing eating machines. Julian just turned twelve yesterday and Reed will be thirteen in October. (Julian was named for me and is my God-son.)

Hopefully, my mom or my sister will stop procrastinating and send me a picture of Reed’s youngest sister, Jadyn--born this past May—so I can post more cute rug-rat pictures. If I’m lucky, I’ll also get a pic of Reed’s brother and other sister—Ryan and Jordyn—and Julian’s brother, Saevonne.

If I’m really lucky, I’ll get a picture of me at fifteen, with a big wild afro, holding my youngest sister in my arms. Something for my readers to make fun of, to be sure.

Strategy

Stephen Green morphs into Stephen Den Beste in this excellent essay on war planning.

Color Him Father

Remember that song?

In several posts, I’ve made reference to my “step-father,” the guy that married my mom when I was nine. In reality, I almost never refer to him as my “step-father.” I’ve only done so here to differentiate him from the guy that gave me life and a name. Perhaps I should start referring to my “step-father” as “the guy who chose to become my father.” That, he did.

I‘ve been very blessed, in that I’ve had several fathers. None of them have been perfect. However, none of them have been arbiters of evil either. And the one who has given me the least amount of love is the one who is responsible for me being here. The other two chose me.

I’ve told the story of my origins and my uncle (yes, I’ve linked to it again). What I haven’t told is the story of the man who became my father in the course of time.

A tall, powerfully-built former college athlete—football and basketball—Johnny Ray presents a stark contrast to the athletes of this day: he’s reserved, soft-spoken, even taciturn at times. He’s never boisterous or boastful. However, he can sometimes exhibit an unexpected humor and playfulness, punctuated by an infectious, loud laugh. His specialty is the type of insight that comes unbidden, out of nowhere. The time when I saw the greatest joy on his face? That was when he was holding my oldest nephew—about nine months old at the time, now nearly thirteen years old and nearly six feet in height —in his arms.

Johnny Ray looks much the same as he did thirty or so years ago—except that his hair is now nearly totally gray. (Lucky him, he’s showing no signs of balding at age sixty-two.) I joke that one small patch of gray is me, another small patch is the sister next to me and the rest of it is my (step-)brother and our youngest sister. (Don’t ask.)

When the sister next to me—nine years my junior and Johnny Ray’s biological child—was eighteen, I told her the story about the day Johnny Ray and I met. She was fascinated. Of course, she knew that I was the product of our mother’s first marriage, but it was only an intellectual knowledge. Emotionally, she had always thought of Dad as our same father.

One day, when I was about four or five, my Mom said, “I’m going to take you to meet Johnny.” We went to his apartment and there he was: this towering, dark brown-skinned man. He didn’t make a big deal about me, as some are wont to do with small children. As I recall, he said something like, “hi, nice to meet you,” as if I were thirty. I like that, now as then. By the time a couple of years had rolled around, he was the apple of my eye.

We’ve definitely had our differences over these many years, but he’s nearly always willing to listen, and, nearly always, so am I. He once paid me this compliment: “You’re the only one of my children that ever listens to me.” Me, being the smart-mouth that I am, shot back: “That’s because those other ones are so much like you.” I’m not sure if it hurt his feelings or not, but I didn’t mean it in a bad way. I meant it in the way that when two people are so much alike, they can sometimes not “hear” each other. (Yes, Mom, that’s why it happens.) :-) Dad and I are very different and I think that it facilitates our “hearing” each other. I know it definitely did when I was a teenager. You know, ladies, that time when Mom is the enemy?

*****

Here’s one pertinent fact about my Dad: he is an awesome cook. He has run his own prosperous catering service for some years now, after many years of working for other people. (His specialty is blackened chicken. Yum!)

Now don’t mistake what I’m saying. Mom is also an excellent cook, but her husband is better; more imaginative. And I know that Mom knows this and is comfortable with it. She once said that Dad was a better cook because he enjoys it more than she does. And just to prove that some things are genetic, my brother is a trained and accomplished chef.

Here’s yet another pertinent fact about Johnny Ray: he is a strong, Bible-believing Christian. Oh, he wasn’t always so. As I mentioned to La Shawn in her comments, my immediate family were once members of the Nation of Islam. Yes, really. Things happened, years passed, and my Dad (and Mom) changed. Dad is now an associate pastor at his younger brother’s Methodist church.

When I look at how much my Dad has changed in the last twenty or so years, my own faith is strengthened. He went from being a good man--though one who often did what was right in his own eyes--to being a great one, who presents his decisions to the Father first, before making them.

*****

I know so many people, especially women, who have horribly ugly stories of “step-fathers.” I am sometimes astonished at how greatly I’ve been blessed with “men who have stepped into the breach” that my biological father vacated. If that is what is meant by the prefix “step-,” then Johnny Ray, as well as my Uncle John, certainly fit the bill.

Happy Father’s Day, Daddy. I love you.

Remember

Not exactly a Reagan or a D-Day post, but related.

During my sojourn to Berlin in the eighties, I was greeted with this image upon setting foot to the city’s famous Kurfürstendamm (in German).

The irony of the destruction of a church that existed in a fascist state isn’t lost on me.

Kaiser -Wilhelm - Gedächtnis Kirche (Remembrance Church) was the recipient of Allied bombs in 1943. The first site of it is a slap. Set against the glitz of the Ku-Damm, the view of the devastation rained upon the landmark was jarring. (I’m told that, since the Reunification, the Ku-Damm has become rather seedy. Unter den Linden, the street located in what used to be the gray, bland East Berlin, has been accorded its former stature as the place-to-be.)

With repeated viewings of the church while partying on the Ku-Damm, one becomes a bit inured to its starkness, however. After being stationed in Berlin for a couple of years, I had begun to ignore it. (It didn’t help that I was often *not* sober when running the Ku-Damm.)

One of my little sisters visited me there, however, and her gasp at first sight of the bombed-out church brought back to me how ugly it was.

“A gaping, rotten tooth” was the metaphor that someone once used to put a face on the church. Rotten, indeed. It was preserved in its pocked and ruined state as a reminder of the consequences of embracing fascism.

Red Day

No one but God knows how many lives were lost on D-Day.

Bodies disintegrated under bombs and shells. Soldiers drowned and disappeared. Company clerks who tallied casualties were killed. Records were lost.

"Landing crafts [sic] were hit," said Ivy Agee, an 81-year-old from Gordonsville, Tenn., who fought on Omaha Beach. "Bodies were flying everywhere. There was blood on the edge of the water, the beach was just running with pure blood."[SNIP]

"Now and then, construction work unearths bones and skeletons from soldiers. This happens fairly often," said Fritz Kirchmeier, a spokesman for the German organization that tends the 80,000 graves for German soldiers in Normandy.[SNIP]

Sir Winston Churchill (search), Britain's wartime prime minister, "said to his wife before going to bed that he was afraid that when they woke up, more than 20,000 people would have been killed," said Andrew Whitmarsh, the D-day Museum's military historian.

Remind anyone of another bloody day?

On The Altar

BlackFive has been keeping list of links in conjunction with the Sixtieth Anniversary of D-Day. Greyhawk has a tribute of his own going and has created this outstanding graphic for Milblogs:

I had planned to wait until tomorrow to post something commemoratory, along with a set of round up links. The passing of Ronald Reagan--on the eve of the anniversary, no less--compels me not to wait, however. Simply put, he helped to preserve what those who fell on June 6, 1944 died to protect. Here’s Former President Reagan’s D-Day anniversary speech from 1984.

I Me My

100 things about this blogger? Well there are 100 things about me I could post, but there are quite a few of them that I’d prefer to keep to myself and even more things that are just plain too boring. So I picked out 30 things about me (and my family) that a reader might find interesting. Don’t blame me! Dean put the idea in my head. (That, my friends, is how you shirk responsibility for your actions.)

This list will be posted to my “About Me” page when I get around to it.

Nominally Speaking

Dean linked to a post regarding name changing by women upon marriage. My own thoughts on the subject have a couple of unique twists to it.

Anyone who’s been reading for a few months might be familiar with the Name Follies:
being born with a Chinese-sounding last name without being born with a Chinese appearance.

As I’ve mentioned several times, my father is Kenyan and, having the kind of last name that I do, is an anomaly among black Americans, most of whom have European last names.

The thing that many Americans—black and white—tend to forget is why this is so.* Hint: it’s not from excessive intermarriage between the descendants of African and European immigrants.

Now I’m not one to wield American slavery as a weapon with which to bludgeon the descendents of slave-owners over the head, so don't get any underwear into wads that you may have to pick out of uncomfortable places. This isn’t about blame, but about facts. Fact: black Americans have inherited European surnames usually because of slavery. Fact: forbidding a group of humans the use of any totems of their culture, including the very names with which they were born, makes them better slaves. (Think about this the next time some polemicist begins to rant on the non-existence of legacies of American slavery or, conversely, some bogus legacy of same.) This is why one sees few, if any, West African traditions passed from the "old country," (also likely unknown) unlike, say, those Americans who are descended from Italian immigrants.

By no doing of my own, I was born without this legacy. As I got older and began to understand that I had something rare and what it meant, I began to cherish it.

That said, I did take the name of my ex-husband when got married. Why? Ironically, it was because of the uniqueness of my own last name in my own family: my parents divorced early and my father went back to his country. When my mother remarried, I was the only one in the family with my last name. In my new family, I didn’t want this for myself or for my prospective children. (This is an American cultural bias on my part, to be sure. See the above post, “Funny You Don’t Look Chinese” for information on how the Luo—my tribal brethren—name their children.)

However, as things happen, my ex and I never had any children and, after our divorce, I shed his name like a gangrenous arm and returned to the legal use of my maiden name.

Were I to marry again, would I change it? I’m not sure. When I returned to the use of my maiden name, it was like seeing an old friend that I hadn’t realized how much I cherished until it was gone. Additionally, it took the Air Force three years to figure out that I had gone back to my maiden name (and this was in the computer age). I’m not sure that I want all of that fit-pitching that I did to count for naught.

Likely, however, I’d go the hyphen or double name route. Though it’s unlikely that I’d have any children at this late stage in the game, a sense of family is more important to me than some point of pride; families have the same name. You can’t sleep with your lineage. Okay well you can, but I'm sure the phrase "cold comfort" is a familiar one.

*The adherents to the Nation of Islam did not forget this and this is what the X—as in Malcolm X--is all about, X signifying the unknown last name of the first African slave “imported” in a given black American’s lineage.

The Tree

As in from where the fruit rarely falls far. In this case, the saying applies to many things.

Meet one of the authors of the misery of many.

Philip Ochieng pens a perceptive column regarding New Year’s resolutions while managing to throw a little Kenyan politics into the mix—his usual subject matter.

Of course, tomorrow people will cross their hearts and swear solemnly that, in 2004, they will never do the things that they did in 2003. But, of course, by January 2, they will have broken all those vows. [SNIP]

We approach it [each January first] with profound sentiment and baited breath because - imagining that it is a really material line, we are convinced that we are about to find something beyond ordinary on the other side of the line. [SNIP]

But, though reason is our vocation, the human mind is constituted to behave reasonably far less than 50 per cent [sic] of its career. That is why, the next time we approach January 1, we are just as excited as the last time. We never learn that whatever we want to be after January 1, we can become it every other day of the year if we make a genuine effort…

Considering that my father is a communist, an atheist, is anti-American and--to his credit--anti-European, I had predicted that the first time I featured one of his columns here would be to hold it up for a gleeful, upstart fisking. Maybe next time.

Back in Time

It’s strange how innocuous things can trigger memories. That happened to me yesterday as I drove south on Interstate 5, then onto the connection to CA 110 (which turns into Interstate 110 and takes me to the crib). The southbound 5-110 connection is a little stretch of two lane highway which looks like it was carved into the hill next to it. It also looks rickety enough to crumble with a good, trademark Southern California shake and quake.

But there it hangs, for at least as far back as I can recall. Big trucks, buses, etc. have sat on it in traffic jams headed toward downtown LA for decades and probably are doing so as I type these words. Many years ago another vehicle had occasion to take this tiny stretch of highway: my great uncle, great aunt and I would be on our way home from Lake Isabella and, when we hit that part, I knew we were close to home. My uncle had one of those pick-up trucks with a camper on the back; a nice one, big enough for three. (Do they still make those things?) We’d go over that road and, I, with a six-year-old’s a vivid imagination, would get the feeling that our truck was too big for the road and that we were going to fall off down to some unknown abyss that waited for us. Fortunately it takes about fifteen seconds--traffic willing—to run over this part of the freeway, so my morbid imaginings never had time to bloom into full-blown panic. I had a small inkling of the panic last night as I drove over the stretch in my little car, but it was quickly overwhelmed by that bit of nostalgia and I, yet again, missed my uncle.

Why I Fight Write

Big Daddy has a post about writing, inspiration and style.

I’ve always loved writing. As a teenager, it was an outlet for timidity; as a young adult, an outlet for frustration. And as I approach middle age, it’s more of a means to let out the parts of myself that tend to frighten or confuse others in person.

My mom says that all of her children are good writers, but that I am the only one that seems to enjoy it.

Style? I speak in nearly the same manner as I write. If I read the written material aloud and it sounds good, onto the “paper” it goes.

The thing that writing does for me—and I know I’m not alone—is that it helps me flesh out what I’m thinking. If I have some vague “feeling” about a subject, instead of saying “I can’t put it into words,” I actually do put it into words. It helps me to put “feeling” in its proper place and to actively think. I’ve got a hard drive filled with illogical discarded “feelings.” (Some might say that I have blog filled with such. Oh well.)

If I were to list the number of writers, authors and novelists, that have influenced my style, I would likely bore myself to death, not to mention my readers. You’ll notice that, on my sidebar, I’ve listed favorite fiction. The list is not fixed—except for One Hundred Years of Solitude and The Dahomean--but merely some of the ones that I’ve read more than once, which is a great indicator of how much I enjoyed it. The fiction writer creates his/her own world. If that world is a place that I want to go back to, over and over again, then it's a winner.

AFTERTHOUGHT: The most handy writing tool is, taa daa! A dictionary. No, not a spell-checker, not an online dictionary, but a big, dead-tree dictionary. I keep a ten-year-old Webster’s Third under my desk: hardback, split into three volumes. It’s great but it’s strange how the letters in it keep getting smaller every year. ;-)

Battle Log Update

Jeans. You know them, as do I. I like them in blue and black, mostly in the latter. For men, women’s jeans are strictly for viewing pleasure (or horror).

For women, however, jeans are the indicator of how big or small we’re getting. Like many women—except for you obnoxious ladies who stay forever small--I own many pairs of jeans in many sizes, ranging from sizes six to sixteen. I only own one set of sixteens, however. Having to buy those was my wake up call and after only two weeks of working out, they were too big. I had been a fourteen for several years and after a month of working out, they were too big.

Today, after two and half months of hellacious cardio three days a week and rather fun--there are good-looking guys in there--but intense weight-lifting three days a week, I got into the size tens! Comfortably.

I even tried on one of the eights (dang, they look tiny). Got ‘em on, but not buttoned. Three months ago, I couldn’t even get them over the hump (my backside).

It is a wonderful feeling. I’m shooting for six.

*****

At the base gym where I work out, there are huge picture windows in the weight room and the cardio room facing the gym parking lot. This parking lot is shared with the base headquarters building, which is located next to the gym. Lots of civilian workers there, including lots of middle-aged ladies, like myself. Lots of big ladies. Really big ladies. No, I mean BIG. Not just the kind that are twenty or thirty pounds overweight, but the kind that are carrying an extra person with them. These ladies don't walk, they roll. Everytime I see one going into the HQ building when I'm looking out of one of the windows, I work just a little bit harder. I was on my way.

For the past couple of weeks, however, I've seen a couple of really large ladies coming into the gym. One had asked me what my routine was and I told her. When I mentioned weights, the two balked, but I think I'm going to encourage them to try it next time I see them. I'd love to see two that size get fit and love it.

Funny, You Don't Look Chinese

Having an African last name that doesn’t “sound African” to the American ear usually brings questions and has brought some interesting exchanges my way. Many think it’s Chinese in origin and, possessing a distinctly un-Chinese appearance, I’ve giggled at some puzzled expressions directed at me when I say the name. I used to get annoyed when some would think it was Chinese until a Chinese guy asked if it was.

Most people are polite and ask the origin straight out. Then, there are some that are just plain rude. Here’s an example of the latter that occurred when I worked for United Airlines. A co-worker had seen me before and asked me what my name was:

Man: What’s your last name?

Me: Ochieng.

Man: (pauses) Are you married?

Me: No.

Man: Did you used to be married?

Me: (thinking 'boy, is he nosy,' but having a sense of where the conversation is leading) Yes.

Man: What is your maiden name?

Me: Ochieng. I went back to my maiden name when I got divorced.

Man: What was your name before?

Me: (here it is, I thought; I smiled sweetly) Before what?

Man: Before you changed it.

Me: I was born with this name. It’s my father’s last name.

Man: (really puzzled now) How did he get that last name?

Me: (yanking his chain, knowing what he really wanted to know, but ticked off at how he went about getting the information) It was his father’s name and his father before him. (Not really. I’ll explain below.)

The man is totally perplexed now. Finally I tire of his crap.

Me: Why don’t you ask the question that you really want to ask?

Man: What kind of name is that?

Me: Kenyan. My father is from Kenya.

Man: (ticked off, to my delight) Well why didn’t you say so in the first place?

Me: (shrugs) You didn’t ask. You made all kinds of assump….

He stomped off in a huff.

*****

In my father’s tribe, it’s not customary to take the last name of one’s father. Each kid gets his/her own last name. The name is determined by the conditions under which the child is born, i.e. morning, noon, night, raining, etc. The last name also varies in the spelling with regard to gender: girls’ last names begin with A, boys’ with O. With Kenya having been a British colony, some Kenyans use their fathers’ last names in keeping with the European tradition. Some don’t. However, even those who use the European system of naming still have a “middle” name; more accurately, two last names.

Since I was born in the US, I was given my father’s last name, but I have my own last name which begins with A. As with the Russian patronymic concept, it’s permissible to call me by this name alone, but in my family, it can get confusing. One of my sisters has the identical “middle” name. When she lived in the DC area, I went to visit her and she took me to a Kenyan gathering. Someone called out our name: “Hey, A….!” We both said, “hey, what,” looked at each other and giggled.

Just a little narcissistic FYI.