Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Last Rites for Jayne Cortez

THE FAMILY OF JAYNE CORTEZ
INVITES YOU TO A CELEBRATION OF HER LIFE
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2013 2:00 pm
THE GREAT HALL
in the
COOPER UNION FOUNDATION BUILDING
7 East 7th Street
New York, New York
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE SEND A NOTE TO: jaynecortezcelebration@gmail.com
WE ARE TRYING TO REACH OUT TO ALL OF JAYNE'S FRIENDS
SO PLEASE FEEL FREE TO FORWARD THIS NOTE

Jayne Cortez — poet, activist, muse of the avant garde — dies, age 76

December 30, 2012 by Howard Mandel

Jayne Cortez

Jayne Cortez, a no-nonsense poet who often declaimed her incisive lines of vivid imagery tying fierce social criticism to imperatives of personal responsibility with backing by her band the Firespitters, died Dec. 28 at age 76 (according to NYT obit, age 78). Her deep appreciation of American blues and jazz was another of her constant themes; her son Denardo Coleman played drums in the Firespitters, with whom she recorded six albums.

one of the “Lynch Fragments”

An activist in the Civil Rights movement, organizer of Watts writing and drama workshops, founder of the Watts Repertory Theater, Bola Press and co-founder of the Organization of Women Writers of Africa, Ms. Cortez was also taught at Rutgers, Howard, Wesleyan and Eastern Michigan universities, Dartmouth and Queens colleges and was a muse to the avant garde. Her husband sculptor Melvin Edwards is well known for his series “Lynch Fragments” and “Rockers.” When Ms. Cortez was a teenager in California, musicians including Don Cherry hung out at her family’s home because she had (as Cherry said) “the best record collection,” and through them she met Ornette Coleman, to whom she was married from 1954 to ’64 and with whom she kept in contact. Members of the Firespitters such as guitarist Bern Nix and bassist Jamaaldeen Tacuma, besides Denardo, played in Ornette’s electrically amplified band Prime Time.

Born in Arizon, raised in Los Angeles, Ms. Cortez was drawn to the arts at an early age. She painted and played cello besides keeping journals, graduated from an arts high school but was unable to go to college due to financial problems. She is sometimes said to have inspired Coleman’s composition “Lonely Woman,” originally titled “Angry Woman” — but the adjectives that seem (in my limited experience) to best describe Jayne Cortez are independent, inquisitive, precise and determined. Rhythm, repetition and pointed rhetoric characterize her poetry, as when she asked, “If the drum is a woman/Why do you beat your woman?”

If the drum is a woman
then understand your drum
. . . your drum is not invisible
your drum is not inferior to you
your drum is a woman
so don’t reject your drum
don’t try to dominate your drum
. . . don’t be forced into the position
as an oppressor of drums
and make a drum tragedy of drums
if your drum is a woman
don’t abuse your drum.

In 2000, I was honored to be invited by Jayne Cortez to sit on a panel for an international symposium she was helping to organize at New York University titled “Slave Routes: The Long Memory.” Sometime later, while writing Miles Ornette Cecil – Jazz Beyond Jazz, I ran into her coming out a Manhattan drug store and we chatted briefly. I mentioned that my topic was the avant-garde, and she immediately responded that “the avant-garde is that in art which didn’t exist before. It’s always hard to introduce, because the avant-garde has to make a place for itself where there wasn’t one, where there wasn’t anything.”

Deeper, deeper, deeper/Higher, higher, higher. Always reaching and urging us to, too, intending encouragement as much as challenge. Thanks, Jayne Cortez, for ideas, spirit, words and music.

Let's Play Happy

Let me love you tonight
do not fear me
I come in the name of love
I will speak in silence
and not confuse you with language
let silence be love
let silence be truth
hold me
let me touch you
massage me
I massage you
do for me
I do for you
such is love
unconditional
reciprocal
yes
I am willing now
after so long
somewhere beyond Maat
suffering the patriarchal
love me now
hold me
squeeeze me
kiss me
let me kiss you
hold you
massage you
make you come
beyond joy
scream
beyond joy
let juices flow
let's play happy!

--Marvin X

The Enemy of Self

You are your own worst enemy. If anyone shoots you in the foot, it will be you and you alone. Actually, you qualify for the mental institution since you are a danger to yourself and others. The most danger facing the Black man is himself, after which come his brother and his woman, then the white man. If he can become disciplined enough to out maneuver these forces, he shall see a brighter day, but most often he gets trapped in one of these black holes and find himself sinking into darkness.

At this moment, he must run for his life since mortal danger is on the horizon in the form of White Supremacy forces that are gathering like storm clouds to consume him since with the symbolic rise of the Black Man in America with the election or "selection" of Obama as President, we see the North American Africans have discovered the world of infinite possibilities, while his perennial enemies are working to block him at every turn. See my Parable of the No People, Wisdom of Plato Negro, Marvin X, Black Bird Press, 2012.

It is when you think you are free that the devil pops up like Jack in the Box! Let us recall that after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued we descended to the hell of Reconstruction and the KKK. We foolishly disarmed ourselves of 200,000 Africans with guns and have suffered ever since. Thereafter we were mostly defenseless against violent acts of white terrorism and Jim Crow.

And so what that we have arrived at the Obama Era. Obama is not new on the horizon, his type is known throughout Africa and the Caribbean, reactionary leaders who do the bidding of globalism, even the war policies. Here is a man who keeps a list of people to kill, even American citizens! Then uses the bible of Martin Luther King, Jr., the prophet of peace, for his second inauguration, while he is the complete opposite, a global killer for international finance and the military/industrial/prison/university
complex of institutions known as White Supremacy.

And so you must watch out for yourself, your black brother and the white man, but if you will only guard against being deceived you shall stay of the right path. You must maintain a modicum of discipline to get through the stormy sea ahead.

Maybe you thought the white man would change colors and become human after the liberation movements of the 60s, but it's business as usual with international finance, they have not wavered
it quest of the world of make believe and conspicuous consumption.

The question of guns is very much about you as it is about the mental breakdown of their children, yes, those suffering from the addiction to white supremacy. Of course we suffer the same, White Supremacy Type II (Dr. Hare). You have always been a threat to their white national security, after all, what is the mission of the slave but to overthrow his master by any means necessary. You know the slave or the African caught in the American slave system should be taking heads 24/7, so you programed him to self destruction, yes, a misplaced aggression. Today, he is indeed a danger to himself and others. And you have found that incarceration is the best place to contain him from carrying out any threats he may seek to carry out.

Unable to confront him, you turn to abusing your woman, wife, partner, beating her unmercifully as if she has done anything but love you and wash your funky drawers!

Jack, jump out of the box and stand tall.

By the Time, and what is the time? It is time to save yourself and your people, to do all you can to help them see the light of truth and love. It is time for you to wake up and play happy! Thankful and thoughtful you have the consciousness to understand your mission and purpose.
--Marvin X

Invite Marvin X for Black History Month 2013.

The Battle of Algeria

Some Algeria Attackers Are Placed at Benghazi

By ADAM NOSSITER

New York Times

Published: January 22, 2013

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ALGIERS — Several Egyptian members of the squad of militants that lay bloody siege to an Algerian gas complex last week also took part in the deadly attack on the United States Mission in Libya in September, a senior Algerian official said Tuesday.

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The Egyptians involved in both attacks were killed by Algerian forces during the four-day ordeal that ended in the deaths of at least 38 hostages and 29 kidnappers, the official said. But three of the militants were captured alive, and one of them described the Egyptians’ role in both assaults under interrogation by the Algerian security services, the official said.

If confirmed, the link between two of the most brazen assaults in recent memory would reinforce the transborder character of the jihadist groups now striking across the Sahara. American officials have long warned that the region’s volatile mix of porous borders, turbulent states, weapons and ranks of fighters with similar ideologies creates a dangerous landscape in which extremists are trying to collaborate across vast distances.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is scheduled to testify before Congress on Wednesday about the Libyan attack that killed the American ambassador and three staff members, raised the specter of regional cooperation among extremists soon after the mission in Benghazi was overrun.

In particular, she said the Islamist militant takeover of northern Mali had created a “safe haven” for terrorists to “extend their reach” and work with other extremists in North Africa, “as we tragically saw in Benghazi,” though she offered no clear evidence of such ties.

Now the Algerians say the plot to seize the gas complex in the desert was hatched in northern Mali as well. Indeed, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the veteran militant who has claimed overall responsibility for the siege, is believed to be based there.

But the Algerian official did not say why the captured kidnapper’s assertion — that some fighters had taken part in both the Benghazi and Algerian attacks — should be considered trustworthy. Nor did he say whether it was obtained under duress.

Instead, he focused on the chaos unleashed by the recent uprisings throughout the region, leaving large ungoverned areas where extremists can flourish.

“This is the result of the Arab Spring,” said the official said, who spoke on condition of anonymity because investigations into the hostage crisis were still under way. “I hope the Americans are conscious of this.”

American counterterrorism and intelligence officials have said that some members of Ansar al-Shariah, the group that carried out the attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, had connections to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, one of the militant groups now holding northern Mali. But American officials have also said that the Qaeda affiliate played no role in directing or instigating that Benghazi attack.

Similarly, Egyptian security officials said they believed that a longtime Islamist militant from Egypt was involved in the gas field attack, but the officials did not know of any connection to the Benghazi attack as well.

Algeria was firmly opposed to the Western intervention to help topple Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya in 2011, and this nation’s conservative leadership viewed the Arab Spring with deep suspicion, making no secret of its desire to avoid any such occurrences.

Small-scale demonstrations here were quickly stifled, and ever since Algerian officials have not hesitated to point at what they see as the connection between popular demands for greater democracy that have swept the Arab world and the rise of Islamist militancy in the region.

Algerian officials says the militants who seized the gas field traveled through Niger and Libya, whose border is only some 30 miles from the plant at In Amenas. Mohamed-Lamine Bouchneb, the militant leading the attack at the site, had purchased arms for the assault in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, the senior official said.

The kidnappers had also gathered, undisturbed, at the southern Libyan town of Ghat, just across the border from Algeria, he said, depicting Libya as anarchic, without an effective military force and an ideal staging ground for attacks like the one launched a week ago.

Having already experienced a large-scale Islamist insurgency in the 1990s, in which perhaps as many as 100,000 were killed, Algeria had no intention of experiencing another, the official suggested. He defended the tough Algerian military assault during the standoff and dismissed criticism by foreign leaders that they were not informed of it in advance.

“We left it all up to the military chiefs,” he said. “Myself, I was only informed a half-hour afterwards.”

His assertion squares with the widely held view of Algerian analysts that the military, and in particular a cadre of elderly generals, holds a wide degree of autonomy in the country and often acts independently of civilian leadership.

The official said that Algeria could expect more terrorist attacks, despite having delivered sharp blows to militants over a period covering nearly 15 years.

“We’re waiting for more,” he said. “We are not out of the woods yet.”

David D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting from Cairo, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

Crisis of the Pan African Intellectual

What is the revolutionary Pan African position on the Euro-American-Chinese occupation of Africa?
And what can the Diaspora do to stop the military campaigns for the mineral riches of Africa? Do we have drones, nukes, what? Can we tell African heads of state who are now in league with the Euro-Americans not to join the West in its supposed role of stopping the Islamic revolution? Perhaps we should make clear that the Arab Islamists, including the African Arab Islamists, are as much a problem as the Euro-Americans and Chinese, although the Chinese role appears to be purely economic, which is
nice if there is parity of trade between the Afro-Asians, but too often Chinese made goods destabilize the local economy with pricing and shoddy goods, often imitation cloth such as Kenti in Ghanna.

But what can we do, those intellectuals, Pan Africanists and revolutionary nationalists here in the belly of the beast. Dr. Nathan Hare and Kwame Toure argued over whether our focus should be to cut off the tentacles or the head of the serpent. Of course our focus must be the home front where our people are suffering greatly, jobless, ignorant, incarcerated, drugged out, diseased, etc. Think globally but act locally. What can we do down here on the ground in Babylon? If you know, teach! If you don't know learn! The nature of events in Africa is complex with major issues of corruption, religion, tribalism, imperialism from a myriad sources, European, American, Arab, Asian, etc.

When will Africa be for the Africans? We see reactionary forces occupying Africa. America is placing American troops in 35 African countries. France is now in Mali to stop the Islamists, with American support of course. But does it matter to us whether the Euro-Americans or the Islamists occupy the land, both are known to be devils and destroyers of African culture.

And what shall we say about the African governments in cahoots with the imperialists or globalists?
The African politicians appear in lockstep with the colonizers and crusaders seeking control of Africa's precious minerals. From the neocolonialism of the last decades, we seek they are in the mood to make deals with the devil. After all, Kwame Nkruma taught us neocolonialism is colonialism playing possum.

The African nations collaborating with the occupiers are in the tradition of those who sold us to slavers.
In many of these nations, the former revolutionaries have turned reactionary, yes, in league with the devil. We can almost say no one in this African quagmire is without sin. Who are the good guys, the African leaders, the Euro-Americans, Arab Islamists, who?

Perhaps we can say the common people are the good guys, exploited and robbed of their labor and natural resources at every turn. How shall they gather the energy to seize people's power? The African bourgeoise is not about to give up power to the masses, thus the masses must fight internal forces and external forces of every stripe, European, American, Asian, Arab. This will employ sophistication and a broad understanding of all the forces involved, political, economic, religious.

Malian Front: France Wins First Round of the War, but Now What?

ISSOUF SANOGO / AFP / GETTY IMAGES

Malian youth watch French soldiers drive down a road in Niono on Jan. 20, 2013

Three days after France sent jets screeching over the white skies of West Africa, a trail of over 50 Islamist-packed vehicles stormed south out of the desert, bypassing the Malian military post at the village of Dogofry and churning off the road into the shrubby bush. The group then split; some continued south, where they looped around to assault a Malian army base from the rear. The others took off on foot, around a swamp, to flank the Malians in battle. The Malian soldiers fought, then fled. Oumar Traore, like most villagers of Diabaly, scurried through the lush green fields to hide. For the next four days and nights, planes and helicopter blades whirred above, as automatic bursts fired back. And then: silence. Traore waited for several hours, then ventured out. The bearded men from the desert had left almost as suddenly as they had swooped in, leaving only charred souvenirs behind. “The bombing was too intense,” Traore said. “There were burnt trucks all around my neighborhood.”

France won Round 1 of its new war in Africa but not as smoothly as its military planners might have hoped. By the time it had successfully stopped the Islamist advance southward that prompted its intervention earlier this month, the hodgepodge of overlapping Islamist militias had dealt the French a quick lesson: they plan on fighting back.

(MORE: When Did France Become So Bellicose?)

The rebels finally retreated because they had no answer to the pummeling from the air. “The French would wait until the rebels had to move, then they’d hit them while running,” said Traore. The rebels tried everything to try to evade the air assault: hiding under trees, camouflaging trucks with mud and branches. They even broke into civilian homes, sometimes knocking down walls, to park their mounted guns in places the French would not bomb. Eventually, they pulled out.

But, the rebels also exposed a gaping chink in France’s armament: Paris still has no solution for the ground war. The first phase of France’s war in Mali took place in the country’s riverine center. Control a bridge here, a few checkpoints there, and you can secure a site. Not so in the desert, the rebels’ home turf, where France will have to press the fight next. The French need fighters, and the Malian army is not up to the task. Even after the rebels fled Diabaly, the Malian army refused to re-enter for over 24 hours and even then would not spend the night. There was no ground assault on the rebels’ position, even with the French airpower on their side. But so far, France hasn’t shown willingness to do the dirty work either. With the exception of French special forces deployed to assist the air assaults from the ground, the gathering swarm of French troops, now numbering over 2,000 in Mali, stayed south of the Malian lines.

French insistence on African troops leading the pack has resurrected the U.N.’s original intervention plan: a cobbled-together West African force that does not even exist yet. The U.N. has said such a force would take until September to be deployable, but now their troops are rolling piecemeal into Bamako, Mali’s capital, with new urgency but still without a defined command structure or size.

(MORE: In Mali’s Shadow: A Short History of French Military Mishaps in Africa)

One option is for France to secure central and southern Mali and wait the weeks or, more likely, months until the African force is theoretically ready to go. The problem is that time is not on France’s side. The Islamists have ruled northern Mali since last spring, and every passing month grants the rebels’ more time to bolster their one glaring area of weakness: local support, or rather the lack of it. So far, the French intervention is wildly popular in Mali. Malians don’t appreciate the ultraconservative lectures on Islam: 90% of the country is Muslim, and Timbuktu, seized by Islamists earlier this year, was once the center of Islamic scholarship in the Muslim world, and they blame the rebels for their nation’s precipitous collapse.

But the Islamists are working hard to improve their reputation, especially with the youth. “They offered us money, candy. They told us we could join them. They were not abusive, they were trying to be nice,” said Fousseni Traore, a 19-year-old from Diabaly. Some in Diabaly joined the insurgents during the brief occupation. Northern Mali, ethnically and culturally, is even riper recruiting ground.

More time also means more room to regroup and prepare for the coming assault, and U.S. officials admit the Islamist coalition, including al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, already had too much of it. ”One of the hallmarks of AQIM is that they are generally quite well trained and quite effective, particularly if there’s no counterpressure on them, which there hadn’t been until the French launched their military action,” said State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland about the rebels’ counterstrike. To speed things up, France could try a hybrid approach by putting together a mix of Nigerian and Chadian troops, the most battle-hardened of the contributing countries, to forge ahead by its side as the rest of the African troops are readied and trained.

France deserves the world’s thanks for stepping in when and where no one else, the U.S. included, would. A collapsed Mali into the hands of Taliban-style hoodlums would have established a sinkhole of terrorism accessible from almost any corner of north, west and central Africa. American doubts that the crisis in Mali had direct national-security implications were profoundly shortsighted: as the Algerian hostage situation and the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi showed, Mali’s crisis already extends far past its borders. If no one had stopped the Islamists from taking all of Mali, the resulting calamity for the wider region would have been exponentially grimmer. The moral bravado of the French mission, however, will be of limited assistance on the battlefield as the conflict grinds on. As the French eye Mali’s north, there’s still a lot of sand to sift through.