Confession...

 

© April 15, 2024, the Griot Poet

 

Source: https://www.britannica.com/technology/thermonuclear-bomb

 

September 15, 2001, was a Saturday.

We were all still reeling from the attacks on the Twin Towers that no longer existed,

The Pentagon had a sizable hole in it,

Every news outlet had “theme music,”

As pundits pontificated about Flight 93’s purpose when some “Let’s Roll” brave souls scuttled it.

 

“Pop, isn’t that where you went to school?”

 

My youngest son said it.

His older brother was at Prairie View, trying to figure it out.

We were in H-E-B getting groceries,

Before me, on the shelf,

On the top fold of the Austin American Statesman,

There was a photo of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, my classmate.

Under the caption of his photo was where he went to pursue his Mechanical Engineering degree:

North Carolina A&T State University.

The largest HBCU in the country and our Alma Mater.

 

Khalid and I were STEM majors,

He was in Mechanical Engineering, I was in Engineering Physics,

I was in my senior year, and he was a transfer student.

[And] we were taking a graduate-level course in Nuclear Physics.

The course was taught by Dr. Amin Haque (may he rest in peace),

Who explained that the reason why we were taking this upper-division course was to ensure the country had enough STEM students to manufacture thermonuclear weapons in case of a war with Russia.

 

“Who would SURVIVE a first exchange to manufacture ANYTHING?” I thought.

I kept my concerns mum.

I have since realized that the government used a competitive, captive audience of STEM students working on the same issue across the country, HBCUs, and PWIs, a youthful “think tank” with no salary.

 

Khalid and I were as different as two people could be,

 

He was a child of wealth; I was born into designed poverty.

He drove a Porch; I drove a Chevy.

He wore Birkenstock; I wore sneakers.

 

It wouldn't be an understatement to say that we said two words to each other throughout the semester.

 

We were both trying to graduate.

We both learned the intricacies of fission reactions,

Chain reactions are like billiard balls,

That fact was the basis for the Manhattan Project.

A fusion reaction requires enough force to push hydrogen atoms with the same positive charge into each other.

How would you do that, you wonder?

A mechanical disturbance causes the fission reaction,

Uranium 235 is the element,

That can happen in a laboratory or in a reactor.

The Hydrogen Bomb is a step above the ones,

Dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

The fissile material is caged around a Nickel Cadmium core of Plutonium 239,

The explosions must be simultaneous,

For the fission chain reaction to compress the atoms in the Nickel Cadmium core,

A description I recognized reading the Tom Clancy novel, “The Sum of All Fears.”

"600 megatons of TNT,"

"Concussive shockwaves at supersonic speeds,"

Enough to flatten any municipalities,

Capable of murdering populations by the millions,

And the radiation: Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,100 years.

And my senior project improved this killing machine by eleven percent.

 

Source: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/plutonium.html

 

Khalid, my colleagues, and I were mastering the intricacies of Doomsday Devices.

Tearfully, I recounted the Vedic scripture,

J. Robert Oppenheimer quoted at the first test explosion:

 

“If the radiance of a thousand suns

Were to burst at once into the sky.

That would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...

(Now)

I [am] become Death,

The destroyer of worlds.”

 

I wept then for the children who hadn’t been born yet.

 

“Pop, isn’t that where you went to school?”

 

Yes, it was.

I was snapped back in the present, then September 15, 2001.

Still reeling from the attacks on 9/11,

And this was the face of my classmate, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad,

Number three in Al Qaeda,

And I was dumbstruck in H-E-B.

I had to move along because someone behind me insisted on getting on with their shopping day.

 

I realized that for Khalid,

Everything he needed to accomplish his dark deed was public knowledge,

Figuring out how to burn down buildings was a mechanical engineering problem.

Not nearly as intricate as it was to build a thermonuclear device.

 

I recall getting an “A” in the course and for my senior project.

I assume Khalid did as well; he seemed intelligent.

Our paths diverged after graduation:

I took an oath to defend my nation,

Khalid joined Osama Bin Laden in the CIA-backed Mujahideen,

Encouraged by President Carter and National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Defending Afghanistan from Soviet invasion,

In what would soon become the textbook definition of blowback.

 

I stared at a familiar face.

I connected with him over the time and space of memories.

We were both in the same class in Nuclear Physics.

Like most upper-division majors, we were both just trying to graduate.

I was a pauper, and he was a prince.

We’re about the same age.

Khalid, my classmate, is in Guantanamo Bay.

My penance is Environmental Engineering.

After military communications and the semiconductor industry,

Using my STEM knowledge to make the world better for humanity,

And my family,

But for a moment in Greensboro, North Carolina,

Khalid and I were studying earnestly how to build Doomsday Devices.

Slap Boxing...

Chris Rock and Will Smith [onstage] during the show at the 94th Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood on Sunday, March 27, 2022.

Myung Chun / Los Angeles Times via GI

Image Source: Billboard.com

© March 30, 2022, the Griot Poet

 

Slap boxing,

Open hand smacking,

Not knuckling like men

Marquis of Queensberry rules lacking,

To our shock and chagrin,

The “slap heard round the world” wasn’t an act,

 

First question:

Would you have stepped up

Had the comedian been Jimmy Kimmel?

Comedians roast celebrities: that’s their shtick.

You just put a target on any comedian who makes a joke.

You were laughing until you saw Jada rolling her eyes, then you thought about it.

No one is going to practice the art wearing a Kevlar flack jacket,

 

I’m not saying NOT to defend your wife,

We didn’t have that luxury during slavery,

Or the Middle Passage,

But you’re (at the moment) A-Listed status,

A multimillionaire former rapper,

Turned formidable actor,

 

You could have taken him to the side after the ceremony

With your lawyer, and demanded a public apology,

You could have challenged him

On the most important night of your existence,

To a celebrity boxing match after accepting your Oscar.

You had the eyes of the world on YOU,

And who didn’t want to see you FINALLY win?

You took “King Richard” from Venus and Serena Williams,

You took “Summer of Soul” from Quest Love,

Will Packer, after “Oscars So White,” was head manager,

You trained for “Ali,” and you’re a good athlete.

You could have even charged Pay-Per-View,

Made a mint,

And donate the money to the other’s favorite charity.

That could have satisfied your chivalry,

All Chris would have done is get big-eyed on stage and say, “Oh, shit!”

 

We’ll never know.

It would suck if the Academy took your Oscar back.

Harvey Weinstein still has his after “me too” in prison,

The Academy of Motion Pictures is shuffling,

They’re hoping the public is attention deficit,

Their discipline appears selective.

Yeah, there was a classier way to handle disrespect to your wife.

Last night wasn’t it.

 

Second question,

Would you have made a GI Jane joke reference

Had the couple in the audience been

Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds?

You’ve attained multimillionaire status,

You’re off a season of “Boardwalk Empire,”

You were Pookie in “New Jack City,”

Comedy takes intelligence,

Meanness takes psychopathy,

 

Alopecia is a disease that

Removes a woman’s “crowning glory,”

Jada Pickett-Smith,

And Representative Ayanna Pressley bravely decided to own it,

I’ll give Chris this pass: he didn’t know about it.

 

Each strand falling to the floor is a “little death” of their self-esteem,

The five stages of grief are still:

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression: acceptance,

By Elisabeth Kübler-Ross,

And not exactly in that order,

 

Both of you have mothers, grandmothers, aunties, sisters,

If you’re living, you have a woman to thank for being on the planet!

The beauty shop is the center of their universe,

Losing their hair is not a giggle,

Losing the audience is not a winner,

Jada’s not inviting you to the next Thanksgiving dinner,

Your Boston show sold out,

Ticket sales were through the roof,

The pimp slap is proving profitable,

You’re going to have the crowd pressure of escalating

The situation,

Or you’re going to have to be brave enough to squash it,

 

Enslavers pitted us

Against each other so that we wouldn’t have the strength,

Or the cunning to organize against them,

It was a human-sized cock fighting for debasement

And entertainment,

We didn’t start moving forward until we squashed the kinds of beef between us,

Building towns, colleges, Rosewood and Black Wall Street,

It was racist envy that destroyed the latter, not infighting!

We used to be running in the same direction on the Underground Railroad,

Following Harriet Tubman to freedom,

 

Don’t get “too big for your britches,”

Lawyers are salivating to strip both of you,

Of your wealth and riches,

So the only option you’ll have left,

Is moving back to your tenements in New York and Philly,

The “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” from Peacock to a peon,

“Boardwalk Empire” back to Pookie, the crackhead,

 

Slap box somebody on those streets,

We’re just recovering from the disappointment of Bill Cosby,

Now you’re both giving us 21st Century Step-n-Fetch,

If you can’t tell, I’ve lost all respect for the slap boxer and the slapped,

Admit it, Chris: this isn’t the first time towards Jada that you’ve talked smack,

Do you have a problem with the joke Will,

Or your wife’s open relationship with her lover, August Alsina? (He doesn’t look slapped)

Do you remember talking about squashing kinds of beef after Biggie and Tupac at the Grammys?

Some young people look up to both of you; whether [or not] you like it.

 

Bottom line:

Crass jokes aren’t for smart comedians,

Slap boxing isn’t for grown-ass men,

You both went from A-listers in my mind to minstrels.

Be careful with your public personas, or both of you will quickly be forgotten.

From Hey to Rant!...

This is the most partisan posting I've done on this blog. However, this is far too important, for the country possibly being led by an extreme fringe that put on a show Wednesday trying to go "relentlessly to center" to paraphrase Nixon. It started with a lackluster solicitation email I received Thursday morning titled: "Hey."

Dear Mr. President,

I was at work Wednesday night, but I have heard the coverage regarding the debates. They said Governor Romney won. It was like getting punched in the gut.

No mention of the 47%. Or the fact that he was 47^th in job creation while governor. Someone with your rhetorical skills should have made poetry with those two items; mincemeat out of Mr. Romney.

Wednesday was you and First Lady Michelle's anniversary. Do me a favor: FIRE the lawyers that deliberated and put the first debate on what should have been YOUR and the First Lady's private day.

Also sir: Mr. Romney obviously suffers from Pseudologia Fantasticia, AKA pathological lying. His running mate is a "chip-off-the-old-block" with admiring Ayn Rand in one video-taped breath, then repudiating her as if he never knew the author of "Atlas Shrugged" was a militant atheist (her words: I know some atheists, and they're quite pleasant).

What's at stake: we're in the "Twilight Zone" with a dominionist-dominated Republican Party hijacking privately-practiced religion for one public end: power. Former GOP operative Mike Lofgren says it's become "an apocalyptic cult." You won only on facts, not style, and the crowd that's adamant about voting for Willard ain't thinking about the "facts": they once labeled his faith as a cult until left with no other alternative. In the words of a political operative to Run Suskind, they "create their own realities."

It's a shame we're discussing the "controversy" about evolution, question whether the earth is over four billion years old or six thousand years old. Meanwhile, "back at the ranch" of global competition, countries we helped build up with the Marshall Plan post WWII have no such delusional machinations. They march forward in STEM careers, creating more scientists and engineers than our own universities as we put our heads in ostrich sands; our minds in reverse back to God-knows-where, but I bet where we land won't have a middle class or America as fabled "shining city on a hill." I'm a year younger than you, and I can recall getting more on evolution and sex education during the late seventies than my twenty and thirty year old sons. Science is no threat to religious faith, and any reality created, virtual or imagined, cannot govern.

Let me end with Kevin Costner and Sean Connery in The Untouchables: "Don't bring a knife to a gun fight," and by the way: you're FROM Chicago!

Related link: William Rivers Pitt - A Nationally-Televised Presidential Fail

Bootleg, II

Prohibition

© 9 March 2012, Bootleg, part 1 here

Chinua Achebe would say “Things Fall Apart” (still):
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell
Speaking his intentions to make the young president
And his beautiful family “one-term residents”
In the Presidential Mansion affectionately to its
Previous supremacist management known as: the “White” House.

“I want my country back”; “I want Obama to fail”:
The incessant wails of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh,
Two right-wing talk show hosts that as standard bearers
Of “conservative family values” are two jokes: Beck – 2nd marriage,
Limbaugh – 4th, with Elton John making a million-dollar payday
At the reception with his lifelong beau in tow…
Both men had issues with drug and alcohol abuse as
They railed at others’ abyss; both dropped out of college,
(Beck has a boondoggle online for a fee),

Rush couldn’t even pass ballroom dancing,
Yet these Neanderthals dictate to a gullible electorate
What THEY should say, act, think or be! Glenn Beck
Actually got too crazy for FOXNEWS – imagine that?

And Rush seems to have it in for pretty white females
That obviously eclipse his intelligence! Sandra Fluke
Executed her constitutional right to address congress and
This Troglodyte called her a “slut, prostitute”
And more, eventually forced to apologize as his
Sponsors dropped from his once burgeoning list like migrating fireflies.

Sarah Palin was still game-changing when she placed
Targets on her web site and announced: “don’t retreat: RELOAD!”
Resulting in an unstable member of our human family almost
Ending the life of Gabriele Gifford and Christina-Taylor Green (9)
Born on September 11, 2001, the full-circle of a short life of tragedy.
Yet, she offered no apology, only reinforcing the narrative that as a
VEEP barely vetted; she wasn’t ready for prime time or the office of president.

Big government bureaucrats became Tea-bagging impediments,
Killing legislation that in elation they once sponsored: “hell no!”
Exclaimed the-then House minority leader John Boehner
(which, if you haven’t added him, one of Words’ alternatives is “bonehead”),
Moments after the phrase “President-Elect”
Began sinking in to the sinking reality their
Former standard-bearer left them.

An economy crumbling – a byproduct of libertarian
Laissez faire myths of “trickle-down” that even David Stockton
Disavows, the once-mighty “rubber-stamp”
Congress defeated in 2006 midterms – “impeachment is off the table”
The only negative appraisal I have of former
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. 562 laws versus “bonehead’s” 12:
Girlfriend got it done!

And we will be undone if the current four horsemen of a
Red apocalypse bootleg the same stale stance, should one
Perchance win the nomination and whitewash the
White House again – with inane theories and ignoring
Science as the world globally warms, wars and rumors of – and spins.

February Flow of Negritude

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/negritude: The historical, cultural, and social heritage considered common to blacks collectively: An aesthetic and ideological concept affirming the independent nature, quality, and validity of Black culture. An ideological position that holds Black culture to be independent and valid on its own terms; an affirmation of the African cultural heritage… © 20 February 2008, The Griot Poet, TGP

Was it important to you to erase my history? Whitewashed sepulchers that hide the mystery of my origins and contributions to biblical, historical, technological and modern history…?

Would it kill you to admit that the stories in the Bible resemble the inhabitants of ancient KEMET? National Geographic FINALLY put a black pharaoh on its cover after Richard Burton as Mark Anthony and Liz Taylor as Cleopatra confused us! Nefertiti: you’ve got archeologist and anthropologist vultures filled with their culture, arguing if she was a sister. As the “beautiful one that has come,” how could she be anything else but?

Charlton/Charlatan Heston as Moses lied to us (breaching one of the 10 Commandments), raised in pharaoh’s palace as a black prince that married Jethro’s daughter, an Ethiopian princess, and the only race they could NOT BS us with was the Nubians, the ONLY people of color in Africa according to Cecile B. DeMille.

That Adam is from AD-HAM, Adonai-Black and that the dust he was created from was correctly called “dark mud”? Yet the Klan opens its meetings with cross burnings and prayer.

Enlightened liberal fascists derisively admit the “opiate of the people” is necessary to combat the ravages of racism, compassionate conservative socialists decry “family values,” all the while the upper 1% make killings in the stock market making it hard for families to value the dollars spent at: the gas pump and grocery markets.

Would it kill you to admit: that a black woman created central air conditioning; that a black man created the filament for Edison to invent the light bulb; that Garret Morgan invented the stoplight and gas mask; that Washington DC was laid out by astronomer/engineer/civil-rights-letter-writing-to-Thomas-Jefferson Benjamin Banneker? Now, you have scholars denying the copulation of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemming, question: name a white Jefferson! Was it necessary to go around Egypt knocking off noses and lips from obvious African princes?

What twisted psychotic mentality allows liberals or conservatives not to consider either Hilary (woman) or Barack (son of AD-HAM) as viable presidential candidates?

Michelangelo did a number on you, painting the Sistine Chapel in your hue until you came down with a bad case of: narcissism. You have defined beauty, dominating the cover of every magazine cover other than Ebony, Jet and Upscale with women that get 20 minute tans, plastic “Nip/Tuck” surgery and botox enhanced lips.

And your schism will not allow you to admit others other than your hue into the Nuclear nightmare club med: when if they go off, no one will distinguish the dead from the color of their skin, but the content of their corpses: uranium 236! We should all disarm and find peaceful uses for this godlike power. I say in this hour: 6-6-6 is the perfect binary code that is the inverse of itself. And until you recompense what you’ve stolen, you tick-tock down the clock to your civilization built on lies and not truth. Else, your wages of sin on this earth will be well spent!