In Progress Part 1

Work in Progress, Acrylic on Board with Detail, March 5, 2011

Cushing and Chutney Enjoying a Walk

I've Fallen Down 
And I Don't Want To Get Up


"I fell off stage and bruised some ribs. The worst part was that the audience didn't realize I was gone."-Richard Marx

On Saturday, February 18 at 5:30 AM while taking my canine friends Chutney and Cushing out for their morning constitutional I noticed that my driveway had become a sheet of ice. Friday had been one of the rare days of the winter with a bit of a thaw. The packed layer of snow in our long downhill driveway was now a bobsled track. Even though I was half asleep, I noticed this. I was aware of it. I am a recently retired mailman in Maine. I know how to walk on ice. I am aware of the danger of falling. I had fallen a few times as a letter carrier and had never been hurt falling. The one bad back injury I had suffered on the job came from not falling, catching my fall after slipping on ice by quickly bending and then straightening my left leg and experiencing the dynamic jolt of my entire body weight going up the leg and into my spine, damaging my S-1 disc in the process. This injury would finally lead to surgery after seventeen years of working in pain.
I told myself at that time that it was just better to fall and break something than try to stay on one's feet and hurt one's back.

It May Sometimes Be Better To Fall Down
But Sometimes You Have No Choice

The dogs seemed a little reluctant to urinate in their regular spot so, in an adventurous mood, I decided to ambulate down the driveway to the street. Walking down the side of the driveway where there was some snow that I could grip seemed like a good strategy. But, of course, as I approached the end of the driveway there was no more snow and I fell. I didn't have a chance. Almost before I knew what was happening I landed on my right side and on my back. Instantly I knew I was hurt. It wasn't the fault of the dogs. They didn't pull me down. I just went down all by myself. They approached me and licked my face in sympathy.
I let them lick; I got up, and then they finally pissed.

Oh, The Pain, The Pain!

I struggled back to the house and spent the next two days trying to get comfortable around the spreading pain in my right side. I hoped for bruised not broken ribs. I went to my physician who ordered x-rays. The radiologist at the hospital read them as negative. After two days I started to feel better. On the fourth day I was feeling much better.  At bedtime on the evening of the fourth day I went to brush my teeth feeling very pleased about the improvement in my ribs. I was enjoying a new toothpaste (A natural brand,Organique Neem and Pomegranite by Himalaya, made in Bangalore, India. I'm not being paid to say that.) and in the process I sneezed and instantly felt like I got kicked in the side by a horse. I returned to the doctor the next day and he pulled up my x-rays from the internets. He uttered words to the effect 'By golly they missed something here. You have at least two broken ribs'.

Broken Ribs From the Outside After Eight Days

Happy Days! Have Some Drugs

He prescribed oxycodone, which I despise, having taken it when my back was at its worst just before surgery in 2002. But you have to keep down the pain of broken ribs so you can breathe deeply to avoid getting pneumonia. That drug messes up your digestion, your sleep patterns, and it makes your brain sluggish. How people can take this stuff for fun I'll never know.
Broken ribs are one debilitating thing. I have had no energy because pain limits my ability to move around. And lack of activity breeds lack of activity. But I'm feeling better now and that's it for the oxy. Back in the day we took drugs to have visions. Psychedelics [ψυχή (psyche, "soul") and δηλοῦν (deloun, "to manifest")] were used to enhance experience.  It seems like a lot of people today are looking for something to shut down their brains and avoid experience.
But enough of my old man rant, no one wants to hear it.

The Driveway Today

Almost all of the snow we have enjoyed this winter remains here in Hiram.

Cecil Rhodes Monument, Capetown

"Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life."-Cecil Rhodes

A Short List of Recent Prominent Rhodes Scholars

Extracted from the document: List of American Rhodes Scholars 1904-2011 


Click here for another very useful list of Rhodes Scholars sorted by occupation and position.


Thirty-two of the brightest young Americans are awarded Rhodes Scholarships every year. Prominent Americans like Bill Clinton, Robert Reich, David Vitter, Richard Lugar, Bobby Jindal, and David Souter were  chosen Rhodes Scholars in their day. 

I am not making a judgement  about any one of them.
In fact, I am certain I would have accepted a Rhodes Scholarship had I applied and been offered one in my youth.

I do find execrable the notorious colonialist Mr. Cecil Rhodes. He instituted the scholarship program with a fortune wrenched out of Africa. With funding from the Rothschild Family, he founded the De Beers diamond mining concern in 1888. Through a shrewd strategic mix of price fixing, a captive labor force, monopoly and inventory control De Beers  ensured that diamond prices were maintained at a high level and profits were maximized.

The questions to be asked are 'What becomes of Rhodes scholars?' and, 'How does their Oxford education (or indoctrination) affect their lives, and ours?' and,  'Do they have a secret handshake?'
I only half jest.
We must consider the racist, or racialist as it were, views and agenda of Anglo-Saxon superiority held by Mr. Cecil Rhodes as revealed by these quotes from his 1877 essay, "Confession of Faith". 

It is up to each of us to determine whether the original agenda of Cecil Rhodes, which is reflected in these quotes,  persists as  Raison d'être of today's Rhodes Trust.

"Why should we not form a secret society with but one object the furtherance of the British Empire and the bringing of the whole uncivilised world under British rule for the recovery of the United States for the making of the Anglo-Saxon race but one empire." 

"There are some subjects on which there can be no arguments, and to an Englishman this is one of them, but  even from an American's point of view just picture what they have lost, look at their government. Are not the frauds that yearly come before the public view a disgrace to any country and especially theirs which is the finest in the world? Would they have occurred had they remained under English rule? Great as they have become how infinitely greater they would have been with the softening and elevating influences of English rule. Think of those countless 000’s of Englishmen that during the last 100 years would have crossed the Atlantic and settled and populated the United States. Would they have not made without any prejudice a finer country of it than the low class Irish and German emigrants?"

"It is our duty to seize every opportunity of acquiring more territory and we should keep this one idea steadily before our eyes that more territory simply means more of the Anglo-Saxon race, more of the best, the most human, most honourable race the world possesses.
To forward such a scheme what a splendid help a secret society would be, a society not openly acknowledged but who would work in secret for such an object."

"Once make it common and it fails. Take a man of great wealth who is bereft of his children perhaps having his mind soured by some bitter disappointment who shuts himself up separate from his neighbours and makes up his mind to a miserable existence. To such men as these the society should go, gradually disclose the greatness of their scheme, and entreat him to throw in his life and property with them for this object. I think that there are thousands now existing who would eagerly grasp at the opportunity. Such are the heads of my scheme.
For fear that death might cut me off before the time for attempting its development I leave all my worldly goods in trust to S. G. Shippard and the Secretary for the Colonies at the time of my death to try to form such a Society with such an object."

A List Of Recent Prominent Rhodes Scholars

1999
Benjamin Edward Cannon – Oregon State House of Representatives (2007-present)
Jonathan J. Finer (CFR) – former embedded reporter for The Washington Post during the Iraq War (2003)
Antonio Ramon Delgado –AD The Voice, singer and hip-hop artist; singer of Painfully Free album

1998
Noam Scheiber – senior editor of The New Republic
Ebrahim Patel (CFR)

1997
Jeremy Andrew Vetter – Assistant Professor of History at Dickinson College
Annette Elizabeth Salmeen – awarded a gold medal in swimming at 1996 Summer Olympics
Benjamin Todd Jealous – President and CEO of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) (2008-present)
Tali Farimah Farhadian (CFR, S&B 1997)
Former Associate of Debevoise & Plimpton [law firm in New York City]
Lawyer in the Office of the U.S. Attorney General (2009-2010)
John Maxon Ackerly (CFR)

1996
Michelle Diane Gavin (CFR)
Foreign Policy Advisor to U.S. Senator Russ Feingold (1999-2005)
Special Assistant to the President and National Security Council Senior Director for African Affairs (2009-present)
Priya Radhakrishnan Aiyar – Associate of Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel, P.L.L.C.

1995
Rachel Maddow – host of “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC
Zayde Gordon Antrim – Assistant Professor of History at Trinity College (2006-present)

1994
Zachary J. Ziliak – Associate of Mayer Brown [law firm in Chicago] (2007-present)
Andrew J. Zawacki – author and poet
Dacia Meek Sampson Toll – President of Achievement First; founder of Amistad Academy in New Haven, Connecticut
Eduardo M. Penalver – Associate Professor of Law at Cornell University Law School
Randal D. Pinkett – Co-Founder, President and CEO of BCT Partners

1993
John R. Unger II – Member of the West Virginia Senate (1998-present)
Stanley J. Panikowski III – Partner of DLA Piper [law firm in San Diego, CA]
Julie M. Mikuta
Member of the Washington, D.C. Board of Education (2001-2004)
Partner in the NewSchools Venture Fund West Coast office [San Francisco, CA]
Alison Morantz – Assistant Professor of Law at Stanford Law School
Pamela Dawn McElwee – assistant professor at The School of Global Studies at Arizona State University
David K. Ismay – former Navy SEAL Platoon Commander
M. Taylor Fravel, Jr. (CFR) – Professor of Politics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Eric Garcetti – President of Los Angeles City Council (2005-present)
Peter Beinart – Editor of The New Republic (1999-2006)

1992
Catherine M. Sharkey (S&B 1992)
Professor of Law at New York University School of Law (2007-present)
Professor of Law at Columbia University Law School (2003-2007)
Richard A. Primus – Professor of Law at University of Michigan Law School
Piyush Robert Jindal
Governor of Louisiana (2008-present)
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives (2005-2008)
Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Planning and Evaluation (2001-2004)
President of the Louisiana State University System (1999-2001)
Nikolas K. Gvosdev (CFR) – editor of The National Interest
Jonah Edelman
co-founder of Stand for Children organization;
son of Children’s Defense Fund President Marian Wright Edelman
Noah Feldman (CFR)
Bemis Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School (2007-present)
Cecelia Goetz Professor of Law at New York University (2006-2007)
Cory A. Booker (CFR) – Mayor of Newark, New Jersey (2006-present)

1991
Kenji Yoshino
Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law (2008-present)
Guido Calabresi Professor of Law at Yale Law School (2006-2008)
Professor of Law at Yale Law School (2003-2006)
Jason R. Zimba – Professor of Physics and Mathematics at Bennington College
Leonard P. Stark
Judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware (2010-present)
U.S. Magistrate Judge for the District of Delaware (2007-2010)
Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware (2002-2007)
Jesse Malkin –(former?) economist at  Rand Corporation, (which has been called America's University of Imperialism) married to uber-conservative, author and writer Michelle Malkin
Goodwin Liu
Professor of Law at University of California at Berkeley
Appointed Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit by President Barack Obama in 2010
Peter Blair Henry (CFR)
Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Economics at Stanford University
Dean of New York University Leonard N. Stern School of Business (2010-present)
Brad Ronnell Braxton – Associate Professor of Homiletics and New Testament at Vanderbilt University


I have gone back only twenty years, to 1991, in this document, pulling out some prominent names. You can be sure that these younger Rhodes alumni will be heard from more and more as time goes by. If you explore this list further you will find some very interesting curriculum vitae of Rhodes Scholars since 1904. There are many Federal Reserve bankers, prominent educators, diplomats, businessmen, and politicians. Not many of these men, and lately women, earned a living getting their hands dirty, shattering our illusions or our chains, or creating something to improve the physical or spiritual lot of humanity. Do your own research. Correct me if I am wrong.

"The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial."-Assistant Attorney General Nicholas deBelleville Katzenbach, in a  memo,  dated November 25 1963, two days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. This was a "rush to judgement"  indeed.   After being a prisoner of war of the Germans and Italians for two years during World War II, Nicholas was named a 1949 Rhodes Scholar.  Lyndon Johnson appointed him Attorney General in 1964, replacing Bobby Kennedy after his resignation. Two years later, Katzenbach  was named Under-Secretary of State. After the Johnson administration went away, Katzenbach became general council for IBM in 1969 for the duration of its thirteen year anti-trust proceedings. He obviously had intimate knowledge of the government's case and, as it turned out, IBM survived the litigation. He then served on the board of directors of MCI and in the same capacity for Verizon after the two entities merged when MCI came out of a bankruptcy. 

Links:

Office of the American Secretary, The Rhodes Trust

The American Association of Rhodes Scholars
Rhodes Scholars Chart Sorted by Occupation (A Must See)
The Rhodes Trust and Its Administration, Anthony Kenny (PDF)

Cushing Crashes My Passport Photo Session. No You Cannot Come With Us, Cushing. 

Addendum: My wife Beth thinks I bash the British a bit too much. I, in fact, love the people of old England. It is the Royals, their Empire and their minions I dislike. It is their financial system and the bankers of the City of London I dislike. It is the remnants, the Ghost of an Empire which the United States has been tasked to defend that I dislike. Wherever you see American troops in the world, which is almost everywhere, you see the unfinished business of the British Empire being attended to.

“If you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.” -Mike Huckabee this week on WOR radio.

Mike should be reminded that the grandchildren of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted their grandparents.

Well, that, and the inconvenient fact that Obama didn't grow up in Kenya and never really knew his father, meeting him once at the age of ten.  It seems that the Right is prone to fantasizing. But the Left tends to ignore facts. Well, maybe, those who one would expect to  be on the left here in America ignore the facts and instead are swayed by simplistic Rightist phantasies. 

The origin of the term "Mau Mau" is uncertain. Later an acronym from the Swahili "Mzungu Aende Ulaya, Mwafrika Apate Uhuru" meaning "Let the European go back to Europe (Abroad), Let the African regain Independence" was adapted as the meaning of Mau Mau. It's hard to see what's wrong with that. There are people here in the United States saying much the same about Mexicans. There are some Native Americans who might say it about Euro-Americans but their numbers are few and their voices are soft. But their blood is strong in the Mexicans. What confusion!


"To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom, and of colonisation by British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour and enterprise, and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the Islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire and, finally, the foundation of so great a Power as to render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity." -Cecil Rhodes' "Confession of Faith"

It seems that Mike Huckabee's notion of the Mau Mau Rebellion may have been influenced by exploitation films like this 1954 Joe Rock and Elwood Price documentary narrated by Chet Huntley. There were staged scenes of topless African women chased by men with machetes.The Mau Mau and Kenyan London School of Economics educated leader Jomo Kenyatta were, of course, characterized as Communist influenced savages. The reality is below. Kenyatta spent most of the time of the rebellion in prison for 7 years being convicted of ties to the Mau Mau Society in what is now seen as a kangaroo court.

25,000 to 90,000 Mau Maus were killed by the British in the 1950's in an ultimately futile effort to extend colonial rule. Perhaps 30 white settlers , 200 British soldiers, and 2,000 African soldiers fighting on the colonial side were killed by Mau Maus during the eight year emergency.