Iraq = Blacksburg x2 every day!

Juan Cole says it best. All I can do today is try to amplify his comments. (Please note, everything below is a quote from Juan Cole, Blogger and my computer do not mesh and I have lost the ability to shape posts! No block quotes, italics or bolding, sigh. Another reason that this blog is due for an overhaul.)

Juan Cole: Informed Comment, 4/17/07)

"I keep hearing from US politicians and the US mass media that the "situation is improving" in Iraq. The profound sorrow and alarm produced in the American public by the horrific shootings at Virginia Tech should give us a baseline for what the Iraqis are actually living through. They have two Virginia Tech-style attacks every single day. Virginia Tech will be gone from the headlines and the air waves by next week this time in the US, though the families of the victims will grieve for a lifetime. But next Tuesday I will come out here and report to you that 64 Iraqis have been killed in political violence. And those will mainly be the ones killed by bombs and mortars. They are only 13% of the total; most Iraqis killed violently, perhaps 500 a day throughout the country if you count criminal and tribal violence, are just shot down. Shot down, like the college students and professors at Blacksburg. We Americans can so easily, with a shudder, imagine the college student trying to barricade himself behind a door against the armed madman without. But can we put ourselves in the place of Iraqi students?"

"I wrote on February 26,

' A suicide bomber with a bomb belt got into the lobby of the School of Administration and Economy of Mustansiriya University in Baghdad and managed to set it off despite being spotted at the last minute by university security guards. The blast killed 41 and wounded a similar number according to late reports, with body parts everywhere and big pools of blood in the foyer as students were shredded by the high explosives. '


That isn't "slow progress" or just "progress," the way the weasels in Washington keep proclaiming. It is the most massive manmade human tragedy of the young century."

Riverbend

Funny, that Riverbend should put up a new post. I spoke at a seminar for older adults in a kind of elderhostel program yesterday and I was surprised when a older gentleman came up after my talk (on Sunni, Shia, and Sufi strands of Islam) and told me that he reads the Iraqi blogger Riverbend. We both noted that she hadn't posted since December 31. I recommended Treasure of Baghdad to him.

Today I went to check Helena Cobban's Just World News and heard that Riverbend had posted again. Her topic? An Iraqi woman had come forward to claim that she had been gang-raped by US-trained security forces on al-Jazeera. On Al-Jazeera!! That is a dramatic and powerful act. Nearly unthinkable. I can only imagine the conversations going on in living rooms and kitchens across the Arabic speaking world today. Rape is not a crime that is easily discussed or prosecuted in the Middle East. In a subsequent post Riverbend notes:

No Iraqi woman under the circumstances- under any circumstances- would publicly, falsely claim she was raped. There are just too many risks. There is the risk of being shunned socially. There is the risk of beginning an endless chain of retaliations and revenge killings between tribes. There is the shame of coming out publicly and talking about a subject so taboo, she and her husband are not only risking their reputations by telling this story, they are risking their lives.

Nuri al-Maliki's response was not just to denouce this woman but to reward the men accused of the crime. Ugh! You can read Maliki's statement on her blog as well.

Both blog entries are essential reading. More, perhaps on this later. Sick children and an important lunch meeting mean that there is little time for blogging today.

Arab Media & popular culture

I encountered two music clips today from the Middle East. The first is Baladna (Our Country) by the Iraqi singer Haithem Yosef. It is beautiful and sad and reflects the grief of those who have had to flee, it speaks to the nostalgic and romantic unity of Iraq that will always exist in the heart of exiles whether or not it remains a reality on the ground in Iraq. Sad, sweet, and bitter. Thank you Treasure of Baghdad for bringing it to my attention.





The second comes from Cairo via the Kuwaiti singer, Shams. I think that it is instructive that it takes that kind of distance to produce a ruthless satire. The Iraqis are caught in chaos and grief that is unimaginable. The rest of the Arab world has enough safety to be bitter and very, very funny. Both Juan Cole and Helena Cobban take note of this video. Two very heavy hitters. Professor Cole notes,

She says, "Hi! How are you?" as a cardboard Bush smiles and raises his shoulders idiotically. "No one is like you," she adds, "and there certainly aren't two of you." She shakes her head in front of a White House stage prop.

She sings in front of a sign that says "Democracy." She chases away confused US troops. She mugs for the camera and does a little belly dance. She appears as the statue of liberty lady. She lies down on the word "Guantanamo," referring to the allegations of the use of torture there, a counterpoint to the block letters "Democracy" earlier.

It is the oddest thing, but certainly a "resistance" video of a sort.

What is most striking of all is the tone of familiarity and intimacy along with the contempt. Bush has become an Arab leader, like Mubarak or Asad, and is subject to all the same parodying and jokes that they are in the Arab street.

Helena also explains the video this way:

She sings a well-known Egyptian popular song of romantic repudiation. "Hi! How are you... You think you're so great? I never want to see you again!" while hamming it up with a dizzying array of props representing aspects of Bush's policy in the Middle East. And yes, that includes Washington's "information" policies, too, with repeated visual references to newspaper stories and to round-table type TV talk-shows...

The ending is key, Shams sits on a graph (that most seem to think reflects rising oil prices) in a black cowbay hat, in a mock duel with President Bush, he falls off and lands on his back, hard in the sand, as she pushes what soon becomes the letter E in liberty onto him, the word liberty pummels the President into dust and behind prison bars while a fortune teller reveals the future, Shams walks off into the sunset wearing a wedding dress and holding the hand of the groom Handala (the iconic Palestinian child and symbol of resistance, read more here). Wow! Powerful ending. Are all Arabs now dispossesed like the Palestinians? Alienated, yet joyful in their resistance?

My favorite part is the talking heads in the situation room, I'd like to cut some of those strings too! Watch it!

Baladna, however, is the sad song that will linger when the laughter from Shams is gone.

Bullies

The kind in grade school this time not the ones in Washington DC!

For nearly a decade I have been part of a forum for mothers who all had children in the same month. Collectively, those women are the "smartest woman I know" because among us all we have an amazing span of experience. Yesterday, I was called upon to repost my list of links to resources on bullying. Little 'Skandar had a few run-ins with bigger boys back when he was in pre-K. My eternal graduate student self took over (nothing I love more than researching a new topic) and in one morning I had complied a set of on-line resources to deal with this painful topic. Many of the women on the forum have used it repeatedly over the years. I have now updated it and thought I'd add it to the blog as well.

Large site devoted to the issue of bullies http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/parents/life/health_happiness/problems/bullying.shtml
A british organization devoted to ending bullying
http://www.bullying.co.uk/
A British guide to dealing with bullies in school
http://www.ace-ed.org.uk/advice/booklets/Bullying.html
Bullying, how to stop it
http://www.ianr.unl.edu/pubs/family/nf309.htm
An entire site for dealing with bullies, refers to out-of-print articles, lots of great stuff here!http://www.scre.ac.uk/bully/index.html
A more academic article:
http://www.ericdigests.org/1997-4/bullying.htm
A new site with lots of info:
http://www.stopbullyingnow.com/
Lots of good links here and recent information:
http://www.education.unisa.edu.au/bullying/

One new approach that is taught to my children in school is the idea of "the courageous bystander." This notion recognizes that it is typically difficult if not impossible for the victim to disrupt the bullying dynamic but often all it take is a "courageous bystander" who intervenes with a "knock it off" or a joke or any remark that lets the bully know that his actions are seen by the broader community and that they are not acceptable.

Bumper Sticker

Bumper sticker seen on the back of a Honda this morning in my neighborhood:

FRODO FAILED: Bush has the Ring!

white looters = amusing, black looters = criminals

Last night we had ABC World News on while getting dinner ready. The last story of the night was about "scavengers on the beach picking up a windfall from a sinking cargo ship." I immediately turned to my husband and said, "you mean stealing?" The piece was plugged before the commercial break as an amusing final story, Charlie Gibson's tone was one of lighthearted amusement and that was exactly how the piece played. Two hundred people on a beach carting off loot that had washed ashore, big stuff like BMW motorcycles, and useless stuff like a man carrying a steering wheel (not to mention bottles and cases of wine). We were told that things from the wreck were beginning to show up on ebay, we were shown helpless police encouraging people to register the items with the police but there were no arrests. The story went on to say that scavenging from shipwreaks in this area was a tradition that went back four generations! Locals used to lure ships to run aground on the rocks offshore by setting up deceptive lights to shine out to sea.

Again, its hard to put into the words the tone of the piece (and the video isn't available from ABC on their website) but it was one of goodnatured amusement at human nature; people just can't resist free stuff that appears like magic on the beach. Certainly there was no hint that these people were engaged in a criminal act (technically, you can take and store salvage from the sea while the original owners make recovery plans but it all remains the property of the original owners and you certainly can't legally sell it), or presented a threat to basic law and order, or a sign of a local culure run amok.

Did I mention that these folks were all white? British in fact.

White folk speaking English carting off goods (and liquor) for profit and amusement in southern England is not stealing or looting; it is comedic. While black folk facing floods, abandonment, complete lack of services, and all elements of life turned upside down during Katrina who broke into convenience stores to take water, diapers, food, (and liquor) were described as looters!! Horrible, criminal looters demonstrating not the government's failure to provide safety and basic welfare both before and after the storm but somehow spun to illustrate the degenerate nature of black people in New Orleans (and quietly implying that their fate was their own fault).

Four generations of luring ships to run aground to profit from the washed up cargo!! Yet no mention of culture of criminality or depravity or laziness or inability to think of other ways to make a living.

Imagine that story wasn't about England but about somewhere in Africa where a container ship has floundered and the cargo is washing up on shore, imagine an African place where the tradition is to encourage ships to crash to enrich the local population with the ship's cargo. Imagine pictures of black folk rolling motorcycles and car parts and crates of wine off the beach, imagine the crowded beach scenes and helpless police. Now, would that story be the final amusing human interest story? Would the anchor have good-natured amusement in his voice? Would the story be spun as an example of all-too-human foibles or would it be an entirely different story altogether?

Here is the wire story dated yesterday January 23 from ABC. Note, this is not the story that was broadcast (I'll have to hunt for a transcript for that) but it is the basis for the broadcast report. It lacks the tonal nuances and the bit about four generations of this practice but again, if this was set in Somolia say, or even South Africa, would it have such a neutral tone?

You can see another take on the story with pictures from al-Jazeera and Reuters. Note the difference in tone in the al-Jazeera story.

Sewer lines

As if any of us needed more confirmation that you can learn about ANYTHING on the internet, check out the following: sewerhistory.org. Yes, thanks to a recent discussion on my neighborhood list serv about replacing sewerlines and orangebury pipe, I was led to sewerhistory.org! Absolutely amazing amount of information.

And speaking of keeping up with infrastructure. I have begun the process of transferring the blog to the new blogger and making some format changes. To my horror, I discovered that I had enabled comment moderation without realizing it! So, comments, blessed little currency of the blogging world, were going unposted, unread, and unrealized!! Ack!

Comments should be enabled now. Thank you all, especially Eric, for sticking with me and continuing to post comments even when they disappeared into the ether!

War is Hell

War is hell. For what it does to "them" and for what it does to "us."

Marine Corporal Pleads Guilty in Killing of Unarmed Iraqi

Camp Pendeleton, Calif., Jan. 18 (AP) -- A Marine corporal pleaded guilty Thursday to kidnapping and murdering an unarmed Iraqi civilian last year, saying he and other servicemen went after him because they were “sick and tired of getting bombed.”

The marine, Cpl. Trent D. Thomas, 25, is the first of seven marines and a Navy medic accused in the case to plead guilty to murder. Four others have pleaded guilty to reduced charges in exchange for their testimony.

Prosecutors said the eight-man squad had kidnapped 52-year-old Hashim Ibrahim Awad in Hamdania, a Sunni stronghold west of Baghdad, taken him to a roadside hole and shot him to death, placing an AK-47 and shovel by his body to make it look as if he were an insurgent caught planting a bomb.

Corporal Thomas, a native of the St. Louis area on his second tour in Iraq when the man was killed on April 26, testified about the slaying as part of his plea deal. The group planned to go after a known insurgent, he said, but that plan was thwarted and they went to a neighboring house instead. The judge, Lt. Col. Tracy A. Daly, asked why the group had proceeded with the plan.

“We would get someone else to make a statement that marines, we were sick and tired of getting bombed,” Corporal Thomas said.

Corporal Thomas said he and another marine seized Mr. Awad from a house by entering through an unlocked door. He said they used a combination of hand signals and Arabic commands to lure Mr. Awad away. Mr. Awad spoke little English, Corporal Thomas said, but he pleaded with the group of four marines.

“He started asking, ‘Why, mister, why?’ ” Corporal Thomas said. “We didn’t say anything.”

The four took Mr. Awad to the roadside hole, where they rejoined the rest of the squad, Corporal Thomas said. Mr. Awad was struggling to break free, Corporal Thomas said, so he and others bound his hands and feet. Corporal Thomas said Lance Cpl. Robert Pennington tried to force Mr. Awad to lose consciousness by choking him.

The squad leader, Sgt. Lawrence G. Hutchins III, then reported over the radio that the group had spotted a man digging a hole, Corporal Thomas said. Someone fired a shot, he said, then he and others in the squad opened fire. Petty Officer Third Class Melson J. Bacos, he said, shot the AK-47 away from the group to make it appear as though a gunfight had occurred.

After the firing stopped, Corporal Thomas said, Sergeant Hutchins made sure Mr. Awad was dead by shooting a three-round burst of gunfire into his head.

Sergeant Hutchins, of Plymouth, Mass., is awaiting trial on murder charges and others. Corporal Pennington, of Mukilteo, Wash., is also awaiting trial and claims his rights were violated when investigators interviewed him.

Petty Officer Bacos, of Franklin, Wis., pleaded guilty to lesser charges and was sentenced to one year in prison. Another marine, Cpl. Marshall L. Magincalda, 23, of Manteca, Calif., has pleaded not guilty to murder charges and others.

Corporal Thomas faces up to life in prison without the possibility of parole, though he is likely to receive a more lenient sentence under his plea agreement.

via the New York Times

Today: laugh instead of cry!

I found this via Treasure of Baghdad. I sometimes avoid Treasure of Baghdad because it can be so intense (TB is a young Iraqi who worked as a journalist in Baghdad during much of the war but who is now a student in Philadelphia). But this made me laugh. You Tube titles this "George Bush & America role-play."

Read and Weep

Not long after 9/11 I had a momentary shock as I was mindlessly driving on the freeway. I suddenly saw that this was how America ended, how our nation declined and lost our way: expense wars in far-off places, billions spent while our country was hollowed out at home. It wasn't the fact of fighting that spooked me but the incompetence of our administration. I live in Texas, I had already experienced the "leadership" of Bush and company.

It was a visceral moment. I nearly crashed the car. I hoped and prayed that I was wrong.

I thought of that moment almost six years ago today when I read this essay by Bernard Chazelle of Princeton. Read it and weep.

Thanks to Helena Cobban's Just World News for bringing it to my attention.

Voices in the Wilderness

Yes, I should be blogging about Iraq and the President's speech. . . but my instant analysis is that Bush is offering just more of the same. Half a million troops in May 2003 or fall 2004 might have made a difference but once the mosque in Samarra was bombed(February 22, 2006) the game was up. See the always wise Juan Cole if you want more.

And it is the fifth anniversary of the detentions at Guantamo Bay, Cuba. Helena Cobban brings us more on that. It is worth noting the legal basis for the treatment of the detainees was set by the first President Bush when he used the base to detain Haitian refugees, who, at the time were universally suspected of being HIV positive. See chapter two of Paul Farmer's Pathologies of Power, entitled Pestilence and Restraint: Guantanamo, AIDS, and the Logic of Quarentine,"page 57:

Since Guantanamo is not technically on U.S. soil, the Bush administration lawyers developed a torturous rationale: (now quoting from Ingrid Arneson of the Nation) "While conceding that the Haitians are treated differently from other national groups who seek asylum in the US, the Government claimed that the US Constitution and other sources of US and international law do not apply to Guantanamo -- this despite the fact that the US military base at Guantanamo is under the exclusive jurisdiction and control of the US Government." Guantanamo thus became a place where non-US nationals could be stowed away in a sort of lawless limbo, out of reach of US or international law. Officials charged with upholding US law could intercept refugees, take them to a US military base, and openly declare any actions taken there above the law. Neither the hypocrisy nor the irony was lost on the Haitians.

Although the Pathologies of Power book came out in 2003, Farmer originally wrote the piece on Guantanamo in 1994! Few would or could stand up for poor Haitians possibly ill with AIDs (clearly the "least of these" in the 1990s) and thus was laid the legal basis for detention that now threatens the rights of us all. From Farmer's account it appears that the Haitian refugees faced physical and social conditions quite similar to the current detainees.

Treating the military base at Guantanamo like it exists outside of the bounds of the US Constitution yet firmly inside our control is nonsensical. It led to cruel and unusual punishment for Haitians fleeing vicious repression and it continues to blot our moral standing in the world today. As Helena Cobban says:

The detainees against whom there is solid evidence should be tried, and if found guilty , incarcerated. Let's see and fully examine all the evidence. The rest should be released and given help for their rehabilitation after their years of dehumanizing detention.

After five years the world's sole superpower can't determine who are the bad guys they've detained and who are unluckly Afghan farmers?! Come on! Read Helena's piece in the Christian Science Monitor.

We can do better.

You won't find quoting Christian scripture very often but remember Matthew 25:31-46. In language that reminds me so much of the Quran, it evokes Judgement Day with Jesus separating the sheep from the goats and the righteous are told "Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of my brethen, ye have done it unto me."

Google led me this sermon from the Reverend Barbara Green based on the words in Matthew and grappling with the very issues of torture, detention, and Guantanamo. She concludes her sermon from October 26, 2006 in Houston, Texas with these words:

As I was preparing this sermon, I admitted to my college-student daughter that I had some
trepidation about bringing this issue into worship. She said, “Cut it out, Mom! This isn’t some partisan debate on some obscure budget amendment. This is torture!” That directness is what I would bring to you this morning. Torture is a military issue, and a hard-nosed political issue. But it is also a profoundly moral and spiritual issue. It is wrong. When it is perpetrated in our name “unto one of the least of these, my brethren,” it is the responsibility of all of us.

Standstill

Things may seem to be at a standstill here but like a duck who's serene on the surface, there's some frantic paddling going on beneath the surface.

I'm occupied with writing final exams, grading, and the academic details that I will be leaving behind once the semester is over. Its holiday time and the baking and decorating is just barely underway; school activities for the kids are running full tilt.

I've decided to take my idea for a new section of a contemporary world issues course focusing on Iraq on-line! Why not teach it over the blogosphere for free? I get paid so little to teach it to 30 undergrads anyway and this way there's no grading!!

Check back in January for that as well as for a re-launch of the blog, possibly in a new format.

Happy Holidays!

VOTE!

Vote!!

I've been waiting for this day since election day 2004 (remember how horrible that felt?)

VOTE!

Why? Well, one place to start would be this Frontline account of the missteps in the first year of our occupation of Iraq Lost Year in Iraq.

Everyday people in Iraq

During the months and years that I lived in the Middle East, I became friends with many of the merchants that I encountered on a daily basis. I would discuss Quran with the owner of the little grocery store near my apartment as I made photocopies letters and lessons. I talked about the Archbishop with the Christian bakers who made pizza. I talked about Sufism with folks at one bookstore; the educational system with the staff of another book store. A dear and true friend was from a merchant family who had a presence in the big souk for centuries. I knew his wife, children and siblings. He knew my husband and had met my parents. From him I met many other merchants and small manufacturers. Another man who over the decade I knew him became like a surrogate father to me is part of an extended family that started with just a single candy shop in a small provincial town, now they are wholesalers; trucking sweets all over the rural provinces to supply small shops. So it is with a sense of great poignacy that I read about the slow destruction of the small shop owners in Iraq.

First to go was the pastry shop next door. That was early last spring. Since then, Alaa al Janabi, 46, has watched as Baghdad's epidemic of violence drained the life from his street, one store at a time.


Not long ago, about a dozen shops lined the one-block stretch of road in southwest Baghdad's Saidia neighborhood. Now only Janabi's computer-game arcade and the barbershop one door down remain, and the barber sneaks in for only a couple of hours each day, at a time whispered like a password to longtime customers.


Along a nearby section of a bit more than a mile, where 140 shops once stood only 23 remain. So many merchants in the area have been killed - or fled in fear that they would be - that the result of staying seems obvious, especially for a Shiite Muslim in a neighborhood that's being methodically cleansed by Sunni Muslims, who dominate the area.


"I am here waiting to die," Janabi said.

Jay Price and Mohammed al Dulaimy
McClatchy Newspapers

Small shopkeepers are a key component of the middle class in Iraq. Insurgents target them because in doing so you target a whole family, a whole network of small supplies, an entire social and economic ecosystem. What will happen? Look at Afghanistan. The war with the Soviets damaged and crippled the country but it was what came after, the endless civil war, the battles between warlords that drove away first the professionals, the doctors, engineers, lawyers, and professors who could find work abroad; then the big merchants, those with access to capital left; then the small merchants; eventually anyone with any type of skill left Afghanistan to escape the civil war, the plumbers, the machinists, the mechanics, the tailors, the barbers, the butchers. Only farmers on their land, the very poor, and the most radical were left. They welcome the Taliban as a force that might restore order and morality to a devestated and abandoned country (Please go read Ahmed Rashid's book The Taliban). But that lies in the future (God willing, Iraq will escape that horrible fate altogether). Today the loss of each shop, each merchant, makes the calculus of daily survival more difficult and inevitably more people -- the very people who are our best hope of rebuilding the country will leave.

In Baghdad, the loss of neighborhood stores is more than an inconvenience. With electricity only a sometime thing, refrigeration is impossible, so many people must buy food daily. Traveling even a few extra blocks can mean running a gantlet of death squads, illegal sectarian checkpoints, common bandits, kidnappers and random bombs. Showing up in a strange neighborhood, even just to buy tomatoes, can draw the wrong kind of attention.


Iraqi and U.S. officials here are painfully aware of the problem. Restoring normalcy to troubled neighborhoods is a goal of their current district-by-district military sweep through Baghdad.


It's unclear yet whether it's working; it hasn't reached Saidia yet.

I don't know what the model is for restoring normalcy, how it can be done without either massive increases in troop levels (along with language and cultural training for the US army on a mass scale) or a complete withdrawal. But I weep for each merchant, for each family that the shop supports, for each neighborhood, and each city in Iraq. Ya Iraq! How has it come to this?

Thanks to Iraqnam for bringing the San Jose Mercury article to my attention. The author of Iraqnam also has a piece up at Daily Kos on "The week that was" detailing the events of the last week, October 8-14, for each year 2001-2006. I'd blog about it but it is almost too painful just reading it. Every year it is the same except that every year it gets a bit worse; how long is this war going to go on?

Murtha & "Defeatocrats"

Juan Cole has brought my attention to Rep. John Murtha's piece in the Washington Post today taking on Karl Rove's latest creation,"the Defeatocrats."

Murtha explains:

The Republicans are running scared. In the White House, on Capitol Hill and on the campaign trail, they're worried about losing control of Congress. And so the administration and the GOP have launched a desperate assault on Democrats and our position on the war in Iraq. Defeatists, they call us, and appeasers and -- oh so cleverly -- "Defeatocrats."

Rove & Company can be so clever! (I must admit, however, that my secret dream job would be to come up with such turns of phrase for the Democrats; I love being push-polled by a Republican candidate and turning every crafted phrase back on them). But unfortuately, this is serious business, and deserves not clever phrases but real analysis and hard decisions; two things Republicans can't seem to do. Murtha continues:

When U.S. forces first entered Baghdad, the Iraqi people cheered as the statue of Saddam Hussein was torn from its pedestal. Forty-two months and $400 billion later, we are caught in a civil war in which 61 percent of Iraqis think killing Americans is justified and the Iraqi people butcher one another at an alarming rate. We are considered occupiers. The longer we stay, the harder it becomes for the Iraqis to find their own destiny.

The administration's "stay-the-course" strategy is not a plan for victory. It's not even a plan. All we have is a new military blueprint to keep 140,000 troops in Iraq through 2010.

Murtha's piece deserves to read in full and his ideas taken seriously. Here is a true patriot, a man who served 37 years in the Marine Corps, thirty-seven years! The chicken-hawks don't deserve to hold his coat much less challenge his patriotism.

The Replacements

Time taken to find a replacement to teach the courses I just declined?

About 48 hours!! I'm sure that the Dean could have done it even faster if she had tried.

But it was definitely the right thing to do. Grand Aspirations University spends money lavishly on landscaping, new buildings, marketing materials etc but relies on adjuncts to do the lion's share of the teaching. Over time the discrepancies wear you down (particularly as it is a Catholic school that goes and on about its mission and ethics). I always swore that I would get out before I became a bitter adjunct and the time is now.

Do I sound bitter? Then, you have never met a truly bitter adjunct, it can be fearful to behold.

Once again, the Dean held out the possibility of full-time employment some time in the future, but I've heard the same song and dance again and again. Adjuncting for another semester won't help my chances of getting a full-time post with them and it might even hurt. Two years ago I realized that getting a full time position at this school wasn't my dream but possibly my nightmare. A 4-4 teaching load, plus committee, advising, and service responsibilties with brutal and infinitely petty politics (I've already pissed off enough people to make a full-time offer unlikely.)

Just nine more weeks, and then I am out for good! Yee-haw!

The Good Girl in the Happy Fog

Dean Dad over at Confessions of a Community College Dean has talked recently about the Happy Fog, the self-delusional certainty that the regular rules don't apply to you. Dean Dad wants to talk about Happy Fog in relationship to workplace management issues but he notes:

Is there a more textbook case of happy fog than the hordes of eager young grad students rushing into doctoral programs, each convinced that s/he will buck the adjunct trend? If not for their exploitable hopes and dreams, colleges would have to hire more full-time faculty, and would be even more expensive than they already are!

So sad and so true. My independent study student this semester can't wait to go to grad school and pursue a Ph.D. in philosophy and religion. I immediately asked him, "do you expect to support yourself with this?" Since I can't dissuade him I can only advise him to marry well. I came out of the Happy Fog surrounding academia two years ago thanks to the bracing posts and comments of Invisible Adjunct.

I've written about the impact of Invisible Adjunct before. Go and read the entire blog and comments (its inactive but remains as an archive, a valuable public service) before entering grad school. Thomas Hart Benton in the famous "So you want to go to grad school article" also identifies the magical thinking that creates the happy fog:

The Modern Language Association's own data -- very conservative and upbeat in my opinion -- indicate that only about one in five newly-admitted graduate students in English will eventually become tenure-track professors.

"Are you the one in five?" Really? Well, that's what the other four think too. Take my advice (I secretly care about you as a person): Don't go.

If you speak this way, four out of five students will think you're a crank and find a more flattering adviser: "Of course, my little genius, you can be anything you want to be."

But even after I had stopped drinking the Kool-aid and could see precisely what my true position was an adjunct in the academy, I couldn't quite give it up. Teaching is seductive; you get to stand before a class and make pronouncements, shape history, see bright young faces nodding at your words. But then Dean Dad once again came to the rescue and helped me clarify my position: I was stuck being the good girl. Dean Dad explains,

It's a kind of modesty, worn as a badge of honor. (The contradiction in proudly displaying one's modesty is rarely addressed.) Leave such vulgar pursuits to lesser folk -- I'm too busy nobly and selflessly pursuing truth (and tenure, and status, and travel money . . .

I don't think it's a coincidence that most of the more interesting and insightful academic bloggers are female. The tension between self-effacement and self-promotion that pervades academic culture is structurally similar to the tension in the definition of the 'good girl' - be sexy but not sexual, get attention without looking like you're trying to get attention, etc. Women academics have seen the contradictions twice, so they seem (generally) better able to articulate them. "I could never do that" is a classic good-girl sentiment. Seek approbation through self-effacement --yeah, that should work . . .

As the classic tenure-track faculty line evaporates into budgetary purgatory, I think many academics would be well-advised to retire their modesty. The existing rules have set up an entire generation to fail. It's time to write some new rules.

Yes, indeed. Adjuncting has worked for me. It allowed me to gain classroom and course development experience, it has allowed me to keep my hand in the field while having children. But the process has turned against me now. It sucks up my time and energy and pays me less than minumun wage when divided by all the unpaid hours of class prep, grading, meeting with students etc. Teaching the same courses over and over wears me out and has started to sap my creative energies. When the request to order next semester's textbooks came in, I was filled with dread. I knew it was time. I finally took the plunge and declined my sections for next semester.

Its time to start the next phase.

Popular Wisdom

David Brooks' NY Times column on 9/28 is one of the things that irritated me enough to drive me back to blogging. [The link above will only take you so far if you are not a NYT subscriber. Now, I firmly believe that everyone should read a paper newspaper everyday and the NYT is an excellent choice but I remain bewildered by their insistence on keeping so much on-line content behind subcriber firewalls.]

Saturday, five smart, intelligent letters to the editor in response to Brooks' column were published. My favorite comes from Utah.

To the Editor:
David Brooks acknowledges that modern nations mark their greatness by economic wealth and that "Islamic extremists will continue to compete and grow until mainstream Islamic moderates can establish a more civilized set of criteria for prestige and greatness."

Why, then, does Mr. Brooks continue to support the violence of war as a means of ending the violence of terrorism? Given his reasoning, wouldn't it be far wiser to divert the billions of dollars we are spending on the Iraqi disaster into the economic development of Palestine?

Wouldn't viable ports, secure water sources, healthy agribusiness and manufacturing plants be more productive in the fight against Islamic extremists then military action?

Janet Ellington

Salt Lake City, Sept. 28, 2006

Yes, I can think of nothing that would reverse al-Qaeda's appeal than a strong economy with high levels of employment for young men. In the Arab world, young men without jobs face a future without marriage in a society where marriage and fatherhood are still crucial signs of maculinity and adulthood.

To the Editor:
If, as Mr. Brooks avers, Islamic extremism is not a result of "short-term historical circumstances, but of consciousness and culture," why did the Bush administration and Mr. Brooks believe that 150,000 Western troops, even with billions of dollars, chould change than in jig time?

Grand delusion, indeed.

William W. Goetz

Bedminster, NJ, Sept. 28, 2007

I would only add the political litmus tests that kept many smart, experienced, Arabic-speaking Americans from government positions in the occupation government destroyed any chance that we ever had of moving the consciousness and culture of Iraq in any particular direction.

To the Editor:
David Brooks says countries in the Arab world do not define their national glory economically. In fact, their arrogance stems directly from the money they receive from the West for their oil.

Without the petrodollars flowing into these regimes, they would find themselves quickly at odds with their people, who anger would be pointed at their leaders, resulting in the overthrow of these totalitarian regimes.

The "grand delusion" is that we can maintain our present level of oil consumption, attacke regimes that were contained (Iraq) and talk about attacking other countries (Iran) when we do not have enough troops to maintain order in a country previously defeated (Afghanistan).

President Bush siad he was the "decider"; I see him as the "delusioner."

Brian Gallagher

White Plains, Sept. 28, 2006

Mr. Gallagher does not mention that fact that most of the arrogant, petro-fueled regimes, encourage their populations to see "attacks on Islam" coming from the West as a way to divert their energies away from home-grown political change. Everytime, the western media, commentators, authors, playwrights, etc. carelessly criticize Islam, they play right into this dynamic.

All in all, these letters indicate to me that Americans deserve so very much better from the currrent administration.

Call to Arms

The Bush/Cheney administration mishandling of the war in Iraq and the (mis-named) War on Terrorism makes me physically ill. The administration is pouring oil on a burning fire and doesn't seem to understand why the flames won't go out. I have been immobilized lately and not blogging. But I can feel my internal gears starting to shift. Because this is something I know about, I know about the Middle East, I know about Islam, I know Arabic, I know about the daily struggles of ordinary people in the region, AND I know about America, I know about party politics, and "framing issues" and, dammit, I have a sleeping baby in my lap. I have skin in this game. I want a different, better future for my family, for America, for Syria, for Iraq, for Afghanistan.


Time to write the Senators again, my own, and Chuck Hegal, and John Warner, and John McCain, and Patrick Leahy. Time to write David Brooks, and Keith Olbermann, and my local paper. It is time to say (as if it had to be said) that America should not use torture, it is an ineffective technique to again information, it hardens the resolve and desperation of the enemy and it is morally corrosive to the torturer and the society that condones it.

And time to starting blogging again.

Susan G at Daily Kos is fired up too. Billmon has a new post up even after declaring he was taking a break. The Islamic Society of North America has a new President, Ingrid Mattson. It is Ramadan, it is the middle of Jewish High Holidays, and today is the Feast of St. Michael and All the Angels. Election Day is 39 days away. Time to get back to work.

Satire

Ooh, Billmon! I'm either laughing or crying, not sure which!

Please read.