Saturday, December 10, 2011

The Defence Rests


In re Ezra Pound

A Nation
That Will Not
Get itself Into Debt
Drives The Usurers
To Fury

The above quote is from Ezra Pound’s prose work The Enemy Is Ignorance.
I do not want to take up any serious student’s valuable time with the countering of acrimonious slander, but there are two predominant lies that are propagated about Ezra Pound, both of which attempt to tarnish the splendour of his work and his extraordinary genius, but most of all obfuscate the seminal theme of his lifelong effort to expose what he identified as the most pernicious injustice that had infected the world.
The first accusation is that he was a Fascist. He was not. He did support Mussolini and in particular certain of his ‘land reform initiatives’ such as the reclamation of previously unproductive land, the breaking-up of certain capitalist monopolies that were crippling the economy, and also his attempt to rein in the Church’s enormous wealth that they extracted from people who were suffering under the weight of extreme hardship.  It can be argued that Mussolini was something of a mountebank, as he frequently plagiarized Gabriele D’Annunzio, who at the end of the First World War was not only a literary legend but by then a military and political one as well. When D’Annunzio rallied the Italian nation to help rescue ‘their sister France’ during the First World War, Mussolini used the same words when France had been occupied by Germany under the Nazis. It was, nevertheless, the bellicose British Prime Minister who not only pushed Mussolini away, but into the arms of Hitler whom Il Duce is on record as saying he could not stand. On numerous occasions Pound very clearly expressed that Italian style Fascism was in no way suitable to the American psyche, and therefore, to the American people, while he did see it as beneficial to Italy at that time.
The second thing said about him was that he was rabidly anti-Semitic. He was not. An important note: Semitic is a linguistic classification not a racial one, and therefore, includes all the Arabic-speaking people of the world. It also includes any Aramaic-speaking people, the old form of which was spoken during the time of Jesus, peace be upon him, and is now the exclusive preserve of philologists, historians and archaeologists.
In Pound’s literary masterpiece, The Cantos, the name of Rothschild is used as an allegorical personification of usurers, those that practice riba, as it is referred to in Qur’anic Arabic, or neschek in Hebrew scripture, which appears in The Cantos explicitly as being non-racially directed.

The Evil is Usury, neschek
the serpent                                                         
neschek whose name is known, the defiler,
beyond race and against race
the defiler
Tόxos     hic mali medium est

In one place he refers to them as Stinkschuld. This is a potent metaphor as schuld in German means debt, and also, interestingly, guilt. It could, of course, as well be described as a pungent metaphor.
There is a direct reference to William Paterson, who founded the Bank of England in 1694.

Said Paterson:
Hath benefit of interest on all
the moneys which it, the bank, creates out of nothing.
(Canto XLVI)

This line was taken from a letter found by Pound in the British Library and refers to the fractional reserve system whereby a bank can legally multiply what money it has and so lend out at interest money it does not actually have.  The ratio of tangible assets (real wealth) to credit currency is today astronomical and virtually incalculable. Paterson was a Scot.
There is an inspirational prose text by Pound called Guide to Kulchur. The dedication at the front of the book reads:

To
LOUIS ZUKOFSKY
and
BASIL BUNTING
strugglers
In the
desert

Zukofsky was a second generation protégé of Pound and dedicated nearly all his life work as a poet to Ezra Pound. Zukofsky was born in 1904 and died in 1978. His parents were Lithuanian Jews who raised their family in New York’s Lower East Side. Pound helped him publish his first poems in a literary magazine called Exile.
During WWII while Pound was living in the fishing village of Rapallo the mayor announced that due to severe shortages caused by the war, the town’s orchestra would have to be disbanded. It was now 1940-41 and word of the terrible atrocities that were taking place in Germany and Poland had made their way to outside countries. Let us remember that even most Germans were not aware as to what was taking place. Pound literally went door to door to find sponsors for these people, realising that nearly a third of the orchestra were German and Polish Jews and subsequently what fate awaited them if they were repatriated in accordance with a bi-lateral agreement between Italy and Germany for anyone without a valid work permit. He did this despite the fact that people, himself included, were having a very hard time feeding their own families. Subsequently, the mayor was able to rescind his previous edict.
Ezra Pound took as the warp and woof of his masterwork, The Cantos, the theme of usury or usura as he wrote it.  He made war on riba!

Oh you who believe, fear God
and give up what remains of
your demand for usury, if you
are indeed are believers.
If you do not, take notice of War
 from God and His Messenger.
Qur’an: 2.275/279

They severely punished Pound, not only for his condemnation of usury itself, but more significantly, for his condemnation of those who practised it, and who have never forgotten or forgiven him for what he wrote and spoke. He was put in a wire cage at an American detention centre in Pisa, and then extradited to the United States on charges of treason. He was denied the right of habeas corpus, and spent over eleven and a half years in a mental hospital in Washington, D.C. for the criminally insane. That is what was done to the most important poet of the twentieth century.
Remembering what Ezra Pound wrote - You defeat the bankers (drive them to fury) by not needing them.
As far as Ezra Pound’s political affiliations, he was notably a Jeffersonian. There are two salient quotes from Jefferson found in Pound’s writing. The first is: “I believe that the banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.” The second quote that Pound used was: “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency, first by inflation, then deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
Philosophically Pound was a Confucian, and his brilliant translations of the master Kung, as Pound called him, are a testament to that. What follows is a segment from The Great Digest.


TA S’EU

“The men of old wanting to clarify and diffuse throughout the empire that light that comes from looking straight into the heart and then acting, first set up good government in their own states; wanting good government in their states, they first established order in their own families; wanting order in the home, they first disciplined themselves; desiring self-discipline, they rectified their own hearts; and wanting to rectify their hearts, they sought precise verbal definitions of their inarticulate thoughts [the tones given off by the heart]; wishing to attain precise verbal definitions, they set to extend their knowledge to the utmost. This completion of knowledge is rooted in sorting things into organic categories.”
As far as religion, he was adamant about “no Popery”, while he often expressed his enormous admiration for the architectural magnificence and beauty that expressed Christian transcendence made manifest by the superb craftsmanship of the artisans who built breathtaking structures, and the sublime artistry of those that painted the frescos that adorned them. One need only walk along the pathways of Venice or Rimini to witness what Pound so loved.
In The Cantos Pound singled out the theologian Johannes Scotus Erigena, condemned by Pope Honorius as a heretic, a follower of Averroes (Ibn Rushd) who he identified as a hero, as indeed Dante had done some centuries earlier although, according to Dante, was unable to enter Paradise as he was not a Christian. As a defender of the Canon Law of the Church against usury they should have canonised him and made him a saint, but the Vatican was enmeshed in banking and remained silent while Pound remained vilified and locked up in a madhouse. It was only Hemingway, in A Movable Feast, recalling his youth in Paris in the 1920s, who called him Saint Ezra on account of his indefatigable efforts on behalf of the literary and artist friends he so assiduously tried to help.
We are today experiencing the aftershocks of what has been called the financial crisis of 2008-2009. Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and even poor Bernie Madoff who stole 47 billion dollars that never actually existed, have entered the public discourse in a way that Rothschild, Sassoon and Sir Basil Zaharoff did in Pound’s era. A corrupt and flaccid political class has been inexorably exposed, and has left people unable to comprehend the ineluctable truth that their vaunted democratically elected leaders are simply not in charge. Pound had believed in the vision of men like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, just as he celebrated the Monte dei Paschi (Mount of Grazing Lands) established by the Arch Duke Ferdinando in 1600 as being sufficient collateral for those who needed seed money at the start of the new growing season. The God-given abundance was in nature itself, and there was no un-natural increase by means of interest.
Pound also saw the time of the American Civil War (fought between 1861-1864) and the passing of the Banking Act that immediately followed and with it the handing over of political power to a mercantile class of profiteers, as the end of the great American experiment.

M’amour, m’amour
what do I love and
where are you?
That I lost my center
fighting the world.
The dreams clash
and are shattered –
and that I tried to make a paradiso
                                    terrestre.

Do not move
Let the wind speak
that is paradise.
Let the Gods forgive what I have made
Let those I love try to forgive
what I have made. 
(From: Notes for CXVIII et seq.)

The defence rests its case.

Robert Luongo
 

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Dear Prime Minister

An Open Letter to Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Dear Prime Minister Erdogan,

It is with the greatest respect for you that I acknowledge what I perceive of the complex and dangerous minefield you must traverse on a daily basis in order to continue in your efforts to lead Turkey at this most critical moment and to steer the ship of State across threatening geopolitical currents. It is, therefore, in apprehension of the treacherous reefs that your rivals and opponents long to see you founder upon, that I venture firstly to convey my sincere hope for your continued safety, and also, if you will excuse my forwardness, volunteer myself to you as a marker buoy for certain dangers that lie in wait for you.

Before going further, I must mention that I first visited Turkey in 1996 as part of a delegation that came to attend a conference in Istanbul, and was, in fact, your guest at a dinner given by you as Mayor of that most noble and beautiful city. Unfortunately, I did not get the opportunity on that memorable occasion to thank you personally for your generous hospitality.

It was during this visit that Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi presented the Islamic Gold Dinar and Silver Dirham to the recently deceased Dr. Necmettin Erbakan, the newly elected Prime Minister of Turkey. I had the opportunity to visit again the following year and recall doing a live radio interview on a student-run station. In 1996 Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir had numerous invitations to speak and of all the places offered, he chose Bosphorus University, acknowledged at the time as the most prestigious secular university in the country. Shaykh Abdalqadir presented a major paper, subsequently published under the title of The Return of The Khalifate. The result of his discourse was thunderous applause and excitement as young men and women rushed forward to meet and greet the Shaykh. A series of smaller gatherings took place and, as mentioned, a second visit was made the following year.

I hope you will permit me, respectfully, to make one or two observations regarding the late Dr. Erbakan, whose dignified, gentlemanly and urbane demeanour exemplified the innate courtesy of the Turkish people. The difficulties he experienced in forming a majority government are, I am sure, better known to you than to me. A coalition had to be formed and it was to Tansu Çiller that he turned. She had, as you know, two options open to her. The first was to face criminal charges of fraud, which according to Turkish law she could not be prosecuted for if in office, or to team up with a declared political enemy. History has recorded that she chose the latter. It was a sensible move by her and a politically strategic one by Dr. Erbakan. Nevertheless, she wasted not one minute in sowing the seeds of discord within the Turkish Administration. Whilst reiterating that you will know far more of the Machiavellian intrigues and machinations that ensued, I find the first two official State visits that the new Prime Minister made worthy of some attention.

The Prime Minister went to Iran, a country that was already fixed within the crosshairs of the Pentagon. It is common knowledge that Iran is run by a cadre of Shias, and it is not disputed that the Shias split off as a faction from the body politic (Ummah) of the Muslims many centuries ago. The etymological root of the Arabic word shi’ah, which they adopted as a name for themselves, indicates that which splits away. Their religion openly slanders the noble Companions of the Prophet, as well as his wife Aisha and declares as non-believers numerous people that were promised the Garden in the Hereafter, either in Qur’an or on the tongue of the blessed Messenger. It also sanctions the practice of taqi’a, permitting them to resort to dissemblance and concealment of their true beliefs and motives whenever it suits them to do so.

Then there are the Ismailis, an even more radical sect within the Shia religion, who established suicide assassination as a tactic to be seen not only valid, but laudable. Any form of suicide is against the teaching of Islam, not to mention the killing of innocent victims who are written off as collateral damage. It is of the utmost importance that the most knowledgeable specialists upon whom you rely to inform your position on these matters provide you with the means to take up a clear and unequivocal stance on this. Of course, Iran is your neighbour, possibly a valuable trading partner, and therefore, a détente must be maintained to secure a safe border with them.

It is now fifteen years on since the late Dr. Erbakan made that visit. What was he thinking? What did he imagine the response of the Turkish military and his other enemies within the country would be? Lacking the advantage of your proximity to the circumstances, certainly the wisdom of hindsight persuades me that it was a fatal lack of political acumen that allowed Dr. Erbakan to choose that destination as one of his first official tours. Iran is still under the aim of the Pentagon for a possible military strike, but given that the US is presently embroiled in two unwinnable wars, and that Iran has gained ascendancy as the major power broker in nearly all Mid-Eastern affairs, it is my view that the US is prepared, despite Israel’s protestations, to jump into bed with Iran as a temporary strategic convenience. Please sir, do not get caught between them, because that is precisely what is now being asked of you!

The second country he visited was Libya, a profitable ‘petrol station’ that was of considerable value to BP and certain American oil companies, run by a man I am convinced was clinically mad (although I am not a qualified psychiatrist). There was all the vitriolic rhetoric between Libya and the US during the Reagan years, but, as I was informed by reliable sources, business between the two countries was at its all time best. As you know, recent events have resulted in the disgraceful murder of Colonel Gaddafi, backed by a pro democracy contingent that was funded by the very same people who had allowed him to remain in power for over forty years. Once more, sir, please do not be drawn into the maelstrom of a hostile corporate takeover of a country’s oil wealth masked as part of a fantasy that was first launched on Facebook as ‘The Arab Spring’.

From my relatively distant perspective, the choice of these two countries by Dr. Erbakan suggests a lack of understanding of the political arena into which he had entered. When the military threatened to roll tanks through the streets he, being a man of honour and one with true concern for the welfare of the Turkish people, stepped aside. If only Osama Bin Laden had followed this example of how a true Muslim leader behaves - instead of choosing to remain in Afghanistan when it was clear that his presence there would rain down death and destruction upon the brave people of that country.

Leaving the past and what mistakes were made, it is of the utmost exigency that you have a clear view of the political terrain that is open before you. Syria is a quagmire, with its citizens being slaughtered by the Assad regime, as they, like lemmings, are going to their deaths. What do they want? Do they want to be Greece? Similar to the situation with Iran Turkey is being asked to serve as a broker on behalf of those countries that have a geopolitical interest in the region. Egypt has gone from bad to worse, as now it is reported that the military, called in to maintain calm while the new democratic government has time to organise, is proving more brutal than under Mubarak. You must know that after Israel, Egypt receives more US aid than any other country. So who kept a rabid dog in power and made him rich? The same ones that funded the ‘spontaneous revolution’ to usher in a new era of democracy.

From Nasser to Sadat to Mubarak; each one worse than the one they succeeded. And all the while who has been lurking in the background, pretending to be this secret organisation - that everyone knows about, including who its leaders are? Of course, I refer to the Ikhwan al-Muslimeen. In all the years of their recreant existence what have they ever accomplished but shameful defeat and the sending of misguided young men to their graves? Meanwhile, their leadership have occupied lucrative government positions in the countries they secretly denounce as kafir. Where are they? Egypt, Jordan, the oil-rich Gulf States and Turkey! When you trace their antecedents you arrive at the door of Muhammad Abduh, the late nineteenth century founder of Islamic Modernism in Egypt, who, despite his vituperative railing against British imperialism was, according to Lord Cromer, referred to as ‘our friend Abduh’ and ‘most likely an agnostic’ who would help put in place all of the pro British initiatives, including a fatwa to allow the Post Office Bank, with its ‘moderate’ interest rates, to operate in Egypt. After him came Rashid Rida and the disasters of the 20th century that opened the way for the Ikhwan. Weed them out of Turkey! Be sure to get to the roots and not just the stems.

Before proceeding further, I must reiterate my high regard for you and the assiduousness you have applied to the task before you. Being at the forefront of your country’s undoubted political progress, and importantly her commercial vigour, you have genuinely helped your people and consequently expanded your support base. Whether Turkey is admitted into the EU or not (you are more aware of that than I), what has been most telling is your indefatigable resolve to bring Turkish goods to the world marketplace. A leader that actually helps his own people: what an anomaly in today’s political environment!

Equally commendable has been your consummate handling of the hard-core nationalists who have persisted in maintaining an acrimonious attitude towards the Kurdish people within Turkey. You have opened a direct dialogue with them. You have permitted the use of Kurdish in local political affairs, allowed it to be taught in schools and used on regional radio stations. They are a minority with a distinct culture and language that are part of Turkey. Most significantly they are Muslim people, brothers and sisters in Islam. A weapon against you and your government has been taken away from your enemies in Europe and at home.

Please permit me to speak of friendship. One must chose one’s friends carefully. The last Shah of Iran sat at the family dining room table in the White House of five consecutive American presidents. I do not refer to State dinners but family meals. The Shah and his wife were on intimate terms with those presidents and their families. When the writing was on the wall, and it was clear that the Shah would fall, not one of them would take his calls. He flew around and around in his private luxury jet running out of fuel with no one allowing him to land. The decision was that it would be imprudent to be seen backing a loser, and better to come to some form of amenable terms with the ‘fellow in the turban’ who was being flown in from Paris. Now, that’s how they treat their friends! Let me also turn to the case of Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, a staunch anti-communist and recipient of lavish amounts of US aid that he and his wife lavishly spent on themselves. When it was obvious that he would not last the latest uprising and that a newly elected democratic leader, Corazon Aquino, would be president, his friends deserted him. Basta! As they say in Italian.

The last matter I want to raise with you is that of finance. At the moment Turkey is running on a high. Ten years ago Ireland had the fastest growing economy in Europe and Dublin was a boomtown with a bonanza of new money pouring in.

A Nation

That Will Not

Get itself Into Debt

Drives The Usurers

To Fury

The above quote is by Ezra Pound from his prose work The Enemy Is Ignorance.

Ezra Pound took as the warp and woof of his masterwork, The Cantos, the theme of usury or usura as he wrote it. He made war on riba! They severely punished him for it and have never forgotten or forgiven him for what he wrote and spoke. He was put in a wire cage at an American detention centre in Pisa, and then extradited to the United States on charges of treason. He was denied the right of habeas corpus, and spent over eleven and a half years in a mental hospital in Washington, D.C. for the criminally insane. That is what was done to the most important English speaking poet of the twentieth century.

Returning to the twenty-first century you must be fully aware of the generous line of credit being offered to Turkey. Your economy we are told is one of the few that is growing and doing well. Think of this line of credit as a rope. There is an anecdote taken directly from a chronicler during the time of Louis XV of France: “And we saw the King walking in the garden with his Jew...” “The bank supports the State like the rope supports a hanging man”.

The banks are not defeated by attacking them. Berlusconi refused to sign the austerity measures bill demanded by the banks to ‘restore confidence in Italy’s finances’. Overnight he was gone. He has been replaced by Mario Monti, the previous Minister of Economy and Finance. He is openly a member of the Bilderberg Group as well as chairman of the Trilateral Commission, the influential think-tank founded in 1973 by David Rockefeller. He has also been a key advisor to Goldman Sachs. Italians were seen dancing in the streets after Berlusconi was forced to step down, as people shouted “clown, clown, clown”. We will hear a different chant when Monti signs the austerity bill, which he will; he is a banker.

In 1965 a recalcitrant Achmed Sukarno had the temerity to throw the IMF and World Bank out of Indonesia. In 1966 a CIA backed initiative was put into motion to overthrow him and place General Suharto in power. All of Indonesia’s vast natural resources were handed to US, UK and Australian multi-nationals, the IMF were welcomed back, and Suharto undertook the task, under the cover of being anti-communist, of carrying out the worst cases of torture and genocide against his own people. The US and others simply looked the other way.

I remind you again of what Ezra Pound wrote. You defeat them (drive them to fury) by not needing them. Your customary politeness and cordiality is a shield. Courtesy was the hallmark of the best of mankind. And he, God bless him and cover him with peace, also said, “Strategy is part of warfare”. The astonishing advances you have made so far for your people were not accomplished in a day, and lately we have seen how much can be destroyed overnight. However, a great opportunity awaits you and the Turkish people, and as Pound also said, quoting Confucius: Make It New!

I thank you very much for your valuable time, and pray for your continued success and safety - for you and all of the people of Turkey. Certainly, we must want this for all people around the world in need of the good news - as well as the warning.

Yours truly,

Robert Luongo

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Pre-Graduation Day

There is the need to record an event, to put down in words, so as not to forget something, something of importance. From it may very well come an understanding, even if much later, within which one can find benefit. Homer had such a need and we are grateful to him for it. We have The Iliad and The Odyssey.

There was firstly Homer’s narrative poem; to which my approach was then deepened through The Cantos of Ezra Pound; and more recently Odysseus (or Ulysses as he was known to the Romans) makes a guest appearance in Shakespeare, whose political plays are the theme of the subject I teach at a college in South Africa. Presently I am reading a fascinating study by Barbara Reynolds of the Italian poet, political thinker and the man, Dante, who lived from 1469-1527; and who should show up in her book but the celebrated Greek general, who served under King Agamemnon, and not without trepidation and intense daring managed to survive a terrible war, and after a long and arduous journey finally makes his way home to his wife, Penelope, their son and an ageing father. When he arrived he found his homestead in Ithaca infested by property developers, speculators and bankers, all wanting to convert his land into a housing estate. As the potential for profit was enormous they had been besieging his wife day and night, all the while feasting on her husband’s food and drinking his wine, in hopes of their imminent gain if she would simply sign the papers and seal the deal. By all accounts Odysseus was presumed to have perished, dead, either in battle or upon his return journey. It would simply be better all around if she sold.

There is not a general consensus as to the inherent character of the 13th century BC mythical figure, for some have portrayed him as a cunning Machiavellian who drove his men not only in war, but also into dangerous detours, exploiting their desire for both fame and riches, while others have depicted him far more favourably and heroically. It is worthy of note that he and his son Telemachus unsheathed their swords against those that were intent on obtaining his property, killing them all, except for those that managed to escape with their tails curled between their legs: a fair warning to modern day bankers and speculators. It seems certain that I’ll never be a ‘proper’ academic, maintaining that detached and distinguished objectivity. Not, of course, that they ever forget who signs their pay cheques. Academia operates by corporate sponsorship, which along with major banks and financial institutions are the largest contributors to the arts and sciences within both private and state universities.

This past Thursday was the last day of formal classes at Dallas College, and we were all honoured that the founder, Dr. Dallas, whose name the college bears (also known to all of us as Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi) came and delivered an address to the students and faculty. A third year student, who is hafiz of Qur’an, recited the first part of Al-Baqara to begin the morning programme.

Dallas College, established in 2005, was created to produce future leaders - as well as those capable of recognising such men, pledging their allegiance and serving them by whatever means and expertise they have obtained. It was said to me a short time ago by our Chancellor, who is not only a prominent attorney from Johannesburg but most importantly an indefatigable supporter of the college: “Not all of our graduates will become leaders, but none of them will ever be led astray”.

The central theme of Dr. Dallas’s address was the study of history as a means of making sense of the time in which one is living. He made mention of Sir Roland Syme’s magisterial work: The Roman Revolution, and also Thucydides’s classic: The Peloponnesian War. Speaking directly to the students, all of whom are in their late teens and early twenties, he spoke about what lies ahead in a world that is rapidly changing and with it new challenges that await them.

Dr. Dallas made mention of a recently aired television docudrama on the Second World War. It was mostly comprised of black and white footage from the 1930s, ‘40s and early ‘50s, all of which had been converted into technicolour and had added a dramatic and “rather vulgar” sound track. The effect was that history had been repackaged like a Hollywood movie and presented in a manner in which an ideological overview was superimposed upon what were the “undeniably terrible events” of a war and the unconscionable things that occurred during it. From this I understood that the message being impressed upon the viewers was that one and only one choice remains for peace and prosperity in the world. It is marketed as the freedom of democracy.

He then spoke of human anxieties, like that of the safety of one’s family, the quality of education for our children, or the crime rate in the places we live, but also included the unavoidable anxiety of, for example, the impending financial crisis in Greece, with a referendum passed into law by politicians that the people adamantly reject, and similar such cases in Spain, Portugal and Britain, all of which have seen thousands of angry protesters in the streets of their major cities. Breaking news from around the world crashes in, even in this most southern tip of Africa, and you are made to feel helpless. Although not directly stated by Dr. Dallas, what I understood is that we are repeatedly told on a daily basis that more credit is the only solution to stimulate a flagging world economy, which the banks are willing to provide, obviously tied to strict austerity measures to assure the minimal expenditure on unprofitable social welfare programmes, while concentrating instead on programmes aimed at sustainable debt repayment. Democratically elected governments will assure that their debtor citizenry will pay.

Another example was provided to the gathering that on face value was rather humorous, but upon closer examination, if reflected upon, something serious. He spoke of a man who suffered from a delusion that he was a grain of wheat. After a period of intensive psychotherapy the patient was cured, as he now knew he was not a grain of wheat but a man, and was released from hospital. It was only a day later that the very same man came banging on the hospital doors demanding to be let in. When the doctors opened the doors for him they could only exclaim that he had been cured, that he knew he was not a grain of wheat but a man! He replied, “Yes, but do the chickens know?” There is a shared perception of what ‘reality’ is, and it is broadcast to all of us via Internet, TV, film, cinema and printed media. I could grasp that not only must one understand and decode the nature of events, that more often than not function as smokescreens that obfuscate rather than clarify what is taking place, but also the need to recognise the contextualised world view in which others are led to believe in them.

Dr. Dallas brought his most inspiring talk to a close, as he submitted the entire matter to what is the Truth, and in so doing specifically referred to Tawhid (the Oneness of Existence) and that all power belongs to Allah. Then admitting that his Latin was no longer what it once was, he deferred to our Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Azzali, a scholar in Medieval History who graduated from the University of Parma, and also our lecturer in Roman History, for confirmation of a word in that ancient language. Dr. Dallas had, in fact, got it right. We ended with everyone reciting Al-Fatiha.

The morning’s event finished with coffee and cakes, with the Vice-Chancellor and the third year graduates having the special privilege of sitting with the Shaykh.

The final examinations will be starting shortly.

Everything moves on. The academic year has been a success and, moreover, as well as being included in this most auspicious college for the past seven years, I have been most fortunate that what I embarked upon in the summer of 1970 when I first met this unique man of his time, has been a most remarkable journey: truly an odyssey! What is of the utmost of importance is to see that the Shaykh is a guide, he indicates the way, which he also embodies. Nevertheless, he has never allowed anyone to make this affair about him. About this he is most adamant. And what has he personally said to me? “Follow him [the Messenger] / so that hopefully you will be guided,” (Al-A’raf). Dr. Dallas turned 81 this past autumn while I am nineteen years younger. I do think it a fair assessment that I am no longer young, although in no way do I concede to being old. After ten years in Cape Town, it is quite probable that he will return to Europe. For myself, I have been here going on eleven years, far longer than I had ever thought I would be. Nevertheless, the college remains based in Cape Town, and while I could, of course, be replaced, for now my work is here. Therefore, this year is also a kind of graduation for me. It has taken me a terribly long time, but having been shown a way must now embark on another kind of journey.

Odysseus lived to a ripe old age. He planted his oar on a hillside overlooking the sea. Such extraordinary times!

-----------------

Robert Luongo’s new book: The Power Template: Shakespeare’s Political Plays is available in paperback through Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and also from Kindle Direct as an ebook. You can also visit: www.thepowertemplate.com

Friday, October 28, 2011

A Precise Terminology

He taught Adam the names of all things.

Then He arrayed them before the angels and said,

‘Tell Me the names of these if you are telling the truth.’

 

They said, ‘Glory be to You! We have no knowledge

Except what You have taught us.

You are the All-Knowing All-Wise.’

 

The above quoted lines are from uncreated Word of Allah, from His Book, of which there are copies, at first written down by scribes and in latter times, till the present, in printed editions. From these copies, which are referred to as mus’hafs, literally ‘copies’, there have been numerous renderings of its meanings into a great many languages, with the majority of scholars being exceedingly careful not to refer to them as translations, per se.  Already we are acutely aware of the essential importance of having a precise understanding of the meaning of words, thereby to say exactly what it is we mean to say.

It must be clear that I am in no manner a qualified authority on that Book, or its meanings. I have neither access to it in the original language, nor am I learned in its meanings and interpretations, except from what little I have understood through those scholars who have acquired that well defined science, passed down from generation to generation. Again, I read the line: “He taught Adam the names of all things.” It is upon the men of knowledge, both past and present, that I rely to gain a correct understanding, and in so doing, not make a mistake, or say something of which I have no knowledge. Therefore, as someone for whom the use of language and obtaining a precise terminology is of the utmost importance; finding le mot juste, whether in attempting to convey an understanding of an idea, a deep inner emotion, a command or prohibition, or an insight required to plumb the depth of a particular meaning; great care is required.

He taught Adam the names of all things. To know the name of something is to connect it to its meaning. Getting it right or getting it wrong makes all the difference. We are living in a time in which men have, to a great extent, lost that Adamic knowledge, the meanings of the names of things. We could, for example, identify the word money. What is it and what do people understand it to be: a value, a medium of exchange by which goods and services are exchanged? Yet, the whole world has had a terrible shock as it became abundantly clear that what people understood to be a value, was in fact a credit, created ex nihilo, a debt, that was traded and exchanged across the world through a mysterious medium, an Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), via computer terminals by an elite but seemingly innocuous group of people, as well as the more quotidian use of money as a medium of exchange, that has been revealed to be devoid of value. Subsequently, all those things to which we refer by their names, property quite possibly being one of the most important, and one could say most valuable, lost its value. Just like that! Truly, this is most astounding!

As a small stream, like the many I can recall from the woodlands of my native New England, that through a myriad of twists and turns finds its way to a mighty river (the Merrimack comes to mind), that is itself being pulled into the great Atlantic Ocean, I find myself drawn again to what I have understood from the study of the writings of Ezra Pound. In addition to his magnum opus, the Cantos, there are his prose essays and expositions and also his immensely important translations of the major works of Confucius: The Great Digest or Ta Hio, The Unwobbling Pivot or Chung-Yung and lastly The Analects, comparatively less orderly in their sequence, yet believed by his students to be indispensable. I have tenaciously tried to hold to the proper name of the ancient sage as Kung-futz-æ. Pound settled upon the more intimate, yet respectful, name of Kung - acknowledging that both Master and Kung are synonyms.

What follows is Pound’s translation from ancient Chinese into a down to earth colloquial vernacular that you might still hear in more rural parts of the American Midwest. It should be noted that trained sinologists have often taken exception to Pound’s translations that he made using a basic Chinese-English dictionary, along with a sheaf of notes bequeathed to him by a scholar by the name of Ernest Fenollosa, who had spent a lifetime in Japan studying the ideograms, and whom Pound had never met. Pound was ecstatic when the scholar’s widow approached him and handed over the notes with no more explanation than that her husband wanted the poet to have them. The basic complaint is that Ezra ‘made numerous mistakes’. This is, of course, entirely possible; though having read each of the books I am convinced he never got a meaning wrong, as each one is sound and rings true.

Tze Lu: The lord Wei is waiting for you to form a government, what are you going to do first?

Kung: Settle the names (determine a precise terminology).

Tze Lu: How’s this, your divagating, why fix’em?

Kung: You bumpkin! Sprout! When a proper man don’t know a thing, he shows some reserve.

If words, (terminology) are not (is not) precise, they cannot be followed out,

or completed in action according to specifications.

The very next Confucian principle is: ‘The creation of a just state must be established on a just means of exchange’. The Qur’anic model is much more refined and clearly defined, as it transcends to a yet higher knowledge to which mankind can aspire; although it is agreed upon by the people of knowledge that it only arrives as a gift.

Properly speaking, there is no such thing as an Islamic politics, but rather there is an Islamic economic model. That model is called dawlat, and is directly related to the movement of wealth from the highest segment of society to reach and nourish the lowest. The primary means by which this occurs is the taking of Zakat by the authority of a leader, paid on substances or merchandise of intrinsic value, in substances of equally intrinsic value, and immediately distributed to those who qualify to receive it by the clear rulings relating to it. None of which, I might add, pertain to the maintenance of a bureaucratic system whose main objective is to pay itself. It is to the body politic what the circulatory system is to the human body. Governance and, therefore, leadership devolves on the one who undertakes to ensure that that takes place. The modern fiscal state, which by its very structure is static and consolidates and holds wealth, although as was pointed out earlier does in no way have control over it, is diametrically opposed to dawlat. Consequently, an Islamic State is inimical to Islam. The name, in its most profound Adamic sense has been separated from its meaning.

In Dante’s Paradiso he presents in a most spectacular manner a line from the Book of Wisdom spoken by Solomon, where the souls of Heaven spell it out in a pattern of lights: Diligite iustitiam qui iudicatis terram. While the Commedia as a whole was written by Dante in a new vernacular prose, he would revert to the use of Latin for such an important line. Literally it would read: “You who govern the earth, cherish justice”, while most translations into English reverse the order: Cherish Justice, oh you who govern (or make judgements) upon the earth. The verb cherish is in the imperative, a form of the verb that corresponds to the simple present subjunctive, that expresses a command. The thing named, which is the object of the sentence, and is of the utmost significance, is clearly Justice. Dante sided with Imperial power as the upholders of justice and therefore more closely aligned with what he understood to be the Divine command, as opposed to the Papacy, to which he took exception. Needless to say, this did not make him popular with the Pope.

The role of leadership is to establish and maintain justice alongside the imperatives of worship, without which man’s raison d’être cannot be fulfilled. Together they form a single whole. Therefore, a proper man calls things by their proper names - paraphrased from Pound but connecting back to the Original Source: He taught Adam the names of all things.

This circumnavigation from the opening ayat pertaining to ‘the names’ and then returning to it, could benefit from another source that guided Pound in his Odyssey. It was the far lesser known monetary historian, Alexander Del Mar, who wrote several books, one of which was The History of Money. In it he directed Pound to Imams Shafi’i and Ibn Hanbal who explained the means of weights and measures by which gold and silver were used as a medium of exchange. The key point is that of weight, as opposed to bits of paper with larger or smaller numbers written on them, or of electronic impulses on computer screens, that determine their value. This brings us to the opening lines of Canto XCVII:

Malik & Edward struck coins with a sword,

“Emir el Moumenin” (Systems p.134)

six and a half to one, or the sword of the Prophet,

Silver being in the hands of the people.

Referring to Carroll F. Terrell’s monumental A Companion to The Cantos we are informed that in A.D. 692 the Emir Abd-el-Malik [sic] sought to assert his independence from Rome. He struck gold dinars and silver dirhams according to the practice established by the Prophet Muhammad, may God bless him and grant him peace, which adjusted the (unjust) disparity determined by Rome between the inflated value of gold that was only in the hands of the super rich, and that of silver, commonly held by ordinary folks. This meant that immediately, by the use of Muslim currency, the money in your pocket was worth more. This not only brought Islamic coins into Eastern Europe, but also Islam itself as a religion preferred by many people of the region.

The two ‘names’, in the manner in which Adam was first taught all the names, would then be money and justice. He taught Adam the names of all things. Now look at the time in which we live, where money has no real value, justice is left in the hands of a corrupt political class, and Islam, once a balm to not only the East but also the West, has become characterised as the bane. But that is about to change, as the disgraced jihadists and islamists are receding into the holes they crawled out of, and a new era is opening.

 

 

There is a link to The Power Template – Shakespeare’s Political Plays

Dallas College Press, 2011, by Robert Luongo

Or visit www.thepowertemplate.com

 

Monday, October 3, 2011

Your Best Shot

If what you perceive is that you have but one remaining shot you had better make it count, I mean, aim well and hope like hell you hit your target. Therefore, you would do better to hope to heaven that you succeed.

It seems that starting locally, in my case, from the place where I am living, is most apropos, and then one can widen the field to a more global range.

The South African Police Commissioner Bheki Cele, ubiquitously referred to as the country’s ‘top cop’ has been served notification that he is suspended of all duties due to his role in a corruption scheme that involved the construction of new police stations for more than treble the other tendered quotes, and furthermore, were awarded to a close friend and financial supporter of both the police commissioner and the head of the ANC and South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma. Nevertheless, the suspension has been approved by the nation’s president, who has made a statement that Cele remaining at his post undermines the credibility of the South African police force, and subsequently he has to go.

This was obviously a difficult decision for President Zuma, as he and Cele, long-time ANC cohorts, go way back. A bit more interesting, as corruption in government isn’t a particularly novel occurrence, is that the previous police commissioner, Jackie Selebi, was convicted in 2008 of corruption for his taking monies from his associate and personal friend, the Mafioso Glenn Agliotti, who was accused and later acquitted of the murder of South African mining magnate Brett Kebble, multi-millionaire and recognised ‘Don’ of the country’s underworld where lucrative contracts were traded like poker chips at a casino, while the more serious charge against Commissioner Selebi of perverting the course of justice was, upon advisement, dropped by the high-court judge. Agliotti got a walk and Selebi is still out on bail, while the country’s legal experts confirm that the conviction will stand and his appeal will fail, it remains doubtful if he will ever serve any time in jail.

All this could be attributed to what the industrialised North say is endemic within the African continent, except that Selebi was also the Interpol President from 2004-2008, and therefore, an astute and quick footed player within the global field where corruption in Africa is still in the minor league compared to, for example, the American major league where the corruption of a city’s chief of police on up to the State Governor and Attorney General has been riddled with cronyism, kick-backs and payoffs  that are an intrinsic part of that nation’s colourful history. As was pointed out to me by one of South Africa’s more notorious defence attorneys, that at least when you pass money to a South African government official you do get value for your dollar, or rand as it happens to be. In the so-called advanced countries such as those in Europe or in the US you pay and get nothing in return: “now that’s corruption”. Of course, there is another level of corruption that makes nonsense of the low level venal malfeasance found within South Africa’s police force and criminal justice system. It is one that operates openly and with total impunity, which is that of the entire political class: all those elected and appointed officials from councilmen to senators, legislators, ministers and parliamentarians and up (or down) to Heads of State, who in no manner whatsoever answer to their electorate, who are, ironically, for the most part, irrelevant to the entire democratic process. The worldwide political class answer instead to an in-back, un-elected elite that can bankrupt a country on Monday and receive an enormous bailout package on Tuesday, paid for by that very same passive electorate that can be found from Paris to Pretoria. We have reached endgame, but the all-important question does remain. How can there be any manner of equity and justice within a system where the very survival of elected officials is dependant upon the funds they receive from those special interest groups that have stipulated the deregulation of banking and fiscal practices, removing, in the process, any form of ethics that could otherwise encumber the free movement of market forces. There has been a fair amount of clamouring about banking reforms and new regulatory bodies to oversee the workings of the financial sector, but with all important elections coming up in both Europe and the US, and the staggering sums needed to mount a successful campaign, it would not be at all surprising if things fell rather silent on those reform issues, at least until after the elections.

What is clear is that it is not a new system or (even worse) the correcting or reforming of the current system that can restrain the unscrupulous monetary elite. Tacitus wrote in his Annals: “...and laws were most numerous when the commonwealth was most corrupt”. Plato made this abundantly clear centuries ago when he described the inevitability of democracy lending itself as a means to instating a financial oligarchy, ultimately leading to tyranny. The new power template is therefore neither a system nor structure, as by their very nature they breed corruption, but rather a new man who accepts leadership as an unsought after responsibility that is inexorably bound to accountability, honour and service. To the modern i-pod debtor citizen of the industrially developed world it will sound preposterous as he has long since been anesthetised by media rap and the baby food pap of liberal idealism. To the masses of the world’s poor it is an incomprehensible dream. One could call it chivalry, although that certainly sounds a romantic anachronism, and would, in these opening years of the 21st century, hardly be taken seriously. So better yet, call it futuwwah, and make your way towards it. “I have not come but to perfect good character in men”, said the Prophet from the Arabian Desert, who, we are informed, was sent as a mercy to the whole world. “Leadership is an obligation binding on good men”.

If I am to use just one time this thing called my vote, my best shot is an overwhelming vote of no confidence in the entire system, and then to proceed with vigour towards a new nomos, with men and women that educate their best and brightest youths and help them rise up to be the leaders of our future. From amongst them there will, as has throughout history been the case, emerge one who will take the lead. To him we will pledge our allegiance, loyalty and fealty.

 

The Power Template: Shakespeare’s Political Plays by Robert Luongo is available from Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble on-line as an ebook and in paperback.

 

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Ezra Pound and the Political Class

Ezra Pound and the Political Class

Within the vast tapestry of The Cantos, following the schemata of Dante’s La Divina Commedia, Canto XIV and Canto XV are both referred to as the “Hell Cantos”, and according to Pound were a portrait of England during the years 1919 – 1920. To his close friend and intellectual sparring partner, Wyndham Lewis, he wrote: “You will readily see that the ‘hell’ is a portrait of contemporary England, or at least Eng. as she wuz when I left her.” In a letter to John Drummond: “the hell cantos are specifically LONDON, the state of English mind in 1919 and 1920.” Lastly, in a letter written to his father in 1925, Pound wrote: “I intended Cantos XIV and XV to give an accurate picture of the spiritual state of England in the years 1919 and following.”

In taking a brief look at Canto XIV I hope to shed some light on the deepening malaise of not only the British political class, but rather of the entire gang of whom we are told are today’s world leaders. 

The stench of wet coal, politicians

.........e and  .....n,  their wrists bound to

their ankles,

standing bare bum,

Faces smeared on their rumps,

Wide eye on flat buttock,

Bush hanging for beard,

Addressing crowds through their arse-holes.”

In the above passage there is a consensus amongst both Pound scholars and historians that the e is the last letter of Lloyd George, British prime minister from 1916-1922, and the n for Wilson, the American president, both of whom were not only complicit but directly responsible for the brutality of the Treaty of Versailles at the end of the First World War.  There is extant documentation that Lloyd felt dreadfully bad about the conditions of surrender imposed on Germany, but apparently lacked the strength of conviction to do anything other than go along with the others. Wilson was as happy as a pig in shit, as J.P. Morgan and other Wall Street bankers who had financed putting him in the White House assured Woodrow that, “We made money out of destroying Europe and we’ll do it again rebuilding it.”

And the betrayers of language

......n and the press gang

And those who had lied for hire;

the perverts, the perverters of language,

the perverts, who have set money-lust

Before the pleasures of the senses;

howling, as of a hen-yard in a printing-house’

the clatter of presses,”.

As then, so today the media magnates have the politicians dancing to the tune of the banking elite. At the time Pound wrote this canto England was divided into an upper class, middleclass (not to be confused with the term as used by Americans) and the lowly working class. Today we are being told of yet another class, and they are found from England to Egypt: the underclass. They are those who see no hope. They are rioting, not for bread, but for i-phones, plasma screen TVs and expensive trainers made by poorly paid Chinese workers. The dialectic of Terrorism is giving way to a new media craze – Pro Democracy, spurred on in an unstable Middle East and North Africa by Twitter, Facebook and CNN. And what do they hope for? Maybe to become the next Greece or Portugal or Ireland, as all their natural resources (real wealth) are safely in the hands of multi-nationals with the banks eagerly standing by to offer the indebted governments, backed with no choice in the matter by the servile taxpaying masses, a series of loans wedded to IMF austerity measures. And has it not occurred to any of them that the same people who supported – both financially and militarily - the harsh dictatorships in their countries, are the same ones urging them on to “assert their rights as free people governed by leaders of their own choice?” 

What are you going to do about it? Most people have a noose around their neck and are balanced precariously on a tottering stool. With one slip-up, amounting to two missed pay cheques or a missed welfare cheque, and the stool topples over. People used to avoid the homeless and indigent, ostensibly it was purported, because of the smell, but today, no more so than in major US cities, they hate them. They hate them out of fear that that could be them.

So where are the men of fealty and brotherhood who do not fear for their provision? Where are those that are not duped by a spineless political class chosen by corporate campaign contributors and sold in the media as being “the choice of the people?” And would it not be true that if such men rose up then women of equal courage, or even greater, would stand with them? Just listen to Beethoven’s opera Fidelio.

The age of chivalry seems long passed where a man’s honour precedes his desire for profit. There is a word in Qur’anic Arabic, futuwwah, that is the embodiment of these unique qualities of courage, loyalty and the protection of women’s honour. For those most qualified there is the duty of noblesse oblige, and, according to the most trustworthy and blessed of men, the Prophet Muhammad, what disqualified a person from such office was their seeking it! From where will such people emerge? Certainly, do not look to the Arabs as they do not know what this is, nor do they know the very meanings of the words they use everyday. There is the word dawla, which is to the body politic what the circulatory system is to the human body, but with the flow of blood being replaced by the movement of wealth. Yet they call it State – that sustains the hoarding of static wealth by a few, passed into law by a disgraced political class, typically in the name of the many.  They even have a word they call religion whose meaning they have taken from their enemies. The word in Arabic is deen, whose root comes from the word for debt: what you owe. What you owe to your Creator, for He alone has given you life, knowing, seeing and hearing and much more, and also what you owe to other human beings, which are essentially concerned with one’s fiduciary obligations.

I started with Pound and will, therefore, return to him in order to end. Of all the Chinese ideograms, his most treasured was the one of ‘a man standing by his words’: verbal integrity. I too, love that one. Its antonym would describe the stance of today’s political class.   

Saturday, July 30, 2011

Georgia On My Mind

Georgia On My Mind

 

It was my first journey into those great southern states, and while I may have thought of myself as a native New Englander departing from Cambridge, heading to the Faulknerian environs south of the Mason-Dickson Line, imagining I was a reverse (optimistic) image of Quentin Compson (Absalom, Absalom!). A more truthful description would be a seventeen year old Italian-American kid from Boston, hitchhiking, with no money, into a part of the country that was as foreign as any I would later find myself in once I’d crossed the pond and landed in Europe. But we will not get bogged down in mere details, as I’m a writer of ‘political fiction’ not an historian, and therefore, licensed to reinvent – especially myself – something I have been doing for as long as I can remember.

It was the summer of ‘68 and everywhere in America was hot. In the spring of that year Martin Luther King was shot dead on the balcony of a motel he’d been staying at and two months later Bobby Kennedy would be shot at a political rally in California. Tension was high and a lot of people were jumpy. Young black men, with some having done a stint at university, as opposed to the county jail house or a more prestigious maximum security facility, were meeting in Oakland and forming a radical political movement known as the Panthers, while middle class white kids were openly opposing a war in South-East Asia and some, moreover, walking out albeit in the middle of the night, from a secure suburban America to arrive on the streets of Boston, New York and San Francisco. It was a hot summer and people were restless.

One needs to back-up just a few years to better place the summer of 1968 into perspective. In ‘63 when President Kennedy was shot in a motorcade while driving down a street in Dallas Texas, I was in ancient history class, and the name of Nebuchadnezzar is forever etched in my mind. Lyndon Johnson stepped in as president and Robert Kennedy served as his Attorney General for nine months until they broke over their opposing positions on Viet Nam. The Kennedys were Irish Catholics and Boston Democrats, with what some people considered uppity Yankee airs, what with sending their sons to Harvard; while LBJ was a Texan Democrat that grew out of the old-boy system of the hill country with its payoffs, backhanders and political cronyism. Of course, Joe Kennedy got rich with inside tip-offs from the numerous politicians he owned over the timing of the lifting of prohibition and being first in line with cargo ships stocked with Irish whiskey, and was as much of an affront to the old Boston Brahmins (all but extinct before the outbreak of the Second World War) as his oil-rich Texan counterparts. The fact was that Vice-President Johnson, soon to be President Johnson, and his Texan political posse couldn’t stand the Kennedys, while they were obliged to get into bed together to beat the Republicans in the race for the White House.

There is one more bit of background that needs filling in before I can stick my thumb out and start hitching south. In 1968 George Wallace ran, unsuccessfully, for US president. In fact, he made a few runs at the presidency, three times as a Democratic Party candidate and once as an Independent. But it is as Governor Wallace that he is most remembered, four times elected by those people of the State of Alabama, and bulwark of the pro-segregationist position that dominated the entire southern part of the United States. It was 1963 when then Governor Wallace stood on the steps of first, a university, and a few weeks later on the steps of a high school, where a cordon of the National Guard (that’s the army), accompanied by the US Federal Marshal himself, who personally came down from Washington to tell the Governor to step aside, as four black youngsters passed into that school. Later in life, confined as he was to a wheelchair, after being shot and left paralysed, Governor Wallace reversed his position on segregation.

Now it’s too easy to project from hindsight a clear view of something one did not have the slightest clarity on at the time the particular event took place. Since I was at school and could read a book, I declared myself a firm supporter of Thomas Jefferson, who supported State’s right and fervidly opposed private banks taking control of issuing both currency and credit (which was in direct contravention to their Constitution) while on the other hand, I saw little more in Alexander Hamilton, with his fancy signature, than a pawn in the bankers’ pockets, doing their bidding, as the Federal Government would enjoy the noose of private banking interest around their necks. The banks always said that they “supported” a strong Federal Government. Like a rope supports a hanging man? Now it was one hundred years since the American Civil War ended, and with it, to a great extent, the defeat of State’s right over and against an omnipotent Federal Government.

I was adamantly opposed to the war in Viet Nam and would not be drafted, nor would I run. On top of that I had not gotten over the fact that Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics, who in 1959 I saw with my father, with both of us standing on our feet cheering in Boston Garden (now torn down), bring yet another world championship to that city, and was one of my very first real heroes (something I have always taken very seriously) who on three occasions when trying to buy a house with his wife was told by an estate agent that she was so terribly sorry but that the family had decided after all not to sell.

It was the constitutionality of State’s right that vehemently opposed the forced desegregation of southern schools by the Federal Government. I was a very young fellow who, nevertheless, thought he knew everything, without realising how damn little I did know. But the idea that black kids couldn’t attend proper schools with adequate facilities (regardless of my admiration for Thomas Jefferson and his supporting State’s right) was not ever going to be acceptable. It would only be many years later after reading a comment made by William Faulkner that I obtained, partially at least, some long awaited clarity.

Faulkner was the first major author to do what had never been done. He certainly did not romanticise the American Negro, but what he did do was humanise them in a way that was unprecedented.  The abolitionists in England were a hundred years ahead in terms of romanticising the ending of the African slave trade. Faulkner, particularly in the novels set in the mythological land of Yoknapatawpha County, superimposed over Lafayette County, Mississippi, created fully developed characters, both men or women, who were coloured people. Some certainly had egregious faults, others had rich and noble qualities and some had tragic flaws comparable to those of characters found in the stories of the ancient Greeks. But they were human beings with all the complexities and contradictions that have made up some of the most memorable characters ever conceived within that vast opus of world literature that has come down through the ages.

 There is a collection of short stories called Go Down Moses and one story in particular of the same name. There is a lawyer, Gavin Stevens, who is asked to help bring the grandson of an old Negro woman, a woman whom Gavin had know all his life, back to Mississippi, as he was scheduled to be executed that very evening at midnight in Chicago for the murder of a policeman. There is a sense of such pathos, dignity and courage in this woman. Gavin got a pledge from a Roth Edmonds and another from the local newspaper editor, whom he’d also roped-in, to help pay the cost of the box and the train from Chicago, and “my word flowers!” as well, and, if that weren’t enough, a promise he’d not print the story in the local paper, so that what kin Beauchamp had would not have to read about the execution, and would only be told later that Butch Beauchamp was dead and coming home to Jefferson to be buried. And old Miss Worsham was stronger and more stoic than Hecuba when she mourned her son Hector and her husband, King Priam. “He dead,” she said. “Pharaoh got him.” “Oh yes, Lord,” Worsham said. “Pharaoh got him.” “Done sold my Benjamin,” the old Negress said. “Sold him in Egypt.”

The 1960s Civil Rights Movement latched onto Faulkner and attempted to use his literary notoriety to advance the cause of Northern liberals, with some going so far as to join the March on Selma, while Faulkner was clearly difficult to handle. At one such gathering where he was being honoured as America’s great literary genius he had, as was not too unusual, gotten pretty drunk and said that if there was to be a show-down between the North, who had little or no empathy, nor understanding, of the coloured people, while advocating their ‘rights’ to rise up as long as they kept their distance and didn’t try to move next door (which surely would bring down property values), and the Southern States, who Faulkner believed were directly accountable for the most unconscionable injustice before both God and those Negro people with whom they had so long lived, he would raise the Confederate flag and arm himself against the North.  The Yankee do-gooders were beside themselves and Faulkner was out as their literary icon.

The journey that would begin in the North would take me down through Washington D.C. and on to Savannah George where, on a humid late afternoon, I found myself in front of a small local diner. Having done a bit of restaurant work myself, I thought I’d walk around back and just maybe, there would be a young fellow like myself who could possibly get me something to eat from the kitchen without it causing too much of a fuss. I saw a black boy; he looked about my age, some seventeen or eighteen years old, who was scrubbing pots. I can still see him clearly, his face coal black and something gentle in his nature. I approached him, greeted him and then proceeded to tell him that I was hungry. He nodded as if to acknowledge he understood and put down his work and went in through the back screen door of the kitchen.

It was not too long before I saw a matronly white woman walking towards me with the boy I’d spoken to following behind. Damn it, I thought, he sold me out. He went and told the owner there was some long-haired beggar ‘round back aksin’ for food. I never thought, I mean I just didn’t see that in his face and was more shocked by having so misread him than whatever lay ahead from this woman coming straight at me. She motioned to the boy, not at all unkind but with directness, to go back to his work. She took me by the hand and walked me around to the front of the diner and straight in through the front door that made a bell ring every time it opened. She sat me down at a long counter, sitting on one of those round swivel stools and placed a menu in my hands. “Now darl’n, ya’all have whatever you like. You be skinny as a tooth-pick.” Well, I ordered meatloaf with mash potatoes, sweet peas and extra gravy. After that I had a big slice of that famous Georgia pecan pie and a cup of coffee. You could say I’d struck it rich and that there was no more I could want after a meal like that. Now that was real southern hospitality, and me being a Yankee clear as day. And far from selling me out it was the boy from out back that I had as much to thank as the proprietor of that local diner (well before MacDonald’s would put them all out of business). But everything wasn’t fine. My stomach was full but I’d be the worst hypocrite that ever lived if I said I did not enjoy that meal. For there was that sign, the sign in large bold letters that I could not ignore let alone pretend I’d not seen: FOR WHITES ONLY.

 

The Power Template by Robert Luongo (Dallas College Press 2011) is now available from Amazon Kindle and will be available as a physical printed book in early August from Amazon.com and Create Space. It is a study of Shakespeare’s political plays that discovers corollaries between politically contentious issues within Elizabethan England with themes that were explored through the early English history plays as well as Shakespeare’s Roman plays. The author then views more modern political events, some leading up to today’s current affairs, through the perspective of Shakespeare’s timeless insight into the human motives behind the machinations of what we understand as politics. Nevertheless, the work is far from being a polemical study that marginalises the wit, dexterity and delight of Shakespeare’s language.