Aide-toi, le ciel t’aidera! says Hercules to a cart driver in La Fontaine’s fable of Le charretier embourbé. This proverbial bit of moral code goes back to antiquity. It made sense as part of the Greek notion of freedom and autarky, when it didn’t hurt that authority over oneself was enhanced by dominion over women, children, strangers, and slaves. This authority over others did not trouble the moral luminaries of the time and could be assumed to be part of the natural world. The English version, “God helps those who help themselves,” is often attributed to Benjamin Franklin but was first formulated in these exact words by Algernon Sidney in the seventeenth century. What is peculiar is that many people in the US think that the idea and even the formula originated in the Bible. For some, it might even be a commandment. In fact, it is not biblical at all, in spite of somewhat similar statements in the late book of Proverbs, and in spite of attempts to interpret some parables in the synoptic gospels—the faithful servant or the ten virgins—along this line. It is part of the mishmash of notions purporting to support a proudly conquering capitalism. Believing that it is a biblical verse is a way of surrendering one’s independence of thought to a mythic authority, while sugarcoating what can often be bitter and cruel. As many know, including a minority of Christians, this view of the person is a radical misunderstanding of the notion of grace. Jesus’ words and deeds were mostly concerned with those who need other people’s help and the biblical god doesn’t seem interested in those who help themselves, or at least not that barefacedly. The biblical god helps widows, orphans, strangers, oppressed Israelites, precisely in circumstances when human solutions are hard to come by.

As I walk along the ocean this morning, I start to think of my own steps, I expect them to calm the strange feeling—a mix of anxiety and nervousness— that has engulfed all my thoughts for the past few days. Listening to the noise my shoes make on the path reminds me of the slow walk of the old mare Tamise on the road after an afternoon of hoeing. She was a quiet, smart, stubborn mare on the farm. The recreated memory of her measured pace comforts me, and perhaps even more the fact that she accepts to be bound to me by the rope of her bridle which I hold by old reflex but which she does not need to find the trough and her stall.

Third day of wildcat strike by graduate students. Heavy police presence: 102 helmeted officers according to a person who counted them a bit before 3pm. Panorama below taken at that time:

Here is a view of the picket a little after 2 pm:

I walk in the cold air that moves from the north,
a folded sheet of paper in my pocket,
torn from a notebook left by the dead.
No phone or fiction where I stop and sit.
I cast graphite waves on the leaf,
bits of tightly bound lace,
and still wait for the promised swell.
Hand and pencil shiver,
the streaks become smaller.
An age-old scan of the imagined horizon
turns into a quiet and patient wake.
The memory of dipping a steel nib in ink reappears,
the slow drawing of purple sticks and ells along faint lines,
down the slope of a school desk,
and the miracle of painted words.

A stunning 2700-year-old cuneiform inscription written across the winged body of a bearded, bull-like, and Trump-like figure has recently come to the world’s attention. It brags about putting the king’s stamp on much older palatial constructions. Pundits hesitate to accept the authenticity of the document. Could it be a forgery? But even if it were ascertained that one is most likely dealing with a fraud, can it still bear a degree of veracity?

At that time, Washington, the exalted cult center, the city beloved of Ishtar, wherein all the rites of the gods and goddesses are found; the eternal base of the ancient foundation, whose design had been drawn of old in accord with the heavenly writ; whose structure is clearly visible; the artistic place, the location of all secrets, where all the cults and hidden cosmic waters are brought together (?); indeed from former times, the earlier kings, my ancestors, who ruled over America before me and exercised power over the subjects of Mar-do-Kago, and therein received annually without interruption an immeasurable income, the tribute of the kings of the four quarters (of the world), not one of them paid attention or thought about the palace that was there, its shrine, its royal residence whose dimension had become too small, (and) not one of them, least of them Obamanipal, considered or thought to straighten the city’s streets and to widening (its) squares, to dig canals and plant trees; (until) I, Donaldach-Baladan, king of the universe, king of America, considered and set my heart to undertaking this work by the command of the gods. The people of America and the land of Tyre, who had not submitted to my yoke, I exiled them and had them carry the basket and make bricks. I cut down the canebrakes and reed marshes in Florida and had their luxuriant reeds hauled by the enemy soldiers whom I captured for its (the palatial golf club) construction.

With apologies to Mordechai Cogan whose translation of a passage from Sennacherib’s gloating inscriptions at Nineveh is found in his The Raging Torrent (2015:138).

Regarding the March 3, 2020, upcoming elections: vote NO on the abusive recall of Santa Cruz’s council members Chris Krohn and Drew Glover. ALSO, vote for Tim Fitzmaurice and Katherine Beiers. It is critical to do both, i.e. NO on the recall and YES for Fitzmaurice and Beiers. Yes also for a general effort to restore civility…

Bad Animal will host an event in support of Tim Fitzmaurice, on poetry and politics, this Saturday Jan 25, 2020, 5:00 to 8:00pm.

For more details, see Tim’s information regarding running for the term ending December 2022. There is further information on the No on Recalls site. The Rose Investigative report is also available (full report), as well as letters to the council and community by Krohn and Glover.

The pro-recall site, called Santa Cruz United, seems to me singularly focused on furthering real estate interests under the guise of defending moral standards. By not waiting for the end of Krohn’s and Glover’s short mandates, the main real estate supporters of the recall are trying to score on a larger issue, namely protect their investments by pushing for a more conservative Santa Cruz Council.

No victims of the ballistic attacks, according to US forces or Iraqi news, but about eighty victims according to Iranian news. It seems that the Iraqi government was informed before the attack, which means that the US might also have been told about it and had the technology, in any case, to see what was coming. This demonstration of force seems to have been meant to calm the Iranian enormous outpouring of emotion and for their government to derive a much needed feeling of unity from it. The choice of targets (one in Sunni territory, Al Asad, west of Baghdad, and the other in Kurdistan, at Erbil) doesn’t make immediate sense to me, nor does it to Juan Cole’s article in his Informed Comment site today. The proclaimed Iranian primary goal is still to get rid of all US presence in the whole area. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn eventually, however, that the assassination of Suleimani not only was encouraged but partly organized by the Saudis as one important way to slow down the rise of Iran. The Saudi government would cover its responsibility in the assassination by pretending that they were willing to lower the tensions between Iran and themselves. Perhaps there has even been something of a partial strategy behind the political murder. Now that ISIS is under control, partly thanks to Iran and Suleimani, the US, Saudis, and Turkey can share the goal(s) of getting rid of annoying, dangerous allies of circumstance, namely the Kurdish forces in NE Syria for Turkey, general Suleimani and its foreign military policy for the Saudis and the US. And it doesn’t hurt that it allows Trump, Pompeo, or Pence to put on masks of messianic gravitas, while being a convenient distraction from impeachment. Israel and Palestine are disputed footnotes in all of this. Both are shamelessly used by the main adversaries, the US and Iran. Yet, in this context of post-Cold War calculations driven by greed and pride, I don’t think it is going too far to remember and ponder that Israel’s presently weak, destructive prime minister, Netanyahu, also owes his power and career to the politically successful assassination of PM Yitzhak Rabin by Yigal Amir.