Despite the popularity of Black Friday among retailers and the local news media, every day of the week has at some point or another been described as "black." In fact, an entire week can be cobbled together out of the darkness. For more dark days, visit www.laphamsquarterly.org. Our Deja Vu blog can be found here.

Black Sunday (1977)
1977 movie about a blimp pilot / Vietnam veteran driven mad by torture as a POW who uses his intricate knowledge of blimps to attempt to detonate a bomb at the Super Bowl. Much of the film was shot live at Super Bowl X, in which the Dallas Cowboys triumphed over the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Black Monday (1987)
Describes the largest one-day decline in stock market history which occurred on Monday October 19 1987. Also ascribed to part of the Black Long Weekend of 1929 (see "Black Thursday" and "Black Tuesday")

Black Tuesday (1929, 2001)
The day the financial repercussions of 1929's Black Thursday set in, causing wide-spread panic when everyone attempted to pull out of the market at the same time. Also used to describe the events of September 11th, 2001.

Black Wednesday (1992)
Describes the situation in Britain on September 16, 1992 when the government was forced to withdraw the pound from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism due to currency speculators. The fiasco cost the UK Treasury an estimated 3.3 billion pounds.

Black Thursday (1929, 1993)
This was, of course, the day of the 1929 Stock Market Crash, but is it also used to describe a terrible Thursday in 1993 when Phillies player Pete Incavigila shouted obscenities at his fans and stormed out of an autograph session at the Granite Run Mall in Media, PA.

Black Friday (1869, 1929, present)
On September 24, 1869, during one of the great scandals of the Reconstruction era, two speculators sent the market into freefall by buying up government gold in a time the government was run primarily on credit. Black Friday is perhaps better known as, the day after Thanksgiving, on which the Christmas retail season pins most of its hopes. In the United Kingdom, it's the name given to the last Friday before Christmas when widespread alcohol abuse is expected to occur and police are given extra leniency to combat any disturbances of the peace. Also in Europe, this is used to refer to the "Black Thursday" 1929 crash because of the time difference.

Black Saturday (1621)
Saturdays are rarely ruinous. The only Black Saturday on record occurred when a particularly nasty storm raged over the skies of Scotland on August 4th, 1621. This was largely regarded as the judgment of God on recent acts passed by the Scottish Parliament concerning the Episcopal Church.

The great hope was that President Obama would have the courage and political sense to do what JFK did forty six years ago. Kennedy told the generals no to their demand for escalation in Vietnam. It wasn't easy. The Pentagon had drawn up plans for the massive military ramp up, had an active lobby on Congress and in the defense establishment, and had National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy pounding on Kennedy for escalation. To force Kennedy's hand, the generals dragged their feet, slowrolled," on implementing his directive for a contingency troop withdrawal plan. Despite the backdoor insubordination to an order from their commander-in-chief, Kennedy held firm on withdrawal.

But it took political craft to accomplish his goal. He quietly drew up a plan for withdrawal and then sent his two top military advisors Maxwell Taylor and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara on a fact finding tour to publicly confirm that a massive escalation in American troops would be a resounding failure. The South Vietnamese government was corrupt and unpopular, the resistance was well armed, fiercely ideological and battle tested after years of war against the French. The US would have to permanently garrison tens of thousands of troops, at a cost of billions, risk large scale casualties with little hope of victory.

Kennedy did not live long enough to thwart the generals. They got their war. It dragged on for years, cost thousands of American lives, killed and maimed thousands of civilians, reinforced the image of America as a global bully, created massive political chaos at home, and jaded a generation of young persons who now saw the US policy makers as liars and deceivers.

Obama knows this tragic history. He has read many of the books on the Vietnam catastrophe, which tell how the war ripped apart a nation, and totally discredited the once highly popular and promising presidency of LBJ. He's heard from the experts and seen all the polls that show the war is unpopular.
For a brief moment in September it appeared that Obama's dither on Afghan troop escalation might be a JFK moment. The right elements were in place to turn his dither into a no to the generals on escalation. Polls showed that Americans were opposed to escalation. The overwhelming majority of Democrats openly voiced opposition to war funding increases and escalation. A number of military and foreign policy experts said the war was unwinnable and told him why. With public worry and unease rising over the economy, and an unfinished health care reform battle, escalation seemed even more absurd.

During the campaign much was made of the Obama-JFK comparison. Both were young, dynamic, inspired hope, and once elected immediately faced a military and foreign policy crisis that forced Kennedy and now Obama to weigh pressure from the Pentagon to expand a war. In JFK's case the immediate crisis was the Cuban Missile episode. The story is well known. The generals pushed hard for a quick strike against Russian missiles, and a bellicose warning to the Soviet Union that if they responded, the USSR would be obliterated. Kennedy rejected both.

The U.S.-Soviet stand down was brokered through back channel talks initiated by Robert Kennedy with the Soviet ambassador to the U.S. After they hammered out the bare details of the agreement Robert Kennedy and other senior advisors urged Kennedy to finally approve the deal. Kennedy choose diplomacy, embargo, containment of Cuba, beefed up military aid and assistance to Latin American governments, and counterinsurgency against guerrilla threats to counter communist backed insurgency in Latin America, over direct US military intervention.

Kennedy had one major advantage over Obama. He did not inherit a full blown war. When he took office US military involvement in Vietnam was fleeting. There were less than 1000 military advisors in the country, and fewer than ten Americans had been killed in combat related action. To most Americans, Vietnam then was merely a name on the map. The military and foreign policy issues involved in the prolonged fighting between the Vietnamese and French, and increasingly the Americans, were barely known, and even less understood.

The public was not asked to make a leap of faith that an untested president could handle a war crisis. But surprisingly Kennedy did. The situation Obama faces with Afghanistan is the opposite of what Kennedy faced. There's the depth of American military involvement, commitment, and the entrenched thinking that Afghanistan is the front line in the war on terrorism. Obama shares this thinking with the generals. This makes it even less likely that he would defy them and chart a course that relies solely on diplomacy, containment, partnerships with foreign allies, and Afghan governmental reforms, and Afghan security training and overhaul, in place of troop escalation to attain his goals.
JFK opted to take this course to deal with Cuba and Vietnam. Obama should take the same course with Afghanistan. If he did it would be his JFK moment. But don't expect it.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book, How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press) will be released in January 2010.

DOWNEY, Calif. — This city that once helped send men rocketing into the space now wants to help earth-bound motorists to become more fuel efficient.

Downey's City Council has approved an agreement aimed at luring Tesla Motors' electric car manufacturing plant to the former site of a NASA plant that helped develop the Apollo program and the space shuttle fleet.

"Not only will it bring money to the city, it will establish us as a leader in electric car and green technology production," Mayor Mario Guerra said of the unanimous approval Wednesday.

The city is pinning hopes that the car factory could bring $21 million in city revenues over 15 years, create about 1,200 jobs and help revitalize its reputation as Southern California's high-tech hub.

Downey, a city of 115,000, was once a vibrant center of high tech manufacturing jobs where aerospace engineers designed and built parts for America's space program. At its height, there were some 30,000 employees at the complex, but when the plant closed in 1999, the complex fell into disrepair.

Sandra Barrett, a 19-year resident of Downey, said she can recall when the NASA facility closed and thousands of people lost their jobs. The 69-year-old said a Tesla factory would "be a big boost to our city. There are so many people in need of a job here."

The city bought 160 acres of land from NASA and has been trying to redevelop it. A hospital, park, shopping center and memorial dedicated to the shuttle Columbia now occupy half of the complex. The other half became a film production facility used in the making of "Ironman," "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" and at least one of the "Spiderman" films.

Industrial Realty Group owns nearly 60 acres of Downey Studios, and the city owns the remaining 20 acres.

Under a memorandum of understanding with IRG, the city agreed to waive $6.9 million in rent on those 20 acres and promised to expedite the permit process if IRG enters into a lease with Tesla.

Tom Messler, senior vice president of IRG, said his company is holding final discussions with the carmaker.

For nine months the city has aggressively courted Tesla, a Bay Area company known for its sporty all-electric Roadster and now moving toward more mainstream sedans.

In September, the council took out a half-page advertisement in the Los Angeles Times featuring a photo of the members wearing "Downey (hearts) Tesla" T-shirts and holding a banner that read: "Downey Welcomes Tesla Motors. Apollo to Tesla ... the legacy continues."

The rotund mayor vowed to purchase a Tesla, even lose weight to fit into the sleek vehicle, if the carmaker comes to town.

"We're continuing to make progress," he said.

San Carlos-based Tesla has been looking for a place to build its next-generation Model S sedan, its seven-seat, $57,400 alternative to the $109,000 Roadster.

The Roadster's chassis is assembled in England and its guts – the powertrain, battery and so on – are installed at Tesla's factory in Menlo Park.

Tesla Motors Inc. initially planned to build the Model S in New Mexico but was persuaded to stay in California when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger offered to exempt Tesla from state sales tax on equipment it buys to build the sedan. That will save the company 7 percent to 9 percent on each part purchased.

When the Model S was unveiled to reporters in the spring, Tesla said it would bring the plant to Southern California. The company has also flirted with Long Beach, and Tesla spokesman Ricardo Reyes would not confirm if it has chosen a site.

In June, the company was awarded $465 million in low-interest loans from the U.S. Department of Energy to help build the Model S, which is designed to travel as far as 300 miles on a three- to five-hour charge.

The car is slated to go into production by late 2011, and with a federal tax credit for battery-powered cars, the cost to buyers could be less than $50,000.

If Tesla comes to Downey, it would mark the return of auto manufacturing to Southern California for the first time since General Motors Co. closed its Van Nuys Plant in 1992.

Barrett said she isn't bothered by the incentives the city is offering to lure Tesla.

"In order to get, you have to give," Barrett said. "I'm willing to see us make a little sacrifice to get people working again."

Happy Thanksgiving. On this day I am truly grateful for all of my many blessings. I am thankful for my wonderful family. I am grateful for a lifetime of terrific friends. I am thankful to our military for their courageous service. And I am thankful to be an American, the greatest country on earth.

Yet while I am so grateful I can't help but be reminded of those who are not so lucky, especially this year.

About one in five Americans were hungry at some point this year. On the Upper East Side of New York City homeless people sleep every night in the entryway of a famous church surrounded by multi-million dollar condominiums, coops and townhouses. Wealthy people frequently pass by while walking their dogs after dinner.

About 40 million Americans do not have health insurance. I know of someone who contracted cancer and now is having difficulty getting health insurance because she has a preexisting condition. I know of someone who left a job and started his own business that is struggling to get health insurance. I know a young boy who has brain cancer. His family's efforts to find a cure for him have been slowed by insurance companies.

It is estimated that more than 10% of eligible Americans cannot get full time work. I know some people who have been out of work for a long time. They are smart and skilled at their profession yet they were laid off because of the economic downturn and changes in business models and technology. The unemployment rate is still increasing at an alarming rate throughout the country.

Millions of Americans have either defaulted on their home mortgage or are on the verge of doing so in the next few months. Many more are "under water" as the value of their home is well below the amount of their mortgage. Little is being done to slow this serious problem. Of course, credit card companies with high interest rates and penalties are hosing many of these same Americans.

While a few powerful investment banks are setting record profits and paying huge bonuses, dozens more are near bankruptcy. Banking regulations have not been improved, and the fat cats are not loaning money to average Americans. Rather they are making money off financial investments, many of which are financed with government loans at zero interest. Wall Street and Main Street are worlds apart.

Our country is involved in two wars, where thousands of American soldiers have died or been injured. While there is a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, billions of taxpayer dollars are being spent for uncertain long-term gain. Meanwhile, the threat of terrorism is ever present.

The country remains polarized, and the shouting is louder than at any time in recent memory. Short-term political gain and local agendas have paralyzed our government.

So while I have plenty to be thankful for, on this great American holiday I can't help but wonder about the future for my daughter and my country. Yet I remain optimistic that the very characteristics that have made our country great for more than two centuries will lead us to even brighter days ahead.

I have a confession to make. I recently bid on a bronze bust of Lavrenti Beria on eBay. He was Joseph Stalin's last secret police chief. Alas, someone outbid me.

But at a Chelsea flea market in New York City last weekend I did purchase a World War I German military cigarette case.

Despite what you might think, I'm really not a communist-sympathizer. Nor a fan of the Kaiser. Just a collector. Collecting might be a form of mental illness, but it's not the same as endorsing mass murder.

I'm thinking a bit more about my collecting these days after the controversy that erupted over Marc Garlasco of Human Rights Watch, who collects World War II German militaria. It is the most popular military genre, but Garlasco was attacked as a Nazi-sympathizer by people who don't like his analytical work critical of Israel.

Garlasco--whom I have never met--seems to have survived the kerfuffle, but the controversy demonstrated not only Washington's tendency toward the ad hominem but also a more general failure to understand collectors. Collectors collect. The doing often is as important as the what. Few collectors collect because they identify with the politics behind the items they are accumulating. In fact, many can't even explain why they like what they like.

I blame my collecting on genetics. In high school my Air Force father was stationed in Great Britain. I traveled with my parents all over the British isle hitting antique shops. Virtually all of my limited income went into my collections. I mostly bought antique bladed weapons. But there were a few chess sets, some old guns, a World War I trench periscope, a couple of African clubs and shields, and even a cuff band for a foreign Waffen SS unit. Don't worry, however--I never wore the latter.

Back in the U.S. I merely dabbled, watching the want ads for chess sets and picking up occasional sets while playing tourist abroad. But then I met someone whose outward appearance as a deputy fire chief hid a seriously demented collector within. He tended to cycle through collections and I met him when he was selling off chess sets. Since his girlfriend did not share his passion, unless the item somehow related to Michael Jordan, then playing for the Chicago Bulls, I started visiting flea markets and antique shops with him. And the rest is, as they say, is history.

The problem with "hitting the shops" was that it multiplied temptation. Until then I hadn't realized that I was an antiques addict without the slightest iota of self-control. In high school my funds were limited. Back in the U.S. I saw few collectibles through work or play. But now I was visiting antique shops with an adult income, ready credit, and no one at home to say nyet.

My interests slowly multiplied. There were chess sets. Most are non-controversial, but I do have a commie propaganda capitalists versus communists set. The capitalist queen is a representative of death with a cornucopia of gold. But really, I'm not a closet Red.

I've also gotten into eagles and hawks. That doesn't mean I have a brutal, atavistic core, however. I just like the way they look. I have a few icons. I appreciate the religious imagery, but I'm not Orthodox, despite what some people might think.

I also collect military art and propaganda. I don't have any Nazi posters, but I do own some communist Soviet and Chinese posters. I've been picking up a multitude of commie tchotchke, especially cheap plastic deskware with pictures of Lenin and Stalin, the hammer and cycle, Red Army symbols, images of war memorials, and more. Then there was the Beria bust.

Despite appearances, I really do not admire one of Stalin's chief henchman, a person responsible for the murder and imprisonment of millions of people. Rather, I'm fascinated with what amounts to a celebration of the banality of evil. A bust of this unprepossessing figure, bald head highlighted by pince-nez glasses, actually sat on someone's desk a half century ago (he was arrested and shot shortly after Stalin's death in 1953).

I have other politically incorrect collectibles. Some cigarette cases and smoking paraphernalia (even though I don't smoke) with Soviet political and military symbols; German beer steins decorated for Marxists before World War II; propaganda books by the Soviet and Nazi regimes; and German military stuff, mostly World War I.

For obvious reasons, Germany has, sadly, generated a wealth of military material. Garlasco was attacked for wearing a sweatshirt with an Iron Cross, the basic German military award which had nothing to do with Nazism--it was first awarded in 1813. Unfortunately, to collect German militaria from 1933 to 1945 likely means accumulating--different from "collecting"--items with Nazi imagery.

There was no more hideous movement than Nazism, which sought to eradicate an entire people. Nazi imagery understandably creates a very strong emotional reaction. But collecting items with Nazi images does not make one a Nazi-sympathizer, any more than collecting communist imagery suggests communist sympathies. Undoubtedly there are neo-Nazis who collect Third Reich material because they are neo-Nazis, but most collectors with Third Reich material detest that regime and everything it stood for.

Indeed, there is a curious disconnect between the way people react to Nazi and communist collectibles. I wouldn't buy Nazi curios like my communist acquisitions because the former would generate a hostile and uncomprehending reaction. Yet in principle, what is the difference between displaying a bust of Heinrich Himmler and one of Lavrenti Beria? Both were unfeeling human monsters who participated in mass murder. There is something uniquely horrific about attempted genocide, but there is no real moral difference between Nazism and communism.

Also unsettling to some people was the passion evidenced by a Garlasco internet comment: "That is so cool. The leather SS jacket makes my blood go cold it is so COOL!" I can't speak for Garlasco, but, again, for most collectors the passion is for collecting, not the political meaning behind the items being collected.

When I've gathered with fellow collectors talk always turns to our favorite acquisitions. Saying a prized item was "cool" is a very moderate reaction. I don't know if I've ever publicly admitted that my blood ran cold on seeing a particular item, but when I found a particularly nice London-made chess set some years ago--well, my blood ran cold.

A prominent Civil War historian friend once suggested that I visit so we could "fondle books" together. Trust me: no kinky sex was involved. Another friend lovingly cleans silver steins after he buys them. He then sends out before and after pictures of his new acquisitions. I can't say for sure that he likes collecting more than sex, but I have my suspicions.

And it's not unusual for crazy collectors to identify with their collections. Garlasco's license plate and web identity are Flak88--for the famed 88mm anti-aircraft and anti-tank gun used by his grandfather, who was conscripted into the air defense service. I do the same with "chessset"--for the chess sets which I collect. Weird, perhaps. Evidence of totalitarian tendencies, I don't think so.

Alas, it's apparently impossible to strip politics out of even the most innocent activities, like collecting. But for most collectors, there is no politics in their acquisitions. So if another bust of Lavrenti comes up again, I'll be back bidding. And not because I'm a com-symp.

Attempts to paint the economic stimulus package as a failure begin with wordy paeans to budget austerity and end with anecdotes of Spanish wind turbines and prison inmates. Responsible Republicans claim to have proposed a more effective alternative to the stimulus, no matter that an economic adviser to their own presidential candidate rates the effectiveness of tax cuts lower than that of government spending.

But the stimulus truly was a model of political compromise, providing that devilish mixture of effective public policy - increased unemployment benefits, help for the uninsured, state aid - and politics - scaled back spending and a bill with a diluted purpose. This last element, embodied by a piece of legislation designed to boost aggregate demand and at the same time increase employment and prevent hardship for the worst off and invest in a clean energy economy and set the stage for long-term economic growth, was probably necessary for passage but also ensured that no single narrative for the stimulus's impact could be created.

Imperfect provisions accepted for expediency's sake - beyond the reduced size of the package - include state aid that shortchanged cities, shovel-ready requirements that have been observed more closely than requirements to focus money on areas of economic distress, and at times overly burdensome reporting requirements. Of course, the fact that we are in the midst of a "jobs crisis" does not mean that alternative measures should not be taken to deal with other problems (for instance, our gaping infrastructure deficit). But, especially now that Speaker Pelosi is considering deficit-neutral jobs legislation, the disparate nature of the stimulus perhaps drove a permanent wedge between what we think of as a stimulus bill and what we consider a jobs bill.

Whatever the actual content of the likely jobs bill, the legislation must be as straightforward as possible with the number of jobs saved and created as simply relatable to dollars spent as possible. This means that the administration and Congress should reconsider its support for something like the jobs tax credit. The credit, which would provide a tax break to companies for hiring workers, is as politically attractive as the housing tax credit, but is also susceptible to the same type of fraud as the housing credit and just as bereft of benefits.

The most important task of the administration, though, is to fight against the notion that saved jobs are any less important than created jobs. Sure, job creation is a sign that the economy has turned around for the non-Wall Street portion of the United States. But saved jobs mean fewer unemployed, fewer benefits paid out, more consumer spending, and less foreclosures, among other things. In fact, one of the best proposals for additional stimulus - direct aid to state and cities - is almost wholly reliant on saving jobs (some 900,000 of them). Right now, the administration is losing the battle for why saved jobs are important.

Future administrations will perhaps be loath to portray "stimulus" bills as job creators. It is essential, then, that the benefits of any "jobs bill" be readily apparent.

Attempts to paint the economic stimulus package as a failure begin with wordy paeans to budget austerity and end with anecdotes of Spanish wind turbines and prison inmates. Responsible Republicans claim to have proposed a more effective alternative to the stimulus, no matter that an economic adviser to their own presidential candidate rates the effectiveness of tax cuts lower than that of government spending.

But the stimulus truly was a model of political compromise, providing that devilish mixture of effective public policy - increased unemployment benefits, help for the uninsured, state aid - and politics - scaled back spending and a bill with a diluted purpose. This last element, embodied by a piece of legislation designed to boost aggregate demand and at the same time increase employment and prevent hardship for the worst off and invest in a clean energy economy and set the stage for long-term economic growth, was probably necessary for passage but also ensured that no single narrative for the stimulus's impact could be created.

Imperfect provisions accepted for expediency's sake - beyond the reduced size of the package - include state aid that shortchanged cities, shovel-ready requirements that have been observed more closely than requirements to focus money on areas of economic distress, and at times overly burdensome reporting requirements. Of course, the fact that we are in the midst of a "jobs crisis" does not mean that alternative measures should not be taken to deal with other problems (for instance, our gaping infrastructure deficit). But, especially now that Speaker Pelosi is considering deficit-neutral jobs legislation, the disparate nature of the stimulus perhaps drove a permanent wedge between what we think of as a stimulus bill and what we consider a jobs bill.

Whatever the actual content of the likely jobs bill, the legislation must be as straightforward as possible with the number of jobs saved and created as simply relatable to dollars spent as possible. This means that the administration and Congress should reconsider its support for something like the jobs tax credit. The credit, which would provide a tax break to companies for hiring workers, is as politically attractive as the housing tax credit, but is also susceptible to the same type of fraud as the housing credit and just as bereft of benefits.

The most important task of the administration, though, is to fight against the notion that saved jobs are any less important than created jobs. Sure, job creation is a sign that the economy has turned around for the non-Wall Street portion of the United States. But saved jobs mean fewer unemployed, fewer benefits paid out, more consumer spending, and less foreclosures, among other things. In fact, one of the best proposals for additional stimulus - direct aid to state and cities - is almost wholly reliant on saving jobs (some 900,000 of them). Right now, the administration is losing the battle for why saved jobs are important.

Future administrations will perhaps be loath to portray "stimulus" bills as job creators. It is essential, then, that the benefits of any "jobs bill" be readily apparent.

Nicholson Baker bursts into our poetry series with a passion for form, a longing for four-beat rhythms a la Kipling and rhymes of the kind that Ira Gershwin and Dr. Seuss learned from Swinburne. For a couple of months now we've been puzzling: what's it like to write serious verse in these times? Who does it, and why? Enter: Nick Baker, the brilliant mischief-making novelist of Vox and Fermata, the compendious historian in Human Smoke of 20th Century weapons of mass destruction, and also the Kindle commentator in The New Yorker. In a day-dreamy fictional monolog titled The Anthologist, Baker's poetic hero Paul Chowder gives one man's complete set of answers to questions we've asked in "whose words these are." Poetry is about dense, juicy words that want to be read slowly, he says. Writing it is slow, too. The poetry game is competitive, anxious and downright scary, not because the words are blocked but because the poet is afraid he's run out of them -- or that he's lost sight of the main goal, to make something memorably beautiful.

In our conversation Nick Baker reveals that he assembled The Anthologist by speaking his own clutter of thoughts (the silly, the sly, the grand) on poetry into a video recorder upstairs and down in his house in Maine -- and some others sitting in a plastic chair next to the badminton court. This is a writer who can talk the afternoon away in the quirky, wise, erudite, fluidly funny high style that we know on the page as Nick Bakeresque.

What is a poem? A poem is something that a person somewhere decided to call a poem. That's the first thing. And what does it ask of us? It asks us to read it slowly. I think that's the key, is that poetry is a bunch of words that's just making a polite request to be read slowly. And there are all sorts of other things that it can do - it can rhyme, it can thump along in a kind of wonderful galumphing way, or not - but it mainly is asking us to slow down. And I like that. I think that I'm not a very fast reader but even though I'm not a fast reader, I read too quickly. And I found that the thing that's most helpful to me as a writer is to slow myself down artificially. And the way I do that is getting a spiral notebook and copying things out, because if you copy something out, you are forced to read at the speed of writing, which is really really slow. So that comma that you've come across? You've had to make that little comma shape. So you're slowing yourself down and I've found that that's very helpful. And one of the things I wanted to do in this book was to put my little hard-won hoard of tips and tricks into book form. Although it's a work of fiction, here are some things that actually helped me learn how to write. And one of them was to read poetry. I as a fiction writer, learned how to write prose by reading poetry, so I have a great debt that I owe to this tradition. I carried around the New Yorker book of poems, and Howard Moss' poems, and Stanley Kunitz's poems with me when I was working in New York on Wall Street, read them on my lunch hour. So I have that, but also there are other tips, and one of them is to: something that you really like - slow yourself down, artificially - it may seem artificial - but slow yourself down by copying it out. If you copy it out, you'll really read it for the first time.

Nicholson Baker with Chris Lydon in Boston, 11.20.09.

Cross-posted from Open Source With Christopher Lydon

Maajid Nawaz is a British citizen of Pakistani descent who became involved in
his youth with the radical Islamic Liberation Party (Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami),
undertaking missions for the party in Pakistan and Egypt. Hizb al-Tahrir is an
international movement that campaigns for the reestablishment of the caliphate
in Muslim lands.

In April 2002 Nawaz was detained by the Egyptian authorities along with three
other British members of the party. He was interrogated for twelve weeks in
Cairo's State Security Intelligence building, and then sent for pre-trial
detention. He was written off by Hizb al-Tahrir as "a fallen solder."

Hizb at-Tahrir is banned from participating in political activity in Egypt
and Amnesty International took up Nawaz's case as a freedom of speech
issue. In the fall of 2002 an Amnesty delegation visited Egypt and sought access
to him in prison. Abandoned by his former colleagues, Nawaz was stunned to learn
that an international human rights group had been taken up his case:

"I was just amazed, we'd always seen Amnesty as the soft power
tools of colonialism. So, when Amnesty, despite knowing that we hated them,
adopted us, I felt -- maybe these democratic values aren't always
hypocritical. Maybe some people take them seriously... it was the beginning
of my serious doubts."

In March 2004 Nawaz was formally adopted as a "Prisoner of Conscience" by Amnesty and finally, after four years of incarceration, he was released by the Egyptian authorities.

Nawaz's rejection of extremism was cemented by his conversations with
two fellow inmates, Omar Bayoumi and Dr Tauriq al Sawah, who had been convicted
for their part in the plot to murder Anwar Sadat. Both men had turned away from
the violence of their youth and encouraged younger inmates to pursue a more
compassionate interpretation of Islam.

Unlike the nebulous claims made for the national security imperative of embracing
the "dark side", here is a case based on actual facts; a case in
which a commitment to human rights for all trumped fear-mongering and prejudice,
with an end result that has struck a major blow against violent extremism.

Maajid Nawaz went on to found the Quilliam Foundation that promotes cross-cultural
understanding and aims to counter extremism and radicalization in the Muslim
community. The Quilliam Foundation has become an influential actor on the European
stage.

It is a lesson worth noting that Nawaz credits the open hand rather than the
closed fist for his conversion:

"Before someone can change his ideas, he has to open his heart. I was
filled with hate and anger. But during my trial, something decisive happened:
Amnesty International adopted me as a prisoner of conscience, and it was an
unbelievable feeling to know that there is someone fighting for you on the outside.
Amnesty's "soft" approach made me seriously consider alternatives
to revenge".

Jail, anyone? Perhaps that's too harsh, and at any rate premature, but is anyone ever going to be held accountable for the behind-the-scenes sweetheart deals that passed tens of billions of taxpayer dollars through the AIG shell game to the very banks that caused the financial meltdown? Or for the many other acts of double-dealing that left one out of three American homeowners owing much more than their houses were worth while the folks who swindled them were rewarded with hundreds of billions in public money?

Undoubtedly not, since the same folks who are most culpable wrote the laws that made this, and the other scams at the heart of the banking collapse, perfectly legal. And guess what? They're back at work in the government, writing the new laws that will, they claim, prevent us from being had once again. As a telling example of that process at work, check the official response of the Department of Treasury to the devastating report by the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), Neil M. Barofsky, titled "Factors Affecting Efforts to Limit Payments to AIG Counterparties." The main factor was that Timothy Geithner followed the lead of Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd "I'm Doing God's Work" Blankfein in crowding the lifeboats with bankers.

Geithner, now treasury secretary, was previously the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY), where he negotiated the deal to pay Goldman Sachs and the other top banks in full to cover their bad bets on securitized mortgages. Barofsky's report concluded that Geithner's scheme represented a "backdoor bailout" for the financial hustlers at the center of the market fiasco. Noting that Geithner denies that was his intention, the report states, "Irrespective of their stated intent, however, there is no question that the effect of FRBNY's decisions--indeed, the very design of the federal assistance to AIG--was that tens of billions of dollars of Government money was funneled inexorably and directly to AIG's counterparties."

Not surprisingly, the Treasury Department that Geithner now heads defended his actions in not forcing "haircuts" on the full dollar-for-dollar payoff by AIG to the banks while he was at the New York Fed: "The government could not unilaterally impose haircuts on creditors, and it would not have been appropriate for the government to pressure counterparties to accept haircuts by threatening to retaliate in some way through its regulatory power."

Nonsense, argues Eliot Spitzer, who as New York attorney general was way ahead of the curve in challenging Wall Street arrogance. Writing in Slate on Monday, Spitzer points out: "Pressuring Goldman and the other counterparties to offer concessions would have forced them to absorb the consequences of making suspect deals with an insurance company that was essentially a Ponzi scheme."

The Ponzi scheme was based on the collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) in which the bankers traded and which AIG had insured with the credit default swaps (CDSs) that they sold but failed to back with adequate funding. Now Geithner's Treasury concedes that AIG "should never have been allowed to escape tough, consolidated supervision." But none of AIG's scams were regulated, nor were any of the others at the center of the larger financial debacle, because of laws pushed through Congress by Geithner's boss, Lawrence Summers, when they both were in the Clinton administration. Specifically, they prevented regulation of those opaque CDOs and CDSs that would come to derail the world's economy.

As the inspector general's report stated: "In 2000, the [Clinton administration-backed] Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) ... barred the regulation of credit default swaps and other derivatives." Why did the financial geniuses of the Clinton administration seek to prevent that obviously needed regulation? Because the Clintonistas believed the Wall Street guys knew what they were doing and that what was good for them was good for us lesser folk. As Summers, who is the top economic adviser in the Obama White House, put it in congressional testimony back then: "The parties to these kinds of contracts are largely sophisticated financial institutions that would appear to be eminently capable of protecting themselves from fraud and counterparty insolvencies."

Sounds nonsensical today: The inspector general's report notes that AIG, because of the deregulatory law that Summers and Geithner pushed through, was "able to sell swaps on $72 billion worth of CDOs to counterparties without holding reserves that a regulated insurance company would be required to maintain." But why, then, is Summers once again running the show with Geithner when both have made careers of exhibiting total contempt for the public interest? Because there is no accountability for the high rollers of finance, no matter who happens to be president.