Slave in Space: The Story of Apollo Jefferson, the slave who ran…

Apollo Jefferson ran...

It’s the Year of our Lord 1820 in the Deep South. South Carolina announces penalties for introducing any written anti-slavery material into the state. The white-male led government feels slavery is a way of life in the south; they feel as if it is the right thing to do. Plantation owners take their slaves to market, breaking up families, mother taken away from children; wife’s separated from husband, and regrettably, father’s removed from sons. This is the story of Apollo Jefferson and the beginning chapter of “Slaves in Space: The Story of Apollo Jefferson,” the slave who ran…

By Don Allen, Author – Slaves in Space, Chapter 1: Hell

My heart was racing, the sun in the sky felt like hot lava, my chest burned, my vision blurred, and I truthfully felt as if I'd died long ago. Despite this however, my legs continued to carry me through the woods, as far away from that godforsaken plantation as possible. I willed myself to keep running, it would be worth this pain just to never have to hear the word “boy” again. I’m not a boy, I'm a man, and I, all of us, deserve more than working ourselves to death in those atrocious cotton plantations. Just a few more yards I told myself, just a few more yards and then I’ll rest, and rest I did. My eyes grew heavy, sweat poured down my face but I didn't care, I closed my eyes and slipped into a deep sleep, or perhaps even a coma, either way I didn’t care...

I awoke what I presumed was several hours later; I knew this as it was now dark. Despite this however, there were no stars in the sky, in fact, I could barely see a thing, and what’s more, it felt as if I was laying on a sheet of metal. I panicked, something wasn't right, I wasn't in the woods underneath that tree anymore, I was somewhere else, somewhere metallic. Had I been caught? No, I would have awakened, surely? I got to my feet, made my way to what looked like a dim crimson red due, perhaps a light, which was shining under what must have been a door. I made my way through the darkness to what I hoped was the door, fumbled around on the wall, and found some form of switch. A sudden THUD echoed throughout the room, the huge door lifted effortlessly, and the entire room was bathed in a deep red. I saw where I was, and what I saw made my blood turn to ice.

Cages after cages, filled with people just like me, and when I say just like me, I mean slaves, I recognised half of them from the plantation I’d spent the summer on. I recognised one lady, Bet, a sweet girl, and called out to her “Bet, bet, can you hear me”. She slowly turned to me, looked me right in the face, yet somehow she seemed different. Her eyes were vacant, almost dead, glazed over, like a dead fish. “Bet, what’s going on”? Nothing, not a word. I made my way down the lines of cages littering the entire room, and with each cage I encountered, I grew more and more terrified. Some faces I recognized, some I didn’t, and some faces, not even their own parents would recognize. They were contorted in agony, their skin, once dark, was now silver, and the eyes were as white as snow, as white as those devils that forced us to work ourselves to death on the plantations.

I was now petrified, these things in front of me weren’t human, they were demons, devils, perhaps I’d died and was in hell? It would explain the crimson hue washing over this room, and the near unbearable heat. I was snapped out of my god-awful train of thought by a clinking noise, nothing too loud, but loud enough for it to make my hair stand on end. “Who’s there”? I called out, yet immediately wished I hadn’t when I received my reply. There was no voice, instead, a blood curdling gargling shrieking sound. Out from the darkness and into the crimson light stepped a creature, the likes of which I’d never seen before. Even hunched over, it was taller than any person could ever be, its face was more beast than man, its skin, silver and glistening, and it was looking right at me. I slowly backed towards the exit but with one blood-curdling shriek, it raced towards me, faster than any animal I’d ever seen before in my life.

It was at that moment that I knew I was done for...

What is Postmodernism? Capitalism and Schizophrenia

By Don Allen

Really...what did happen?

I have differed musings about this book. From one perspective I admire it’s bring down of Freud and its elucidation of how individuals are made to yearning remorseless administrations. Maybe its to their superbness, alongside that of other postmodern savants, that their musings no more appear earth-shaking, yet I additionally feel that their hypotheses are not exceptionally valuable on a practical level, particularly when wearing such pretentious dialect.

A most critical work in the improvement of genuine hypothesis in the late twentieth century,
Anti-Oedipus is an essential content for social researchers, legendary scholars, women's activists,
savants, and others inspired by the issues of breakthrough Western traditions.

In his prelude, Michel Foucault calls Anti-Oedipus a starting to non-rightist life, alluding to
 political oppression as well as to the autocracy inside us-the longing to be driven. Identify with that
issue, Deleuze and Guattari set forward a political investigation of yearning as it is communicated or
stifled in Western traditions. They find the seeds of society's ailment in contemporary therapy -
especially in the prevailing figure of Oedipus.

Deleuze and Guattari see machines all over. The body, the earth, craving, everything techniques
as a machine. In the same light, they announce, "Everything is production”. Nothing is ever done
delivering. Sustenance, a PC, a spoon, everything is generation as it keeps on creating and is attached
up to different machines that keep on delivering. Regardless, only in light of the fact that nothing is
ever done creating does not imply that nothing is ever delivered. It is critical to note that "Something is
created: the impacts of a machine, not simply allegories". Items exist yet just as makers. Besides,
"creation is quickly utilization and a recording procedure”. The qualification in the middle of creation
and utilization – and the procedure that records those – is caved in by the commonness of generation
in both utilization and recording.

The book is sorted out into four sections. The first is presentation that, accepting that Anti-
Oedipus is a kind of machine, depicts "what it can do and how it functions”. The second is an
investigation of the thought of "wanting generation" which arranges this inside an "inner" study of
Oedipus. This is trailed by a third part, which portrays the "outer" scrutinize of Oedipus and its
relating idea of "social-creation." A fourth section finishes up the book by looking at conceivably
 productive utilizations of schizoanalysis inside territories of hypothetical and political activism, for
example, Marxism, woman's rights and environmentalism. All through, painstakingly points of interest the relations in the middle of Deleuze and Guattari's book and its different hypothetical antecedents, including (among others) Marcuse, Reich, Weber, Adorno, Lukács, Klein, Lévi-Strauss and Lacan. The principal section specifically is concerned to position Anti-Oedipus in a custom of "supernatural."

The second and third parts involve examinations, clarifying - in genuine Kantian style - the three
"blends" of the oblivious, the "paralogisms" of analysis (the illegitimate employments of these three
unions), and the social developments, which generally compare to the recorded advancement of
Oedipus (brutality, oppression, and private enterprise). The focal subjects investigated here
incorporate thoughts of generation and hostile to creation, the "body-without-organs" as a format for
wanting creation, frameworks of (political and phonetic) representation and engraving, and the
generally changing character of the "socius," together with the different ventures of longing (social
and psychic) that constitute it. While these sections are entirely explicatory, the fourth and last section, entitled "Past Critique: Schizoanalysis and all inclusive history," endeavors to orchestrate Deleuze and Guattari's bits of knowledge and apply them to the fields of contemporary political and hypothetical verbal confront.

Analyzing Hortense Spillers "Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe" and the New Black

For those outside of reality, coonery exists as a tight fitting hat. 

By Don Allen

Hortense Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe,” becomes more timely and relevant in 2015 than ever before with the talk about the New Black. Hip Hop music artist Pharrell, interviewed by Oprah said,  "The New Black doesn't blame other races for our issues.” Then, one of the world's most successful musicians, said to Oprah, the billionaire queen of the world. "The New Black dreams and realizes that it's not pigmentation: it's a mentality and it's either going to work for you or it's going to work against you. And you've got to pick the side you're going to be on."

Phar. and Common become extremely embarrassing to
the plain black American; never new, alway here.

Pharrell lays bare huge blind spots in his cognitive thinking of picking the side you are going to be. Choice and the operant construction of race, in step with severe structural violence for those who do not have it like the Pharrell (money, fame, women and prestige), is the spectacle for those on the outside looking in can only dream of obtaining, which makes Pharrell’s statements about the New Black even more arguable.  Pharrell's comments are ultimately folly to people who do not fit in with his narrow ideas. He misses the point that “black outsiders” exist. 

Spillers thoughts on the erasure of blackness, as it “inscribe[s] ‘ethnicity’ as a scene of negation,” through the construction of a binary opposition between “white” (or normalized American) and “black” family structures is a point that must be considered as fact.  In the analysis of any blind extension of blackness, we (scholars) must address statements from the people who perpetrate unoccupied materialism as a platform for the most absurd rhetoric.

In Spillers feminist-focused argument, the road of identification is shrouded and unclear: To her point, we (Blacks), are not in control of our identity, but assigned to an infrastructure by historical placement. “Embedded in a bizarre axiological ground, they demonstrate a sort of telegraphic coding; they are markers so loaded with mythical prepossession that there is no easy way for the agents buried beneath them to come clean.  In that regard, the names by which I am called in the public place render an example of signifying property plus.  In order for me to speak a truer word concerning myself, I must strip down through layers of attenuated meanings, made in excess over time, assigned by a particular historical order, and there await whatever marvels of my own inventiveness,” (67).

Rapper/actor Common fell into the same trap as Pharrell, while discussing the legacy of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and the current tensions in an interview with John Stewart. Common said, “We all know there’s been some bad history in our country. We know that racism exists,” the star conceded, before adding, “I’m…extending a hand. In addition, I think many generations and different cultures are saying ‘Hey, we want to get past this. We have been bullied and we have been beat down, but we do not want it anymore. We’re not extending a fist and saying, ‘Hey, you did us wrong.’ It is more like ‘Hey, I am extending my hand in love. Let us forget about the past as much as we can, and let us move from where we are now. How can we help each other? Can you try to help us because we’re going to help ourselves, too.’ That’s really where we are right now.”

Again, Common presents a gaping blind spot in not understanding America is fixed. We can access Spillers and her argument in reflecting back on its major points.  It leaves us with the challenging supposition that maybe the ways in which historically gender and race has been configured for black men and women through slavery and its aftermath will always be a part of the constructed identity by the dominant white patriarchal structure. We (Blacks) sit outside of a dominant “American grammar.”

The so-called legitimacy of white, normative gender constructions as potentially radical ways of re-conceptualizing what it means to be a man or woman, black or white, rather than banishing the “illegitimacy” of black family structures as lacking something fundamentally in the American landscape.

Works Cited

        Spillers, Hortense J. "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book." Diacritics 17.2 (1987): 64-81. Print.

References

Stewart, John. “The John Stewart Show”. 2015.

Winfrey, Oprah. “The Oprah Show”. 2015.

Is ISIS for Real?

By Donald Allen, Publisher – The Independent Business News Network

ISIS is not a threat to the Mall of America

Every weaponized conflict has its casualties. The reason I am not calling the conflict in the Middle East a war is because in war, someone wins – someone loses. Our soldiers are being disfigured and killed, a high level dark operation seeks to continue a conflict that is not for land, water, or the good of the American People but has become clearly a political effort for dope (the poppy fields of the Middle East), money, oil and regime adjustments. America has been at war for 222 years out of 239 since 1776. It is properly called building an empire, not fighting for freedom. Let that sink in for a moment.

It is time for a comprehensive history lesson that many will not be able to stomach and some would dare call unpatriotic. The information I share with you today is about the grand puppeteer and we the people, Americans, and how we are being played in the Marxist theater by the political one percent to create fear and discord in an effort to overlook the killings of women, children and innocent victims in the name of collateral damage in the Middle East. The United States has been very inconsistent over who our allies are. Those who cooperate get billions in U.S. support (Israel); and those who do not are fed into the public relations machine that spews America-hate-rhetoric made especially for Americans to ingest; and we do…without question.

Remember, this very same thing happened in Vietnam…when America woke up, they loathed our young men who fought and died in the name of the conflict. It seems in the best interest of democracy, the political ruling class via the mainstream media could find a reason to put our American troops in Sweden if need be. As American citizens, we must question authority and use our own personal cognitive rationale to figure out something is very wrong when the media feeds us (like animals) Hollywood-style produced videos of beheadings that beg the question: Are they real, and how are they so well distributed? Also the question we need to ask: Did Christians get beheaded, or were these loyalist to ISIS following the dream of multiple virgins for taking one for the team? Again, what does ISIS want?

Read the full story here.

Let the truth be told...we have a huge diversity challenge on every university campus

Some will not like this, but the truth will not change. 

Open letter to HU president Hanson and Dean of Students Sickbert, Kline: What about us?

Sometimes a concern written in the prose poem format can make your point!

Editors note: Talking about racial diversity is not enough. We need to experience it. A while back, I heard a university student compare campus life to “living in a bubble.” As part of their educational experiences, teachers need to nudge and even push students out of their cultural bubbles.  While college students might come from different cultural backgrounds, there is no guarantee that they will interact and learn from each other. Often, what we find on college campuses is what some term segregated pluralism, students keeping to themselves and interacting for the most part with their “own kind.” The college classroom and co-curricular activities can help break down these barriers, but college administrators need to focus more on activities, programs, and other initiatives to promote cross-cultural interaction. Furthermore, college presidents need to translate their personal commitment to diversity into organizational change.

By Don Allen, Senior Columnist – Hamline University Oracle student newspaper 2012-2015 (Editorial Opinion) 

Thanks for the cup any-who. 

St. Paul, Minn. - On Feb. 12 the HU senior team put together a top-notch event to celebrate the class of 2015 having less than 100 days before graduating. The event had great food, a cash bar, free champagne and a whole lot of words from the president and HU deans. While I sat with my back turned away from the podium and listened, I began to cringe from listening to the rhetoric likened to a high school pep fest.  The words spoken left out a very important part of the HU student body who did not live in the dorms or have a meal plan. Here today, I ask the question, “What about us?”

What about us? We are the students who transferred to Hamline University that did not take part in the first year student activities. We did not take the class of 2015 photo that appears on Facebook pages and sometimes on the HU website. We did not know about it; of course nobody followed up.

What about us? We figured out that Hamline’s Undergraduate Student Congress (HUSC) was nothing more than a laughable group who’s main concern is to manipulate imaginary power in the name of the HU administration while the student body gets absolutely nothing but empty promises and the students get nothing. We only do drama at home, not on campus.

What about us? We wanted to get involved on campus but were marginalized and dismissed while student leaders decided that students over a certain age were no a part of the HU participation base. We didn’t want to see a movie at the local theater that was meant for children (Big Hero 6).

What about us? We are the students who have children, families, and mortgage bills. We could not attend events made for students who live on campus that could skip right over to the Anderson Center after 5 pm. Where is the consideration for us?

What about us? The single mother’s, who worked jobs, paid for day care and went to school while the fathers of our children were far away. There was not a peep of gratitude for our struggles making it to the final year at HU. Yeah - really, what about us?

What about us? Students of color who wanted HU to take a position on race, gender and sexual orientation that sat by and watched HU go through the motions of boutique social engineering training the campus not to march, protest or voice concerns other than in a controlled environment.

What about us? Students who worked for the newspaper, radio station or had an opinion. Our voices where shut down; the First Amendment’s freedom of speech and expression was silenced by “suggestive overtures” from certain administrators.

What about us? We are veterans who served our country wounded with disabilities that sometimes cannot be seen from the outside who have to contend with a new HU veteran certifying official who will not update us on new benefits and will hardly look us in the eye and say hello when passing. What about the handful of soldiers who left HU because in reality the university is far from being veteran friendly and it is obvious that nobody really cares.

What about us? We have never seen so many university administrators out-of-touch with non-traditional student reality that could be needed for recruitment and retention. The world is changing and it is not what is sometimes represented at HU.

What about us? What happened to the words in celebration for the non-traditional students who did not miss a day of classes in more than three-years at HU despite sick children, schedules of our spouses and work? 

What about us? I know in the classroom HU professors take the time to use the knowledge and experience of the non-traditional student for the betterment of the whole class and learning experiences. This is where the rubber meets the road for HU’s high-impact learning. Unfortunately, HU administrators do not see (or it seems that way) the value of the class of students who will not fall into a fresh-out-of-high-school mentality when we know the real world does not operate on those terms.

In closing, to president Hanson and Dean of Students Sickbert, Kline – if you cannot see beyond the scripted words that only look to acknowledge one caste of HU students who made it to graduation, you miss the point of why HU is a great University. If you do not care, please disregard the above.

What about us? Do I need an apology letter...no, too many of those have been sent out. 

Earth Year 2666 - Commander Stony King’s Journal

Short Fiction by Don Allen in his pin name (pictured)

Deep space exploration had riddles that nobody could answer. Commander King is the sole survivor of the failed Tango-Nine mission to Terra-X. 

by Bartholomew Gottlieb (Don Allen)

Galaxy 3  “…Roger this is Galaxy 3 requesting clearance to land on Terra X…”

Control: “…Copy Galaxy 3; you are cleared for immediate landing on Terra X - over….”

Galaxy 3: “…Roger that. We are 5-by-5 in the hole preparing to deploy 4R shield around landing site, over.”

Control: “Roger that, have a safe mission. Control out.”

          The year 2877 on New Earth. Members of the United Nations of Deep Space Planetary Exploration (UNDSPE) have found a planet compatible to earth.

          Over 400 million people have been resettled.

           In 2666 we lost all contact with Tango-Nine. Ten days ago, our forwarding communications command (FCC)  picked up a faint...but consistent signal 40 light-years away from New Earth. It was Commander Stony King’s distress signal from Tango-Nine. The UNDSPE in now aware of the conditions on Terra-X and have taken precautions to land there safely and rescue the crew of Tango-Nine.

          When we arrived our recover crews found only Commander King, frozen in a Time Vortex Shield, alive and healthy. Now, our ship – the Hillary is headed back to New Earth with Commander Stony aboard, still frozen in stasis. 

          All we know about the crew of Tango-Nine was found in Commander Stony’s journal.  

   

          The commander’s last entry was on Christmas Day, December 25, 2666. The following journal entry was recorded before Commander King put his body back into a Time Vortex Shield to save his life.

     Earth Year 2666 – Log 0600 - December 24:

       As I look up at the sky I see a red haze with a deep orange-yellow mist that saturates the cold red rocks on this planet. This is Commander Stony King log entry 28.93, year 2666. I am the commander of the crew of Tango-Nine in search of habitable planets by the command of the United Nations of Deep Space Planetary Exploration (UNDSPE). 

        The wind blows with a howl on this planet reminiscent of an old western scene with deadly rattlesnakes under every rock and tumbleweeds rolling across the plain – only here, it’s not rattlesnakes or tumbleweeds rolling across the plain, it’s dirt spores with enough neurotoxin 

that with the slightest skin contact, the sticky venom can kill a whole city or a crew of explorers seeking a new habitat for terraforming into a friendly earth-like planet.       

       In review, in 2566 after the comet collided with the earth’s moon, the United Nations of Deep Space Planetary Exploration (UNDSPE) launched several crews into deep space in search of non-hostile environments. The plan was the UNDSPE would launch Noah One into deep space with its passengers frozen in stasis with the use of a Time Vortex Shield (TVS) that would protect them from aging, disease and any cataclysmic encounter, except for a sun-burst – a direct crash into a Supernova. This was one of the many risks we had to take making sure mankind would survive.  Death could happen any moment in deep space travel. 

       Earth Year 2666 – Log 0830 - December 24:

       I remembered what happen on earth after the comet McCain hit the moon.          

       The sun now rises in the west. This unusual shift in the gravitational matrix on earth happened 100 years ago when a comet collided with the earth’s moon. The magnetic poles are not on the north and south poles anymore. The North Pole has shifted to India and the South Pole to the Caribbean. Temperatures in these sub-topical places dropped drastically below freezing and cataclysmic level disasters caused thousands of deaths that could not be avoided.  The environmental shift in the ecology has caused violent earthquakes and massive title waves that engulf whole coastal cities.  Volcanoes erupt across the world killing millions.  A mass migration with the assistance of the military from several countries evacuated refugees from the India and the Caribbean to more friendly climates. Both India and the Caribbean are both frozen wastelands, abandoned and uninhabitable.   Many years before the meteor incident, several nations rallied to build a maximum-security prison in space that orbited the moon and held the earth’s most violent criminals. When the meteor hit the moon, 20,000 escape pods were automatically released on a trajectory back to earth – back to the United Wing of the America’s, formally the United States.  Chaos ensued with the deregulation of technology the criminal element ruled areas of the world with fear and death. Leaders of the United Wing of the America’s set up mega-cities across the world and defended them against numerous attacks from warlords set on commandeering the Noah project.

Earth Year 2666 – Log 1133 - December 24:

          Scientists estimate the earth has less than five-years and the United Nations of Deep Space Planetary Exploration have worked feverishly to build ten mega-ships code named Noah.  These ships are commissioned to terraforming of human friendly planets for a mass evacuation of earth.

         Noah One, now headed toward my location, Terra X-98, with the locator beacon on - is the geo-location targeting system for the massive ships to lock in on and travel to this God forsaken planet.

Earth Year 2666 – Log 1400 - December 24:

      It was our mission, the mission of the crew of Tango-Nine to find a suitable place before the earth implodes. China was the first to launch Noah Two, which headed 477 light years away from our known galaxy. They last anyone has heard from them was when the United States space shuttle Obama picked up a distress call that could have been broadcasted 20 light-years prior. The earth lay in mourning for the crew and its 800,000 passengers ever since.  Many of the large Noah arks did not make it to their final destinations. Attacks from aliens, to the likes we never knew launched massive attacks on our ships. We were outnumbered and outgunned

        

Earth Year 2666 – Log 1800- December 24:

          Unfortunately, what happened here on Terra X-98 was a tragedy to my ship Tango-Nine and its crew of ten; I never predicted my chances to return to earth could have been so faint; I never predicted a death so far away from earth for me and my crew.

        Earth Year 2666 – Log 2100- December 24:

       The earth is gone. I sit here feeling doomed, alone, without any communications. My crew is dead, killed by this deadly planet and I have no way to give mission control a warning about my deadly situation. If another ship, perhaps a rescue ship lands and its TVS’s are turned off, it’s a possibility everyone landing here will die within minutes. I know it’s too late, I know they have already launched Noah One to my beacon. If I turn it off, the occupants of Noah one will float into space, more than likely crashing into a sun. Damn, death can be a cruel dealer at the poker table. 

Earth Year 2666 – Log 2200- December 24:

          I don’t know how much longer I can take being on this planet alone and knowing that if Noah One lands on auto-pilot and the Time Vortex Shield is turned off, it’s a possibility, no, it’s fact everyone on board could be killed instantly by the blowing spores.                             

       My options have become limited. I have enough power to put myself back into the Time Vortex Shield, set the warning beacon and remain in stasis until someone can rescue me, or I can just give up. I cannot hold my poker face for much longer.

Earth Year 2666 – Log 0001 December 25:

            Merry Christmas and goodbye…

Computer voice: “…End of journal entries star date 2666 December 25.”