This is the day that a black Mercedes Benz driving forty five in a twenty-five mile zone almost cuts me off. Two Armenian flags fly from the rear windows and another Armenian flag is displayed on the top, clipped into the sun-roof sliding glass. The crazy driver is a young man with a booming stereo at full blast, a cigarette in his mouth. Today is a big day in my town because it is the commemoration of the Armenian genocide--1914-1918, the first holocaust of the 20th century. The orders that Hitler gave before the invasion of Poland ended with the question, "Who. after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?" And though many decades have passed since US Ambassador Morgenthau first reported to the Wilson government that genocide was taking place, and headlines in the New York Times recorded the massacres and forced migrations, the United States still has not officially recognized the Armenian genocide, acting according to Realpolitikischen principles in not wanting to upset the Turkish government, our allies and fellow NATO member. Candidate Obama clearly indicated that he was in favor of recognizing the Armenian genocide. President Obama made a speech in Turkey ...
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Over at Best of the Blogs, a respondent to my cross-posted entry about Martin Wolf's piece in the Financial Times, timr, took issue with the "prematurity" of my criticism of the new President, so I thought I would elaborate. Please don't misunderstand me. I do hope that the president sees the urgency. Martin Wolf's piece jolted me, as I said, because he honed in on a problem that all leaders face in critical times.I'm not criticizing Obama as president. I am criticizing the weaknesses of an intellectual/political/plutocratic/privileged class to which he belongs. This political class is incapable--with a few notable exceptions, like Dennis Kucinich and Bernie Sanders and Russ Feingold, all of whom without fail are marginalized by the other members of their class--of understanding the dilemma of people in the "underclasses." I use the word carefully, I think, because at this point it is the only appropriate word to use. It includes people, for example, in the professional and technical classes and business classes whose combined incomes exceed even a quarter of a million dollars, because even they have seen a transfer of wealth to the tiny minority of the rich and super-rich who ...
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The Long Gray Line waits with breath at attention for the commands of the president, but will you, the American public, really hang on every word of the president's speech tomorrow [today] at West Point? What will you be looking for? Nuance? Restraint? That last glimmer of Hope, of that "yes, we can win this war" attitude, of the thought that perhaps, here in the darkness there is light at the end of the tunnel? That after eight years and a number of twists and turns, here while the train is stopped so we can figure out if we want to go on or back up, perhaps you will see a promise of a glint of a glimmer of the sundown of ultimate defeat after another 7 or 8 years of traveling in darkness yet to come? Tired of Hope yet? Tired of war in the graveyard of empires? Ready to send some more marines and national guardsmen out for their third and fourth tours of duty into the mountains and deserts despite their PTSD and their IED-battered cerebellums? Ready to keep feeding the yawning maw of the military industrial congressional complex? Well, I have seen commentary that Obama has been manipulated by the generals--and to a certain extent he has been manipulated by the sneaky leaks, by the ...
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John Stewart and his staff are to be congratulated for interviewing Mustafa Barghouti and Anna Baltzer this past week. For once, national television made an effort to provide a platform for the voice of the Palestinians' peaceful non-violent resistance. A significant portion of the Palestinian people have carried out non-violent resistance for years and find themselves the targets of violence from the Israeli military--a number of Palestinian demonstrators have been killed in the past year; one young American male protester is still in a coma after brain damage when he was hit by a tear gas canister. (Canisters these days sometimes get fired on a flat trajectory at body level, not lobbed into the air. Non-violence never receives the coverage that violence does, and the absence of coverage of the non-violent protests tends to perpetuate the misconception that all Palestinians are a violent. This is preposterous, of course. I am glad that both Barghouti and Anna Baltzer were able to state the case for a movement that those of us who are for justice, equality, and humanity in the Middle East have been making for many years now. I urge all of you to access the interview through ...
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I wish it were more like the sleep of Rip Van Winkle. The world has not changed. Awake and returning, I just know more about it. For example, yesterday in the Los Angeles Times Op-ed pages, Frank Luntz--the man who successfully changed the exact phrase "Estate Tax" into the negatively charged "Death Tax" (which must have sent currents of damaging electrical energy along the decomposing spine of Thomas Jefferson)--Frank Luntz, sounding oh so sympathetic and sincere, wrote about how "The angry, fearful American" has changed from optimist to frantic raincoated Howard Beale, mad as hell and not wanting to take it any more. According to his research, 72% of Americans are mad as hell, 57% think their children will have a worse world than they, and only 33% think their children will have it better. The paper version of the op-ed was "The angry, fearful American" but on the LAT website it this has been changed to "What Americans really want." Perhaps the first title had too heavy a connotation--think of "angry, fearful Indian" or "angry, fearful Negro." He has interviewed, he says, 6400 people from all areas and ethnic and political backgrounds, has taken instant responses over the past ...
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This is what remains of the American International School in Gaza, bombed by an Israeli Air Force pilot sometime in the early morning of January 3, 2009. The Israeli military spokesman told Ha'aretz that the "American College" site was a munitions storage dump, and therefore the bombing was justified. No weapons remnants have been found. There were no secondary explosions or fires. Anyone with an ounce of intelligence can figure out that a munitions dump would have rendered more destruction than this. I suppose one can argue that the timing of the bombing was humane in that it took place during the night when no children were present. Actually, they failed to take into account the janitor who lived on the premises. But what's a janitor compared to imaginary munitions? We toured the site. I walked around and saw the athletic fields--and again thought what this could look like undamaged and filled with children and teenagers.
As Amira Hass, the Ha'aretz correspondent, pointed out the "College" is a school for children in grades 1-12. According to its director, the school opened for operation the day before Ariel Sharon led his troupe of policemen to the Al Aqsa ...
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We left Gaza on a bus to the Rafah crossing on the evening of the 16th, watching the sun set in the Mediterranean, a few people on the beach and in the surf, trying to cool off. The shore of the Gaza Strip could be developed into a resort if there were any substance to the economy. Along the shore road south of Gaza City, you can see the ruins of buildings, targets of the Israeli warships: they are, for the most part, the villas of leaders of the PA. Within the borders of Gaza City, there was an industrial zone. All of the factories have been destroyed by the Israeli onslaught. I have done risk management and safety surveys on concrete factories, and one of the factories first bombed into oblivion was a cement factory--the burned hulks of cement mixing trucks and crane pumpers lay in the yard of the factory--crumbled cement walls and twisted rebar all around. I find this significant, because I know for a fact that the Israeli government refuses to allow the delivery of construction materials into the Gaza strip as part of their siege.
When you travel through Gaza City you see wide boulevards and what could be neat paved roads on a set of gentle hills, stone buildings (unlike the .. ...
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From Alexandria I write, getting ready to go into a meeting regarding the pickup of the vehicles and the departure. We have been receiving contradictory information regarding what happened to the Cairo contingent of the convoy last night as they tried to cross the Suez Canal into the Sinai and head for the rendezvous point at Al Arish. Because I hear contradictory statements, I send on the official press release. We are all hoping that this will be the last night in Alexandria, but what appears to be more important now is that we are running out of time. The return flight to the US leaves Cairo on the 17th, so we have five days to rendezvous at Al Arish, deliver the supplies across the border, and high tail it back to Cairo airport for the afternoon of the 17th. Robert Burns' words keep repeating in my head: "the best laid plans of mice and men oft gang awry" (loose translation from the Scots); but in this case, it appears that some of the going awry is due to diplomatic machinations. The careful listing of passports that has been done all along now apparently is not good enough. That is my speculation. As I wrote in the last one--inshallah has resonance that I never clearly ...
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Called "Alex," scene of the famous Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell, home of the poet Constantine Cavafy, site of the famous museum and library burned and then destroyed by earthquake--no telling how different the texture of history might have been had all the volumes of papyrus survived--site of another famous seven wonder of the ancient world, the lighthouse at Pharos--well, there is a lot of history here in this seaboard town, the Mediterranan sea pounding against the stones and concrete, umbrellas by the seashore so closely packed that no sun penetrates. Millions on the beach and millions walking the streets, riding the trolleys and the minibuses that go everywhere and no tourist can tell where. The coptic church in the sun--where the women are not covered by a hijab. Cavafy's house in the shade of the small street, the view of the old Jewish Synagogue--but we cannot visit, and "No Camera" the instruction from the white-uniformed antiquities police. The library has long gone, but the new spectacular Library, a large cap of concrete with incised and molded characters from all languages, Arabic, Greek, Latin, looks out over the old Harbor toward the entrance of the ...
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The Viva Palestina Convoy members have been in Cairo since the fifth of July--having left NYC and other cities on the Fourth of July in order to declare independence from US policy of tacit support of the Israeli siege. The people of Gaza await our delivery of medical supplies and equipment. Over 180 Americans are in the convoy from all over the country with a very strong contingent of 34 from CA.
And now that the planning and various supply negotiations have been completed, we are beginning the convoy. One team remains here in Cairo to handle last minute procurement, packing, and inventory to add to the supplies already shipped from the US. Another team heads out tomorrow morning to procure the convoy vehicles, prepare and secure them for loading and transport.
British MP George Galloway, the inspiration for the convoy, has been interviewed by Al Jazeera in NYC before we left, by the AP here in Cairo when we arrived on Sunday. Wednesday at the Association of Egyptian journalists, Galloway and a contingent of 30 Viva Palestina participants answered questions regarding the convoy. Unfortunately, American media, despite some prodding by individuals, have not been very responsive up . ...
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