Be the peace
"Surely, they say, there must, there has to be another way of doing this."
OK, let's start here, with this flicker of anguish, this quick stab of despair and disbelief that war is a rational means to an end. These words, from an essay by Jeremy Ben-Ami, executive director of the Jewish peace lobbying group J Street, describe the complex discomfort felt by what he surmises to be a "third stream of Jews" in the U.S. and elsewhere -- neither committed peaceniks nor "Pavlovian flag wavers" -- over Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip.
"There has to be another way . . ." Let's sit with it for a moment, nurture it before it passes, because it is awareness at the earliest noticeable stage, and most of us on this planet, I think, can no longer repress it, no matter how much we want to and no matter how alone we feel with it. This awareness may be the fire we must harness if we are going to survive.
I say this mindful of how difficult life is without an enemy to blame for our suffering, for everything that's wrong. I say this mindful, also, of the hell that others do create, as we crouch in the hallway with Lubna Karam.
OK, let's start here, with this flicker of anguish, this quick stab of despair and disbelief that war is a rational means to an end. These words, from an essay by Jeremy Ben-Ami, executive director of the Jewish peace lobbying group J Street, describe the complex discomfort felt by what he surmises to be a "third stream of Jews" in the U.S. and elsewhere -- neither committed peaceniks nor "Pavlovian flag wavers" -- over Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip.
"There has to be another way . . ." Let's sit with it for a moment, nurture it before it passes, because it is awareness at the earliest noticeable stage, and most of us on this planet, I think, can no longer repress it, no matter how much we want to and no matter how alone we feel with it. This awareness may be the fire we must harness if we are going to survive.
I say this mindful of how difficult life is without an enemy to blame for our suffering, for everything that's wrong. I say this mindful, also, of the hell that others do create, as we crouch in the hallway with Lubna Karam.
The future of civilization
The tight, absurd parameters of “peace,” as they are drawn by the military model we continue to believe in, make real peace —neither bitter nor temporary — impossible even to imagine. God save us, for instance, from New York Times editorials, which inflict as much damage on civilians as F-16s.
“Israel must defend itself,” the paper intoned a few days into the bombing attack on Gaza that quickly left 350 people dead, expressing regret only that the action was “unlikely to weaken” Hamas. The editorial affected a neutral assessment of the situation that failed to mention either the Israeli occupation of Palestine or the month-and-half-long blockade of Gaza that preceded the bombardment and, among much other deprivation, left the region’s few hospitals drastically undersupplied with medicine, gauze or even space to treat the flood of newly wounded.
“Israel must defend itself,” the paper intoned a few days into the bombing attack on Gaza that quickly left 350 people dead, expressing regret only that the action was “unlikely to weaken” Hamas. The editorial affected a neutral assessment of the situation that failed to mention either the Israeli occupation of Palestine or the month-and-half-long blockade of Gaza that preceded the bombardment and, among much other deprivation, left the region’s few hospitals drastically undersupplied with medicine, gauze or even space to treat the flood of newly wounded.
A hundred eyes for an eye
Israelis and Arabs "feel that only force can assure justice," I. F. Stone noted soon after the Six Day War in 1967. And he wrote: "A certain moral imbecility marks all ethnocentric movements. The Others are always either less than human, and thus their interests may be ignored, or more than human and therefore so dangerous that it is right to destroy them."
The closing days of 2008 have heightened the Israeli government's stature as a mighty practitioner of the moral imbecility that Stone described.
Israel's airstrikes "have killed at least 270 people so far, injured more than 1,000, many of them seriously, and many remain buried under the rubble so the death toll will likely rise," Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies pointed out on Sunday, two days into Israel's attack. "This catastrophic impact was known and inevitable, and far outweighs any claim of self-defense or protection of Israeli civilians." She mentioned that "the one Israeli killed by a Palestinian rocket attack on Saturday after the Israeli assault began was the first such casualty in more than a year."
The closing days of 2008 have heightened the Israeli government's stature as a mighty practitioner of the moral imbecility that Stone described.
Israel's airstrikes "have killed at least 270 people so far, injured more than 1,000, many of them seriously, and many remain buried under the rubble so the death toll will likely rise," Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies pointed out on Sunday, two days into Israel's attack. "This catastrophic impact was known and inevitable, and far outweighs any claim of self-defense or protection of Israeli civilians." She mentioned that "the one Israeli killed by a Palestinian rocket attack on Saturday after the Israeli assault began was the first such casualty in more than a year."
Did Bush Sr. kill Kennedy and frame Nixon?
Russ Baker's new book presents an account of the U.S. government that is both remarkably new and extensively documented. According to this account, George H. W. Bush, the father of the current president, devoted his career to secret intelligence work with the CIA many years before he became the CIA director, and the network of spies and petroleum plutocrats he began working with early on has played a powerful but hidden role in determining the direction of the U.S. government up to the current day.
Did Bush Sr. kill Kennedy and frame Nixon?
Russ Baker's new book presents an account of the U.S. government that is both remarkably new and extensively documented. According to this account, George H. W. Bush, the father of the current president, devoted his career to secret intelligence work with the CIA many years before he became the CIA director, and the network of spies and petroleum plutocrats he began working with early on has played a powerful but hidden role in determining the direction of the U.S. government up to the current day.
Class is a dirty word
“Class is a dirty word in that it gets close to the truth about who governs and for whose benefit.” -Michael Parentiz
In the land of those who think they’re free and the home of savage capitalism, class is indeed a dirty word. Remember, we’re a nation of Joe the Plumbers. If we just work hard enough and fend off those socialist vampires who want to suck us dry by redistributing our hard-earned wealth, we can all be financial successes. And if you’re a faux-progressive presidential candidate—like Obama, you’re doomed to political perdition unless you sign a blood oath disavowing your ties to socialism.
In the land of those who think they’re free and the home of savage capitalism, class is indeed a dirty word. Remember, we’re a nation of Joe the Plumbers. If we just work hard enough and fend off those socialist vampires who want to suck us dry by redistributing our hard-earned wealth, we can all be financial successes. And if you’re a faux-progressive presidential candidate—like Obama, you’re doomed to political perdition unless you sign a blood oath disavowing your ties to socialism.
Dark prayer
The water churned and pushed against the ice with a dark seriousness that reminded me of prayer.
Subzero Chicago night at the edge of the year, the edge of change, the edge of what’s bearable. I stood on an old breakwater, a long, crumbling construction of concrete and steel that jutted into Lake Michigan — just stood, feeling the wind scrape my face. Whatever thoughts came to me were honest ones. Or maybe I just needed to grieve.
“Courage grows strong at the wound.”
Someone said this to me earlier this year and I felt a rush of reverence as I contemplated wounds and war, a wrecked economy, a wasted planet, hope, illusion, the holidays, the human condition. My niece just got married; the same day, a friend was mugged in the alley behind her house. The dark water undulated beyond the ice, gurgling, whispering. Dear God . . .
Subzero Chicago night at the edge of the year, the edge of change, the edge of what’s bearable. I stood on an old breakwater, a long, crumbling construction of concrete and steel that jutted into Lake Michigan — just stood, feeling the wind scrape my face. Whatever thoughts came to me were honest ones. Or maybe I just needed to grieve.
“Courage grows strong at the wound.”
Someone said this to me earlier this year and I felt a rush of reverence as I contemplated wounds and war, a wrecked economy, a wasted planet, hope, illusion, the holidays, the human condition. My niece just got married; the same day, a friend was mugged in the alley behind her house. The dark water undulated beyond the ice, gurgling, whispering. Dear God . . .
The pacifier tree
"Dad, did you know the governor of Illinois was arrested?"
Well, no. This was last week. I was in Denmark, visiting my daughter, and this was my first news from Crazy Land in a while. It's dangerous to go online when I'm traveling. I learned, among other things, that my governor, Rod Blagojevich, was taped discussing the sale of the president-elect's old Senate seat because it's "a bleeping valuable thing. You just don't give it away."
No way. Not in this economy.
But even though I felt no real surprise at that or anything else I eventually returned home to — flying shoes, collapsing Ponzi schemes, a federal report documenting waste and ineffectiveness in the reconstruction of Iraq (who would have guessed?) — I was nevertheless blindsided by the cumulative effect of the week's news. All it took was a week of expatriate perspective to see how surreal, how nuts, American normal has become.
Well, no. This was last week. I was in Denmark, visiting my daughter, and this was my first news from Crazy Land in a while. It's dangerous to go online when I'm traveling. I learned, among other things, that my governor, Rod Blagojevich, was taped discussing the sale of the president-elect's old Senate seat because it's "a bleeping valuable thing. You just don't give it away."
No way. Not in this economy.
But even though I felt no real surprise at that or anything else I eventually returned home to — flying shoes, collapsing Ponzi schemes, a federal report documenting waste and ineffectiveness in the reconstruction of Iraq (who would have guessed?) — I was nevertheless blindsided by the cumulative effect of the week's news. All it took was a week of expatriate perspective to see how surreal, how nuts, American normal has become.
The silent winter of escalation
Sunday morning, before dawn, I read in the New York Times that “the
Pentagon is planning to add more than 20,000 troops to Afghanistan” within
the next 18 months -- “raising American force levels to about 58,000” in
that country. Then I scraped ice off a windshield and
drove to the C-SPAN studios, where a picture window showed a serene
daybreak over the Capitol dome.
While I was on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” for a live interview, the program aired some rarely seen footage with the voices of two courageous politicians who challenged the warfare state.
So, on Sunday morning, viewers across the country saw Barbara Lee speaking on the House floor three days after 9/11 -- just before she became the only member of Congress to vote against the president’s green-light resolution to begin the U.S. military attack on Afghanistan.
While I was on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” for a live interview, the program aired some rarely seen footage with the voices of two courageous politicians who challenged the warfare state.
So, on Sunday morning, viewers across the country saw Barbara Lee speaking on the House floor three days after 9/11 -- just before she became the only member of Congress to vote against the president’s green-light resolution to begin the U.S. military attack on Afghanistan.
Interview with Iraqi journalist Salam Talib
On October 22, 2008, I recorded a talk I had with Salam Talib, who is a computer engineer and journalist from Iraq and who is now studying in San Francisco. He has worked with US independent journalist, Dahr Jamail, and other independent journalists as an interpreter and fellow reporter on the conditions in Iraq that ordinary people have faced during the US military occupation. Dahr Jamail is the author of "Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq."
When I met a person by the name of Zaineb Alani, I learned that I have been mispronouncing 'Salam Talib'as I made the following audio recordings for the radio program. Saying his name with a long 'a' after the 'l' and a long 'i' after the second 'l' is incorrect, according to Ms. Alani.
The audio for the WCRS 102.1 and 98.3 LP FM program that aired in late October or early November of 2008 is divided into four parts. You can find the audio portals below, after the paragraphs of text.
Here are some questions and some notes I developed as I put together the radio program. Please go to tomover.com and offer your ideas and whatever else you want to express.
When I met a person by the name of Zaineb Alani, I learned that I have been mispronouncing 'Salam Talib'as I made the following audio recordings for the radio program. Saying his name with a long 'a' after the 'l' and a long 'i' after the second 'l' is incorrect, according to Ms. Alani.
The audio for the WCRS 102.1 and 98.3 LP FM program that aired in late October or early November of 2008 is divided into four parts. You can find the audio portals below, after the paragraphs of text.
Here are some questions and some notes I developed as I put together the radio program. Please go to tomover.com and offer your ideas and whatever else you want to express.