I ceased being surprised by any “startling” new political developments in Lebanon in, oh, around 1983, when Fateh’s bosses suddenly started aligning with the Phalange.
But still, this burgeoning Aoun-Hizbullah lovefest does give one that little scintilla of excitement to realize that once again, the country’s body politic is capable of yet another thrill, yet another twist of the political kaleidoscope.
I’m wondering what the terms of this new relationship are… Maybe I should head over to the Al-Intiqad website sometime, see how they’re reporting it over there.
Basically, though, I’m quite happy about this development, as it would seem to reduce the likelihood of sectarian violence erupting in Lebanon over the summer quite considerably.
French colonial violence remembered
Today is the 60th anniversary of the massacre of Sétif, a town in a remote area of eastern Algeria where in May 1945 the “Free French” colonial forces decided to enact a colonial massacre against the indigenes.
Here’s an account (in French) of an appeal that Algerian President Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika launched to mark the occasion today.
Here’s the Babelfish translation of the lead to that piece (as improved by myself):
- ALGIERS (Reuters) – Abdelaziz Bouteflika called this weekend on France to recognize its responsibility forthe massacres for tens of thousands of Algerians who had gone out into the streets, May 8, 1945, to claim their independence at the time when Europe was celebrating the victory over the Nazi Germany.
“The Algerian people await from France a gesture which would liberate the French conscience”, stated the Algerian president in a speech delivered Saturday evening in S
Our Palestinian embroidery sale
So, our Charlottesville-based group ‘Holy Land Treasures’ held its second annual pre-Mother’s Day sale of Palestinian Heritage Embroidery here in town. We sold more than $7,500-worth of these really lovely stitched goods (all proceeds go to the producer organizations), and 60 bottles of fine Palestinian olive oil.
It was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. The University of Virginia Palestinian debkeh dancers sent along a small troupe to dance for us. We had poetry readings, super Palestinian food, music– and sold a lot of stuff!
Doing this helps send a bit of income in to the embroidery artists and the olive farmers. (Just a tiny trickle compared with the great gobs of money the US government sends to Israel every year, of course.) In addition it helps to keep the Palestinians’ rich heritage alive, and it’s a fun way to share information about that heritage with US citizens.
I used to feel quite torn, sometimes, between doing things that you could describe as “social work”, and engaging in the campaign to bring about about deep structural change. Then I figured, why not do both? Let each engagement inform the other.
It’s Mother’s Day today, here in the US. The occasion was originally founded as an anti-war action– but the Hallmark Cards Co. has been trying to hide that fact ever since.
Maybe next year we should all focus much harder on reclaiming Mother’s Day for the anti-war movement?
In the meantime, my wish for every mother around the world for the year ahead is that she, her children, and each of those she loves be assured the basics of a decent life including the oppportunity to participate in a secure community of her or his own choosing.
Approaching 1,600
Every Thursday, almost without fail, I join my friends from the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice in holding a one-hour “peace presence” on one of the busy corners in our town. (Right outside the local office building maintained by the federal government, actually.)
A few weeks ago I was making a few new signs to replace the ones that had become so tattered over the past three years. One I made says at the bottom “U.S. deaths in Iraq”. Above that there are spaces for four large single-digit numbers, and little velcro squares to which I attach the relevant digits each week. (This is all done with environment-hostile foamcore. Sorry ’bout that.)
Today the number was 1,591. I get the number out of the WaPo every Thursday. I realize it doesn’t mention the much great number of Iraqi deaths. One of our other signs says “We mourn all the victims.”
Preparing the digits each week is a horrible thing. Somehow it’s a very physical way of seeing how quickly that number rises.
In ‘Nam, the proportion of Vietnamese deaths to US military deaths was roughly 50 to 1. I believe something like the same proportion (or something even higher, given the US mil-tech “advances” since then) must apply today. But how, actually, do you count? What do you count? All the infants and sick people who died because of the war-caused degradation of what was once a fairly efficient modern safe-water system? All the sick people who died because of the war-caused chaos in the medical system in general, or because they couldn’t get to the hospital because of the rampant public insecurity?
… Anyway, my favorite sign to hold is still the one that says on one side, “Honk 4 peace” and on the other, “Rebuild our communities.” It’s a good intersection to stand at, since the lights are timed to allow only one of the four approaching streams of traffic to go through it at a time. So drivers in the other three approach roads all have to wait a while.
This means that all of us with the signs can focus on turning toward the approaching stream of traffic and trying to interact with those drivers. We wave and make peace signs to them.
You wouldn’t believe the number of honks we get.
In the past six weeks the number of honks has definitely been increasing– and also the intensity with which people do it. Several times today it felt like a veritable cacophony of different honkings, all competing with each other. Sometimes one or two of the drivers waiting at the light really feel they want to express themselves, and then that can set almost everyone else going as well.
The way I see it, it’s become not just an interactive thing– between us demonstrators and the drivers– but almost a community thing among the drivers themselves, as well.
Anyone who hates this war and who, sitting waiting in her or his car at the light, hears another driver “honking 4 peace” will know that she is not alone. That’s why, sometimes, the honking just seems to spiral almost out of control there.
To me, that’s incredibly valuable, to be able to “connect” all those people in a single symphony of honking, even if only just for a couple of minutes, in today’s unbelievably fractured US culture. (However, if you’re down on the pavement right in front of some of those big old honking pick-up trucks, it can really hurt your ears.)
About how to count all those war-related deaths of Iraqis, though…
Read Matt and weep
Matt, over at Today in Iraq, put up the most amazing post yesterday, to mark the second anniversary of the “Mission Accomplished” peroration by Our Great Leader.
If you can’t read anything else this year, read that.
Let’s hope to God the US forces aren’t still over there, killing Iraqis and getting killed by them, this time next year.
Israeli hawks worried by nonviolence now?
For many months now, the Palestinian villagers of Bil’in, west of Ramallah, have been organizing a variety of totally nonviolent mass actions to protest the devastating Separation Barrier that the Israelis have been building right up against their village, which cuts many of the villagers off from their families’ ancestral lands. They’ve faced various forms of brutality from the Israeli occupation forces along the way.
Last Thursday, April 28th, they had yet another action: a march toward bulldozers preparing the land for the Barrier. Some 1,000 Palestinians and 200 Israeli peace activists showed up. But that time, the Israelis launched a sinister new tactic: they had infiltrated some of their people, dressed as “Arabs”, into the body of protesters to act as agents provocateurs. These agents started throwing stones at the Israeli forces lined up in front of them– which then gave the Israelis “permission” to fire back…
According to the website of Uri Avnery’s “Gush Shalom” (Peace Bloc), the Israeli forces responded using “new means of riot control, such as specially painful plastic bullets covered with salt, pepper bombs and more.”
How did the participants in the peace action discover that the stone-throwers were agents? Easy. As soon as the guys started throwing stones, the organizers of the march moved toward them and reminded them that the rules of the action were “complete nonviolence; no stone-throwing!”
At which point the stone-throwers turned around and grabbed hold of the organizers who had approached them and dragged them across to the Israeli lines where they were arrested.
It is an outrage. In my book, a provocateur like that– and the commanders who organized the whole provocation maneuver– are entirely responsible for all the violence that they spark.
I’m not even sure if the men arrested last Thursday have been released yet.
On May 1, Electronic Intifada reported that they were still being held. Here’s what EI said about the April 24 action:
Continue reading “Israeli hawks worried by nonviolence now?”
Palestinian bazaar; Hip NYC performance space
Lots of interesting things happening in our family, culture-wise, this week.
If you’re in central Virginia this Saturday, come on by the sale of Palestinian heritage embroideries that some friends and I are organizing at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville, 11 a.m. though 4 p.m.
We’ll have fine, hand-stitched products to fit every budget: shawls, cushion covers, purses, coin-purses, place-mats, etc.
Plus we’ll be selling Palestinian extra-virgin olive oil… Plus, there’ll be Mediterranean box-lunches with yummy Palestinian delicacies inside. Plus music, cultural events, and a good time for all the family.
A good opportunity to buy somethng special for Mother’s Day (which is on Sunday, here in the US) or for the truly far-sighted, Father’s Day in early June.
All proceeds from the sales go to the refugee and disabled embroidery artists, or (olive oil sales only) Palestinian farm families struggling to hold onto their land and tend their crops. We import our stitched goods from organizations like Atfaluna (Gaza) , Sunbula (West Bank), and the Association for the Development of Palestinian Camps in Lebanon (Lebanon)…
And on a different note…
My daughter Leila, her husband Greg, and their partners are this week opening their great new business in New York City, so if you’re there do stop on by and give them some support!
The place is called Cakeshop. This is a reference to something in popular culture that I’m not quite aware of. Leila assures me that they do, as a matter of fact, have a few cakes there for sale. But mainly the place is a coffee shop, plus record store (yes, that’s right, as in your old LPs, also known these days, more hiply, as “vinyl”), plus a performance space plus– I’m sorry to say– a bar.
Anyway, they’ve all been working their hearts out to get the place organized, up and running. It looked really good when I was there in January. It’s in a very happening part of Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
Go by if you can! I think I ‘ll make the coffee-shop part of it JWN’s “official drop-by meeting-spot” whenever I go to NYC. (For some reason Leila turned down my suggestion that I might do some stand-up comedy for them on opening night. I’m not really upset at the rejection. But hey, boo-hoo all the same.)
You’ll find Cakeshop at 152 Ludlow St. The metro stop is Essex & Delancey on the F or J/M/Z lines.
Life, war, bombs, despair
Read Riverbend’s Monday post from her family’s neighborhood in Baghdad.
I lived through six years of just such horror during the civil war in Lebanon in the 1970s. Including the fiendish kinds of car-bombs (set by “Christian” militias) in which one goes off, people gather to help the wounded, and then ten minutes later another goes off…
They have those in Iraq, too, these days.
I could still describe to you the arrangement of body parts I saw in the street by the time I arrived, reporter’s notebook in hand.
I can still feel the same knot I’d get in my gut if a bomb went off and I thought it was somewhere near where my kids were.
Read Faiza’s latest post in English, too. Faiza is still in Jordan, but it seems to me she has a very clear eye for what’s going on in her homeland, Iraq:
Wilfred Owen’s gut-socking words
Down in the lengthy Gallipoli discussion commenter Friendly Fire has posted a favorite poem of his, a rather thoughtful piece of war remembrance, “Poppies of war”, by E.M. Warnock.
I’ve always been struck by another British poet of World War 1, myself: Wilfred Owen. That site there says, rather coyly that:
- Owen was injured in March 1917 and sent home; he was fit for duty in August, 1918, and returned to the front. November 4, just seven days before the Armistice, he was caught in a German machine gun attack and killed. He was twenty-five when he died.
The bells were ringing on November 11, 1918, in Shrewsbury to celebrate the Armistice when the doorbell rang at his parent’s home, bringing them the telegram telling them their son was dead.
Well, “injured” in 1917– yes. The guy had a raging case of shell shock. The condition that was later “discovered” by the Yanks as PTSD.
He was sent to the British military hospital at Craiglockhart, near Edinburgh, where numerous other shell-shocked British warrior-poets were also gathered. (Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, etc.)
The main doctor figure there who seemed vaguely to have an idea what was going on was Dr. William Rivers Rivers. If you haven’t read Pat Barker’s brilliant “Regeneration” trilogy of novels about that convergence of tortured souls, you should.
I seem to recall that in her account, even Rivers– the most humane of the docs there– was certain that the “best” thing for his patients was to get them back to the front. Something to do with “manhood”, as I recall? Of course, issues of homosexuality barely repressed or not repressed at all were enormous at Craiglockhart, as they were throughout the entire history of the British Empire…
By the way, that latter site I linked to is one I just discovered: “The Heritage of the Great War” a bilingual, Dutch-English site with material written by a Rob Ruggenberg. He even has a little slideshow of photos of the Gallipoli battles there…
Anyway, back to Wilfred Owen. Here’s the first of my picks for today:
- Parable of the Old Men and the Young
So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretch\ed forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son. . . .
Powerful, huh?
Now you’ll have to click on “continue” to read the next one:
Apartheid’s ‘Total Strategy’, contd.
About a month ago, JWN regular Dominic and I were doing some online work together looking at potential areas for comparison between the “total strategy” adopted by the SA apartheid regime in the 1970s and the “Global War on Terrorism” launched by the Bush administration after 9/11.
We’re still really only at the beginning of this work. But if you go to this early-April post you can see some of the exchanges we had– plus some helpful comments from JWN readers, too.
Okay, here’s a bit of an update. First, I have finally managed to scan an excerpt of the text of the TS, as compiled in “South African government documents on the