Gaza -- still

Finished a 15 day "burst" of steroids, but I don't feel that much better. I'm trying to maintain a positive, creative attitude but can't seem to get Gaza off my mind. Angry when I hear news reports, angry when I don't.

Posting two youtube links which I think say it all. Then I'll get back to art.

The first is BBC interview interview from several days ago. Even soldiers in the Israeli military see the injustice.

The second is a song I picked up from the "Raising Youssef" blog. The song is powerful; the pictures take my breath away.

I'm just hoping I can work out these feelings in the studio rather than sliding into another exacerbation.

Gaza on my mind

CNN: Waiting for dawn in Gaza. It's 5:30 pm here in Belenistan so in a few hours we should see what has become of Jabaliya and Beit Hanoun and Rafah and Gaza City after the overnight ground incursion.

You don't need to be prescient to know that after seven days of air bombardment, it will look like Dresden after the firebombing and feel like Guernica.

I weep.

New Attitude

Feeling pretty good. Others seem to be monitoring the news and stating the obvious lately, so I've started a new "art" blog, Belenistan Studio

Plan to post some of the pieces completed in the last few months. Please have patience as I work through the process of posting.

Then I'll brave the cold to get my act out into the unheated studio and MAKE ART.

Palin's Pin

Doing my best to stay out of the election fray this time around, but some things just can't be ignored: The fake outrage at Obama's 'lipstick on a pig' remark when it was obvious that the 'pig' to which Obama referred was the Bush policy and the 'lipstick' was the McCain camp's spin; the irresponsibility of McCain's choice of VP ... someone who will be one heartbeat away from the presidency chosen because she brings in 'the base' while having no understanding of international issues or relations and whose speech borders on warmongering with every declarative sentence; the deference of the media (McCain's true base) and the kid gloves worn around McCain (the war hero) and Palin (the little woman), refusing to call a lie a lie even as McCain's drawers go up in flames.

But I digress, as usual. In an era when a person's patriotism is measured by the size of his flag lapel pin, Palin's red, white and blue rhinestone broach is as large as her head! Is this supposed to be a measure of her love of country? The thing is so over the top, so tacky, so shiny, so ongepatshket (sin brechen) that I fear if it had one more rhinestone, the sheer weight of it would topple her over backwards!

It's not about the lipstick. It's not about the pig. It's about the damn flag pin!

Incident?

The MSNBC crawl caught my eye this morning. Civilian casualties from a US air strike in Nuristan Provence, Afghanistan, now number 47, all members of a wedding party -- including the bride. The US military is investigating the incident.

Incident? Incident? We used to refer to collateral damage, e.g., when we dropped bombs on a wedding party in western Iraq in the first year of the war and tried to white wash it. Now, it seems, civilian casualties have been downgraded to "an incident" ...

If this had happened on a college campus in the US or to a Christian wedding party in Lebanon, it would be reported as a massacre. The press would be all over it for days with a CNN reporter rushing to the scene.

Incident? How cheap other peoples lives have become.

Steroid Rant on Nakba

The 60th anniversary of the Nakba and I'm on another steroid rant. Bush 43 is celebrating in Israel while Gaza does without water and power and the Palestinians in the West Bank are on virtual lock down. How can a group of people be oblivious to the plight of its neighbor? It's too painful.

As I grow weaker, my ability to feel the pain of others only becomes more painful: the Palestinians, the Lebanese, the victims of the cyclone in Burma, the earthquake in China, the genocide in Darfur, the never ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan only add to the pain. I need to learn to differentiate between personal pain and Weltschmerz.

Listening to the news, even the 'real' news (Democracy Now, Keith Olbermann, Jon Stewart), only creates exacerbation. Which leads to being back on steroids. But there is the occasional laugh along with the heartache, like when the local news anchor out of Albuquerque spoke of two troops killed by an IUD and didn't even realize her mistake.

Imagine, soldiers killed by contraceptives. Now that's an argument for the religious right.

Remember

Sixty years -- Deir Yassin.

Prison Break

God bless the people of Gaza. While the American media talks about Gaza being closed since the Hamas takeover (read election) last June, Gaza has been a prison for over 40 years. With the withdrawal of the settlers, the IDF totally surrounded this narrow strip of land and its 1.5 million citizens, bombing and bulldozing and terrifying children with nightly sonic booms. They've reinforced the walls on the north and east, the gates of which are rarely opened while the west is patrolled by the Israeli navy. As for the south, the wall separating Gaza from Egypt was built on the Palestinian side so that the area between Palestinian Rafah and Egyptian Rafah has been a no-man's land in theory. The Israelis have actual control of who comes and who goes, who lives and who dies. And countless innocents have died awaiting crossing and transport to hospitals and clinics outside of Gaza.

The fuel freeze of the last week was not the first. Gaza has been down to one working power plant for some time so electricity is scarce, the water pumps don't work and the sewage problem has actually killed women and children.

So watching the news of the women of Gaza trying to storm the Rafah crossing only to be turned back by the Egyptian army spewing water cannon and firing live rounds was disheartening, to say the least. But then, Tuesday night, reading the news of the wall tumbling down was breathtaking.

If only for a day or so, the people of Gaza will have had a taste of freedom. They will have petrol and medicine and flour and pride. And they will have the illusion of control for however long it lasts. God bless the people of Gaza. Allah Ma'kum.

Surge Success

After months of doubt about the success of the American surge in Iraq, today the Iraqi Parliament produced its first sign that the parties are reaching an agreement -- they've agreed to a new Iraqi flag. Although the new flag is considered "interim", pending a better flag within a year, agreement was reached to remove the three stars which originally symbolized pan-Arab unity and, when that didn't pan out, was changed to promote the ideals of the Ba'ath party. The new flag will retain its original colors but will include the Arab script inserted by Sadaam Hussein in 1991 in response to American threats over Iraqi's annexation of Kuwait. However, rather than looking as it did from 1991 through the fall of Sadaam, the script will be changed to the new and improved Kufic type font. The message remains the same: "Allahu Akbar".

At some point in the not too distant future, the Coalition of the "Whoops-Where-Did-Everybody-Go" will find an Arabic speaking translator to let them know that the phrase on the new and improved flag translates as "God is Great".

So the Pan-Arab flag, which was replaced by the Ba'ath Flag, which was replaced by the post-1991 flag promoting Sadaam's attempts at pacifying his Muslim citizens will now be replaced by a temporary Iraqi flag containing the Islamic rallying cry of "Allahu Akbar" (in new and improved Kufic type face).

Score one for the American Surge and its progress. Now if the Parliament can only agree to convene once again in the American-protected "Green Zone" and find a way to get the power back up and running, get potable water to the people, clean the streets of streams of sewage, find jobs in reconstruction for unemployed Iraqis, put the oil industry back in Iraqi hands, reopen safe schools and well-stocked hospitals and clinics, get the 2 million Iraqis who have left the country to return and find homes and jobs for the 2 million internally displaced, the Americans can claim that the Surge actually worked! And the Parliament can ask the Americans to leave.

Somehow, I don't find great hope in this. It's beyond FUBAR -- it's a tragedy of errors in cosmic proportion.

Scandal

Breaking News: Baseball players taking steroids. I seem to recall a line in one of Bush's early State of the Union addresses about the import of this issue, just as he also stressed that Laura Bush should be the "gang czar" in another address. But scandal?

Scandals, as priorities, are different for everyone. In my mind, outing a CIA agent is scandalous, spying on Americans is scandalous, holding people in detention on or off-shore for years without benefit to legal recourse is scandalous, torture is scandalous, cover-ups are scandalous, refusing to testify before Congress is scandalous, not funding health care for poor children is scandalous, lying to the American people is scandalous, using cluster bombs is scandalous, making up your own science is scandalous, benefiting from war is scandalous, killing civilians is scandalous, giving Israel more time to smash southern Lebanon is scandalous, ignoring the plight of Gaza is scandalous, interfering in the elections of others is scandalous.

But baseball? Give me a break ...

Nakba

Another November 29th ... and the situation in Gaza and the West Bank, not to mention the dozens of refugee camps in Lebanon, seems worse, if that's even possible. Less fuel, less food, less medical care, less work, less housing, less hope. International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

What was that nonsense in Annapolis with Bush II earlier this week? It certainly wasn't solidarity. More like a two-day photo op during the last inning of a losing game ... everybody loses. What an embarrassment, what a sadness.

I haven't blogged for a while and everything is bottled up. Eventually I'll blow and write for hours and hours. But tonight I just couldn't let another November 29th pass with remark.

Relief for River

It is with a great deal of relief (tinged with a fair amount of sadness) that I finally saw a post from River at Baghdad Burning I have been concerned for months ...

Ilhamdul'Allah.

I encourage others to read her story about the decision to leave Baghdad and head to Syria. This egregious war does have a human face -- something Americans tend to forget as we only count our own killed or maimed in combat and the government suggests that the rest of us "go shopping."

Bless you, River.

Remembering Naji Al-Ali

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the assassination of Naji al-Ali in 1987. In the early 1980's I had the good fortune to meet this talented Palestinian artist and journalist at a showing of his work at USC.

At the beginning of the first Intifada, I wrote this poem in his memory:

Remembering Naji Al-Ali

The return address on the envelope says "Handhalah..."
The envelope is empty.
I wait.
The voice on the answering machine whispers "Handhalah..."
But there is no number to call.
I wait.
The lettering on the back of the T-shirt
Of the boy running past reads "Handhalah..."
I walk faster.
And in my dream Handhalah approaches.
For the first time I can see his face,
He is smiling.
I awake and sit at my desk in the night,
And write a check.
At the bottom where is says "for:"
I write "Stones."
(c)1988

As my heart breaks

My heart is breaking. A million reasons for not blogging lately (too many topics, too much anger) but truly no excuse.

Today the horrible, unnecessary, ugly war in Iraq hit home in the WalMart parking lot here in Belen(istan). La Luz, my caregiver, was pushing the basket and loading the car with groceries while the WalMart greeter followed my slow progress in the little electric wheelchair and was helping me into the car. What do you talk about with a total stranger who is younger than your granddaughter? We talked about the weather, how hot it is and (I just couldn’t resist) how much hotter it will become once Americans realize that global warming is real and here to stay.

The girl said that she'd heard about global warming and she hated it. Her fiancé had recently died of heat stroke in Iraq. It took my breath away! This smiling bit of a girl was back to work just a week after the funeral I’d watched from my kitchen window as it left Our Lady of Belen Church, streaming past my house as it headed toward I-25 and the military cemetery up in Santa Fe.

I’d actually heard about his death from my friend "T" before it was announced in our little semi-weekly throw away paper. "T" knew the family and had told me that his core body temperature had been 130 degrees, a fact I’ve yet to read on line or elsewhere. But here are the facts as I know them:

PFC Henry G. Byrd III, age 20 of Veguita, New Mexico died in late June in Germany from “illness” contracted while in Iraq. He had been standing guard near a tank being repaired at the side of a road and collapsed from the heat. His body temperature was at least 109 degrees as he was flown to Germany and all his major organs and body functions shut down. And no one noticed him lying there.

How can this happen? Where were his comrades? His water? How much armor was he wearing? Too many questions – no answers.

All I could do standing in the heat between the wheelchair and the car was hug her, a simple girl, a total stranger. As she helped me into the car she lifted my necklace in a very feminine and personal gesture, examining the talismans I always wear: the Hand of Fatima, the Masha’Allah, the carnelian carved with “Muhammad Rasul Allah”, the blue “eye bead”. She looked me in the eye and tilted her head; the question unasked. But I offered: “Yes, I am Muslim and I absolutely hate this war with its 3611 American service people dead as of yesterday and the Iraq number untold.” She smiled kindly and said that she also hated that we were fighting the wrong war in the wrong country, but took comfort that her fiancé had died doing what he loved best, working on tanks and serving his country. I checked my tears and hugged her a second time and she helped me into the passenger seat.

I feel devastated. I’ve lost acquaintances to terror: from Alex Odeh in the early ‘80s in the Orange County explosion of the ADC offices and Mustapha Akkad a year or so ago in the hotel bombing in Amman, Jordan. And I worry every day about folks I’ve met on line. No word from Riverbend (BaghdadBurning.blogpot.com) or the guys at BethlehemGhetto.blogpot.com in months. But this was in my own back yard.

I’ll blog on the ills of this administration/regime and its failures and crimes another day. Today I just have to think abut this young man, his fiancée, and feel my feelings.

Dear Turkey

Dear Turkey,

Speaking lovingly of you last night with my friend F from Los Angeles. We are very concerned about your desire to join the EU at any cost. We feel you might just sell your soul for a chance to party with the west.

Please, please reconsider. "They're just not that in to you". You're not white, you're not Christian and you just can't change enough to ever please them. (I know this feeling at a personal level and it feels ugly.) Why do you want to play with kids who don't want to play with you? It's as though you're the little skinny girl in the corner at the dance, just waiting for the right guy to come over and ask you to waltz ... but he never does. (Again, personal, but apropos.)

My advice? Forget the dance; just go bowling. Face east and look for partners who will love and value you, like the Turkic-speaking republics of the former Soviet Union. They have the oil; you have the labor force, the pipelines and the access to the sea.

I know this sounds like an intervention, but I miss you and only want the best for you. I'd hate to see you change what is essentially your heart and soul in order join the EU.

With great love,
Francine in Belenistan

Creative Accounting

Granny Franny's Unified Theory of Everything: Chapter 37 - Creative Accounting

George W. Bush, "The War President", has filed his 2006 Federal Income Tax Return and has taken the $40 War Tax Rebate. This just frosts me. The rebate was intended to reimburse Americans for a tax we've been paying since 1989 to fund the Spanish-American War. Most of us will get $30; some large businesses will get more. Am I the only one who thinks it's bizarre that the man who has declared himself "The War President" has the nerve to request a $40 war tax rebate?

Still on the subject of Creative Accounting, I'm not surprised that Paul Wolfowitz, a long-time neo-con and one of the architects of the Iraq war, now head of the World Bank (the entity responsible for helping poor nations rise out of poverty) is under scrutiny for arranging a cushy job ($193,000+/year) at the State Department for his "girlfriend". All these guys are a bit slimy. But what man his age has a girlfriend? Isn't she a mistress or a companion or a significant other? Calling her a "girlfriend" is akin to calling a grown man "Scooter" -- ooops.

So much for helping poor nations. So much for supporting the war. The hypocrisy never ends ....

My Brain on Drugs

This is my brain on drugs with a side of bacon:

Iraq, Iran, Darfur, Palestine -- all have taken a back seat lately on the 24/7 news cycle on cable TV. Tonight it's the Teenage Squeaker on American Idol. Last week it was Anna Nicole Smith. And before that it was Bald Britney and Crazy Astronaut Diaper Lady. Everyone's entitled to their 15 minutes of fame, but when did thousands of dead become news only in the crawl or below the fold or on an inside page? Halaas! Enough already ...

It's been four years since the Jenin Massacre, but there's no mention in the American press. Can anyone else recall IDF tanks rolling down empty streets, purposely running over parked cars with Palestinian plates just to watch them crumble? Where's the outrage?

It's been four years since Rachel Corrie was mowed down by a Caterpillar earthmoving machine in Gaza, but there's no mention in the American press. Where's the outrage?

It's been four years since Shock & Awe and Mission Accomplished and They Hate Us For Our Freedoms, yet the same Washington Crowd and the same Talking Heads tell the same tale tales and talking points over and over again with no one calling them on it. Where's the outrage?

Since I don't eat pork, maybe I just need better meds...

Scary Movie

Last night I watched the scariest movie ever: "Jesus Camp".

Now I know there are no axe murderers in this film, no blood or gore or guts, but I was truly frightened by what I saw. The documentary film makers captured what is perhaps the most frightening trend of our times in America -- the Evangelical Movement at work training children to hate and fear, accept guilt, follow blindly, and then pass it on to the next generation.

Folks, these are the real culture wars. We're not battling an enemy abroad. We're battling an enemy within our own borders and it is us. Children across America are being trained to pray for George Bush, pray for Supreme Court justices who will limit reproductive choices, and praying for your soul, my soul, anyone's soul who does not conform to their world view. Many of them are home schooled and being taught that science is bogus, that evolution is a myth, and that there is no such thing as global warming.

Their brand of Christianity has nothing to do with Good Works or Charity or Brotherly Love. It's all about Good and Evil, Moral and Immoral, Black or White. And if you don't listen to their message, these little pre-pubescent kids are taught to label you as sinner, or worse: Muslim. They consider themselves warriors and are in training, for what, I'm hesitant to speculate, but I am afraid, very afraid.

What happened to the America in which I grew up? And when did it happen?

Driving Naked

Long time between blog entries -- too much food for thought, too much sadness...

I seem to remember a bumper sticker from the 60's which read: "Friends don't let friends drive naked!" I think George W. Bush has no friends for he is barreling down a road to total destruction and it's fairly evident that his "emperor clothes" caught fire along with his pants. Bush has said that he will persevere even if Laura and Barney the Dog are his only allies. Lately I'm convinced that Laura is a Stepford Wife. George and Barney are all that's left of the "Coalition of the Oops, Where Did Everybody Go". He certainly doesn't listen to his generals, to his advisors, to the American people or to the folks from the Iraq Study Group aka Baker and Hamilton. In just six years, Bush, acting with a sense of executive privilege and impunity, has all but destroyed 225 years of balance and rule of law.

As for the 110th Congress, everyone is so busy jockeying for position in the 2008 election that no one is standing up for what is right in the here and now. And people are dead and dying because of it. Every day that Congress hems and haws, posits and positions, people die -- people in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in the Occupied Territories, in Somalia, in the U.S., in the military, in the National Guard, in Darfur, in the prison that is Gaza, and in places whose names we don't know and can't pronounce.

The occasional byte of truth slips through. As Bush was threatening Iran on prime-time television, another aircraft carrier was headed toward the Persian Gulf and five Iranian diplomats were arrested by US forces in Kurdistan. ABC News ran a two minute clip of a female Israeli settler in Hebron taunting a group of frightened Palestinian women locked into their home, behind a wire cage, the settler yelling, then whispering "sharmuta" (whore) at them, threatening them, as the settler's children lobbed stones at the caged women and the IDF stood by their tanks and looked on, passively.

But for the most part, the mainstream media ignores all but the most blatant incidents of mass death and destruction, jumping at the chance to focus on fires, train derailments, O.J. Simpson, snow in Denver, boys lost and found, while it adopts the Regime talking points and Rovian language of "Syrian-backed Hezbollah"," Iran's Nuclear Ambitions", "Al Qaeda in Iraq", "cut and run" and "flip flop". I'm beginning to think that Muqtada as-Sadr's first name is "Radical Shi'a Firebrand" and that the pronunciation of Iraq's Nuri al-Maliki's name is up for grabs as no one can agree on a standard and the media doesn't check with Arabic speakers on such mundane issues (or on facts).

Don't get me started on the ethnic cleansing of what was New Orleans. Or the sad state of water or telephone or electric services to the Navajo Nation. Or on the mess that is Medicare. Or the plight of the working poor. And if I hear one more pundit blame the victim, they'll hear me scream all the way up in Santa Fe.

But mostly, I'm just sad...

Democratic Dominoes

Went to bed last night high and happy -- the Republican Regime had lost the House. (I really am a political junky.) Better news at noon -- bye bye Rummy. And this evening, it appears that the Senate has gone to the Democrats. These are not my Democrats (the centrists, the compromisers), but it's a first step towards righting the wrongs of the past six years.

Feel like it's my birthday or 'Eid or Christmas or Hanukkah. And I want a hot fudge sundae or cheesecake or both. But I settled for a large pizza from Domino's, delivered (yes, we do have delivery in Belenistan).

When and if I find out that Patricia Madrid has won over Heather (oh my God, my son has seen Janet Jackson's nipple during half time and I'm totally apoplectic) Wilson, I may treat myself to that hot fudge sundae.