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.

Broken Glass

I'd love to be in the "GLASS IS HALF FULL" group, which prompted the uncharacteristic optimism of my last post on voting. The "GLASS IS HALF EMPTY" group is negative and wishy-washy, implying that with a little push from below (or above), the liquid in the glass might rise slightly (or that the glass will shrink, giving the appearance of fullness).

But today I feel that THE GLASS IS BROKEN. No Democratic majority in the house or senate can fix what has been broken in the last six years. Broken glass is broken glass. It cuts, it shreds, it maims and murders. It can't even be swept away with any certainty. And, if walked on, it will only break further.

Didn't the authors of our constitution have solutions (within the rule of law) to remedy a broken executive, a broken judiciary, a broken congress? And why are we just sitting on our hands, waiting for November 7 to hope and pray for the glue or bonding agent which might put the glass back together? Hey folks, it ain't gonna happen. Broken is broken.

When the entire system is corrupted by large sums of currency, large infusions of power, and some crazy form of religious zeal intent on controlling our bodies, our thoughts, our diets, our money and our children, we need to look to the constitution for the remedy. And failing that, can we screw the rule of law, the constitution, and the power structure and just revolt? Isn't that what the founding fathers really had in mind? "The revolution (may) not be televised" but there's nothing saying it can't be sent out over the internet, at least not yet (as long as we still have some measure of net neutrality).

I may not live long enough to see redress (impeachment is way too good for the shrub called Bush, the evil Cheney and all the other players who appear to be the illegitimate love children of Barbara Bush and the Pillsbury Dough Boy), but I'd like to see the beginnings of an outrage, an outrage that builds across middle America over our wars of aggression, the decimation of our political and judicial system, the death of our civil rights, the loss of human dignity, and our blindness to how the dots are connected from the White House to Congress to K Street to Tel Aviv, to Gaza, to Baghdad, to Tehran, to South Lebanon, to New Orleans, to Blackwater and Halliburton and KBR, to the loss of independent media, to the stripping of our language as an exercise in Orwellian semantics, to Guantanamo and Baghram and Diego Garcia, to Belenistan and Kazakhistan ... just fill in the blanks.

The Red Queen (with grey hair flying) rises painfully and, between hits of oxygen from the durable medical equipment throughout her house, shouts hoarsely, "OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!"

To quote the Red Queen:

"Freedom is on the march..." George W. Bush
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose..." Janis Joplin

Vote!!!

Vote! Please, please, please vote!

Vote your conscience, vote your wallet, vote your heart. Vote for what will matter to you most in the coming years: your social security, your personal safety, the lives of those your love. Vote for the Gold Star Mothers so that there will be no more Gold Star Mothers. Vote against violence, aggression, hatred and bigotry. Vote for what you believe in, what will serve you and your community.

Vote for health care, clean air and water, nutritious food, better education, good resources, your grandchildren (born and yet to be born) who are too young to get to the polls and vote on their own.

No excuses, no lesser of two evils, no party line. If weather is a problem, vote absentee, but vote. Don't vote what your minister or husband or lover or boss advises. Look at the issues on your own. Really listen to the attack ads on television and figure out who is doing the attacking and why. Look at the faces of those asking to be reelected and ask if you would want them in your home for dinner or coffee. Would your trust them to baby sit? To fix your car? To balance your checkbook?

Listen to what the candidates say in your town hall, on your television, on the Sunday Morning talk shows. Does any candidate who answers a direct question with "I don't recall..." deserve to have that job? When appearing on TV to answer questions, is any politician who says "I haven't read/seen/heard the article/report/book" really doing his or her job? Would you hire them?

Look at the faces of those asking to be sent to Washington and ask if you think they're smart enough, honest enough, independent enough to work for you over the coming years. You are the boss. This is your country. Washington is supposed to be doing your bidding, not the bidding of the corporations and Wall Street and K Street. Not even Main Street. The folks who get elected in two weeks are supposed to be working for those who live on your street, USA.

Voting is not a luxury. It's not even a privilege, at this point. It's an obligation you have to the future -- yourself, your children, your grandchildren and their grandchildren.

9/11 - A Test of Faith

I knew. I knew the minute I turned on the television, before my first cup of coffee, before I could light my candle, before the sleep was out of my eyes. I knew. I knew that what I saw transpiring some 2,000 miles away on my television screen was going to be a test. A test of my faith as an American Muslim.

After five years, my faith as a Muslim remains unshaken. Sadly, I can't say the same about my faith in America and Americans.

This was not my first personal test and I'm not a wuss. I've lived through three major earthquakes and two riots in Los Angeles, two battles with cancer, marriage, divorce and a 10 year battle with COPD. But they were nothing compared to 9/11.

Nor was this my first political test. I lived through the protests against the war in Viet Nam in the 60's, organizing and protesting the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 (and then losing my job because my boss saw me on television protesting in front of the Israeli Consulate), physical attacks and death threats from the JDL (and losing a friend to a bomb planted by the JDL on the door knob to his office in Santa Ana, California) and having my birthday clouded forever by the coincidence of the massacres at Sabra and Shatila. But they were nothing compared to 9/11.

I lived through setting up press conferences at the Islamic Center to defend Islam as a peaceful religion in the wake of the terror attacks on Istanbul's synagogues in 1987, being strip searched at Heathrow in January 1991 (and the horror of watching bombs fall on Iraq a few hours later), worrying about friends stuck in Kuwait and unable to flee the invasion, and the first attack on the World Trade Center a few years later. But they were nothing compared to 9/11.

I lived through all of the above and more. But I always felt like an American. Now? Not so much ...

In the days immediately after 9/11, I noticed the flags. Flags, flags everywhere. On poles, on cars, on pickup trucks, on clothing and lapels. Red White and Blue. But more importantly, I noticed the rhetoric. Phrases like "crusade", "clash of civilizations", "with us or against us".

And living, as I do, alone, 30 miles south of the middle of nowhere and 250 miles west of East Armpit, Texas, for the first time in my life I began to be afraid, very afraid. Not afraid of an airplane crashing into my house. Not afraid of another terrorist attack. But afraid that, isolated as I am, I needed to be very aware of my surroundings, my neighbors, my internet activities, my phone conversations.

In the first year, my health deteriorated sharply. I stopped teaching Arabic and giving seminars on Islam and the Muslim World. I relied on my dogs to alert me to strangers on my property. And I actually read the "so-called" Patriot Act and HEPA and all the other pieces of new legislation meant to "protect us". I even called the police one night to come replace a burned out porch light because I was frightened, disabled, alone and more than slightly paranoid as Jenin was being decimated and the US marched blindly towards war in Iraq ... and the police came and put in a new light. (There are advantages to living in a town this small.)

I changed. I could no longer watch a sitcom with a laugh track on television. Still can't. And I take notes while watching the news, often taping one program while watching another. In five years the rhetoric has only become more strident, with even the President using terms like "Islamic Fascists". Every utterance by a talking know-nothing head, a "so-called" expert, a media darling, or a member of the Bush Regime spouting the hateful talking points of the day, grates like fingernails on a blackboard.

If I was a news junky before 9/11, I'm a full-blown addict now. But over the last five years I've narrowed down the voices I can trust to just three: Amy Goodman, Keith Olbermann, and Jon Stewart. The fact that the third is a comedian speaks volumes...

So this weekend, as every television station is commemorating the 5th anniversary of that horrible morning, as ABC is getting ready to air yet another inflammatory made for TV movie, as CNN continues to run "In the Footsteps of Bin Laden", as the talking points roll around the echo chamber that is the media, and as more and more truths come to light in the mainstream, I mourn for my American identity. I mourn for the faith I had in this country and its people to always do the right thing -- eventually. I mourn for the America that came together to rescue Baby Jessica from the well. I mourn for my lost innocence.

Every morning I light a candle which burns throughout the day on my kitchen stove. And on that candle I place my prayers for my family, my friends, for women and children everywhere, for Iraq and Iran and Palestine, for Darfur and Gaza, for troops everywhere in harm's way and for the victims of collateral damage.

Starting tomorrow, I will also place prayers for my lost America.

Truce?

As Rome burns, Nero diddles in Texas and we approach the fifth anniversary of the "Global War on Fundamentalist Extremist Factions and Non-State Actors who would do us harm because they hate our freedoms and want to see Islamic Fascist Anarchy from sea to shining sea while they carry out their barbarous acts of mayhem and murder on our bravest and finest as well as innocent civilians, purposely refusing to wear a recognizable uniform and stand in a straight line and shoot like real men but opt instead to pursue Weapons of Mass Destruction related capabilities funded by narco-terrorist states collaborating with teenage immigrant welfare mothers on drugs (apologies to the Austin Lounge Lizards) who have entered our fine country illegally and use the internet in an effort to cut and run back to their reality based world."

This weekend, the major television outlets turned their attention, 24/7, to the arrest of terrorist suspects in the UK and the logjam at European and American airports, a relief from the need for "talking heads" to reiterate their "expert opinions" and their "faith-based facts" on Hezbollah's connections to Syria and Iran and Israel's "right to defend herself" against aggression.

I am bone weary of the opinions of Israeli ambassador to the United States Dan Gillerman and the American Zionist Alan Dershowitz. No one reports on the bombing of Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon (or even explains why Palestinians have been in these camps in Lebanon for the last 58 years). And I've stopped waiting for that "Anderson Cooper/Katrina" moment: Cooper, along with all other major broadcasters, have so drunk the Likud Kool-Aid.

While the world's attention was focused on Lebanon (and now Heathrow), Israel continued to cut access for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, stage mass arrests, and kill children and women with impunity.

As for looking for the "precipitating event" for the July 12 incursion across the blue line into South Lebanon, George Monbiot, writing in The Guardian, may have answered my question:

"On May 26 this year, two officials of Islamic Jihad - Nidal and Mahmoud Majzoub - were killed by a car bomb in the Lebanese city of Sidon. This was widely assumed in Lebanon and Israel to be the work of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. In June, a man named Mahmoud Rafeh confessed to the killings and admitted that he had been working for Mossad since 1994. Militants in southern Lebanon responded, on the day of the bombing, by launching eight rockets into Israel. One soldier was lightly wounded. There was a major bust-up on the border, during which one member of Hizbullah (sic) was killed and several wounded, and one Israeli soldier wounded. But while the border region "remained tense and volatile", Unifil says it was "generally quiet" until July 12."

Then an Israeli soldier was captured in Gaza and two Israeli soldiers were captured in Lebanon and all hell broke loose. The response was immediate and totally out of proportion -- obviously the Israelis had another agenda (see Seymour Hersch's article in The New Yorker).

What gets little press is this: Of the casualties on the Israeli side, at least 2/3 of them are military; and of the remaining 1/3 (civilian) deaths, about 40% are Arab (Palestinian) Israelis without access to bomb shelters and/or air raid sirens. And Israel's inflated injury figures include citizens suffering from "anxiety", according to an Israeli military source. Anxiety? Don't get me started ...

So, we are now into the 15th hour of a cease fire -- and we'll see just how long this lasts. It pains me to say, but I doubt Israel wants a true peace with its neighbors. If it did, it would have acted in 1967 and implemented UN Resolution 242 instead of waiting 39 years for 1701, which does not address the root issue of the Palestinian people and their right to a state, a homeland.

Dare I ask, at what point does a country lose its right to exist?

Dear Anonymous

Sorry, friends, but I need to reinstall the word verification filter that prevents spam from being posted on my blog. If you want to comment on any of my thoughts, just follow the instructions and the comments should post and come through to me via my e-mail.

Wish the web were a friendlier place for bloggers, but I guess there will always be jerks who feel the need to "flash" the world (or just make trouble for the sake of trouble). But I can blog on trouble later ... There's certainly more than enough to go around.

Day 16

Day 16: This war has gone on long enough for CNN to have accumulated "stock footage" to run as filler on all of its programming -- a woman wailing in a Haifa doorway, leaflets falling from the sky in Tyre, tanks lining the road on the Israeli side of the Lebanese border, motorbikes dodging rubble in southern Beirut. I keep waiting for that "Anderson Cooper/Katrina" moment when someone in the western media will finally have seen enough carnage and wanton destruction to finally question why 2,500 lb. bombs are falling on civilian slums and speak truth to power. Waiting. And waiting ...

Tonight I noticed that most of the coverage is coming from south of the blue line (because its far safer?) And the IDF will not allow embeds. So the few journalists left in Lebanon do "talking points" rather than actual reporting and answer only the questions that are asked, never deviating from the script.*

Much has been made of the ball bearings in the Katyusha rockets, designed to inflict "maximum civilian damage" -- Katyusha rockets which are basically "point and shoot" like my $6 camera, with no targeting capability. Yet there's little mention of cluster munitions and phosphorus bombs being dropped on civilian areas of Lebanon with great precision, except when one happens to take out a UN station or a string of Red Cross ambulances "by accident". Since the US is providing these laser guided missiles and bunker busters (on a rush basis, I might add), I wonder if they, too, are tipped with depleted uranium such as the US military has been using in Iraq and what the long term environmental/health effects will be.

So far, in addition to UN outposts and Red Cross vehicles, the IDF has managed to hit roads, bridges, food depots, airports, gas stations, fuel depots, Palestinian refugee camps (dating back to 1948), civilians holding white bedsheets out the windows of minivans while attempting to flee to higher ground, and even make several successful strikes against Lebanese Army barracks, the very same Army that the world is counting on to take up the slack (under UN Resolution #1559) once Hezbollah is eliminated, or at least contained. Does anyone else see parallels with Fallujah in this picture?

In addition to the stock footage, new myths (or talking points) have developed over the last 16 days: Hezbollah as Jihadist, ties to Syria, Iran and even Al-Qaeda, a new Caliphate from Iran to Spain, and the ever popular (and particularly disgusting) Islamo-Fascism. As Gaza and the West Bank fall off the media radar and Iraq and Afghanistan recede into the background, all the rhetoric is now applied to Lebanon. Shrill voices are calling for Lebanon to uphold UN Resolution #1559 while the 66 plus resolutions (beginning with 242 and 338) regarding Israel's occupation are forgotten. (And John Bolton will probably squeak through the Senate towards a permanent appointment to the UN and be in a better position to keep the 66 plus resolutions regarding occupied territories, apartheid walls, civilian infrastructure, water grabs, land grabs and the protection of civilian populations under occupation from ever being discussed, let alone enforced.)

The US is generously giving $30 million in emergency aid to Lebanon. That's 1% of the $3 Billion given annually to Israel. One percent. The Bush Regime likes quantifiable data and metrics, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld. How's this? The Bush Regime has quantified Lebanese (or Palestinian) life as worth one percent of Israeli life.


*A footnote: Did anyone else think that Prime Minister al-Malaki's speech before the bicameral session of congress sounded like it had been written by Karl Rove or Dick Cheney and then translated into Arabic?

Clean Up in Aisle L

So ill from the news. Shades of 1982, 1988, 2000, 2003. I won't update this site with *news* because anyone who has found the site has already heard it all. But the idea that the Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora is talking of suing Israel for damages struck me as not quite good enough. I put forth the following:

Sue George W. Bush and Condi Rice for not demanding that Israel stop the indiscriminate killing and wanton destruction in Lebanon from Day One. The idea of giving Israel "another week or so" to clean out Hezbollah is just disgusting. It will only create more destruction and more enemies.

Sue every member of the Senate and the House, present and past, living and dead, for the last 58 years for gifting $3 billion plus of American tax dollars annually to the State of Israel to use as it will, ignoring any caveats against the use of funds for construction in the occupied territories and/or offensive war.

Sue every major (and minor) weapons and equipment manufacturer who has sold weapons to Israel which are now being used to target civilian populations and infrastructure. And don't do it in American courts but on the international stage, beginning tomorrow.

Once all these lawsuits have been filed, I'd suggest that it's time for Abu Mazen to think of a Clean Up on Aisle P (which includes W and G), beginning with a lawsuit against Caterpillar. Let's not wait until even more Palestinian infrastructure is demolished, more Palestinian land appropriated, more women and children dead.

Of course, none of these lawsuits will bring back the life of a single child. Time for me to cry now.

War on Wheat?

After watching 24 straight hours of news on CNN and MS-NBC, I've concluded that Israel has declared a "War on Wheat".

Words like "asymmetrical", "disproportionate" and "restraint" have been repeated until they have lost their meaning. The media keeps reminding me that Hamas started this cycle of violence by kidnapping an IDF soldier on June 25, while neglecting to mention that on June 24 the IDF kidnapped a Palestinian doctor and his brother from their home in Gaza and they have not been heard from since (see Ha'Aretz's Gideon Levy's reports of July 8) or that the previous months were a living hell with indiscriminate rockets, bombs, gunboat and helicopter strikes against 1.4 million Palestinians in Gaza, the nightly sonic booms keeping frightened children awake, the closing of border crossings turning all of Gaza into one large open-air prison. Nor do they discuss the incursions into the West Bank, the land grabs, the detentions and the arrests which occur on a daily basis.

But, unlike Gaza, where every missile or bomb is a direct hit on a "munitions factory or warehouse" and all the dead and injured are "militants and/or armed terrorists", there are actually international media in Lebanon who can send out live feeds and actually report what might pass for a truth if there weren't so much ridiculous and ill-informed commentary.

In retaliation for Hezbollah's attack on IDF forces at the blue line of Israel's northern border and the capture of two soldiers, 15 civilians in a minibus were obliterated in Southern Lebanon Saturday while trying to seek protection from nearby UN forces. Other "legitimate" targets have included airports and landing strips (3), border crossings into Syria (2), roads, bridges, ports, lighthouses, gas stations, petrol tanks and reserves, religious and political offices in heavily populated civilian neighborhoods, television and radio stations and several actual Lebanese military installations.

But strangest of all, the Israelis targeted and took out three wheat silos. Since when does a country declare a "War on Wheat"?

Eyeless in Gaza

Eyeless in Gaza -- apologies to Aldous Huxley.

Eyesless in Gaza -- as the mainstream media avoids reporting on Gaza (for days on end) until today's events on Israel's northern border. And, once again, Israel uses a blow torch to swat a fly. And, once again, Palestinians (and now Lebanese) pay the price while the Regime in Washington tries to drag Syria and Iran into the conflict.

Eyeless in Gaza -- now eyeless, headless, and homeless. No bridges, electricity, running water, sewage or trash services; no food, medicine, money; no access or exit; no airport, sea port, border crossings; no hope. Was this the plan behind Sharon's unilateral withdrawal 11 months ago -- to create one large open air prison where not even the press or NGO's can access the truth and to drive 1.3 million men, women and children (mostly children) either mad (as in insane) or mad (as in another generation ready to experience yet more war)?

Eyeless in Gaza -- no witnesses. Only tears falling from blind eyes.

It's the Economy (Stupid!)

Watched the Dow plummet 135 points on Friday due to a variety of factors, one of which was fear of inflation due to the dramatic increase in the average hourly wage paid in May -- an increase of 0.5%. The "average hourly wage" is more than three times the "minimum wage" of $5.15 per hour (which Congress refused to increase -- again -- while voting themselves a hefty sum). Didn't catch the exact number quoted for the "average hourly wage", but it was less than $18 per hour.

I'm not a math whiz, but 0.5% of $18 is nine cents. So a whopping nine cents sent the Dow reeling at week's end. Interesting ... I wonder who got the nine cents (72 cents per day), what he or she plans to spend it on, and who will take the blame the problems with the economy (stupid!)

Not Getting "It"

I don't get it ... It's justified as self-defense for the IDF to target cars carrying elected Hamas officials with missiles fired from helicopters and to bomb a Hamas-run Islamic University in Gaza, but if the PA or Hamas were to target a Yeshiva in the Occupied Territories, it would be labeled as anti-Semitic; if a Muslim were to damage one stone of a seminary anywhere in the Western world, it would be considered an act of Islamic terrorism.

I don't get it ... It's perfectly acceptable for George W. Bush or any number of talking heads from the US government, its think tanks or the media (Fox News, CNN, MS-NBC) to make reference to "Islamo-Fascism", but if anyone were to refer to Judeo-Fascism, they would be labeled as anti-Semitic; if anyone were to utter the words Christian-Fascists, they would be considered a threat to Western Civilization as we know it.

I don't get it ... The Bush Regime labels Iraq, Iran and North Korea as the "Axis of Evil". Then the Regime refuses face-to-face talks with either Iran or North Korea, but invades Iraq (Hello? No WMD!), continues to threaten Iran (while still refusing two-party talks), and is "shocked, just shocked I tell you", when the one country who actually may have or want such weapons attempts to launch a missile that might, just might, have the range to hit Alaska. And Bush still refuses face-to-face talks, calling for six-party talks that have never worked.

I don't get it ...

Miami Heat

Got caught up in CNN's coverage of last night's raid on a poor section of Miami and the arrest of seven would-be "terrorists". For three hours I watched (and listened closely) as various reporters on the ground, pundits, experts and politicians tried to fill hours of air time with little or no information.

After years of being a news junkie, my first prayer was: "Oh God, please don't let them be Muslim or Arab or Black." Don't think He heard me. But as the evening unfolded on CNN, I watched the case unfold as well.

A reporter on the ground was asked to describe the neighborhood and he obliged with: "Well, it's lower cla... I mean, lower income." That was a brilliant start!

Another pundit was asked to speculate about the seven men arrested and he obliged with: "They may be Nation of Islam or Black Muslims or Black Separatists or Black Panthers or Five Percenters." (My God, does he even understand what a Five Percenter is?)

And within an hour it was pretty clear from the coverage (and lack of information) that this would be a case of "conspiracy" trussed up by an "undercover informant/agent" and that the whole thing smacked of entrapment.

My instincts aren't bad. Today's four separate news conferences outlining the four "conspiracy charges" against the seven alleged terror suspects reinforced my initial reaction that this would probably fall apart on grounds of entrapment.

Unfortunately, the damage has been done to both American Muslims and Blacks, immigrants and Haitians. Tonight's press release from CAIR (the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations) requesting that "...media professionals not to refer to the seven terror suspects arrested in Miami as 'Muslims'" came 24 hours too late. As the story continues to unfold and more is learned of "The Seas of David", CNN (and every other major news outlet) had carried the water for the Bush Regime, once again.

The more important story of today's revelation about a secret government program to track global bank transfers was buried. And the image of "Home-Grown" Muslim Terrorists "conspiring with Al-Qaeda" in the Miami Heat is what everyone will remember.