Dove's Eye View

The Stakes: Nuclear War

We need to speak clearly. Bush's plans for Iran include the possibility of nuclear war. America might strike first. George Lakoff makes it plain: The Words None Dare Say: Nuclear War | The Huffington Post.

Bunker busters. Do you really think they are going to be harmless? Lakoff says they'll poison aquifers far away from the point of entry. Is that okay with you, or do you hate Iranians so much that you don't care?

It's not just a moral question, it's a question of our survival as a species. First strike nukes will not keep America (or Lebanon) safe.

Let me say this: I don't believe the recent "evidence" of Iranian involvement in producing Iraqi bombs. Even if it were true, as Lakoff asks - do roadside bombs that blow up Humvees warrant nuclear war?

Let me also say: this casual talk of CIA "black ops" in Lebanon makes me sick to my stomach and ready to renounce my motherland, the USA. We are already doing black ops in Iran to try to destabilize that country. It's unconscionable and it doesn't really work. Remember Mossadeq? In 1953 in Iran, the CIA bombed people, blamed it on Communists, and set off street riots, toppling a democratically elected, PRO-WESTERN leader. So they got the Shah in as dictator, but he only lasted 25 years and good riddance.

Black ops in Lebanon. Think about what that implies. CIA black ops in Lebanon. I'm not going to spell it out. My Lebanese readers know what this suggests. Shame. Shame. Shame.

America's current leaders are sick, deluded and foolish, and any Lebanese who believe that such people will protect them or help them are just delusional.

Virginia apologizes for role in slavery

About time, too: Virginia apologizes for role in slavery - Yahoo! News.

the Virginia General Assembly voted unanimously Saturday to express "profound regret" for the state's role in slavery.

I was thinking about the cost of slavery. Let's leave aside the trauma visited from one generation to the next, which can be hard to measure but one must agree exists.

How about let's think about a hypothetical slave owned by my real great-great-grandmother in Georgia. That slave had no education. She was freed at the end of the Civil War, but she didn't own property and didn't have the advantages my ancestor did. She couldn't work at anything but menial jobs, and her husband would have been limited by his circumstances. Her daughter might have worked for my great-grandmother as a cook. My great-grandmother got to go to a nice women's college, paid for by the proceeds of the plantation still in the family until 1904. I don't know much about this great-grandmother, but she kept a nice home, and all her children, including my grandmother, went to college.

While my grandmother married poor, she employed African-American servants to help her with her children and household chores. She taught English and Spanish, was interested in the opera and travel. Her children all went to college, and have all prospered. Did the children of her African-American household help have the same advantages? Not likely. They faced much, much greater obstacles, indeed complete barriers, to prosperity.

Jumping to my generation. The great-great-granddaughter of the hypothetical slave owned by my ancestor has several generations of under-educated parents, while I, the off-spring of the white plantation owner, have several generations of college-educated parents. Perhaps the African-American of my generation or my mother's generation got herself into a decent high school and went to college. But the economic effects of so many generations of deprivation resonate unto the present day. Economists have measured the wealth gap between white and black citizens of America. It is large and it is real.

Even though I am from a white Southern family that has not had any money for a hundred years, I inherited privilege - education and class privilege - that my cousins (and can anyone doubt that African-American descendants of slaves are the cousins of white Southerners?) privilege my cousins did not receive from their parents.

Apologies are only the beginning. White Americans have to recognize the cost to black Americans of slavery, racism and white privilege. Do some black Americans succeed? Of course. But the achievement gap is real and many aspects of it can be traced back to the continuing after-effects of 250 years of slavery and a hundred years of segregation and Jim Crow.

Then there's this:

Sponsors of the resolution say they know of no other state that has apologized for slavery, although Missouri lawmakers are considering such a measure.

Woops. I just heard the head of the NAACP on the radio saying this ain't so. California voted to apologize back in the 90s. This news missed me somehow - where was I?

Anyway. I am glad to see that my mother's state voted to apologize. Again, it's a start.

Jane Smiley: What Would You Do If Bush Declared Martial Law?

Jane Smiley is my hero: What Would You Do If Bush Declared Martial Law? | The Huffington Post.

What would *you* do? And how do you know it isn't happening already?

Read the New York Times link in her piece.

Busy

Reading with Yiyun Li at Works in Progress, Mills College, Tuesday 2/20.

College friend Peggy Orenstein signing her latest book for me after her funny, poignant, evocative reading in Montclair, Oakland, tonight.

I won't post photos of the 4 day L.A. trip, the kid's birthday party, the husband's birthday dinner, the writing of thesis, Shakespeare paper and short story, but that's all on the plate as well this month. Sorry no posting for a while.

Stay tuned for reviews of Peggy's book, Waiting for Daisy, and of the latest translation of Mahmoud Darwish's poems from Copper Canyon Press.

Maria Golia Talks Back to Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The New York Times just posted a review of The Caged Virgin, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. If you want a more informed view of this book, read Maria Golia's excellent review, which appeared in the Times Literary Supplement last winter. The review is not on-line, so Maria kindly emailed me the text and permission to reprint.

It's not that Hirsi Ali says outright that all Muslims are fundamentalists; she just attributes fundamentalist beliefs and practices to all Muslims.

... Hirsi Ali erroneously states that 'there is a strict taboo in Muslim families on talking about birth control, abortion and sexual violence.' Islam, like its Judeo-Christian antecedents, bans premarital sex, but not birth control. The Prophet Mohammed advocated coitus interruptus, not the most effective means of family planning, but in keeping with Islam's encouragement of sexual activity as a source of marital pleasure, not solely procreation. Egypt's state-sponsored birth control programs began in the 1960s. In Iran, condoms manufactured in a government-operated facility are distributed through clinics and state-sponsored family planning counseling centers. By contrast, the Vatican, which condemns birth control, recently announced that its ban on condoms may be lifted - for married people whose partner is HIV positive.

Maria Golia has lived in Cairo since at least 1983, when I met her there. She wrote a book about that city which Issandr al-Imrani of The Arabist calls one of the best on the topic (see City of Sand, at left). In order to further refute the sweeping generalizations and mistakes of The Caged Virgin, Maria reviews the anthology by Fawzia Afzal Khan: Shattering the Stereotypes, giving it high marks by comparison.

If you're interested in women and Islam, you would do well to start with Maria Golia's essay, then go get the Khan anthology.

Public Readings Spring 2007

I'll be reading in public with my fellow MFA students (and one professor) several times this spring:

1) Works in Progress
with Yiyun Li
Tuesday, February 20, 5:30 PM
Mills College
Bender Room, Carnegie Building
5000 MacArthur Boulevard
Oakland, CA

2) with Jinky DeRivera, Patty Tumang, and other authors of
Homelands: Women's Journeys Across Race, Place, and Time
Wednesday, March 7, 7 PM
Cody's Books San Francisco
2 Stockton Street
San Francisco, CA 94108
(415) 773-0444

3) with Micheline Marcom's Craft of Fiction class
Wednesday, May 2, 7 PM
Laurel Bookstore
4100 MacArthur Blvd
Oakland, CA 94619
(510) 531-2073

Also, please note that the brilliant Mills writer (disclosure - and my workshop teacher this term) Daniel Alarcon is on tour for his new book, Lost City Radio. He's going all over the USA so look out for him. The book is set in a city much like Lima, Peru. The LA Times calls it "remarkable" and the Washington Post says:

"[Alarcón's] words express, eloquently and exactly, the self-destructiveness of violent insurgency and official retaliation. Lost City Radio is a fable for an entire continent, and is no less pertinent in other parts of the world where different languages are spoken in different climates but where the same ruinous dance is played out."

I'm reading his first story collection, War by Candlelight, which is wonderful. Buy his book, and go hear him read too.

Yeah, I hear the peanut gallery jeering at me for plugging a teacher's book. What, I should shut up about a great book because I am in the author's workshop? This blog has always promoted people I know (or don't know but admire). If you have friends and a blog, you should do the same. Dove's Eye View is not a putatively "objective" news outlet, it's a public diary written by one person.

Trees and Crops Turn Back the Desert

The most hopeful article I've seen in a very long time: In Niger, Trees and Crops Turn Back the Desert - New York Times.

In this dust-choked region, long seen as an increasingly barren wasteland decaying into desert, millions of trees are flourishing, thanks in part to poor farmers whose simple methods cost little or nothing at all.

Better conservation and improved rainfall have led to at least 7.4 million newly tree-covered acres in Niger, researchers have found, achieved largely without relying on the large-scale planting of trees or other expensive methods often advocated by African politicians and aid groups for halting desertification, the process by which soil loses its fertility.

Recent studies of vegetation patterns, based on detailed satellite images and on-the-ground inventories of trees, have found that Niger, a place of persistent hunger and deprivation, has recently added millions of new trees and is now far greener than it was 30 years ago.

These gains, moreover, have come at a time when the population of Niger has exploded, confounding the conventional wisdom that population growth leads to the loss of trees and accelerates land degradation, scientists studying Niger say.

The vegetation is densest, researchers have found, in some of the most densely populated regions of the country.

This addresses several of my climate change nightmares (desertification of California and Lebanon, for instance)

Cracks in the wall

Blog buddy Richard Silverstein is the latest to publish in the Guardian: Comment is free: Cracks in the wall.

AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee have enjoyed virtual hegemony as the voice of American Jewry on Israel. It is why presidents, senators and Congress members have voted AIPAC's way (until recently) on virtually all legislation of interest to the group.

But now, if you put your finger to the wind, you can sense a change. Jimmy Carter's book is a sensation, having sold 200,000 copies as of January 14. The more Jewish greybeards attack it, the more it sells. The book seems to have struck a chord.

The old Israel "consensus" and leadership approaches are ineffective. When AIPAC speaks, politicians no longer salute quite as crisply as they once did.

From your lips to God's ear, Richard. Please read the rest of Richard's essay, part of a group of independent Jewish voices published recently. And visit Richard's blog, Tikun Olam (not the same as the magazine Tikkun). Dove's Eye View is aggregated over at the Israel/Palestine group blog, which he hosts (I think).

Who speaks for Jews?

The Guardian (UK) is running several pieces by Jews who dissent from right-wing Israeli policies: Comment is free: Who speaks for Jews in Britain?.

Who speaks for Jews in Britain?

We will not accept the vilification of those who protest at injustices carried out in the name of the Jewish people.

Read the whole thing. It's illuminating.

Another article in the series calls for independent Jewish voices to speak up.

Also look for Richard Silverstein in the same space. By the way, Richard notes that the Jewish newspaper The Forward has mentioned his work exposing the harrassment of Jewish progressives. Go read about it.

Hat tip The Arabist.

Kuwaiti Music Video: Like Jon Stewart Crossed With an Arab Britney Spears

You have to see this music video to believe it. It's a political satire as done by the Britney Spears of the Arab world channelling Jon Stewart while singing and belly dancing: Kuwaiti Singer's Video Satirizes the Bush War. The link is to Helena Cobban, who blogged a great explanation of the video. Read it to help you understand what the heck is going on - but the video itself tells the story, even if you don't understand the Arabic.

"Within the highly wired world of the urban Middle East, the latest and most potent means of political communication are short videos that are disseminated either via YouTube or from cellphone to cellphone.

"I'm writing this from Egypt. Everyone here agrees that the video images of the hanging of Saddam Hussein played a huge role in stirring up anti-US and also anti-Shiite feelings among many of the Sunni Muslims who make up the majority of the Arab world's people.

"Now, a well-known Kuwaiti singer called Shams has come out with a new 5-minute video called Ahlan! Ezayek? ("Hi! How are you"), which is a hard-hitting anti-Bush satire. She energetically sings and performs a well-known Egyptian popular song of romantic repudiation. "Hi! How are you... You think you're so great? I never want to see you again!" while hamming it up with a dizzying array of props representing aspects of Bush's policy in the Middle East. And yes, that includes Washington's "information" policies, too, with repeated visual references to newspaper stories and to round-table type TV talk-shows..." - Helena Cobban

Hurry, hurry and watch it. I am stunned. It's hilarious and biting all at once. By the way, for bonus points, Shams satirizes Arabs who get plastic surgery to look more European.

Juan Cole weighs in.