Dove's Eye View

The New York Times Calls Out Bush & Co.

Link: Looking at America - New York Times.

There are too many moments these days when we cannot recognize our country. Sunday was one of them, as we read the account in The Times of how men in some of the most trusted posts in the nation plotted to cover up the torture of prisoners by Central Intelligence Agency interrogators by destroying videotapes of their sickening behavior. It was impossible to see the founding principles of the greatest democracy in the contempt these men and their bosses showed for the Constitution, the rule of law and human decency.

It was not the first time in recent years we’ve felt this horror, this sorrowful sense of estrangement, not nearly. This sort of lawless behavior has become standard practice since Sept. 11, 2001.

The Times has stood by too quietly until now. Their editorial choices have tended to let this administration get away with murder and the abrogation of our Constitution. Finally the Times editorial page tells the truth and takes a stand for American ideals.

اللحم الأحمر: ما ثمن لذّته؟ | جريدة الأخبار

UPDATE - What the cow really says in the cartoon - a new translation - see below:

That's me writing in Al Akhbar about factory farmed meat: اللحم الأحمر: ما ثمن لذّته؟ | جريدة الأخبار.

If you can't read the Arabic, at least check out the cartoon of a cow in a blood-spattered butcher's apron, standing in front of a bunch of steaks for sale.

UPDATE: According to Cousin Nick at Harvard Hospital, the cow is saying: "I promise you I don't have mad cow disease."

New Update Cousin Camille in Dubai translates the cartoon thus:

In Arabic, the cow says "We promise (or guarantee) you that our meat is free from Mad Human Disease."

He used the term "Jounoun Al Bashar". Jounoun means mad or going crazy (like majnoun). Bashar means Human beings, but typically only refers to men and women and not animals.

I have always heard the Mad Cow disease in Arabic as jounoun al baqar.

It is actually funny, as the cow believes that they are fine and the humans are going mad.

Read the English original here.

Read Professor Rami Zurayk's article (in Arabic) Meat or Beans?, in the same section. I believe that in it he calls for Lebanese and other Arabs to eat local, traditional, plant-based foods.

Red hat

Red hat II
Originally uploaded by bedouina

This is what I look like now - new hat; new scarlet shawl; Christmas coral necklace that reverses to mother of pearl; make up. I'm compensating for the lack of hair. Taken on Christmas day. Click on the picture to get a better view.

Posted to reassure all the friends and relatives that I really am doing fine.

All those who believe

The Washington Monthly has a thread going about Giuliani's staffer with the religious bigotry problem. In comments I responded to somebody who defined Muslim for us as "those who obey God." This is the story I told:

A dozen years ago, my Lebanese Christian father and I were touring medieval Sidon, Lebanon, near our hometown. I wanted to see an ancient mosque, and since I was wearing a large shawl and modest clothing, I covered my hair and we went in. My dad however started taking pictures, which I thought was uncool; sure enough a man began saying "are they Muslims? They're not Muslims!" A buzz went up, and somebody else asked us to leave. As Dad was putting on his shoes in the vestibule, a crowd gathered around us. People looked mad. I kept calm and yet was a little concerned about the situation.

A man stepped up to my dad and asked again, as if on behalf of the crowd: but are you Muslim?

My dad quoted Koran to him - loose translation: "All those who believe in One God are Muslims." Everybody started laughing and the tension broke - the questioner said, fine, fine, but you have to leave now. We did.

"All those who believe in One God are Muslims." Just remember that.

Leila Writes for Al-Akhbar: No Factory-farmed Meat!

Rami Zurayk tells me that today's print edition of Al-Akhbar carries my opinion piece on industrialized, factory-farmed meat. I wrote it in English, natch, and Professor Zurayk translated. Readers with access to the print newspaper can find the piece in the "Bada'el" (Alternatives) section. Wikipedia entry on Al-Akhbar here. It seems I am writing for a liberal, progressive paper which is against the American project in Lebanon. Sounds okay to me. I am not categorically against any American project in Lebanon, but I can certainly say that if my current President and his minions are behind a project, then it's bad for everybody but the plutocrats.

When the online link becomes available, I will post. You'll have to read it in Arabic, though!

My writing group

I frequently mention the writing group that keeps me going now that graduate school is done. We have been meeting every two or three weeks since June '07, reading a book together and discussing it, then reading our own work in progress aloud. Here are graduation pictures of the posse, from May '07:

Group shot with teacher
Originally uploaded by bedouina

With Micheline Aharonian Marcom (left), our inspiration. From left: Micheline, Carolina De Robertis, me, Will Lynch, and Alison Towata.

From left: Will, Alison, Julia Azar Rubin, me and Scott Hoshida.

Sara Campos

Carolina and Jinky (Jenesha De Rivera, co-editor of the Homelands Anthology).

I think that's everybody. One of these days we'll do a group shot with all of us. I miss my writing group over the holidays - we're meeting in less than two weeks but it doesn't seem soon enough. Their amazing writing and their inspired readings of texts have helped me grow as a writer. I need the group like I need food and sunshine.

Benazir Bhutto: Informed Comment

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto has only just come across the wires, and we are all grappling for information and context. I rely upon Juan Cole for Middle East comment, and he now points us to his group blog, Informed Comment: Global Affairs, for information and analysis. Manan Ahmed has the first report on the Bhutto assassination.

Keep an eye on Colonel Patrick Lang's blog for inside military intelligence gossip and analysis on Bhutto and Pakistan.

I am deeply sorry to see such violence. May the world continue to muddle through this latest crisis; may peace prevail.

Pierre Tristam on Season's Greetings

"Candide" says what I've been thinking: Merry Christmas All / Pierre Tristam [Candide's Notebooks].

I remember that Christians and Muslims mutually wished each other Merry Christmas and Eid Mubarak as each occasion came in turn, never worrying about the kind of trashy disclaimers that attach to so many of our greetings these days (“in case you celebrate Christmas”) or the even worse detergent-water greetings that now dull so much of the season’s colors (“Happy Holidays”).

The vapidity of “Happy Holidays” misses the very point of the greeting: we wish each other Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah or Eid Mubarak not because we’re necessarily Christian or Jewish or Muslim, but even more so because we may be none of those things, and because others are: the wish primarily celebrates the other person, and only secondarily, if at all, the religion itself. It celebrates our mutual basking in the spirit of the season, whatever its religious stripe. It celebrates our willingness to share a planet, to love the pluralism of it all.

The less Christian I am, the more I welcome Christmas wishes—or wishes of any hue. It would be supremely stupid of me, as a one-time Catholic, to be offended if a Muslim wished me Eid Mubarak, or a devout Christian wished me merry Christmas, or a Jew, even one who spent part of his conscripted years occupying south Lebanon, wished me happy Hanukah

I grew up determinedly secular and non-believing and am becoming more Christian rather than less as I move through life. However I would never feel insulted if someone wished me Eid Mubarak or Happy New Year on Rosh Hashanah. In fact I am always pleased to be included.

This year I sent out cards that said Merry Christmas because that's how I feel about it, it's my tradition, and that's what I say.

I think the whole "Happy Holidays" custom is driven by a desire not to offend the easily offended - atheists who don't want to be Merry Christmased, folk of other religions who might feel touchy about being in the minority. Here in the Free Republic of Berkeley-Oaklandistan, where the churches are empty and the cafes and restaurants are full, being a person of any faith makes you in the minority. Perhaps I'm saying Merry Christmas more just out of pure rebelliousness (wouldn't be the first time). In any case ...

Christmas is drawing to a close and I wish all the peace of the season. Merry Christmas - and have a Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas to all

We took our children to a local church last night for a child-friendly Christmas Eve service. I had never visited Fruitvale Presbyterian before, but I drive by its handsome old Neo-Spanish sanctuary at least twice a week on my rounds.

The service was held in a small chapel with the high, wood-beamed ceilings and stucco walls of the classic Spanish mission church. The beams were decorated with painted curlicues just barely visible in the candlelight. The pews had been pushed into rows along either wall, a most unusual set-up for a church, and a table full of unlit candlesticks and another small table with unlit Advent candles stood between the pews, close enough for the children to fondle the nativity scene strewn amidst the candlesticks.

At the front of the chapel, the pastor, a young man in open collar shirt, set up a laptop and a guitar; an even younger man with curly hair tuned an electric mandolin. Pastor Monte led us in a service that was at once casual and rich with ancient music and allusion. We sang Lo How a Rose, and Oh Come Emmanuel, songs I know almost by heart (and can even harmonize sometimes, without a hymnal). My children were enchanted; in the middle of the service they got to light Advent candles with the long brass candle-lighter, and then they were offered tambourines from a basket to accompany a couple of songs. At least a dozen children, from pre-adolescents to babies, attended along with parents, grandparents, and miscellaneous parishioners.

The best part of the service for my kids was the impromptu pageant. With no rehearsing, the children went off with the preacher's wife to be costumed in homemade robes. My Joseph got to be - Joseph, and emerged wearing two towels on his head, one twisted and tied like an agal. He hovered around the young Mary and her baby (doll) Jesus laid upon a footstool. Then the wise men appeared, among them my son Jacob, six, stern and completely in character as Wise Man #3. Dressed in a miniature choir robe, with towel on his head beneath a magnificent gold-jeweled (cloth) crown, he marched up and down the sanctuary, never looking at his parents once. There were also many tiny angels with wings, and a shepherd in a fleece jacket who smiled to show two brand new, half-grown front teeth. The pastor sat to one side and read the Gospel story, and the children appeared pretty much on cue, with subtle directing by Mrs. Pastor.

My children could not believe their luck at getting to be in a play, with costumes; they spent most of the rest of the evening talking about the drama rather than the impending orgy of presents and candy.

Afterwards we went to dinner at our favorite Indian restaurant close to my husband's childhood home. The moon, just past full, rose bright above the hills. Tomorrow (today - I have insomnia again, possible side effect of chemo) we will dine at my mother-in-law's, with my mom, her sister, and my husband's uncle and aunt. I could not ask for a happier holiday. (But I miss my father...)

Merry Christmas to everyone.

Aziz Shihab, Arab-American Journalist

The Radius of Arab Writers forwards this obituary for the Texas journalist Aziz Shihab, native of Palestine:

We are very sad to announce the death of AZIZ SHIHAB, in Dallas, October 22, 2007.

Born in 1927 in Jerusalem, Palestine, he and his family were dispossessed of their home in 1948. He began working as a journalist in Jerusalem for the BBC while still in his teens. Emigrating to the United States as a college student in 1950, he married Miriam Allwardt of St. Louis in 1951. He worked as an importer and journalist for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, the Jerusalem Times, the San Antonio Express-News, and the Dallas Morning News. After retirement, he started his own paper, The Arab Star, for the Dallas metroplex. He was author of two memoirs, A TASTE OF PALESTINE and DOES THE LAND REMEMBER ME? A MEMOIR OF PALESTINE, published by Syracuse University Press in May, 2007. He volunteered as a public relations liason for Physicians for Peace. A wide traveler, and a frequent public speaker, he was a strong advocate for justice for Palestinian people. We will never forget his great and precious spirit, his congenial good humor, appetite for living, and wise insights. Survivors include his wife, Miriam, son, Adlai and his wife Janis, daughter Naomi and her husband Michael, and grandchildren, Ashley and Austin Shihab and Madison Nye, as well as numerous nieces and nephews.

I bought Mr. Shihab's cookbook in a San Francisco bookstore in the early 90s, before I even knew of his daughter, the famous poet Naomi Shihab Nye. My condolences to the whole family...