Dove's Eye View

Art against the Iraq war - Bitter Fruits

Laura McCallum, a sculptor and teacher in Brooklyn, NY, began a project six years ago to draw a tiny image in honor of each American killed in the Iraq war. The scroll now has 4,259 images on it, and takes up an enormous hallway.

Laura stood up with me at my marriage to David MacLeod, and more recently traveled with me to Lebanon and Syria in 2008.

Informed Comment: Have Bush and the Neocons Ruined it for the Israelis?

Informed Comment: Have Bush and the Neocons Ruined it for the Israelis?.

Let's take some of the basic techniques of propaganda practiced by Bush and compare them to those deployed by the Israeli leadership in the past 8 days.

Read the whole thing, point by point. Helps me cope with the maddening spin and obfuscation of the mainstream media. Counter propaganda, indeed.

Shoes At the White House Gate

"Muntadar al-Zaidi should not be in jail, George Bush should be in jail." Code Pink delivers shoes - and speeches - to the White House gates.

The speeches here.

In solidarity with Muntadar al-Zaidi, the widows and orphans of Iraq, and all the dead in this terrible, mistaken war.

Look here - this angry New Yorker took off his shoe and shook it, sole first, at the president of the Metropolitan Transit Authority. He was hustled away, but told reporters later that he wanted to show his contempt for the leaders who would raise fares for the disabled. The shoe demonstrator said he was inspired by the "brave Iraqi journalist." Thanks to the Angry Arab for this tip.

Hayan Charara Wins NEA Grant

Hayan Charara, poet, translator, editor and teacher, just won a $25,000 creative writing grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Congratulations, Hayan, for this well-deserved award. You will put it to good use, since you have already produced an impressive body of work.

Read some of Hayan's poems linked in this old post here.

Hayan kindly sent me a copy of his excellent anthology of Arab-American poetry, Inclined to Speak, when it came out this spring. I was in chemo and while I read many poems, my mind was scattered and porous and retained nothing but an impression of Arab-American friends gathered together between the covers. This morning in the quiet hour before the children awoke, I picked up the book and read poems by Elmaz Abinader, Ziad Shlah, Eliot Khalil Wilson, Sharif Al-Musa; then the children got up and I promised myself to return, to read Deema Shehabi, Matthew Shenoda, Fady Joudah, Suheir Hammad, so many more.

From Ziad Shlah's Thirty-three Beads on a String:

17
I'll cut for you the last swath
of blue from the sky, sever my
hand if you'll let me

but for five minutes more
leave me to sleep without the
knowledge of war.

18
A qanoun weeps
near the funeral of music.

The grant will give Hayan time to write and access to more audiences. I hope it will also remind readers to buy and read Inclined to Speak, to hear the voices of Arab-American writers: multiplicitous, challenging, gorgeous, urgent, of this moment.

Stories Heal

Stories can drive a nation to war. Look at the story Bush and Cheney sold us about Saddam Hussein and the weapons of mass destruction. So many Americans (and Europeans) believed the story that we went into Iraq and committed ourselves to enormous expense of life and treasure. All because of a story based on lies.

Stories can also move us to tears. I am in mourning for a young Brooklyn rabbi and his wife, because of the story of his toddler found weeping in Mumbai with blood stains on his baby pants. I have also been distressed this month over the suffering of the people of Gaza, again, because of the stories of the Israeli blockade, cutting off food and medical supplies, again.

Stories can also heal. Many of my Jewish-American friends from childhood and college days began to wake up and "get it" about the Palestinians, maybe years after we were in school together, because they remembered my stories of my experiences in Lebanon of the 1970s.

My friend Len Traubman works tirelessly to create communities where people from opposing sides of the great Middle East divide listen to each other. His motto: an enemy is someone whose story you do not know. Len and his wife Libby founded a Jewish-Palestinian dialogue group in their hometown many years ago which is ongoing; they also travel around the country and the world promoting dialogue through all manner of events, workshops, and retreats.

A few days ago he sent me one of his regular emails full of news about people talking, listening and building peace together. Here's an article about a movement to foster understanding between Jewish synagogues and Muslim mosques across the USA:
Weekend of Twinning.

A quote from an email Len received:

We (Beth Shir Sholom of Santa Monica) were one of the 50 synagogues that “twinned” with a Mosque (the Islamic Center of Southern California) this past weekend. It was a marvelous experience with people from the Mosque invited to our Shabbat celebration on Friday (including Muslim call to worship, Muslim prayers, Muslim teachings and a symbolic “spiritual exchange” in which we took responsibility for the welfare of each other’s children!).
On Sunday we were invited to the Islamic Center for prayer (in which many Jews, including me, participated), a meal and discussion about Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.
We intend to continue our relationship with a Muslim-Jewish Chavurah, a multi-religious exchange program in our Religious School, an exchange with the local Muslim preschool, a blog and a musical event.

Len and Libby just spent several days in Houston, TX, leading dialogue events among Muslims, Christians and Jews in the area.

In church today I heard the pastor tell us to focus on what we want, not what we don't want. Focus on health. Focus on what's good about our lives, about the people around us, about others in our world.

Len and Libby Traubman, through their work, help us focus on the humanity of people we might think of as our enemies. This is the only way to resolve any of our problems. We need competent police to protect us from killers. But the vast majority of human beings are not killers, and in order for nations and neighborhoods to coexist in peace, we must cling to our humanity and remind ourselves of the humanity of others. Even of those we think are our enemies.

The cynical like to sneer at dialogue groups as ineffective. I myself sometimes wonder - what are we doing this for? But I ask you how effective guns and bombs have been in creating peace, justice, compassion and community in Israel, in Palestine, in Lebanon. The best weapons against the propaganda of the powerful are the stories of ordinary people, told to each other with respect and attention.

Thank you Len and Libby for helping so many share their stories in pursuit of reconciliation and justice.

Good News All Over

Patrick Lang did a post last week titled Good News in the Levant. The good news just keeps on coming on the Middle East political front, so take your eyes off the stock market and the US economy and consider these developments:

July 11: Lebanon forms a government.

July 16: U.S. Envoy to Join Meeting With Iranian - NYTimes.com.

President Bush has authorized the most significant American diplomatic contact with Iran since the Islamic Revolution in 1979

(Just like Obama said he would do, while McCain said it would be treason)

July 16: Israelis and Hizbullah exchange prisoners and remains, clearing out one set of conflicts. You don't have to think these guys are heroes - just note that a painful impasse that has caused bloodshed over the years has now been resolved.

Pentagon to recommend faster drawdown of Iraq troops.

Ongoing: Turkey mediating talks between Israel and Syria. The link analyzes the U.S. role.

Reasons why US won't attack Iran after all. Seem convincing to me even though I've never heard of the commenter...

I have selfish motives for being happy about all these hopeful signs from the Middle East - I plan to travel to Lebanon and Syria at the end of September through mid-October. Only war, economic collapse rendering my family bankrupt, or sudden change in my health would prevent me. It's looking like my health is in good shape and the war drums are fading. Economic collapse... well... maybe I'll buy my plane ticket right now and hope the airlines are still flying by September.

Meanwhile I shall continue my policy of not getting too upset about crises in the making. It worked for Lebanon. (Remember, we thought we were going to have a blow-up in May, merely two months ago) Let's all continue to ignore the stock market, oil prices, and weather catastrophes as best we can. Refuse to be moved by any of this. The crises will then have to dry up and blow away from lack of attention.

It's The War, Stupid

Bill Clinton's campaign team in 1992 famously posted a slogan during their momentous election: It's the economy, stupid. Most pundits agree that Clinton beat a formerly popular sitting president because Americans were worried about the economy, and the Democratic candidate ran strongly on that issue.

Now Frank Rich tells us it's the Iraq war, stupid: McCain'€™s McClellan Nightmare - NYTimes.com.

Mr. Bush, Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton refuse to accept responsibility for their roles, major and minor, in abetting this national tragedy.

Hilary Clinton never had my vote because of her stance on Iraq. She wouldn't even admit that her judgment was wrong - in fact she has called for "obliterating Iran" next, if that country does not do our bidding. Obama's Middle East stance caters to the Joe Lieberman crowd as cravenly as Hilary's, but at least he was right about Iraq from the beginning.

Now it seems that a plurality of American voters share my concerns. Even folks who believed in the war now get it.

Anti-Torture Protests at Cal Graduation

We drove by some of these folks at mid-day today on our way to grandma's: Protestors at Boalt Hall Graduation - from SF Gate: Multimedia (image).

Boalt Hall is the law school of the University of California at Berkeley, one of the best in the nation. Many of us in the community (and it seems, at Berkeley itself) are horrified that John Yoo, author of the torture memo that enabled Bush & company to flout American values, is still teaching at Cal. I'm glad to see somebody making a public stink about it.

The picture I linked to shows Dean Christopher Edley - read his response to John Yoo here. Essentially Edley says that what Yoo did isn't very ethical but he can't really do anything about it.

Professor Brad DeLong hosts a running discussion about John Yoo and the torture memo, including many learned critiques of Dean Edley's memo.

To me it seems the University's leaders are behaving like frightened apparatchiks. They don't want to ruffle feathers so they will let John Yoo carry on. Update. That's one way of looking at it. Or, if I read Dean Edley's memo as if he really means it (which I can assume he does), perhaps he believes that until Yoo is convicted of a crime, he can do nothing. He does not want to set off a witch hunt. Others in the Delong torture memo blog (linked above) have argued that there is a question of "standing" here. Who has the right to prosecute this matter? The US Senate should be prosecuting Bush and all his minions for war crimes, says one writer. Mere professors do not and should not have the standing to prosecute such crimes.

I think these arguments have merit, and I don't want to let my condemnation stand. The people arguing about this are doing so because they care about the rule of law. They don't want to turn into a mob with pitchforks. I commend them. End update.

Fascism overtakes countries not only through tanks and soldiers, but through social intimidation and the acquiescence of "nice" people who just don't want to rock the boat.

Mutanabbi Street Memorial Reading

Reading in San Francisco on Sunday in honor of the famed Street of Booksellers in Baghdad:

Link: Mutanabbi Street Memorial Reading.

On March 5th 2007, a car bomb was exploded on Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad. More than 30 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded. This locale is the historic center of Baghdad bookselling, a winding street filled with bookstores and outdoor book stalls. Named after the famed 10th century classical Arab poet, Al-Mutanabbi, this is an old and established street for bookselling and has been for hundreds of years. It has been the heart and soul of the Baghdad literary and intellectual community.

We are among the pages of every book that was shredded and burned and covered with flesh and blood that day.

And to those who would manufacture hate with the tools of language . . .

Those who would take away the rights and dignity of a people with the very same words that guarantee them . . .</p>

And to anyone who would view the bodies on Mutanabbi Street as a way to narrow the future into one book . . .</p>

We say, as poets, writers, artists, booksellers, printers and readers</p>

Mutanabbi Street starts here. The Mutanabbi Street Coalition will host a Mutanabbi Street memorial reading at the San Francisco Public Library, on August 26, at 1pm.   Please help spread the word by downloading and distributing our General Flier, Call to Booksellers, or Call to Printers (all pdf documents).

Additionally, on Friday, September 28, the San Francisco Center for the Book will host an evening dedicated to Mutanabbi Street and specially-printed broadsides. The event will include readings, and we will print a broadside on the Center’s Vandercook.

Up All Night: US Out of Iraq!

So my children were riding in the back seat of the car this afternoon as I listened to the news on the radio. Senator Patty Murray said "We're going to stay up all night and end this war in Iraq!"

"Stay up all night?" said my six-year-old son. "I want to stay up all night. How are we going to stop the war in Iraq? Can I stay up all night, mommy?"

Later as I sat in the front garden enjoying the cool of the evening, he came outside with a broom handle tucked into his belt, wearing a plastic medieval style knight's helmet, carrying the long blue "noodle" float we bought for him to use at the pool. He held the blade of his toy sword in his other hand - the handle broke off months ago.

"I'm going to Iraq," he said. "Marhaba." (somebody on TV had taught him to say hello in Arabic.) "I'm going to use my sword to knock the guns out of their hands. Then I'm going to hide the guns. They can use words to solve their problems." I commended him for this plan.

"Do you want to see George Bush go to jail?" he continued. I admitted that I do, indeed think our President has committed crimes and I hope he gets in trouble for them one day. Hasn't happened yet.

"So you have to learn Arabic if you go to Iraq," my son said. We discussed who we know who speaks Arabic, and I told him in Arabic that he should learn to speak.

My sweet little warrior. I didn't want to tell him that the knight regalia would be politically insensitive, with all its echoes of the Crusades. He is a very fine talker and negotiator already at the age of six.

I sure hope that by the time he graduates from whatever professional degree I hope he pursues, that the US will indeed have left Iraq. Don't know if this is in the cards.