The Crusades through Scott's eyes

I haven't yet seen "Kingdom of Heaven." I hadn't really planned on it as I don't get out much and the critics all seemed less than impressed with it. But, after reading this piece from Robert Fisk about watching it in Beirut, I'm actually curious to see it. Fisk readily acknowledges it's flaws.

The screenplay isn't up for much and Orlando Bloom, playing the loss-of-faith crusader Balian of Ibelin, does indeed look--as The Independent cruelly observed--like a backpacker touring the Middle East in a gap year.

Yet, it was the reaction of the mostly Muslim audience watching the film that was moving for Fisk.

When the leprous King of Jerusalem--his face covered in a steel mask to spare his followers the ordeal of looking at his decomposition--falls fatally ill after honourably preventing a battle between Crusaders and Saracens, Saladin, played by that wonderful Syrian actor Ghassan Massoud--and thank God the Arabs in the film are played by Arabs--tells his deputies to send his own doctors to look after the Christian king.

At this, there came from the Muslim audience a round of spontaneous applause. They admired this act of mercy from their warrior hero; they wanted to see his kindness to a Christian...

But at the end of the film, after Balian has surrendered Jerusalem, Saladin enters the city and finds a crucifix lying on the floor of a church, knocked off the altar during the three-day siege. And he carefully picks up the cross and places it reverently back on the altar. And at this point the audience rose to their feet and clapped and shouted their appreciation. They loved that gesture of honour. They wanted Islam to be merciful as well as strong. And they roared their approval above the soundtrack of the film.

I was particularly impressed when Fisk said that Amin Maalouf, the author of The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, stated that the film was "too fair." While Scott may have found history irrelevant for "Gladiator" and Arabs nothing but primitive butchers in "Black Hawk Down," it sounds like he got this one right.

And now that my boyfriend is here for the summer, and I'm finally starting to feel a bit better, perhaps the proverbial dinner and a movie might be a nice thing. :)

Out comes my inner nerd

Joe over at beppeblog tagged me about three or so weeks ago for the book meme that has been snaking around the blogosphere, and now I'm finally getting around to doing it. And Joe's not entirely correct that I'd rather be doing anything but reading. Actually, I have a ton of books I haven't read and would like to read but my brain has been too mushy to bother lately. However, once I recouperate from this latest relapse, one of the things that's helped me accept the leisurely life I am now ordained to have is that I'll get to read a lot. You know, I've always wished I had time to do nothing but read. Well, now I have it.

So, here we go...

What is the total number of books you own? My best guess using a highly dubious form of estimation involving averages by number of shelves is about 1100 or so, if you include cookbooks, reference books, Arabic textbooks (my godfather says that taking Arabic is like starting a heroin addiction -- first you start out thinking if I can just get a little more, another class or another Arabic textbook, and in the end you're just bitter, strung out, and still unable to even read a newspaper after six years but have a shelf full of Arabic textbooks). In order to fit so many books into my 400 or so sq ft. apartment, my dad hung several shelves down two walls, as well as a fifteen foot long shelf that runs along underneath the ceiling (that one holds mostly novels as well as some plays and poetry).

I'm vain about two things: my library (particularly the Middle East section) and my chocolate chip cookies (people help me move for a batch). Yes, I have a pathetic life.

Next...

What was the last book you bought? Frida Kahlo: The Brush of Anguish by Martha Zamora. I just bought this book last week at Powell's after I picked up my new glasses (see the last post) as it was just a few blocks down from the shop. It's a large, hardcover translated abridgement of Zamora's biography that includes 75 of Kahlo's paintings.

What was the last book you read? Prayer of the Cosmos by Neil Douglas-Klotz. This is a tiny book in which Douglas-Klotz re-translates the Our Father and the Beatitudes from the Aramaic in which Jesus would have spoken them.

What are five books that mean a lot to you?

Beloved by Toni Morrison. I don't think a week goes by when I don't think of that sermon Baby Suggs, holy, gives in the forest. "...In this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard...You got to love it, you!...This is flesh I'm talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved..." As a woman living in a society where I've been told from the time I was born that I should never like my body the way it is, whether from my mother, doctors, or advertisements, this was one of the most empowering passages I ever read. "Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it." Indeed they don't. They objectify it. Judge it. Take blood from it. And like Baby Suggs, holy, teaches, I gotta love it. Love it hard.

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. This is the book that has kept me a Christian. Particularly during one of Father Zosima's speeches where he says, "God took seeds from the other worlds and sowed them on this earth, and raised up his garden; and everything that could sprout sprouted, but it lives and grows only through its sense of being in touch with other mysterious worlds; if this sense is weakened or destroyed in you, that which has grown up in you dies." I cannot prove the existence of God. I cannot answer the question of why a benevolent, omnipotent God allows so much suffering (and neither does Dostoyevsky really). But I know that, whether it's just that my "god spot" is over developed or that I refuse to give up what I was acculturated into as a child or whatever, if that sense of being in touch with other mysterious worlds is weakened or destroyed in me, something vital in me would die. Plus, the family in this book is almost as dysfunctional as mine. Almost.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I first read this book in eighth grade and have lived my childhood vicariously through Scout every since. My copy is a well-worn paperback I bought at a garage sale for a quarter. I have more than gotten my quarter's worth.

Being Human by Solihin Thom, Alicia Thom, and Alexandra ter Horst. I don't know if this book would get as prominent a mention a year from now, but at the moment I'd have to say it's definitely had a significant impact on my thinking and faith. It's also a book I would say has kept me a Christian even though it strives to be non-denominational. The authors do a great job of synthesizing neuroscience, biology, comparative religion, and pyschology to create a model for understanding the Self. While it can feel sort of New Agey and simplistic, I found it very helpful. I think it's what helped me come to the resolution regarding my faith that I talked about in this post, along with Wrestling with the Ox by Paul Ingram, which I've only managed to get about half way through yet.

Prayers of the Cosmos by Neil Douglas-Klotz. Yes, I know it was the last thing I read, but seriously, this is one of the most amazing books I've ever read. It sounds cheesy to say, but it was like I could actually hear Christ speaking, if, for no other reason than Douglas-Klotz gives the Aramaic transliteration of the texts. Along with his translation notes, he also includes "body prayers" or guided meditations on each line in the Our Father and the Beatitudes. And those translation notes, which are only a paragraph or two long (you get the first in that link above), have so much meat that my mind is still chewing on it and reading it over and over (well, yeah, and my short term memory sucks). It's now become my "hardest working book" per Sylvia's addition to this book meme as it's now apart of my daily prayers as well as meditation time. And I sooo wanna learn Aramaic now. I mean, I've got Arabic and Hebrew (well, sorta) so it should be a breeze, right?

Of course, the Bible has always been an important part of my life as I've got a lot of it memorized (thanks to my gray-shirt clad youth spent in AWANA), but it feels odd to list a sacred text, whether it be the Qu'ran, the Torah, or the Bhagavad Gita as a mere book, so I guess I'm adding it as the super text above the five.

Right, so I'm supposed to tag others and requst that they do this on their blog, should they so choose. Most of my blogging friends have already done this meme but I think a few that haven't would include Annie and her husband Paul, David (who might have already done this meme and I missed it), and my sister Tammy. If Trickgnosis is reading, I'd be curious to see what he'd list too.

My unintentional Latina film festival

I just signed up with Netflix last week as I figured it would be an easy way to watch movies since I have to spend so much time in bed these days. The first movie was something I picked from among the new releases on the front page of the indie movies section: "Real Women Have Curves." The second I found in PBS documentaries, which I then immediately jumped to second place in the queue: "The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo." It only occurred to me after I watched the latter movie that I had sorta ended up holding my own private Latina film festival. :)

As the title suggests, "Real Women Have Curves" deals, in part, with the false expectations women often feel they must live up to regarding their bodies. However, the primary conflict in the movie is between a Mexican-American daughter desiring to go on to college and her melodramatic but traditional immigrant mother. I am not Chicana. Indeed, I come from good ol' American rednecks. But I could relate a great deal to Ana, the main character. I too come from a poor family that was ambivalent about education and sometimes even downright hostile. I also have a mother who is a textbook case of Histrionic Personality Disorder.

"Real Women Have Curves" is a great movie but was probably not something I should have watched when I was sick. A couple of times a year I have a day where I get into a mood of absolute despair from which no amount of logic can console me. Everything feels hopeless and is certain to remain so. I've learned to simply tell myself that yes, I get this way, and I'll get through this latest day of despair and wake up tomorrow back to my usual more realistic self. Well, that day happened to fall on the day I watched this movie. As I watched Ana sucked into working in her sister's sweatshop, I remembered how trapped I felt when I had to return home after my freshmen year of college unable to afford a sophomore year. I remembered how when I told my mother over the phone I wasn't going to be able return to school, she laughed. I remembered how when I started school again in Portland a year later, I felt guilty that I was leaving my sister and brother behind instead of foregoing school and getting a job and taking care of them. Now, as it turns out, not returning to that private Evangelical university was a good thing. And my sister and brother have grown up doing better than they probably would have had I not gone to school and been example for them to follow (well, at least my sister; my brother has Down Syndrome and is in a vocational training program). But all I could think of that day was that here I am, the first to graduate from college, and I'm the one on welfare. No matter how smart I was, no matter how much I worked to lift myself out of poverty, it didn't matter. And because I am ill, I still have to rely on my mother. I felt trapped all over again.

I was in a better mood when I watched the documentary about Frida Kahlo, though still a bit weepy. I first heard about Frida Kahlo when the movie about her came out a few years back and the director was interviewed on "Now with Bill Moyers." But I didn't really think much about her until I was reading the Oregon Fibromylagia Foundation website where one page discusses how an examination of her medical records suggests Kahlo had Fibromyalgia. That was also where I first saw her painting "The Broken Column." It left me a blubbering mess -- I think because it was such a graphic, raw portrayal of pain. My pain. Both physical and emotional. My accident was far less traumatic physically than Frida's. Mine was just a broken ankle. A bimalleolar fracture. The doctor said he'd never seen a 10-year-old manage that sort of a break. My pain developed gradually over the next year and remained manageable until the surgery to correct that ankle fracture 16 years later. Or rather, I learned how to suppress it. Most of the time.

I've seen some critics call her "narcissistic" and "self-aggrandizing." Perhaps. Kahlo was certainly someone who craved attention, particularly that of her husband, the Mexican painter Diego Rivera. But when you spend month after month isolated by illness, you can't help but hunger for attention. For interaction. Conversation. Anything but the same four damn walls surrounding you. It makes perfect sense to me that she spent so much time painting herself. Months in bed give you a view of yourself that you just don't see when you're healthy and busy. Frankly, I'm so grateful that she had the courage to be narcissistic. Carlos Fuentes, an historian and friend of Kahlo's said,

"...she is a woman who cannot reveal the pain inside her except through the painting of her own self. If you look inside yourself, I forgot who said this, I think it was Greek philosopher, Roman-Greek philosopher said, "If you could see yourself inside yourself, you would die of fear of what you saw." Well, she saw. She saw what was inside herself, and she painted it.

Four years ago when my health was finally collapsing after two years of struggling to grab hold of the life I had before surgery, my therapist gently suggested to me that it was time to talk about going on disability. It was like one of those sneaker waves when you're wading in the ocean that grabs your ankles and sucks you underneath. I wasn't disabled. Just sick. A lot, sure. But not disabled. Besides, if I quit teaching and going to school, I would have far too much time to spend with myself. And that frightened the hell out of me. Frida Kahlo managed to look inside during all that time spent in bed and paint it. Unibrow and mustache. Blood and brokeness. An act that I'm learning takes enormous courage as I spend my own months in bed.

My massage therapist/acupuncturist, who often doesn't do much of either, makes use of a modality called Ontological Kinesiology in which she utilizes muscle resistance and hand shapes called mudras to see what is happening in my body as if she is a type of translator. The mudra that came up during my last appointment was that I turn my emotions into poetry too soon instead of really feeling my emotions. And it's true. I use writing as a way to make sense of what has happened to me. Intellectualize it. Make it all manageable and containable. Fit it to what I already know of theology or science. But, of course, emotions are not nearly so tidy or dutiful.

And that is what I love about Frida Kahlo. What inspires me. Makes me realize that I have enormous freedom when I quit worrying about whether or not someone will think I'm being too negative. Or narcissistic. Or morbid. Or obsessive. About whether or not it will connect with my "audience" or the readership of this literary magazine or that.

An Oregon writer, Karen Karbo, with whom I had a writing workshop years ago during healthier days, told us that you write your first draft for yourself. At one point during this documentary they made a comment about how Kahlo started out painting for herself. I started writing as a kid because I liked it. I could create other worlds far better than the one in which I lived. Eventually I turned to writing about my own life to study it. Do my own sort of Foucaultian genealogies. But more and more I find that I want to just write it. Say it. Tell it like it is. Write my own version of the "Broken Column" with knitting needles stabbing me in my thigh and my heel, or knives slicing through the bones in my arm and calf, or fire seeping throughout my body, or a backbone made spongy by abuse.

And while I'm at it, maybe even borrow a bit of Kahlo's fashion sense. Yesterday I needed to go pick up my new glasses. It was warm and as I don't get out that often, I decided to dress up a bit. I braided my hair and pinned it up like you see Kahlo's hair in most of the photos of her. At first I sighed to myself that it made my already round face look even rounder. But, to hell with it. I wanted to wear it that way anyway and damnit, I was worn out from all the effort it had taken to get dressed and braid and pin my hair up so it was just going to have to stay that way. I staggered to the street car stop (first time in probably a good two months that I've made it on the streetcar). Wobbled as I got out and shuffled the half block to the eye glasses shop. As I tried on my new glasses, one of the girls working there stopped in front of me and said "your hair looks so cute. I want to do mine like that." Then she paused. "You don't mind if I copy you, do you?"

"Not at all," I smiled. "I love being a trendsetter."

A trendsetter who was back in bed with a fever later that afternoon, but one with cute hair.

Radicalization

Sorry to be gone the last few days. I think I've been fighting some sort of virus. My lungs and joints are even more achy than normal, and every time I'm on the computer for very long I get a low grade fever, which increases my neuropathic pain. Which is already increasing at the moment because I've been waiting for my order of Neurontin from the Canadian pharmacy where I buy it for a week now and they are just getting around to shipping today. The pain was so bad last night, despite extra strength Vicodin (Lortabs), that I couldn't sleep. As I sat on my recliner in the dark crying, all I could think about is how much I hate George Bush for spending $200 billion dollars in Iraq (where, the Indy reports, we've been dropping Napalm and lying about it to our good friend Tony Blair) that he could be spending on healthcare so that the Oregon Health Plan would cover the Neurontin that I could have then picked up at Safeway last week with the rest of my prescriptions.

Needless to say, I find myself becoming more and more sympathetic to radical politics these days. And it's not just about health care policy, to which I say just socialize the whole damn thing already. I mean, capitalists go on and on about how efficient the Market is but our free market health care system is the most ineffecient in the world -- we spend more than anyone else per capita on health care, yet fewer people have health care and our mortality and morbity rates are also some of the highest in the industrialized world.

But I also think about welfare. Post-secondary education. Racism.

My sister just left last week to work at a day camp this summer for kids from the Potamac Gardens, a project in Southeast Washington D.C. Last summer she and others she works with spent an evening cleaning the apartment of one of the kids in their program whose mother's boyfriend was stabbed. It took them two hours to clean the blood from the floors and walls. Everyone knew who did it, but there was no sense of urgency from the police to catch the guy. Yet, if it would have been a white person who was stabbed, you can bet the guy would have been caught within a few hours. People always ask Tammy if she's afraid to walk around the projects. Her response is a mixture of laughter and annoyance. "They know better than to hurt a white girl."

In AlterNet today was an op/ed piece about the recent Senate apology for lynchings that rightly called it "a scam with no substantial benefits and less good faith."

There are nearly a million African-Americans in prison - one out of eight inmates on the planet - a gulag of monstrous proportions, clearly designed to perpetuate the social relations that began with slavery. We demand an end to those relations, not an insincere, risk-free "apology" that sets not one prisoner free.

As the Sentencing Project pointed out in 1995, on any given day one third of all black males between 20 and 29 were sitting in American prisons. There were more blacks in American prisons in 1990 than were in South African prisons. A black boy born in 1991 has a one in three chance that he'll be in prison at some point in his life. For Latinos it's 17. 4%. And when you consider the fact that a felony conviction disenfranchises those in many states, or that a number of corporations use prison labor, or that these horrible statistics represent a huge increase from the 1970s before the "war on drugs," it's not much of a leap to conclude that America has simply exchanged Jim Crow for the current situation to keep "the darkies" in fetters.

And I won't even touch foreign policy...

I did find some comfort today when I discovered Jesus Radicals via David Yeh via Orthodox Contemplative via Reader, I Married Him (gosh I love the way the web works). Well, actually I felt a lot of comfort from all three of those great blogs as well. But the welcome page at Jesus Radicals was a needed balm.

"...This resource is designed for Christians who know something is wrong with the church. It is a place for those of us who are tired of playing power games practiced in the name of Jesus—for those of us who are tired of violence and the lording of it over others.

You are not alone.

God has saved a remnant of His people who have not bowed down to capitalism, the state, money, the military or any other idol that plagues the world today. On this site, you'll find an online library, essays written by our readers, sermon ideas, links to helpful sites and much more. We are glad you could join us."

I'm glad I could too. Especially with this quote from Oscar Romero in the left corner:

Even when they call us mad, when they call us subversives and communists and all the epithets they put on us, we know we only preach the subversive witness of the Beatitudes, which have turned everything upside down.

Yes, those Beatitudes are subversive alright. Especially when you read them in the original Aramaic. A friend of mine gave me this tiny little book entitled, The Prayer of the Cosmos: Meditations on the Aramaic Words of Jesus, in which Neil Douglas-Klotz gives a rich translation of the Aramaic version of the Our Father and the Beatitudes. Semetic languages, as my friend Talmida can tell you, have an enormous level of depth and meaning that English or even Greek lack. So that "blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth" becomes "integrated, resisting corruption are those who have dissolved heavy morality within; they shall be open to receive the slendor of earth's fruits." Or "blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God" becomes "healed are those who have the courage and audacity to feel abundant inside; they shall envision the furthest extent of life's wealth" or even "resisting corruption are those whose natural reaction is sympathy and friendship; they shall be illuminated by a flash of lightning: the Source of the soul's movement in all creatures."

Subversive, radical stuff indeed.

I made it to Safeway today! Or rather, my life as Hans Moleman

Yep, I managed to walk the whole three blocks down to Safeway and back this afternoon. I walked painstakingly slowly, focusing on the entire physiological process of walking on my right foot. Heel through the metatarsal bones up through the toes. I could even feel the peronial tendon, the one with the tendonitis that they cut and threaded through a hole they drilled into my ankle six years ago, stretch a bit with each step. I think that's a good sign.

Walking so slow made me think of Hans Moleman, the mole-like character from the Simpsons "who is a lot younger than you think! He is constantly involved in accidents, and has been described as the 'Kenny' of the Simpson world" On last nights episode, the third airing this season, Mr. Burns shows up at the DMV with three people impaled on the grill of his car: Comic Book Guy, Crazy Cat Lady, and underneath those two was Hans Moleman, cane in hand, who says, "at least I'm getting out." LOL

Yup. That'd be me these days. And scarily enough, he's only 31 -- a year younger than me! Eek!

Ghandi in a keffiyeh

Ha'aretz: Ghandi Redux

Here's another story that finally made it to the big time: Palestinian non-violent protests against the Apartheid Wall in the West Bank area of Qalqilyah. For two years now I've been reading the reports of the International Solidarity Movement about the demonstrations against the Wall that have been going on in that area, all the while listening to people babble on about how if the Palestinians had been non-violent they would have a country right now. Well, Meron Rapaport looks at the complex interplay among the Palestinian residents of these towns, Israeli activists against the occupation, and the Israeli Defense Force in the article linked at the top.

There are almost daily demonstrations of Palestinians mixed with Israelis mixed with cameras. In meetings of the popular committees in Bilin or Boudrus or Beit Lakia, Palestinian grassroots activists - not intellectuals who get donations from Europe - are talking seriously about the doctrine of Mahatma Gandhi, about the model of nonviolent demonstrations that is meant to spread from village to village throughout the West Bank.

There ya go, Thomas Friedman. You want Ghandi on the West Bank? You've got him.

Not that the IDF is buying it.

Nonsense - there is no such thing as a nonviolent Palestinian demonstration, say officers of the Israel Defense Forces, whose soldiers have already developed a routine of confrontation with the Palestinian and Israeli demonstrators, and even display fondness for some of those involved.

Yet, Rapaport goes on to point out that 10% of the entire village of Bi'ilin have been wounded during demonstrations in just the last three months, at least 180 Palestinians throughout the area according to B'Tselem -- 16 of them with live ammunition, seven of them fatally -- as opposed to one soilder who lost an eye when a youth threw a stone at him, despite the pleas of village elders not to throw stones.

It is difficult to escape the impression that the IDF is using an iron fist in these demonstrations. That impression is reinforced if we take into account that in the hundreds of demonstrations held since the protests against the separation fence began about two years ago, in the Qalqilyah area, the demonstrators have never resorted to firearms.

The IDF claims that all this demonstration nonsense is the fault of Israeli anarchists stirring up trouble. Getting the Palestinians to demonstrate and protest. Both the Palestinians and the Israeli activists deny this. But the IDF is right about the fact that the Palestinians rarely protest without the Israelis there.

From the army's perspective, there is a clear difference between the attitude toward the Israelis and the attitude toward the Palestinians. "You have to differentiate between Israelis and Palestinians," Segev told his unit commanders in a briefing two weeks ago on Friday. "Where there are Israelis, you don't fire rubber [coated bullets]."

The Palestinians aren't masochists. They know the Israeli presence gives them protection and they actively invite it, as do the Isreali activists actively help in this. It's part of the philosophy behind groups like ISM and Christian Peacemaker Teams. That as unfair as it is, if you're a white Westerner, or in this case, a Jewish Israeli, your life is worth more. So, why not use that unfair value against oppression, or to help protect those who choose to stand up against their oppressors?

Both Hatib and Abu Rahma vehemently deny that the Israelis are behind the demonstrations, as the IDF is convinced. Yonatan Pollack and Einat Podhorny, two of the Israelis who do a lot of traveling between Tel Aviv and Bilin, also say that such claims are preposterous. The Palestinians tell us when and what activity they are planning and invite us to come, they say, but we are never the initiators. However, both the Palestinians and the Israelis concede that the very knowledge that Israelis will be present at a demonstration makes it easier for the Palestinians to decide to confront the soldiers, as it is likely that the troops will use less force when they see Israelis among the demonstrators.

So, in another words, Palestinians need Israelis to be Ghandis.

My Palestinian friends say that it's up to the Israelis to take the moral high ground and do the right thing, which I'm usually inclined to agree with because the Israelis are also the ones in the position of power -- they have the high ground on everything. My Israeli friends, of course, look to the Palestinians to do the moral thing and non-violently protest the occupation. But what these demonstrations in Qalqilyah show is that it takes both sides to do the right thing in this situation. Both Palestinians and Israelis to stand up against the Wall and the Occupation. Both to create the synergy needed to confront the decades of hate and violence and dehumanization.

Elias tells about a demonstration in Qalqilyah in which the majority of the demonstrators were Israelis. During the demonstration a prayer service was held and the cleric who conducted it delivered a sermon against the Jews. "I went over to him and asked him, `How can you talk like that? didn't you notice that half the people here are Israelis?' He replied, `I meant the other Israelis.'"

Murad notes that before the Israelis started to show up for the demonstrations, many in Boudrus knew Jews only as uniformed soldiers. "Now even the children do not shout slogans against the Jews, only against the occupation." An Israeli demonstrator relates that she heard a Palestinian say proudly that "the Israelis" - meaning the demonstrators - had protected them from "the Jews," meaning the soldiers.

"Clearly the fact that we face danger together influences the Palestinians' level of trust in us," says Einat Podhorny from Ta'ayush, an Israeli-Palestinian cooperative organization, and an activist against the fence.

Now, aside from the interesting, and perhaps, troubling, interplay of religion, nationality, and identity demonstrated there with the terms "Israeli" and "Jew," the fact that Palestinians are speaking up against what we in the West find anti-Semitic is progress (though I find it amazingly ironic that we would call Palestinians, who are at least as Semetic as any Jew from Brooklyn or Krakow, anti-Semetic). And while I find this blooming trust the only thing that gives me hope about the Israel/Palestine situation at the moment, for the IDF it's all about the Wall.

"For a month and a half we have encountered a daily routine of disturbances," Colonel Gedj says. "Soldiers find themselves in mortal danger, the machinery is damaged, the workers are attacked. This is delaying the work and causing the loss of a great deal of money. It is a situation that we cannot accept."

At this point in the article, Rapaport has the reader quite skeptical about just how much "mortal danger" these soilders are in. And killing and maiming people protesting the loss of their homes and livlihoods because someone is loosing money building the wall that is causing the loss of homes and livlihoods makes Col. Gedj. look a little bit like Marie-Antoinette.

The article ends with a quote from a senior officer at Command Central who recognizes that protecting machinery and concrete may be easily achieved but at a cost.

"...this is a classic type of disturbance and the army has no problem dealing with it. We only have to internalize the transition from fighting against armed individuals to coping with disturbances. It reminds me of the first intifada, and in the first intifada we were victorious at the operative level without any doubt. Most of the wanted individuals were liquidated or caught - it was an extraordinary success. But in these struggles it is very difficult to determine who wins in the judgement of history."

P.S. As I was looking for that Friedman quote about "a la Ghandi" on Google, I found this brilliant "memo from Ghandi" written by Arjan El Fassed, a Dutch-Palestinian political scientist. You wanna play "who can appropriate Ghandi the best?" Well, Fassed is definitely in the game. ;)

Made it to the big time

Though the Downing Street Memo has been discussed in a great deal of detail in the British press, it's only been sorta floating around the blogosphere on this side of the Atlantic. However the Washington Post finally took a look at it and raised some of the same questions, i.e. that Bush and company hand-picked intelligence and shaped it to fit their plan to invade Iraq.

Well, no duh...

The big difference between this article and the way it's been reported in the British press is that the WP simply focuses on the fact that the British were concerned about the aftermath of the war, not the fact that Bush basically lied. And, of course, the article ends with Bush almost implying that the memo might be fake.

Bush said he had read "characterizations of the memo," pointing out that it was released in the middle of Blair's reelection campaign, and that the United States and Britain went to the United Nations to exhaust diplomatic options before the invasion.

And as always seems to be the case with the American media these days, Bush has the finally say.

But I think this quote from Paul Wolfowitz wins the prize for Most Ironic Testimony Before a House Subcommittee (either that or he intentionally fed them a load of bullshit, in which case it's perjury, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he was just naive):

Testimony by then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, one of the chief architects of Iraq policy, before a House subcommittee on Feb. 28, 2003, just weeks before the invasion, illustrated the optimistic view the administration had of postwar Iraq. He said containment of Hussein the previous 12 years had cost "slightly over $30 billion," adding, "I can't imagine anyone here wanting to spend another $30 billion to be there for another 12 years." As of May, the Congressional Research Service estimated that Congress has approved $208 billion for the war in Iraq since 2003.

Again, I'll just point out that is enough to give each state $2 billion to spend on funding and expanding Medicaid, Section 8, etc. But, you know, silly me. Wanting to spend money on the poor. I mean, really. I'm being so selfish as a poor person wanting adequate healthcare and housing when there are nations to invade. A Pax Americana to establish. World domination to attain. I really ought to think of my sacrifice, and the sacrifice of all those suffering for lack of good healthcare, as something noble for such a worthy cause.

Bombing resistance into them

CPTnet June Releases: FALLUJAH, IRAQ: An unnatural disaster

The people of Christian Peacemaker Teams are my heroes. Their motto is "getting in the way" and they go to the most dangerous areas and well, get in the way. Get in the faces of soldiers. Ride buses targeted by suicide bombers. Accompany kids to school. Record human rights abuses.

Like in Falluja.

This is from a report from Joe Carr, CPTer in Iraq.

A Sunni cleric told us that during the first invasion, several families near his mosque took cover in a home. U.S. troops used megaphones to order all them out into the street and told them to carry a white flag. They complied, but when they all got out, the soldiers opened fire and killed five. He said one boy had run to his mother who'd been shot, and Americans shot him in the head. A U.S. Commander cried as this happened, "but what good were his tears?" he asked, "He didn't do anything to stop it."

During our meeting with the cleric, a man told us, "The Americans shot and killed my 15-year-old daughter, was she a terrorist?" The U.S. military denied killing her. "With all respect to you," he said, "I hate Americans; they killed my family. They shot and killed my sister-in-law while she was washing clothes, and my other brother's hands and feet were blown off." He apologized for interrupting, but said that he had to tell us because he's in so much pain.

Someone once told me, "You can't bomb a resistance out of existence, but you can bomb one into it."

Oh Little, Carved-Up Town of Bethlehem

The Apartheid Wall around Bethlehem

Those goats remind me of the goats outside my window when I was in the West Bank town of BirZeit about 10 years ago. A teenage boy was leading them around, letting them nibble. As I was sick and stuck in my room (yeah, somethings never change, no?), they were my entertainment for about 20 minutes or so. Along with the occassional F-15s flying overhead. Definitely felt rather dissonant, as does the picture above.

I'm so used to reading about the Wall being built and how it's cutting communities -- particularly Bethlehem -- apart that I forget a lot of people don't know what's happening. That farmers are being cut off from their fields. That the other day disabled, peaceful protesters were tear gassed and beaten. Apparently being in a wheelchair or on crutches does not excuse you from this baptism of fire for speaking out against the decimation of your community and homes.

Yes, the little town of Bethlehem does not lie quite as still as the Christmas carol memorializes. And there's certainly no sleeping over at the International Center of Bethlehem. Or over at Bethlehem Bloggers. Both sites can tell you all about what is happening to their town, which has been traditionally Christian. And yes, there ARE Christian Palestinians. Not that religion should matter when it comes to human rights.

The mystery disease

From Skepticism to Science / After 20 years, chronic fatigue syndrome may finally be getting some respect and cutting-edge science

This article is a nice summary about the history of how doctors have related to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, as well as what researchers are up against in trying to figure out its pathology and epidemiology.

I don't understand why doctors are so dismissive of something just because it doesn't necessarily make sense to them. Is it that big a threat to their world view? Why would you immediately jump to the conclusion that someone is faking it when your tests, which are man made and therefore fallible, show up normal? I suppose there are some people who really do enjoy spending their lives going to doctors appointments and getting tests that will someday be looked upon as crude and even barbaric. But I must say, I've never actually met one of these hypochondriacs. Just about everyone I know would rather be doing a zillion other things than living life as a professional patient.

Go in peace?

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: Un-Housing the Poor

A few years back, when I was first applying for Social Security and waiting the two years it takes to get approved and thereby become eligible for a variety of benefits available to the disabled, I was encouraged by my case worker to apply for Section 8. It's a voucher program in which poor people pay a third of their income for rent and HUD (Housing and Urban Development) pays the rest of the market-rate rent for an apartment or house.

Actually, I wasn't encouraged to apply, but to take advantage of the once in-every-18-months event when they open the waiting list, which was happening in a month or so. Now, the waiting list is 4-6 years long. And opening up the waiting list means that for one week, at a different place each day between 9 am and 2 pm, you can fill out an application to be put in a lottery to be chosen to get on the 4-6 years long waiting list. When I went to fill out what was essentially a lottery ticket, the line filled the rooms and spilled outside and down the street. A lot of the people there had kids. All of them, of course, poor and in need of safe, suitable housing.

I kept shaking my head at the Steinbeck-esque scene. And still do. My eyes fill with angry tears and all I can think is, what the fuck kind of society do we live in?

But wait! It's getting worse. Our Christian President and Congressmen are trying to reduce the amount of funding for Section 8 by offering it to people whose 30 percent would be more money than that of the very poor. Basically, pitting the working class against the poorest for housing that's rapidly becoming too expensive for them both.

Last month, Congress began hearings on two bills -- one each in the House and Senate -- that threaten to reorient federal assistance away from the families that need it most. Specifically, the legislation would double Section 8Â’s existing median income cap to 60 percent, thereby allowing families who earn more to qualify for these vouchers.

It also removes rules which ensure that families in serious need receive the most assistance. Under the new measure, local housing authorities are free to award up to 90 percent of their vouchers to applicants that qualify under the raised income cap -- allowing them to dole out the majority of vouchers to families who earn more and therefore pay more of the rent.

It's often said that you can't just throw money at poverty. But this is something where money is the answer, as in adequately funding a program, Section 8, which so obviously needs it. I've seen the lines. I've seen the kids running around while their mother tells them to knock it off while she fills out an application, praying it will get picked so she can spend the next 4-6 years waiting and working 80 hours a week to stay out of the shelter.

"If...one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,' but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it? So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead." James 2:16-17

(Cross-posted at Sollicitudo Rei Socialis)

A little beginning of the week reading

It's always funny how the web links together so many diverse things. I was going through my email and reading the daily digest of posts to the NeaByzantia yahoo club I'm a member of in which there was a link to a review of Byzantine Philosophy, a book now available in English. So, curious girl that I am, especially as the poster said it was a review from a Marxist perspective, I clicked on the link. As I read the review there was a interesting pic of George Bush that was a link to the blog American Leftist. The picture, called "War President" is a mosaic of soldiers who have died in Iraq that form a picture of George Bush. Very cool.

There are a lot of political blogs out there. Sometimes I write about politics when it's something that affects me directly or is related to research, but as there are so many others doing it far better than I usually do, I leave it to them. And I particularly appreciate it when they post something that doesn't get discussed much, like Chomsky mentioning the fact that healthcare in this country is the real crisis rather than Social Security, or that Iraq isn't just on the verge of civil war but really IS in civil war.

And there are a lot of cool links over at American Leftist as well. So, I'll be blogsurfing for awhile. ;)

Rose Festival time

There are fireworks going off this very minute along the waterfront just down the road from me announcing it's Rose Festival time. Portland is the Rose City. We have one of the largest rose test gardens in the world. And for almost a century we have celebrated the blooming of these flowers with a big festival complete with a queen and court, parades, carnival, car races and airshows, among other events. It's sorta quaint, in a way. Though only sorta as it's so commercialized and branded and marketed that it barely resembles the small town celebration it originally started out as.

But, it always means summer is on the way. Even if it usually rains through the big Grand Floral parade. And maybe because I grew up with it and still have fond memories of sitting out along the parade route hours before it started eating donuts and drinking hot chocolate, or visiting the big naval ships that dock along our waterfront, or every now and then going to the Fun Festival and riding a few rides on a prosperous year, I still get a bit excited when it's Rose Festival time.

P.S. Back to bed for me today. Think I over did it a tad yesterday. But, not like I had anything planned for today. And I do have a soft bed. And a long ethernet cord for my laptop. :)

Making progress

Yup. I've managed to move from the bed and recliner to the desk. Cleaned off enough junk mail from my desk to actually see bare space. Cleaned out the toilet bowl (it's been driving me nuts for a week or so now). I even made some oatmeal cookies. Though, have to admit, I was shuffling around like an old lady in slippers by the time I mixed in the raisin and walnuts.

Started receiving Meals on Wheels yesterday. Delievered by the Loaves and Fishes. Ironically enough, the Greek Orthodox daily bible reading in my email box yesterday included the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand with the loaves and fishes. Have to say, Meals on Wheels reminds me of old Baptist potlucks. There was lemon Jell-O for dessert yesterday. And tonight was the first time I've had meatloaf in a very long time. But do not think I'm complaining. It's such a relief having a meal that I can eat without being so exhausted from making it I'm almost too tired to eat it. Or just not eating a meal at all but settling for granola bars, popcorn, and frozen yogurt because there's no labor involved.

And hell, maybe one of these days I'll actually emerge from my apartment for something other than a doctor's appointment. ;)

"When the President talks to God"

IFILM - Viral Videos: When The President Talks To God

I'd never heard of Bright Eyes before my boyfriend and I stumbled on this video from Jay Leno at IFILM where we were browsing through their top 100 looking to be entertained. But, I have to say I'm becoming a quick fan. The song he sings in the video is brilliant (and why it's been snaking its way around the blogosphere), but when I went to the Saddle Creek website and listened to a couple of other songs, I was also quite pleased. The cowboy hat made me think he was a country singer, but he's actually an indie rocker with rich, textured songwriting that almost kinda reminds me of Paul Simon or Bob Dylan, well, the acoustic stuff at least.

P.S. Note that at the very end of the song in the video he says "fil mishmish." It was a bit jarring for me to hear because immediately my Arabic turned on. "In apricots?" I thought to myself. It took me a bit but then I remembered that it's a colloquialism -- from Egyptian Arabic I think -- which means "sooooo not gonna happen." Though, how this Nebraskan boy learned Egyptian Arabic has me puzzled.

It's complicated

AlterNet: Women waiting to exhale


I'm going to "out" myself a bit here.

Those of you who read this blog know that I'm Catholic. During Lent and Easter and the Papal funeral I wrote many a spiritual post about fasting and going to Pre-Sanctified Liturgy and praying panachidas.

Many of you also know that my politics are rather far to the left of the political spectrum. I'm a registered Green. I don't even like to call myself a liberal because it feels too conservative a label.

But, when it comes to abortion -- to the shock of both my good Catholic and my good Lefty friends -- I find myself rather ambivalent.

I find myself less ambivalent by the second and third trimesters, particularly as the point of viability is reached. I think after three months most women know they're pregnant and if you haven't made up your mind by that point, it seems unfair to kill a being that can feel pain and take on the characteristics of life outside the womb.

But tragedy though it is, I wouldn't make it illegal because, if nothing else, it's not going to stop abortions. They've always been around and they'll always be around so long as women get pregnant.

And when it comes to the first trimester, the question of whether or not we should privilege the life of what are, admittedly, a handful of cells over the life of a full grown woman who may suffer irreparable harm because of pregnancy becomes much more difficult for me.

For the most part, I prefer to work for the adoption of a generous welfare state that allows women more choices than the other/or they have now. Indeed, for all the pro-choice/pro-life rhetoric, there's a lot on both sides that disturbs me.

Much of the pro-life movement lacks mercy, or fails to recognize that their attempts at mercy (which are helpful), such as crisis pregnancy centers which provide clothes and cribs, are woefully inadequate to meet the life long needs a baby will entail. And so many (not all) are aligned with economic policies that make women who might otherwise keep their babies abort them because they can't afford to keep them.

Yet, having middle-class white women and men help African-American women kill their unborn children always has a creepy eugenics feel to me, even though I know their intent is to help. And I'm very sympathetic to the argument that killing life inside the womb can make us more comfortable with killing those vulnerable outside of it (not that there hasn't been a point in human history where we've been really all that uncomfortable as any daily headline will attest).

Makes me always think of the ending scene in that brilliant movie, Citizen Ruth, where Ruth climbs out the window of the abortion clinic to go off on her own way while pro-life and pro-choice demonstrators shout at each other, unaware that the woman who started the yelling match is running from them both.

So, it was the proverbial breath of fresh air to read the article linked above in AlterNet today. It talked about "a new approach to abortion counseling [that] supports women who choose the procedure while letting them tell the complicated, emotional truth about the experience."

Abortion is complicated. And for this person standing in the middle, I'm always glad to hear someone on either side step down from the soap box and admit that it is.