{politics} – Page 64 – { feuilleton }

The Middle East now

Arthur magazine‘s recent feature on life in the Middle East by Daniel Chamberlin was an excellent mix of travelogue/reportage. Iraq and the ongoing Israeli/Palestinian conflict aside, the region was fairly peaceful last year. How quickly things change. This is from the latest Arthur email bulletin.

FROM ARTHUR CONTRIBUTING EDITOR DANIEL CHAMBERLIN:

Last summer I went traveling with my brother Paul in Egypt, Lebanon and Syria. The result was “Dr. Moustache and The Egyptian Gentleman,” a three-part series in the November 2005 and January 2006 issues of Arthur.

Paul returned to Damascus this summer to refine his Arabic and research his thesis – he’s getting a Ph.D. in diplomatic history at Ohio State University – in Syria’s governmental archives.

The first sign that my brother’s tour of Syrian libraries might not go as planned came on June 25 when Palestinian guerillas linked to the Hamas government kidnapped an Israeli soldier and killed two others. The ensuing conflict with Israel was escalated on July 12 when some Hezbollah guys sneaked from Lebanon into Israel, killing eight soldiers and kidnapping two others, prompting Israel to start dropping bombs all over Lebanon, destroying the country’s infrastructure to the tune of several billion dollars and killing over 200 civilians as of July 18. Hezbollah shot more of their wildly inaccurate rockets back into Israel, killing some 13 civilians.

Paul is living in Damascus though, not Beirut, Haifa or Gaza City. But Khaled Meshal, the exiled leader of Hamas, also lives in Damascus with the permission of the government- he moved there after Israeli Mossad agents tried to assassinate him in Jordan in 1997 by putting poison in his ear. Israel expressed its discontent at this arrangement by having fighter jets buzz Syrian President Bashir Asad’s summer pad in Latakia shortly after things started getting bloody in Gaza.

As for Hezbollah, they do their own thing-whether it’s firing Katyushas into Israeli settlements, selling keychains in the gift shops on the Israeli border that Paul and I visited last summer or serving as members of Lebanon’s parliament – but they receive support from both Syria and Iran. The U.S. and Israeli governments have indicated they hold Syria responsible for the actions of both Hezbollah and Hamas. In an interview with Charlie Rose, the Israeli representative to the United Nations characterized this as not only part of the “War on Terror,” but went so far as to say that it was one of the early chapters of World War III. Tehran and Damascus, it should be mentioned, have agreed to back the other should Israel or the U.S. decide to attack.

Paul and I talk frequently via e-mail, and the following is his daily journal of what life in Damascus has been like lately.

Daniel Chamberlin Los Angeles July 18, 2006

LETTERS FROM DAMASCUS by Paul Chamberlin

*** Friday 14 July*** Tonight we met a man who fought in the Syrian army in the Golan during the 1973 war. He seemed considerably less concerned about the situation here than us, explaining that the people here could sense when a war was coming, and everything was fine.

***Saturday 15 July*** Things got worse today. I went to the internet cafe this morning to find my inbox full of emails from the United States urging me to evacuate Damascus immediately. My advisor at Ohio State-a historian of U.S.-Israeli relations-is suggesting that it might not be a bad idea to get out of the region as soon as possible while my friend Steve in Beirut recommends that I might consider heading north to Turkey. Apparently he’s heard from a contact in the State Department that the situation could escalate to conflict with Syria in the very near future. Rumor has it that the Israeli fleet is massing off of Tripoli in preparation to begin bombing the northern highways to Syria. Apparently he hasn’t heard anything from the U.S. Embassy in Beirut even though the city has been under Israeli attack for two days. To make matters worse, I find another email from my friend Mariam, also in Beirut, relating her plans to head to Damascus via the same northern roads that the Israelis are planning to attack. I send a cautionary email to her, convinced that it won’t reach her in time to make any difference.

Continue reading “The Middle East now”

Same shit, different day

“The Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does the Westerner. Life is cheap in the Orient.” General William Westmoreland, commander of US military operations during the Vietnam War, speaking in Hearts and Minds (1974).

Yahoo News, Mon Jul 17, 2006, 4:47 PM ET
UNITED NATIONS (AFP) – US Ambassador John Bolton said there was no moral equivalence between the civilian casualties from the Israeli raids in Lebanon and those killed in Israel from “malicious terrorist acts”.

Asked to comment on the deaths in an Israeli air strike of eight Canadian citizens in southern Lebanon Sunday, he said: “it is a matter of great concern to us…that these civilian deaths are occurring. It’s a tragedy.”

“I think it would be a mistake to ascribe moral equivalence to civilians who die as the direct result of malicious terrorist acts,” he added, while defending as “self-defense” Israel’s military action, which has had “the tragic and unfortunate consequence of civilian deaths”.

Designers take a stand

Some of the honourees of America’s National Design Awards tell the President’s wife why they won’t be attending a special gala breakfast at the White House.

Dear Mrs. Bush:

As American designers, we strongly believe our government should support the design profession and applaud the White House sponsorship of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. And as finalists and recipients of the National Design Award in Communication Design we are deeply honored to be selected for this recognition. However, we find ourselves compelled to respectfully decline your invitation to visit the White House on July 10th.

Graphic designers are intimately engaged in the construction of language, both visual and verbal. And while our work often dissects, rearranges, rethinks, questions and plays with language, it is our fundamental belief, and a central tenet of “good” design, that words and images must be used responsibly, especially when the matters articulated are of vital importance to the life of our nation.

We understand that politics often involves high rhetoric and the shading of language for political ends. However it is our belief that the current administration of George W. Bush has used the mass communication of words and images in ways that have seriously harmed the political discourse in America. We therefore feel it would be inconsistent with those values previously stated to accept an award celebrating language and communication, from a representative of an administration that has engaged in a prolonged assault on meaning.

While we have diverse political beliefs, we are united in our rejection of these policies. Through the wide-scale distortion of words (from “Healthy Forests” to “Mission Accomplished”) and both the manipulation of media (the photo op) and its suppression (the hidden war casualties), the Bush administration has demonstrated disdain for the responsible use of mass media, language and the intelligence of the American people.

While it may be an insignificant gesture, we stand against these distortions and for the restoration of a civil political dialogue.

Michael Rock, Susan Sellers, Georgie Stout, Paula Scher and Stefan Sagmeister.

This story is causing some heated debate over at Design Observer, both for and against. For my part I’m glad to see it and would support their decision; the more people taking a principled stand against these despicable wretches, the better. Too often—as Jonathan Barnbrook never tires of pointing out—designers seem happy to take the money (and awards) and run, ignoring any broader context with regard to their work. Maximum respect.

Good Night and Good Luck

Only just caught this and it’s an excellent piece of work from Clooney and co. (his second time as director). Impossible not to see parallels between Ed Murrow’s determination to expose the excesses of McCarthyism with the current battles between the press in America and the belligerent rabble currently occupying the White House. Senator Joe McCarthy famously developed a pattern of accusing all his critics of being Communists or fellow travellers with the Communist cause. Likewise today we have the Bush administration accusing their critics of being traitors and terrorist sympathisers. Swap the word Communist for terrorist and the arguments remain identical. Last week the New York Times was accused of treason for publishing a report into secret service investigations into international banking activity, not the first time America’s newspaper of record has suffered accusations of treachery. As the NYT said in response:

Government officials, understandably, want it both ways. They want us to protect their secrets, and they want us to trumpet their successes. A few days ago, Treasury Secretary John Snow said he was scandalized by our decision to report on the bank-monitoring program. But in September 2003 the same Secretary Snow invited a group of reporters from our papers, The Wall Street Journal and others to travel with him and his aides on a military aircraft for a six-day tour to show off the department’s efforts to track terrorist financing. The secretary’s team discussed many sensitive details of their monitoring efforts, hoping they would appear in print and demonstrate the administration’s relentlessness against the terrorist threat.

Meanwhile Republicans continue to howl for the editor’s head. Why does America seem to slip into this kind of rigid authoritarianism so easily? This is one question not answered in Clooney’s film, perhaps understandably; it’s not an easy one to answer. Ed Murrow reported from London during the height of the Blitz and, at the end of the Second World War, from Buchenwald; he didn’t need lectures about patriotism or the evils that men are capable of. His articulacy compared with the showroom dummies that comprise today’s TV presenters is astonishing. His words are as relevant now as they were in the 1950s:

“If we confuse dissent with disloyalty – if we deny the right of the individual to be wrong, unpopular, eccentric or unorthodox – if we deny the essence of racial equality, then hundreds of millions in Asia and Africa who are shopping about for a new allegiance will conclude that we are concerned to defend a myth and our present privileged status. Every act that denies or limits the freedom of the individual in this country costs us the . . . confidence of men and women who aspire to that freedom and independence of which we speak and for which our ancestors fought.”

“We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.”

Postscript: There’s a good analysis of the NYT debacle and why it’s such a serious issue here.

So Much Fire to Roast Human Flesh

So Much Fire to Roast Human Flesh

A benefit album curated
by Josephine Foster

“All profits from sales of this
compilation will be distributed to
specific counter-military recruitment
and pacifist organizations and
programs. We hope to assist them
in their efforts promoting peace
and non-militarism in the United States.

“All of the musicians represented
here are US citizens. Our voices
join with many others across this
land that freely question and
openly oppose war.”

Josephine Foster

Track listing:
THE CHERRY BLOSSOMS – ‘Dragonfly’ (live)
FEATHERS – ‘Dust’
MICHAEL HURLEY – ‘A Little Bit of Love for You’
MEG BAIRD – ‘Western Red Lily (Nunavut Diamond Dream)’
ANDREW BAR – ‘Don’t Trust That Man’
GOATGIRL – ‘President Combed His Hair’
DEVENDRA BANHART – ‘I Know Some Souls’ (demo)
KATH BLOOM – ‘Baby Let It Come Down On Me’
CHARLIE NOTHING – ‘Fuck You and Your Stupid Wars’
DIANE CLUCK – ‘A Phoenix and Doves’
JOHN ALLINGHAM & ANN TILEY – ‘Big War’
JOSEPHINE FOSTER – ‘Would You Pave the Road?’
ANGELS OF LIGHT – ‘Destroyer’
RACHEL MASON – ‘The War Clerk’s Lament’
PAJO – ‘War Is Dead’
MVEE – ‘Powderfinger’
KATHLEEN BAIRD – ‘Prayer for Silence’
LAY ALL OVER IT – ‘A Place’

Cover artwork by Fred Tomaselli

Available August 1. $12US/14Can/17World postpaid.

Click here for info on pre-ordering.