About Ukraine

Over the past two, three years, a growing number of us have been identitying with the frog, the batracian placed in a pot of cold water under which a flame is lit. The water gets warmer, then hot, then boiling, and kills the frog which hasn’t even seen the end coming.

So we’ve been buffered, thrown against this wall or that, feeling as if headed for a pot of boiling water, or destined to suffocate in a hospital ward through a virus arrived from who knows where and intent on killing. We’ve been quarantined, worried, lonely even when not alone, trying to get work done, endlessly scrolling down Netflix or YouTube or a dozen other entertainment sites, and even when the sun shone through our windows, feeling as aimless as a Kafka character wrapped in grey fog.

Politics grew ever more nasty during and since the Trump presidency and our countries, all of them, uncertain about the future, a number of them crushed under the brute force of despots.

And now the recent earthshaking crisis with Putin’s gaping maw ready to swallow whole Ukraine, the largest country in Europe and long for him a detested problem he hasn’t been able to solve so far-his solution of choice meaning reintegrating Ukraine into mother Russia of which the Russian President has long been trying to bring back borders into the Czar’s heyday or, barring that, to the USSR’s red glory.

“I’m Mad as Hell, and I’m Not Going to Take this Anymore!”

If, beside being battered by the news, you’ve also paid close attention, you may be sensing changes in the way people and governments react to various events. Look at the trial of that cop for his murder of George Floyd a year ago. Over the years, thousands of Blacks, usually unarmed and usually not guilty of anything but a peccadillo for which a white person would have been sent on his/her way with an apology or at most a ticket, have been slaughtered by the same kind of racist, murderous cops. Over the decades since Martin Luther King’s dream turned to nightmare, there has been no accountability for these crimes across the land, usually not even an accusation, so no punishment.

But that ugly tide seems to be turning. When George Floyd’s murderer was recently found guilty on three counts by the District Court of Minnesota, it was the first conviction in Minnesota, the first ever, of a white officer for the murder of a Black person. (208 cop-related deaths since 2008, see Star Tribune, 27/4/21). In a nationwide address after the verdict, President Joe Biden called the decision “much too rare” and detailed how it took a “unique and extraordinary convergence of factors” for the judicial system to deliver “basic accountability.” 

Quite a change from the tenure of the con man who for four dreadful years managed to play on the small ids of ignorant suckers and KKK remnants. That frightening time uncovered the ugly soft belly of everything that is bad in the US, but also ushered in the reaction of everything that is good. Black Lives Matter is now a full-fledged social and political movement that is not only not going away but set to expand dramatically and possibly, finally, bring about change.

Change is everywhere. For too long, many countries on our planet have been exploited and gouged and used as personal treasury and playing field rolled into one by repulsive individuals holding up charts of human rights, freedom of the press and a booming economy on lands in fact mostly devastated, with hordes of the exploited or the supine. The list would be long but anyone can instantly come up with names on all continents. The few civilized countries with actual governments unfortunately make a short list : Western democracies, a few others, too small or too distant or of unappealing climate or unattractive financial possibilities. Then there’s the particular case of India, « the world’s largest democracy, » under the crushing sway of Modi, that living insult to hinduism and to that extraordinary country. 

Dear President-elect Biden, please don’t apologize for the Iranian events of 1953

Mohammad Mossadegh

(le texte français suit)

Assigning guilt for past real or conflated crimes and misdemeanors can and often does lead astray leaders and even historians, insisting on blanket and endless apologies where a sharper look at facts would better serve policy. Humans being what they are, the abominable, the criminal and the appalling does occur through centuries and countries. All do not deserve the same treatment. As an example, the case against the atrocity that was slavery cannot be watered down by a redeeming explanation and Black lives must forever be honored and protected in atonement for that sinister page of history.

After the Infamous Trump-Netanyahu “Peace Plan,” a Sober Look at Numbers

The Israeli peace organisation Btselem has compared the Donald Trump US plan to Swiss cheese. In their press statement,
they explain: “the cheese is being offered to the Israelis and
the holes to the Palestinians.”

Israel as a state goes back to 1948, while previous centuries or even millenia saw Jewish wandering throughout the world, millions settling down in communities, sometimes accepted, more often either shunned or suspected/accused of every crime or malfeasance under the sun. That they paid a terrible price under Nazi Germany for simply existing is a fact, save for Holocaust deniers–and those are legion. That equating the creation of a Jewish state is seen by many as a disproportionate compensation is also a fact. (My view is that there can never be enough compensation for a crime surpassing all others in the history of a world that has been ever creative in the field.)

Arabs (save for Jordanians and rare others) share with my fellow Iranians a deep hatred of Jews and nothing would make them happier than the destruction of Israel. They pride themselves on their brotherhood with the much put-upon, oppressed, crushed Palestinians but the feeling is caused by anti-Semitism rather than by virtuous empathy or Hegel’s “schöne Seele” (beautiful soul). Push them and they will say that the only problem with the Holocaust ( if it ever happened) is that the much admired Hitler didn’t do away with all Jews. But then, hating Jews has been a tradition forever–entire libraries are filled with books about the subject, with disquisitions on eras, events, legends, etc. Of the many strange facets of the human mind, this is one of the weirdest but one that yields no answers.

Certainly, ever since European Jews settled down in Israel, realising Theodor Herzl’s Zionist dream, cohabitation never proved easy between them and Arabs who had lived in the original Palestine almost since the beginning of time along with the original Sabras, the Jews who had never left. Clashes have been frequent, appalling stories occurred with the Palestinian population which legitimately felt wronged, deprived of basic rights, their land stolen and innumerable lives lost. As for Arab Israelis, they chafed under their second-rate citizenship. There were skirmishes, wars such as the 1967 one with Egypt, massacres took place, such as the abominable 1982 ones in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila near Beyrouth perpetrated by Lebanese phalanges while the Israeli military under Ariel Sharon looked the other way and even facilitated operations.

Yet, until relatively recent times, Israel had an active liberal press and progressive Jewish Israelis strongly voiced their dissent with the human violations of the government, though the hardliner Jews grew ever more rigidly religious and the army more often than not brutally crushed dissent. Meanwhile, the illegal settlements have increased in scope, making life ever more difficult or even impossible for Palestinians. Activists and sympathizers, despite good intentions, are not able to make headway as long as the people in power have no intention of looking for solutions. We remember Rachel Corrie, crushed by an Israeli armored bulldozer (photo below), or James Miller, the British filmmaker killed by Israeli soldiers, both in Gaza, both in 2003, but there have been and are others.

Today, there are 9 million Israelis, including some 2 million Arab Israelis. Settlements number 130 government-approved ones and 100 unofficial ones. East Jerusalem (that Palestinians still believe will some day become their capital, demonstrating that hope does indeed spring eternal) counts 300,000 Israeli citizens, both Arabs and Jews. In nearby Syria, the Golan Heights, a desert region hardly populated and illegally annexed by Israel in 1981, counts 20,000 settlers. While Gaza, separated from the West Bank by the width of Israel and a battleground for all in the area as well as for unhinged warriors remains an impossible proposition.

Settlements are generously encouraged and approved by Trump who would be hard put to find Israel or any country in the area or any country, period, on a map, has no idea what languages the people there speak, what gods they worship and the future or lack thereof they see for their children. Where other U.S. presidents more or less half-heartedly paid lip service to possible roadmaps, the present one, the “very stable genius” who swerves from one pathetic and destructive bright idea to the next helps his best buddy, the corrupt and dangerous Netanyahu, by bringing him total support in what often looks like a “final solution” regarding Palestinians. The “Peace Plan,” brainchild of the brilliant international policy expert Jared Kushner, calls for occupation of even more of the West Bank by Israeli settlers, in exchange offering Palestinians desert land on the Golan Heights. By some estimates, the Palestinians will end up losing 30% of  of the land they occupy now, generally in a most uneasy cohabitation with the ever more rabidly religious and Palestinian hating settlers. The appalling injustice makes even staunch supporters of the existence of Israel such as myself wonder how long this situation can keep deteriorating and not end in total disaster.
And the world looks on…

 

Also see:

Facing Thanatos

Forget Allah, Buddha, Christ, etc. Two minor Greek mythological deities excavated by Freud in his theory of what makes us humans tick have been ruling the world forever. Eros, the god or drive for love and Thanatos, that of death. Of course, any number of cultures follows the established pattern of duality. Be it yin and yang or the light versus darkness of my Zoroastrian ancestors, these warring forces live inside all of us. Looking at the state of the world, one would have to wonder if, for several decades now, more than explaining humanity, they aren’t actually splitting it in two

Populations with a pea-sized brain (and I’m being generous here) in countries or communities prey to religious superstition and/or battleground to sectarian or other conflicts, tribalism, warlordism, illegal occupation, and/or crushed under brutal regimes—take your pick—have every reason to believe in Thanatos’s supremacy. That is what they see all around day in and day out. You can preach all you want about peace and love and the brotherhood of man, they would sooner drive a sharp dagger through your lying heart than listen to more pieties. Death is all there is and you are responsible for this, they will assert time and again, you caused this war and the one before that. You brought to power that tyrant. You stole our ressources, you victimized us, and now you insult our prophets. You deserve death, I will kill you and die myself rather than live to see another day.

There you go. Thanatos once more spreading his dark wings, grabbing his scythe. What can you do against imbeciles whose most powerful emotion is hatred, who will always destroy rather than build, who will hold the most asinine beliefs and defend them to the death?

Also powerful believers in Thanatos are the vicious regimes which we, to our shame, pretend are no better and no worse than any other, whose repulsive heads we invite at our tables, with whose governments we sign juicy contracts, whose terrible crimes we pretend not to see. Did our administration voice even a modest protest over the 47 executions in Saudi Arabia last Saturday? Is decapitation horrendous only when performed by ISIS? Is crucifixion bad when putting Christ to death but okay to get rid of pesky teenagers who send out one tweet too many? Yet, even that kingdom built on sand has executed only 150 people in 2015. Our real best buddy since the signing of the doomed-to-crumble nuclear agreement is Iran where nearly one thousand people have been executed during the year that just ended. (Hurray for Iran, they’re getting there, though still far from our own United States where this past year 33,000 of our citizens died through gun violence—thirty-three THOUSAND?—and where cops killed almost 1200 people, mostly from minorities and often unarmed. All this to much cheering from the half-wits who refuse gun control and police accountability.)

We can’t confront Thanatos, his hold is too strong on fanatics and deranged individuals (for whom we continue to voice excuses and understanding.) That shouldn’t prevent us from recognizing his cult as the big divide between civilized discourse and mayhem. Or from picking Eros.

 

 

Snowden does not exist

 Whoa, hasn’t this story run its course yet? I know, there’s no end of fascination with what journalists and  the media do to our society. And no answer to the vexing and clichéd chicken-and-egg question: Does the  media create news or do news create the media? Still, with the present colorful and exasperating circus  round the Snowden/NSA story, another question pops up, when is enough enough?

In the latest development, President Obama has cancelled his trip to Russia, ostensibly because he didn’t think at this point it would improve the relations between the two countries. Seriously? Does anyone believe that behind the inflated rhetoric about agendas not meshing and whatnot and unspoken disapproval of that thug Putin, this is not first and foremost about Russia granting asylum to Snowden? Or anything but a preemptive appeasement of the crazy conservatives in our country? Imagine what Tea Party extremists, libertarians, Paul Ryan (along with Ron Paul, Rand Paul and all similarly named Republicans) would have had to say if this unpatriotic Kenyan-socialist-communist-black president had not cancelled his visit, the mud-slinging he would have had to endure for showing such disregard for security breaches, intelligence, and keeping Americans safe!

For? Against? Don’t know?

“Don’t know” is a response that doesn’t exist outside polls. Everywhere else, everyone knows everything, has an opinion about everything and is busy sending it out for all to hear. What we don’t always realize is how obvious our buttons are, the ones that every social, economic, or political issue pushes. We are robots with features incorporated by our background and circumstances and rarely are we capable of moving beyond. Think? God forbid. We just jump in and engage in disquisition about this or that issue that’s already being beaten to death. The public gabfest wouldn’t be complete if it didn’t carry my voice, would it?
Case in point, the Zimmerman verdict. This guy, a self-appointed vigilante who thought packing heat made him someone to be reckoned with (my regular readers know how I feel about guns) shot and killed a young black man. Neither the police investigation nor the trial that just ended with Zimmerman’s acquittal could establish the exact sequence of events, only that the armed guard was not racist. The jury did its best under murky circumstances and returned a not-guilty verdict. But the chorus of voices on all sides pitching in with arguments and opinions? The only one worth hearing was the President with a moving unscripted statement about what it means to be a black man in America today. Everything else, just so much wind.

Case in point. Rolling Stone magazine’s cover of surviving Boston Marathon bomber, Dzohkhar Tsarnaev, and the related story by Janet Reitman. Howls of outrage went up; calling it a glam shot glorifying the assassin, retailers refused to carry the issue; one Boston police photographer retaliated by producing photos of Tsarnaev bloodied and dazed flushed out of his hiding place. Personally, I’m not as worried about the cover as about the question foremost in my mind: how many Tsarnaevs, Adam Lanzas, Mohammad Attas are even now stirring in their primal muck in pods like those in the old horror film “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” getting ready to unleash mayhem? But does the magazine cover insult the victims of the bombing? I don’t know.

Case in point, Edward Snowden. Now stuck in Russian limbo, was this man–overnight celebrity for the next fifteen minutes–right when he denounced the NSA’s vast spying system of unsuspecting citizens? Here I do have an opinion. Yes, he was. But the rest of the discussion about his life, personality, motivation—out to make a quick buck, selfless whistleblower, cheat, hero? Who knows? I certainly don’t. And I’ll defer to Daniel Ellsberg, certainly more qualified than anyone to have an opinion on the matter, when he says that Snowden was right to make a run for it.

Case in point, Syria and American intervention. Is it okay for tens of thousands of Syrians to die while Bashar Assad emails congratulations to his wife for buying her latest Louboutin heels? Should Obama go in, is he half-hearted about it, has he moved the red line again, should he actually arm insurgents? I don’t think anyone, including the President, has the answer to that. The administration is playing it by ear. Two years ago, something could possibly have been done to overthrow the tyrant son of a tyrant and replace him with a more palatable government (though America would never have heard the end of it) but now? Obama promised light armament and logistics help to the insurgents but despite David Ignatius’ op-ed echoing others accusing the president of equivocating, the situation is not clear. Whom would we be arming? Sectarian fanatics? Democratically inclined future leaders, potential allies of the US? Brutal thugs who think nothing of ripping out their enemy’s heart and eating it, as we saw in one video? What should Obama do? Once again, I don’t know.

About many things, I have an opinion, some too strong for my own good. But about many others, such as in the above examples, sorry, the earth will have to continue turning without knowing what I think. All of you out there express more than enough to fill the void.

Why Egypt is not quite back to square one

The military are temporarily—at least, so they claim—back in power, having gotten rid of Morsi, an inept and clueless would-be autocrat. Muslim Brotherhood leaders once again find themselves behind bars while their rank and file vow martyrdom. So, what has changed?

a) Politically, Egyptians have come of age. Put to the test, they rallied. Shifting alliances? Of course. A mix of secular and well-educated youth, disenchanted officials, Coptic Christians, even Salafists, unhappy with the Brotherhood? Sure. But any population that can come out 17 million strong with demands has to be acknowledged. No one can pull a Bashar Assad and mow down such crowds. Morsi failed to capitalize on the goodwill of people finally rid of decades of military dictatorship and corruption; he had no idea of how to build democratic foundations and no intention to do so; he didn’t begin to tackle the immediate and huge economic problems of a population already poor before the Arab Spring and now plunged into immeasurable woes and difficulties.

“Rouhani, Rouhani, we support you!”

No matter what happens next, Iranians will have known relief and a great burst of enthusiasm after the results of Friday’s presidential elections were announced, an overwhelming and unexpected majority for 64-year old cleric Hassan Rouhani. Not wanting to risk bloody demonstrations such as the ones following its rigged elections of 2009, the regime played it safe this time, sharing the returns as they came in and waiting for the total countdown before announcing Rouhani as the new president. It’s safe to assume that the Supreme Leader was not dancing in the streets with the exuberant crowds—his preferred candidates came in a very distant second and third.

A break from the tumult

What should the new post be about? Chavez? Nah…I don’t know anything about the man or about Venezuela or even about Latin America. To paraphrase famously brainy Dan Quayle—remember him?–I don’t even speak Latin. After two days of enduring the torrents of words and images hurtling through the ether about el comandante, assessments from both grieving followers and ecstatic foes and op-eds from experts and analysts and mixed reactions from world leaders, boredom is setting in and I no longer feel like weighing the “yes, buts” and the “on the other hands.” As in, Chavez was a populist and a socialist but his rogue buddies—Assad of Syria, Ahmadinejad of Iran, the late-and-little-lamented Qaddafi of Libya—spoil the picture. As in, he was brought to power by popular vote, including in the recent elections, but despite enormous oil resources, the economy is not good and his fourteen years at the head of the country include some unsavory violations, great corruption, and unchecked crime. Bottom line, he was no Che Guevara and certainly no Salvador Allende. Also, as a matter of personal taste, I dislike posturing strongmen whose main platform is to thumb their nose at the culture of the great white oppressor.