meanderings

Fahrenheit 911

The rare, but gifted writer can make you both laugh and cry in the same book. Yesterday, I saw people do both in the same five to 10 minutes of Michael Moore's film. I personally never made the laughter stage. In his most comic moments, George W. Bush is a tragic figure to me. And the greatest tragedy is what he has done to others with his sincerity of belief, arrogance and ignorance.
I do not recommend that anyone who lived through September 11, 2001 in New York, or had loved ones die there, or anyone who has a loved one in Afghanistan or Iraq, view this film. Michael Moore takes a razor to an open wound. And yet, I thought he exploited the images of that fateful day less than any media coverage I've seen since. He uses darkness and voice, people's faces, and the white debris of a macabre snow. We never see those towers, never see a plane. We don't need to.
We sent my 13 year old son to Shrek 2. I read the controversy over the rating. I needed to see it for myself first. It was a very disturbing film and I would not want my child to see it alone. Is its violence worse than other PG-13 films? I don't know. Probably not. But this was not a "reality" show or fantasy. My son will see this movie with his parents beside him, supporting him and talking with him in the days to follow.
This was, of course, a slanted view of Bush... as is everything I read in my local, South Carolina newspapers. And I suppose both make some claim to objectivity. However, I thought I was better informed than most because I don't rely on those local newspapers for what I know about Bush and al-Queda and the war; but I was shocked by the connections even I was unaware of.
Bush supporters for the most part won't see this; and if they do, won't believe it. But it seems to me that it would have to be disturbing to anyone who is not a die-hard Bush fan. I was astounded by the footage. What work it must have taken to find all those clips in such a variety of places! The film was simply brilliant. I think, in many ways, it was a much greater achievement than Bowling for Columbine. I think we forget how much public record is visual these days. Of course, Moore put the pieces together and had the obvious, brutally satirical comments. But almost the entire film was actual footage. It was a truly incredible feat.
My biggest problem with the movie was the exploitation of people's grief. The media is saturated with that. The soldier's mother may have wanted to tell her story. She may not regret it later. But it is so fresh and so public. It felt almost pornographic to me. I realize that the grief of those families and of those wounded in the war are the part we have not seen on national TV and they do need a voice ... but it still feels like voyeurism to plaster that pain on the screen to people who have no connection of love and history. Yes, I wept with them and they are my spiritual brothers and sisters; but I'm not there to hold their hand, to offer them comfort. I feel that my sympathy is barren.
I live in South Carolina. We are a die-hard Republican state. Strom Thurmond could still be senator here if we hadn't had such a public funeral for him. We are the Britney Spears state. "We should just trust our president and support him in what he does."
I am a lonely painter. I live in a box of paints.

the answer my friend is blowing in the wind.... bob dylanmy image of god is not an old white man in the sky. i think my truest image of god is the wind. it can be both gentle and fierce and evokes both love and fear. it can only be seen by what it does. it can power sails and wreak havoc and provide soothing relief on a hot day. wind can never be put in a box.
kinda like god.

i'm going to write something of my own soon.... but the absence of any concern for these people drives me crazy. this article is for the christian right who believe god needs their assistance and cooperation to bring about the end of the world.


Palestinian camp bears brunt of violence



By RAVI NESSMAN


June 5, 2004 | RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) -- Mohammed Zanoun writes his name in charcoal on the white remnant of a kitchen cabinet and jams it into the bare ground where his house used to stand. Zanoun's home was one of dozens crushed into rubble by armored bulldozers during a weeklong Israeli raid into the Rafah refugee camp that ended last week.

His block, in the comparatively upscale neighborhood known as Brazil, is now a patchwork of piles of debris and pits of sand. It's the same across the street. And on the next block.

"You know why I am doing this? So my children will not forget this is my home," he said.

Rafah has suffered more during nearly four years of violence than any other Palestinian camp or town. More than 13,000 of its 90,000 residents have been made homeless by demolitions since 2000, and about 365 have been killed in fighting.

The sound of gunfire from Israeli guard towers along the nearby border with Egypt echoes through the streets almost nightly, sometimes punctuated by the blast of tank shells.

Israel says the weeklong raid and most of its other operations in Rafah are aimed at uncovering tunnels used to smuggle weapons under the border. The army said troops uncovered three during the most recent raid.

The people of Rafah see only more suffering ahead, even if Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pushes through with his proposal to withdraw from the Gaza Strip. Under that plan, Israel might widen a buffer zone separating Rafah from the border. That area already has borne the brunt of fighting and house demolitions.

The Block O section of the refugee camp along the border is now mostly a desolate moonscape, a large, empty no-man's land of huge mounds of rubble dotted by the occasional shell of a concrete house, often missing a roof or several walls.

Residents say the army has been widening the zone for years by systematically destroying houses along the border.

An army spokesman, Capt. Jacob Dallal, strenuously denied that, saying the army only knocks down buildings masking tunnels or being used by gunmen to attack soldiers.

The result has been an unplanned widening of the zone as gunmen took over the houses closest to soldiers guarding the border, the army destroyed them and the gunmen moved on to the next layer of houses, Dallal said.

"This wasn't something that was part of any premeditated desire," he said.

But even in neighborhoods far from the border, people are anxious.

"I feel like they are chasing us," said Mohammad Abu Jazar, who had a house destroyed three years ago and whose new house was damaged last month.

Dallal said the military regrets the damage and loss of life but also said crowded Rafah is "one of the most difficult places in the world for an army to operate."

In several raids in May, 246 houses were destroyed or so badly damaged they are uninhabitable, leaving more than 3,800 people homeless, the United Nations said. Forty-five Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire during the most recent raid, Palestinian officials said.

The 40 members of the Faramayi family squeeze into a classroom at a school turned into a refugee center. Laundry hangs from the windows, a dirty blanket covers the door and mattresses lie stacked against one wall.

The family patriarch, Ismail Faramayi, 60, said they fled Block O after an Israeli tank shell or helicopter missile blew apart the front of their home, slightly injuring two family members.

When they returned several days later, the house where they had lived for 50 years was a mound of broken concrete, splintered furniture and smashed children's toys, he said.

Usually the demolitions come in the poorer parts of the refugee camp more likely to house militants, not places like Brazil, where Nabil Abu Saud has a whirlpool bath in his gray marble master bathroom -- a room now open to the outside. The home, which he spent 30 years building with money from construction work in Israel, now has no sewage system, water, electricity or front wall.

Abu Saud, 50, worries the army will come back and finish off the house, but he cannot bring himself to move the new cabinets and beds that still smell of freshly cut wood.

"When I touch them, I feel like I'm dying," he said.

The 6-month-old stadium where neighborhood boys hung out every night playing basketball and soccer -- a place locals dubbed "the soul of Brazil" -- is in ruins.

The walls were knocked down and its asphalt is pitted by tank and bulldozer treads and covered in rubble from the damaged concrete bleachers. The big green gate is twisted. Three of its four light poles have been knocked to the ground.

Nearby, a small bulldozer with a Palestinian flag slowly works through the neighborhood, clearing ruined streets of piles of dirt, crushed pipes, ripped clothes and bedding.

In a pit where his house for 30 people once stood, Ghazi el Akhras, 51, has put up a tent of pipes, a tattered blue tarp, some plywood and blankets.

As el Akhras walked in, he removed his sandals, as Arabs traditionally do upon entering a home, and padded barefoot over the sand and dirt.

Israel knocked down his previous home 33 years ago in a different part of Rafah and sent him here, he said.

Although he hopes to get housing assistance from aid groups, he said he is wary of building a new home, even in a different part of Rafah.

"I'm afraid the Israelis will come again and destroy it," he said.

Thrice-stolen land
by Ryan Beiler
Far from recent headlines about home demolitions and assassinations by airstrike in Gaza, violence of a different kind affects Palestinians every day - violence against the land itself. In the midst of the chalky, blasted-rock moonscape left by the construction of an Israeli settlement road south of Bethlehem in the Occupied Territories lies a massive mound of burgundy earth, clawed at its margins by backhoe teeth. This soil once covered the land of Hamed Issal al Bow, who grew olives, citrus fruits, and vegetables until the Israeli confiscation order came that carved away all of his cultivated slopes, leaving him with a few acres of rocky hilltop.

This wasn't a case of American-style "imminent domain," in which a members of the community are forced to vacate their property for the ostensible common good - perhaps even with government compensation. As a Palestinian, Issal al Bow will not be able to travel the road that took his hillside. The special permits required of Palestinians to travel such roads are almost never given, making this essentially an Israeli-only highway that not only divides Palestinian communities, but that does so to connect settlements already illegal under international law. The Fourth Geneva Convention, of which Israel is a signatory, states that "the occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."

Even as his land was being taken, Issal al Bow asked that at least the soil be deposited on his remaining land, making it potentially arable. He was refused. But the Israeli contractors who carried out the order weren't content to merely destroy Issal al Bow's livelihood - they're now selling it for their own profit. The rich brown mound of topsoil that sustained generations of his family - and now sits mere meters from his remaining land - is being sold piecemeal to whoever can afford it. Issal al Bow cannot, leaving him the victim of three thefts: first, the occupation of his land, then the confiscation of it, then the sale of the very soil to the highest bidder.

A few kilometers to the north, a pathetic row of olive trees perch on the rim of another hill blasted in two for settlement road construction. Their pathos explicated: After the destruction of the grove, the few olive branches left will likely wither with the development of a new road that benefits mainly Israelis, solidifies settlements, and leaves Palestinians isolated, with fewer options for sustainable peace, and many reasons for anger and despair.

Ryan Beiler is Web editor for Sojourners. He recently traveled to Israel and Palestine on a freelance assignment for Mennonite Central Committee.

anniversary edition

i found this while cleaning out files in my computer...still true although i don't remember writing or sending it...

I have been reading a book about Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The message that I have heard is that it is more important to inadequately express heartfelt thoughts and feelings than to wait for the more eloquently produced words of gifted orators. Lincoln’s speech lasted just over two minutes. I guess honesty sometimes bestows its own eloquence.

Freedom is a word I have heard so often these days. And like God and Allah and Jesus it has been besmeared with blood and violence, greed and ambition, until its virtue can be compared to that of a repeatedly raped and abused child. But like the child, its precious value remains.

Do we have freedom in America? Do we have freedom anywhere? What is freedom?

I think freedom is about choice. But only dead people have no choices so choice cannot be the sole indicator of freedom. All choices have consequences, and I think it is the consequences more than the choices that define freedom.

We define choices as good and bad, but in reality, it is the consequences that we label good or label bad. A person who chooses to pursue an education is said to have made a good choice. The truth is that what we label as good is the consequences of that choice.... knowledge, wisdom, material gain. The same is true when we speak of bad choices. The person who chooses to ingest illegal (or legal) drugs may suffer the consequences of addiction, iron bars, even the final lethal dose... self administered or administered by the state. We label this as bad, or perhaps even as evil.

So if we define freedom in terms of consequences rather than choice, who then is truly free. Is it the American? Is it the Palestinian child? Is it the 13 year old African mother? Who is this mythical free person?

I believe it is the person who accepts the concept of a loving deity. Only the person whose every choice is clothed in the consequence of love is free. This is the way I choose to live my life. This is the way I choose to view my world and all the beings in it. Most intimately, this is the way I choose to raise my children. These are the words I am compelled to send to my beloved friends and family on this day of confusing emotions and thoughts as I look at my world. This is where I seek freedom on the last day of May, 2003.