Category: General

The story is fascinating. The feature article by Jane Perlez visits an aristocratic Iraqi family which in this century alone has survived (no, somehow flourished under) an Ottoman Caliphate, a British Empire, an Arab monarchy and a Baath Party coup followed by a Sadaam Hussein dictatorship. Today its members eagerly anticipate the latest regime, with characteristic optimism about the benefits which will follow, for all Iraqis.

“We have lost,” Mr. Jabbar said matter-of-factly at his mother’s home, which he visits daily for lunch and conversation. “But I told my daughter, Magda, the other day: ‘Now we will see Iraq changed into a modern country. Now there is a chance.'”

But the wisdom of this same man, a member of the Baath Party for four decades, is best revealed in his words to a 6-year-old grandson, Essa, words which reveal the patience and wisdom of thousands of years of history – or maybe just plain good sense.

When he was not at the party headquarters during the [recent U.S.-led] war, Mr. Jabbar said he paid a lot of attention to his 6-year-old grandson, Essa, who was frightened, particularly at night.
He created games, he said, such as how to tell the different kinds of orange trees in the garden in the dark (by feeling the varied textures of the skins), or a card game pitting the Americans and Iraqis against each other. When the Americans won a game, Mr. Jabber said he told Essa that the Iraqis could win a game in the future. “It doesn’t have to be a battle to have a winner or loser,” he told the child.

My friend Glenn and I went to the New York Auto Show yesterday. I go every year, I suppose just to keep tabs on what the selection will look like should I ever decide to own a car again. Besides, I grew up in Detroit, before it self-destructed, where I was actually a sucker for imports (MG TDs, Citroens, even NSUs and Fiat 500s) by the time I was ten. Also, the guys wandering around are cute, as are the smart women, of virtually all ages, hired to talk to the cute guys about the cars.
Well, Glenn and I had fun, and he was definitely keen on the fine VW Beetle cabriolet, but I confess I couldn’t find anything at any price that would look good on me. Even the one possible exception of a beautiful, and surprisingly practical, Audi cabriolet was no real temptation, since I’m actually not willing to spend that “any price” on a car just now, especially one of $38,000. Maybe I could go for a Polo or Jetta cabriolet, if they ever send one over. Well, I do live in the rapidly disappearing land of public transportation, so I can still afford to be pure about car ownership.
To be honest, Barry and I would probably spring for some new wheels if anything truly worthy, exciting, and reasonably appropriate to our world were ever to be allowed into this country. The Smart would do it, although our friends would have to stay at home. Ok, the little Mercedes A-Class (a Smart with a back seat) would be my second choice.
But what is the selection Americans actually get to choose from? We see only dummed-down versions of the largest and most expensive products of Europe, uninspired, consumer-survey-designed bores from Asia, and the sad, unmemorable, bloated losers from our own drawing boards. I’m not even talking about the abominable insult to taste and conscience represented by the trucks, whether pickup or SUV!
What’s the American auto show circuit news in these, the years of the imperial oil wars? The next big thing is the big, meaning bigger, and in fact the biggest gosh darn sedans and truck-tanks Detroit, even Maybach, has ever imagined. I mean, they’re talking ten and sixteen cylinders and up to 1,000 horsepower. [My first car, a prize 1962 Beetle had 40hp, and my beloved previously-owned 1960 Porsche 356B had an entirely adequate 70.*]
A NYTimes “Editorial Observer” piece on the Auto Show begins with
a description of a “dream,” or “concept,” car which actually does try to relate to the planet we share with others. What does it say about industry priorities that yesterday I never noticed a car answering the very “green” description found in the editorial? I only saw what looked like another SUV, if somewhat downsized, and I passed it by.

At the New York auto show, Ford has an interesting little vehicle on display. It is sort of an ultimate green machine — fueled by hydrogen, lubricated by cornflower oil, rolling on tires made of corn, built with panels of soy. I can imagine waking up one morning to find my ride being devoured by groundhogs. Ford calls it the Model U, invoking a pioneering, back-to-basics machine. Fascinating but very lonely.
All around are vehicles that, in the absence of groundhogs, look intent on eating the Model U for breakfast. . . . This is what the folks are really here to see: fantasies, toys, nostalgia, horsepower and more horsepower.
The car has always been the ultimate American dream machine. We love to hate them, to love them and to analyze why we love or hate them. Yes, we drive them, too, but that is never really been a big deal in America. We do not really go for all that gear-shifting, twisting-road European stuff. We prefer to race around oval tracks or down a straight quarter-mile. Besides, there is just not that much you can do droning on an Interstate or crawling up the Henry Hudson, except listen to the radio. Our constant has always been the car as accessory, as image, as fantasy, as identity. It is a jet plane with fins, a fighting vehicle, a machine that is “sexy and powerful,” a truck yearning for the wilderness.

Actually, I think the Times writer, Serge Schmemann, is being too gentle on us. America’s attitude toward the automobile is more than superficial, from top to bottom, it’s fundamentally unconscionable.
____________________
* For the two people out there who care about such things, the Porsche was replaced, when it needed a major valve job, with a delicate aluminum Lancia Fulvia Zagato, and that Italian exotic was joined (finally!) by a little blue FIAT Cinquecento paisan. Both were retired for an eccentric white South African (rhd) Citroen GS, which was itself succeeded by a delightful bouncy Renault 5 (not a “Le Car!”) with a fold-back sunroof as big as all outdoors. My last little gasoline friend, a black fireplug of a 1984 Volkswagen GTI, was abandoned while still very young, when I moved to New York and began my long-term relationship with the subway system.

In today’s anniversary memorial to both the pragmatism and the idealism of the 1930’s the NYTimes seems to say it’s the latter.

On April 6, 1933, the Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill that would have made the standard work week 30 hours. Anything more would be overtime.
The bill passed by the Senate was an effort to reduce a national unemployment rate that stood at 25 percent. It had strong support from labor and religious leaders who argued that working people needed time for family, education, recreation and spirituality as much as they needed higher wages. But the bill failed in the House. The Fair Labor Standards Act, passed five years later, gave Americans a statutory 40-hour workweek.

The report goes on to say that while American productivity is now several times what it was 70 years ago, most of us still find it hard to get our work done in 40 hours, and millions are without work altogether.

What happened? In effect, the United States as a society took all of its increases in labor productivity in the form of money and stuff instead of time. Of course, we didn’t all get the money; the very poor earn even less in real terms than they did then, and the largest share of the increase went to the richest Americans.
The harmful effects of working more hours are being felt in many areas of society. Stress is a leading cause of heart disease and weakened immune systems. Consumption of fast foods and lack of time for exercise has led to an epidemic of obesity and diabetes. Many parents complain that they do not have enough time to spend with their children, much less become involved in their community. Worker productivity declines during the latter part of long work shifts.

To put this in perspective, we could look at the picture in Europe. Because of differences in workweek hours and vacation time, Americans now labor a full nine weeks more each year than Western Europeans.

. . . over the past 30 years, Europeans have made a different choice — to live simpler, more balanced lives and work fewer hours. The average Norwegian, for instance, works 29 percent less than the average American — 14 weeks per year — yet his average income is only 16 percent less. Western Europeans average five to six weeks of paid vacation a year; we average two.
Work and consumption are not necessarily bad. But producing and consuming can become the focus of a person’s life — at the expense of other values.

And now with fears fanned by a radical nationalist regime since September 11, the freedoms which have always been the most worthy blessings of American society are being traded for an illusory security. What can we offer ourselves, or anyone outside who might manage to make it through the walls surrounding the new fortress America, but more stuff we never have time to appreciate? In the end is that all that will remain of the idea of America?

The household has been delightfully distracted for five days while the perfect mother-out-of-law visited us this past week. It was also a healthy diversion from a virtually full-time obsession with, well, that damn elephant in the parlor.

Peter Freundlich thinks “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass” should not be the models for American foreign policy.

Listen. Don’t misunderstand. I think it is a good thing that the members of the Bush administration seem to have been reading Lewis Carroll. I only wish someone had pointed out that “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass” are meditations on paradox and puzzle and illogic and on the strangeness of things, not templates for foreign policy. It is amusing for the Mad Hatter to say something like, `We must make war on him because he is a threat to peace,’ but not amusing for someone who actually commands an army to say that.

My nephew, who regrets the limited instrumental recital opportunities available in his home in Brownsville, writes about something like a voice debut, in southern Texas streets February 15.

HEY, WHAT ABOUT MY OTHER TWO SECONDS?!
Among the millions of peace demonstrators out in the streets today, about 250 (of us) were marching on the scene in McAllen, Texas, the nearest rally to us in the Rio Grande Valley [about 50-60 miles from Pete and Michael’s house]. With Michael’s reassurance, I overcame my stage fright and agreed to an interview by a local television reporter, which lasted for about four minutes in front of the camera. I had a small degree of satisfaction (and immense relief) immediately afterward, feeling it had gone OK and musing that it might possibly help awaken others to understand and protest the recklessness of Bush’s headlong rush into war.
My “interview” did air, but was distilled to 6 seconds of footage on the local ABC news channel tonight. (Isn’t a sound bite supposed to be at least 8 seconds long ?) Fortunately for my vanity, there was nothing bizarre or embarrassing in my appearance or speech as captured on TV. However, considering how nerve-wracking it was to psych myself up to articulate my views like that publicly, it was frustrating watching the shallowness of the local news coverage; nobody is going to have their mind changed by 6 seconds of “discussion.”
I’m left only with hoping that as a result of the novelty of my brief TV appearance, some of my neighbors or coworkers will be more curious about my convictions and ask me for more detail the next time I bump into them.
Take heart, I tell myself; it’s good to face your fears, and stage fright has always been a big bugbear for me. Maybe this will help my poise someday during my next recital or concerto.
Peace,
Pete

We love Pete and Michael.

I confess. [But is it ego or wanna-do-good works?] I’ve always felt that if I’m going to a protest or a demonstration and I don’t intend to do something which would risk arrest, I’ve got to sport a good hand-lettered sign. For lots of people, costume or line dancing would be other possibilities, but I have a congenital problem with the concept of flashy, and that certainly limits the attention-getting options.
For the massive anti-war demonsration in New York today I decided to hoist a sign invoking the exhaustively repeated, truly magnificent cri of one of my French heroes [France was not an accidental reference in a week which saw the government of the American republic refer to the country which guaranteed our independence, our oldest and most loyal ally, as “old Europe” and a proper object of our disdain and scorn].
My shield read, “�crasez l’inf�me!,” and I wore a Jacobin cap. Pretty esoteric? Yeah, tons of people seemed totally nonplused by the foreign arrangement of letters, and the hat was just a stocking cap for most fellow marchers, but early in our progress up Fifth Avenue from the Public Library I was approached by a French Television crew and asked why I was carrying that sign.
Like a smart-aleck kid, I was delighted to be able to explain the English translation, “Crush the infamous thing!,” and went on to describe my understanding of what Voltaire meant by “L’infame.” I held it to refer to unreason, superstition, fundamentalism, arbitrary authority and the Bush White House. I admitted that Voltaire had been remarkably prescient 250 years ago when he included in his list of iniquities the current administration in Washington, and that my gratitude was accordingly that much more profound.
They asked more, about my current attitude toward France and toward the position of the French people and the French government on the subject of an Iraq war, and most significantly, about what I thought of the performance of the American media [ok, I admit I provoked that one].
They were very impressive. They had been following the legendary Florent Morillet and the GLAMericans since nine in the morning, and I’m very sorry I won’t be able to see the product of their labors on French public television [The program, “Envoies Speciales,” is something like the American institution, “60 Minutes.” If anyone sees this segment somewhere in the french-speaking world, please let me know.].
My sign and I were hailed and saluted by a number of people all afternoon, many who understood the words and their origin, but many who did not and asked for particulars. The most gratifying encounters were with French citizens, but the most charming exchange may have been with the very attractive, young, Hunter College-type couple who asked. As soon as I mentioned “Voltaire,” the woman gasped, blushed and shyly sighed that she should have remembered, since she had just read about him.
Thank you, La France.

Is this part of the many blessings being promised to New York if certain interests succeed in bringing the Olympics to the City in 2012?

Government troops massacred student protesters in Tlatelolco Plaza in Mexico City that night, on the eve of the 1968 Olympic Games, and then tried to wash away the blood, along with every trace of the killing.
. . .
“The army surrounded the square and fired from every angle on thousands of youths,” the book says, leaving “hundreds of dead and wounded, thousands of arrests,” followed by “the persecution and imprisonment of student leaders.” [At least 275 subsequent killings were committed by the government, government investigation determined later.]
. . .
The 1968 killings were the beginning of a long government crackdown on its real and suspected enemies. Hundreds of people were killed over the next 15 years.
. . .
[The judgment of the country’s leading historians is that] the killing at Tlatelolco was orchestrated at the highest levels of the government, with the intent of suppressing political unrest that could embarrass Mexico before the world at the Olympics.

Those sports fanatics go too far. And Mexico didn’t even have the excuse September 11 will give our own thugs.

The complete quote, Albert Einstein’s words, goes, “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”
Well some righteous and very brave people people are doing something, and they are now risking their lives. We have to help them.
I just received the text of a report of a group of international activists being beaten and shot at by Israeli soldiers this week in occupied Palestinian territory. [No, the world hasn’t really dropped everything, hasn’t interrupted its abominations everywhere in order to be spectators of the Americans’ own special nutiness and barbarity.] The account arrived in an email from my friend Steve, who has twice gone to Palestine with Jews Against the Occupation (JATO), and will return this summer.
The story doesn’t easily lend itself to being excerpted, but it can be read on the website maintained by the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). It may be enough to note that its major significance lies in what it reveals of the dangers increasing even for non-Palestinians, and the fact that this is most likely deliberate Israeli government policy.

I would like to take this opportunity to impress upon all our supporters that they are by no means helpless and that the success or failure of the ISM depends not only on the heroism of our activists in Palestine but also our supporters around the world.
We are convinced that these assaults on ISM activists are not merely a case of military indiscipline but of a deliberate campaign to intimidate our activists with the ultimate aim of driving them from areas such as Nablus so as to give the army a free hand in the area. By refusing to protest such violence against their nationals the governments of the West are not only failing in their responsibility to protect these peace activists but are also serving as accomplices to Israel’s campaign of terrorism against the indigenous people of Palestine.
In the coming weeks America and its allies are expected to launch their war against Iraq. Many analysts believe that the Israeli’s will seize the opportunity that the war presents to escalate its campaign of terror against the Palestinians with the aim of driving as many of them as possible from the Gaza Strip and the Occupied West Bank (ethnic cleansing). [Michael ISM Media Coordinator, Beit Sahour, Occupied Palestine]

I have as much of an imagination and as much hope for the possibilities of our species as the next person, and I believe in a space program. I just cannot understand how we can think that incurring the unnecessary expense of sending real bodies into orbit performing high school science projects, mostly to market voters, and corporate, military and Congressional interests for the support of other, serious NASA programs, is more important than securing health care for all of our people, something provided by every civilized nation on the planet.
How can we be proud as a nation of our efforts in space if we cannot give basic care to our people on earth? Once we ensure that everyone in the world’s wealthiest country has health care, we might have the luxury of re-examining whether men and women are better astronauts than machines.
Paul Krugman has been thinking about this a lot.

But the shuttle program didn’t suddenly go wrong last weekend; in terms of its original mission, it was a failure from the get-go. Indeed, manned space flight in general has turned out to be a bust.