Prince Turki speaks for me

Stick around long enough and the world may actually come to your front door.

Or, at least, blow your mind.

In my politically active days I was ardently opposed to the war in Vietnam. Most of the world has come around to the view that that war was the turning point to any claim the United States may have had to a moral high ground in international relations. I believe I called that one right.

When war criminals George W. Bush and his boss, Vice-President Cheney, decided to use 9/11 as an opportunity to invade Iraq, they were roundly supported by people on both the left and the right. I proudly put a bumper sticker on my car announcing "Barbara Lee speaks for me." She was and is my representative in Congress (she's now running for the Senate.) It was Barbara Lee who was the sole representative to vote against that invasion of Iraq. That too, has turned out to be the right call. It was a shameful moment, when America proved it knows how to make the same mistake twice.  It handed Iran a prize on a silver platter, and opened the flood gates to the Taliban, ISIS, Hamas and other islamist zealots. It contributed in a significant way to the hatred many in the Muslim world feel toward Western ways. Instead of modeling democracy, America (and its allies) chose to seek change by means of killing machines. When bombs drop on your heads it's hard to believe the guys dropping the bombs have a nuanced understanding of the difference between ordinary Muslims and radical islamists.

Now, once again, we are standing behind Bibi Nethanyahu in his campaign to root out Hamas, no matter how many children of Gaza have to die in the process. Even Biden, whom I have come to admire since he picked up the reins from the anti-democracy party led by a cheap fraud of a hustler, even Biden, is giving money and arms to this misguided attempt to prove that two wrongs can make a right, this time on the part of Israel.

I'm very pro-Jewish. Very pro-Israel. I understand the desire of Jews to have a homeland after the Holocaust Experience. I want them to succeed as a country. But I believe this use of bombs is not the way to go and is in the long run counter-productive. I believe that they are only generating more hatred. Another generation - as if three generations were not already enough - is learning to hate Israel with such passion that some will even be willing to become suicide bombers. I want them to stop bombing Gaza not because I am anti-Israel, but because I am pro-Israel.

Argue with me. Go ahead. I have no claim to certainty here. But I do believe that's what is going on.

And after living in Saudi Arabia, where women, until recently, could not drive or go to the movies without permission from a father or a husband, where every day I watched religious police bash people with clubs for not closing their stores fast enough at prayer time, I never thought I'd say this: not only does Barbara Lee speak for me. But so does Saudi Arabia's former intelligence chief, Turki Al-Faisal.

At least on this issue. I'm sure if I knew more of his views, I might well find things to disagree on.

But on this issue, he speaks for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCTla5lupzc

Start at the beginning of his speech at minute 1:35 if you want to skip the introduction.

Don't kill the people of Gaza

Two days ago, I wrote a blog entry, A Moment for Taking Sides, in which I expressed my sympathy for Israel as the victim of vicious attacks by Hamas, and urged anybody with influence over current affairs to side with them in taking Hamas down.  "First things first," I said. First get rid of Hamas, then get on with the business of putting right the injustices perpetrated on the Palestinians by what I am convinced are misguided and self-defeating Israeli policies. But I'm afraid I left unsaid why I think Nethanyahu's policies are self-defeating, ultimately. And, Nethanyahu is hardly the only Israeli leader responsible for bad policies; he's merely the latest and, I happen to think, the worst of the lot.

Every time - every single time - the topic of Israel/Palestine comes up in discussion with friends, we get bogged down with competing historical narratives. My first exposure to the history of Israel/Palestine was probably the Ashkenazi Zionist perspective I swallowed whole from the 1960 movie Exodus, based on Leon Uris's book and starring Paul Newman, a fictional account of heroic efforts by European Jews to get around the British efforts to limit emigration to Israel. That film went a long way to establishing American sympathy with the Zionist project. Only much later, after developing leftist political sympathies, did I begin to get the view from the other side.

This leads me to underline the importance of understanding something about the sociology of knowledge, how much of what we know is accidental and arbitrary. How we can err in thinking we have a grasp on reality when in fact what we know, true and factual though it may be, is only part of a bigger picture. That's why the metaphorical tale of The Blind Men and the Elephant has become one the guiding lights of my understanding of the world.

Another aspect of this thing called the sociology of knowledge is the fact that you can't say everything at once. One of the dangers of the modern day is our willingness to take bumper-sticker wisdom too seriously. Another is our impatience: we like our summaries to be limited to one page. Sometimes we have to check and make sure we have the whole story.  For whatever reason, I didn't get it all out the other day. When I said that I wanted to stand with Israel, I failed to add my hope that they don't make the horror of this attack worse.

I fear that is what they are about to do. They have the attention - and the sympathy - of decent people around the world at the moment. Few will be surprised to see them strike back, hit Gaza as the launching place of the attack, for all it's worth. OK, so there will be collateral damage, they will say. What do you expect us to do? We can't sit on our hands and let the hostages be abused; we've got to get them back. And we can't let the leaders of Hamas get away with murder; we've got to take them out.

It is at highly emotional moments like this one when we are most likely to go off half-cocked, when politicians worry more about how they are being perceived than about doing the right thing. America did it when George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condaleeza Rice and company took us into Iraq after 9/11. They made a mistake the whole world will be paying for for a hundred years, destabilizing the Middle East in a whole new way.  I can't tell you how often I have wanted to lose my lunch as I watched Michelle Obama speak of W as a personal friend; I see him as a war criminal. And how I squirmed over the fact that Dick (ditto war criminal) is the father of Liz Cheney, one of my heroes. 

But let's leave this discussion of cognitive dissonance for another day. My point here is that I believe Israel is about to commit an error equivalent to the Iraq War misadventure. By killing thousands of innocent Palestinian residents of Gaza, as we killed thousands of innocent Iraqis, I believe the Israelis will only generate further sympathy for the terrorist attackers. Increase hatred. Add fuel to the flames.

Politicians are not all evil. Nor are all of them stupid. The reconciliation approach taken by Mandela, Desmond Tutu and other South Africans who resisted the temptation to take revenge on and slaughter the leaders of the apartheid regime illustrate this point.

One of the main reasons, possibly the primary reason, for the timing of the attack was the prospect of Saudi Arabia and Israel forming a pact with the United States. If they manage to do this, its is likely other Arab states will follow. And part of the deal would very likely be that Israel would have to grant meaningful concessions on their hardheaded anti-Palestinian policies. Saudi Arabia would gain enormous prestige, but so would Israel. And the Palestinians would not be thrown under the bus, as many are claiming; they would be in a much stronger position, with Arab/Israeli tensions lessening. The only losers would be Hamas, which derives its strength from hatred and division, which, in turn is derived from their all-or-nothing approach to the land of Palestine. Hamas, remember, wants nothing to do with anybody who is moving toward a two-state solution, or any other suggestion that the land of Israel/Palestine might be shared.

Instead, I am afraid, because Nethanyahu remains in control, the use of military force, and all the killing of innocents in the line of fire, will continue.

It's why people of good will are currently in despair.

I don't believe in miracles. But I do believe that a sense of human decency can prevail if and when people bring it to the fore.  I know it looks like the naive Christian notion of turning the other cheek and many will oppose it for that reason. But sometimes the moral approach and the practical approach coincide. I believe if Palestinians see the Israelis turn from violence to a rational long-term peace-keeping strategy, they will find the strength they need to muster to rid themselves of Hamas and whoever might succeed them once they are wiped out. Remember, it does no one any good if Hamas is removed and somebody just as bad takes their place.

In the long run, wouldn't a new peace-oriented approach have a much better chance of succeeding?

Wouldn't it at least be worth a try?

A Moment for Taking Sides

Like everybody else I come in contact with, I am saddened and depressed by the images of the attacks on Israel by Hamas this week. I have resisted the urge to comment on the war for all the usual reasons. First, I have nothing original to add to the dark picture. Secondly, I know from bitter experience that all but a tiny handful of people who try to offer helpful suggestions about the Middle East end up looking foolish. There is such a complex history, so many choices of starting places, that you don't have to go very far to find somebody insisting you are starting with the wrong one.

My earliest childhood lesson in how messed up the world can get comes from growing up with German people during and just after World War II. "Germans" were "bad" people, according to most of the adult world I lived in in America. But they weren't. My grandmother was love personified. So were all her friends from the Germania Singing Society, from the German Lutheran Church, from the German-American community of which she was a part. "There are good people and bad people everywhere," was her explanation. It should have satisfied my six-year-old self, but it didn't. When I read the newspaper, the references were always to the misery "the Germans" caused. Nobody used the expression "the bad Germans." It was simply "the Germans."

This human habit of generalizing is a necessary but ultimately harmful social convention. Today "the Russians" are invading Ukraine and "the Israelis" are about to bomb, starve and crush Gaza in retaliation for the barbarism inflicted on them by Hamas. And just as I knew there was something wrong about faulting "the Germans" for what the Nazis did, I know there is something wrong with not seeing that countless thousands of young Russian boys are being led to the slaughter by the Russian military, no less victims of Putin's imperial ambitions than Ukrainians. And Palestinians living in Gaza, who have not had a say in who controls their lives since Hamas was elected in 2006, are about to die in even greater numbers now than even before. Hamas savages, Gazans die, along with Israelis.

What makes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so bitter is the widespread conviction that the two sides lack the will, and many believe the capacity to come together. On the Palestinian side is Hamas, a terrorist organization committed to killing every last Jew with a ferocious hatred not seen since the Holocaust. On the Israeli side are the Orthodox ultra-nationalists, who continue - with the aid of that god damned son of a bitch Benjamin Nethanyahu and his sinister Deputy Prime Minister, Yariv Levin - to squeeze the life out of both Palestinians and democracy in Israel. People for whom the current apartheid policy is only a stepping stone to the total disenfranchisement of non-Jews within Israel.

I've been sitting here, trying to tell myself to take that "god damned son of a bitch" bit I just wrote out, and go back to my comfortable claim to neutrality. I'd like to do that. Would like to sing out, "I'm neither Arab nor Jew and just want everybody to get along."

But I can't do that at the moment. At the moment, all the other bits of history need to get pushed aside in my head as I try to get it around the fact that Hamas attacked a group of people singing and dancing. Killed a couple hundred of them. Then raped and dragged a hundred more into Gaza to be used as shields as they continued their efforts to wipe out every Jewish man, woman and child.

I can't stay neutral. I'll find my way back to balance soon, I hope. But for now, here's my response to the
three friends who wrote me "but what about the Palestinians?" when I posted that beautiful picture of the Israeli flag superimposed on the Brandenburg Gate.

My response is "First things first." First recognize this is not a fair fight. The framing, at least at the moment, is not Palestinian vs. Israeli; it's between barbarians and families murdered in their beds. Between barbarians and singers and dancers.

As an American, I support President Biden's declaration: "Let there be no doubt: The United States has Israel's back."

Bad News, Good News

So much bad news has come down the pike of late, you've got to allow me to let out a whoop and a hollar at some really good news. Rotate in your graves, Strom Thurmond, Anita Bryant, Jerry Falwell and all you other sexists, white supremacists and homophobes of yore, as the world gets a look at the Vice-President of the United States swearing in a Senator pro-tem from California yesterday. The new senator's name is Laphonza Butler. She is black. She is married to the third woman in the photo, with whom she is raising a daughter (just in case you missed the fact that LGBT people have family values, too). In fact, all three women in the photo are black women. We've come a long way since the 13th and 14th time the U.S. Constitution was amended: the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, and the moment women were granted the right to vote in the U.S. on August 18, 1920.

"Piano, piano si va lontano" they say in Italian. Literally, "Take it easy if you're going a long way." Meaning you can't rush things if you want them done right.

Sometimes the pace of progress is agonizingly slow. We live in a country where the political right gets away with slapping the label "socialist" on health care for all Americans, knowing that most Americans can't distinguish the word from "communist" and they know a bad thing when they hear one. The Equal Rights Amendment has yet to pass, and it appears to be at the end of a long line of things progressives would like to see happen. We can't stop a self-serving minority from dictating to the majority via the Electoral College and the way voting districts are gerrymandered. Hungary, Estonia and Portugal each have one billionaire each living within their borders. The United States has 735. Not a problem per se, but something to think about when you realize that if you went out and spent $100 on dinner every night of the week, it would take over 2.7 million years (that's 2,700,000) before your check would bounce for insufficient funds. And that's if you have only one billion dollars in the bank. Most of the 735 have more than that. Elon Musk is alleged to have $251 billion, so multiply those 2.7 million years by 251. You get my point.

And put that fact (if I've done my math right - no guarantee there - if not, please set me right) up against the fact that the Republicans were on the verge just now of shutting down the government because they don't believe it should involve itself in helping the 14.5 million American children living in poverty. They prefer to leave that to the market. Oh, and of those 14.5 million, more than 13.1 million are food insecure.

I could go on forever listing all the good news items I've come across lately and line them up against the bad news items. It's part of the art of living how much of each you let into your awareness of the world to spur you to responsible action and how much you keep out to save your sanity. I zeroed in the other day on the fact that parking meters in Berkeley now want $2.75 to allow you to park your car on a commercial street per hour. Highway robbery, if ever there was such a thing. Greedy bastards run the City of Berkeley. Then today I had Darling Daughter Boobie (aka Bounce) get her once-every-three-years rabies shot, a necessary step in getting her dog licence renewed. The cost of that is $40 for those three years. But because I'm over 65 years old, the City of Berkeley lets me register my dog for free. So today I love the City of Berkeley and want to find the person or persons who put that regulation in place and give them a hug and a smooch.

Other good news on the gay liberation front comes from Mauritius, where they just rescinded the law punishing gay people for having sex. Piano piano.

And from the Vatican, where the pope is trying to convince the hardliners in his church to lighten up and allow priests to bless same-sex unions. The hardliners are holding out, reasoning that it's just not right to bless sinners. One might argue that the line they fling around is "love the sinner and hate the sin." But I guess they're not idiots. They know that a good many of the men and women who go to the trouble of standing up in front of God and all the world to declare their love for each other are probably going to do things in the bed at night besides snore.  No matter. Let's hear it for Papa Francesco. Piano piano.

Kevin McCarthy got bounced, good news, and replaced by another one of us Mc people, neither good nor bad news, except that this one is an out-and-out homophobe, bad news, and a guy known for being rude as hell. Check out his run-in with Elizabeth Warren, for example. He also just kicked Nancy Pelosi out of her office, but I don't want to fault him for that, necessarily. Good news is he's speaker only pro tempore, and therefore not third in line for the presidency.

What all is next? Will the Maldives sink below the ocean due to global warming? Will the Ukrainians hold out against the Russian invasion? Will we ever get mom-and-pop stores back instead of putting immigrants into jobs where they get abused by cost-cutting big corporations? We're onto the real possibility that there may be a cure in the offing, and not just a stop-gap medication, for HIV/AIDS. My eye doctor tells me my eyes are good for another year without cataract surgery and Boobie is back sleeping in my bed again, at least when I get to bed before midnight.

Let me end on a positive note. Tangerine Turd, of the political party that touts itself as the family-values party, is now on display as the Big Daddy who taught his two older sons to be bare-faced liars. They may lose the right to do business in New York, and TT père has been legally declared a fraud.  Ditto Jr. and Eric. Dyed-in-the-wool Maga folk will still follow him anywhere, I know, but there is reason to believe their numbers are diminishing. 

Slowly, but surely. Piano piano.

photo by Getty images: 

Venturing Out

HWMBO (He who must be obeyed), aka "the spousal unit," aka the family member who still works full time, buys all the groceries and does all the cleaning, has been nagging the bejeezuz out of me since Covid came to town to get up from in front of the computer and out to exercise. I know he's just looking out for my well-being, so I try not to snap back. But one of the reasons I don't exercise is I have vertigo and need a cane to minimize the wobble. Another is I have promised myself I'd get me some orthotics and some new shoes, and just haven't gotten around to it.

So today, I decided, was going to be the day. I got up, put on one of the few pairs of trousers I have without threads dangling from worn-out pantlegs, my least wrinkled shirt, and off I went. Found a place across from La Foot, stuck my credit card in the parking meter and promptly recoiled at the $2.75 hour parking fee. Christ, was it that long I've been hiding in my room? How did we get from a quarter an hour to $2 friggin 75?

I grumbled to the front door of La Foot:

Monday – Saturday: 10:00 am – 6:30 pm

(510) 644-3668

info@lafoot.com

2917 College Ave

Berkeley, CA 94705

http://lafoot.com

You don't have to look that closely to see that their website informs you they're open on Mondays. Well, they lied. The sign on the door says they're closed on Mondays. No apologies or anything. Just closed Mondays.

Suddenly that $2.75 began to feel more like five bucks. Go ahead. Rob me blind and then stab me in the back for good measure. I won't add a kvetch about how not that long ago I could have walked to La Foot from my house in twenty minutes, but that's now a distant memory.

Then I got a brilliant idea. I'd drive to the place where you get parking permits and spend $66 to get a J-sticker so I can park on the street when the construction workers come and put a dumpster in my driveway when they start work replacing the siding on my house. I still have more than 45 minutes on my parking receipt and it says "City of Berkeley Parking Permit" without further specification, so I assume it will be good across town.

Except for the time I spent idling first behind a giant book mobile then behind an Amazon delivery truck parked in a way that didn't permit anybody to drive around, I made it in good time, parked, and wobbled my way up the stairs only to find a sign reading "Hours of Operation: 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. It was now 4 p.m. and I was once again out of luck. So much for getting up from the computer and venturing out into the world. What kind of city service closes up at 2 friggin p.m.?

I have trouble reading these days. My eyes have gotten noticeably worse since the last time I got new glasses. I have an appointment at Kaiser for an eye exam tomorrow morning. I decided to come home and look forward to that.

Back in front of the computer I see there's an e-mail from Kaiser. It tells me there is a strike pending and I need to be prepared to find all appointments cancelled.

The justice system has put the Orange Fraudster on the docket and they might actually take away his toys and put his ass in jail.

 

What's a little frustration compared to that good news? 

I should get out and about more often.