NOTES FROM SRI LANKA.
(November '05)
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11/06/05
Land, ho!
What is this thing called gravity? It's not a vegetable, nor a mineral. It is not a particle, nor a wave. What the hell is it, anyway? One might consider it attraction. Fatal attraction, in our case. Not a thing to be trifled with, to be sure. Oh, and one other comment.... YAAAAARRGGHHH!
Ever
hear of the term "free fall"? Well, that's a pretty good description
of what we're experiencing right now. Not the kind of return to old mother Earth
we had hoped for. Let me back up a bit -- now that I've got a moment or two to
explain before impact. As we were returning from our glorious galaxy-wide tour,
The Big Zamboola, we were stopped by border agents operating a new checkpoint
high in Earth's orbit. (New innovation -- apparently that's what they've been
working on at that bloody space station all this time. Who knew?) As I mentioned
last week, they weren't real keen on letting the newly-reduced Big Zamboola
cross the "border", if you will, so they hung us up for a while and
clamped sFshzenKlyrn into a holding cell for
complaining too loudly. (Actually, I think that had more to do with the number
he did on the border patrol's commissary, but that's just me talking.)
So
anyway.... after our full body cavity searches (oh, man!) and several passes
through the amazing contraband/terror weapon detector (it has a large flashing
light on the top, kind of like what you would find on a 60s police car or in a
discotheque from the same period), we were getting a little bit impatient. Sure,
our Zenite friend was fine, just fine, with his incarceration --
the fact that he is a semi-gaseous form who lives in seven different
dimensions at the same time makes that a piece of cake. I mean, he can be
in his cell and at a sidewalk cafe in Paris in 1932 at the same 
instant -- how
sweet is that? As for the rest of us, sentient three-dimensional beings that we
are, we were all getting a little stir-crazy standing around inside this
featureless orbital way station, looking at the same ersatz wall hangings,
reading the same signed photographs of various Homeland Security officials,
flipping through the phone directory. It was time for action, man, ACTION.
Luckily,
we had Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to work the inside track with these
customs agents. He has that open, honest kind of face that people tend to trust.
Also, his law enforcement background gives him certain advantages -- opens
doors, if you will, that might otherwise remain closed for the civilians amongst
us. Actually, truth be known, he's just really good at palming things -- fast as
a magician. We had him toddling through the interrogation center, whistling to
himself in that tuneless way of his while using his spare claw to rummage
through drawers, cabinets, etc., in search of our spacecraft keys. Thanks to the
quantum-mechanical magic of magnetism, Marvin snagged the keys and, exercising
as much stealth as we could muster, we made our way to the impounded J-2
spacecraft with The Not-So-Big Zamboola under a 
tablecloth. (Mitch Macaphee was
recruited to talk the Zamboola into it -- a somewhat reluctant planetoid when it
comes to legal transgressions, it appears.) Trevor James pointed his patented orgone
generating device at the prison compound gates, and open they flew....and out we
flew.
Flawless escape? Well... not so much. Sure, we got out of the facility all right. But then they started shooting. Shooting with guns. Ray guns. Edward Teller's deadly lasers, I suspect. What can I tell you, they disabled our main drive. So down we plummet, the thickening layers of atmosphere setting off a shower of sparks on our hull. Down and down, round and round. So long, sky -- hello, ground. In suspense yet? (I certainly am...)
(Note to readers: for those of you only interested in my political ravings, start here. For those who only wish to inspect my band-related ravings,...well...you get the drift.)
Tortured
Logic. Part of the adminstration's secret gulag of interrogation and abuse
centers was uncovered by the Washington Post this week, adding another chapter
to the continuing story of our nation's shameful acceptance of torture as a
weapon in the "Global War on Terror" (or whatever they've decided to
brand it now). Since the start of this conflict, we have engaged in policies of
direct abuse (at Guantanamo, Baghram, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere) or have
outsourced our torture to other countries. In both cases, the focus has been on
avoiding responsibility and circumventing existing legal restrictions by
creating hidden detention facilities and new definitions for both those being
held and what techniques are used against them. Not that we have ever been far
removed from this tactic of terror -- just read about the Phoenix program in
South Vietnam is you want to curdle your blood sometime. No, it's more a
question of 
approach, much like our policy on unilateral and unprovoked (or
"preventive") war. We've long reserved to ourselves the right to
attack at will; now we openly declare that right. In the case of torture, it's
the fact that the policy is so clumsily concealed, you have to think that they
don't care if people know about it. Or that they want people to
know about it.
My vote is on the latter. I think that's part of a larger strategy of intimidation. There should be no doubt in anyone's mind that if you fall afoul of the foreign policy and national security establishment, you're in for a pretty rough ride -- summary detention, loss of citizenship, "extraordinary rendition" to torture-friendly countries, etc. That's enough to stop dissent in its tracks. Who will draw attention to themselves under these circumstances? Who will stand up for the wrongfully accused when to do so may be placing one's own liberty in jeopardy? See -- that's the only thing torture is "good" for... to intimidate and terrorize. And just as during the cold war when anyone to the left of Eisenhower lived under the constant threat of being lumped into the "international communist conspiracy", the threat of "international terrorism" is used to beat people over the head for their political views. The case of Dr. Dhafir is instructive -- hyped as a terrorism related case, his conviction on nearly 60 counts included no terror charges; in fact, the specter of terrorism was raised during the sentencing phase of his trial, so that the jurors might interpret his violation of sanctions against Iraq (something for which U.S. corporations and activists had faced relatively light rebukes) as support for terror groups and something that merits a long prison term. (20 to life, I believe.)
To
suggest that such tactics are right and proper, our leaders evoke images of
other historic confrontations -- probably more than anything else, the Battle of
Britain during WWII, since it involved mostly white people. They equate their
overreactions with Churchilian resolve, thereby flattering themselves beyond all
reason or redemption. How many blood-thirsty terrorists are arrayed against us,
hell-bent on our destruction? Is their power anything close to that of Hitler's Wehrmacht,
which rolled over much of Europe in a matter of weeks, killing thousands upon
nameless thousands? Do we really face such an enormous and implacable foe that
we need to throw rights and principles over the side by the bushel-full? Of
course we bloody don't. In fact, it's over lack of principle -- namely our
willingness to torture and humiliate people -- and our very weak standard for
going to war that is making the threat of terror attacks grow, not diminish.
Cold war relics like Cheney (a man who makes waxworks dummies look animated)
have effectively brought the dynamic of fear so prevalent during those years
into the modern era. People do crazy things when they're scared... like line up
behind an administration that (with help from our so-called "friends"
in Congress) is driving us over a cliff. And now that their polls are in the
toilet, I expect they'll be cooking up another good scare fairly soon -- more
mushroom clouds on the horizon.
That's how terrorism works, you see.
luv u,
jp
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11/13/05
Yah, nein.
You know what they say: It ain't the fall what kills you -- it's that sudden stop at the end. That's the part to avoid. The rest of it can actually be kind of fun, you know? Fun like a party. A fast-moving party on fire. How fun is that?
No,
we didn't burn up in the atmosphere. Of course bloody not. What, do you think
I'd leave you hanging like I did last week if we were really in trouble?
Not a chance. I was eating a sandwich while I wrote that, trust me. And doing so
in a very leisurely fashion, I might add. (Fake pastrami, if I remember
correctly. Mmmmm. Luscious not-pastrami....) Yes, we were
plummeting at an almost inconceivable speed down through the atmosphere towards
the Indian Ocean, our engines disabled by the interplanetary border patrol (now
a branch of Homeland Security), our tongues hanging out of our mouths like a dog
with his/her head out the window. I recall some choice utterances. Mine was
pretty much just ARRRRRRGGGGHHHH. Matt is more of a WHOAWHOAWHOA kind of guy in
those situations. Then there was someone going NAGANAGANAGA, but I couldn't tell
if it was Mitch Macaphee or Trevor James Constable or perhaps one of the dueling
Lincolns because my mouth was open so damn wide.
Be
that as it may, one of us must have uttered the all-important name of sFshzenKlyrn
in the midst of all this cacophony. Perhaps it was Marvin (my personal robot
assistant) ... except that he is still mostly non-verbal and makes reference to
our Zenite guitarist through use of schematic diagrams and smoke signals. (Don't
ask about the latter... just don't.) Whoever it may have been, this was the one
call that was answered. If you read last week's pointless column, you may
remember that sFshzenKlyrn is a
transcendental being who exists in seven (or was it eight?) dimensions
simultaneously. So while one of his infinite selves was still sitting in his
holding cell in the immigration detention center, another one appeared on the
deck of the imitation Jupiter Two. Using his vast and vaguely-defined powers, he
managed to nudge our main propulsion stack back into operation just in time to
break our fall. Even more amazing, he did this while playing air guitar and
eating a foot-long hoagie. "Would you believe I'm cleaning my oven?"
he said as our engines stirred, and I, for one, believed him.
Thanks
to the other-worldly intervention of our extraterrestrial bandmate, we came to a
hovering stop approximately one nautical mile above the surface of the Indian
Ocean. After pausing briefly to take our bearings, we headed north, north, north
towards the island nation we call home, the shadow of our craft following along
below us on the lipid surface of the water. While we were a little hoarse from
the descent/panic session, it seemed an opportune moment to burst into
spontaneous song, our bacon having been saved so precipitously (and
unexpectedly). Lincoln (the positive, not the negative) started in with Amazing
Grace, which of course did not seem at all suitable to the rest of
us. Perhaps our reluctance to share in so explicitly devotional a song is
somehow related to our vegetarianism. What does it 
mean to us that our
"bacon" has been saved? All we ever eat is fakin' bacon. (Vegetarians
don't know it's not bacon.) Mmmmmmm. Fakin' bacon.....
Okay, so where was I? Oh yes. Hoovering. We were hoovering (as Mitch pronounces it) over the Indian Ocean, then passing over the now-familiar terrain of mother Sri Lanka, sharing a suitably non-devotional song (the "Bilbo Baggins" song, Leonard Nimoy version) as we approached the vicinity of the Cheney Hammer Mill, our squat house. Been a long time -- good thing we had neighbor Gung Ho around to keep the home fires burning. (So why, then, is the hammer mill......burning????)
(Note to readers: for those of you only interested in my political ravings, start here. For those who only wish to inspect my band-related ravings,...well...you get the drift.)
Fatal
Disconnect. I imagine the world wonders why people in the U.S. tend to treat
the rest of the world like some other planet. There's no simple explanation, but
a large part of what perpetuates this attitude is the way our corporate news
media report on world events. It is, in fact, a very "event" oriented
approach, lacking much in the way of historical, cultural, or political context,
so that we're always looking at the world through the wrong end of a telescope,
and what we see is a reflection of our own profound isolation. I was watching
the PBS NewsHour the other night when they were reporting on terrorism in
Indonesia, talking to a terror expert from something called the
"International Crisis Group." Sure, Indonesian terror groups have
killed scores, blown up buildings, etc. But how does that compare with the
Indonesian military? They've killed hundreds of thousands in East Timor alone,
many thousands in Banda Aceh, Iryan Jaya, and elsewhere over the years. Though
they don't get funding from Osama, they are now climbing back onto the
Washington gravy train, not that they ever completely hopped off. So, which do
you suppose strikes terror into a greater number of 
Indonesian peasants -- some
mafia-like cabal of religious fanatics...or their own blood-soaked armed forces?
That's the problem with news from the fringes of the empire. We hear about the trouble-makers, but not about the over-arching troubles. We see the angry demonstration in Argentina during Bush's visit... but not the mess Washington-led economic policies have made of their country. We see the devastation and sickening carnage of a suicide bomber in Baghdad or Jerusalem, but not the death of a thousand cuts that Palestinians and Iraqis experience every grim day of their respective military occupations. We see the burned-out cars in the Parisian suburb, but not the concentrated policies of exclusion and harassment that ethnic North Africans endure day after day, year after year. It's as though Americans suffice with an understanding of the world less nuanced than what one might derive from an Idiot's Guide to Foreign Policy or a made-for-TV movie. As a consequence, we clumsily attempt to rule distant peoples who know much more about us than we know about them. We may be the most insular and inward-looking people ever to have run an empire... and it shows.
Another
example from television news springs to mind. One of the networks (it may have
been PBS again, I'm not certain) did a close-up segment on a small town in the
heartland somewhere -- a place that had a long history of sending people to
fight in America's wars. The reporter talked to a number of veterans and their
families about past conflicts and the war in Iraq, including the mother of one
of the Americans killed in the barracks bombing in Beirut more than 20 years
ago. Her take on Iraq was that we should stay the course, as the president puts
it. Reason? If we had "finished the job" in Beirut back in 1983
instead of pulling out, the "terrorists" would have been stopped then 
and
there. What she apparently does not realize is that one of the most active
"terror" organizations at that time was Dawa, the party of current
Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari, operating in exile up until two years
ago. So today's soldiers are fighting to ensure that yesterday's
"terrorists" remain in power. In terms of the broader region in
question, we in fact did "finish the job" back then, sending
billions in aid to jihadists in Afghanistan, supporting Israel through some of
the worst of her abuses, supporting Saddam through the worst of his. If the poor
woman on the news could think of the middle east as something other than a
large, undifferentiated mass of dark-skinned fanatics, she might realize that
our intervention there has fueled violence, not quelled it, and she might
actually consider opposing this conflict that's killing other women's sons for
no bloody good reason.
Hoof-in-mouth: Another Outbreak. Uncle Pat Robertson has done it again, friends -- flapping that crazy jawbone of his. Look out, Pennsylvania. Looks like the Keystone State be damned, come the next cold front.
luv u,
jp
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11/20/05
Man god damn....
Warm reception after weeks in space. I'm not talking relativity here, either, so don't give me that "icy cold in outer space" drivel. I'm talking warm, friend, warm. Hot, even. Boinin' hot. Like juggling torches, baby, that's the ticket.
Someone
set our mill on fire -- that was the big finale for our fall 2005 interstellar
tour. It's similar to Come on, baby, light my fire, except the net result
is homelessness. When we came over the horizon, skimming across the Indian Ocean
like a titanium flat-stone, the warning signs of a major conflagration were
there -- the orange glow, the smoke, the pizza delivery man knocking obliviously
on the front door and checking his watch. It's a good goddamn thing that Mitch
was driving, because I was apoplectic at the sight of that plume of flame
breaking out through my bedroom window. "Bucket brigade!" I shouted on
the control deck, and my fellow band-mates looked annoyed. sFshzenKlyrn
smiled quietly to himself. (I get that reaction a lot. Probably
deserved.)
As
per our standard operating procedure for building fires, we landed on the roof
and started hopping around on one foot, holding the other in both hands
(hot-foot style). Of course, sFshzenKlyrn
couldn't follow procedure because what? -- because he doesn't have
"feet" per se, just massive pseudopods that may be shaped as feet for
demonstration purposes. Anyway, we started working our way down through the
smoky stairwells and corridors of our beloved squat house, headed for my
quarters where the fire had apparently broken out. (Oh, and did I mention the
handy pressure suits? Ideal for space-walks and limited firefighting
applications.) This was a bad one -- real bad. Worst I'd seen since the last
fire at the Cheney Hammer 
Mill... which was, well, probably worse than this,
but...go and compare fires, already. One is like the other, right? (Okay, so my
disaster reporting sucks. You want to take over, Anderson Cooper?)
I think Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was the first one of us to actually reach my flaming bedroom. Luckily, he is made out of a copper-titanium alloy that is impervious to flame, nuclear radiation, and three-alarm taco sauce. (Four-alarm is dicey -- he tends to avoid it.) As we had suspected, the mattress was on fire, the blunt end of a Gung-Ho Cuban-seed cigar still visible at its charred and blackened edge. Having spent a good bit of his time in the public service, working for the constabulary and what-not (though his tenure at what-not was fairly brief), Marvin knew just what to do in a case such as this. He carefully removed the cigar butt, then set up a security perimeter consisting of some left over police tape he had coiled up in his utility belt. Then with the strength of twenty (or perhaps forty) he lifted the flaming mattress into the air and tossed it through the broken-out window and into the street.
Lawd-a-mighty,
what does it take to get some peace around here, eh? It's not enough that we
have another mouth to feed (the Big Zamboola... now not so big). First day back,
and we're already having to press-gang Marvin into doing something we don't want
to do ourselves. Exhausting business. In fact, I think I'll have a lie-down, now
that all the excitement is past. A nice lie-down on my... my..... GODDAMN YOU,
GUNG-HO!!
(Note to readers: for those of you only interested in my political ravings, start here. For those who only wish to inspect my band-related ravings,...well...you get the drift.)
Globo-Cop-out.
They may be slow to assist disaster victims in peril, but no one can say the
Bush administration won't deploy all resources necessary to save its own
sorry ass. What is now underway in Bush-land might be termed the fall offensive
-- a full-bore marketing push to drag the president's polling numbers out of the
sewer. It usually starts with a bombastic speech in front of a military audience
(under orders to clap) -- this time around, his laughable Veteran's Day
address in which he accused Iraq war critics of "rewriting history" --
followed by a world photo-op tour so that the evening news will always have
footage of Dubya talking tough and threatening 
somebody...
anybody. The net effect on the rest of the world is probably a general
sense of relief that we are too mired in the Iraq debacle to attack anyone else.
Even so, the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war still stands, and while Dubya
rattles his little tin saber at China and North Korea, they are no doubt using
his words to justify their own arms-buying sprees and increasingly profound
garrison state mentality.
The threat we pose goes far beyond mere words and white papers. Unfortunately, we continue to put our money where junior's mouth is, pushing ahead with development of expensive and destabilizing systems like "missile defense," which is viewed by China and North Korea as an offensive capability. Paranoia? Think about it. The principle of nuclear deterrence is based upon the capacity to retaliate -- that's what makes nuclear war an unattractive option to war planners. The United States has never renounced the option of first-use of nuclear weapons against any foe. Though the system doesn't even begin to work, the fact that Dubya is deploying "missile defense" batteries on the periphery of east Asia indicates an effort to cancel out any nuclear deterrent, thereby strengthening our first-strike capability. If retaliatory missiles can be shot out of the sky, an unprovoked nuclear attack becomes a more attractive -- if completely mad -- option. Combine this with the preventive war doctrine and the fact that we've previously bombed one of these nations to smithereens, and you've got some very nervous military planners on the other side of the Pacific.
Over
to the west, we're making friends as fast as we can stack them, applying our
tradition of "the only good ____ is a dead ____" in Mesopotamia. And
as always, truth is the first casualty. Remember those wild and irrational
charges about our military using white phosphorus weapons during the destruction
of Fallujah last year? Turns out they were true. The Pentagon tends to
slow-walk these admissions, waiting for the story to miss the news cycle a few
times and become too stale and boring an atrocity to merit serious reporting. 
Lord
knows how many we've killed with our bombardment and invasion of towns along the
Syrian border -- no one is reporting on it, and we can hardly expect the
administration to tell the truth about it voluntarily. They're too busy
inventing "truth" in new and innovative ways, like pressing news
organizations to rewrite Scott McClellan's lines in their White House press
briefing transcripts to reflect something he obviously didn't say. Literally
re-writing history in the clumsiest way imaginable... as if the news was a
document commissioned by the president that he could then edit to his liking.
(They did change the transcript on the White House web site, but so far haven't
gotten the press to go along.)
As their disastrous foreign policy becomes increasingly septic, the Bush-ites
feel compelled to lie all the harder. But it's like wallpapering over a burning
wall. Take it from me -- that doesn't work so well.
luv u,
jp
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11/27/05
Knock-a-my soul....
Crispy, crispy critters -- that's us, just off the interstellar tour bus. Hmmmm... best speak for myself. Seeing things that aren't supposed to be there. Anvils. Old woodworking machinery. Stuff hanging from the ceiling. Weird, weird shit. Doesn't look like my bedroom at all. What the hell. Must be dreaming. Don't remember going to bed. Can't use personal pronouns.
Oh,
damn. Now I remember. I'm sleeping in one of the old forge rooms here at the
Cheney Hammer Mill, now that my bedroom suite has been choked by flame and is no
longer quite so... well... sweet as it once was. Actually, it started out
kind of spartan, but now it's just plain unlivable. So here I am, in amongst
the abandoned machine-shop implements, sleeping on a cheap mattress and
wondering where the hell I am every time I wake up. Such is the price I pay to
serve the somewhat fickle and demanding muse to which
Big Green has been assigned in this great cosmic discothèque we call
"the universe." Why, I would gladly sleep on a bed of nails and be
awoken by an exploding alarm clock every morning in order to bring you -- our
dear listener -- the service you expect and deserve from this, the world's
original virtual rock band. You've gotta' suffer for your art, that's what they
tell me... and suffer we shall. So, what the fuck, switch on a couple of those
lathes and smash a window or two. Any way to get some more dust in this
place?
Actually,
truth be known, accommodations are getting a little complicated around here, now
that our retinue has ballooned out to an almost obscene dimension, encompassing
nearly a dozen advisers, fellow travelers, and hangers-on, all of whom require
six square meals a day and a place to lay their oddly misshapen heads. Our most
recent addition -- the Big Zamboola, who signed on during our recently concluded
tour of the cosmos -- is pretty much all oddly misshapen head... and he
displays 
anti-gravity behavior virtually all the time, so we gave him my
burned-out bedroom (he doesn't seem to notice how fucked up it is). Then there
are the two Lincolns (matter and anti-matter) who have been compelled to share
quarters (in addition to all those pennies they share) on the far side of
the mill, in another abandoned machine shop. These are what I would term
relatively low-maintenance co-squatters, since they've accepted their room
assignments with relatively little bother. (Could be worse... they could be
dispatched to our old lean-to out on the range.)
More
problematic are the scholarly elements of our little community. Mitch Macaphee,
for instance, requires a large block of rooms to accommodate his scientific
equipment and (of course) his wardrobe. Trevor James Constable needs only a
couple of rooms for himself, but his orgone generating device takes up a large section
of our basement, particularly if you count the trans-dimensional
"space" generated by its mysterious array (which is, of course, more
vast than eleven galaxies -- not bad for a squat). Contrast these somewhat
baroque living arrangements with Big Green's
own more humble dig: Matt's isolate cupola (which he shares with the ravens);
John's dingy loft (just big enough for his drums and an air mattress); and my
machine shop floor. Be it ever so, there's no place like it. Could be worse.
Hell, the man-sized tuber "sleeps" in his terrarium, and Marvin (my
personal robot assistant) just plugs himself in to the outlet in the laundry
room overnight.
In any case, neighbor Gung-Ho's incendiary little accident with that cigar butt may have made things a little uglier around here, but that's about all. Big Green is back at the mill and we're ready to start working on that second album again. In fact, Marvin's down in the studio right now, blowing dust off the console with his built-in air gun and making sure all of the knobs are pre-twiddled and ready for business. Now all we have to do is get off of our sorry asses and get back to work. (Always a challenge.)
(Note to readers: for those of you only interested in my political ravings, start here. For those who only wish to inspect my band-related ravings,...well...you get the drift.)
Elephant
Walk. The large object known as Ariel Sharon has decided to quit his Likud
coalition in Israel and form his own "centrist" political grouping. As
with the U.S., Israel's political landscape has become so dominated by the
extreme right that the notion of a "center" is itself far to the right
of, say, Nixonian Republicanism. So a world-class war criminal and career
terrorist like Sharon could squat quite comfortably in the middle of Israel's
body politic. It is, as always, fascinating to watch how this type of scenario
plays out in the U.S. press. Sharon's getting the Rabin treatment -- the old
warrior who takes a big gamble for peace. I've already seen one historical (or
hysterical) treatment of Sharon's life that starts in the 1940s and jumps
straight to the glory of the 1967 war (when the Palestinians were robbed of the
22% that remained of their homeland), hurtling over Sharon's 
death squad years
and unseemly incidents such as the slaughter at Qibya in 1953, then soft-pedaling
the unprovoked war in Lebanon (no mention of the Sabra-Chatilla
massacre). His Gaza "disengagement" is described as "bold"
and his exit from Likud a big gamble. And I'm thinking... Sharon without Likud
-- sounds like the Democratic Party establishment's dream scenario. Maybe
Hillary should disengage herself from Bill and start dating the pachyderm.
Be that as it may, the Gaza pullout -- like so many initiatives in the "peace process" -- is a lot of hot air. The settlements Israel abandoned were put there as bargaining chips to begin with. One of the poorest and most crowded places on Earth, Gaza is essentially an enormous prison, guarded on all sides by the Israeli armed forces. Some years back, an Israeli minister commented that it was the government's intention to contain the Palestinians like drugged roaches in a bottle; Gaza is just the kind of bottle he had in mind. The most recent "breakthrough" brokered by the execrable Condoleeza Rice provides for a border crossing with Egypt that will be monitored per Israel's specifications by European Union troops -- they poked a hole in the penitentiary, and put an EU-sponsored cork in the bottle. The operative principle here is that Israel is still in control, that it is still free to attack Gaza at will in what amounts to a turkey shoot, since Palestinians have no defense against Israeli warplanes, missiles, tanks, and bulldozers.
This
"historic" giveback amounts to about 19 square miles and the
evacuation of 8,500 Israeli settlers. Meanwhile, on the West Bank, the Israelis
have sealed off 23 additional square miles of land in the area of the Ma'ale
Adumim settlement alone, according to the Guardian of London, and the
Israeli settler population has increased by 14,000 in the past year. Sharon has
also approved the start of a massive new settlement referred to as
"E-1", which will be double the size of Ma'ale Adumim, now the
largest. (See this editorial
on the Electronic Intifada for more on this.) West Bank developments
have always been the focus of Israel's expropriation 
efforts,
both under Likud and the left-leaning Labor coalition. There's no reason to
expect that this process will do anything but speed up with a
"centrist" Sharon running the show. And, of course, it is our billons
of dollars in annual aid that enables Israel to build new settlement blocks and
apartheid walls at such a hysterical pace. So as this elephant walks, we're
walking right beside him.
Turkey Day. Dubya called about 10 deployed U.S. military people to wish them a happy Thanksgiving. The White House won't say who they are -- that would, after all, be an invasion of their privacy... like showing their flag-draped coffins being handed down from cargo planes. Thoughtful, aren't they?
luv u,
jp