Oompa Loompa

2005-10-04T04:14:00.000-07:00

Tingo!

Did you know that people in Indonesia have a word that means 'to take off your clothes in order to dance'? Or how many words the Albanians have for eyebrows and moustaches? Or the Dutch word for skimming stones is plimpplamppletteren? Drawing on the collective wisdom of over 154 languages, this intriguing book is arranged by theme so you can compare attitudes all over the world to such subjects as food, the human body and the battle of the sexes. Here you can find not only those words for which there is no direct counterpart in English (such as the Japanese age-otori which means looking less attractive after a haircut), but also a frank discussion of exactly how many 'Eskimo' terms there are for snow, and a vast array of information exploring the wonderful and often downright strange world of words. Oh, and tingo means 'to take all the objects one desires from the house of a friend, one at a time, by asking to borrow them'. - Penguin

2005-09-19T23:32:00.000-07:00

Remembering Sabra & Shatila

On Wednesday 15 September, the day after the assassination of Israeli-allied Phalangist militia leader and Lebanese President-elect Bashir Gemayel, the Israeli army occupied West Beirut, "encircling and sealing" the camps of Sabra and Shatila, which were inhabited by Lebanese and Palestinian civilians. By mid-day on 15 September 1982, the refugee camps were entirely surrounded by Israeli tanks and soldiers, who installed checkpoints at strategic locations and crossroads around the camps in order to monitor the entry or exit of any person.

During the late afternoon and evening of that day, the camps were shelled. Around mid-day on Thursday 16 September 1982, a unit of approximately 150 Israeli-allied Phalangists entered the first camp. For the next 40 hours members of the Phalangist militia (guided by Ariel Sharon, Defence Minister back then) raped, killed, and injured a large number of unarmed civilians, mostly children, women and elderly people inside the encircled and sealed camps. The estimate of victims varies between 700 to 3,500. [source: electronic intifada)

The memory of those murdered and raped must linger on in our minds, not merely for the sake of creating melodramatic flashbacks of defeats this region has witnessed, but mainly to remind ourselves that Sabra and Shatila is happening every day in Palestine, Iraq and other Muslim and Arab lands.

My colleague Mr. Ali Jarekji, one of Reuters' best photojournalists, took that photo in 1982 of bodies lying at the refugee camp in Beirut.

Rasheed

2005-09-08T00:49:00.000-07:00

“We cannot do anything without the approval of the Jewish Lobby in the U.S.” Starbucks Senior Executive.

The following is based on my personal encounters in 2004 with senior executives of Starbucks, the company famous for its international coffee blends. I would like to note that I have refrained from mentioning the actual names of these executives and the other local people involved in promoting Starbucks in Jordan, for the purpose of this article is not to defame individuals as much as to unmask the Zionist face of Starbucks through its founder and director: Howard Shultz.

Starbuck, as many of you know, has opened its main coffee house in Abdoun near Blue Fig (a classic strategy they follow to divert clientele from competitors). They have also opened in three other locations: 1. Sweifyeih, 2. The area around The Sheraton Hotel (4^th circle), 3. and Mecca Mall.

The purpose of this article is to unravel many of the facts that people either do not know, or do not want to know about Starbucks. It revolves around my encounter with the senior executives here in Jordan back in 2004 when I was managing a public relations firm in Amman.

I had a vague idea about Starbucks back then regarding its political agenda (I will explain later why it has an agenda), I only heard rumors about its owner Howard Shultz being a Zionist propagandist.

To double check, I googled the guy and found an interesting UK-based website proving, through real quotes and documents, that Shultz was not only a Zionist, but a highly-celebrated one as well. The site quotes Gideon Meir, Israeli Foreign Ministry publicist, saying: “The key to Israel’s long-term PR success is on the campuses of North America and Europe. Wealthy Jews like Howard Schultz, the owner of the Starbucks chain, are helping with student projects, including seminars held in both Israel and North America, in which students hear Israeli presentations on the crisis."

Also, in 1998, Schultz was presented with "The Israel 50th Anniversary Friend of Zion Tribute Award" by the The Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah. This Fund sponsors Israeli military arms fairs chaired by the butcher of Jenin General Shaul Mofaz. The fund’s mission is to "strengthen the special connection between the American, European and Israeli defense industries" and "to showcase the newest Israeli innovations in defense."

Yet there is a chance this website could hold false information about the guy, couldn’t it? So I held my horses for a while and tried to scratch the surface. I had the perfect opportunity: several key executives from Starbucks were arriving to Amman to meet with us and discuss how we can promote Starbucks in Jordan via a public relations strategy.

I had two ideas for the strategy, which served more as testing grounds for the credibility of Starbucks, whether they would score with the lie detector or not.

The first idea was to bring Shultz to Jordan and present him to the local press at the opening day of Starbucks Abdoun under the premise that he has nothing against the Palestinians, that he is a guy of peace and flower power love (bla bla bla), and that he apologizes for any comment that could have provoked the Palestinians or had embedded bigotry and hatred within.

The other approach would be to convince him to launch a social responsibility project to support and enhance the state of the Palestinian refugee camps across Jordan in association with a local entity responsible for refugee issues in the Kingdom, excluding UNRWA of course. By doing so he would demonstrate to the Jordanian public that he is a man of charity and community development (something they do a lot in the US to evade taxes, the trend is contagious, and is being adopted in Jordan for a while now, do a charity event, and pay less taxes to the state.)

So, dear readers, imagine yourself sitting in front of four serious staff members of a multinational company listening to yours truly telling them, in a way or another, to support Palestine (and by the way when I say Palestine, I mean Palestine, from north to south, east to west, not 1948, or 1967 or whatever, Palestine is an occupied land and people, ravished by Zionist gangsters and killers, a big full stop there, I am sorry, this will not please our fellow supporters of the peace process, since they only recognize what remains of the inches of Palestinian sovereignty in Ramallah and the West Bank, and Gaza!).

Anyways, they were speechless for a while, one of them said: “Rasheed, these types of projects require a lot of planning and management and I am not sure this is exactly what Starbucks is all about.” I see, well, we ought to toy these options in our minds since many in this part of the world believe that Schultz is a Zionist.” The man’s face blushed: “Rasheed, do you believe so, or think so?” I replied: “I believe so, after careful investigation I believe your boss is a Zionist.” Everybody in the room was shocked to see me talking so bluntly, they looked at each other, and the local owners of the Jordanian pr company were not pleased as I saw in their eyes, after all, this is a big-dollar retainer they did not want to loose because a mad man like me believes Starbucks are Zionists. They tried on several occasions to take my concerns and beliefs seriously but it was for the sake of diplomacy and corporate tolerance.

Afterwards, the guy revealed all his cards after a desperate discourse with me that ran for 3 hours and said: “Rasheed, we cannot do anything [regarding the ideas I suggested] without the approval of the Jewish Lobby in the U.S.”

Why does a company as powerful as Starbucks seek the blessings of the Jewish lobby in the US? It is only because the Jewish lobby is a major investor in Starbucks, and is a top supporter of Shultz, seeing him as a propaganda machine for their devilry cause. Not to mention of course, that Mr. Tomato Sauce Face admitted afterwards to me that Shultz had once pointed the finger at the Palestinians accusing them of spreading terror in Israel, and promoting anti-Semitism, Shcultz said that in an official speech he delivered to a Seattle Jewish community during a Synagogue sermon. So there you have it, from the horse’s mouth, they said it loud and clear: Shultz is a Zionist, his company is nothing but a tool to support Israel through corporate public relations and fabricated social events.

Now, I look back at this meeting and try to scratch my thick head and ask a simple question: What would it take to convince our fellow Jordanian coffee and culture aficionados to stop going to Starbucks Abdoun (get a life and drink some Italian Lavazza!) But my thick mind seems to fail me, many are aware today of the fact that Starbucks is Israel’s Corporate Military Arm (like Marks & Spenser’s), but they still go to that café, no doubt the coffee is delicious, I do not care whether they use the money to murder Palestinians or build an Israeli Disney Land, as long as my religious and political conscience remains in slumber.

Rasheed

2005-08-28T05:17:00.000-07:00

Email, the thief of time

I read an interesting article today about how email is becoming the 21st century's thief of time, joining its brother the TV. This is quite true in the sense that email and googling has turned us into compulsive web surfers, which no doubt contributes to the amount of time we waste at work. Sorry I have to go now, it seems I have a new email in my mail box!

2005-08-25T04:03:00.000-07:00

Sincerely, Meredith!

I have been introduced today to, how should I say this: a genius, terribly-mad, terribly-capturing composer, vocalist, and musician. Her name is Meredith Monk. As described in her website: Her ground breaking exploration of the voice as an instrument, as an eloquent language in and of itself, expands the boundaries of musical composition, creating landscapes of sound that unearth feelings, energies, and memories for which we have no words. Thank you ECM!

2005-08-22T03:36:00.000-07:00

Jazz Impressions of

Japan

Jazz composer/pianist Dave Brubeck has a long track record of pieces that stand today as milestones of world jazz, including his renowned Take Five. After World War II, jazz musicians performed live gigs that promoted peace and anti-war propaganda.

I was just listening to a genuine album by the Dave Brubeck Quartet called Jazz Impressions of Japan, in which Brubeck interprets the urban and spiritual contours of post-war Japan. It is remarkably original and features traditional Japanese scales meshed with jazz intervals. The Fujiyama and Koto Song tracks are heart-wrenching. I might try to develop some piano jazz impressions of the Middle East, but that will take some time!

2005-08-18T00:20:00.000-07:00

Young in the Middle East!

The BBC has recently published an in-depth online report on youth in the Middle East, but what a report: thumbnails of bras, underwear, and Ruby! Terribly biased, terribly disgusting, I leave the rest to your opinion.

Rasheed

2005-08-17T12:54:00.000-07:00

Piano impro n.02

I recorded this yesterday, variations on Nature Boy song. Hope you like it. This is about 2 MB, better quality.
Click: piano impro n.02

Rasheed

2005-08-17T06:07:00.000-07:00

The Jamal Effect:

Yesterday I was listening to one hell of a jazz pianist. He is acknowledged worldwide to have influenced many of the world's top jazz musicians, improvisers and composers including pianists Bill Evans, Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett (Jarrett is my no.1 virtuoso). The name of this influential musician is Ahmad Jamal. The album that I got was recorded in 1955 (superb sound quality), called Ahmad Jamal: Chamber Music of the New Jazz. It is definitely way beyond its time, especially track number 04 titled It Ain't Necessarily So. Ahmad Jamal is in his 70's now and has recently recorded a live album called After Fajer.

2005-08-15T06:11:00.000-07:00

Piano improvisations:

I would like to share several recordings of piano improvisations I perform at home now and then. Please excuse the following: I rarely practice these days, and the piano is not fully tuned, which I will fix next month insha'a Allah.

I like to play expressional piano melodies based on invented or original themes with a jazzy edge. If you are interested in listening to the first improvisation (recorded yesterday, .rar file-648 KB, mp3 format) please click on the PIANO IMPRO-01 to download.

I appreciate your feedback.

Rasheed

2005-08-14T01:15:00.000-07:00

Terror's greatest recruitment tool

Hussain Osman, one of the men alleged to have participated in London's failed bombings on July 21, recently told Italian investigators that they prepared for the attacks by watching "films on the war in Iraq," La Repubblica reported. "Especially those where women and children were being killed and exterminated by British and American soldiers...of widows, mothers and daughters that cry."

By Naomi Klein - The Nation

2005-08-11T03:51:00.000-07:00

Currently Reading: Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War

Pity the Nation (by Robert Fisk) ranks among the classic accounts of war in our time, both as historical document and as an eyewitness testament to human savagery. Written by one of Britain's foremost journalists, this remarkable book combines political analysis and war reporting in an unprecedented way: it is an epic account of the Lebanon conflict by an author who has personally witnessed the carnage of Beirut for over a decade.

2005-08-09T01:45:00.000-07:00

Cemeteries of Lost Books

Have you ever been to a cemetery of lost books? I have lately roamed in one in Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind (translated from Spanish by Lucia Graves). A capturing read with a multi-story plot, one of which probes an age of lost books, an age ear-tagged by dying readership and rare book appreciation.

In A History of Reading, author Alberto Manguel explains how and why an artificial dichotomy between life and reading has been actively encouraged by those in power, in an attempt to convince the layman that books are superfluous luxuries, and in turn, encouraging the consumption of pap.

The Shadow of the Wind is a journey into a world where such dichotomy no longer exists, where stories in books are reflections of life, where characters emerge out of pages to remind us that we are mirrors of what we read.

2005-08-08T07:12:00.000-07:00

Seen it, shot it, sold it

People can become overnight stars, courtesy of reality TV, and instant millionaires, courtesy of the lottery. They can make their own films, courtesy of cheap video cameras. They can travel the world dressed in clothes designed by couturiers while enjoying meals in the finest restaurants. A combination of education, affluence and technology has allowed people to hurdle the traditional barriers erected by an elite that previously insulated itself from the masses at both work and play.

The Guardian

2005-08-08T00:43:00.000-07:00

The World, The Word

Nicholas Ostler's fascinating history, Empires of the Word, examines why some languages survive while others die out, and why English reigns supreme.

There's an old linguist's joke that a language is a dialect with an army, but the material in this book suggests that the real key to survival is for a language to be a dialect with a civil service. A class of bureaucrats with the power to defend its monopoly can keep a language going for centuries, as can a set of scriptures, while conquerors come and go.

Source: The Guardian

2005-08-06T02:16:00.002-07:00

Blogs, for what?

I have been advised ever since I toyed the idea of developing a blog to submit my own ideas about the ideas I intend to submit based on any idea that would submit to the reader's stereotypical idea of a blog submittal! I am a true believer in the power of the Internet, but I tend to be cautious, walking the tight rope, I prefer "balancing the juggle" to "juggling the balance".

Why? Because the idea of someone sharing his/her day-by-day encounters and thoughts is horrifyingly "Orwellian" in nature (George Orwell's 1984 introduced the concept of Big Brother – reality voyeurism – I live, therefore you see!). Blog-ing should be about expressing ideas, I agree, but I wonder where the daily mushi mushi and watch-me watch-me behavior will lead us to? Are blogs for publishing personalized articles and opinions or uncovering the private lives of people?

I had a conversation once with the director of Big Brother (Arabic version), which Al Hamdu lil Allah, failed to hit the screens after Bahrainis protested/detested the program and stood against Bahrain hosting it. I asked the guy: "What is Big Brother anyways, it does not promote any values?" He replied saying: "Rasheed, people love voyeurism, give it to them and they will love it."

Voyeurism is what 90 percent of TV programs and a handful of movies (Blair Witch Project 1+2) are all about, it is simply pathetic to have reached a stage where "the Peeping Tom" is a natural media fad!

2005-07-31T06:11:00.000-07:00

Book Review:
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Roald Dahl's unforgettable masterpiece of morals, loony ideas, and chocolaty delights is a literary tour de force that probes the pulse of poverty-stricken society (thanks to corrupt capitalist dogma), childhood (ill & well-mannered), and the unmatched scrumptiousness of chocolate .Willy Wonka, the reclusive and eccentric chocolate maker, opens his doors to five lucky members of the public, who, after finding a Golden Ticket in their Wonka chocolate bars, received a private tour of the factory, given by Mr. Wonka himself.

Join Charlie Bucket, Mike Teavee, Veruca Salt, Violet Beauregarde, and Augustus Gloop, as they step into the factory gates to discover a world of bizarre ideas, timeless chocolate feasts and morals you can only taste at Wonka's.

Tim Burton has recently directed a movie version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory starring Johnny Depp. This is the second movie version of the book. The first was produced in the 70's starring Gene Wilder .

2005-07-31T01:27:00.001-07:00

It's just him, his piano, and a world of possibilities

Jeffrey Brown sits down with acclaimed jazz pianist Keith Jarrett, who will play his first solo concert in North America since 1995 at Carnegie Hall in September.

JEFFREY BROWN: When Keith Jarrett takes the stage for one of his solo concerts, it's just him, his piano, and a world of possibilities. Nothing is written down; everything is improvised.

Now 60, Jarrett has long been recognized as one of the foremost pianists around, primarily as a jazz musician, but also through several acclaimed classical recordings as well. As a child growing up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in fact, he was trained in classical piano. He switched to jazz in his teens, and began to make a name for himself playing with Charles Lloyd and others in the late 1960s , and then with Miles Davis's Electric Fusion Group.

For the past two decades, he's headed a trio with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette that some critics are saying is one of the best in jazz history. But it's for his solo work that Jarrett is perhaps best known, concert-length performances, where an individual piece can last for minutes or an hour.

Beginning in the early '70s, he's released numerous recordings of these performances. One, the 1975 "Koln Concert," is one of the best-selling piano recordings in history. His newest release, called "Radiance," was recorded and videotaped in Japan. Keith Jarrett leads a very private life in rural New Jersey.

He rarely does television interviews, but invited us for a visit to his home studio, where he practices and sometimes records, for a talk about the art of improvising.

KEITH JARRETT: When you are improvising, what you have to be true to is yourself. And you aren't historical. At that moment, you are at that moment, at that moment. And what I would wish the listener to do is just know that it's all as unprepared as they are. In other words, they don't know what's coming up, and neither do I. After a while, that's not scary. After a while, that's what you would want.

JEFFREY BROWN: Jarrett says he comes to the stage with no preconceived ideas or destination, just an openness.

KEITH JARRETT: When I go out onstage, if I have an idea in my head, it's going to be in my way. Those notes and feelings come to the player, come to the improviser, if he lets them. But if there's an idea in the way, those notes and those feelings will be restricted to whatever that idea started to be.

JEFFREY BROWN: So you sit down at the piano and you want to be ready for anything?

KEITH JARRETT: That's right. There are a lot of young players now who are imitating players they hear, or heard in the past. They haven't learned the lesson that the great players would have been wishing upon them, which would be, "That's the last thing you would ever want to do. You do not imitate; you find out what you are about and try to convey that to yourself and to the audience in some way that demonstrates what your experience is."

JEFFREY BROWN: Sometimes the results are abstract, long flights of notes.

KEITH JARRETT: It's like you're being under shock all the time -- an electrical current is flowing through you.

JEFFREY BROWN: At other moments, the music is lyrical and song-like. Even at its simplest, it's all unfolding for the first time, as here at the beginning of a section of "Radiance."

KEITH JARRETT: It sounds like I know everything about the piece when it starts. I mean, I think it starts -- something like that. And then it turns into … and then it just keeps going. Now, someone could have written that piece. In fact, many people might have written it. But nobody did, and I never heard it, and the only clue I had about what was going to come next was ... I mean, that's it.

JEFFREY BROWN: When he's not flying solo, Jarrett continues to perform and record regularly with his trio. But here, too, where the music is more structured, Jarrett says it's all about listening, and being ready.

KEITH JARRETT: In the trio, we'll be suddenly swinging. You can't swing on purpose. You can't say, "We're going to sit down and now we're going to swing." This is a very good example of the entirety of what we're talking about. You can just be ready for swinging.

And so sometimes it'll happen onstage, and we're looking at each other like the light just got turned on, you know? And we know we didn't turn it on, and we also know we don't know where the switch is. There is no switch; it just happens for many, many reasons that are beyond our control.

JEFFREY BROWN: And you just go with it?

KEITH JARRETT: Just go with it. A couple nights later, the trio might play that same tune and try to -- remembering how great it felt, and nothing happens. And we all look at each other for -- again, we now know, "here we are being dunces again."

JEFFREY BROWN: You make it sound sort of mysterious.

KEITH JARRETT: It is mysterious. It's totally mysterious, which is why if someone wanted a simple explanation of it, the last person -- the first person that would be able to explain it simply would be someone who doesn't know anything about it.

JEFFREY BROWN: Several years ago, Jarrett's career was in jeopardy when he was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, and had to stop playing for long periods. The disease, he says, is now under control, and "Radiance" is his first solo concert recording since his return.

Jarrett knows that his music is not for everyone. But he's able to travel the world and play for a loyal audience that's now followed his development for decades.

KEITH JARRETT: That's my job. I mean, I think that's an artist's job. I put much more weight on what an artist should be doing. I believe that everybody that pays money for a ticket is paying money for more than they're asking for.

JEFFREY BROWN: More than they're asking for?

KEITH JARRETT: Yeah. They're usually asking for "let's hear this again." And I'm always sitting there thinking, "I know if they've followed me this far, that there's farther to go."

End - Copyright of PBS

2005-07-31T00:20:00.000-07:00

Penguin picture marches to box office gold

In a year chockfull of remakes where Hollywood's misses are outnumbering its hits, a humble documentary about animal migration is making waves for all the right reasons.

March of the Penguins, directed by Luc Jacquet, has been charming filmgoers Stateside ever since it went on release last month and is on course to become the second biggest non-fiction film of all time.

The picture won a colony of admirers when it screened at the Sundance film festival last January and has sold just over $10m (£5.7m) in tickets since opening five weeks ago - a remarkable amount for a documentary in limited release.

Senior executives at Warner Independent Pictures (WiP), Warner Bros' specialty division that is distributing the picture in the US, expect to keep penguin fever alive and waddling in theatres well into September.

Studio top brass believe it has a shot at overtaking the $21.6m (£12.3m) mark set by Michael Moore's Bowling For Columbine to become the second biggest documentary of all time. The seemingly unassailable number one spot is held by another Moore picture, Fahrenheit 9/11, on $119.2m (£67.8m).

According to WiP's market research, March of the Penguins, which follows the perilous annual journey of the emperor penguin to its Antarctic breeding grounds, is playing strongly across all demographics and is proving to be a popular date movie. Morgan Freeman lends his dulcet tones as the picture's narrator.

Another Sundance documentary, Mad Hot Ballroom, which charts a group of children as they take dance classes in New York, is also performing well. Released through Paramount Classics, it currently stands at more than $6.1m (£3.5m) after nine weeks in release and ranks 10th in the all-time non-fiction stakes.

March of the Penguins sold more than $12m (£6.8m) in tickets in France earlier this year and will open in the UK through Warner Bros this December.

End - Copyright of The Guardian

2005-07-30T05:58:00.000-07:00

Why we are what we are

Thomas de Zengotita argues that the modern media shape people's lives in totally new ways in his haunting study, Mediated, says Peter Preston

Mediated: The Hidden Effects of the Media on You and Your World
Thomas de Zengotita

At first sight, the latest media studies thesis in town isn't exactly cutting-edge. Indeed, the Bard of Avon had the jump on Thomas de Zengotita, professor of anthropology at New York University (and Harper's guru). All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players? Just so. It's precisely what the prof is arguing. But at least his Shakespeare arrives in postmodern, anti-terrorist dress with high-tech gadgetry attached.

Long ago, he says, de Zengotita was taking a course in method acting, simulating extreme grief, when news came banging at the door. John Kennedy is dead! And suddenly his Lee Strasberg-trained class dissolved into true grief, except that, audibly, visibly, no one could tell the difference. The method was the continuing message. It is this utter confusion of reality and virtual reality that sends his mind spinning on.

Were the hundreds of thousands of Londoners who turned out for Princess Di's funeral genuine mourners, gripped by genuine emotion? Perhaps, in a way; the mediated way of his title. But they were also volunteer players on an ad-hoc stage, groundlings seeking their moment in history's arc-light. And if that was true for Di, and for the thousands who thronged St Peter's Square when the Pope died on nonstop cable news, think what de Zengotita would have made of London two weeks ago and its silence for the slaughtered lambs.

Almost everything, you see, comes to us through some media prism, which, in turn, colours not just our view of this life, but our own self-definition. We are products of immense, often inchoate, media indoctrination.

Moreover, the very pattern of life we take for granted, our normality, is hectic, digital and new, quite different in kind from that of even recent generations. You know where you were when Kennedy or Di died or the Twin Towers came toppling down. But does anybody, except those few who were there, on the spot, remember Pearl Harbor?

No, because no instant, vivid media existed to bring the enormity of that moment to you and make you share it. Our lives, as recently as the first half of the 20th century, were different in kind: isolated, unchanging, experiencing great events at a sluggardly distance.

You recognise that in so many ways if you pause and ponder. De Zengotita, who has a wonderful way with personal anecdotes, says silly little reconstructed things can make you cry, and he's right.

I remember, a few years ago, weeping uncontrollably in my living room at the sweep of a panning shot which ends Mississippi Gambler as Piper Laurie rushes aboard the steamboat into Tyrone Power's arms. Why weep? Because, 50 years after I first saw that film, a lone schoolboy in the back row of the Victory cinema in Loughborough, experiencing it all over again, as though I was still that boy, first tears remembered and frozen in time.

No generation before had such a bank of mediated memory to draw on. Old music hall stars perished and vanished forever. Old wonders of history were written about, not experienced. The world had heroes, say, Nelson or Alexander, but the world did not see them close up, if at all. Human existence was cramped, confined. Most people had few life choices to make because life itself gave them few options.

Rivetingly, de Zengotita examines what that means for the ages of man. Childhood? That used to be a brief, passing phase between cradle and a full working life, not a decade or more of anxiety and expense. Teenage years? The very concept of 'a teenager', all acne and slammed doors and CDs blasting out, is a totally 20th-century construct. We didn't have teenagers with teenage problems before then: neither the word nor the concept existed.

At which point, other puzzles fall into place. Take the supposed political apathy of the young. If, for years on end, they're sifting the mediated options, deciding who they are or want to be, then is it any wonder that politics, using pop video techniques and pop slogans inferior to the pitch on cans of Diet Cola, is the option they never find time for, one limp message among many more compulsive ones?

It isn't the spin that turns them off; it's the style and the tone of voice. It's Clinton and Bush and, yes, of course, Tony Blair acting again, because acting is what they all have to do while the media carousel turns.

This is a fertile, haunting book, with a thesis that peddles awareness, not conclusions. But once you've absorbed the awareness, you're bound to see life a little differently, and to keep asking the most vexing of questions. If I am a sponge, an assemblage of images, sounds and influences, always looking out for my 15 minutes of fame, always rehearsing what I'll say if a camera pokes its head round my doorway or a producer from reality television comes knocking with a contract, then where is the real me, the inner core, not the outer show?

De Zengotita remembers looking at his mother one day in the kitchen and thinking: 'That woman bore me in her womb.' We've all done that, I guess. But is it reality or a line from a movie somewhere?

And so, inevitably, queasily, back to the biggest mediated experience of our age. On the morning of 9/11, de Zengotito was sitting in a park by Brooklyn Bridge. What was that bang? A gas main exploding? It's days before he's allowed to cross the East River to see for himself. 'It was chaos, a gigantic instantiation of necessity and accident.' It had cracked apart the expected frame of media representation. It was a tangle of shapes and miseries on a beautiful September day. It was - the exact word - surreal. More, much more, than a Hollywood blockbuster: a shattering experience because without the gloss of art or intellectual point or meaning, a glimpse of reality unmediated, the difference between watching a screen and being there amid dust and rubble.

Was that the difference for Londoners between the choking blackness of the Piccadilly line and the silence of Trafalgar Square? Or had one bitter reality been subsumed by mediated mourning? The professor, witty and pungent throughout, says he voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, so he's not infallible.

But if you want to think afresh about who you are and how you came to believe what you believe, start here.

End - Copyright of The Observer

2005-07-30T05:23:00.000-07:00

Al-Nakba's Oral History Project

This project aims to document and retain the Palestinian refugees' experience and memories before, during and after al-Nakba. Live interviews have been conducted with the refugees who witnessed al-Nakba at the age of 12 years and above. To learn more about this project, please click below:

http://PalestineRemembered.com/OralHistory/index.html

2005-07-30T02:16:00.000-07:00

Vatican in terror dispute with Israel

Pope Benedict XVI was yesterday immersed in the first big diplomatic crisis of his papacy after the Vatican issued an unusually blunt statement criticising Israel for its response to Palestinian attacks.

The Vatican's stinging rebuke came after Israel demanded to know why the Pope did not refer to a Palestinian suicide bombing in remarks he made on Sunday condemning terrorist attacks in London and Sharm el-Sheikh.

In a 1,300-word communique, the Vatican said: "It has not always been possible to follow every attack against Israel with a public declaration of condemnation."

It said one reason for this was that "the attacks on Israel were sometimes followed by immediate Israeli reactions not always compatible with the norms of international law ... It would thus be impossible to condemn the [terrorist operations] and pass over the [Israeli retaliation] in silence".

The statement also expressed irritation with the reaction of the Israeli government to the Pope's original comments and said it was not prepared to "take lessons or instructions from any other authority on the content and direction of its own statements".

Israel has repeatedly demanded that other governments recognise Palestinian attacks as part of an international Islamist campaign against western democracy, therefore implicitly not connected to its own actions in the occupied territories.

The Israeli foreign ministry called in the Vatican's envoy on Monday to complain that the Pope, in condemning terrorist attacks in several countries, had "deliberately" omitted mention of a July 12 suicide bombing in the coastal city of Netanya in which five Israelis died. The Pope's spokesman replied that the pontiff had explicitly indicated he was referring to all the recent attacks. He said it was "surprising that one would have wanted to take the opportunity to distort the intentions of the Holy Father".

The generally conciliatory tone of the Vatican's initial response appeared to have put an end to the row. But the next day an Israeli foreign ministry official told the Jerusalem Post that it has been Vatican policy for years not to condemn terrorism in Israel.

Thursday's statement was framed as a response to that claim. It included a long list of references to statements made by the late pope, John Paul II, condemning violence against civilians in Israel.

After the July 7 bombings in London, Israel's foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, said suicide attacks around the world were driven by a common hatred for freedom. "Ultimately terrorism can strike any country in the world that has an ideology of freedom, of democracy, that has an ideology of openness," he said.

Shortly afterwards the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, ordered his ministers not to comment on the London bombings for fear that their remarks could be interpreted as seeking to make political capital out of the killings.

But Mr Shalom's wife, Judy, felt no such restraint on a television chatshow a few days later. "As long as I hold no official position I can say it's not all bad for the English to find out what it's like," she said.

End-Copyright of The Guardian

2005-07-29T09:49:00.000-07:00

Privatize or Else!

The following article by Naomi Klein is a prototype of "how" the U.S. "deals" with countries and nations who refuse to sumbit to U.S. "democratic" will. Klein interviews Haitian exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, she reports the tragedy.

Aristide in Exile

[from the August 1, 2005 issue, The Nation]

When United Nations troops kill residents of the Haitian slum Cité Soleil, friends and family often place photographs of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on their bodies. The photographs silently insist that there is a method to the madness raging in Port-au-Prince. Poor Haitians are being slaughtered not for being "violent," as we so often hear, but for being militant; for daring to demand the return of their elected president.

It was only ten years ago that President Clinton celebrated Aristide's return to power as "the triumph of freedom over fear." So what changed? Corruption? Violence? Fraud? Aristide is certainly no saint. But even if the worst of the allegations are true, they pale next to the rap sheets of the convicted killers, drug smugglers and arms traders who ousted Aristide and continue to enjoy free rein, with full support from the Bush Administration and the UN. Turning Haiti over to this underworld gang out of concern for Aristide's lack of "good governance" is like escaping an annoying date by accepting a lift home from Charles Manson.

A few weeks ago I visited Aristide in Pretoria, South Africa, where he lives in forced exile. I asked him what was really behind his dramatic falling-out with Washington. He offered an explanation rarely heard in discussions of Haitian politics--actually, he offered three: "privatization, privatization and privatization."

The dispute dates back to a series of meetings in early 1994, a pivotal moment in Haiti's history that Aristide has rarely discussed. Haitians were living under the barbaric rule of Raoul Cédras, who overthrew Aristide in a 1991 US-backed coup. Aristide was in Washington and despite popular calls for his return, there was no way he could face down the junta without military back-up. Increasingly embarrassed by Cédras's abuses, the Clinton Administration offered Aristide a deal: US troops would take him back to Haiti--but only after he agreed to a sweeping economic program with the stated goal to "substantially transform the nature of the Haitian state."

Aristide agreed to pay the debts accumulated under the kleptocratic Duvalier dictatorships, slash the civil service, open up Haiti to "free trade" and cut import tariffs on rice and corn in half. It was a lousy deal but, Aristide says, he had little choice. "I was out of my country and my country was the poorest in the Western hemisphere, so what kind of power did I have at that time?"

But Washington's negotiators made one demand that Aristide could not accept: the immediate sell-off of Haiti's state-owned enterprises, including phones and electricity. Aristide argued that unregulated privatization would transform state monopolies into private oligarchies, increasing the riches of Haiti's elite and stripping the poor of their national wealth. He says the proposal simply didn't add up: "Being honest means saying two plus two equals four. They wanted us to sing two plus two equals five."

Aristide proposed a compromise: Rather than sell off the firms outright, he would "democratize" them. He defined this as writing antitrust legislation, insuring that proceeds from the sales were redistributed to the poor and allowing workers to become shareholders. Washington backed down, and the final text of the agreement--accepted by the United States and by a meeting of donor nations in Paris--called for the "democratization" of state companies.

But when Aristide began to implement the plan, it turned out that the financiers in Washington thought his democratization talk was just public relations. When Aristide announced that no sales could take place until Parliament had approved the new laws, Washington cried foul. Aristide says he realized then that what was being attempted was an "economic coup." "The hidden agenda was to tie my hands once I was back and make me give for nothing all the state public enterprises." He threatened to arrest anyone who went ahead with privatizations. "Washington was very angry at me. They said I didn't respect my word, when they were the ones who didn't respect our common economic policy."

Aristide's relationship with Washington has been deteriorating ever since: While more than $500 million in promised loans and aid were cut off, starving his government, USAID poured millions into the coffers of opposition groups, culminating ultimately in the February 2004 armed coup.

And the war continues. On June 23 Roger Noriega, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, called on UN troops to take a more "proactive role" in going after armed pro-Aristide gangs. In practice, this has meant a wave of Falluja-like collective punishment inflicted on neighborhoods known for supporting Aristide. On July 6, for instance, 300 UN troops stormed Cité Soleil, blocking off exits and firing from armored vehicles. The UN admits that five were killed, but residents put the number of dead at no fewer than twenty. Reuters correspondent Joseph Guyler Delva says he "saw seven bodies in one house alone, including two babies and one older woman in her 60s." Ali Besnaci, head of Médecins Sans Frontières in Haiti, confirmed that on the day of the siege twenty-seven people came to the MSF clinic with gunshot wounds, three-quarters of them women and children.

Yet despite these attacks, Haitians are still on the streets--rejecting the planned sham elections, opposing privatization and holding up photographs of their president. And just as Washington's experts could not fathom the possibility that Aristide would reject their advice a decade ago, today they cannot accept that his poor supporters could be acting of their own accord--surely Aristide must be controlling them through some mysterious voodoo arts. "We believe that his people are receiving instructions directly from his voice and indirectly through his acolytes that communicate with him personally in South Africa," Noriega said.

Aristide claims no such powers. "The people are bright, the people are intelligent, the people are courageous," he says. They know that two plus two does not equal five.

End

2005-07-28T06:28:00.000-07:00

Dear Dwellers of Cyber Life, Addicts of Big Brother, Denied Souls of Offline Freedom, Midgets of Tall Shadows:

It has been a pleasure supplying you with news and views from around the mad globe of hope & dope. The time has come for me to melt all these links and articles in one scrumptious chocolaty pot that would feature my own mad inspired words, links to writers I like, music I listen to, and movies I love, as well as political news that will urge you to attend to the bathroom more often. Be ware though, this is not a blog of personal journeys and minute-by-minute worthless reflections and detections, like many blogs out there, who have nothing to say about theme selves except: I, me and myself! This is a blog for awareness & knowledge exchange, a blog for news and views, for advocacy and promotion.

So, let me adjust the mic first, is everybody in his/her place? 123 test, test 123, Dandy, we are ready then, let me adjust my tie, I hate ties, ok, ehm, em: "It brings me great pleasure to announce the blogging of my humble blog under the blogless name of Papier Potpar, a blog frog fog character I will introduce to you in the coming blog-driven months of the coming years of this blogged century hopefully." (I hear claps from cheering audiences, dear me, is this vanity running through my veins!?)

So if you still like to read the same quality stuff I used to send you via email, you will find the Potpar blog a blogy bloody site, a textual joy of unique bohemian attire. I would like to note as well, that my writing mentor Dr. Marwan Asmar is preparing his own type of duel madness on his blog: Asmar & Asmar (www.marwanasmar.blogspot.com). We will be reading quality political and cultural insights brought to you by Asmar & Asmar Wordsmiths.

Ladies before Gentleman:

My first feature this week is a political marvel by John Pilger of Newstatesman, a journalist of honesty, consciousness, and fearless words – the Muslim characteristics of a non-Muslim voice!

Enjoy. Enrage.

Yours,
Potpar

2005-07-27T05:49:00.000-07:00

Blair's bombs

Terror and the UK - The senseless repercussions of interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine demand that we renew our anger at our leaders. Our troops must come home. We owe it to all those who died in London on 7 July. By John Pilger - Newstatesman

In all the coverage of the bombing of London, a truth has struggled to be heard. With honourable exceptions, it has been said guardedly, apologetically. Occasionally, a member of the public has broken the silence, as an east Londoner did when he walked in front of a CNN camera crew and reporter in mid-platitude. "Iraq!" he said. "We invaded Iraq and what did we expect? Go on, say it."

Alex Salmond tried to say it on Today on Radio 4. He was told he was speaking "in poor taste . . . before the bodies are even buried". George Galloway was lectured on Newsnight (BBC2) that he was being "crass". The inimitable Ken Livingstone contradicted his previous statement, which was that the invasion of Iraq would come home to London. With the exception of Galloway, not one so-called anti-war MP spoke out in clear, unequivocal English. The warmongers were allowed to fix the boundaries of public debate; one of the more idiotic, in the Guardian, called Blair "the world's leading statesman".

And yet, like the man who interrupted CNN, people understand and know why, just as the majority of Britons oppose the war and believe Blair is a liar. This frightens the political elite. At a large media party I attended, many of the important guests uttered "Iraq" and "Blair" as a kind of catharsis for that which they dared not say professionally and publicly.

The bombs of 7 July were Blair's bombs.

Blair brought home to this country his and George W Bush's illegal, unprovoked and blood-soaked adventure in the Middle East. Were it not for his epic irresponsibility, the Londoners who died in the Tube and on the No 30 bus almost certainly would be alive today. This is what Livingstone ought to have said. To paraphrase perhaps the only challenging question put to Blair on the eve of the invasion (by John Humphrys), it is now surely beyond all doubt that the man is unfit to be Prime Minister.

How much more evidence is needed? Before the invasion, Blair was warned by the Joint Intelligence Committee that "by far the greatest terrorist threat" to this country would be "heightened by military action against Iraq". He was warned by 79 per cent of Londoners who, according to a YouGov survey in February 2003, believed that a British attack on Iraq "would make a terrorist attack on London more likely". A month ago, a leaked, classified CIA report revealed that the invasion had turned Iraq into a focal point of terrorism. Before the invasion, said the CIA, Iraq "exported no terrorist threat to its neighbours" because Saddam Hussein was "implacably hostile to al-Qaeda".

Now, a report by the Chatham House organisation, a "think-tank" deep within the British establishment, may well beckon Blair's coup de grace. Published on 18 July, it says there is "no doubt" the invasion of Iraq has "given a boost to the al-Qaeda network" in "propaganda, recruitment and fundraising" while providing an ideal targeting and training area for terrorists. "Riding pillion with a powerful ally" has cost Iraqi, American and British lives. The right-wing academic Paul Wilkinson, a voice of western power, was the principal author. Read between the lines, and it says the Prime Minister is now a serious liability. Those who run this country know he has committed a great crime; the "link" has been made.

Blair's bunker-mantra is that there was terrorism long before the invasion, notably 11 September 2001. Anyone with an understanding of the painful history of the Middle East would not have been surprised by 11 September or by the bombings of Madrid and London, only that they had not happened earlier. I have reported the region for 35 years, and if I could describe in a word how millions of Arab and Muslim people felt, I would say "humiliated". When Egypt looked like winning back its captured territory in the 1973 war with Israel, I walked through jubilant crowds in Cairo: it felt as if the weight of history's humiliation had lifted. In a very Egyptian flourish, one man said to me, "We once chased cricket balls at the British Club. Now we are free."

They were not free, of course. The Americans resupplied the Israeli army and they almost lost everything again. In Palestine, the humiliation of a captive people is Israeli policy. How many Palestinian babies have died at Israeli checkpoints after their mothers, bleeding and screaming in premature labour, have been forced to give birth beside the road at a military checkpoint with the lights of a hospital in the distance? How many old men have been forced to make obeisance to young Israeli conscripts? How many families have been blown to bits by American-supplied F-16s using British-supplied parts?

The gravity of the bombing of London, said a BBC commentator, "can be measured by the fact that it marks Britain's first suicide bombing". What about Iraq? There were no suicide bombers in Iraq until Blair and Bush invaded. What about Palestine? There were no suicide bombers in Palestine until Ariel Sharon, an accredited war criminal sponsored by Bush and Blair, came to power. In the 1991 Gulf "war", American and British forces left more than 200,000 Iraqis dead and injured, and the infrastructure of their country in "an apocalyptic state", according to the United Nations. The subsequent embargo, designed and promoted by zealots in Washington and Whitehall, was not unlike a medieval siege. Denis Halliday, the United Nations official assigned to administer the near-starvation food allowance, called it "genocidal".

I witnessed its consequences: tracts of southern Iraq contaminated with depleted uranium, and cluster bomblets waiting to explode. I watched dying children, some of the half a million infants whose deaths Unicef attributed to the embargo - deaths which the US secretary of state Madeleine Albright said were "worth it". In the west, this was hardly reported. Throughout the Muslim world, the bitterness was like a presence, its contagion reaching many young British-born Muslims.

In 2001, in revenge for the killing of 3,000 people in the twin towers, more than 20,000 Muslims died in the Anglo-American invasion of Afghanistan. This was revealed by Jonathan Steele in the Guardian but never became news, to my knowledge. The attack on Iraq was the Rubicon, making the reprisal against Madrid and the bombing of London entirely predictable: this last "in response to the massacres carried out by Britain in Iraq and Afghanistan", claimed the Secret Organisation Group of al-Qaeda in Europe. Whether or not the claim was genuine, the reason was. Bush and Blair wanted a "war on terror" and they got it. Omitted from public discussion is that their state terror makes al-Qaeda's appear minuscule by comparison. More than 100,000 Iraqi men, woman and children have been killed not by suicide bombers, but by the Anglo-American "coalition", says a peer-reviewed study published in the Lancet, and largely ignored.

In his poem "From Iraq", Michael Rosen wrote:

We are the unfound
We are uncounted
You don't see the homes we made
We're not even the small print or the bit in brackets . . .
because we lived far from you . . .
because you have cameras that point the other way . . .

Imagine, for a moment, you are in the Iraqi city of Fallujah. It is an American police state, like a vast penned ghetto. Since April last year, the hospitals there have been subjec- ted to an American policy of collective punishment. Staff have been attacked by US marines, doctors have been shot, emer-gency medicines blocked. Children have been murdered in front of their families.

Now imagine the same state of affairs imposed on the London hospitals that received the victims of the bombing. When will someone draw this parallel at one of Blair's staged "press conferences", at which he is allowed to emote for the cameras about "our values outlast[ing] theirs"? Silence is not journalism. In Fallujah, the people know "our values" only too well. And when will someone invite the obsequious Bob Geldof to explain why his hero's smoke-and-mirrors "debt cancellation" amounts to less than the money the Blair government spends in a week, brutalising Iraq?

The hand-wringing over "whither Islam's soul" is another distraction. As an industrial killer, Christianity leaves Islam for dead. The cause of the current terrorism is neither religion nor hatred for "our way of life": it is political, requiring a political solution. It is injustice and double standards, which plant the deepest grievances. That, and the culpability of our leaders, and the "cameras that point the other way", are the core of it.

On 19 July, while the BBC governors were holding their annual general meeting at Television Centre, an inspired group of British documentary film-makers met outside the main gates and conducted a series of news reports of the kind you do not see on television. Actors played famous reporters doing their "pieces to camera". The "stories" they reported included the targeting of the civilian population of Iraq, the application of the Nuremberg Principles to Iraq, America's illegal rewriting of the laws of Iraq, and theft of its resources through privatisation, the everyday torture and humiliation of ordinary people and the failure to protect Iraqis' archaeological and cultural heritage.

Blair is using the London bombings to further deplete our rights and those of others, as Bush has done in America. Their goal is not security, but greater control. The memory of their victims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and elsewhere demands the renewal of our anger. The troops must come home. Nothing less is owed to those who died and suffered in London on 7 July, unnecessarily, and nothing less is owed to those whose lives are marked if this travesty endures.