Planet Earth being what it is, no New Year can begin without a supreme offense to basic morality and contempt toward the actual historical record. And so it is with the death of Gerald Ford.

Yes, we should be as generous as possible to the dead. And so we all extend our sympathy to Ford’s family and friends, who must be feeling a deep loss. We also should concede that Ford was better than his immediate predecessors, and probably most of the presidential pack up to this day – and sure, he was a “nice guy” in the usual strained sense of the term, much as with the Chief Frat Boy who still manages to hold off his political day of reckoning.

But Ford, who’s sometimes credited with steering US foreign policy temporarily away from mass murder and indiscriminate destruction, really did have a lot of blood on his hands. It’s fun to read Alexander Cockburn’s view that the man from Grand Rapids (actually East Grand Rapids, a separate municipality that still is an island of privilege within a sorely stressed Rust Belt city) was our “greatest president,” but of course that’s because the competition is gutter level.

For a quick recap of Ford’s foreign policy career, check out Stephen Zunes’ fine piece posted on commondreams.org. There you’ll read about Ford’s collusion with Pinochet, the Shah of Iran, Ferdinand Marcos, Mobutu, and other butchers and torturers - most grievously, Indonesia’s Suharto, who infamously got the “green light” from Ford and henchman Henry Kissinger to invade and occupy East Timor, an adventure that cost more than 200,000 innocent lives.

Henry the K is scheduled to eulogize Ford at the latter’s state funeral. Just goes to show you, old war criminals don’t die, or even fade away; they recline on the puffy clouds of high punditry and elder statesmanship.

Now, why doesn’t the nation hold a solemn funeral for the 3,000 American servicemembers killed in Iraq (the 3,000^th was felled by an IED while Ford’s official mourning period began and Bush’s Iraq policy renovation crew was meeting in what must have been sober cluelessness) and then use this tip-of-the-iceberg statistical milestone as prelude to a commemoration of the half million Iraqi dead?

I don’t mean a commemoration with vain prayers, slow marches, and lying sacks of garbage at the lectern. I mean one that starts with getting the US the fuck out of Iraq.

Posted by jackbradiganspula at 17:24 EST

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Usually I’m not drawn to designer olive oil in small fancy bottles - and with large fancy prices. And I don’t much like the concept of a “Holy Land” (though the idea that all land/earth is sacred sounds pretty good).

But I’m making exceptions on both counts to push Holy Land Olive Oil, a high-end fair-trade product from farmer cooperatives in the still-occupied West Bank. Some proceeds from sales of this extra virgin, first cold press oil - made from hand-picked olives grown without pesticides and other such chemicals - are directly re-invested in Palestinian communities that have long struggled to maintain their orchards; and this re-investment is vital now, as the Palestinian economy suffers even greater stress than “normal.”

I’ve got an armful of 500 ml bottles of this fine oil in front of me right now; they make great stocking stuffers. You can buy Holy Land at Abundance Cooperative Market, 62 Marshall St., right off Monroe Ave. near the Inner Loop. (Disclosure, if one is necessary: I serve on the Abundance board of directors.)  And you can learn more about the product at www.palestineoliveoil.org.

You can also get a taste of the conditions under which such oil is produced by following the work of the Christian Peacemaker Team in the West Bank city of Hebron (www.cpt.org), where a small group of extremist “settlers” seek to dominate and dispossess a large Palestinian population - often with tacit or overt support from Israeli troops on hand. (Check out relevant reports from Israeli human rights groups like B’tselem, www.btselem.org.) Below is a recent CPT report from the trenches:

CPT monitors olive harvesting

6 November 2006
By Abigail Ozanne

The olive harvest in Al Khalil (Hebron) began 26 October, following the end of Ramadan. During the harvest, Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) members have observed trends in the reactions of Israeli forces and settlers to Palestinians harvesting olives. In several cases, Israeli authorities have allowed Palestinians to pick olives if they have a permit and have protected them from Israeli settlers. Sometimes, at the land close to the settlement enclave of Tel Rumeida, Israeli forces have not allowed internationals to pick with the Palestinians and have required the Palestinians to get permission from the Israeli District Command Officer (DCO).

On 26 October, a Palestinian who lives directly below the settlement enclave of Tel Rumeida, received a permit to harvest his olives. At the family's request, about a dozen internationals and Israeli human rights workers arrived to help with the picking, while local press observed. The group had to cut razor wire in order to clear the path to the olive trees. Soon after the group began picking olives, Israeli settlers entered the grove and others watched from settler mobile homes.

One settler woman holding a baby began yelling at the Palestinian owner, "You are all terrorists! You want to kill the Jews! You killed my father!" He replied, "No, I'm not a terrorist. I haven't killed any Jews, and my family protected Jews during the massacre of 1929." Then the woman claimed the olive trees belonged to her and shouted at him, "If you want to pick olives, go to Tel Aviv to pick olives!" She kicked one of the olive pickers, causing him to lose his balance and fall. Another settler hit a Palestinian nonviolent activist in the face, injuring him slightly. The young man did not retaliate.

Later, the Israeli police came. They said that the Palestinians could pick olives but the internationals could not help and only journalists and Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) members could observe. When picking resumed, Israeli soldiers and police stood nearby and the settlers watched from a distance.

On Friday 27 October, CPTers and internationals joined another Palestinian family picking olives on their land. After the group had been picking for several hours, a settler boy came down from the settlement caravans and threw a stone at the olive pickers. Israeli military units-after determining that the family had a permit-monitored for the rest of the day. Every time settlers threw stones or tried to approach too close, the officers chased them away.

On 26 June 2006, the High Court of Justice in Israel ruled that Palestinians have the right to enter and work their land, and the military commander is obligated to protect this right. In five cases where CPTers witnessed families harvesting their olives, Israeli authorities prevented setters from interfering with the harvest. In four of those cases, the family had to show their permit to pick the olives on their own land.

Posted by jackbradiganspula at 08:59 EST

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With its recent (and belated) review of Jimmy Carter’s new book, the downstate daily that veteran journalist John Hess used to call “The Nouveau York Times” plumbed new depths of rag-dom.

Carter’s Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid has generally brought out the worst in American journalism, which is pretty lame under the best circumstances. You’d think this book – by a former president who’s won the Nobel Peace Prize, garnered praise worldwide as an election observer and stateside as a benefactor of low-income housing, and on the flip side, jettisoned a strongly pro-military and interventionist record as president in favor of a touchy-feely-preachy image as born-again conscience of the nation – would inspire deep respect, if not genuflection. But no. Carter has really stepped in it this time, mostly because he dared to use the “A” word in his subtitle. References to apartheid, and extended analogies with the South African racist regime, appear frequently in Israeli media, but such daring is not allowed in the US.

Which brings us back to the Times, whose review of the book (12/14) was dominated by concern over the admittedly provocative term. The reviewer used five named sources who trashed Carter – including the centrist Michael Kinsley, the faintly liberal Dennis Ross (who specializes in distorting the record of Clinton-era talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders), and the far-right contortionist Abraham Foxman of the justly discredited Anti-Defamation League (whose latest caper was a covert attack on esteemed historian Tony Judt). And for balance? Well, the reviewer quoted Carter himself.

The review also quoted The Jerusalem Post, surely one of the worst of Israeli papers – certainly overrated among US readers, though in this regard it can be seen as a worthy companion to the NY Times. For a better grasp of informed Israeli opinion, one can turn to Ha’aretz of 12/15 and historian Tom Segev’s largely positive review of the book.

After a few quibbles, Segev, one of the pioneering “new historians” whose reality-based recasting of Middle East history is now unexceptionable, addresses “the uproar… over the word apartheid”:

“That's another thing I would have recommended that Carter forgo, if he'd asked me,” says Segev. “It's  not necessary; the situation is terrible as it is.” But Segev’s take on terminology is much different than that of Kinsley, Foxman, et al. “Now everyone's busy arguing about the use of the term `apartheid` instead of focusing on the horrors of the occupation in the territories… But [Carter’s] principal argument is well-founded, and backed up by the reports from B'Tselem, Peace Now, Israeli newspapers and even many articles that appear in The New York Times (as opposed to the theory, which Carter cites, that says Israel's critics are being silenced). Like many others, Carter points out the ongoing and systematic violation of the Palestinians` human rights; the injustices of the oppression perpetuate the conflict. It's bad for everyone, the United States included.”

I believe the apartheid analogy is right on – and that the American people need precisely this kind of wake-up call. Analogies are intrinsically and notoriously inexact, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have great value. For many years the Israeli left has drawn comparisons between Israel/Palestine and the old South Africa – not just with the “A” word, but by using the word “bantustans” to describe the archipelago of West Bank cantons that Israeli and US negotiators want the Palestinians to accept in lieu of a viable, governable state.

Posted by jackbradiganspula at 12:54 EST

Updated: Sunday, 17 December 2006 12:58 EST

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As tests of our transportation system go, this week’s snowfall wasn’t even a pop quiz. Yet for pedestrians, the forgotten ones who are assumed to have no place to go, the system still flunked.

I took a stroll up Mt. Hope Ave. the day after the snow, and here’s what I found. The long stretch of sidewalk at the edge of Highland Park was unshoveled – thanks to inattention from the Monroe County parks department, whose administrative offices are in the park a quarter mile east, near South Avenue. By contrast, the sidewalk on the west side of Mt. Hope, under the control of the city-owned cemetery, was nicely cleared, as were some short stretches near The Distillery sports bar and some other businesses. (The Distillery maintains an additional parking lot a few doors down Mt. Hope, so its management has an obvious interest in helping patrons get from their vehicles to the front door.)

Things got chancier south of Elmwood Ave. The University of Rochester presumably is responsible for the sidewalks by the former Towne House, which it has long owned. But the walks there were innocent of shovel or plow. Up by the parking lot where the old Wegmans used to stand (property the UR acquired when Wegmans ditched the neighborhood) I found a couple parallel tracks through the snow that must have been made by a power wheelchair. Maybe this is a sign that the UR - which I cited a few years ago for the wretched job its subdivision, the Memorial Art Gallery, did with sidewalks on University Avenue, Prince St. and Goodman St. – plans to mount blades on wheelchairs from Strong Hospital around the corner and deploy a volunteer plowing service. (N.B.: MAG did clean up its act eventually; I hope they’re still doing the walks in a timely manner.)

People often figure I have a tough time getting around in winter on my bike. Not at all. Especially since studded bike tires came on the market, winter riding has been a breeze, a pleasure, and generally easier on the body than riding in summer heat and blazing sun. (Cf. a favorite website of mine, www.icebike.org.) No, it’s the pedestrians who have a tough time in winter. But that’s not because of the weather. It’s because of the privileged classes' persistent failure to treat pedestrian routes and facilities as important links in the transportation system - a failure which puts an annual freeze on the most vulnerable population’s mobility rights.

Posted by jackbradiganspula at 21:33 EST

Updated: Sunday, 10 December 2006 21:39 EST

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After months and years of Bushisms about Iraq – Stay the course, Batten the hatches, Damn the torpedoes, etc. ad nauseam – lots of people sense fresh air in the Baker, Hamilton, and Co.,  report on Iraq. But I smell a rat or two.

The report is just perfume on a policy of continued mass murder. You don’t even have to search the fine print; the headlines make it clear that even under the terms the Wise Elders have dictated, US forces would remain in Iraq in large numbers well past 2008, and whether our soldiers and Marines were explicitly ordered into combat or kept back as “advisers” and “trainers,” they’d keep killing Iraqis. Thus we could see the toll of “excess deaths” in Iraq rise to a cool million very quickly – still far from what we wrought in Southeast Asia a while ago, but certainly a number worthy of a great power.

Nothing in the Baker report or on its pundit-ridden fringes should distract us from the plain truth. The US invasion and occupation of Iraq were and are illegal and immoral, and as such must be stopped immediately. And let’s not take refuge in the passive voice: We are the ones who must end this war and call the “leaders” to account. That includes Baker - who did yeoman service with the Reagan administration and then George H.W. Bush’s dirty little war council, and thus is no rose himself.

Posted by jackbradiganspula at 22:51 EST

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