John McCain...

you can't have him

MoveOn, the country's most successful independent progressive organization won't be backing down for this presidential election. Its officials insist that it will continue to represent the views of their members across the county. This means developing the most provocative advertising possible.


They aren't kidding. A new TV ad, which will air in the swing states of Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, highlights John McCain's 100 years pledge regarding the U.S. military commitment to Iraq.

Meanwhile, over at the Obama camp, they've launched a folksy but national ad campaign. It's Message? Barack Obama is just like you. He knows what it's like to start with little and work your way up, he loves his country, he loves his family.

The Wayback Machine

and the War in Bosnia
through the Eyes
of its Children

Browse through 85 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago. To start surfing the Wayback Machine, type in the web address of a site or page where you would like to start, and press enter.

Then select from the archived dates available. The resulting pages point to other archived pages at as close a date as possible. If you have trouble connecting to the Wayback servers, the Internet archive at the New Library of Alexandria, Egypt, mirrors it.

The Internet Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library, with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format. Unfortunately, keyword searching is not currently supported by either the archive or the Wayback Machine.

Founded in 1996 and located in the Presidio of San Francisco, the Archive has been receiving data donations from Alexa Internet and others. In late 1999, the organization started to grow to include more well-rounded collections.

Now the Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages in their collections.

Memory day...

a war
through the eyes of
a 12 year old

In Tuzla, the biggest city north of Sarajevo, I saw a bike. Completely crushed. Probably by a tank. Probably with its rider. The old, rusty stain dragged down the road for several meters. That's why I'm spening much of today on my back porch admiring three old bikes I've rebuilt. Steel and chrome, rusty and pitted, are easier to deal with than mangled flesh. Or mangled memories, for that matter.

And I'm reading a book about a war. There are many books, like memories, about war. Some are personal recollections such as Orwell's Homage to Catalonia; or about specific topics like civilian refugees or children. Very few, though, are written by children themselves. Ann Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl is certainly the most well known. But its understandably self-absorbed, teenage voice makes it less a war story than a coming of age story set against the backdrop of a war. What makes these diaries so ominous is that the reader knows Anne's life will soon be cut cruelly short.

The voice of Aleksandar, the 12 year old narrator in How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone, though equally self-absorbed with growing up, is not hemmed in by the four walls of Anne Frank's temporary attic refuge. When war comes to Višegrad, in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina, it shells the school, throws horses off the bridge into the river Drina, parks tanks in the apartment courtyard, and breaks down doors. Townspeople are taken away eenymeenyminymoe style. There are no temporary attic or basement refuges in 1991-92. Even magic won't help.

Višegrad is the same town in which Ivo Andrić set his historical novel, The Bridge Over the Drina. Written nearly a century earlier it gained much world fame for the magic of its stories. I believe that this debut novel by Saša Stanišić will gain a similar fame but for its stories of magic. The comparison is no rhetorical flourish. Both authors use the ever present Drina as a metaphor for the stories that flow throughout there respective novels.

In no mood to merely ape Ivo Andrić's style, Stanišić adds a magical realism most often associated with Latin American authors. But in the end, magic cannot undue the horrifying displacement of war. As he concludes,

A good story, you'd have said, is like our river Drina: never calm, it doesn't trickle along, it is rough and broad, tributaries flow in to enrich it, it rises above its banks, it bubble and roars, here and there it flows into shallows but then it comes to rapids again, prelude to the depths where there's no splashing. Nut one thing neither the Drina nor the stories can do: there's no going back for any of them.

Why the bike riders?

think Yiddish,
roll British

A story told amongst many post-WWI Talmud students:

In 1936 an elderly Jew was walking down a lonely street in Berlin. Suddenly he was accosted by three burly Nazi ruffians, who taunted him. One demanded angrily: "Isn't it true, old man, that the Jews are the cause of all the problems we now have in Germany?" The old man, no fool, replied, "Actually, it's the Jews and the bike riders."


The irate hooligan looked puzzled and asked "Why the bike riders?" The old man replied:

"Why the Jews?"

Hilter's torch

and
China's shame

An editorial in The LA Times notes, The Olympic torch relay was invented by the Nazis:

According to historians, Adolf Hitler wanted to promote his belief in an Aryan master race by symbolically linking the 1936 Berlin Games to the ancient Greek gods and rituals, hence the carrying of the flame from Olympia to Germany. The first relay was chronicled on film by Hitler’s propagandist, Leni Riefenstahl.

And this from a former college student of mine who is working in Tibet:

Hi All,

An update on the situation here and to remind you that if you're so inclined and able to, please attend a rally this Monday (or at anytime!) to support Tibetans in their fight for greater freedom. There are vigils at lunch and i think in the evenings in many places, and if not please offer a minute of silence for them.

News from here is limited unfortunately. We foreigners are under lock down and surveillance and i've only been able to briefly meet and talk with friends. Some perhaps i won't be able to see again. One is now missing, probably arrested, and another is on the run - staying in the mountains and on the move. Many have had to face several interrogations - and these aren't people necessarily involved in protests but perhaps they are young, male and relatively well-educated. To make matters more frightening, now they are tracking phones to find those on the run, tapping many people's lines, and have also, by dint of having so many people in and around lhasa, effectively blocked off the most well-known escape route to india. And it's still very cold and windy here most days.

In the key areas of unrest its apparently worse. They've arrested all men aged between 15-60. They've closed the schools and most businesses have also shut. Last i heard the trucks were doing laps around the main streets and people said you couldn't move for the numbers of soldiers. Residents have been told that the army will be there until after the olympics. Every monastery has had at least several monks arrested - some where no protests have been known to have happened. (Possibly just a good time to get rid of a few recognised leaders or to escalate the fear already present?)

Minorities universities are keeping their professors at work on the weekend, everyone involved with anything regarding tibetan culture - monks, teachers, social scientists, students, doctors, etc - are having to attend lengthy patriotic lessons. NGOs are being forced to stop activities in these areas until after the olympics and are subjected to daily visits by the PSB. Some of them have had 70% of their planned activities cancelled.

Despite this there are on-going protests, most of which are small, go unreported and are immediately shut down. Most universities are having vigils and sit-ins, monks are continuing to protest peacefully - although inside monasteries as they are surrounded by soldiers and not allowed to leave. People say that they are not watching the olympics on their television and some people say that this rift will not heal, that this will be a long battle. While the government may have brought about a stability, it is because of suppressive tactics. If people felt that they wouldn't be arrested for protesting i think you'd see thousands protesting every day. Every night there is Tibetan dancing in our local square. Maybe 300 people come and form circles, dancing for about 4 hours, and the young men particularly are so active, dancing off tension and aggression, kicking and turning in a flurry of arms and legs, as if they are chasing a devil away.

What will become of this region (1/3 of china) if for six months it is under such fear and tight restriction?

Economically it will be devastated. No men to care for the animals and earn off farm income, not enough people to farm the land at this critical time of sowing, no additional assistance for the women and children, no movement to better pastures for the nomadic families, and it will miss out any tourists, particularly the thousands who will come to the olympics. Of course this has huge social and environmental impacts as well. Possibly no school, especially for all the thousands of teenagers now in custody. No recognition of the Tibetan views, no public discourse, so many people missing, no contact between the thousands of prisoners and their families. And no spring and summer cultural events - if they are held it will be under the most severest restrictions as it will be a very big match from which new protests may strike. And the ethnic divide is growing larger - tibetans are not eating at muslim restaurants and the normally at least cordial relations between Han and Tibetans has been changed to one of suspicion and antagonism. And this division is being fueled by the state media and on-line chat rooms. China said it has found a cache of arms at a monastery today! People who have only been told one version of their history cannot find any compassion for Tibetans, indeed find them incredibly ungrateful and are calling for death penalties for the rioters. And there is increasing rumours among Tibetans of Chinese agents dressed as Tibetans, possibly even as monks, and inciting greater rioting. Of course, there are intellectuals and people who do see both views, but their voices are also silenced.

Now Buddhist for centuries, Tibetans have lost much of their warrior culture but i think also that the young men are very tired of the current system and its preference for all things Han. Depending on how severe the fall-out is, this latest repression will only harden their feelings and heighten their desperation. As the touchstone for Tibetan religion and culture it is vital that the Big D and the Chinese government find a way forward that is both peaceful and sustainable. And only one side is refusing to talk. If the change doesn't come now it will come at a greater cost later. Tibet needs more autonomy and real equality for its people. In order to hold the Chinese state together the government needs to address the underlying issues. Only dialogue can address the needs of both sides.

Given this state's totalitarian nature it is absolutely vital that the international community and other nations put pressure on China to accept this dialogue.

China's support for tactics of large scale repression, secrecy and stoking blind nationalism are not part of its global commitment nor do they share anything in common with the olympic ideals. Its government must be held accountable for its actions both internally in places like Tibet and Xinjiang and externally in Burma and Sudan. China will only grow stronger and richer in the years to come and it will grow even less concerned with international opinion. This is an opportunity that neither China nor the world can fail to grasp. We cannot let this moment slip through our hands without giving our all to bring greater peace to the world.

Anyway, a bit of a long letter but thanks for reading! Please do what you can. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

I probably won't write again for a few weeks at least as i'm off to the east. Please let me know if you want more information. Please forward this to others but take off my email address. Thanks and all the best...

Hillary's Bosnia war...

and why
it pisses me off

Embellishing wartime experiences is an ancient, if untrustworthy, tradition. Having spent the latter part of the Bosnia War in Tuzla, I remember many a late hour hearing graphic war stories from both local Tuzlans and refugees from Eastern Bosnia. Many even made their own grainy home movies of the war.

But when Hillary embellished her 1996 trip to Tuzla on the campaign trail, it really, really, really pissed me off. Not only does it smack of the worst kind of war tourism, it also insults the real experiences of the locals and internationals who fought daily just to survive.


As the monument to The 1995 Tuzla Massacre states:

Here you don't live
just to live
here you don't die
just to die
here you die
just to live.

Dictatorship of the velotariat

Lenin rolled
in Paris & Cracow

During his 1909-1916 exile from Imperial Russia, V.I. Lenin, like all refugees was too poor to afford a car. So Lenin, ever at the Forefront of the Proletariat, got himself a bike - model unknown. It seems, though, that he wasn't a very skilled biker. In Paris, he even tangled with a cager! His wife, Nadezhda K. Krupskaya, reports in her Reminiscences of Lenin:

Studying in Paris was very inconvenient. The Bibliotheque Nationale was a long way off. Vladimir Ilyich usually cycled there, but riding a bicycle in Paris was not what it was in the suburbs of Geneva. It was a great strain. Those cycle rides tired him out. The library closed at lunch time. There was a lot of red-tape in the arrangements for ordering books, and Ilyich swore at the library, and while he was at it, at Paris in general...

Ilyich made the round of all the libraries mentioned but none of them was suitable. In the end his bicycle was stolen. He used to leave it on the stairs of a house next door to the Bibliothetque Nationale and pay the concierge ten centimes a day for it. When he came for the bicycle and found it gone, the concierge declared that she had not been hired to look after the bicycle but only to let Ilyich keep it on the stairs.

Riding a bicycle in Paris and the suburbs required great care. Once, on his way [to watch an air display at] to Juvisy-sur-Orge, Ilyich was nearly run over by a motor-car. He barely managed to jump clear, and the bicycle was wrecked.

Then in June 1912, Lenin & Krupskaya moved from Paris to the ancient Polish city of Cracow:

...In the morning Lenin would swim in the Dunajec, little mountain river, before breakfast. Then he would drop in to the post office, receive his correspondence, and quickly glance through it in order to answer urgent telegrams and letters on the spot. After breakfast he would sit down to work which lasted until 7:00 in the evening with one short break. Then he would take his mail to the train station on bicycle. In nice weather Lenin would take his work and climb up to the hill Galitsova Grapa. A splendid view of the Tatry Mountains could be seen from there.

A gut feeling?

NYC bombing

this bike
is a pipe bomb?

The NYPD is still investigating Friday's early morning explosion at the famous Times Square Armed Forces Recruiting Center on Military Island at 43rd & Broadway. They've looked at dozens of security videotapes, hoping to identify a bike bomber.

Kosovo/a

the final divorce
& what it cost

Yesterday, Kosova's parliament unanimously proclaimed independence. Today, the Serb parliament declared the proclamation invalid and illegal. Sporadic Serb protests have taken place in both nations. What began in 1989, during the heady days of Communism's European demise, is now over: Yugoslavia is no more.


This sometimes peaceful, but mostly brutal, divorce of Woodrow Wilson's shotgun marriage, actually began in Kosovo, Yugoslavia's poorest autonomous province. Slobodan Milošević, the erstwhile gigolo, wooed those Kosovo Serbs who both feared democracy and loathed Albanian (Kosova) nationalism. But he soon lost interest in favor of other unhappy Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

But many of us who worked in Yugoslavia during those violent, terrible years knew Milošević would eventually return to the Cradle of the Serb Nation. When my colleagues and I finally pulled out of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1998, we joked that we'd see each other in Kosovo/a next year. Few of us did go back. We were done with all this. But everyone had to wait for the final divorce until yesterday. Here's the final settlement:

Kosovo
1989
25 casualties
100% civilian

Croatia
1991-95
40,000 casualties
60% civilian

Slovenia
1991
63 casualties
0% civilian

Bosnia-Herzegovina
1992-1995
102, 622 casualties
approx. 50% civilian

Macedonia
2001
137 casualties
50% civilian

Montenegro
2006
0 casualties
0% civilian

Kosova
1999 - 2008
11,200 casualties
89% civilian

154,047 total casualties
6% of Yugoslavia's 1989 population:
24,000,000

*This photo of a bike on a blood-stained Sarajevo street comes from A Photographers Life, Annie Leibovitz's 2006 book. I found it over at The Washington Post.

Who hates whom?

from Jeopardy
to commentary

While the country ramps up the political heat with the 2008 presidential primaries, other serious shit is happening around the world: Bhutto dead, Kenya burns, Iraq simmers, Gaza dying, etc. It may help to check out Bob Harris who explains on his website:

Who Hates Whom is meant to be useful the next time something blows up in Thailand or Rwanda or Colombia or Turkey, and CNN or Fox moves on to the next Lindsay Lohan story before bothering to fill in many details. (If you think I exaggerate, see this list of major news stories that were virtually ignored in the U.S. on the day that Anna Nicole Smith died.)

iRaq

this year's
big answer?

Whatever happens this year, the question of Iraq is going to intensify. 13 men and 1 woman will debate the numerous plans for continuing or ending our latest foreign adventure. It isn't just an isolated civil war between sectarian factions with a long history of mutual animosity. There are sharp philosophical divisions between candidates and their parties concerning whether the war is the central front in the larger war on terrorism.

The war's growing unpopularity among many Americans, coupled with nightly images of civilian and soldier casualties, will only add to the candidates' need to craft a plan to win the war. They are divided between supporting the president's strategy to surge more troops into central Iraq versus establishing a timetable, complete with benchmarks, to eventually pull out. But as Machiavelli once wrote:

Wars begin when you will,
but they do not end when you please...

So listen
very, very
carefully.

Why Benazir Bhutto matters

..in death
as in life

بينظير ڀٽو

1953-2007

If Pakistan weren't in one of the world's roughest regions with neighbors like Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, India, Kashmir, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Tibet,

her assassination would be just another political tragedy in one of the ignored corners of the world.

If global oil prices weren't negatively tied to growing political instability throughout this region,

her assassination would be just another political tragedy in one of the ignored corners of the world.

If Pakistan did not straddle the great divide between Islam and the West,

her assassination would be just another political tragedy in one of the ignored corners of the world.

If Bhutto hadn't supported the Taliban in Afghanistan during her 2nd tenure as Pakistan's prime minister,

her assassination would be just another political tragedy in one of the ignored corners of the world.

If Bhutto hadn't become the only candidate for prime minister who could challenge the Pakistan's radical Islamists,

her assassination would be just another political tragedy in one of the ignored corners of the world.

If Bhutto hadn't successfully accelerated Pakistan's nuclear weapons program,

her assassination would be just another political tragedy in one of the ignored corners of the world.

If Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, didn't need Bhutto to shore up the faltering support of the US,

her assassination would be just another political tragedy in one of the ignored corners of the world.

If the US hadn't pinned its hopes first on Musharraf, and then on Bhutto,for victory in the War on Terror,

her assassination would be just another political tragedy in one of the ignored corners of the world.

If it hadn't become commonplace in Pakistan to assassinate national leaders like Bhutto,

her assassination would be just another political tragedy in one of the ignored corners of the world.

If Pakistan weren't perpetually and violently on the edge of the abyss,

her assassination would be just another political tragedy in one of the ignored corners of the world.

UPDATE
31 XII 07

If al-Qaida hadn't claimed responsibility for Bhutto's assassination,

her assassination would be just another political tragedy in one of the ignored corners of the world.

What happens in Chicago, Part II

...torture

Last week I posted Peter Sagal's brilliant commentary on Chicago-style reality. It's what I love about the City of Big Shoulders. But if you're going to make reality a virtue, you have to acknowledge the bad along with the good. A case in point is torture. On 16 December 07, Darius Rigali, highlights (in The Boston Globe) the links between torture overseas and here at home. Too close to home, it seems ... because he includes several examples of Chicago-style torture:

Chicago police used magneto [electric shock] torture in the 1970s and 1980s to extract confessions. Most alleged incidents implicated Commander Jon Burge, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, and the detectives he supervised...

In Chicago, in the decade after Vietnam, the use of magnetos and other clean tortures left a disaster: At least 11 men were sentenced to death and many others given long-term prison sentences based on confessions extracted by torture, and in 2003, Governor George Ryan of Illinois commuted the death sentences of all 167 death row inmates. Earlier this month the City of Chicago agreed to pay nearly $20 million to settle lawsuits filed by four former death row inmates who claimed they were tortured and wrongly convicted.

If the spread of torture techniques suggests a blurry line between "us" and "them," it also teaches that there's no real boundary between "there" and "here." It would be ignoring history to assume that what happens in an American-run prison in Iraq will stay in Iraq. Soldiers who learn torture techniques abroad get jobs as police when they return, and the new developments in torture you read about today could yet be employed in a neighborhood near you.

Fascist bike art?

Gino Boccasile
1901-1952

The famous Italian illustrator was born in Bari; the son of a perfumer. Little Gino showed a precocious aptitude for design early on. He completed studies at the fine art school in his home town; and after the death of his father in 1925, moved to Milan, the center of the design world. Despite initial difficulties, he eventually gained a post at the Mauzan-Morzenti Agency. Over the next few years he produced sports posters and illustrated fashion magazines.


Following the lead of fellow poster artist Achille Mauzan, Boccasile went to Buenos Aires for a time where he met his future spouse Alma Corsi. He also visited Paris, where the Paris Tabou dedicated an entire issue to his work, and participated in the 1932 Salon des Indépendants. Returning to Milan, he opened a publicity agency called Acta with his friend Franco Aloi. It was there that he found his real creative outlet.


But wait there's more ... A supporter of Benito Mussolini, Boccasile produced propaganda material for the government. This included several racist and anti-semitic posters. After the war he was imprisoned and tried for collaborating with the Fascists and although acquitted, he remained an outcast. He could not find work for a few years as his signature was feared by prospective employers.


Nonetheless, he supported himself by doing erotic sketches for English and French publishers, and by 1946, after slightly changing his style, Boccasile was back at work. He set up his own agency in Milan where he created memorable posters for Paglieri cosmetics, Chlorodont toothpaste, and Zenith footwear, all bearing his signature.


He died prematurely in Milan, from bronchitis and pleurisy, in 1952.

Plus ça change...

plus c'est la même chose

Nine countries could kill many people on a moment’s notice by launching missiles carrying nuclear warheads. A 10th, Iran, may be weaponizing uranium. The U.S., Russia and China can bomb virtually any country with long-range ballistic missiles and, along with France and the U.K., could do the same using submarines. The effects of even one bomb could far exceed the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Nuclear Threat, Scientific American, November 2007

Guantánamo - 6 years on

a denim jacket
for your time

Number of “high-value detainees” now at Guantánamo:
15

Approximate percentage of detainees found to have committed “hostile acts” against the United States or coalition forces before detention:
53

Approximate number of countries of which detainees are citizens:
40

Most represented countries at Guantánamo:
Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Yemen

Cost of building Guantánamo high-security detention facilities:
about $54 million

Estimated annual cost of operating Guantánamo: $90 million to $118 million

Cost of “expeditionary legal complex” for the military commission (under construction):
$10 million to $12 million

Number of books in the Guantánamo detention library:
5,143

Number of Korans issued to detainees from January 2002 to June 2005:
more than 1,600

Number of daily calories per detainee:
Up to 4,200, including halal meat

Average weight gain per detainee:
20 pounds

Number of pills dispensed per day:
1,000, to 200-300 detainees

Number of apparent suicides:
4

Number of apparent suicide attempts:
41, by 25 detainees
(as of May 2006)

Number of detainee assaults on guards using “bodily fluids”:
more than 400

Date of first visit to Guantánamo by the International Committee of the Red Cross:
Jan. 18, 2002

Approximate number of visits by lawyers to Guantánamo detainees so far this year:
1,100

Month of first habeas corpus petition filed to challenge detention at Guantánamo:
January 2002

Number of habeas corpus petitions filed in federal courts on behalf of detainees:
roughly 300

Number of detainees designated by the president as “eligible” for trial by military commission:
14

Number actually charged with crimes (for example, murder and material support for terrorism):
10

Number of pending cases:
3

Number of convictions:
1
(an Australian who pleaded guilty to material support of terrorism and was sentenced to nine months of confinement in his home country)

Estimated number of detainees who may be charged in the future:
80

Month of first release of a detainee:
May 2002
(one detainee repatriated to Afghanistan because of an “emotional breakdown”)

Approximate number of detainees released:
445

Approximate number of current detainees found eligible for transfer or release:
70

Countries to which Guantánamo detainees have been transferred:
Albania, Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Maldives, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uganda, Yemen

Most recent announced transfer of detainees from Guantánamo:
Nov. 4
(eight to Afghanistan, three to Jordan)

Personal items provided to detainees upon departure:
a Koran, a denim jacket, a white T-shirt, a pair of blue jeans, high-top sneakers, a gym bag of toiletries and a pillow and blanket for the flight home

Number of detainees said by Pentagon to have resumed hostile activities against the United States after release:
at least 30

Number of United States senators who voted in favor of a nonbinding resolution that Guantánamo detainees “should not be released into American society, nor should they be transferred stateside into facilities in American communities and neighborhoods”:
94

Number of bills in Congress calling for the closing of Guantánamo:
3

Number of members of the House of Representatives who signed a letter to President Bush in June 2007 urging him to close Guantánamo and move the detainees to military prisons in the United States:
145

Number of Republicans who signed the letter:
1

Democratic presidential candidates who are on record supporting closing Guantánamo:
8

Republican presidential candidates who are:
2
(John McCain and Ron Paul)

Closest American allies that have called for Guantánamo’s closing:
Britain, France, Germany

Next scheduled legal test of the Guantánamo system:
Boumediene v. Bush, a challenge to the denial of habeas corpus, set for argument before the Supreme Court on Dec. 5

From Guantánamo by the Numbers, by David Bowker and David Kaye, NYTimes, 10 November 2007.