Fanfare for the Common Man

 It's now the sixth of November: Guy Fawkes Day is over, and so is the civic ritual (not far) to the south of where I live. Though we do not know the full outcome yet, this election may well bring to office an administration that will bring with it policies that challenge the whole world, and not least Canada. 

At this moment, suspended between bad news (the New York Times has just called the United States Senate majority for the party of Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, and J. D. Vance) and the remaining hope that the Democrats will take the White House of at least the House of Representatives, it seems a good time to reflect on what it will take to respond to the challenge of a man and an administration in the White House who wants to exercise dictatorial powers "on the first day"; who plans to replace professional civil servants with ideologically vetted functionaries; who has referred to dissenters in his country as "vermin"; who has promised his supporters "I am your retribution".

For my friends in the United States, this is a bleak outlook. The Trump Administration elected in 2016 came into office by surprise, with relatively few set plans, relying on professional civil servants and members of the military, most of whom had a basis in their professional and personal ethics that enabled them to resist Donald Trump's worst impulses. If he is elected this time, he will have a retinue of individuals who share his most undemocratic impulses and a plan to transform the American government, all ready.

Thirty-nine years ago, in 1985, Jonathan Kozol published "Illiterate America". It contained a chilling prophesy describing the end result of Ronald Reagan's educational policies. It ends with these words: 

Masking skills in time will yield to a determined passion to remove those masks and to compel us to look hard into the face of every Caliban we have created and ignored. Violent disorders will become endemic. They will be met with measures that no longer seek to pacify but only to contain. American will cease to be a flawed democracy. What we will become instead cannot be named.

If the American people have given Donald Trump another term, and particularly if they have given him a compliant legislature, he will have no shortage of supporters and enablers eager to make the worst of Kozol's prophesy come true. 

River Run, 2024

The history isn't a secret.

Grassy Narrows First Nation, an Anishinaabe community, lives along the English-Wabigoon river system, northwest of Lake Superior and directly north of Lake of the Woods. Until about the middle of the previous century, they lived by fur trapping, harvesting blueberries and wild rice harvest, and the river fishery. Fish formed a significant part of the people's diet, and they also found work as guides at the fishing resorts on the river. They did not have a bucolic lifestyle, enduring unwelcome interactions with the majority society, particularly in the form of the cruelties of the residential school system.

Then the government built a series of hydroelectric dams, which disrupted the wild rice harvest. Intensive logging destroyed the blueberry harvest. And the greatest blow, the one which makes the name Grassy Narrows a source of shame to every decent Canadian, fell in 1970: high levels of mercury were detected in the English-Wabigoon river system, and medical tests showed the people of Grassy Narrows were suffering from mercury poisoning.

None of this is mysterious. Scientists and medical personnel have known for centuries that mercury is highly toxic; our common phrase "mad as a hatter" refers to the effects of the mercury used to make felt for hats. There was no question about where the mercury had come from, either; a chlorine plant upstream had dumped ten tons of untreated mercury waste into the river system at Dryden, upstream of the Grassy Narrows reserve, in 1962. The pulp and paper industry had polluted a river used by people as a source of food from time immemorial in an act of gross negligence. Governments, with equal or greater negligence, had allowed them to do it. Both now had a clear obligation: stop the pollution, clean up the river, and provide a decent level of care and compensation for the people who were poisoned.

For fifty-four years the people of Grassy Narrows have demanded the government do exactly that. Youthful activists have become grandparents, calling in vain for successive governments of this province to show a shred of compassion, or failing that decency, or failing that, responsibility for a plain obligation.  For at least the past fourteen years, members of the Grassy Narrows First Nation (Asubpeeschoseewagong Netum Anishinabek) have marched in Toronto to call for the Ontario government to address the harms done to them.An increasing number of supporters have marched with them.

Darcy Allan Sheppard, 1975-2009

 Fifteen years ago, on August 31 2009, Darcy Allan Sheppard encountered Michael Bryant on the most fashionable stretch of Bloor Street, between University Avenue to the west and Yonge Street to the east. What happened then depends on who you ask; according to at least one witness, Michael Bryant struck Darcy Sheppard with the front bumper of his car either deliberately or negligently, and then without trying to see if the person he had hit was all right as the law requires, had attempted to make off. At this point, Darcy Sheppard had latched onto the car, possibly to demand Mr Bryant live up to his responsibilities. Michael Bryant apparently responded by driving rapidly along the wrong side of Bloor Street attempting to shake him off. In the course of this action, Bryant drove so close to the street furniture he struck Darcy Sheppard against the street furniture, fatally injuring him.

Three Kinds of Politicians

 

All politicians have their individual quirks, personalities, viewpoints, and priorities. Within that, we can sort politicians into roughly three categories. 

The first category, the pragmatists, approach politics as an art of problem solving and consensus building, aiming to accomplish effective governance. Pragmatists tend to focus their efforts on issues and in directions where an opportunity to build a working coalition exists. Pragmatic politics involves listening and adjusting positions; pragmatists change based not only on practical politics, but also in response to information and to logical arguments. Abraham Lincoln was, famously, a pragmatist in his approach to ending American slavery.

The second type of politician, the romantics, start with a specific goal or outlook, one they resist compromising. Romantic political orientation has its value where compromise is either ineffective or morally intolerable.  Winston Churchill was largely romantic in his implacable opposition to Nazi Germany. However, in most cases a romantic approach to politics ends with fireworks such as those produced by romantic conservatives in the American Congress, have who achieved periodic shutdowns of the American government but little in the way of legislation. 

The final type, the incendiary, is more common in social movements than in politics, but incendiary politicians do appear from time to time. Incendiary politicians are distinguished from romantics by their willingness to go outside the formal and informal limits of political discourse to achieve their goals. Andrew Jackson was an incendiary politician, most notably when he defied the US Supreme Court ruling on Indigenous rights to commit one of the worst acts of ethnic cleansing in American history. Donald Trump is, of course, cut from similar cloth.

All of which makes Rich Lowry's recent commentary in the New York Times downright interesting.

Project 2025 and "schedule 'F'"

Republicans complain the Democrats have set out to terrify the public with references to Project 2025. They point out the project did not come from the Republican Party, but from the Heritage Foundation, a right wing policy development and influence organization. The Heritage Foundation operates at arm's length from the Republican Party and the Trump campaign, but all three entities belong to the larger American Conservative movement, and the personnel in the Heritage foundation, including the staff responsible for Project 2025, overlaps with the personnel of the Trump Administration of 2017-2021 to a significant degree.

The project itself consists of a public policy framework, containing both broad ideological outlines and specific implementation details. Its authors have divided it into several phases: the initial policy document, titled Mandate for Leadership, which they have released publicly, then a series of training videos, which have been leaked to ProPublica, and a number of other as yet unpublished documents.

The mask is right off

This time he said it before a microphone and TV cameras. Donald Trump claimed that from his perspective the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which he has awarded to, among others, donors, professional athletes, politicians, and radio commentator Rush Limbaugh "is better" than the Medal of Honor. He claimed the medal of freedom is "better" precisely because recipients do not have to sacrifice their health or their lives.

Donald Trump has made it clear from the outset that he despises service and sacrifice. He has repeatedly, and very publicly, rejected the notion that those who sacrifice themselves for the good of others have a claim on their fellow citizens. He dismissed the five and a half years his political rival John McCain spent in brutal captivity for his country with a sneer: "I like people who weren't captured, OK?". When the family of Humayun Khan, who had given his life in Operation Iraqi Freedom, appealed to Donald Trump to abandon his Islamophobic policies in the name of the United States Constitution, and of their son who had given his life for that constitution, Donald Trump dismissed them by doubling down on his Islamophobic positions.

Awake

Sometime a little over two weeks ago a contractor illegally placed a dumpster in the Bloor Street bike lane. Attempting to manoeuvre around this obstruction, a young woman cyclist was hit and killed in the street. The following Wednesday, six hundred cyclists turned out for a memorial ride to honour and remember the fallen cyclist, and to stand at a street corner where our blood has been spilled too often before and to call for an end to irresponsible behaviour on the streets, and for effective measures to protect the lives of all road users. 

 

What the women's Olympic boxing controversy tells us

 

 

To use a sports metaphor the controversies over two women boxers at the Olympics, Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting have a world of "tells" attached to them.

Eleven score and eight years ago...

...the continental congress of what would become the United States severed their links with the most scientifically sophisticated and democratic nation in Europe. In doing so, they also cut ties with the most just, wise, and honourable monarch in Europe at that time, a king whose Royal Proclamation of 1763 laid out the requirement to treat the Indigenous peoples of the continent with basic respect.

 Last month, the Supreme Court of the United States decreed the presidential powers extend to immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts, and rendered prosecution for any act by a president extremely difficult. Last week, President Biden announced he would forego a presidential nomination that was his for the good of the country. Both decisions, in their way, stand to shape the nature of the American experiment.

Antisemitism: evaluating events in context

To go back to the beginning: antisemitism, animus against Jewish people for the religion they profess and the community they belong to, is absolutely wrong, as wrong as any other bigotry. Trying to excuse antisemitic actions or expression by claiming to oppose the policies of the current policies of Israel offends twice. Using Israeli policies as an excuse to target Jewish people make them scapegoats for policies they did not choose and often do not support. Antisemitic acts and expressions by those claiming to advocate a just peace in Israel/Palestine cast doubt on the sincerity of peace efforts while obscuring the hard reality: more Christians than Jews support the bad political and theological ideas behind efforts to subjugate, expel, or destroy the Palestinian people. 

None of this makes it any less important to report incidents fully and honestly.

Metal versus flesh

As a cyclist active in advocating for road safety and cycling infrastructure, I know very well the arguments for the inevitability of car use. Indeed, I personally have a somewhat sour perspective on the nature of these two arguments: our opponents seem to me to argue cycling is only possible when the weather is warmer than 22 degrees and cooler than twenty, for people who are younger than twenty-two and older than twenty-four, in the months before July and after June. I have certainly heard someone at a public meeting claim they could not ride a bicycle because they were over forty-five. As I recall, I was fifty at the time, and I still ride my bicycle at 67.

Beyond the excuses of age and weather, the other arguments against cyclists and cycling reflect the dark sides of our culture: the appeal to conformity, the association, now quickly fading, of the automobile with all things "cool" and masculine, or the risks of cycling, meaning, in too many cases, the prevalence of  violence on our roads, in the form of negligent or outright homicidal operation of motor vehicles.

A verdict and a question

The conviction of Donald Trump by a New York jury actually raises a number of questions, some trivial and some decidedly not.

From the beginning, Donald Trump's behaviour has appalled me. His casual cruelty disgusts me, and his contempt for the very idea of service angers me at a deep level that frankly surprised me. His profound divisiveness and heedlessness incompetence frightens me, particularly when I consider the power of the office he has held and wants to reclaim. I and others appalled and enraged by Donald Trump should probably ask ourselves how much we really want to celebrate the conviction and possible incarceration of an elderly and by all accounts rather pathetic individual on a relatively minor, if squalid crime. 

On the trivial side, I wonder how the US Treasury Department, which provides security for American presidents and former presidents, will decide which agents have to accompany Donald Trump to prison. Musical chairs, perhaps? Offering danger money or hardship pay?

The jury verdict on Donald Trump does not, in fact, mean he will go to prison or even jail: not soon, and quite possibly not at all. Courts have routinely sentenced people guilty of worse things than any of the charges against Mr. Trump to fines, community service, or probation. As well. Mr. Trump still has avenues of appeal.

Pierre Poilevre Can't Handle the Truth

 Recently, Pierre Poilievre, the conservative party leader and Bitcoin promoter, added his voice to the chorus of voices calling for political oversight over the decisions of Corrections Canada officials. This proposal, of course, almost certainly stems from the flurry of media interest in the transfer of Paul Teale (Bernardo) from a high security institution to a lower security one. 

It makes sense to start here by pointing out the correctional service falls under the justice system, which as in most democracies operates under political oversight but not political micromanagement. Parliament passes laws and Attorneys General set policy, but ministers and members of parliament do not tell the police who to investigate, and for them to try to tell judges how to rule constitutes a serious breach of ethics.

Free riders

The Atlantic's Yair Rosenberg describes a sketch on Israeli television: Israeli Defence Force representatives knock on the door of the wrong apartment. They expect to find a family of one of their soldiers, and to tell them, with deep regret, of the death or grave wounding of their relative. Instead, a Haredi Jewish man answers the door, and before they can speak, he tells them he will never, under any circumstances,enlist in the army. His work of prayer and study matters far too much: for him, for his community, and ultimately for the Jewish community and the State of Israel.

The sketch touched a nerve: the war in Gaza, with its mounting casualties and economic disruption has touched most Jewish Israelis, with a notable exception: the Haredim, or the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community enjoys an exemption from military service. The religious parties in the ruling political coalition fiercely guard this exemption, but the in the parts of Israeli society that bear the financial and human costs of the war, resentment of the Haredim as free riders could bring down Prime Minister Netanyahu's government.

I have a mental image of representatives of the Jewish community knocking on a door, and a different person, representative of a very different free-riding community opening the door: US. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. 

All or nothing: a convenient paralysis

Therapists characterize all or nothing thinking, the ability to see only polar opposites, as a cognitive distortion.  Politicians, governments, and advertisers all rely, to greater or lesser degrees, on convincing people to make decisions that work against their own interests, so they find cognitive distortions very useful. Far too often, those of us who work for peace and justice accept these distortions without analyzing them, and when we do, we limit our effectiveness.

Governments have worked hard to promote all or nothing thinking in relation to peace work.. The idea of peace as an all or nothing proposition, with no possibility of any position between absolute passivity and unlimited, lawless violence has proved useful as a political strategy and as an administrative technique for authorities in charge of military conscription. To the extent advocates of peace and justice work have accepted this proposition, it has proved disastrous for us, and more important, it has done real harm to the people we work and advocate for.

Conspiracy minded

Iran isn't actually powering missiles with money

George Orwell characterized the English "Rule of the Saints" under Oliver Cromwell as "a military dictatorship enlivened by witchcraft trials". Those words appear to describe Iran pretty well today. A dictatorship, and particularly a military dictatorship, needs an enemy, and the current regime in Iran had identified Israel as an enemy well before the Ayatollahs came to power. Iran's declarations of solidarity with the Palestinian people and support for Hamas in the current conflict continues a policy they have pursued for over forty years. It seems obvious the leadership in Iran strongly approves of  the current opposition to Israeli policy in the West, and it makes sense expect them to support organizing in opposition to Israel in any way they can.

Again with the modest proposals

A major impediment to systems to make traffic safer is resistance on the part of motorists. Like many other people, motorists tend to resist measures that could restrict what they see as their freedoms, even if they improve safety for everyone. The motoring public, which of course makes up a large proportion of the general public, will accept safety measures more willingly if these measures provide advantages for the drivers and owners of motor vehicles.

The genocide convention

Words is what we do here, Miss Kincaid. - Law & Order, Censure

Imagine for a moment a legal system with only one defined crime: intentional murder. It's not difficult to see the problems such a system would create. Many crimes aside from intentional murder seriously affect people's lives; this would create pressure to extend the definition of murder. Victims of crashes caused by drunk drivers could argue those who victimized them intended to kill and had simply selected their target at random. 

 

The natural human tendency to demand precise definitions for the offences we commit, while pursuing expanded definitions of the offences others commit against us, would make this problem impossible for a legal system to manage. Worse, a vague and broad criminal law would intersect with the difficulties of determining what really happened in a crime or tragedy. Because of this, almost every legal code defines a large number of offences with explicit definitions and punishments varying according to the severity of the offence.

Poetry and government

 

"The silent wheels roll through the quiet green," happens to be the first line of a sonnet, a poem written in a highly specific form. The word form here matters: a form, by definition, has a formal definition, one which a poem, or anything else with a formal definition, must fit. A Shakespearean sonnet must consist of exactly fourteen lines, divided into three stanzas and a final rhyming couplet. In the stanzas, each alternate line must rhyme: first with third and second with fourth. A line in a sonnet must consist of exactly ten syllables, or beats, with alternate strong and weak stresses, and each pair of beats must begin with the weaker beat. Like the drumming of Indigenous North Americas, this poetry mimics the beat of a human heart.

Many other formal definitions exist: computer languages have extremely specific formal definitions, many of which make the definition of a sonnet look very loose and informal. In each case, a formal definition acts as a scaffold. It does not define what people who employ the form may express, but it does define, and thus restrict, the means of expression. Above all, the scaffold, by itself, has nothing to say about the quality of the expression. The literary record contains a long list of very bad sonnets: trite, sentimental, poorly expressed, but none the less fitting the formal definition of the sonnet. Conversely, the world contains many magnificent poems that do not fit the definition of a sonnet.

There are no...

...settler colonialist children. There are no capitalist children. There are no wealthy children, for all children come into the world with nothing, and depend on others for their needs.

Every child deserves the support and love of the community. Every child deserves protection in conflict, relief in disaster, care in sickness, education, and connection with a family to love and care for them.

A tide in the affairs of men...

By now, most people know a massive container ship, named The Dali, struck a pier or support of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, plunging eight road workers into the water. At this time, rescue efforts have failed to find six of these workers, and the authorities now presume assume they have died, either in the accident or in the cold water shortly after.

Most news reports to date have emphasized the absence of information, saying authorities do not know what caused the disaster. We do not know exactly what caused The Dali to lose power at the worst possible time, but we do have a general sense of  the sequence of events. The ship quite clearly suffered a major failure in the engine room. The crew dropped the anchor, which did not stop the ship. When the crew or pilots saw their vessel drifting into the bridge, they sent out a Mayday, which allowed the port authorities to stop traffic on the bridge; this certainly saved lives.

Reciprocity

A basic principle for resolving conflicts and discussing moral issues is reciprocity. Turn the question around. Would it be OK if the positions if the people (or communities) were reversed? What if I did that to you?

I have written here about the obligation of people and communities protesting for Palestine and advocating for a ceasefire to avoid raising fears, by actions or statements, of antisemitism among Canada's Jewish community. I stand by that urging. That obligation applies reciprocally: the Muslim communities in Canada also have traumatic histories of colonialism, dispossession, and exile. Their concerns deserve sensitivity as well, particularly in this time of horrific violence. 

Oppression and atrocity

This post deals with the accounts of sexual violence in the Hamas-led assault on Southern Israel on October 7, 2023. It thus necessarily includes references to rape, homicide, and crimes of extreme violence.

A United Nations investigative team has now submitted a report, finding credible evidence the Hamas fighters committed acts of sexual violence, both during the initial assault on southern Israel on October 7, and also against those they held hostage.

In all the things people can say, and have an obligation to say about this report, a number of things stand out. Start with the obvious: "credible evidence" does not mean certainty. If subsequent investigation should disprove these allegations unfounded, we should all celebrate: any woman  not suffering rape, not violated in life or death, is good news. But that is also to say there is no excuse, whatever, for this kind of violence. Nor, now, do we have any excuse for ignoring or dismissing the possibility Hamas fighters, or people associated with them, did commit these atrocities. 

We can't justify the violation of Israeli women by Hamas by pointing to claims, also under investigation, that Israeli soldiers have assaulted and violated Palestinians. Nor do we have to justify, or ignore, claims about brutality by Hamas to uphold Palestinian rights. The children of Gaza are innocent, and their suffering is unjust. No actions of Hamas cancel or reduce the rights of Palestinians who had no hand and no say in them.

We've been here before: A personal view of the Israel-Hamas conflict

 

Flag of Kach/Kahane Chai

Over the last five months, the dialogue between Israel and the international community, including some of the strongest supporters of Israel in the international community, has begun more and more to resemble the conversation at an intervention. The participants all express support, sympathy, solidarity with Israel, emphasize their friendship, and slowly work around to the lengthening list of symptoms suggesting their friend has gone off the rails. The sense of dismay at the behaviour of the Israeli government grows steadily more apparent. Increasingly, we see calls for moderation, expressed willingness to broker and support a settlement leading to peace and freedom for Israelis and Palestinians alike, and behind those words of encouragement the seldom bluntly stated but increasingly solid consensus that the behaviour of  the current government of Israel will lead to catastrophe.

Perhaps a memory of my own can help explain why this is happening. 

Letter to Stephen Holyday

Last night, February 28, Councillor Holyday convened a meeting to discuss the Bloor Street bike lanes. The discussion revealed a number of things, including some of the illusions cherished by advocates for the car in this city. One thing the meeting made particularly clear was the extent to which transportation has evolved into a political and cultural issue, the way so many issues, in so many people's minds, have fused together into a picture they project, to themselves and others, of who they are. Thirty years ago, the fiercest cycling advocates I knew were ardent conservatives; today, despising bike and cycle lanes has become part of a prepackaged identity labelled "conservative". It doesn't have to be this way.

 In response to my observations at this meeting, I have written an open letter I am sending to Councillor Holyday, my own city councillor, and the mayor of Toronto. You can read it after the jump.

Yet another modest proposal

There is no such thing as he "war on the car". Whether we view cars as their physical reality, tin boxes with a wheel at each corner, or as concepts, or as cultural tropes, cars are not moral agents and do not have a right of self defence. If we as a society choose to limit or even eliminate the operation of private automobiles in our society, or particularly in our cities, we can do so. It requires no war and no conflict. We are not in a war; we are having a debate. 

Antisemitism

Memorial for victims of antisemitism

Start at the beginning: antisemitism is wrong. Full stop, no excuses, no qualifications. It's wrong.

Our society has a longer record of antisemitism than we have of anti-Black racism or anti-Indigenous oppression. Europeans persecuted the Jewish community before Columbus and after, before the Atlantic slave trade and after. Anti-Semitic hate has driven some of the most calculated and methodical mass murders in history.

In the empty spaces between the words...

Does "make America great again" signal a desire for a recovery of American self confidence and more products made in the United States, or a last clutch at a white supremacist social order? Either, or both, depending on who you ask. 

Does "defund the police" refer to a proposal to shift responsibility for social and mental health issues from the police, jails, and prisons, and redirect the associated funding to health and social service agencies, or does it mean disbanding all police agencies? It depends on who you ask; I have heard both interpretations of the slogan asserted with conviction.

Does the slogan "land back" mean Indigenous nations should have increased jurisdiction over resource development, land use, and environmental decision making within their traditional territories, or does it mean packing "white" people back to their place of origin?

 

Does the chant "from the river to the sea" call for a single, democratic, non-confessional state with room for all believers between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea? Does it mean a single Palestinian Muslim-majority state from which Jewish inhabitants, or most of them, have fled or forced to leave? Does it mean a single Jewish Israeli state from the Mediterranean, as a Likud slogan has advocated, or even beyond the Jordan, as some advocates of "Biblical Israel" claim?

Talk is cheap

Germany has come out strongly in support of Israel's position at the International Court of Justice and against the allegations of genocide brought by South Africa. The statement from Germany mentioned a sense of obligation felt by the current German government as a result of the mass murders of Jewish people committed by Nazi Germany. 

Tomoyuki Yamashita would like a word...

General Tomoyuki Yamashita

 Recently, Jonathan Cook published a substack essay, in which he questioned the evidence for widespread sexual violence associated with the Hamas breakout from Gaza on October 7. In his essay, he makes the following extraordinary statement:

The reason why Israel’s apologists for genocide need to inflate their claim is because, sadly, opportunistic rape would be entirely unremarkable in any violent, militarised situation – and indeed unremarkable in behaviours towards women in western societies in general.

First, it should go without saying: nothing justifies genocide. Those who believe the Israeli government, or apologists for Israel, have alleged sexual violence against Hamas to justify genocide or even ethnic cleansing in Gaza need to respond on principle: nothing justifies crimes against humanity. Nothing Hamas fighters did on October 7 justifies intentionally harming or killing the children of Gaza. 

Second: allegations of war crimes matter. They matter because of what Sr. Helen Prejean called the basic human solidarity against suffering and death. They matter because without investigation and accountability they will happen more often.They matter especially when people we might otherwise sympathize with stand accused, because if our solidarity depends on a political test it means nothing.

Finally: if you let loose armed fighters on a civilian population, you own what they do. The American government hanged the Japanese general Tomoyuki Yamashita on exactly that basis, and his fate has haunted more than one military commander since, with good reason. Our rules and standards for warfare exist to make resort to violence harder and less appealing, and to offer the maximum protection to uninvolved and unarmed persons caught up in a conflict.

We do not need to accept allegations of rape and sexual violence by Hamas fighters on October 7 without scrutiny, but neither should we dismiss them. Standards of human rights and human decency must apply to all of us, or they will come to apply to none of us.

Friends like these

 Recently, Barbara Kay published an opinion piece praising the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, calling the organization a "true friend of Israel". 

Israel does have friends, and quite possibly many supporters of the International Christian Embassy have the best possible intentions for Israel, Israeli citizens, and the wider Jewish community. However, by no means do all so-called "Christian" "Zionists" have the best interests of Israel in mind.

Trauma informed

The image carries a meaning in a way very few others do.A squat tower with an ill proportioned and ugly railway gate, it serves as an instantly recognizable shorthand and an indelible stain on the history of our civilization. In the history of past five hundred years, an age of endless empire, of ever more destructive wars and increasingly empowered hatreds, this one image in all its meanings occupies a unique place. This gate opens onto a killing machine capable of  efficiently carrying out a million murders, a large proportion of more than six million murders in the four years between the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union and the fall of Berlin. Together, the murder and enslavement beyond this gate created the index trauma of our time. We measure other crimes, other catastrophes, and other horrors against this one.

 

...by omission

Last entry I wrote about my frustration at having no outlet during a time of even greater global turmoil than usual: the first major war in Europe during my lifetime, renewed war in Southwest Asia  (aka the "Middle East"), and looming over everything, global climate change. In the current round of crises, and in particularly the outbreak of war in Southwest Asia, so much remains unsaid, so many problems seem to me to have gone without a mention, I just feel a need to speak, if only to say things I think obvious.

Here we go again...

Whether or not it makes sense to pick up this web log again after over two years with no posts, I'm going to.

I have stopped posting on twitter; the present owner has expressed a foul antisemitism and I don't want to do any unpaid work to make him any wealthier. That has left me with no outlet for most of a very frustrating 2023, and since everyone I read promises an even more frustrating and frightening ride for 2024, I expect I will need someplace to write about what I see and feel and think. 

So... Open Hand, Open Eye might just come alive again for anyone interested in reading it.