EVE TOLIMAN

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Photograph by Gene Ark

JUST NOW

by Eve Toliman

“Nothing gets easier with the passage of time, not even the passing of time.”  Joyce Carol Oates

The scent of orange blossoms, the long autumn shadows across the floor, the cracked plaster, my Tante Dora, always kind, always strong, snoring lightly on the couch — and that ache, that tough sinew through time slicing my heart with as much determination and vitality now as on that day almost forty years ago.

There was nothing significant about that day; there is nothing significant about this one.  These moments are vivid and acute because life wills it for reasons I will never grasp.  These are the times life grabs my face between her paws and frightens me alive.

We speak about being present as if it is a good and lovely way to be; it is not.  To be present means to fall into the black hole singularity where time loops around itself and everything and nothing collapse into each other.  It is not lovely to see what-is and what-is-not superimpose over the people we love.  It is not good to see the past and future eclipsed by this moment, to watch the penumbra of hope fade as the dark now becomes all there is.  We exist forever.  We don’t exist at all.  The truth lies here, in the horrible marriage of these impossibilities.

My love spans time and being.  I know because I love the dead and I feel their love for me.  I feel their love pulsing through me, undeterred by time, unaffected by my experiences.  How strange.  There is no door to close.  Once love has touched us, we are caught in each other’s hearts – hearts that survive even death.  I want to warn my children, “Be careful who you love; they never leave,” but I know they won’t understand – and even if they do, their stout, brave youth will deny it, as it must in order to carry on.

Of course the devil runs the show down here.  We inhabit a world built on lies, fueled by our insistent subterfuge.  We made him king of our pretense.  We have to lie to ourselves, over and over, in some fashion or another, in order to live the lives we do.  What if we surrendered to the annihilating reality that who we think we are is actually impossible?  What if we allowed ourselves to be flayed by truth?  Gasping in the air of another reality, a fleeting bliss before the gills we formed to extract sustenance from a sea of untruth, flap, useless, one last time and fail.  No more happy darting, no more fearful dashing, just this stillness.  What would we be after that?

We would be free.

–Eve Toliman

Further Reading:

U.S. CENSUS

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Immigrant Rights March, Los Angeles, March 25, 2006. Photograph by Bob Chamberlin, Los Angeles Times.

U.S. CENSUS — WHY I WON’T COOPERATE

by Nativo Vigil Lopez

After thirty years of dutifully cooperating with the census count, and even enthusiastically promoting and organizing for a successful enumeration in 1990 and 2000, I have decided this year to sit it out and not comply with the federal law. I do so very conscious of the implications of such noncooperation and noncompliance, but this is more than just a statement of protest; not a whim nor a lark.

I am driven to this conclusion by the immorality of our federal government, and too many state and local jurisdictions, in relation to its treatment of my brethen – family members, both immediate and extended into a community of millions, whose immigration status has yet to be resolved favorably for them by way of a fair and humane immigration reform. The promise and prospect of such legislation has been put off once again – justice delayed – by President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party leadership. And in the interim an enforcement-only policy and practice has been implemented by the Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano. This is certainly not the HOPE that was held out to us, nor the CHANGE that was promised by candidate Obama during the tough fought presidential campaign wherein the Latino electorate played a pivotal role in locking down important swing states for the young U.S. Senator.

I suppose the first bad omen came with the cabinet- level appointment of Secretary Napolitano, the former Democratic governor of Arizona who signed into law the toughest state-sponsored employer sanctions law; repeatedly coveted Maricopa County Sheriff, Joe Arpaio, nationally infamous for both his anti-immigrant antics and practices (currently under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department for alleged racial profiling); and her numerous calls for the deployment of national troops along the U.S.-Mexico border. This is the same person that Obama named as his personal liasion directing the “dialogue” between the White House and the congressional leadership for the purpose of fashioning immigration legislation. It sounds like the fox has been let loose in the chicken coop. There is now absolutely no pretense to expect an immigration bill that could come close to being fair or humane. The current enforcement-only approach augurs poorly for any such illusion.

In reality, enforcement of the onerous side of the immigration laws by Obama and Napolitano has been more efficient, sweeping, effective, and pervasive than even under George W. and all the previous presidents combined since the passage of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which legalized three million undocumented persons, and also enacted into law employer sanctions.

During the month of September the largest clothing manufacturing company in the U.S. based in Los Angeles, California, American Apparel, will be forced to terminate 1,800 employees as a result of an I-9 audit of its personnel, a function of employer sanctions. The social impact of the Obama approach to demonstrate to the general electorate that he is “serious” about enforcement touches 10,000 souls alone in the Los Angeles region. And, this is only the beginning. In July, Napolitano reported that DHS would target 650 profiled companies throughout the nation with I-9 audits in the succeeding twelve months. The immediate impact will be devastating on hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of immigrant families.

The Obama “hard-line” enforcement-only pursuit of immigrants must be met with a counter-vailing response that brings to the fore the political character of the policy, but also demonstrates its immorality and objectionable nature to millions of immigrant families and their U.S. citizen and permanent resident relatives, and Americans generally who find favor with immigration reform in poll after poll.

Refusing to cooperate with the U.S. census count is a political act of noncooperation and noncompliance in the best of Gandhian tradition conducted for the purpose of pressuring the political regime that pursues the persecution of immigrants on a daily basis at all nexus of social connection. This action seeks to dissociate ourselves from this repugnant and immoral policy, which strikes at the heart of the immigrant family.

The immediate objective of this tactic is to secure a moratorium of the current policy. Second, the medium- range objective is to win a fair and humane immigration reform, which results in legalizing the estimated 12-15 million persons without authorized status, but also overhauls other areas of the law – including the repeal of employer sanctions and mothballing the e-verify program. Third, and most importantly, the campaign is designed to raise the civic awareness and political consiousness of the immigrant community and its family members – irrespective of status – with regard to their own inherent power as contributing members of society in all its dimensions, and express the same in an organized concerted way to send a message of disfavor with the president and the leadership in the U.S. Congress.

At a time when the federal government is spending millions of dollars to insure a “full count” and especially reach into the cracks and shadows of social life to enumerate the hardest to reach individuals, noncooperation and noncompliance appears as the greatest leverage available to immigrants in their own pursuit of fairness and justice. It is the equivalent of a vote abstention for those who do not have the right to vote – their vote of no-confidence. Immigrants will send a clear message to Mr. Obama that they will not step out of the shadow only to be counted by the census enumerators and then be told to step back in the shadow when it comes to benefits, services, and rights. Their resounding demand is – before you count you must legalize us! This will be their clearest expression of political power.

Nativo Vigil Lopez is the President of the Mexican American Political Association.

This piece was first disseminated as part of the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA) newsletter, 9/23/09.

Further Reading:

Obama’s Immigration Enforcement More Efficient Than Bush’s by Nativo Vigil Lopez, 8/2/09

IN MEMORIAM D.F.S.

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DON FUCKING STEELE (1971-2009)

by Charles Gonzalez

San Francisco lost a giant in the cultural and music scene this weekend when Don Steele tragically passed away. Things will not be the same without this man’s awesome presence and incredible vibe.

Not only was he the glue that held so many people together in what is often a transitory cultural and social scene, but he was an extraordinarily talented musician, songwriter, and DJ whose performances were both spectacular and historical and who perfected the constant celebration of life.

Don was a graduate of Chico State where he was part of the music scene around the Mother Hips (whom he lived with) and during which time he led the band Pitchfork Tuning. He was a veteran of countless gigs and gatherings. In San Francisco he played in bands including Local Stars and De Vez En Quando.


His energy and love inspired many and Don epitomized “cool” like no other. Words cannot describe the loss.

Don Steele will be remembered.

A memorial gathering to celebrate his life takes place tonight, Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 7 p.m. at The Verdi Club located at 2424 Mariposa Street, San Francisco, CA 94110-1423.

If you can, please come out and pay your respects.

–Charles Gonzalez

THE ART OF FAILURE: POETRY IN TRANSLATION

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[This piece previously appeared in Poet’s Market 2010 and Poet’s Market 2011.]

THE ART OF FAILURE: POETRY IN TRANSLATION

by Okla Elliott

“Translators are the shadow heroes of literature, the often forgotten instruments that make it possible for different cultures to talk to one another.”—Paul Auster

Introduction

The historical importance of translation for English language poetry is undeniable. Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, invented blank verse in order to translate Virgil’s Æneid in 1554, because the Latin original was unrhymed yet metered, and no equivalent existed in English. Blank verse, brought to us by a translator’s ingenuity, allowed for Shakespeare’s plays to be written as we know them. The sonnet (sonetto or “little song” in Italian) was created by Giacomo da Lentini and enjoyed a boom among Italian poets such as Calvalcanti, Dante, and Petrarch in the mid-13th and early 14th centuries. It was not until the 16th century that sonnets began appearing in English, in translations from Italian and from French. And the list of gifts translators have brought English poetry goes on—couplets, villanelles, sestinas, and, some have argued, even free verse via attempts to translate Chinese poetry. The question now is: What is the cultural and artistic place of translation in the age of globalization?

According to a Center for Book Culture study on the number of books translated into English between 2000-2006, it’s a pretty dismal place. Most countries had fewer than one book per year translated into English, and literary heavyweights such as France, Italy, and Germany had fewer than ten books per year translated into English—and this includes novels and nonfiction as well as poetry. The percentage of books in translation tends to be estimated, by such organizations as the NEA and PEN, at about three percent of the total published in America. (Incidentally, there is an excellent blog about translation, out of the University of Rochester, called Three Percent.) Does this mean the effort of translation is hopeless or unimportant? Not necessarily.

Translation is very complex; the process, the need, and the market for it are not so easily summed up. To understand the landscape, we have to look at the differences between publishing translation as books or in journals, translating contemporary or older work, working alone or collaboratively. Likewise, the politics and ethics of translation play a role. And perhaps most importantly, the process and joys of translation need to be understood.

The Process of Translation

The primary goal of translation is to recreate the effect of the original poem in the target language (the language into which you are translating). The problem, of course, is that if the poet did her work properly in the original (or source) language, then she made use of every available trick and tactic, thus making the job of recreating the poem almost impossible. This is why Umberto Eco calls translation “the art of failure.” But while perfection is perhaps not possible, there are thousands of excellent translations in existence. So, how were they done?

You have to determine whether you want to transport the source text into the target language or transport the reader of your translation to the source culture. If you are translating, for example, a contemporary Mexican poet, and the word buñuelo appears, you have to decide whether to replace this very specific Mexican sweet bun made with orange juice with some American equivalent (a honeybun perhaps) or to simply leave the Spanish word in the English translation and hope the reader knows what a buñuelo is. A third option is to retain the Spanish word and footnote it, though footnotes can ruin the effect of a poem if there are too many of them. The general rule is to avoid them when possible. Of course, the problem with replacing a Mexican pastry with a traditional American pastry is that—forgive the pun—you damage the original flavor of the poem, though you do not run the risk of losing or confusing your reader. But both tactics lead to problems, as nearly everything in translation does. I don’t mean to suggest that a translation can’t do both. In fact, most good translations do, but each successful translation, in order to have its singular effect as the original had its singular effect, ought to privilege one effort over the other.

Depending on the source text, your level of mastery of the source language, and whether there are pre-existing translations, the first stages of working on a new translation of a poem will differ wildly. When translating Latin and Greek literature, David Slavitt uses pre-existing literal prose translations of the poems as well as his personal knowledge of Latin and Greek “to turn the prose translations back into poems.” Slavitt says, “When you translate prose, you are the original author’s clerk, but when you translate poetry, you are his partner.”

Frequently, translation is also done collaboratively. Likely the most famous contemporary duo is Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, who have redone many of the Russian prose masterpieces. A notable team in poetry translation is Peter Burian and Alan Shapiro, who collaborate on translations of ancient literature. The make-up of the team is frequently a scholar of the source language/text and a poet who knows the tricks of English verse and who might have some knowledge of the source language.

But no matter your tactics or whether you work alone or with a collaborator, tough choices will have to be made. My translation of Jürgen Becker’s poem “Oderbruch,” which appeared in the Indiana Review, offers a simple example of the issues a translator runs into in nearly every line. I had translated “[g]elb graue Dämmerung” as “[g]old gray twilight” which caused the faculty member consulted about the accuracy of my translation to suggest that I change it to the more literal “[y]ellow gray twilight.” In one sense, he was right—“gelb” means “yellow.” But I felt that “gold” was close enough to the literal meaning, but it had the added poetic benefit of retaining the consonance and the number of syllables in the original. Ultimately, the poetry editors at the Indiana Review agreed with me, but not because I was unquestionably right. We were both right about how to translate the line. It was simply that I was willing to make a small sacrifice in literalness to retain the music, whereas he was willing to make a small sacrifice of the music to retain a more exact meaning. Every poem will present a dozen or more moments where the translator must sacrifice one thing for another. Only rarely does a poem submit easily to transfer into a new language/culture. That, however, is also part of the joy. Nearly every translator speaks of the joy of finding an elegant solution to a seemingly insoluble problem.

Slavitt says, “I didn’t take a Hippocratic Oath when I signed on to be a writer. I feel no obligation to the literal meaning of the text whatsoever.” It’s the pleasure of the original he is after. Does that mean Twinkies show up in Ovid? Well, fine, let it be so. Or so Slavitt says. But the business of translation is a highly contentious one, and one where opinions are unusually strong and criticisms often bitter.

One of the joys of translation is what you can learn by doing it. Slavitt went to the Eclogues and Georgics of Virgil in order to learn how to make a paragraph work in verse. Matthew Zapruder, author of The Pajamaist and translator of the Romanian poet Eugen Jebeleanu, reports, “I also had a sense right away that it would be a good thing for me, a poet just starting to find his way, to be inside the seriousness of the voice and the directness and implacable structure of the poems.”

Publishing Translations

The report on the market for poetry in translation is mixed. A recent New York Review of Books article points out that Iran publishes more literature in translation than the United States does—as do all European countries and most Latin American ones. That said, however, it has been my experience that original poetry and fiction are comparably hard to place in journals, whereas translation and nonfiction are much easier to place. This has, predictably, to do with the volume and quality of submissions in each genre, as well as current demand. Brett Fletcher Lauer, a poetry editor at A Public Space and an advisory editor at Columbia University’s Circumference, a journal dedicated largely to poetry in translation, offers the following theory on why translations tend to be better and therefore more likely to be accepted: “A Public Space receives a relatively small number of submissions of poetry in translation compared with the thousands of submissions of English-language poetry. That being said, the overall quality of translations submitted is very high. I’m not sure how to account for this fact.” He goes on to speculate, “The process of translating and the dedication it requires makes it so that it cannot be casual work, but, instead, a sort of over-time, and what we receive reflects this.”

“Generally journals were happy to publish the poems,” says Zapruder of his translations of Jebeleanu. “I had more difficulty publishing the book; in fact, I finished the translations in 1998, and it took almost ten years for the book to eventually come out with Coffee House Press.”

Slavitt says, “If you translate a standard classic and are lucky enough to get it adopted as a text in enough courses, it will do much better than original poetry.” But he adds, “If you translate someone who needs translating—Ausonius for instance—it’s about even [with sales of original collections of poetry].” Given the generally poor sales of poetry collections, this might not be very heartening, but it ought to be. Either a book of translation will sell about the same as an original collection or considerably better, especially if you can recast a classic poet in a new translation.

Some of the journals most supportive of poetry in translation are Absinthe, The Bitter Oleander, Circumference, Indiana Review, International Poetry Review, The Literary Review, Natural Bridge, New Letters, Poetry International, and A Public Space. There are others, of course, but these are journals that are dedicated to translation solely or that publish some translation in nearly every issue. And presses that publish translation regularly include Dalkey Archive Press, Northwestern University Press, Red Hen Press, Sheep Meadow Press, and Ugly Duckling Presse. If a new translator wants to discover what is happening in translation today, she would do well to peruse these publications.

Advice for Getting Started

If you’re a first-time translator, it is unlikely that you’ll get the rights to translate and publish the work of a major author whose work is still under copyright—e.g., Günter Grass or Pablo Neruda. Mark Smith-Soto, the editor of International Poetry Review and a poet/translator in his own right, advises that a new translator find an author who enjoys a good reputation in his/her home country but who hasn’t yet been translated into English. “If you ask a poet whether he’d like to be translated, the answer is generally going to be yes,” Smith-Soto says. And here is where the unfortunate state of literature in translation can actually be a plus. Since there is so much excellent literature that has yet to be translated, you’ll have plenty to choose from. But since you’ll be spending many hours living in the poet’s work, it’s important to find work you admire. Otherwise, what should be a joy will become a chore. Once you’ve established yourself, then the larger gigs will come.

It’s also worthwhile to have a working knowledge of translation theory, which sounds daunting but which in fact can be attained by reading two excellent books out from University of Chicago Press, The Craft of Translation and Theories of Translation, both edited by John Biguenet and Rainer Schulte. These two reasonably sized volumes will bring you from Dryden’s thinking on translation through Goethe’s and up to Gregory Rabassa’s with excellent stops at Nietzsche’s, Benjamin’s, and others’.

So, read the journals that publish translations, read these two seminal texts on the theory and craft of translation, find poetry you admire, and get to work. It’s rewarding for both the translator and for the literary culture as a whole.

WITNESS IN PALESTINE

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A demonstration in Bil’ain. Photobucket photo by phalistine.

PLANTING TREES WITH “THE PALESTINIAN GANDHI”

by Anna Baltzer

Two winters ago I attended a demonstration in the village of Bil’ain in protest of the Wall that Israel was building between the village and more than half of its land. It was the second Friday in a row that the community had come together to protest their collective imprisonment and dispossession. Now, two years later, the Wall around Bil’ain is complete. Yet the village continues, week after week, to come together to demonstrate in new and creative ways, in spite of the obstacles.

In two years of demonstrating, Bil’ain villagers have prayed on their land. They’ve constructed giant dioramas. They’ve marched with a giant paper-maché grey snake with a dove in its mouth to symbolize how the Wall is suffocating peace and the village. They’ve held a wedding on their “forbidden” land, and World Cup parties. They’ve invited drummers to give a beat to their marching for freedom. Bil’ain has dressed up like Abu Ghraib prisoners, and worn masks of Bush and Condi. They’ve spelled out their message with mosaics on their streets. They’ve resolved to build a hotel on their stolen land, where any person will be free to stay no matter what ethnicity or religion.

Bil’ain has paid a price for its determination. Villagers have withstood kidnappings, rubber bullets, sound bombs, tear gas, beatings, live ammunition, arrests, threats of deportation, arson, and more, yet they continue. When the Army declared overnight curfew on Bil’ain, villagers held a volleyball tournament from midnight to 3am between teams of Israelis, internationals, and Palestinians. When the Army declared internationals were forbidden from entering the village, they invited foreign musical groups to sing and dance on their land with them. When they lost their first court case, they filed another. When a nearby settlement continued expansion on Bil’ain land, villagers built their very own outpost!–a trailer resembling those used by ideological settlers to illegally squat Palestinian land, but this one open to internationals, Israelis, and villagers to affirm Palestinians’ right to live on their land. They call it the “Center for Joint Struggle,” and although the original was destroyed, another towed, and yet another burned, the villagers return each time to reassert their rights and build a new community home on their stolen groves.

I visited the Bil’ain outpost for the first time today. I arrived with a caravan of Israeli activists from Tel Aviv early in the morning, and was embarrassed to realize we had woken two villagers sleeping inside. One, named Ashraf, insisted he was already awake as he rubbed his eyes, and shuffled around to prepare tea and drag out mattresses for us to sit on under the olive trees. It was a beautiful day, and I admired the fort held together in part by sheets and tree trunks, and the organic garden they had created next to it. We chatted and munched on chocolate wafers as we waited for other villagers to arrive for the planned action. Ashraf was disappointed when his friend Yonatan–an Israeli vegan–declined each round of cookies, and squinted through the ingredients on everything in his snack stash desperate to find something without milk. Eventually the others arrived and we began walking towards the settlement of Modiin Elite.

I had forgotten how quickly settlements can grow. Modiin Elite is a large Jewish-only colony built on Bil’ain village land, home to more than 33,000 Israelis and about twice as many homes, according to an Israeli activist I drove through with. In spite of generous financial packages, the Israeli government has not succeeded in transferring as many Israeli families as they have made room for, yet construction continues aggressively.

Modiin Elite is also known as Kiryat Sefer, and its extensions are sometimes called Matityahu East or Green Park. According to my friend Kobi, an Israeli professor and activist, “Giving settlements different names are part of a general strategy of obstruction and disinformation by developers and the Civil Administration. Master plans are not available, construction is not announced, the planning laws are alternatively Ottoman, British, Jordanian, or Israeli, whichever suits the settlers’ purposes at any particular moment. This makes it harder for opponents to know what they’re up against and to monitor it.” If the court rules something illegal for one settlement, they continue activity under a different name. For example, the court recently required developers to cease all activity in certain areas that the settlement annexed from Bil’ain, but as we drove in we saw cranes working away.

Bil’ain villagers have filed a number of lawsuits against Modiin Elite. Today’s action was to plant olive trees on two fenced-in enclaves near the settlement that the court has finally determined do belong to Bil’ain villagers. Contractors have been required to remove all infrastructure and restore the land to its previous state. As expected, while digging holes–ostensibly for the trees–we uncovered all kinds of illegal activity. In the first enclave, we found water pipes, telephone lines, and remnants of an old concrete settler road. In the second enclave we found parts of a building foundation that had been simply covered up with mounds of dirt. As we dug, we were approached by settler security and eventually the contractor himself, who was visibly nervous. Half a dozen Israelis and internationals were extensively documenting his illegal work, and he’s likely to get into a lot of trouble. After we finished planting, the Israelis scooted back under the fence to the settlement where they’d parked, and we began the walk back to Bil’ain, where we hoped to catch transport back to our home in the West Bank.

It was upsetting to see the completed Wall in Bil’ain, knowing all the village had done to try and prevent it, or at least change its path. Now it separates the villagers from their land, including the outpost and enclaves where we’d been. The soldiers holding the key to the gate met us along the way, and declared strictly that village residents could pass to Bil’ain, but nobody else. Abdallah, one of the villagers, explained in Hebrew that we are his friends and he was inviting us to his village. He did not ask for permission, he stated clearly that this was his and our right and that we had come in peace. Then he began walking forward and motioned for us to come along.

The soldiers didn’t like that. They began yelling and formed a line to prevent us from passing. One soldier began to remove a tear gas canister from his belt. Convinced that the soldiers would not be moved, Abdallah sat down on the road in protest, and invited us to sit with him. He explained once again that there is no law against us passing, but made clear that we would not cause the soldiers any harm or use violence.

Abdallah is an active member of Bil’ain’s Popular Committee Against the Wall. He’s been called “the Palestinian Gandhi,” and remains committed to nonviolent resistance, no matter how many times the Army beats or arrests him. He was calm and poised, and I could tell that the soldiers were not accustomed to Palestinians neither validating them nor becoming upset.

After calling a number of Army hotlines for help (in vain), we resolved to try again to walk peacefully through the line of soldiers towards the village. Abdallah led the group, with his hands up in the air. As soon as he’d passed the soldiers began pushing me and my colleagues back, separating us from Abdallah. They pushed him against the gate, hastily opened it, pushed him onto the other side, and closed it. He did not resist. He just kept asking, “Lamma? Lamma?” (“Why? Why?” in Hebrew). Another villager approached the soldiers, holding the hand of his young daughter. He asked me, “Shall we go to my village?” and I said, “Yalla” (Let’s go). He stuck out his elbow for me to link arms with him, and we began to walk towards the soldiers. They immediately broke between us and shoved the man and his daughter through the opened gate before closing it. They threatened to arrest me. I said I hadn’t done anything illegal, but I backed off.

The only Palestinian left was Ashraf, who would probably stay in the outpost again. By this time I realized he was slightly mentally handicapped, and hoped he would make it back okay. Abdallah called to us through the fence that he would meet us at the checkpoint a couple miles away if we could hitch a ride there with a settler security man who had recently arrived, curious about the commotion. The man agreed–if only to get us out of there–and half an hour later we were in Abdallah’s car on the detour road back to Bil’ain. On the way Abdallah told us the bad news: Ashraf, whom we’d left at the scene, had been detained. We drove quickly from the village to the gate of the Wall, now opposite the soldiers we’d confronted earlier. We could see Ashraf sitting in an army tent, handcuffed and blindfolded. Abdallah called some Israeli friends and a lawyer, and I took some photos. When pressed, the soldiers explained that they had asked Ashraf if he wanted to return to his village and he said nothing. Then they asked if he wanted to return to the outpost and he said nothing. Now they were detaining him temporarily as punishment for not responding to their questions. When asked when he would be released they said they hadn’t decided yet but maybe in half an hour. Abdallah felt that rather than cause a big scene we should wait and hope they were telling the truth.

We sat down next to the gate. I reflected on how disempowering it is to witness injustice through an impenetrable Wall. I prayed the soldiers would not hurt Ashraf, not sure if I could handle watching through a fence unable to try and stop it. But they left him alone, and after about 40 minutes they removed his blindfold and handcuffs and escorted him to the gate. He walked through with a sheepish smile, clearly moved that we had waited to ensure his release. We drove back to Abdallah’s house–half of which he’s donated as a home for Israelis and internationals to have their own space in the village. We told Abdallah we’d see him next Friday, and started the long journey back to Haris.

Thanks for reading,

Anna

–Anna Baltzer

This piece was originally published on Anna Baltzer’s website: AnnaInTheMiddleEast.com on 2/13/07.

Further Reading:

Conversation with Hamas Supporters by Anna Baltzer, 9/4/09

Thieves in the Night by Anna Baltzer, 8/26/09

From Jericho to Hebron by Anna Baltzer, 8/17/09

The Olive Harvest by Anna Baltzer, 8/7/09

IS INFIDELITY THE END OF THE MARRIAGE?

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ASK LADY ESQ.

Relationship advice from a divorce attorney.

Dear Lady Esq.,

My wife of twelve years recently disclosed to me that two years ago she had an affair with a co-worker that lasted for three months. I had no idea that this happened and have been devastated by her admission. Up until now we have had what I thought was a happy marriage.

Her explanation of the affair is completely unsatisfactory to me. She explains that she enjoyed the attention she was getting from him and that it just went too far. She did not have many boyfriends before we were married and the attention she received was hard to resist according to her. The gentleman has since been transferred to an overseas office.

She states that she is happy and fulfilled in our marriage and that I was in no way the cause of this affair. I feel humiliated. I feel I can no longer trust my wife. I am contemplating a divorce, but we have three young children to consider. I cannot be in a relationship without trust. That is gone.

What advice can you give me for my situation?

– Cuckold in NYC


Dear Cuckold,

Your concerns are well-founded. Trust, once lost, is difficult (though not impossible) to regain. And yet a commitment to marriage is a commitment to work through difficult situations including the mistakes that are made, and a marriage with children may be even more of a reason to try to work things out.

Your wife betrayed you and your trust. The reasons she did what she did are irrelevant. At the end of the day, she cheated, and you are hurt and no longer trust her or look at her or the marriage in the same way.

Ignorance is bliss. The truth is, like you said, before you knew about this infidelity you thought you had a happy marriage. And the affair was two years ago. For two years you didn’t know about the affair and it didn’t hurt you. I wonder what prompted your wife to tell you about it now. Was it her guilty conscience? Or is she trying to let you know that there are things she needs from you and the relationship that she is not getting? Whatever her reasons for telling you, the truth is that when a person “comes clean” about infidelity, especially if the affair has ended, that person does so for their own reasons, to benefit themselves. Her telling you about this affair has caused you nothing but grief and confusion – you have gained nothing positive from knowing the truth.

Now you are in an awful position. What you thought was the state of your marriage is not. The person you thought you could trust you no longer think you can. That is hard to recover from, both as an individual and in the relationship.

Your children should not be the reason you stay in the marriage. Despite our cultural belief that having married parents is what’s best for the kids, staying in the marriage for their sake alone can actually be quite damaging to them. Children are highly intuitive. If you are with your wife for their sake, and not because you are in love with her and dedicated to her and the relationship, your children will sense it. This can shake the foundation of their future relationships. Your relationship must be built on honesty and a true desire to be in it and work on it if you expect your children to grow up seeking healthy relationships of their own.

So the first thing you need to explore is what you truly feel and what you truly want, for you. Do you still love your wife, despite her infidelity? Is this a relationship that you are still willing to put effort into and work to repair, because it is what you want and what will make you happy, regardless of how this decision affects others?

If the answers are yes, if you still love your wife and are willing to put in the work needed to repair your relationship, then, and only then, can and should you proceed with trying to make things work.

If you do want the marriage to work, you have to begin couple’s therapy together. You have to explore the reasons she strayed, the way it makes you feel, and most importantly you have to explore your shaken trust in her and how you can work together to rebuild it. Trust is imperative in a relationship. And you cannot be expected to trust a woman who has lied to you and cheated on you. That is to say, without outside help, you cannot be expected to rebuild that trust. If you choose to stay with your wife but do not seek professional help for the relationship you will carry around fear, bitterness, insecurity, anger, and resentment toward your wife. Without the proper tools to process through and overcome those very valid feelings your relationship won’t stand a chance.

If you do choose to work things out and seek professional help, in doing so you may find that there are changes you need to make to make the relationship work. You may need to give your wife the attention she needs that made her stray in the first place. You may need to work harder, do more, be more attentive to her needs. It may seem unfair to you that she was the one who cheated and now you’re the one who has to change and put forth the effort to repair things, but it is important that you realize this is a possibility and are willing to take on the challenge as part of making your marriage work.

If, on the other hand, your wife’s infidelity has caused you to fall out of love with her or has caused you to no longer want to work on the relationship, then you have to end the marriage. A marriage attempted half-heartedly or without the underlying desire to be in the relationship will fail, and it will fail in a slower more painful way that will be more damaging to your children. If you look into your heart and realize your marriage cannot be saved, you owe it to yourself, to your children, and even to your wife to end the marriage. And if you do go down this path I implore you and your wife to promise to always be civil to each other and to continue to co-parent in a positive way with mutual respect for one another, for the sake of the children, despite whatever bad blood may be between you and your wife.

You can walk away from the marriage and still not damage your children. But if you find yourself in a place where the two of you cannot discuss choices involving your children in a positive and civil way, where lawyers and courts have to make decisions for you, where you can’t talk to each other kindly, where you only have negative things to say about each other, this will damage your children. So for their sake, no matter what path you choose, always put them first and implore your wife to do the same. The actions you take along these lines will be what impacts your children, not whether or not you remain in the marriage.

– Lady Esq.

askLadyEsq.com

CENTRAL AMERICA

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StelaH_Copan_Rabbit18

Close-up of Stela H at Copan in Honduras, depicting the Mayan ruler Uaxaclajuun Ub’aah K’awiil (18 Rabbit). Flickr photograph by Youngrobv.

THE LIES ABOUT HONDURAS WE BELIEVED

by Jim Dorenkott

President Zelaya was ousted in a coup in the early hours of June 28, and flown in his pajamas to Costa Rica. The world recoiled and universally condemned it The coup outraged but the pro-coup spin hung out there believed by way too many people. Why?

Scripps Howard News Service published immediately after the coup  this account, “Zelaya, encouraged by his friend Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, scheduled a vote to change the constitution so he could remain president after next year. .. The annoying thing about this power play is how Zelaya tried to use democracy ― he called for a vote ― to keep himself in office beyond his one allowed term.”

Was it just the conservative media? Sadly no as PBS’s Ray Suarez wrote 3 days after the coup, “Zelaya was ousted Sunday. He had tried to organize a referendum to end the constitutional limit on his presidential term. That enraged the country’s congress and armed forces.”

And even Al Jazeera repeated the phrase “after he tried to carry out a referendum to extend his term in office.” With the Christian Scientist Monitor repeating similar phrases a month later.

Fortunately, some people, though, stepped back to look at the facts, and began to understand that it was logically impossible for Zelaya to extend his term. Among those Alberto Vallente Thorensen an El Salvador lawyer writing in Counterpunch pictures the context of his ouster, “In their rage, the almighty gods of Honduran politics have punished an aspiring titan, President Manuel Zelaya, for attempting to give Hondurans the gift of participatory democracy. This generated a constitutional conflict that resulted in president Zelaya’s banishment and exile”

Most importantly Thorensen urges us to be less gullible when we hear these stories. “… If we, the spectators, are not attentive to these words, we risk succumbing intellectually, willfully accepting the facts presented by the angry coup-makers and Honduran gods of politics.” This for sure happened even in Latin America where polls showed that 50% there believed the official line.

He explains that when the Supreme Court ruled Zelaya couldn’t legitimately carry out a referendum so close to an election he made it informal. “The poll was certainly non-binding, and therefore also not subject to prohibition.”

Even if it had been a referendum which it wasn’t, “the objective was not to extend Zelaya’s term in office. In this sense, it is important to point out that Zelaya’s term concludes in January 2010. In line with article 239 of the Honduran Constitution of 1982, Zelaya is not participating in the presidential elections of November 2009, meaning that he could have not been reelected.” It is now pretty obvious that Zelaya could not have extended his term in office.

The Constitution left over from the oligarchy military rule days needs revision or replacement. Would that have allowed Zeleya to extend his term?

“Moreover, it is completely uncertain what the probable National Constituent Assembly would have suggested concerning matters of presidential periods and re-elections. These suggestions would have to be approved by all Hondurans and this would have happened at a time when Zelaya would have concluded his term. Likewise, even if the Honduran public had decided that earlier presidents could become presidential candidates again, this disposition would form a part of a completely new constitution.

“Therefore, it cannot be regarded as an amendment to the 1982 Constitution and it would not be in violation of articles 5, 239 and 374.”

So Zelaya duly elected President is in exile much like Haiti’s President Aristide and the attempted kidnapping of Venezuela’s President Chavez. Critics of US behaviour describe its complicity in a range from the typical green light to dragging its feet at restoring democracy.

In the meantime many Hondurans every day risk their lives to demand the restoration of their democracy. Understanding how we have been misled by the media accounts is very important in supporting their efforts and in refuting the propaganda which has been so unbelievably successful at misleading so many.

–Jim Dorenkott

PETER CAMEJO

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PeterCamejoForPresident1976

Peter Camejo, Socialist Workers Party candidate for US President, 1976.

REMEMBERING PETER CAMEJO

by Matt Gonzalez

Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of Peter Camejo’s death. He had been battling cancer (lymphoma) for over a year. It was in remission then came back suddenly and killed him.

I spoke to Peter the last week of his life, in fact, just a couple of days before his death while I was in Ohio campaigning with Ralph Nader. Nader and I took turns talking with Peter by telephone. It was apparent that he was going to die, so there were many heartfelt words exchanged. I made sure to tell him that he had much to be proud of, that we loved him greatly, and that we would miss having him at our side.

Most people know Peter Camejo as a three-time Green Party candidate for Governor of California and for his run with Ralph Nader in 2004. Others recall his days with the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), when he ran for US President in 1976 (with running mate Willie Mae Reid) against both Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

Peter was also an author. He wrote about post-American Civil War politics (Racism, Revolution, Reaction 1861-1877, The Rise and Fall of Radical Reconstruction) and about progressive financial investing (The SRI Advantage: Why Socially Responsible Investing Has Outperformed Financially).

Many of his speeches from his period with the SWP were published by Pathfinder press in pamphlet form including: Who Killed Jim Crow?; Allende’s Chile: Is It Going Socialist?; Liberalism, Ultraleftism, Or Mass Action; How to Make a Revolution in the US; and Cuba and the Central American Revolution.

Peter marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma and participated in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, culminating in his expulsion from the University of California and subsequent run for mayor of Berkeley. It was during this era when then Governor Ronald Reagan declared Peter “one of the 10 most dangerous men in California”.

It is without question that Peter was one of the important members of the American Left of the last half-century. He had combated injustice his entire life and helped plant the seeds for many progressive ideas that are popular now.

None of the things we fight for today: gay marriage, equal rights for women, fair wage laws, immigrant rights, universal health care, would exist or even be conceived of, had there not been men and women like Peter pushing from one side — agitating and making people uncomfortable. It amazes me how once these ideas are commonplace, we celebrate the politicians who joined the effort at the last moment, when victory was all but assured. There’s little credit given to how we got on the beachhead in the first place.

What does it mean to stand up against something that won’t budge, long before it’s poised to be the majority sentiment?

Peter knew the system would crumble someday. Politics as we know it will someday buckle under the pressure of human desires for a more egalitarian and democratic world. And when it happens, the “successful” politicians will not be remembered. They were the ones that took the easy path. Worked for change on the margin. Wanted the winner’s circle at all cost. Even if it meant denying what they knew to be the truth.

Peter believed the two-party system was a failure, pure and simple. He mused how years from now historians will scratch their heads and wonder how people tolerated its oppressiveness? Its days are numbered. Just as slavery was, just as the overt subjugation of woman was, just as concentrated capital’s refusal to pay decent wages and give human beings the benefits they deserve cannot be sustained for much longer.

Peter stood up to say that both parties defended corporations such that the differences, we’re told matter, hardly alleviate any true suffering.

Peter wanted to live in a democracy. He wanted an economic system that produced for human needs not profits. He often said that the only reason someone hires you when you’re looking for a job is that they decide you can make them more money than what they’re going to pay you. He dared to say this was wrong.

He noted that the wealthy mistakenly believed they had earned their wealth and that they believed the poor just didn’t work hard enough. He pointed out that the notion that people should be allowed to do as they please with their earnings overlooked that the manner in which this wealth was invested and enjoyed often meant whether you and I would have a job, whether there would be pollution in the air, and what wars we would be fighting.

PCamejobutton

Many disparaged Peter’s electoral efforts. The press often referred to the “perennial candidate”, as if to say “here we go again, this candidate doesn’t have a chance”. In their minds they’d say, he barely registered, in terms of percentage of the vote, when he ran for president (91,000 votes or 0.1% of the vote in 1976) or governor (in his best showing, 400,000 votes or 5.3% of the vote in 2002) so why should they cover his efforts?

But Peter wasn’t discouraged by these election results because he understood that the things we fight for today will come to pass, if only by the sheer strength of the logic and decency of the principles we advocate. He was very aware of Latin American examples of minor parties becoming ruling parties in a matter of a single generation.

Peter spoke of Hugo Blanco who led a peasant revolt among the Quechua in Peru in the early 1960s. He was nearly killed by the government and ultimately was given a 25-year jail sentence. Peter visited him at the prison on the Island of El Fronton, during the period of his “exile”. 15 years later in 1978, Blanco was elected to Parliament, as a member of the Workers Revolutionary Party.

There are many stories like this one, where political efforts are totally marginalized, before becoming the dominant strand. Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva helped found the Brazilian Workers Party in 1980. He ran three times for the presidency unsuccessfully, finally winning the 4th time in 2002.

It only took two decades, Peter would have said.

Peter placed his vision of what was possible in the context of these struggles. He couldn’t be dissuaded of his politics just because they weren’t in fashion yet.

Our society has a way of romanticizing past radicals. We don’t think twice when we see Che Guevara on a t-shirt. Many hold up the agrarian revolution that Emiliano Zapata participated in, and think romantically that they would have fought at his side, but the truth is far from that. How many of these people condemn the efforts of politicians like Peter Camejo? How many would have said the timing isn’t right? How many wouldn’t have lifted a finger to help?

Peter Camejo was a beautiful man. He was unreasonable. He thought the timing was right now. He didn’t capitulate like so many of his contemporaries did. He was a socialist.

–Matt Gonzalez

Peter Camejo’s memoir, North Star, will be published in 2010 by Haymarket Books.


JOY

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joy

JOY

by Eve Toliman

This is what it feels like to be lost: an unnameable sadness; a tender, probing affinity with alienation. Is that an oxymoron — affinity with alienation? I gingerly touch the world around me, searching, affirming, “This does not feel right to me, either. I am lost, too.”
City trees have lost their forests. Collared in concrete, their branches strain to mingle with other trees while their stout trunks remain constrained and isolated for the sake of order. The university has simulated wildness in tight pockets. Small groves of like trees are allowed to intertwine on well-bordered islands of ivy or bark. In front of the rent-a-car’s plastic sign, a lone teen sycamore seems to gaze longingly across four busy lanes at the university’s small redwood clan. Their long evergreen branches weave together and caress each other in the breeze.

Here and there true wildness asserts itself. Roots push under the concrete in front of the music store. The sidewalk cracks and bulges. A long branch outside the deli reaches into wires strung between tall poles. The wind gusts and up and down the block, the electricity goes out. A large limb falls. It sweeps across the paint store, shattering the facade on its way down.

There is a kind of freedom in the decay as our idea of order loses ground. Scrabbling at the edges of an eroding bank, our control, our suppressions, our repressions, our bindings, our propriety, our impositions finally swirl into the powerful, unavoidable current of another order. I recognize myself in this torrent. I breathe deeply, surprised to realize that I’ve been dizzy from shallow breathing for a long time.

Last night, something happened. I’m not even sure what it was but it hit something old and painful. As I lay in bed, in the dark, curled under blankets, I was absorbed by the experience of lying on the ground staring straight up at a bright blue sky with large, powder-grey doves flying overhead. Their fanned tails swooped just above my face, so close that for a moment as they flew directly overhead, the blue sky turned to grey. They flew round and round in figure eights on parallel planes. Rhythmic swooping motions; rhythmic blinking of grey to blue to grey to blue. Soothing and hypnotic, these worlds lull me. I do not need to feel or relate anymore. There is no taste, no smell, no real physical sensation at all. These colors, patterns, and soundless sounds are not palpable, they satisfy something much more: an all-embracing, textureless-texture surrounding and infusing me; a silent rumble; complete enfolding emptiness.

When I was twelve years old, I read a short story called “Silent Snow, Secret Snow” about a boy who chooses to permanently inhabit his secret world. It impressed me. I had my own secret worlds. When I was fourteen years old I understood something clearly for the first time: I realized that I, too, could choose to stay in these worlds. They offered me refuge from emotional pain, safe from the unpredictability of others and life. I also understood that the price for this tempting balm was to surrender all emotions; to forfeit my capacity to relate or feel; to stop caring.

For the sake of joy, I declined the offer. I have suffered all the rest, including an unnameable sadness, so that I could still know joy. I have since come to believe that our humanity is fulfilled by this choice — to choose to suffer all the rest, again and again, to be broken and broken open, to feel our hearts mingling and entwined across time and circumstance so that through our deep care we can know a glorious, simple joy.

–Eve Toliman

Further Reading:

COMMENTARY

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VanJones

Van Jones, former White House Council on Environmental Quality’s Special Advisor for Green Jobs. Photograph from College Foundation when Jones worked with the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.

IF YOU ARE A PROGRESSIVE, THE RESIGNATION OF VAN JONES SHOULD SCARE YOU

by John Dolan

I don’t know Van Jones personally, and I have not read much of his writings. What I know about him I have learned over the past few days, during the media frenzy surrounding his resignation. I am sorry that Van Jones has resigned, as he was probably doing good work in Washington, D.C. However what his resignation means for progressive American’s is more alarming to me than the loss of Mr. Jones from President Obama’s circle. I guess it is finally time for Progressive America to wake up and see that President Obama is not their friend. Like the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing, he has gained their confidence and he will eat them from the inside out. If he does not eat them, he will allow his fellow wolves to devour them and stand idly by.

Imagine the effect President Obama could have had if he showed some backbone and stood up for Van Jones? Imagine if he said simply “Van Jones is a valuable member of my staff, and just because he has different views on some issues than I do, does not mean he should resign, and he is not going to resign. In fact, it is these different viewpoints that make us stronger as a country.” He spoke in simple platitudes during the campaign; he could have done so now.

What the resignation clearly and explicitly illustrates is that President Obama will not allow anyone to float any challenging ideas in Washington. In fact, if you look at the below questions—the petition Mr. Jones signed is not in the least bit threatening. Why is it that 9-11 is some kind of sacred cow—something that can never be questioned?

Why can’t we ask our government about 9-11? Why can’t we call Republican’s assholes? They have bankrupted our country and led thousands to their deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. President Obama shows what he really is with the resignation of Van Jones, and that is not a friend of progressives, not a friend of anyone who seeks to change the culture of Washington.

I have pulled up the petition Van Jones allegedly signed. Below are the questions he supported being asked of the United States Government. These questions are simple, factual based questions.

We want truthful answers to questions such as:

  1. Why were standard operating procedures for dealing with hijacked airliners not followed that day?
  2. Why were the extensive missile batteries and air defenses reportedly deployed around the Pentagon not activated during the attack?
  3. Why did the Secret Service allow Bush to complete his elementary school visit, apparently unconcerned about his safety or that of the schoolchildren?
  4. Why hasn’t a single person been fired, penalized, or reprimanded for the gross incompetence we witnessed that day?
  5. Why haven’t authorities in the U.S. and abroad published the results of multiple investigations into trading that strongly suggested foreknowledge of specific details of the 9/11 attacks, resulting in tens of millions of dollars of traceable gains?
  6. Why has Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator who claims to have knowledge of advance warnings, been publicly silenced with a gag order requested by Attorney General Ashcroft and granted by a Bush-appointed judge?
  7. How could Flight 77, which reportedly hit the Pentagon, have flown back towards Washington D.C. for 40 minutes without being detected by the FAA’s radar or the even superior radar possessed by the US military?
  8. How were the FBI and CIA able to release the names and photos of the alleged hijackers within hours, as well as to visit houses, restaurants, and flight schools they were known to frequent?
  9. What happened to the over 20 documented warnings given our government by 14 foreign intelligence agencies or heads of state?
  10. Why did the Bush administration cover up the fact that the head of the Pakistani intelligence agency was in Washington the week of 9/11 and reportedly had $100,000 wired to Mohamed Atta, considered the ringleader of the hijackers?
  11. Why did the 911 Commission fail to address most of the questions posed by the families of the victims, in addition to almost all of the questions posed here?
  12. Why was Philip Zelikow chosen to be the Executive Director of the ostensibly independent 911 Commission although he had co-authored a book with Condoleezza Rice?

Taken from:

http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20041026093059633

–John Dolan