Dennis Fox’s Weblog

Stephen Soldz:

I have always felt that personal change, as is facilitated by therapy and analysis, needs to be complemented by social change that will reduce the environmental causes of human suffering. We have to create social institutions that increase the likelihood of people acting constructively and reduce the likelihood of destructive action. Like many in my generation, I grew up in the anti-Vietnam war and other social justice movements of the 1960’s. The current trend toward permanent war and the imminent breakdown of our already inadequate network of social services have led to a revival of my activism.

Soldz, a psychoanalyst, has been doing a lot of good writing recently, much about Iraq and related issues. Interesting blog, too.

More from Avigail Abarbanel:

Feeling something about what we see is the first condition towards making a difference. However, there are serious dangers in exposing ourselves to suffering and pain. This is particularly true for those of us who are agents of change; people whose life’s work is aimed at making things better for various social groups, the environment and individuals. By the nature of the work we do, we receive a disproportionate dose of the ‘dark matter’ of life. One of the worst dangers in being exposed to a high dose of ‘dark matter’ is to become overwhelmed and disillusioned. I think of it as being tempted by the ‘dark side’. The temptation is to begin to believe that darkness is all there is.

Avigail Abarbanel:

What is it like to differentiate from a country, a culture? Is it even possible? This paper describes my struggle to differentiate from Israel. I share both the emotional and intellectual dimensions of my journey. The emotional plane is illustrated with a journal entry, and the intellectual through the meaning that I give to my experiences and the conclusions that I draw from them as a therapist.

This paper is not a political statement but it does illustrate, I believe, the close and complicated relationship between what is public and what is personal.

One of my sons, a social geography graduate student, sent me a link to a 2001 paper he read for a class. Writing thoughtfully about his fieldwork on the West Bank, cultural geographer Bret Wallach touches on a number of issues I’ve reflected on before, which I expect to confront again once I return to the area. Several items of interest:

Fieldwork on the West Bank was not just reasonably safe, it was easy — at least it was easy if by that word you mean that powerful material comes flying your way. One might expect all kinds of suspicion and hostility from people who feel profoundly victimized by Israel and its supporters — which is to say, first and foremost, by the United States. But however much suspicion and hostility Palestinians feel, those things are more than counterbalanced by traditional Arab hospitality and by the acute need many Palestinians have to talk about the disruptions that are so much a part of their lives.

—

The villagers insist that all the land within the village boundary is  theirs, regardless of what Israeli lawyers conclude from studying Ottoman land law. The Israelis have the law on their side, I think, but that hardly matters if one is seriously interested in peace.

—

Once I had made the decision to understand both sides, however, fieldwork on the West Bank suddenly become very hard, because a conflict emerged between getting good stories and being honest with the people telling them. What do you say in conversation with a Palestinian who believes in the unfettered right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees? You can disagree, with the probability that the interview will turn into an argument, or you can be deceptively sympathetic, which is to say manipulative — which is to say dishonest. Or, to take the other side, what do you say to the Israeli who believes that his settlement has “excellent” relations with a nearby Palestinian village when, in fact, you know it has almost no relations with that village, whose inhabitants hate the settlers? It’s the same bind, turned on its head. Janet Malcolm argued years ago that professional journalists choose the story over honesty. I do, too, but I don’t like it.

New Orleans Activists Fill Aid Gaps Left by FEMA, Red Cross:

At any given time, about 30 volunteers with the grassroots relief organization Common Ground Collective work from early morning until late at night in a small corner of the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans. They unload trucks, patch people’s homes, staff an on-site distribution center, and drive supplies out to surrounding regions.

Throughout the day, people from the neighborhood drop by to pick up supplies. Stacks of canned food, bottled water, toiletries, bleach, diapers, baby food and other necessities are stored in what volunteers have dubbed “the tunnel,” a long outdoor corridor roofed by tarps….

Though most Americans might be surprised that such grassroots level relief is still necessary a full two months after Katrina flooded New Orleans, the gaps left by federally funded programs and large charities are evident in the still-devastated Crescent City. People live in houses with holes in the roofs. Families struggle to find enough food, water and ice to get them through the day. And neighborhoods sit largely empty waiting for their residents to find the resources to return.

In the face of the inadequate official response, small groups like Common Ground are struggling to pick up the slack. They work with few monetary resources and volunteer labor in an effort to reach those underserved by powerful relief agencies. They combine their humanitarian efforts with an alternative vision of rebuilding that seeks to empower and restore dignity to the people of this struggling city.

Over the past two months of travel and other pursuits, I haven’t written anything here about Israel and Palestine, but the subject has been on my mind. Sporadically I continue to investigate how to return for a longer visit than last year. Every day I get emails from one list or another about what’s going on in the Middle East. I check a few blogs to see what people are writing about. It’s all very discouraging.

One reason I haven’t been blogging on the subject even when I’ve had the time is that that sometimes it seems I’ve said it all before. The players change but the game goes on. There are times I don’t mind repeating myself, applying a lesson learned in one context to whatever is currently in the news. Maybe soon. In the meantime, in the past few weeks my thoughts have been provoked by a book, a film, and a talk:

1. One of the books I read on my endless bus/train trip a few weeks ago was Michel Warschawski’s On the Border. Warschawski, otherwise known as Mikado, founded the Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem and for 30 years has been involved in one effort after another to end Israeli domination of Palestinians. His book recounts the history of the conflict, efforts mostly by the non-Zionist left in Israel to counter the Jewish State’s underlying assumptions, and current trends among different segments of the israeli population.

I found the book engrossing, but also at times difficult — not the language, which is clear and concise, but the way Warschawski’s account contrasts so sharply with the assumptions I picked up as a teenager. Although I abandoned Zionism years ago and have learned to see things differently, Warschawski’s remarks still sometimes caught me by surprise. It made me realize I still have more to digest.

2. Last week I went to see a couple of Israelis from the group Breaking the Silence speak in Cambridge. I saw one of them present pretty much the same slide show last January in Tel Aviv. The group consists of Israelis who served in Occupied Territory and later exhibited photos of their experiences, along with written testimonials about their units’ treatment of Palestinians. The speakers said this is their first trip to the United States, designed to get external support for their work.

When I saw them speak in Tel Aviv, I bought their booklet of testimonials. Now they have another booklet, focused less on individual dehumanizing behavior by soldiers and more on the Israeli military orders, rules of engagement, and procedures that lead not just to dehumanizing Palestinians but killing them. This, too, makes difficult reading.

Several comments from the large audience came from Israelis who disagreed with each other about how significant the talk was, about whether there ’s even a “silence” in Israel that needs to be broken. Do Israelis really not know what their children in uniform do on the West Bank, or do they know and approve, or know and regret it?

3. Also last week I saw the Another Road Home, Danae Elon’s account of her search for and reunion with the Palestinian man who helped raise her in Jerusalem. Much of the narrative takes place in Patterson, New Jersey, where several of the Palestinian’s sons now live middle-class, professional lives.  Some in the audience thought the film insufficiently political, but I thought Elon’s personal quest humanized the Palestinians in a way many Americans don’t usually experience.

There was some discussion at the end of the film, which was shown by the group Visions of Peace with Justice in Israel/Palestine. Most said they found the film moving, but first a woman in the audience asked the VOPJ person up front how she felt about the money she paid for the Palestinian-made vest she was wearing possibly going to support suicide bombing. The single-minded focus by so many American Jews on violence by Palestinians, to the exclusion of violence by Israelis, remains an obstacle to any positive outcome.

After a month off from blogging, it’s hard to decide where to begin. So first a comment on my bus and train travel.

To visit friends in a few different places, I took a bus from Boston to Cincinnati, then the next week to East Lansing, Michigan. A few days later I took a train from East Lansing to Lincoln, Nebraska and then eventually another one back to Boston. The bus part especially made me feel very old, very white, and very middle class.

The U.S. public transportation system is poor in general, and my first extended bus-train trip in at least a decade reminds me how bad it is to get from one city to the next. The majority of bus passengers along most of my route were African Americans and, leaving Boston, students. At 56, I often seemed to be the oldest person on the bus. On the trains, though, old people were everywhere; when we boarded in Chicago on the way home, the announcement telling passengers over 62 to board first drew what looked like almost half the people in the waiting area.

Bus schedules are better than train. I would have done more of the trip by train instead of bus — being able to walk around during the trip is worth the few extra dollars — but the routes were too circuitous. There’s only one train a day in each direction through Nebraska, reaching Lincoln at 12:30 am westbound and 4:30 am eastbound. Four of the five trains I took (with connections) left and/or arrived late, a couple of times more than three hours late.

Food was a problem in almost all the many bus stations I spent time in. Sometimes there wasn’t any except for a few vending machines, and when there was a coffee shop of sorts it wasn’t catering to people who care much about what they eat. That might not be so bad on a short haul, but for long-distance it’s a drag.

Trying to sleep was also a drag, though both the bus and train were better than trying to sleep on a plane. Train seats especially are more comfortable than airplane seats, with a lot more legroom. (I’ve never been in a sleeper car, which cost a lot, so I don’t know what they’re like.)

Despite my food and sleep complaints, I had a good time. Here at home I rarely spend a day just sitting and reading, but on this trip that’s pretty much what I did. Talked to a few people on and off. Watched the scenery go by — not as exciting as on the trips I took long ago through mountains and desert, but interesting enough.

In both Michigan and Nebraska, the train stations had pamphlets asking passengers to fight cuts in train subsidies. From what I read it looks like schedules are destined to get even worse, and both bus and train travel is likely to become even more inconvenient (Greyhound has also been cutting routes). The further decline of Midwest towns and small cities may be the result — not being able to take a bus wherever you want may not bother people who can afford to fly, but even if the poor can afford a plane ticket they still often need a bus to get to the nearest city with an airport.

In a society that really cared about such things, public transportation would be a lot better.

My daughter’s excitement at starting seventh grade is a pleasant reminder that life begins anew every September. The summer heat having melted the previous year’s inevitable imperfections into an unformed mixture of possibility, this change of seasons has always meant to me not the approach of harsh winter but the emergence of energy and even, sometimes, of optimism.

This new school year’s promise, though, was accompanied by Hurricane Katrina. My daughter and a friend in a different Brookline school tell me that both schools have emphasized the importance of helping survivors, but their teachers haven’t led substantive classroom discussions about the hurricane or about the continuing mess in and around New Orleans. If their reports are accurate, I’m disappointed. I had expected Brookline schools to focus heavily on Katrina, making use of its drama to raise a wide range of educational topics in classes ranging from science to social studies to math to English.

My generation grew up amid constant talk of expected war with the Soviets, of the need for backyard fallout shelters, of milk contaminated by radiation from atom bomb testing. When I was the age my daughter is now, I watched President Kennedy announce on television the Cuban missile blockade. For days afterward, I walked to school wondering which jet flying overhead would drop The Bomb. In later years, scholars examined how these experiences affected our later lives.

Today, images of destruction bombard a new generation. When my daughter was in fourth grade, she too looked up nervously at jets overhead, asking which one might crash into Brookline. This year she watches Katrina’s devastation, asking, as she did four years ago, “How could this happen?” The tragedies of Manhattan and New Orleans — more visually and emotionally powerful than the mere threat of disaster that assaulted my generation — and the endless War on Terrorism’s escalation of fear of The Other will form the backdrop of her generation’s memories of childhood and adolescence. The inevitable anxieties are certain to play themselves out in decades to come.

In response to this changed world confronting our children, our schools should be expanding coverage of intense events. This is no time to stick to a pre-packaged curriculum.

I’ve written before about the importance of putting aside scheduled lesson plans and seizing instead the teachable moment. That’s not easy, since there’s always pressure to focus on the nitty gritty. Even teachers who want to address issues they know are on their students’ minds can’t always do so when they know how much of the curriculum remains to be covered. Too often, thus, spontaneity loses out.

That’s perhaps especially true in our era of state-mandated tests designed to narrow the range of topics our students are supposed to learn. Here in Massachusetts, what’s most important in school is whatever the state MCAS exam tests. That’s the case even in Brookline, despite protestations to the contrary by school principals and School Committee members who criticize MCAS mandates while insisting that teach-to-the-test pressures don’t contaminate our high-quality schools. MCAS, of course, is fully in keeping with the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which penalizes public schools that don’t keep their attention on the federally approved bottom line.

The inability of schools across the country to meet politically motivated demands now has a striking parallel: the plight of Hurricane Katrina survivors unable to live up to the apparent federal assumption that survival is a personal, rather than a communal, responsibility. Our schools should address that philosophy of rugged individualism, along with the many other political and economic forces that escalated the predicable Katrina disaster and are likely to escalate disasters yet to come.

The interplay between profit and power, of race and poverty, of science and politics — these are what our kids should come home talking about. These topics may not be on the MCAS test, but our schools should address them nonetheless. The time to do that is right now, when the news is filled with the raw material of discussion and debate. By the time Katrina makes its way into some future watered-down government-approved textbook, the immediacy and relevance will be long gone.

——–

Published today as my regular column in the Brookline TAB

There’s little chance the Senate will reject John Roberts as Chief Justice of the United States, so watching the Judiciary Committee’s opening statements yesterday seemed somewhat beside the point. The predictable back-and-forth between Republicans and Democrats, and Judge Roberts’ own careful statement at the end, did little more than illustrate contending political-legal philosophies without delving deeply into their rationales or consequences.

The Republicans are mostly right to insist that Roberts should not indicate how he would vote on specific future cases. No decent judge can say how he our she would rule in the future, because each case is specific to particular facts. Yet they’re wrong to insist that Roberts cannot explain his general approach to controversial issues. The Democrats just have to ask the right questions.

For example, Roberts won’t say how he will vote on the next abortion case, whether he thinks Roe v. Wade should be overturned (as some conservative justices maintain) or its precedent affirmed (as other conservative justices conclude). But he should be able to answer this question: Judge Roberts, was Roe v. Wade wrongly or rightly decided, and why?

His answer is no guarantee of any future vote, but at least it would give a sense of how he approaches the abortion/privacy divide. Similarly, questions about how he would have voted in other specific cases would explain his approach to precedent, to the tensions between state and federal power and between legislative and executive branches of government, to the debate between those who think the Constitution can help change society and those who think it should preserve the status quo.

Republicans will claim that even this sort of question goes too far, that, for example, indicating his agreement or disagreement with Roe v. Wade might “pre-commit” Roberts to future stances. This objection makes little sense, however. We already know, for example, what every sitting justice thinks about Roe, because they have told us so in more recent cases. No one suggests that Antonin Scalia should recuse himself from the next abortion case because, given appropriate facts, his decision is entirely predictable based on his past rulings.

This kind of discussion could make the Senate hearings more targeted than yesterday’s generalities. More interesting, anyway

————–

First published on eTalkinghead.com

From t r u t h o u t – By Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo

New Orleans – Heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private
security firm, infamous for their work in Iraq, are openly patrolling the streets
of New Orleans. Some of the mercenaries say they have been “deputized”
by the Louisiana governor; indeed some are wearing gold Louisiana state law
enforcement badges on their chests and Blackwater photo identification cards
on their arms. They say they are on contract with the Department of Homeland
Security and have been given the authority to use lethal force. Several mercenaries
we spoke with said they had served in Iraq on the personal security details
of the former head of the US occupation, L. Paul Bremer and the former US ambassador
to Iraq, John Negroponte.

“This is a totally new thing to have guys like us working CONUS (Continental
United States),” a heavily armed Blackwater mercenary told us as we stood
on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. “We’re much better equipped to
deal with the situation in Iraq.”

Blackwater mercenaries are some of the most feared professional killers in
the world and they are accustomed to operating without worry of legal consequences.
Their presence on the streets of New Orleans should be a cause for serious concern
for the remaining residents of the city and raises alarming questions about
why the government would allow men trained to kill with impunity in places like
Iraq and Afghanistan to operate here. Some of the men now patrolling the streets
of New Orleans returned from Iraq as recently as 2 weeks ago.

What is most disturbing is the claim of several Blackwater mercenaries we spoke
with that they are here under contract from the federal and Louisiana state
governments……