Margarethe von Trotta: 'Hannah Arendt' (2012)

Margarethe von Trotta's Hannah Arendt (2012) focuses on the deep 20th century thinker (pronounced more like "Errant" or "Aren't" than "Ah-Rent") around the time (early 1960s) of Adolf Eichman's trial -- and execution -- in Israel. 

With her articles on the Eichmann trial and the resulting book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), Arendt's ideas at the time aroused heated controversy because of their multilayered complexity. Specifically at one point, she argues that some Jews were complicit in facilitating the evils of the Holocaust through their cooperation with Nazis. The movie covers all of this ground very well, including the hatred from others which she had to contend with.   

Many people nowadays know at least some of Hannah Arendt's ideas, with or without her name attached to them, such as "the banality of evil:" evil acts made easy by a widespread, bureaucratic, impersonal evasion of responsibility. Pass the buck. It's not my department. I didn't know. I was just following orders, rules, protocol. Sorry, I cannot recall . . .   

It took me about twenty minutes to get into sync with Hannah Arendt's pacing and field of characters; once in, I was all in. 

The meticulous 1960s details of a working intellectual and her circle of friends, assistants and critics -- plus her living and working spaces -- are all excellent, as are the actors: especially Barbara Sukowa as Hannah Arendt and Axel Milberg as Heinrich Blücher, Hannah's anti-Stalinist communist philosopher-poet professor husband. 

Among several other important characters, keep an eye out for Martin Heidegger, the philosopher -- an early paramour and, for at least a time, Nazi sympathizer -- and American writer-friend Mary McCarthy. 

Today's Rune: Partnership.   

Madrid: Spectral and Alive

76 and 77 years ago, the people living in Madrid were being attacked from the air and adjacent land. The city was pummeled with explosives -- bombs from airplanes, ground artillery and everything in between. Today, there are spectral traces of war still, yet the city is bursting with life -- and culture has endured.

Image: Madrid defenders firing at besieging fascist forces from the university library in 1937 - a twist in the use of library stacks. (Parapetos formados con sacos y libros de la Biblioteca. Link here).

My guess is that 99% of all sentient people now on Earth live within an hour of, by foot, horse, boat, ship, train, zeppelin, automobile or aeroplane, a battleground or battlefield -- places of war remaining from the past, unfolding in the present or coming in the future. If you don't think that's true where you live, look harder. If today you live in Palestine-Israel, Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen or one of many other such places around the world, you don't need to look at all.

From a little brochure about the Internationalist Brigades stationed in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War, I learned that our hotel (Hotel Europa) was a hangout for the troops and their supports -- what's now the Café Restaurante Europa was, in 1936-1939, La Cerveceria Española (cerveza = beer). On November 16, 1936, the nearby metro station at Puerta del Sol suffered a direct hit from German and Italian aerial bombers. 

Tío Pepe sign now, in Puerta del Sol -- how about some nice sherry instead of another war?

Today's Rune: Partnership.    

Defining Lines at the Nasher

Much to see at three thoughtful, absorbing exhibits at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. "Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space" is one of them. ". . . [C]o-curated by Iftikahr Dadi and Hammad Nasar, brings together art across many genres . . . that have their common theme a preoccupation [pun intended?] with borders, boundaries and lines that divide and demarcate. . . " The British Empire, for one, "brought in its wake the geographic and cartographic division of much of the inhabited world . . ." Obviously, we're still living in the fallout zones from "the Middle East" to Africa and everywhere else in the world as we know it -- or really know it not. 

"Defining Lines: Cartography in the Age of Empire" takes a similar look at dividing lines, focusing on maps as cultural artifacts that carve up the world in ways that favor certain groups over others. "No matter . . . their claims to 'objectivity,' 'accuracy' and 'authority,' maps never simply show the world as it is; they are . . . 'a construction of reality, images laden with intentions and consequences.'" In the end, it's mostly about culture, power and economics. 

A third exhibit revolves around Doris Duke's spectacular "Shangri La" project in Hawaii, replete with beautiful Islamic-themed signs and wonders.

Very impressive all.

Today's Rune: Journey.   

Syria's Turn

Today marks a significant turning point in the Syrian Civil War (2011-present) because the USA will now officially supply armaments to the rebels fighting Syria's Bashar Hafez al-Assad-led government forces. 

Above is an ethnoreligious map courtesy of Wiki Commons (from 2012).

To compare scale, Syria has many more people involved than did the American Civil War of 1861-1865, in which more than 600,000 died. Syria's population (including refugees) is about 23 million strong; so far, probably more than 100,000 people have died in its current civil war (about 93,000 is the official UN estimate as of today, mostly civilians).

A closer equivalent might be the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) -- Spain had a population of about 24-25 million people at the time. An estimated 500,000 died in the course of that internecine war; I'm not sure if the total number includes 150,000 or so executed by the government of Generalissimo Francisco Franco in its wake, or if the total rises to 650,000.

As with Spain, so now with Syria also in the sense of drawing in other nations, volunteers, weapons and additional supplies.

The Spanish Civil War is often depicted as a technological testing ground and precursor to World War II. The Syrian Civil War may be seen within the larger context of the "Arab Spring;" as for other effects, they will unfold with time.  

Today's Rune: Strength.    

Blood and Rockets

Here we go again. No negotiated settlement, endless bloodletting -- in cycles. Without the will for successful negotiations, there can be no successful negotiations. Without a live-and-let-live attitude on all sides, there cannot be a live-and-let-live reality on the ground, in the air or on the high seas. And the destruction continues.  A tit-for-ten-tats, ten eyes-for-an-eye, another slaughter in the making for the "Holy Land."  Way to go, peoples.

  





















Today's Rune: Gateway.

Unfortunately, It Was Paradise

This will be the last post inspired by Jean-Luc Godard's Notre Musique (2004) -- for now.

In panning for more gold, another found nugget is Jean Racine's Phèdre (1677). This connects to contemplation of suicide by a main character in Godard's film. "Suicide is the only truly serious philosophical problem" - derived from a statement by Albert Camus (1913-1960): "Il n'y a qu'un problème philosophique vraiment sérieux: c'est le suicide" -- from Le Mythe de Sisyphe (1942) / The Myth of Sisyphus (1955). And then there's this eerie announcement: “Tonight I will be in heaven.”

Claude Lefort (1924-2010), a social-political theorist like Hannah Arendt, also pops up. Lefort wrote about, among other topics, Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) and Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), the butt of many pot jokes in American high school classes. I'm not sure if this is from Lefort, but around this time in Notre Musique, the following statement is made: "The life of man is but a battle for existence with being vanquished the only certainty . . .”  How will each person conduct that battle in the meantime?

Finally, there's Palestinian poet-writer Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008), born in Palestine, died in Texas. Given his arc, the title Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems (2003) makes perfect sense. Displaced, exiled, with no hope of return, in Notre Musique, he speaks of being a Poet of Troy, the city overrun near the end of the Trojan War. The thorny Palestinian-Israeli relationship has been at the heart of many a Middle Eastern dilemma for as long as I can remember, with no out in sight. 

  















Mahmoud Darwish discussing poetry and life in Bosnia links to the arrival of American Indians (aka Native Americans) at the Mostar Bridge, pointing to a feeling of similar displacements in North America. It could be that reconstruction of the bridge after the Bosnian War will parallel reconstruction and reconciliation for "First Nations" here in the 21st century.

Today's Rune: Separation (Reversed).
 

The Iran-Contra Scandal

"I went down to the demonstration /
to get my fair share of abuse . . ."

And this is why: the Reagan Administration. Its support for the Contras and similar death squad entities in Latin America. 

Iran-Contra.

What was that again?  Israel-US-Iran-Iraq-Nicaragua involved in a bizarre, intricate scheme that came down to trading weapons to Iran for cash and a trickle of hostage releases in Lebanon; the cash was to be rerouted to the Contras secretly as a way to get around US legal restrictions against sending weapons to either Contras or Iranians. It was so brazenly stupid that even now, looking back, I'd be amazed except for continued blunders and stupidity, such as how an American officer -- after US forces have spent more than ten years in Afghanistan -- could be so dense as to burn Korans and basically hand a political victory over to the Taliban by inciting serious unrest throughout the region. And we wonder why the Afghan Army being trained by the West for an entire decade is either A) not ever going to be up to the task we "assigned" them; or B) prefering not to, like an army of Bartleby the Scriveners?  Or that three out of four Republican presidential candidates (excepting only Ron Paul) in this year's national nominating process have already loudly announced their intention of participating in or even gleefully starting an Israel/US-Iran war?  Good God, folks!  How else can we define collective madness?
   

"What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god!"

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

Zoë Heller: The Believers

Zoë Heller understands people exceedingly well. It's almost eerie how she can see the world from various points of view, with telling detail. In The Believers (2008), the plot revolves around the immediate family of Joel Litvinoff, a high-powered civil rights lawyer mostly at the point where things go awry: Audrey (his English wife), daughters Rosa and Karla, adopted son Lenny, and Joel's mother Hannah. There are others. The main backdrop is post-9/11 New York City, on the verge of the Iraq War.    

As in What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal (2003), Zoë Heller masterfully delves into her characters and milieu. Everything works in tandem as sentences become paragraphs, paragraphs become chapters and chapters become a novel. Heller can set the scene in a single sentence. Here's a married couple on an important day: "When Karla woke at six, Mike was already up and creeping about the room in his underpants." (p. 316). Here's another one: "Audrey looked around, wondering how long Jean was going to talk about nature." (p. 273). Another thing to note about Heller is her lexicon, a compelling mix of British and American English, slang and all. I find her a complete joy to read.

Today's Rune: Wholeness.   

It's 1968, Okay?

1968 is a year that keeps reverberating. Like the eclectic music coming out that year, it's hard to absorb.  The Tet Offensive and a series of massacres in Vietnam, MLK's assassination. The Prague Spring and the Velvet Underground's White Light/White Heat, related because Václav Havel was a fan of the band, an inspiration for engaged artists and protesters behind the Iron Curtain.     

I remember, as a little kid in 1968, a lot of excitement about Jean-Claude Killy, France and the Winter Olympics. Only later did I read about Opération Canopus, the first French thermonuclear test detonations that made France, in 1968, the fifth nuclear power after the USA, USSR, UK and PRC. Since 1968, the governments of India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea have joined the club, with Iran's hoping to tag along shortly.

Today's Rune: Journey.   

Is it Over?

And so the US is seemingly pulling its last combat troops out of Iraq after nearly nine years of invasion and occupation. It's been so long many were born into this debacle and have no idea how it all happened.

After the Persian Gulf War of 1990-1991 -- in which Iraq's military was badly defeated in response to its invasion of Kuwait -- no fly zones (NFZ map above courtesy of wikimedia) were created by the US, UK and France to keep the battered Saddam Hussein regime's remaining armed forces in check. One aspect of the NFZ: Kurds were to be more protected in the north and Shiites in the south from continued Hussein regime revenge attacks. Hussein's Iraq had earlier fought a brutal eight-year war with Iran and was still its primary enemy, so its eastern flank had to be covered, too. 

Into this mix -- which had the effect of keeping Hussein's government penned in while remaining a counterbalance to Iran -- came the events of 9/11/2001. The George W. Bush administration decided to invade Iraq, even though there was no direct link between Iraq and 9/11; the attacks had been devised and managed from Afghanistan, where bin Laden was based under the auspices of the Taliban. 

France, Turkey and several Arab states refused to participate in the invasion of Iraq (France did and does participate in Afghanistan operations). The US-led invasion of Iraq by a "coalition of the willing" removed Saddam Hussein from power, but emboldened (and made nervous) the Iranian government, which is still even now moving toward a nuclear weapons capability and engaged in a shadow war with its opponents.

Was the 2003 invasion of Iraq a wise move? Could the US afford such an adventure? Was it worth the cost in blood and treasure? Five and half years after the start of the invasion, the US economy took a nosedive, as did the economies of many of its allies. Today, the Obama Administration welcomed home some of the last US troops to be pulled out of Iraq.

Looking back, Turkey's position has risen. Some may not now remember or know that Turkey refused to allow US ground forces to invade northern Iraq through its territory. Now the Turkish government is in a stronger position to influence events in the entire region, including Syria, Israel-Palestine, Egypt and Iraq. The Turks and Kurdish elements continue to fight along the borderlands, as well. The Iraq War -- wiser to avoid than to plunge into.

I was opposed to an invasion of Iraq in 2002 and 2003, protested in the streets along with many many others to no avail and continue to think it was a terrible decision.

Today's Rune: Strength.
    

Serious Midnight

So many conflicts, so little time. If you're in the line of fire, knives and bombs, so much time. The situation in Syria pits protestors against the Bashar al-Assad regime, civilians against soldiers and internal security forces.  Yes, there is war all over the planet, from Sudan to Somalia and spinning all around the globe, and this is just one of them. 

The countries neighboring Syria are being sucked into this particular disaster, too. Syria's population: 23 million -- more than live in New York, fewer than in Texas.

How this Syrian cycle ends, nobody knows yet; but more will be killed by the next sunrise, and, by the following midnight, more will be killed after that. There but for the grace of God or luck or kismet go the rest of us.   

Today's Rune: Joy.

Homeland Insecurity: Israel Palestine

Fraught with emotion, turmoil and global complexity: the nexus of the "homeland" concept with two overlapping, conflicting realities, Israel and Palestine.

The Google Ngram above (created by simply plugging in the terms "Israel" and "Palestine") very clearly indicates that the nation-concept of Israel became, in the corpus of American English texts digitized by Google,  the more widely used one, starting in or around 1948, the year Israel became first recognized as a modern nation state, and the concept of Palestine became phantomized.

In British English texts, there's a little more lag time. Why? Probably because, until 1948, the British Mandate for Palestine was the externally accepted narrative, then displaced by Israel-Palestine. Even so, by 1950, Israel overtakes Palestine in textual discussions.

The British Empire's direct influence in the region peaked from near the end of the First World War (1914-1918) until around sometime in the 1950s. British economic and political interests remain, though, at the beginning of the 21st century.  

The proposed partition of Israel-Palestine in 1947 looks like a mess even at a rearview glance. As of 2011, Humpty Dumpty has yet to be pieced together again, but a globally recognized State of Palestine is in the pipeline.

Today's Rune: Movement.  

22 Thermidor CCXIX

What makes a red letter or banner year? Years like 1968 pop to mind, and years wars start or end -- 1945 of course, continuing all the way back like that to beyond the mists of early calendar time. Today, 22 Thermidor / Fervidor, Revolutionary Year 219, known in the parlance of our day as August 9, 2011 and to some as Nagasaki Remembrance Day -- lest the world forget that day an atomic bomb was dropped on a (second) Japanese city filled mostly with civilians during a cataclysmic conflict in 1945 -- today we pull back and consider 2011 as another red letter year perhaps more along the lines of the 1968 upheavals. But who knows? There are several months left to go.

What have we learned this year?  What has happened?   The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster has got to take the radioactive cake; surely the Arab Spring / Arabic Rebellions roil the status quo; and, of course let's not forget climate change (mostly bad news) . . .  But what else "big" has happened or will happen this year?  In the words of one Detroiter: What else you got?

Today's Rune: Journey.

Egypt: The Widening Gyre

In interpreting what's going on, it may be useful to know the relative population sizes of the various countries in the greater Middle Eastern region and beyond. Otherwise, it would be as if California was given the same relative weight as Wyoming, or New York the same as Rhode Island. There are differences -- everything is not weighted equally. In fact, world news coverage is often quite skewed in other directions for cultural, political, economic or other reasons.

Demographics/population

Tunisia: 10-11 million
Egypt: 80 million
Israel: 7-8 million
Libya: 6-7 million
Lebanon: 4-5 million
Syria: 22 million
Jordan: 6-7 million
Saudi Arabia: 20-26 million
Iraq: 31-32 million
Iran: 77 million
Turkey: 74 million
Somalia: 9-10 million
Sudan: 44-45 million
Ethiopia: 85-86 million
Algeria: 35 million
Yemen: 24 million

The largest populations of those listed above:
Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran, Turkey, Algeria.

The smallest populations of those listed above:
Tunisia, Somalia, Israel, Libya, Jordan, Lebanon.

What will happen if the Tunisia-Egypt convulsions ripple throughout the region?   Should those in power in Saudi Arabia, Israel and Jordan (etc.) be nervous?  

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.   

William Friedkin's Sorcerer

From William Friedkin, the director who has given us such gems as The French Connection (1971), The Exorcist (1973) and Bug (2007), another insanely torqued masterwork: Sorceror (1977)! I can't say enough good stuff about this one: visceral and creepy, it draws the viewer into a world few would want to live or die in . . . It's an alternate version of one of my favorite 50s films, Henri-Georges Clouzot's Le Salaire de la peur / The Wages of Fear (1953) based on Georges-Jean Arnaud's 1950 novel. Off the charts good filmmaking . . .














Early on in Sorcerer, there are scenes in Vera Cruz, Jerusalem, Paris and New Jersey that lay out why four bad dudes end up as desperados driving two trucks carrying volatile explosives toward a burning oil well 216 clicks away from the squalid village of Porvenir ("future" in Spanish) somewhere in South America.* 

A shady hitman, a smalltime gangster on the run from robbing a church, the survivor of a cell that set off a bomb in Jerusalem, a banker fleeing from corruption charges, and "the German" -- that's the main crew. Throw in death, destruction and wreckage from an oil disaster, a peasant uprising, guerillas in the mountains, the brutal and ever-changing nature of the terrain, savage tropical weather and corporate mandates -- plus Tangerine Dream's first soundtrack -- and there you have it . . . Not for the Disney and Hallmark crowd nor the easily distracted, my friends . . . but oh, what a movie!

*Possibly an allusion to Provenir in Chile under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, though actually the village of Alta Gracia -- "high grace" -- in the Dominican Republic.

Today's Rune: Journey.

Sixty Years On

Maybe ignorance is bliss, because when you look back decade by decade, it seems that today we're like puppets, our actions prescribed in large part by the past, by the "dead hand of history." Certainly we seem as a species clueless and mired in stubborn, short-sighted and irrational mindsets as much today as ever.

In any case, 1949 saw any number of developments leading to 2009's realities. NATO was formed (now with troops deployed in Afghanistan, etc.).

The People's Republic of China became official in 1949. In 2009, the PRC more or less owns a huge chunk of the USA's assets -- doubt many saw that coming down the pike: not even the Chinese strategists themselves. Back then, within a year Chinese "volunteers" would be fighting Americans in Korea, still a global ulcer above the 38th parallel.

Pakistan and India came to a temporary ceasefire in a war largely over Kashmir. Three wars later, they're still braced for more as of 2009, even as the Pakistani Army fights Taliban and other insurgents within its own borders.


One change over the past sixty years: Germany. In 1949, Germany formally became two countries, one dominated by the Soviets, the other dominated by NATO. The Berlin Airlift was a big deal at the time, helping to preserve Berlin for the West. Here, we've made some intervening changes in that Germany is one unified country again. The Berlin Wall went up in 1961 and came down in 1989. The Cold War is more or less over and has been for twenty years, at least compared to how things were in 1949. Within the US in 1949, there was not uncoincidentally another Red Scare. The right wing viewpoint was about as wild-eyed in 1949 as it is in 2009. "People are stupid. What a shock." (Six Feet Under).


In 1949, Israel and its Arab neighbors agreed to a truce with the Green Line -- still fighting over that one, with several wars to go between then and now. Israel also joined the United Nations in 1949.


The first couple of VW Beetles were sold in the USA. Germans were already driving them around in the 1930s.

Another thing from 1949: a US veteran decided to shoot a bunch of people. Just like an incident from 2009, eh?

CAMDEN, N.J., Sept.6--Howard B. Unruh, 28 years old, a mild, soft-spoken veteran of many armored artillery battles in Italy, France, Austria, Belgium and Germany, killed twelve persons with a war souvenir Luger pistol in his home block in East Camden this morning. He wounded four others.

Unruh, a slender, hollow-cheeked six-footer paradoxically devoted to scripture reading and to constant practice with firearms, had no previous history of mental illness but specialists indicated tonight that there was no doubt that he was a psychiatric case, and that he had secretly nursed a persecution complex for two years or more. . . (New York Times snippet).

Today's Rune: Fertility.

Station to Station, I to I

In English, there are something like eight "I" countries and one dependency.

I've had the great pleasure of spending time in Ireland and Italy, and would be happy to spend a lot more in both.

India would be interesting, given certain conditions. My eldest sister has been, the only member of my immediate family.

Isle of Man -- seen it from afar, in between moving around Scotland, Ireland, and England. Had an excellent stay on the Isle of Wight, but that's for another post. Lots of famous concerts on both the Isle of Man and Isle of Wight (Jimi Hendrix, for instance).

Israel, Iran, Iraq, Indonesia. If paid handsomely and closely guarded, with a specific purpose, maybe. Some day far off, or never. These ain't no CBGB, and I ain't no Joe the Plumber . . .

Iceland -- almost made it a couple times! But alas, still to do. It's in the blood, ya know . . .



















Today's Rune: Signals.

Dark Star: Full Spectrum Dominance

We live in a chilling world where nobody really knows what exactly is going on or where we're going. Economically, militarily -- or personally. A dog cloned for $155,000. Secret operations, psyops, super-hacking, disruptions in the food chain. Post-traumatic stress syndrome, military suicides. Vaporized investments.

Full Spectrum Dominance: dominating a battlefield, a zone, a region, an occupied territory. Toy robots, Dark Star, remote-controlled Predator drones, Hellfire missile systems, Global Hawk. Even the names are chilling. And what country produced these infernal systems? The USA. Look at Israel's "operations" in Gaza, and wonder who's who.

What do enemies do? Hide in the rubble, hide among civilians. Why? Because they would be slaughtered in a conventional fight, like Iraqi soldiers on the Highway of Death in 1991. Counter with primitive means -- suicide bombers, an endless supply of individual kamikazes. Their most effective weapons over the long-term? Tenacity and economic attrition. Entropy. For the rest of our lives. Unless peace can be found with equal tenacity, plus a tinge of the miraculous -- as in Northern Ireland. Who would have thought those "Troubles" would ever end? So, too, it could happen in and around Israel and Palestine. If there's a will, there's a way.

















The US needs to continue supporting Israel, but it must also use its support as leverage. As with Ireland, the US must play heavy to broker a negotiated settlement. Because Full Spectral Dominance may win in the short term, but it probably cannot in the long-term. Grinding attrition trumps technological edge, and demographics favor the now weak in the long run. Empires rise and empires fall. What is left is a rump state, or nothing at all but cultural diffusion, or a lingering spectral presence.

(Pictured at top: Rahul Mahajan, Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond (2003).

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

Tunnels and People

Tunnels for hiding, tunnels for smuggling. Tunnels for sneaking, tunnels for trading. Tunnels to get under things, tunnels to keep things running. Tunnels to hide from ice and snow, tunnels to move people from point A to point B. Tunnels that move water, tunnels that go under water. Tunnels that go through mountains, tunnels that collapse mountains. Tunnels for escaping, tunnels for blowing things up.

In my lifetime to date, I've seen tunnels constructed by French people, Germans, Americans, Romans, British. I know about tunnels built by Palestinians, Vietnamese, Japanese. I've seen the surface reminders of coal mines, kinds worked in by members of my own family. I know of the salt mines below Detroit. I've seen catacombs in France and Italy. I've seen underground tunnels and fallout shelters under Duke University, and connecting tunnels under Macomb Community College in Warren, Michigan. Somewhere there's Super 8mm footage of me and some friends under Duke, a sort of short science fiction film shot more than thirty years ago. I've seen underground caches of food, water and Geiger counters, enough for a long siege if not a nuclear holocaust. Tunnels never cease to amaze me.










Tunnels are examples of human ingenuity equalled or surpassed only by human stupidity, insanity, and misery in their use and/or in their destruction. Little wonder that human ingenuity is sometimes called infernal; certainly its uglier ramifications often come out that way, whether they were intended to or not.

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.

Another Dirty War

Operation Cast Lead in Gaza has resulted in thousands of casualties, mostly civilians. The Israeli government has so far blocked all firsthand neutral reporting in Gaza, which reminds me of Anna Politkovskaya (1958-2006), the determined and enterprising Russian journalist who covered the brutal fighting in Chechnya before being murdered gangster-style in her own Moscow apartment building. Anna Politkovskaya, A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya (2003, 2004).

I wanted to write about something more fun, but this latest Gaza nightmare makes me sick. Immediate ceasefire needed. Also, a critical review of American-Israeli relations is needed. Wagging the dog is not cool in my book.

Today's Rune: Movement.