tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50268902011-04-21T10:56:09.057-07:00Info, analysis, discussion-- to build a more just world.helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comBlogger1211100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2003950752003-06-06T11:52:00.000-07:002003-07-04T11:47:46.503-07:00

IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR READERS: If you came to JWN through the URL: www.justworld.blogspot.com, or through a bookmark or any other path that linked to that URL, then you need to know that I won't be sending JWN posts to that URL any longer. The best URL to use to keep reading JWN-- in a version that has a new design and new capabilities, but still all of the old content accessible as well--

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2003892072003-06-05T08:45:00.000-07:002003-06-05T08:45:28.260-07:00

'JWN' UNDERGOING TECH WORK: Apologies to JWN readers who are experiencing changes and difficulties. We're doing some work on the blog. Should be good by the weekend?

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2003807942003-06-03T13:07:00.000-07:002003-06-03T13:07:57.663-07:00

THE 'CON' IN 'NEO-CON': I was just re-reading (and correcting a typo or two in) yesterday's post about Chalabi. And it came to me with the proverbial blinding flash! Now we know what the 'con' in 'neo-con' really stands for! And we thought it was "conservative." No, friends, these guys (Perle, Wolfie, BAD, and friends) are anything but conservative. They are rabid, wild-eyed radicals.

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2003734802003-06-02T07:52:00.000-07:002003-06-03T13:12:06.000-07:00

CHALABI DOUBLY DISCREDITED: Ahmad Chalabi, the sleazemeister of Jordan's Petra Bank scandal, has now been completely discredited on two key claims he made when he successfully "sold" himself and his ambitions for Iraq to Bombs-Away Don in the months leading up to the US invasion. The first of these was that he had extensive networks of supporters inside Iraq who would rise joyfully to greet

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2003664052003-05-30T18:40:00.000-07:002003-05-30T19:36:34.000-07:00

THE NEXUS BETWEEN GENOCIDE AND WAR: Last night, I watched "The Pianist". Again. The first time was back at the beginning of the month, in Johannesburg. But last night, my spouse brought the video home from the video store. So I decided to sit down and watch it again, with him. It is a remarkable, gut-wrenching movie. Adrien Brody has such a haunting, haunted face, and plays the

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2003586012003-05-29T12:02:00.000-07:002003-05-29T12:02:13.470-07:00

A SOUTH AFRICAN IN VIRGINIA: Emily Mnisi is an ethnic Sothu with a Master's degree in special education from the University of Lancaster. These days, she's on the management team of a farm-based therapeutic community for adults with mental disabilities, near Johannesburg. It's called Cluny Farm. Back at the beginning of the month, when my daughter Leila and I were in South Africa, Emily

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2003414702003-05-26T09:14:00.000-07:002003-05-29T11:02:43.000-07:00

SHARON USES THE 'O' WORD: Might the fragile-seeming Mideast 'roadmap' have some legs after all? The most intriguing indication that this just might be so came from reports that were leaked out of a seemingly stormy encounter Monday afternoon between Ariel Sharon and some of his colleagues in the Likud Party leadership. According to these reports, which were relayed breathlessly to a waiting

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2003352312003-05-23T20:05:00.000-07:002003-05-23T20:05:36.866-07:00

PUMLA'S BOOK: I'm writing this, sitting on Amtrak train 94, traveling from Washington DC to Philadelphia. Beforehand, on the connecting bus from Charlottesville up to DC, I read a most amazing book, that I want to write these notes on before I forget. Also, I'll probably be giving my copy of it to my friend Emily Mnisi soon, before she returns to South Africa. I learned when I was there

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2003283722003-05-22T11:00:00.000-07:002003-05-22T11:33:05.000-07:00

RE-CONNECTING, RECHARGING: Okay, we U.S. citizens all know that our government is doing many things around the world that are highly damaging (as well as a much smaller proportion, I'd argue, that are helpful). A lot of us feel fed-up and frustrated about this. But one problem is that, ever since the Bushies launched the war against Iraq, and then won a totally unsurprising battlefield

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2003221502003-05-21T08:14:00.000-07:002003-05-21T08:17:05.000-07:00

TWO MORE THINGS ABOUT SHI-ITE ORGANIZING: In yesterday's post-- right below here, I waxed fairly admiring of the political smarts that Hizbullah has shown over the year, in Lebanon, and suggested that much of what Hizbullah has learned through that experience there will inform the actions of their Shi-ite co-religionists inside Iraq. I want to add two quick points. One, inevitably, has to do

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2003200042003-05-20T19:47:00.000-07:002003-05-21T06:53:11.000-07:00

SHI-ITE ORGANIZING: Ways, ways back in 1985, I published a book about Lebanon. (It won an award from Choice magazine, actually.) The "new" phenom in Lebanon then-- new, I mean, in terms of, gee-whiz, it suddenly gets "discovered" by otherwise uninterested Westerners-- was the rising influence of the country's rapidly modernizing and rapidly organizing Shia community. I wrote a bit about

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2003143882003-05-19T18:12:00.000-07:002003-05-20T18:39:48.000-07:00

SAUDI LEADERSHIP ON LIFE SUPPORT: Okay, call me a softie, but every so often I do feel sorry for those pampered little rich boys (and girls) called the Saudi royal family... The only family on the planet, by the way, to have a whole nation-state named after them. Well, maybe it's something to do with them never having actually been forced to develop a work ethic, Protestant or otherwise. This

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2003045642003-05-17T06:53:00.000-07:002003-05-17T06:53:18.996-07:00

INTO THE VIOLENCE CYCLE: So here's how it goes. Leader X (call him George Bush, call him Ariel Sharon, call him whatever you want) perceives that his nation/group/whatever is experiencing a security problem. He proposes a large-scale application of violence as a way to end this problem. He applies the violence. The problem doesn't stop. In fact, it gets worse. (Duh! This is what

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2002980342003-05-15T17:32:00.000-07:002003-05-15T17:45:33.000-07:00

AFTER THE TRIP: So this is how it is. Ever since I took the decision, back in about February, that Iraq war or no Iraq war I would proceed with my research trip to Africa, I've been strongly focused on planning for and then undertaking the trip. And now I've done it. It was great. But I have definitely been on an adrenalin low this week. I think that gradually I'm coming out of that.

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2002712142003-05-10T07:00:00.000-07:002003-05-15T17:33:16.000-07:00

CAPE TOWN (CONTD.): I'm writing this Saturday afternoon, a couple of hours before Leila and I need to leave for the airport at the end of our time here. What a beautiful city! We figured out fairly well how to get around on the train system. Today, we took a long walk from the Observatory district, where we're staying, over to the UCT campus in nearby Mowbray. But we couldn't take the

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2002631872003-05-08T12:49:00.000-07:002003-05-08T12:49:41.183-07:00

ALBIE SACHS AND OTHERS IN CAPE TOWN: Our first day in Cape Town was really productive and full. I'd been in touch for a while with the office of Albie Sachs, the long-time ANC leader who was the target of a car bomb in Maputo in the 1980s, and who now sits on South Africa's Constitutional Court. On Tuesday, I finally got to speak to Albie himself, and he said there might be a chance we could

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2002514122003-05-06T12:59:00.000-07:002003-05-06T12:59:56.300-07:00

SOWETO AGAIN AND CAPE TOWN: Actually, I think I've got it about Soweto. It's not so much a set of disadvantaged suburbs of Johannesburg. It's not so much an entire sister city. It's more like a whole parallel universe out there. Today we went back to the edge of Soweto once again. This time we were visiting "17 Shaft", a project run by a former MK (ANC military) leader called Steve Corry

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2002481462003-05-06T00:57:00.000-07:002003-05-06T00:57:18.806-07:00

MORE ON SOWETO: Yesterday I didn't get to finish writing my account of our Sunday visit to and around Soweto with Emily Mnisi. Now, I'm in a hurry, but I want to bring this as up-to-date as possible. On Sunday, we had a traditional African lunch with Emily's friends Ria and Charles. Then we went to drive around Soweto some with Emily, Ria, and Ria's daughter Rudo. We went to Vilakasie Street

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2002427512003-05-05T00:42:00.000-07:002003-05-05T00:42:49.763-07:00

SOWETO AND JOHANNESBURG: We had a busy and informative weekend. On Saturday we had lunch with Emily Mnisi, a Quaker woman from near Jo'burg whom I had gotten to know last year when we were both on an international Quaker fact-finding mission in Israel and Palestine. Emily is a special-education specialist who currently trains and supervises the house-parents at a residential farm for some 70

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2002367222003-05-03T02:19:00.000-07:002003-05-03T02:33:48.000-07:00

REMEMBERING PAST ATROCITIES, IN MOZAMBIQUE AND SOUTH AFRICA: I'm writing this, on Saturday May 3, sitting in the lovely home of our friends Shirley Pendlebury and Harold Annegaarn, in Johannesburg. Leila and I got here on Thursday evening, after bidding a sad farewell to Salomao in Maputo. But we've been so busy that I haven't blogged since about Tuesday. Too bad! I'd gotten into such a

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2002170332003-04-29T10:29:00.000-07:002003-04-29T10:29:22.550-07:00

HAYAT COLUMN DEADLINE COMING UP: Oh my goodness, it's nearly the end of the month. Which means I need to get my head around doing my next column for Al-Hayat. There is so much going on in the Middle East. But probably people don't need me, from Africa, to tell them about it. My old nemesis Martin Indyk being quoted as saying that given the failure of Iraqis to come out and greet the US

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2002169892003-04-29T10:20:00.000-07:002003-04-29T10:20:00.316-07:00

FINDING FRELIMO: Yesterday morning (Monday), Leila and I had a really good discussion with Afiado Zunguza, the Mozambican head of a conflict-resolution capacity-building organization called Justapaz. In the afternoon, we had a good discussion with Raul Domingos, who had been over-all head of the Renamo delegation at the peace talks, having previously been the chief of Renamo's military staff.

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2002071262003-04-27T14:15:00.000-07:002003-04-27T14:15:43.113-07:00

FORMER COMBATANTS WORKING TOGETHER, AND A CHURCH SERVICE: Yesterday, we had a really interesting meeting with General Herminio Morais, the former head of Special Forces for Renamo who led the Renamo military team that helped to finish up the peace negotiations that brought the Mozambican civil war to an end in 1992. Morais had been suggested as a good interview subject by the VAIL project's

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2002042992003-04-26T15:05:00.000-07:002003-04-26T15:05:51.930-07:00

MAPUTO AVENIDAS: (I posted this piece last Sunday, April 20, but it never made it into the week's archive, so this is a re-post.) Overcast today, so I was able to go for a nice long walk this morning after the going-to-church plans fell through. I walked over to the lovely broad esplanade that runs along the east (Indian Ocean) side of the old city center, suspended some 80 feet or so up a

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2002024452003-04-26T00:29:00.000-07:002003-04-26T00:29:23.850-07:00

RELIGION AND ATROCITY: I know full well that many terrible actions have been undertaken in the past in the name of "religion", and that this tendency continues to this day. But still, as I have been pursuing my research project on how societies deal with legacies of violence, I have become increasingly aware that in the aftermath of universe-shattering atrocities, religion can in some cases

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2001944472003-04-24T10:57:00.000-07:002003-04-24T10:57:50.753-07:00

EARTH TO ARI FLEISCHER: Fleischer, I just saw, was warning everyone that Öutsiders had better stay out of the process of building democracy in Iraq." How's that again?

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2001944332003-04-24T10:55:00.000-07:002003-04-24T10:55:46.683-07:00

DISCUSSING ESCAPING FROM VIOLENCE, IN A SMALL TOWN IN MOZAMBIQUE: Today, Leila, Salmao, and I drove out of Maputo to a small town called Bellavista, about 50 km to the south. Salomao has colleagues there who work for the same organization of ex-combatant peace promoters that he does. They had agreed to set up a discussion for us there, for the research project. Getting there was itself

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2001843162003-04-22T14:34:00.000-07:002003-04-22T14:41:01.000-07:00

EX-COMBATANT PEACE PROMOTERS, AND A CARDINAL: The first two substantive days of the research here in Mozambique have been going very well. Plus, my new research assistant (and elder daughter) Leila Rached joined me here on Sunday afternoon. It is a real blast having her here working with me! And in our hours off, the two of us are able to do various things around town that I alone, as a

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2001723192003-04-20T04:28:00.000-07:002003-04-20T05:09:10.000-07:00

MAPUTO AVENIDAS: Overcast today, so I was able to go for a nice long walk this morning after the going-to-church plans fell through. I walked over to the lovely broad esplanade that runs along the east (Indian Ocean) side of the old city center, suspended some 80 feet or so up a steep but verdant cliff above the beach-side road below. The esplanade is now called Avenida Friedrich Engels. I

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2001694922003-04-19T03:51:00.000-07:002003-04-19T04:25:01.000-07:00

TO MAPUTO: Yesterday, I woke up in a city-center hotel in Dar es-Salaam (the capital of Tanzania); I took the promised walk to and along the waterfront; did a bit of email back at the hotel ($1.50/hour); went back to the airport. The Linhas Aereas de Mocambique flight to Maputo took off not just on time, but actually five minutes early. The first portion of the flight was more or less down

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2001630732003-04-17T12:46:00.000-07:002003-04-17T13:08:19.000-07:00

THOUGHTS ON THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL FOR RWANDA: I'll confess right here that I am still at only a very preliminary stage in trying to organize all the impressions I gained, all the interviews I undertook, all the great discussions I had, during my eight days of work at ICTR. Yesterday turned out to be another gala day in terms of interviews. I had really substantive interviews with

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2001626952003-04-17T11:30:00.000-07:002003-04-17T11:30:46.733-07:00

DAR ES-SALAAM: When my travel agent, Alaina, told me that various flight schedules had been changed and I could not any longer fly from Arusha, Tanzania to Maputo, Mozambique in a single day, at first I felt really frustrated. I mean! For goodness sake! This would cut a whole workday off my valuable schedule! Etc.! Then I got a grip and thought, wow, it's amazing I can do this whole

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2001577872003-04-16T13:14:00.000-07:002003-04-16T13:14:20.200-07:00

RICHARD PERLE, VIEWED FROM AFRICA: Sitting around waiting in the the ICTR press office earlier this week, I pisked up a copy of The East African. UN Public Affairs Officer Straton Musonera, who hails from Rwanda, saw what I was looking at. "Did you see that?" he asked, outraged. It was a syndicated article by Richard Perle titled something like, "The UN has no place in the New World Order."

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2001576072003-04-16T12:42:00.000-07:002003-04-16T12:57:39.000-07:00

A NIGHT ON THE TOWN IN ARUSHA: Tonight is my last evening in Arusha. Gabi Gabiro, who works for Hirondelle Press Agency here, a couple of his friends, and I were going out to dinner. I'd been kind of looking forward to this, since I've eaten dinner in my hotel, the Impala, every night since I got here. So Gabi picks a place, we go there straight from a late-ish evening working at the ICTR--

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2001458472003-04-14T11:18:00.000-07:002003-04-15T02:41:13.000-07:00

EDITORIAL NOTE: I've been filing recently from Arusha, Tanzania. There follow some fairly lengthy posts. To read about my "cultural tourism" experience in a Masai village, just scroll down to the very next post.. If you want to read my thoughts about last week's "fall" of Baghdad, click here. To read my detailed description of 'AN INTERNATIONAL COURTROOM IN AFRICA', click here. I'm

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2001458122003-04-14T11:11:00.000-07:002003-04-15T12:37:16.000-07:00

VISITING WITH THE MASAI: Since I'm here in Arusha alone, I was looking for a good day-hike I could sign up with for yesterday, Sunday. Luckily, in the Tanzania Tourism Board office in town I found something much better: a "cultural tourism program" in the nearby Masai (Wa-arusha) village of Ilkiding'a.. What's more, on the brochure it said there was an option to walk to the starting point from

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2001372402003-04-12T05:59:00.000-07:002003-04-12T06:07:55.000-07:00

AN INTERNATIONAL COURTROOM IN AFRICA: The Arusha International Conference Center is a sprawling concatenation of three or four large, 1960s-style white concrete buildings netsled into the northeast side of the city of Arusha. The vegetation here is lush. Splendidly blossomed jacaranda trees, dense palm trees, and lots of other Africa varieties that I'm incapable of naming, form a lush canopy

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2001371872003-04-12T05:35:00.000-07:002003-04-12T05:40:30.000-07:00

THOUGHTS ON THE FALL OF BAGHDAD: The war is not yet finished. Securing the peace has still even to begin. I think we can attribute the tragic mayhem we presently see in Baghdad and the other Iraqi cities to two main factors: (1) The legacy of 30-plus years of Baathist authoritarianism, that resulted in the total repression of Iraqi civil society and a serious, longterm degradation of public

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2001282102003-04-10T11:43:00.000-07:002003-04-10T11:58:25.000-07:00

INSIDE SOUTHERN IRAQ: Ghanim Alnajjar is a Kuwaiti professor, long-time human-rights activist, and indeed the UN Secretary-General's Special representative for Human Rights in Somalia and Somaliland. He is also an old friend of mine with whom I was recently put back in touch by Yvette, author of the 'Jaded in Africa' blog (see link to it, at right.) Ghanim has a particular perspective on

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2001279502003-04-10T11:06:00.000-07:002003-04-12T05:29:31.000-07:00

CSM COLUMN OUT TODAY: I have a column in the Christian Science Monitor today. I wrote it last weekend. It's titled, "Postwar shock and awe in the global economy". I think you can find it here.

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2001279022003-04-10T10:56:00.000-07:002003-04-10T11:01:52.000-07:00

GALA DAY FOR THE RESEARCH PROJECT: I've been working on this research project, that looks at the effectiveness, as viewed 8 - 10 years later, of the widely varying policies that each of Rwanda, S. Africa, and Mozambique dopted in the early-to-mid 1990s, for nearly 30 months now. Today was truly a gala day for my enquiry. I had substantial amounts of time with three people key to

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2001226072003-04-09T12:39:00.000-07:002003-04-10T10:39:04.000-07:00

REMEMBERING GENOCIDE: Early April 1994 was the time when that year's terrible genocide in Rwanda was started. It then continued for a further 100 days, in the course of which around a million of the country's seven million people were killed. In a very hands-on way. Every year recently, inside Rwanda, the government has devoted the first week of April to genocide remembrance, and the

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2001143442003-04-08T06:10:00.000-07:002003-04-10T10:35:51.000-07:00

FROM NAIROBI AIRPORT: I've now been traveling for 40-plus hours, so far seen four airports and a few areas of West London (I guess that was on Monday). Interesting that these places (Dulles, Heathrow, Jo'burg, Nairobi) seem almost totally unaffected by war-related anything. The only notable thing, in Jo'burg, was several passengers who looked Asian were wearing face masks. SARS seemed bigger

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2001030912003-04-05T18:25:00.000-08:002003-04-05T18:33:23.000-08:00

RUSSIAN SITE'S VERSION OF COL. DOWDY REMOVAL: Back on March 25, I wrote about the pair of Russian websites that seem to be being maintained by Russia's GRU military intelligence. Since then, I've intermittently been trying to assess these sites' output. Today, a piece on the English-language version of www.iraqwar.ru writes about yesterday morning's surprise removal/replacement of the

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2001001642003-04-04T19:25:00.000-08:002003-04-04T19:25:04.770-08:00

COMMENTS FEATURE ON 'JWN' SOON? Well, I can't tell you how soon, since I'm just about to go of on this complicated trip. (See previous post, below.) But my technical advisor and I are working on specs for a radically upgraded presentation for JWN, as soon as we can manage it. In the meantime, I keep telling myself I could at least put in a little feature at the end of each pst-- either in

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2001000862003-04-04T18:50:00.000-08:002003-04-04T19:28:28.000-08:00

MENTAL MIGRATION TO AFRICA: I am definitely on my way, switching gear between my obsession with the unfolding Iraq situation, and my upcoming five-week research trip to Africa. Wednesday, I picked up my Mozambique visa in DC. Thursday, I picked up my traveler's checks. Today, I picked up my re-issued ticket. I am definitely ready to rock and roll! Sunday evening will be the time I

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000999392003-04-04T17:40:00.000-08:002003-04-04T19:29:04.000-08:00

YARD-SIGN UPDATE: At the end of a post last Sunday, I wrote that I was going to put yellow-ribbon bows onto the two peace signs we have in our front yard. I did that, Monday. They looked pretty good, I thought. Wednesday night, the signs got uprooted yet again. These are really pretty and effective signs, that have been designed and sold at cost by the Charlottesville Center for Peace and

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000889742003-04-02T19:35:00.000-08:002003-04-02T20:20:25.000-08:00

PLANNING FOR THE 'AFTERMATH': The military outcome of this war is, at this point in time, completely unpredictable. The currently "best possible" scenario for the US-UK troops could be mean getting into Baghdad within the next 2-3 days; regime collapse there spreads out through the whole country; extension of a measure of US-UK military control over the whole country by the end of April. The "

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000763852003-03-31T18:55:00.000-08:002003-03-31T19:54:31.000-08:00

YELLOW RIBBON SHORTAGE: Yesterday, I wrote that I was going to buy some yellow ribbon and make bows to put on the peace signs in our front yard. So I got to the local craft supplies / "notions" store around 5:30 p.m., and the ribbon department was nearly totally out of yellows. The point of this, you'll remember, was to send a message of support for US troops-- while totally not ignoring the

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000692502003-03-30T11:35:00.000-08:002003-03-30T19:35:12.000-08:00

"PRECISION" GUIDED MISSILES? HOW'S THAT? Every time there's a war, the Pentagon assures that, "our missiles have gotten a LOT smarter since the last time." And so now, once again, we're promised that they're using the smartest missiles ever. You'd think, wouldn't you, that if a missile is so darned "smart" then it should be able to arrive at, say, a military headquarters without harming a

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000691632003-03-30T11:11:00.000-08:002003-03-30T11:14:32.000-08:00

LESSONS FROM AN EARLIER GULF WAR: When US citizens talk about a "precedent" for fighting in the Persian Gulf region, they're almost always talking about "Operation Desert Storm". In that 10-week war in early 1991, the US-led-- but also UN-authorized-- international coalition succeeded in realizing the war's central aim of reversing Iraq's occupation of all of Kuwait and re-installing the

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000640302003-03-28T20:20:00.000-08:002003-03-29T12:31:08.000-08:00

GEOPOLITICS OF THE GULF 101: Why are so many Iranians inside and outside the regime taking evident satisfaction at the imbroglio to their west? Had it occurred to anyone in the present US administration that maybe, just maybe, there's a history there? Here's some of what AP is reporting out of Teheran today: "Hundreds of thousands of Iranians demonstrated, denouncing both 'Bush's

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000636272003-03-28T17:52:00.000-08:002003-03-31T07:05:50.000-08:00

THE BRITS SHOULD KNOW BETTER:  The strategic geography of Mesopotamia may seem distant, perplexing, and "exotic" to many in the United States. But, with all due respect to the British military, they should have known better than to let the Bushites take them along for the promised "cakewalk" into Iraq. The Brits should have known better.  Actually, many Brits do.  Many Brits learned in their (

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000582352003-03-27T18:57:00.000-08:002003-03-28T08:50:27.000-08:00

CSM COLUMN OUT TODAY; AL-HAYAT COLUMN YESTERDAY: Busy times we live in.  The Christian Science Monitor column was titled "Military occupations - the good, bad, and ugly", which makes me think the copy editor who composed it must have read my earlier lengthy post here by that title... I wrote the piece Tuesday, and then had a good, productive time working with my editor on it.  I do note,

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000552882003-03-27T08:53:00.000-08:002003-03-27T16:45:26.000-08:00

BILL SAFIRE GOES BESERK: I think that at heart of the present (and impending) imbroglio in Iraq lies not only a profound moral/ethical miscalculation-- to the effect that problems can be solved through violence-- but also a very profound political miscalculation: the one that predicted with seeming confidence that the Iraqi populace would certainly greet the arriving US troops as "liberators".

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000483882003-03-26T06:39:00.000-08:002003-03-26T08:58:56.000-08:00

MILITARY OCCUPATIONS, PART 3 (RE-POST): [Editorial note: I was working on my index, and this post, which was originally posted at 7:17 p.m. last Saturday, March 22, seemed not to have gotten put into either the March 16-22 archive, or the March 23-29 archive. So I'm re-posting it here in the hope that it DOES get archived this time. Plus, I am now PAYING Blogger for their 'Pro' level of

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000466112003-03-25T20:02:00.000-08:002003-03-26T08:59:41.000-08:00

THE RUSSIANS ARE LISTENING? I guess a lot of people around the world have become used to the idea that the US government, or their friends in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, listen in on just about everyone's cellphone and other supposedly private conversations. But now, do the Russians have sophisticated listening capacity that can capture some internal US government communications as well?

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000455352003-03-25T15:10:00.000-08:002003-03-26T06:14:08.000-08:00

CONTINUING TO ARTICULATE AN ALTERNATIVE TO WAR: Today, I wrote my column on "comparative military occupations" for the Christian Science Monitor. Once again the writing went more quickly because I'd thought most of the text through beforehand. It'll be in the paper Thursday. Meanwhile my visa-ed passport arrived back from the Tanzanian Embassy. Next task: figure out getting the Mozambique

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-913244992003-03-24T20:22:00.000-08:002003-03-28T11:53:38.000-08:00

"THE 17-YEAR-OLD" ASSERTS HERSELF: Yesterday, she was on my case again. "Mom, why do you call me that? It's so demeaning!" I tried to explain it was related to an old joke. But that it was too complex to explain. She carried on. "Besides, in your March 1 post, you talked about the dog having a slipped disk before you said anything about the so-called 'seventeen-year-old' having a bad

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-912615082003-03-23T21:09:00.000-08:002003-03-23T21:34:53.000-08:00

BLOGGING AS FIVE-FINGER EXERCISES: For some reason, two of my sisters have both expressed a concern that my blogging "might be taking too much of my time". (All three of my sisters live on the far side of the Atlantic Ocean, in England. Sometimes I wonder how much they talk about me behind my [very distant] back, as it were. I don't spend much time speculating about it though, because-- well,

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-912006652003-03-22T16:17:00.000-08:002003-03-23T07:26:04.000-08:00

MILITARY OCCUPATIONS, PART 3: I first met Uri Avnery, the veteran Israeli peace activist, in a PLO office in Tunis in the mid-1980s. Uri has sure hung in there over the years! (I saw him at the Tel Aviv offices of his present organization, Gush Shalom/ the Peace Bloc, just last June.) Today, I got an email from GS, in which Uri had penned some very thought-provoking notes about the present

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-912000972003-03-22T16:00:00.000-08:002003-03-22T16:02:24.000-08:00

MORE ON MICHELE AND GLADYS: So I wrote here Thursday night about the civil disobedience action that some Quakers and others here in Charlottesville undertook that afternoon. What I failed to put in was any part of the lovely statement that Michele Mattioli had prepared, that explained what they were doing. Here are some extracts: We are citizens who oppose war. Killing people is never the

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-911629292003-03-21T20:14:00.000-08:002003-03-23T20:49:33.000-08:00

FOUND! A WORTH-READING ISRAELI BLOG: From Salam via Diane I found a good-to-read blog by an Israeli. At last! Someone who writes from the heart. She's Imshin. For some reason her blog is called "Not a Fish". Her definition of it is: "The meaningless chatter of your regular split personality Israeli mother trying to make sense of current insanity." But no, Imshin, I don't think it's

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-911623962003-03-21T20:01:00.000-08:002003-03-21T20:01:50.216-08:00

MORE ON OCCUPATIONS-- JAPAN AND IRAQ: What I forgot to mention in my earlier long screed on comparative occupation-ology was that there's a great article by the historian of modern Japan John Dower, in the current issue of Boston Review in which he elegantly and to my view convincingly debunks the idea that we can make a meaningful analogy between what the American occupation of Japan achieved

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-911357742003-03-21T10:04:00.000-08:002003-03-21T19:56:06.000-08:00

MILITARY OCCUPATIONS: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE POSSIBLY UGLY: Okay, George Bush has set us on the path of war, and in the days ahead Iraqi people, Iraqi conscripts, the fighting members of the all-volunteer US and British armies and numerous other human groups near and far from the battlefield have, as a consequence, been put squarely in harm's way. I, of all people, don't want to elide

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-911003702003-03-20T19:24:00.000-08:002003-03-21T10:57:26.000-08:00

D-PLUS-ONE IN CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA: Three (or more?) local peace groups here in my hometown had loosely organized that if-and-when the Bushies should launch the war against Iraq, there would be a multi-hour string of pro-peace activities starting with a noon-hour "convergence" at the amphitheater on our downtown mall. But what a rainstorm we had!! Truly, the heavens were weeping with us

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-910628712003-03-20T07:36:00.000-08:002003-03-20T18:36:42.000-08:00

FINALLY GOT THE INDEX HERE FIXED?? I still can't figure what was wrong with the coding Blogger and I had put into the archives for the past couple of weeks, but I went into the HTML and there were some really nasty extra characters in there... I cleaned it up by hand (being a good housewife, heh-heh-heh) and now I think the index WORKS. Please, friends, tell me if you try it and it doesn't.

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-910322582003-03-19T19:08:00.000-08:002003-03-20T06:27:29.000-08:00

SO IT'S STARTED: The 17-year-old just broke the news to me about the bombing having started. I clicked onto CNN.com. "Mommy?" she said, hanging round my door in her bath-robe. I said, "D'you want a hug?" "No... aw, yes then." We hugged. "I mean," she said, "I feel a lot, lot worse for other people." "Yup. But you know what, I'm afraid the world we're going to be handing over to you

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-909629352003-03-18T18:25:00.000-08:002003-03-18T18:26:57.000-08:00

A QUAKER SALUTE TO SOLDIERS IN NASIRIYAH: My friend Rick McCutcheon is a Canadian Quaker. In 2000-2001, he and his wife Tamara Fleming served as joint field representatives to Iraq for Quaker and Mennonite service bodies. In the March 2003 issue of The Canadian Friend, Rick has published a recollection of one particularly poignant encounter he had with an Iraqi military unit. I'll post the

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-909613992003-03-18T17:57:00.000-08:002003-03-18T17:57:44.000-08:00

THE EFFECT OF THIS WAR ON IRAN: Juan R. Cole, who's probably the best informed, sanest, and most articulate person around who writes on Iran, has given me permission to use the following assessment, penned March 17, on JWN. I should add that for his day job, Cole's a distinguished Professor of History at the University of Michigan. It seems to me that the likely scenario in Iran after an

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-909466462003-03-18T13:22:00.000-08:002003-03-18T13:36:50.000-08:00

BUSH CONVERTS TO KEYNESIANISM-- JUST NOT FOR DOMESTIC CONSUMPTION? Among the many unseemly and downright scandalous aspects of this war (which I need not list here), one of the most distasteful has been the spate of reports that the administration is already preparing to hand out large contracts to large U.S. firms, to engage in the "post-war reconstruction" of Iraq. In a good piece in

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-908995942003-03-17T19:50:00.000-08:002003-03-17T20:15:40.000-08:00

BLAMING THE FRENCH: This seems to be one of the slightly underhanded tactics that's emerged from the Trio Con Brio summit over the weekend. It was certainly a fairly strong theme in Bush speech tonight. And there's buzz from London that Blair might try to exploit the anti-French prejudice that's still strong in the UK to shore up his very shaky position. The main gist of the argument is

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-908745122003-03-17T12:41:00.000-08:002003-03-17T12:51:36.000-08:00

A RWANDAN PROTESTS: Heck, this is one of many things I meant to post recently but forgot to. It's from Isidore Munyeshyaka, who contributes to a Rwandan-affairs group I'm in. He was responding to Ari Fleischer's invocation of the UN's failure to act to prevent genocide in Rwanda in 1994 as a stick to beat the UN 'round the head and neck with, in order to help excuse bypassing the UN on

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-908298022003-03-16T18:12:00.000-08:002003-03-16T19:08:48.000-08:00

PRE-EMPTIVE MOURNING: Someone in the peace movement-- I forget who-- called for a "week of pre-emptive mourning" this week. I'm certainly in the mood for that. I have intimate knowledge of two wars: the Lebanese civil war, and (the early months of) the "Very First Gulf War" of the modern era, that is, the one Saddam started in September 1980 when with the tacit support of the Americans he

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-908276412003-03-16T17:24:00.000-08:002003-03-16T17:24:43.140-08:00

AZORES SUMMIT TEXT -- THE ULTIMATE IN ELISION: The statement that the Trio Con Brio issued at the end of their Azores summit represents the highest form of elision: neither the word "war" nor any synonymous or similar terms is mentioned anywhere at all. The nearest the statement comes to mentioning anything as distasteful as war is "serious consequences", as in "If Saddam refuses even now to

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-907620582003-03-15T06:26:00.000-08:002003-03-15T06:51:14.000-08:00

PALESTINIAN-ISRAELI ROAD MAP 'NEWS': Read all about it! Read all about it! In the Rose Garden yesterday (March 14), the Prez promised that as soon as Abu Mazen is confirmed as Palestinian Prime Minister, "the road map for peace will be given to the Palestinians and Israelis." And then, "Once this road map is delivered, we will expect and welcome contributions from Israel and the Palestinians

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-906896932003-03-13T20:26:00.000-08:002003-03-13T20:29:56.000-08:00

MY COLUMN IN TODAY'S CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: So the column ran today. It's titled "Unraveling a centuries-old global system... " I guess that over the 13 or so years I've been contributing this column to the CSM, a number of my pieces have precipitated quite a lot of criticism. Like whenever I-- shock! horror!-- criticize some policy of the Government of Israel, or whatever. My

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-906884522003-03-13T20:00:00.000-08:002003-03-13T20:08:02.000-08:00

PERLE AND HERSH: So far, much of the commentary about Sy Hersh's great article in this week's New Yorker about Richard "Prince of Darkness" Perle has dealt with Perle's out-of-control accusation on CNN that Hersh is "the nearest thing American journalism has to a terrorist." But I think what people really need to focus on is the content of what Hersh writes about Perle's involvement in

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-906227572003-03-12T18:03:00.000-08:002003-03-12T18:37:13.000-08:00

GOING TO AFRICA: So, a massive war threatens in and around Iraq.... CNN, according to one report has or soon will have 250 people in the field there... As for JWN? Well, this trusty correspondent is hard at work planning a trip to-- Africa. The way I figured it, when I went final-final on this decision a couple of weeks ago, is that the Middle East's bundle of issues ain't going to go away.

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000440422003-03-11T18:39:00.000-08:002003-03-11T18:40:14.000-08:00

STILL LOOKING FOR AN INFORMATIVE, EDGY ISRAELI BLOG: Thanks to the alert reader who, in response to my earlier enquiry on this score, suggested I go to "Israeli guy." However, he didn't come anywhere close to being as informative, as irreverent, or as just-plain-interesting as Iraqi blogmeister Salam of Where's Raed? Today, though, scrolling down one of Salam's comment screens, I found a

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000440412003-03-11T18:33:00.000-08:002003-03-11T18:33:10.060-08:00

I WROTE A COLUMN FOR THE CSM TODAY: Sometimes, meeting deadlines is like pulling teeth. Sometimes, it flows. Today was a "flow" day. The piece will run Thursday-- check it out at their website. Actually, I'd spent many of the wee hours of the morning polishing various phrases in my half-sleep. So when I sat down at around 8:30 a.m.-- still in my cuddly fleece robe; it's cold again!-- I

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-905586202003-03-11T18:01:00.000-08:002003-03-11T18:24:53.000-08:00

BOMBS-AWAY DON DOES DIPLOMACY (also, does 'Bombs-away'): I've written before about Bombs-Away Don suffering some illusions that in addition to being SecDef he's also the Secretary of State... His latest diplomatic debacle has even set the tea-cups tinkling in 10 Downing St., it seems. So there he was at a Pentagon press briefing today saying, essentially, that he doesn't give a hoot whether

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000440402003-03-09T12:04:00.000-08:002003-03-10T17:06:22.000-08:00

LOSING (WINNING?) TOM FRIEDMAN: Seems like Dubya's news conference last Thursday truly was a bust. It has caused numerous liberals who were formerly on the war wagon finally to jump off. Here I'm talking not just about bloggisti like Josh Marshall, Kevin Drum, or the Agonist. I'm talking-- with all due respect to the aforementioned-- big-time. I'm talking my old friend Tom Friedman. Tom's

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000440392003-03-09T11:37:00.000-08:002003-03-10T17:06:50.000-08:00

DDV DOES DIPLOMACY: Master Hunk of the Rational Universe Dominique de Villepin is, according to Reuters, off to make a diplomatic tour of Africa. By an amazing coincidence (!) his itinerary will take him to Angola, Cameroon, and Guinea, the three African countries with seats on the Security Council. I've noted earlier on JWN that Colin Powell's failure to actually visit key countries, but to

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000440382003-03-09T11:01:00.000-08:002003-03-09T11:03:19.000-08:00

CODE PINK RALLY REPORT: I confess I did not feel entirely in sync with the "celebratory, creative" approach that the feminist organizers from Code Pink For Peace had planned for their pro-peace events in DC yesterday. But Barbara Ehrenreich, Alice Walker, Maxine Hong Kingston, and a raft of other great creative and dedicated women were scheduled to speak. And the timing was great-- coming so

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000440372003-03-09T09:15:00.000-08:002003-03-09T10:28:26.000-08:00

DUBYA: PERHAPS NOT XANAX BUT VOICE LESSONS? The Washinton Post's Tom Shales was one of the first to suggest that perhaps the android-like, affectless behavior of the Prez at thursday's news conference was due to him being on some kind of anti-depressant medication. Today, the peerless Maureen Dowd picks up the theme, titling her perceptive column on the event, "The Xanax Cowboy." I have a

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000440362003-03-07T19:42:00.000-08:002003-03-07T19:46:24.000-08:00

DUBYA, BLIX, BARADEI, AND THE 'NIGER CONNECTION': Last night we had the scary experience of seeing the Prez floundering, being evasive, and reiterating his intention to go to war regardless of what the U.N. might or might not do. Today, we had the very professional presentations of Hans Blix and Mohamed el-Baradei to the Security Council. I loved Blix's exclamation that "these are not

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000440352003-03-06T18:38:00.000-08:002003-03-06T19:12:37.000-08:00

NEVER MIND 'NUCULAR': ... half of America mis-says that one. It's "IAEA" that's the real test of someone who knows what she's talking about when it comes to weapons of mass destruction. IAEA as in the International Atomic Energy Agency, a very important UN-linked body that's the guardian of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, known as the NPT (not the NNPT; go figure). Try saying "IAEA"

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000440342003-03-05T19:52:00.000-08:002003-03-06T10:42:15.000-08:00

THE SAD OLD CANARD OF 'CREDIBILITY' (again): A blogger called Sean-Paul, who posts to The Agonist, has produced a four-part listing of the possible risks and rewards involved in the US invading or not invading Iraq. The listing is interesting, though very provincial and US-centric. Sean-Paul seems to have given no thought to the idea that the US, as a country and as a citizenry, might

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000440332003-03-05T19:20:00.000-08:002003-03-06T10:40:49.000-08:00

'TERROR TOURS' OFFERED IN THE WEST BANK: The BBC has been reporting that "Jewish settlers are offering special 'terror tours' of the West Bank and Gaza, in which tourists will be trained to fire weapons and participate in mock fights with Arab militants. Those who sign up for the four-day, $5,500 experience will "be taken on a helicopter tour of Palestinian 'terrorist enclaves' and be shown

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000440322003-03-05T18:59:00.000-08:002003-03-05T20:04:30.000-08:00

HONEYMOON IN FRANCE: Back in 1984, my newly-wed spouse and I were planning our slightly belated honeymoon. (The scond one, that was: the one without my father, my brother-in-law, and the two kids from my first marriage also tagging along.) No, this was to be the real thing. And being as how we are both deeply convinced Francophiles, it was going to be France... But we wanted to do

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000440312003-03-05T18:39:00.000-08:002003-03-05T18:42:22.000-08:00

TONI SMITH & DEIDRA CHAPMAN-- women of conscience: The incident happened Sunday, here in Charlottesville, Virginia, but it only made our local paper, The Daily Progress today. At the home game here Sunday, freshman center Deidra Smith of the University of Virginia women's basketball squad refused to turn to face the flag during the playing of the national anthem. She became the second

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000440302003-03-04T19:21:00.000-08:002003-03-04T19:21:06.966-08:00

NEW INDEX FEATURE, REMINDER ON DOMAIN NAME: If everything's gone right on my editing of the template for this blog, you should see an Index-like feature right under the Archives place. If you click on the link there, that takes you to a chronological listing of the titles of the posts here. It's not (yet) ideal, because when you've scanned through for, e.g., something about Japan and bridges

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000440292003-03-04T19:13:00.000-08:002003-03-04T19:13:00.500-08:00

THE COWBOY CODE: When I was at the Feb. 15 rally in NYC, one of the funnier signs I saw read "Stop mad cowboy disease!" Then last Sunday, I was talking with my friend Charles Morrill who said he really wished Dubya could live up to Gene Autrey's cowboy code. How so? I said. (I didn't tell him I have only the faintest idea who Gene Autrey is or was.) Charles said he really wanted to write

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000440282003-03-03T18:43:00.000-08:002003-03-04T13:23:25.000-08:00

"THE BUSHITES' WAR OF GLOBAL INSURRECTION": Today, I wrote a column of that title for Al-Hayat. I can't give you the whole text, since it takes them a few days to translate it into Arabic and then schedule it for publication. The funny thing is, I actually started out this morning planning a column on a different (though related) subject. As often happens, it was the process of writing

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000440272003-03-02T17:14:00.000-08:002003-03-02T17:38:59.000-08:00

WASHINGTONIANS REALLY ARE DIFFERENT: It's been my surmise for some time now that people who live inside Washington's infamous Beltway really are a different breed from the rest of us. This insight came to me roughly three minutes after our family moved here to Central Virginia-- from Washington DC-- in 1997. Okay, maybe it took more than three minutes. But the point is, the two-and-a-half

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-2000440262003-03-02T17:10:00.000-08:002003-03-02T17:10:47.373-08:00

ONE WIN FOR THE GOOD GUYS: Yesterday, when I was cataloguing how badly things were going for the Bush administration, I confess I forgot to mention an important piece of good news. That was, the capture in Pakistan of Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, the guy described as Qaeda's Chief Operating Officer. That certainly sounded like good news for the forces of sanity in the world, though we shouldn't

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-899811592003-03-01T19:38:00.000-08:002003-03-01T19:40:50.000-08:00

HOLY LAND CASUALTY TOLL: Almost every days now, there seem to be headlines about some new incursion of Israeli armor, or attack by Israeli helicopters, in one or another part of the Gaza Strip, or in Nablus or Hebron. When I was in Israel last summer, many Israelis warned that if Prez Bush launched a "big" war against Iraq, then Sharon might well be tempted to launch his own mirror-image of

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-899801332003-03-01T19:10:00.000-08:002003-03-01T19:17:15.000-08:00

A PURRTY BAD COUPLE OF DAYS: Yes, things have been a little challenging around our household for the past couple of days. The dog has a slipped disc in her long foxhound's back and has been very needy. Yesterday, we were still digging our way out of the latest 48-hour-long snowstorm to dump its load over Central Virginia. And today, the 17-year-old daughter fainted, fell against a dresser,

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5026890.post-898792422003-02-27T19:37:00.000-08:002003-02-27T19:54:05.000-08:00

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH WATCH, part Deux: HRW is an American-based, mainly staff-driven research and advocacy organization. In contrast to Amnesty International, the Federation Internationale des Ligues des Droits de l'Homme, and a number of other human-rights organizations, HRW notably does not take a position for or against the advisability or legality of the currently threatened U.S. assault

helenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709270195918636938noreply@blogger.com