Liberals Love of Palestine Baffling

The Hamas flag. Is this a banner you want flying at the U.N.?

Yesterday President Barack Obama visited Ireland and assured the citizens of Éire that the “United States stands with Ireland.” That’s in marked contrast to last week, when he told Israel that it needed to retreat to its 1967 borders as a precondition for peace talks with Palestine.

What is it about liberals and Palestine anyhow? At the University of Massachusetts you could set a truckload of babies and kittens afire and students would duck into the Student Union, grab a cup of coffee, and exit the back door. But mention Palestine and they weep, don red and white shumrags, and begin shouting anti-Israel slogans. That’s an awful lot of anguish for a group of people who danced in the street when the Twin Towers fell on September 11, 2001. How about this is a precondition for peace talks—peace? How about saying there is no discussion until Hamas stops lobbing missiles into Israel and sending bomb-wired adolescents onto Israeli busses? Better yet, how about saying that there are no talks until Hamas is disbanded?

Shall we begin to enumerate the ways in which current thinking on Palestine is wrong? Let’s do that! First of all, the parties involved need to broker a deal, not the United States. Imagine the outrage here if an Israeli politician said, in advance of a summit between the U.S. and Mexico, that the United States needs to retreat to pre-1846 borders with Mexico and abandon “settlements” in California, Texas, and the Southwest. Or what if the Balkan states were told they needed to respect pre-World War I borders, hence the Austro-Hungarian Empire was being revived? A fact of history is that lands change hands. Is that moral? Usually not; wars seldom are. At some point, though, a settlement must be made and everyone must move on. Borders can be arbitrated, but only when the principals involved request it; other than in the case of conquest, outsiders do not get to make the decision about how disputes are resolved.

Second, do we really want to support a United Nations resolution to create a new state that sanctions terrorism? Please spare me the crap about Hamas being the democratically elected representative of the Palestinian people. Americans wave the words “democracy” and “elections” as if they are cantrips that remove all curses and cure all ills. Write a constitution, hold an election, and democracy shall bloom like thousand flowers. We believe this, I suppose, because it worked so well in South Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, where elections put the kibosh to the Vietcong, Al Jihad, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban. Oh, wait….

Hamas exists for a single reason: the destruction of Israel. Okay; I’ll back off and be more charitable—it has yet to unveil its plan for state building or demonstrate a capacity for improving the lot of average Palestinians. More to the point, it has yet to practice civility, a factor that ought to be more of a precondition for statehood than constitutions and elections. For all of the handwringing about the aggressive actions of Israel, can anyone come up with an example of an Israeli troop incursion that was not preceded by direct attacks on Israel? (And that includes its ill-fated 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which came after relentless shelling from Hezbollah.) To return to the Mexico analogy, if Mexicans sent missiles and suicide bombers into the U.S. on a weekly basis, how much time would pass before we scrambled the jets, sent in the Marines, and declared Mexico null and void?

Third, why the rush to create a non-viable state? Palestine lacks water, arable land, mineral resources, and infrastructure. Create it tomorrow and what do you have? Bangladesh in the desert. For all of the hatred of Israel, the salient economic reality of Palestine is that it has been a welfare client of Israel for decades. That’s why 1.5 million Palestinians live in Israel, not the West Bank, and why tens of thousands commute to Israel for work—when the borders aren’t closed due to terrorism. Want to create a Palestinian state that works? There already is one: Jordan! Half of its population is Palestinian. The most logical solution is to append the West Bank to Jordan, whose Hashemite dynasty gained power in 1946, the same year Palestine rejected statehood, by the way. Jordan has one of the highest standards of living in the Middle East, but I guess liberals can’t support this plan because it’s a monarchy. If only they’d hold an election…. (Sigh!)

Fourth, and the cincher in my view, Barack Obama’s hard line on Israel works against everything the United States says it wants. Democracy? There is a single democratic state in the entire region: Israel. Security? There is one power that consistently fights terrorism: Israel. Improved standards of living? The region’s highest standard of living is found in Israel. Elections? That would be Israel. Human rights? There’s room for improvement everywhere, but the region’s best record is in Israel. Stability? Israel by a landslide. Reliability as a U.S. ally? Well it sure as hell isn’t Palestine! Or Syria. Or Iraq. Or Lebanon. Or anyone else not named Israel.

Liberals need to wise up on the Middle East. They’re like children trying to wish their fantasies into reality. We’re already seeing the democracy fantasy unravel. Anyone want to place bets on how long it is before the Muslim Brotherhood forces its way into Egyptian politics, or Al Qaeda takes over Yemen? There is, at present, a single road to peace and stability in the Middle East. It runs through Israel. The hard line Barack Obama should be taking it is this: the preconditions for U.S. aid, arbitration of disputes, and diplomatic relations is repudiation of violence and acceptance of Israel’s right to exist.

Video Review: Workers Win in Made in Dagenham

MADE IN DAGENHAM (2010)

Directed by Nigel Cole

113 mins.

* * *

Depressed by what happened in Wisconsin? Feeling sick by the nationwide union-bashing steamroller effect that’s flattening working people? Think there’s no hope? Maybe you could use a reminder that sometimes the bastards go too far and that common people do, on occasion, stand up for themselves. Let us recommend a modest British movie, Made in Dagenham. It’s now on DVD, about the only way to see it as it sped out of U.S. theaters faster than a Ford goes down the assembly line. Like a lot of “small” films, this one’s meager budget isn’t hard to spot, but watch it one for inspiration, not path-breaking filmmaking.

Made in Dagenham is the British Norma Rae. Dagenham is a section of East London that was, until 2005, the site of a massive Ford assembly plant. In 1968, it was the site of an impromptu strike by 187 women sewing machine operators who were responsible for all of the upholstery that went inside Fords. That 187 women walked out in defiance of Ford U.K, the American parent firm, and their own union was remarkable enough. That they won was little short of miraculous, and a signal event in helping a working-class version of feminism take hold in England. Rita O’Grady, a married woman who simply got fed up with being ignored, spearheaded the strike. The women of Dagenham were abused by management, made the butt of sexist jokes by the thousands of male autoworkers, and were taken for granted by a union that insisted that men’s issues were more important. This film shows how the women of Dagenham turned everyone’s assumptions upside down.

O’Grady is played by Sally Hawkins with a deft and steely resolve. This comes as a surprise, because we last saw her in Happy-Go-Lucky playing a motor-mouthed ditz who flitted across the screen like a Republican fleeing a tax collector. We walked out of that film, as we found Hawkins’s performance so over-the-top and annoying that she could have been Jim Carrey in drag. Not in this film! Hawkins is a spark plug analogous to Sally Field in Norma Rae, and she is superb at walking the line between past and present. Her performance allows us to see the ways in which the 1960s belatedly but inexorably transformed working-class life. Bob Hoskins turns in a very credible performance as the one union official who believes that women need to be seen as comrades, not cupcakes. Another intriguing performance is that of Jaime Winstone (daughter of veteran actor Ray Winstone) as Sandra, a young woman torn between using her slutty sexuality to get ahead, or to decry her exploitation and castigate the sexist pigs that objectify her. Miranda Richardson gets to kick chauvinist keister as the first woman to hold the office of British Secretary of State.

This is an inspiring film, even if it is often heavy handed and predictable. The story is, essentially, David-versus-Goliath with David sporting a Ronettes’ hairstyle and wearing a gathered skirt. In like fashion, some of the characters are cartoon cutouts rather than recognizable people. For all of that, the film nicely captures the sense of a culture in transition. We also see that which so many men tried hard not to see. There could be no turning back; the page hadn’t turned, it had been ripped from its binder and burned.

So watch this film and remind yourself that some times the good gals win.

Postscript: The Dagenham Ford plant closed on 2005, not because of union problems, but because the sixty-year-old plant was no longer economically viable. Wind turbines are now made in Dagenham.

Michael Miles Takes the Banjo to Unexpected Places

MICHAEL J. MILES

Collage

www.milesmusic.org

****

Just what you’ve all been waiting for: a solo banjo album. You scoff? Be gone, unbeliever. The subtitle of Michael Miles’s fifth release is “Timbres of Unlikely Juxtaposition,” and it doesn’t even begin to describe what’s in store on this recording. It’s just like every other banjo recording you’ve ever heard, assuming the ones you’ve heard have tracks arranged for the banjo to share aural space with trumpet, flugehorn, the vibes, Brazilian hand percussion, a string quartet, and vocals from the Sons of the Never Wrong! This CD is more Dave Brubeck Quartet than Blue Ridge Mountains and more Robert Johnson than “Rocky Top.” Miles, who teaches at Chicago’s Old School of Folk Music, is often compared to Bela Fleck, but even that parallel falls short. Know any other banjo players who have covered Bach’s “Gavotte en Rondeau” and “Sleepers Awake?” Remember “All That You Dream” by Little Feat? Miles covers that one too, as well as Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads.” Okay—Eric Clapton has covered that classic, as has Alvin Lee, Jimi Hendrix, Duane Allman, Alex Van Halen, Trey Anastacio, and a host of other guitar heroes. But “Crossroads” on the banjo? Hell, yes! Miles also busts out four originals, and they too break the mold as each is played in conjunction with Chicago’s Chamber Blues String Quartet. When he finally slips in a mountain standard, “The Cuckoo,” you almost have to pinch yourself to realize that it’s on the same record as the rest. This album is a triumph of boldness, panache, and genius.

Check out his "New Century Suite."

The Unaccountable Monstrousness of Catholic Bishops Report

Need further proof that it would take Dan Brown to unearth the Roman Catholic Church’s moral compass? Catholic bishops released their five-year study on clerical abuse yesterday and named what caused priests to abuse hundreds of children: the sexual revolution. In the therapeutic language of apology and faux concern that now passes for “justice” these days, the report portrays priests as the victims. It seems the poor pedophiles were ill prepared for the sexually frank and libertine ways of Flower Children. The report admits that the Church erred in not monitoring priests better during this sexually open time, but if you believe this load of whitened hogwash--and you should not--what happened was akin to round-eyed unsupervised children let loose in a candy shop: alas, some of them overindulged.

Let’s not mince words. This report is an abomination. If the Rapture does happen this weekend, no one associated it with it, the US Conference of Bishops, the Vatican, or BishopAccountability.org will be heavenly bound. Are we to applaud because the report oh-so-carefully did not blame homosexuality? Or should we laugh because it so definitely asserted that celibacy vows had nothing to do with the spike in gay priests and sexual abuse? Perhaps we should demand an investigation of the investigators. After all, most of the money for the $1.8 million study conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice came from--you guessed it--Catholic organizations. What next, a major research project on the health benefits of tobacco underwritten by R.J. Reynolds? (Can we at least have a list of the John Jay researchers so we can make sure to toss their applications, should they apply for jobs at universiies with ethical standards?)

People of faith should react with outrage to this. It is, simply put, one of the most monstrous lies ever put forth in the name of religion. At least rightwing evangelicals have the grace to blame Satan when they get caught in sexual scandals. But hippies? Jesus, Mary, and the love beads! “Next up on The Jerry Springer Show--How the Merry Pranksters Primed Priestly Pedophilia.” I am reminded of Joseph Welch’s 1954 attack on Senator Joseph McCarthy when he blurted out, “Have you no sense of decency… at long last?” Later in the exchange an exasperated Welch turned away from McCarthy and said to him, “I will not discuss this with you further…. If there is a God in heaven, it will do neither you nor your cause any good. I will not discuss it further.”

That sums up how I feel about the Catholic Church these days. The Church continues to behave as if this is the Middle Ages and it can use its wealth and power to sweep scandal under a brocaded tapestry. But I note another thing here in my town--three of the city’s four Catholic churches are closing and being consolidated into one. Some parishioners call this tragic; I call it “justice.”

Justice Not Done in Phoebe Prince Case

Is six months probation appropriate compensation for Phoebe Prince's death?

It began with a thunderclap and ended in crocodile tears. Even if you don’t live in Western Massachusetts you’ve probably heard of Phoebe Prince (pictured). She was the fifteen-year-old Irish émigré who hanged herself after brutal bouts of bullying from six teens at South Hadley High School, one of whom was an eighteen-year-old football player with whom she had sex, and another of whom was his erstwhile girlfriend. The case more than consumed South Hadley--it totally devoured it. It touched off torrents of tears, months of anguished handwringing, and bitter recrimination against the teens involved, teachers who turned a blind eye, and school administrators who failed to act upon information that some teachers and parents did provide. Former District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel did the right thing and brought criminal charges against the teens involved.

So how did it all end? New Northwestern District Attorney David Sullivan accepted plea bargains that, in essence, wiped the record clean and left the school district off the hook. The bullies involved showed up in court--attorneys in tow--apologized, shed a few tears, and were handed sentenced to probation periods of six months to a year, after which their records will be wiped clean and charges expunged. Sullivan vigorously defended himself against charges that the sentences were a “mere slap on the wrist,” and insisted the kids had “punished in other ways,” including media scrutiny, soul searching, and community ostracism. In what was surely the triumph of rhetoric over reality, Sullivan declared an end to the era of turning a “blind eye to bullying.”

At this point I should confess that I voted for Sullivan when Scheibel retired. But his ham-handed handling of the Phoebe Prince case he inherited gives me pause and I doubt I’ll cast a vote for reelection. No one wanted to see the kids involved tossed away on a fiery heap of vengeance; not Anne O'Brien, Prince’s mother, wanted that. Place me in the camp that says we don’t want to hold someone accountable forever for something awful done as an impulsive adolescent. I’m also glad the statutory rape charge was dropped against the eighteen-year-old--that law is a relic completely out of synch with the way real teens behave. Message to moralists: If you don’t want kids to have sex, put an end to the culture that begins sexualizing girls when they’re prepubescent “beauty queens.”

But I do recall an axiom from my own days as a social worker--If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. I’m sorry, but probation and a clean record is a wrist slap, no matter how Sullivan dissects it. In lieu of an aggressive look into the school district, I’m also leery of end-to-bullying nostrums. From where I sit, the message sent in the Prince case is simply another chapter in the “apology” culture that’s rampant in our society--do what you want until you get caught, and then act really, really sorry. Do lawyers still practice law these days, or have they become drama coaches who teach method acting to defendants?

Let me run a scenario. Let’s say that the kids who bullied Phoebe Prince were not middle-class teens from middle-class South Hadley. Let’s cross the Connecticut River and make them public housing kids from Holyoke. Let’s make them black and Hispanic rather than white. And let’s give each of them the public defender, not privately retained lawyers. Do those kids get six months probation and dropped charges? I suspect that the community reaction to that would be analogous to old horror films where we see the villagers marching on the castle with fiery torches in one hand and pitchforks in the other.

A more appropriate actionwould have been a suspended jail sentence of six months to a year. Let’s take stock here. The six teens involved will, at some point, get on with their lives, their stain and shame notwithstanding. Phoebe Prince won’t get that chance and these six are at least partially to blame for that. Probation without consequence is simply not an appropriate punishment. The county where I used to work often used a modified “Scared Straight” tactic where kids in their late teens were arraigned on Friday afternoon, bail was set high, and they spent the weekend in jail until parents could arrange bond on Monday. (The jail housed them away from the general population.) Maybe that’s overly harsh, but it’s not too harsh to say that the burden is on the teens involved in the Prince case need to prove that theirs was a horrifying one-time mistake and that the tears and apologies are sincere, not rehearsed. My bare minimum--and one I would have advocated in my days as a juvenile probation officer--would have been a stipulation of three-to-five years of non-criminal behavior as a prerequisite for sealing the charges. I would have also encouraged a thorough investigation of the school district. Phoebe Prince is dead, six teens have some serious redemption to do, and District Attorney Sullivan dropped the ball.

Peter Bradley Adams New CD Pleasant but Lacks Diversity

PETER BRADLEY ADAMS

Between Us

Mishara Music

* * *

Peter Bradley Adams has a voice that’s David Wilcox-like sweet and soothing. The former front man of Eastmountainsouth, a duo signed by Robbie Robertson, is back with his fourth solo album. Like the previous three, is impresses with its gentleness and is nearly retro in the manner in which it highlights songwriting and voice without a lot of extraneous production and noise. The arrangements often reminded me of Daniel Lanois, especially the way in which various electric guitar guest musicians used their instruments for sonic soundscaping. The album’s quietness is both its strength and its weakness in the sense that it’s a balm for frenzied minds, but doesn’t work so well when you’re bombing down the highway in an upbeat mood. It consists of eleven songs, all of which are mid-tempo. This gives the album a distinct identity, but it also lists toward monochromatic. Adams’ voice could use a bit of controlled grit in order to add emphasis to his poetic lyrics. Ditto the need to explore a broader range of time signatures.

I enjoyed this CD, but my enthusiasm waxed and waned according to my mood. I did find that it required close concentration lest it become aural wallpaper. I also found myself listening hard for small adornments that broke the tone a bit. Some of this was achieved by the gorgeous backing vocals of Aoife O’Donovan on songs such as “My Love is My Love” and “Waltz for the Faithless.” Even more came when I just sat down and listened, without outward distractions. That said, Adams has been labeled a “promising” artist for several years now and this album will not be a game-changer. It’s pleasant and well worth purchasing, but Adams needs to expand his repertoire and musical palette before he’ll shed his old label and become a consistent headliner.

Check out this lovely YouTube clip.

Pakistan: The Bitter Fruit of Ali Jinnah

Pakistan's Effort to Locate Osama bin Laden?

And now the bullshit begins. Pakistan is busy backpedaling from the Osama bin Laden hit that took place on its soil. After the requisite saber rattling by its military, which warned the U.S. not to conduct any more raids on its soil, Pakistani government, military, and intelligence officials have announced they were shocked--shocked I tell you--to find that bin Laden was living near Islamabad. Why none of the military officers stationed just 200 meters away had the slightest idea he was there! The Pakistanis have even--get this--hired a U.S. lobby firm, Locke Lord Strategies 5, to shore up its reputation among U.S. officials.

Absurd? Of course it is. But here’s something even more unbelievable--it might just work! Cautious word is already trickling out of Washington that the United States can’t afford to allow Pakistan to become a failed state and that we need to work with Pakistani officials to repair the breach in relations and continue the war against terror. With all due respect to the Pakistani people, the majority of whom we should carefully separate from the den of vipers that misrule them, let’s enumerate some of the reasons why further involvement with Pakistan is wrongheaded.

Pakistan isn’t in “danger” of being a failed state; it is a failed state. It’s never been anything other than a failed state. Today’s Pakistan is the rotten fruit of a withered tree planted by its misguided founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876-1948) in 1947. A short history lesson: Jinnah was originally a member of the Indian National Congress (INC), the group seeking to oust British imperialists from the Indian subcontinent. He split from the INC in 1920, when Mahatma Gandhi launched his non-cooperation program against the British. (Gandhi going “native” offended the Western-trained and Western-cultured Ali Jinnah.) In the 1930s, Ali Jinnah began to insist on a two-nations solution once the British were supplanted. In his mind, Muslims and Hindus could not live in the same nation. To be sure, there had been tension among the groups, as one might expect given that Muslim Mughals conquered India in 1526 and relegated Hindus to second-class citizenship. The Mughals were outsiders as surely as were the British, who kicked out the Mughals in 1804.

Fact Check Time 1: Ali Jinnah was full of himself and a few other substances. He got his way, though Gandhi and Nehru pleaded with him not to split India. In 1947, West Pakistan was created from Muslim majority lands in Punjab, and East Pakistan from lands in Bengal. Now there’s a solid basis for a new nation, one bifurcated by a thousand miles of India between its two halves! Pakistan was a basket case from day one. Thirteen million people were displaced and angry riots led to the deaths of up to half a million souls. So was Ali Jinnah right that Muslims and Hindus cannot live in peace? Not really. Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim nation (203 million) and Pakistan is second (174 million). Want to guess who’s third? That would be India, with 161 million--roughly 13% of its population.

Pakistan became an unstable nation prone to coup governments (1955-71, 1977-88, 1999-2008), failed coups (1949, 1980, 1995), wars with India (1947, 1965, 1971, and 1995), and a devastating civil war in 1971 in which East Pakistan went its separate way and became Bangladesh, chronically among the poorest nations on earth. Throw in a penchant for assassination during Pakistan’s sixty-four-year history and it’s hard to see it as anything other than a stillborn state. Were it not for the fact that it’s also (alas!) a nuclear power, Pakistan would be as irrelevant as a global power as, say Tajikistan.

Fact Check 2: Do not be deceived into thinking that severing relations with Pakistan will hurt the Pakistani people. Since 2002 Pakistan has gotten $12.3 billion of US aid, but only about a quarter of it has gone to economic development. Most has gone to--yep--military and intelligence spending; in fact, quite a bit of it has gone to security forces that have suppressed Pakistani dissident movements.

Fact Check 3: Pakistan has never been an ally in the war on terror. Counting bin Laden, exactly four high-profile terrorists have been arrested on Pakistani soil since 2002; in three cases the raids were initiated and led by U.S. forces. Want to bet on how many Afghani Taliban leaders are in Pakistan right now?

The U.S. relationship with Pakistan is a Cold War relic whose day has passed. In 1955, India had the unmitigated gall to champion a “Third Way” program that rejected both U.S. and the Soviet Union. In the bipolar thinking of the day, that made them “pro-Soviet,” so the U.S. snuggled up to Pakistan to keep the dominos from tumbling. That was rubbish during the Cold War and it’s positively archaic in the post-Soviet world. There is, simply, no good reason to continue pumping billions into Pakistani coffers. It is time for Pakistanis to take a hard look at the bitter fruit Ali Jinnah planted, and it needs to do so without American interference. While we’re at it, it’s time for the U.S. to lift the operating licenses of lobby firms whose profit margins are healthier than their sense of patriotism. Locke Lord Strategies 5 would be a good place to start.