Recommended reading

A Cronkite Moment? by Jonathan Tasini, on signs that the conservative middle class is turning against Bush, Cheney & Rumsfeld's war.

Downward spiral of depression?

A colleague in the National Writers Union asks if others, like her, suffer periods of tremendous doubt of their writing and enter a downward spiral of paralyzing depression. But she wasn't just looking for company for her misery; she wanted solutions. This is what I told her:

Yep. I'll bet we all do, sometimes. What I do about it is dose myself with virtual Prozac ©. In my case this comes in the form of a shelf of poetry. Howard Nemerov is very good for this ailment, at least in my case. And Antonio Machado helps me remember that you just have to keep going on. (That's what Samuel Beckett said, too.)

The funny paper

Kudos to Deborah Solomon. The NYT Magazine is sometimes amusing, but rarely so laugh-out-loud hysterical. Check out her pursuit of the wizened Harvard prof of withered brain, Samuel Huntington. He's the old coot who's sounding the alarm that the Mexicans (of all people) are stealing our country away from White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, to whom, Huntington assures us, it rightfully belongs. Solomon is skeptical, and finds it too, too easy to work up old Huntington to a froth. Having established his WASPishness ("The Huntingtons arrived in Boston in 1633"), she asks him:

Do you think that there is any truth to the stereotypical view of WASP's as emotionally cold people?

Wait a minute. You're talking about people. I am not talking about people. I am talking about ideas and practices.

What do you say to the fact that about 10 percent of the U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq are Hispanic?

Again you are talking about people.

What else is there besides people?

What indeed? Thank you, Ms. Solomon, for shedding such a strong light on such a murky old waspnest encrusted mind. How could anyone take him seriously enough to bother to put together a whole panel debunking him? (See blog for 4/22, below.) The man is a self-parody. See the whole silly interview: Three Cheers for Assimilation

"Dogville" is America

"Before I go to prison, the America that I know is a beautiful country and Americans are such beautiful, kind, humble people. When I go to prison, I see there is a different face of the United States of America." This is what Javaid Iqbal, on the telephone from Faisalabad, Pakistan, told Nina Bernstein of the NYT. Bernstein's article this morning, 2 Men Charge Abuse in Arrests After 9/11 Terror Attack, is another tale of horrible abuses -- degrading, painful and life-harming -- by American officials. Iqbal and Ehab Elmaghraby, an Egyptian, were both living and working in New York legally and happily when their lives were interrupted by "federal agents in an anti-terror sweep." Other federal officials ultimately deported them even though they were cleared of the original charges-- deemed guilty because of their national origins and religions, that is, because they were outsiders.

In the powerful fable "Dogville," which we saw last night, Nicole Kidman plays an outsider who comes to the remote mountain hamlet of Dogville while on the run from gangsters. The Dogvilleans at first protect her grudgingly, then come to like her and even begin to depend on her services. But when outside events ("Wanted" posters tacked up by the sheriff on a rare visit to the town) make them think their generosity might entail some risk, they begin exploiting and punishing her horribly, including regular rapes, all the while regarding themselves as righteous. The violent ending comes as an immense relief to the entire audience, but mixed with the relief must be a disturbing recognition: this must be the kind of relief that so many in the Muslim world felt when the Twin Towers fell.

Don't see "Dogville" if you want to sleep peacefully snuggled in a Dogvillean cocoon of righteousness. The acting is too good, and the bare-bones stagecraft never lets your mind drift from horror of the story to the scenery. Dogville official website

Who needs the UN?

I just got this belated response to my op-ed on Spain from March 16. I'm glad for the "useful analysis" comment, but not sure I understand the point about the UN. There are of course many problems with the UN, where I know several people who are doing the best they can to keep our world livable. The greatest problems stem from the US Government's underfunding and deliberate sabotaging of it, while simultaneously regarding other world agreements (Kyoto, the World Court) as irrelevant. But if the UN dissolved, or if other countries simply stopped bothering with it, wouldn't we likely see a rebirth of Bandung and an organization of the nonaligned nations to stand against the US? It looks like the US needs the UN just to forestall that happening, so it will probably continue to limp along.

Thank you for your useful analysis. Clearly the UN is useless. However, our State Department should be actively cultivating our allies many of whom have been very helpful in this effort in Iraq. M. Jones

Venezuela

I've been following the turmoil in Venezuela as closely as I could from the distance of New York, between other distractions like assignments and my own government's sowing of turmoil in Iraq and other places. I can't do much about Iraq, but I do have some experience that might be useful in Venezuela. Finally this week I decided to do something about it, to try to clarify the issues: I've written a grant proposal to let me go back to Caracas and talk to people in the barrios, as Venezuelans call those dense, poor warrens of improvised housing clinging to the slopes around the city, where the mass of Hugo Chávez's fervent supporters struggle for life. (I lived and worked in two of these communities years ago, in my first job after college, so I'll feel like Brer Rabbit back in the briar patch.) And I also plan to talk to the professional and business people and union leaders who oppose him. Each side accuses the other of being "antidemocratic." Yet each side has approved an attempted military coup! The anti-Chávez people just in April 2002 -- shortly undone by the rapid and mostly spontaneous massing of Chávez's supporters from the barrios and the loyalty of most of the armed forces. And ten years earlier, Chávez himself led a nearly-successful coup that his followers now celebrate. Just what kind of democracy are they talking about then?

I just came across this old essay of mine, previously unpublished, on Chávez's 1992 coup and what it meant. You may find it useful if you too are puzzled by events there. Hugo Chávez's Failed Coup of 1992.

Writers' rights panel May 4 - don't miss it!

Here's that information again, on the National Writers Union, New York Chapter website.

They really don't want us to know how much they knew

Check out this story from the Independent: Lawyers try to gag FBI worker over 9/11 by Andrew Buncombe in Washington.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Geoffrey Fox gf@geoffreyfox.com
1-212-505-2615

Fourth Estate or Fifth Column?
Panel on Rights & Responsibilities of Independent Writers in a Time of Terror

“The events of 9/11 and the Bush Administration's 'war on terror' have had a chilling effect on writers,” says Mel Friedman, writer and activist in the National Writers Union. Concerned about the impact of the USA PATRIOT Act and other measures of the Bush administration to restrict the free flow of ideas and information, Friedman has joined with other members of the NWU’s New York chapter to organize a panel on "Fourth Estate or Fifth Column?: Rights & Responsibilities of Independent Writers in a Time of Terror," to be held at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York on May 4.

“The adversarial relationship between government and its critics is not unique to this administration," says Friedman. “But the Bush Administration's obsession with secrecy, its efforts to gut the Freedom of Information Act, and its return to a policy that treats dissent as disloyalty bode ill for a republic founded on human rights and the free flow of ideas and information."

The panel discussion is co-sponsored by the National Writers Union and the City University of New York Graduate Center's Continuing Education and Public Programs.

“Every journalist, every author, and every citizen needs to understand the challenges facing the press today,” says Friedman. “The May 4 panel is an opportunity to increase our understanding so that writers can respond effectively to safeguard the free flow of information and ideas that is the guarantor of our democracy.”

The event will be held on May 4, 2004, at The City University of New York Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street. Suggested donation $10; $5 for students. To register (course #4235) or for more information, call: (212) 817-8215, or visit Continuing Education website.

PANELISTS

GERARD COLBY, Author, Journalist and President, National Writers Union

LUCY DALGLISH, Executive Director, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Washington, DC

LARRY SIEMS, Director, Freedom to Write and International Programs
PEN American Center, New York.
Larry Siems served for five years as Director of the Freedom to Write Program at PEN USA West in Los Angeles, where he spearheaded the establishment of PEN's Latin American Network.

UDI OFER, Director, New York Bill of Rights Defense Campaign, New York Civil Liberties Union, New York

Price of misguided patriotism: forbidden images of death

My friend Diana Wright writes: After 4 days of constant trying, I have finally been able to get to the web site with the photos we are not supposed to see. Some of them are extraordinarily moving. When you start looking at individual series, taken in dawn, bright light, dark, then you see a great deal more that we have not been told. These caskets are treated with amazing care at each point of transfer. If the war is being carried out in our name, with our money, at least the military are showing the tenderness we share toward the lost.

DW

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