Moyers on Gaza & Israel

From Bill Moyers Journal at pbs:

For too much of the world at large the names of the dead and wounded in Gaza might as well be John Doe too. They are the casualties and victims of Israel’s decision to silence the rockets from Hamas terrorists by waging war on an entire population. Yes, every nation has the right to defend its people. Israel is no exception, all the more so because Hamas would like to see every Jew in Israel dead.

But brute force can turn self-defense into state terrorism. It’s what the U.S. did in Vietnam, with B-52s and napalm, and again in Iraq, with shock and awe. By killing indiscriminately – the elderly, kids, entire families by destroying schools and hospitals — Israel did exactly what terrorists do and exactly what Hamas wanted. It spilled the blood that turns the wheel of retribution.

Hardly had Israeli tank fire killed and injured scores at a UN school in Gaza than a senior Hamas leader went on television to announce, “The Zionists have legitimized the killing of their children by killing our children.” Already attacks on Jews in Europe are escalating — a burning car crashes into a synagogue in Southern France, a fiery object is hurled through a window in Sweden, venomous anti-Semitic graffiti appears across the continent, and arsonists strike in London.

What we are seeing in Gaza is the latest battle in the oldest family quarrel on record. Open your Bible: the sons of the patriarch Abraham become Arab and Jew. Go to the Book of Deuteronomy. When the ancient Israelites entered Canaan their leaders urged violence against its inhabitants. The very Moses who had brought down the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” now proclaimed, “You must destroy completely all the places where the nations have served their gods. You must tear down their altars, smash their pillars, cut down their sacred poles, set fire to the carved images of their gods, and wipe out their name from that place.”

So God-soaked violence became genetically coded. A radical stream of Islam now seeks to eliminate Israel from the face of the earth. Israel misses no opportunity to humiliate the Palestinians with checkpoints, concrete walls, routine insults, and the onslaught in Gaza. As if boasting of their might, Israel defense forces even put up video of the explosions on YouTube for all the world to see. A Norwegian doctor there tells CBS, “It’s like Dante’s Inferno. They are bombing one and a half million people in a cage.”

America has officially chosen sides. We supply Israel with money, F-16s, winks and tacit signals. Our Christian right links arms with the religious extremists there who claim divine sanctions for Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. Our political elites show neither independence nor courage by challenging the consensus that Israel can do no wrong. Although one recent poll found Democratic voters overwhelmingly oppose the Israeli offensive by a 24-point margin, Democratic Party leaders in Congress nonetheless march in lockstep to the hardliners in Israel and the White House. Rarely does our mainstream media depart from the monotonous monologue of the party line. Many American Jews know, as Aaron David Miller writes in the current “Newsweek”, that the destruction in Gaza won’t do much to address Israel’s longer-term needs.

But those who raise questions are accused by a prominent reform rabbi of being “morally deficient.” One Jewish American activist told me this week that never in 30 years has he seen such blind and binding conformity in his community. “You’d never know,” he said, “that it is the Gazans who are doing most of the suffering.”

We are in a terrible bind — Israel, the Palestinians, the United States. Each greases the cycle of violence, as one man’s terrorism becomes another’s resistance to oppression. Is it possible to turn this mindless tragedy toward peace? For starters, read Aaron David Miller’s article in the current “Newsweek”. Get his book, “The Much Too Promised Land”. And pay no attention to those Washington pundits cheering the fighting in Gaza as they did the bloodletting in Iraq. Killing is cheap and war is a sport in a city where life and death become abstractions of policy. Here are the people who pay the price.

Legal Problems with Torture

Jane Mayer, author of The Dark Side: The Inside Story Of How The War On Terror Turned Into A War On American Ideals, on Bill Moyers’ Journal:

… to say that there’s a special exception here: we won’t torture except when we will torture, is a legal problem.

Yup.  Not much of a standard is it?

Mayer is good stuff.  Transcript of the interview here

UPDATE:  Jane Mayer at the New York Review of Books –

Seven years after al-Qaeda’s attacks on America, as the Bush administration slips into history, it is clear that what began on September 11, 2001, as a battle for America’s security became, and continues to be, a battle for the country’s soul.

Gilded America

Steve Fraser with Bill Moyers

From Bill Moyers’ Journal at PBS:

The BBC reported startling economic equality figures in a recent documentary: the top 200 wealthiest people in the world control more wealth than the bottom 4 billion. But what is more striking to many is a close look at the economic inequality in the homeland of the “American Dream.” The United States is the most economically stratified society in the western world. As THE WALL STREET JOURNAL reported, a recent study found that the top .01% or 14,000 American families hold 22.2% of wealth – the bottom 90%, or over 133 million families, just 4% of the nation’s wealth.

Additional studies narrow the focus: This from the Pew Foundation and THE NEW YORK TIMES: “The chance that children of the poor or middle class will climb up the income ladder, has not changed significantly over the last three decades. “This from THE ECONOMIST’S special report, “Inequality in America:” “The fruits of productivity gains have been skewed towards the highest earners, and towards companies, whose profits have reached record levels as a share of GDP.”

This trend, among others, has some historians and cultural commentators comparing our era to that of the late 19th century Gilded Age. Bill Moyers guest Steve Fraser notes its hallmarks: crony capitalism, extreme inequalities in wealth and income, ostentatious spending and wage depression. Mark Twain is responsible for naming the period between Reconstruction and Roosevelt, ‘The Gilded Age.’ As THE OXFORD COMPANION TO UNITED STATES HISTORY notes, it is the only period to be commonly known by a pejorative name.

Transcript

Related Material from PBS

Tomgram: Steve Fraser

Women in a Difficult Economy, Heidi Harmann

Inequality in America

Part I

 

 

Part II

Bill Moyers and Barbara Ehrenreich on rising economic inequality in America

Economic inequality is growing in America (and in Western capitalist democracies in general).  In my view, this is the great unchallenged issue in the 2008 US elections.

Moyers’ Memorial Day

How to Honour US War Dead on Memorial Day Weekend

Bill Moyer’s Journal

From NYT:

In every way, this president has tried to hide the war. The press chafes because photos of flag-draped coffins are forbidden. But that’s nothing compared to how this administration is trying to turn the public’s eyes away from the pain of the people who feel it most directly, the soldiers and their families.

Suicide rates among returning veterans are soaring. And the administration’s response? Cover up the data. An e-mail titled “Shh!” surfaced earlier this month from Dr. Ira Katz, a top official at the V.A. The note indicated that far more veterans were trying to kill themselves than the administration had let on. It speaks for itself.

“Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see,” Katz wrote, in a note not meant for the general public. “Is this something we should address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles upon it?”

Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat of Washington, who has made veterans affairs her specialty, was furious. “They lied about these numbers,” Murray told me. “It breaks my heart. Soldiers tell us that they were taught how to go to war, but not how to come home. You hear about divorces, binge-drinking, post-traumatic stress, suicide. And the reaction from the president is part of a pattern from the very beginning to show that this war is not costly or consequential.”

And from Salon:

A February report by the Army’s Mental Health Advisory Team said that nearly a third of married enlisted men and more than a fifth of married noncommissioned officers were planning to get a divorce by the end of their 15-month deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. The divorce rate among enlisted soldiers has risen from 2.3 percent in 2001 to 3.5 percent today.

Will the “Real” Jeremiah Wright … Do We Know Him?

What is the meaning/what are the meanings of the words that the Reverend Jeremiah Wright has spoken in the last few days, in an interview with Bill Moyers on PBS (watch the whole interview  here  ) and during several press conferences today?  I suppose that many of us, no doubt viewing ourselves as intelligent people, think that we are in a position to decide (I’m talking about white folk in particular).  I don’t think so.  At least, we are not in that position immediately.  We have a lot of work to do first.

I’m not a racialized person living in America.  I assume that racialized people living in America have a lot to tell me before I might begin to understand their experience and their relationship to power, politics, the media etc.  I like the Reverend and I can relate to much of what he says, even his speech after 9/11.  But many people don’t like what he’s said, including Barack Obama apparently.  I’ve read some of the Reverend’s sermons, listened to videos of ENTIRE sermons and done some reading, as well as listening to African Americans and their responses on tv news shows.  I might be starting to APPROACH an understanding of what Wright’s sermons mean to his parishioners.  Yet others feel free to speak conclusively about what he means, immediately, without looking deeper, without speaking to people whose interpretations may be more accurate.  That’s dumb but more importantly, it’s racist.  It’s not a discussion or a conversation.  It’s privilege utilizing privilege and dominance to determine meaning.

Moreoever, I don’t describe myself as a Christian, though that is in my history.  I know nothing at all of the “prophetic tradition” in African American churches.  I have a good background for coming to an understanding and I’ve taken steps in that direction.  But I don’t pretend to understand as yet.  Until I do, beyond saying that I can relate to the Reverend and his people, I cannot judge.

With respect to Barack Obama, if anything, I’m disappointed that he has “renounced” these sermons of Rev. Wright.  I’d have thought a lot more of him if, as part of the discussion he urges upon his fellow Americans, he helped them towards an understanding of his long-time pastor, a man he clearly admires and only looks hypocritical distancing himself from.

Until I learn more, this will have to do:

First, a reminder of the incendiary, flame-hot words of one of America’s righteous heroes, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. –

“God didn’t call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war. . . . And we are criminals in that war. We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I’m going to continue to say it. And we won’t stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation. But God has a way of even putting nations in their place…[God will say:] And if you don’t stop your reckless course, I’ll rise up and break the backbone of your power.” 

MLK has God telling his people, “his” America, that he will rise up and break its backbone?  Not gentle words.  And more than gentle words were needed.  Tell me, if anyone had listened to words such as those spoken by Rev. Wright in 2001, where might America be just now? where might the world be?

If you want to read another opinion about Rev. Wright, check E.J. Dionne Jr.,    here

And this:

How dare Reverend Wright and King violate their assigned space! Next thing you know, they’ll be sitting in the front row of the bus, scaring the bejesus out of the bus driver and the proper people. All of whom can respond with anger. It’s right there, in the rulebook.   here

And, on March 29th when the first “Wright wars” raged, here’s David Newiert’s take on the brouhaha:

The Washington Post’s report on Obama’s speech observed that this was a controversy that “threatens to engulf his presidential candidacy.” Yet as far as anyone can tell, it was having only a marginal effect on the polls in the race before it blew up on the networks, and it was not generated by either of Obama’s political opponents, or by any particular interest groups.

No, this is a controversy cooked up almost entirely within the media realm. Once they sank their fangs into it, the whole zombielike corps of pundits, cable talking heads, and radio talk-show hosts couldn’t let go of it. And equally remarkable was the bias that was on display in discussing it: News anchors and talking heads flatly referred to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s videotaped remarks as “anti-American,” “hate-filled,” “vicious,” “offensive,” and so on and on.

It’s telling that none of them also observed that, for the most part, Wright’s remarks (aside from his conspiracist comments about AIDS, which were indeed inexcusable, but which received little or no play before Obama’s speech) were factually accurate, and deeply reflective of a reality that most African Americans live with — and which most white Americans do their best to ignore, deny, and forget. The remarks that were broadcast all over YouTube and replayed endlessly on the cable talk shows were, no doubt, were impolitic, but they were also largely true.

 more at firedoglake

And more today from peterr at firedoglake:

Let me start with some disclosure: I know Jeremiah Wright. I’ve worshiped at Trinity United Church of Christ a time or two. I’ve heard Wright speak at clergy conferences. I’ve had a couple of one-on-one conversations with him.

With that said . . . Oh, that man can preach. But as any preacher will tell you, it helps if people would listen. As a preacher with some 20+ years of my own experience in the pulpit, I shudder to think what would happen if some of my sermons were snipped and sliced and diced in the same manner as those of Jeremiah Wright.

The most lamentable aspect of the way Wright has been swift-boated is the manner in which his critics snipped his quotes out of context. CNN’s Roland Martin, underneath the broader radar of the media, noted that Jeremiah Wright’s now-infamous sermon addressing 9/11 was completely misrepresented:

One of the most controversial statements in this sermon was when he mentioned “chickens coming home to roost.” He was actually quoting Edward Peck, former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and deputy director of President Reagan’s terrorism task force, who was speaking on FOX News. That’s what he told the congregation.

To hear the media speak about it, though, this was Wright trying to burn down the White House. I’m not surprised that you didn’t hear this on Fox — though the initial interview with Peck took place on Fox! — but the fact that the media missed this is stunning. Even on CNN, apart from the blog post, you’d never get the idea that their reporters ever listened to the whole sermon. and judging from this morning’s performance by reporters at Wright’s appearance at the National Press Club, they’re still not listening.   more here

And while we’re reading and learning and trying to catch up, those of us who are NOT African Americans, let’s remember that African America is made up of multiple communities and many, many people with a wide variety of experience and interpretations of their own.  I know this is a bit of a rant and I do try to avoid that.  Can’t help it on this one.