Marian's Blog

Hastings holds State of Black Europe hearing in Congress

In London in September or October 2004 this writer spoke on the panel, "Alliances We Need to Fight Racism" at the European Social Forum (Malmo, Sweden Sept. 2008). I participated as a member of the network Alliance of People of African Descent in Europe. Now, veteran Florida Member of Congress Alcee Hastings, who is Black American (and certainly likely, as most Black Americans are, a Euro descendant himself), has announced a hearing by the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, or CSCE, a commission of the U.S. Congress. Mr. Hastings is CSCE chair. "The State of (In)visible Black Europe: Race, Rights, and Politics" will be held Tuesday, 29 April, at 10AM in Rayburn House Office Building. "The hearing will focus on the challenges and opportunities faced by the more than 5 million members of Europe's Black population amidst reported increases in hate crimes and discrimination, anti-immigration and national identity debates, and growing security concerns. The impact of recently introduced anti-discrimination laws and diversity initiatives aimed at ensuring and protecting equal rights for a population many do not know exists will also be discussed. ..." Invited participants are Dr. Philomena Essed of Antioch University, author of the book, Everyday Racism: Reports from Women of Two Cultures (1990), and member of Netherlands' Equal Treatment Commission; (UK) Guardian newspaper columnist Gary Younge; Joe Frans, vice chair of the UN Working Group on People of African Descent and former member of Swedish Parliament; Dr. Allison Blakely, Afro-European author and historian at Boston University; Dr. Clarence Lusane, international race politics author and faculty member at American University; and Afro-German actor Boris Kodjoe. Logically, Marian's Blog is very interested in this hearing and its outcomes. One hard look at the disenfranchised, excluded political condition of the people of the city of majority-Black Washington, DC, with NO VOTE in the very same U.S. Senate and House of Representatives where this hearing's being held, reveals a painful irony. Europe isn't the only place where Black people are ignored, disempowered, and treated as invisible.

March Madness? Bombing, from Belgrade to Baghdad

It's just days after the "Ides of March" - the date when the emperor Giulio Cesare was assassinated in Rome. In English we call him Julius Caesar. In English we also have a saying about March, that it "comes in like a lion," and "goes out like a lamb." We also talk casually about something called "March madness." Does anyone know where that started? I don't know its origin but looking at U.S. foreign policy in the past nine years the idea of "madness" in March seems worth another look. I was part of a group at the Salzburg Seminar in Austria in March 1999, when on the first or second evening we got word that the NATO bombing of Belgrade had begun. Four years later and it was Baghdad. Is there method to madness in March?

Kosovo: Albanians, Serbs - And what about the Roma?

After five years living in the Balkans, and longer if I count Italy and France, there are a few things I know about Europe and Kosovo, and even more I remember about that area and the rest of former Yugoslavia. I recall one particular orientation in Pristina; one of those sessions most, if not all, international civilian mission staff have endured. Usually I actually liked them for the information we learned on the people we would work with and the regions into which we were sent. Yet in much the same way media are reporting Kosovo/Kosova and the Balkans today, in this seminar in Pristina in 2000 we were briefed on the Kosovar Albanians and on the Kosovo Serbs, yet not one word about Kosovo's Roma. So, of course I asked. After all, we were in Kosovo to work with the Roma, too. I've written about Europe's Romani citizens before on this blog and will do so again, but I'll repeat myself - the Roma, the Rom, Romani, etc., are Europe's largest ethnic minority population, whom many outsiders still call "Gypsies". In all the public discourse and reporting on Kosovo, and even on the Balkans and Europe overall, why are the Roma still almost always excluded? More powerful than anything I can offer is Sani Rifati's own firsthand account of his birthplace, along with this link to a powerful, if a bit dated, related report. When I think of my time in Kosovo (and elsewhere in the Balkans) in my mind's eye I see the pregnant woman IDP ("internally displaced person") with two school-age kids. I remember the long, narrow storage container which was "home" to several unrelated families. I remember the refugee day center in Macedonia, near Skopje: Kosovo Roma refugees sitting, waiting for so-called 'third-country refugee resettlement' invitations that never arrived. As human beings wherever we are, all of us can and, hopefully, will do far better, for each other and consequently for ourselves.

Castro, Cuba, the Americas: next door, yet so far away

From Cuba this week, at age 81, Fidel Castro announced his retirement. As a child in the late 50s, early 60s, I remember the feeling if not every political detail, of the way Cuba's "surprise" revolution shifted forever the power relationship between one tiny Caribbean island nation and the United States. What probably stands out most is remnants of the terrible sense of dread during the so-called Cuban missile crisis. In school back then we had regular "civil defense" drills. In my safe and pleasant all-Black elementary school we watched film clips of white children climbing under and croutching beneath their school desks. Now forty, fifty years later I ponder all those decades, the years and lifetimes (including my own) of so much missed opportunity for us, the people of the Americas to know each other. Most of us hardly do, if at all. This is especially true from the side of the people of the United States whose gaze in the 20th century, and now continuing into the 21st, only briefly and rarely focused on our region and our 'cousins' (particularly for Black and Native people) who are our neighbors. We particularly and very deliberately ignore Cuba. The ninety miles from there to Miami feels more like nine-thousand. The official U.S. political playbook says Fidel Castro - and by extension all of Cuba - is 'off limits' and to be villified. Yet unlike many Americans, Cubans are able to access education, literacy and health care beyond what the people of the U.S. are led to expect as achievable for a nation of Cuba's size and history. And what of Afro Cubans? What was their lot in Cuban history, and their status since 1960?

Black History Month on the Eve of the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election

It's Black History Month, folks. Today, renegade though it may be to some, my focus is on the peculiarities I'm observing in this 2008 U.S. presidential election season. I'll begin with a fact that may not be obvious to some observers, and the farther one is from the U.S. and our history the less obvious this fact will be. Let's call it Fact 1:

Come November, U.S. voters, after well over two centuries, still will not elect to the presidency a Black person who is the descendant of "we the people" who were enslaved not long ago in the U.S.A. These descendants are the Black American people, the group of Blacks whom Kenyan historian Ali Mazrui somehow has come to deem "undefinable" or "unmentionable", or who somehow should not be singled out n view of our long historical existence, lest in some way we might be seen as an "elite." That is his term, not mine. The other side of this issue is the current possibilitiy of electing someone to become the first Black president of a country - in this case the United States - but a person who in fact does not come from the indigenous Black population of said country. We'll call this Fact 2. Or as Mr. Mazrui informed all of us during the January symposium which was supposed to be about Blacks and abolition of the U.S. slave trade, the United States may beat Kenya by electing the first "Luo" president. Apparently Luo is the name of the Kenyan ethnic group Barack Obama's late father belonged to. Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga is a Luo also, hence the inside joke, though not to Americans in general or to Black Americans in particular. ...

Joining Maxine Waters in backing Hillary Clinton

I'm gonna try to keep this short. Once again it's about the current infernal election cycle. As far back as fall 2004 at a local Democratic Party event in Rome, Italy, a white American - an Italian American called Peter Alegi - made it perfectly clear to me, and in the rudest possible way, that my honest, considered opinion about the candidates in this race would be neither valued or respected. So what else is new for Black women in the USA?

The same nasty attitude has been driven home to me again and again over the past months and days. The sole exception has been two truly refreshing conversations in just the past couple of days. On two separate occasions persons who asked my opinion about the U.S. presidential race happened to be three Italian Italians: two were together in Rome airport, and one was aboard my flight. Signori, Vi ringrazio per vostri domande. Meanwhile, speaking of Black American women, I've noticed how neither the MSM - "mainstream" media - nor the Democratic Party has said much about former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney leaving the Party and moving to the U.S. Greens. She now has her own campaign for the U.S. presidency, and I wish the sister well. It was just under two years ago, the last time I saw Cynthia - still in office - on Capitol Hill. I remember vividly the early '90s when she arrived in Washington to take her new office. And I recall our chats while on a congressional trip to Haiti. This was when New York Rep. Charles Rangel tried to reach a deal with then-dictator General Raoul Cedras. It was to no avail. But that, too, is for a future blog post. McKinney was a feisty senior Democratic congresswoman from Georgia. Would the current silence and apparent indifference be the same were she a white woman or a Black man? Interestingly this brings us back to the demographics of the current Democratic presidential race. We may never know for sure whether race+gender (rather than one or the other separately) has made the difference. Or perhaps we do know. Legendary Los Angeles, California congresswoman Maxine Waters is another U.S. policymaker I admire who also "happens" to be a Black American woman. Yet again I notice little coverage of recent news that she, too, has decided to back Senator Clinton. So I feel in being dissed I'm in pretty good company! A couple of other senior Black American politicos whom I've met and who also are backing HILLARY include New York's first Black mayor, David Dinkins and Harlem congressman Charles Rangel. I met Mrs.Clinton herself at the 1997 international conference on Women and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. That was in Vienna, Austria. I'd just completed four intense months work in Srebrenica and elsewhere in eastern Bosnia. I helped with the conference as a volunteer, assisting a woman called Susan Hovanec with press. In her presidency I hope that Hillary will act on some of the lessons she has taught on the need for greater women's participation in politics and society. For myself as a Black American woman there is something else I am not ashamed to state and about which I will not remain silent. It's a fact which should neither be denied or in any way obscured. The ancestors of the Black Americans of North America were enslaved by the British, some by the French and others by the Spanish; and later we were enslaved under the newly declared United States. Here we are today, pretty much 400 years later. One of the bottom lines for me about this election is that no matter who wins on Tuesday, 4 Nov. 2008, on the day after, the United States still will never have elected a president who comes from the U.S. Black population who are the descendants of our enslaved ancestors. For the record, I am not the person to whom to say that this is insignificant. For me as a descendant of my enslaved ancestors - my grandfather's uncle was born into slavery in Missouri before, as soon as slavery ended, that part of our family fled Missouri to Leavenworth, Kansas. And so it is vitally important that alongside other political issues which will be critical in Hillary Clinton's presidency, at the very least, with her as president there will be no illusions, delusions or confusion about this fact.

John Edwards knows it's the economy, not just Iraq

As the candidate said last night in New Hampshire, I too am on the John Edwards grassroots campaign bandwagon right through my ancestral South Carolina, called "the Black Primary", and the other 47, right up to the Democratic Party convention next August in Denver. John Edwards all along has been addressing what's touching, and crushing, the majority of Americans, middle- and working-class/working-poor and poor. I scoffed when I read a Washington Post headline quoting George Bush saying how 'good' the economy looked. I was wondering what planet he was visiting or what he'd been ingesting. That was only about ten days ago. Now Bush has backtracked, acknowledging there are issues with the economy, and today CNN (MSM - mainstream media) reports we're in a recession since the final quarter of 2007. I hear all the candidates. I'm supporting John Edwards.

Major Owens unveils Black Caucus Members' opinion survey

The Congressional Black Caucus annual legislative conference ends tomorrow, Saturday. Monday, Oct 1st, I plan to attend "A New Challenge to the Congressional Black Caucus", my former boss Major Owens' Library of Congress think-tank panel on the CBC and his forthcoming book, The Peacock Elite: A Subjective Case Study of the Congressional Black Caucus. I'm interested in the results of Mr. Owens' opinion survey that he's asked his former colleagues - Black Caucus members (Members of U.S. Congress) to complete. Monday's panel includes current Congresswoman Maxine Waters (Los Angeles, California); former CBC members, Oakland (Cali) Mayor Ron Dellums and attorney Louis Stokes; author and Univ. of Maryland political science prof Ron Walters; and author Michael Eric Dyson, now on faculty at Georgetown University. I have not yet seen results of the congressional opinion survey, though I'm certain we'll hear more on Monday. Since retiring last January after 24 years representing Central Brooklyn, NY's 11th congressional district, Mr. Owens is now a distinguished visiting scholar in the Library of Congress's Kluge Center.

3 votes shy: Dems Baucus, Byrd & GOP halt S. 1257, DC Voting Rights

I couldn't believe the news at mid-afternoon today that on a 57 "yes" to 42 "no" voice vote, the U.S. Senate today failed to endorse S. 1257. This bill finally would have given Washington, the District of Columbia its own voting representation in the House of Representatives. Can any Americans truly be proud of, or indifferent to, this outcome?

This probably is particularly sobering for 87 year old, former Massachusetts senator Edward Brooke, a Republican who is Black. Despite his best bi-partisan efforts, today's vote split along party lines. With eight exceptions, other Republicans voted against 1257 despite the fact that its major compromise would have given Utah one more congressional seat.

Call your U.S. senators today in favor of S. 1257 - DC Voting Rights!

According to DC Vote, today is the second annual National Call-In Day for U.S. voters to ask their U.S. Senators to vote YES on S. 1257 - the DC Voting Rights Act. DC Vote says Senate Majority leader Harry Reid has committed to bringing S. 1257 to the Senate floor tomorrow, 18 September. You can call your two U.S. senators on the following 866 number before 5PM U.S. Eastern time today. Ask them to please vote to pass the DC Voting Rights Act - tel: 1.866.346.3008. Or call on 1.202.224.3121 and ask for your senators' offices. Ask friends, family and colleagues to do likewise. If you're not American but know others who are, ask them to do the same. And thanks. What's at stake is (finally) granting equal participation in the House of Representatives to the people of Washington, DC. You'd think we already had this right, huh?

Americans whose home is "the Nation's Capital" - Washington - have waited patiently and protested very peacefully for a very long time. We're again asking our sister and fellow citizens for a modicum of equal status. Even if we win tomorrow, we'll still be unrepresented in the U.S. Senate. 

One battle at a time. The House of Reps already has approved this change. Now the decision is up to the 100 senators who control DC's future yet are only based in Washington to represent all the other Americans out in the lower 48 States plus Alaska and Hawaii.

"Washington City", as we once were called, has been the US capital since the early 1800s. Enslavement of Black Americans in DC only ended in 1862. So why have Washingtonians been so long excluded from equal representation?

Earlier today, a Democratic email colleague shared the fact that Sept. 18 is "Constitution Day" in the U.S. I'd never heard of it but as a proud native of the District of Columbia it's hard to wrap my mind around, and just as difficult to describe, how it feels knowing every moment I've lived in Washington, I've been de facto excluded from, politically voiceless in and invisible to, our national system of "representative democracy."

What George asked the Queen (in 1991)...

Mara sent me a piece in NYTimes this week, The Queen Visits the White House, in which the  author reflects upon Bush the younger's curious behaviour sixteen years ago in the very same White House. On that occasion George found himself in the presence of both QE and his mom Barbara - "... when the first President and Mrs. Bush played host to their own state dinner for the queen. By several different accounts, including Mr. Bush's own, Barbara Bush told the queen that she had seated her son far away from Her Majesty, for fear he might make a wisecrack. Then, to his mother's horror, he did, telling the queen that he was his family's black sheep and asking, "Who's yours?"  The queen, apparently not amused, replied tartly, "None of your business." Ahhh... a refreshingly direct answer to a startlingly stupid question!

"Embedded" in Iraq

Recently GOP "maverick"(?) Colin Powell labelled the reality in Iraq a civil war. Knowledgeable journalists and others say what we see in the press does not begin to convey how bad it is. It's almost two years since my Jan 19, 2005 entry when I wrote about what to some of us already looked like a tragic, inexorable descent into hell. I contrasted it with George Bush's grand, lavish and self-congratulatory 2005 re-entry into the White House on the same day. Two years on I'm still trying to comprehend the U.S. media's "approach" to reporting Iraq and the kind of place it has become since Bush & Co.'s 2003 unilateral invasion.

This led me to search for the meaning of the term 'embedded' via Merriam Webster's dictionary online. As in "to have embedded virtually all journalistic coverage of Iraq inside the military". Here's what I found: "... to enclose closely in or as if in a matrix"; "to make something an integral part of"; "to prepare [a specimen] for sectioning by infiltrating with and enclosing in a supporting substance"; "to surround closely"; and the use of the intransitive verb: "to become embedded". How will journalists and historians chronicle this still-unfolding story of the way so many are covering Iraq?

The American assassinations, part 2 - 1964, 68: Malcolm, Martin and John's brother Bobby

On the Web I found a photo taken in Washington, at Richard Nixon's January 1969 inauguration. A notation says ten thousand people came out in the cold for this event. Two thousand were protesters. In the foreground, above the crowd, a young woman holds her handpainted sign. "PEACE IS NOT SUBVERSIVE". I read those words and forty years later they make me ask myself what exactly is different today? Is America a sleepwalking society? Quite often that's how it feels. I started blogging this thread, "the American assassinations", before reading that this week BBC News has alleged U.S. CIA involvement in the 1968 murder of Robert Kennedy. The report by Shane O'Sullivan appeared November 21, 2006 on BBC Newsnight. It is possible some in the US still really do not want to think of such things. The evening he was murdered Bobby Kennedy had just won California's Democratic Party primary and was on the verge of becoming the party nominee for president of the United States. How many of us ever stop to consider the implication of these multiple assassinations in the US? All the victims were male political figures and not one of them right wing. All this violence and death. The violent reversal of the politically possible. All in less than five years, from 1963 to '68. The Boomer generation. My generation. Multiple political murders shaped my generation of American youth. In the face of serial murders and assassinations, wouldn't coming-of-age somehow change? One devastating death followed by another and another. All in barely half a decade. All with deep social and political effects that remain today. Who talks about how these killings in the U.S. marked the baby boomer generation? Many of us weren't even 18 by the time we'd lived through all this. How many people, Americans and everyone, ever think about that? Had Robert Kennedy not been shot in the recesses of an L.A. hotel it is possible, even likely, he'd have become the 37th U.S. president. Is this the real reason he died? Indeed this 'alternate reality': had Bobby Kennedy been allowed to live, at the very least would have spared us who we got instead: Richard "I am not a crook" Nixon. Some of us remember -only too well- his other "name", "Tricky Dick". Tricky Dick Nixon. Before Robert it was his brother, our president, on a routine political visit to Dallas where he, too, was assassinated in November 1963. Fewer than nineteen months later it was Black American leader Malcolm X (Malcolm Little), shot so many times, by multiple gunmen, in the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. It was Sunday, 21 February 1965. In Pennsylvania my family heard the news on our car radio. This moment in my parents' car stays frozen in my mind. A sunny, early Sunday afternoon, right after church. I am in the back seat as we ride. The news comes on the radio as we're stopped at the light at East Market Street, heading north on South Queen. So much violence. And then barely three years later Martin Luther King is shot and killed, Thursday, April 4th, in Memphis, Tennessee. Then Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles on June 8th. Two more American assassinations less than eight weeks apart.

The American assassinations: John Kennedy, 22 Nov 1963

Today, Wednesday, 22 November 2006, is the 43rd anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, thirty-fifth president of the US. In the wake of yesterday's terrible, reminiscent shooting of Lebanese government minister Pierre Gemayel, so far today I've heard no mention of President Kennedy's horrific death. I was a kid at Southern University Lab School in Scotlandville, Baton Rouge, but like Americans older than me, I remember exactly where I was when the news came. It was music class at school. I seem to remember we were learning to sing "The Peanut Vendor's Song." And then somehow everyone is outside along the breezeways at school. People falling and crying and moaning. It's hard to imagine a thing that could bring to tears every single adult around you. But that's exactly what happened on a November Friday in 1963. It still makes me cry, too, and it's still hard to allow oneself to really think about even today. What is equally sad and seems too incredible to admit is John Kennedy's death was destined not to be the only 20th century assassination of a political figure in my country, and in my life.

U.S. Midterms: "Appetizer for 2008" - Gergen

What was unimaginable less than 48 hours ago has occurred. Democrats have won both the House and the Senate while Mr. Rumsfeld has been shown the District line. Sayonara, Don. I couldn't have said it better than David Gergen on CNN declaring Tuesday's election results "the appetizer" for Election Day 2008. Gergen also aptly declared what's happening in America as "political high drama". A-men. In today's early hours, Thursday, 9 November, Associated Press has now declared Jim Webb winner while Mr. Webb has publicly thanked the people of Virginia (1607-2007) for electing him that state's new U.S. senator. Unlike perhaps a few folks I don't really intend to brag. At least not much. Globally and inside the U.S. all of us are dealing with many sobering things. Yet now at least there's the opportunity to begin again and to do some things which are both practical and right. Tuesday's really was a seismic vote.

It's Iraq, the economy AND the Constitution, "Stupid"

I'm certainly not calling anyone "stupid". That was part of a very accurate and effective Democratic campaign slogan a few elections back. But mid-term Election 2006 is about Iraq. It is about the U.S. and global economy - which also partly is about Iraq, especially for the U.S. economy already in the toilet - and it is about whether the U.S. Constitution is worth the paper it was written on. Even Alice in Wonderland never went to a tea party like the one all of us are at. In spite of assessments of many, many Americans, Mr. Donald Rumsfeld tells us again: he doesn't plan to go anywhere. Could someone, anyone, please show Mr. Rumsfeld to the District of Columbia line? Who is taking marching orders from whom? If, like me, you're an American, for God's sake vote - and vote progressive. Everyone else in the rest of the world, please pray, or just send some good energy our way.

Harold Ford - Tennessee - for U.S. Senate

He deserves our support. Please support Harold Ford as U.S. senator from the great state of Tennessee - www.fordfortennessee.com.

WAR as "tax", only worse, & the U.S. 2006 elections

We're into the countdown to the 2006 U.S. mid-term elections. Tuesday, Nov 7, is election day, and if you're registered, I urge you to vote. On t.v. one of the usual political talking heads tries to "remind" us that "if Democrats win, they'll institute taxes."

What the heck?! Is that supposed to be an argument?

Isn't war a huge, bloody, tax???

No amount of taxes or other money that any of us pays will bring back one life lost in this war. Don't forget to add in billions going to some rather shadowy private corporations to "rebuild" the country where the war is. Then we hear not much really is being built. So we don't even know where the money has gone. "Your tax dollars at work." But in the Washington, DC metro area - mainly suburban Maryland and northern Virginia - you hear from reliable sources that so many of the people with money to buy big homes work (or do contracting) for Defense Department and "Homeland Security". So please don't talk to me about Democrats and "taxes". Let's vote.

September 11th

On Friday, Feb. 26, 1993, I was sitting at my desk in the Washington congressional office of my boss, Central Brooklyn, NY representative Major R. Owens. My office partner, Braden, and I noticed we were unable to reach our New York office by phone. Eventually we heard "a fire" (we thought minor) had broken out at the World Trade Center. We then learned smoke from the WTC could be seen from the office in Brooklyn.

Another Friday, this time August 1998. In Croatia, my friend and work colleague Melinda and I arrive for a few well-deserved days on an island in the Jadranska Mora - the Adriatic. We turn on the t.v. as we walk into the hotel room and become witnesses to bombings in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi. Somewhere inside I feel that for me there is more to this news, but I don't know what it could be. Ten days later I hear from Andrea in Washington that our friend and mutual colleague Julian Bartley, U.S. consul general at the embassy in Nairobi, has been killed, along with his 20 year old son "Jay" - Julian, Jr. Many, many Kenyans and other innocent people are killed and injured. Julian - a Black American diplomat - and his son are the two Americans who die who are from the same family.

Julian, Sr. and I had met and had a working lunch while he was on loan on the staff of another member of Congress.

Three years on from August 1998 - barely a month after September 11 - our family relocated to Nairobi. There I learn that one of my new friends was Julian's neighbour. Her sons attended school with Jay.

We will continue to do our best to fear no evil; no matter where it comes from, no matter the "logic" claimed by those responsible, regardless of which side.

From the Quran (39:53): "O my servants who exceeded the limits, never despair of God's Mercy. For God forgives all sins. God is the forgiver, most merciful." God forgives. So can we.

Britain reports plot to blow up transatlantic flights from London

BBC and other media are reporting an alleged terror plot to blow up planes on transatlantic flights out of London. In the UK more than 20 persons have been arrested with searches continuing. Three U.S. airlines are said to have been targeted: United, Continental and American. London's Heathrow Airport appears virtually closed for the time being, with an international 'knock-on' or domino effect. UK authorities advise travelers to stay away from Heathrow as much as possible today. At present no hand luggage or liquids may be carried onto UK flights. Exceedingly long queues are reported along with flight cancellations and/or serious delays. A steady stream of news conferences is occurring in London, Washington and elsewhere.

From a wedding to killing at Qana: Lebanese prime minister brought to tears at Arab summit

Today, Monday, BBC carried live coverage of the Arab foreign ministers' summit in Beirut.

I grew up learning about Jesus attending a wedding in "Cana" where he transformed water to wine. This is described in John, chapter 2, verses 1-11 of the Bible. As news filtered out last week of the killing of children and adults in a place called Qana, in Lebanon, I asked myself if this could possibly be the same place where Jesus was a wedding guest. It is.

A Bible lesson online describes the wedding feast at Qana as "the first of seven miracles described in the portion of John’s Gospel known ... as "the Book of Signs." It says in changing to wine water meant for Jewish purification, Jesus began "a pattern of transforming the institutions of Judaism into those of Christianity." Today, a couple thousand years later, Qana stands for war, carnage, terror and fear.

At the Arab foreign ministers' summit in Beirut, at a certain point there was silence in the room full of Arab male diplomats and politicians as Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora stopped speaking. He was in the middle of affirming Lebanon's character as an Arab country - saying it is not negotiable - when his voice cracked and he worked to catch his breath. He repeated his statement while wiping tears from his eyes. Pulled himself together and concluded. A BBC summary of his earlier remarks says he proclaimed there can be no ceasefire as long as Israel occupies Lebanon and that the permanent solution must include Israel's withdrawal beyond the so-called green line as well as creation of that long-awaited Palestinian state - with its capital in Jerusalem.

Among the men dominating all sides of this carnage, which man will take on accountability for the killings (by aerial bombing) in Qana and elsewhere? After nearly 30 years of inconsisent Middle East peace talks (that started under U.S. president Jimmy Carter) - what is going on here? Why are we still collectively allowing such constant, blatant and horrific breakdowns of our humanity? All of it is beyond being unspeakable. It is thoroughly repulsive.

New York's Chris Owens for Congress on 12 September 2006

Let me draw your attention to blogdiva Liza Sabater's recently posted pro-Chris Owens' take on Sept 12th's key race for the successor to my former boss, U.S. Congressman Major Owens. Major, "the first professional librarian elected to Congress", is retiring after about 12 productive terms in Congress over 24 years. He was elected in 1982 in the district where in 1968 the late Hon. Shirley Chisolm became the first Black and Caribbean American woman elected to Congress. Today there are 4 candidates in this majority Black/Brown district. "Majority colored" as Liza calls Central Brooklyn's 11th Congressional District. The people are mostly English-speaking U.S. Black American, mostly English and Kreyol/Haitian-speaking Caribbean, and Spanish-speaking Puerto Rican who, by the way, are Caribbean. The candidates: Chris Owens, Carl Andrews, Yvette Clarke, and David Yassky. Why did I believe I'd heard ages ago that Yassky had pulled out of the race? Folks say he hopes to split the colored majority vote. If it's true that's a highly cynical strategy in a district like this for a candidate who happens to be a white, Jewish male. I really hope vote-splitting does not occur. Sabater elaborates on each candidate in her Daily Gotham blog. My view is that Chris Owens happens to be the most qualified, transparent and the most effective progressive in the race. Frankly, he knows more about how Congress works than do his three opponents, combined. He also happens to be a son of Major Owens, but don't make the mistake of thinking he's trying to take a "free ride". No. Chris Owens has his own merits that make him the candidate of choice to succeed his dad - and to provide important political continuity in Washington at a time when Democrats are coming back from behind. This year's election is a referendum on the future of Brooklyn and her colored majority population. Hopefully this future will be decided in favour of the people of Brooklyn, by the clear-thinking will of eligible 11th District Brooklyn voters who take the time and cast their respective ballots, Tuesday, 12 September 2006.

War and Collateral Civilians: Ethiopian women trafficked and trapped in Lebanon

The Blogher 2006 conference is happening in about a week. Meanwhile over at Blogher.org I posted my concerns about the least visible of the "collateral civilians" caught in the bombing of Lebanon and Hezbollah. Look here under "Race & Ethnicity."

Gaza, Haifa, Somalia, Colombia, Srebrenica: Nurit Elhanan's "Women" at the Euro Parliament

"Why does that streak of blood rip the petal of your cheek?"

Correction: Nine years have passed since I worked in eastern Bosnia in 1997. In July 1995 the mass killings took place there, in the town of Srebrenica. I also remember the quiet and private sheroism of two women whom I met there in early '97 in the course of my work. I want to thank those ladies. The first rushed up to us just outside Srebrenica's municipal building. She had the grace and courage to walk right over and personally welcome home the Bosnian Muslim man with us on his first return. I do not recall his name but he was the first Muslim member of Srebrenica's post-war municipal elections commission. Another member of our staff, a woman, had driven him over from Tuzla - across the IEBL. The IEBL is a boundary: the Inter-Entity Boundary Line, a border separating mostly Muslim parts of Bosnia from the eastern region's self-styled Bosnian Serb Republic - Republika Srpska. The second lady I met just before Orthodox Easter. I was walking in the center of Srebrenica when she intently crossed the main street to meet me. This wasn't far from the Dom Kultura (Cultural Center) building. She handed me a beautiful, hand-painted Easter egg, a real, edible egg, and I accepted it from her with a thank-you in her language and a smile. Srebrenica's a very small town. Yet even the whole world is small in many ways, especially once people begin to know each other. I was deeply touched by and will not forget the kindness at the root of these small yet expansive acts of willingness and courage shown by two women whose names I do not know; women I've yet to meet again.

Last March 8 (International Women's Day) in her speech to the European Parliament, Israeli educator Nurit Peled-Elhanan - mother of a 5 - correction: 13 year old daughter killed by a suicide bomber - posed a question made eternal by the writing of t