Santa Bring Us an Escape Plan: Xmas Greetings from Baghdad!

By DEB REICH
December 16 / 17, 2006

Dear Santa,

I live in Israel/Palestine and I think I am probably addicted to the big bad conflict we have here. We all seem to be addicted to the conflict we have here. We are so used to it, sometimes I wonder if, given half a chance, we could really learn to live without it. Meanwhile, the academics study it. The politicians cook it and bake it and spin it. The pollsters monitor it. Nonprofit organizations and NGOs mop up the messes, frequently lethal, that it makes. Dissident poets bemoan it, and the journalists (with the exception of a courageous handful, who tell the truth) pretend to report on it. The prisoners find their education, for better or worse, in its shadow, while the wardens find some kinky pleasure there, or anyhow their paycheck.

The mothers, raped by the conflict, carry it with them like some spawn of Satan. That is how it feels, these days. We are continually and forcibly violated by the politicians’ spinmeisters, who keep trying to impregnate us with their dysfunctional fantasies so we can deliver more soldiers for the conflict. The children are afraid of the conflict, they’re afraid that it’s lurking under the bed (if they have a bed, if they have a house), or that it’s about to fall on them from the sky and explode in a hail of blood and gore, to kill and maim, like it did last night or last week or in the last war. Or, brainwashed, they crow about the enemy’s getting what he deserves, never thinking that "the enemy" is mainly a bunch of kids like them. And then they get a bit older and go out to do battle.

Santa, tell me: What in God’s name have we done to the children?

While the innocents suffer, the arms merchants and the generals sign fat deals. Out in the countryside you can see the only truly neutral bystanders to the conflict, cows lowing in their barnyard or goats and sheep grazing on their patch of grass and brambles; surely they hear the infernal screaming when the missiles of death approach. Perhaps they are afraid; no one knows or cares. Once in a while, when I go down south to visit my sister on her kibbutz, I drive through the desert past the dread zone where The Bomb dozes in its nest, deep beneath the sandy hills ­ waiting. Waiting for someone to make a mistake.

Meanwhile Gaia, the living brooding spirit of this beautiful besieged planet, pays us no attention whatsoever; we are an errant flake on the skin of her mysterious, majestic body. She goes on breathing as always - inhale, exhale; inhale, exhale. She can feel a fever coming on, but she has been afflicted before. No matter. She will know how to restore the balance when the time comes. Is there any ice left up there at the North Pole, Santa?

If I feel like praying, I can access a direct line to the Almighty by email or fax They have these handy services now. Here’s what you do: (1) Compose your prayer. (2) Send it by email, fax, or post and the company will print it and take it to the ancient Western (formerly Wailing) Wall in Jerusalem and stuff it in the cracks with thousands of other supplications to the Most High. Express delivery guaranteed! (3) Pay by credit card, from anywhere - unless you’re in Gaza: Gaza the besieged, the starving, where there is no email, fax, or post, no credit card, no electricity, no water, no work, no bread, and not much else, either. You can still pray there, but the company cannot guarantee delivery, and anyhow the service is not really designed for Muslims.

Dear Abby,

I am a Jewish freethinker in Israel. (Sometimes I write "in Israel/Palestine" because it seems to make more sense, but we won’t go into that now.) I have a question. If Jewish renewal in Palestine after a thousand generations is visionary and noble, why is the idea of repatriating the displaced Palestinians after a mere fifty or sixty years seen as delusional? I don’t get it.

Dear Allah,

I have an acquaintance, a Muslim, whose brother is a political prisoner. He’s been in prison in Israel more than twenty years ­ nearly half his life. He went into a cell at age 25, waving his banned manifestos; that was in 1986. Soon, he’ll have a Ph.D. and I think he’s starting to lose his hair. He writes eloquent essays in prison and works on his research. I’d like to play him Libby Roderick’s anthem of the oppressed, "How Could Anyone," beginning: How could anyone ever tell you / you were anything less than beautiful? Tell me what else I can do for him. How will this balance ever be restored? How will this debt ever be paid? His name is Walid Daka. He belonged to a banned organization, and maybe he helped to plan violent acts of resistance; I don’t know. But I think his real crime was being born Palestinian, because all the rest followed from that.

Dear Jesus,

Come back! We need you! But don’t come back as a woman, they won’t listen. Don’t try to come back as an ordinary Muslim traveler on an airplane, God forbid ­ they’ll arrest you at the airport. Don’t come back as a foreign (guest) worker: they’ll take your passport and lock you up. Don’t come back as a cabinet minister because, inside of a week, you’ll start to care more about keeping your car and driver than about comforting the poor and afflicted. Better to stick with the donkey, like last time ­ but don’t try to cross a checkpoint with it; they’ll think it has a bomb in its belly and they’ll blow it up, poor critter. I read the other day that there are over 500 checkpoints on the West Bank now; hard to believe. That’s a lot of checkpoints. So maybe come on foot. Or get Scotty to beam you over here. But come quick! We’re sinking. And whatever you do, don’t go to Bethlehem this time. It’s under siege and crumbling, but the people are incredibly resilient. They’ll break your mortal heart.

Dear Goddess,

Sometimes lately when I’m driving to work on the Abominable Highway Six, built on confiscated land through the hilly heart of Israel/Palestine, I pass the perverted separation barrier around Tulkarm without really noticing. I’ve only been riding on this road since last spring, and initially I used to stare at the sections of separation wall as I went by, full of acute emotions. The wall dominated my consciousness. I wrote an essay about it. I had nightmares about it. I used to lower the car window and salute the cousins caged on the other side. I’d play them Peter, Paul and Mary ("If I had a hammer, I’d hammer out justice") on the CD player in my car, with the volume on maximum. I’d cry, sometimes; but not anymore. Not even a year has gone by, and I’m desensitized. I don’t cry. Sometimes I even forget to look. I forget to salute. I drive by Tulkarm (a ghetto; a prison that was a town) and forget to pay my respects. And then Qalqilya, same thing only bigger, a bit farther along, less hilly ­ same thing. What is happening to me, while we are doing what we are doing to them? When I eventually come to the bottom of this slippery slope, what ghoulish being will gaze back at me out of my mirror? We ought to be careful where we are headed (goes an old folk saying), or we are liable to get to where we are going.

Dear reader:

Well, I can’t fix the obscene separation barrier with an old album of Peter, Paul and Mary. But I can get the word out to you, out there in the world — because if enough people agree we are on the wrong path here, maybe there is still time to walk a different way together. You must not demonize us, though, if you want to help. We’re just a bunch of ordinary people who have thoroughly lost our way, possibly because our national ethos was built on an unsustainable foundation. The military sector is very powerful and the political sector is morally bankrupt. What happened to us here could happen to you but I hope, for your sake, that it never does.

Tomorrow on the way to work, I’ll stop the car on the shoulder of the highway and get out and listen to the grass growing, for a while. The maintenance crews continually go up and down the length of Highway Six with their spray gizmos, blasting the greenery into oblivion all along the route, beyond the slightest shadow of a weed. All the verge turns brown. It looks vanquished, as if life itself has surrendered, as if brutality has won, at least on this privately- built-for-profit toll road of desolation.

You might think the poisonous reality has begot a permanent wilderness of scorched earth here. But if you sit still and listen, you can hear the grass, deep down, gathering itself to grow again, ready in all innocence to push on through, the sap dancing up from the roots under the ground. New life emergent, rising out of this brutalized place, draws to itself the energy of pure Love from the vast silent starlit universe. That alchemy of renewal is all we can offer by way of solace to a grieving mother or father or child in any Qalqilya on earth. No one can bring back the dead, make the invalid whole or give back the prisoner’s lost years, but this I can promise you: The destroyers will not have the last word. We ordinary moms and dads and families - we refuse to be enemies. Our souls are ready to reach past this conflict to a new shared future, as the blades of grass are ready to poke through the dirt again, all over this sorrowing land, reaching up regardless through the blood-soaked soil: little green stalks of life and hope, irrepressible. And over every blade of grass hovers its own angel, whispering: Grow, lovely one! Shaatr! Ta’al! Come to me Grow!

Children under 10 think being a celebrity is the "very best thing in the world" but do not think quite as much of God, a survey has revealed.

The poll of just under 1,500 youngsters ranked "God" as their tenth favourite thing in the world, with celebrity, "good looks" and being rich at one, two and three respectively.

It is the second year running that God has come in at number 10 in the annual survey for National Kids’ Day, but being rich came top last time around.

God did come top again this year as the most famous "person" in the world, beating US President George Bush into second place.

Meanwhile "killing" and "wars" head the list of the "very worst things in the world", followed by drunks, bullies, illness, smoking, stealing, divorce and being fat. Dying is in tenth place.

The research, carried out through schools and online, was by Luton First, sponsors and organisers of yesterday’s National Kids’ Day.

Asked what rules they would make if they were king or queen of the world, the number one response from the under-10s was to ban knives and guns.

They would also put a stop to fighting and killing, telling lies, drugs, bullying, drunks, and smoking.

The children who answered the survey would also put a stop to stealing, but wanted more holidays and more hospitals.

Just over three quarters of the youngsters said they would probably marry later in life, although 21 per cent gave a definite "No".

Most of them want to have children with most opting for one or two.

When asked how much money was needed to be rich, the children quoted figures ranging from £1,000 to £10 million - down on 2005 when the range was £460 to £200 million.

For most of the children questioned, Saturday remains the best day of the week.

Although God comes in as the tenth most famous person in the world, Jesus is at number four and Father Christmas at five.

Also in the top ten were Madonna, the Queen, Tony Blair and X-Factor stars Simon Cowell and Sharon Osbourne.

Wayne Rooney and David Beckham, who were in the top four in 2005, did not make the top ten this year.

Patricia Murchie of Luton First said: "The idea of the special Kids’ Day is to give pre-teens a national voice for their opinions in a very simple format.

"This particular age group has some very clear ideas on how the world could be changed for the better but are very rarely given the opportunity to express them."

Here is a sample of some of the survey’s results: What do you think is the very best thing in the world?

1. Being a Celebrity 2. Good Looks 3. Being Rich 4. Being Healthy 5. Pop Music 6. Families 7. Friends 8. Nice Food 9. Watching Films 10. Heaven/God

Published: December 19, 2006

NEW YORK Sean Penn, the actor and occasional foreign correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle, hit the media and called for impeachment of the president in receiving the 2006 Christopher Reeve First Amendment Award fromThe Creative Coalition Monday night in New York City.

Presented since 1997, the First Amendment Award recognizes "individuals who are dedicated to the sanctity of the first amendment and its free speech provision." Other Creative Coalition honorees last night included Branford Marsalis, Harvey Keitel, Heather Graham and Marcia Gay Harden.

In his remarks, Penn listed more than a dozen serious issues facing the country, and commented, ”We depend largely for information on these issues from media industries, driven by the bottom line to such an extent that the public interest becomes uninteresting.”

Turning to his views of President Bush, Penn said, “Now, there’s been a lot of talk lately on Capitol Hill about how impeachment should be ‘off the table.’ We’re told that it’s time to look ahead - not back...

“Can you imagine how far that argument would go for the defense at an arraignment on charges of grand larceny, or large-scale distribution of methamphetamines? How about the arranging of a contract killing on a pregnant mother? ‘Indictment should be off the table.’ Or ‘Let’s look forward, not backward.’ Or ‘We can’t afford another failed defendant.’

“Our country has a legal system, not of men and women, but of laws. Why then are we so willing to put inconvenient provisions of the U.S. constitution and federal law ‘off the table?’”

Penn said he admired New York Times columnist Frank Rich but disagreed with his position that pursuing impeachment now would be “decadent.”

In his prepared remarks, he also lamented how the U.S. public was allegedly tricked into backing the Iraq invasion and derided those media figures who did that, describing Rush Limbaugh as “high as a kite on OxyContin,” Bill O’Reilly as “factually impaired,” and Sean Hannity as “simply a whore to the cause of his pimps - Murdoch and Ailes?” He then rapped former Rep. Mark Foley, Sen. Joe Lieberman and even singer Toby Keith.

With that, he imagined listeners thinking, "Oh, there goes Sean...he had to go and name-call. They say he can’t help himself." But he asked: “Or, did I name-call? Maybe I just quickly summed up seven or eight little truths. Oh, no, you’re right - I name-called. I said, ‘putz.’ I take it back. Or, do I? Did I say whore? Pimp? These are questions. But, the real and great questions of conscience and accountability would not loom so ominously — unanswered or evaded at such tremendous cost — without our day-to-day failure to insist on genuine accountability.

“Of course we’d prefer some easy ways to get there. But no easy ways exist. Not a new Congress. Not Barack Obama. And, not John McCain.”

More excerpts from his prepared speech, first posted at Huffingtonpost.com, follow:

The most effective forms of de facto censorship are pre-emptive. Systemically, we are encouraged to keep our heads down, out of the line of fire - to avoid the danger, god forbid, that someone in the White House, on Capitol Hill, or a media blow-hard might take a shot at us.

But, as a practical matter, most of the limits on creative expression and other forms of free speech come from self-censorship, where the mechanism of corporate clout offers carrots and brandishes sticks. We avoid a conflict before the conflict materializes. We reach for the carrots and stay out of range of sticks.

Decades ago, Fred Friendly called it a "positive veto" - corporations putting big money behind shows that they want to establish and perpetuate. Whether in journalism or drama, creative efforts that don’t gain a financial "positive veto" are dismissible, then dismissed. We may not call that "censorship." But whatever we call it, the effects of a "positive veto" system are severe. They impose practical limits on efforts to bring the most important realities to public attention sooner rather than later...

We’re beginning to see more revealing images of this war. But it’s later now, isn’t it? What we have to pay attention to are the results of these "practical limits." One, is that wars become much easier to launch than to halt….

I’m sure many people who I met in Baghdad, both in my trips prior to and during the occupation, now similarly cannot just look forward. With lives so entirely shattered by a violence of occupation - an ongoing U.S. war effort and the civil war that it has catalyzed. All on the back of a crumbled infrastructure, following eleven years of devastating U.N. sanctions...

Let’s give the whistle-blowers cover, let’s get the subpoenas out there, and then, one by one, put this administration under oath. And then, if the crimes of "Treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors" are proven, do as Article 2, Section 4 of the United States Constitution provides, and remove "the President, Vice President and...civil officers of the United States" from office. If the Justice Department then sees fit to bunk them up with Jeff Skilling, so be it….

Christopher Reeve promised to get out of that chair. Well, I don’t know about you, but it feels like he’s up now and I wouldn’t be standing here if it weren’t on his shoulders. Let it be for something.