Los Angeles Times

Funny business

In “Revel With a Cause,” Stephen E. Kercher argues that the “satire boom” of the 1950s and ’60s was not only just entertainment but also a social movement — one that changed American life.

By Rich Cohen

‘Revel With a Cause: Liberal Satire in Postwar America’
Stephen E. Kercher
University of Chicago Press: 576 pp., $35

Nothing ages as poorly as a joke. It’s a dirty little secret — the records of Mort Sahl, that revolutionary genius, no longer play funny. How do I know? Because when I listen to them, I don’t laugh. Monologues that kept my father in stitches don’t touch me. In the end, all that remains of the old comedian (or of most old comedians, since I still find the Marx Brothers pretty funny, ditto Jackie Gleason) is the pose of the comic, the way he held his cigarette or stood in the light — the way, in other words, he faced the world.

In fearful times, comedians are often the first to stand up to authority. It’s in their nature. They know the teacher is going to come down with the ruler, but they go for it anyway. In fact, if you study the history of comedy, you study the history of dissent. This is what Stephen E. Kercher has done in “Revel With a Cause: Liberal Satire in Postwar America,” a survey of the “satire boom,” the comedic flowering that ran from the early 1950s to the mid-1960s. “Far from being mirthless,” he writes, “the two decades following World War II spawned satiric forms and techniques that have permanently altered the direction of modern American comic expression.”

Kercher, who is an assistant professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, has watched and analyzed legions of lost television shows, comic strips, routines, sketches. The old names keep turning up: Dick Gregory, Nichols and May, Bob Newhart, Bob and Ray. Much of their work was heroic because it flourished in the wake of McCarthyism. This was life re-asserting itself, the giggle that wells up in your chest after the gym teacher has chewed you out.

It began with the cartoonists — people like Bill Mauldin, a World War II grunt who painted Army life as it was lived, not as it was sold; or Al Capp, Herblock and Walt Kelly, whose “Pogo” comic strip became a national sensation. “By 1958,” Kercher writes, “an estimated fifty million readers followed ‘Pogo’ in five hundred newspapers worldwide…. The quadrennial ‘I Go Pogo’ presidential campaigns that Kelly initiated in 1952 — campaigns intended to parody presidential candidates and their campaigns — became sizeable high school and college fads.”

Plays, films, nightclub routines: Each is minutely detailed in “Revel With a Cause.” Reading the book is like watching a slo-mo explosion, one triggered by Ernie Kovacs, Sid Caesar, Henry Morgan, Stan Freberg and Harvey Kurtzman’s Mad magazine. Then Steve Allen’s “The Tonight Show,” the Compass Players in Chicago — who spawned Shelley Berman — and Second City, a reflection of which can still be seen on “Saturday Night Live.”

According to Kercher, many of the comedians who made their names in the 20 years after World War II were Jewish or African American — outsiders no less obsessed with the phoniness of the system than J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield or Norman Mailer’s White Negro. “[F]or many of these artists and performers,” he points out, “humor did not provide an escape from reality but instead a momentary flight from the unreality of postwar American life.”

By the late 1950s a parallel universe had developed, a world of funny people who saw themselves as distinct from the bourgeoisie.

“We were members of a comic underground,” cartoonist Jules Feiffer recalls, “meeting in cabarets and cellar clubs, making startlingly grave and innovative jokes about virginity, Jewish mothers, HUAC and J. Edgar Hoover.”

When listening to these old routines, you have to ask yourself: What comes first, the joke or the message? Is the latter a byproduct, something that arises naturally, or is the joke the candy that hides the medicine? Because in the end — and the end is now — the candy rots and you are left with a generation of young people looking for what makes this stuff funny. Old newspapers are read only by historians and conspiracy nuts.

At times, “Revel With a Cause” strikes me as too earnest, too academic — that’s my beef, as Jay Leno used to say. It reads like a college survey in which the professor shuts you up by saying: Comedy is no laughing matter! “By considering their humorous work seriously,” Kercher writes, “I will demonstrate that American postwar satiric writers, artists, and performers responded critically and creatively to concerns many middle class Americans shared over race relations, the Cold War, McCarthyism, and the spread of hypocrisy and deceit.”

Kercher is the sort of guy who takes four hours to tell you the plot of a 90-minute movie, who explains why a whoopee cushion is funny rather than letting the humor stand for itself. I’m not suggesting that a writer chronicling comedians has to be their equal on the page, but because these men, the best of them, were defined by a daredevil, hope-we-don’t-get-lynched recklessness, I do think they are owed some liveliness.

Yet “Revel With a Cause” is saved by its portrayal of Lenny Bruce, who is its hero and stands as an endpoint to all the comedic kvetching. Pictures of Bruce never fail to touch me. His face is as melancholy as that of Chaplin’s Tramp. He was a hero of the age, so had to be broken on the wheel. That’s the way it is with revolutionaries. Their ideas might sound dated, but their example lives.

Bruce was born Leonard Schneider. He never made it past fifth grade. He served in the Navy, where he handled bombs, which seems like a literary symbol. (Almost all the comics Kercher writes about served in the military, which gave them the authority to take on the generals; this lack of authority — today, most humorists come from the class that does not serve — is one of many problems of having an all-volunteer military.)

Bruce began doing conventional stand-up but soon broke out and started speaking his mind. He made fun of Catholics, Jews, everyone. Talked about sex. A New York critic called him “a truthteller, a kind of prophet, the kind that goes right back to Ezekiel.” Walter Winchell called him “America’s No. 1 Vomic.” He was arrested for obscenity and tried and arrested and tried again. In Los Angeles, the case against him was made by none other than Johnnie Cochran Jr. — part of the legal team responsible for O.J. Simpson’s acquittal — who tried to nail Bruce to the cross.

The People of the State of New York v. Lenny Bruce was the case that killed him — that, and the heroin. It was prosecuted by Frank Hogan, who also went after members of the Jewish Mob. Bruce was convicted, or so it seems, for not being funny enough, because the judge didn’t “get” his act. The decision called his routine “chaotic, haphazard, and inartful.” It’s a comedian’s worst nightmare: sentenced to prison because he bombed. On appeal, he did his routine for a panel that included future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

The satire boom was ultimately devoured by the forces it helped bring into power: Camelot and the New Frontier. “In terms of its political outlook, certainly,” Kercher notes, “most of the satire celebrated throughout American popular culture during the 1950s and early 1960s dovetailed with the cold war liberalism of Adlai Stevenson and John F. Kennedy. Once they began to see themselves as part of the liberal establishment, American satirists yielded their positions as critical outsiders for the sake of becoming court jesters.”

To highlight this, Kercher quotes, among others, Feiffer, who suggests that the Kennedys “learned how to make [satire] ineffectual by embracing it.” In 1963 the cartoonist told a reporter that what most bothered him was the way he had been “accepted by the very people I’m trying to wound. They wound me by loving me to death while I’m expressing my hostility.”

The satirist is an insurgent — he can snipe and detonate and oppose, but he can never govern.

In the end, Kercher offers a compelling picture of a time when the funny man ruled, although he fails to explain just what made the funny man funny, what made the audience laugh. Partly this has to do with the nature of jokes, which, even more quickly than the comics who crafted them, fall into haggard ruins. Partly it’s the fault of Kercher, who simply does not have an ear for comedy. He is like a scholar who can explain what the invention of dessert meant in a sociological sense, but cannot tell you what the pudding tasted like, or why people keep ordering profiteroles. It reminds me of T.S. Eliot, that great lover of Borscht Belt comedy, who said: “We had the experience but missed the meaning.”

Rich Cohen is the author of “Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams,” “The Record Men: The Chess Brothers and the Birth of Rock & Roll,” and “Sweet and Low: A Family Story.”

The Independent

By Anthony Barnes, Arts and Media Correspondent
Published: 20 August 2006

A treasure trove of 3,000 tapes from the early days of guitar pop has been uncovered, chronicling the works of the man dubbed the UK’s answer to “wall of sound” creator Phil Spector.

The collection was amassed by Joe Meek, a volatile genius who shaped some of the biggest chart hits of the early Sixties with stars such as David Bowie, Rod Stewart, Status Quo and Tom Jones passing through the doors of his studio. The cache, known as the “tea chest tapes”, includes master recordings of many of the string of number one hits he created, as well as unheard sessions which never saw the light of day.

But fans of the charismatic record producer are now concerned that the uncatalogued boxes of 10in reels are simply rotting away as they oxidise and age. With the approach of the 40th anniversary of Meek’s death, fans and artists who appear on the tapes are demanding the recordings are properly preserved to protect his legacy.

Musician Clem Cattini of The Tornados, whose Meek-produced single “Telstar” was the first US number one by a British group and the favourite record of Baroness Thatcher, said: “It would be a terrible shame if this stuff, some of which has never been heard, was to be completely lost.” Meek’s biographer, John Repsch, added: “Leaving them there rotting year after year is just a terrible waste.”

Meek, who played no instruments himself but had a brilliant ear for sound, built up his ramshackle studio in a split-level flat at 304 Holloway Road, north London. His unconventional recording methods became the stuff of legend as he sought to create new effects.

He would record vocals in the toilet, or put the string section on the stairs, to create the right sound, twist screws that weren’t meant to be touched on the mixing desk and bash tacks into the hammers of his piano to alter its sound.

John Leyton, who scored a number one hit in 1961 before appearing in films such as The Great Escape and Von Ryan’s Express, said: “His studio was in a very dank maisonette and there were cables and tapes all over the place. It was an absolute mess. When I got there I thought, ‘So this is the glamour of showbiz.’ It just didn’t seem at all professional, and I thought nothing was going to come of it, but people were always amazed by the results.”

Meek, who was gay and had once been arrested for importuning, became increasingly unpredictable as his fame grew. As well as being obsessed with the spirit world, he also became fixated by the idea that he was being bugged by major record labels. He would often record the private conversations of guests to his home when he stepped out of the room to find out what they said about him.

In February 1967, long after his hits had dried up, he committed suicide, moments after murdering his landlady. His equipment was sold off to pay his debts and a huge cache of tapes was sold to businessman Cliff Cooper – who had performed in a Meek band, The Millionaires – on the proviso that he held them for the study of the producer’s methods.

Mr Cooper has held on to the collection ever since, but many Meek fans are now angry that the tapes – said to include sessions featuring Bowie, Jones and Stewart, as well as thousands of hours of unheard recordings – are crumbling away. Campaigners say if work is done now they can be preserved.

Mr Cooper told The Independent on Sunday: “I do feel guilty that this has gone on for so long but I was advised that it could be a litigation nightmare. I would love to do something with them. I intend to over the next few weeks.”

Los Angeles Times – 31 Aug 2006

In Caracas, the Poor Shall Inherit the Golf Course
By Chris Kraul
Times Staff Writer

CARACAS, Venezuela — Perched in a green and forested aerie in the city’s southern hills, the exclusive Valle Arriba Golf Club has long offered its members a breathtaking view and a pleasant escape from urban cacophony and congestion.

Now, a staunch ally of President Hugo Chavez wants it.

Caracas Mayor Juan Barreto announced late Tuesday that the municipal government planned to seize two elite country clubs, Valle Arriba and the Caracas Country Club, and redevelop them as low-income housing projects.

The planned seizures were justified as part of Chavez’s federal policy to redistribute privately owned land to the poor. The takeovers, which have included farmland and apartment buildings, are roiling the social and political scene just as the presidential campaign is kicking off.

Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel said Wednesday that the Chavez government “does not share the decision.” But the proposal, which is subject to appeals by the landowners, has drawn attention to an accelerating cycle of government takeovers, as well as squatter seizures that have thrown land tenancy law into chaos throughout Venezuela.

Backed by a land law passed in 2003, the Chavez government has targeted 4 million acres of farmland for seizure and redistribution this year to poor farm cooperatives. The moves are part of a broader social agenda to move the poor out of the cities and onto small farms.

In Caracas, Barreto’s officials say the takeover is prompted by a housing shortage and is permitted under the Chavez land law, which gave the government sweeping new powers to seize property that it deemed idle, misused, illegally acquired or not contributing to “social goals.”

The law, among the broadest eminent domain statutes in the hemisphere, affords the government ample discretion in applying those criteria. In a public address last week, Barreto referred to the residents living around the country clubs as “putrid.”

Chavez opponents see the club seizures as a brazen campaign tactic to bolster Chavez’s support among the poor before the December election. The president has made political hay by vilifying the upper classes and blames them for a crippling general strike and a failed coup earlier in his administration.

Business interests and members of the clubs reacted angrily to the announcement Wednesday.

Country club member and prominent banker Oscar Mendoza said the confiscations would amount to an illegal seizure of private property.

The Venezuelan Construction Chamber said building low-income housing on the club site would make little planning sense.

Caracas Country Club board president Fernando Zozaya said club management had not been informed of any takeover. But putting housing on the club grounds, which he described as “a lung of the city,” would be an “environmental disaster with unforeseeable consequences,” he said.

The announcement comes as Chavez’s sweeping property reform policies are kicking into higher gear. Juan Carlos Loyo, president of the National Land Institute, said his agency is about halfway toward the target of redistributing 4 million acres to the poor.

Previous attempts at land reform never worked, he said. “According to the World Bank, Brazil and Venezuela have the worst concentration of land in the hands of a few…. There is a profound social inequality here.”

This month, the government began carving up the La Vergarena ranch in southern Bolivar state, a 500,000-acre property owned by a banking family that the government said was underutilized. About 10% of the ranch has been turned over to indigenous groups who will plant crops while preserving the forests.

In Yaracuy state, 60 ranches and sugar plantations have been targeted for takeovers.

But the social revolution pushed by Chavez is having violent repercussions. More than 50 peasant squatters have been slain since the president took office.

In July, Yaracuy peasant leader Braulio Alvarez, who is also a federal deputy, narrowly escaped death when assailants shot him in the face as he left a late-night meeting. It was the third attempt on his life.

Alvarez blamed assassins hired by landowners who oppose Chavez’s redistribution plan.

“There are many chameleons who say they support the president but who have not changed their souls or way of thinking,” Alvarez said.

Chavez is under pressure to deliver on promises to give housing to Venezuelans who are homeless or living in substandard structures. The government estimates that the housing “deficit” amounts to 2 million units. Tenants of about 1,000 apartment buildings in Caracas have formally applied for government takeovers of their structures, hoping they will become instant owners.

But squatters elsewhere have taken over land, even where title seems secure, forcing authorities to rein in the land grab.

On Monday, police dragged 50 squatters out of an apartment building in central Caracas that they had occupied for three years.

Fear of squatter seizures has brought new apartment construction to a virtual halt in the capital and other Venezuelan cities, creating an acute shortage of units and inflating rents.

Loyo and other Chavez officials insist that owners are compensated for the rightful value of their property, but owners complain that they are poorly paid.

In the countryside, the government has taken over sprawling sugar farms and cattle ranches, arguing that such tracts could be put to better use by peasants, said Laura Lorenzo, secretary for Land and Agricultural Security in the Yaracuy state government.

Getting peasants out of congested cities and back to the countryside has been a goal of Chavez since he took power in 1999, and Loyo believes that land redistribution coupled with adequate financing and equipment will make that happen.

But historian and newspaper columnist Manuel Caballero thinks the chances of such a reverse exodus are slim. Once they’ve seen the city, poor farmers never go back to the countryside in significant numbers, he said.

“Instead of trying to lure peasants back to the farm, Chavez would do them a better service by improving the quality of life in the city,” Caballero said.

Times special correspondent Mery Mogollon in Caracas contributed to this report.

Apocalypse Near, Noam Chomsky interviewed by Merav Yudilovitch

ynet, August 4, 2006

[Note from NC: “The Yediot Ahronot interview came out (on Ynet), Aug. 3, but only in Hebrew — so far at least. What they published was a kind of amalgam of two versions, the second when the asked me to shorten the first by eliminating the part about Iranian nuclear weapons. What they published, for some reason, included the part they asked me to cut and eliminated parts I thought were more important. But worked out OK.” The version posted here reproduces the original transcript in full.]

You say the provocation and counter-provocation all serve as a distraction from the real issue. does the war in lebanon is also a distraction the aims to draw the worlds attention to the north of israel while gazza is been destroyed?

I assume you are referring to John Berger’s letter (which I signed, among others).

The “real issue” that is being ignored is the systematic destruction of any prospects for a viable Palestinian existence as Israel annexes valuable land and major resources (water particularly), leaving the shrinking territories assigned to Palestinians as unviable cantons, largely separated from one another and from whatever little bit of Jerusalem is to be left to Palestinians, and completely imprisoned as Israel takes over the Jordan valley (and of course controls air space, etc.). This program of “hitkansut,” cynically disguised as “withdrawal,” is of course completely illegal, in violation of Security Council resolutions and the unanimous decision of the World Court (including the dissenting statement of US Justice Buergenthal). If it is implemented as planned, it spells the end of the very broad international consensus on a two-state settlement that the US and Israel have unilaterally blocked for 30 years – matters that are so well documented that I do not have to review them here.

The US and Israel do not tolerate any resistance to these plans, preferring to pretend – falsely of course – that “there is no partner,” as they proceed with programs that go back a long way. We may recall that Gaza and the West Bank are recognized to be a unit, so that if resistance to Israel’s destructive and illegal progams is considered to be legitimate within the West Bank, then it is legitimate in Gaza as well, in reaction to Israeli actions in the West Bank.

To turn to your specific question, even a casual look at the Western press reveals that the crucial developments in the occupied territories are marginalized even more by the war in Lebanon. The ongoing destruction in Gaza – which was rarely seriously reported in the first place — has largely faded into the background, and the systematic takeover of the West Bank has virtually disappeared. The severe punishment of the population for “voting the wrong way” was never considered problematic, consistent with the long-standing principle that democracy is fine if and only if it accords with strategic and economic interests, documented to the heavens. However, I would not go as far as the implication in your question that this was a purpose of the war, though it clearly is the effect.

Do you see the world media partialy responsible for not insisting of linking between what’s going on in the occupied territories and lebanon?

Yes, but that is the least of the charges that should be levelled against the world media, and the intellectual communities generally. One of many far more severe charges is brought up in the opening paragraph of the Berger letter. Recall the facts. On June 25, Cpl. Gilad Shalit was captured at an army post near Gaza, eliciting huge cries of outrage worldwide, continuing daily at a high pitch, and a sharp escalation in Israeli attacks in Gaza. The escalation was supported on the grounds that capture of a soldier is a grave crime for which the population must be punished. One day before, on June 24, Israeli forces kidnapped two Gaza civilians, Osama and Mustafa Muamar, by any standards a far more severe crime than capture of a soldier. The Muamar kidnappings were certainly known to the major world media. They were reported at once in the English-language Israeli press (Jerusalem Post, Ha’aretz English edition, June 25), basically IDF handouts. And there were indeed a few brief, scattered and dismissive reports in several newspapers around the US; the only serious news report in English that day was in the Turkish press. Very revealingly, there was no comment, no follow-up, no call for military or terrorist attacks against Israel. A google search will quickly reveal the relative significance in the West of the kidnapping of civilians by the IDF and the capture of an Israeli soldier a day later.

The paired events, a day apart, demonstrate with bitter clarity that the show of outrage over the Shalit kidnapping was cynical fraud. They reveal that by Western moral standards, kidnapping of civilians is just fine if it is done by “our side,” but capture of a soldier on “our side” a day later is a despicable crime that requires severe punishment of the population. As Gideon Levy accurately wrote in Ha’aretz, the IDF kidnapping of civilians the day before the capture of Cpl. Shalit strips away any “legitimate basis for the IDF’s operation,” and, we may add, any legitimate basis for support for these operations. The same assessment carries over to the July 12 kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers near the Lebanon border, heightened, in this case, by the (null) reaction to the regular Israeli practice for many years of abducting Lebanese and holding many as hostages for long periods, and of course killing many Lebanese. No one ever argued that these crimes justified bombing and shelling of Israel, invasion and destruction of much of the country, or terrorist actions within it. The conclusions are stark, clear, and entirely unambiguous.

All of this is, obviously, of extraordinary importance in the present case, particularly given the dramatic timing. That is, I suppose, why the major media chose to avoid the crucial facts, apart from a very few scattered and dismissive phrases.

Apologists for state crimes claim that the kidnapping of the Gaza civilians is justified by IDF claims that they are “Hamas militants” or were planning crimes. By their logic, they should therefore be lauding the capture of Gilad Shalit, a soldier in an army that was (uncontroversially) shelling and bombing Gaza. These performances are truly disgraceful.

You’re talking first and foremost about acknowledging the palestinian nation but will it solve the “iranian threat” will it push the hizbullah from the israeli boarder? today israelis see an imediate danger in the northern front are we being blinded?

Virtually all informed observers agree that a fair and equitable resolution of the plight of the Palestinians would considerably weaken the anger and hatred towards Israel and the US in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Such an agreement is surely within reach, if the US and Israel depart from their long-standing rejectionism. Before they were called off prematurely by Ehud Barak, the Taba negotiations of January 2001 were coming close to a viable settlement, carried forward by subseqnent negotiations, most prominently the Geneva Accord released on December 2002, which received strong international support but was dismissed by the US and rejected by Israel. One can raise various criticisms of these proposals, but they are at least a basis, perhaps a solid basis, for progress towards peaceful settlement – if the US and Israel sharply reverse their rejectionist policies.

On Iran and Hizbollah, there is, of course, much more to say, and I can only mention a few central points here.

Let us begin with Iran. In 2003, Iran offered to negotiate all outstanding issues with the US, including nuclear issues and a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. The offer was made by the moderate Khatami government, with the support of the hard-line “supreme leader” Ayatollah Khamenei. The Bush administration response was to censure the Swiss diplomat who brought the offer.

In June 2006, Khamenei issued an official declaration stating that Iran agrees with the Arab countries on the issue of Palestine, meaning that it accepts the 2002 Arab League call for full normalization of relations with Israel in a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus. The timing suggests that this might have been a reprimand to his subordinate Ahmadenijad, whose inflammatory statements are given wide publicity in the West, unlike the far more important declaration by his superior Khamenei. Just a few days ago, former Iranian diplomat Saddagh Kharazzi “reaffirmed that Iran would back a two-state solution if the Palestinians accepted” (Financial Times, July 26, 2006). Of course, the PLO has officially backed a two-state solution for many years, and backed the 2002 Arab League proposal. Hamas has also indicated its willingness to negotiate a two-state settlement, as is surely well-known in Israel. Kharazzi is reported to be the author of the 2003 proposal of Khatami and Khamanei.

The US and Israel do not want to hear any of this. They prefer to hear that Iran “is sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state” (Jerusalem correspondent Charles Radin, Boston Globe, 2 August), the standard and more convenient story.

They also do not want to hear that Iran appears to be the only country to have accepted the proposal by IAEA director Mohammed ElBaradei that all weapons-usable fissile materials be placed under international control, a step towards a verifiable Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaty (FMCT), as mandated by the UN General Assembly in 1993. ElBaradei’s proposal, if implemented, would not only end the Iranian nuclear crisis but would also deal with a vastly more serious crisis: the growing threat of nuclear war, which leads prominent strategic analysts to warn of “apocalypse soon” (Robert McNamara) if policies continue on their current course. The US strongly opposes a verifiable FMCT, but over US objections, the treaty came to a vote at the United Nations, where it passed 147-1, with two abstentions: Israel, which cannot oppose its patron, and more interestingly, Blair’s Britain, which retains a degree of sovereignty. The British ambassador stated that Britain supports the treaty, but it “divides the international community” – 147 to 1. These again are matters that are virtually suppressed outside of specialist circles, and are matters of literal survival of the species, extending far beyond Iran.

It is commonly said that the “international community” has called on Iran to abandon its legal right to enrich uranium. That is true, if we define the “international community” as Washington and whoever happens to go along with it. It is surely not true of the world. The non-aligned countries have forcefully endorsed Iran’s “inalienable right” to enrich uranium. And, rather remarkably, in Turkey, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, a majority of the population favor accepting a nuclear-armed Iran over any American military action, international polls reveal.

The non-aligned countries also called for a nuclear-free Middle East, a longstanding demand of the authentic international community, again blocked by the US and Israel. It should be recognized that the threat of Israeli nuclear weapons is taken very seriously in the world. As explained by the former Commander-in-Chief of the US Strategic Command, General Lee Butler, “it is dangerous in the extreme that in the cauldron of animosities that we call the Middle East, one nation has armed itself, ostensibly, with stockpiles of nuclear weapons, perhaps numbering in the hundreds, and that inspires other nations to do so.” Israel is doing itself no favors if it ignores these concerns.

It is also of some interest that when Iran was ruled by the tryant installed by a US-UK military coup, the United States – including Rumsfeld, Cheney, Kissinger, Wolfowitz and others — strongly supported the Iranian nuclear programs they now condemn and helped provide Iran with the means to pursue them. These facts are surely not lost on the Iranians, just as they have not forgotten the very strong support of the US and its allies for Saddam Hussein during his murderous aggression, including help in developing the chemical weapons that helped kill hundreds of thousands of Iranians.

There is a great deal more to say, but it appears that the “Iranian threat” to which you refer can be approached by peaceful means, if the US and Israel would agree. We cannot know whether the Iranian proposals are serious, unless they are explored. The US-Israel refusal to explore them, and the silence of the US (and, to my knowledge, European) media, suggests that it is perhaps feared that they may be serious.

I should add that to the outside world, it sounds a bit odd, to put it mildly, for the US and Israel to be warning of the “Iranian threat” when they and they alone are issuing threats to launch an attack, threats that are immediate and credible, and in serious violation of international law; and are preparing very openly for such an attack. Whatever one thinks of Iran, no such charge can be made in their case. It is also apparent to the world, if not to the US and Israel, that Iran has not invaded any other countries, something that the US and Israel have done regularly.

On Hezbollah too, there are hard and serious questions. As well-known, Hezbollah was formed in reaction to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and its harsh and brutal occupation in violation of Security Council orders. It won considerable prestige by playing the leading role in driving out the aggressors. Also, like other Islamic movements, including Hamas, it has gained popular support by providing social services to the poor. Along with Amal, now its close ally, Hizbollah represents the Shi’a community in the parliament in Lebanon’s confessional system. It is an integral part of Lebanese society. And much as in the past, US-backed Israeli violence is sharply increasing popular support for Hezbollah, not only in the Arab and Muslim worlds generally, but also in Lebanon itself. Polls taken in late July reveal that “87 percent of Lebanese support Hizbullah’s fight with Israel, a rise of 29 percent on a similar poll conducted in February. More striking, however, is the level of support for Hizbullah’s resistance from non-Shiite communities. Eighty percent of Christians polled supported Hizbullah along with 80 percent of Druze and 89 percent of Sunnis. Lebanese no longer blame Hizbullah for sparking the war by kidnapping the Israeli soldiers, but Israel and the US instead” (Christian Science Monitor, July 28). As often in the past, Israel is doing itself no favors by failing to attend to the predictable consequences of its resort to extreme violence instead of such measures as prisoner exchange, as in the past.

It is also not wise to ignore the recent observations of Zeev Maoz (Ha’aretz, July 24). As he wrote, the “wall-to-wall consensus in Israel that the war against the Hezbollah in Lebanon is a just and moral war…is based on selective and short-term memory, on an introverted world view, and on double standards.” The reasons include the Israeli practice of kidnapping and the almost daily violations of the Lebanese border for surveillance: “a border violation is a border violation.” The reasons also include the historical record: the four earlier Israeli invasions since 1978, and their grim consequences for Lebanese. And we should also not forget the pretexts. The 1982 invasion was carried out after a year in which Israel repeatedly carried out bombing and other provocations in Lebanon, apparently trying to elicit some PLO violation of the 1981 truce, and when it failed, attacked anyway, on the pretext of the assassination attempt against Ambassador Argov (by Abu Nidal, who was at war with the PLO). The invasion was clearly intended, as virtually conceded, to end the embarrassing PLO initiatives for negotiation, a “veritable catastrophe” for Israel as Yehoshua Porat pointed out. It was, as described at the time, a “war for the West Bank.” The later invasions also had shameful pretexts. In 1993, Hezbollah had violated “the rules of the game,” Yitzhak Rabin announced: these Israeli rules permitted Israel to carry out terrorist attacks north of its illegally-held “security zone,” but did not permit retaliation within Israel. Peres’s 1996 invasion had no more credible pretexts. It is convenient to forget all of this, or to concoct tales about shelling of the Galilee in 1981, but it is not an attractive practice, nor a wise one.

The problem of Hezbollah’s arms is quite serious, no doubt. Resolution 1559 calls for disarming of all Lebanese militias, but Lebanon has not enacted that provision. Sunni Prime Minister Fuad Siniora describes Hezbollah’s military wing as “resistance rather than as a militia, and thus exempt from” Resolution 1559. A National Dialogue in June 2006 failed to resolve the problem. Its main purpose was to formulate a “national defense strategy” (vis-à-vis Israel), but it remained deadlocked over Hezbollah’s call for “a defense strategy that allowed the Islamic Resistance to keep its weapons as a deterrent to possible Israeli aggression” (Beirut-based journalist Jim Quilty, Middle East Report, July 25), in the absence of any credible alternative. The US could, if it chose, provide a credible guarantee against an invasion by its client state, but that would require a sharp change in long-standing policy.

In the background are crucial facts emphasized by several veteran Middle East correspondents. Rami Khouri, an editor of Lebanon’s Daily Star, writes that “the Lebanese and Palestinians have responded to Israel’s persistent and increasingly savage attacks against entire civilian populations by creating parallel or alternative leaderships that can protect them and deliver essential services.” Syria specialist Patrick Seale agrees: “You have the rise of essentially non-state actors like Hezbollah and Hamas because of the vacuum created by the impotence of Arab states to contain or deter Israel. These actors are basically taking issue with Israel’s ‘deterrence,’ which posits that Israel can strike but no one can strike at it.” Until such basic questions are dealt with, it is likely that “the Middle East will sink further into violence and despair,” as Khouri predicts.

You are not refering in your letter to the israeli casualties. is there diferentiation in your opinion between isareli casualties of war (and i’m not talking about soldiers i’m talking about civilians) and lebanese or palestinians casualties?

That is not accurate. John Berger’s letter is very explicit about making no distinction between Israeli and other casualties. As his letter states: “Both categories of missile rip bodies apart horribly – who but field commanders can forget this for a moment.”

Why in your opinion the world is co-operating with the israeli invasion to lebanon and why isn’t there any real pressure on the israeli government to stop the madness in gazza and jenin? what purpose does this silence serve?

The great majority of the world protests, but chooses not to act. Europe is unwilling to take a stand against the US administration, which has made it clear that it supports Israeli policies in Palestine and Lebanon. The rest of the world strongly objects, but they are not even considered part of the “international community,” unless they obey. The US-backed Arab tyrannies at first condemned Hezbollah, but were forced to back down out of fear of their own populations. Even King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Washington’s most loyal (and most important) ally, was compelled to say that “If the peace option is rejected due to the Israeli arrogance, then only the war option remains, and no one knows the repercussions befalling the region, including wars and conflict that will spare no one, including those whose military power is now tempting them to play with fire.”

With regard to Palestine, while Bush’s stand is extreme, it has its roots in earlier policies. The week in Taba in January 2001 is the only real break in US rejectionism in 30 years. During the Oslo years, the US-Israel hinted at joining the international consensus, but made sure it would be very difficult to implement by steady increase in settlement, the rate peaking in 2000. The US also strongly supported earlier Israeli invasions of Lebanon, though in 1982 and 1996, it compelled Israel to terminate its aggression when atrocities were reaching a point that harmed US interests.

Unfortunately, one can generalize a comment of Uri Avnery’s about Dan Halutz, who “views the world below through a bombsight.” Much the same is true of Rumsfeld-Cheney-Rice, and other top Bush administration planners, despite occasional soothing rhetoric. As history reveals, that view of the world is not uncommon among those who hold a virtual monopoly of the means of violence, with consequences that we need not review.

What is the next chapter in this middle-eastern conflict as you see it?

I do not know of anyone foolhardy enough to predict. The US and Israel are stirring up popular forces that are very ominous, and which will only gain in power and become more extremist if the US and Israel persist in demolishing any hope of realization of Palestinian national rights, and destroying Lebanon. It should also be recognized that Washington’s primary concern, as in the past, is not Israel and Lebanon, but the vast energy resources of the Middle East, recognized 60 years ago to be a “stupendous source of strategic power” and “one of the greatest material prizes in world history.” We can expect, with confidence, that the US will continue to do what it can to control this unparalleled source of strategic power. That may not be easy. The remarkable incompetence of Bush planners has created a catastrophe in Iraq, for their own interests as well. They are even facing the possibility of the ultimate nightmare: a loose Shi’a alliance (including Shi’ite-dominated Iraq, Iran, and the Shi’ite regions of Saudi Arabia), controlling the world’s major energy supplies, and independent of Washington – or even worse, establishing closer links with the China-based Asian Energy Security Grid and Shanghai Cooperation Council. The results could be truly apocalyptic. And even in tiny Lebanon, the leading Lebanese academic scholar of Hezbollah, and a harsh critic of the organization, describes the current conflict in “apocalyptic terms,” warning that possibly “All hell would be let loose” if the outcome of the US-Israel campaign leaves a situation in which “the Shiite community is seething with resentment at Israel, the United States and the government that it perceives as its betrayer” (Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, Washington Post, 23 July).

It is no secret that in past years, Israel has helped to destroy secular Arab nationalism and to create Hezbollah and Hamas, just as US violence has expedited the rise of extremist Islamic fundamentalism and jihadi terror. The reasons are understood. There are constant warnings about it by Western (including US) intelligence agencies, and by the leading specialists on these topics. One can bury one’s head in the sand and take comfort in a “wall-to-wall consensus” that what we do is “just and moral” (Maoz), ignoring the lessons of recent history, or simple rationality. Or one can face the facts, and approach dilemmas which are very serious by peaceful means. They are available. Their success can never be guaranteed. But we can be reasonably confident that viewing the world through a bombsight will bring further misery and suffering, perhaps even “apocalypse soon.”

“Valerie and Her Week of Wonders” – Friday, September 8 at 8pm in Philadelphia

The Valerie Project

with members of Espers, Fern Knight, Fursaxa and Grass and featuring Greg Weeks, Mary Lattimore, Charles Cohen, Jesse Sparhawk and special guest performance by Marissa Nadler

Co-presented by Joseph A Gervasi

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
dir. Jaromil Jires, Czechoslovakia, 1970, 16mm, 72 mins, color, Czech w/ English subtitles

Philadelphia musicians led by Greg Weeks, bring new life to a forgotten classic of the Czech New Wave, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders. The sound goes off and the amps get cranked (do harps need amps?) as a collective of Philadelphia’s finest underground musicians pay tribute to this seminal film of the new folk movement. Their lush haunting melodies are the perfect compliment to this surreal tale in which love, fear, sex and religion merge into one fantastic world. When a 13-year-old girl crosses the threshold into womanhood, her life unfolds as a gothic saga of vampires, witchcraft, and mysticism. Rich in imagination, color, and textures, this remarkable film has been described as “a Jodorowsky/Bergman co-production of a Grimm’s fairytale.”

$12 IHouse + Live Arts/Fringe members; $13 students; $15 general admission.
Advance tickets at or 866.468.7619.

Thursday August 3, 2006
The Guardian

The US-backed Israeli assault on Lebanon has left the country numb, smouldering and angry. The massacre in Qana and the loss of life is not simply “disproportionate”. It is, according to existing international laws, a war crime.

The deliberate and systematic destruction of Lebanon’s social infrastructure by the Israeli air force was also a war crime, designed to reduce that country to the status of an Israeli-US protectorate. The attempt has backfired. In Lebanon itself, 87% of the population now support Hizbullah’s resistance, including 80% of Christian and Druze and 89% of Sunni Muslims, while 8% believe the US supports Lebanon. But these actions will not be tried by any court set up by the “international community” since the US and its allies that commit or are complicit in these appalling crimes will not permit it.

It has now become clear that the assault on Lebanon to wipe out Hizbullah had been prepared long before. Israel’s crimes had been given a green light by the US and its loyal British ally, despite the opposition to Blair in his own country.

In short, the peace that Lebanon enjoyed has come to an end, and a paralysed country is forced to remember a past it had hoped to forget. The state terror inflicted on Lebanon is being repeated in the Gaza ghetto, while the “international community” stands by and watches in silence. Meanwhile, the rest of Palestine is annexed and dismantled with the direct participation of the US and the tacit approval of its allies.

We offer our solidarity and support to the victims of this brutality and to those who mount a resistance against it. For our part, we will use all the means at our disposal to expose the complicity of our governments in these crimes. There will be no peace in the Middle East while the occupations of Palestine and Iraq and the temporarily “paused” bombings of Lebanon continue.

Tariq Ali
Noam Chomsky
Eduardo Galeano
Howard Zinn
Ken Loach
John Berger
Arundhati Roy