THE PISS OF ALTERITY

In an eloquent response to my 9/11 essay below, Charles Simpson, a sociologist friend, seems to be arguing for an end to the 9/11 truth movement. His letter is not online, and is too long to be quoted in full.  But let me respond here by quoting a few sections which may give you as sense of his points.

Charles points to the "roadblock" that has frustrated all 9/11 truth seekers, the "room without an echo", and calls for "the next move", a "way out", engaging instead with "broader social movements", "face-to-face localism", and "alternative ways forward in the construction of meaningful lives" which will more likely resonate with American tastes, understandings of the world, and current conditions.

The irony of his call to leave 9/11 issues behind is the pessimism behind his suggestion.  Charles argues that people do not "want to go there" (9/11) because of a deep survival instinct towards optimism.  According to him, most people choose to avoid "the pitfall of despondency" that might threaten should one come to a realistic understanding of power relations in the capitalist world.

I find his hypothesis, however, too deeply pessimistic. The implication is that facts don't matter to human survival, that assembling evidence about important issues, even evidence packaged in "easy-to-digest" formats, can be a socially meaningless act, readily trumped by shoddy cultural misdirection.

I am not claiming that cultivating local gardens is unimportant, given the immanence of large-scale catastrophes. What I mean is that to give up hope for the rational component of human existence, is simply to give up hope.

Jung maintained that human consciousness was capable of four distinct functions: thinking, feeling, judgement, and intuition. To flee from such truths as 9/11 research may uncover is to give up two, if not three, of those capacities. I don't see how such emptying out can advance our capacity for survival.

The 9/11 research movement (my preferred term) wants to keep insisting -- in the face of much resistance -- that facts matter, that humans can reason on the basis of evidence, can intuit further directions for investigation, and can make judgements based on what is found. It may be pissing in the current wind, but eventually, the world must begin to smell the illuminating piss of alterity.

9/11 TEN YEARS IN

The U.S. is now in six overt wars, droning, bombing, killing, starving people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and Libya -- all illegal.

Obama’s justifying rhetoric turns, as did all of Bush’s, on the constantly whupped-up justification of “9/11”:

"We did not ask for this fight. On September 11, 2001, nineteen men hijacked four airplanes and used them to murder nearly 3,000 people. They struck at our military and economic nerve centers. They took the lives of innocent men, women and children without regard to their faith or race or station. Were it not for the heroic actions of the passengers on board one of those flights, they could have also struck at one of the great symbols of our democracy in Washington, and killed many more.”

And so Obama needs 10K soldiers and “contractors” to fight the “less than 100 operatives” (Gen. James L. Jones, US National Security Advisor) left in Afghanistan, and their vague sporulations blooming worldwide. 9/11. The Global War on Terror. Or Obama’s “Kinetic Overseas Contingency Operations.” Not to mention secret prisons, justified torture and expanding surveillance in "the homeland".

Aside from the absurdity of proportion, the demonstrated ineffectiveness of the approach, and the barbaric “collateral damage” -- global and domestic -- accompanying it, the entire package is based on, justified by, and pitched via a most problematic “fact” -- the "official story" of 9/11, 19 Arab hijackers with boxcutters, etc.

Absolutely every one of the major and minor elements of this tale has been shown to be inconsistent with demonstrable physical events and surrounded with impossible and suspicious behavior.

After ten years of study, thousands of serious researchers in many technical areas can confidently assert the complete falsity of the "official story", along with slightly differing alternatives, diffuse along the edges, but solidly agreeing at the core: the "official story" is completely impossible, and a new, independent, supoena-empowered investigation must be conducted to examine the contradictions, and answer the questions raised by 9/11 truth groups: Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Medical Professionals for..., Scholars for..., Physicists for..., Intelligence Professionals for..., Firefighters for..., Pilots for..., Political Leaders for..., Lawyers for..., Religious Leaders for..., Media Professionals for....

These are not "tin hats" "conspiracy nuts", or "crackpots" as culturally labeled. Google any of their websites, and see the facts and discussions enabled by their collective expertise. Vast amounts of material has been available online since the first explorations and organizations debuted eight or nine years ago.

And yet the same, tired, much-wounded story continues to justify the exercise of our killing machines, military and financial, around the globe -- including here at home where our own population is being starved of humane goods and services.

The 9/11-justified “war on terror” (by whatever fancy name Obama chooses to call it) remains the be-all and end-all of our secure existence -- all action based on a set of demonstrable, manipulated falsities. The media has enshrined the official story; any challenge to it -- at least in this country -- is off the table of the public mind.

PROGRESS IN RESEARCH

The earliest researchers simply noted the contradictions of story and fact:

-- Plane crashes leave wreckage. The one at the Pentagon left only a few scraps -- none related to a 757.
-- The initial hole in the outer wall of the  Pentagon was not large enough to accommodate a 757; the grass leading up to the wall was unscathed; windows were unbroken, and although the official story has the wreckage "vaporizing" because of the extreme heat (including the titanium steel engines that burn the fuel), neighboring rooms contained wooden desks and paper books -- unvaporized.
-- Steel frame buildings had never before collapsed from fires burning much more fiercely and longer than those in the twin towers. The collapses were at free-fall speed, demonstrating the removal of all supporting structures.
-- Building Seven, a 47-story office block, collapsed in the late afternoon without being hit by planes or demonstrating significant fires.
-- There were no bodies and no wreckage at all found at the purported site of the "Let's roll" heroic self-sacrifice crash of the Shanksville plane.
-- Cell phone calls describing the now-mythic events on board the hijacked airliners were not possible in 2001.

Beyond these prima-facie physical contradictions, quickly and easily noticed by any open eyes were a host of behavioral oddities:

-- the apparent stand-down of the NORAD air defense system, charged with scrambling fighters and protecting US air space.
-- the scrubbing of initial reports on all TV networks concerning explosions and demolitions.
-- the odd behavior of the president and the secret service at a grade school.
-- the immediate FBI confiscation of all videotapes from cameras inside and outside the Pentagon.
-- the BBC news report -- 20 minutes before it happened -- of the collapse of Building Seven.
-- the prompt illegal removal of all evidence from the crime scenes.
-- the flight-training history of the purported hijackers.
-- the resistance of the Bush administration to an official investigation.
-- the hand-holding, secret testimony of Bush and Cheney concerning the events of the day.
-- finally, the appointment of an investigatory commission run by an administration insider who chose what evidence would be presented and what excluded from the official report.

In The New Pearl Harbor (2004), David Ray Griffin listed the contradictions, and considered the implication that our own government was complict in the events of 9/11, and not a mere victim -- either of intelligence failures or incompetence. In a nuanced discussion of complicity, Griffin distinguished eight possible levels, from simply lying about events to maximize political effects, through intentionally allowing expected attacks, to actual involvement in planning them. At the time he did not make specific accusations, or even hypothesize a "true" version of what happened. But he did challenge people to undertake unflinching investigations of all the contradictions, with clear reporting of results, and most difficult, courageous drawing of conclusions, no matter how "unthinkable" or outrageous they may appear.

Over the next seven years, research communities responded: interested individuals and the professional organizations listed above brought their expertise to the problems. Structural forces, melting points, evidence of explosives, aerodynamics, photo and video forensics, witness testimonies, and many other angles were explored in detail, and all information made public online at the various sites.

But ten years and many Bush/Obamaogenic catastrophes later, people still refuse to confront the ever more abundant evidence.

Let’s take only the single most obvious strangeness: Building Seven collapsing without planes or significant fires. Curious? But somehow not so curious as to arouse curiosity. You’d think folks might get the hint that something was up.

However, talking with many news-aware friends over the years, I’ve found that very few had even heard of Building Seven. When I mentioned it was a classical example of a controlled demolition, I would almost always get exactly the same response:

Gesture: Elbows bent, both hands up to shoulder level, palms out. Followed by
Sentence: “I’m not going there.” One woman added: “I don’t want to live in a world where such a thing is possible.”

Any further talk of details got those hands moving, flapping outward from the shoulders, go away, “I really don’t want to go there.”

All those who have put many hours into reading books and scholarly papers, exploring photos and videos -- guess what…they’re all—all— nuts, crazies, lunatic fringe not worthy of media or political discussion. Cass Sunstein, Obama's Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, has written extensively about the need to "cognitively infiltrate" such truth groups, to interrupt and correct their false thinking. Even the prominent lefty analysist have refused to cover, much less feature, the results of so many person-hours of research, and all assume the official story to be true in their articles on blowback from the evils of American imperialism. They too just won't "go there."
What an enormous and pervasive need-not-to-know.

STUPIDY, FEAR AND GREED

Albert Einstein once noted that “Three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear and greed.”  Interesting choice of qualities. Something non-intelligent certainly seems to be ruling the world. Einstein's trio may go partway toward explaining the need of not-knowing.

Stupidity? The grand narrative of American Realpolitik?  “Too complicated for me.”  When you put that sort of thing together with most people not knowing much about history, or geography, or math or science, it does add up to a semi-dysfunctional stupidity endemic in the population, annually measured and bewailed.

But as Chomsky points out, this is not native stupidity, but stupidity engineered by the system. People are plenty smart on the street, he observes, or concerning the statistics of sports. But intelligence about history or politics is not encouraged. “Best to trust the experts.” (Chomsky takes no blame for being one of the engineers of 9/11 stupidity.)

Fear. The fear factor is obvious, a major tactic of all authoritarian institutions, from elementary school to Guantanamo.  The more one knows, the more there is to be afraid of.  Like possible administration complicity in 9/11?  Best not to know.

Greed may be what drives it all.  Why is America afraid?  In large part because it has it and they want it.  Share equitably?  Forget it.  The best way to avoid guilt is not to know -- not to know other languages, international dynamics, the ecological state of affairs, who the criminals are. Not to know the misery greed creates. Our need not-to-know is urgent.

Ten years later, some people know a lot more. Most don't want to.

ROOSTING WITH THE GODS

I'm not sure if announcing the release of one's latest novel gets this post into the "shameless commerce division", but I do think people who like my writing may be interested.

When the Gods Come Home to Roost has just been published by Spuyten Duyvil, a wonderful small publisher that produces gorgeously made books. (They did my last one, Tsim-tsum.)

Here's the story:

When his 35-year old trophy girlfriend, Demi, dumps 65-year old George, a classicist at Berkeley, he decides to attempt to actualize some of the Greek and Roman myths he has been teaching for four decades, specifically the one in which Aphrodite transforms Phaon from an ugly old man into a beautiful youth.

He accepts the (mephistophelian) offer from a plastic surgeon in his UU congregation to turn him into a genuine 17-year old through a combination of surgery, hormonal therapy, nutritional therapy, psychotherapy and yogic practice. The rejuvenation succeeds, and for the acid test, George enrolls at The Putney School, the high school attended by Zoe, Demi’s daughter, a young woman he had raised to be the daughter he always wanted. They fall in love — as well they might, being so perfectly matched in worldview, frames of reference, and jokes.

The moral status of this relationship is challenging. George, after all, has been changed. He is really 17, not her erstwhile stepfather, but an appropriate, non-blood related, first lover. But maybe he’s not really 17. You get the issue. Lots of interesting classics and music stuff on the path. A plastic surgeon you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley.

Gods was born in this wise:

The first seed was planted by a Harpers magazine article quite a few years back which struck me with its beautiful and alarming illustrations. It concerned a plastic surgeon who thought that medical ethics should not exclude individual patients' desires to express themselves through bodily transformation. Faustian striving and overreach has been a continual theme in my novels, and here was a great set of possibilities for crime and punishment. I tucked it away somewhere in my subconscious.

The next poke came a few years ago, when I was reading in bed, holding up a book, and noticed the skin on my arm was wrinkled. First time I had noticed. Geez, I'm getting old.

Putting those two together a year or so later, the story emerged of a guy getting old who meets up with a plastic surgeon ethically capable of anything -- and there you have it: Faustian striving, mephistophelian manipulation, and whatever consequences might result therefrom.

The most interesting thing, as always, is that novels never work out the way you think they're going to. Plots fulfill themselves, characters enter and exit unexpectedly, and tell you what to do. I am not the only writer who has experienced this. In my case, the unexpected banana peel was the happy end. Well, maybe not entirely happy, and certainly not securely happy, but happy–ish nevertheless.

I had always been a fervent fan of Marlow's Faust, and Thomas Mann's, as opposed to Goethe's. Why the hell should Faust get off so easy? Away to hell with him. A deal's a deal. No salvation for unknown causes.

And yet, here I have my Faust (George Helmstetter was the original Dr. Faust's real name) undertaking a deal with the devil, getting his unholy goodies, and walking off with his Gretchen into the sunset. Why can't I control these things?

The other interesting switcheroo was discovering that Mephistopheles himself has quite Faustian qualities, always striving for greater agency and control, his own demon being, perhaps, the once-innocent John Stuart Mill. You just never can tell.

I do finally have to say that the last thing on earth I, Marc Estrin, would want, is to do it (or anything) all over again.

Here's the book at Amazon. If you like it (or hate it) put up an Amazon review.

Thanks,

Marc

UP, UP, AND AWAY...

Though two summers away, an invitation by the mayor to discuss inviting another Burlington air show, "Wings Over Vermont", has elicited some interesting letters to the Burlington Free Press, the state's largest paper.

For those outside of Vermont who may not have seen a similar event, such an air show consists of  "a blend of high-performance military jets and much more sedate civilian aircraft, such as biplanes." As the Free Press notes without comment, "The sound impact of jets, generated by the likes of the Blue Angels and other precision flying teams, probably would fill up to two hours of the five-hour program."

In practice, the show takes place down at Lake Champlain during a crowded day with a July 4th atmosphere. For those not at the event, the cross-overs and low-altitude fly-arounds of the team of "high-performance military jets" is admittedly an auditory trial. Many people leave town while others just gripe.

The virtues or sins of the show are not my subject here. Rather, what interests me is the nature of some of the commentary from the supporters of the show addressing those against.

A most common notion among them is that American freedom to publicly express opinions have been made possible by the existence of the military.

"They are the reason why we all have the freedom to meet," wrote one. And another: "Your freedoms to express freely your 'opinions' have been protected and insured by generations of men and women who proudly served in the military." (The quotations marks around "opinions" are also interesting.)

To one letter writer, the sound of the jets is "the sound of freedom," and another asserts that true patriots are "not bothered by the sounds of the people who allow them to live their dream in freedom."

It seems to me, rather, that the freedom to form and speak our opinions and to freely assemble is not a military issue, but rather a basic gift of the U.S. constitution. If the military is functioning to protect those constitutional rights, you'd never know it as they serve to support administrations in hot pursuit of those rights, dead or alive.

For all the high- and low-tech wonders of flight (it still astounds me to see a huge plane take off), there is a disturbing leitmotif of jingoist war chants among some of the comments:

"There is no better sight in the world than one of those 'fast movers' streaking into the battle delivering their payload on top of the enemy," rhapsodizes one, the enemy, of course, being anyone upon whom a payload is dropped.  "Is it noisy? You bet," writes another. "Does it burn fossil fuel? It sure as heck does. Is it patriotic? You better well believe it."

Speaking against an anti-show writer, one letter predicts that "When the bad guys from across the pond attack again, he'll be grateful for our military, but it will be too late." Concerning his probable reference, 9/11, one may note that our jets -- for reasons still unclear -- were unable to scramble that day against four errant airliners clearly bent on destruction.

(This has been a week containing a rape by a power-driven, hyper-sexual world leader, and the postponed invitation by a Savior for meeting in the skies with his elect. It is hard for me to avoid sensing a relation of themes here. But I will leave such meta-interpretations to readers so disposed.")

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of these freedom-loving comments has been the depiction of those who oppose the air show: "Moonbats," they are, "whack jobs", "tree-hugging wing nuts" (these descriptors from different letters). What to do with them? "Progressives and liberals should be MADE to watch the air show. Maybe then they will pack up and leave."

And a warning: "If you don't stand behind our troops, PLEASE feel free to stand in front of them.

The vibes are chilling.

OSAMA BIN LADEN -- WHAT WOULD KANT SAY?

Now that the bipartisan jingofest around OBL’s purported killing seems to be settling down, and the kaleidoscope of changing stories seems to be solidifying into cognitively dissonant national belief, it may be time to rationally review the evidence and sequence of changes in the generally accepted narrative.

My recent little essay ("Drinking the Obamaid") was written only a day after Obama's mission accomplished announcement, before all the changes and contradictions in the official story emerged.

Many people have been following those changes -- some simply to record the "truth" developing out of the "fog of war", and some to note the suspicious nature of what looks like political manipulation.

Chief among the latter has been Steven Lendman, who has closely followed the administration's twists and turns, and analyzed the absurdity of some of its claims. Rather than repeat his cataloguing, let me just give you some links for the curious:

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/05/06/steve-lendman-staged-bin-laden-killing-hokum/

(Contained in this link, are links to two of his earlier assessments.)

Lendman has also noted the inconsistencies in the newly revealed tape of OBL watching himself on TV.

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011_05_01_archive.html (blog for May 9)

In my earlier essay, I referred to a 2009 book by David Ray Griffin which reviewed the evidence that Osama was likely long dead. Here is a short summary of the contents of that book:

http://www.americanpendulum.com/2011/05/david-ray-griffin-on-evidence-osama-bin-laden-died-several-years-ago/

What bollixes my mind is not the flag-covered USA! USA! chanters outside the White House, or the dignified chest-thumping president within. It is the complete belief in a hard-to-believe story by the intelligent left -- who are now frothing over the ethics and legality of targeted assassination. You can practically watch the fangs grow, and the saliva drip:

http://popwatch.ew.com/2011/05/03/jon-stewart-osama-bin-laden/

We don't even know that OBL was responsible for anything on 911. At least the FBI doesn't seem to think so. After the attacks, he denied it for two weeks, and all subsequent "confession" tapes have proved to be poorly constructed fakes emerging at crucial moments in American political life. Big lies are a well-honed American tradition:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011_05_01_archive.html

(Another Lendman cataloguing: scroll to entry for May 7, a little more than halfway down.)

So what really went down on May 1st? Who knows? We have taped interviews with fifty or so neighbors that say that Osama was never living in that compound or they would have known it. We have the "family" in Pakistani military custody, and who knows what they will say? Or what the photos/videos, when and if finally released, will contain -- authentic or fabricated?

We do know that the story with all its changes smells awfully fishy, and the immediate disappearing of the body with its various rationales is fishiest of all.

We do know that as Mara Liasson announced on NPR, Obama's "Republican opponents will always have to deal with the new and enduring fact that Barack Obama is the president who got Osama bin Laden."

We do know that immediately after OBL's putative elimination, calls were going up for increased homeland security money and protection against blowback and revenge.

We do know that this event, pseudo- or not, is now being used as justification for assassination, torture and future preemptive war, and for support of the Patriot Act.

We do know that acclaim for targeted assassination has risen, and will certainly serve as a protective buffer against any possible prosecution for war crimes of the Bush or Obama administrations.

As usual, Cui Bono? is a pertinent question.

What would Kant say?

He would say "All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason."

He might say, too, "By a lie, a man annihilates his dignity as a man."

DRINKING THE OBAMAID

With no evidence whatsoever except the changing assertions of our military spokesmen, almost the entire left, and of  course all of the mainstream media, have swallowed the story of Barak Obama finally bringing in the big fish, the symbol and cause of all our woes.

The timing is convenient at the start of a chaotic election season. The burial place is unreachable, unseeable, the body now unfindable, and we claim to have "a quick DNA [DoNotArgue] match" in hand.

I love the story put out by the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON – Knowing there would be disbelievers, the U.S. says it used convincing means to confirm Osama bin Laden's identity during and after the firefight that killed him.

In the entire article, do they ever mention what those convincing means are? No. Just that whatever they are, they are convincing. They proceed to ask three questions, "Was it really him? How do we know?" Where are the pictures?", but they don't ask them as questions to be answered by investigative reporting, but only to denigrate the "conspiracy theorists" asking such question.

Then: U.S. officials are balancing that skepticism with the sensitivities that might be inflamed by showing images they say they have of the dead al-Qaida leader and video of his burial at sea.

After showing and crowing over Saddam Hussein's hanging, we are now sensitive to sensitivities. No boasters we. Keep it low key. Any evidence would only inflame.

So far, the AP continues, the U.S. has cited evidence that satisfied the Navy SEAL force, and at least most of the world, that they had the right man in Abbottabad, Pakistan. I would think the SEALs are likely an easy audience, and I haven't seen any documentation of the "rest of the world"'s satisfaction, unless "the rest of the world" means, as it usually does, our government's fellow kleptocrats and sociopaths, a group small enough for occasional photoops all together on the same stage.

There is plenty of evidence that this new official story is peculiar: the somehow secret "luxury compound", unseen over years by our satellites, the identification of our man "by appearance", the quick, untraceable burial, the so-far lack of corroborating evidence, the changing stories -- first that we buried him at sea to respect Islamic law that corpses must be buried within 24 hours, and then when Islamic scholars disagreed, that we buried him at sea to prevent there being a shrine to which worshippers would come. The broadcast "sense of relief", mission accomplished, coupled with warnings that the threat of revenge attacks may be greater than ever...

There is also plenty of evidence that Osama has been dead for many years, too great to summarize here, but well-collected in David Ray Griffin's 2009 book, Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive?

There is also plenty of evidence that his periodic appearances -- all of which were timed to be helpful to some president, or candidate, or poll, at some crucial moment -- are transparent fakes, the physiognomy, bling, handedness, language, being that of someone other than Osama. These fake videos are well covered in Griffin's book.

There is finally plenty of evidence that Osama bin Laden -- our Osama bin Laden -- whose brother was breakfasting in Washington on the morning of 9/11/01, and whose relatives were specially and secretly flown out of the country in spite of their being a flight ban in the days immediately following the events -- that our Osama bin Laden was not, and had never been, and is still not  connected by the FBI to 9/11/01.

Yet the AP warns us that "as with the birther conspiracy, there's going to be a set of people who are never going to be convinced." "If it suits extremist ends to spin a fantastical tale of survival or trickery to gullible ears, expect to hear it." "There are always conspiracy theories," he said. "There are individuals who believe that bin Laden wasn't involved in the 9/11 attacks."

You'd never know it, listening to, or reading the blogs of the left pundits, not to mention the right.

LIGHT UNTO THE NATIONS

What is it? It doesn't seem to be a bird. Definitely not a plane. It's...an Israeli Defense Forces flashlight. For only 72 bucks plus shipping and handling, you can own this Agronomic [sic.] Flashlight Grip (T-GRIP) Tactile Vertical Foregrip Weapon Lights Holder.

It "comes with a 1 inch flight Adaptor with special activity trigger, and also a place to store additional batteries, AND
    * Three in one: special handgrip and a flashlight mount with a built in trigger that
    * transform tactical light into a Vertical Fore grip Weapon Light
    * This unique ergonomic fore grip will fit perfectly to your hand while holding in up to 1 .
    * diameter tactical light with Tail cap switch and allow trigger activation of the light
    * Ergonomic designed grip, comfortable and natural to use “fighting stance".
    * Designed to hold any 1" diameter flashlight and allow quick and easy operation
    * Easy to fit and secured by 2 bolts
    * Fits hand guards equipped with a Weaver or Picatinny rail system
    * No gunsmithing is required
    * Molded from reinforced polymer composite
    * Super lightweight, Eliminate the need for a ymer compositer"

Now, I don't normally use my blog entries to sell Israeli military accessories, but this piece of equipment serves up much food for thought. As does the website on which you'll find it (search "flashlight""), the Israel Military Products Israeli Army Surplus Store, http://www.israelmilitary.com/default.aspx.

I advise you to explore this site, watch the short slide show on the home page, and sift through the various gifts for sale. You don't have to be Jewish. Two of my favorite items are a sweatshirt reading " America Don't Worry. Israel Is Behind You." and a hoodie, reading "UZI DOES IT". With a nice Uzi graphic.

I was brought inadvertently to this page by my novelist's wondering about the details involved in a terse dispatch this week from the Palestinian Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements:

The Israeli army and police occupation forces stormed the village of Bil’in at 1:30 am on Monday 4th April, raiding the houses of Ali Ibrahim Bornat, and Khames Abo Rahma. They searched their houses and tampered with the contents under the pretext of search for solidarity foreigners.

Bil'in is a village of 1,800 people in the central West Bank, near Ramallah. It is famous for its six-plus years of weekly, non-violent protests against the illegal (International Court of Justice) wall separating it from 60% of its farmland, and its peaceful protests have been met with increasing Israeli violence, now including live ammunition, and my favorite, Israeli trucks spraying human sewage collected from Modi'in Illit, an illegal Israeli settlement of 50,000, towering on the hill above.

Now, imagine this closely. You're asleep in your bed. It's still very dark. Into your tiny town roar not one, but two heavily armed convoys -- one from the military, one from the police. Doors, as normal, are banged on, kicked in with shouts and threats, children cry in fear. Flashlights -- likely those lovely "agronomic" ones, used in "fighting stance" -- search the rooms, peer into faces, blind the eyes.

What are they looking for? Weapons? Terrorists? No. Non-violent activists, organizers of the weekly protests, and worst of all "solidarity foreigners" -- those peaceniks from abroad who come to witness, document, take part in peaceful demonstrations against the wall or home demolitions, occasionally help with harvests.

I suppose it could be worse. Rachel Corrie experienced being on the wrong end of a Military Bulldozer, and others have been blinded, brain-damaged, and killed by "non-lethal" weapons shot directly at their heads for their non-violent protest.

Nevertheless -- harboring peace activists, are you? Take that, and that, and we're really sorry about the door and that laptop. See you soon.

"I, the LORD, have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thy hand, and will keep thee, and will make you a covenant of the people, as a light unto the nations." (Isaiah 42:6)

There are extra batteries in the T-GRIP storage compartment.