Discovered America? How can you discover something that’s already in use? See that BMW over there? Let’s discover it.                                   —-Dick Gregory

What if “Columbus Day” was given the more accurate name “Celebrate Genocide Day”?
—-The Professor who dares to ask what if²

PWDAWI, makes several citations to Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.

Democracy Now! today [after headlines] {large raster BitTorrent download} is an interview with Canadian Cree singer/songwriter Buffy St-Marie. Included is a performance of ‘Universal Soldier’. In Buffy’s view, for a Native American to ‘make it’ requires a lucky accident. She spends her money on education from the Native American point of view.

¹The Common White Man In The Street.

²I don’t know where she teaches. I would say definitely not Harvard, but that would be snarky. I’ll just say definitely not in Harvard economics or government. Jack Womack has been emeritized by Harvard history, but there are still some folks around who question.
That said, I still reserve the right to question whether Harvard’s pair of world historical jacks question enough.

Robert McNamara 1964 {Yoichi R. Okamoto, White House Press Office (WHPO)}

But at least he struggled to apologize. The phrase “war crimes” crossed his lips.

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The Outreach Center at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School are announcing a panel that will address the recent events in Gaza.

Gaza In Context: Background and Prospects From the Current Crisis

Wednesday, January 21st
12 Noon – 1:30 pm
Harvard Kennedy School, Littauer Building, Room 280
79 JFK Street, Cambridge MA 02138 (click here for a map)

Speakers: Duncan Kennedy, Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence, Harvard Law School

Naz K. Modirzadeh, Senior Associate, International Humanitarian Law Research Initative, Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research, Harvard University

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[Photo: Wikmedia foundation.²]

Prof Duncan is one of the stars of Harvard’s legal left. I heard him give a paper – “Three Globalizations of Law and Legal Thought: 1850-2000″ – at the Workshop on the Political Economy of Modern Capitalism. I am totally bereft of clue as to what he said. Egyptian Eyes tells me that it was a very hard paper. Hopefully, this talk will be human understandable and/or his colleagues and/or students will be able to translate and/or elaborate for him.³

I don’t know Prof Naz, but you can read his paper, Taking Islamic Law Seriously: INGOs and the Battle for Muslim Hearts and Minds for The Harvard Human Rights Journal.

¹In the war biz, a ceasefire “holding” doesn’t mean “nobody dying.” There are, of course always deaths due to unrelated causes. There are deaths due to “holdover effects” like children killed playing with unexploded munitions. And there are always “isolated incidents” that lead to a “small’ number of deaths – relatively speaking. The calculus of ceasefire compliance ignores the first two categories and indicates “holding” if the third category is “negligible”.

²I tried to take his picture for Wikipedia. He may have questions about the political economy of Wikipedia, but they can be ignored because nobody has really worked it out with any richness of detail. It’s a cheap way to reach some unknown number of people. But being miffed about Cambridge’s other village idiot badgering him for free legal advice makes more sense. Especially since he was represented by one of Prof. Duncan’s graduates who is known to be able to speak human.

³my snarkiness notwithstanding. But seriously folks, communication between the legal left and the artsy fartsy left could be, it seems to me, better. I am part of the later and a bit self snarky.

Young demonstrator holding the Palestinian flag in Harvard Square, December 29, 2008.

Democracy Now has a lot of coverage of the latest from Gaza.

[This link is now 15 days old. Fortunately and unfortunately, it is still accurate.]

*It was not my intent to be enigmatic. As we used to say in the 60’s, I’ve had “a heavy head.”^! I refer to Rachel Corrie who was killed by an armored D9R bulldozer as she tried to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian home on the Gaza Strip. Cindy and Craig Corrie spoke at Christ Church Cambridge last summer. Craig was asked, “Did you try to prevent Rachel from going?” “Of course, I asked her questions. I wanted to be sure she understood … , but when your child tells you that her conscience demands that she do something you cannot prevent her from doing it.”

^!My only regret about being homeless is that it takes time away from saving the world, which is after all what I ‘do’.

Norman Finkelstein speaking at Suffolk University [Photo: Wikimedia Foundation]

Born of a mother who survived the Warsaw Ghetto, Majdanek concentration camp, and two slave labor camps, Norman Finkelstein could hardly be called a Holocaust denier. Yet there are some who do. Dr. Finkelstein¹ has been joined by two Holocaust scholars, Raul Hilberg and Avi Schlaim in questioning the official story of the conduct of the State of Israel in its treatment of the Palestinians.

He spoke at MIT: 60 Years of Dispossession and Displacement
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the humanitarian crisis today and since 1948.²

His talk was reasoned, measured, well documented, and based in international law. At the end, he asked that the question period begin with people who disagree with him i.e. dissenters. I did not follow the first question. I think it was from David Solden and I think he regards Dr. Finkelstein is not pro-Palestinian enough.³ The second question was, “How can you view the 1973 Yom Kippur war as anything but aggression?”

Dr. Finkelstein based his answer on a principle of international law – it is illegal to acquire territory through war. The Sinai and the Golan heights were the spoils of the 1967 war still occupied by Israeli forces. “Sadat looked across to the Sinai and saw Eqyptian territory occupied by Israeli forces.”

The Calculus of Suffering

Dr. Finkelstein remarked that a major portion of Israel’s justification of its actions is the notion that The Holocaust is unique among occurrences of genocide – case in point; the use of capital T and capital H.

¹Norman Finkelstein, until recently was Professor Finkelstein, but having been denied tenure at DePaul University, arguably in part due to Allan Dershowitz, he has been busted back to Dr.

²Sponsor(s): ASO, Muslim Students’ Association, MIT, Social Justice Cooperative, Latino/a Cultural Center, GSC Funding Board, Palestine@MIT For more information, contact: Palestine@MIT pal_xc@mit.edu
Dr. Finkelstein’s website: http://www.normanfinkelstein.com

³Perhaps Dr. Trumpbour will help us out here.

They came to deliver food and medical supplies for an international relief convoy to Gaza this Saturday January 26:

Gaza has other problems:

Clean the Water, Turn on the Lights,
Stop the War on Human Rights.

The demonstrators view the Israeli blockade in response to Hamas rockets as:

Collective Punishment

They wanted to speak with the Israeli Consul and ask him to let the convoy through:

But they were turned away:

There were some goyim¹ and the Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights might include some Palestinians, but mostly the were Jews – Jews for Human Rights in Gaza and Jewish Voices for Peace – and the Israeli Consul would not see them.

Saturday, January 26, Local: Campaign to Break the Siege of Gaza, 12noon-1pm, Harvard Sq., Cambridge (in front of Au Bon Pain) On that day that Israeli peace groups will attempt to enter the Gaza Strip with a convoy of essential supplies and medicines. Gaza no longer has sufficient fuel to keep its power station running. Hospitals and homes are dark and cold, remaining food stocks are being spoiled, the water and sewage infrastructure is breaking down. We American taxpayers — who make this collective punishment possible — must raise our voices. Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights

¹Reverand Ralph, though sporting an Anglican collar, is Unitarian. Ah, those Unitarians, such an unruly bunch. God love ‘em. And as I’ve mentioned before, I am Pennsylvania Dutch.

Protest at the Israeli Consulate Boston to demand Israel stop the Blockade of Gaza, which is leading to malnutrition, raw sewage in the streets, no electricity ect. In solidarity with the international relief convey.

Similar demonstration July 2006.

Time: NOON to 1pm this Thursday January 24th

Place: Israeli Consulate Boston, located in the Park Plaza Hotel

Directions: Park Plaza hotel is located near the Boston Public Gardens (Arlington St. stop) We’re meeting at noon right across the street from the Park Plaza Hotel, the entrance closest to the Common (Arlington St. stop).

Action: WE are one of hundreds of protest world wide to demand that the international relief convey be let thought on Saturday January 26th SEE (http://zope.gush-shalom.org/index_en.html)

We will attempt to bring food to the Israeli Consulate and demand they end the siege of GAZA. Bring one food item to give…..

We will have leaflets, signs, speaker, music, and a few cartons of medical and food aid to carry in to the consulate – we’re going to try asking the consul to deliver it to Gaza, and to forward to his government our demand that they let the Israeli relief convoy through the Erez checkpoint this Saturday.

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Is collective punishment ever justified?