Avuncular American

House of Un-American Hyperactivity

There was a time, weeks that seem like eons ago, when the White House was the very symbol of American steadfastness, stability, and respectability.  Many of us mourn the departure of Barack Obama from the premises, but it had to happen, we knew it would happen.  And Kennedy's "Camelot" was of course never such a thing, only a myth that became all the more romanticized once it all ended in Dallas.  In all the political dramas and thrillers we've seen on the screen, the White House is that pillar that exemplifies the United States.  Until, as in Mars Attacks! or Independence Day, aliens come to blast the place to smithereens.

Or, as with the current denizen of the place (on most weekdays), he turns it into something unrecognizable, a White House of Un-American Activities.

Upside down White House in Wisconsin Dells, photo by almiruh

There's no point in enumerating all the executive orders and declarations (bet you didn't know that Inauguration Day is now the National Day of Patriotic Devotion).  Some of them, like his Muslim Ban, are in a state of suspended animation, declared unconstitutional by Federal courts and under appeal by the Trump administration.  The Ban created such a worldwide uproar that it diverted attention from equally nefarious moves, like the elevation of conspiracy theorist Stephen Bannon to the National Security Council (and utter confusion over the role of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence, the experts and "adults in the room").

Then there's the sneaky little order - his very first, in the hours after his swearing in - where Trump the Populist added millions of dollars to the mortgages of American home owners.  Another, signed with some fanfare to the applause of lobbyists and brokers, makes transparency for Mom & Pop investments in retirement plans more opaque and could cost them billions.

Newt Gingrich, when he called last year for a reinstatement of the McCarthy era House Un-American Activities Committee or HUAC, had other things in mind of course.  For him, and for Trump, "un-American" activities are those done by immigrants, foreigners, judges and Democrats (probably).  When we know that the real un-American is Mr. President, who has already turned his back on all that is decent about the country, and who has become the one-man symbol, the world over, of rapaciousness and misogyny.  Thanks to Mr. Trump, we all know about narcissism and the ravages of sociopaths.  But until now, none of their ranks made it to the Oval Office.

So what to do?  Certainly not tweet or like or share your disdain for this man and his dangerous coterie of courtiers.  Or, do all of that, but first register to vote, and then vote in every single election for the next four years and more.  Complaining without consequent, effective action is not acceptable.

In the great World War II movie The Guns of Navarone, the Gregory Peck character, all angry righteousness, says to a cynical David Niven:

"You think you've been getting away with it all this time, standing by. Well, son... your bystanding days are over! You're in it now, up to your neck!"

Yes, "standing by" and not turning out to vote (at least in sufficient numbers in the right places) got us Donald Trump in the White House.  We're in it, up to our necks, and only we can get ourselves out of it.

Anne Frank, essential reading in these times

In the wake of the November US election, we happened to spend several days in Amsterdam.  One of my must-sees was the Anne Frank House, where one of the world's most read authors hid with her family from the Nazis from 1942 until they were captured and sent to concentration camps in 1944.

So many millions of people around the world read Anne Frank's "Diary of a Young Girl" as part of their school curriculum.  I hadn't, so I finally made up for it.  Since we know how the story ends, it's a heartbreaking glimpse into the hopes and fears of an aspiring teenage writer.  You dread that final diary entry.  And in the gift shop, I bought a diary with the same binding and plaid cover that Anne used.

Why? Because the story of this innocent girl, whose only "crime" that she was born a Jew, speaks volumes to our times.  I started my diary entries on the train back to Brussels, determined that I would write during these times that bode very ill for all that is decent and civilized.

Anne never got around to writing daily entries, and I'm even less diligent.  But we all should chronicle our reactions, and register our objections.  And not just in a diary.

As the assault on the weak gets fully underway by the bullies who are increasingly able to rise to power, people need to do everything they can to protect democracy.  Register to vote, and help others to do so too.  Contact elected representatives to ensure that the framework of a civilized democracy is not dismantled.

The Anne Frank Declaration, signed by world leaders from Nelson Mandela to Bill Clinton:

"Because prejudice and hatred harm us all, I declare that:

• I will stand up for what is right and speak out against what is unfair and wrong
• I will try to defend those who cannot defend themselves
• I will strive for a world in which our differences will make no difference - a world in which everyone is treated fairly and has an equal chance in life"

Today January 27 is Holocaust Memorial Day.  Anne Frank's father Otto was among those liberated by Soviet forces from Auschwitz death camp on this day in 1944.  He was the only survivor of those who hid in the "Secret Annex" in Amsterdam, and made his daughter's message his life's work.

Anne Frank died in Bergen-Belsen in 1945, just a month or so before the camp's liberation.  We now know that her father had unsuccessfully attempted to gain entry into the United States for the Frank family.

- - - - -

Update: The above post was written before we learned that the Trump White House declaration on the Holocaust specifically avoided stating that Jews were singled out for annihilation by the Nazis.  Many have seen "Holocaust Denial Lite" and the work of the far right in this omission.  On the same day, of course, Trump signed his Muslim Ban executive order, setting off a firestorm of protest worldwide and triggering unprecedented opposition from within his own executive branch, as well as judicial judgements deeming his actions unconstitutional.  What a way to honor the Anne Franks of 1945 and 2017.

Mustang - Free and Untamed in Turkey

Bars on your home's windows are usually to keep the baddies on the outside, but in Mustang they come to signify the prison that Grandma's house becomes for the five spirited girls who are facing the special dangers of adolescence in a conservative village.

Deniz Gamze Ergüven's film - honored at Cannes - begins and ends with Lale, the youngest of the girls but the one you want on your team if ever you have to survive impossible odds.  Young Günes Sensoy, playing Lale, sees trouble brewing, and lays plans.  Her first film, and what an acting revelation.

Her older sisters, one by one, risk succumbing to the constant pressure to be married off, arranged by Grandma, who mostly just wants to avoid embarrassment in front of judgmental neighbors, and by uncle Erol, a supposed prude with a violent streak.

Director Ergüven (French director Alice Winocour co-wrote the screenplay), whose diplomatic childhood spanned life in Paris and in Ankara, has deftly inserted scenes which illustrate the lot of many a marriageable girl in Turkey: virginity tests, arranged pairings concluded by the families, frustration assuaged by eating too many Turkish delights or swigging the dregs of raki at big sister's wedding reception.

But this is not a documentary, credible and realistic as it is.  From the outset, you care deeply about these girls and are with them as they try to enjoy innocent childhood pursuits or the normal joys and challenges of growing up.  A beautiful, moving film.

Deniz Gamze Ergüven is interviewed here on France Culture (44 minutes, in French).

Pay-2-Slave: A Warped Economic Model

In a French documentary touching on the tragic Germanwings crash in the Alps, there was a discussion of "Pay2Fly," a practice that was news to us.

Though there appears to be a general omerta over the practice, it was already described in a French radio report last year.  Young pilot aspirants, who need to rack up several hundred hours of flight time, will pay thousands of dollars to airlines for the privilege of flying their planes.

While you are thinking about that, consider what aviation expert Miles O'Brien said on US PBS News Hour:

[T]he system is facing tremendous demand and a lot of cost pressure. A lot of pilots are required to fill these seats and fly these aircraft. There’s a pilot shortage most everywhere you look in the world right now. Meanwhile, the pay for pilots is very low...  there’s a lot of pressure to keep the salaries of pilots low. So you have to wonder, is the process not selecting the best people for the job? And are we, in fact, not training them quite up to standards we prefer because it’s, frankly, cheaper?

Okay, so "Pay2Fly" results in aspirant pilots paying thousands out to companies in the hope that they might get hired by other companies at "very low" pay?  What the Wall Street Journal called "fast food pay."  Reflect on that before you book your low-cost ticket.

So now let's consider another occupation where your life is in the hands of stressed-out and exhausted professionals: hospital interns or residents.  Another French TV report profiled these young slaves to the system, where le burnout has now become commonplace and interns fear complaining about the inhuman hours.

A 2013 Washington Post report noted the progress in the US, where in 2011 medical interns were limited to "only" 80 hour work weeks or 16 hour shifts.  Sixteen hours... "That’s the point at which studies have found performance begins to deteriorate, and roughly double the consecutive hours of flying time allowed pilots."

Medical interns in the US might at least get a living wage during their period of residency, but they, like other US students, must take on huge loans which they then must take years to repay.  Read the "Student Debt Time Bomb" at Bill Moyers.

At least the doctors, if they survive those endless shifts without killing anyone, can aspire to earn a decent living.  Not so of the thousands of migrants paying people traffickers thousands of dollars each for the chance to sneak into Europe or the United States.  To join the bottom of the ladder - sometimes to become virtual slaves to those complicit in trafficking - in economies already hard-pressed to keep unemployment at bay for their own citizens.

So, we knew the world was in sorry shape, but things are completely lopsided when people feel the need to pay to get "fast food" wages.  I don't want them piloting the plane I'm in, and to paraphrase a Jimmy Buffet song, I don't want any bleary-eyed intern "to cut on me."

Tangier American Diplomat Among the Righteous?

This post was originally published in 2011 on the Tangier American Legation blog.

In honor of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and the Soviet arrest of Raoul Wallenberg, the "Swedish Schindler," I republish three posts on a righteous American diplomat who helped more than a thousand Jews escape the Holocaust.

- - - - - -

Photo at left: J. Rives Childs, Chargé d'Affaires, American Legation Tangier, February 1941 - June 1945 (from the collection at TALIM).

The following letter is from one of Childs' many books, Vignettes, or Autobiographical Fragments, Vantage Press, 1977.

- - - - - - -

                                                                                                Tangier, 13 June 1945

Excellency:

Permit me, before your departure from Tangier, to express to Your Excellency from the bottom of my heart my most profound and everlasting gratitude for your extremely noble and generous assistance in the affair of the entry visas for Tangier for 500 children and adults, for the most part of large families of Hungarian Jews.

 It is without doubt, due to the intervention of Your Excellency that the requests for entry visas were accorded.

The International Red Cross of Budapest, not having received German transit visas for these persons, had, thanks to the entry visas for Tangier, been able to arrange for the departure of this number of Jews from a Nazi concentration camp, place them in safety in a building rented by it which was, in consequence of the authorization of entry visas, protected by the Spanish Consulate in Budapest.

Thus 1200 innocent souls owe their survival to Your Excellency.

I pray God and hope for Your Excellency that benedictions and success accompany all your life each of your steps.

Please accept, Excellency, this testimony of my most profound respect and most distinguished thanks.

                                                                                                Your very devoted,

                                                                                                Renée Reichmann

- - - - - - -

Renée Reichmann, when she wrote this letter, was in Tangier representing the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC).  The incident is partially described in this 1997 Business Week excerpt from Anthony Bianco's book on the Reichmanns.

J. Rives Childs, in his 1977 book, wrote "All these years... I have carried a copy of Mme. Reichmann's letter in my wallet."  In his autobiography, Let the Credit Go (1983, Frederick Fell Publishers), Childs modestly gave credit for the rescue to Reichmann and to General Luis Orgaz, high commissioner of the Spanish Zone of Morocco, who had ordered the visas issued.

My question is this: shouldn't J. Rives Childs be considered one of The Righteous, and be properly recognized in Yad Vashem?  Childs, in Vignettes, wrote: "I cannot now recall whether, in the hurly-burly of leavetaking of Tangier, I made Mme. Reichmann's letter a matter of official record or ever reported to Washington my unofficial and personal intervention with General Orgaz."  Might there be some mention of this event in Childs' State Department file or at the National Archives?

Childs died on July 15, 1987 at the age of 94, but even posthumous recognition would do him honor.

Next month, it will have been 70 years since Childs took up his post as Chargé at the American Legation, a key post given the events that would unfold here over the next two years, culminating in the first American combat operation in the European theatre of World War II: Operation Torch, the North Africa landings that started to turn the tide on the Western Front.

We knew he was in charge of sensitive diplomatic relations then; we didn't know that he was a hero, a righteous man.

(originally posted January 3, 2011)

Brussels' Jewish Museum

It seemed fitting, on the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, to visit the Jewish Museum of Belgium.  Not quite a year ago, this museum was itself the site of an anti-Semitic terrorist attack.

I couldn't help thinking that the victims - an elderly volunteer, the receptionist, and a couple visiting the museum - were like the people there to welcome me to the museum.  A quieter, more peaceful place would be harder to imagine.  Only the Belgian soldiers at the entrance hint at the ongoing need to protect the museum.

Dedicated to recounting the long history of the Jewish presence in Belgium (the timeline on the wall starts in the Middle Ages), the museum provides illustrations of daily life of Jews over the centuries.  Their religious beliefs, related feast days, the economic life of the community.

An exhibit on Jewish bookbinders and other craftsmen leads to a small room on the impact of the Shoah in Belgium.  A poster announcing, just months after the fall of Belgium and France in May/June 1940, the requirement for Jews to register "by order of the military authorities."  The announcement is in French, and there's no need to mention whose order it is.

The displays include the usual documentation of the bureaucracy of extermination - ID cards marked "Juif," ugly antisemitic posters preparing the way for the roundup of Jews - but also heroic stories of Belgians who successfully hid Jewish children during four years of Nazi occupation.  And the stirring account of the Nazi train to Auschwitz where resistance fighters freed Jewish captives.

There's a reminder that "Palestinian" was once a synonym for Jews: a letter from the "Office Palestinien en Suisse," a branch of the Jewish Agency in Switzerland, helping Jews find refuge in British Mandate Palestine from the horrors in Europe.

Elsewhere, a photo from a previous German occupation, that of the First World War.  German soldiers (!) celebrating Yom Kippur in Brussels, 1915.  A reminder that German Jews fought loyally in the German army, a fact which meant nothing to the Nazis a generation later.

And yet another occupation, the "Spanish Netherlands" period of the late 16th to early 18th century.  Jewish "marrano" refugees from the Spanish Inquisition had found refuge in Belgium, and the museum displays a book of the period by a captain in the Spanish army, himself a secret Jew.

The Jewish Museum of Belgium is a low-tech, traditional museum.  It is light years away from the sophistication of, say, the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.  But because it was the target of terrorism, and because Jews and Jewish institutions in Europe need the support of their host countries at this tense time, it should itself become a place of pilgrimage.  

Cartoonists as the Footsoldiers of Democracy

If ever there was a time to watch this 2014 film, it's now.

If ever anyone doubted that political cartoonist is a high-risk occupation, yesterday's Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris is devastating proof.

"Les Caricaturistes: Fantassins de la Démocratie" is the definitive documentary on political cartoonists from every part of the world.  It's a chance to discover an NGO which helps defend their efforts on behalf of free speech, "Cartooning for Peace," begun in 2006 under the auspices of then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Le Monde's "Plantu" is the star of both film and NGO, never missing a chance to explain the art behind the message or to share the spotlight with his cherished colleagues throughout the world.  Last night he was on the TV news, with his same message of perseverance in the face of the terrorism perpetrated in Paris.

This short (1.5 hours) documentary sketches sympathetic portraits of this diverse group of heroes, who all face, in varying degrees, the threat of violence (or at a minimum, exclusion) in their countries.  A Syrian cartoonist whose hands are broken by Assad's thugs.  A Venezuelan journalist who's called a whore and a lesbian for daring to ridicule Chavez & Co.  Russia's premier political artist, who can't publish anything in Putin's Russia, and drives a night taxi to earn a living.

 

http://www.bedetheque.com/

In the early '90s in Algeria, I remember cartoonist "Slim" taking on the establishment and the reigning social (dis)order, even before he took on the rise of Islamism (which eventually led to his exile).  In a former one-party state, Slim's cartoons were of an amazing candor, and really funny: in a country where orphans of slain moujahid freedom fighters from the 1950s and 60s were provided great advantages (which led people to invent a heroic forebear), he had a 1990s baby in carriage saying, "some day, I'll be the son of a moujahid."  Today, in Algeria, Ali Dilem in Liberté continues to wield his pen, and is appropriately biting about the assassination of the Charlie Hebdo journalists.

Caricaturistes of course can't include every political cartoonist; Steve Bell, the often outrageous and sometimes unfathomable (he was very clear on the Paris killings) Guardian veteran, isn't featured, nor is our own Brussels favorite, Pierre Kroll of Le Soir (here's Kroll on yesterday's murders, Morts de Rire).

Belgian-Israeli cartoonist Michel Kichka believes that political correctness, even more than censorship by authorities, is the greatest threat to the freedom of expression practiced by his profession.  For his part, Plantu paraphrases Franklin Roosevelt's admonition to Americans after Pearl Harbor: "we have nothing to fear but fear itself."  Plantu, like his slain counterparts at Charlie Hebdo, fears nothing, except this: "I am afraid of the fear of others."

That's the wonderful thing about the wave of solidarity shown in the face of this assault on the freedom of expression, and it's the uplifting message of Caricaturistes: those in power (and those who would like to wield power at the point of a gun) fear ridicule, and the Cartoonists are there to show that the (fill in the blank) has no clothes.

Gestapo, 1937: "Intensified Interrogation"

EL DE House (Cologne) museum tickets

It was a rainy day in Cologne, and we had time to kill before catching our train back to Brussels.  And there it was on the map, just a couple of blocks away.  A museum in what had been the city's Gestapo HQ.

The "EL DE" House (taking the initials of its builder, Leopold Dahmen) is the home of NSDOK, the National Socialist Documentation Center.  This is definitely a place to visit, especially now that torture is no longer a subject about which Americans can experience schadenfreude or gloating about those bad Nazis.

Deep down in the dungeons of the EL DE house, where prisoners' graffiti has been preserved, your audio guide informs you that the Gestapo joked about the "intensified interrogation" it inflicted on its helpless prisoners.  Already in 2007, The Atlantic documented how the Bush administration's "enhanced interrogation techniques" not only sounded like the Nazis' original Verschärfte Vernehmung, but also matched them in their application.

It helps bring home what this means down there in the claustrophobic cells, where there was no hope of escape for the unfortunate Germans, Russians, Poles and others who were rounded up.  Elsewhere in the EL DE House, the birth and rise of the Nazi movement, and its diabolical work to exterminate Jews, Gypsies, and others is painstakingly documented.

All too often, the exhibits show how the torturers were able to pick up with normal life after the war... but what kind of dreams did they have at night?

I share former CIA agent Philip Giraldi's disgust (writing in the American Conservative) with the apologists for "EIT" who will not pronounce the word "torture," and yet who continue to justify the same thing that Nazis did in those dark places.

Apparently we are in a minority; according to a recent poll, some 2/3 of Americans feel that torture was justified.  Former US diplomat Peter Van Buren, in "Torture and the Company We Keep," urges Americans to "Look around at the company you keep.  The people who support torture, six out of ten, are your neighbors, your co-workers, the people on the bus with you..."

In 1945, American soldiers liberated Cologne and freed the prisoners who survived those Nazi torturers in the EL DE house.  What would they have thought if they knew that their fellow citizens, a half century later, would perform similar horrors?

End of Mubarak, End of Maalesh

The old joke about Egyptian society ruled by the IBM ethic - Inshallah, Boukra, Maalesh (God willing, mañana, It doesn't matter) - needs a bit of revision after the resignation under popular pressure of Hosni Mubarak.

God willing, democracy will come to take root.  Note the word democracy, not elections, though credible electoral processes are certainly welcome. Inshallah.

Tomorrow - boukra or mañana - in a more democratic Egypt may bring stability and prosperity, but the danger for now is a letdown after the euphoria.

But maalesh, that fatalistic default position where today's woes are regrettable but will certainly be there tomorrow, has suffered a serious blow.  Despairing Egyptians, faced with the stultifyingly corrupt practices of a civil service that could turn the simplest of administrative procedures into a lifelong quest, used to jump off the roof of the infamous Mogamaa Building off Tahrir Square.

Maybe that was urban legend, but the truth is that they summoned up the courage not only to block access to the all-powerful Mogamaa, but also to block a President-for-life, and his hereditary plans for a "republic" in name only.

Mubarak and his sons, no doubt, counted on the famous Egyptian quality of contentment or qanaa, a tranquility of the spirit that put up with three decades of impunity.  But every good quality, when abused, has its limits.  Maalesh - no more.

Saints Preserve Us From "Doctor" Terry Jones

Tangier, Morocco, September 11, 2010

Yesterday, September 10, was the Aid al-Fitr, or the feast day after the Muslim month of fasting and prayer, Ramadan.  The RFI correspondent in Tangier gave a nice image of the place on this festive day, which, according to one interviewee, consisted of "eating all day." Sounds like American Thanksgiving day.

Cut to September 11 in the US, where apparently all the world's media have camped out in front of a 50-person church in Florida, waiting to see if the Bible Koran burner will carry out his act, or not, as he has said of late.  Keep us in suspense, Terry, while you've already done your damage.

You see, there's been enough coverage worldwide - especially in the Muslim world, on its special feast day - to have done more damage to the American image.  The country founded on religious freedom, unable to come to grips with the establishment of a Muslim center in downtown New York.  Tolerance for the Terry Joneses, who already burned his bridges in Germany before he thought about burning holy books, but not for the "Imans" (as he calls imams).  Maybe he was going to see Iman.

So here's the point of this post.  Should the "Reverend" Jones renege on his latest promise and in fact carry out his act, I want to put it in print that I will resent being immolated in return by a mob looking for an easy American target.  It's no secret: the American Legation in Tangier is in the middle of the medina, a labyrinth of alleys that the police rarely frequent.  We are on our own.

And I thought our days of fear-inducing September 11 memorials were over.  Where for years, it would be a chance to ramp the "fear up" campaign to further war plans.  This time, the fear is not emanating from the White House or from Cheney's bunker, but from a small church in Florida.

So Terry, stay away from those matches.  Go back to running your business-cum-"church," in the time honored tradition of American hucksters.  And let the press cover something important, like how it is that the country that has room for the Dove World Outreach Center cannot accomodate the Cordoba Faith Initiative, named after a Spanish city whose reputation under centuries of Muslim rule was as a light of religious tolerance.

As my mother used to say, a souvenir from her old Ireland, "Saints preserve us."  From this man of "religion."

Image: Morocco Board News Service