121Contact

Feb 28 2012 Mad Men: The Falling Man and 9/11

So this reporter asks me, under the guise of "I do not want to start a controversy where none exists," how I, one who lost someone on 9/11,  feel about the poster.

The first time I saw one of these posters it made me sick to my stomach..a little.

There was a day, that day, a crisp morning, when I stood beneath the towers taking photos on 9/11. I stopped when I realized I had just captured the image of a woman in a white dress, twisting down, down...I own that image in a way I detest. This was all before we knew that my nephew, Supreme Court Officer Mitch Wallace, was at the site; moments before the South Tower collapsed upon him and so many others.

I also, less frequently now, get nauseous when a low flying jet passes overhead. Living under a Brooklyn flyway lets me deal with this quite often.

If an advertising campaign (which I am now, I guess, a part of) evokes images of a horrid day, then so be it. I cannot stop the jets from flying low. I cannot stop images that remind me of 9/11 from being created.

I refuse to spend my entire existance looking through the lens of 9/11. There is more to me than grief and anger. I can only do my little bit to make for more peaceful tomorrows.

 

Feb 24 2012 Two conversations: Syrian Slaughter, Iraqi Bombings, and Iran

We stand in the cold drizzle and talk of Syria. The Lieutenant, a disabled Vietnam vet, is wearing his khakis, smoking his cigarette, and talking loudly of the cruelty of the Syrian government. I listen.

"They are killing women and children. The bastards. They're bastards, you know. These people should be hung. They don't even let the Red Cross in. No food. Nothing," he rants. He goes on for quite a while before I find a place to break in with some quiet assent, a word for the future, and a damp goodbye.

I don't have the heart to bring up Fallujah. Every day the Syrian slaughter reminds me of Fallujah, especially the assault on Homs. Fallujah has become a symbol to me of the utter illogical cruelty of our invasion and occupation of Iraq;  where we crushed the innocent civilians with every bit as much gusto as the Syrian government has mustered now.

---

Later I'm on the phone to Baghdad, and the news is not good.

"The neighborhood is closed since yesterday. We cannot go anywhere. The older children cannot go to college. We are trapped. Again. There is no hope."

"But there is hope in the future...the  young ones who are coming out of college," is my reply. It is also my hope.

He tells me, "This is a dead hope. I have been in Syria for 4 years before I come back now. Baghdad is not Baghdad. It is Iran. Even the cars that blew up yesterday are Iranian taxis. Everything is Iran here. Do you think these children can change that?"

"Do you know," he continues, "the government paid 60 million for their cars? 60 million American. Now they ride in safety in their armoured cars. They don't care for the people. Only themselves and all they can steal. This is Baghdad now."

The conversation shifts to the children and how they are coping with the madness around them. Little K has taken to biting. Each time he is upset, each time he hears a loud noise, each time he is angry he bites. Usually his mom, but anyone around is in danger. They don't know what to do about it, how to handle it, how to punish, reward, prevent...

The line is cut and I am in the rain again, or maybe it's tears.

Feb 22 2012 Condolences and Prayers: Does Homs Remind You of Fallujah?

RIP Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik. We publicize the names of brave journalists killed in Syria. Let's not forget the many, many innocent civilians being murdered in the midst of the violence.

We remember when we were told that Fallujah had been evacuated before the shelling. We remember the students who arrived in Baghdad to tell the tales of the many who were left behind, unable to leave. Sure, the rich, those with transportation, those who fled on foot did escape the bombs. But what of the families too poor, too traumatized, too paralyzed to leave?

Hundreds for sure, perhaps thousands, died in Fallujah. The death toll in Homs is already over 400 [France News International], and the killing hasn't stopped.

Can you tell which is Homs; which is Fallujah?

 

Innocent civilians, as always, are paying the highest price in this latest violence in Syria. Does it matter who does the killing? The Syrian government? American troops? Violent resistors of tyranny? It's all the same to the daughter who loses her dad or the mother who loses her precious son.

We offer our condolences and prayers to the families of the lost innocents.

Feb 14 2012 Syria: The shame and the blame

It's Valentine's Day. This wonderfully commercialized holiday is RED. Red covers everything: boxes of chocolate and jewelry, Hallmark cards, and bouquets of roses.

The streets of Syria are red, too, but there are no flowers. Over 7,000 have died so far and there is no end in site. Indiscriminate bombing of Homs and other civilian centers intensifies; fighting dances around the edges of Damascus; arms and fighters flow in and the rich and/or lucky flow out.

The blame of it: It depends upon which media you read. It depends upon which pundit you revere. It depends upon which house you were born into.

We already hear the echoes of Iraqi voices in such statements as, "Yes, it was bad before, but I could go to the store and not fear for my life," and "Sure, we hated him, but it is NATO we really hate now."

I don't have any answers. Syria is internally split and the opposition is also internally split. They have no leader and the various anti-government forces are creating their own militias. Rumors of Al Qaeda, Iranian influence are increasing. The old "Syria-to-Iraq" path of arms and fighters has evidently been reversed.

The shame of it all is bigger than Syria. It is the shame of a human race that thinks it cannot resist the tyrannies of power that are so willing to use violence to keep themselves on top. Truth be told, the peace activist (just the activists, mind you, not the vast majority of peace-loving people) outnumber the leaders and operators of The Machine by at least a million to one.

The Machine depends upon our cooperation. Our taxes pay for the bombs. Our bodies are the soldiers. Our munitions manufacturers (and those that work for the military industrial complex; not just the owners) are critical to the oppression of freedom loving peoples.

The peace activists, if working together, could, in the manner of Gandhi and King, refuse to participate in large enough numbers so that we could halt The Machine.

The shame of it: We are as splintered as the militias of Iraq were; as the militias of Syria are; as [insert clever metaphor here]...

Happy Valentine's Day.

Oct 31, 2011 Baghdad Days: The House is Falling

Baghdad Days: The House is Falling October 31, 2011
by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

Noor, kaif halich? We are fine. Alhamdulilah. We are fine.

Yes, I know it is 4AM here but I just could not sleep. Oh sister, the house is falling. I am living in endless panic. I cannot go on. No. Everything is all right. But I am filled with worries. There is no sleep for me. I need to talk to someone. I need to talk to someone who is far away. I can call you because you are far away and I know I will not wake you. I know you will help me.

Do you know yesterday Ahmed amd his friend came home all shaking. When the car dropped them off at the checkpoint,  when they came from school, he said, the soldiers who are surrounding the neighborhood they looked at the kids, Ahmed and his friend,  in that funny way. One of them said, “I would love to take you home with me.” My son was in tears. Frightened. He and his friend are only 12 years. My son doesn’t know of homosexual things, but he knew something is wrong. He said, “He looked at me in the funny evil way. I was frightened.”  I was in shock. How can I send them again to the school? I don’t know whom should I worry about…my daughter, or to take care of my son. They are innocent of such details of rape or sex or such things. So I sat with him and forced myself to talk with him about these details instead of his studies. I have to frighten him to make him watch out. This is a big responsibility. It is not easy. This is happening here. Can you imagine?  In our neighborhood. Can you imagine? We are surrounded now, like years ago. The checkpoints are in each place.

You ask me to take him from school and to school? To walk with him? Sister, I have 3 children. Shall I cut myself in three and take care of each child? Hammed? He is working each day, Alhamdulilah.

Hammed? Yes. He is still going to work every day. And what of his coming and going? He insists to go to work, of course. But they are killing again. Each Sunni in our neighborhood is in fear again. They are killing again; the teachers, the intellectuals, especially the professional with a job…Now we are becoming like Mosul; like Baghdad of 2006. Hammed says, “Keep the children at home.” How can I deny them school? This is impossible. They will go crazy if I lock them in the house.

Did you hear of the bombs in Amariyah? Adhamiyah? Here in Fadhil? You think this is coincidence? We are the target. They will come for us, and we don’t know when. We are living with this fear. It is of every moment. Maybe I don’t think about it at every moment. But it is there. And I will think about it again. I know.

And I tell you I am tired. I am torn…of worrying about the boy, the girl, the work, the money. And when they go out the burden is like a mountain on my chest. And when they come home I feel it is lifted. I am tired of the fear and it is taking my sleep, and I have no energy to do anything; to shop; to take the children to school; to clean the house…what for?

Hammed tells me I have to be strong. For the children.  I am strong. But, sister, I am tired.

Oh, sister, I call you. Do you hear me? Can you help me?

[the connection is cut]

 

 

 

 

 

IRAQI NGOs Enter the Light of International Cooperation

October 17, 2011,by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

 The recent ICSSI conference in Erbil, Iraq brought to light many of the issues that Iraqi citizens are working to correct. These newly formed NGOs are quickly learning how to approach their government from the bottom up, with civil society initiatives that are beginning to change the complexion of Iraqi politics.

 Exactly five years ago Stars and Stripes reported about Haweeja in an article titled “U.S. military faces an overly hostile climate in out-of-the-way town populated by Sunnis” They depicted it as ”small and somewhat isolated in the farmlands between Kirkuk and Beiji about 175 miles north of Baghdad. Haweeja is a destitute sprawl of buildings.” What they did not report was the fact the Haweeja was so riddled with radioactive waste that that an entire newly disabled generation faces a lifelong threat of cancer and other radiation induced illnesses and birth defects. 25% of newborns in Haweeja are deformed and neither the Maliki government nor US authorities are doing anything about it. In fact, when a resident brought contaminated soil samples to the government he was threatened with investigation by US military forces.

  [Yanaar Mohammed, of OWFI]

The NGO  OWFI, The Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, has added Haweeja to the list of concerns they bring to the Maliki government. Even after having been attacked and molested in June as they protested in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square they have not stopped their efforts to build a new, more just Iraq. Their research into the situation in Haweeja has been documented and reported on by Al Hurra TV, Al Faiah TV, Reuters, Al Mousawat Radio, and Al Sumeria news.

 There are 412 radiation cases registered in the local clinic, and OWFI speaks of anecdotal evidence of about 600 cases. The source: a nearby US base and arsenal which conducted extensive live ammunition practice.  

OWFI hopes to get help from international organizations to relieve the suffering and bring the situation under international court attention.  They are part of the new, resilient, and determined NGOs that are lifting Iraq to more peaceful tomorrows.

 

 

 

 

Sept 17 2011 "I choose not to choose who dies."

A fellow traveller in Peaceful Tomorrows, Rita L., said it and makes a lot of sense to me:

"I choose not to choose who dies."

Sept 13 2011 "Your 9/11 is our 24/7," and other 10 year memorial thoughts...

Oh, it's not original. It's been around for a while, but this year it seemed more pungent somehow, more odious, outrageous, disrespectful, and horribly true.

"Your 9/11 is our 24/7" Facebook saw it posted over and over; multiple "Letters to the Editor" columns, and innumerable blogs (including this one) carried the bleak comparison. Google carried 79,400,000 hits. There must be something to it. After all, it was just yesterday that a busload of familiesm headed out of Iraq to Syriam was intercepted by armed men dressed in military uniforms. All the women and children were forced off and told to march across the desert. The bus was later found a few miles down the road. All the men who remained on board were executed.

What? Sure, the body counts are inversely proportional to the asymmetry of the warfare, as are the vastly more unbalanced  count of injured. Sure, also, the number of people deeply affected by long term trauma are also weighed heavily on the side of 'the enemy'; 'the other'; the 'not with us, therefore against us'...the very people we claimed to be helping.

It is ten years since the term 'ground zero' got applied to the ruins of the World Trade Center in New York City, U.S.A. It's first use in print was in a 1946 New York Times article: "The intense heat of the blast started fires as far as 3,500 feet from 'ground zero' (the point on the ground directly under the bomb's explosion in the air)." It was a catchy 2001 phrase and caught on quickly as the media frenzy began to take hold. "Collateral damage" came in second, I think, as Americans began to understand the reality behind that phrase. But only a few Americans.

It was the proximity factor that did us in; prevented us from attaining the moral high ground; interfered with our grasping the simplest of truths: This was not a time for revenge, but a time to dig deep and find the peaceful paths to victory.Unfortunately, fear carried the day and made it easy for the Bushmen to manipulate public opinion.

If you lost a loved one, a friend, an acquaintance, then you knew the pain of collateral damage. If you were witness to the attack or a rescue/recovery worker, on the scene as we were, then the meaning of collateral damage was clear. It was in the air. It was in the stinking smell of death that permeated your clothes, your pillow, and stubbornly refused to leave  your nostrils. It was the stench that had you double over with vomit spewing from your mouth and nose.

But if you were a TV witness, then all was probably transformed for you. That media wall protected you from a deeper, sadder understanding of the phrase. Collateral damage. Collateral damage. Many Americans were already filled with compassion, but the curtain of distance kept the majority of us from a visceral, emotional understanding of the events and their consequences. Not, however, from a stirring of our basest emotional triggers that spawned a taste for revenge.

Repeated film clips of the bodies falling (note: not referred to as people jumping to their deaths), the towers collapsing, the smoke and debris rushing toward the camera...all stirring flight/fight responses that were unanswerable from the living room. This left us with untapped energies that the administration could manipulate to its own ends.

And now, the now of 9/11, the now of Bush's decisions, we were to inflict collateral damage on Afghanistan, and then Iraq. To win the "war on terror?" I think not. To take revenge, send a message, appear strong in a modern warfare way? I think so.

And then came what no one was able to predict in scale. Many had opined that using violence would only lead to more violence. Many had stood and tried to stop the carnage they knew would only create more enemies than it killed. But few, if any, knew the extent of the horror we would unleash in Iraq.

We aren't any safer. We don't understand much more about the mind of the terrorist or how to steer young people away from paths of destruction. We haven't brought the world's nations any closer. What did we gain? A lot of money for the war-suppliers, a lot of weapons know-how, and a lot of enemies.

"Your 9/11 is our 24/7" became an ironic truth. One bumper sticker said, "Be nice to America or we'll bring Democracy to your nation." We were still able to joke about it,  but to this day, and forward many generations, there are Iraqis who will be hard pressed to find the humor in the pain we unleashed upon their nation, their people, their generations of young Iraqis growing up traumatized by what surrounded them day after day for so many years.

It's never too late to learn. It's not too late to admint the errors of our foreign policies. It's not too late to teach young ones about compassion and the folly of using violence to solve problems.

"Your 9/11 is our 24/7." It's not a joke.

What if we made September the International Month of Peace Studies? What if we made the eleventh of September a day of rememberance for all those lost to political violence in all countries in all times? What if we began to steer this world toward more peaceful tomorrows?

September 13, 2001 by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

 

Aug 27 2011 Those Illiterate Women of Iraq

The United Nations defines an illiterate person as “someone who cannot, with understanding, both read and write a short, simple statement on his or her everyday life. One out of four Iraqi women are illiterate! The figure is lower for men, at about 11%. That leaves about 6 million Iraqis unable to express themselves in writing or read about the world around them.

This, after Iraq led the region in literacy for many years. In 1982 Iraq was awarded The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) prize for eradicating illiteracy. What happened?

Well, the 1980's sanctions took a big bite. Educational materials were on the list and everything from pencils, books, and computers were kept away from schools.The invasion and occupation that followed brought the final blows to the destruction of Iraq's educational system.

Following that was the US led invasion and occupation which resulted in the physical destruction of many schools by bombs, rockets, fires, looting, and wanton vandalism by US forces (among others).  When a school is bombed not only lives are lost. There is also a conviciton on the part of many parents that sending their children to school is not a safe option.

Then came the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) rulings that resulted in a) all Ba'athists being removed from thier government jobs. Almost all teachers were registered Ba'athists; an unstated requirement for employment, b) Salaries for teachers plummeted to about US$2/day forcing many to leave for other jobs or other countries, and c) a mass exodus of educators fueled by perceptions of dire futures and not to be under emphasized assassinations of educators. Many schools closed or became educationally ineffective child care centers.

In the last few years a great many students have left school to help their families earn money.

Althought the educational system is repairing itself, it is a painfully slow process. There is so much serious need in so many critical areas that Education is not high on the list of funding.

Is the United States reponsible for this mess? Sure, if you take the position "my country, my government, my war." Not, if you believe that Iraq should care for itself and "it's not our business to interfere." We find the latter view ludicrous in the face of what the US unleashed in Iraq.

So what can we do, as a nation, to help repair what we have broken?

Direct funding aid to Iraq's educational systems will go a long way to restoring Iraq to its former position as the intellectual and educational capital of the Arab world.

You can contact your representatives to ask that we, as a nation, begin to repair what we helped destroy. We can remove the troops, reduce expenses, and replace the expenditures with real aid to real people in real need.

 August 27, 2011, by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

References: IndexMundi,   CIA.gov,  IraqSolidaridad , WorldBank

 

 

 

 

 

Aug 20 2011 Oh my aching Baghdad, Iftar, and memories

The end of another day of fasting. Unwinding into the night with an evening of ritual: Mahgrib, Iftar, talk, and Isha.  Even later came TaraweeH, but that is another story. Several families, really parts of families, gathered together in a small apartment in Brooklyn.

The meal was lavish. Each of the many dishes delicious, and plates overflowed, as did the talk. Each dish lifted its own plumes of spice-laden air, thick with memories of Ramadans past, places past, lives past. 

"This feels like home," said a young woman, here alone, her family still in Baghdad. She lifted her face and said softly,  "The gathering; the crowded table; the many dishes; the talk, arguing, children playing and teasing...like home."

Lina, the hostess, reached a hand to touch a hand and said, "Please. We are your family now. We are all one family here."

The table overflows and there aren't enough chairs so some are sitting on hassocks and the youngest, Luma, is on the sofa. She doesn't mind because from there she can watch an ElectricFactory show ("Please Arwa, use the earpiece.") while she eats, eavesdrops, and learns English at the same time.

After dinner the teenagers head for the bedroom, the women for the kitchen, and the men chat of everyday things: the long  commutes to work, the business of making a living, studying...then AHmed told of his recently failed venture and how he had to sell the grocery store, and how that gave him the money to start another business and how this new work was so fulfilling.

"This work is the work I did in Baghdad. Air condition. Big." His hands draw large machines in the air and he continues, " Large for companies, for stores. The same. I love it. I can do it here. The store I sold in Manhattan, they are now a customer. In Baghdad we had three stores of... appliances. Air condition, refrigerator..."

He pauses here, eyes moving to the floor, hands drooping in his lap.

"Then one day my man of business...er...my partner of the business assassinated. They come into the store, some men, and they just shoot him. No. No rob. Just to kill him. He has wife and three daughters. "

He pauses again, staring into space. His breath seems to stop and his face has loses all emotion, and he continues, flatly, "Then, after this, they kill my brother-in -law. He has two children. Two sons. No reason. Too much."

Murmurs of recognition and words of condolence are offered, and accepted. A few more stories come forth of life in Baghdad in 2005, 2006 (when most of those here at the table left Iraq). The usual coda of questions without answers follows ("Who does these things? Who are these people?" Why?) and then, with a joke or two, there is first an attempt and then success at moving the mood. We return to the present and become concious of the laughter from the kitchen. Luma has not budged from the sofa. She gives no indication of having heard any of the conversation around her but notices immediately when the older women enter the room.

The women return with kaHwah and kleicha and qataiyef. They bring withthem a real joy and appreciation for what we have. The evening returns to a bright night with friends, with family, and with Ramadan's spirit of calm reverence for all that is given.