[Illustration by Ajda Gregor?i?]

BY WILLIAM C. HENRY I just finished reading a column in the New York Times by Stanley Fish titled “What’s up with the Jews?” The article poses the question of whether it’s ever possible for any of us to completely eliminate anti-semitic characterizations of Jews from whatever opinions we may form, or conclusions we may draw, with reference to any particular Jewish affected action or stance. In conclusion he offers this statement with respect to the Israeli/Palestinian situation: “Those who offer the criticism can never quite be sure that their distaste for Israel’s actions with respect to the Palestinians is entirely innocent of the influence of centuries of vilification.” Well, I think I can. The only thing I see that could possibly even remotely effect the scores-old, tried and true, let’s-get-this-whole-thing-sorted-out, flawlessly implemented, Alfred E. Neuman approved, nth degree analytical process of mine might be the somewhat flimsy reasoning I occasionally employ, or the inevitable intrusion of a preconceived notion here or there, all of which sounds pretty fair-minded and bound-to-get-to-the-bottom-of-things to me!

Let’s begin with: Why does the Jewish state have any more right to exist than the descendants of the original Native American tribes have the right to retake possession of the United States? Both suffered similar diasporas. Both believed their lands had been entrusted to them by their God. Both had inhabited their respective lands for millennia (actually a damn site longer in the case of the Native Americans). Should one be considered more “deserving” than the other? Is it simply a matter of one having the “right” God? Should the western world’s collective guilt about the Holocaust have overridden any consideration for the rights of those who had actually inhabited Palestine for the previous millennia and more? The only truth I can see evident here is that might rarely makes right, but it’s almost always effective. It should be noted that while American reparations in the aftermath of its own pitiless genocide of Native Americans is nothing to write home about, they have had the unintended benefit of providing us with some of the world’s most lavish gambling resorts.

Likewise, I’m wondering why it’s so perfectly OK for Israel to possess nuclear weapons but so definitely NOT for Iran. Assumed intentions are one thing, reality offers a much more predictable outcome. What Iran “could” do with a nuclear weapon is no different from what nine other current nuclear weaponized nations “could” do with theirs. Besides, there isn’t a moderately informed person on the face of the earth who doesn’t know full well that were Iran to unleash a nuclear weapon on Israel, it would instantaneously be nuked back to the Stone Age. All their pro-forma Israel-bashing may produce the occasional self-destructionist among the rank and file, but trust me when I say it doesn’t extend to the ruling class. That aside, why aren’t we a damn site more concerned about the fact that Pakistan already HAS an array of them?! Boy, if you think Pakistan is a stable nuclear weapons possessor, I’ve got some toxic assets I’d like to “swap” with you! This is the “sophisticated” Muslim democracy and great friend and ally of ours that couldn’t possibly have known that bin Laden had been living the life of Riley less than a hop, skip and jump from its top military academy for over five f _ ck _ _ g years! Gee, that’s being just about as friendly and honest as say, Iran!

And, then there’s that pesky little matter of why Israel gets to continually fire a middle finger (with our acquiescence and without consequences) toward EVERY United Nations resolution they deem to be the least bit detrimental to their paranoid schizophrenic ‘best interests.’ Let’s skip over the other some 70-plus similarly “birded” U.N. resolutions that have attempted to resolve the Palestine situation and concentrate on just ONE! It’s titled U.N. Resolution 194 and it states that Palestinian refugees are guaranteed the “right of return” to their homelands. It has been re-affirmed by the U.N. on no fewer than 122 OCCASIONS! That’s the same Right of Return that’s guaranteed under Humanitarian and Human Rights Law including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination and the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights. Yet, after 60 years, the refugees (some 400,000 of them in Lebanon alone!) continue to suffer under some of the most squalid conditions to be found anywhere on the planet simply because this so-called Christian congress of ours lacks the plain old political guts to face down the far-out-of-proportion-power-wielding financial powerhouse Jewish political lobby. Can I get an Amen?!?

So, how DO we (with all due respect to our highly esteemed neighbors to the south) end this proverbial “Mexican standoff”? Well, after months of exhaustive examination of literally every conceivable solution to this heretofore acknowledged all but winnable tug o’ war, I believe I have come up with a solution that comes as close as humanly possible to satisfying the needs and demands of both ends. Here it is: the Palestinians (all of them) get ALL of Palestine (including Israel). The Israelis, in turn, get half of Manhattan Island and half of Washington, DC. I mean, they already own half of them anyway, right?

PREVIOUSLY: Big Brother’s Holding Co.

PREVIOUSLY: Goldman Sachs Of Shit

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Fed up early stage septuagenarian who has actually been most of there and done most of that. Born and raised in the picturesque Pocono Mountains. Quite well educated. Very lucky to have been born into a well-schooled and somewhat prosperous family. Long divorced. One beautiful, brilliant daughter. Two far above average grandsons. Semi-retired (how does anyone manage to do it completely these days?) and fully-tired of bullshit. Uncle of the Editor-In-Chief.

1,598 = The number of Americans killed in action in Afghanistan
11,191 = The number of Americans  wounded in Afghanistan.
0 = To date the number of financial industry kingpins indicted for having committed the most massive FRAUD in American history.

[Photo by JONATHAN VALANIA]

FRESH AIR

Love, violence, death and America have always been themes for Australian-born singer-composer Nick Cave — Murder Ballads and Abbatoir Blues are just two of his album titles — so he was perhaps a natural to compose the soundtrack for last year’s epically paranoid Western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Cave also wrote the screenplay and soundtrack for the Australian epic The Proposition, which Roger Ebert described as “pitiless and uncompromising, so filled with pathos and disregarded innocence that it is a record of those things we pray to be delivered from.” Cave appeared in Wim Wenders’ 1987 film Wings of Desire, and he’s written both plays and novels. Now Cave has released a new CD with his band the Bad Seeds. The title? Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! The inspiration, he says, is the Biblical story of Lazarus’ return from the grave.

RELATED: In the beginning, there was The Birthday Party. And it was good. Rock n roll as sonic aneurysm: screeching, cataclysmic and cruel. The Birthday Party was scary, but not in the corny Count Chocula way of most of the Kabuki-faced goths that followed in its wake, but, like, Exorcist scary. Danger was the Birthday Party’s business, and in the early ’80s business was good. Nick Cave was the human cannonball at the microphone, and the band would just light his fuse and run for cover. When the audience demanded blood, Cave would open up and bleed with the best of them. When he got bored with that, he would lunge into the crowd for a good punch-up and casually drop kick any skull that dared to violate the sacred space of the stage. Needless to say, there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth. The Birthday Party nicknamed one tour ‘Whoops, I’ve Got Blood On The Tip Of My Boot’ Tour.

And then there were drugs — bags and bags of drugs. The worst drugs money can buy. It wasn’t long before Cave was willing to cut off his leg to feed his arm, and things only grew more ghoulish and dastardly. He was literally scrawling song lyrics into his notebook with a blood-filled syringe. Until one day when the Birthday Party ran out of blood and the willingness to extract it from others. All things move towards their end, Cave would later sing, and the Birthday Party had stopped moving. So ends the first chapter in the Gospel of Nick. […]

Along the way, something miraculous happened: Nick The Ripper transfigured into old Saint Nick and he became…wait for it…capital-G great. While many still probably assume he sleeps in a coffin and others have convicted him in absentia for the fashion crimes of a million po-faced goth twinks, the standard by which he measures himself as an artist is the work of Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, and Leonard Cohen — before which, he will tell you if you bother to ask, he feels humbled. Although he’ll deny it, the music he has been making since, oh I dunno, at least as far back as 1996’s Murder Ballads, breathes the same rarefied air those artists once exhaled. At times stripped nearly to the bone of silence — and devoid all the pretense, posturing and dark intent that could sometimes mar his earlier work — these psalms of love and devotion lift their skinny arms toward heaven, where they once pounded the sands of the abyss. And it was good. Very good. — Jonathan Valania

RADIO TIMES

Hour 1
Is peace possible between Israel and the Palestinians? We talk with AARON DAVID MILLER author of The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace. For the previous two decades, he served at the Department of State as an adviser to six Secretaries of State, where he helped formulate U.S. policy on the Middle East and the Arab-Israel peace process, most recently as the Senior Adviser for Arab-Israeli Negotiations. Miller is currently a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC. Listen to this show via Real Audio | mp3

Hour 2
This Sunday through Thursday PBS will air a 10-part series filmed aboard the USS Nimitz a nuclear aircraft carrier during a six month deployment to the Persian Gulf in 2005. We talk about the history and future of aircraft carriers and their role in American naval strategy with NORMAN POLMAR, naval analyst and consultant. Listen to this show via Real Audio | mp3

THE WORLD CAFE

Melody Gardot didn’t start her musical career out of a grand artistic vision. While riding her bicycle, she was hit by the driver of a Jeep making an illegal turn. Hospitalized for months, Gardot used music for recovery therapy, at doctors’ suggestion. In the ensuing months, Gardot took up the guitar — it was hard for her to sit at the piano — and recorded what would become the Some Lessons EP. Determined to make more music, she independently recorded and released Worrisome Heart, a jazzy singer-songwriter affair that brings to mind Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell, and Eva Cassidy. The CD has since been reissued by a major label.

MELODY GARDOT: Worrisome Heart

Click here to view the video on YouTube.