Geographica Ohia Part I: Mounds and Morgan’s Raiders

I was born and raised in the city of Cincinnati, Ohio and spent a bunch of my time staying with my grandparents and other family in rural southeast Ohio.  Unlucky you might say and I might agree with you.  Still, there is a whole lot to be said about the place and very little of it jives with the stereotype of this most rust belt of states.  It feels like home as much as any place can feel that way for me.

A friend and I took advantage of a break from school to hit the road and explore the hills and hollows of southeastern Ohio with the country college town of Athens as our jumping off point.  Our main objective was to visit the mounds and earthworks left by the cultures of Ohio’s native past.   My grandparents took me to Serpent Mound, down the road from their farm, among others as a kid and yet it was only a few years ago that I actually knew anything about these structures or the people who built them.  Now I never miss a chance to visit the sites and monuments of the Ohio River valley.  In my mind they rival any in the world in inspiration.  My traveling partner shared a keen interest and we indulged ourselves by exploring dozens of sites of every description.

Along the way we also saw Civil War and other historic sites and explored the world of Ohio’s coal miners.  My grandfather’s family mined in the old country and then in Ohio where they immigrated to.  Seven generations of my family were coal miners.  For my grandfather’s family, whose father was an organizer for District 6 of the United Mine Workers, the coming of the union was a defining moment.  It meant freedom from hunger and it meant self-worth and respect.   Ohio saw some of the most fierce class battles of the last 150 years and miners were at the center of it.  All over southeast Ohio is subtle, “unofficial” evidence of that battle.  We saw plenty of it.

And now my curiosities indulged I have nothing but more curiosities to show for it.  Here is a little Geographica Ohia with photos of a trip through the riverines and hollows of that too much maligned place.

We’ll start here at one of my favorite spots.  The mound above, called Seip, was the central feature of a large Hopewell work on the Paint Creek off route 41.  Very little of the nearly two miles of embankments remain.   Seip is special.  From the vantage point of its summit the valley spreads around you with terraces on either side.  At 30 feet high it belongs to the second tier of mounds in the Ohio in terms of height.  It was extensively excavated and some pretty remarkable pieces of material culture unearthed.  The Paint Creek valley has over 950 archaeological sites.  The confluence of the Paint and Scioto rivers mark the epicenter of Ohio Hopewell culture.

We also saw the remains of the Baum works on the other side of the Paint as well as a few mounds, including one that sits on the local high school campus.  A few miles west of Seip is Spruce Hill, a hilltop enclosure with a beautiful mesa-flat summit of 40 acres.  The Arc of Appalachia and the Ross County Park just purchased the site with the promise to protect, investigate and preserve it.

The remarkable 1840’s atlas produced by Ephraim Davis and Edwin Davis, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, was the first publication of the newly formed Smithsonian Institute, and remains an indispensable tool for the study of the earthworks especially since the findings of their surveys are often all that remains of most Ohio earthworks.  It was are constant companion on the trip and led us to Spruce.

Our hike to this hidden gem was a highlight.  From its top the whole valley is in view and the mounds of fire scarred rock on the western ridge is testimony to years of huge fires, possibly as a signaling point.  At the top you get a real sense of the nature of these sites.  The whole world around it is in view and yet the hilltop itself is its own contained space clearly differentiated from the outside world.  There is recent speculation that some of these hilltop enclosures were complicated water collection and storage works, at least by the time of more heavily agricultural Fort Ancient culture some 600 years after the Hopewell.

Serpent Mound above Brush Creek off Route 73 in northeastern Adams County is the most recognized of all Ohio ancient monuments.  How ancient it is is up to debate with most recent scholarship pointing to a much later Fort Ancient period than previously thought Hopewell or earlier cultures.  The bends in the serpent’s body align with an 18 1/2 year moon cycle while the mouth devouring an ellipse (an egg?  the sun?) opens to the setting sun of the summer solstice.

Not far from my grandparent’s farm this was a place I visited as a child any number of times.  I don’t think a new dollar of investment or up-keep has been added since then.  What is so telling about all of these sites is their near invisibility.  Good luck finding well marked signs or displays of explanation.  These are unique, precious places.  For a settler society like the United States making the previous inhabitants vital, visible actors on history’s stage raises any number of uncomfortable questions.  Better to ignore them than to ask the hard questions.

One of the best rides in Ohio lies just to the east of Serpent Mound.  Strait Creek Road runs through Amish settlements on a narrow trackway.  Find it if you can.

The first settlement by the newly formed United States across the frontier of the Northwest Territories was at Marietta in 1788.  Never mind, of course, that the settlements were about as legal as the Zionists in Hebron and the veterans of the Revolutionary War that settled the place had little qualms about doing far worse to the native populations than was ever dreamed of by King George .  No wonder that many groups, including the Shawnee, allied themselves to the Brits.  For two generations Ohio would be the epicenter of native resistance.

The Shawnee, with great leaders like Blue Jacket and Tecumseh, would resist until the near annihilation of Ohio river valley tribes.  Ohio has two long running and historically problematic outdoor dramas that tell their stories complete with flaming arrows and galloping horses which were great fun to see as a kid.  The first of my ancestors to come to Ohio arrived before the Shawnee’s final rising around the War of 1812 and joined the Ohio militia to put it down.  Above Marietta on the Muskinghum is the Big Bottom State Memorial where Delaware and Wyandot fighters descended on the invading settlers one night in 1791 killing many of them.  I have yet to see an Ohio marker noting the massacre of natives by Europeans.   There might be a few, but to place them everywhere those events occurred would clog the roadways and leave very little space for billboards.

I am a big fan of the historic marker and will stop for most even though many make me scratch my head at the language used and sites noted.  A lot of so-and-so slept here or exploited here.  Mainly the rich and the powerful, rarely my people.  Ohio has a ton of them and no place is more historic than Marietta where the Muskinghum joins the Ohio River across form West Virginia.

A really lovely old river town with a couple of good museums, an amazing little cemetery and a unique group of earthworks.  The conical mound above still has it circular embankment and interior ditch (some mounds have exterior ditches) that are the hallmark of Adena, the culture that preceded the Hopewell, building.  This mound has survived as many of the mounds that have survived by a cemetery being built around it.  The Adena mounds particularly were burial vessels so in a way there is some poetry in the modus operandi of the their continued use. The cemetery itself boasts more Revolutionary War officers than any other in the States and would be worth the visit even if not for the mound.

This conical mound was connected by a embanked way to a 27 acre square Hopewell work now destroyed.  To the west of that square another one nearly twice the size has some cool features including a graded 1/2 mile embanked way from the river to an entrance of the square.  Internally the structure contains two truncated pyramid mounds with graded ways to their tops.  These are rare in Hopewell sites and are much more indicative of later Mississippian sites of the complex chiefdoms far to the west and south.  On one of these platform mounds now stands a public library.  The other was once a military camp and is now a beautiful town square.

We crossed the river here and went into West Virginia where, after passing quickly through the box-store hell of Parkersburg, followed the Enoch Fork of the Kawanha River from Palestine, the home of Iraq invasion cause celebre Jessica Lynch, to Garfield and past.  A beautiful drive in an idyllic valley.  Back across the Ohio, and the Mason-Dixon Line, we came across Buffington Island (below).

The event this site marks, The Battle of Buffington Island, was the largest battle of the Civil War fought on Ohio soil with the added trivial exclamation point that three future US Presidents were engaged here: James Garfield, Rutherford B. Hayes and William McKinley.  After the stunning Confederate success at Chancellorsville in the Spring of 1863 the South went on the offensive.  Lee’s Army of the Virginia invaded Pennsylvania culminating in his defeat at Gettysburg.  A raiding column under John Hunt Morgan crossed into Ohio with 3500 men to disrupt the Northern rear and strike a political blow against the authority of the Federal government on its own turf.

After skirmishing throughout the southern part of the state Morgan’s raiders were caught by Union forces, 15,000 of which were mobilized to get Morgan, near Portland, Ohio.  The battle was fought for miles along the river and Morgan’s column, already damaged in from the preceding weeks, was blocked from escape by Union gunboats on the Ohio.  Half of Morgan’s men were captured and 52 killed as were 25 Union soldiers, including 65 year old Captain Dan McCook in a cavalry charge on the Southern flank.  McCook was the patriarch of “The Fighting McCooks”; 13 of his sons fought in the war, 4 of them dying.

Morgan himself and a few hundred of his troopers escaped only to finally be captured near Columbus a week or so later.  He would soon escape that captivity and rejoin the Southern armies in Tennessee where he would die the following year in a fight with Union pursuers near Greeneville.  Morgan and other Confederate raiders would become the stuff of lore in rural southeast Ohio.  Many of the caves and hollows around my great grandmother’s home were said to be hideouts of the bushwhackers.  Every valley in the area probably has a “Morgan’s Cave”.

Ohio’s contribution to the Civil War goes well beyond this small battle.  320,000  served in the Union army, the third highest in the Union and with 60 percent of all  men between the ages of 18 and 45 enlisted it had the highest participation of any Union state.   5,092  free blacks from Ohio enlisted.  35,475 of these men died, as with all Civil War deaths, most were from disease.  My great-great grandfather of Wooster, Ohio volunteered for the 16th Ohio Volunteer Infantry and fought with Sherman at Chickasaw Bluffs and with Grant for the whole of the Vicksburg campaign.  His uncle also joined the regiment and died of disease in Louisiana.  His two brothers would lie about their age to join the 6th Ohio Cavalry, real shit-kickers, where they would fight under the man below in the murderous campaigns of 1864-5 and live to see, literally, Lee surrender his army at Appomattox.

Philip Sheridan began the Civil War as a lieutenant and ended up four years later commanding an army.  Such is the history of that war.  The old planter class that had dominated public life was being swept away and the sons of shopkeepers could and did rise quickly.  This monument in the cool old town of Somerset, which has some of the oldest still inhabited dwellings I’ve seen in Ohio, stands in the central square.  The Ohio generals Grant, Sherman and Sheridan rose to command because of their development of a strategy of total war.  The character of the war had changed dramatically by 1863 and these generals who developed in the Western Theater away from the intrigues of Washington that plagued the Eastern armies would, militarily, embody that change.

What Sherman did in his march through Georgia, South and North Carolina Sheridan did in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, “The Burning”, crushing Jubal Early’s feared army along the way.  I remember my grandfather saying that he couldn’t go south because his license plates would give away that he was from Sherman’s birth county.  This was just an excuse as my grandfather didn’t like traveling any further from home than absolutely necessary, but the truth of it is that to this day the names of these men are cursed in one part of the country while in the other schools are named for them and impressive monuments like this one for Sheridan in Somerset are erected.    Sheridan was no paragon of progress and would oversee genocidal war on the Plains Indians in the years following the war.  But it was he and his comrades that drove a stake violently at the heart of the South’s ancien regime and for this, at least, history can only be grateful.

Part II: Miners, class war, ghost towns and more mounds

6.25%, 50,000, 10.6%, 2,293,157

Well the numbers keep coming in. The first number, 6.25%, is the rate the United States economy contracted in the Fourth Quarter of last year . That is the quickest rate since the early 1980’s. It also means we are officially in a recession in case you needed that Bureau of Government Statistics to tell you that.

The second number, 50, 000, is the number of troops President Obama plans to leave in Iraq after he “withdrawals” in 16 months. He says that these troops will be “non-combat”. What does that mean? Perhaps they will be teaching yoga lessons. In any case they are going to need lots of places with big walls and machine-gun turrets to protect the yoga instructors and this may give those testy Iraqis an excuse to say that the US hasn’t left their country.

10.6% is the current official unemployment in the state of Michigan, the highest in the country. The actual number is much higher of course as the body that collects these numbers only counts those who are on unemployment. I know dozens of unemployed people and yet only a few of them receive any sort of aid. For black folks, even officially, the number is much higher. Thankfully the State of Michigan is giving its beleaguered workers an added incentive to look for work- it has trimmed the welfare roles by 13% in the last quarter as well. Toughen up Michigan!

The final number, 2,293,157, is the last released statistic for the number of Americans in prison (Dec, 2007). If we aren’t going to have jobs, school or welfare we need prisons to house those that would tussle over the scraps left to them. Again, the rate for black folks (and Hispanics) is much higher than for white people. For whites it is 107 per 100,000, for Hispanics 276 and for blacks 815! Welcome to post-racial America.

These are the number comrades and they do not lie. Workers are in a world of shit. Resistance is not an option to reverse these indicators of the crisis; it is an imperative.

Side note: I just returned from a fantastic road trip through the hills and hollows of Southern Ohio. I’ll have a report up with plenty of photos this weekend.

Another side note: I have only two rules when it comes to comments. one) you can’t comment for the sole reason of being a jerk and I get to decide and two) no anonymous comments. Easy.

Into the Tundra

We took a drive in the blowing snow through southern  Michigan yesterday.  On the drive we plotted spring getaways as well as the overthrow of several governments, set in place the strategy and tactics that would win the war, confirmed the long  held belief that Zingers are far better than Twinkies, coughed incessantly and rejected revisionism.  All in a day’s work, comrades.

Tundra…

One of many old country cemeteries on the route.  At this one they gathered the decaying headstones together at the center.

Walking on frozen Pickeral Lake.  Can’t wait until that first swim.

Bucolica…My architectural nomenclature class learned me that this is a gambrel roof German fore bay…

The tractor also waits for Spring…

It can’t be that cold if the creeks are running…

More bucolica…a snow covered country lane bounded by old trees…

Bibi, Guadeloupe, Karzai, Prop Joe

Well another week in the world goes by.  Some good news, some bad news.  All of it contradictory.  The Class War is what the Class War is.

The bad?  Well for starters Netanyahu got the pick from Peres to form the government.  It sounds like he will gather everything to the right of Likud(?!!) to do it.  Even the right-wing bloc is unstable as the secular and religious nutters have different things to be nutter about.

There is some conventional wisdom out there that the right will be more likely to make a deal a la Nixon to China.  The Nixon to China thing is always brought out at times like these.  Will Bibi go to Damascus?  If he did would it mean peace?   What does peace mean anyway?  The rise of Lieberman bodes poorly for the Palestinians living in the increasingly racist Israeli state.  Lieberman wants them to be loyal to their own dispossession which is both psychologically and politically impossible.  What confrontations “inside” Israel await this coalition is unclear, but they will happen.

The class struggle in the French held islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique reached damned near insurrectionary proportions this week.  Workers in Guadeloupe have been on general strike for a month demanding a 200 Euro a month raise in their poverty wages.  Class on the islands, as it does so many places including here in the US, has a hue.

For generations the descendants of French colonists have held the resources and wealth of the islands tightly in their grips as the mass of producers, descendants of slaves, have lived in poverty.  Enough became enough and it appears that the Sarkozy government may back down and accede to the demands.  The movement,t if not the leaders of the movement, have clearly gone beyond a simple wage demand to a demand that the power relations on the Caribbean islands change.  Sarkozy is hardly likely to accede to that.  And to prove it he has sent additional “security forces” to put a little stick to the strikers should those demands continue.

How will the workers in the metropolitan France react?    That is the key.  After the trade unionist Jacques Bino was killed Wednesday night workers brought out the hunting rifles to confront to cops at barricades whilst issuing demands to their counterparts in the French working class to join them.  One hopes that this request is heard and heeded.  The workers of the Antilles have long been restive, organized and combative and they are far ahead on the front lines these days.

Closer to home President Obama has made the Afghan war his own.  12,000 more combat troops with related support personnel almost doubles the size of US forces in the country.  It is a little surprising to me how far Obama has gone in placing his bets on this adventure.  Perhaps his arrogance means that he believes he can succeed where all others have failed.  The Quisling Karzai is not long for his post, but it who to take his place?  Someone even more compliant?  If Obama insists on walking into the quagmire here’s hoping he sinks in it.

And finally I have said goodbye to The Wire after finishing all of the seasons.  I’ll write more later as I absorb it.  I almost feel like writing an obituary for Proposition Joe who, as played by Robert Chew, had the best lines with the best man to deliver them.  Hard to see you go, Prop Joe.

Patricia Campbell Interviews Mahmoud Abu Aisha on Gaza

Mahmoud Abu Aisha is 23 years old; Based in Palestine, Gaza. He is active in mental health issues, lobbying and advocating on the Palestinian issue in the medical and academic forums worldwide. Mahmoud works for Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP) as Project Officer of the Crisis Intervention for Victims of Israeli War.  He was the coordinator for the GCMHP’s 5th International Conference “Siege and Mental Health… Walls vs. Bridges” which took place on 26-28 October, 2008. The conference was co sponsored by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Patricia Campbell, from the north of Ireland, was a participant at the conference.  She has maintained contact with Mahmoud since the conference and through out the war.  She interviews him for Fourthwrite magazine and Independent Jewish Voices (Canada) as well as The Rustbelt Radical website.

PC:  It is beyond our comprehension what it must have been like living with constant threat, death, destruction and bombings.  Can you explain how you and other survivors coped during those three weeks of constant attack?

Mahmoud:  When I used to write about victims of Israeli crimes, I never imagined that one day I’d be writing about the unbearable misery of my own family.

In the first days of Israel’s war against Gaza, we received a phone call from friends about the bombing of my cousin’s home.  I was in shock.  I couldn’t believe it. Fifteen minutes later, another phone call came from relatives asking whether we had heard this news and if it was true.

I turned on the radio and the local station confirmed that the Abu Aisha home had been bombed by F16 warplanes, resulting in the murder of the entire family of seven.

When we arrived at my cousin’s house we found the civil defence and ambulances there collecting the severed limbs of the children and their parents.  We found the father’s corpse laying on the ground, about 50 meters away from the home, with severe injuries and burns.  One of the mothers, (we couldn’t distinguish which one) was found with the head and shoulder amputated from her body.

The fate of the children was even more heart-wrenching.  I was weeping while collecting their limbs and shredded bodies.  The three children were Mohamad, 4 years, Ghaida, 7 years, and Sayed, 10 years.  I am still traumatized from seeing their fingers, flesh and guts spread everywhere.

Only Dalal, 12 years old, survived.  She had gone to sleep with her aunt the day before, as she was afraid of the shelling.  When she discovered that she had lost her entire family, she slumped over in shock.  She was inconsolable, crying;  “I am an orphan… what is my sin?… Nothing remains for me…”

Dalal is consumed with grief by the loss of her family, and she cries constantly.  The only things left in her home were her school uniform, her cat and some photos of her brothers and sister.

No safe place

We have lived difficult times under the Israeli war.  We were subject to the Israeli undiscriminating missiles that target everything, yes everything.  Neither stones, nor trees, nor humans were safe.  Everyday, every moment, we experienced death and destruction.  We didn’t feel safe even in our homes.  They threatened so many people to evacuate their homes by phone calls to shell them.  Many of the threats were real and others were to spread fear and terror among civilians.  All in all, it was a form of psychological warfare, yet we witnessed other cruel threats by the direct bombardment of many homes in very intensive areas.  Many people left their homes in pursuit of safe places, but nowhere was safe everywhere was attacked.

Israeli air jets

Not only this, the Israeli air jets and artillery shelling targeted civilian homes causing disasters and calamities for every family in the Gaza Strip.  I personally was about to die in many situations.  One day, I was walking with my friend under high level of precautions, suddenly huge explosions occurred around 30 meters in front of us targeting an empty school near our home, causing great dust and stones and shrapnel everywhere. My friend fell down screaming.   He sustained a chest injury and caused deep wounds and burns to his body and broken ribs.  Other people were injured in their homes in the surrounding area.

Military tanks and bulldozers

One day, we received news that the military tanks and bulldozers came closer to our home.  We had to leave our home in a hurry, we took our luggage and I went with my sister in law and her three sons (3, 5, 7 years) at sunset.  A hail of bullets rushed everywhere and we witnessed explosives in the buildings ahead us.  You can imagine the fear, panic and anxiety we felt. My fear aroused from the inability to protect my nephews.  They were crying and clinging with my chest and hands.  Even my sister-in-law was terrified that she was grasping my jacket.  Despite the high level of risk, we had to go ahead despite the challenge.  On our way we entered a cemetery that was shelled two days before, the airplanes fired lightening bombs over our heads… we were frozen with fear and my sister-in-law collapsed.  I could hardly hold the young two children, she proceeded to walk barefooted, and the older child (2^nd primary grade) was clinging my legs. We crept along to survive until we reached another populated area.  We stayed in our relatives’ home, though it was not safe there either.  We endured the 22 days struggling for survival.  When we heard news about more deaths, it became ordinary as life became equal to death in Gaza at that time.

During this time we were without electricity or water or communication in most of the Gaza areas.  All the networks were destroyed, so we didn’t know the full extent of the destruction.

When the bombing stopped

After the war ended, I couldn’t bear witnessing the scenes of destruction everywhere.  The barbarity of the situation became apparent.  I went to the destroyed areas, and realised how much destruction happened. I couldn’t recognize the roads in the neighbourhoods.

PC:  There is reports that suggest the conduct of Israeli ground troops were ruthless and barbaric. Can you tell us more about that?

Mahmoud:  Actually, words cannot describe what the Israeli ground troops committed in the Gaza strip.  The behaviour of the Israeli troops during this war hasn’t been ordinary troops’ behaviour during fighting; rather, it has reflected a kind of personal or group revenge.  This has been indicated throughout targeting civilians and innocent people in a very aggressive, inhumane, and cruel ways, using internationally prohibited weapons and causing calamities for every family in Gaza… I lost my cousin, her husband and kids in an Israeli F16 missile at their home after midnight… and only Dalal 12 years was the survivor in this family.

Destruction and Genocide

Every thing was entirely destroyed.  When I saw what happened to the invaded areas, I couldn’t recognize the original sites or buildings.  The destruction was in a very horrible way.  Even animals were killed, dead cows were thrown away decaying and causing dangerous diseases to people sheltered in UNESCO tents.  High buildings were targeted and shelled causing damages to all the surrounding houses. Every single individual was affected directly by direct injuries or indirectly by losing dear people or shelling their homes. Detention was very brutal against the innocent civilians who couldn’t escape. Genocide crimes were committed against entire families, such as my relatives Abu Aisha’s; my cousin Dalal 12 years lost her parents and the three siblings. Also, Al-Samouny family members were all besieged (more than 30) in one room and shelled by Apache warplanes, and artillery shelling.  Again, the scene was indescribable.

PC: Are tensions still high in Gaza?

Mahmoud: Unfortunately, tensions are still high and increasing with the Israeli threats of more stages of military invasions.  There were reports there is military invasion in the eastern boarders, not so far from our area in Gaza. We live with anxiety, panic and fear all the time.  Children have shown new critical symptoms like intrusive obsessive behaviours, bed-witting, stuttering, fear of death, nightmares, depression, and PTSD.  A few days ago, we were asked to evacuate our offices as there were Israeli threats to resume the air strikes against the remaining governmental building and the banks and all civil society organizations were asked to evacuate to avoid any potential shelling. Our headquarters of Gaza Community Mental Health organization was partially destroyed by the Israeli shelling.  All in all, tensions are still high and situation is unpredictable as there is no agreement upon truce or ceasefire.

PC:  While Gaza was burning international governments ignored the plight of Palestinians but thousands of protesters took to the streets in cities across the world.  Here in Ireland the people of Derry carried Palestinian flags in solidarity with the people of Gaza when they commemorated 13 people from Derry, shot dead by British Paratroops in 1972 and they changed the historical and famous wall mural of ‘Free Derry’ corner to ‘Free Gaza’  Does this type of international solidarity reach the people of Gaza and does it encourage you?

Mahmoud: In fact, yes we know about these solidarity actions by people all over the world like Northern Ireland and United Kingdom and Boston and so many free cities in the western world that inspire us with the soul of resistance and steadfastness against the Israeli cruelty.  In the same time we feel sad and sorry about the governments’ stance with Israel that violates all human rights conventions and international laws, and rape humanity in front of the fee world. We do acknowledge and recognize the important role of all nations and their solidarity with us and their positions against the injustice and crimes by Israel, the so-called democratic state!

PC: International doctors who treated the injured in Gaza Hospitals testified that most of the injuries and burns resulted from the use of white phosphors, a powerful chemical munitions that can cause serious and sometimes fatal burns.  Can you enlighten us further on this?

Mahmoud: Based on the testimonies of the international doctors who came to Gaza to serve the injured people at hospitals, it was indicated that most of the injuries and burns resulted from using the white phosphors, a powerful chemical munitions that can cause serious and sometimes fatal burns. In this regard, Dr. Nafez Abu Shaaban, the head of the burns unit at Shifa said: “We have never seen this type of injury or the number of such injuries … these were not usual burns.”  These new weapons will end up either by death within 6 – 8 months or chronic diseases like cancer and other disabilities. As a result, we have more than 5.000 people who became disable following their injuries.  This will leave hundreds of families without livelihood, and hundreds of children orphans.  Consequently, feelings of avenge and anger have increased to levels threatening all prospects of peace and stability in the area and will lead to more radical generations.

PC:  Finally, despite all you have been through you told me in an email that the people of Gaza are strong and determined.  In some ways this is reflected in the colourful picture you captured of little children playing in the middle of the rubble and destruction.  How are people dealing with the aftermath of the Israeli onslaught?

People of Gaza have inspired source of power from their long history of trauma they have experienced that equipped people and strengthened them to be able to cope with new traumatic events.  Additionally, the strong social ties, family support and religious believes have promoted their psychological resilience.  Though, some vulnerable groups like children still face psychological problems and need our help.

Mahmoud’s concluding statement

At the end, I’d like to call upon all free people to work against the Israeli barbaric siege over the Gaza Strip to end the suffocation of the innocent civilians and children. Please let our children live like yours.  Please don’t deny us the right to live in safety and security. It’s a call for humanity.

*photos from Mahmoud

Norman Finkelstein in Ann Arbor

Tuesday February 17 7:30 pm

Norman Finkelstein, The Israel-Palestine Conflict: what we can learn from Gandhi – 4th floor, Rackham Amphitheater, UM

This internationally renowned scholar and author Norman Finkelstein will speak on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Norman Finkelstein has authored numerous books and articles on the Israel-Palestine conflict and related issues.

This event is presented by Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE), Jewish Voice for Peace-Detroit, and American Jews for a Just Peace-Detroit. The Rackham Amphitheater is located on 915 E. Washington St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1070.

Darwin, Marx, Engels and All That

Happy Birthday Chuck!  More importantly Darwin shares his birthday with the best nephew in the world.  Darwin, and Lincoln, don’t know how lucky they are.   I’ve spent a little of the last 24 hours checking out Darwin related stuff on the web though I keep telling myself that I am just going to pull The Descent of Man of the bookshelf for a real read.  Instead I brain puttered with Darwin in mind.  Here are some of the things I stumbled upon.

Youtube is awash in Darwin related videos.  Mark Steel has a fabulous lecture on Darwin and  David Attenburough has a nice documentary of two hundred years of Darwin as well.  Neil deGrasse Tyson has a funny speech on “Stupid Design”, Terry Eagleton has a nice, academic, speech on Faith and Reason.  Do your own search; any good ones send my way.

Splintered Sunrise celebrates Darwin Day with a piece on the limits of scientific thought among the leading politicians in the north of Ireland.  This being the US, one need not look that far for evidence of such limitations.  In Cincinnati, a hotbed of Biblical literalism,  last year the Cincinnati Zoo proposed a joint ticket venture with the Creation Museum (no, it is not a joke).   Fortunately even in that backwater on The Ohio the public outcry was too much and the Zoo relented.

And finally I found this article from The Friends of Charles Darwin website on the real story behind the supposed dedication of Das Kapital to Darwin.  It turns out not to be the case, the real case being much more interesting as you can read here.  As usual in Marx’s circle the “villain” is Edward Aveling.  The romantic in me occasionally wishes to whisk back in time and rescue dear Eleanor from the clutches of that hideous little man.

It is shocking to me that there is still a “debate” on evolution.  Of course Darwin didn’t get everything right.  No one does.  Still, when one steps back from all of the silliness and views Darwin’s accomplishments in context they are awe inspiring.   We know where we come from, more or less, which is a helluva long way to finding out where we might be going.  The light of science can truly be a candle in the dark.   Thank you Charles Darwin.

Reading Tacitus; Thinking About Resistance

I ride the bus and for bus riding a certain kind of reading is necessary.  I usually have the paperback of a classical author in my coat pocket.  I never take them too seriously, though some are seriously good, which allows me take make light reading of them.  Herodotus is a welcome escape from Washtenaw Avenue.

I have my favorites and my favorite is Tacitus.  I’ve often thought about studying Latin just so I could read him in the original.  The well worn Penguin edition of The Agricoloa and The Germania was with me today.  I have read it a half dozen times already.  It may not resemble fact, but it soars towards some truths.  Tacitus writes in perfect time even when his view is entirely out of step with my own; his precision is fierce and even his most ludicrous of assertions,  natural enough from a Roman of his class and position I suppose, are as sharp as a knife.

In the reign of Domitian a Caledonian chief named Calgacus resisted Roman encroachment into Scotland and fought Tacitus’ father-in-law Agricola at the Battle of Mons Graupis.  The Caledonians were crushed despite their numbers.  Tacitus was an astute and aware man.  Like many Romans he deeply respected those who would resist Rome and slavery and held the lickspittles in contempt.  He penned these lines in the voice of Calgacus as the Caledonians rallied to fight his own father-in-law.  The famous line about calling a solitude peace is here, but so much of the rest of the speech is extraordinary as well.

“Former contests, in which, with varying fortune, the Romans were resisted, still left in us a last hope of succour, inasmuch as being the most renowned nation of Britain, dwelling in the very heart of the country, and out of sight of the shores of the conquered, we could keep even our eyes unpolluted by the contagion of slavery. To us who dwell on the uttermost confines of the earth and of freedom, this remote sanctuary of Britain’s glory has up to this time been a defence. Now, however, the furthest limits of Britain are thrown open, and the unknown always passes for the marvellous. But there are no tribes beyond us, nothing indeed but waves and rocks, and the yet more terrible Romans, from whose oppression escape is vainly sought by obedience and submission. Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a solitude and call it peace.

“Nature has willed that every man’s children and kindred should be his dearest objects. Yet these are torn from us by conscriptions to be slaves elsewhere. Our wives and our sisters, even though they may escape violation from the enemy, are dishonoured under the names of friendship and hospitality. Our goods and fortunes they collect for their tribute, our harvests for their granaries. Our very hands and bodies, under the lash and in the midst of insult, are worn down by the toil of clearing forests and morasses. Creatures born to slavery are sold once and for all, and are, moreover, fed by their masters; but Britain is daily purchasing, is daily feeding, her own enslaved people. And as in a household the last comer among the slaves is always the butt of his companions, so we in a world long used to slavery, as the newest and most contemptible, are marked out for destruction. We have neither fruitful plains, nor mines, nor harbours, for the working of which we may be spared. Valour, too, and high spirit in subjects, are offensive to rulers; besides, remoteness and seclusion, while they give safety, provoke suspicion. Since then you cannot hope for quarter, take courage, I beseech you, whether it be safety or renown that you hold most precious. Under a woman’s leadership the Brigantes were able to burn a colony, to storm a camp, and had not success ended in supineness, might have thrown off the yoke. Let us, then, a fresh and unconquered people, never likely to abuse our freedom, show forthwith at the very first onset what heroes Caledonia has in reserve.

“Do you suppose that the Romans will be as brave in war as they are licentious in peace? To our strifes and discords they owe their fame, and they turn the errors of an enemy to the renown of their own army, an army which, composed as it is of every variety of nations, is held together by success and will be broken up by disaster. These Gauls and Germans, and, I blush to say, these Britons, who, though they lend their lives to support a stranger’s rule, have been its enemies longer than its subjects, you cannot imagine to be bound by fidelity and affection. Fear and terror there certainly are, feeble bonds of attachment; remove them, and those who have ceased to fear will begin to hate. All the incentives to victory are on our side… Be not frightened by the idle display, by the glitter of gold and of silver, which can neither protect nor wound. In the very ranks of the enemy we shall find our own forces. Britons will acknowledge their own cause; Gauls will remember past freedom; the other Germans will abandon them, as but lately did the Usipii. Behind them there is nothing to dread. … Whether you endure these for ever, or instantly avenge them, this field is to decide. Think, therefore, as you advance to battle, at once of your ancestors and of your posterity.”

These are most certainly not the actual words of Calgacus, but one wonders how many times since words like these have been breathed by people seeking their freedom.  Countless thousands.  The capitalist view of human nature presupposes conquest, competition and division.  And yet even if we were to accept these parameters, which we will not, then isn’t it also true that each one of the ideologues’ examples is belied by the concurrent acts of resistance and solidarity?  Each one?

And Palestine, also conquered by legions of Rome and empires more recent.  How can I read Tacitus’ words and not think of Palestine today.  Palestine, whose resistance negates the whole lie of Pax Americana now just as it did the Pax Romana then.