Local Waste Disposal
At least they weren’t thinking of recycling. Boxhagenerplatz, Berlin, 9/7.
Nationalism can only be criticized in English. Warschauer Straße, early July.
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Return to Sender
The alcohol had taken clearly hold. “Saddam Insane,” she shrieked, as the missiles hit Tel Aviv. “Saddam Insane.” For those present at the dinner table, the bad pun had been repeated one too many times. Everyone was nervous.
We all had family in the city. No rebranding of the Iraqi dictator, as a fool for taking on the US, was going to change that. The only thing we could look forward to were the entrees we’d ordered, and, hopefully, some socializing.
This was in Madrid, in January 1991. The teeshirt above was shot at a Friedrichshain flea market nineteen years later.
The New Sensibility
Northern Bavaria is not known for its anti-occupation politics. Highway rest stop, Frankenwald area, 18/6.
Berlin is full of flags. Cafe Szimpla, Friedrichshain, 17/6.
One Track Minds
Growing up in Istanbul, her sister would lock her in a closet, where, I was told, she was forced to memorize Das Kapital. So the lousy rumor went, as though it were a way of explaining both her trauma, and her brilliance. For the brief time we were involved, I never asked her about it.
The Bosnian war was in full swing. She had strong opinions about US plans for the region. They fascinated me, as they paralleled the beginnings of the American-sponsored Mideast peace process. I can’t recall us ever discussing, in any similar depth, the Kurdish situation.
Kurdistan Workers Party poster, Boxhagenerplatz. Friday, 16/7.
Dead and Gone
It was to be the magazine’s first issue in quite a while. How long, I didn’t quite know. About the only thing that was clear was that an edition had previously been published out of Chicago, in the late 1990s.
The magazine was called LiP. It only made it seven issues. However, the relaunch turned out to be higher profile than that, at least locally (San Francisco) for the next three years. Hired as the managing editor, I didn’t even make it through my first production cycle. The money dried up immediately, and I left. Two months later, I landed the same gig, salaried, at Tikkun.
Several articles I solicited ended up getting published – an interview I did with the late Tanya Reinhart, a review essay by Jillian Sandell about the DVD release of Gillo Pontecorvo’s legendary Battle of Algiers. A couple of the staffers I recruited stuck around, too. The one article that never materialized was an essay I’d solicited about the conflict in Chechnya.
The subject was to have been the significance of the war for the American left. Why, following the Russian invasion of the country, was it not a topic of debate amongst domestic progressives? Was it because of a lack of expertise on Russian issues? A discomfort with having to talk about the Islamic identification of the separatists? I wanted to figure it out.
Unless I write the article myself, I’m probably never going to get any clarity on the issue. Seeing this graffiti (“Freedom for Chechnya”) in Neukolln, on Tuesday, certainly took me back. We’ll see for how long.
Dialectic of Futility
Note the misspelling of “Arafat.” It’s unclear the author is aware he’s dead. Kotbusser Dam, Berlin, 13/7.
No Control
On Thursday, I took part in a discussion about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent trip to Washington. Broadcast yesterday, on Russia Today, the twenty-six minute program is now available on YouTube.
War Stories
Two new pieces today, for France 24. One is a short collaborative article, with a paragraph quoting me (via phone). If you read French, it’s the piece on Gilad Shalit, featured in the lower left hand corner of the screenshot above.
The second is a long form editorial, about a controversial home video of Israeli troops dancing to the tune of Kesha‘s amusing “Tik Tok”, in Hebron. See the photo on the top right. Both articles are in English, French, and Arabic.
Brown Sugar
Germany was not a frequent subject of discussion in my family while I was growing up. Though my father had served in the Second World War, he was a Palestinian Jew whose family had been in the Middle East since 1882. Despite the fact that he had serious issues with the country, at the same time, it did not occupy the same kind of negative mental space, as say, the UK.
To wit, I remember the day Elie came home to London, following a business trip to Hamburg. Opening up his briefcase, he pulled out a Boney M record. If I remember correctly, it was the album with their hit Rasputin. “The most popular group in Germany,” he told us. Looking at the packaging, I noticed that the band members were black. That was that. I never thought about it again.
Photos taken on Koenigstrasse, in Stuttgart, Saturday. Click for detail.