Who was Cassandra?
In the Iliad, she is described as the loveliest of the daughters
of Priam (King of Troy), and gifted with prophecy. The god Apollo
loved her, but she spurned him. As a punishment, he decreed
that no one would ever believe her. So when she told her fellow
Trojans that the Greeks were hiding inside the wooden horse...well,
you know what happened.
the cassandra pages
words, pictures, and a life
Friday, April 04, 2003
A gifted Iranian photographer and cameraman for the BBC was killed April 1 when he stepped on a landmine in northern Iraq. "Kaveh Golestan was an outstanding photojournalist who had worked in support of freedom of expression in his native Iran and elsewhere," said BBC news director Richard Sambrook.
Golestan, who was 52, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the gassing of the Kurds during the Iran-Iraq War in 1988. Here is an account of his life, and his striking photo essay, "Those Days", about the Iranian revolution.
Check out the "Ten-Second Film" contest and the quite wonderful winning entry, "Walking Haiku" by Sorrel Ahlfeld.
8:59 AM
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With all the justifiably vitriolic rhetoric currently directed at the U.S. government, it was nice to read the following in the recent piece by Arundati Roy, although it can hardly be argued that we are as courageous as people risking death. Nevertheless, standing up openly and continually against this monstrous force is a big deal, and I appreciate her acknowledgement:
More than one third of America's citizens have survived the relentless propaganda they've been subjected to, and many thousands are actively fighting their own government. In the ultra-patriotic climate that prevails in the US, that's as brave as any Iraqi fighting for his or her homeland.
While the "Allies" wait in the desert for an uprising of Shia Muslims on the streets of Basra, the real uprising is taking place in hundreds of cities across the world. It has been the most spectacular display of public morality ever seen.
Most courageous of all, are the hundreds of thousands of American people on the streets of America's great cities - Washington, New York, Chicago, San Francisco. The fact is that the only institution in the world today that is more powerful than the American government, is American civil society. American citizens have a huge responsibility riding on their shoulders. How can we not salute and support those who not only acknowledge but act upon that responsibility? They are our allies, our friends.
Thursday, April 03, 2003
Outside, the difficult birthing of New England spring continues with a silent descent of snowflakes the size of sand-dollars, looking more like a celestial pillow-fight than a snowstorm...inside, looking forward to koresh-e bademjan (Persian eggplant stew) for dinner...
more cluelessness from the administration: President Bush yesterday nominated pro-Israel commentator Daniel Pipes, who many American Muslims regard as the nation's leading Islamophobe, to join the board of the United States Institute of Peace, a federal institution created by Congress. The institute's board of directors is appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. (Pipes made the claim about Muslims being potential killers in the October 8, 2001, issue of the Philadelphia Daily News.)
"Pipes' nomination sends entirely the wrong message as America seeks to convince Muslims worldwide that the war on terrorism and the war against Iraq are not attacks on Islam. His bigoted views are incompatible with the mission of the United States Institute of Peace. We respectfully urge President Bush to rescind this ill-considered and poorly-timed nomination," said CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad. He called on the Senate to reject Pipes' nomination if it is not rescinded by the president. From the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
5:28 PM
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L.A. Times photographer Brian Walski, who has been covering the war in Iraq, was just fired for sending the paper a manipulated image that combined two photos he had taken. Walski wrote an apology: "This was after an extremely long, hot and stressful day but I offer no excuses here. ..I have always maintained the highest ethical standards throughout my career and cannot truly explain my complete breakdown in judgment at this time. That will only come in the many sleepless nights that are ahead."
The incident will no doubt have a lasting negative effect on Walski's career. My probably-unanswerable question: was this a normal lapse in judgement? The result of a highly-competitive, adrenaline-rushed journalistic atmosphere? An unfortunate casualty of the stress of war itself? It's very possible that Walski himself doesn't know.
It's a fact that when human beings are subjected to unfamiliar, dangerous situations, lack of sleep, and prolonged stress, we may react unpredictably and in ways that will haunt us for the rest of their lives. Putting our young people into these situations is one of the aspects of war that simply doesn't get talked about very much, yet we are highly prone to judging their actions after the fact. And while there is a big difference between a young, frightened soldier killing civilians at a checkpoint and a seasoned war reporter making a blatant error of judgement, the fact remains that none of us know how we would act or react in the same situation, or what combination of psychological, emotional, cultural and physical factors would be working on us at the time.
The ethical question of personal responsibility looms large, but rarely more so than in war. Few young people now serving must have banked on being in combat situations like the one that is now occuring. An American marine, Stephen Eagle Funk, has refused to carry out orders that would put him in the potential situation of killing civilians; he faces a possible court martial. Conscientious objection is difficult enough when one is not already within the miltary establishment. How many people already serving within a military culture based on pride and unswerving loyalty would have the personal convictions and strength to subject themselves to the ramifications of refusal? Funk's story is a sober commentary on the discrepancies between the promises of military recruitment ads, and the actual culture and personal requirements that face recruits. Particularly chilling was his account of what happened when he consulted the chaplain:
As a Catholic who attended mass most Sundays during training, he eventually decided to take his concerns to the chaplain. "He said, 'It's a lot easier if you just give in and don't question authority.' He quoted the Bible at me and said, 'Jesus says to carry a sword.'
"But I don't think Jesus was a violent man - in fact, the opposite - and I don't think God takes sides in war. Everyone told me it was futile to try to get out." 11:42 AM
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Wednesday, April 02, 2003
Beyond the reports they're posting, what is daily life like for embedded journalists? Jules Crittenden of the Boston Herald is now embedded with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, and he's writing descriptive, reflective pieces with a lot of (literally) gritty detail for the Herald and Poynter Online.
4:58 PM
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Tuesday, April 01, 2003
Many have been more than a little put off by the prayer pamphlets passed out to soldiers by an evangelical group, In Touch Ministries, asking them to pledge to pray for the President, and then giving them prescribed prayers with a message, such as ""Pray that the President and his advisers will be strong and courageous to do what is right regardless of critics." This comment is by Jim Boodley, Chaplain of Wells College:
Next week, Christians will be celebrating Palm Sunday. The difference between that event and the above attitude is that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey (a symbol of peace in his day) to show to all present that he was a man of peace, not war. That fact seems conveniently forgotten by some in the Christian community -- which is both revealing and revolting.
Monday, March 31, 2003
(yesterday) We’ve stopped for gas at the Betty Beaver filling station in Fonda, New York. Unlike the stations lining the strip up in Fultonville, where prices were as high as $1.75 per gallon, Betty Beaver offers us $1.61 and a view across the Erie Canal, flowing high with the spring run-off along willow-lined banks. The Canal is about the only picturesque thing left in Fonda. The downtown is all but abandoned. I notice that an old brick church I’ve long admired has fallen in on its foundations over the winter, and except for one family emerging from the pizza parlor in one of the old storefronts, and a few kids buying creemies at the dairy bar, just opened for spring, there’s no activity at all.
I’ve been doing an unofficial flag count as we drive. When we crossed into New York, the flags – many at half-mast -- became more numerous, along with occasional bedraggled yellow ribbons tied around trees, and “We Support our Troops” and “God Bless America” messages on the moveable-letter signboards in front of businesses, VFWs, and churches. Only one Episcopal Church in Hudson expressed anything slightly ambiguous: “Pray. Pray Real Hard”.
Maybe it’s the mud and last piles of rotten, gravel-crusted snow, but what we notice the most is how depressed these areas seem to be. Despite the plethora of fast-food franchises on the Fultonville strip above Fonda, local businesses look like they’re really hurting. When we stop for a sandwich next door, I wander over to the Copy Cat Gift Shop. Two small American flags top a “God Bles Our Troops” sign, with missing letters, watched over by a collection of dusty clocks, baskets, and haphazard Easter bunnies in pink and yellow plush. It looks like nobody’s been inside in months.
But in this town with its romantic history of slow-motion transportation on the Canal, the new icon is the internal combustion engine. Despite the apparently slow local economy, the second-biggest category of businesses on the strip are car dealerships: each one has a bigger, shinier display of the largest pickup trucks and SUVs available, and plenty of people are wandering in and out of the rows, looking. Nowdays the big deal in Fonda is the NASCAR racetrack. The local McDonald’s is filled with stock car memorabilia and a big “Welcome Race Fans!” banner, and even here, at Betty Beaver’s, gas sales are supplemented by the “Chrome Shop” inside, selling fancy hubcaps and hood ornaments. Betty is patriotic, too: she’s a cartoon beaver with a buxom, star-studded chest, a short red-and-white-striped skirt on her cinched waist, buck-teeth and long eyelashes, and she wields a gas pump under her motto: “Get the Fever, Fuel with the Beaver.”
It’s an easy target -- this simplistic marriage of flags and gasoline, patriotic and race-day fervor, high-octane engines and male adrenaline. But I’ll pass this time, and just carry my own depression up the Thruway. I can’t deplore international cultural ignorance and then allow myself to engage in liberal, urban bashing of smalltown America and its obsessions too, especially when I know it all too well from the place I grew up. I know the combination of boredom and hopelessness that keeps people revving those engines all their lives, keeps them in front of the blue flickering tubes at night, or fascinated by cars going round and round a track, where the greatest exictement and biggest fear is of spinning out, out, out of control toward an unpredictable, fiery fate.
