Round the Blogosphere

Extra bonus coverage here at the Trip. There is a story flying around the links that Colin Powell was caught in a lie about Iraqi WMD. It seems a documentary was shown on British ITV last night which exposed Powell as having said some very different things than what he told the UN. The transcript of the Feb 2001 press remarks is available at the State Department Website. This is the "money" quote:

We will always try to consult with our friends in the region so that they are not surprised and do everything we can to explain the purpose of our responses. We had a good discussion, the Foreign Minister and I and the President and I, had a good discussion about the nature of the sanctions -- the fact that the sanctions exist -- not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq, and these are policies that we are going to keep in place, but we are always willing to review them to make sure that they are being carried out in a way that does not affect the Iraqi people but does affect the Iraqi regime's ambitions and the ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and we had a good conversation on this issue.

(emphasis added by lil' old me)

This doesn't look good. I'm not sure how he spins his way out of this one if it gets picked up by major media. But, like those 16 words in the State of the Union, I'm afraid it just won't stick. This Misadministration is taking R. Kelly's place as The Teflon Don.

Ten Years After

Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of the public ceremony to announce the Oslo Peace Accords. Ten years ago on the lawn of the White House, Rabin and Arafat shook hands, and the world thought a new day was dawning. Ten years on, and you find nary a hint of the hope and dreams raised that day. I think most people (myself included) have, on occasion, unfairly blamed one side or the other for the failure of the Accords. It is plain to see both are at fault for picking paths to power instead of peace.

In Arafat, the Palestinians have had a man who placed the good of himself ahead of the people. If Arafat had, in those heady days following the announcement, opened his fledgling government to the political wings of armed factions outside of his own Fateh movement, things may have been different. If Hamas and Islamic Jihad had a political stake in the government, they might not have seen the need to build complete organizations that paralleled that of the PA. Arafat's hunger for power kept them apart and led them to believe (rightly, I think) that their only hope was to act as a separate authority for their followers, leading to numerous unconnected controlling factions. This in turn led to the Palestinian Authority's inability to stop separatist actions and suicide bombings; there is no way to influence those outside of a power structure without utilizing that power. So the violence continues unabated, and the PA is unwilling to take the only action available to it to stop it. Palestinians killing Palestinians is unacceptable for all involved, and there can be no dialogue without inclusion.

The Israelis, in turn, have been mislead by their elected officials. Netenyahu and Sharon are polarizing individuals who have seen accommodation as weakness, instead of the one true path to peace. The Israelis are in the position of power - the occupying force, the modern society. They have something concrete to give, where the Palestinians had nothing to give the Israelis beyond recognition (security from suicide bombings did not become a major issue until Sharon fanned the flames of anger over the slow-going peace process by visiting the Temple Mount). The refusal of Israel to allow contiguous Palestinian land in the West Bank, and the continued growth of settlements that are clearly illegal under the Geneva Conventions regarding occupying powers, are giant blocks preventing any steps toward two viable states (For some simple maps of Israeli settlements, see the BBC's map of the West Bank and of the Gaza Strip. For a slow loading, large but very detailed map of the West Bank, go here).

So, where to now, ten years after? Many of you who have talked with me about this subject know that I would love to see, in the absence of two viable and separate states, a greater nation of Israel-Palestine shared by all. Interestingly, in today's New York Times, columnist Thomas L. Friedman discusses the dividing wall and the possible result: a Palestinian call for a single state. Unfortunately, this is probably the least acceptable solution for the Israelis, as the population numbers would create an Arab, not a Jewish, democracy (which ironically would most likely be stable and strong prior to the Iraqi democracy the US is trying to create. Why not help create an Arab democracy with a population already accepting of the ideas of voting and representation? The mind boggles).

There are no easy answers, no imminent hope for peace. Ten years ago, it began with a handshake, and now proceeds with explosives and nails, missiles and masonry walls. Oh, Oslo, where do we go from here?

Fossil Favorite

My prior music blog was named for a Robyn Hitchcock song from 1996's Moss Elixer. That album had a limited edition vinyl counterpoint - Mossy Liquor, with variant recordings and tracks that didn't make the final cut. And as interesting as a Swedish version of "Alright, Yeah" may be, it was the also-rans and near misses that made it worth finding.

Prior to my finally obtaining the album in '99 (thanks to eBay, when you could still get bargains), I had heard Hitchcock perform a few of these songs live. I remember "Each of Her Silver Wands" from a DC show, and one amazing night at the Ram's Head in Annapolis he performed "Trilobite." To preface the song, Robyn told a story about how, thousands of millennia from now, someone will chance upon our bones and give us a name, a classification, as we have done with Lucy, Tyrannosaurus Rex, and the lowly Trilobite (the song proposes "Sven" as a nice name for the singer's remains). He also reminded the audience that Elton John's given name is Reginald Dwight, which figures into the chorus:

Trilobite, right Dwight's in the light-bite
Trilobite, right in the light-bite, Dwight

It's nonsense, of course, a nonsense Hitchcock has traded in sense his days with the Soft Boys, when he asked, "Where are the prawns?" and answered, "Down by the sea." It is the refreshing juxtaposition - the examining of "deep thoughts", of human interaction and relations, kissed by the absurd or startling - that makes Hitchcock work so well for me. At his best he is a musical koan, a dancing slap of knowledge with a fresh fish.