From the monthly archives:

August 2006

the death of Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi

by jackie sheeler on August 17, 2006

i just read the story of Abeer’s rape and murder, as well as the murder of her family, on Alternet. and i have nothing but the ultimate respect for Alternet — one of the few sane voices of our insane times.

but what i’d like to know is when war was ever about anything OTHER than rape and pillage? what happened during the crusades? what happened in rome? what happened when mercenaries popped out of the trojan horse? what happened in the writings of homer? what, for chrissake, happened in half of the bible?

rape. pillage. plunder. the strong taking whatever convenient advantage they could of the weak.

so what’s new about what some (not all) of the GI’s are doing in Iraq? they did it in Vietnam. (again, just some of them, there are always the lieutenant cali’s and the ehren watadas of the world, who are willing to sacrifice their own futures for the sake of justice and, hopefully change — but let’s face it, they are a very, very small minority.)

you give men — and, now, women — guns and the right to run riot, and this is what you get. women, you say? what do i mean by women? well, they may not rape (can’t be easy to rape a man who’s too scared to get it up), but they sure do molest. think Abu Ghraib and Lynndie England.

Lord Acton, in 1887, said “absolute power corrupts absolutely” — and he, as a Lord in the land that was then trying to turn the entire earth into its empire, should know. though god knows the current asshole in the white house now wouldn’t agree. probably wouldn’t even get it.

yet it’s true. even if there were enough supervision, it’s the same problem: the supervisors have absolute power.

so let’s distill. the problem isn’t that people don’t do their wars “properly” — the problem is that people go to war. as long as there is sanctified murder in the name of the state, all these states and countries drawn by imaginary lines on imaginary maps — there will be the raping, and the killing, of teenagers. there will be the bombing of villages that are barely literate enough to understand why a war is going on. there will be the kicking of cutoff enemy heads in a parody of soccer (or football). there will be murder and injustice and torture and acts so obscene they haven’t yet been chronicled. there will be kidnappings and public executions. there will, in this day and age, be internet beheadings in the name of some distant god.

the problem is not the execution. the problem is that the so-called leaders of this world continue to believe that war is an option. until they change their minds, the carnage will continue.

and they have nobody to blame but themselves.

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the loneliest man in the world?

by jackie sheeler on August 17, 2006


he is the owner of this, the only parking lot in the area (118th & manhattan). the christmas lights have been up since i first rented a space there, 3 years ago. there used to be salsa playing loudly from a boombox beside the forever out-of-order bathroom, but when a new building went up across the street the new millionaire neighbors complained, and that was the end of that.

a lonely place is even lonelier when it’s quiet.

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suozzi: the worst that could happen

by jackie sheeler on August 15, 2006

that’s his quote in the daily news today “what the worst that could happen? i lose an election?”

no, asshole, the worst that could happen is the you cost the democrats the election. think GWB in 2000. THAT’s the worst that could happen. you wanna be the next ralph nader?

bail out, NOW, and throw your support behind Cuomo. there’s no other valid ethical choice.

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necessities of prison?

by jackie sheeler on August 14, 2006



the cars are behind bars for their protection.

the flags, for ours.

i barely open the (dozens of) activist and protest emails i get every day, even though i know that they are honorable and worthy of my time.

it’s just that i’m exhausted. i do what i can, but i know that what i can do is not quite enough. i can’t compete with the resources of halliburton or BP.

speaking of BP, you must have seen the many articles about their recent “emergency” shutdown of an alaskan oil pipeline that has been in disrepair for years. if you haven’t, click the title link of this article.

timing is everything.

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lieutenant ehren watada

by jackie sheeler on August 8, 2006

i just found out about him from the pattismith.net website.

i am comforted to know that we have not entirely become a nation of cowards. this man is willing to risk life in prison in order to resist killing civilians in iraq.

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what’s in a date?

by jackie sheeler on August 8, 2006

i just read about some hoopla relating to the first anniversary of hurricane Katrina. quick, don’t look it up, just say when it is.

dunno? that’s because we don’t call it by its date.

what about Oklahoma City? what was the date of that? and Columbine? and Pearl Harbor (that one you might know) or VJ Day?

so all these happenings have actual names. they are not known by the date of the event.

so why do we call the terrorist attacks of 2001 “9/11″? i’ll tell you right now that the reason this pisses me off is because 9/11 is my birthday, and is now forever stigmatized. i have had numerous people — both strangers and friends — console me over it. why? it’s always been my birthdate, how come all of a sudden it’s so misfortunate? it actually used to be cool when my dad was in the NYPD and my birthday was the same as the universal emergency telephone number.

i am lucky, though. i have some smart and loving friends. on the first anniversary of the attacks — when everybody in the fucking city was walking around weeping with a candle, vigils on every corner, certainly no room for any kind of birthday gathering (not that i’m so keen on that sort of thing, i just like having options), i went to dinner with a good and wise friend. at the end of our evening together, she quietly said “thank you for giving me something to celebrate today” (karen s., i will NEVER forget those words, and continually thank you in my heart for giving me that perspective.)

yet, do the people born on Pearl Harbor Day (12/7) get consoled about their birthdates? how about Oklahoma City (4/19) or Columbine (4/20). do they get congratulated for VJ Day (8/15)?

finally, someone has given me a rationale for this that makes sense: 9/11 was not just an attack on NYC, it was also attack on the Pentagon, and god knows where that downed plane in PA was heading. so OK, i can go along with it now, with somewhat less resentment, because there is a difference and there is a reason. still, it’s tiresome when people pat me sadly on my back over my birthday. i wish they had all seen the column that The Onion ran on the first anniversary – hilarious!

oh, and in case you’re wondering, Katrina happened on 8/29.

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what’s an “improvement”?

by jackie sheeler on August 8, 2006


i bet everybody living in this neighborhood for more than a year or so remembers this gorgeous wall. it was on the side of a building on 116th Street between 8th & St. Nick. next to the building was an empty lot. sure, there were some rats there, and some junk, but there are rats and junk around here all the time anyway.

i miss this wall. i miss this art. it’s gone now, the lot replaced with yet another high-end luxury housing development. even if they took that cookie-cutter building down, no doubt the artwall has been destroyed.

i remember in the 70’s, waiting for the elevated train in brooklyn, how breathtaking it was when a newly-graffitied B-train would round the curve toward 25th avenue. i didn’t like it when they painted over the windows, but the best of the artists didn’t do that, they incorporated the windows into their designs. since i was just a couple of stops from coney island, where most of the graffiti-ing happened in the trainyards there, i got to see a lot of it. they couldn’t just pull a rush-hour train off schedule because it got painted. i remember one morning in particular, the ugly old train was stunning, painted all turquoise blue (not over the windows) by an artist who tagged himself Skye. it was one of the most amazing things i’ve ever seen. then the city got serious about “protecting” itself from art, and set attack dogs loose in the yards, and let artists get electrocuted by leaving usually dead third rails on high current overnight. they won the battle, but they lost the war. is anything more ugly than a subway train in NYC? recorded (white voice) announcements and all? GIMME BACK SKYE!

(just looking at what i wrote. people were being killed in NYC for creating public art. murdered.)

and give me back that beautiful wall on 116th street. i’ll take it, even with the rats and crackheads and junk that sometimes filled its empty lot to the brim. that wall was breathtaking, and it spoke about peace, and love, and solidarity. what’ve we got now? more housing for the millionaires.

last laugh may belong to the neighborhood. new high-income housing and storefronts are going up ALL OVER southwest harlem. many of them have stood empty for months now, like the refurbished buildling on the corner of my block. it’s nice they cleaned it up, and sent the drug dealers who masqueraded as hairdressers off to jail or somewhere, but the fact is that the store has been ready for occupancy for quite some time and there are no takers. that’s the story up and down 8th avenue, up and down 116th street, surely up and down other neighborhood blocks that i don’t walk very often.

any of those developers reading the financial presses these days? the crash is coming, and it’s gonna crash HARD. and the low-income people in their section 8’s and rent-stabilized apartments won’t feel it at all. but these developers? they’re going down in flames.

but they’ve already taken away some of our magnificent art, though.

fuckers.

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