Would you do me a favor? I would like to know what you think of different essays below, and I’ve made it super-easy for you to tell me. Under the title of each essay are a bunch of stars. If you would simply click on the number of stars you would give that particular essay, just that much feedback would help me steer my energies. It’s simple, direct, fast, and anonymous. If you want to offer more feedback than that, you can also add a comment at the end. If you’d rather your feedback be private, you can e-mail me. Thanks for stopping by and thanks for reading, but I’d really love to know what you like or dislike.

“That is the city where your leaders live, and there is a killing almost every night,” Fuad points out. “What would it be like without protection? You’d have a thousand people dead in one night. Then they will see how it will work to remove the protection on a certain date. How can they expect Iraqis to do better?”

Although Jamal and his wife Cathy Pearce are now farmers outside of Suleimaniya in Iraqi Kurdistan, they are not simple people who are unaware of the world around them. Cathy taught nursing and English at the local university and has traveled the world from her original home in California. She met Jamal in India in 1999, when he was the Minister of Humanitarian Assistance for the Kurdish Regional Government. He went on to be the KRG’s Minister of Agriculture until 2003.

I could tell he was an influential man. When we handed him a copy of a book about Iraq, he opened it first to the index. He wanted to see who he knew listed as topics or sources.

Fuad went to college at the University of North Carolina and continued his studies in the United States, earning a PhD from the University of Minnesota in agricultural science. He was schooled in the United States, but his family and his heritage is in Kurdistan. He talks more easily about “his people” than “his country.”

The Treaty of Sevres guaranteed the Kurds a nation state in 1920, but the treaty was never ratified. It was replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne, which supported the division of Kurdistan, but not full independence.

Today, Kurds constitute 28 percent of the population in Turkey, 24 percent in Iraq, 12 percent Iran and 10 percent in Syria. Kurds can also be found in Lebanon, Armenia and Azarbaijan. Taken together, they number 26 million.

Fuad’s new farm is several miles from his family’s roots, and it makes a noticeable difference. Fuad laughs easily about what confusion he can encounter with a simple exchange at the nearby grocery store. Sorani is spoken by most southern Kurds (and by Fuad), but Kurmanji is dominant farther north (and used by Fuad’s new grocer.) Think about how “soda” and “pop” are used differently in the United States, and then imagine if those differing vocabularies were separated by only a few miles.

Language and nationalism are woven together for the Kurds. Do the Kurds speak a single language with distinct dialects, or do these constitute separate languages? Linguists don’t agree. In fact, the language is written in three different scripts — Latin in Turkey, Cyrillic in the ex-Soviet Union, and Persian in Iraq and Iran.

Governments determined to diminish the national identity of the Kurds have forbidden the use of their native language. British playwright Harold Pinter wrote about this form of brutality in his one-act play “Mountain Language.” Educated Kurds know this play. Americans should know it better.

“How can it be against a law what language I use?” Fuad asks. Turkey has only recently and sporadically recanted its prohibition of the Kurdish language, after it was deemed a human rights abuse by the European Union.

Faud pivots in his seat to break the rhythm. Brutality is still the topic, but Fuad knows diplomacy. He softens his voice, unclenches himself.

“Our trouble is we love peace.” Fuad laments. “America respects force. Bad boys get scolded, but then America respects them. We are not fighters.”

Kurds may not be natural fighters, but this Kurd married one. Cathy Pearce had some parting advice for us, how to tell others back home about what we’ve heard: “Don’t be so nice! People are dying.”

==

Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) is sharing his experiences from Iraqi Kurdistan with readers of The Register-Guard. Each is also posted at www.dksez.com, where you can see a photo of Jamal and Cathy, plus a link to a map tracking the use of “pop” and “soda” across the United States.

LINKS: www.popvssoda.com
http://www.crimesofwar.org/cultural/pinter01.html
http://www.startts.org.au/default.aspx?id=225

For a while there, it was easy to be pissed off at “Rage”

Rage Against The Machine exploded onto the cultural scene in the 90s with a mostly-rap sound that brought amazing music and energy to the fundamentally flawed idea that U.S. voters should not participate in a two-party system. Now they are bringing that message, slightly updated, to the Democratic National Convention.

RATM, as it’s sometimes called, plays today and has become a sort of de facto Keynote Event for the non-laminated convention goers.

Of course, anger is nothing new in politics, although it’s usually packaged as “outrage” these days. Politicians today move beyond being angry or even cynical into a post-cynical age more akin to Ayn Rand’s objectivism than to anything envisioned by Thomas Jefferson or even Richard Nixon, who might look around today’s political landscape and marvel at how the seeds he planted have taken root, blossomed and finally born fruit.

But for a Democratic National Convention walking the line between open healthy debate (and the resulting protest) and projecting a controlled on-message image, “Rage Against The Machine” is a reminder that good old-fashioned fear and loathing is still with us. Granted, it has a corporate record deal and performs amid staunch security, but it’s still out there.

RATM came to power in the 90s, and the band’s wake-up call against political apathy found a wildly receptive audience. It was a time when LA was going up in flames, inner-city murder rates were approaching third world levels and a largely unpopular war in the Middle East seemed to hasten both secular and religious versions of the End Days — wait, that was the early 90s. How much we’ve progressed in that now instead of watching raw CNN feeds as the only uncensored news coverage we can enjoy websites and get the images on our phones. Wheee doggies.

I’ve never bought the core Rage message, which boils down to: The two party system offers no real choice and we ought to support third party guys even if they don’t have a chance to win. Does anyone now there’s no difference between Barack Obama and John McCain? Really?

No, there’s plenty of difference. But you can’t get the story from the headline, and the headline is what takes place in mainstream media. That is all image and it should do what any good headline does — pull you into the story. But the headline ain’t the story and mainstream media ain’t the candidate. You don’t read the newspaper and just skim the headlines … do you?

This was a real problem even ten years ago, when finding a candidates actual stance on issues made a trip to the DMV seem like a three-day weekend.

But these days virtually anyone with an Internet connection, or a Library card, and the sense God gave a goose can find the story. Want to know why some of America’s teachers are looking askance at Candidate Obama? Check out his feelings about merit pay — which in Teacherland is code for a conservative agenda linked to vouchers and charter schools and the whole public education system. It’s not as critical as some other issues, but they see it the way hunters see the assault weapons issue: The first step toward things they really care about.

But I have been wrong about Rage. Because among the promises kept by the Bush Administration (and you have to admit that, for all practical purposed he’s united the nation, albeit against him, while creating real change in our automobile culture, albeit with $4 gasoline) is the element of anger. Boy, this country is about as pissed off as I’ve seen it without something burning up on TV … no, I mean something something in THIS country. And thing about “Rage” is that they are not called “Logic Against The Machine” or “Irony Against the Machine” or even “Grassroots Organizing To Actually Build A Third Party Instead Of Making A Bid Deal Every Now And Them Against The Machine.”

They give voice to simmering anger and a focus to our free-floating frustration. We need these vents before LA drivers start shooting at each other again (they did stop, right?) or we take to the streets in ways usually reserved for winning major sporting events.

It’s telling that Rage Against The Machine is a very hot ticket for DemCon 08. Everything about them — from the lottery system to assure public access to the performance to their long-term commitment to their ideas, however debatable — threatens to offer a contrast to the “official” DemCon events. That’s normal enough in normal times — but when your candidate’s main theme is “change,” it’s interesting how much the baseline anger of “Rage” still calls us to task. The machine, indeed is still worth getting pissed off about.

I had just heard his relative’s story. I’ve never been invited to share such pain from such a short distance. He had recounted in excruciating detail his experience when Saddam Hussein gassed Halabjah on March 16, 1988. He lost five of his seven children in the six days that followed the bombings, and each loss was described as its own, as if he was burying them again, each in their own place.

Through the heat and the sorrow and the despair, generosity shone through every moment. Fanta Orange soda was served, more than once, keeping a teenage granddaughter feeling busy and useful. The youngest grandson came and went, sat for a while, then squirmed away, full of life in spite of it all.

So when the man expressed concern for others before telling his story, I can’t say I was surprised. The Kurds are a hospitable people, determined to take care of others, regardless of their own ability to provide.

“I was 20. On March 14, 15, and 16, everything stopped. There were many injuries. But no medicine. I had three brothers, seven sisters, my mother and my father. Only I survived that week.”

“My mother was cooking quick. Fixing food, and taking it to the cellar. We knew there was danger. She knew we had to eat.”

“I was outside when the first planes came. The plane came so low, I remember I thought it was crashing. It launched a rocket. I was hit.”

“For ten minutes it was constant bombing. There was a smell that was not natural. My friend was earlier in the military. He said it was Napalm.”

“We learned later they had 25 planes dropping gas bombs on us, five at a time. First they dropped paper, to measure the wind. They knew from the paper where the gas would go. They dropped their bombs and then headed back for more. Others dropped bombs while they got more. It was constant.”

“For six days we didn’t sleep. We were told if you sleep, you won’t wake up.”

“We made masks with cloth and salt and charcoal, so we could breathe, but the shelters were not a safe place. The bombing drove people into their shelters, where they thought they would be safe. But the gas was heavy. It went down and killed everyone in their shelters. I was young. I stayed outside. But the gas was everywhere.”

“First you feel kind of drunk. There’s a saying. ‘You can’t find your pockets.’ Then you can’t see, like a curtain is falling over your eyes. I tilted my head up and looked down my nose to see the ground.”

“I ran away. There was a big room where I stayed near the hospital. I think there were 80 of us there for two or three days.”

“It was very quiet everywhere. I went back to my home. There were bodies everywhere. Nobody had come to pick them up. Nobody was left to bury them. When I got home, I saw that my mother had been cooking, but there was nobody there. They were all in the shelter, all of them. They were all dead.”

He did not cry. He had told the story many times before. But I was his guest and I wasn’t sure I could bear more.

He finished his story, putting both of us into it. “Why do Americans let this happen? They won’t let their children watch violent movies, but yet they allow this. Why?”

Of course there’s nothing that could be said. My elder host changed the tone, if not the subject.

“Look at us, the Kurds. We love life. We wear colorful clothes. We dance. Even when we work, we dance.”

“I had two children who survived. My daughter was only three. Her son, my grandson, is now that age. He plays while we talk. We have a house. I’ve rebuilt this house four times.” He held up four fingers for emphasis.

“And now you are here. You are my guest. We know each other.”

“Everything we have we carry on our back. We want to empty our pack and stay in our home. We are a peace-loving people.”

by Curtis Robinson (not Don Kahle)

We’re sure to hear plenty of wild-eyed poll-result spinning as hurricane DemCon blows through Denver next week, but let’s begin by shedding some quantitative light on a burning questions of our times: Who tips better, Republicans or Democrats?
Since you are how you drink, we should ponder a new survey out of Washington that queried 100 capital barkeeps on that landmark question and more. Some sobering findings: Democrats are clearly better tippers, have better pick-up lines and give better toasts. Republicans are dominant over Democrats when it comes to ordering their drink straight up. Parties are at a near stalemate over drinking hours, with Republicans holding a slight lead in he coveted “first to arrive at happy hour” title and Democrats ruling “last to go home.” Could the later be associated with dominance in the “best pickup line” column? Mysteries abound.
The timely survey was issued by Beam Global Spirits & Wine, Inc. working with the Clarus Research Group (a disclaimer of sorts here — I used to work at a company that is part of Clarus, or the other way around … that my former colleagues would want to survey bartenders is no particular shock).
“According to the survey results, bartenders in Denver should know that they’ll hear better toasts while the bartenders in Minneapolis (site of the GOP convention) won’t need as much ice with their patrons ordering drinks straight up,” stated Bobby “G” Gleason, master mixologist for Beam Global Spirits & Wine.
Okay, I know what you’re thinking: Hey, nobody at Career Day said anything to me about no job called “master mixologist.” And Jim Beam is cool enough to hire an executive named “G?” But when you calm down, you can see this research as a wake-up call.
As an objective journalist, I’m of course professional and neutral. Still, with the possible exception of “toilet-seat-up, toilet-seat-down,” there is no more defining American issue than honest, hard working straight-up drinkers vs. the blatant terrorist-coddling national security threats polluting our culture with teeth-and-morality rotting “fruity, let’s just say it PINK,” drinks (emphasis added, not that it was needed).
And when we learn that 58 percent of D.C. bartenders say Dems are fruity while only 34 percent fingered the GOP … well, take as many foreign rock-star, change-agent trips as you want, but maybe consider a few photo opps ordering whiskey neater than your hairstyle, eh Senator?
And it’s no surprise that Democrats are better tippers than Republicans. The only debate is the cause: Do Democrats love giving away money so much that the impulse just carries over into tipping? Are Republicans holding back 10 percent for supply-side tithing?
It’s fun to create your own self-confirming spin, so here are the poll results (in percentages): Better tipper? Democrats 60, Republicans 38; More likely to order straight up? Democrats 14, Republicans 82; More likely to order a fruity (pink) drink? Democrats 58, Republicans 34; Better pick-up lines? Democrats 74, Republicans 14; Better at giving a toast? Democrats 63, Republicans 36; More likely to arrive first to happy hour? Democrats 48, Republicans 50; More likely to be the last to go home? Democrats 53, Republicans 46.
(Curtis Robinson is a former newspaper editor and longtime national director of Ban Silly Umbrella Drinks While There’s Still Time coalition. He appears here on Saturdays and will be posting fairly random Internet blogs throughout the Democratic National Convention at theimbiber.net.)

(AMMAN, JORDAN) Medical Technologist Sinasi (not her real name) might be five feet tall on her tiptoes, but she is standing tall against the despair and isolation that so many of her fellow Iraqi refugees face every day. She works for Direct Aid Iraq (www.directaidiraq.org) and focuses her work on providing medical care for Iraqi war casualties. Iraq has been at war or under economic sanctions continuously since Sinasi was eleven years old. She’s 39 now and doing important work. But five years ago, she barely wanted her life to go on. She holds the full story arc of so many Iraqis in her tiny frame — struggle, then despair, then resolve, and finally hope.

Sinasi grew up in Baghdad, and worked first as a lab technician. She and her family are Mandeans, followers of John the Baptist. Their numbers in Iraq have shrunk from an estimated 70,000 to now only 5,000 or fewer.

“I was taking care of a Muslim woman in the hospital. She was dying, but she had no family. I told her I would stay with her; I would be her family.” Sinasi’s compassion for others has always been strong. “But the night before she died, she learned I was not Muslim. When I came to be with her on her last day, she refused me. I asked her why. She said she wanted to ‘die clean.’”

She applied for an exit visa from Iraq in 2003, and moved to a new job in Syria, hoping for safe passage to Europe. But the news when it arrived was not good. The war with the United States was beginning, and Sinasi’s exit visa was declined.

She and her family agreed she should not re-enter Iraq. Instead, they would wait for an opportunity to meet in Syria. She was in Syria, alone. The door of opportunity ahead had been closed, and the past she had known was closed behind her. Without a future and without a past, Sinasi found that she didn’t want to live.

In the summer of 2005, Sinasi and her family came to Jordan, where her father could receive better medical care. She was ready to start a new life. She found a doctor who needed somebody to run his medical lab. The doctor told her he wouldn’t pay her the standard salary of 300 dinar. He offered her 100 dinar, the same wage paid to the cleaning woman.

Sinasi asked why he was offering a wage so low. “You are Iraqi,” he said. “I don’t pay you what I would pay a Jordanian.” Sinasi refused the job. She didn’t know where to turn, but found a Chaldean priest who listened to her plight. She realized then that there must be many others in her situation, despairing for their future with no place to turn.

From that moment came her fiery commitment to help other Iraqi refugees in Jordan. First she and the priest offered English classes. Then computer classes. Then a kindergarten and sports programs.

She met an American who was starting Direct Aid Iraq for Iraqis who could no longer count on governments to assist them, not even for their most basic needs. Sinasi understands the system and she works with it as best she can.

She draws strength from helping others. Her discovery is a simple one: “If you see the problems of others, you’ll see your problems are simple.”

She digs deeper. “We have to understand why they make war. It’s very simple. It’s business. But the money lost on war is lost on both sides. We’ve lost our homes. We’ve lost parts of our families, even parts of our bodies and our spirits. But Americans lose too. The soldiers and their families get hurt. The bombs cost money. It’s your money. You have the right to better medical care and free education. We can make money better with peace. We can make it together.”

“Direct Aid Iraq is building a peace bridge. War brings war, and peace brings peace. We need many soldiers for peace.”

==

Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) is writing from Iraq and neighboring Jordan this week and next. Additional entries, including Sinasi’s withdrawl plan and why Iraqis have recently developed a distaste for fresh fish can be found elsewhere at www.dksez.com.

Qassim Al-Sanid cuts a sharp profile. His sleek sunglasses sit confidently atop his shaved head. He sports that two-day stubble we see so often with sport stars. He has a winsome smile, and he’s not afraid of eye contact. He’s not afraid of very much; that’s the impression you get right away.

He pulls out his adidas-logoed wallet to show the letter he got from the United Nation’s High Commission for Refugees, acknowledging his need and right to be in Jordan while he awaits a final verdict from the Department of Homeland Security. He and his family hope to resettle in the United States, where he has a brother.

“I show police this paper. They don’t know what it is.” But he keeps it in his wallet, just in case. He also has a hotline number for the United Nations, in case he has trouble. But he has called that number half a dozen times and no one ever answers.

Qassim and his family fled Iraq in 2001. Two of his brothers escaped earlier — one to the United States in 1998 and another to Yemen in 1999 — but Qassim felt a responsibility to stay with his mother, his younger brother and his two sisters. His mother has severe rheumatism, which gets worse when she’s nervous. She’s nervous a lot. Homeland Security keeps calling, asking for more details.

“Every visit requires a full day,” he complains. “We must be there at 8, so we’re up at 7. We sit and we wait, often the whole day, until 5 or 6 at night. All day sitting. No food. My mom, she has to eat. She has to take medicine, but with food.”

The red tape is part of a refugee’s life, if they hope to get help. Qassim’s brother had to provide new finger prints for his file because his old finger prints had “expired.”

Two months ago, Homeland Security called. They were reviewing Qassim’s application and they needed him to come by the office with his whole family, first thing the next morning. They waited all together for the entire day. Then the officials met with Qassim, asked him a few questions. They had reviewed his application and wanted to know why he hadn’t served in the Iraqi military. (His family lived in Kuwait during that time.) They also wondered why he brought his family. “We only wanted you,” they said.

Qassim’s brother is 21, so his application couldn’t be completed until he registered with United States Selective Service, as all Americans under 26 must do. He complied. The authorities called a month later and said they lost his papers.

Qassim worries about his little brother. “He was 13 when we arrived in Jordan, but they don’t allow him to go to school.” Qassim wonders how many other Iraqi refugees are now becoming adults, but without the benefits that come from education.

“I remember when I was a teenager,” recalls Qassim, who is 38 now. “It was a crazy time, not caring about anything. But I had my family and I had my home. My brother has none of that.”

Qassim’s father remains in Baghdad and tells his family he wants to die there. He has been kidnapped more than once, has sold his car to pay a ransom, but remains in his home.

Qassim has been told his paperwork will be approved, but that he and his family will receive only 10 days’ notice when they will be allowed to leave. When that call comes, they’ll have to move immediately and hope the paperwork is completed in time to allow their departure to the United States.

If there are difficulties along the way, he always has that United Nations hotline number. If only somebody would answer.

At the last two Democratic National Conventions, things were very different.

Obama came to the 2000 convention in Los Angeles after losing his first congressional race. He arrived at the airport and his debit card was declined. Four years later, he was giving the keynote address in Boston, as a first-time candidate for the U.S. Senate.

His 2004 speech rejected the distinctions that have sliced and diced America into endless subsets. Never mind that politicians and their advisers have been the drivers behind this parsing of the public into various constituencies and interest groups. Obama exploded onto the national stage, insisting that blacks and whites are all Americans, that red and blue states together form the United States, that rich and poor must work together to make this nation stronger.

We ate it up. He spoke to the point with authority, because he embodied all those contradictions himself. His race, his constituencies, and his economic fortunes had been mixed. Joining them together was a singularly compelling image, uniquely his own. It seemed like magic.

University of Oregon professor David Frank was one of the first to explain the magic. He attributed it to “consilience.”

David Frank co-wrote with Mark McPhail an analysis of that speech for “Rhetoric & Public Affairs,” a professional journal read mostly by professors and practitioners of rhetoric. The subtitle of the essay was “ Trauma, Compromise, Consilience, and the (Im)possibility of Racial Reconciliation.” The larger issue addressed was whether the time had come for Obama’s unifying approach. (Frank said yes; his colleague was more skeptical.)

“Consilience” refers to the unity of knowledge, literally a “jumping together.” Edward O. Wilson wrote a well-received book “Consilience” in 1998, but otherwise the concept is seldom given its due.

“Consilience” was coined in 1840 by William Whewell, in a book titled “The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences.” In fact, Whewell also invented the term “scientist.” (They had previously been known as “natural philosophers” or “men of science.”)

Science and knowledge, even in 1840, were already falling headlong into reductionism, believing that understanding parts leads to understanding the whole. We’re learning now, but we’ve always known, that any whole reliably transcends the sum of its parts.

Science has taught us how to divide things into pieces. This table is made of wood, which is formed by sinews of cellulose, which is formed by molecules, which are made up of atoms, which form from protons, neutrons, and electrons, which contain quarks and gluons and exotic things we don’t yet understand, which might be actually more like strings than things.

Taking apart a Volkswagen engine may be satisfying, but unless you can put the parts back together, it won’t take you anywhere. If we want to get someplace new, we must return somehow to the whole, the unity. This brings us back to Obama’s style of consilience.

Politics is a small industry, even in an election year, but it is frighteningly focused on how to move people to a single, specific action. Over a billion dollars will be spent this year, and that’s on a single race. It remains to be seen whether Obama will choose to stay with the consilience model that brought him this far, or whether his advisers will fall back on the “old reliable” techniques that have worked in the past for both parties.

Can people be excited about and motivated to move toward a vision that unifies and lifts up? Can the hopeful force of consilience counter the divisiveness of fear? We’re about to find out.

==

Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) won’t be at the Democratic National Convention, but a colleague of his will be blogging from there and posting right here. Kahle’s column appears on Fridays in The Register-Guard.