It is great when we find ways to break through the propaganda barrier and bring some truth into the people sitting on the couch waiting for the television to tell them what they think.
If we're lucky, a few minutes of truth leak into a long piece on worshipful crowds squealing at the sight of the president's van, as happened in San Francisco at yet another fundraiser on Monday.
If we're really lucky, the spot runs on both the 6pm and 11pm news, and on affiliate stations.
But for this activist, being our own media is every bit as important. Notice how Regis Tremblay's Truth TV coverage of our drone die-ins is both more artistic than mainstream tv coverage, and more revealing of how to do such actions in your community. His voiceover provides context, and instead of showing himself as a talking head, he squeezes in a few more images, keeping the total time under five minutes for a crisp upload that others can help share. What Regis' video above demonstrates most eloquently is the power of teamwork in our quest to bring truth to our fellow citizens.
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Dr. Sara Roy of Harvard ("the Hebrew University of the US", as a US-born emeritus at HU told me) just gave the Edward Said Lecture at the Palestine Center, of which I caught the last half hour. Sixty-some percent of Gaza households have biological contamination in their drinking water. Some vast majority of sub-one-year infants in Gaza are anemic. Is President Morsi of Egypt a hope on the horizon? She says Israel is prepared to wash its hands of Gaza, seal its border, if Egypt develops a normal border relationship with Gaza, and will thenceforth treat the West Bank and Gaza as two separate entities with no regard to the integrity of a Palestinian polity. If I may summarize, Israel would take this opening by Egypt as its opportunity to say, "OK, now you own Gaza." Dr. Roy says Morsi is afraid of antagonizing the US and Israel but implies he is also afraid of being co-opted into a divide-and-conquer role against Palestinians. Dr. Roy's thesis apparently was contained in her title: "A Deliberate Cruelty: Rendering Gaza Unviable". She includes the US, EU, and Arab states in this accusation through a combination of their financing the present arrangement and legitimizing it.
I mention this all as a case in point of Saul Alinsky's rule, articulated for me by Paul Wellstone at Carleton, that political power consists in the control of the agenda.
Israel is apparently hoping it can either kill or drive out Palestinians and thus obviate--remove the need for--a Palestinian state. How would you feel about that result? Can we just kill them off and solve the problem? I ask you that as an invitation to a factual prediction, not a moral appraisal.
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