LIFE

Click Here to see the Film "Life" by Artavazd Peleshian

PS. Anyone ever wonders why there are no films gloryfing abortion?

UW Obama is no US Grant- 'Unconditional Withdrawl Obama' is no 'Unconditional Surrender Grant'

by Yervand Kochar

Every time I catch Obama giving a speech on TV, I wonder why they broadcast it live.
Every speech sounds exactly like the one given a day before. After all, how many different messages of hope and change can you bring from Monday through Thursday?

Obama hammers the abstracts of change and hope so consistently that even he believes that once he becomes the Wizard of the United States of OZ, he will cease being a man from Kansas anymore. His demagogue repetition of the same magic words of hope and change is amplified by the machinery of the media hidden behind the curtain of fascination that hopes so much with Obama that as a result of a prolonged journey into the OZ Hillary got heart, Edwards got courage and Kucinich got brains.
The only problem that Dorothy may not be sent back home to Kansas but may stay around, get on welfare and listen to Deepak Chopra as she tries to empower herself for the rest of her life as a single mom.

What is really troubling about Obama is not the fact that his presidential platform sounds increasingly like a user profile on MySpace but the fact that he is the only black man in the American politics that is not linked to the heritage of the black slavery. This alone is not basis for equating the man with a gramophone, but it is odd for a half white guy to come across as the ultimate reparation for the plight of the descendants of the Western African chattel slaves. After all, slavery was not about just skin color but a repression of a specific group of people who happened to have a different skin color.

But even this is not enough for dismissing Obama as an African-American candidate.
He is more African in heritage than most of the black Americans and this alone gives him basis of identification with the issues of slavery.
I mean, you don’t even have to be black to understand the trauma of slavery and the plight of the civil rights. So the question is, ‘Does he really understand what slavery meant and means to the African-Americans who have a direct generational link to it?’

What makes me doubt this is his indifference to the destiny of another oppressed and formerly enslaved people, the people of Iraq. If the hope and change are the nails on which his candidacy hangs on the shaky wall of the American political interest, the immediate withdrawal of the US forces from Iraq is the frame that embraces the image of his candidacy. Obama’s insistence on withdrawal is based on the fact that Iraqi people have to take responsibility for their own future and stop depending on the US help.

Now, let’s rewind to year 1877 when the Northerners, worn out by the not so distant Civil War and continuous occupation of the South, were calling upon the withdrawal of the Union army from the defeated South.
People got tired of fighting with the former slave owners who just could not accept the fact that their former slaves were put into positions of power. Under the pressure and constant unrest in the South by the Democrats, the Republican political establishment in the North began to give in and got weary of supporting the effort of elevating the former slaves to a position of a normal citizenry. The Democrats in the South threatened the second secession and an electoral deadlock over the presidency of the Republican Rutherford Hayes if Northern Republicans continued the Reconstruction process and the empowerment of the blacks.

A radical wing of the Democratic party formed a terrorist organization known as KKK which was dedicated to undoing the Reconstruction process by brutally and demonstratively murdering blacks and the Republican operatives in the South.

Under the ferocious pressure from the Democratic political establishment in the South and the public opinion in the North, Republicans had to withdraw the armed forces from the South leaving the blacks alone with their former tormentors. This unfinished process resulted in violence, segregation and had disastrous consequences for the post war reconstruction and racial harmony.

Therefore, not only Obama but any Black-American who does not understand how a premature withdrawal of the US forces will affect the people of Iraq has no right to represent the issue of slavery.
Obama simply uses the wound of slavery when he needs to hurt people who feel guilty about it and drops it when the people he needs don’t care about the wound at all.

The tragedy of history may very well be in its ruthless irony; when a race that rose out of the ashes of human slavery and a monumental struggle against it, chooses a leader that may cause a chain of events that will make the slavery happen all over again.

And this, my friends, is no change. This is history repeating itself over and over to people who always hope that they can learn from repetition but always make the same mistakes out of habit.

In Memory of 9/11

This evening I traveled my usual subway route back home to Wall St.

As I got off the train and walked past the many locked gates, following the crowd to the one open exit entering the street, I very slowly walked upstairs passing the many police and military personnel. As I stopped at the police barricades, I slowly lifted my eyes to look at the site of the WTC. I had seen this site many times before, in glory, not in destruction.

I took for granted those magnificent buildings towering into the clouds; I took for granted all the people who worked in those great towers bringing them to life. I now stared at the blocks and blocks of wreckage that was once our WTC. They were the symbol of a free world, and you know what? They still are.
Yes, physically they have fallen, but what they stood for still exists in spirit. They can be felt -stronger than ever, and now all over the world.
The beautiful NY skyline will be forever altered, but her spirit will never change. There is a new heart in the city, felt everywhere, and actually a new heart in our country, a pulsating passion for freedom and peace. We lost many heroes, thousands in that building; the amazing men and women who gave and risked their own lives to help strangers. All the people who worked there who didn't make it out, their families and friends. Yes, our brothers and sisters lost many, some a father, mother, child, husband, boss, worker, friend. And all the people who lost the first person they would see, or greet in the morning, the many friends one makes in the workplace, and this was no ordinary workplace, these buildings housed 50 thousand on any given day.

They are all heroes, and they need love, support and much prayer. On that fated day, many watched the buildings they worked in and loved crumble in a black cloud, taking their friends and family with them. As they watched on TV in horror and disbelief, or ran from the crumbling buildings, crying and covered in the dust of death, all were bathed in shock and horror. This could not be happening, but it was, and the sight, smells, sounds and emotions they can never run from. Grief and trauma was now embedded in their spirit. It is now embedded in all our spirits; for we learned that day that the freedom and security we once knew would never be the same.

I was a few blocks away in my apartment when the first plane hit. The sound of that plane tearing through the tower I will never forget. I knew at that moment many were dead. I huddled in fear as I listened to the sounds of death. How can one ever forget the sight, smell and sound, of it all? I never will, as I prayed and waited in fear, were we being attacked, 'Was the whole city under siege? Was it the end of the world? Well, that's what it felt like and I really thought I might die that morning.

I didn't know if I would live as the day turned tonight, as the blackness of the falling buildings engulfed our building in a cloud of dust and debris. As each building fell and the walls quivered, I held my girlfriend and prayed. And then the flood of tears and anguish came, screaming out for the thousands of people I knew were in that area, and for my very dear friend Brian, who I knew worked in Tower 1.

That's when we lost power, and that's when I could feel the souls of thousand leaving the earth. I cried and prayed for the souls I knew were gone, so fast, so unexpected. I felt the pain, the fear and the loss. My body started shaking, I was never so full of anguish in my life. All my body and soul felt was the sound of the WTC collapsing and the sound of the people crying for help.

We remained in darkness with a candle and a radio. My girlfriend and I spent the rest of the day into evening listening to fighter planes and choppers overhead. The sound of the snow plows picking up the debris and many inches of ash sounded like gunfire in the streets.

We cried ourselves to sleep. We woke to a great stillness, as if there had been a great snowstorm. Everything outside was white and quiet, very quiet. So we packed a few things and made our way down 10 flights of blackness. We were at the street, and in shock, as we covered our mouths with scarfs. We saw what we never thought we would see on our shores, no less in the great city of New York. Military tankers and personnel were everywhere, carrying large guns atop the tanks, and on top of our buildings. Yes, there were tanks heading down Wall Street. Does anyone ever think they will see this?

There were more police then I have ever seen in my life, and those sounds, the sounds of rescue where everywhere with a most haunting melody. As I write I must stop as I catch my breath and wipe my tears. Because I still can't believe this happened.

The sites and sounds are scratched upon my soul and a great sadness with it.It is the eve of the second week since the attack.

The shock has not gotten better but worse. Police, firefighters and military are everywhere so brave and caring. I want to hug every one of you.

There is also a strange quiet in the streets, and a reserve in the subways. People don't push and are quicker to offer their seats. There doesn't seem to be different races anymore either, it has all changed, we now realize we are all one and we fight a much bigger enemy than our own bigotry. For when the WTC was attacked, all Americans and the free world was attacked. A part of us all was lost that day, but a renewed strength and spirit has replaced it. We all need to be proud and to discard any guilt we may feel.

We need to dance with love and life, for life on this planet is short, and one never knows when we, or a loved one will leave it.

My fellow New Yorkers and Countrymen have shown a unity of love that I am so proud to be a part of. To be part of the family we call America and part of the family of the free world. I am damn proud as we renew our faiths, renew our spirits and fight for truth.

So, if I may borrow from a great late night TV show, 'LIVE FROM NEW YORK CITY!' We will survive stronger then ever. May God bless and protect you and your family. Remember, when fear besieges your soul and heart, hold the hand of the Divine, hold it real tight, and you will realize, no matter what the loss: YOU make a difference, we are all needed now, love is needed now.

Don't give up the good fight.

Bean-girl

(written two weeks after September 11, 2001)

The Velveteen Rabbit

Fifty years ago women everywhere were stuffed into a roll cleverly made up for us by the elites of America.
In this roll we could be everything, we could be a Mother, a worker, “it’s our bodies” Women, 'we will do as we like Women'.
All our morals meant nothing as “We Are Women.” We were told that nothing mattered but us and our wants and our goals. And most of us sat and watched and read this all on TV and in the Madison Avenue magazines. And we became dazed.

We became a stuffed version of ourselves; we became a toy, a toy for the Media and Politicians, as they used us for cheap sex, and a vote, all this as they tore our bodies apart, while dressing us in sexy lingerie. We became stuffed toys for the elites to use as they wished.

When the news of Sarah Palin as a VP choice came out last week… America took a big sigh of relief. Why?

Was it just Republicans who took this breath? Was it independent women, most women, some Democrats? Who was it that took this deep sigh of relief?

It was almost everyone in America except for the mainstream media, the Democratic pundits, and the hard-core leftists.

Yes, women everywhere, even the ones that were sold on hope and change, took that healing breath. Why? Because Sarah IS hope and change, she does not talk about it, she is it, without effort, not feigned, just is!
Why is she our hope and our change? She is just a woman, with five kids, pretty, not a model though, married for 20 years, and, frankly, average in many ways.

And, that is why American took that breath of relief, for she is REAL. Yes, real… finally women became real. Like in ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’, all that the child and the rabbit ever wanted was to be real and that is what America has been waiting for almost 50 years, for a Woman in politics to be real, to have a woman role model who is a real woman.
Not a clone of a man Hillary, not a Barbara Streisand or an Oprah woman. No, super Hollywood types just can’t cut it, they are not real. They kept us holding our breath, in the hope that one day we can be like them, a fabricated ideal, a well marketed and distributed feminist fantasy.

Now we breathe…we see a real deal who is like us. We don’t need the ‘empowerment’ that only takes away from our real power, we just have to be ourselves, we have to be REAL and that what Sarah Palin represents

You see America has been waiting without knowing it for someone who is real. No hairdresser, no makeup artist, no personal trainer. Just a Mom, who loves life, her family, her Country and God. A simple woman who gets things done. Like you, like me.

A woman, a mother, a wife, who holds a job, and does not complain every five minutes about how hard it all has been, while she holds her Down Syndrome baby, a child from God that she loved… she did not see this baby as a punishment, but a gift from God.
And we see her as a gift from God. We can finally throw out all the ads of the sexy perfect working woman, the sex symbol woman, the sex in the city woman, the woman who has no morals. We were never them, they tried to make us them.

Now we are finally seeing us, yes, us.

Sarah is a symbol of the REAL American woman, not the made up Gloria Steinem woman.. Not the Cosmopolitan woman… but the American woman.
A lovely woman, so full of life, abilities, with time for truth, for family and for community...
It is time to say no to the lies that the media has been brainwashing us with for 50 years. We are tired; not from the work but from making believe.

We just want to be real, and Sarah gives us all permission to be real.

Thank you, Sarah, and thank you, John McCain, for having the guts to see that we need a role model. Not a model with five housekeepers, two hairdressers, a stylist, makeup artist, and a Hermes bag but someone we can all relate to- a fighter, a woman like most of us.
A woman, who can do it all, who is not perfectly coifed for the camera. A woman who looks like us, acts like us, and is a symbol of us.
Perhaps, now American woman can come back to life after 50 years of trying to be what she was not and will never be, a fake idea of a woman.

It is our time to become REAL again.

Finally peace out,
Bean-girl