Pre/View: Art and Politics--The genesis and genius of "My Daily Constitution"

One of the less well-known US holidays is “Constitution Day” on September 17, comemorating the US Constitution's signing in 1787. It’s one of the only holidays that comes with a club attached. Appalled by Americans’ lack of knowledge about their foundational document, Sen. Harry Byrd pushed through a law mandating that every educational institution receiving federal funds must organize programs celebrating the Constitution. It thus seems like a “cod liver oil” holiday: it’s good for you … but because it tastes yucky, you gotta force children to swallow it.

"Yum! Constitution Day is good for you!"

Discussing the meaning of the Constitution shouldn’t have to be nasty medicine, spooned down kids’ throats once a year. It should be enjoyable as well as educational, it should be valuable for grown-ups as well as students, and given the political challenges facing the country, it shouldn’t only happen one day a year.

This year the people of Indianapolis are being offered something much tastier than civic cod liver oil. We have a chance to create a new way to celebrate Constitution Day, and perhaps a new way to think about our shared cultural and political lives. “My Daily Constitution” is the brainchild of Los Angeles-based artist Linda Pollack. In a single week, from September 17 to 24, Hoosiers have a chance to engage in 19 different events devoted to the Constitution. Think of it as a civic Fringe Festival. The New York Times, in a section about adding a spoonful of sugar to help make the cod liver oil go down better for college students, had this to say about My Daily Constitution:

My Daily Constitution is a week-long, city-wide public art project dedicated to the collective exploration and interpretation of the United States Constitution. Conceptualized by Los Angeles-based artist Linda Pollack, the project uses dialogue, printed matter, film, poetry, theater and lectures to engage us all in creative reflection about democracy from many perspectives. My Daily Constitution treats Indianapolis as an integrated living being, layered with relationships, history, and expectations about citizenship, law, and the political state of the country … This project consists mainly of Constitution Cafés—ordinary community spaces where you can participate in democratic discussion—and programs that use the arts to reflect related ideas. A week of programming kicks off on Constitution Day, Sunday, September 17, and runs through Sunday, September 24.

Hold it, you may interrupt. Why is an artist doing this? What does art have to do with the US Constitution?

An easy answer would be that the physical appearance of the document that was adopted 219 years ago is strikingly beautiful, a work of art that deserves to be treated as such. See for yourself at the Indianapolis Museum of Art where, from September 1 to October 15, an original Dunlap and Claypoole printing of the Constitution will be displayed at the Lilly House. You can see what the American people first saw. You can stand in the presence of history.

Of course the piece of parchment that you will see at IMA isn’t really THE Constitution. Lokk past the funny "f" instead of "s" printing and read very first line of the document: “We, the People … have ordained and established this Constitution for the United States of America.” It wasn’t 57 individuals in the sweltering Philadelphia State House who created the Constitution. It was, somehow, "the People" ... whoever "We" are. So for an understanding of the true art of the Constitution, we must look beyond this old piece of paper.

My Daily Constitution began in 2002 as a conceptual art project included in the exhibition “Democracy When?” at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions in Hollywood. Linda Pollack was an internationally renowned artist who exhibited her work across Europe and the United States. With the Amsterdam based European Cultural Foundation in the 1990s she set up the Foundation's first arts mobility fund to respond to Europe's East/West cultural divide, facilitating over 900 art exchanges. She also set up initiatives addressing culture and war in the former Yugoslavia, working with the Sarajevo Theatre Festival, the Macedonian jazz-rockers Leb i Sol, and others.

What a depressing place to be, the Balkans in the 1990s! Linda witnessed the descent into brutal civil war, a descent driven by demagogic nationalist politicians appealing to the very worst instincts of The People.

In the Balkans, however, she also was struck by the sprouting and eventual flourishing of democracy in the everyday lives of citizens and communities.

Her experiences with new democracies in Balkan and East Europe led Linda to create a major installation called "German Parliaments." Germany in the 1990s was preoccupied with building democracy. This entailed reorganizing governmental power, both by digesting East Germany into what had been West Germany, and more subtly by redefining the power of Germany's regional parliaments vis-à-vis a unified national government in Berlin and vis-à-vis the institutions of an increasingly assertive and powerful European Union. "German Parliaments" shifted the focus from building (and destroying) political institutions to the actual built environment in which politics took place. The installation drew attention to the actual seats of power, the chairs and desks used by parliamentarians and other officials.

The comfort of politicians' backsides may seem mundane, even trivial. But Karl Marx said of the boils on his bum that made writing his ferocious criticisms of capitalism a daily ordeal: "I hope the bourgeoisie will remember my carbuncles until their dying day." Perhaps if the benches at the British Museum had slightly better padding in Marx's day, the 20th century might have worked out differently. And perhaps all of us are better off if German politicians can rest their seats comfortably (and peacefully) in their seats of power.

The brilliance of "German Parliaments" was not its exploration of the physical "seats of power," however, so much as the spatial configuration of those seats. Parliaments and congresses are generally places of beauty: they are after all the temples in our civil religion of democracy, and we expect temples to reflect the glory of the Creator (in the case of republics, the glory of "We the People"). German regional parliaments are no exception: they are imposingly beautiful.

The State Capitol of Saxony

Any teacher knows there's a big difference between students sitting in a circle or seated in neat rows facing the front. Rows convey order and obedience, lines of authority. Circles encourage discussion, they can be noisy and messy, and sometimes they can be enormously creative. The same is true for houses of parliament. The way seats are arrayed tells us something about the way policymakers view power. "German Parliaments" represented in miniature how the seats were arranged in the provincial parliaments in Germany. During her residency at the art center Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Linda examined the construction and organization of the plenary halls of state and federal parliaments for clues about how democracy was being embraced by German society after unification.

"German Parliaments" installation in Solitude Palace in Stuttgart

I wish I could have seen this installation! Pictures capture a part of the beauty of the domino-sized seating arrangements. You can feel just how contingent power is. "If we rearranged these chair this way instead of that way, think how the nature of political discourse would change!" More intriguing are the pictures of German schoolchildren interacting with the installation. They understand how important seating arrangements are. And seeing children looming over a miniature regional German parliament is a healthy reminder of just how fragile representative democracy can be.

German children examining "German Parliaments"

With My Daily Constitution, Pollack turns her attention from the physical architecture of German parliamentary halls to the political and moral framework of the American constitution. The project came into being after Linda returned to the US, after 9/11, after the controversial adoption of the USA PATRIOT Act. During the frenzied discussions of vulnerabilities and protections, of constitutional rights and governmental abuses, Linda realized how little she knew about the Constitution, how little anyone seems to know. Linda's great act was not simply to complain about the government's abuses or about the public's ignorance, or to parallel Sen. Byrd's cod liver oil approach by forcing constitutional lessons down citizens' throats.

Where “German Parliaments” examined the static spatial structure of policymaking, My Daily Constitution creates new, fluid spaces where citizens can come together to discuss the challenges and possibilities of our shared civic life. My Daily Constitution is organized around a series of discussions, "Constitution Cafés," devoted to some aspect of democracy. Constitution Cafes occur in spaces that might not be considered usual forums to discuss politics: parks and museums, coffee shops and churches, bookstores and food courts.

My Daily Constitution: An act of communal creation in Cincinnati

Let's return to the question posed earlier: Sure, Constitution Cafes are good for you, but are they art? The leading institutional sponsors of My Daily Constitution in Indianapolis are a museum (the Indianapolis Museum of Art) and an art school (IUPUI's Herron School of Art and Design) ... but that doesn't make it art, does it?

Perhaps the beauty of the physical spaces in which My Daily Constitution’s political discussions take place qualify them as art. The Statehouse, the Athenaeum, the Old Centrum ... No doubt about it, the venues are among the most gorgeous in the city. Check out the blurbs in IndyBuzz where you can see images of the sites. It makes sense to see the physical spaces in which Constitutional Cafés unfold as constituting part of the artwork themselves. This was the brilliant insight of "German Parliaments": the tactile world in which power is exercised is inextricably bound to the exercise of power itself.

It goes deeper than this. We humans are social beings who live life differently when we share space with other social beings like ourselves. One problem today is that so many distractions can draw us away from these real world social and communal engagements. For me it's TV and the computer, reading and listening to music by myself. As it becomes possible to conduct more of our social life at a distance, in cyberspace, it's absolutely essential that physical real-world places are worth our time and presence. Spaces must be truly special to attract us.

Constitution Cafés take this notion further. So many of our real-world interactions with our fellow human creatures -- work, business, school -- are routine and routinized, offering no scope for collective play or creation.

It thus isn't the aesthetics of the physical events that make My Daily Constitution itself art. It is the process of shared creation. The previous comparison with the Fringe Festival is apt but incomplete. Think of Big Car's brilliant Masterpiece in a Day, which on September 23 allows anyone to write a story, compose a song, paint a picture ... as long as it's finished by 3 PM.

We will have more time than this to create a matserpiece of civic discourse

Masterpiece-in-a-Day's particular pieces of artwork are less important than the experience, the communal acts of creativity. Likewise, more important than any particular flash of insight about democracy or brilliant observation about civil rights during a Constitution Cafés is the process of discussion. What matters is the coming-together of equals to create something new.

So when you attend a Constitution Café, or the Film Festival at IMA, or the public reading of the Constitution at the Statehouse on Constitution Day, or the democracy hip-hop poetry slam at Glendale Mall ... look around you. Feel the space as well as the conversation. My conversation with Andy Jacob's about the War Powers Clause will take place in the Indiana Historical Society's theatre, with 300 seats facing the stage. Contrast this with the mixed scattering of comfy chairs and folding chairs at the discussion of LGBT rights at Out Word Bound Bookstore. How does space shape the discussion? Where's the power focused?

This shows how complicated the relation between art and politics can be. The works of art we'll be creating in My Daily Constitution are open-ended. Discussion only for the sake of discussing is even more sterile than "art for art's sake." The conversations we start during the week of September 17th to 24th can’t stop the way the masterpieces-in-a-day will stop being created at 3 PM September 23rd. And the conversations begun during that week ought to have a telos, a purpose ... they should be directed toward making changes in our lives.

That's asking a lot of any work of art, even one as ambitious as My Daily Constitution. Perhaps the best way to think of this is less a finished work of art than an opportunity: Linda Pollack has provided Indianapolis with a civic studio, and now it’s up to us to create.

Some suggestions about My Daily Constitution. Check out at the week's schedule at the MDC website or IndyBuzz. Identify the Constitution Cafés that matter most to you, then branch out to similar topics. IndyBuzz identifies a few clusters of themes:

• Overarching events addressing the Constitution as a whole
• Constitution Cafés discussing free spech and its limits
• Constitution Cafés discussing the struggle to be included in "We the People"
• Constitution Cafés discussing tensions between private property and the social good
• Constitution Cafés discussing the Constitution in a time of war and terror
  

But dont stop there. Move outside your particular interests, and attend events that you may know or even care little about.

Any questions about this very special opportunity? Contact me at john@sipr.org.

From the Mid East to the Mid West -- We are given a chance to help some mayors from helltown

Being a mayor in the Middle East is a difficult job. Israeli mayors must often balance the conflicting demands of constituencies that include Arabs as well as a bewildering variety of Jews ... while facing the ever-present threat of terrorist attacks. Mayors in the West Bank and Gaza must deliver services to desperately impoverished residents who blame their condition on Israeli occupation and incursions. Above these mayors is the Palestinian Authority, which seems driven by self-interest and ideology rather than considering what helps their people's lives. Their towns’ infrastructure is crumbling, and their access to resources is limited.

As we have seen lately, sometimes a difficult job can get a lot worse.

To help these mayors, the State Department brought several to the United States for three weeks in July to learn how American government works at its most basic level. The program showed them up-close the operations of local government, best practices employed by successful municipal officials, and innovative approaches to community outreach. The State Department calls this "public diplomacy" ——winning the hearts and minds of people around the world.

The trip in July could hardly have come at a worse time. In the end, four West Bank and two Israeli mayors remained for the full duration of the program (six Palestinians and five Israelis were selected). While in Central Indiana, the mayors met with officials from the medium-sized town of Greenwood and attended a roundtable discussion with small-town mayors from the Indiana Association of Cities and Towns. They met top Indiana government officials and the head of the state’s Republican Party. The mayors sat in on a session of the City-County Council of Indianapolis and Marion County and chatted with the city’s top economic development policymakers. And they met with two of the series of exceptional mayors who have led Indianapolis over the past three decades: former mayor Steve Goldsmith and current mayor Bart Peterson.

With just a few days’ notice, on July 20 more than 275 people attended a forum of the mayors at the University of Indianapolis. Joining were more than forty students from Mar Elias University in Galilee who are spending the summer at their school’s partner, the University of Indianapolis. The Mar Elias students symbolize the fragile promise of Israel’s Arab minority as well as the increasing global reach of small American colleges such as University of Indianapolis.

Provocate was invited to moderate the discussion. The mayors began by answering: Who are you, and what is special about the town you come from?

Walid Ahmad Issa Abbadi from Ya’bad in the West Bank was a civil engineer who became mayor in 2004. Ya’bad’s challenge is relying on revenue from coal and tobacco, both of which contribute to high levels of pollution.

Hani Abdalmashi, mayor of Beit Sahour in the West Bank, reports that Christians and Muslims live in harmony in his town (where angels told shepherds of the birth of Jesus). He boasts that his town most adamantly “refused to submit” to the Israelis during the first Intifada.

Ibrahim Jaffal of Abu Dees in the West Bank was a school principal before becoming mayor. His town, he says, used to be one of the wealthiest in Palestine, until 80 percent of the land was confiscated by the Israelis; now it is among the poorest.

Yaron Ben-Nun is mayor of Gedera, a prosperous town in the center of Israel.

Okab Daraghma, mayor of Tubas in the West Bank, is a civil engineer who has an MBA. His town possesses a university and a medical school.

Meir Dahan’s Mazkeret-Batya in Israel was founded by Russian immigrants more than a century ago. He was a journalist before becoming mayor.

The mayor’s second set of questions was trickier: Was it difficult to be around each other for such a long time during this trip? Have you found any common ground?

Some gave answers familiar to anyone who talks to Palestinians. Abdelmashi (Beit Sahour): “It is important for Israelis to know that we are not a people who practice terrorism, and we deserve more than a one-sided life. We deserve universal rights, liberty, and the establishment of a Palestinian state according to the borders of 1967 and the enforcement of UN statements regarding refugees. If we can agree on these principles, we will have gone a long way towards peace.”

Others mentioned initial misgivings and tensions that diminished over time. Abbadi (Ya’bad): “Meeting with the Israelis was a little hard. Then each of us revealed to each other our hardships. … Frankness in and of itself is good, as is understanding hardships.” Dahan (Mazkeret-Batya): “Initially, being with the Palestinians wasn’t so much fun. When we left Israel, the Middle East was more or less quiet. Later, [when tensions escalated after the kidnapping of the Israeli soldier] it became even less pleasant. Then we quickly learned to like each other—and even love each other. Today, we learned the names each other’s kids. We also learned to laugh at each other.”

Most agreed that the job-related challenges they face as mayors provide a common bond. Jaffal (Abu Dees): “We all have on our shoulders running the daily affairs of people. … We can promote peace in our own way. There is no problem between us as mayors. We are friends.” Ben-Nun (Gedera): It is important to have “understanding and a desire to understand the other side of the coin. … All mayors all over the world are dealing with the same problems.” Daraghma (Tubas): “I think sometime or another we have to talk to each other. … I think we have established mutual understanding for each other… We will leave larger governments to do what they will on their parts; but for us, we will promote peace.”

The final set of questions may have been most important: What are the toughest challenges waiting for you at home, and what can we Hoosiers do to help?

Abdelmashi (Beit Sahour): “People think the mayor has a magic wand. Sixty percent of the people in Beit Sahour are unemployed. There are lots of debts and a lot of demand on the healthcare system. The farmers have trouble moving from city to city because of the roadblocks. … How can we make it? How can we pull though? I don’t know.”

Abbadi (Ya’bad): “In the West Bank and in Palestine in general, resources are limited. In my city, we have no electricity. We have generators, but the cost is very high. This is a challenge that faced my city when I left and will face my city when I return.”

Daraghma (Tubas): “We all have the same problems: to deliver services with a lack of resources … I have not been able to pay my town’s officials for months … The business environment in places like this is not encouraging for investors.”

Jaffal (Abu Dees): Seventy-eight percent of the children in his town recently scored exceptionally well on the national standardized exam. “How can I find scholarships for these kids, one of which is my own daughter? … We certainly hope that the Palestinian people are not punished for exercising their rights for democracy.”

Dahan (Mazkeret-Batya): “I’m more modest in my request. All I’m asking for is your understanding of my people. Mr. Daraghma and I [he grabs Mr. Daraghma’s forearm] plan to join together to create a garden for Israeli and Palestinian children called the Garden of Peace. We need your help in building this park to promote peace.”

How should we assess the mayor’s various requests for help?

Idea# 1: Allowing Palestinian people to live and work in dignity.
Most Hoosiers would sympathize with Mr. Abdelmashi’s request and Palestinian support for extremists would surely shrink if it were met. Many Indiana residents travel to the West Bank and Gaza to protest on behalf of Palestinians’ rights (in the process alienating many local Jews, who believe loud pro-Palestinian positions border on being anti-Israel and ignore critical complexities). In the end, dismantling roadblocks and complying with international law is the job of the Israeli national government and remains outside the influence of most Hoosiers.

Idea# 2: Purchasing a power generator.
Uninterrupted electricity would make life more livable for West Bank residents, should help the local economy, and (insofar as residents blame Israel for their troubles) could defuse a source of anger. Hoosiers could easily afford to purchase a generator for Ya’bad. Determining the appropriate technology would require some research, a task for which Indiana’s world-class engineering institutions are well-qualified. But simply giving Ya’bad an electricity generator might not address a more persistent of discontent: the belief that Israel refuses to take the Palestinians’ needs seriously.

Idea# 3: Improving the investment climate by paying back-salaries for Palestinian civil servants.
Many economic development specialists see “poverty trap”: without competent and properly compensated government officials, property rights are unlikely to be enforced; without secure property rights, no one will invest; without investment, the economy will not produce enough to pay properly trained and motivated officials. Paying back-salaries for civil servants could jump start a “virtuous cycle” of economic growth. But virtuous cycles take time to get rolling, and in this case probably require training as well. If Palestinians blame Israel for their poverty, seeing themselves as recipients of Hoosier charity could leave unchanged the sense of oppression that fuels support for extremism. Paying salaries of civil servants also could run afoul of US restrictions on providing support for Hamas and other extremist groups.

Idea #4: Providing increased educational chances for Palestinian students.
Could the opportunities Arab Israeli students from Mar Elias be extended to promising Palestinians? Perhaps Hoosiers could fund scholarships for Palestinians to study at the university in Tubas. Or, more ambitiously, could they establish scholarships to study at the University of Indianapolis or another of the state’s many other fine institutions of higher education? Attracting talented college students would be a win for Indiana’s economy, and a win for American public diplomacy ... but would it be a win for the Middle East? It might be best for gifted Palestinian youths to study with Jewish Israelis, as well as Hoosiers.

Idea #5: Helping Palestinians and Israelis build a Garden of Peace.
Building a park in Tubas may seem to trivialize the terrible problems facing the region, a band-aid for multiple bleeding wounds. But it would not be trivial to the children of Tubas, or to the Israelis of Mazkeret-Batya who help fund and construct the park. Or to the Hoosiers who would be part of the process. Four Indiana Hoosier companies do manufacture playground equipment. But making this modest ——yet doable ——initiative work would require listening to Israelis and Palestinians; and a well-conceived park would have to be the seed of a much more ambitious effort to redesign much more of an insecure life for the residents of Tubas ... and beyond.

Inter/View with Pierre Atlas on Cuba and the Middle East

Pierre Atlas has emerged as one of the most thoughtful voices on foreign affairs in Central Indiana. An assistant professor of political science at Marian College, Pierre is also director Marian's Franciscan Center for Global Studies. He also writes a bi-weekly opinion column for the Indianapolis Star and a monthly online column for RealClearPolitics.com. In May 2006, Pierre represented Marian College on a six-day trip to Cuba with members of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis and Catholic Relief Services; the group spent time in both Camaguey and Havana. The next month, Pierre was one of 22 American academics invited to participate in a two-week workshop on the Arab-Israeli conflict sponsored by Tel Aviv University. The group met with Israeli and Palestinian scholars, journalists and activists and traveled throughout Israel, including up to the Lebanese border where they saw Hizbollah flags flying on the other side. Two weeks after his return to the US, the Lebanon conflict erupted.

On Wednesday September 20, Pierre will share his experiences at a talk for the Indiana council on World Affairs: “What I did on My Summer Vacation: Reflections on Cuba and Israel.” He will offer his analysis of both the current crisis in the Middle East and the potential challenges and opportunities of a post-Fidel Cuba.

Provocate caught up with Pierre for a quick interview August 14th.



Provocate:
Tell us about your two trips. In the space of a few weeks you went to Cuba and to Northern Israel, right to the edge of Hezbollah-occupied Lebanon. Why were you sent on the trips? Had you made someone in the administration at Marian College angry?

Atlas:
The timing of the two trips was purely coincidental, but it made for an interesting summer, with Cuba in May and Israel in June. Both trips were amazing experiences, even life-changing. I knew I'd be going to Cuba at some point since last December, when I went to the Catholic Relief Services HQ in Baltimore to discuss collaborations between CRS and Marian/FCGS. I met the Cuba desk guy, and he wanted me to go down there. I originally thought the Cuba trip would take place in April, but there was a lot of uncertainty with the visa process. And even when our May date was set, our "church visas" almost fell through at the last minute.

Here's what the Cuba trip was about. The Archdiocese of Indianapolis is the only archdiocese in the US that has a formal relationship with a counterpart in Cuba, the Archdiocese of Camaguey. I was asked to go on this trip (along with members of the Indy Archdiocese and CRS) to represent Marian College, and to see how Marian might help enhance the Indy-Cuba relationship given its position as the only Catholic college in central Indiana. Our group spent 3 days in Camaguey, and then took a 9 hour bus ride (through a monsoon) to Havana, where we spent our final 3 days. It was an incredibly exciting and very successful trip.

As for Israel, I was one of 22 academics at US institutions invited to participate in a 2-week workshop on the Arab-Israeli conflict, sponsored by Tel Aviv University, the first of its kind. We traveled all over Israel (including Tel Aviv area, Jerusalem, Haifa, Tiberias), meeting with and attending special seminars by Israeli and Palestinian scholars, journalists, security experts, etc. We met with Arab and Jewish Israelis, spent some time in the Druze community, got a tour of the security fence/wall, went up to the Golan Heights, to Sheba Farms and the Lebanese border.

Our US group was a very interesting mix of profs, with various national and religious backgrounds. All of us had academic expertise in some aspect of the Middle East broadly defined, and we arrived with different perspectives and opinions on the Israeli-Palestinian question. Despite--or perhaps because of--our diversity, we really bonded over the two weeks. We have kept in touch via email ever since we got back to the States, including during this crisis.

As a plug, let me note that on September 14, the first FCGS Global Studies speaker for this year will be Dr. Akram Khater, a Middle East historian, director of the Middle East studies program at North Carolina State University, and a native of Lebanon. He was one of the American participants in the Tel Aviv University workshop. I grew to really admire and respect him, and when the conflict with Hizbollah broke out, I had to invite him to Marian to speak on the subject. It was a no-brainer. His talk will be free and open to the public, 7 pm at Marian.

Provocate:
Two weeks after you left Israel the Lebanon conflict erupted. A couple of months after you left Cuba, Fidel was hospitalized and passed authority to his brother Raul. A coincidence or do you perhaps have some other job we don't know about?

Atlas:
Funny, I noticed that pattern myself. Maybe I just leave excitement in my wake. It would have been interesting to be in those countries when these events broke out, but on the other hand, I'm glad I was home safe with my family.

Provocate:
What were the most surprising things you saw in Israel and Cuba? And why were they surprising?

Atlas:
This is one of the questions I plan to address in my ICWA talk on September 20 (another plug!). For Cuba, let me say briefly that some of the things I expected to see, I didn't, and I saw things that I really didn't anticipate. I expected to see pictures of Fidel everywhere, but I think I saw only one poster with his face on it in the entire 6 days. The ubiquitous image was Che Gevara, not Fidel. Che was on the facades of buildings, on posters, billboards, etc. And he was totally commercialized, with t-shirts and kitschy refrigerator magnets and key chains for sale everywhere. I found this humorously ironic, given the regime's communist ideology. What also surprised me was the absence of newsstands and "normal" book stores. It took a while for it to dawn on me, but you could not find an international newspaper or magazine anywhere, not even in the most expensive international hotel, the Hotel Nacional in Havana. The only books I saw were collections of communist propaganda for sale in the hotels and the official bookstores. The only American author I saw (in all the official stores) was Noam Chomsky. Another surprise was that there were no boats or even docks for small craft in Havana harbor. This is the first harbor I'd ever seen with no boats. I guess the government wanted to remove all temptation.

As for Israel, and I'll talk about this at ICWA, perhaps the most surprising thing is apparent in hindsight. We were at Kibbutz Misgav Am, right on the Lebanese border overlooking a Shi'ite village (I could see the Hizbollah flag flying on the other side), and we also went up to Sheba Farms, the disputed territory captured in 1967 that Hizbollah says belongs to Lebanon but that Israel (and the UN) says belongs to Syria. Our "tour guides" that day were an IDF spokesman and Eyal Zisser, a TAU prof who specializes in Syria and Lebanon. That was the day the solider was kidnapped in the raid from Gaza. Not only was there no sense of imminent danger on the Lebanese border, but the IDF was not on any combat footing whatsoever. I'll show some pictures at the ICWA talk that I took of the Sheba Farms checkpoint: just a few soldiers and a lone tank parked in a parking lot. Israel was not preparing for this war in advance, nor was it even thinking about war with Hizbollah. All focus was on Gaza. In fact, the IDF spokesman actually told us that units were being taken from the north and redeployed to Gaza for the pending operations there.

Provocate:
How were you received as an American by different groups in the two countries?

Atlas:
Ironically, I met more "ordinary" Cubans than I did "ordinary" Israelis. In Camaguey, which does not get the tourist traffic of Havana, very white guys with cameras were an unusual sight. Cubans would walk up to us on the street and ask us where we were from. When we'd say the States, invariably each person would rattle off the US cities where they had family members. They were all very friendly toward us, even when the security people were standing nearby (and they were everywhere). I often wondered if the people talking to us were government agents. I had no way of telling for sure, but I think most were just ordinary Cubans. On the other hand, as we discovered in one tense moment in the Camaguey bus station, some people whom we assumed were just Cubans waiting for the bus did turn out to be security agents who had been spying on us.

Provocate:
Sounds like you are saving the story about the bus-waiting spies for your ICWA talk. Smart move, I'd attend just to hear it. Did you see a lot of anti-US government or anti-Bush in Cuba?

Atlas:

The US interest section in Havana (officially part of the Swiss embassy) is a couple of blocks from the hotel we were staying at, and I walked over there along with some others from our group. The building has an electronic sign that posts messages critical of the Cuban regime (it wasn't on that day). To block the view of this "counterrevolutionary propaganda" from the road, the Cubans erected a series of extremely large flagpoles with black flags directly in front of the building. [see attached photos]. This is typical of the games the US and Cuban governments play, and if it wasn't for the fact that people's lives are in the balance, it really would all seem a bit silly.

Provocate:

In addition to the predictable insults to George W. Bush, political billboards in the pictures you brought back from Cuba showed a person who is probably unfamiliar to most Hoosiers (unless they are Cubans from Florida or Texas): Posada Carriles. Did your guides tell you anything about him?"

Atlas:

The boulevard was also lined with huge billboards denouncing Posada with rather graphic images, all facing the US interest section. This is what the Americans see as they look out their windows, and what drivers see as they drive by. As we were looking at the billboards, it took me a minute to remember who Posada was: an violently anti-Castro Cuban who allegedly plotted to blow up a Cuban airliner in the 1970s. He was in exile for years in South America, but then recently showed up in the US and requested asylum. His story got about 5 minutes of media attention in the US, but clearly he is a propaganda boon for the Cuban regime. They had a field day linking President Bush, who is waging a "war on terror," to a pro-US "terrorist." On one of the billboards, the regime seems to suggest that Posada is even worse than Hitler.

Provocate:

In one of your columns you describe a senior Fatah official briefing you about a "unity agreement" between Hamas and other Palestinian factions that were expected to jumpstart peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. But the next day, instead of reading in the newspapers about the breakthrough agreement you read about raids by Palestinian militants that kidnapped an Israeli soldier and provoked the Israeli incursions in the coming days. Do you think the actions by the Palestinian militants were deliberately timed to scuttle the "unity agreement"? Were the Israelis then mistaken to react the way they did?

Atlas:
I can't say with certainty that the timing of the Hamas attack from Gaza into Israel was related to the talks. But the attack was ordered by Khaled Meshal in Damascus (this was reported in the Israeli media and admitted by Meshal himself), who openly opposed Hamas PM Haniya's unity talks with Abu Mazen. So I doubt the timing was purely coincidental. But given these talks, I do believe that the IDF response played into the hands of the Hamas hardliners-as Israeli responses often do. The fighting in Gaza took the unity talks, which might have jumpstarted negotiations with Israel, off the agenda completely.

On the other hand, this was a deliberate attack from a tunnel dug under the (fully evacuated) Gaza strip, with the intent of capturing an Israeli soldier to ransom off. And the response was in the wake of hundreds of Qassam rockets fired from "liberated" Gaza into Israel. So the response was not just about the kidnapping of the one soldier. But with its responses, Israel is always in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" position. If Israel responds with force, it might play into the hands of the militants; if it doesn't, then the militants might interpret Israeli inaction as weakness and carry on. Ultimately, the only way to resolve the conflict (for both sides) is through a political solution, not a military one.

Provocate:
What about the US embargo against Cuba? Is it achieving what it is intended to achieve (and what would that be)? What should be US policy toward Cuba these days?

Atlas:
I think the embargo is a disaster for the people of Cuba and also for US foreign policy. Rarely do you get such clear empirical evidence of policy failure as you get with the 40-year old embargo that has left Castro solidly in power. We give Fidel the ideal scapegoat that allows him to evade any responsibility for his regime's failures. He blames everything on the US, and the US is demonized on billboards across the country (and so is Bush, by the way). I think our policy toward Cuba should be a 180 degree reversal. We should be actively trading and dealing with Cuba the way we do with China.

Provocate:
Which do you think we will see first: a functioning and sovereign Palestinian state, a fully democratic Cuba, or peace between Israel and a Lebanon governed entirely by the government of Lebanon?

Atlas:
Gee, what a choice! I think all three are a long way off. I'd put my money on Lebanon first.

Provocate:
What can we Hoosiers do to help the Cubans, the Lebanese, the Israelis, and the Palestinians?

Atlas:
One of the standard options is to "write your Congressman." Elected officials actually do care what constituents think. Beyond that, for Cuba, one of the strongest links Americans have is through their religious institutions, and here Hoosiers are ahead of the game. The Catholic Church supports very important (non-political) children's programs in Camaguey and puts together shipping containers of medical supplies (one of the few things the Cuban gov't will allow in). You can contact the Archdiocese of Indianapolis for details. Members of the Indiana Jewish community have gone down to Cuba on humanitarian missions to assist the 350 year old Cuban Jewish community. And I recently learned that the Methodist church in Indy is also involved in Cuba.

Major NGOs are actively involved in assisting Israelis, Lebanese, and Palestinians (usually not the same NGOs), and they are always willing to accept your donations. Catholic Relief Services is active in both Cuba and Lebanon. The UN World Food Program (directed by Hoosier Jim Morris) is active in the region too.

Provocate:
How would you recommend we learn more about these crises (besides attending your talk at the Indiana Council on World Affairs on September 20th)?

Atlas:
Attend the events this year sponsored by the Franciscan Center for Global Studies at Marian! We'll address the Israel-Lebanon crisis on 14 September, and I hope to bring in the European Union ambassador to Cuba in the spring.

For current events, one of the best newspapers (and websites) in the Arab world is the English language Daily Star, published in Beirut (www.dailystar.com). The best Israeli coverage (and one of the most reliable sources in the region) is the English language version of Haaretz, the Israeli daily (www.haaretz.com). The English version of Al-Jazeera is also an essential source (http://english.aljazeera.net/).