The story appeared in The City section of the NYTimes on Sunday. It was part of an article describing the history of the World Trade Center site. As I read it I felt that its outline seemed very familiar. It described the manipulation of the power of the state for personal gain, but while both the profit and the loss associated with two years of warfare against the Indians in New Netherland was on a much smaller scale than that of the imperial Bush wars, has anything changed much in four centuries?

Jan Jansen Damen, who came from Holland around 1630 to help set up the new colony, was more than just a simple farmer. The first European owner of what would later become part of the World Trade Center site had much greater ambitions.

Like an early Donald Trump, Damen had a thirst for land and wealth. He pushed aggressively to secure commitments from the Dutch West India Company for grants or leases of property located just north of the barricade that was Wall Street. Below this barrier was all of settled New York, the land where the pioneers had built their crude, wooden-roofed homes.

When trouble came in the form of Indian attacks on settlers, the Dutch governor turned to Damen for advice, naming him in 1641 to New York's first local governing board, known as the Twelve Men.

The board's chairman, David Pietersen De Vries, urged Gov. Willem Kieft to be patient, as the tiny colony, with little in the form of arms or soldiers, was vulnerable and "the Indians, though cunning enough, would do no harm unless harm were done to them."

Damen did not agree. His land, at the edge of the settled area, was particularly vulnerable. In February 1643, accounts written at the time say, Damen and two other members of the Twelve Men entertained the governor with conversation and wine and reminded him that the Indians had not complied with his demands to make reparations for recent attacks. "God having now delivered the enemy evidently into our hands, we beseech you to permit us to attack them," they wrote in Dutch, in a document that survives today.

DeVries tried to calm Governor Kieft: "You go to break the Indians' heads; it is our nation you are about to destroy." But the governor disagreed. It was time, he resolved, "to make the savages wipe their chops."

The assault, which took place about midnight on Feb. 25, 1643, in Jersey City, then called Pavonia, and at Corlears Hook, now part of the Lower East Side, was an extraordinarily gruesome affair. "Infants were torn from their mothers' breasts and hacked to pieces," DeVries relates in his journal. Others "came running to us from the country, having their hands cut off; some lost both arms and legs; some were supporting their entrails with their hands, while others were mangled in other horrid ways too horrid to be conceived." In all, more than 100 were killed.

The region's Indian tribes united against Governor Kieft and the colonists. Damen was nicknamed "the church warden with blood on his hands," and expelled from the local governing board. The governor was ultimately recalled by the Dutch. The colony, over two years of retaliatory attacks, sank to a desperate state.

"Almost every place is abandoned," a group of colonists wrote to authorities in Holland in late 1643. "We, wretched people, must skulk, with wives and children that still survive, in poverty together, in and around the fort at the Manahatas, where we are not safe even for an hour whilst the Indians daily threaten to overwhelm us."

Damen died about 1650. His heirs sold his property to two men: Oloff Stevensen Van Cortlandt, a brewer and one-time soldier in the Dutch West India militia, and Dirck Dey, a farmer and cattle brander. Their names were ultimately assigned to the streets at the trade center site. Damen's was lost to history

We won't be so lucky with Bush's name.

Note: The native American peoples in Manhattan were of the group, Lenape or Lenni-Lenape, later catagorized by the Europeans as Upper Delaware.

[image from RootsWeb for Montgomery County]

the United States Supreme Court, showing nothing upstairs

More on today's ruling from the Supreme Court.

The news stories which first appeared this morning have already been rewritten a number of times (the AP story I linked to in my own post no longer exists; its replacement bears a report which is almost a reversal of the original), reflecting the confusion which surrounds the justices' "decision."

I think most of us don't have to be reminded that it was this same Supreme judiciary body which three and a half years ago installed the Administration which we see working so asiduously to re-create the remainder of the judiciary in its own image.* I don't think we can expect "judicial review" to safeguard any of us from assaults waged in the name of the War on Terror.

Today's decision says Bush has the right, under the Patriot Act, to arrest and hold both citizens and non-citizens indefinitely and without charges, although both citizens and non-citizens have the right to go to court to argue, apparently one at a time, that in their particular cases they are being held illegally. No one will be let out today - or tomorrow - and in fact the separate cases could be argued for years while the plaintiffs languish in camps, thanks to these (un)worthy judges.

However you look at what the Court did today, it has to be regarded as making bad law.

* One reminder which more of us actually do need: John Kerry, our great blue hope, voted for the war, voted for staying the course in Iraq, and voted for the Patriot Act.

[image from supremecourtus]

Chaplin in "The Dictator"

We have no freedom.

I'm looking for the nearest door.

[image from DVDMaXX]

Big Time

Could this be the same newspaper whose editors have been major cheerleaders for the Bush administration for three and a half years? Starting even with their site headline, "Cheney Uses Major-League Expletive," this delicious story from the Washington Post reads more like something you'd see on a smart progressive blog than what you might expect from a White House rag.

Among other helpful tips, the Post article reminds us:

As it happens, the exchange occurred on the same day the Senate passed legislation described as the "Defense of Decency Act" by 99 to 1.

Goodness!

[image from CONSPIRATION.CC]

live "dancers, whores, merrymakers, and priests" outside powerHouse Books (the few "corpulent Weimar German types" to be seen last night were inside by the snacks and bubbly, but since they were there, they were obviously on the side of the republic)

Three years ago Larry Fink completed the film shoot, and the pictures were scheduled to run in the NYTimes Magazine in the Fall of 2001 as an arty fashion spread with a bit of frisson. There they would probably have attracted a modest amount of attention.

Then the world seemed to stop. September 11 may not have changed everything, but it certainly frightened the Times, and, as it turns out, apparently every other periodical market in both the U.S. and Europe.

The tableaux vivant produced in the summer of 2001, with their voluptuous, polychrome sculptural presence, have become forbidden pictures.

Fink has been unable to persuade any magazine to print these remarkable photographs. powerHouse Books is now publishing them and they are currently visible at their gallery on Charlton Street, where they will remain through the last day of the Republican Convention, September 2. The Gallery calls them, "a provocative political commentary" and "a satirical look at America’s current leaders."

The artist tells us a little more.

It was simple! I was shooting fashion, perhaps a compromise for me, but a trivial, jovial, stylish, learning theater. Why not use its public accessibility for subversion, satire, association, and education? An idea! One of my favorite periods in twentieth-century art was Weimar Germany, with Beckmann, Dix, and Grosz all melting down convention in an impassioned visionary way. Grosz was especially political, but all of the were hyper-aware of the decadence, the despair, the hysteria, and the lies. I suggested to The New York Times Magazine (whose rear end is sometimes gifted with fashion spreads) an idea to replicate the period but loosen it, update it, and tell it anew. There were fashion equivalents and certainlymoral and historical ones.

Oh the glee! They said yes. I suggested that rather than the corpulent Weimar German types, why not use our current fraudulent leaders, George W.and his cabinet. Oh the glee! They said yes. Political satire and critical acuity are something rarely if ever done in fashion. Yet another coup.

We searched for the cast of dancers, whores, merrymakers, and priests. We searched for the look-alikes of our own Mr. G. W. and his consortium. We found it all and went to work. Five paintings chosen from the period and three days shooting them, interpreting them, and creating aesthetic clarity and political bedlam.

The pictures were shot on 7/19/01 and were hypothetically scheduled to run in The Times in the fall. 9/11 gave birth to doom. The tragic inevitable moment, the rupture of providence, the rape of the external soul of America. And its aftermath. [excerpt from the Artist's Statement]

These are the pictures. But don't expect credits for the fashion.

the press conference across from Madison Sqare Garden ended, some participants still linger [NY1's Michael Scotto in front, Donna Lieberman of the NYCLU in the center, and from UFPJ, Bill Dobbs, back to camera, tall on the far left and Leslie Cagan, partly obscured, fingers spread, on the right]

Beginning last June United For Peace and justice (UFPJ) started planning a New York City march and rally for August 29, the eve of the Republican Convention. They still have no permit.

In fact, no police or park permits have been granted to any of the organizations planning protests related to the Convention, although some applications were made up to a year ago.

UFPJ has filed an application for a permit to walk up 8th Avenue from 23rd Street, past the site of the Convention, Madison Square Garden, and end up with a gathering in Central Park. The NYPD and the NY Parks Department wants them to go to Queens for their rally or, alternatively to bake in the wasteland of the West Side Highway, four long blocks left of the Convention site.

Today a number of groups planning protests related to the Convention joined UFPJ in a press conference across the street from Madison Square Garden, to describe their frustrations with city agencies and to demand that Mayor Bloomberg protect their right of dissent.

We should all be concerned with what the experience of these groups says about the agenda of the Bloomberg administration, bending over backwards to see that the convention of a radical right-wing political party goes as smoothly as possible, while doing absolutely nothing to ensure the peaceful assembly of those who wish to voice objection. Should this surprise us at a time when the Republican party controls the mechanisms of all three branches of the federal government as well as Albany and our own City Hall? Now even dissent must be eliminated or at least rendered invisible.

Even beyond the big issue, the city's behavior is appalling for what will be its impact on the basic safety of both New Yorkers and visitors in the last days of what will surely be a long summer. We should be asking how are the best interests of anyone being served when no group knows how to plan for August 29, neither a police department (already being stretched to the limit by real or imagined security concerns) nor a crowd whose size some now expect may easily end up as a seven-figure number. The city is playing a dangerous game, and we are the pawns.

Virtually every other great city of the world (and I won't even use the customary patronizing qualifiers, "western" or "industrial") can accomodate enormous peaceful protest without confining participants in pens or moving them far beyond the periphery of protest targets. But in the land we call "of the free" we only imagine we can exercise such liberty, and it's some measure of just how unfree we are that few understand that they are are so bound.

The right to dissent and the right to protest are meaningless if the dissent and protest are neither heard nor seen.

On August 29 we gotta pass by the Convention site, and we gotta have the Park.

Grand Central Station

waiting for the Lex express

on board, somewhere above Union Square, er . . . actually, below

transferring to the L

I saw the message captioned, "Photographer's Rights Protest," and I told myself, "I'm in!"

The issue is the New York MTA's recently-announced proposal that photography be banned throughout the system. Of course it would be for our protection, from camera-hefting researcher/terrorists. I was attracted to the issue (how could its lack of merit even be arguable?), but the fact that a demonstration was announced through the internet, the modest panache of its text appeal, and finally my own recent experience with MTA security incompetence, and its photographic documentation, made it a must.

An excerpt from the organizers' webpage:

This will be a peaceful demonstration against the MTA's proposed Photography Ban, conducted in the spirit of Rosa Parks. We will simply ride through Manhattan with our cameras, taking as many photographs as we please, of whatever we please. This is a completely legal protest, as photography within the subway system has not yet been banned (even though the police seem to have been told otherwise).

Participants were asked to bring cameras and, if they wished, "a witty sign." I have to admit that while I had good intentions, I didn't manage to fabricate the cool sandwich-board I had created in my head; I went shamefully textless. So did all but one of the hundred or so people who gathered in the central hall of Grand Central Station early this afternoon. That singular body sign, "the end is nigh," was suitably wry but undoubtedly arcane for all passers- and sitters-by.

But maybe in this action it really was appropriate to just take pictures, especially if the press was already interested, as it seemed this afternoon it was.

The weirdest thing for someone who's been in perhaps hundreds of other zaps and demonstrations was to be in the midst of all these people taking pictures of each other. Right now there must be thousands of shots out there somewhere showing people snapping people snapping people snapping people, and perhaps beyond.

Not incidently, our progress through the system today must represented the safest time and place in the history of the MTA - at least as far as any threat originating with camera-wielding terrorists is concerned. Don't leave those cameras home, good folks; it's for your own security.

For some early-posted, great images go to the dart board]

In the end, I broke down and made this crummy impromptu sign on the site, hoping it might raise us above the "flashmob"-type thing.

[bottom image from Forgotten NY]

The NYTimes begins its obituary of Ronald Reagan today with a three-column headline on the front page and it continues inside for a total of four more full-page sheets uninterrrupted by advertising. The size of this death notice may be unprecedented, but the most newsworthy item is what's missing.

The words AIDS or HIV do not appear once.

This is beyond politics; it's criminal neglect, if not part of a deliberate agenda, from the newspaper which was itself so guilty in ignoring or mishandling accounts of the plague during the Reagan years. Now that same newspaper would have us regard as serious journalism its account of the life of our second-most-disastrous president, the man whose administration, in surviving its general malfeasance and treasons, marked the final disintegration of American democracy.

We won't buy it.

Donald Moffett He Kills Me (installation detail), 1987

He's dead, but as the encomiums pile up he's not going to look dead enough.

Reagan virtually spat on people with AIDS throughout his presidency. The epidemic began under his watch, and he ensured that it would ultimately kill millions. For that responsibility alone, he didn't deserve the relief alzheimers must have brought to his memory.

Ah, wait, Barry just turned on Sylvester's "You Make Me Feel Mighty Real." The magical musical legend Sylvester died of AIDS in 1988, so that ecstatic, triumphant shout of delight seems very real around here today. We're dancing on his grave tonight. Maybe me especially. I'm still talking, and now that monster/fool is not. I'm one of the lucky ones. I've been HIV+ for decades, and I'm not leaving yet.

Oh yes, and my memory's just fine.

[image from Richard F. Brush Gallery, St. Lawrence University]

German visitor and Israeli tour guide meet the Dead sea

I'd say that Eyton Fox has now redeemed himself in the eyes of anyone who might have thought his last film, "Yossi and Jagger," operated in too much of a bell jar. The story of a love affair between two young Israeli officers in a remote army base on the Israeli-Lebanese border, "Y&J" does not really address the elephant in the barracks - the moral questions of occupation and violence.

The American-born Israeli fimmaker's third film, "Walk On Water," which premiered last night at New York's NEW FEST, is a much more mature film than the very well-received feature shown by the director last year, and it covers far more ethical ground without stretching the moralizing. The film's most profound voiced statement is brief. It's delivery is given to an Israeli Arab and it's directed at a Jewish Israeli who represents absolute power in their shared world. The young Arab, his family and his nation have just been deeply insulted in front of two visiting young Germans. His reply, painfully gentle under the circumstances, is directed into an open car window. It was something close to this: Maybe if you people could get over what happened to you a long time ago, you'd be able to see what you yourselves are doing now.

It's a wonderful, nuanced film. It's about all kinds of people doing both very bad and very good things, representing the relationships between one generation of Palestinians, two generations of Jewish Israelis and three generations of Germans. No one gets off easily.

Now what some of you will appreciate knowing before you decide to go: The actor playing the lead Israeli character, Lior Ashkenazi, is one of the most beautiful men ever touched by a camera.

[image from the film's website]