Nixon- Khrushchev Kitchen Debate & George Feifer

Yesterday on NPR.org an audio essay by Gregory Feifer appeared commemorating and describing the the notorious Nixon Khrushchev "Kitchen Debate" in 1959--one of the Cold War's icon events and one of the first media circuses. In this early example of televised news propaganda, VP Richard Nixon debated Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev on the merits of the communist and capitalist systems. The setting was a trade exhibition in Moscow which featured the best in US consumerist manufacturing (such as washing machines and Thunderbirds). I'd known that my friend the American writer George Feifer had played some role in this event, but never such an amusing one as portrayed in this audio essay by his son. A literary tie-in occurs in the account of how George met his Russian wife, whom I would take to be the heroine of Feifer's hilarious, rumbustious memoir of the 60s, Moscow Farewell. The rich photographic documentation shows the principals of the debate and Feifer's role as a guide. Read & hear the story at www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101430375

AVAAZ petition on GAZA is necessary & useful

THE AVAAZ petition on stopping the war in Gaza seems to me a welcome initiative, especially for far-flung people like us far away on the fringes of the world without much say in what goes on "over there." Actually, though, living in the Middle East forces me to a more direct confrontation with this event for several reasons. First personal anger: once again I cannot travel in the Middle East due to a war/controversy for which my country will be blamed. Second, the news here is closer, more direct and much more gory. Unless you get Al Jazeera in English, you will probably see nothing that will disturb you viscerally. Here though, in video and newspaper shots, we see lots of dead bodies, and some of them are children. The NY Times has printed only polite and well-arranged shots of living people. So that’s another reason I got involved with the Avaaz petition, to protest Israel's blackout and censorship on several levels. The last point I want to make is indignation and disgust with Israel’s brutality and indifference to world opinion. I thought nothing that happened in the Middle East could shock me, but the spectacle of Israel’s US provided jet fighters bombing a people cooped up in a pen with no escape and then calling their legally elected defenders “terrorists” has surpassed the limits of what is politically and humanly digestible. Last, it’s Israel’s denial of reality that revolts me – Hamas, whatever you may think of them, are a legally elected government, not a gang of terrorists, and should be dealt with diplomatically even though they broke the cease-fire and thus are also guilty for the situation. And as for that even deeper denial of Israel: unless I’m mistaken Palestinians have been around since Biblical times, so why not get used it to? For these reasons, I’m for the AVAAZ petition, which seems to me useful though late in the process