The Ohio State University Press
The Ohio State University Prize in Short Fiction
Sponsored by The Ohio State University Press and the MFA Program in Creative Writing at The Ohio State University
Rules
This annual award is given to the manuscript collection of short fiction selected by an independent judge to be the best submitted. The winning author will receive publication under a standard book contract that includes a cash prize of $1,500 as an advance against royalties. The winner and finalists will be announced in May.
Eligibility Requirements
Submission Format
Deadline information
Manuscripts must be postmarked in the month of January and be accompanied by a nonrefundable fee of $20 (U.S. dollars). Send check or money order (no cash) made payable to The Ohio State University.
Mail to
Fiction Editor
The Ohio State University Press
180 Pressey Hall
1070 Carmack Road
Columbus, OH 43210-1002
>via: http://www.ohiostatepress.org/index.htm?/books/series%20pages/osushortfiction.htm
The Obsidian Prize in Fiction
Through a literary prize, High Desert Journal aims to explore the realm described by poet Jarold Ramsey: "I believe in an ecology of story, memory and imagination as much as an ecology of land." As an organization focused on a specific place, we at High Desert Journal have discovered that a deep hunger of readers, writers, and artists exists for place-based arts and literature. We believe every place has an ecology of story, memory, and imagination that inspires us, connects us to one another and to a place. We want to offer the best of this "ecology" through the Obsidian Prize.
- 2011 Obsidian Prize in Fiction
- Judged by Gretel Erlich
- $1,000 prize and publication in the High Desert Journal
- 6,000 words maximum
- $15 entry fee
- Deadline: February 18, 2011
- For writers working in or inspired by the West, Big Sky or big city. Send us your best work.
- Submissions are only accepted via SubmishMash. http://highdesertjournal.submishmash.com/Submit
General Guidelines
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
CutBank reads submissions from October 1 through February 15. We welcome original, unpublished work from established and upcoming writers alike. We're looking first and foremost for excellent writing. We love to read, and are always excited to find a piece that startles us, engaging us emotionally and challenging us intellectually.
Please only submit unpublished, original work. We're always happy to accept simultaneous submissions but ask that you withdraw your work immediately if it is accepted elsewhere. Please include a cover letter with a brief biography. We encourage you to read CutBank before submitting. Sample issues are available for $7; one-year subscriptions for $12.
Every piece will be read first by an editor, and then by an enthusiastic, trained pool of readers. Reading your work is the most exciting part of our jobs, and we're happy to say we form the majority of our content for CutBank from unsolicited submissions. We're all writers here, and we appreciate the opportunity to read your work. Response time is typically 2 to 4 months. Keep writing and we'll see you on the flip side!
Fiction
(pdf, doc, docx, rtf)
Size limit: 10,000 words
FICTION should be double-spaced and paginated with your name, address, phone number, and e-mail address on at least the first page. We are unable to read unsolicited submissions of more than 10,000 words.Please only submit unpublished, original work. We're always happy to accept simultaneous submissions but ask that you withdraw your work immediately if it is accepted elsewhere. Please include a cover letter with a brief biography.
We appreciate the opportunity to read your work. Response time is typically 2 to 4 months. Thank you for submitting!
Poetry
(pdf, doc, docx, rtf)
Size limit: 5 poems
POEMS (up to five per submissions) should include your name, address, phone number, and e-mail address on the first page of each poem. All poems should be uploaded as one file, with page breaks between poems.Please only submit unpublished, original work. Include a cover letter with a brief biography. We're always happy to accept simultaneous submissions but ask that you withdraw your work immediately if it is accepted elsewhere. To withdraw your entire submission, use Submishmash. To withdrawn part of your submission, email us at cutbank[at]umontana.edu.
We appreciate the opportunity to read your work. Response time is typically 2 to 4 months. Thank you for submitting!
Nonfiction
(pdf, doc, docx, rtf)
Size limit: 10,000 words
NONFICTION should be double-spaced and paginated with your name, address, phone number, and e-mail address on at least the first page. We are unable to read unsolicited submissions of more than 10,000 words.Please only submit unpublished, original work. We're always happy to accept simultaneous submissions but ask that you withdraw your work immediately if it is accepted elsewhere. Please include a cover letter with a brief biography.
We appreciate the opportunity to read your work. Response time is typically 2 to 4 months. Thank you for submitting!
Montana Prize in Fiction - $17.00
(pdf, doc, docx, rtf)
Size limit: 40 pages
Open Dec. 1 - Feb. 28, the Montana Prize in Fiction seeks to highlight work that showcases an authentic voice, a boldness of form, and a rejection of functional fixedness. The winner, chosen by judge Eileen Myles, will be featured in CutBank 75 and receive $500. All pieces will be considered for print publication. We look forward to reading your work!CONTEST GUIDELINES:
The $17 contest entry fee includes a one-year subscription to CutBank and covers the reading of a single submission in a single genre. Please send only a single work of no greater than 40 pages. Please submit only once per genre - writers are permitted to submit in multiple genres.Include a short cover letter that mentions your address, phone number, and email address, as well as the title of your work. Please include the author's name on the manuscript—names will be removed from the pool of submissions that goes before our contest judges. Current subscribers may submit for the same $17 fee—subscriptions will be extended by one year. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please withdraw your submission via Submishmash immediately should it be accepted elsewhere. We are unable to offer refunds.
Entrants will be notified of their submission status no later than May 15, 2011. One winner in each genre, as chosen by our guest judges, will receive a $500 award and publication in CutBank 75, our summer 2011 issue. Winners will be required to complete a W-9 form to receive payment. All manuscripts are considered for publication in CutBank. All rights to selected manuscripts revert to the author upon publication. The author grants their permission to have their work electronically archived as part of CutBank 75 in EBSCO International's subscription-based research database. Current University of Montana students and faculty and former CutBank staff are not eligible for the awards.
Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry - $17.00
(pdf, doc, docx, rtf)
Size limit: 5 poems
Open Dec. 1 - Feb. 28, the Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry seeks to highlight work that showcases an authentic voice, a boldness of form, and a rejection of functional fixedness. The winner, chosen by judge D. A. Powell, will be featured in CutBank 75 and receive $500. All pieces will be considered for print publication. We look forward to reading your work!CONTEST GUIDELINES:
Submissions are accepted December 1 through February 28. Submissions are accepted through our online submission manager only. The $17 contest entry fee includes a one-year subscription to CutBank and covers the reading of a single submission in a single genre. Submit up to five poems. Please submit only once per genre - writers are permitted to submit in multiple genres.Please include a short cover letter that mentions your address, phone number, and email address, as well as the title of your work. Please include the author's name on the manuscript—names will be removed from the pool of submissions that goes before our contest judges. Current subscribers may submit for the same $17 fee—subscriptions will be extended by one year. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please withdraw your submission via Submishmash immediately should it be accepted elsewhere. We are unable to offer refunds.
Entrants will be notified of their submission status no later than May 15, 2011. One winner in each genre, as chosen by our guest judges, will receive a $500 award and publication in CutBank 75, our summer 2011 issue. Winners will be required to complete a W-9 form to receive payment. All manuscripts are considered for publication in CutBank. All rights to selected manuscripts revert to the author upon publication. The author grants their permission to have their work electronically archived as part of CutBank 75 in EBSCO International's subscription-based research database. Current University of Montana students and faculty and former CutBank staff are not eligible for the awards.
Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction - $17.00
(pdf, doc, docx, rtf)
Size limit: 40 pages
Open Dec. 1 - Feb. 28, the Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction seeks to highlight work that showcases an authentic voice, a boldness of form, and a rejection of functional fixedness. The winner, chosen by judge Thalia Field, will be featured in CutBank 75 and receive $500. All pieces will be considered for print publication. We look forward to reading your work!CONTEST GUIDELINES:
The $17 contest entry fee includes a one-year subscription to CutBank and covers the reading of a single submission in a single genre. Please send only a single work of no greater than 40 pages. Please submit only once per genre - writers are permitted to submit in multiple genres.Include a short cover letter that mentions your address, phone number, and email address, as well as the title of your work. Please include the author's name on the manuscript—names will be removed from the pool of submissions that goes before our contest judges. Current subscribers may submit for the same $17 fee—subscriptions will be extended by one year. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please withdraw your submission via Submishmash immediately should it be accepted elsewhere. We are unable to offer refunds.
Entrants will be notified of their submission status no later than May 15, 2011. One winner in each genre, as chosen by our guest judges, will receive a $500 award and publication in CutBank 75, our summer 2011 issue. Winners will be required to complete a W-9 form to receive payment. All manuscripts are considered for publication in CutBank. All rights to selected manuscripts revert to the author upon publication. The author grants their permission to have their work electronically archived as part of CutBank 75 in EBSCO International's subscription-based research database. Current University of Montana students and faculty and former CutBank staff are not eligible for the awards.
Ghana: Flash Mobs - Ad Love
Using 5 flash mobs of 100 dancers performing across Accra, Google advertises in Ghana its classifieds service, Google Trader, that allows people to buy and sell products and services, on web, mobile web and sms.
"If You Leave Us Here, We Will Die":
How Genocide Was Stopped in East Timor
Geoffrey RobinsonPaper | April 2011 | $24.95 / £16.95
Cloth | 2009 | $35.00 / £24.95
344 pp. | 6 x 9 | 22 halftones.
This is a book about a terrible spate of mass violence. It is also about a rare success in bringing such violence to an end. "If You Leave Us Here, We Will Die" tells the story of East Timor, a half-island that suffered genocide after Indonesia invaded in 1975, and which was again laid to waste after the population voted for independence from Indonesia in 1999. Before international forces intervened, more than half the population had been displaced and 1,500 people killed. Geoffrey Robinson, an expert in Southeast Asian history, was in East Timor with the United Nations in 1999 and provides a gripping first-person account of the violence, as well as a rigorous assessment of the politics and history behind it.
Robinson debunks claims that the militias committing the violence in East Timor acted spontaneously, attributing their actions instead to the calculation of Indonesian leaders, and to a "culture of terror" within the Indonesian army. He argues that major powers--notably the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom--were complicit in the genocide of the late 1970s and the violence of 1999. At the same time, Robinson stresses that armed intervention supported by those powers in late 1999 was vital in averting a second genocide. Advocating accountability, the book chronicles the failure to bring those responsible for the violence to justice.
A riveting narrative filled with personal observations, documentary evidence, and eyewitness accounts, "If You Leave Us Here, We Will Die" engages essential questions about political violence, international humanitarian intervention, genocide, and transitional justice.
Geoffrey Robinson is professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles. His books include The Dark Side of Paradise: Political Violence in Bali. Before coming to UCLA, he worked for six years at Amnesty International's headquarters in London. From June to November 1999, he served as a political affairs officer with the United Nations in Dili, East Timor. Robinson lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter.
"Intimate, informed . . . the author offers rare insight into the country's internal turmoil. Particularly riveting are Robinson's descriptions of the days preceding the historic vote to separate from Indonesia. . . . Despite the overwhelming brutality of the story, and a bleak assessment of actions from the UN and international community (as much a part of the problem as the solution), Robinson manages to cap his detailed report with a hopeful note."--Publishers Weekly
"Robinson's book is thus a valuable addition to the literature on genocide and intervention. . . . [He] has fused his own observations from that harrowing time with a more general history of East Timor to produce a thoughtful and intelligent volume."--Richard Just, New Republic
"Robinson was a UN officer stationed in East Timor and his account is illuminating and horrifying."--Billy Heller, New York Post
"[A] fine book. . . . [T]hough enlivened by the narrative of Mr Robinson's own time as a participant in and eyewitness to the events described, ['If You Leave Us Here, We Will Die'] is also a subtle and nuanced work of history and analysis."--Economist
"[Geoffrey Robinson] is arguably one of the most informed, compassionate outsiders to tell the story of the violence in the small island nation. . . . Even if you don't have much baseline knowledge about the conflicts between these Southeast Asian islands, this book will illuminate the complicated history is accessible terms. Robinson offers crucial perspective on modern colonialism and explores issues of accountability and justice with aplomb."--Brittany Shoot, Feminist Review
Print
Princeton University Press, 319 pp., $35
On December 7, 1975, Indonesia invaded East Timor. Less than twenty-four hours before the invasion, President Ford and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, met with Suharto, Indonesia’s dictator, in Jakarta. Kissinger would later insist that he and Ford had not talked about East Timor while meeting with Suharto (an assertion that would be proven false by the release of a damning transcript showing Ford and Kissinger essentially giving the autocrat their blessing to invade). But Kissinger did concede that “at the airport as we were leaving, the Indonesians told us that they were going to occupy the Portuguese colony of Timor.” Then, as Geoffrey Robinson recounts in his new book on the subject, the secretary of state added, “To us that did not seem like a very significant event.”
Kissinger’s judgment was horrifically wrong. The results of Indonesia’s invasion were extremely significant: more than 100,000 dead and decades of repression that would end only in 1999, with an intervention by the international community. Yet, despite this history, when we talk about the humanitarian calamities of recent decades, East Timor tends to be overlooked. Cambodia, Rwanda, the Balkans, and Darfur loom over contemporary discussions of genocide, but not East Timor. Robinson’s book is thus a valuable addition to the literature on genocide and intervention. A professor of history at UCLA who worked for the United Nations in East Timor during the violence of 1999, Robinson has fused his own observations from that harrowing time with a more general history of East Timor to produce a thoughtful and intelligent volume.
East Timor’s problems can be traced to the fact that it was colonized by Portugal, whereas its larger neighbor, Indonesia, was colonized by Holland. As a result, even though the two territories were geographically linked—East Timor consists of the eastern half of an island whose western half is part of the Indonesian archipelago—they developed separate identities. Indonesia won its independence from Holland in the 1940s, but the Portuguese held on to East Timor until 1975. Indonesia was then ruled by Suharto, a brutal dictator who had taken power in a coup in 1965—and whose staunch anti-communism made him a valuable American ally.
As Portuguese rule in East Timor deteriorated in the 1970s, three factions emerged to vie for control. One party, Fretilin, favored instant decolonization; among its founders was José Ramos-Horta, who would go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize. A second party, the UDT, advocated a slower shift toward independence. The third party, Apodeti, argued for integration with Indonesia. Local elections held in 1975, albeit under imperfect conditions, suggested that Fretilin commanded a “substantial majority,” according to Robinson. It seemed that the people of East Timor did not want to become part of Indonesia.
But Indonesia was not interested in what the East Timorese wanted. The Indonesians believed that Fretilin was a communist organization—something that Robinson says was “demonstrably false”—and may also have coveted East Timor’s offshore oil. A Fretilin-UDT coalition did not last, and Indonesia took sides in the violence that erupted among the different factions, supporting the UDT and Apodeti. Fretilin eventually emerged from this fighting in control of East Timor, and formally declared the country independent from Portugal on November 28. Nine days later, Suharto—having received tacit consent from Ford and Kissinger—invaded. Fretilin was deposed, and East Timor became part of Indonesia.
Next came a genocidal counterinsurgency operation to root out Fretilin and subdue East Timor’s population. More than 100,000 people were killed in a campaign that involved forcibly relocating huge swathes of the population. By the time Fretilin surrendered in 1978, East Timor was beset by famine. “The conditions in the resettlement areas were appalling,” Robinson writes. “Supplies of food and medicine were minimal, and residents were prevented from venturing outside a limited area to tend crops or harvest wild food.”
Eventually the famine subsided, but Suharto continued to rule East Timor with a heavy hand. In 1991, Carlos Belo, a Catholic bishop who would share the Nobel Peace Prize with Ramos-Horta, said East Timor was a place in which “half of the population is paid to spy on the other half.” Yet the East Timorese never gave up on the concept of independence. In 1998, after Suharto stepped down and his successor, B.J. Habibie, signaled some flexibility, the East Timorese pressed their advantage. The following year, with Indonesia weakened by a financial crisis and desperate for international assistance, Habibie agreed to allow East Timor to vote on independence. United Nations officials including Robinson (on leave from UCLA) soon arrived in the region to facilitate the election.
The problem was that the Indonesian government had not resigned itself to the likelihood that East Timor would become independent. On the contrary, it intended to win the referendum through any means possible. As the summer of 1999 unfolded, it became clear that Jakarta was backing East Timorese militias that opposed independence. The atmosphere in East Timor grew violent, to the point where the United Nations considered delaying the vote. The situation was not made any better by the fact that the U.N. monitors were unarmed, and therefore powerless to do anything but observe.
In the end the vote went forward, and a resounding 78.5 percent of East Timorese cast their ballots for independence. Robinson’s account of the vote is stirring. Despite the threat of violence, “electoral officers reported that when the polls opened at 6:30 a.m., roughly half of all registered voters were already in line.” The courage of the East Timorese was remarkable. Some local residents, Robinson reports, “had even carried their belongings to the polling stations so that they could flee to the hills immediately after casting their ballot.”
Their fears turned out to be correct. Angry with the outcome, anti-independence militias unleashed their wrath on East Timor in the days after the result was announced. Behind these attacks was, once again, the Indonesian government. “As we began to piece together testimony and information from different parts of the country,” says Robinson, “we saw evidence that far from being spontaneous, the violence and confusion were being carefully organized—and that the Indonesian army and police were the principal organizers.”
Robinson offers disturbing accounts of what took place during this time at the hands of Indonesian soldiers and their militia allies—a church from which “blood was flowing like a long stream” after a massacre; militiamen descending on a group of refugees who, one witness said, “were screaming in fear but...could not escape” because militias and Indonesian soldiers “were all around guarding the place.” Soon, fifteen hundred people were dead and over half of the region’s residents had been displaced. Dili, the capital city, “was a flattened, smoking ruin.”
East Timor appeared to be on the brink of another genocide. What saved it was a rare instance of the international community—fresh off the successful intervention in Kosovo—acting swiftly. After some initial missteps, President Clinton began talking tough with Indonesia; meanwhile Kofi Annan emerged as a strong supporter of intervention. By mid-September, a United Nations contingent with Chapter VII authority—that is, the authority to use force—was on the ground in East Timor. Order was shortly restored; and, three years later, East Timor officially declared its independence from Indonesia.
Reading Robinson’s account, I was struck by two things. The first was how poorly a diverse array of American officials conducted themselves when it came to East Timor. No one will be surprised to hear that a realist such as Kissinger endorsed the Indonesians’ decision to invade. But it was not just Ford and Kissinger who abetted the disaster. From 1975 to 1979, the four years during which Indonesia carried out its genocide, Washington provided more than $318 million in weapons to Jakarta. That amount peaked in 1978—under Jimmy Carter, a supposed champion of human rights.
Meanwhile, in 1980, no less a liberal hawk than Richard Holbrooke appeared before Congress and credited the Indonesian government with helping to stop the famine in East Timor—a famine that Indonesia had caused through its genocidal policies. Then there was the dinner with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (another liberal hawk) that Robinson attended in early 1999, where he “learned that State Department officials were still searching for alternatives to a referendum...because both [Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali] Alatas and the Indonesian army opposed it.” At the dinner, Paul Wolfowitz—the most humanitarian-minded of the neocons, but also a former ambassador to Indonesia—“added misleadingly that the Indonesian army had been the only guarantor of peace and order in the territory, and that a referendum would likely give rise to renewed violence among East Timorese.” Finally, there were the charming comments of Sandy Berger, Clinton’s national security adviser, who, at the height of the 1999 violence, said, “You know, my daughter has a very messy apartment up in college; maybe I shouldn’t intervene to have that cleaned up. I don’t think anybody ever articulated a doctrine which said we ought to intervene wherever there is a humanitarian problem.”
So the ability to ignore human rights, to regard mass killing coldly and cynically, is not the province of any one political party or even any one ideology. The left likes to accuse the right of ignoring human rights; and neocons, in turn, like to charge the dovish left with being allergic to humanitarian intervention. But in the case of East Timor, right, left, realist, idealist, dove, hawk—all of them managed to acquit themselves badly.
The second striking thing about Robinson’s book has to do with a contemporary situation a world away from East Timor. It is impossible to ignore parallels to the upcoming referendum on independence in southern Sudan. Of course, no two geopolitical situations are identical, but the parallels here are substantial. Like East Timor, South Sudan has long viewed itself as a separate entity. And the strategy employed by Indonesia to counter Fretilin—genocidal counterinsurgency—was more or less the same strategy used in the 1980s and 1990s by Sudan to fight the southern rebels. Khartoum has now agreed to let the south vote on independence—just as Indonesia did for East Timor. If the south opts for independence at the ballot box, it is widely feared that Khartoum will instigate violence. And, again like Indonesia in 1999, it will probably rely on militia proxies to foment this violence, so that it can maintain deniability on the international stage.
The experience of East Timor would seem to offer a simple lesson for the challenge that we may be about to confront in Sudan: when violence breaks out, the quick dispatch of peacekeepers can save huge numbers of lives, and prevent full-blown genocide from erupting. Except that the parallel is not so simple. The United Nations intervened in East Timor only after Indonesia quickly gave its assent. Had Jakarta failed to give permission, there is little reason to think the United Nations would have barreled into East Timor anyway. Why did a country orchestrating mass killing so quickly agree to have an international force intervene and put a stop to it? The likely reason is that, thanks to the financial crisis of the late 1990s, Indonesia was in a uniquely vulnerable position. Just days before Habibie agreed to accept U.N. troops, the IMF and the World Bank put Indonesia on notice that its actions in East Timor were jeopardizing its relationship with those organizations. It is little wonder that Habibie caved so quickly.
Serious leverage, in other words, was the key to stopping genocide in East Timor. But serious leverage is hard to come by—and we do not have it with Sudan. If there is violence in the south, we should not expect to see Bashir welcome a U.N. peacekeeping force to protect civilians. And we should not expect to see the United Nations authorize a peacekeeping force without getting Bashir’s consent. As a result, we will have to create leverage with Khartoum that we do not currently have. We will have to be willing to put real military threats on the table, as we did in Bosnia and Kosovo. Bashir must be made to realize that another killing spree will entail devastating consequences for his regime. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, ten years from now, there was a book that carried the subtitle, How Genocide Was Stopped in Sudan?
Richard Just is the executive editor of The New Republic.
Muslims Save Jews in Untold WWll Story
Exhibit showcases photographs of Albanian Muslims who sheltered Jews during the Holocaust
Photo: Norman Gershman
Ali Sheqer Pashkaj's father helped a young Jewish man escape transportation to a labor camp and then hid him for two years. "My father was a devout Muslim," he says. "He believed that to save one life is to enter paradise."
LISTEN TO AUDIO STORY
An untold story of the Nazi Holocaust is on display at a Jewish temple in St. Louis, Missouri. It's a photography exhibit, featuring portraits of elderly Albanian Muslims - men and women who helped save nearly 2,000 Jews who fled to Albania during World War II.
Untold story
"Who ever heard of Muslims saving Jews?," asks photographer Norman Gershman. After hearing the story, he decided to visit Albania to meet the surviving families who had sheltered Jews. "I wanted to go to Albania first to discover for myself who are these people."
Norman Gershman
Basri Hasani sheltered his next-door neighbor and best friend, Moshe Rubenovic, who fought the Nazis throughout Albania and Kosovo. "I am a true Muslim," says Hasani. "My door is always open to anyone in need."
For the past six years, Gershman, a fine art photographer whose work is typically displayed in museums, traveled throughout Albania and Kosovo. He photographed most of his subjects in their homes, often with objects that were significant to the people they sheltered.
In one photograph, a man stands with three Jewish prayer books that a family left behind after the war.
"I'll never forget this - when we were at this guy's home and he was looking at us sort of like angrily and he said 'What are you doing here?'" says Gershman. "We said, 'Well, your family saved this Jewish family,' and he looked at us and said, 'So what? Any Albanian would have done the same thing. We did nothing special,' and he meant it."
Word of honor
The Albanians have a word for this: Besa. It translates as 'word of honor,' and is a cultural precept unique to Albania.
"The word Besa in Albanian is kind of protection of when they host a guest, the Albanians, it's a rule, they protect them with their own lives," says Alberto Colonomos, a Jewish man born in 1933 in what was then Yugoslavia. He was 10 years old when his family fled to Albania.
"There were about 7,200 Jews living in that area. They deported them to the concentration camps and they deported them all the way to Treblinka. They killed them all, nobody came back. But about 50 families escaped a week or two weeks before the deportation."
Norman Gershman
The Jewish family that lived with the Kazazi family (pictured) escaped the Nazis during searches by scrambling through connecting doorways to other homes. "Our parents were not very religious, but they believed in the Koran and Besa," the grown Kazazi children say. "Without the Koran there is no Besa. Without Besa there is no Koran."
A wealthy man who worked in a tobacco factory took in the Colonomos family. Unlike many Jews in other parts of Europe who survived the war in cellars and attics, Jews in Albania were given Muslim names and treated as honored guests. Colonomos explains that under Besa, Albanians put their guests before their own family.
"They really hid us with their lives. They knew that the Germans - the consequences if they catch them were very, very stiff. So they would be shot. But when they have that Besa, they will not denounce their guests. They were amazing people."
Gershman's black and white portraits have been in over 70 exhibitions around the world. For the rest of the year they are on display - for the first time in the American Midwest - at Temple Emanuel, a Reform Jewish synagogue in St. Louis, Missouri.
VOA - D. Weinberg
Rabbi Justin Kerber hopes the exhibit will help start an interfaith dialogue in his own community that will spread to other parts of the country.
Interfaith dialogue
"We are really delighted to have it and were really excited to see the interest," said Rabbi Justin Kerber, who has led the congregation for a year and a half. He hopes the exhibit will help start an interfaith dialogue in his own community that will spread to other parts of the country.
"At this time when there is so much tension in the world and so much attention being paid to Jewish-Muslim conflict or Israeli-Arab conflict, it's really important for everyone to understand that is not the only story," says Kerber. "It's not the way things have always been and I'm really looking forward to growing this relationship with the Islamic Foundation."
That hope is shared by Mufti Minhajuddin Ahmed, the Imam and director of Religious Services of the Greater Islamic Foundation of St. Louis, which partnered with Temple Emanuel for a panel discussion on the exhibit's opening night.
"I think at a time when the Jewish-Muslim relations are very sour to many of the events taking place in the Middle East, this was a very timely and much-needed exhibition that highlights how Muslims have saved Jews and these are the true teachings of Islam," says Ahmed. "This is an opportunity for others to learn that it's a religion that is not born in violence. Rather they are teachings of compassion and kindness."
The compassion and kindness - the Besa - of the Albanian Muslims was recognized by Israel in 2007. The Jewish state awarded them one of its highest honors, Righteous Among Nations, which is granted to non-Jews who saved the lives of Jews during the Holocaust.
Gershman's photographs of those men and women have been published in a book called "Besa: Muslims Who Saved Jews During World War II." A documentary film based on Gershman's trip to Albania will be released next year.
"Bobby's Berms."
*I want to start this post by giving a shout out to GQ Magazine for featuring the last surviving member of the original three Wailers in this latest issue of their magazine. It was a pleasant surprise to open up the pages and see my man Bunny Wailer in full effect.Anyway, tonight I want to write about rising GOP star, Bobby Jindal. Seems my man, like so many wingnuts before him, was wrong about something else:
Remember when Jindal was ripping his O ness a new one about his administrations inactivity and incompetence during the gulf oil spill? My man even wrote a book about it and was on every wingnut talk show from California to Maine patting himself on the back and praising his skills as a governor on knowing how to get things done. Not so fast.
Now it seems that Jindal might have been wrong all along.
"The GOP's rising star, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, was the driving force behind the construction of sand berms to curb the Gulf oil spill. They were considered environmentally unsound, and a presidential commission has found that they didn't even work.
A draft of the commission's report was released yesterday, and aside from the obvious (BP), Jindal comes out looking pretty scummy. That shouldn't really shock anyone, but the particulars of the berm deal are pretty bad. So what really happened? Well, the berms cost about $220 million to build with another $140 million committed to finish the project. The report describes them as "underwhelmingly effective, and overwhelmingly expensive." The sand berm project got nearly three times more money than any other oil spill relief project in Jindal's state of Louisiana.
But how does Jindal himself feel about the berms' effectiveness? According to Bloomberg, on November 15, Jindal appeared on the Today Show touting the project's effectiveness: "The reality is, it worked. And the reality is, it prevented that oil from getting into the wetlands 15 to 20 miles away." Hmm. How well did it work? According to the presidential commission's report, the berms only stopped about 1,000 barrels of oil... out of about 5 million barrels that were spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. Nice try, Bobby!
And Jindal could have listened to skeptical experts during a June meeting to weight the pros and cons of moving ahead with the project. According to the report, "A Coast Guard officer present at the summit offered a similar [dismal] assessment. According to that officer, the experts ‘all said it's pretty crummy' and offered no ‘glowing endorsements' of berms as a spill response measure." That sure doesn't sound like something a fiscally responsible Republican would get behind.
Jindal responded with a typically shitty statement, calling the report "partisan revisionist history at taxpayer expense," which means we can call Bobby's Berms "the result of very little scientific evidence, at the environment, and people of Louisiana's expense," right? So, to all of the Gulf residents struggling to squeeze money out of BP in the wake of the oil spill, you can thank Bobby Jindal for sucking up hundreds of millions of dollars for a joke of a relief project." [Article]
What a fraud! It just goes to show you that you can't trust a wingnut with anything having to do with science.
Finally, I would like to invite all of you reading this to come to Philadelphia and see the "President's House "display. If you are a student of real history it will be worth the trip.* Pic lifted from Gawker.com
A Question
from Son of Baldwin
Now that gay Americans have the right to—freely and openly—rape, kill, die and raise hell in other countries, do you imagine that we might now have, unilaterally, the right to love and marry in our own?
______________________________________
WASHINGTON -- The Senate voted 65-31 on Saturday to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell, defeating a 17-year policy of banning gay and lesbian service members from serving openly in the military. Six Republicans initially crossed the aisle to vote against the policy: Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), Scott Brown (R-Mass.), Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and George Voinovich (R-Ohio).
The Senate vote is a vindication of Obama's decision to push for congressional repeal as opposed to unilateral executive action, though activists note he could have done both. The Senate will make a final vote on ending the policy at 3 p.m.
In the first procedural vote on Saturday morning, 63 senators voted in favor of the bill and 33 against. In the final passage, Sens. John Ensign (R-Nev.) and Richard Burr (R-N.C.) switched their vote to "aye," despite initially voting against moving forward with the bill.
"The important thing today is that 63 senators were on the right side of history," Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, told HuffPost after the first vote, adding he sees the bill as a "stepping stone to further advances for the gay and lesbian community."
Gay-rights activists owe a small debt to their Latino brethren, as the DREAM Act, which the House and Senate have been considering at the same time, showed the way forward for repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Roughly a week before a crucial cloture vote failed, said one top aide, Democratic leadership staff saw that the same legislative tactic could be used to bring a standalone version of the repeal bill to the Senate floor as was currently being used to bring DREAM up. For needlessly complex reasons, a bill that comes to the Senate as a "message from the House" faces fewer obstacles to a floor vote than one that originates in the Senate.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) proposed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that the House consider moving first. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) had the same idea.
"Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins determined that they would introduce a bill," Hoyer told HuffPost earlier this week. "I called and talked to a number of people. I then called Senator Lieberman and said 'Joe, my intent will be to talk to Congressman Murphy' -- who's the sponsor of the amendment that was adopted in the defense bill -- 'and put this in as a free standing bill, because we can probably send it over to you more quickly than you can send to us.' And he agreed and we introduced exactly the same bill that they have in the Senate."
The bill passed in the House 250-175 on Dec. 16.
During debate before the cloture vote, Republicans ran through the usual list of arguments against repealing DADT, claiming it would hurt unit cohesion and that troops had not been given an adequate chance to voice their opinions on the bill. A survey on ending DADT was sent to 400,000 service members, at least 100,000 of whom responded. Of those who responded, 70 percent said they would "work together to get the job done" if there was a gay service member in their unit -- and 69 percent said they know or suspect there is a gay service member serving with them already.
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said the reason survey results were mostly positive because troops already thought the repeal was "a done deal" because politicians had said they planned to repeal it. Repealing DADT would harm recruitment and retention, he said. "I was shocked at how well this has worked for a long period of time," Inhofe said. "We have a saying in Oklahoma, 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.' Well, this isn't broke, it's working very well."
Republican senators said their opposition was not related to homophobia or lack of appreciation for those who have served or are serving in the military. "This has nothing to do with the gays and lesbians who have given valuable service to our military," said Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.). "That's a given."
Still, they rejected the idea that the military could adjust seamlessly to a more open policy. "Some people will say this is about civil rights and its time has come. The Marine Corps doesn't have that view," Graham said. "This is about effectiveness on the battle field, not about civil rights."
In the end, though, support for a repeal won out. A number of Democrats made impassioned appeals for the bill in the debate. "I can't think of something more egregious to our fabric, to our military," said Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y). "If you care about national security, if you care about military readiness, you will vote against this corrosive policy."
Now, though, Republicans are threatening that the vote will threaten another effort: ratification of the START Treaty, which supporters say would strengthen national security.
"Some Republicans are saying they're not going to vote for the START Treaty now because we had a vote on the DREAM Act and Don't Ask, Don't Tell," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) after the vote.
President Barack Obama applauded the Senate for moving toward repeal. "By ending 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' no longer will our nation be denied the service of thousands of patriotic Americans forced to leave the military, despite years of exemplary performance, because they happen to be gay," he said in a statement. "And no longer will many thousands more be asked to live a lie in order to serve the country they love."
Ryan Grim contributed reporting
>via: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/18/dont-ask-dont-tell-repeal_5_n_798636...
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First Posted: 12-18-10 11:49 AM | Updated: 12-18-10 10:05 PM