Over our Christmas holidays, Lin and I went to San Francisco to see her uncle, and then to Texas to see my family and have a wedding ceremony on 30 December at Northwoods UU which was my church while I was in Texas growing up.

I hope to write more about the ceremony, but for now I want to archive this awesome picture of Johnny flying over the ________ in San Francisco. I can’t remember / find the name of the place..

Free hug if you know the name!!

Before the scheduled landing at Philadelphia, the crew got an indication that the landing gear was not down and did a flyover to confirm that the nose wheels had not deployed, airport spokeswoman Victoria Lupica said.

Sweet!

In an attempt to disrupt this unity among Palestinians on both sides of the Armistice Line, the Wall has been built right down the middle of the village, separating families and neighbors, shopkeepers and customers from their markets, people from their work, and children from their schools. 216 shops and houses have been demolished close to where the Wall has been built. 600 out of the previously existing 1,200 shops had to close.

Hi All, it’s been a while I know! Partly my lack of emails is because i’m not very good at keeping in touch (as pointed out very clearly by my sister last week!) and partly because I didn’t think I had that much to report. I’m settled here now and my life has it’s routine just like it did in the UK. That’s what I thought until I had an instant-messenger conversation with a friend a couple of nights ago:
Me: “Everything’s good here, very quiet really, except for the birds, spring is definitely here!”
Neil: “I read things were bad in Hebron, have you been back recently?”
Me “Oh yes, i was there last week and couldn’t leave cos the army invaded and sealed off the checkpoint. The settlers had driven a JCB into the Old city- they want to expand their colony and were trying to knock down some Palestinian owned shops. Oh, and Beit Jala was raided early yesterday morning- I slept through it! And another raid into Bethlehem, I swear I’m bad luck, everytime I go to do my shopping the army seem to follow me! Not so quiet then I guess…”

After only 5 months this has all become a bit normal for me. If I don’t see it happening with my own eyes i hear of it on the radio or TV- everyday- Hebron, Tubas, Nablus, Jenin, a village, a refugee camp raided, one teenager dead, one child shot but still alive, several with rubber bullet injuries, an elderly woman collapsed from tear gas inhalation. A couple of days ago Al Walajah was raided just as my friend Ahamd was leaving his home. They had come to arrest a 17 year old boy. The only reason Ahmad told me was because it was part of a funny story about the bad day he’d had- it started with the army raiding his village and making him late for school, then at school he got into trouble for being late from the headmaster, he was kept back after school but couldn’t call to tell his brother as his phone had no credit….etc etc. An army helicopter and harrassment from fully armed soldiers was just an incinental part of his story.
This isn’t accidental, this normalisation of daily violence and injustice, it’s a survival strategy. When I’d been here for about three months I went through a period when i couldn’t sleep. Whenever i tried my mind would begin to wander and i’d strart thinking and getting upset about things I’d seen and heard that day: my friend Wael worrying about money, playing with the four lovely children that he’s so worried about finding the money to feed, remembering going through the Bethlehem checkpoint and having to explain in bad arabic how it all worked to a bewildered woman visiting her family for the first time if 5 years or remebering that i’d noticed that the construction of the aparthied wall was creeping ever closer to Walajeh or thinking about a report on Al Jazeera that quoted Condaliza Rice saying that sanctions on Palestine wouldn’t lifted until Hamas recognised Israels right to exist and another report that said that the number of illegal Israeli colonies had increased again during 2006 and…….
It was driving me crazy, and this isn’t even my country…
I told a friend about this and asked how he coped with it day in day out. He said that he’d stopped himself thinking about it. If he saw a soldier beating a friend at a checkpoint he’d cry about it there and then, and then push all feelings and memories of it aside and lock them away. If he didn’t, he’d go mad. He advised me to stop watching Al Jazeera just before I go to bed.
So this is what i’ve done. Most nights I manage to fall asleep, if i feel my mind wandering i gather up those memories and put them aside. I have wild and crazy dreams and wonder what this is doing to my mental health, but at least i am sleeping.

And all of this after just 5 months. Just imagine what it must be like if this was your country, your entire life, past present and foreseeable future….

Two weeks in Bethlehem (a city smaller than Leeds):
Bethlehem city raided three times.
Aida Camp raided twice
Al Walajah village raided one
Al Khader village raided once
Al Souwara village raided once
Beit Jala raided twice
16 taken to unknown locations by the Israeli army.

www.palestinecampaign.org
www.bigcampaign.org.uk
www.enoughoccupation.org

Sx
P.S. It was 23ºC here yesterday, spring in Palestine is beautiful!

Boeing has already been paid $20.6 million for the pilot project, and in December, the DHS gave the firm another $65 million to replace the software with military-style, battle management software.

This, for some reason, seems shocking to me. Okay, so this is for a virtual fence 28 miles long. The $20.6 million price works out to almost $140 / foot.

The price paid to Boeing to fix their own mistake I assume can be amortized out along the rest of the 100 miles estimated to be completed by 2011, or, three years late. But let’s just further grant that it can be amortized along the entire 2000 miles, so the software costs $6 / foot. Hmm; that’s not so bad.

So let’s just hope Boeing finishes the rest of the project on (the new delayed) schedule, and on (the new increased) butdget, and generally gets everything right.

BWHAHAhaahahahahaa!!! What am I saying???

Read the latest News: virtual fence us.mexico.

AND, let me be the first to point out: If it works, THIS IS ALSO A VIRTUAL PRISON for US Americans. Get out while you can.

To insure[sic] the best results we will be “chumming” the water with fish and fish parts. Consequently, there will be food in the water while divers are in the water. To insure your safety, we will usually have one or two crewmembers in the water as safety. Please be aware that these are NOT “cage” dives, they are open water experiences.

I wonder if they’ll be leaving this quote on their site… I wonder if they’ll still chum the water… I hope they’ll stay in business!

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Originally uploaded by thunderrabbit

Not sure the story here, but as I was walking to lunch, I saw this guy on the main street of Dogenzaka. I thought he was on the phone, but as I walked by, he didn’t seem conscious enough to talk.

Originally uploaded by thunderrabbit

Rob, Francois, and Kittie.

Ami took this picture in Nihon O-dori station

So do me a favour, think about how this would make you feel, spare us
a thought over the holidays, and next time you hear about Hamas
refusing to recognise Israels right to exist bear in mind the
continuous humiliations and tragedies inflicted on every Palestinian:
man, woman and child.

Suzy xx