*IT’S DARK AS A DUNGEON, WAY DOWN IN THE MINE*

*DISSECTOR’S MOM SPEAKS*

*YOUR VIEWS ON THE MADNESS*

Hola companeros y companeras on this 26 de Julio, anniversario of the Revolucion Cubana. There is a story dating back, if memory serves correctly, to December l956 when Fidel and his armed band of barbudos arrived in Santiago de Cuba on the good ship Granma from their outpost in exile in Mexico. They were ambushed on arrival by the then-Cuban Army, who may have benefited from a “leak.” Their lucha armada was shattered, leaving only twelve men still alive from a much larger guerilla foco.

While scrambling to the mountains to fight another day, the Argentinian doctor, Che Guevara, reportedly looked around at the wipe-out of their forces, looked at the determination on the faces of his comrades, and predicted, “The days of the dictatorship are numbered.” .And so they were. He could see future victory in the jaws of defeat.

I reprise this historical moment from the dusty recesses of my fading mind, as a lesson on optimism in troubling times.

MINERS FIGHT FOR LIFE

Another blast from the past comes to mind this morning as rescuers drill feverishly, according to CNN, “to reach nine coal miners trapped for more than 24 hours in a flooded mine about 300 feet underground in Pennsylvania’s rugged southwestern coal country.

Pennsylvania Gov. Mark Schweiker said a “sophisticated basket” is being made to drop down the escape hole now being drilled, and it could reach the miners early this morning.” It hadn’t as of the early morning news.

As I watched this drama unfold, I realized that none of us really know how many industrial accidents like this happen every day, or how many workers are injured on the job. We have reports on every micro movement in the markets but no Dow Jones report of the number of deadly or dangerous accidents in America’s plants and mines. (ed. note: There may be such a compilation on the OSHA website, http://www.osha.gov)

I am thinking of that, because by coincidence, if there are ever simple coincidences, I was browsing through a “Memory Book” that my brother Bill had compiled about my late mother Ruth Lisa Schechter, a poet of some distinction, among her other virtues.

RUTH’S RAGE TO ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

And there, in this family published tribute, was a letter she wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt on December 20, l940, after reading about (what else?) another mine disaster in (where else?) Pennslvania, the state that has given this good nation the services of its former governor, Tom Ridge, to watch over “homeland security.”

My mom, from whence this dissector sprang, was upset about “the unnecessary and premature deaths of the ‘dark men’ of the mines who go to their doom without even a chance to fight back.”

It “has always made me feel sick and angry,” she wrote.

She confessed this to our former and still best loved First Lady. She explained in her letter: “Long ago, I read a book called ‘Germinal’ by Emile Zola that made me clench my fists; and after that there were many newspaper accounts telling of accidents. One after another, like little obituary notices. Hardly noticed, but always there. Men dying in the dark, doing their jobs, trapped.

“One day, this July, it happened again. It was the way the article was written with the inference that ‘mine accidents will always be with us,’ as something that just can’t be helped’ like locusts or the measles that made me feel like getting on a house top and yelling…”

DARK AS A DUNGEON

Instead my mom wrote a poem to express her feelings, just as Merle Travis would later pen in l947, “it’s dark as a dungeon way down in the mine.” And she sent it to Mrs. Roosevelt as “the expression of one average citizen ‘Mary Doe’ who is a little fed up…and who understands that you, too, feel that something should be done in the way of safeguards to prevent the all too frequent occurrence of so-called accidents.”

On January 6, l941, the day before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Malvina Thompson, secretary to Mrs. Roosevelt, responded on the stationery of the White House, Washington, to my mom, who had not yet married. It was sent to her apartment on Grant Avenue in the Bronx.

“I am writing to acknowledge your letter of December 20 and to tell you I will bring it to Mrs. Roosevelt’s attention at the first opportunity.”

As you can bet, she saved that letter as a precious possession, even though the White House would have other disasters to worry about in the day and years ahead.

And so, for the miners fighting for life in Quecreek, Pa. today, I dust off these words from another century, more than 62 years ago, and serve them up in your honor and with hopes for your survival.

“MINE BLAST IN PENNSLVANIA”

July 16, 1940

The earth is a jealous lover giving men

treasures for a kiss of death

You and I and each one lost sixty-three

Brothers today.

All quite like us, maybe better.

Not as often, not every day do we seek

our own dark words

Nor do we seek it to put bread on a table.

(It’s a small town except for the mine;

the mine swallows the town.)

It was in the print, not in front

That no bullet killed them; no one to blame

Just one of those things — a blast tore through

Some fought with choking breath, but they

Took them to the morgue,–

The brothers, the fathers, the sons.(

It’s a small town except for the mine;

the mine swallows the mine.)

Sighs are cheap, turn the palms upward,

Say “Too Bad; happened before, — worse.”

Miners are like rain, dying away, coming again,

Good for the earth,

But the dead are dead and words are as big

As ants crushed by a leather heel,

And there’s a kind of tears no words can stop,-

Silver cold — too deep to see.

Later on, at night, they tell the children,

The earth is a jealous lover giving men treasures

for a kiss of death.

Yes, but where my father, my brother, my son.”

Ruth Lisa Schechter,

December 20, 1940

HOMELAND SECURITY, OY VEY

Now, let’s fast forward into the present, in the news behind the news, as the Bush Administration threatens to veto the homeland security act. And the reason given: a need for more management flexibility. Oh really? The website opensecrets.org offers a more complex picture. Writes Holly Bailey:

“When legislation that would create a Department of Homeland Security reaches the House floor today, the debate won’t simply affect the mundane inner-workings of the federal government.

“Millions of dollars in federal contracts and potential business deals are on the line as Congress considers what would be the most substantial reorganization of the government since the end of World War II. It goes without saying that business interests in Washington are watching the deal closely, perhaps more intently than any legislation in recent memory.

Click here for the full report:

http://www.opensecrets.org/alerts/v6/alertv6_59.asp

WAR ON TERROR “FLOUNDERING”

This agency, like the War on Terror it serves, is in trouble and is floundering, explains Dan Plesch of the Foreign Policy Information Center.

“Now the administration is touting the new Department of Homeland Security as a giant step toward reform of the U.S. intelligence community. But even well-publicized federal arrests of low-level terrorist wannabes like Jose “The Dirty Bomber” Padilla should not distract us from the huge problem we still face in collecting accurate intelligence on terrorist activities.

“A simple chain of logic applies to intelligence. To get good intelligence you have to be able to work around the world, and that in turn takes good cooperation with your friends. To get that cooperation you need to give your allies respect. This is as true in world affairs as it is in your local neighborhood. But right now, respect is about the last thing we get from U.S. officials — there’s no rethinking of U.S. positions on other issues that concern us, such as global warming, the International Criminal Court, and the Middle East.

“The Bush team seems to think the U.S. military — now functioning as a global SWAT team — is all it needs. But SWAT teams need to know where to hit and when, and they need to get the job done when they do go in. Otherwise, the result is the same as “Pin the Tail on the Donkey.”

TV WATCHING: HITS AND MISSES

I am sorry I missed Phil Donahue because he was shooting the shit with Tom Brokaw over “bias” in the media to which he predictably pleads “not guilty.”

What was fascinating is that Tom felt he had to CHA-CHA (cover his ass) by also appearing this morning with Imus to cover his bases with conservative viewers. As Tom beamed over the phone, Imus exonerated him from the phony allegation of “liberal bias,” to which Tom responded with deferential noises. Natch, the Don of morning nastiness blasted Jennings and Rather for this odious crime without them being around to speak for themselves — which is his modus operandi….

Watched a fascinating report on Chechnya on the PBS show WIDE ANGLE last night. I was prepared to hate it, because we at Globalvision can’t seem to even get a meeting there to pitch, but the report was skillfully done, visually powerful and important because Russian Crimes in Chechnya have all but dropped out of the news….

The New York Post is reporting today that a multi-state identity theft ring has tapped into the donor rolls at NPR affiliate WNYC in New York after a janitor there ripped them off. Is nothing sacred?

HER MAJESTY’S MEDIA

The British Press has been focusing on the debate in Israel.”Ariel Sharon said yesterday that he would not have authorized Sheikh Salah Shehada’s assassination in Gaza City had he known that 14 other people would die in the bombing raid.

“What happened is really regrettable,” the Israeli foreign minister, Shimon Peres, told the BBC yesterday. “It wasn’t done intentionally.”

“The Guardian disagrees. “Credible” sources suggest that Hamas was on the verge of making a “landmark statement ending the suicide bombings” in return for Israeli withdrawal and an end to assassinations.

“Deliberate sabotage of the peace process may soon be added to the Sharon charge sheet,” the paper says.

E-MAIL: GEE, THEY MISSED ME

Lots of letters have come in with your views on all of these issues. Larry Houghteling writes:”Thank goodness you’re back. I was starting to itch. Is this what’s called a ‘jones’?”

“Do you see Jimmy Breslin in “Newsday”? He had a good column on the creeps from Adelphia today, but with a very different slant from your short item. His was about how they wronged a kindly pornographer. An unusual (though not unsympathetic) POV, I must say.”

“It’s interesting — fascinating, in fact — to watchCongress tripping over itself while trying to close the barn door, now that the multimillionaire horse thieves are running loose all over the country. The Senatevoted 97 to 0 the other day to punish malfeasance in high corporate office.

“I wish I could get myself to believe that something is actually being done, but I’m a guy who, whenever he sees the US Senate passing anything by 97-0, immediately puts his hand into his pocket to make sure his wallet is still there. The almost unrelieved shamefulness of much of the corporate leadership (and far too many politicians) is almost too much to face and think about. (Daddy, is this what they call cynicism?)”

DURAN:”THEY DESERVE WHAT THEY GET”

Notes Eugene Duran (fyi, Its been Eugene, not his wife, Chris, who has been writing.)

“The coverage of the arrest of the Adelphia execs was such a media spectacle to show toughness, that it was easy to see through. Finally they found a scummy company not tied to this administration, so they called out the dogs and made sure the media caught it all on tape. No Danny, you did not cause the rise in the market. If investors are so quick to rally behind such a false spectacle then they deserve what they get. Your price to earning comment was right on. But if the only ones who get arrested are those so out of the loop, than the change is only cosmetic.”

SHEBAR: WHERE’S DA BUCKS?

It was good to hear from Shebar Winstone: “Just when I was revving up to tear into you for your naive optimism that the economy is perking up today, I scrolled down to yesterday’s column & saw your mention of Doug Dowd… Small world! I took a class of his at a free school in San Francisco back the in ’70s, & we broadcast him over KPFA too. You quote him saying just what I was about to tell you — & if anything, I think, he understates the case. Not only is the whole US economic house of cards built on debt (& debt to finance the debt, & debt to finance the debt on the debt), but much of the rest of the world is deeply in debt to keep up payments on money they’ve borrowed from us to pay back to us. Think Enron, Worldcom, the S&L debacle, etc., on a global scale! The only thing I don’t understand is where the “real” money goes — the money that’s got something real to back it up, money where its mouth is. I think maybe it’s all gone to China, along with our jobs & production infrastructure & more trade secrets than anyone will ever admit. Not much left here but hot air — maybe from the friction of all this essentially counterfeit government paper racing around in circles chasing its tail, maybe from the economy going up in smoke.”

PARKE: ON DANNY PEARL’S DAD

Benjamin Parke of LA writes about my carrying the comments of Daniel Pearl’s father, Judea, in the column yesterday:

“Hi Danny,

“I thought you would have known about this, but it doesn’t seem so from your posting of the comments by the father of Daniel Pearl.

“From The Independent, May 14, 2002

“Robert Fisk: Why Does John Malkovich Want to Kill Me?

“But the e-mails that poured into The Independent over the next few days bordered on the inflammatory. The attacks on America were caused by ‘hate itself, of precisely the obsessive and dehumanising kind that Fisk and Bin Laden have been spreading,’ said a letter from a Professor Judea Pearl of UCLA. I was, he claimed, ‘drooling venom’ and a professional ‘hate peddler’.”

“See also: http://www.epnworld-reporter.com/news/fullstory.php/aid/239/Fisk_Fights_Back.html

“Hopefully, Professor Pearl’s admirable statement about his son, “He showed that an American can faithfully and unjudgmentally present anti-Western points of view,” represents a change of heart from the kind of stance he took against Fisk.

“Welcome back, Danny. I hope you continue your weblog past its one-year anniversary. I must say that when it comes to a halt as it did during your trip to Indonesia, I feel a bit lost.”

You have now been found.

All kidding aside, thanks to all the readers who have written in to say they missed my typos and disjointed comments. As it turns out, I will be speaking at the CONCLAVE in Minneapolis tomorrow, a conference of radio people who aremore than upset about the media concentration that has taken much of the fun and diversity out of radio. As a result, I won’t be back until Monday or possibly Tuesday, but who knows?

Your words are always welcome. Write dissector@mediachannel.org