Turkey’s View Toward the Middle East during (and before) the Arab Uprisings... published on March 22, 2011 by New America Media.
ISTANBUL, Turkey—I had asked my Turkish friend Ali what he thought of Arabs and the Arab world. Normally a peaceful man, Ali rolled his eyes and sneered, “That fucker Lawrence of Arabia played at being an Arab, meanwhile inciting the Arabs to stab us in the back.”
That was on a summer night in 2002, as we sat alfresco at a meyhane bar, which plays Türkü, the folk music of Anatolia and central Asia. Our glasses were full of Raki, the popular anise aperitif, and we looked out at the Sea of Marmara, enjoying the southwest breeze.
“We Turks can never forget what the Arabs-- our brothers in Islam--did to us,” Ali continued. “We can forgive them, maybe, but we can’t forget what they did.”
It is winter now and almost 10 years later. The government of the Islamist Justice and Development Party (JDP or AK Parti in Turkish) long ago closed the old meyhane bar by the sea and leased the land to a cemaat, a private Turkish religious network. There’s a “family friendly” non-alcoholic café in its place.
Ali sits in the café sipping tea, wishing we were drinking Raki again. It’s not just our drinks that have changed in a decade. The Turks’ “national perspective on Arabs and the Islamic world has totally changed” because of the JDP, Ali says.
Ethnic Media Watch (New America Media radio, 91.7 FM) on October 8th, 2010.
Byline: "This week on Ethnic Media Watch Sean David Hobbs and Odette Keeley discuss President Aquino's stance on condoms and family planning in the Philippines and why a young man was tasered in his high school and what does it represent for education in Louisiana."
Ethnic Media Watch (New America Media radio, 91.7 FM) on July 23rd, 2010.
Byline: "On this weeks ethnic media watch, Odette Keeley, host of our TV show New America Now, about Filipinos in America who are trying to bring about good governance in Manila and David Hobbs, monitor of the NOLA Beez, about a six year old who was handcuffed to a chair in his elementary school in New Orleans."
New America Now (New America Media radio, 91.7 FM) on June 18th, 2010.
Byline: "David Hobbs, coordinator of the NOLA Beez hyperlocal news hub in New Orleans, shares the stories of a few families on the Gulf Coast who are struggling economically due to the oil spill."
DULAC, LOUISIANA — Some days the only people she serves are wayward journalists and well meaning volunteers come down to south Louisiana after the nation's worst oil spill. Some days not even the journalists or volunteers come. The locals have long since abandoned her restaurant.
In the early afternoon Lois Salinas, 69, owner and sole worker at Annie's Restaurant in Dulac, Louisiana sits alone on her back porch, which overlooks the swelling Grand Caillou Bayou (pronounced KAI-U). Ms. Salinas is a Houma Native American and her people have been fishing, working and living on Grand Caillou Bayou since before the Anglo or French speaking white man arrived. Now Salinas (or as she is known in her community, Ms. Lois) ponders the slow destruction of her culture.
"One thing that makes me sad is that my grandkids and great-grandkids won't have a chance to see this culture... one day it's all gonna be gone," Ms. Lois laments, staring fatalistically at the full Grand Caillou Bayou.
The closed door of BP's Community Outreach Center in Venice, Louisiana
Venice, Louisiana — We rumbled up the front stairs of BP's Community Outreach Center and we felt good. A group of Vietnamese American Fishermen — with valid complaints of poor treatment by BP employees — surrounded and walked up the stairs with me. This was the United States of America and here we had free speech. Here I, as a media representative, would be able to ask BP direct questions which would address the plight of my new fisherman friends. Despite its national ad campaign to show an open and transparent company working to "get it done" and "make this right" BP systematically limits and controls media access to BP leadership and workers who are employed by BP.
Background of Disrespect from BP
When we arrived at the BP Community Outreach Center the fishermen I had interviewed felt they had valid questions for BP which were not being answered. Most of the fishermen felt that they had been lulled into accepting a check from BP in May for $5,000. Some complained that the "Vessels of Opportunity" program was a farce, meant to lull working men and women on the Gulf Coast into taking the $5,000 check (or payoff) and waiting to be called by BP to make money cleaning up the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. The call, they stated, "Never came." For the past few weeks they had sat and waited.
When the fishermen I interviewed had gone to complain to BP's Community Outreach Center in Venice, Louisiana, BP officials were reportedly rude and dismissive. One fisherman told me that a BP official had told him he would have to leave the center immediately because, "...there is nothing to be done."
For the fishermen it was bad enough that BP — through its own admitted negligence had caused the spill at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico — but to be rude to locals about promised work was unbearable.
Vietnamese American Fishermen in Venice, Louisiana discuss their grievances with BP.
Angry and wanting answers we carpooled down from the docks to stand together — fisherman and writer alike — in front of the BP's Community Outreach Center. We wanted answers. The fishermen wanted an advocate who — in a free society — was supposed to be able to ask their questions to those that could change their lives and help their families. I was certain that if we went together we would get a quick response from a BP representative. I didn't realize at the time that I was beginning a journey that would take weeks and finally end me up back at the same Community Outreach Center.
A trip to the land of the United Houma Nation sheds light on a Native American people and a culture on the brink.
Published by GAMBIT WEEKLY, September 23, 2008 (Excerpt from article)
...Isle de Jean Charles is a one-road village looking out over miles of disappearing wetland. It is virtually undefended, open to the Gulf of Mexico's storm surges. The homes are beaten and torn open. Many have been gutted by the storms or by returning families. After a storm, it is amazing how quickly the earth reclaims human imprints...
Chief Robichaux and her husband, former state Sen. Dr. Mike Robichaux, drive me ... where Houma Indians have lived and worked for hundreds of years. The post-hurricane air feels different. Love bugs fly awkwardly, mating and almost biting anything they come in contact with. Dead sea gulls and dogs litter the shoulders of the highway...
I take pictures while the Robichauxs drive on to check a friend's house. Everything is silent save the wind, which blows hard across the wetlands, stirring panels of broken metal siding.
Dusk falls and I find myself in the middle of an abandoned village, lightless and without cellular service. I cannot reach the Robichauxs. The mosquitoes come in a swarm as nightfall descends. I scratch and pull at my skin. Rushing along, I must find shelter and people.
A dog trapped in a fragmented house barks loudly, then wails louder as I approach. It sounds fearsome. Further on, the drone of a lone generator echoes over the countryside. I round a hill and the generator's pump and slam get closer. I see a house light.
As I approach the house, headlights come down the road. A truck pulls up next to me and stops. It is not Mike Robichaux. A man inside the truck says he is a Houma Indian who has lived at Isle de Jean Charles all his life. "Only Indians live out here — and I mean no offense to you — but white people don't give a shit about Indians."
(Istanbul) The legendary music clubs and belly dancers were the first to go. There’s no longer a trace of the lively coffeeshops or balcony restaurants. And now, the once-narrow alleyways are strangely opened wide: because of the bulldozers, Sulukule, a gypsy settlement within Istanbul that dated back to before the 15th century, has become nothing more than a memory.
Nearly 1,000 years of history have been unceremoniously demolished over the past six months as the last buildings of this relic of the Ottoman empire have been razed. The roar of bulldozers was unbearable for those within earshot, but barely a sound has reverberated throughout the rest of Istanbul, Turkey and the world, as Europe’s oldest permanent gypsy settlement was torn down.
Feature Article published by WWW.NEWSPLINK.COM on July 15th, 2009. The New Orleans Press Club gave this article honorable mention in their best on-line articles of 2009.
Eugene Hicks, 65, leans on the front counter of his Clarksdale, Miss. restaurant, and his elbows thud on the wooden countertop. Hicks is a large man, and his establishment, Hicks’ Hot Tamales and Barbeque Banquet Hall, is a local institution. With one meaty finger he scratches his chin and moustache, thinking. The scratching sounds like sandpaper on wood.
“I don’t rightly know, but I suppose the hot tamale came up to us in the Mississippi Delta from Mexico. At least that is how I heard it.”
When? During the Mexican-American War? Brought by returning soldiers or captured Mexicans? Migrant laborers?
Hicks raises his eyebrows. He doesn’t know. Like everyone I talked to in the area, he is not certain how the hot tamale—traditionally a south of the border food staple—traveled to the Mississippi Delta. Neither guidebooks nor history books have an answer. Not even an Internet search was able to crack this enduring mystery.
DULAC, LOUISIANA — Some days the only people she serves are wayward journalists and well meaning volunteers come down to south Louisiana after the nation's worst oil spill. Some days not even the journalists or volunteers come. The locals have long since abandoned her restaurant.
Eugene Hicks, 65, leans on the front counter of his Clarksdale, Miss. restaurant, and his elbows thud on the wooden countertop. Hicks is a large man, and his establishment, Hicks’ Hot Tamales and Barbeque Banquet Hall, is a local institution. With one meaty finger he scratches his chin and moustache, thinking. The scratching sounds like sandpaper on wood.