Your article in BB "Palestine, Israel...Conflict in the Occupied Territories" earlier this year was provocative. Several readers told me they thought it was an accurate statement of the issues and that you simply don’t see the Palestine-Israel conflict presented in this unblinking way by the mainstream media. Do you find it a problem to voice your sentiments about Israel and Palestine when so many liberal people here are Jewish. Is that a delicate situation?

It’s something people need to confront right now. That this is not about Jews, its about human rights, it’s projected genocide in Palestine. It’s an issue people don’t want to deal with, they don’t want to negotiate, don’t want to meet it head on because there are very high feelings on every side of it.

And it’s important to address the issue.

People particularly don’t want to talk about it in the framework of opposing Israeli actions right up front. They want to approach it in terms of the equivalency of Israeli and of Palestinian attack and counter-attack. And there’s none of that, in my view. This whole thing has its roots in the occupation. Yet it is reported and discussed largely in terms of body counts.

What if Britain had attached the population of Northern Ireland every time the IRA blew up a pub? This is what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. The fact that they’re attacking an occupied territory, a territory occupied by themselves is simply…. The conflict will never end until, first of all, their attacks on the occupied territories stop, and second, until they withdraw from the occupied territories. And allow those people some space to live.

And it’s complicated by our political makeup here and with the Israeli lobby. And the liberal, Democratic … So much of the informed part of that is Jewish and how much of that is pro-Israel? That’s interesting, too.

Well, there is more dissent in Israel than there is in the United States.

Do you think so?

Oh, absolutely. I don’t know if you have heard recently but I guess it’s up to about 350 reserve officers have signed a petition and a statement that they are refusing to serve in the Occupied Territories. There’s a real solid resistance to the occupation in Israel and …

Here, you think there’s more unanimity among Jewish voters?

Yes. Here there is very little space to talk.

Because I have friends who think that it is not right.

Well, we need to speak out more. Because we’re looking at the end of a people here. Sharon WILL destroy the Palestinians and Palestine if he is given free rein. And he needs to be stopped.

The Palestinians, do they have an ethnic identity?

Yes. I have a book called Before the Diaspora which chronicles the history of the region. There are 500 photographs and text by Walid Khalidi, a Palestinian scholar. This book goes deep into the origins of the conflict there. In a way the region was, didn’t have a strong central government. And people literally lived together, it was multiethnic, it was kind of city-state oriented. You know, they all respected each other. Another book, Out of Place, Edward Said’s autobiography, also gives a perspective on the conflict.

Let’s talk about Nicaragua and El Salvador. In your notes on this trip and earlier trips, you mentioned NicNet. Is that a humanitarian organization?

No, it’s a Solidarity network.

When you say Solidarity…a lot of people think Communism.

No, it grew out of the Sandinista revolution – In the early 80’s North Americans wanted to support this struggle for a new society after decades of the Somosa dictatorship. The Sandinistan movement overthrew Somosa. Took power in 1979. In the early 1980s, Reagan sponsored a war against the Sandinistans - in the early days of the Sandinistan revolution.

We were threatened in some way by the change of power? Our capital interests?

Yes, in the sense that Nicaragua was trying to build itself as its own nation.

Similar to Cuba?

Exactly. Nicaragua wanted to be independent of U.S. influence for the first time in a century. We had invaded several times. Sandino was a leader of the struggle in the Twenties and early Thirties against the U.S. Marines. He drove them out of Nicaragua with his peasant army. Sandino was assassinated in 1934 by Somosa. It was cold…cold. Somosa invited him to Managua. Made a deal with him. Sandino disarmed. He was at a dinner party with some Somosa supporters and people in the government of Somosa. Somosa just had a group of military people take him and two of his cohorts down a deserted road and shot them. And then massacred hundreds of disarmed Sandinistans in the countryside. This ushered in Somosa’s rule. Somosa was a man referred to by Franklin Roosevelt as "a son of a bitch, but OUR son of a bitch." And that encapsulates our approach to human rights in the Third World. Who we side with depends on what is convenient for U.S. interests.

I remember how terrible it was when Allende was assassinated. It stands out as a horrible, egregious…

It was September 11^th. In any case, the Nicaraguan government invited North Americans to visit Nicaragua in 1983. Sandinistans had won a vicious civil war in which tens of thousands of Nicaraguans died. Somosa fire-bombed his own population. He murdered, tortured. And the Sandinistans won the civil war, militarily when Somosa’s National guard and military just collapsed in the late Seventies. People got behind the popular uprising and in 1979 Somosa had to leave the country.

Is he still alive?

No. He was assassinated in, I think, Argentina. In the early 80s.

Isn’t Argentina weird? A place where all these people go…Nazis…

Yeah, Argentina is a whole other issue. It’s very Europeanized in many ways. There was a large influx of Germans.

Do you think it has a history of accepting repressive, fascist type people?

I know there was a period of extreme repression in Argentina when about 10 thousand were assassinated by the military. There’s been a large German influence in Central America for the entire 20^th century.

But anyway, not to get off the subject.

No, that’s ok. Argentina is fascinating. Right now, its economy has collapsed.

I know. You know where I see a lot more about Argentina than on our news? I’ve been watching the Italian news to try to improve my Italian and they covered Argentina closely. They cover happenings in so many more countries than we see here. Here we have Israel and Palestine and Afghanistan and that’s about it.

The BBC is better that way also. That’s one of the great benefits of getting out of the country, see the world from a different vantage point. Especially in the Third World.

Do you feel like the ugly American when you are there?

No, not at all. Because I don’t live like that. I don’t live in a fancy hotel. I live with families there.

Do you hear comments from people you’re with about Americans?

America is fascinating to people of Central America, especially today. It’s more a fascination with things America than a political approach to knowing us. The economies of Central America are largely based on money sent back from North America…people working here and sending money back to relatives. Especially El Salvador – that’s the largest single item in their economy.

That’s interesting. You assume that about the Caribbean but….

Guatemala and Mexico like El Salvador depend on money earned in the States and sent back there. Nicaragua not as much. We’re linked because of geography and that’s one of the most obvious links, people working here in low level labor jobs and sending money back there.

It sounded, from reading your notes, like you divide your time between contributing physical labor to various projects and talking and strategizing with social-minded people there.

Well, in 1983, I worked in a coffee brigade, the 1^st Internationalist Brigade from North America to support the Sandinistas. We went out into the northwest corner of Nicaragua and cut coffee during the coffee harvest – from December 1983 to January 1984. That was a tremendous Solidarity experience. We met many of the leaders of the revolution…Daniel Ortegas and others.

In 1985, I spent a month there doing the same thing. The war was looking grim then for the Sandinistans. The U.S. was spending millions arming the Contras.

In 1986, the U.S. was found to be in violation of international law. We had blown up oil refineries, killed hundreds of workers, including a lot of Solidarity workers. This was the years of Iran Contra – there were drugs involved. Money was being funneled from Iran to the contras under cover of civilian deals. People like Oliver North, John Poindexter, John Negroponte who at this time was ambassador to Honduras, Eliot Abrams, Otto Reich were all involved in this effort to illegally channel arms to the Contras. We were fighting a full-scale war against the Nicaraguans. mostly based in Honduras and the northern part of Nicaragua was mostly under siege. The economy was stretched to the limit. It was a time of crisis.

So I did not visit Nicaragua in 1986, I participated in a protest called the Pledge of Resistance and we sat in at the capital after Congress passed the appropriations to the Contras which violated international law. Eighteen of us were convicted of crimes in a 6-week trial in Federal Court, convicted of sitting in on three counts of criminal violations related to that. We didn’t have to do jail time, but there it is.

So you have a criminal record?

Yeah. My Co-defendants were David Dellinger, some great people…

Patti Smith?

(laughs) No.

She’s still quite an activist.

I know. I like her latest album, "Gung-ho." After the trial, I went to nursing school. So I didn’t return to Central America until 1997.

That was a long time…12 years. Were you politically involved during that time?

Yes, and there were periods when I was pretty much consumed by my nursing jobs. I was working full time for a period.

Do you love it? Nursing?

Oh, it’s interesting.

What kind of work do you do?

Right now, I’m working in nursing home, part time.

Your nursing kind of keeps your political career going along, doesn’t it?

Yes, it does. So in 1997, I went to El Salvador for a month and attended a program at the Center for the Exchange of Solidarity in El Salvador They are attempting to create different conditions for the majority of Salvadorans who live in poverty. This is a region of 150 million people who live on less than $2 a day. During the war years in Central America it was front page news. When the war was over, we left an exhausted nation. Very similar to what we did in Afghanistan where we fought, left, and now have returned to bomb again.

In El Salvador we have a different kind of brutality going on – it’s the brutality of the globalization of the world economy. The new conquistadors carry briefcases. We were talking about coffee before. These countries have an export-based economy based on coffee. When the price drops out of the commodity, they’re helpless. Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala have all taken a huge hit this year as coffee prices dropped. Because the World Bank decided Vietnam should have a coffee crop. Flooded the market with a cheaper product. At the same time, Brazil also came back. So the world has a glut of coffee which drops the prices right out. Anyway, the region is really in big trouble.

Do you plan to go back next year?

Yes, I will

Do you feel it makes a difference?

Yes, last year we had a big fundraiser because of the earthquakes in El Salvador, and I was going there, I ended up taking down over $2,000. During 2000, I worked on a work brigade near Managua in Nicaragua. We were building houses after Hurricane Mitch. Seven hundred thousand houses are needed in El Salvador – many live in substandard housing – plastic shacks, no sanitary water or sewage. They have a saying, hacienda dignam – housing with dignity. They are trying to build a real community, not just houses. They need all the services that go with housing. There’s a desperate need for water services. I have pictures here of Managua’s sewage system which is literally open ditches, not even concrete lined, that run directly into Lake Managua – black water. Not only that, people live right up to the edges of these things.

In 2001, the Council of Spanish Speaking Organizations chipped in $7 thousand – for victims of Hurricane Mitch. I try to maintain contact with them. This year I visited the CSSO people. They sent me their 800-page report on how their projects are doing, and I’m translating it now, which is a struggle.

You have been doing this for a long time. Do you have friends and associates who do this as well. Are you just a strange, unusual, saint-like person?

(Laughs) No, no, no. I’ve been working with the American solidarity group at LEPOCO. We’ve mostly done political activity here. One of the big efforts is the drive to close the School of the Americas. Over the last few years I’ve spent a lot of energy working on that. I’ve gone down to Fort Benning for the last four years. There again, I’ve crossed the line of trespass technically. But you’re trespassing with thousands of other people and they can only arrest so many. I was taken into custody once, but I’ve haven’t ever been arrested there.

Do they profile people? If you have an arrest record from another protest…

It suppose it could come up. You know, I really believe that the U.S. right now is a rogue state and that we are in a situation in which the principles of international law as defined in the UN Charter of the international accord on human rights... I mean, the Nuremberg principles require us to oppose actions that violate international law. We violate international law at our whim. Israel has been violating international law with its occupation of Palestine right now, and we support Israel at every step…Our use of weapons of mass destruction.

How much does these issues keep you awake at night?

Oh, I don’t know (laughs) I play golf, I’m not totally obsessed with issues.

No, but it seems like a consuming interest, you go back year after year.

There’s always insights, you try to go a little further each time.

Have you considered doing something permanent down there? Starting a school perhaps.

Yes, maybe next year. Go for a few months, try to plan some type of position in El Salvador or Nicaragua.

Are you interested in gardening? When you go to these places, do you notice the flora?

Yes, El Salvador has been devastated. It is 90 percent deforested. But Nicaragua has vast areas of virgin forest that are under threat of development and tillage by the resource companies - gold, silver, timber… Asian, Euro, American interests. Now there is the dry canal project. Vanderbilt ran a steamship line for prospectors during the Gold Rush. It took them down the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, up the San Juan River to Lake Nicaragua. Then it’s a short rail ride across the Pacific and a steamship ride back up to San Francisco. William Walker, an American, set up as governor, playing off various Nicaraguan political groups off each other. So our history with this region is fraught with these economic boondoggle ideas. Up to the current obsession with this dry canal, which would go right through native Raman lands and bisect the ecological corridor of Central America that connects the South American rain forests with the North. It follows the Caribbean Coast up through Guatemala and Mexico to Belize. The corridor is important for species management - plants and animals - and bird migratory paths. The Bush-Fox Superhighway would run from Texas to Panama. Bush is visiting the region on March 24th. This superhighway will not benefit the people, it will open the region up to us. What is needed is infrastructure – water, labor initiatives that increase their living wage.

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of the need and the tininess of individual effort?

There are six billion people on earth. Things happen in nonlinear ways in human history. Everybody develops a certain flow or consistency in their life, so for me, I just try to maintain a certain level of involvement.

So many people who are activists seem contemptuous toward the rest of humanity - the noninvolved. You don’t seem that way.

A bumper sticker I see says, Live Simply That Other People May Simply Live – it’s kind of a contradiction to see that on the bumper of a foreign-made vehicle, driving to work, when we go to the supermarket, order by mail, use credit cards. We live in this culture and it’s absurd to think that one of us is that much different from another because of our stated views. We’re creatures of North America in the early 21^st century and live in this white enclave. A huge question to ponder is, What is your responsibility, what is your complicity? What’s the difference between the SUV and the Honda Civic? There is a difference, but how much really from the point of view of an El Salvadoran, for example. I know someone who worked for the government telephone company. When it was privatized, he lost his job. He is living in poverty. What does it mean to him, the choice of the Civic over the SUV? One of us can’t really point fingers at another. Your life is where you create your politics and not in what you espouse.

I know. This morning I saw an SUV with a bumper sticker about sailing and I have a certain reaction, then I see the NRA sticker in the upper corner of the window and immediately react in a different way. And I felt hostile to that person with the NRA sticker. Then I was thinking how I wished I would stop doing that because I hate the way this whole debate has been going over Ron Angle. Cut and dried, if it’s cut and dried we might as well kill him, put him to death (Joe: Nooooo) Well, you know what I mean. You have to talk about it. We might as well kill all the conservatives if that’s how we really feel. And that’s not the answer. His remarks are disgusting; he’s pandering to the lowest common denominator. That’s my first response. I also know he’s the only voice of reform on that Council, so rather than have him step down, I would like to see him realize the damage these talk shows with remarks like his do. They keep further polarizing society. We need to win people over and educate them, not stuff them down in their own little ghetto and ostracize them.