arisbe | Sgrena Revisited

This is the lead story on Crux, a Catholic site that might be fairly described as conservative if not out and out reactionary. But don't let that stop you from clicking. The Sgrena story seems to be no longer the property of the tinfoil hat brigade. My own attitude is, Wait a century or so and we might be able to make a good guess about what went down. But it looks like the Europeans, I mean Old Europe, yes, Catholic Europe, is making its guesses even as we speak. Type. Whatever.

Was the victim of the shooting really the Italian 002? Was he really on the phone to the PM's office, if only to tell his wife he was coming home, when he was shot? The implications are staggering, even if he wasn't taken out by a death squad triangulating his cell phone.

Is there a secular Ba'athist faction among the Iraqi rebels, including Chaldean Catholics in communication with the Vatican? It seems probable, though the sources may have as much reason to exaggerate its importance as Washington may to ignore it.

It doesn't look good. But to me it never did. Then again, I'm a conservative, not a neoconservative.

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The implications are staggering in any event but the Chaldean angle is interesting and sad for me personally. I know that Ba'ath served as a useful (maybe even crucial) pluralist umbrella for non-Muslim non-Arab ethnicities like the Assyrians and of course Tariq Aziz and his people. Nowadays they're drowning, having been artfully snipped out of any triplicate vision of shia/sunni/kurdish Iraq.

It is heartbreaking.

I take little comfort in the fact that the Assyrian-Chaldean community is flourishing in North America, with the Asyrrian Patriarchate (http://cired.org/) located in Chicago.

We were speaking of what America is all about. That is part of it -- our being the second homeland of so many diasporic peoples. Including (it is March 17) my own.

That's right! Plenty of Assyrians in the Midwest (and more every week), so at least the community survives somewhere, but I hate to see such an old tree finally fall down.

On the home front, I have to admit that I've only had a chance to leaf through the Needleman Soul of America and thought it was a nice enough first step, but only a first step. Has there been any more sustained follow-through anywhere, or are people thinking that he's actually taken us where we need to be? For example, I don't see him really getting under the skin of what it means to be a radically diasporic culture (a land for many "peoples without land" as it were), which is such a huge component of your own work and the joy of NYC.

Speaking of which, today everyone is Irish but I hope you can at least play some music if getting up and around isn't convenient.

Yes, it's only a first step, and I don't think he wants to take the next one. He probably thinks everyone needs to do this for himself, into the esoteric side of his own spiritual tradition, birthright or adopted. In his case, I think Fourth Way.

That's all right. It gives me a clearer idea of what needs to be done, and what I may be able to do myself.

Thursday I did visit my Irish podiatrist (or maybe it's her husband who is Irish). I did not say, Me fate is in your hands. But she did tell me that my bloodwork shows normal uric acid, so I celebrated with a Mc Sorley's Black and Tan at the local.

I suggested to an Old Calendrist priest that he dress up with one of those big green hats on March 17 Julian.

I know, it is heartbreaking to see US have a hand in finishing off one of the oldest Christian cultures left.

Sgrena Revisited

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