Cinco de Mayo, Courtesy of the French

(City of Puebla, Mexico. North view, toward the Malinche Volcano)

East of Mexico City lies the landlocked state of Puebla, now formally named Heróica Puebla de Zaragoza. On May 5, 1862, La Puebla de los Angeles, Town of the Angels, hosted the scene of an arrogant Napoléon III and the Imperial French Army's comeuppance by a poorly supplied yet tenacious Mexican Army. At the time, America was a two nation country dragging the southern part back into reunification one bloody battlefield at a time with no real interest in Mexico's internal strife. Besides, America considered France a friend. The people of Pueblo harbored no such illusions. The whole American friendship thing exited with the idea that an emperor or monarchal rule went against what the young war torn nation had fought against before the French republicans lopped off Marie Antoinette's head. Mexican men & women fought off a better supplied Second Empire army that had a disticnt advantage of twice as much manpower to thwart the colonization of central Mexico. It took six years before France threw in the towel when they went in expecting an early crushing of dissent victory after installing Emperor Napoleon's puppet as a Mexican Emperor, the soon to be executed Archduke Ferdinand Maximillian of Austria by Benito Juarez's order.

Photo of escaramuza - women in the Mexican Revolution - courtesy Nelvin C. Cepeda/Union Tribune

In a turnabout induced by time and immigration, Cinco de Mayo is now very popular in the United States but remains a regional phenomenon in Mexico. Pueblo's battle did not decide the outcome, but what a morale booster that Emperor Napoléon III and the 8,000 French soldiers could be beaten by the few people under the command of General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín. The Execution of Maximillian I (and only) of Mexico was captured by the renowned Spanish painter, Édouard Manet in a painting of the ame name. In the 21st century, Cinco de Mayo captures the American imagination while giving those of Mexican descent a means to celebrate a part of its rich heritage.

French interventionism, the first time, went under the anglicized rubric of the Pastry War (1838 -1839) goes by the name, Primera Intervención Francesa en México, in Spanish. The word croissant does not imediately conjur up images of Mexico, but entire battles and many nations including the Republic of Texas became charbroiled over a French baker demanding payment for a ruined shop in Mexico. A French blockade ensued with Americans eventually aiding the Europeans resulting in eventually bringing the venerable Santa Anna out of retirement.

Cinco de Mayo is now also a cause to celebrate Mexican cuisine and drinks. In a spirit of patriotism the Chiles en nogada uses the three colors of the Mexican flag. Food influences allow people to go forward presenting each with treasures from their own culture. The margarita enjoys a variety of flavors, yet for a few of the orange flavored liqueurs a mexico product with a French label Patrón Citrónge, or the imported Cointreau , blue curaçao produces the stunning blue margarita. Yum. Add a little mariachi music and the celebration is ON!




It was setting my teeth on edge that the most prominent authors on Cinco de Mayo were Anglo. So after looking here is a great history for the younder set, Cinco de Mayo:Yesterday and Today, from Maria Christina Urrutia and Rebecca Orozco.

Emancipation Day After Watch Night

For most, today heralds a 2009 bright with promise while still carrying the backpack of burdens from the last year. Seven score and 6 years ago, in a square "Oval Office" in the 1812 torched White House, now known as the Lincoln Bedroom, President Abraham Lincoln retired after a really well attended huddled masses meet and greet to sit down and sign one of this nation's most important documents. His hand swollen from having shaken so many others, he had to pause before putting quill to paper. The witnesses Secretary of State Seward and the office clerk, father and son, were aghast that maybe he had changed his mind like many were urging him to do to not inflame the Unionists or the Confederates. It was a temporary moment designed to let the swelling in his hand subside so his signature would be recorded as strong and firm for posterity on the Emancipation Proclamation. He also used his full first name to mark the formality and solemness the occassion required, the First Watch Night. (Watch Night, the painting is part of the White House Art Collection)

The Emancipation Proclamation
January 1, 1863

By the President of the United States of America:

A Proclamation.

Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:

"That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

Famous paintings depict the moment the Words of Freedom being carried forth into slave hovels

nation on Watch Night. It was literally symbolic on all levels. Everybody knew the hour was upon them on New Years Day as President Lincoln made his intent known to friend and foe alike. Lincoln told his Cabinet officers in July of 1862 once he settled on the idea many urged him to wait until the Union won a big victory to increase the power of a document that was in reality quite limited in its scope. It literally looks at slaves as the spoils of war with the victor setting the terms and conditions. (Painting by Henry Louis Stephens 1863)

All of the things that led to the war - the first Constitution and the 3/5ths accounting, the failed Missouri Compromise (1820), the La Amistad Mutiny (1839) one of the worst Supreme Court idiot decisions ever - Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), and the rebellion of abolitionist John Brown (1859). Through it all the Underground Railroad (National Geographic does a tour and puts you as slave making the intense decisions to stay or go on) carried people to safety out of slavery using clever gospel songs, quilts and the homes of complete strangers who Believed in the righteous cause.

Today around the nation, there are services marking the historic event that set in motion the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution that nullified some portions of the racist lawmaking. This year, the advent of impending historic presidential change imbues the ceremonies at midnight with a lot more meaning and four hundred years of reflection. It is not without a full measure of devotion to historical symmetry that Lincoln freed the slaves and it is his bicentennial year of which a biracial president from the land of Lincoln will lead the commemoration.

The Emancipation Proclamation also will be read during Watch Night at the historic Brick Baptist Church on St. Helena Island. Its ceremony will begin around 10:30 p.m. Brick Baptist is the oldest church on St. Helena Island. The church was built by slaves in 1855 for plantation owners, and former slaves assumed control of the building in 1861 after the Battle of Port Royal.

"Watch Night is a way of thanking God and just being thankful because we're alive to see the dawn of another year," said the church's the Rev. Abraham Murray. "I think this year will be a little bit more significant. We're grateful that we have an African-American who will be installed as president, but our hope is in the Lord, so we just thank the Lord for what the Lord has brought us." (President Abraham Lincoln's March 4, 1861 Oath of Office)

The movie Amistad is just over a decade old now and has lost none of its power to provoke shock and thought at what America was into today's new dynamic. A must see DVD. Perfectly priced for a glorious viewing at under $10 for this and the next Watch Night Party.

Happy Emancipation Day!

Green Zone Under Attack - Again

Photo— Tina Susman in Baghdad

KAPOW! Boom! Incoming!!! Those are just a few of the new sounds and shelling coming from Baghdad's supposedly ultra secure Green Zone. The puppet president of Iraq called a truce, ceasefire or invoked the mercy rule to get the violence to stop in Sadr City after he decided to borrow Bush swagger and invade when his newly minted US trained troops went up against Iraq's best armed militia. It was a full on rout for al-Sadr's team. Splurge to surge on protecting the Main Area set aside for American forces, contractors, aid workers, a journalist or two and enough worker bee diplomats to fill the biggest and most grandiose embassy ever built with US tax dollars is an embarrassing failure today after all the mortar fire.


General Petraeus's Surge command was supposed to make his nominal dotted-line boss, W, look good before his long awaited happy talk report was presented before a weak willed Congress. The timing of these attacks in Sadr City and the Green Zone is meant to cast aspersions on the president and his chief Iraq military commander. A more triumphal charm offensive was aimed at Congress with an RPG - Report Progress is Great as directed by the White House that vets his words and Ambassador Ryan Crocker's. Instead, more than thirty people suffered injuries and three American troops lay dead when the smoke cleared Sunday in Baghdad's Green Zone safer sanctuary.

The attacks also came as Iraq’s national security council intensified pressure on the Mahdi Army, the armed wing of the political group led by Moktada Al-Sadr, the powerful anti-American Shiite cleric, to disarm. In a statement, the council declared that all political parties must immediately dissolve their militias and surrender their weapons if they wished to participate in elections. (Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty Images Sadr City)

The timing of the statement was seen as message meant in particular for Mr. Sadr, who represents the biggest political threat to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and his associates, and who derives much of his support from Sadr City, the sprawling area of Baghdad that has been encircled by American and Iraqi troops for more than a week.

After the Iraqi soldiers came under attack, American forces, equipped with Abrams tanks, and troop-carrying Strykers and Bradley fighting vehicles rumbled to the scene. An American helicopter fired at least two Hellfire missiles at militia fighters armed with rocket propelled grenades, and blasted one of their vehicles. Later at least one militia-fired rocket hit the Jamilla market, a heavily frequented part of Sadr City, where clashes left at least 20 people dead, Iraqi officials said.

At large whoosh from a nearby rocket disrupted a briefing held by Iraqi and American commanders for a small group of reporters at the lone American Army and Iraqi combat outpost in Sadr City, prompting correspondents and soldiers to duck for their lives. The news conference, given by Gen. Abud Qanbar Hashim, the Iraqi commander for Baghdad, and Maj. Gen. Jeffrey W.Hammond, who leads the American division charged with securing the capital, began as bursts of gunfire rattled nearby streets.

Hidebound leathery Americans still trying to justify that the military is winning a war that shifted a couple of years ago to the political and diplomatic fronts are out of step or shouting Remember the Maine! A spate of unending violence in Mesopotamia screamed for desperate measures. Enter Mr. Bush's last seven-11 Camo Gucci Gulp Surge with his magical thinking heir apparent with a forty ounce of Bush koolaid elixir, John McCain. See John McCain crowing that the Surge is working even though when he was heavily guarded while traipsing around Baghdad, he could not go back to the same market he went to last year when he falsely claimed things were getting better as violence wet out of control. McCain claims the Maliki official Iraq forces did pretty well - oh goodness, that's some might powerful bush league stuff he drinks.

The Republican Party's presumptive nominee for president, Senator John McCain said Sunday Iraq's military performed "pretty well" during its recent assault in the southern Iraqi city of Basra despite mixed results of the battle.

He said such an assault would have been unthinkable just nine months ago.

Check your television again because its a shame if that's how folk's get the latest news on what current tragedy has befallen Iraq during the American invasion, occupation, forced purple finger democracy, re-invasion, reoccupation, assisted executions, political meddling, Surge 1 moving into super-sized Surge-Stay-the-Course. American TV media (MIA) mostly abandoned Iraq because its too expensive to cover full time, to say nothing of the realities of danger. With the lack of representatives for the American populace reporting everyday, many decided the Surge - patent pending - was doing just fine. Not.

There is no progress on the requirements to get some political laws passed on sharing oil revenue. Lately, Iran is showing more clout in Iraq with helping to broker the Shi'a stand down and al-Sadr deciding when to agree fighting against a fellow Shiite. Bush's guy, President Maliki, is being out negotiated too. But hey, Condi's State Department re-approved the Iraq contract for Blackwater services, even after incurring the wrath of Congress and the public's after they allegedly shot first, maimed and killed innocents in Baghdad, then claimed they were fired upon while protecting an American.



Released tomorrow is Patrick Cockburn's latest book which is incredibly timely. Entitled, Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shi'a Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq, offers a perspective that shows insight into the most powerful Shi'a in Iraq with ties Iran.

The United States of Torture

John Yoo has much to be despised for, but the history books are yet to be written cataloging the US's sweeping powers on who could be outside US law, remain a citizen and torture the Hell out of whom they chose. Bybee is the signatory name on the March 14, 2003 doc, but the 81 page memo magically appeared the day after his exit from the DOJ from Yoo. The first drafts of history are replete with the twisted sadistic thinking of someone who is teaching Berkeley law students today while giving the Torturer-in-Chief sweeping powers to launch those tactics against people suspected - not proven - to be Enemies of the American state.

Former aides to John Ashcroft say the then-attorney general privately dubbed Yoo "Dr. Yes" for being so closely aligned with lawyers at the White House.

From one misbegotten masochistic memo, we have senior Bush bums in the administration acting as if they had a Divine legalistic right to torture, based on their personal game of being judge, jury and torturer - that accidentally executed a few folks, guilty or not. The Rule of Law was captured and taken to Guantanamo Bay never to be seen again by Americans until the grumpy clown that is the US head of State, is out of office.

Mr. Yoo’s memorandum is the latest document to illuminate the legal foundation that Bush administration lawyers used after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to give the White House broad powers to capture, detain and interrogate suspects around the globe.

Some legal scholars said Tuesday that they were amazed at the scope of the memorandum.

“This is a monument to executive supremacy and the imperial presidency,” said Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School and the Washington College of Law at American University. “It’s also a road map for the Pentagon for fending off any prosecutions.”

The memorandum gave the military broad latitude to use harsh interrogation methods. It reasoned that federal laws prohibiting assault were not applicable to military interrogators dealing with members of Al Qaeda because of White House authority during wartime. It also argued that many American and international laws would not apply to interrogations overseas.

“Even if an interrogation method arguably were to violate a criminal statute, the Justice Department could not bring a prosecution because the statute would be unconstitutional as applied in this context,” it reads.

Bottom line is John Yoo and all of the people that used that legal abomination of a memo as a thin sheet of coverup for their nefarious activities, became what they sought to protect Americans from, terrorists. In order to become a More Perfect Union, a nation cannot turn into what it despises and holds in contempt. It took over nine months before the Department of Defense legal beagles thought to rescind the memo - not the practices. The Bush administration used bad karma, mental midget judo, and how-low-can-you-go legal limbo to justify its squalid behavior as being more Noble than the terrorist activity being hatched by a stupendously wealthy terrorist with a turban, salt and pepper beard, hiding out in a first century cave in Tora Bora that was never apprehended for his self-righteous schemes and ponzi Death crimes against the world's people either.

This (mis)administration still cannot speak clearly with one united voice about keeping to the decades old Geneva Conventions, nor define torture without a long drawn out explanation about how the US does not torture but reserves the right to use certain "enhanced" interrogation techniques against enemy combatants who have no habeas corpus rights because the US said so. Logically, if US trained Iraqis captured an American and cut off their fingers without going through the benefit of the Rule of law, its in the same nebulous ballpark.

While the military has banned the use of waterboarding and other harsh methods considered by some rights advocates to be torture, the U.S. Intelligence community has not. Bush authorized the CIA to use waterboarding after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001 but has repeatedly insisted that the United States does not torture prisoners.

The loss of humanity within the folks who pen or follow these anti-freedom legal screeds that inhabited this malevolent administration muck below the River Styx to places deep in a murky underworld to guide their actions, will have lasting ramifications, known as blowback, for US international relationships. How does the US in its wheezing asthmatic moral condition advocate from a position of authority for Human Rights elsewhere, when the Monopoly House is full of mold, mildew and rotting legal memos collecting 200 prisoners and jumps straight into penthouse Hell?

In the Office of Legal Council, OLC, there was someone who disagreed with the memo from Hell. Bush's US tax payer paid lackeys/torture, two time failed Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld & five deferments from military service Dick Cheney oversaw the application of the John Yoo memo into formal US policy and brooked no interference. No senior people were ever indicted in Abu Gharib or the secret US renditions that picked up innocents that were sent to nations where America outsourced its torture. Read all about the legal wars in side the ironic Department of Justice in Jack Goldsmith's book, The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration.

China Spends to Build Their Military Might

China is making it clear that the 2008 Beijing Olympics are part and parcel of their rationale to reorganize, restructure and then use business school speak about what their military spending really means and how the perception of China will be manged as the world looks on. It also provides an opportunity for China's premier, Wen Jiabao, to threaten Taiwan during his presentation at the National Assembly, for its upcoming March 22nd presidential elections and Taiwan's request to the UN on recognition. No public statement by the Chinese goes without a direct challenge to Taiwan's intransigence against the One China policy. The Chinese allocated a substantial portion of funds to increase their known military spending by 18% while standing on a military and rhetorical alert, in instant readiness to thwart any Taiwanese rebellion Beijing deems destructive to their control of the tiny island nation and Asian financial powerhouse.

"All sons and daughters of the Chinese nation are looking forward to them, and they will be of great importance in promoting China's economic and social development and increasing friendship and cooperation between Chinese people and the peoples of other countries," Wen told the 2,970 delegates.

Wen said the changes will "mainly center on changing the way the government functions, appropriately dividing responsibilities among departments that exercise macro-economic regulation, adjusting and improving bodies in charge of management, and improving departments responsible for public administration and public services."...

"We firmly oppose Taiwan independence, secessionist activities and will never allow anyone to separate Taiwan from the motherland ... by any means."

"Attempts of Taiwan independence, secessionist forces to deny the reality that the mainland and Taiwan belong to one and the same China and to undermine peace in the Taiwan strait are doomed to fail," he said.

On multiple levels, the Pentagon does not like to see its supremacy challenged. Especially by a nation that owns so much of the US debt, has its own space program and an army numbering in the millions. China also has a paramilitary operation and ongoing training similar to what the US deploys in Iraq and elsewhere as contractors through the Pentagon and State department, like the notorious Blackwater based in North Carolina and manged by Bush cronies and donors. The US has spent billions of dollars to gain just parity in quelling the violence in Iraq and now faces a challenge; China is free to train an army that is not tied down in two wars and draining its treasury. Cyberwarfare between the US and China has also reached boiling points within the last year as the Pentagon itself came under a cyber attack.

The release of the budget figures came after the Pentagon published a report that expressed concern about China's growing military might and said a lack of transparency from Beijing posed risks to regional and international stability.

The Pentagon said China's military spending in 2007 was between 97 and 139 billion dollars, well in excess of Beijing's official budgeted figure of 45 billion dollars.

The Pentagon further raised concerns over China's development of cruise and ballistic missiles, its testing of an anti-satellite weapon last year and an apparent rise in cyber-espionage emanating from the Asian nation.

"China's expanding and improving military capabilities are changing East Asian military balances; improvements in China's strategic capabilities have implications beyond the Asia-Pacific region," the report said.

Meanwhile, China is on track to present a peaceful happy face to the world after spending billions to make Beijing a show stopper in Olympic history. A war with China would be a multi-modal fight, economics, military means, space, propaganda and cyber warfare are major components that should be keeping the Pentagon up at night while they figure out how to get the billions of dollars the US treasury does not have to train a broken US military against these threats as it fights a hydra monster world wide terrorist organization in just two places without enough attention on the coming resource wars that are consuming the planet. China is choosing its opportunities judiciously in announcing their military intentions and the funds to back up the rhetoric, unlike George Bush.

James Carroll wrote a lyrical empirical history of the Pentagon with its features and foibles in House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power.

China's military is the cause for study from author, Xiaobing Li, in A History of the Modern Chinese Army. This is one of the first books for English speaking and reading audiences about the make up and capability of China's armed forces.

The Dark Arts of Professional Waterboarding

Under oath and with intense questions, the Giant Head of US's spy central, uniformed 4 star General Michael C. Hayden, comes clean with an admission that Bush the Lesser approved express lane waterboarding for three, courtesy of the Geneva Convention signing United Sadists States of America. What a stain on America as the US decried waterboarding US POW's under the Japanese in WWII leading to a treaty, a global accord, an international pact among civilized nations and dictatorships, not to engage in torture. But the Bush Administration and the US Attorney General still cannot define the "special techniques" of torture under Oath to Congress. So, in capturing terrorist tormentors, the US acted like barbarians, but wants to be thought of as the good folks wearing ten gallon white cowboy hats while saving people and puppies.

Our whole goal was not to be like terrorists - but Bush and his farm of cronies mightily begs to differ with that stratagem. He went to the evil dark place by confirming that the US reserves the right to use the drowning practice in the future - during the final year of his cesspool presidency. Gitmo has many prisoners who may shed light on US techniques that the Bush humanoids would rather not discuss since many have never had the right or writ of habeas corpus to tell their side.

The practice, a staple of brutal interrogations from the Spanish Inquistion to Cambodia's Khmer Rouge regime, usually consists of strapping down a captive, covering their face with a cloth, and pouring water onto the cloth.

Fratto underlined that the tactic -- which experts liken to controlled drowning -- is not currently permitted, but left the door wide open to resuming its use.

"The president will listen to the considered judgment of the professionals in the intelligence community and the judgment of the attorney general in terms of the legal consequences of employing a particular technique," he said.

His comments came one day after CIA director Michael Hayden for the first time admitted publicly that the agency had used waterboarding, to question three top Al-Qaeda detainees after the September 11, 2001 terrorist strikes.

An admission of torture comes amidst Congress's laborious dithering and OCD hand wringing on how to manhandle the issue with a stubborn and petulant Bush White House. Hayden's civilian boss, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) or Head Spook Mike McConnell, was giving Congress his gussied up version of the National Threat Assessment. Let's see, the 3 Guests who tested out the new waterboard features are all well known Al Qaeda operatives from the same kingdom, Saudi Arabia, who Bush just pitifully begged King Abdullah for more oil to feed America's energy habit. Th UN, Human Rights groups stage protests but that is to high minded to sway the hardened. Hayden was busy for years at the NSA serving the Pentagon with all the spy techno stuff floating in Orbit that listens to our calls and logs keystrokes before heading from Fort Meade to Langley to clean up the human side of the US spyworld - cough, still wearing military garb.



California scholar and author, Mark Danner, participates in full measure in debates about torture in a terrifying mesmerizing fashion both verbally and in the written word. His book, Torture and Truth: America, Abu Gharib and the War on Terror with the arresting and defining image of torture from Iraq grabs your attention from the cover to the index.

Tapes, Lies, Spies - The CIA's Shredded Creds

Choosing when to lie is terribly hard work. Lies are arriving like hen house clockwork from so many chickens coming to the CIA to roost. More than fifty years old, the spy agency started by Wild Bill Donovan , still cloaks itself in high teenage drama when caught red-handed lying. America's Central Intelligence Agency behaves as if mortally wounded when found bald-face lying. Professional apologists for the Langley agency are then publicly thrown into the swirling cesspool of the seven press circles of hell. Swimming in muck is what they are paid to do, but CIA propagandists just cannot help lauding themselves like The Incredibles for saving America from all manner of evil. That is the executive premise from which many of the CIA abuses flow - like destroying taped evidence and taking oaths they did not have it - until now. Another part of the equation is the Bush administration's incredible expansion of presidential powers to include the intelligence community.

The order to destroy the recordings came from Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then-head of the CIA's clandestine service, which deploys spies overseas and carries out covert operations.

The clandestine service "is almost tribal in nature," said a former senior CIA official familiar with the discussions on the tapes. "They believe that no one else will look out for them so they have to look out for themselves."

Even with the possibility of criminal charges looming, some CIA veterans who worked with Rodriguez said destroying the tapes was the honorable course at an agency that reveres leaders who protect spies and guard agency secrets.

The CIA has maintained that all of its interrogation methods were lawful and approved in advance by the Justice Department. The agency has also defended its handling of the tapes.

Australia just returned the passport of a legal immigrant Indian doctor accused by the CIA of being a terrorist. Australia is mum on the tapes of Habib's interrogations as he was taken by the CIA to Egypt where excruciating torture of prisoners is a known tactic.

It is maddening that the same spy people given license by an unrighteous US president(s) to secretly rendition people to other countries using ghost CIA spy planes, run arms and Stinger missiles to Afghanistan rebels now using them against the USA, and ferry drugs are the same people that told the 9/11 Commission, we have no tapes of our methods and means of extracting information from suspected terrorists strapped to a board with his or her nose clamped and mouth shut as water is forcibly poured down their throats as their feet are higher than their heads. No. Now three entities are investigating the destroyed tape lies, Bush's decimated and political Justice Department, a weak capitulating Congress and the CIA's own Inspector General who is under investigation. Just inspires confidence, doesn't it?

Right now in theaters, is the Tom Hanks & Julia Roberts film collaboration in Charlie Wilson's War premised on the bestselling book by George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest man in Congress and A Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times. Now that was a mighty fine read on how a boozing and womanizing player congressman found out how to help bring down the Soviet Union in Afghanistan with the CIA. The CIA chronicles are in a five-star 2007 book by multiple Pulitzer winner, reporter Timothy Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.

Bethlehem: Peace Came Upon a Midnight Square

A 20 foot high concrete wall keeps Bethlehem isolated as the full scope of Jesus's homeless beginnings in a manger and his death on a cross on the hill a few kilometers away, play out still in modern times with no end in sight. Glimpses of what could be present themselves rarely in the Middle East, but today, Bethlehem hosted thousands of pilgrims in the Spirit of Peace. Palestinians saw the poor, the prominent, the devout, the tourist, the Christian and the Muslim gather together to celebrate and honor the birth of Christ in Manger Square. The Israeli occupation has taken Bethlehem off of the list as a top tourism spot, but the city and its impoverished inhabitants soldier on, bleakly hoping and paying for economic salvation too in their own land.

Sansour also believes that visitors and pilgrims who do come show support but at the same time many are also in Bethlehem as part of "the fairy-tale story of Christmas".

Father Garret Edmonds, a Franciscan monk from California who works with pilgrim groups in Palestine and is spending his fifth Christmas in Bethlehem, said: "There are moments of hope but then everything returns to the status quo. It goes on and off like this all the time."

Father Edmonds also highlighted the increasing erosion of the Church and the increasing number of Christians choosing to emigrate from in Palestine.

"It's important to have a viable, living Church, but if things continue the way they are in 25 years there might not be a living church. Bethlehem could become one giant museum," he said.

The Grotto at the Church of the Nativity had long lines to pay homage to what is believed to be the birthplace of Jesus. In the recent past, security concerns from the 2000 Palestinian uprising dampened enthusiasm for pilgrimages into Bethlehem devastating the local economy with rising unemployment and no other means of income. This year was a different scene with kids in bright red Santa hats under Palestinian led tight security and the usual Bethlehem nativity scene in Nazareth. The Catholic leader called for peace in the Middle East while the Pontiff made Christmas greetings in 60 languages. (AP Photo Kevin Frayer)




And a little child shall lead them... makes for the children's book, from Michal Hudak An Uproar in Bethlehem told from a Christian perspective of the night Jesus was born and the three Magi.