Posted by panch from host-148-244-221-7.block.alestra.net.mx (148.244.221.7) on Friday, April 12, 2002 at 12:52PM :
Itīs been six months since her convention in San Jose. I say "hers" because thatīs what it was...as the general manager told me, ..."Ms Bejan is our one customer, you are all her guests".
Sheīd convinced them that we were a bad lot. I wasnīt the only one labelled a trouble maker...we were all suspect from the moment we enetered her hotel...she had it for the week-end. The security people were at high alert even overreacting, as in the one incident I participated in, in which the head of security punched an Assyrian young man in the back, only to bounce off. That drove him balistic and he radioed for the armed Policemen, hiding upstairs because enough people had said they didnīt appreciate paying extra to visit an armed camp. The cops swarmed over the kid, and though he never resisted a one of them...they hustled him out and gave him a good dose in the dark parking lot. Jackie put them up to it...I donīt mean she actually told them to beat and arrest us...but her insistence on uniformed police...and armed at that, a first for that Hotel and probably for all others, had them primed and ready to go off...another distinction these leaders can confer on us...creating an atmosphere where anything could have happened.
It was an atmosphere in which a question, very civily put to a gigantic ass of a man whom she yet treats as an honored guest, got me threatened with explusion. It was a convention at which Gabriella Yonan, a bizarre German woman, once married to an Assyrian...a woman who not only had her airfare paid for by you, and her suite...but who further insisted on having her meals paid for as well by you all. But she is German, she is white...she has "honored" us all by taking an interest in us chitlin babies by writing about us, freaks that we are...therefore she would be an honored guest while I was kicked out and my sculptures, paid for by my own labor, were thrown in a corner and damaged. Gabreilla was there as a feather in Jackie's cap, not to do anything for you.
There are lots of German authors, even several who have taken an interest in us in the past. We have only one public monument installed anywhere in 2500 years...and it was done by an Assyrian, paid for by Assyrians. Do you think every Jew artist or Italian or Frenchman is a paragon of virtue? Do you think anyone cares?
No matter what you think of me personally, it was still at the San Jose convention, for the first time in my 23 years of attendance that I was treated that way...told to become the ONLY artist there who could not sell, thereby not only wounding my family, but effectively killing the Hammurabi Monument for which I had sold $90,000 worth of my own sculpture to raise funds. I was also to be the only one who must voluntarily renounce his First Amendment right to free speech by promising not to answer the questions put to me as to what happened to the Shumirum Monument...because Jackie didnīt want people to know the truth...as she threatened John Pirali for daring to interview me on his TV show. For agreeing to all this, I would have been allowed the privilege of displaying my sculpture, but denied the means to earn what it takes to continue doing the work...as if to say if I wanted to do it...go ahead, but it means nothing to Jackie, or the rest of you.
Jackie did manage to earn some few thousand dollars more than any other convention...and that was really what she was after. She wanted to prove to the "men" that she is better than they are. NOT that she is a capable woman, but that she is a better Man. That extra money was made by charging you all more for your rooms. Hell I can make more money by charging more...whereīs the achievement? If people wanted to see friends and walk the lobby...they had to pay Jackie a surcharge, a "Gratness Fee".
That money will undoubtedly do some good in Iraq...but it is a drop in the bucket, all but futile for the people there and their needs...but oh so useful for the Jackster. That extra money was supposed to buy her your goodwill. Like Sargon Lewie who, when he was president, made a big show out of delivering $5,000 to Iraq HIMSELF...expenses paid...because he wanted to be sure they got the money...and knew who gave it to them. This president from hell who owns porno video stores and became our GRAT LEEDER for four dismal years...to by followed by Golani, the Shrimp of Assyria...and god knows what "heights" he will aspire to during his tenure...enough to make sure a chihuahua dosnīt drown him in pee.
It was the most shameful convention I ever attended...shameful for the treatment meted out to this communities one professional sculptor...for YOUR sakes ya dummies! Shameful for the fawning over yet another Kraut who deigns to notice us...shameful for its introduction of armed guards and Police to patrol us and watch over us...to beat us too at the slightrest provocation and eject us at a nod from one person. Shameful for its insistence that $40,000, in cash, was something grand, something to blind us to what else went on, things money canīt buy orrectify.
That money is less than useless if it isnīt backed up by the kind of behavior and understanding and humanity that would allow us to put aside our petty and personal aspirations and make something grand and well known of our name in this country...where much more than $40,000, earned for us by Jackie, and at that cost, could be gained elsehwre, as other ethnic communities in America are doing.
Jackieīs interest, like that of all of them, is to keep us enthralled to them...keep us under them, convinced that they know what is best. There are ways in which we could make this Heritage ring out in glory in this country...but the Jackies and Dimrods and Golanis donīt want that...they would have nothing to do any longer, their places easily taken up by really impressive people...of which we have several....several who are not low enough to take advantage of the position a Jackster or Dimrod insist on keeping us in.
No one..no Muslim, no law, stands in our way here. Only Jackie stood in your way of seeing those sculptures, with Atourīs help. Only John Nimrod has kept us all from seeing the Shumirum installed six years ago on the campus of one of the most exalted Univeristies this country has produced, two blocks from THE finest academic center for the study of Assyriology in the land and among the best in the world. Only Jackie stopped the Shumirum from coming to San Jose because she couldnīt take it over, because I was no more beholden to her than I would be to Dimrod, or anyone else, when it comes to knowing what is proper to do with the monument I conceived, designed, funded and made...because I would NOT take direction on these matters from people so obviously bereft of the slightest understanding of these things...especially an idiot like Atour who would dare go have my sculpture welded at Ford Motor Comapnay, where they have enough to do making cars that donīt kill people.
It was the most shameful display, JUST because everything was supposed to be excused because of the cash. Those people worked like mules, tirelessly and around the clock, I take nothing away from them...but in the end for what? So people could visit under armed surveilance...so a Kraut could cage a ride and a meal...dance and eat bad food...listen to the same music and watch last years tits sag even further and the muscles turn to flab? No...it wasnīt even for that...it was to showcase Jackie...and I think her membership will begin to see that more clearly.
They can begin to glimpse it in the way she has proceeded since then...in using them once again to serve her own purposes, to keep me out of there at all costs because the last shred of integrity she may have had disappears the minute I walk in there an errect member...without her having ever gained the benefit of it either.
-- panch
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