February 28, 2005
1. Social Security and the slippery
slope of program destruction
2. Camilo Mejia, conscientious
objector serving prison sentence
3. Again I find myself agreeing with
Pat Buchanan
4. A little good news regarding high
school recruiting by the military
5. With NH troops returning home, we
need to keep in mind PTSD
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1. In Paul Krugman's view, the real
goal is destruction of not only Social Security, but Medicare and
Medicaid as well. This is serious stuff, for most Americans
(unless you're planning on the rapture happening in the next few
years, in which case retirement funds will not be needed)
2. Camilo write quite eloquently about
his decision not to return to Iraq.
3. Not a very cheery assessment from
Pat Buchanan, but I think he is right on the money.
4. Apparently it is getting a little
harder for the recruiters to get kids to take the military career
aptitude test.
5. With NH troops returning home, we
may encounter some of them on Saturday mornings. We need to keep
in mind the reality of PTSD and be careful about how we respond to
folks - perhaps some of the passers-by will be vets.
February 20, 2005
1. For the systems thinkers out there
2. Democracy at the crossroads -
choosing a civil society
3. Something for the Christians among
us, or your Christian friends
4. Bush's immoral budget
5. Hillary-who-would-be-President
****************
1. A wonderful article on systems
thinking and how we can be more effective in dealing with the
complex systems that surround us. Not a step-by-step kind of
guide, more conceptual but very instructive. The disturbing part
is that Bush and Co. don't do any of the things she says must be
done in order to be effective.
2. A slightly different history lesson
on the rise of democracy and what it really means - what Barnes
calls the civilian story vs. the military story.
3. John Dear minces no words in
labeling Americans as Pharisees. Challenges everyone to consider
exactly who they are following when they claim to be Christians
but support the agendas of George Bush.
4. Jim Wallis calls Bush's budget
lacking in "moral vision" - some suggestions on how to talk about
domestic issues from a values/morals perspective
5. Just in case anyone out there
thinks Hillary Clinton is somehow on the side of peace people,
read this commentary by Bruce Gagnon.
February 14, 2005
1. Bush's real Domestic Agenda
2. Iraq election results
3. Reject Bush's Indecent budget
4. More on the draft
5. Uri Averny on the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process
*********
1.Op-Ed piece from the Brattleboro
Reformer, laying out far-reaching implications of some of Bush's
major domestic initiatives.
2. It remains to be seen how the Bush
Administration will control this new political scene, given that
their man ran a distant third.
3. If you are as appalled at Bush's
budget as I am, here's a website you can go to and send a message.
They also have plenty of info about what is in the budget.
4. The slippery slope concept applies
to the draft too - start with medical personnel, then take it from
there. Or, stick your head in the sand and pretend your sons and
daughters won't be drafted.
5. This came in a Gush Shalom e-mail,
so I am pasting in the whole thing here. Uri Averny is an Israeli
peace activist in his 80s, and he has not forgotten history.
"Sharm-al-Sheikh,
We Have Come Back Again." - by Uri Avnery
Nobody called it the "Ophira Conference". Not even the papers of
the extreme right. Who today even remembers the name Ophira, which
was given to Sharm-al-Sheikh during the Israeli occupation, as a
first step to its annexation?
Who wants to remember the famous saying of Moshe Dayan that "Sharm-al-Sheikh
is more important than peace"? A few years later, the same Dayan
took part in the peace negotiations with Egypt and gave Sharm-al-Sheikh
back. But in the meantime, some 2500 young Israelis and who knows
how many thousands of Egyptians paid with their lives for that
statement in the Yom Kippur war.
While the conference went on, I could not clear my head of a song
that was haunting me: "Sharm-al-Sheikh, we have come back again."
It was sung with gusto in the days of the stupid euphoria after
the Six-Day war. It reminded people at the time that we had
already conquered the place during the 1956 Sinai war but were
compelled by the Eisenhower-Bulganin ultimatum to withdraw. So
here we were again.
I was there in 1956. A beautiful gulf ("Sharm-al-Sheikh means "the
bay of the old man"), a few small houses and a distinctive mosque.
Before our army withdrew, a few months later, it blew up the
mosque in a fit of pique.
Now, 22 years after leaving Ophira for the last time (nobody sang
then "Sharm-al-Sheikh, we have left you again.") all of us are
treating the place as an Egyptian resort, as Egyptian as Cairo and
Alexandria. The past has been erased. The occupation has been
wiped from our collective memory.
That is the first optimistic lesson from the conference. One can
withdraw. One can put an end to occupation. One can even forget
that it ever took place.
The spirits of two people who were not there hovered over the
proceedings.
One of them was George W. Bush. Neither he nor any other American
sat at the large round table. But all the four who were sitting
there knew that they are completely dependent on him. Husni
Mubarak relies on the two billion dollars he gets every year from
the United States, under the auspices of a Congress dominated by
the pro-Israeli lobby. King Abdallah of Jordan gets much less, but
his regime, too, depends on US support.
Ariel Sharon is the Siamese twin of Bush and cannot move without
him. It is barely conceivable that he would do anything, big or
small, that would upset Bush. Abu-Mazen, for his part, is playing
va banque in the hope that Bush will help the Palestinians to cast
off the occupation and establish their state.
So why did the Americans not come to Sharm? Because they are not
ready to risk taking part in a process that might fail. They will
come when success is assured. And today it is not.
The second absentee was Yasser Arafat.The conference would not
have taken place without his mysterious death. It deprived Sharon
of the pretext to put peace in "formalin", as described by Dov
Weissglas, his closest advisor, who sat next to him throughout the
conference. No Arafat, no pretext. Israeli propaganda, which
worked so hard to portray Arafat as a devil, will have to toil
hard to do the same to Abu Mazen.
Abu Mazen succeeded in slipping the name of Arafat into his
speech, but only in an indirect way. But he - like every
Palestinian - knows that it was the 45 years of Arafat's work that
laid the foundations on which Abu Mazen is now building his new
strategy. Without the first intifada there would have been no
Oslo, and without the second intifada there would have been no
Sharm-al-Sheikh conference. Only the violent Palestinian
resistance, which the Israeli army has not been able to put down,
has brought Sharon to the round table.
The Israeli army knows by now that it cannot stamp out the
insurgency by military means. The Palestinians have recovered
their self-respect, much like the Egyptians after Yom Kippur. Many
of them also believe that in his second term of office, Bush will
impose withdrawal on Israel.
Incidentally, the demonization of Arafat has by no means stopped
after his death. On the contrary, it goes on with great fervor.
The Left and the Right in Israel, in heart-warming unity, declare
in almost every article and TV talk-show that Arafat was the great
obstacle to peace. Not the occupation. Not the settlements. Not
the policy of Netanyahu-Barak-Sharon. Only Arafat. Fact: Arafat
died and hopla - there is a conference.
The game played by Condoleezza Rice was especially amusing. She
visited the Mukata'ah, where every stone shouts the name of
Arafat. She did not lay a wreath on his grave - a minimal gesture
of courtesy that would have won the hearts of the Palestinians.
However, as a diplomatic compromise, she agreed to have her
handshake with Abu Mazen photographed under the picture of Arafat.
Arafat smiled his canny smile. He surely understood.
So what was achieved at this conference?
Easier to say what was not.
The Oslo agreement failed because it did not spell out the final
aim which was to be achieved after the tortuous interim stages.
Arafat and Abu Mazen had a clear objective: a Palestinian State in
all of the occupied territories with East Jerusalem as its
capital, a return to the Green Line border (with minimal
adjustments), dismantling the settlements and a practical solution
to the refugee problem. The Israelis did not have the courage to
define this inevitable solution, and many still dreamed about a
Greater Israel.
That was a recipe for failure. And the very next day the
quarrelling about every single paragraph began.
At Sharm-al-Sheikh the resolution of the conflict was not
mentioned at all. Abu Mazen succeeded in slipping in some words,
but Sharon did not react. This omission is very significant. It
must be emphasized: Sharon did not utter a single word that does
not conform with his plan of annexing 58% of the West Bank and
enclosing the Palestinians in small enclaves in the rest of the
territories.
The same goes for the timetable. In Oslo dates were indeed fixed,
but the Israeli party had no intention of keeping to them. "There
are no sacred dates," Yitzhaq Rabin famously declared after
signing the timetable.
That was a fatal mistake. Quite literally - it killed Rabin. The
postponement of the solution allowed the opponents of peace the
time to regain their strength, to regroup and mount the
counter-attack that culminated in the assassination of Rabin. In
vain did we quote to Rabin the dictum of Lloyd-George: "You cannot
cross an abyss in two jumps."
Abu Mazen said at Sharm-al-Sheikh that this is the first step on a
long road. A long road is a dangerous road. All along it the those
who seek to sabotage peace, Israelis as well as Palestinians, are
lurking.
Moreover, one of the basic conditions for a real peace process -
and perhaps the most important one - is the truthful
representation of reality. If one listened to all the speeches,
one could get the impression that the root problem is "Palestinian
terrorism", and that if this stops, everything will be alright. In
the following sequence: (a) The Palestinians end their "violence",
(b) Israel stops military actions, (c) security cooperation is
established and (d) G*d and/or Allah will take care of the rest.
Pessimists will say: Nothing came from of the conference. The
cease-fire is fragile. In the best case, Sharon will fulfill his
promise of withdrawing from the Gaza Strip and dismantling a few
settlements. Then the trouble will start anew.
Optimists will say: This is a good beginning. The cessation of
"Palestinian terrorism" will create a new atmosphere in Israel.
The dismantling of the first settlements will create a crucial
confrontation. The settlers and the nationalist-messianic Right
will be defeated. People will realize that life can be different.
The dynamics of the process will carry Sharon along and he will
not be able to stop it, even if he wants to.
Who is right?
February 03, 2005
1. Follow-up on last article
about the world rejecting American models