Bush Plays Dominos

President Bush spoke from the Oval Office tonight on the fifth anniversary of the attacks of 9/11/01. Here is part of a recap from the New York Times:

If we do not defeat these enemies now,” Mr. Bush said, “we will leave our children to face a Middle East overrun by terrorist states and radical dictators armed with nuclear weapons.”

The address capped a week of speeches in which Mr. Bush tried to lay out his best case for the war in Iraq by defining it as a crucial front in the war on terror, while portraying the broader struggle as a natural successor to World War II and the Cold War in defining the place of the United States in the world.

Even by the standards of his latest round of speeches, Mr. Bush’s language was particularly forceful, even ominous, with warnings of a radical Islamic network that was “determined to bring death and suffering to our homes.”

Bush wants to play dominos, just like one of our first cold-war Presidents, Eisenhower, with just about the same logic—see if you can pick out the inconsistencies, or how history went vs. how our leaders told us how it would go:

First of all, you have the specific value of a locality in its production
of materials that the world needs.

Then you have the possibility that many human beings pass under a dictatorship that is inimical to the free world. Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the "falling domino" principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.

Now, with respect to the first one, two of the items from this particular area that the world uses are tin and tungsten. They are very important. There are others, of course, the rubber plantations and so on.

Then with respect to more people passing under this domination, Asia, after all, has already lost some 450 million of its peoples to the Communist dictatorship, and we simply can't afford greater losses.

But when we come to the possible sequence of events, the loss of Indochina, of Burma, of Thailand, of the Peninsula, and Indonesia following, now you begin to talk about areas that not only multiply the disadvantages that you would suffer through loss of materials, sources of materials, but now you are talking really about millions and millions and millions of people.

Finally, the geographical position achieved thereby does many things. It turns the so-called island defensive chain of Japan, Formosa, of the Philippines and to the southward; it moves in to threaten Australia and New Zealand.

It takes away, in its economic aspects, that region that Japan must have as a trading area or Japan, in turn, will have only one place in the world to go -- that is, toward the Communist areas in order to live.

So, the possible consequences of the loss are just incalculable to the free world. --News Conference of April 7, 1954

So the choice here is, give up tin and tungsten, or kiss Australia goodbye?

After 50 years, in a time of crisis, we the people are being fed the same theory -- dominos falling -- the name of which we had to learn in high school 40 years ago. It was a mistake then, a game of smoke and mirrors to lull the citizens into falling lockstep in line behind the hairbrained leadership for the sake of the powerful interests--whoever tin and tungsten was benefitting at that time.

I truly trust our troops in Iraq are kept safe, until they get to come home, and soon! The oil windfall never panned out anyway, and the manpower could come in handy to overcome the terrorist cells in the US, not to mention in all the other countries the world over. And who plays dominos anymore?

9/11/01: Five Years Later We’re Worse Off

In the “you learn something new every day” category, I got a week’s worth of lessons in this morning’s newspaper. For one thing, I thought terrorists who kill innocent people are basically nuts looking for attention. The truth is nowhere near that simple. Another assumption was that Bush’s policies have put American lives increasingly in danger, but I was unaware of the possibility of a consensus of experts in agreement about this.

On the terrorists as nuts scenario: Rosa Brooks, Los Angeles Times columnist, reviews three new books on terrorism. One, What Terrorists Want, by Louise Richardson, has a nice explanation of the terrorist mentality and why the knowledge of that mentality is important:

Drawing on interviews and primary source materials from dozens of such movements, Richardson reminds us that despite the awfulness of their acts, most terrorists are neither "insane" nor even unusually cruel. On the contrary, their acts are rationally calculated, and most terrorists believe themselves to be altruistic and noble, Davids fighting Goliaths.

This is a simple insight with profound implications for counter-terrorism policy. The rhetoric of "evil" prevents us from understanding how terrorists think and alienates those who may be torn between sympathy for the political aims of such movements and
disapproval of terrorism as a tactic. And these are precisely the people Richardson says we can least afford to alienate. Although terrorist movements thrive when they are based in what she calls "complicit communities," they fizzle out when they lose community support. Thus, understanding the grievances of those drawn to terrorism is crucial to designing effective policies to halt its spread.

By refusing to consider that terrorists may have any legitimate grievances, the Bush administration has radicalized moderates throughout the Islamic world and has wasted opportunities to deprive terrorists of the community support so critical to their survival. From the war in Iraq to the abuse of detainees, U.S. anti-terror tactics have backfired, driving more and more recruits into the arms of Al Qaeda.

Heinous terrorist acts of any kind are indefensible. With that in mind, it is difficult to reconcile willful ignorance of terorist mindset when some heroes of the most vocal anti-terrorists in the US fit that category--American Revolutionary War heroes who were snipers and indescriminate bombers; Jewish terrorists who bombed the King David Hotel in 1946, an act which paved the way toward UN acceptance of Israeli statehood. The question is a lot more complicated and important than just telling the lowest common denominator--American citizens--we have to protect against those "evil folks."

I knew calling terrorists “evildoers” was bizarre (what isn’t bizarre in the ignorant and muddled chatter of the inarticulate and decidedly arrogant POTUS?) – now I know that the use of simplistic terms is anti-productive.
On the front page of the Times was the glaring day-before-the 9/11 anniversary headline:

Is the U.S. Winning This War?

WASHINGTON — Five years after Sept. 11, is the United States winning the war against Al Qaeda? President Bush says yes, but most experts — including many inside the U.S. government — say no.

The article enumerates reasons for its point:

…The war in Iraq has become a training ground for Islamic extremists from Saudi Arabia and other countries, and some have returned home with expertise in urban warfare and explosives.

…Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon have damaged the image of the U.S. in much of the Muslim world and made it easier for terrorist organizations to win recruits.

Beyond the misguided Bush/Cheney priorities of spreading forces too thin in the wrong places -- the lack of focus on the enormous and growing health care coverage fiasco; not developing an alternative-energy source plan — all of the last six-year’s poor leadership is setting back the potential for which Americans are famous: innovative solutions to problems. And the set-backs create new obstacles, bureaucratic and financial, that make taking the next step forward in progress more like digging out of a muddy hole.

As for the 9/11 five-year anniversary: next time the republicans pat themselves on their backs for keeping the US homeland from suffering a terrorist attack in the last five years, think of the co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission report:

"Why have we not suffered [another] attack?" asked Lee H. Hamilton, co-chairman of the Sept. 11 commission, which exhaustively studied the 2001 attacks. "The honest answer is: We don't know. We simply don't know. Because we don't know the minds of the terrorists."--Los Angeles Times, 9/10/06

It’s time for a fresh group of people to be in charge, with better expertise and more open minds, who are willing to shelve the arrogance of power and roll up their sleeves, to find out what it really takes to improve lives. And that includes the lives of everyone on earth, not just the ones living in America.

The additional attention and money for nation-building and public relations is increasingly seen as a key to winning the war against Al Qaeda."It's not so much a question [of] whether you're able to …capture or kill or otherwise drive off" terrorists, said Cambone, the Pentagon intelligence chief. "That we know we can do. It's whether the confidence of those who stand in opposition [to terrorism] is going up … and that of the terrorists is going down.

"Then you're succeeding," he said. "And then the issue isn't how many successive terrorist cells you've undone. They will disband."—Los Angeles Times, 9/10/06

Menace to our Children: School

As I watched our 4th grader enter the classroom for her first day of school, I was overwhelmed by the regimentation of these sweet little children. Thirty five kids with backpacks in tow, feeling the first separation after the summer from anxious parents standing by, marched into the building in groups of ten at a time. Their teacher, a kind, dedicated multi-decade veteran of elementary school habit, at one point in the “ceremony” stomped over to a group of three dressed-for-jogging young moms to reprimand them for talking so loudly that the children couldn’t hear the teacher’s directions. I like a take-charge attitude, but I still couldn’t get the idea that I had recently read about, out of my mind, that this scenario seemed more like prisoners being led to their cells then it did of happy enthusiastic children entering a “palace” of learning.

John Taylor Gatto is a former New York State and New York City Teacher of the Year and the author of The Underground History of American Education. In a short article, “AGAINST SCHOOL: How public education cripples our kids, and why” he reviews the history of the present US public school system, its derivation from the 19th century militaristic Prussian background, and his conclusion of how it does not serve our children.

Gatto quotes the famous writer H. L. Mencken:

H. L. Mencken, who wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not

to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. ... Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim ... is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States... and that is its aim everywhere else.

Gatto goes on to show how the elite powers-that-be historically had a hand in creating the US school system and curriculum, and that this provides a class of “servant” individuals which is perfect for the purpose of catering to the small ultra-upper class.

Whether or not one wants to subscribe to this radical opinion, the truth is that there are many elements wrong with the basic nature of compulsory education, and there is a lot of advocacy in the air for change. Gatto’s explanation of how the “institution” of public school was developed is helpful if one ponders how many other ways it could be set up.

Consider the following aspects of school that we take for granted—that children go to school every weekday, with a few minor breaks, for ten months a year and have two months off in the summer; that they go to school at ridiculously odd hours, locally from 7:45 am to 2 pm (I went to school 9 – 3 in the late 1950‘s); that children are expected to begin reading in Kindergarten, that they have homework every night, that they are continually tested to determine if they are keeping up to a certain state-prescribed level of maintenance; and finally, that all children are expected to become experts in all subjects, including advanced math and algebra--disciplines they will never use in most cases once they have left high school. Yet in reality people specialize in certain areas in their employment—no one is an expert on everything—neither are children, yet they are taught that way.

One new book, The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It by Sara Bennett, Nancy Kalish, specifically states that

...there is almost no evidence that homework helps elementary school students achieve academic success and little evidence that it helps older students. Yet the nightly burden is taking a serious toll on America’s families. It robs children of the sleep, play, and exercise time they need for proper physical, emotional, and neurological development. And it is a hidden cause of the childhood obesity epidemic, creating a nation of “homework potatoes.”

I didn’t like school when I went through it 40 years ago. I was bored most of the time, except when I was given an assignment to do an independent “project” about a subject of my choice. I never had homework until the 7th grade—jr. high school—and then it was never-ending. I was under the certain perception that I was inadequate in my performance, and as a person. I developed huge insecurities, despite the fact that I had an above average I.Q., was always near the top of my class, and had a great talent for playing the piano. What I did was never enough, and my teachers were always insistent on telling me so.

The fault lies in the system itself, not in the teachers, some of whom are dedicated beyond excellence, nor in the parents, nor in the students themselves. The constant testing and subsequent fault-finding in each individual child (unless you get 100% or A+, you did something wrong) makes most of them question their capabilities, and no two children at any given age are going to have the same abilities, so most US school children wind up developing insecurities which take years to overcome.

I can’t believe my fellow parents standing next to me watching our children enter the 4th grade classroom want the devastating outcome of their education that I just described. What was good enough for me is not good enough for my children. I wonder how many other parents feel that way.

It is proven among animals, and that includes human beings, that positive reinforcement will always produce much better and more thorough results than negative reinforcement. When my wife volunteers in the class and tells the children how great they are doing on an art project, they always respond positively, even the ones who have Attention Deficit Disorder, or who are unruly or rebellious, and they all love to have her to come to the class. Some of the teachers of our children have that knack as well, but it is not what they are taught—they’re instructed on curriculum and goals, not human nature.

Roger Shank, who I’ve quoted before, is an authority on learning. He is a psychologist and computer scientist and author of dozens of books on the subject of how people learn. Here is a sample of his expert opinion on the US school system:

After a natural disaster, the newscasters eventually excitedly announce that school is finally open so no matter what else is terrible where they live, the kids are going to school. I always feel sorry for the poor kids.

My... idea is one that most people immediately reject without giving it serious thought: school is bad for kids — it makes them unhappy and as tests show — they don't learn much. When you listen to children talk about school you easily discover what they are thinking about in school: who likes them, who is being mean to them, how to improve their social ranking, how to get the teacher to treat them well and give them good grades.

Schools are structured today in much the same way as they have been for hundreds of years. And for hundreds of years philosophers and others have pointed out that school is reallya bad idea:

We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or
fifteen years, and come out at last with a belly full of words and do not know a thing. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.—Oscar Wilde

Schools should simply cease to exist as we know them. The Government needs to get out of the education business and stop thinking it knows what children should know and then testing them constantly to see if they regurgitate whatever they have just been spoon fed.

And from Gatto’s article, his conclusion:

First, though, we must wake up to what our schools really are: laboratories of experimentation on young minds, drill centers for the habits and attitudes that corporate society demands. Mandatory education serves children only incidentally; its real purpose is to turn them into servants.

There is a solution, ultimately, to this amazing quandary of such a broken institution as how we educate our next generation. The answer is not unlike the way to correct the broken health-care system, or our misdirected foreign policy: we the people have to make known our concerns, by voicing opinions like this blog, by writing our elected representatives from the national level down to the city council, and by voting for those who want to make changes. And the changes require experts who are willing to stand up to the crowd that utters the universally unproductive mantra, “We’ve always done it this way.” “This way” isn’t working in the schools, and never did. People are not indigenously lazy enough not to be able to make changes. People just need to know there is a better way. I know there is.

I’ll be happy to sign off on any homework my children do not want to finish any day of the week. That’s a start—after all, this is just the first day of school.

We Order Our Priorities

It’s frustrating to read the mainstream news today. It’s fairly frustrating everyday, since short attention spans overtook demand for some depth to news reporting and all the average citizen can handle is a sound- or word-bite that tells an entire story in a sensational headline. Today’s big story: Karr Won’t be Charged in JonBenet Murder.

The frustration lies in the other news stories that are all more important for each of us in our lives than some nut wanting a moment of fame by falsely confessing to a crime with which he had nothing to do. The big stories are a tropical storm, Ernesto, rumbling up the waters toward eastern Florida, and the overreaction of the authorities in the face of earlier under reaction to what could prove to be yes, a lot of rain, but no, not much of a hurricane. Then again, W’s smarter, more serious, younger brother, Governor Jeb Bush of Florida, is positioning himself for a dynastic plunge into the presidential wannabe foray, so when he can point to his utterly remarkable management of the onslaught of Ernesto with all of it’s fury, that would be a nice notch on his political resume.

There have been bombings in Turkey with people killed, UN Secretary Kofi Annan is in Lebanon trying to get Hezbollah to release 2 Israeli soldiers so that Israel won’t kill additional hundreds of Lebanese again. And in Israel, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rejected a state probe into his conduct of the recent war in light of the failure to defeat, utterly, Hezbollah in Lebanon. Instead he will authorize a downsized, less antagonistic committee investigation. "I am not going to allow the army to be a whipping boy, nor am I ... simply to satisfy some Tom, Dick or Harry," he said.

I can see his point, especially based on some back ground supplied in a New Yorker Article by Seymour Hersh of August 21, 2006. Why would Olmert want to take the blame for being a go-along kind of guy, appeasing Israel’s number one ally and financial benefactor, not to mention the most powerful nation on earth, the US?

The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israel’s retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah’s heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel’s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preemptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground.

Hersh describes the complex discussions and planning back and forth, and the customary denials and affirmations of both sides, Israel and the US, that there were plans, or not, and who first decided on the plans, or who acquiesced. No matter what story is the bottom-line truth, the obvious initial US detachment from trying to negotiate an end of the bombings allowed the horrendous destruction of years of Lebanese infrastructure construction, and of course several hundred innocent civilian deaths and homeless and villages gone. All to make Israel safer, and keep the US safe, from Iran nuke possibilities and other evildoings by those Islamo-Faschist folks.

It’s hard to blame Olmert for not wanting to be called on the carpet for not coming out of that war with a shiny new Hezbollah-free southern Lebanon. It wasn’t his entire fault.

Worry not, my fellow US citizens—that news isn’t going to see the light of conversation at today’s water coolers or tonight’s dinner table. A plane went off the wrong runway in Kentucky yesterday killing 49 people, and Conan O’Brien had a pre-taped spoof showing a plane in trouble on the Emmy telecast last night. Some consider that bad taste and it got attention in today’s papers. That story, the JonBenet case, and a possible hurricane get the big billing.

The long term problems of ongoing US military occupation of war-torn Iraq, tensions between Israel and its neighbors, declining ability of Americans to pay for necessary health care—these items which affect each and every one of us—will be on the back burner--out of sight, out of, what would be for Bush politically-detrimental, mind for now. Even on his best day, Karl Rove couldn’t engineer this favorable order of news-story priorities for the sake of his bosses, Bush and Cheney. Then again, in terms of supply and demand and the news—we all engineered it for ourselves.

It’s the Bigotry, Stupid!

It’s time to play the racism card again. Every so often, the number one problem of our society—bigotry—raises its angry gorgonesque tentacled head throughout the media. Lately we’ve been bombarded with stories about Mel Gibson, the anti-Semite; Andrew Young, an icon of the civil-rights movement, incredibly inserting racist foot in mouth as a Wal-Mart rep; Virginia Republican Senator George Allen using a possible racial slur to make a point at a political gathering—all of this while we are told by pundits and partisans that bigotry in the good ole USA is nothing compared to what it was 40 years ago.

Oh really? All those old bigots died and left all of us clean tolerant love-thy-neighbor wannabes to carry on in the tradition of “all men are created equal?” So that book I’ve been working on--Pardon My Prejudice: America’s Excuse for Bigotry—which was inspired by what I see and hear on a daily basis just living in America, all that fire I felt that needed to be put on paper about what is wrecking the great American dream, or at least postponing its potential through the little everyday words of hate, was a mirage invented in my head for more writing practice? With all due modesty and respect for a margin of error, I am not that delusional.

In the midst of gathering my thoughts for this post, I came across the latest blog entry on Huffington Post by Dave Johnson, a super-blogger:

The other day I wrote about how the Right's amplification machine was picking up the signal on this, calling for "racial profiling" of Middle-Easterners, even though not all Muslims are Middle Eastern. Of course, never mind about Timothy McVeigh or Eric Rudolph and others of domestic origin.

Let's be clear what "profiling" means - it means singling out all people of a certain racial appearance for harassment and intimidation. And let's be clear about what complaints about "political correctness" and "multiculturalism" are - they are racist phrases demanding domination and privilege for those of European descent.

That goes for the anti-immigration activists as well. There really is a lot of grist to go into on the racist subject, and those who would deny this problem, or excuse it as a momentary aberration, like Jackie Mason, famous Jewish comedian, explaining that Mel Gibson’s drunken anti-Jewish vitriol was nothing he hadn’t heard before from other drunks, and shouldn’t carry any weight.

A better viewpoint comes from Jonah Goldberg’s latest op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times in which he argues that besides reinforced prejudice towards others who are different, like Nazi hatred of Jews, there is a learned fear along with the prejudice, so that the racist mind can actually believe that it’s worthwhile morally to act on the hatred:

…the Nazis really believed that the Jews ran the world and wanted to destroy Germany. They believed that Jews controlled not only the Bolsheviks to the east but the capitalists to the west. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was a mere pawn of his Jewish friends and advisors. The British Parliament, Goebbels wrote in one diary entry, was "in reality a kind of Jewish stock exchange." The "Jewish-Plutocratic enemy" was everywhere, benefiting from, and responsible for, every piece of bad news for Germany. In fact, the Nazis were sure that the Jews had declared war on Germany first, giving them no choice but to respond to the Jewish campaign to "exterminate the Germans." This paranoia led the Nazis to believe that rounding up millions of Jews and gassing them was an act of self-defense.

What is so frightening is how similar this is to the sounds from the Middle East today.

Goldberg goes on about Iran and the anti-Jewish rhetoric of Ahmadinejad. These leaders in the spotlight, including of course Nasrallah of the Lebanese Hizbullah, are not the only ones to stir up the base prejudices of their people.

The incursion into Iraq, and the ongoing proclamation by Bush and his neocon "nudgers" that the US is spreading democracy, has all the implications of racism. It’s obvious this policy is flawed since the flower and confetti–throwing grateful Iraqi population never appeared to welcome the invading army of US military might, as was predicted by Cheney and Rumsfeld. Chris Dickey explains simply why it didn’t work out quite as predicted:

What does not help in the process of encouraging peace (because no one is going to “bring” peace), is the notion that we Americans can apply our nationalist vision to people who never chose to participate in our immigrant aspirations to begin with: people who feel safer, stronger and saner in their worlds of belonging than in our world of having. When we make that mistake, threatening to the core their sense of who they are, all we do is invite hatred.

Chris, Newsweek’s Middle East and terrorism expert, understands intimately the thinking of the man on the street, as well as his leaders. One thing Chris makes poignant in his latest discussion of media priorities vs. reality, is the perpetual mutually-fed fascination with sensation in the US by those who provide the news, and by those who choose what news they want:

In the genocides of Rwanda and Bosnia, how many children with smiles every bit as warm and guileless as JonBenet Ramsey's were slaughtered by machete and hand grenade, sniper rifle and mortar shell? How many children died from AIDS in Africa or were orphaned by it? While the United States debated the true significance of that stain on the dress lovingly preserved by former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, the Taliban were taking over Afghanistan and their ally Osama bin Laden was declaring war on the Western world.

What does the American viewing news and media priorities have to do with prejudice, bigotry and racism? They are completely intertwined, because no one would care about the JonBenet Ramsey case if she were a poor African-American, or a poor African living in Africa, or an Iraqi girl slaughtered by accident in the crossfire between Coalition fighters and Iraqi insurgents. That’s just one example.

Chris chooses to use the closing of the movie The Ugly American, showing political figure Marlon Brando on a TV screen in a middle-class American home about to describe what he thinks will help the growing problems of Southeast Asia, and the viewer watching the TV clicking it off with his remote control as he reaches for a cold beer. That image, from 1963, shows that American apathy towards the rest of the world is nothing new. That this apathy partially derives from racism is not clearly understood.

Comments made by people are striking, that ardent racism is a thing of the past, that anti-Semitism was really bad after WWII when there were restricted neighborhoods etc, that African Americans have all the benefits of society since the civil rights laws were passed.

After Mel Gibson’s DUI dilemma, and the publicizing of it through Harvey Levin’s TMZ web site, I was looking at the latest info about a rabbi asking Gibson to speak on one of the High Holidays this fall. As I glanced at the comments after the article, I was amazed by the percentage of anti-Jewish remarks, and by the abject anger and hatred of them. But I also noticed that both sides of the “debate” were heavy with intensity. Apparently, bigotry-wise, whether you’re on one side or the other, you’re pissed! Here are some quotes:

fuck this homophobe / jew hater

NO WONDER THERE IS SO MUCH CONFLICT BETWEEN LEBANON AND ISRAEL....JEWS ARE SUCH UNFORGIVING, OVERBEARING AND BRUTAL PEOPLE...(SORRY, YOU ASKED FOR IT!!)

It is about time jewish people get over this for crying out loud, i myself have had a bad experience with bad jewish a racist who was out to make his students life miserable, and to top it all off he was a faggot. Get over yourselves greedy idiots.

listen you jew loving b****es, who the FU** cares wat he said about the jews, he said they were responsible for all the wars in this world, THE MAN IS PROBABLY RIGHT, YOU A**HOLES, First i think people who talk out loud like that are stupid idiots in the first place, but don't think the jewish people are crying over this incident, they are too busy working the poor folk , those bitches dont even tip, they are the scum of this planet.

Good god. Enough is enough. The poor little Jewish people that can't handle someone talking bad about them need to grow up. Didn't your mommy ever tell you stick and stones.... I'm sure if she didn't that someone else has. This whole thing is completely ridiculous.

OK class—so what have we learned here: there’s a lot of anger out there. Anger needs to be focused, and sometimes it’s easier to see a group of people who are not part of one’s homogenous group as the problem, and cause, of one’s troubles. That’s a lot easier than blaming oneself for ones troubles.

Then there is disappointment: I have always admired Andrew Young, civil-rights worker with Martin Luther King, and political activist in the name of tolerance and understanding. So I was appalled and saddened to hear of his choice of verbiage to describe why Wal-Mart was going to help the inner-city communities he champions:

Young was asked about whether he was concerned Wal-Mart causes smaller, mom-and-pop stores to close.

"Well, I think they should; they ran the `mom and pop' stores out of my neighborhood," the paper quoted Young as saying. "But you see, those are the people who have been overcharging us selling us stale bread and bad meat and wilted vegetables. And they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they've ripped off our communities enough.

First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it's Arabs; very few black people own these stores."

Young resigned his Wal-Mart post, and I’m not the only one who saw the problem in what he said:

The remarks surprised Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, who pointed to Young's reputation of civil rights work.

"If anyone should know that these are the words of bigotry, anti-Semitism and prejudice, it's him," Hier said. "I know he apologized, but I would say this, ... during his years as a leader of the national civil rights movement, if anyone would utter remarks like this about African-Americans his voice would be the first to rise in indignation."

Well, nobody’s perfect. What’s happening is not just bigotry, but the ease with which it can be generated. Lack of tolerance for someone who is different comes from ignorance of the meaning of that difference. Knowledge of why people dress a certain way, or why their culture has certain aspects—that knowledge brings tolerance and understanding. The constant barrage of tiny bites of visual and audio stimulus which has become how we receive our information through the media—that promulgates ignorance, which perpetuates prejudice and bigotry.

Chris Matthews on the Imus show last Friday morning explained why cable news has devolved into one quick sensational story after another. He said the person watching with the remote-control clicker in his hand has a choice of hundreds of options to switch to—if there is hesitation or pause, he’ll click to another choice. Thus, the way to keep your audience is to offer quick bites, quick ideas, which leads to easy labels and generalizations—stereotyping—and furthers prejudice and bigotry which feed off of simplicity and naiveté.

William Lederer, who co-wrote Ugly American, also wrote in a preface to his book Nation of Sheep how the death of an individual affects each of us. He described a pyramid, where the top narrow section equaled the death of a loved one, and the bottom widest area was the equivalent of several million people in a foreign country dying—each segment of the pyramid would affect us equally.

It may never be possible for us to equate the death of someone in Tibet with the death of a member of our family. But unless we come to understanding that our priorities of interhuman relationships has to come down to treating others as we would treat ourselves--not only as individuals but as a nation--the current Middle East skirmishes and deaths are going to seem minor compared to what may be coming.

Like the Common Folk Do

Bush doesn’t open his own car door, and hasn’t since he was inaugurated as POTUS in January, 2001. Condoleeza Rice shops for shoes at the finest boutiques on 5th Avenue, without giving a thought to the cost or how to make the bill payment. Cheney and Rumsfeld are corporate animals who may never see their own checkbooks because those who manage their affairs manage everything for them.

Can you imagine one of these titans of power standing at the counter at the dry cleaners, asking if this shirt would be better off laundered or dry cleaned? Or any of them taking the time to stand in line at the local market, answering the checker’s ubiquitous inquiry, “Did you find everything OK?”

Can you picture one of them wondering if they should run the air-conditioning on any given night during this ridiculously-hot summer in order to get a night’s sleep without sweating on the pillow, because they might not be able to pay the horrendous electric bill as a result next month? Or can you imagine any of them thinking about whether to buy those pants, or this shirt, or more milk or less bread, because they just can’t make financial ends meet by saying yes to every purchase?

What would happen to these people’s decisions if they had to give up living like royalty, and scrape along like the rest of us, worrying about our budgets and medical care for our families and all the rest that goes along with the American Dream? Would they consider what the consequences are of carrying out a reckless foreign policy that jeopardizes all sides, as well as alienating potential allies throughout the world? Would they look at the other person’s dilemma with a bit more empathy, instead of through a telescopic viewer with only political goals and ends in the sight?

Bush uses a term “Islamic Fascist” for the enemy in the so-called cause of eliminating terrorism from the world, as if that could be done. He might as well have said, "Moon-men,” for all the unintelligent gobbledygook "Islam-Fascist" means.

Fascism is a quasi-political term given to a government that is not democratically elected, is totalitarian, and wants to control the means of production—as opposed to communism which purports to have the people, which is to say the “state,” own the means of production. Islam is a religion, followed by millions and millions of people world wide. Islam and fascism together is like saying Native Americans and parliamentary government. There is no connection. But “Fascism” sounds really bad—like saying “axis of evil,” or “evildoers.”

There is no reality check for our executive leaders. They are a bunch of hysterical megalomaniacs trying to punch their way out of a paper bag of trouble that they have created for themselves. The real problem here, is that they’ve dragged American citizens along with them into this mindless abyss, along with a good portion of the rest of the world as well. It is mind boggling to even think of the untold damage a mere two terms of Bush’s presidency has done to the people of this small planet. Our only hope is that by voting, we can bring this to a halt sooner than later.

Revolutionary War—It’s Old Hat

Guerilla war, fought from within the matrix of a country, hiding in homes, places of business, hospitals, schools, and appearing now and then to fire hodge-podge destructive potshots to hurt the enemy—the guerillas always win.

The French vacated Indo-China when they could see the handwriting on the wall. The US moved in gradually until ten years later there were 500,000 American troops stationed there fighting an unbeatable enemy. 50,000 troops were killed in Vietnam, then the US vacated and is trading with that country today.

The obvious best example of guerilla warfare is the American Revolutionary War. There is no known casualty total--several thousand died in battle on each side. Disease killed ten times the number of war casualties in the same period. Around 40-45% of American colonists were supportive of the revolution. It became a burden for the British to continue fighting on another continent, so they recognized the new nation of the United States.

The Hizbollah militia in southern Lebanon operates in a similar fashion as any guerilla group, blending in with the population and not staging specific battle grounds. They fire their vintage WWII Russian-made Katyusha rockets into northern Israel from just about anywhere, hiding them in private homes, schools, hospitals—anywhere.

Hizbollah does not expect to be able to wipe out the Jews in Israel, or destroy the State of Israel. Hizbollah is a proxy militia force set up by Iran subsequent to Israel vacating southern Lebanon in the 1980’s. Hizbollah is Iran in Lebanon. And Syria is the pimp go-between.

They are trying to start a gathering storm of congealing groups of anti-Israel forces throughout the Arab world to eventually make it impossible for Israel to continue as Jewish state, and to give up as much of its land as they can force.

And there is the demigod—the “idol” to see on cable news and Arab TV--their leader, Nasrallah, wants a world stage from which to bloat his bloateries, not unlike Arafat 40 years ago, who was a nobody without a cause--until he got the Palestinian diaspora to see itself as unjustly displaced. Never mind that it was the Arab countries who displaced them.

Israel wants utterly to destroy Hizbollah, and Israel is not making any progress so far in accomplishing this aim. The US powers-that-be – Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, mouthpiece Rice – see a chance to gain an upper hand against Iran while Israel fights the battle on the front. Bush and cronies are itching for a “good” reason to start bombing Iran. How else do they distract the American “proles” from the real issues at hand—relying less on fossil fuel for this nation’s wealth and resources; taking responsibility for the hungry and suffering of the rest of the world while there is the means and method of alleviating that insufficiency. That’s too much work—that doesn’t buy a better cushion for the power-elite in the US.

The current strife has managed to gain recruits for Hizbollah and the radical anti-Jewish anti-Israel movement in the Arab countries surrounding Israel, while not to diminish the zeal and numbers of militia. In addition, Israel has thrown enough firepower into the structures of Lebanon, including the airport, to knock it literally fifty years back in time from its pre-current-war state.

Israel does have the right to defend itself from unfriendly invasion, with which Hizbollah started off this business. Israel military might, including it’s nuclear capability, has the power to destroy Lebanon completely, and Hizbollah with it, which Israel won’t do for obvious reasons, not the least of which is the immorality of killing millions of innocent people to get rid of a few tens of thousands of the enemy.

Short of such all-out destruction by Israel, Hizbollah will survive, probably gain strength, and negate all of the goals and reasons for Israel’s attack on southern Lebanon in order to avenge the original, initial Hezbollah invasion. Israel’s number one, and these days only, international friend, the United States, resolutely stayed out of the fray hoping that Israel would do it’s dirty work alone.

There is even rumor that Bush and Rice don’t see 100% eye to eye on trying to stop the conflict:

"The United States and Israel must understand that it is not in their long-term interests to allow themselves to become isolated in the Middle East and the world," said Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Rice ally and senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "Both Damascus and Tehran must hear from America directly."

Bush the warmonger trumps Rice this time.

All this contradiction and futility is not lost on the saner leader of the region, Jordan's King Abdullah II, in an interview with the BBC. His judgment, while negative and depressing, is the reality of the day, after one month of fighting:

Each time we have a crisis it gets far more unstable and the end game or where we're going to be leading a region is dim," he told the BBC.

"I can't read the political map of the Middle East anymore because I see all the heavy clouds over our shoulders at this stage.

"I fear for the future of the Middle East."

The king, after reiterating his calls for an "immediate ceasefire" in the conflict, said that if Arabs and Israelis did not sit down and "declare a new future" for the region, countries in the region "will continually be sucked into the abyss."

While stating his hopes for a United Nations Security Council resolution bringing an end to the conflict "today as opposed to tomorrow," the king said:

"You can't destroy Hezbollah."

The ongoing conflict is even starting to take second and third-tier importance in the daily news. The primary vote for democratic senator from Connecticut between incumbent Lieberman and challenger Lamont is the big story today, along with the closure of the British Petroleum pipeline section which may cost Americans more money for gasoline, and the Fed pausing rate hikes after 17 increases in the last 2 years.

And American Idol is having auditions at the Rose Bowl, where several thousand wannabe contestants showed up at 4 AM to wait in line to get put down by Simon Cowell and his gang.

The Lieberman-Lamont race is important to catch a flavor of how democrats prefer their candidates from now on—will the pro or anti Iraq war stance make the difference, Lieberman being pro and Lamont anti?

That campaign’s importance to the future makeup of congress in the US lies in the enormous shadow of the conflict in the Middle East. There is a worldview in the leadership of the US that is completely apart from the reality of politics and society internationally. Some citizens are starting to get the message.

The Bush administration is looking for a fight against radical Islam. Bush sees himself as the “wartime president,” wants a war with Iran, and Syria if necessary. This will take the minds of American voters off the failure of US policy on the grand scale. and fear can be generated in place. The press can join arms with the government to make people think it’s better to have an armegeddon in the Middle East than to have one in New York, or St. Louis, or Omaha…

But the longer it takes to stop the conflict, the worse America’s options are, not to mention Israel’s. That Bush and company don’t understand this in all of it’s clarity gives more reason toi claim their incompetence. Over two weeks ago, Newsweek reporter Christopher Dickey already wrote what is happening and what Bush should have known:

The United States, following Israel’s lead, does not want an immediate ceasefire precisely because that would hand Hizbullah a classic guerrilla-style victory: it started this fight against a much greater military force—and it’s still standing. In the context of a region where vast Arab armies have been defeated in days, for a militia to hold out one week, two weeks and more, is seen as heroic. Hizbullah is the aggressor, the underdog and the noble survivor,
all at once. “It’s that deadly combination of the expectation game, which Hizbullah have won, and the victim game, which they’ve also won,” as my straight-talking friend put it.

Neither U.S. nor Israeli policymakers have taken this dynamic into account. If they had, they’d understand that with each passing day, no matterhow many casualties it takes, Hizbullah’s political power grows. Several of my worldly Lebanese and Arab friends here in Rome today—people who loathe Hizbullah—understand this problem well. Privately they say that’s one of the main reasons they are so horrified at the direction this war has taken: they fear not only that Lebanon will be destroyed, but that Hizbullah will wind up planting its banner atop the mountain of rubble.

Cooler minds must prevail here. The defeat of Lieberman as a referendum on the Iraq war is a start. It’s time to rise up in dissension against what our representatives in Washington, D.C. think is OK—the passive status quo, following pollsters, not taking the lead in fear of losing voter support--it lines their mattresses with the green stuff while it mortgages our lives and our children’s future.

The immoral inaction of congress to stand up to Bush and his dangerous notions is staggering. We need to elect new leaders, so that King Abdullah's fear for the Middle East remains a warning, and not a reality.

The Chosen People

 

Tevye: I know, I know. We are Your chosen people. But, once in a while, can't You choose someone else?—Fiddler on the Roof

As a child I never understood how it could be fair that God, creator of the world, could choose a single people to be “above” everyone else. Granted, the biblical pact with Abraham, who first figured out 4,000 years ago that there was one entity beyond us all—the “force” in an eastern mythological sort of way—solidified his lineage as favored among humans. But still, it didn’t seem fair to me. Was every one else “not chosen?”

Then one day, as I, Jewish, was taking lessons on how to become a good converted Jew in place of my ex-wife-to-be who was busy orchestrating her bridal registration at several department stores in Boston so she couldn't attend these classes herself, I was told an amazing consciousness-raising point of view by the reformed Jewish rabbi who conducted the classes: “chosen” doesn’t mean “special,” or “unusual.” It means that when Abraham saw the immorality of the lifestyle of the ancient nomadic peoples—human sacrifices, not valuing life itself, worshipping clay figurines as if they were powerful--and wanted his family to be separate from all that, his agreement with God to stand apart in a higher ethic code made him and his descendents “chosen” to bear this burden of responsibility, of setting the example for everyone else. The Jews are supposed to set the moral example for the rest of the world.

I was quite moved. And I was in disbelief. I didn’t see this great moral “cut-above” in the community of Jews I knew, let alone in the general community at large. But the idea of the lesson stuck, and I was intrigued—it must have stuck since it’s thirty years since I heard it.

Point-at-hand: Israel, at almost 60 years of existence as an independent Jewish State, fighting for its life since day 1, has been invaded by militia from the bordering country of Lebanon, and has reacted to defend itself by bombing that country and sending in troops to root out the harassing militia—Hezbollah. In so doing, protecting its people and trying to neutralize the offenders, Israeli forces have inadvertently killed innocent people, many of them children.

Jesse Kornbluth, eminent writer and fellow observer of this horrible state of affairs in the Middle East, makes some powerful points:

My pro-Israel friends shrug off this kind of revelation. They tell me, "The Arabs do worse." And so they do. But since when is the bar set by the worst offender? Is Abu Ghraib okay because at least our soldiers didn't use electric drills on their victims' eyes? As long as Israel doesn't decapitate Arab prisoners, should we speak of Israel's "mercy"?

As I write, there is a scandal about Israel's most recent atrocity: a couple of dozen children dead in Lebanon, some of them all the kids in a family. The Israeli line is that Hezbollah used this apartment building to hide bombs, that the residents were warned several times. Yet, oddly, no one seems to have left. The reports suggest that residents felt safe moving to lower floors. And so the bombs killed hem as they slept.

Zionists who froth at the mouth--I'm thinking of Alan Dershowitz--say this is all Hezbollah's fault for using civilians as shields. Even if you agree, so what? People who bomb kids get hated for it, period. As even Israel should know. You want to create sympathy for people you call terrorists? Kill kids. Works every time. (Of course, it is disingenous to argue that civilians are not the target of modern wars?they are.)

I have been complaining about the lack of my country’s response in the face of this travesty—I honesty don’t care if the dead or injured child, or innocent civilian for that matter, is Moslem, Christian, or Jewish—the killing of modern warfare, which by virtue of the participants’ behavior--hiding in hospitals and school buildings etc--causes the agony of non-participants—is worth the involvement of the leaders of my country, the United States of America, with all the money, arms, and where-with-all to stop this ongoing violence. The inaction of the leadership—Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Cheney—is indicative of the lost morality, the abrogation of the moral upper-hand—the reason that the fighting goes on, and that these leaders need to be replaced, removed, and that the moral authority of this country needs to be reasserted by another group, whoever that may be, elected hopefully—to get the present conflict stopped, and the troops out of Iraq, and a peace plan in order for the Middle East.

Jews are the chosen people, but over the past century they have become victims. There’s only so much you can ask of one group to manage, to take personally, to try to survive—really I think the Jews have about had it. In the response, which many diplomats and pundits consider an “overreaction,” of the Israeli forces to the invasion across the northern border by the terrorist militia Hezbollah, Jews were doing no less than any other sovereign country would do. Yet as Swami explains in his articulate blog entry, the killing of children is never reasonable.

If the Jews are supposed to inhabit the higher moral ground, what about the United States of America—shouldn’t the most powerful and “moral” democracy in the world be responsible for carrying the highest moral banner? Yet instead of acting as peacemaker for the past several weeks, Bush and Rice have been goading the Israelis on to fulfill some sort of imagined mission of ridding Lebanon once and for all of every member of the Hezbollah ranks—as if that could be done. It can’t, and they all know it, and that’s why there the moral element is lacking in the Bush policies, and the Israeli response. Never mind the Hezbollah—they’re beneath discussion of moral grounds. Artificially set-up by the Iran megalomaniacs, Hezbollah is in the class with Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, even Arafat—those who need a cause to justify their raison d’etre. Pathetic is the best label for Nasrallah and his ilk.

The irony is that these news stories are not new—Mel Gibson froths off at a Jewish policemen who’s arresting him for drunk driving—Mel probably knows the guy -- he starts screaming “F***king Jews” and “Are you a Jew?” You think that came out of nowhere, or because Mel had one too many drinks? He knows these cops in Malibu—it’s not that big an area to patrol. Ya think there’s no more anti-Semitism in our enlightened age? Mel’s a big mouth for the ambient word that’s out there. Hatred is all over the place—Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, African Americans, Muslims, Gays, Lesbians. Liberal Media. Thin, White, Pure… Unless you’re Bill O’Reilly, you’re not accepted anymore.

No these stories aren’t new—here is a bit of dialogue from the movie, Exodus, about the original transition of Palestine from British protectorate to Nation State of Israel. This conversation is between Ari Ben Canaan, who is working to get the United Nations to recognize Israel and have the British leave, and his uncle, Akiva, of the terrorist group Irgun, which not unlike today’s terrorists tries to bring attention to a cause:

Ari: I think these bombings and these killings hurt us with the United Nations. A year ago we had the respect of the whole world. Now, when they read about us, it's nothing but terror and violence.

Akiva: It's not the first time this happens in history. I don't know of one nation, whether existing now or in the past hat was not born in violence. Terror, violence, death. They are the midwives who bring free nations into this world. Compromisers like the Haganah produce only abortions.

Ari: Before you have a country, you have to have people. That's the job we've done. Tens of thousands of people smuggled in with the whole British Navy blockading the coast. The population we've built is our most valid argument for independence. How can we ask the UN for a just decision when we keep blowing up things like a bunch of anarchists?

Akiva: You have just used the words "a just decision." May I tell you something?

Firstly--justice itself is an abstraction completely devoid of reality.

Second--to speak of justice and Jews in the same breath is a logical uncertainty.

Thirdly--one can argue the justice of Arab claims on Palestine just as one can argue the justice of Jewish claims.

Fourthly--no one can say the Jews have not had more than their share of injustice these past years. I therefore say,

Fifthly--Let the next injustice work against somebody else for a change.

Ari: You just changed the subject on me.

Today, US Secretary of State Rice has delineated elements of a cease-fire resolution for the UN to vote on, 60 years after the above supposed
conversation above took place. One of the items in the resolution:

Disarmament of all militias in Lebanon and the deployment of the Lebanese army throughout southern Lebanon, which is now controlled by Hezbollah.

Now who’s going to police that and how? Isn’t it about time we Americans woke up to our responsibilities, instead of watching this “war thing” on CNN and wondering if our gas prices will be affected?

It’s us! We need to take the higher moral road. We are the chosen people, like it or not. We have the power, the money, the means to feed the whole world. We can end poverty, hardship, and we have the tools—don’t believe me?—It’s the TRUTH! We better get a handle on that for our own sakes!

Mel Gibson Really Hates Jews and is Unhappy

I heard years ago that Mel Gibson had a flare for going “over the top” as they say. I also am aware of his father’s anti-Jewish leanings and statements about the Holocaust being a scam. A lot of people drink more than they’re allowed to legally and then drive, and they get arrested and booked and pay fines and attend classes on problem drinking etc. I don’t believe that many people arrested with a blood alcohol above the legal limit scream at the officers conducting the arrest that Jews cause all the wars in the world, and that Jews are “f****d.”

Mel did.

TMZ has learned that Mel Gibson went on a rampage when he was arrested Friday on suspicion of drunk driving, hurling religious epithets. TMZ has also learned that the Los Angeles County Sheriff's department had the initial report doctored to keep the real story under wraps.

TMZ has four pages of the original report prepared by the arresting officer in the case, L.A. County Sheriff's Deputy James Mee. According to the report, Gibson became agitated after he was stopped on Pacific Coast Highway and told he was to be detained for drunk driving Friday morning in Malibu. The actor began swearing uncontrollably. Gibson repeatedly said, "My life is f****d." Law enforcement sources say the deputy, worried that Gibson might become violent, told the actor that he was supposed to cuff him but would not, as long as Gibson cooperated. As the two stood next to the hood of the patrol car, the deputy asked Gibson to get inside. Deputy Mee then walked over to the passenger door and opened it. The report says Gibson then said, "I'm not going to get in your car," and bolted to his car. The deputy quickly subdued Gibson, cuffed him and put him inside the patrol car.

Once inside the car, a source directly connected with the case says Gibson began banging himself against the seat. The report says Gibson told the deputy, "You mother f****r. I'm going to f*** you." The report also says "Gibson almost continually [sic] threatened me saying he 'owns Malibu' and will spend all of his money to 'get even' with me."

The report says Gibson then launched into a barrage of anti-Semitic statements: "F*****g Jews... The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." Gibson then asked the deputy, "Are you a Jew?" The deputy became alarmed as Gibson's tirade escalated, and called ahead for a sergeant to meet them when they arrived at the station. When they arrived, a sergeant began videotaping Gibson, who noticed the camera and then said, "What the f*** do you think you're doing?"

A law enforcement source says Gibson then noticed another female sergeant and yelled, "What do you think you're looking at, sugar tits?" We're told Gibson took two blood alcohol tests, which were videotaped, and continued saying how "f****d" he was and how he was going to "f***" Deputy Mee.

There’s more here.

Here are some questions, since Gibson is after all a mega superstar in the entertainment business and visible worldwide to hundreds of millions of people:

Is this an anomaly in the actions of Mel Gibson? Or is it consistent and a continuation on his road to fulfill his mission, whatever that is?

How many Jews, of which there are a lot in the film business, will work with him on his next project?

How many Christians, who poured into the theaters for his film The Passion of The Christ, will reject his actions and words in this latest event, if true, and how many will keep silent either in embarrassment or tacit agreement?

And all this just when you thought there were enough Jew-haters out there already.

Gore Vidal on Bush the Thug

Gore Vidal expresses some opinions in an interview in The Progressive, conducted by David Barsamian. Here are some tidbits—like potato chips, after you bite into one, you want more:

He sees a certain continuity in U.S. foreign policy over the last fifty years. “The management, then and now, truly believes the United States is the master of the Earth and anyone who defies us will be napalmed or blockaded or covertly overthrown,” he says. “We are beyond law, which is not unusual for an empire; unfortunately, we are also beyond common sense.”

“I was brought up in Washington. When you are brought up in a zoo, you know what’s going on in the monkey house. You see a couple of monkeys loose and one is President and one is Vice President, you know it’s trouble. Monkeys make trouble.”

“…The people don’t matter to this gang. They pay no attention. They think in totalitarian terms. They’ve got the troops. They’ve got the army. They’ve got Congress. They’ve got the judiciary. Why should they worry? Let the chattering classes chatter. Bush is a thug. I think here is something really wrong with him.”

“The United States has done wicked things in the past to other countries but never on such a scale and never in such an existentialist way. It’s as though we are evil. We strike first. We’ll destroy you. This is an eternal war against terrorism. It’s like a war against dandruff. There’s no such thing as a war against terrorism. It’s idiotic. These are slogans. These are lies.”

What is the leader of the free world up to on this Friday, the 17th day of horrible violence between Israel and Lebanon, with which Bush would rather have nothing to do? First he’s meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who’s trying to convince the US president that involvement, actually out and out demand, of a cease fire and U.N. peacekeeping forces is a better idea than just watching the fighting on TV.

Then the most powerful man in the world hosts a gathering of the stars of this year’s American Idol TV show at the White House. In case you think this may be inappropriate while dozens of missiles are lopping off the limbs of innocent men, women and children every minute of every hour while our president could act to help out and end the misery, you’re not the only one:

"It can be tricky, when the Middle East is falling apart, to be spending time with the winner of 'American Idol,' " said Darrell West, a political scientist at Brown University in Rhode Island. "There's the risk that people will ask, 'Doesn't this guy have something better to do? Shouldn't he be solving foreign crises?' "—Los Angeles Times, 7/28/06

Shouldn’t we be praying for the November elections to get here soon?

Benefit of the Doubt

As I watched the leader of the free world put his hands on the German chancellor’s shoulders last week in a friendly attempt to make physical contact, I was embarrassed by the ridiculous image. Why was I embarrassed? I didn’t do it—I wouldn’t think of being physically familiar with a world leader at a public forum, even if I were a world leader myself. But this act in and of itself is not the problem.

A lot of bloggers and media pundits have tried to turn it into an issue of sexism and any other of a number of contemporary societal problems. What boat they’re all missing is that the crux of this action lies in the mentality of the individual, George W. Bush, and the almost disassociation with reality the act conveyed, which may be a key to the bigger dilemma of having such a person as president.

There was a series of rumblings on cable TV today because of the lack of progress toward a cease fire in a meeting of Secretary of State Rice and others in Rome:

The assembled dignitaries expressed their “determination to work immediately to reach with the utmost urgency a ceasefire” in the war that started two weeks ago today when the Hizbullah militia crossed the border to capture two Israeli soldiers, and Israel responded with a massive counterattack the length and breadth of Lebanon. But, at American insistence, the ceasefire would have to be one that’s “lasting, permanent and sustainable.” Which means the flames searing Lebanon, threatening Israel and endangering the most volatile region in the world will go on for weeks, if not months, to come.—Christopher Dickey, Newsweek

The rumblings were on the order of, as usual, Bush’s miscalculations and his ignorance of the consequences going back to the invasion of Iraq. More appropriately, the finger should be pointed at the neoconservative contingent of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz, before just sticking it to the POTUS.

Howard Fineman, on MSNBC, said he had not seen the “body language” [I saw this today and do not have transcript or reference yet] Bush demonstrated which was clearly that of someone “not in control” as he has been up to now. Fineman was referring to the speech of the Iraqi Prime Minister, Al-Maliki, in congress today. The controversy over his speech emanated from some remarks over the last couple of days during his visit to the US that implied he wasn’t entirely in sync with Bush policies concerning Israel and the region. Some of our elected representatives differed over whether to accept the P.M’s point of view, or boycott his speech, as Schumer of NY did:

"Am I surprised that an Arab has voiced words of concern about Israel and has supported Hezbollah and Hamas?" asked Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Connecticut. "No, I'm not surprised. He's trying to build coalitions in his own country. I am outraged. But you know, welcome to democracy."--CNN

National security adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters Tuesday that al-Maliki's comments were not as inflammatory as those of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for the Jewish state's destruction. "I have not heard from him statements suggesting Israel does not have the right to exist," Hadley said.—CNN

Fineman is the lead political reporter for Newsweek, and he thinks Bush is exhibiting some kind of psycho-body language that signals a change from the last, what, 6 years? There is more to this that is significant. David Gergen (Commentator, editor, teacher, public servant, best-selling author and adviser to presidents for 30 years, according to his web site) offered his two cents as to what the hell the US is waiting for in not demanding an immediate cease-fire. [Again I just heard this on satellite radio and don’t have transcript]

Gergen explains the US in the past has taken the lead position to broker cease fires in the Middle East, then work out the details afterward. Part of the ability to use diplomacy has been the ambient message that the US is the neutral party, interested only in ending violence, while supporting Israel as the in-place democracy and giving a nod to the needs and wants of the Palestinians and other Arab groups.

Gergen went on to explain that the new Bush response is divergent from past US policy since Israel became a state in that there is no wish to broker a cease-fire until and unless the Hizbullah threat in Lebanon is neutered. This may not happen, so Gergen says this policy is a big risk for the US, and could fail.

My friend and Middle East expert Chris Dickey goes on to delineate the crisis in a more articulate and compassionate fashion:

But as irrational as the politicians who make policy may be, the professionals in their entourages often understand reality quite well. And in the corridors of today’s conference I met several men and women who, on background or off the record (meaning they were afraid of losing their jobs if caught talking too frankly) laid out a picture of the situation in the Middle East right now that was convincing, frightening, and seems to have escaped the notice of Dispatcher Rice altogether.

The bottom line: Hizbullah is winning. That’s the hideous truth about the direction this war is taking, not in spite of the way the Israelis have waged their counterattack, but precisely because of it. As my source Mr. Frankly put it, “Hizbullah is eating their lunch.”

…Several of my worldly Lebanese and Arab friends here in Rome today—people who loathe Hizbullah—understand this problem well. Privately they say that’s one of the main reasons they are so horrified at the direction this war has taken: they fear not only that Lebanon will be destroyed, but that Hizbullah will wind up planting its banner atop the mountain of rubble.

That’s the latest fear—Israel responded to an invasion of its border by Hizbullah with tremendous firepower and military force, and may have created a brand new Lebanon, one that joins the other Muslim haters of Israel and run by an organization that didn’t exist 25 years ago, a proxy of Iran, Israel’s real menace. Talk about miscalculations!

Several polls were reported today, with the overwhelming numbers of Americans believing that the current Israel-Lebanon conflict will widen in the region, and that they don’t think the Iraq War will come to a successful conclusion.

I heard a poll number today that says that 75% of Americans think Bush should listen to US allies, and 29% think he does. I believe in standing up for a cause even if you’re the only one among millions who believes it, if it’s right. I don’t think that philosophy applies here, and I’ll tell you why very simply. The other day on the CNN web site there was a photo of an infant lying on a hospital table with its mother standing over in obvious emotional pain. The caption was that the infant was in such pain that he was shuddering as he went in and out of shock:

Standing in front of this 8-year-old boy lying in a hospital bed, the "conflict in the Middle East" and the "cost of war" seem endless and suffocating. His pain cannot possibly be imagined as he shakes uncontrollably in and out of shock. He has blood coming from his eyes.

His name is Mahmood Monsoor and he is horribly burned. In the hospital bed next to him is his 8-month-old sister, Maria -- also burned.

Screaming at the top of her lungs is the children's mother, Nuhader Monsoor. She is standing over her baby, looking at her son -- and probably thinking of her dead husband. The smell of burned flesh is overwhelming.

… Politics creeps into the ward like the blood that runs on the floors. "Clearly he is Hezbollah," says one of the doctors outside the room -- arcastically referring to 8-year-old Mahmood, whose screams can be heard from the hallway. His screams now blend with the wails of his mother, matching the baby's cries.

The hospital ward begins to teem with members of the international press. They all have blue flak jackets that say "press" on the front. They carry microphones, cameras, radios and satellite phones, and have local guides to translate.

Today, as I finish I am sitting in the same spot and the shells are still falling. Hezbollah rockets are firing toward northern Israel. I can imagine another reporter, in another flak jacket, standing over an 8-year old Israeli boy.

I'll finish by asking another question: Are any of us making a difference?

Here is the “cause:” the United States should stand for something greater than the common national interest of other countries. The great experiment of democracy, the Constitution, created by mortal men so many years ago, as a Republic that would stand for the rights of human beings, should be a standard and a model for those people who are living in miserable conditions.

Now that the US has the means to quell regional conflict that imparts horrors on innocent children, it has the responsibility to exercise this power to inhibit those envious, resentful, and ambitious little people who would use their charisma and maneuvering for their own ends, to cause trouble for others who want only peace, and the space to do their daily work.

In the US Declaration of Independence, Jefferson made it clear what the object of existence is, through the power of just government:

…organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

It would seem that a society based on such concepts, revered for over two hundred years, would work to install these concepts on a society in turmoil, if it could, to save innocent lives. The Middle East is such a society, in need of mediation and “cooler heads.”

Can’t those people who were polled and expressed dissatisfaction vote? Isn’t there an election this fall where they could express their wishes? Isn’t that what democracy means? Then again, so many voted for the Bush-Cheney ticket in 2004, and we already knew better then.

Time to wake up. There's no benefit of the doubt--that's a silly phrase anyway. We are citizens of the world, and we have the option of stopping suffering. Who would refuse that mission?

I Hate War and so does Eleanor

My friend in Toronto runs a chat forum with an eclectic international clientele who at any given moment may offer an opinion that will make you scurry to find out where the humanity went. Then there is me, who tends to stir up shit just because anything less than controversial tends to boredom, the worst of the deadly sins (I made that up, unless you include “sloth”).

Therefore when a recent post bragged about being related to Robert Duvall because the actor and the poster had a “common ancestor,” I felt compelled to reply that, in fact, all living human beings have a common ancestor. This is both mathematically provable as well as scientifically. Therefore, this forum-chatter had no special claim, as he thought he did, of relativity to Robert Duvall.

Besides the obvious wise-guy response that my tack took, I have been thinking about this aspect of humanity—that we are all, the world over, related in DNA and no doubt with some person centuries ago who is common to everyone who lives on the planet—and how futile are the contentions we make between us now, which cause such untold grief.

It’s one thing to look back at human history and marvel at the atrocities that were committed because people can’t get along. It’s another, in the current day and age of global communication, to think that any individual or group in a leadership position, would not understand the sophisticated concept that there is no difference among human beings of the earth—fighting against each other will only prolong the ultimate goal of learning how to overcome the calamities of nature—physical and natural. There a re enough disasters of weather and nature, and germs and sickness, to fulfill all the desires of suffering for our species. We don’t need any help from our fellow humans, there’s enough trouble to go around.

The war in Israel and Lebanon is a case in point. I just watched a Lebanese woman interviewed on CNN telling about the promises Hisbullah made to her to rebuild her shattered home and life once the current fighting stops. She hopes that more Israelis are killed, because they are the enemy and the reason for her suffering. If I taught my children that anything missing in their lives was because there are too many Mexicans in California, they would believe it and repeat it. This Hizbullah woman has been indoctrinated as have millions of Jews and Arabs since birth, to hate each other. They don’t even know why any more—the hatred is an entity all by itself.

There can’t be peace where people suffer. There will always be the element among those who suffer who will blame the "oppressors," and resist putting down their arms. Then there are the demigods, like Nasrallah who heads Hizbullah, who cares nothing for Lebanon or its people, except whether it gets him air time on cable news:

“What happened in Lebanon today might open a way out of the crisis in Gaza,” Nasrallah proclaimed the night his war began. “In other words, the Israelis are saying we don't want to negotiate with Hamas … We say: All right. Israel usually negotiates with us. At first they say no, but then they accept.” Then Nasrallah made his gambit perfectly clear. “We don't object to a joint Lebanese-Palestinian effort in this connection to emerge from this crisis” to end the “barbaric detention of 10,000 prisoners in Israeli prisons.” Nasrallah miscalculated badly, and not only for himself. Amid the death and destruction wrought by the new Lebanon war, the continued suffering of the Palestinians under siege in Gaza has been all but forgotten; the issue of Palestinian prisoners has dropped off the map and Israeli ground forces almost certainly will take new Lebanese captives in the current fighting.—Dickey, Newsweek, Best-Laid Plans 7/21/06

Further, the Israeli push is to emulate the neutering of Milosevic in Yugoslavia—but here’s a difference, as Chris points out:

But Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora is powerless. Nasrallah started this war, not him, and Siniora can’t stop it. Milosevic, moreover, was a cynical politician who wanted to survive. Nasrallah is a religious demagogue who exalts a cult of martyrdom. Milosevic was the president of a state, and his great ambitions were based on a primitive, narrow nationalism. Nasrallah is at once a militia leader and a would-be leader of global Islamic radicalism. The fate of the Lebanese state is, in many ways, irrelevant to him.

So we’re back to the common ancestor. Sounds like an academic word-play, in some Ivy-League tower removed from the reality of ground skirmishes, heat, tanks, crummy WWII missiles lobbed into civilized neighborhoods. Why doesn’t the US just nuke the whole Middle east and call the game? I’ve heard that from friends and family, while they sip their herbal teas and decaf lattes.

The losers are the ones who get shot or bombed. That is real pain, on a human one-by-one level. Southern Lebanon was rebuilt before, it can rise again. A child who loses a limb, that parent cannot retrieve that loss, no matter what.

Two weeks ago, my wife and I spoke with an old friend who had helped with some computer therapy years ago, that is still available for students to help with reading and processing of language. The program is called “Fast Forward” from Scientific learning Corporation, and we spoke to this therapist about helping a young cousin with learning difficulties. Today the report in the on line Orange County Register is that Terry Antonius just made it back from Lebanon by the skin of his chinny chin chin.

Anxious to escape the region and frustrated by a slow response by the U.S. Embassy to announce evacuation plans, Antonius on Wednesday boarded a cousin's 57-foot-long boat along with other family members.

They sailed from Beirut to Cyprus – a 105-mile, 19-hour trip, and Antonius was then able to board a flight arranged by the U.S. government.

He traveled more than 40 hours on his return home.

"I didn't give up," he said, his eyes wet with tears just moments after being reunited with his family. "There was a door open, and I took it. I wasn't going to wait any longer."

We like to believe here in the good ole USA that none of this foreign debacle bothers us. Morris Dees, founder and lead attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center, just sent an appeal for funds for his latest project—a civil suit against the “four white men involved in the beating and dumping of Billy Ray's almost lifeless body. He may not be able to speak for himself but, with your help, we will seek justice for him and his family.”

On September 27, 2003, Billy Ray Johnson, a mentally-challenged 43-year-old black man, was lured to a late night beer-drinking party in a pasture on the edge of Linden by a 19-year-old white teenager. The Cass County District Attorney said, "He was their entertainment for the night."

Billy Ray was taunted by a group of white teenagers, encouraged to pick up hot coals from the bonfire, called racist names and told that the Ku Klux Klan would get him. He was knocked unconscious by one of the white men, loaded in the back of a pickup truck and dumped beside a rural country road in an area infested with fire ants and wild hogs. The group believed that he might die and did not want to take him to the hospital. His body was covered with fire ant stings, he suffered permanent brain damage, and he is now confined to a nursing home.

Linden's 73-year-old white mayor said that he "was not surprised that the white teens used the n-word ... the black boy was somewhere he shouldn't have been, although they brought him there." Calling a 43-year-old black man a "boy" also seems common talk around Linden.—Southern poverty Law Center

What is it about us and our “common ancestor?” This little town in Texas, with all this hatred built in and up—what are they afraid of that they have to take it out on some poor guy who has a different skin color? All this fear and hatred—is that what our parents have taught us?

Are we so bad? Should God and the Angels call it off once and for all and admit this was an experiment that really wasn’t worth the pain caused to innocent people?

There is a thread on that Toronto forum that asks what is the meaning of life. At the end of the seminal science fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still, the all-knowing alien, in the form of actor Michael Rennie, addresses the crowd of scientists at the foot of the Washington Monument. What he says is as clear a condemnation of human foibles as I have ever heard, and the solution is also the best possible. It’s a science fiction film over ½ century old, and I still believe it has a meaning for us now:

I am leaving soon and you'll forgive me if I speak bluntly. The universe grows smaller every day and the threat of aggression by any group anywhere can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all or no one is secure. Now this does not mean giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly. Your ancestors knew this when they made laws to govern themselves and hired policemen to enforce them. We, of the other planets, have long accepted this principle. We have an organization for the mutual protection of all planets and for the complete elimination of aggression. The test of any such higher authority is, of course, the police force that supports it. For our policemen we created a race of robots. Their function is to patrol the planets in spaceships like this one and preserve the peace. In matters of aggression we have given them absolute power over us. This power cannot be revoked. At the first signs of violence they act automatically against the aggressor. The penalty for provoking their action is too terrible to risk. The result is we live in peace without arms or armies, secure in the knowledge that we are free from aggression and war, free to pursue more profitable enterprises. Now, we do not pretend to have achieved perfection, but we do have a system, and it works. I came here to give you these facts. It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer.

The decision rests with you.

Oy Have I Got the Wrong Rice

I wrote last Sunday, 5 long harrowing bloody destructive days ago, that the US needed to ramp up diplomacy right away:

What is hopeful it that the exceedingly brilliant woman Rice is will find analternative way to initiate diplomacy, and resolution.

During this morning’s press conference outlining US goals for the region, and her immediate plans for her trip to the battle area in two more days, here’s what the Secretary of State said:

Asked why she had not gone earlier and engaged in shuttle diplomacy to try toend the death and destruction that has gripped the region, she said, "I could have gotten on a plane and rushed over and started shuttling, and it wouldn't have been clear what I was shuttling to do."

I guess I put way too much expectation into the abilities of this woman. Then again, there is no doubt the benefits of continued fighting, with the spectre of Israeli ground forces massing on the Southern Lebanon border, are politically advantageous to the US and several of the front-line parties. Let Secretary Rice explain that to the parents of children who will be killed and maimed in the days ahead—see if they understand what cause could be important enough to condone that. How clear is that?

"Rigorous" Logic

In keeping with the last post about the reasons for all the players to see the current war continue in Lebanaon and Israel, here is an exerpt from Jeff Wells' blog entry yesterday on Rigorous Intuition. In its sheer eloquence and simplicity, it offers an uplifting vision and a road to the view:

[Simone] Weil died in England in 1943 of tuburculosis, though her death was hastened by her refusal to eat more than the ration allowed her compatriots in occupied France. She wrote, "Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand."

Evil doesn't do empathy. We had better. Because if our hearts can beat around the world - if our consciousness can be elevated such that we see our isolation to be an illusion and our divisions a deceit of criminals who mean to crush us with them - then maybe the world will yet see some glorious novelty.