Full Column: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemId=13246
Suzanne's comments:
This column is about the impotence of the U.N., as a puppet of American
whim, and the trump card that it gives Iraq by failing to ask that Israel be
held up to the same scrutiny it wants for Iraq. "Dubya's particularly obtuse
insistence that Iraq accept the U.N. teams gives Saddam Hussein a sympathy card
that will play well virtually throughout the world. And now, Iraq can rub it in
even further, by pointing to the grotesque double standard of Israel's right to
reject a U.N. inspection -- one which it had previously approved -- when the
topic is not potential for mass murder, but determining whether mass murder has
already occurred."
Other
quotes drawn from the column:
...another round of humiliating
impotence for the United Nations. Today, a fact-finding mission, left to cool
its heals by Israel while the bodies cooled in the Jenin Refugee Camp, gave up
and went home...
The U.N., understandably, wanted to separate fact from
rumor; unless the worst of the rumors are true, such an exercise would actually
have helped Israel. But in what kind of an investigation -- let alone one
involving allegations of crimes against humanity -- does the defendant get to
dictate the terms of who will do the investigating, where they will be allowed,
what they can look at, and when they can do it?
________________________________________
Other additions to our Quotes section [http://www.theconversation.org/index.html#quotes]:
This article was sent to us
by William Golden:
Jews for Justice
Michael
Lerner
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020520&s=lernerThey call us "self-hating" Jews when we raise
criticisms of Israeli policies. Yet most of those Jews who risk this calumny as
the cost of getting involved actually feel a special resonance with the history
and culture of the Jews--because this is a people who have proclaimed a message
of love, justice and peace...No wonder, then, that social-justice-oriented
American Jews today feel betrayed by Israeli policies that seem transparently
immoral and self-destructive.
Social justice Jews are not apologists for
Palestinian violence. We are outraged by the immoral acts of Palestinian
terrorists who blow up Israelis at Seder tables, or while they shop, or sit in
cafes, or ride in buses. We know that these acts of murder cannot be excused.
But many of us also understand that Israeli treatment of Palestinians has been
immoral and outrageous...
There is ample reason for the non-Jewish world
to atone for its past oppression of Jews. But non-Jews are doing no favors to
the Jewish people when by their silence they help the most destructive elements
of the Jewish world pursue immoral policies that almost certainly will generate
more hatred of Jews.
...an impossible choice between pro-Israel groups
that support Sharon's current policies in lockstep or pro-Palestinian groups
that claim the Palestinians are facing Nazi-like genocide at the hands of the
Jewish people (an exaggeration that allows right-wing Jews to yell
"anti-Semitism" because there is no attempt to systematically murder
Palestinians, thereby letting Israel off the hook).
CIVIL
LIBERTIES
The New War on Freedom
Give me liberty, or give me . . . what?
Security?
Gore Vidal
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/04/21/IN83832.DTLSince V-J Day 1945 ("Victory over Japan" and the end of World War II), we have been
engaged in what the historian Charles A. Beard called "perpetual war for perpetual peace." I have occasionally referred to our 'enemy of
the month club': Each month we are confronted by a new horrendous enemy at whom
we must strike before he destroys us. The Federation of American Scientists has
catalogued nearly 200 such military incursions since 1945 initiated by the
United States...
The awesome physical damage Osama and company did to us
on Dark Tuesday is as nothing compared to the knockout blow to our vanishing
liberties: The Anti-Terrorist Act of 1996 and the recent USA PATRIOT Act (still
being written after it was passed, and thus unread by the Congress which passed
it.)
Kucinich Is the
One
Studs Terkel
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020506&s=terkelIn his speech to the Southern California
Americans for Democratic Action, criticizing Bush's conduct of the war on
terrorism, Dennis Kucinich set the crowd on its ear--one standing ovation after
another. Sure, they were all liberals, but what counted was the response on the
Internet. The Cleveland Congressman's e-mail box was stuffed to overflowing with
20,000-plus enthusiastic letters...
"I found out very quickly there were
a number of special-interest groups who made city hall their private warren.
There are thirty-two councilmen. Thirty-one to one was usually the score. When I
got elected mayor just as I came to the Council, I was expected to represent the
system. When I started to challenge it, the titans of Cleveland's business
community began to get surly and used their clout in the media to disparage the
administration. I came to understand that big business has a feudal view of the
city, and that city hall was within their fiefdom."...
"There are
increasingly two Americas: the America of multinationals dictating decisions in
Washington, and the America of neighborhoods and rural areas, who feel left out.
I see, in the future, a cataclysm: popular forces converging on an economic
elite, which feels no commitments to the needs of the people. That clash is
already shaping up. The American Revolution never really ended. It's a
continuing process. I think we're approaching the revolution of hope. We have
the country that makes it possible for people, if they've lost control of the
government, to regain it in a peaceful way. Through the ballot box. Before I got
into politics, I didn't know whether what I was doing even mattered. Now I know.
One person can make a difference."...
Imagine him in a televised,
coast-to-coast debate with Dubya. Blood wouldn't flow, but it would be a
knockout in the first round, and we'd have an honest-to-God working-class
President for the first time in our history...I haven't touched on ways and
means. Obviously, the big dough will not be there. But this could be the
catapult for the hundreds of grassroots groups on a thousand and one issues to
coalesce behind one banner. Jim Hightower has touched on that often. And Michael
Moore's book, "Stupid White Men," is a bestseller. And there's a whole new
generation of kids, not just the students, but bewildered, lost blue-collar
kids. And, strangely enough, it can be done the old-fashioned way, shoe leather
and bell-ringing, as well as e-mails. It could be that
exciting.
________________________________________
Five Star Piece: Gaza City:
Sharon's War On The Future -- An Eyewitness Recounts Israel's Military
Action, Benjamin Dov Granby -- May 2, 2002
Full piece: http://www.theconversation.org/gaza.html
Suzanne's
comment: This is a first hand account from a Palestinian about
Ramallah. I wonder if anyone would dispute it. This story portrays the outrage
Sharon's Israelis are perpetrating, that only can destroy hopes for any
peaceful, negotiated resolution -- confirming that Sharon's idea is to resolve
the situation by destroying this generation of Palestinians. I hope it is a help
in seeing that the Israel we love is being steered by the reprehensible behavior
of this Israeli government. "...under the cloak of a 'war against terrorism,'
Sharon, ever the pragmatist, took the opportunity to also destroy any vestige of
a viable Palestinian society, one that could someday flourish as an independent
nation. By rhetorically subsuming all Palestinian citizenry into the archetype
of bloodthirsty terrorists, he has gotten away with sabotaging any future
alternatives to Yasser Arafat, be they
lawyers, doctors or educators, and he has forever embittered the whole of
Palestinian society."
Quotes drawn from the piece:
Ramallah is the most
cosmopolitan of the Palestinian cities, and the destruction wrought there stands
as evidence that Ariel Sharon did not only seek a war on terrorism, as he
claimed, but also a war against the future peacemakers of Palestinian
society...
"Some people blow up bombs and Israel makes all of us suffer
for it." ...
The very institutions of the intellectual class were utterly
ransacked. Christina Storm, director of Lawyers Without Borders, commented that
it seemed as if the Israeli government sought to embitter any and all future
peacemakers in the legal arena of educated Palestinian society. While Sharon's
spokesman Raanan Gissen stated to the AP on April 21 that Israeli troops had
"explicit orders to avoid unnecessary damage," the damage to non-governmental
and private organizations was extensive...These attacks can only be construed as
a policy and not a series of accidents.
...the Israeli raids destroyed
"years of information built into knowledge, time spent thinking by thousands of
people working to build their civil society and their future or trying to build
a private sector that would bring a sense of economic stability to their
country." With specious rationale, Sharon and the IDF continue to explain away
this damage (when they even bother to) as justifiable in a search for terrorist
infrastructure.
Wade Frazier sent us this:
Five Star Piece: If You Want a Free
Vote, Ask Nicely, Terry Jones -- April 21, 2002
Full piece: http://www.theconversation.org/venezuela.html
Suzanne's comment: I've been waiting
for the right piece on Venezuela. How much horror about what America does in
meddling where we have no business can we stand to read about? This was a breath
of funny air -- well, sort of funny. At least it's through a relatable lens,
with a delicious tongue in its cheek. "...although Mr. Chavez 'was
democratically elected' one had to bear in mind that 'legitimacy is something
that is conferred not just by a majority of the voters, however' [sic]. Clearly,
this involves a fundamental re-evaluation of what we understand by democracy,
and I offer here some thoughts on the principles - other than counting votes -
which might confer legitimacy."
Quotes drawn from the piece:
It is no good people
blindly voting in any Tom, Dick or Hugo if they are not acceptable to
Washington. If this is true of Iraq, North Korea, Serbia and the UK, it is
doubly true of South America and trebly true of a country that happens to be the
third largest supplier of oil to the US. It is also no good imagining that
landslide victories are any guide to legitimacy. Just because Chavez has twice
been elected President by the largest margins in Venezuela's history, and just
because his government has twice the number of elected representatives that its
opponents have, that does not mean it can go around passing any legislation it
wants. According to the 'Florida Rules', the narrower the margin of victory, the
greater the legitimacy. In fact, if the victor actually has fewer people voting
for him than the loser (almost half-a-million fewer in the case of George W.
Bush) then that is democracy's way of awarding him carte blanche to do whatever
he and his friends in the oil business want.
Five Star
Piece: Surprise Best Seller Blames U.S., Michael Massing -- May
4, 2002
Full piece: http://www.theconversation.org/chomsky911.html
Suzanne's comment: Thanks to Noam Chomsky for
bottom-lining the horror of our day, and for giving us an echo of what Michael
Moore made clear to us about the size of our ranks -- Chomsky's post 9/11 tome
also is a runaway bestseller. Although this is a straightforward news report and
not an opinion piece, like most of our Five Star Pieces, the data about the book
here is a satisfying phenomenon in these polluted times. [Note: quotes are as
they appear in the news report.] "People said it would have no success
whatsoever," said Daniel Simon, the publisher of Seven Stories, "because most
Americans ere lock-step behind the war." As soon as the volume hit bookstores,
however, it began selling briskly, and it hasn't stopped. "People are coming in
every day, asking, `What can I read that can give me some understanding of
what's happening?' " said Virginia Harabin, the floor manager at the Politics
and Prose Bookstore in Washington. "This is the one I
recommend."
Quotes
drawn from the piece:
"9-11," as the volume is titled, analyzes
the attacks from the distinctive perspective that Professor Chomsky has honed in
more than a dozen books. "While the attacks were 'horrifying atrocities,' he writes, 'we can think of the United States as an
innocent victim only if we adopt the convenient path of ignoring the record of
its actions and those of its allies.'" "'The United States, he asserts, is 'a leading terrorist state.'"
________________________________________
Comments from our
Listmembers:
Carol Rios of Santa Fe, New Mexico,
writes:
I would love to continue receiving more conversations.
Thank you for the concern for honesty and responsibility regarding our society's
ideations and creations. I am grateful that people are making space in
their lives to inform themselves as you are, and will be able to cut through
indoctrinations to get at realities, and expose hype for what it is. If I
may add my voice along with yours to a concerted effort to unveil the
distortions, I will certainly try my best to do so. Thanks once
again.
Allan Savory, Center for
Holistic Management [http://www.holisticmanagement.org],
writes:
What a wonderful and telling comment this is, from Geov's
column, "The Fight: All Bow Down and
Pray to the Almighty Dollar," in your last
Update:
"As progressive activists wrestle with trying to change a whole
constellation of destructive government and corporate policies, abroad and at
home, with little or no help from either major party, the first daunting
challenge is to even get people to care, and, once they care, to believe that we
can make a difference...last weekend, tens of thousands of people descended upon
Washington, D.C. (and other cities) to protest. Many people feel the
void of exactly such human-scale concerns in their lives and in our society.
Many people can remember quite vividly when their lives were better, and/or can
imagine quite vividly their lives might improve. In every one of these small
towns you see on a road trip, there are Wal-Marts, but there are also good
people doing inspiring things."
I am due to speak to a think tank on
Tuesday at Sandia National Labs and will use this as it so illustrates the
points I will be making in my efforts to get people to understand how little
hope there is in today's policies dealing with poverty and
violence.
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