[+] A Wish for a Better and More Peaceful Year to Come

[Editor's note: This wish for a better new year comes from Dr. Gershon Baskin, Director of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information. I join him in wishing all a better and more peaceful year, in the Middle East and all over the world. Shalom.]

To all of our Jewish friends and colleagues – Chag Samaeh
To all of us and all of you we wish that this New Year coming before us is better than the one closing.

May this year be the year when we all come to our senses, when logic overcomes emotions of hatred and revenge
When we all understand that no violence is acceptable or tolerable
When we decide that we have had enough
When we all rise and stand up to say – no more!
When we make peace a reality
When we decide to make it happen
When we no longer sit on the sidelines and just complain
When are hearts, minds, and actions rally for justice
When we can answer the question "how are you?" with a direct answer and with no reservations

That is the year we hope for.

Happy New Year and Peace to us all

IPCRI – Israel/Palestine Center for Research and
Information
http://www.ipcri.org

Situation Excellent, I Am Attacking

by William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

There is not enough grammar in the entirety of the English language to describe the incredible international humiliation that has befallen the United States of America. That this humiliation was brought down upon the American people by the man supposedly in charge of the country is, in all honesty, no big surprise for those who have been watching this all unfold. The layers of crushing embarrassment have been building like river sediment for months upon months upon months. On Tuesday, however, George W. Bush managed to completely obliterate the hard-won standing the United States has earned within the global community. . .

Never mind that the entire United Nations may as well not have shown up in the first place. The pitch and tenor of Bush's speech was not aimed at that body.
It was directed at the mainstream American media, whose reporting on these matters has been about as sharp as a sack of wet mice. Yet even to that
tone-deaf receiver, Bush failed to complete the pass. He meandered off into a free-association rant about sex slaves, somehow forgetting that his own citizens
were waiting to hear how he was going to get them out of the mess he so brazenly threw them in to. Certainly, the matter of international slavery in the 21st century is of deadly importance, but what connection it has to the blood-and-guts catastrophe
unfolding in the Middle East is still hovering somewhere in space.

Never mind that in the first ten words of his speech, George W. Bush once again tried to connect the nation of Iraq to the attacks of September 11th. He failed to explain how a nation under near-total occupation before the war, crushed by sanctions, devoid of weapons of any merit whatsoever, unable to even launch a fighter aircraft in its own airspace, and completely lacking in any connections to Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda, could have managed to challenge the most powerful nation on the face of the earth. These are mere details. Bush chose instead to hew close to the bones of our beloved dead, to use them again as an excuse and as cover for his terrible mistakes, lies and mismanagement. The Iraq-9/11 connection has been so thoroughly debunked that Bush himself was forced recently to publicly denounce it, while claiming shock that anyone would think he'd try to make such a connection. Yet there he stood before the judgment of the world, coughing up the same old hairball on their carpet.

Never mind the rank absurdity of it all. There is an old story of a French officer who, when thrown into an impossible battle, sent a communiqué to his commanders: "Hard pressed on my right. My center is yielding. Impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent, I am attacking!" That sad chestnut was on display
before the United Nations on Tuesday, with George W. Bush and the United States of America standing in for the officer. Bush was at the United Nations for one reason: He got his country into terrible trouble, in defiance of virtually the entire international community, and was forced to come begging for help. An ounce of contrition would have furthered the cause of actually helping to repair the devastation in Iraq. An ounce of contrition would have shown America to be the humble nation Bush promised us way back in 2000. An ounce of contrition would almost certainly have motivated the U.N. to leave aside wrangling, roll up its sleeves, and begin to repair the damage that has been done. That ounce was not offered, and the jut-jawed whipsaw President barefaced his way through what could have been the most hopeful moment the Iraqi people have seen in 100 years. Situation excellent, I am attacking.

Never mind the 26,000 liters of anthrax, the 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, the 500 tons of sarin and mustard gas and VX gas, the 30,000 munitions capable of deploying this red death, the mobile biological weapons labs, and the infamous 'yellow-cake' uranium from Niger, that has so fantastically failed to materialize. All of this is sitting on a White House web page called 'Disarm Saddam Hussein.' This was the argument, the reason for war. None of it exists in any coherent state. The administration's own hired-gun weapons inspector, Dr. David Kay, has been tearing through Iraq to find all of these horrors promised by Bush and the gang. His report, saying pointedly that the stuff isn't there, was ready to be released on September 15th, but was promptly buried by the administration.

Never mind all that. It comes down to this.

Over the last 227 years, the United States of America went from a brawling, rebellious infant to the greatest democracy in the universe. This nation spent
oceans of blood, sweat and tears to earn the respect of the world. Too often, it abused that respect by abusing the world, but always managed to regain its
standing within the global community by the sheer force of its goodness, its ideals, and its willingness to help other nations in need. When the attacks of September 11th came, that global community responded to our essential goodness by embracing us with a passionate ferocity that has no precedent in the annals of human history. That standing is dust now, ground under the heels of a pack of ideological extremists who would wrap the world in flames if it profited them a few more ducats. The world sees this, and has seen it for some time now. The United Nations was used on Tuesday as a prop for a failing President's Fox newsbite writ large. It is a shame and a scandal and a disaster beyond description that this
great nation has fallen so very low.

A moment will come on January 20th, 2005. It will be cold in Washington D.C. A man who is not George W. Bush will raise his hand and swear and oath to preserve, protect and defend the United States of America. The words "So help me God" will be snatched by the wind and carried across seas and mountains to the furthest corners of the planet. When that happens, all of the Earth will be joined together in the deepest and most profound exhalation of relief. When that happens, George W. Bush will have become in his absence what he completely failed to be with his presence: A uniter.

[William Rivers Pitt is the Managing Editor of truthout.org. He is a New York Times and international best-selling author of three books - "War On Iraq," available from Context Books, "The Greatest Sedition is Silence," available from Pluto Press, and "Our Flag, Too: The Paradox of Patriotism," available in August from Context Books. ]

Other articles on political concerns related to peace and justice may be found at:
http://groups.yahoo/com/group/ EcunewsAlerts

Gay Married Couple Barred At US Border

by Jan Prout

[Editor's note: Please let me post a personal note as to why I believe this is a very important issue. The Canadian married gay couple who were denied entrance into the U.S. as a family unit admit that it would have been easy for them to simply fill out separate forms as single people, but as gay Canadian citizens in a committed (and legal) married relationship, they felt it was an important issue of respect and recognition of legitimate differences in laws in Canada and other countries where gay marriage is accepted. It seems to me to be a perfectly logical argument that Canadian citizens should be treated as married if they are considered so in their own country -- certainly for purposes of filling out a form and being counted as a married family unit when crossing an international border.

For those of us who believe that same-sex couples should be accorded the same rights and privileges as traditional married couples, this may be an unusually opportune chance to encourage and promote more openness and acceptance of the concept in the U.S. As the reality grows that citizens of other western democratic nations accept gay marriage and/or relationships, their ability to enter this country and to have freedom of access and respect by our government is vitally important to our own struggle to obtain such rights and respect here at home.

Their lawyer stated it well, in my opinion, when he said, "We can't force the U.S. to change its laws on same-sex marriage, but we can insist that Canadian citizens be treated with respect, that the Canadian law regarding family recognition gets respected when it comes to how Canadians treat their families." -- Editor]

Thur., 18 Sep 2003 14:43:40 -0700 (PDT)
365Gay.com Newscenter
Toronto Bureau

http://www.365gay.com/NewsContent/ 091803borderBanned.htm

(Toronto, Ontario) The first gay couple to be legally married in Canada has been refused entry into the United States.

Kevin Bourassa and Joe Varnell were turned back this morning at Toronto's Pearson International Airport by US Customs and Immigration officers when they attempted to board a flight to Georgia.

US Customs and Immigration pre-check people traveling to the US at most major Canadian airports. The couple was rejected after filling out a form identifying themselves as a family.

Bourassa and Varnell were traveling to Braselton, Georgia to speak at a human rights conference where the widow of Martin Luther King is to speak tonight. They also were scheduled at a meeting of the Gill Foundation, a philanthropic LGBT human rights organization.

A US customs supervisor, Bourassa said, told them that they would not be allowed into the United States as a family because the country doesn't recognize same-sex marriages. Customs and Immigration allows families to fill out a single form. The Toronto couple refused to complete separate forms as single people.

"When we realized we weren't going to be allowed into the country, we had to make a real hard decision," Bourassa said.

Bourassa called the action a flagrant violation of the couple's human rights.

"We could have filled out separate forms, but how much of your dignity do you want to have chip away? We feel we had an affront to our dignity, so we decided to go back home."

Bourassa, who works full time as an advocate for same-sex marriages, and Varnell, a banker, were married at Toronto's Metropolitan Community Church in 2001. When the government refused to register the marriage, the couple joined others fighting the Canadian ban on same-sex marriage. This spring the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled the ban unconstitutional. Subsequently a court in British Columbia also ruled the ban illegal. Since that time same-sex-marriage has been permitted in Ontario and B.C. and the federal government is grappling with legislation to change federal laws to allow gay marriage across the country.

The couple contacted their lawyer this morning. Doug Elliott, who also represented them in their landmark marriage suit, spoke with Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham this morning. Elliott said that although the U.S. customs official was enforcing American law by not allowing Bourassa and Varnell into the United States, "he was doing it on Canadian soil."

"We can't force the U.S. to change its laws on same-sex marriage, but we can insist that Canadian citizens be treated with respect, that the Canadian law regarding family recognition gets respected when it comes to how Canadians treat their families."

Other articles on LGBT concerns may be found at:http://groups.yahoo/com/group/lgbt

[+] Israelis Try to Fence In Their Fear

by Thomas L. Friedman
Tuesday, September 9, 2003

JERUSALEM -- If you want to understand why Israel is building a wall and fence around the West Bank to defend against suicide bombers, just hop on any bus in Jerusalem. You can't wait to get off. You scrutinize every passenger. You look at every backpack. You flinch when another bus pulls alongside. And you can't wait to get off.

Yes, Israelis admit it. Suicide bombing of buses and cafes has made them crazy, and the wall-fence they are building is a concrete expression of all those primordial fears.

"It is a tragic project," says the Haaretz writer Ari Shavit. "It looks like the Berlin Wall. It looks wrong. But there is a lot to be said in defense of the wall. No one in Israel actually wanted the wall -- the government didn't want it, the army didn't want it, the right didn't want it. It was imposed on the establishment by popular sentiment. This is the Israeli people's reaction to the intifada and the suicide bombing. What the wall says is that we want to have our coastline democracy -- a small, sane, quiet country of our own, keeping both the Palestinians and the settlers out. In this sense, I think there is wisdom in it."

No question, this wall-fence marks a major turning point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But whether it will be a turning point toward sanity and quiet, as so many Israelis hope, or will instead fuel the conflict, will depend, quite literally, on which way the wall itself turns.

For now only about one-fifth of the wall has been completed -- along the northern and western borders between the West Bank and Israel, and a few areas in Jerusalem. But as the wall snakes south, Ariel Sharon, the hard-line Israeli prime minister, has to soon decide: Will it continue to hew roughly to the 1967 Green Line border or will it turn east, deep into the West Bank, to protect most Jewish settlements. If it turns east, it will imprison hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, separating them from their fields, families and jobs, a process that is already starting.

For now, Sharon seems paralyzed. The Americans, Israeli left-wing parties and Palestinians are tugging him to keep the next stages of the wall near the Green Line, the settlers are pulling him either to abandon the whole idea or include all the major settlement blocks, while the bus-riding Israeli silent majority is simply screaming: "Give us a wall."

In other words, the Israeli left wants the wall to be built in a way that makes it safe for Israel to leave the West Bank and the right wants the wall built in a way that makes it safe for Israel to stay in the West Bank.

A fence that would make the West Bank safe for Israel to leave, argues David Makovsky, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is a fence that would be built roughly along the outline that President Clinton offered Palestinians and Israelis -- which called upon Israel to turn over 95 percent of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in return for peace with the Palestinians. Since 75 percent of the settlers live on 5 percent of the West Bank -- just across the Green Line from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem -- the majority could be included inside the fence, said Makovsky in the latest issue of Foreign Policy magazine, and the Palestinians could still have a contiguous state in almost the entire West Bank.

"It's time we started putting facts on the ground that disentangle this spaghetti and counter the facts on the ground designed to entangle and prevent any solution," argues Makovsky.

If the wall were along the lines of the Clinton plan, it would signal Palestinians that a deal is there for the taking -- and could be further adjusted in peace talks -- while providing Israelis security and signaling the settlers beyond the wall that they have no future.

If the wall heads way off the Green Line, deep into the West Bank, as Sharon hinted it might, we are headed for a disaster.

Good fences make good neighbors, but only if your fence runs along a logical, fair, consensual boundary -- not through the middle of your neighbor's backyard. If this wall is used to unilaterally bite off chunks of the West Bank to absorb far-flung Israeli settlements, then "it will just become a new and longer Wailing Wall," said the Israeli political theorist Yaron Ezrahi. "But unlike the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, this wall will have people wailing on both sides. Jews will be mourning the collapse of their dream of a Jewish democratic state, and Palestinians will be mourning their own lost opportunity to translate all their sacrifices into a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel."

Thomas L. Friedman is foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times. Copyright 2003 New York Times News Service.

Other articles on concerns for peace and justice in Israel-Palestine may be found at:http://groups.yahoo/com/group/jpip

[+] America Is a Religion

"There is no more dangerous notion than that of America the Divine."

by George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 29th July 2003

"The death of Uday and Qusay," the commander of the ground forces in Iraq told reporters on Wednesday, "is definitely going to be a turning point for the resistance."1

Well, it was a turning point, but unfortunately not of the kind he envisaged. On the day he made his announcement, Iraqi insurgents killed one US soldier and wounded six others. On the following day, they killed another three; over the weekend they assassinated five and injured seven. Yesterday they slaughtered one more and wounded three. This has been the worst week for US soldiers in Iraq since George Bush declared that the war there was over.

Few people believe that the resistance in that country is being coordinated by Saddam Hussein and his noxious family, or that it will come to an end when those people are killed. But the few appear to include the military and civilian command of the United States armed forces. For the hundredth time since the US invaded Iraq, the predictions made by those with access to intelligence have proved less reliable than the predictions made by those without. And, for the hundredth time, the inaccuracy of the official forecasts has been blamed on "intelligence failures".

The explanation is wearing a little thin. Are we really expected to believe that the members of the US security services are the only people who cannot see that many Iraqis wish to rid themselves of the US army as fervently as they wished to rid themselves of Saddam Hussein? What is lacking in the Pentagon and the White House is not intelligence (or not, at any rate, of the kind we are considering here), but receptivity. Theirs is not a failure of information, but a failure of ideology.

To understand why this failure persists, we must first grasp a reality which has seldom been discussed in print. The United States is no longer just a nation. It is now a religion. Its soldiers have entered Iraq to liberate its people not only from their dictator, their oil and their sovereignty, but also from their darkness. As George Bush told his troops on the day he announced victory, "wherever you go, you carry a message of hope - a message that is ancient and ever new. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, "To the captives, 'come out,' and to those in darkness, 'be free.'"2

So American soldiers are no longer merely terrestrial combatants; they have become missionaries. They are no longer simply killing enemies; they are casting out demons. The people who reconstructed the faces of Uday and Qusay Hussein carelessly forgot to restore the pair of little horns on each brow, but the understanding that these were opponents from a different realm was transmitted nonetheless. Like all those who send missionaries abroad, the high priests of America cannot conceive that the infidels might resist through their own free will; if they refuse to convert, it is the work of the devil, in his current guise as the former dictator of Iraq.

As Clifford Longley shows in his fascinating book Chosen People, published last year, the founding fathers of the USA, though they sometimes professed otherwise, sensed that they were guided by a divine purpose.3 Thomas Jefferson argued that the Great Seal of the United States should depict the Israelites, "led by a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night".4 George Washington claimed, in his inaugural address, that every step towards independence was "distinguished by some token of providential agency".5 Longley argues that the formation of the American identity was part of a process of "supersession". The Catholic Church claimed that it had supplanted the Jews as the elect, as the Jews had been repudiated by God. The English Protestants accused the Catholics of breaking faith, and claimed that THEY had become the beloved of God. The American revolutionaries believed that the English, in turn, had broken their covenant: the Americans had now become the chosen people, with a divine duty to deliver the world to God's dominion. Six weeks ago, as if to show that this belief persists, George Bush recalled a remark of Woodrow Wilson's. "America," he quoted, "has a spiritual energy in her which no other nation can contribute to the liberation of mankind."6

Gradually this notion of election has been conflated with another, still more dangerous idea. It is not just that the Americans are God's chosen people; America itself is now perceived as a divine project. In his farewell presidential address, Ronald Reagan spoke of his country as a "shining city on a hill", a reference to the Sermon on the Mount.7 But what Jesus was describing was not a temporal Jerusalem, but the kingdom of heaven. Not only, in Reagan's account, was God's kingdom to be found in the United States of America, but the kingdom of hell could also now be located on earth: the "evil empire" of the Soviet Union, against which His holy warriors were pitched.

Since the attacks on New York, this notion of America the divine has been extended and refined. In December 2001, Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of that city, delivered his last mayoral speech in St Paul's Chapel, close to the site of the shattered twin towers. "All that matters," he claimed, "is that you embrace America and understand its ideals and what it's all about. Abraham Lincoln used to say that the test of your Americanism was ... how much you believed in America. Because we're like a religion really. A secular religion."8 The chapel in which he spoke had been consecrated not just by God, but by the fact that George Washington had once prayed there. It was, he said, now "sacred ground to people who feel what America is all about".9 The United States of America no longer needs to call upon God; it is God, and those who go abroad to spread the light do so in the name of a celestial domain. The flag has become as sacred as the Bible; the name of the nation as holy as the name of God. The presidency is turning into a priesthood.

So those who question George Bush's foreign policy are no longer merely critics; they are blasphemers, or "anti-Americans". Those foreign states which seek to change this policy are wasting their time: you can negotiate with politicians; you cannot negotiate with priests. The US has a divine mission, as Bush suggested in January, "to defend ... the hopes of all mankind",10 and woe betide those who hope for something other than the American way of life.

The dangers of national divinity scarcely require explanation. Japan went to war in the 1930s convinced, like George Bush, that it possessed a heaven-sent mission to "liberate" Asia and extend the realm of its divine imperium. It would, the fascist theoretician Kita Ikki predicted, "light the darkness of the entire world".11 Those who seek to drag heaven down to earth are destined only to engineer a hell.

[George Monbiot's books Poisoned Arrows and No Man's Land are published by Green Books. See www.monbiot.com for more information.]


References:

1. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, Commander, Coalition Ground Forces, 23rd July 2003. Briefing on the Confirmation of the Deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jul2003/ g030723-D-6570C.html

2. President George W Bush, 1st May 2003. Address to troops on the USS Abraham Lincoln

3. Clifford Longley, 2002. Chosen People: the big idea that shapes England and America. Hodder and Stoughton, London.

4. Thomas Jefferson, cited in Longley, ibid.

5. George Washington, cited in Longley, ibid.

6. President George W Bush, 21st May 2003. Remarks to the United States Coast Guard Academy, New London, Connecticut.

7. Ronald Reagan, cited in Longley, ibid.

8. Rudy Giuliani, cited in Longley, ibid.

9. ibid

10. President George W. Bush, 28th January 2003. State of the Union Address. The US Capitol.

11. Kita Ikki, cited in Piers Brendon, 2000. The Dark Valley: a panorama of the 1930s. Pimlico, London.

Other articles on political concerns related to peace and justice may be found at:
http://groups.yahoo/com/group/ EcunewsAlerts

A Thought from Thomas Moore

“It may be more important to be awake than to be successful, balanced, or healthy. What does it mean to be awake? Perhaps to be living with a lively imagination, responding honestly and courageously to opportunity and avoiding the temptation to follow mere habit or collective values. It means to be an individual, in every instance manifesting the originality of who we are. This is the ultimate form of creativity -- following the lead of the deep soul as we make a life." -- Thomas Moore (Original Self, Perennial, 2001)