2013-04-01
Walled Democracy
The Easter message of universal redemption got me thinking about the incoherence between our idea of universal democracy and the "peace" process in the Middle East. If white democratic state, Catholic democratic state, Christian democratic state, Muslim democratic state and the like are all anathema to our idea of inclusive, universal democracy, why isn't a Jewish democratic state also?
The White democratic state of south Africa of the 1970's was a democracy for whites as much as the land of Israel+Palestine is a democracy only for those granted the ultimately religious Jewish status. Democracy for those given a special racial or religious status is not coherent with the idea of a liberal, humanistic, universal democracy.
Time is not usually on the side of such regimes, unless they completely annihilate the repressed populations, as was the case of the Native-Americans in all of the Americas. Since that does not look like a possibility in that part of the World, much less a desirable outcome, the advancement of the "peace process" is urgent like many commentators have been expressing recently. Until now, it has only served as a huge Orwellian hoax.
The White democratic state of south Africa of the 1970's was a democracy for whites as much as the land of Israel+Palestine is a democracy only for those granted the ultimately religious Jewish status. Democracy for those given a special racial or religious status is not coherent with the idea of a liberal, humanistic, universal democracy.
Time is not usually on the side of such regimes, unless they completely annihilate the repressed populations, as was the case of the Native-Americans in all of the Americas. Since that does not look like a possibility in that part of the World, much less a desirable outcome, the advancement of the "peace process" is urgent like many commentators have been expressing recently. Until now, it has only served as a huge Orwellian hoax.
2009-01-20
8 years of our assent
"We've gotten really good at living with things during the Bush Years, at tolerating the intolerable. And while this may sound like another tip of the hat to the incredible resilience of the American people, it's not: Resilience, after all, is not what's required in crisis when the crisis is partly of your own making. Responsibility is. We have heard of the Tech Bubble of the Clinton Years, the Housing Bubble of George W. Bush. Well, the bubble that we're living in now — still — is the bubble that's all our own. It's the Moral Bubble, and it will not be pricked until we take responsibility not just for the forty-third president's actions but for our inaction — for all the agreements we've made without awareness, for all the awareness we've come to without vigilance, for all the times we've touched the easy, insulating button of our assent."
Excerpt from the wonderful piece by Tom Junod on Esquire Magazine: What the Hell Just Happened?
8 years of the gangster presidency, was a very, very long time indeed:
We gotta have peace!
Excerpt from the wonderful piece by Tom Junod on Esquire Magazine: What the Hell Just Happened?
8 years of the gangster presidency, was a very, very long time indeed:
We gotta have peace!
Curtis Mayfield
2009-01-15
1000+ 930+ 830+ 700 600 dead and counting
People who have not experienced war first hand don't realize that its horror is not fear, pain or anger. It is despair, and powerlessness. I will never forget my parents' desperate faces when they could do nothing to protect me and my brother other than putting their arms around us and pray for the best---when we were under mortar fire in the Angolan civil war. This sense of powerlessness overwhelms me when I read accounts such as these:
"I heard from the father of one of our patients, a 10-year-old boy with cancer who had been going to Israel for chemotherapy. Of course, there is no chance of that now. His child was in pain, so he wanted to go to the nearest hospital in Gaza, which was the European hospital in Khan Younis. The ambulance couldn't reach them because the road was blocked so this man carried his son for 8km (five miles) on his back to the hospital. When they got there, there wasn't any medication available, there weren't even any painkillers so he just carried him back home."
Dr Miri Weingarten is director of the Israeli charity Physicians for Human Rights
"We have been receiving a very high number of patients with a strange burn, completely different to the burns we are used to managing, very deep burns with a very offensive, chemical odour coming from the wound site. The wound keeps smoking for a long time. When we try to wash it with saline and water, some reaction happens, the skin bubbles and the patient complains of extreme pain. In some cases there is then severe destruction of the tissue and we have had to amputate whole limbs. We don't know what type of treatment should be used. The major problem is we don't know the kind of weapon that has been used. We have a visiting doctor from Norway who thinks it might be white phosphorus but we are not sure. Even if it is, we have no experience of it and do not know how to deal with wounds it has caused. We are asking for the help of all physicians across the world - what type of weapons cause these injuries and how do you deal with them? Is the chemical odour coming from the wound harmful to the medics? What are the long term repercussions? We have no idea. What can we say? We try to reassure patients but we do not know. "
Dr Abu Shaaban is director of the Burns Unit at Gaza's Shifa hospital
Imagine these were your children, and you will get closer to understanding the horror of war. A quote from Erasmus comes to mind: "War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it."
One thing that amazes me is how Israel manages not to let any journalists in, without that much outcry from the U.S. and Western media---certainly nothing like what we read and hear, rightly, when Mugabe expels western journalists from Zimbabwe...
And while the US media worries, also rightly, about whether there was torture at Guantanamo, I don't see the editorials of the NY Times calling for immediate access to Gaza in order to verify horrific stories such as "Israelis shot at fleeing Gazans" and UN accuses Israel over phosphorus. Jon Stewart below is the only one asking why such phony standards... Meanwhile at the NYTimes, we have the boring sanctimony of Friedman---why doesn't he use his position to press Israel into letting journalists in? Why doesn't he go there to report if claims such as the one above are true or not?
Even UN-flagged schools are not immune. 292235 205 children among the dead. Humanitarian crisis deepens. Journalists still not allowed in, therefore casualty claims in Gaza cannot be independently verified. U.N. Warns of Refugee Crisis in Gaza Strip.
"[...] UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said an alleged failure of the Israeli military to help wounded civilians in Gaza - cited by the Red Cross - could constitute a war crime. On Thursday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said its staff had found four weak and scared children beside their mothers' bodies in houses hit by shelling in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City. Ms Pillay told the BBC: 'The incident the Red Cross describes is very troubling because it has all the elements of what constitutes a war crime. There is an obligation to protect the wounded, to treat the sick, to remove them to safety and here, according to the Red Cross, Israeli soldiers just stood by and did nothing for these four children and one adult who were too weak to move.' The UN human rights body has demanded that human rights monitors be deployed in Gaza, Israel and the West Bank so that any violations of international law can be documented independently. Separately, the UN's head of humanitarian affairs, John Holmes, said it was 'extremely disappointing' that so far the resolution had been ignored by both sides." Full Story @ BBC News.
Give Peace A Chance (Phunk Investigation Mix) - ONO
Jon Stewart once more asks the tough questions no one dares to: Why are both parties following the same party line? (removed the embedded player because it was causing some glitches, follow the link to the video).
"I heard from the father of one of our patients, a 10-year-old boy with cancer who had been going to Israel for chemotherapy. Of course, there is no chance of that now. His child was in pain, so he wanted to go to the nearest hospital in Gaza, which was the European hospital in Khan Younis. The ambulance couldn't reach them because the road was blocked so this man carried his son for 8km (five miles) on his back to the hospital. When they got there, there wasn't any medication available, there weren't even any painkillers so he just carried him back home."
Dr Miri Weingarten is director of the Israeli charity Physicians for Human Rights
"We have been receiving a very high number of patients with a strange burn, completely different to the burns we are used to managing, very deep burns with a very offensive, chemical odour coming from the wound site. The wound keeps smoking for a long time. When we try to wash it with saline and water, some reaction happens, the skin bubbles and the patient complains of extreme pain. In some cases there is then severe destruction of the tissue and we have had to amputate whole limbs. We don't know what type of treatment should be used. The major problem is we don't know the kind of weapon that has been used. We have a visiting doctor from Norway who thinks it might be white phosphorus but we are not sure. Even if it is, we have no experience of it and do not know how to deal with wounds it has caused. We are asking for the help of all physicians across the world - what type of weapons cause these injuries and how do you deal with them? Is the chemical odour coming from the wound harmful to the medics? What are the long term repercussions? We have no idea. What can we say? We try to reassure patients but we do not know. "
Dr Abu Shaaban is director of the Burns Unit at Gaza's Shifa hospital
Imagine these were your children, and you will get closer to understanding the horror of war. A quote from Erasmus comes to mind: "War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it."
One thing that amazes me is how Israel manages not to let any journalists in, without that much outcry from the U.S. and Western media---certainly nothing like what we read and hear, rightly, when Mugabe expels western journalists from Zimbabwe...
And while the US media worries, also rightly, about whether there was torture at Guantanamo, I don't see the editorials of the NY Times calling for immediate access to Gaza in order to verify horrific stories such as "Israelis shot at fleeing Gazans" and UN accuses Israel over phosphorus. Jon Stewart below is the only one asking why such phony standards... Meanwhile at the NYTimes, we have the boring sanctimony of Friedman---why doesn't he use his position to press Israel into letting journalists in? Why doesn't he go there to report if claims such as the one above are true or not?
Even UN-flagged schools are not immune. 292
"[...] UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said an alleged failure of the Israeli military to help wounded civilians in Gaza - cited by the Red Cross - could constitute a war crime. On Thursday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said its staff had found four weak and scared children beside their mothers' bodies in houses hit by shelling in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City. Ms Pillay told the BBC: 'The incident the Red Cross describes is very troubling because it has all the elements of what constitutes a war crime. There is an obligation to protect the wounded, to treat the sick, to remove them to safety and here, according to the Red Cross, Israeli soldiers just stood by and did nothing for these four children and one adult who were too weak to move.' The UN human rights body has demanded that human rights monitors be deployed in Gaza, Israel and the West Bank so that any violations of international law can be documented independently. Separately, the UN's head of humanitarian affairs, John Holmes, said it was 'extremely disappointing' that so far the resolution had been ignored by both sides." Full Story @ BBC News.
Give Peace A Chance (Phunk Investigation Mix) - ONO
Jon Stewart once more asks the tough questions no one dares to: Why are both parties following the same party line? (removed the embedded player because it was causing some glitches, follow the link to the video).
2008-12-15
Happy Christmas: Paz na Terra
Conversation in a Bar in the Caribe last November:
Me: sporting a T-shirt with the Lennon/Ono slogan "War is Over, If You want it"
Irish Couple: So which war is over?
Me: This was originally a Lennon/Ono slogan against Vietnam, but I think it applies to any war a democratic country wages.
Irish Couple: We are very catholic, we don't believe in all that peace and love thing.
Conversation in the parking lot at St. Charles in Bloomington
Me: getting out of my Prius with the kids on the side that has a sticker that says "Support Faith-based Missile Defense Systems".
Man: Now why are you mocking people's faith, especially here by the Church?
Me: Well, I actually mean it in a very Catholic, albeit agnostic, kind of way...
Man: How come?
Me: In the sense that Catholics believe in Free Will and don't believe that God really intervenes in our affairs. In the sense that Peace and War are the responsability of humans, not God.
Man: That's messed up.
Labels: Peace
