The Absurd Times: quagmire4

ENOUGH ALREADY

The headlines in our local newspaper read “”U.S. Death Tool in Iraq Rises.”

The Absurd Travel Agency has stepped forth to end the Iraq war with minimal expense and maximun security and support for our troops. As can be seen from the illustration above, the travel agency has been in business for a long time and has experience with all sorts of diverse cargo. Captain N. leads the fleet and the agency has offered to transport all of our troops back here to safety at a very small price.

At the beginning of the congressional session, Dennis Kucinich stated that there was 75 billion dollars still in the “pipeline” and that it could be used for withdrawal. Considering the fact that a month has gone by, perhaps only 60 billion remain, make that 50. For 50 billion dollars, the Absurd Travel Agency will transport all of our troops home immediately. All they have to do is get to the port.

So let’s hear no more about debate. We know why so many Republicans were voted out of office last election – end the war. Just recently, there was a debate in the Senate over whether or not to debate sending an additional 35,000 troops there, but the debate never happened. This is so absurdly far from bringing our troops home that, despite the statements of our “lawmakers,” we must simply take them back and be done with it.

Hence the offer: 50 billion, no CODs or checks, please. Just a money order or cashiers check in Euros, not dollars. No FAR clauses. The Absurd Travel Agency will undertake this on a handshake.

This weeks articles are

! On Iran and Iraq, The Guardian, Jonathis Steele

2. There is no New Anti-Semitism

by Rabbi Michael Lerner

3. j.steele@guardian.co.uk (More Iran)

4. Impeachment by the People

*by Howard Zinn; The Progressive

(This last just to introduce Howard Zinn. He wrote a book called The People’s History of the United States.” In it, he presents all the facts I used to get into trouble in High School with by mentioning them in class when relevant. See, some of the teachers involved really knew some of these facts, but the PTA made sure that they did not get mentioned, so that put the teachers in an uneasy position. Now they are all together in one place, the facts. I mean.)

Johnathin Steele

The Guardian

The shadowy outlines of a new US strategy towards Iran are exercising diplomats and experts around the Middle East and in the west. The US says Iranian personnel are training and arming anti-US forces inside Iraq, and it will not hesitate to kill them. It is sending a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf, doubling its force projection there. It is calling on Europeans to tighten sanctions on Iran until Tehran suspends its uranium enrichment programme.

Is the US rattling the sabre in advance of an attack on Iran? Or is it merely rattling its cage, as it pretends still to be a power in the region in spite of being locked into an unwinnable war in Iraq? The only certainty is that Bush’s strategy of calling for democratisation in the Middle East is over. Washington has had to abandon the neocon dream of turning Iraq into a beacon of secular liberal democracy. It is no longer pressing for reform in other Arab states.

On her recent trip to Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf, Condoleezza Rice said little about democracy. Her pitch was old-fashioned realpolitik as she tried to create a regional counterweight to Iran’s influence. Gary Sick, a former National Security Council expert, argues that Washington’s return to balance-of-power considerations is designed to create an informal anti-Iranian alliance of the US, Israel and the Sunni Arab states. The aim is partly to divert attention from the catastrophe of Iraq. It also reduces Israel’s isolation by suggesting Sunni Arab states have a common interest in confronting Iran, whatever their disagreements over Palestine.

Other American experts argue that Iranian influence should not be confused with Shia influence. The US blunder in invading Iraq and opening the way for Shia Islamists to control its government created an unexpected opportunity for Iran. But it does not follow that Shia movements in other Arab states have grown stronger or that the arc of Shia radicalism that King Abdullah of Jordan has talked of is anything more than a figment of his imagination. The Shia minorities in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are showing no signs of revolt. On the contrary, Saudi Shias are reported to be fearful of a backlash from the Sunni majority if sectarian threat-mongering continues. Highlighting sectarian identities has turned into a galloping cancer in Iraq, and it would be a disaster if the US seeks to export these tensions into the wider Middle East.

Even in Iraq there are limits to Iran’s role. The eight-year war between the two countries in the 1980s showed that Iraqi Shias put their Arab and Iraqi identity above the religious rituals they share with Iranians. Moqtada al-Sadr, the cleric who commands one of the main Iraqi militias, frequently boasts of his Iraqi nationalism and the fact that his father, a distinguished ayatollah, remained in opposition in Iraq during the Saddam Hussein years rather than fleeing, as other Iraqi Shia clerics did, to the protection of Tehran or London.

The US claims Iran has increased its subversion in Iraq in recent months. The US has a record of self-serving and false intelligence on Iraq but, even if true, Iran’s actions cannot make much difference to the problems the US is facing. The sectarian violence is perpetrated largely by Iraqis on Iraqis. If outsiders provoke it, they are mainly Sunni jihadis loyal to al-Qaida. As for attacks on US forces, these come primarily in Sunni areas or the mixed province of Diyala. Some US officials now hint that Iranians may be involved in these areas too. Links between Iran and Iraq’s Sunni insurgents would be new, but marginal.

The real purpose of Washington’s heightened talk of Iranian subversion seems to be twofold. The administration is playing the blame game. When the “who lost Iraq?” debate develops in earnest as the presidential election contest hots up, Bush’s people will name its fall guys. Number one will be the Democrats, for failing to fund the war adequately and allowing the “enemy” to take comfort from the sapping of American will. Number two will be Iran for its alleged arming of militias and insurgents. Number three will be Syria for allowing suicide bombers through Damascus airport and into Iraq.

The second purpose of Washington’s anti-Iranian claims, as the former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski recently suggested, is to prepare a case for a US military strike on Iran. It will be described as defensive, just as the first attacks on North Vietnam two generations ago were falsely said to be an answer to the other side’s aggression.

There could be a third aim: a desire to influence the internal Iranian debate. A senior US official stated in London this week that the Iranian government was a monolith and “we try to discern differences within the Iranian regime at our peril”. That may not be the majority view within the administration. Ratcheting up accusations against Iran’s revolutionary guards who are close to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be a device to make a case for moderates like the former president Hashemi Rafsanjani. He appears to favour a deal with Washington rather than confrontation.

The safest conclusion is that Washington remains confused about what Iran is doing, and frustrated by its own inability to find allies to support a response. All options are being prepared, along with their “justifications”. The International Institute for Strategic Studies’ annual survey rightly pointed out this week that US power is fading. It can shape an agenda but not implement it globally.

Two stark new events prove that. One was the meeting between the Saudi and Iranian security chiefs to try to stop Lebanon sliding back into civil war. This showed Iran can be a force for regional stability, and that Saudi Arabia is resisting US efforts to isolate Tehran. The other was President Jacques Chirac’s comment that it would not matter if Iran developed a nuclear bomb or two as they could not be used productively. Described as a gaffe since it broke ranks with Washington, it expressed the views of many Europeans (as well as the contradiction inherent in the French and British nuclear arsenals), since the French president added that the bigger problem was the push for other nations to follow suit.

As Washington’s neocons go into eclipse and the realpolitikers dither, Britain and other European governments need to be far clearer in public than they have so far been. They should point out that the dispute with Iran is not as monumental as Washington claims. Fomenting new divisions in the Middle East or resorting to force are cures far worse than the disease.

j.steele@guardian.co.uk

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Tikkun to heal, repair, and transform the world

What’s “new” about the alleged New Anti-Semitism?

There is no New Anti-Semitism

by Rabbi Michael Lerner

The N.Y. Times reported on January 31 about the most recent attempt by

the American Jewish Community to conflate intense criticism of Israel

with anti-Semitism. In a neat little example of slippery slope, the

report on “Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism”

written by Alvin H. Rosenfeld moves from exposing the actual

anti-Semitism of those who deny Israel’s right to exist?and hence deny

to the Jewish people the same right to national self-determination

that they grant to every other people on the planet (the anti-war

group International Answer is a good example of that, though Rosenfeld

doesn’t cite them)?to those who powerfully and consistently attack

Israel’s policies toward Palestinians, see Israel as racist the way

that it treats Israeli-Arabs (or even Sephardic Jews), or who

analogize Israel’s policies to those of apartheid as instituted by

South Africa.

The Anti-Defamation League sponsored a conference on this same topic

in San Francisco on Jan.28, conspicuously failing to invite Tikkun,

Jewish Voices for Peace and Brit Tzedeck ve Shalom, the three major

Jewish voices critiquing Israeli policy yet also strong supporters of

Israel’s security.

Meanwhile, the media has been abuzz with stories of Jews denouncing

former President Jimmy Carter for his book Palestine: Peace or

Apartheid. The same charges of anti-Semitism that have consistently

been launched against anyone who criticizes Israeli policy is now

being launched against the one American leader who managed to create a

lasting (albeit cold) peace between Israel and a major Arab state (Egypt). Instead of seriously engaging with the issues raised (e.g. to what extent are Israel’s current policies similar to those of

apartehid and to what extent are they not?) the Jewish establishment

and media responds by attacking the people who raise these or any

other critiques—shifting the discourse to the legitimacy of the

messenger and thus avoiding the substance of the criticisms. Knowing

this, many people become fearful that they too will be labeled

“anti-Semitic” if they question the wisdom of Israeli policies or if

they seek to organize politically to challenge those policies.

Yet there is nothing “new” about this or about this alleged

anti-Semitism that these mainstream Jewish voices seek to reveal. From

the moment I started Tikkun Magazine twenty years ago as “the liberal

alternative to Commentary and the voices of Jewish conservatism and

spiritual deadness in the organized Jewish community” our magazine has

been attacked in much of the organized Jewish community as

“self-hating Jews” (though our editorial advisory board contains some

of the most creative Jewish theologians, rabbis, Israeli peace

activist and committed fighters for social justice). The reason? We

believe that Israeli policy toward Palestinians, manifested most

dramatically in the Occupation of the West Bank for what will soon be

forty years and in the refusal of Israel to take any moral

responsibility for its part in the creation of the Arab refugee

problem, is immoral, irrational, self-destructive, a violation of the

highest values of the Jewish people, and a serious impediment to world

peace.

What the Jewish establishment organizations have done is to make

invisible the strong roots in Judaism for a different kind of policy.

The most frequently repeated injunction in Torah are variations of the

following command: “Do not oppress the stranger (the ‘other’).

Remember that you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Instead, the

Jewish establishment has turned Judaism into a cheer-leading religion

for a particular national state that has a lot of Jews, but has

seriously lost site of the Jewish values which early Zionists hoped

would find realization there.

The impact of the silencing of debate about Israeli policy on Jewish

life has been devastating. We at Tikkun are constantly encountering

young Jews who say that they can no longer identify with their

Jewishness, because they have been told that their own intuitive

revulsion at watching the Israeli settlers with IDF support violate

the human rights of Palestinian civilians in the West Bank or their

own questioning of Israel’s right to occupy the West Bank are proof

that they are “self-hating Jews.” The Jewish world is driving away its

own young.

But the most destructive impact of this new Jewish Political

Correctness is on American foreign policy debates. We at Tikkun have

been involved in trying to create a liberal alternative to AIPAC and

the other Israel-can-do-no-wrong voices in American politics. When we

talk to Congressional representatives who are liberal or even

extremely progressive on every other issue, they tell us privately

that they are afraid to speak out about the way Israeli policies are

destructive to the best interests of the United States or the best

interests of world peace?lest they too be labeled anti-Semitic and

anti-Israel. If it can happen to Jimmy Carter, some of them told me

recently, a man with impeccable moral credentials, then no one is

really politically safe.

When this bubble of repression of dialogue explodes into open

resentment at the way Jewish Political correctness has been imposed,

it may really yield a “new” anti-Semitism. To prevent that, the voices

of dissent on Israeli policy must be given the same national exposure

in the media and American politics that the voices of the Jewish

establishment have been given.

We hope that the creation of our INTEFAITH Network of Spiritual

Progressives (NSP at www.spiritualprogressives.org

<http://www.spiritualprogressives.org ) can provide a safe context for

this kind of discussion among the many Christians, Muslims,

Unitarians, Hindus, Buddhists and secular-but-not-religious people who

share some of the criticisms of Israel and who will eventually try to

challenge the kind of anti-Semitism that might be released against

Jews once the resentment about Jewish Political Correctness on Israel

does explode. Even better if we could succeed in creating a powerful

alternative to AIPAC. Unfortunately, that path is not so easy. When we

approached some of the Israel peace groups to form an alliance with us

to build the alternative to AIPAC we found that the hold of the Jewish

Establishment was so powerful that it had managed to seep into the

brains of people in organizations like Americans for Peace Now (NOT

the Israeli group Peace Now which has been very courageous), Brit

Tzedeck ve’Shalom and the Israel Policy Forum or the Religious Action

Center of the Reform movement—and as a result these peace voices are

continually fearful that they will be “discredited” if they align with

each other and with us to create this alternative to AIPAC. Meanwhile,

while they look over their right shoulders fearfully, the very people

that they fear will “discredit” them for aligning with each other and

with us are ALREADY discrediting them as much as they possibly can.

Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun (www.tikkun.org

<http://www.tikkun.org ), author of the 2006 NY Times best-seller The

Left Hand of God (Harper San Francisco), and national chair of the

Network of Spiritual Progressives (www.spiritualprogressives.org

<http://www.spiritualprogressives.org ). RabbiLerner@tikkun.org

</ym/Compose?To=RabbiLerner@tikkun.org

...

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web: http://www.tikkun.org

<http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?key=279079588&url_num=1&url=http://www.tikkun.org

email: community@tikkun.org </ym/Compose?To=community@tikkun.org

2342 Shattuck Avenue, #1200, Berkeley, CA 94704

Fax

j.steele@guardian.co.uk

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ZNet | Anti War

Impeachment by the People

*by Howard Zinn; The Progressive

<http://www.progressive.org/node/4473 ; February 02, 2007*

Courage is in short supply in Washington, D.C. The realities of the Iraq War cry out for the overthrow of a government that is criminally responsible for death, mutilation, torture, humiliation, chaos. But all we hear in the nation’s capital, which is the source of those catastrophes, is a whimper from the Democratic Party, muttering and nattering about “unity” and “bipartisanship,” in a situation that calls for bold action to immediately reverse the present course.

These are the Democrats who were brought to power in November by an electorate fed up with the war, furious at the Bush Administration, and counting on the new majority in Congress to represent the voters. But if sanity is to be restored in our national policies, it can only come about by a great popular upheaval, pushing both Republicans and Democrats into compliance with the national will.

The Declaration of Independence, revered as a document but ignored as a guide to action, needs to be read from pulpits and podiums, on street corners and community radio stations throughout the nation. Its words, forgotten for over two centuries, need to become a call to action for the first time since it was read aloud to crowds in the early excited days of the American Revolution: “Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and institute new government.”

The “ends” referred to in the Declaration are the equal right of all to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” True, no government in the history of the nation has been faithful to those ends. Favors for the rich, neglect of the poor, massive violence in the interest of continental and world expansion—that is the persistent record of our government.

Still, there seems to be a special viciousness that accompanies the current assault on human rights, in this country and in the world. We have had repressive governments before, but none has legislated the end of habeas corpus, nor openly supported torture, nor declared the possibility of war without end. No government has so casually ignored the will of the people, affirmed the right of the President to ignore the Constitution, even to set aside laws passed by Congress.

The time is right, then, for a national campaign calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Representative John Conyers, who held extensive hearings and introduced an impeachment resolution when the Republicans controlled Congress, is now head of the House Judiciary Committee and in a position to fight for such a resolution. He has apparently been silenced by his Democratic colleagues who throw out as nuggets of wisdom the usual political palaver about “realism” (while ignoring the realities staring them in the face) and politics being “the art of the possible” (while setting limits on what is possible).

I know I’m not the first to talk about impeachment. Indeed, judging by the public opinion polls, there are millions of Americans, indeed a majority of those polled, who declare themselves in favor if it is shown that the President lied us into war (a fact that is not debatable). There are at least a half-dozen books out on impeachment, and it’s been argued for eloquently by some of our finest journalists, John Nichols and Lewis Lapham among them. Indeed, an actual “indictment” has been drawn up by a former federal prosecutor, Elizabeth de la Vega, in a new book called United States v. George W. Bush et al, making a case, in devastating detail, to a fictional grand jury.

There is a logical next step in this development of an impeachment movement: the convening of “people’s impeachment hearings” all over the country. This is especially important given the timidity of the Democratic Party. Such hearings would bypass Congress, which is not representing the will of the people, and would constitute an inspiring example of grassroots democracy.

These hearings would be the contemporary equivalents of the unofficial gatherings that marked the resistance to the British Crown in the years leading up to the American Revolution. The story of the American Revolution is usually built around Lexington and Concord, around the battles and the Founding Fathers. What is forgotten is that the American colonists, unable to count on redress of their grievances from the official bodies of government, took matters into their own hands, even before the first battles of the Revolutionary War.

In 1772, town meetings in Massachusetts began setting up Committees of Correspondence, and the following year, such a committee was set up in Virginia. The first Continental Congress, beginning to meet in 1774, was a recognition that an extralegal body was necessary to represent the interests of the people. In 1774 and 1775, all through the colonies, parallel institutions were set up outside the official governmental bodies.

Throughout the nation’s history, the failure of government to deliver justice has led to the establishment of grassroots organizations, often ad hoc, dissolving after their purpose was fulfilled. For instance, after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, knowing that the national government could not be counted on to repeal the act, black and white anti-slavery groups organized to nullify the law by acts of civil disobedience. They held meetings, made plans, and set about rescuing escaped slaves who were in danger of being returned to their masters.

In the desperate economic conditions of 1933 and 1934, before the Roosevelt Administration was doing anything to help people in distress, local groups were formed all over the country to demand government action. Unemployed Councils came into being, tenants’ groups fought evictions, and hundreds of thousands of people in the country formed self-help organizations to exchange goods and services and enable people to survive.

More recently, we recall the peace groups of the 1980s, which sprang up in hundreds of communities all over the country, and provoked city councils and state legislatures to pass resolutions in favor of a freeze on nuclear weapons. And local organizations have succeeded in getting more than 400 city councils to take a stand against the Patriot Act.

Impeachment hearings all over the country could excite and energize the peace movement. They would make headlines, and could push reluctant members of Congress in both parties to do what the Constitution provides for and what the present circumstances demand: the impeachment and removal from office of George Bush and Dick Cheney. Simply raising the issue in hundreds of communities and Congressional districts would have a healthy effect, and would be a sign that democracy, despite all attempts to destroy it in this era of war, is still alive.

/Howard Zinn is the author, most recently, of “A Power

Governments Cannot Suppress.” For information on how to get

involved in the impeachment effort, go to

www.afterdowningstreet.org <http://www.afterdowningstreet.org ./

The Absurd Times

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Iraq solution -- repost

4. Impeachment by the People

ZNet | Anti War

Impeachment by the People

<http://www.progressive.org/node/4473 ; February 02, 2007*

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Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Iraq solution -- repost

4. Impeachment by the People

ZNet | Anti War

Impeachment by the People

<http://www.progressive.org/node/4473 ; February 02, 2007*

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