I just listened to an interesting podcast from Unwelcome Guests by James Howard Kunstler entitled America's Culture of Denial and Betrayal. It's about what the world will be like once big oil runs out and the massive changes that will be necessary.

This prompted me to find a very thought provoking article by the same author on the same subject that was published in Rolling Stone magazine a couple of years back: What's going to happen as we start running out of cheap gas to guzzle? by James Howard Kunstler. Mar 24, 2005

A few weeks ago, the price of oil ratcheted above fifty-five dollars a barrel, which is about twenty dollars a barrel more than a year ago. The next day, the oil story was buried on page six of the New York Times business section. Apparently, the price of oil is not considered significant news, even when it goes up five bucks a barrel in the span of ten days. That same day, the stock market shot up more than a hundred points because, CNN said, government data showed no signs of inflation. Note to clueless nation: Call planet Earth.

Carl Jung, one of the fathers of psychology, famously remarked that "people cannot stand too much reality." What you're about to read may challenge your assumptions about the kind of world we live in, and especially the kind of world into which events are propelling us. We are in for a rough ride through uncharted territory.

It has been very hard for Americans -- lost in dark raptures of nonstop infotainment, recreational shopping and compulsive motoring -- to make sense of the gathering forces that will fundamentally alter the terms of everyday life in our technological society. Even after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, America is still sleepwalking into the future. I call this coming time the Long Emergency.

Most immediately we face the end of the cheap-fossil-fuel era. It is no exaggeration to state that reliable supplies of cheap oil and natural gas underlie everything we identify as the necessities of modern life -- not to mention all of its comforts and luxuries: central heating, air conditioning, cars, airplanes, electric lights, inexpensive clothing, recorded music, movies, hip-replacement surgery, national defense -- you name it.

The few Americans who are even aware that there is a gathering global-energy predicament usually misunderstand the core of the argument. That argument states that we don't have to run out of oil to start having severe problems with industrial civilization and its dependent systems. We only have to slip over the all-time production peak and begin a slide down the arc of steady depletion.

The term "global oil-production peak" means that a turning point will come when the world produces the most oil it will ever produce in a given year and, after that, yearly production will inexorably decline. It is usually represented graphically in a bell curve. The peak is the top of the curve, the halfway point of the world's all-time total endowment, meaning half the world's oil will be left. That seems like a lot of oil, and it is, but there's a big catch: It's the half that is much more difficult to extract, far more costly to get, of much poorer quality and located mostly in places where the people hate us. A substantial amount of it will never be extracted.

The United States passed its own oil peak -- about 11 million barrels a day -- in 1970, and since then production has dropped steadily. In 2004 it ran just above 5 million barrels a day (we get a tad more from natural-gas condensates). Yet we consume roughly 20 million barrels a day now. That means we have to import about two-thirds of our oil, and the ratio will continue to worsen.

The U.S. peak in 1970 brought on a portentous change in geoeconomic power. Within a few years, foreign producers, chiefly OPEC, were setting the price of oil, and this in turn led to the oil crises of the 1970s. In response, frantic development of non-OPEC oil, especially the North Sea fields of England and Norway, essentially saved the West's ass for about two decades. Since 1999, these fields have entered depletion. Meanwhile, worldwide discovery of new oil has steadily declined to insignificant levels in 2003 and 2004.

Some "cornucopians" claim that the Earth has something like a creamy nougat center of "abiotic" oil that will naturally replenish the great oil fields of the world. The facts speak differently. There has been no replacement whatsoever of oil already extracted from the fields of America or any other place.

Now we are faced with the global oil-production peak. The best estimates of when this will actually happen have been somewhere between now and 2010. In 2004, however, after demand from burgeoning China and India shot up, and revelations that Shell Oil wildly misstated its reserves, and Saudi Arabia proved incapable of goosing up its production despite promises to do so, the most knowledgeable experts revised their predictions and now concur that 2005 is apt to be the year of all-time global peak production.

It will change everything about how we live.

To aggravate matters, American natural-gas production is also declining, at five percent a year, despite frenetic new drilling, and with the potential of much steeper declines ahead. Because of the oil crises of the 1970s, the nuclear-plant disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and the acid-rain problem, the U.S. chose to make gas its first choice for electric-power generation. The result was that just about every power plant built after 1980 has to run on gas. Half the homes in America are heated with gas. To further complicate matters, gas isn't easy to import. Here in North America, it is distributed through a vast pipeline network. Gas imported from overseas would have to be compressed at minus-260 degrees Fahrenheit in pressurized tanker ships and unloaded (re-gasified) at special terminals, of which few exist in America. Moreover, the first attempts to site new terminals have met furious opposition because they are such ripe targets for terrorism.

Some other things about the global energy predicament are poorly understood by the public and even our leaders. This is going to be a permanent energy crisis, and these energy problems will synergize with the disruptions of climate change, epidemic disease and population overshoot to produce higher orders of trouble.

We will have to accommodate ourselves to fundamentally changed conditions.

No combination of alternative fuels will allow us to run American life the way we have been used to running it, or even a substantial fraction of it. The wonders of steady technological progress achieved through the reign of cheap oil have lulled us into a kind of Jiminy Cricket syndrome, leading many Americans to believe that anything we wish for hard enough will come true. These days, even people who ought to know better are wishing ardently for a seamless transition from fossil fuels to their putative replacements.

The widely touted "hydrogen economy" is a particularly cruel hoax. We are not going to replace the U.S. automobile and truck fleet with vehicles run on fuel cells. For one thing, the current generation of fuel cells is largely designed to run on hydrogen obtained from natural gas. The other way to get hydrogen in the quantities wished for would be electrolysis of water using power from hundreds of nuclear plants. Apart from the dim prospect of our building that many nuclear plants soon enough, there are also numerous severe problems with hydrogen's nature as an element that present forbidding obstacles to its use as a replacement for oil and gas, especially in storage and transport.

Wishful notions about rescuing our way of life with "renewables" are also unrealistic. Solar-electric systems and wind turbines face not only the enormous problem of scale but the fact that the components require substantial amounts of energy to manufacture and the probability that they can't be manufactured at all without the underlying support platform of a fossil-fuel economy. We will surely use solar and wind technology to generate some electricity for a period ahead but probably at a very local and small scale.

Virtually all "biomass" schemes for using plants to create liquid fuels cannot be scaled up to even a fraction of the level at which things are currently run. What's more, these schemes are predicated on using oil and gas "inputs" (fertilizers, weed-killers) to grow the biomass crops that would be converted into ethanol or bio-diesel fuels. This is a net energy loser -- you might as well just burn the inputs and not bother with the biomass products. Proposals to distill trash and waste into oil by means of thermal depolymerization depend on the huge waste stream produced by a cheap oil and gas economy in the first place.

Coal is far less versatile than oil and gas, extant in less abundant supplies than many people assume and fraught with huge ecological drawbacks -- as a contributor to greenhouse "global warming" gases and many health and toxicity issues ranging from widespread mercury poisoning to acid rain. You can make synthetic oil from coal, but the only time this was tried on a large scale was by the Nazis under wartime conditions, using impressive amounts of slave labor.

If we wish to keep the lights on in America after 2020, we may indeed have to resort to nuclear power, with all its practical problems and eco-conundrums. Under optimal conditions, it could take ten years to get a new generation of nuclear power plants into operation, and the price may be beyond our means. Uranium is also a resource in finite supply. We are no closer to the more difficult project of atomic fusion, by the way, than we were in the 1970s.

The upshot of all this is that we are entering a historical period of potentially great instability, turbulence and hardship. Obviously, geopolitical maneuvering around the world's richest energy regions has already led to war and promises more international military conflict. Since the Middle East contains two-thirds of the world's remaining oil supplies, the U.S. has attempted desperately to stabilize the region by, in effect, opening a big police station in Iraq. The intent was not just to secure Iraq's oil but to modify and influence the behavior of neighboring states around the Persian Gulf, especially Iran and Saudi Arabia. The results have been far from entirely positive, and our future prospects in that part of the world are not something we can feel altogether confident about.

And then there is the issue of China, which, in 2004, became the world's second-greatest consumer of oil, surpassing Japan. China's surging industrial growth has made it increasingly dependent on the imports we are counting on. If China wanted to, it could easily walk into some of these places -- the Middle East, former Soviet republics in central Asia -- and extend its hegemony by force. Is America prepared to contest for this oil in an Asian land war with the Chinese army? I doubt it. Nor can the U.S. military occupy regions of the Eastern Hemisphere indefinitely, or hope to secure either the terrain or the oil infrastructure of one distant, unfriendly country after another. A likely scenario is that the U.S. could exhaust and bankrupt itself trying to do this, and be forced to withdraw back into our own hemisphere, having lost access to most of the world's remaining oil in the process.

We know that our national leaders are hardly uninformed about this predicament. President George W. Bush has been briefed on the dangers of the oil-peak situation as long ago as before the 2000 election and repeatedly since then. In March, the Department of Energy released a report that officially acknowledges for the first time that peak oil is for real and states plainly that "the world has never faced a problem like this. Without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary."

Most of all, the Long Emergency will require us to make other arrangements for the way we live in the United States. America is in a special predicament due to a set of unfortunate choices we made as a society in the twentieth century. Perhaps the worst was to let our towns and cities rot away and to replace them with suburbia, which had the additional side effect of trashing a lot of the best farmland in America. Suburbia will come to be regarded as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. It has a tragic destiny. The psychology of previous investment suggests that we will defend our drive-in utopia long after it has become a terrible liability.

Before long, the suburbs will fail us in practical terms. We made the ongoing development of housing subdivisions, highway strips, fried-food shacks and shopping malls the basis of our economy, and when we have to stop making more of those things, the bottom will fall out.

The circumstances of the Long Emergency will require us to downscale and re-scale virtually everything we do and how we do it, from the kind of communities we physically inhabit to the way we grow our food to the way we work and trade the products of our work. Our lives will become profoundly and intensely local. Daily life will be far less about mobility and much more about staying where you are. Anything organized on the large scale, whether it is government or a corporate business enterprise such as Wal-Mart, will wither as the cheap energy props that support bigness fall away. The turbulence of the Long Emergency will produce a lot of economic losers, and many of these will be members of an angry and aggrieved former middle class.

Food production is going to be an enormous problem in the Long Emergency. As industrial agriculture fails due to a scarcity of oil- and gas-based inputs, we will certainly have to grow more of our food closer to where we live, and do it on a smaller scale. The American economy of the mid-twenty-first century may actually center on agriculture, not information, not high tech, not "services" like real estate sales or hawking cheeseburgers to tourists. Farming. This is no doubt a startling, radical idea, and it raises extremely difficult questions about the reallocation of land and the nature of work. The relentless subdividing of land in the late twentieth century has destroyed the contiguity and integrity of the rural landscape in most places. The process of readjustment is apt to be disorderly and improvisational. Food production will necessarily be much more labor-intensive than it has been for decades. We can anticipate the re-formation of a native-born American farm-laboring class. It will be composed largely of the aforementioned economic losers who had to relinquish their grip on the American dream. These masses of disentitled people may enter into quasi-feudal social relations with those who own land in exchange for food and physical security. But their sense of grievance will remain fresh, and if mistreated they may simply seize that land.

The way that commerce is currently organized in America will not survive far into the Long Emergency. Wal-Mart's "warehouse on wheels" won't be such a bargain in a non-cheap-oil economy. The national chain stores' 12,000-mile manufacturing supply lines could easily be interrupted by military contests over oil and by internal conflict in the nations that have been supplying us with ultra-cheap manufactured goods, because they, too, will be struggling with similar issues of energy famine and all the disorders that go with it.

As these things occur, America will have to make other arrangements for the manufacture, distribution and sale of ordinary goods. They will probably be made on a "cottage industry" basis rather than the factory system we once had, since the scale of available energy will be much lower -- and we are not going to replay the twentieth century. Tens of thousands of the common products we enjoy today, from paints to pharmaceuticals, are made out of oil. They will become increasingly scarce or unavailable. The selling of things will have to be reorganized at the local scale. It will have to be based on moving merchandise shorter distances. It is almost certain to result in higher costs for the things we buy and far fewer choices.

The automobile will be a diminished presence in our lives, to say the least. With gasoline in short supply, not to mention tax revenue, our roads will surely suffer. The interstate highway system is more delicate than the public realizes. If the "level of service" (as traffic engineers call it) is not maintained to the highest degree, problems multiply and escalate quickly. The system does not tolerate partial failure. The interstates are either in excellent condition, or they quickly fall apart.

America today has a railroad system that the Bulgarians would be ashamed of. Neither of the two major presidential candidates in 2004 mentioned railroads, but if we don't refurbish our rail system, then there may be no long-range travel or transport of goods at all a few decades from now. The commercial aviation industry, already on its knees financially, is likely to vanish. The sheer cost of maintaining gigantic airports may not justify the operation of a much-reduced air-travel fleet. Railroads are far more energy efficient than cars, trucks or airplanes, and they can be run on anything from wood to electricity. The rail-bed infrastructure is also far more economical to maintain than our highway network.

The successful regions in the twenty-first century will be the ones surrounded by viable farming hinterlands that can reconstitute locally sustainable economies on an armature of civic cohesion. Small towns and smaller cities have better prospects than the big cities, which will probably have to contract substantially. The process will be painful and tumultuous. In many American cities, such as Cleveland, Detroit and St. Louis, that process is already well advanced. Others have further to fall. New York and Chicago face extraordinary difficulties, being oversupplied with gigantic buildings out of scale with the reality of declining energy supplies. Their former agricultural hinterlands have long been paved over. They will be encysted in a surrounding fabric of necrotic suburbia that will only amplify and reinforce the cities' problems. Still, our cities occupy important sites. Some kind of urban entities will exist where they are in the future, but probably not the colossi of twentieth-century industrialism.

Some regions of the country will do better than others in the Long Emergency. The Southwest will suffer in proportion to the degree that it prospered during the cheap-oil blowout of the late twentieth century. I predict that Sunbelt states like Arizona and Nevada will become significantly depopulated, since the region will be short of water as well as gasoline and natural gas. Imagine Phoenix without cheap air conditioning.

I'm not optimistic about the Southeast, either, for different reasons. I think it will be subject to substantial levels of violence as the grievances of the formerly middle class boil over and collide with the delusions of Pentecostal Christian extremism. The latent encoded behavior of Southern culture includes an outsized notion of individualism and the belief that firearms ought to be used in the defense of it. This is a poor recipe for civic cohesion.

The Mountain States and Great Plains will face an array of problems, from poor farming potential to water shortages to population loss. The Pacific Northwest, New England and the Upper Midwest have somewhat better prospects. I regard them as less likely to fall into lawlessness, anarchy or despotism and more likely to salvage the bits and pieces of our best social traditions and keep them in operation at some level.

These are daunting and even dreadful prospects. The Long Emergency is going to be a tremendous trauma for the human race. We will not believe that this is happening to us, that 200 years of modernity can be brought to its knees by a world-wide power shortage. The survivors will have to cultivate a religion of hope -- that is, a deep and comprehensive belief that humanity is worth carrying on. If there is any positive side to stark changes coming our way, it may be in the benefits of close communal relations, of having to really work intimately (and physically) with our neighbors, to be part of an enterprise that really matters and to be fully engaged in meaningful social enactments instead of being merely entertained to avoid boredom. Years from now, when we hear singing at all, we will hear ourselves, and we will sing with our whole hearts.

These are ugly, urgent days. Step by step, big business and its allies are taking control of the government and restructuring it to give the corporations and the class that owns them—the capitalists—total, iron-fisted control of the country. One of their major tools in doing so is the current brutal attack on immigrant workers. Because immigrant workers represent a significant sector of the U.S. working class, this divide-and-conquer tactic will weaken the entire class. So it is time for the entire class to stand up!

The marches of immigrant groups last spring terrified the corporate ruling class. In many cities across the country they were the largest marches ever held, a massive show of strength in response to draconian anti-immigrant legislation proposed in the U.S. Congress.

The ruling-class response against immigrant workers and their families has been swift, systematic, and widespread, reaching deep into immigrant communities in every part of the country, from small towns in Montana, Connecticut, Colorado, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Iowa to cities like Baltimore, Las Vegas, Chicago, Miami, New Orleans, and San Diego.

In effect, actions by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, elements of the news media and local police, racist groups such as the Minuteman Project, and corporations such as Halliburton have created a laboratory for establishing outright, tyrannical rule by corporate America—in a word, fascism. ICE RAIDS

Created by the Bush administration after 9/11, ICE has conducted raids of workplaces and homes across the country. Every week ICE agents raid another business. Agents armed with automatic weapons and handcuffs swarm in massive assaults on workplaces and often outnumber those arrested. The raids terrify workers and break up families without consideration of their civil rights. Kids come home from school to find their parents are missing. Nursing babies cry and scream for their mother's milk. Families are broken up. And a mood of intimidation and fear sweep communities of folks who are just trying to make a living.

Not only are communities under attack from ICE raids but anti-immigrant forces are organizing politically in towns across the country. Beginning in April of 2006 in San Bernandino, California, and Hazelton, Pennsylvania, a wave of anti-immigrant city ordinances have swept the country, most of them attacking immigrant workers by punishing landlords who rent to them or calling for English only in all city business. But, while 86 such ordinances have been proposed across the country only 26 have passed, and those that have passed are being fought in the courts. Yet they are an ominous sign of what is to come as more American workers, frightened about their own economic situation, are steered toward scapegoating immigrant workers and away from the true causes of their own economic insecurity. These causes being major changes in the economy such as new technologies that replace more and more workers, and similarly transformations emerge to control society.

Fascist elements of the media are playing their part, tapping into the most racist and hateful strands of U.S. history to demonize and criminalize immigrant workers and other workers who don't fit the most narrow profile of what it means to be an "American".

THE MINUTEMEN

And the Minutemen and other vigilante groups are "mustering" along the borders with both the U.S. and Canada to illegally detain anyone they think looks like an "illegal." Minutemen have also been reported performing surveillance for ICE and posing as immigration agents and conducting their own rogue raids of homes and businesses.

Many good people have organized to monitor and oppose these vigilante squads. But as workers and their families are left living in fear and are driven deeper into hiding, others are called on to do much, much more.

The attack and terrorization of immigrant workers, the division of the working class against itself, is a path consciously taken to control the class as a whole—indeed, to control the American people as a whole. The powers that be seek to dominate the democratic majority and subject it to the outright tyrannical rule of a tiny minority: big capital, the corporations and their political and social allies.

Now is the time to stand up, to organize ourselves in defense of the defenseless among us who are being scapegoated, and, among other things, to march arm-in-arm with our sisters and brothers.

# posted by Rancho Perros Bravos @ 6/09/2007 11:22:00 PM

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(original article by Ury Avnery is found here)

THE BLOODY battles that have erupted around the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp near Tripoli in Lebanon remind us that the refugee problem has not disappeared. On the contrary, 60 years after the "Nakba", the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948, it is again the center of attention throughout the world.

This is an open wound. Anyone who imagines that a solution to the Israel-Arab conflict is possible without healing this wound is deluding himself.

From Tripoli to Sderot, from Riyadh to Jerusalem, the Palestinian refugee problem continues to cast its shadow across the whole region. This week, the media were again full of photos of Israeli and Palestinian refugees fleeing from their homes and of mothers mourning the death of their loved ones in Hebrew and Arabic - as if nothing had changed since 1948.

THE ORDINARY Israeli shrugs his shoulders when confronted with the suffering of the Palestinian refugees and dismisses it with five words: "They brought it on themselves."

Learned professors and market vendors repeat that the Palestinians caused their own downfall when, in 1947, they rejected the Partition Plan of the United Nations and started a war to annihilate the Jewish community in the country.

That is a deeply rooted myth, one of the basic myths of Israeli consciousness. But it is far from reflecting what really happened.

First of all, because at that time there did not even exist a Palestinian national leadership which could take a decision.

In the Arab Revolt of 1935 to 1939 ("the troubles" in Israeli parlance), the Grand Mufti, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, then the leader of the Palestinian Arabs, had most of the prominent Palestinians who did not accept his authority killed. He then fled the country and the remaining Palestinian leaders were exiled by the British to a remote island.

When the hour of destiny struck and the UN adopted the partition resolution, there was no Palestinian leadership capable of deciding one way or the other. Instead, the leaders of the neighboring Arab states decided to send their armies into the country once the British Mandate had come to an end.

True, the masses of the Palestinian people opposed the partition plan. They believed that all of Palestine was their patrimony, and that the Jews, almost all of whom had recently arrived, did not have any right to it. The more so, since the UN plan gave the Jews, then only a third of the population, 55% of the country. Even in this territory, the Arabs constituted 40% of the inhabitants.

(In fairness it should be mentioned that the territory allotted to the Jews included the Negev - a huge desert that was desolate then and has mostly remained so to this day.)

The Jewish side did indeed accept the UN decision - but only in appearance. In secret meetings, David Ben-Gurion did not hide his intention to take the first opportunity to enlarge the territory allotted to the Jewish state and to assure an overwhelming Jewish majority in it. The war of 1948, which was started by the Arab side, created an opportunity to realize both aims: Israel grew from 55% to 78% of the country, and this territory was emptied of most of its Arab inhabitants. Many of them fled the terrors of war, many others were driven out by us. Almost none were allowed to return after the war.

In the course of the war, some 750,000 Palestinians became refugees. Natural increase doubles their number every 18 years, so they are now approaching five million.

That is an immense human tragedy, a humanitarian issue and a political problem. For long periods it seemed that the problem would disappear by itself with the passing of time, but it has repeatedly reared its head again.

MANY PARTIES have exploited the problem for their own ends. Various Arab regimes have at times tried to hitch their wagon to it.

The fate of the refugees varies from country to country. Jordan has accorded them citizenship, yet has kept many of them in miserable camps. The Lebanese have not given the refugees any civil rights at all, and have committed several massacres. Almost all Palestinian leaders demand the implementation of UN resolution 194 which was adopted 59 years ago and which promised the refugees a return to their homes as peaceful citizens.

Few noticed that the Right of Return has served successive Israeli governments as a pretext to reject all peace initiatives. The return of five million refugees would mean the end of Israel as a state with a solid Jewish majority and turn it into a bi-national state - something that arouses the adamant opposition of a minimum of 99.99% of the Israeli-Jewish public.

This has to be realized if one is to understand the way Israelis view peace. An ordinary Israeli, even a decent person who sincerely desires peace, tells himself: the Arabs will never give up the Right of Return, therefore there is no chance for peace, and it isn't worthwhile even to start doing anything about it.

THUS, PARADOXICALLY, the refugee problem has turned into an instrument for those Israelis who oppose any peace based on compromise. They rely on the fact that almost no Arab leader would dare to give up the Right of Return openly. In private conversations, many Arab leaders recognize that the return is impossible, but they dare not say so openly. To do so would mean political suicide - just as announcing a readiness to take back refugees would be suicidal for an Israeli politician.

In spite of this, a subterranean shift has taken place in recent years on the Arab side. There have been hints that Israel's demographic problem cannot be ignored. Here and there, creative solutions have been proposed. (Once, in a public meeting of Gush Shalom, a Palestinian representative said: "Today, the Arab minority constitutes 20% of Israel's citizens. So let us agree that for every 80 new Jewish immigrants coming to the country, 20 Palestinian refugees will be allowed to return. In such a way, the present proportion would be maintained." The public reacted enthusiastically.)

NOW, A REVOLUTIONARY development has taken place. The Arab League has offered Israel a peace plan: all 22 Arab states would recognize Israel and establish diplomatic and economic relations with it, in return for Israel's withdrawal from the occupied territories and the establishment of a Palestinian state.

The offer did not ignore the refugee problem. It mentioned UN resolution 194, but added a qualification of fundamental importance: that the solution would be reached "by agreement" between the two parties. In other words: Israel would have the right of veto over refugees returning to Israeli territory.

This put the Israeli government in a difficult position. If the Israeli public understood that the entire Arab world was offering a comprehensive peace agreement without the actual realization of the Right of Return, they might accept it gladly. Therefore, everything was done to obscure the decisive word. The guided (and misguided) Israeli media emphasized the plan's mention of Resolution 194 and played down the talk of an "agreed upon" solution.

The government treated the Arab offer with manifest disdain, but nevertheless tried to derive advantage from it. Ehud Olmert announced his readiness to talk with an Arab delegation - provided that it did not consist of Egypt and Jordan alone. This way, Olmert and Tzipi Livni hope to attain an important political achievement without paying for it: to compel Saudi Arabia and other states to enter into relations with Israel. Since there are "no free lunches", the Arabs refused. Nothing came out of the whole affair.

IF SOMEONE had offered Israel this Arab League peace plan on June 4, 1967, a day before the Six-Day War, we would have thought that the Messiah had arrived. Now, our government considers this offer nothing but a clever trick: the Arabs are indeed ready to relinquish the return of the refugees, but want to compel us to give up the occupied territories and to dismantle the settlements.

In a historical perspective, the Arab League is correcting an error it made 40 years ago, which had far-reaching consequences. Soon after the Six-Day War, on September 1, 1967, the heads of the Arab states assembled in Khartoum and decided upon the "Three No's" - No peace with Israel, No recognition of Israel, No negotiations with Israel.

One can understand why such a misguided resolution was adopted. The Arab countries had just suffered a humiliating military defeat. They wanted to prove to their peoples and the world that they had not gone down on their knees. They wanted to keep their national dignity. But for the government of Israel, it was a present from heaven.

The resolution freed it from any need to conduct negotiations which might have compelled it to return the territories it had just conquered. It gave the green light for the founding of settlements, an enterprise that continues unhindered to this very day, removing the land from under the feet of the Palestinians. And, of course, it swept the refugee problem from the table.

The new Arab League proposal could repair the damage done to the Palestinian cause at Khartoum. The entire Arab world has now adopted a realistic resolution. From now on, the task is to get the Israeli public to grasp the full meaning of this proposal, and especially its significance concerning the return of the refugees. This task rests on the shoulders of the Israeli peace forces, but also of the Arab leadership.

TO ACHIEVE this goal, the refugee problem must be transferred to the realm of reality. It must undergo a process of de-mystification.

At present, an Israeli sees only a nightmare: five million refugees are waiting to flood Israel. They will demand the return of their lands, on which Israeli towns and villages are now located, and their homes, which have been demolished long ago or in which Israelis are now living. Israel, as a state with a Hebrew majority, will disappear.

This fear must be neutralized, and this wound must be healed. On the psychological level, we must recognize our responsibility for that part of the problem which was actually caused by us. A "Committee for Truth and Reconciliation" could, perhaps, determine the dimensions of this part. For this we must sincerely apologize, as other nations have apologized for injustices committed by them.

On the practical level, the real problem of five million human beings must be solved. All of them will have a right to generous compensation, which will enable them to start a new life any way they wish. Those who want to stay where they are, with the consent of the local government, will have the ability to rebuild the life of their families. Those who want to live in the future State of Palestine, perhaps in the areas cleared of settlements, must receive the necessary international assistance. I, personally, believe that it would be good for us to receive back a certain agreed-upon number of refugees in Israel proper, as a symbolic contribution to the end to the tragedy.

That is neither a dream nor a nightmare. We have already mastered more difficult tasks. It would be much easier and cheaper than to continue a war that has no military solution and no end.

Sixty years ago, a deep wound was opened. Since than it has not healed. It infects our life and endangers our future. It is high time to heal it. That is the lesson of Tripoli in the north and Sderot in the South.

[translation of text on the picture]
I am a union farmworker
Laborer of the nation
I will struggle with the poor
We've had enough of the landowner
We want liberation.


America cries out in fear and anger over their migrant workers, workers who have been coming generation after generation to work their fields and pick their fruits. They say they are taking the jobs and no work remains for themselves, although they do not do this type of work. They prefer welfare or park benches and begging. This article shows how much damage is being done to Americas farming industry by not letting in these migrant workers like they always did in the past. I see many articles like this one complaining about the lack of these type of workers this year, and the loss of crops. The American government would rather ruin its produce industry to stir up a stink over Mexicans so that they can preocuppy the minds of the citizens to distract them from the real issues at hand. Issues far more urgent and dangerous then who picks what.

ACVR - A GOP Front Organization

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The American Center for Voting Rights or ACVR was a GOP front group in the United States that lobbied for stricter voter ID laws to combat allegedly rampant voter fraud. Mark F. "Thor" Hearne was its founder and general counsel from the organization's inception in March 2005 until its dissolution in May 2007[1].

In March 2005 GOP operatives with ties to the White House established a 501(c)4 organization called the American Center for Voting Rights Legislative Fund (ACVR).[2] According to its 990 tax forms, ACVR was based in Midlothian, Virginia, and its executive director is Robin DeJarnette, who is also the founder and executive director of the Virginia Conservative Action PAC. The chairman of ACVR is Brian Lunde, a former Democratic National Committee official from Texas, who in 2004 was head of Democrats for Bush.

ACVR specializes in issuing studies that purport to document a host of voter fraud cases, like the report titled: "Democrat operatives far more involved in voter intimidation and suppression in 2004 than Republicans."(broken link)

A mere six days after the organization was formed, the ACVR, a "non-partisan," "voting rights" organization, was called to testify by Republican members of Congress before a House Administration Committee hearing on March 22[3].

US Senator Kit Bond of Missouri, described the group as a non-partisan, voting rights advocacy group. He testified and submitted a report on Ohio election irregularities, which highlighted the Mary Poppins Conspiracy in this country. If you haven't heard about it, the Mary Poppins Conspiracy consists of many, many ineligible voters—using the names Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy and Jive F. Turkey—fraudulently voting in elections[3].

Unfortunately for advocates of this conspiracy theory, a precinct has yet to report that a citizen by the name of Mary Poppins showed up on Election Day and voted. Searches for Dick Tracy votes and Jive F. Turkey votes have also come up empty[3].

After the Election Assistance Commission, issued a report that said the pervasiveness of fraud was open to debate[4] and an ongoing Congressional investigation into the Bush administration’s firing of eight United States attorneys, the organization was dissolved in May 2007[5].

References

1. ^ "American Center for Voting Rights Legislative Fund", SourceWatch.
2. ^ Joel Bleifuss. "The Fraudulence of Voter Fraud", In These Times, 2007-04-17. (in English)
3. ^ a b c US Representative John Conyers Jr.. "The GOP's Attack On Voting Rights", tompaine.com, May 13, 2005. (in English)
4. ^ Ian Urbina. "Panel Said to Alter Finding on Voter Fraud", The New York Times, 2007-04-11. (in English)
5. ^ Richard L. Hasen. "The Fraudulent Fraud Squad: The incredible, disappearing American Center for Voting Rights.", Slate, 2007-05-18. (in English)

External links
* SPECIAL COVERAGE: Thor Hearne's "American Center for Voting Rights" (ACVR) GOP "Voter Fraud" Scam (English). Brad Blog.
* ACVR Report Riddled with Errors and Partisan Spin (English). The Democratic Party (2005-08-09).

I recently read a very interesting article by Albert Einstein on Socialism...

Why Socialism? by Albert Einstein

This essay was originally published in the first issue of Monthly Review (May 1949).

Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons that it is.

Let us first consider the question from the point of view of scientific knowledge. It might appear that there are no essential methodological differences between astronomy and economics: scientists in both fields attempt to discover laws of general acceptability for a circumscribed group of phenomena in order to make the interconnection of these phenomena as clearly understandable as possible. But in reality such methodological differences do exist. The discovery of general laws in the field of economics is made difficult by the circumstance that observed economic phenomena are often affected by many factors which are very hard to evaluate separately. In addition, the experience which has accumulated since the beginning of the so-called civilized period of human history has—as is well known—been largely influenced and limited by causes which are by no means exclusively economic in nature. For example, most of the major states of history owed their existence to conquest. The conquering peoples established themselves, legally and economically, as the privileged class of the conquered country. They seized for themselves a monopoly of the land ownership and appointed a priesthood from among their own ranks. The priests, in control of education, made the class division of society into a permanent institution and created a system of values by which the people were thenceforth, to a large extent unconsciously, guided in their social behavior. But historic tradition is, so to speak, of yesterday; nowhere have we really overcome what Thorstein Veblen called "the predatory phase" of human development. The observable economic facts belong to that phase and even such laws as we can derive from them are not applicable to other phases. Since the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development, economic science in its present state can throw little light on the socialist society of the future.

Second, socialism is directed towards a social-ethical end. Science, however, cannot create ends and, even less, instill them in human beings; science, at most, can supply the means by which to attain certain ends. But the ends themselves are conceived by personalities with lofty ethical ideals and—if these ends are not stillborn, but vital and vigorous—are adopted and carried forward by those many human beings who, half unconsciously, determine the slow evolution of society.

For these reasons, we should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society.

Innumerable voices have been asserting for some time now that human society is passing through a crisis, that its stability has been gravely shattered. It is characteristic of such a situation that individuals feel indifferent or even hostile toward the group, small or large, to which they belong. In order to illustrate my meaning, let me record here a personal experience. I recently discussed with an intelligent and well-disposed man the threat of another war, which in my opinion would seriously endanger the existence of mankind, and I remarked that only a supra-national organization would offer protection from that danger. Thereupon my visitor, very calmly and coolly, said to me: "Why are you so deeply opposed to the disappearance of the human race?"

I am sure that as little as a century ago no one would have so lightly made a statement of this kind. It is the statement of a man who has striven in vain to attain an equilibrium within himself and has more or less lost hope of succeeding. It is the expression of a painful solitude and isolation from which so many people are suffering in these days. What is the cause? Is there a way out?

It is easy to raise such questions, but difficult to answer them with any degree of assurance. I must try, however, as best I can, although I am very conscious of the fact that our feelings and strivings are often contradictory and obscure and that they cannot be expressed in easy and simple formulas.

Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life. Only the existence of these varied, frequently conflicting, strivings accounts for the special character of a man, and their specific combination determines the extent to which an individual can achieve an inner equilibrium and can contribute to the well-being of society. It is quite possible that the relative strength of these two drives is, in the main, fixed by inheritance. But the personality that finally emerges is largely formed by the environment in which a man happens to find himself during his development, by the structure of the society in which he grows up, by the tradition of that society, and by its appraisal of particular types of behavior. The abstract concept "society" means to the individual human being the sum total of his direct and indirect relations to his contemporaries and to all the people of earlier generations. The individual is able to think, feel, strive, and work by himself; but he depends so much upon society—in his physical, intellectual, and emotional existence—that it is impossible to think of him, or to understand him, outside the framework of society. It is "society" which provides man with food, clothing, a home, the tools of work, language, the forms of thought, and most of the content of thought; his life is made possible through the labor and the accomplishments of the many millions past and present who are all hidden behind the small word “society.”

It is evident, therefore, that the dependence of the individual upon society is a fact of nature which cannot be abolished—just as in the case of ants and bees. However, while the whole life process of ants and bees is fixed down to the smallest detail by rigid, hereditary instincts, the social pattern and interrelationships of human beings are very variable and susceptible to change. Memory, the capacity to make new combinations, the gift of oral communication have made possible developments among human being which are not dictated by biological necessities. Such developments manifest themselves in traditions, institutions, and organizations; in literature; in scientific and engineering accomplishments; in works of art. This explains how it happens that, in a certain sense, man can influence his life through his own conduct, and that in this process conscious thinking and wanting can play a part.

Man acquires at birth, through heredity, a biological constitution which we must consider fixed and unalterable, including the natural urges which are characteristic of the human species. In addition, during his lifetime, he acquires a cultural constitution which he adopts from society through communication and through many other types of influences. It is this cultural constitution which, with the passage of time, is subject to change and which determines to a very large extent the relationship between the individual and society. Modern anthropology has taught us, through comparative investigation of so-called primitive cultures, that the social behavior of human beings may differ greatly, depending upon prevailing cultural patterns and the types of organization which predominate in society. It is on this that those who are striving to improve the lot of man may ground their hopes: human beings are not condemned, because of their biological constitution, to annihilate each other or to be at the mercy of a cruel, self-inflicted fate.

If we ask ourselves how the structure of society and the cultural attitude of man should be changed in order to make human life as satisfying as possible, we should constantly be conscious of the fact that there are certain conditions which we are unable to modify. As mentioned before, the biological nature of man is, for all practical purposes, not subject to change. Furthermore, technological and demographic developments of the last few centuries have created conditions which are here to stay. In relatively densely settled populations with the goods which are indispensable to their continued existence, an extreme division of labor and a highly-centralized productive apparatus are absolutely necessary. The time—which, looking back, seems so idyllic—is gone forever when individuals or relatively small groups could be completely self-sufficient. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that mankind constitutes even now a planetary community of production and consumption.

I have now reached the point where I may indicate briefly what to me constitutes the essence of the crisis of our time. It concerns the relationship of the individual to society. The individual has become more conscious than ever of his dependence upon society. But he does not experience this dependence as a positive asset, as an organic tie, as a protective force, but rather as a threat to his natural rights, or even to his economic existence. Moreover, his position in society is such that the egotistical drives of his make-up are constantly being accentuated, while his social drives, which are by nature weaker, progressively deteriorate. All human beings, whatever their position in society, are suffering from this process of deterioration. Unknowingly prisoners of their own egotism, they feel insecure, lonely, and deprived of the naive, simple, and unsophisticated enjoyment of life. Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society.

The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor—not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules. In this respect, it is important to realize that the means of production—that is to say, the entire productive capacity that is needed for producing consumer goods as well as additional capital goods—may legally be, and for the most part are, the private property of individuals.

For the sake of simplicity, in the discussion that follows I shall call “workers” all those who do not share in the ownership of the means of production—although this does not quite correspond to the customary use of the term. The owner of the means of production is in a position to purchase the labor power of the worker. By using the means of production, the worker produces new goods which become the property of the capitalist. The essential point about this process is the relation between what the worker produces and what he is paid, both measured in terms of real value. Insofar as the labor contract is “free,” what the worker receives is determined not by the real value of the goods he produces, but by his minimum needs and by the capitalists' requirements for labor power in relation to the number of workers competing for jobs. It is important to understand that even in theory the payment of the worker is not determined by the value of his product.

Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.

The situation prevailing in an economy based on the private ownership of capital is thus characterized by two main principles: first, means of production (capital) are privately owned and the owners dispose of them as they see fit; second, the labor contract is free. Of course, there is no such thing as a pure capitalist society in this sense. In particular, it should be noted that the workers, through long and bitter political struggles, have succeeded in securing a somewhat improved form of the “free labor contract” for certain categories of workers. But taken as a whole, the present day economy does not differ much from “pure” capitalism.

Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an “army of unemployed” almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. Since unemployed and poorly paid workers do not provide a profitable market, the production of consumers' goods is restricted, and great hardship is the consequence. Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before.

This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?

Clarity about the aims and problems of socialism is of greatest significance in our age of transition. Since, under present circumstances, free and unhindered discussion of these problems has come under a powerful taboo, I consider the foundation of this magazine to be an important public service.

You can read the 1949 Monthly Review article Here.

"The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil" - Albert Einstein

2nd Arrest Of Trotsky

BackGround

While the Menchivics were arguing how to transfer Russia from feudal to capitalistic in nature, and the Second International was entering its recessionary crisis (plenty of different political & ideological reasons), a 25 year old foresaw, through his expertise in Historical Materialism and under the studies of Parvus that the seeds to establisk a Soviet is possible due to plenty of reasons. When the first Soviet (Workers Council) was built in 1905, Lenin and Julius Martove go "what is that". When the revolution ended, it ended with Trotsky's head up while the Tsarist army baffled that this young fellow was the transformer of a simple demonstration to the 2nd workers' revolutions and established the Second Workers' Council after the Paris Commune of 1871.

This piece is taken from Isaac Deutcher's Prophet Armed timeless masterpiece, that depicts the very end of the first Soviet (Second compared to Paris Commune), and how its organizer got arrested. The 21st Century Communists should learn from their history, and above all how the ideology is placed in the service of the Marxist Revolutionary. It is sad to see Khaled Hdaidi or Elias Attallah claiming they are leftists and bla bla bla:

The Arrest

"From a balcony Trotsky shouted to the delegates: 'Comrades, offer no resistence. We declare beforehand that only an agent provocateur or a policeman will fire a shot here!" He instructed the delegates to break the locks of their revolvers befure surrendering them to the police. Then he resumed his chair at the Executive's conference.

A trade-union spokesman was just declaring his union's readiness ot join in the general strike, when a detachment of soldiers and police occupied the corridors. A police officer entered the room where the Executive was sitting and began to read a warrant of arrest. It was now only a question whether the Soviet would carry its own weakness and humilation with dignity. Resistence was ruled out. But should they surrender meekly, gloomy-faced, without a sign of defiance? Trotsky's pride and his sense of stage effect would not perit him to preside over so flat and disheartening a scene. But he could not afford any serious act of defiance, he could relieve the gloom of the situation only with humour. And so he turned the last scene of this spectacle into a witty burlesque of a bold performance. As the police officer, facing the Executive, began to read the warrant of arrest, Trostsky sharply interrupted him: "Please do not interfere with the speaker. If you wish to take the floor, you must give your name and I shall ask the meeting whether it wishes to list to you."

The perplexed officer, not knowing whether he was being mocke at or whether he should expect armed resistence, waited fo rthe trade-union delegate to end his speech. Then Trotsky gravely asked the Executive whether he should allow the officer to make a statement "for the sake of information". The officer read the warrant, and Trotsky proposed that the Executive should acknowledge it and take up the next item on it agenda. Another speaker rose.

"Excuse me", the police officer, disconcerted by this unheard of behavior, stammered and turned towards Trotsky, as if for help.

"Please do not interfere", Trosktysharply rebuked him. "You have had the floor; you have made your statement; we have acknowledged it. Does the meeting to have further dealings with the policeman?"

"No!"

"Then, please, leave the hall."

The officer shuffled his feet, muttered a few words and left. Trotsky called upon the members of the Executive to destroy all documents and not to reveal their names to the police. From the hall below rose the clangour of broken revolver-locks-the delegates were carrying out Troskty's order.

The police officer re-entered, this time leading a platoon of soldiers. A member of the Executive rose to address the soldiers: The Tsar, he said, was at this very moment breaking the promise of the October Manifesto; and they, the soldiers, were allowing themselves to be used as his tools against the people. The officer, afraid of the effect of the words, hurriedly led the soldiers out into the corridor and shot the door behind them. "Even through closed doors", the speaker raised his vice, "the brotherly call of the workers will reach the soldiers."

At length, a strong detachment of police entered, and Trotsky declared the meeting of the Executive closed.

Thus after fifty days ended the epic of the first Soviet in history."

taken from Isaac Deuther, Prophet Armed Trosky 1879 - 1921 ( Verso, 2003), p. 118 - 119

Friends of mine sent this e-mail to me reporting about their vacation...
"We've gone on vacation to Topsail Island, North Carolina for the past 18 years. This past year, after dinner, we decided to take a walk on the beach like we usually do and discovered the beach was covered for MILES with washed up dead ants! We have never seen anything like this before and nobody knew why this had happened. Nothing was printed in the papers and I still can't get an explanation as to where they came from."





I have not seen any news about mass ant die-offs. Did any one see something reported like this in the news??

And Islamist Orgaizations

Prior to the Republic of Turkey, there existed the massive Ottoman Empire, whose Sultans assumed that they are heirs of the Caliphates and defenders of Islam. The empire itself lasted for centuries and allowed minorities to exist, but provided incentives for people to convert to Islam (Cases of Albania – Kosovo – Bosnia). Towards the 19th Century, corruption rendered the empire weak, and the empire was tagged by the European Colonial forces as “the sick man”. The term Sick Man was used because all the main Imperial forces decided to expand their territorial empires on the expense of the Ottomans. France, Italy, Spain, and Great Britain already carved out North African nations out of the Ottoman empire by the 19th Century.

When Mustapha Kamal took power in Turkey, he had to overcome all the Allied forces present there, next to the last Sultan present. When Mustapha Kamal took power, he transformed a nation that was four centuries late into a modern country. He demolished anything reminded him of the Sultans’ system. He changed the letters (from Arabic Letters to Latin, the Ottomans used to write Turkish in Arabic letters). He gave women the right to divorce, (he was the first to divorce probably), and demolished all feudal titles. Despite the fact he faced a lot of opposition, he integrated in the constitution the right of the Turkish Army to declare a Coup in case any Islamist group won elections. The army rebelled in the early 1980s, and froze constitutional life for two years, then constitutional life was re-introduced with the Social Democrats winning. Couple of weeks ago, the army was threatening to do so again. The opposition (Ordogan’s faction) to the Army now has support from of the European Commission and Germany’s top executive power. The European Commission have been arguing that “democracy must not be tampered with”.

This leads us to Egypt. Moubarak was hailed by the US and UK as democratic. Moubarak’s regime has blocked the Muslim Brotherhood to reach power, while he tampered with presidential elections to preserve his throne for his son (the future president of Egypt). To be exact, there has been no country in the world except for Egypt that had judges demonstrating and later beaten by pro-Moubarak regime. It is ironic because Moubarak has been following the foot-steps of Nasser and Sadat in economical corruptions, which led the Muslim Brotherhood’s “welfare” networks to spread through out Egypt. The Kifaya Movement (“Enough” in Arabic) has been forged which included old fashion Arab Nationalists, Muslim Brotherhood, alter-globalization movements, and whatever remained of the reactionary left to join forces against Moubarak’s regime. The Kifaya movement was threatening against Moubarak’s presidential rally, which cost the nominee to be imprisoned for years for even challenging Moubarak. I will not dwell into the details of Egypt’s history of betrayal and oppression, and I am not defending the Muslim Brotherhood. The current status quo in Egypt is due to Moubarak’s and his predecessors’ management. The question is: how long the United States can over-look this fact till Moubarak or his son would be ousted out of power, specially his blunders, and the Social Islamist Networks’ proper organizations, are pushing the Muslim Brotherhood by the year to grow stronger and stronger. More intriguing, Moubarak turns a blind eye on most of these Networks because they are saving money on the Government’s expenses (similar to Hamas having over 40% of the Palestinians under its welfare system which puts Fatah in an awkward position).
The main idea, if the majority of the population are Islamists, do they democratically qualify to rule the nation, despite the fact that previous experiences (like Sudan) witnessed non-Muslims being ruled by the Muslim Law by Force?

In Lebanon, we have seen Hezbollah being a two-fold model, a militant one and a political one. On the militant level, they inflicted damage on the Israelis whereby no army even succeeded before. On the political level, they have been recent in involving themselves in the political life. Till now, they promised to respect minority rights, despite the fact they have their own legal system in the areas they dominate most. In case Hezbollah are 51% percent of Lebanon, does it make them qualified to rule in Lebanon, specially they have direct ties with Ayatollah Khamenei? What would be the position of their secular allies, like the Lebanese Communist Party and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party? What if, in the long-run, Nasrallah is replaced by a more fanatic hardliner as head of the Shora Council?


In Palestine, we already have seen Hamas and Fatah supporters slashing each other when balance of power is present. Hamas belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Strength of the Muslim Brotherhood's partial success returns to the Israeli blunders. Since Zionists feared secular resistence, which was embodied by the PLO, they turned their eyes on the Muslim Brotherhood's social networks in order to weaken the PLO. The PLO towards the end of the 1970s, exploded at the Muslim Brotherhood under the accusation of 'collaborating with the Israelis'.

In Afghanistan, the horrors of the Taliban regime were too terrifying and oppressive, which increased blindly racism towards “secular Muslims” in the West. The United States still think a political solution is the best answer to everything. The bottom line for the driving society towards a certain orientation is not “imposing democracy”, rather placing heavy investments to improve the society. The Mujahideen in Afghanistan, soon to evolve into Taliban, were recieving a lot of money to face the Soviet invasion. They ended up of becoming part of an international terrorist organization, which has no problem of butchering anyone (including the ones who share their sect) under the banner of cleansing the nation from infidels.

Probably the most complicated case was Algeria, when in a Coup was declared after the FIS (Islamist Coalition) won the majority of the Parliament in the early 90s. The problem of the West is that they never understood the “why” part. I mean by the “why” because poverty is rather harsh, and harshness accompanied with informal welfare under the banner of Islam from the logic of hardliners, brings popularity. Algeria for example was the victim of France, which practiced a harsh and racial form of colonialism on the Algerians. Bad corrupt management by the Liberation National Front (FNL) was an incentive to trigger the different factions of the Islamist Network to expand dramatically. The other question is: “How can a country for over a century of oppression can also fix its system in couple of decades?” The Algerians, along with the Tunisians are still busy in persecuting Qa’eda cells over there, while their leaders practice supreme dictatorship over their people. Investments are still at minimal to improve the situation for this nation.

Globally, as I discussed in an earlier post, several left-wing groups blindly supported those groups because they are against US imperialism, and they are the current available alternative. This is wrong, opposing US imperialism is one thing, but supporting blindly anyone who opposes it (with the exception of al-Qa’eda since they have been too extremists to fit that category) is totally wrong and ideological breach of whatever leftist school comes from. The RESPECT coalition and Kifaya movement has been one example, the Chavez-Ahmadinejad alliance is another. If the left have been working on their goals, they wouldn’t have needed to support such coalitions.

Such a dilemma is really complicated to ponder upon, never the less, such pondering is within the realm of the capitalist logic, as revolutionaries, we should focus on our goals no matter who is in the topic executive position: Emancipation of the workers, and all power be secured into the Workers’ Hands.

MFL

A Mothers Day Report Card
The Best And Worst Countries to Be a Mother

Here is the last of three articles about children and America during this Mothers Day week. It is on Thursday here in Mexico and on Sunday in America. America should not feel itself so superior when they have such a bad record. It is a sign of a decaying society when children are not taken care of right, and the children themselves turn to violence and away from their families like they have now in America. They can point their fingers at other countries that do worse than them, but this does not make their position right.

Save the Children, a U.S.based independent global humanitarian organization, today released its eighth annual Mothers' Index that ranks the best — and worst — places to be a mother and a child and compares the well-being of mothers and children in 140 countries, more than in any previous year. Sweden, Iceland and Norway top the rankings this year. Niger ranks last among countries surveyed. The top-10 countries, in general, attain very high scores for mothers’ and children’s health, educational and economic status. The 10 bottom-ranked countries — nine from sub-Saharan Africa — are a reverse image of the top 10, performing poorly on all indicators. The United States places 26th this year, tied with Hungary,

The rest of the article follows here.

The children were students at the Al-Saada school near the border with Iran, the EFE reported.Along with the children, three other individuals were seriously injured by the attack, and the number of dead could rise. Diyala has been one of the provinces with the most violence this past year, with constant incidents.

An AFP report out of Washington said that the Pentagon had announced Tuesday it was sending 10 additional combat brigades — about 35,000 troops — to Iraq.

No decision had been made on the number of troops that will be stationed in that Arab country in the future, but deployment orders will make it possible to keep up to 20 combat brigades in Iraq until the end of the year, said Bryan Whitman, a spokesman for the U.S. Defense Department.

Whitman said that the 10 combat brigades, all active-duty Army troops, had received their orders to deploy from August to December of this year.

Translated by Granma International

Texas Independance Day May 2

Here is a post I pass on about Texas. A different view of Americans and how some see their history and respect it.

"Other then my great grandmother, who was from a Comanche tribe in west Texas, all my ancestors were scots. So I am not Mexican, nor from any other country south of the border. My family came to Texas long before it was even a republic".

"Mexicans were astoundingly generous to norteamericano colonists. Ahead of a household normally received a league and a labor. That amounted to a whopping 4,605 acres. Additionally, immigrants couldalso expect a tax rebate until they got on their feet in their adopted homeland. Americans who had been ruined in the Panic of 1819 flocked to Mexican Texas by the thousands. And they were grateful to Mexico for the chance--and a place--to make a fresh start. To most American immigrants, it seemed as if Mexico offered more opportunity than the"land of opportunity" itself.

Most Texians immigrated under the Mexican Constitution of 1824. Under that covenant Mexican citizens enjoyed a republican form of government and most of the power of government resided at the state and local levels. Indeed, the Mexican federalists were great admirers of the United States Constitution of 1787 and employed it as a model for their 1824 charter. When Santa Anna revoked the Constitution of 1824 and declared himself dictator in 1835, all bets were off. American Mexicans considered themselves bound to the old constitution and were not about to sit still and be quiet while a military dictator appropriated the reins of government. They were not, however, alone it that. Many Federalistias Mexicans loyal to the Constitution of 1824 -also took up arms to resist Santa Anna's centralist regime.

So the revolt that began near Gonzales in October 2, 1835, was a civilwar - not a bid for complete separation from Mexico. Both Anglo-CelticTexians and the native Tejanos fought for self-government within the federalist system created by the Constitution of 1824. The war was not, as some have insisted, a "culture conflict." Indeed, many Texas Mexicans joined with norteamericano neighbors to resist the centralistas.

Independence forced Tejanos to make hard choices. Some like Navarroand the Segua­ns opted to support the new republic. But others like Benevides, the alcalde of Victoria, could not force their principlesto bend that far. Benevides was a Mexican first, a federalist second.He had seen much hard fighting at the siege and storming of Baxar in1835, but when he heard of the March 2 declaration he went to Goliad commander James W. Fannin and informed him he was leaving the army. He could not abide centralist despotism, but neither could he be a party to striping Mexico of Tejas. He believed his only honorable option was to return to his ranch and sit out the war as a non-combatant. Fannin understood his plight and sent him home with his blessing. Still other Tejanos, like Carlos de la Garza, Juan Moya, and Agusta­n Moya,resented the influx of foreign settlers, view opposition as disloyalty to their motherland, and flocked to the centralist banner. These were not men who wet their fingers to test the prevailing winds; they did not plot their course according to the latest public opinion poll.They were deeply rooted in principle and tradition. Each of theseTexas Mexicans followed his heart and while the path did not always lead to victory, it never led to dishonor."

I bring this up because I for one am sick and tired of hearing people from Texas say the words "illegal immigrants". Either those Texans are transplants or totally ignorant of how important Mexicans are to our being here. Mexico invited us, treated us with the up most respect and friendliness, now a mere 150 yrs later we repay the kindness with hate.

I was not raised this way, nor was anyone I grew up with. We respect and honor this land and the people whose ancestors welcomed us withopened arms. We love their vibrant culture, strong work ethics, andintegrity. For most of us older and multi-generational Texans, we find those traits rare in the Euro-anglos here.

My grandparents and their grandparents would not greet me favorably in the after life if I do not stand up for our comrades of Mexican descent or if I do not fight the building of walls even up to my very last breath. And in my opinion any Texan, regardless of nationality or race, who does not do the same should leave. You are the ones who do not deserve to fly your flags here.

And for anyone that is still interested here is an excellent link about Texas Indpendance.

# posted by Rancho Perros Bravos @ 5/02/2007 11:14:00 PM

Comments:

Bless you for standing up for the truth and reminding people history and sad truth welcomed with open arms and payed back with hate sad huh seams to be a repeat of all history

# posted by  littlebitofsonshine : Thursday, May 3, 2007 at 12:34:00 AM UTC

 

That was an interesting post, on a subject not often talked about.

# posted by  Frank Partisan : Friday, May 4, 2007 at 5:12:00 AM UTC

 

i would like to learn more about the moya delgado family if you know anything please email mariaysabelmariaysabel@yahoo.com

# posted by  Anonymous : Saturday, November 8, 2008 at 6:03:00 AM UTC

 

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---

"...Let the winds lift your banners from far lands
With a message of strife and of hope:
Raise the Maypole aloft with its garlands
That gathers your cause in its scope....

...Stand fast, then, Oh Workers, your ground,
Together pull, strong and united:
Link your hands like a chain the world round,
If you will that your hopes be requited.

When the World's Workers, sisters and brothers,
Shall build, in the new coming years,
A lair house of life--not for others,
For the earth and its fulness is theirs. "

Walter Crane, Workers Maypole, 1894

An extensive information on the origins of May Day are present on the Marxist Internet Archive (MIA) May Day section.

May the first of May (aka May Day) motivates always to work for the Proletariat, and the memories of the fallen ones who sacrificed their lives for the overall oppressed live in our hearts and minds.

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