Whenever i take a break from the blog, more things happen than i can discuss - and still maintain a real life.

So let me just sort through the morass, and find what's important: John Conyers - a great African American Congressman from Michigan - has introduced a bill in the House that would create a National, Universal Health care system that would cut out the profiteers in the insurance business: H. R. 676

When I last checked, the bill had 78 co-sponsors in the House. My congressperson is not among them.

So now, when I call Congress, i'm going to tell them two things: stop spending money on 'defense' and vote for HR 676.

On an unrelated topic: the Star-Ledger today published the letter that i wrote to them about an Op-Ed by Melvin Laird, who argued (among other things) that the US should spend a greater percentage of its GDP on 'defense''. In the past, they called to confirm my address. this time they didn't so maybe that means that they'll publish me in other occasions as well!

Already too much

It is preposterous to propose that "defense" spending should be substantially increased, as Mel vin Laird (and Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid) propose. Our government already spends more than all the rest of the world combined on "defense," much of it directed to programs (to name two, the F-22 and national missile defense) that have little to do with national security and essentially amount to subsidies to the "defense" industry. The $200 billion we spend yearly in Iraq would be more than sufficient to provide health insurance to every American -- and in the face of more than 40 million people, many of them children, who have no health care coverage, Laird should be ashamed of himself.

-- Matteo Tamburini, Newark

On Monday, January 15th, i marched with the People's Organization for Progress (POP) in memory of Martin Luther King. It was amazing to me that on that day (of all days) the police were making a fuss about allowing us to mrch in the streets of Downtown Newark. In Seattle (a city with a MUCH smaller percentage of people of African descent) the MLK day march is an institution that Washington State senators attend. In Newark, no elected official was present.

Then on Saturday January 20th I attended the People's Peace Conference at Rutgers Law School (the muscle behind the event was also mostly from POP). A wonderful event, whose main theme was the appropriate one: The consequences of the war in our community.

The spirit of all these events that now motivates me can be found in the powerful speech in which Martin Luther King declared that he would begin to actively campaign against the war in Vietnam. But his speech is entitled Beyond Vietnam. The reason he made abundantly clear himself:

Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.

My girlfriend Alexis is getting her Masters degree at Bank street college of education - a cutting edge institution, which has very progressive ideas about early childhood education.

At the school cafeteria - until today- Nestle products were served. Nestle is involved in many nasty things (a lot of union activists working for Nestle in Colombia have been murdered), and is extremely powerful (in many places, Newark among them, it is next to impossible to buy bottled water that isn't owned by Nestle, Coca Cola or Pepsi) but none as heinous as its hawking of powdered baby milk substitutes.

To this day, in countries all over the world Nestle aggressively markets its breast milk substitutes to mothers - with the full knowledge that breast feeding is better both for the child and the mother. In the past , for example, they insisted on giving free samples to new mothers, who quickly lose their breast milk if they do not breast feed every day - thus becoming dependent on the substitute.

This is particularly egregious in the global periphery and in poor communities, because mothers there often cannot afford the milk powder, and have little access to clean water - thus their babies become malnourished.

At any rate, the outrage is international (there is an international boycott of nestle products), and there is an organization devoted to fighting these practices - the international baby food action nework (IBFAN) -

Alexis began to question the sale of Nestle products, and the vendor, when he learned about the practices above, decided to stop selling them! mark one victory for people over corporations.

Dal sito AltraVicenza:

PETIZIONE ONLINE PER FERMARE IL RADDOPPIO DELLA BASE USA A VIVCENZA.
SUPERATE LE 3900 ADESIONI IN 48 ORE, FIRMA ANCHE TU

Quando firmate la petizione, fatemelo sapere! Io l'ho gia' fatto!

Ci sono molti motivi per i quali mi oppongo all'installazione di una ulteriore base militare statunitense in italia. La piu' importante pero' l'ho maturata durante i miei anni d'insegnamento a Newark. Come mai i soldi dei contribuenti statunitensi devono andare al mantenimento di un costosissimo impero di basi militari all'estero, quando la guerra fredda e' finita, mentre qui ci sono intere citta' piene di poveri, in cui le scuole non funzionano, e con milioni di persone prive di alcun tipo di assicurazione medica?

Quindi firmare questa petizione non significa solamente opporsi a una ennesima violazione della sovranita' italiana (ci sono basi militari italiane negli USA?) e opporsi a una base il cui scopo e' proiettare l'egemonia militare degli stati uniti nel medio oriente e verso la russia, ma anche schierarsi a favore di tutti coloro che, negli stati uniti, si oppongono allo sperpero delle risorse nazionali in un militarismo senza fine.

There was a brilliant op-ed in the NY Times this weekend - about teaching. I agree wholeheartedly with what the author has to say:

By TOM MOORE

IN the past year or so I have seen Matthew Perry drink 30 cartons of milk, Ted Danson explain the difference between a rook and a pawn, and Hilary Swank remind us that white teachers still can’t dance or jive talk. In other words, I have been confronted by distorted images of my own profession — teaching. Teaching the post-desegregation urban poor, to be precise.

Although my friends and family (who should all know better) continue to ask me whether my job is similar to these movies, I find it hard to recognize myself or my students in them.

So what are these films really about? And what do they teach us about teachers? Are we heroes, villains, bullies, fools? The time has come to set the class record straight.

At the beginning of Ms. Swank’s new movie, “Freedom Writers,” her character, a teacher named Erin Gruwell, walks into her Long Beach, Calif., classroom, and the camera pans across the room to show us what we are supposed to believe is a terribly shabby learning environment. Any experienced educator will have already noted that not only does she have the right key to get into the room but, unlike the seventh-grade science teacher in my current school, she has a door to put the key into. The worst thing about Ms. Gruwell’s classroom seems to be graffiti on the desks, and crooked blinds.

I felt like shouting, Hey, at least you have blinds! My first classroom didn’t, but it did have a family of pigeons living next to the window, whose pane was a cracked piece of plastic. During the winter, snowflakes blew in. The pigeons competed with the mice and cockroaches for the students’ attention.
[The school at which i taught was structurally in very good conditions, and very well kept. from what i understand, the same is not true for all of the schools in Newark]

This is not to say that all schools in poor neighborhoods are a shambles, or that teaching in a real school is impossible. In fact, thousands of teachers in New York City somehow manage to teach every day, many of them in schools more underfinanced and chaotic than anything you’ve seen in movies or on television (except perhaps the most recent season of “The Wire”).

Ms. Gruwell’s students might backtalk, but first they listen to what she says. And when she raises her inflection just slightly, the class falls silent. Many of the students I’ve known won’t sit down unless they’re repeatedly asked to (maybe not even then), and they don’t listen just because the teacher is speaking; even “good teachers” are occasionally drowned out by the din of 30 students simultaneously using language that would easily earn a movie an NC-17 rating.

When a fight breaks out during an English lesson, Ms. Gruwell steps into the hallway and a security guard immediately materializes to break it up. Forget the teacher — this guy was the hero of the movie for me.

If I were to step out into the hallway during a fight, the only people I’d see would be some students who’d heard there was a fight in my room. I’d be wasting my time waiting for a security guard. The handful of guards where I work are responsible for the safety of five floors, six exits, two yards and four schools jammed into my building.

Although personal safety is at the top of both teachers’ and students’ lists of grievances, the people in charge of real schools don’t take it as seriously as the people in charge of movie schools seem to.

The great misconception of these films is not that actual schools are more chaotic and decrepit — many schools in poor neighborhoods are clean and orderly yet still don’t have enough teachers or money for supplies. No, the most dangerous message such films promote is that what schools really need are heroes. This is the Myth of the Great Teacher.

Films like “Freedom Writers” portray teachers more as missionaries than professionals, eager to give up their lives and comfort for the benefit of others, without need of compensation. Ms. Gruwell sacrifices money, time and even her marriage for her job.

Her behavior is not represented as obsessive or self-destructive, but driven — necessary, even. She is forced into making these sacrifices by the aggressive neglect of the school’s administrators, who won’t even let her take books from the bookroom. The film applauds Ms. Gruwell’s dedication, but also implies that she has no other choice. In order to be a good teacher, she has to be a hero.

“Freedom Writers,” like all teacher movies this side of “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” is presented as a celebration of teaching, but its message is that poor students need only love, idealism and martyrdom. [which strikes me as being one of the ways in which one could interpret what Teach for America does]

I won’t argue the need for more of the first two, but I’m always surprised at how, once a Ms. Gruwell wins over a class with clowning, tears, rewards and motivational speeches, there is nothing those kids can’t do. It is as if all the previously insurmountable obstacles students face could be erased by a 10-minute pep talk or a fancy dinner. This trivializes not only the difficulties many real students must overcome, but also the hard-earned skill and tireless effort real teachers must use to help those students succeed.

Every year young people enter the teaching profession hoping to emulate the teachers they’ve seen in films. (Maybe in the back of my mind I felt that I could be an inspiring teacher like Howard Hesseman or Gabe Kaplan.) But when you’re confronted with the reality of teaching not just one class of misunderstood teenagers (the common television and movie conceit) but four or five every day, and dealing with parents, administrators, mentors, grades, attendance records, standardized tests and individual education plans for children with learning disabilities, not to mention multiple daily lesson plans — all without being able to count on the support of your superiors — it becomes harder to measure up to the heroic movie teachers you thought you might be.

It’s no surprise that half the teachers in poor urban schools, like Erin Gruwell herself, quit within five years. [...]

While no one believes that hospitals are really like “ER” or that doctors are anything like “House,” no one blames doctors for the failure of the health care system. From No Child Left Behind to City Hall, teachers are accused of being incompetent and underqualified, while their appeals for better and safer workplaces are systematically ignored.

Every day teachers are blamed for what the system they’re just a part of doesn’t provide: safe, adequately staffed schools with the highest expectations for all students. But that’s not something one maverick teacher, no matter how idealistic, perky or self-sacrificing, can accomplish.

Tom Moore, a 10th-grade history teacher at a public school in the Bronx, is writing a book about his teaching experiences.

Many of these thoughts i have had myself (while watching Stand and Deliver for example) - first and foremost the fact that all movie teachers only ever seem to be dealing with ONE CLASS of twenty students or so. In my experience, teachers have at least fifty kids each - i never had fewer than 100. Students in the movies don't transfer in or out in the middle of the school year - my eighth period class last year started with 25 and ended with 25, but only ten students stayed throughout the nine months. And so on.

The only thing that is missing from his article - though he hints at it in the end - is that the problem of mis-education cannot be solved by one (or even hundreds) of "martyr" teachers: the problem is a political one, and can only be solved through a political process - a process in which teachers should be involved, because they have the potential to affect the political discourse so powerfully.

The Star Ledger today published an op-ed by former secretary of defense Melvin Laird. He draws parallels between Iraq and Vietnam (saying that it would have been a disaster if the US had pulled out of Vietnam) and calls for an increase in the 'Defense' budget.

Some of my thoughts on the matter i wrote to the paper, some i didn't.

Exactly what would have been devastating if Congress had cut the purse strings on the Vietnam war? isn't the death of almost 60,000 soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians 'devastating'? Exactly what could have been MORE disastrous than what actually happened?

Laird says that 'a bloodbath' was the result of US withdrawal. wasn't the war itself a 'bloodbath'? 

It is preposterous to propose that 'defense' spending should be substantially increased, as Mr. Laird (and Democratic leader Harry Reid) propose. Our government already spends more than all the rest of the world COMBINED on 'defense' - a staggering $500 billion dollars, much of it directed to programs (to name two, the F-22 and national missile defense) that have little to do with 'national security' and essentially amount to subsidies to the 'defense' industry.

Laird uses the ridiculous argument that our 'defense' spending is an insufficient percentage of GDP. But it's a ridiculous benchmark to use! isn't spending five times more than the closest competitor enough?

Furthermore, it has been recently pointed out [in the NY Times, as i posted previously] that the $200 billion we spend yearly in Iraq would be more than sufficient to provide health insurance to everyone in the United States - and in the face of more than 40 million people, many of them children, who have no health care coverage, Mr. Laird should be ashamed of himself.

There is a fascinating article in today's NY Times about what how the money being spent to occupy Iraq could be spent to serve human needs. But it has two flaws: it's almost four years too late, and it was published in the Business section. The Times is already a pretentious publication, targeted at the upper middle class (have you seen its ads?), and its business page is about as far removed from the attention of the average taxpayer as front row seats for the superbowl.

The article draws on sources here and here.

The human mind isn’t very well equipped to make sense of a figure like $1.2 trillion. We don’t deal with a trillion of anything in our daily lives, and so when we come across such a big number, it is hard to distinguish it from any other big number. Millions, billions, a trillion — they all start to sound the same.

The way to come to grips with $1.2 trillion is to forget about the number itself and think instead about what you could buy with the money. When you do that, a trillion stops sounding anything like millions or billions.

For starters, $1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign — a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives.

Combined, the cost of running those programs for a decade wouldn’t use up even half our money pot. So we could then turn to poverty and education, starting with universal preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old child across the country. The city of New Orleans could also receive a huge increase in reconstruction funds.

[...] All that would be one way to spend $1.2 trillion. Here would be another:

The war in Iraq.

The article goes along with this graphic (click to see the whole thing) that compares just the straight yearly spending to other things like health care. My reaction to that picture is: yes, that's all true. But did you know, Mr. Leonhardt, that our yearly military budget (much of it spent on subsidies to high technology industries) is TWICE the cost of the war in Iraq? and that the precious democrats are proposing to increase it - and have not (yet) been forced to take the stand that they will stop paying for it?

At any rate, this was my message to the Times.

Editor,

There are few matters more central to the political debate, and indeed our future, in this country, than the war in Iraq. I have felt from the beginning that the discussion of the issue has been insufficient at best, and dominated by the voices of leaders whose reliability was questioned from the beginning -
rightfully, but not as energetically as would have been necessary.

[I wanted to indict the Times itself, given that it published the shameful articles by Judith Miller that fanned the WMD craze, but I keep hoping they'll publish me...]

So why was the profoundly important article by David Leonhardt about the cost of the war placed in the Business section of your paper, and not, say, on the front page?

Da un po' di tempo a questa parte sto seguendo i documenti prodotti da un gruppo chiamato Officina Politica Pistoiese. Mi sembra che le idee proposte siano buone, per quanto io le viva alla distanza.

Recentemente ho letto questi commenti sul 'nuovo ospedale', e sarei curioso di sentire cosa ne dite:

Altri 4,5 milioni di euro per un ospedale dove non dovrebbe stare, questa la somma che servirà ad adeguare la viabilità più prossima al campo di volo secondo la decisione che la giunta ha preso nei giorni scorsi. Un altro costosissimo pastrocchio per cercare di porre rimedio ad una scelta insostenibile: nella fattispecie 5 (cinque) rotonde ed un nuovo ponte dalle porte della città al nuovo ospedale, cioè meno di un chilometro. Questa somma si aggiunge ai molti milioni di euro già preventivati per mettere in sicurezza l’Ombrone a monte del ponte dell’autostrada (casse d’espansione), a quelli che saranno necessari ad acquistare la nuova area per gli spettacoli itineranti, per spostare il campo nomadi, per trovare un’alternativa ai pozzi, per le barriere antirumore ecc ecc.

Ed ancora, tra le altre cose, non c’è né il progetto né l’onerosissimo preventivo relativo alla trasformazione del Brusiliano da fogna (Qualcuno sa di che cosa si tratta?), che attualmente serve una cospicua parte della città, a corso d’acqua con caratteristiche compatibili al fatto di essere praticamente sotto le finestre del previsto nuovo ospedale. Tutto questo, paradossalmente, a monte di una scelta che è stata giustificata per l’economicità dell’area.

Queste enormi cifre, delle quali i cittadini si fanno carico, per un ospedale che potrebbe non essere realizzato per diversi motivi, come il fatto di essere in un’area dove il ministero ha apposto il vincolo ambientale e per i ricorsi al TAR pendenti. Tra le altre cose segnaliamo una incredibile quanto sospetta ‘dimenticanza’: per il nuovo ospedale manca il parere sanitario! Non è mai stato richiesto e manca il parere del dipartimento di prevenzione dell'ASL che agisce come struttura tecnica dell'autorità sanitaria locale, che è il sindaco. Non può trattarsi di una dimenticanza: è legittimo il dubbio che la ASL sia in imbarazzo ad esprimersi sull’idoneità di un’area palesemente inadeguata.

Inoltre il sindaco, che sulla scelta del campo di volo ha speso molto (soldi dei cittadini e la sua autorevolezza come amministratore e politico), non ha interesse a sollecitare un parere che potrebbe alimentare ulteriormente le critiche sulla sua sorda caparbietà nel sostenere quella scelta. Intanto si impegnano cifre esorbitanti per blindare la localizzazione dell’ospedale, dimostrando - a prescindere dall'esito della vicenda - nessun rispetto per il TAR, che deve esprimersi, e per le tasche dei cittadini, che pagheranno un conto salatissimo per un'opera irrealizzabile o realizzata insensatamente.

Aggiungerei io, che il tutto fa parte di una serie di scelte urbanistiche sulle quali avrei da ridire, non ultima la 'chiusura dell'anello' di circonvallazione che passera' dietro la caserma e tagliera' per Sant'Alessio. A questo proposito, sollecito tutti a fare foto a Sant'Alessio com'e', e poi di documentare lo scempio che inevitabilmente (temo) ne verra' fatto.

"400,000 people massacred.

You won't be able to say that you didn't know."

signs like this were EVERYWHERE in the Paris Charles de Gaulle airport when i went through it to go to Italy during winter break..

While i remain unconvinced by the arguments that a military force would be useful in Darfur (as the interventions in Somalia and the Balkans would seem to indicate), i AM convinced that one thing our government could constructively do would be to finally join the International Criminal Court and then swiftly move to prosecute the leaders in Sudan. (of course, that would mean exposing Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush to an overdue prosecution for war crimes, a welcome and intended side effect).

Questa pubblicita' era OVUNQUE nell'aereoporto Charles de Gaulle a Parigi...

il mio computer e' in riparazione. aspettatevi riflessioni meno frequenti nei prossimi giorni.

nel frattempo, mi mettero' a riscoprire la vita reale. conversazioni e giochi con gli amici, passeggiate all'aria aperta, suonare la chitarra, lezioni di capoeira....

-------

my computer is in repairs. expect fewer posts in the next few weeks.

in the meanwhile, i will be busy rediscovering real life. conversations and games with my friends, going for walks in the open air, playing guitar, capoeira lessons...

I found a fascinating interview/book review on Ha'aretz:

Nissim Levy served in the Shin Bet security service for 20 years. In his job as field coordinator in 1984 in Lebanon, and in refugee camps in the Gaza Strip before and after the Oslo Accords, he was in regular contact with the "other side." The endless searches for one more bit of information and the firsthand contact with the residents, those who "want to throw us into the sea," did not turn him into an Arab-hater who is tough on security matters. Perhaps even the opposite.

In his first novel, "Shana bli tzipporim" ("A Year Without Birds"), which was published in Hebrew a few weeks ago by Am Oved, he describes the experiences of a Shin Bet coordinator in Lebanon who is pursuing terrorists that have harmed Israel Defense Forces soldiers. The searches are not always successful, and even when they are, the question that hovers throughout the story is: "What the hell are we doing here?" In reply to the question as to whether the book is autobiographical, Levy refers to the preface he wrote: "If any of you believes that this is a work of the imagination, I apparently have a well-developed imagination. If any of you believes that it actually happened, he was apparently there."

"Unlike Gaza," explains Levy, "the process in Lebanon did not begin with the fact that I was the occupier and they were the occupied: It began with the fact that I was the redeemer and they were glad I had come. Slowly but surely, because of the things I do, because of my thoughtlessness as a nation, as a government, I gradually exacerbate the situation. I turn my friend into my enemy."

It strìikes me that tthere are lessons here for US citizrens both in regards to our current position in Iraq and in terms of our understanding of the role Israel (and, more importantly, the US) plays in teh Israel-Palestine conflict.

and there is more:

Levy once again recalls the concept of "a snowball of hate": "Let's say that in a certain village there's someone who carried out a terror attack against soldiers. The moment you've traveled to the village, taken the man and left, you've created another four potential terrorists. You have to understand that. I had no hesitation when I had to enter homes. But imagine that you are entering a small room where five people are sleeping, and to get to my Mohammed I have to step on four. That's exactly the snowball I'm talking about. On the way to entering a village to arrest someone I'm already doing damage, and the question is why have we reached this situation. Today, if the chief of staff, after dropping a bomb that killed four children, says that he feels only a tremor in the wing - what is the Palestinian who lives there supposed to think?"

As someone who is familiar with the conditions of the Palestinians in Gaza, do you feel empathy toward them?

"Ehud Barak once said that if he were a Palestinian he would join a terror organization. If I were in their situation, I would make our lives bitter. I would not blow up women and children. I'm totally opposed to that. But yes, I would fight against the foreign occupier. When you take a person and put him up against the wall and don't leave him many options, then what do you want him to do?

"Let's forget our patriotism for a moment. If a boy in Be'er Sheva falls in love with a girl in Haifa, what does he do? He picks up the phone, makes a date and drives to see her. If a boy from Bethlehem falls in love with a girl from Nablus, what does he do? He has to cross checkpoints, he needs a 1,001 permits. The moment that you reach the conclusion that you have nothing to live for, you immediately find that you have something to die for."

Are soldiers legitimate targets?

"Yes. In this battle soldiers are legitimate targets. My father was in the Etzel [the Irgun, a pre-1948 right-wing Jewish military organization that fought the British and Arabs]. There was the British occupier and he fought against it. The Palestinian is fighting against the Israeli occupier. When you come and call someone a 'terrorist,' the definition is totally subjective. I consider the Etzel fighters freedom fighters, and the British considered them terrorists ...

"Weren't we the ones who invented this business of sacrifice? Who sanctified 'it is good to die for our country'? Didn't we sanctify those who were the first to charge in order to save the homeland? Okay, so the Palestinians have taken it to much greater extremes. Do you think that if we were in their situation we wouldn't have suicide bombers? Isn't Baruch Goldstein a suicide bomber? [Goldstein, a Jewish doctor, fired at Muslim worshipers in the Tomb of the Patriarchs in February 1994, killing 29 and wounding 150]."

There is a long article in the Times about Newark's "revival." it strikes me tha throughout it is plagued by a classist bias

Foe example, this statement “This city is coming back,” is preceded by the fact that Throughout Newark, even on the most ragged blocks, new three-family homes are selling for $400,000. The article aslo talks about 1180 Raymond Boulevard: Vacant for 20 years, the building at Raymond Boulevard and Broad Street is being transformed into 317 apartments, and will feature valet parking, a mod bowling alley and a yoga studio. The average rent for a two-bedroom is $2,500; the building is still under renovation, but half the finished apartments have been rented. A year from now, the landlord, Cogswell Realty Group, plans to break ground nearby on a project that would bring 2,900 units to a stretch of Broad Street now dominated by abandoned department stores.

Well, of course: if houses cost $400,000 and a two-bedroom costs $2,500 the city must be coming back, right? But how many current Newark residents can afford to buy those houses? well, this is what the renewal is all about: hundreds of suburbanites and New Yorkers are moving into the city’s first luxury high-rise in a generation [and] As it stands, more than three-quarters of the city’s 150,000 jobs are held by out-of-towners.

And just who is going to live in the Cogswell Realty homes? The company sees its markets as college students who currently commute to Newark, young professionals priced out of Manhattan and empty-nesters seeking an urban experience without depleting their savings.

The articles countinues by saying that Business leaders and politicians alike say such retail — and residential — development depends in part on the 50,000 students and teachers whose lives revolve around Seton Hall Law School, Rutgers University, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Essex County College and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. And there is a massive push to get these people to live in Newark: i got a hold of the Rutgers student paper, and essentially the only two ads in it were for these new residential complexes (one of which advertised the presence of 24-hour security).

The article does not hide the class issues: For Mr. Booker, already tarnished in the eyes of some as an outsider for his suburban upbringing and criticized for hiring too many aides from New York, the true challenge will be to spread change beyond a few shiny spots in the business district downtown into the struggling neighborhoods. But sentences like these are followed by this kind of assessment: “The edge is so thin right now,” said Alfred C. Koeppe, president of the Newark Alliance, a consortium of business leaders working to improve the economy and schools. “All it takes is one kid who recently moved here to get shot on the way to the PATH train and it could be all over.”  Never mind the 106 people who were murdered in Newark last year - they're not even part of the equation, except maybe because they create a negative impression in the minds of potential new residents.

The mayor has been saying some of the right things. He says he's going to create building trade apprenticeships for jobless young people and develop a municipal loan pool for minority business owners, [and he is] trying to make the rehabilitation of former offenders [...] a top priority. And there is certainly room to do so: Indeed, down at the waterfront, where the business of unloading and loading cargo has doubled in the past decade, producing about 1,000 new jobs a year, nearly 80 percent of the 28,000 stevedore and truck driving positions are held by people who live outside the city. At Newark Liberty International Airport, the airlines hire hundreds of baggage handlers, flight attendants and reservation agents every month; few are from Newark. (i mentioned the advertisement in this picture in a previous post - this is certainly a good thing).

With 1,500 to 2,000 parolees returning to Newark each year — and 60 percent of them ending up in handcuffs again within three years, according to city officials — the Booker administration plans to unveil a program next month that would provide ex-felons with job training and help them expunge their criminal records.

However, aside from the advertisement above and the proposed redevelopment of Brick Towers (also in a previous post), I have seen many fewer concrete things done for "the mass who burn and toil" than for "the vultures who thirst for blood and oil", and the cynic in me thinks that this is the most telling statement of the whole article:

“All my life, the politicians have been calling this place the Renaissance City,” complained Latonya Edwards, 28, a part-time security guard who is raising three children in a decrepit apartment building on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. “I think the renaissance is for suburban people who go downtown. If they have their way, people like me would just disappear.”

Ho letto oggi sulla Nazione che la Breda sta proponendo dei licenziamenti per risollevarsi dai suoi problem economici.

è solo una proposta, non è chiaro nemmeno a quale stabilimento si riferisca... eppure io ho ritrovato questa cartolina, e mi preparo a fare l'orto!

Più seriamente, mi sembra anche di aver capito dall'articolo che lo stato italiano, quando rinnova il parco treni delle ferrovie, non usa la Breda. Se ho capito bene, ed è vero, mi sembra proprio il massimo del paradosso: sarà mai possibile che aziende straniere possano produrre treni per il sistema ferroviario italiano a un costo minore della Breda?

There is an interesting article in Haaretz about the new settlement being planned by the Israeli government in the West Bank:

the Americans had been informed of the Israeli intention to expand the community [called Maskiot] and to build a settlement there to absorb dozens of families formerly from Gush Katif. The news upset the U.S. State Department and even the White House. The European Union also demanded explanations from Israel, and EU countries urged their ambassadors in Israel to check where in heaven's name the remote settlement is located. They discovered that Defense Minister Amir Peretz had personally signed the building permits for 30 residential units there. This was the first time in almost a decade that Israel had established a settlement in the territories.

[...] The heads of the Maskiot program understood that something bad was about to happen. Although they had received all the necessary permits and even flaunted the signature of the defense minister, expansion work on the premises has come to a standstill, and the area that was prepared for the construction of new residential units has been abandoned. The heavy machinery has disappeared. Attempts to contact the Defense Ministry and other ministries were met with an embarrassing silence.

[The rabbi of the pre-army program, Azualos at Makiot] has managed to learn that the first Zionist rule is to establish facts on the ground; the second rule is to ignore the protests of the world. "They'll shout and we'll continue to instill pride in the young men who come here," he said. "We will give them spiritual strength, we will teach them halakhot (religious laws), we will deepen their faith and their knowledge of the Jewish heritage."

[...] Now the Americans and the Europeans are threatening to put an end to the party. But nobody in Maskiot gets upset by the foreign intervention. Between lessons the 52 students are busy with building, plowing, gardening, setting up an animal corner, cooking and fixing up the place. They are certain that once the diplomatic uproar subsides the trucks and bulldozers will return, and that it won't be long before Maskiot becomes a milestone of renewed settlement momentum in the territories.

It is interesting to read that the work has stopped because the US has done nothing more than to voice its displeasure - they certainly haven't cut the $2 billion aid program, which has no parallel with any other country in the world. It suggests that the US could do MUCH MORE to curb Israeli expansionism in the West Bank, not to mention all of the numerous other Israeli violations of teh Geneva Conventions and UN security council resolutions.

It remains to be seen whether the rabbis of Maskiot are correct - and whether the media in the US will beforced to recognize the two rules of Zionism described above.

I have been following discussions about Newark's new mayor's performance in trying to make the murder rate decline. The mayor has been making a big deal of the fact that, despite Newark's 106 homicides last year (which broke a ten-year record), he should only be held accountable for the ones that occurred after he took office in July. Okay, fair enough.

But this is this year's news, and it's not starting well:

3rd fatal shooting in Newark this week
A 29-year-old man was shot to death tonight in Newark, the city's third homicide in the first four days of the new year, police said.

I have been asked what i think of mayor Cory Booker. I oppose his support of voucehers, and i'm not so sure about some of this policy choices. But I have often been reminded of the fact that fascists can pave roads just as well (if not better) than progressives.

In the end, i think that the residents of Newark will evaluate his tenure based almost exclusively on whether he can bring down the murder rate. I have been thinking that perhaps 80 this year would mean a big sign of improvement.

From Ha'aretz:

The Institute for National Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University said in its annual report, released Tuesday, that Iran will possess nuclear weapons unless military action is taken against it, and Israel would be capable of carrying out such an attack

"Time is working in Iran's favor, and barring military action, Iran's
possession of nuclear weapons is only a matter of time," the institute said in a statement distributed at a news conference where it released its annual assessment of the Middle East's strategic balance.

Israel considers Iran to be its most serious threat. It dismisses Tehran's claims that its nuclear program is designed solely to produce energy and is worried by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's repeated calls to wipe the Jewish state off the map.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has not ruled out a military strike against Iran's nuclear program, but has said he hoped other ways could be found to keep Tehran from becoming a nuclear power. In 1981, Israel destroyed an unfinished Iraqi nuclear reactor in a surprise air attack.

A member of the institute's board, Brigadier General (res.) Giora Eiland said there would not be a military strike without a full "strategic and military" understanding with the U.S.

"Even if, at the end of the day, Israeli jets are going to carry out, or execute, this attack, it might be perceived - and rightly - as an understanding between the United States and Israel," Eiland said.

Will this make the news in the US?

The New York Times had this article:

As a way to cut energy use, it could not be simpler. Unscrew a light bulb that uses a lot of electricity and replace it with one that uses much less.

For all its power in retailing, though, Wal-Mart is meeting plenty of resistance — from light-bulb makers, competitors and consumers.

[Wal-Mart's decision] would send shockwaves — some intended, others not — across the lighting industry. Because compact fluorescent bulbs last up to eight years, giant manufacturers, like General Electric and Osram Sylvania, would sell far fewer lights. Because the bulbs are made in Asia, some American manufacturing jobs could be lost. And because the bulbs contain mercury, there is a risk of pollution when millions of consumers throw them away.

More than a year ago, Mr. Scott, the company’s chief executive, began reaching out to some of environmental groups, telling them that Wal-Mart, long regarded as an environmental offender, wanted to become a leader on issues like fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions.

Why would Wal-Mart make a decision which may negatively affect its bottom line, in the face of pressure from industry? Could it be that environmental activists have raised consciousness to the point that Wal-Mart thinks that selling the compact fluorescent bulbs is a cost-effective propaganda tool to counter environmentalists?

Therefore, let's applaud environmentalists for having won a battle against industry, and urge them to keep it up - many, many more decisions like this need to be made, and they will only be made if we force them to be made.

Letter to the New York Times:

There is a simple (and certainly effective) way to reduce the casualty rate in , the failure to do which is 'hugely frustrating, tragic and disappointing': bring the troops home now.