This is from Haaretz, and is worth reading and reflecting on...

A document obtained by Haaretz shows that the Palestinian Authority vehemently rejected most of Israel's security demands in negotiations at Camp David and Taba in 2000 and 2001, but contrary to what has been assumed for years, significant agreement was reached on parts of three core issues: borders, refugees and Jerusalem.

The 26-page document, signed by Gilad Sher, bureau chief to then prime minister Ehud Barak, was entitled, "The Status of the Diplomatic Process with the Palestinians Points to Update the Incoming Prime Minister."

The document, revealed as Israel and the Palestinians resume official talks following a seven-year hiatus, shows details of the Palestinians' objections for the first time, and illustrates the precise differences in the respective negotiating positions when the talks were frozen in early 2001.

The document also reveals that as early as June 2000, an "initiated separation" plan that would eventually become the basis for Israel's withdrawal from territories were being formulated, in the event talks with the Palestinians break down.

That plan received the cabinet's final approval in October 2000. The separation plan was to encompass all aspects of life, and would take place over a number of years, even while negotiations would be kept on the back burner as an option, should conditions change.

The document was presented to Barak two weeks after the elections on February 6, 2001, in which Barak lost to Ariel Sharon, and a few days before Sharon assumed office.

Among the PA's objections were the demilitarization of the Palestinian Authority; the proposed timeline for the Israel Defense Forces to withdraw from the territories; the IDF's right to emergency deployment in the Jordan Valley; and control of the skies.

The document notes that "at the Camp David negotiations, President [Bill] Clinton agreed on the security issue in the spirit of Israel's positions, but after the summit, the Palestinians reneged on most of the understandings."

Some of the details have been revealed over the years in books and articles, but most have remained ambiguous or unknown.

According to the plan:

* Israel would keep settlement blocs comprising 80 percent of the settlers in the West Bank.

* No evacuation of settlements was planned for the initial phase of the plan. At an appropriate time, it stated, isolated settlements outside the blocs or security zones would be transfered to one of the settlement blocks or to Israel.

* A wide security zone would be maintained along the Dead Sea as far north as Meholah in the Jordan Valley.

* Security forces would be beefed up in the Old City and East Jerusalem, and its environs.

The 26-page booklet was written during a long series of discussions by a team headed by Sher, which included former deputy head of the Shin Bet security service Israel Hasson; Barak's political adviser, Pini Meidan; the IDF chief of planning and strategy, Brigadier General Mike Herzog; head of the Military Advocate General's international law department, Colonel Daniel Reisner; the secretary of the negotiating team, Gidi Grinstein; the head of the negotiation administration, Colonel Shaul Arieli; his deputy, Moti Kristal; and Foreign Ministry representative Oded Eran. Then-head of the National Security Council, Major General Uzi Dayan, also contributed comments. The booklet summed up in almost obsessively thorough and precise detail all diplomatic action that had been taken vis-a-vis the Palestinians during Barak's term in office.

Far-reaching ideas
The main principle toward which Israel was working, according to the document prepared by Sher's team, was not to offer any more territory to the Palestinians before understandings were reached on all the core issues. Israel was prepared to discuss far-reaching ideas, but continually emphasized that "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed."

Another rule was that "no issues could be agreed upon separately from others," because of the interlocking connection among all the issues. These two messages were emphasized frequently during the talks in 2000.

In preparation for the current renewal of talks, the documents were presented to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and her team a month before the Annapolis summit. The Israeli and the Palestinian teams, headed by Livni and Ahmed Qureia, met Wednesday in what was intended as the official reopening of talks, seven years after they were frozen.

During the talks at Camp David and Taba, the parties worked toward a Framework Agreement for Permanent Status (FAPS). The agreement was supposed to encompass all the core issues and offer guidelines and time tables to arrive at a solution.

In comparison, during the opening of talks between Israeli and Palestinian teams on Wednesday, the parties avoided defining the legal status of the document toward which they were working. The joint statement at Annapolis stated that the goal was a "peace agreement," a term open to interpretation.

Olmert has not yet given guidelines to the negotiating team on the present talks. However, the 2001 booklet documents 12 guidelines given by Barak to the negotiating teams.

Gaps revealed
The 2001 document reveals the gaps between the parties on all the core issues:
The parties were divided over when to make a declaration on the end of the conflict. Israel wanted the end-of-conflict declaration to be at the time of the signing of the FAPS. The Palestinians refused, and wanted all prisoners incarcerated in Israel to be released with the signing of the FAPS. Israel proposed that the prisoners be released with the Palestinian end-of-conflict declaration.

The document also reveals the nature of the Palestinian state, constituting the implementation of the right of the entire Palestinian people to self-determination. Among the differences noted was "a disagreement among the Palestinians with regard to formal recognition of the State of Israel as a Jewish state."

With regard to borders, the booklet states that the Palestinians were willing to show flexibility, and had agreed to adjustments to the June 4, 1967, borders, which were "equal in their extent and quality to meet Israel's demographic needs." The talks failed to reach an agreement over the Latrun area, the area annexed to Jerusalem after 1967, and the Dead Sea.

In addition, while Israel sought to exchange territory for 6 to 8 percent of the West Bank in order to keep the settlement blocks, the Palestinians demanded that all territorial exchanges be at a 1:1 ratio, and would not be greater than 2.3 percent of the West Bank.

In terms of safe passage between the West Bank and Gaza, Israel wanted the passage to remain under its sovereignty, but controlled by the Palestinians; the Palestinians wanted a land corridor through Israel that would be under its sovereignty.

Jerusalem
With regard to Jerusalem, it was determined that there would be two capitals, Jerusalem and Al-Quds, and that special arrangements would be made on matters of security, planning, construction and law enforcement. The Palestinians emphasized the idea of the "open city"  that the two capitals would constitute one urban unit separate from its surroundings, both Israeli and Palestinian.

In the areas outside the Old City walls, Israel's guiding principle was that Arab areas would be Palestinian, but presented a map with Jewish territorial contiguity that created Palestinian "bubbles." The Palestinians, for their part, demanded Palestinian territorial contiguity with Israeli "bubbles" connected to Jewish Jerusalem via roads.

In the matter of the "sacred basin" and the Old City, Israel wanted a "special regime," and to keep the Jewish and the Armenian quarters under its aegis. The Palestinians, however, wanted sovereignty over the Muslim, Christian and most of the Armenian quarters.

In terms of the Jewish holy sites outside the walls, the Palestinians proposed special arrangements that would benefit Israel but would not constitute overeignty.

An even more complicated issue was that of the Temple Mount. Israel suggested that sovereignty would be "ambiguous," and that powers of administration and control would be shared, or alternatively, that sovereignty would be determined based on the bond of each party to the site. The Palestinians refused both alternatives and rejected any compromise on the Temple Mount.

Refugees
On refugees, Israel refused to accept sole responsibility for the creation of the refugee problem and to any right of return, theoretical or actual. Israel did agree to recognize the suffering of the 1948 refugees; to take part in an international effort to bring in a small number of refugees 20,000-40,000 at its discretion based on humanitarian considerations only; and to contribute funds to refugee rehabilitation. Israel's condition was that the "implementation of the final status agreement would bring an end to demands and a solution to the problem."

The Palestinians demanded that Israel recognize its sole responsibility for the creation and perpetuation of the refugee problem, and wanted Israel to recognize the Palestinian right of return as per UN resolution 194. However a document written during the talks stated that the Palestinians "showed understanding of the sensitivity of the issue for Israel, and willingness to find a formulation that would balance these feelings with their national needs."

The gaps on the issue of water remained at a legal level, while on the practical level agreement was extensive.

On the process of ratifying the agreement, Israel declared its intention to hold a referendum, while the Palestinians said nothing about this part of the process.

The basic ideology of "the market" and "consumer power" holds that the choices we make as individuals hold the power to change the world. It is an ideology that that is particularly serviceable to the business interests who run the country, because it downplays the basic reality that in order for ordinary people to change a world in which power is very highly concentrated, the need to work TOGETHER.

Businessmen understand that collective action on the part of the people CAN challenge their power. My point: the business pages of  almost any newspaper reflect this understanding, and the 95% of us who DON'T play a significant part in influencing national politics should read them with care.

To cite a specific case: the NY Times on Friday had a story about a report issued by a consulting firm that contained powerful suggestions to reduce US carbon emissions - without new technology, and without "cutting back" on our standard of living. Below is an excerpt:

The United States could shave as much as 28 percent off the amount of greenhouse gases it emits at fairly modest cost and with only small technology innovations,

A large share of the reductions could come from steps that would more than pay for themselves in lower energy bills for industries and individual consumers, the report said, adding that people should take those steps out of good sense regardless of how worried they might be about climate change. But that is unlikely to happen under present circumstances, said the authors, who are energy experts at McKinsey & Company, the consulting firm.

The task might also require emissions limits and other government mandates, as well as incentives like tax breaks to promote efficient buildings, cars and appliances, the study said. The McKinsey report said “lifestyle changes” by Americans could play a role in improved efficiency, even though they were not a major factor in the potential gains the report cited.

In other words, what is MOST important in reducing carbon emissions are the regulatory decisions of the federal government - which is crushed under the lobbying power of big business. If we as citizens wanted to reduce carbon emissions, our individual choices might have a small impact, but the main effort should be to join together in order fight (and, unltimately, vanquish) the corporatocracy that runs the government.

There's a reason why this didn't make it onto the front page...

A CBS news poll, conducted in September of 2007, found that 55% of the electorate supports national, single-payer health care. The question was:

"Which do you think would be better for the country: having one health insurance program covering all Americans that would be administered by the government and paid for by taxpayers, or keeping the current system where many people get their insurance from private employers and some have no insurance?"

In February, the number of people who supported it was 47% - less, but still close to a majority. I wonder to what extent Michael Moore's movie Sicko had an impact on the numbers - which are nonetheless high, given the almost complete lack of articulate support in the media for the idea. The NY Times had an editorial on Nov 25th about health care, in which they discuss Single-Payer as follows:

[Single-Payer] would let the government offset the price-setting strength of the medical and pharmaceutical industries, eliminate much of the waste due to a multiplicity of private insurance plans, and greatly cut administrative costs.

Sounds Great, Right? so, what's the problem?

But a single-payer system is no panacea for the cost problem — witness Medicare’s own cost troubles — and the approach has limited political support.

Too bad that according to a NYTimes poll from March,

A majority of Americans say the federal government should guarantee health insurance to every American, especially children, and are willing to pay higher taxes to do it, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

So what they mean is that politicians - in the health insurance companies' pockets - don't support it, against the wishes of the majority of the population. How's that for journalistic double-speak?

SUPPORT HR 676!

I've said it many times: read the business pages of the New York Times. it's where the REAL news is:

Next spring, for the first time, [farmers in the US] intends to plant beets genetically engineered to withstand Monsanto’s powerful Roundup herbicide. The Roundup will destroy the weeds but leave his crop unscathed, potentially saving him thousands of dollars in tractor fuel and labor.

Seven years ago, beet breeders were on the verge of introducing Roundup-resistant seeds. But they had to pull back after sugar-using food companies like Hershey and Mars, fearing consumer resistance, balked at the idea of biotech beets. Now, though, sensing that those concerns have subsided, many processors have cleared their growers to plant the Roundup-resistant beets next spring.

It would be the first new type of genetically engineered food crop widely grown since the 1990s, when biotech soybeans, corn and a few other crops entered the market.

“Basically, we have not run into resistance,” said David Berg, president of American Crystal Sugar, the nation’s largest sugar beet processor. “We really think that consumer attitudes have come to accept food from biotechnology.”

A Kellogg spokeswoman, Kris Charles, said her company “would not have any issues” buying such sugar for products sold in the United States, where she said “most consumers are not concerned about biotech.”

Really? Consumers in the US aren't worried about bio-engineered frankenfoods? or is it just that corporations like Monsanto have such a stranglehold on public discourse (and the USDA) that people don't have a way to become informed and make their voice heard?

Well, a suggestion: visit the Organic Consumers Association's website, and tell American Crystal Sugar, Hershey, Mars, and Kellogg that you DO oppose introducing genetically modified foods into our environment and food chain - not to mention that you oppose the use of gallons upon gallons of pesticide being sprayed on the food you eat and being released into the enviroment.

SAMPLE LETTER: I read in today's NY Times (Nov. 27th) that your company has dropped its reservations to the use of genetically modfied sugar beets in its products.
As a consumer of your company's goods, i have serious concerns about the long-term health effects of introducing more 'Roundup Ready' foods into the food chain, as well as the environmental effects of a greatly increased use of Roundup.

I will seriously consider ending any purchase of your company's goods if the decision to allow the use of Roundup Ready sugar beets is not reversed.

I heard on Democracy Now that the new Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has pledged to withdraw Australian combat troops from Iraq and immediately sign the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions.

Bear in mind that Australia has the third largest combat contingent in Iraq, after the UK and South Korea.

He has also vowed to issue a formal apology to Aborigines for the abuses they suffered in the past.

It is worthwhile noting that the US government so far has still not even made the symbolic gesture of issuing an apology, let alone provided any substantive reparation for several centuries of slaughter, theft, and broken treaties.

So, great news for Australia. Unfortunately, as i was reading the Sydney Morning Herald, i also read that the state governments of New South Wales and Victoria have given the green light to using genetically modified crops for the first time. The decision is not final: the legislation establishes an expert committee to assess whether the agriculture industry is capable of segregating genetically modified and non-genetically modified crops. If the committee indicates that the industry is unable to do so, then the minister can intervene to block the start of GM farming.

The Australian Conservative Party (whose leader, John Howard, is a staunch ally of George Bush's)has decisevely lost the recent parliamentary elections.

I hope this means good things for the Australians: my question is whether the new Australian government, led by the Labor Party, will withdraw its troops from Iraq. After the UK, Australia has the second largest military contingent in Iraq,

The early analysis I've seen doesn't give me much hope. but we'll see.

From Ha'aretz:

Israel [with the implicit approval of the United States] is to begin gradually reducing the power supply to the Gaza Strip on December 2, in response to the ongoing Qassam rocket fire at Israeli communities along the Strip, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz told the High Court of Justice yesterday.

Israel intends to cut diesel fuel supplies for transportation purposes from 1.4 million liters per week to 1.2 million, and diesel fuel supplies for power stations from 2.2 liters per week to 1.75 liters.

Please remember the 4th Geneva Convention, article 33:

No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.

So this shows the commitment to 'peace' that Israel are demonstrating before the much-ballyhooed Annapolis Conference: violation of the Geneva conventions and collective punishment of the whole population of Gaza.

In this context, i should mention that the US Campaign to end the Israeli Occupation is raising funds for Palestinian farmers by making available Fair Trade Olive Oil grown and processed in Palestine. Purchasing the olive oil is one way to support the Palestinian struggle for independence and self-determination.

I like David Horsey. He is the editorial cartoonist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (formerly for the University of Washington Daily).

But he has a cartoon in today's paper which appalls me. He s trying to mock the Seattle Public Schools for their 'politically correct' (does that mean historically accurate?) portrayal of the real meaning of the day in which white americe celebrates the spoils of genocide.

I mean, don't get me wrong: people get together and spend time with their families - which is wonderful. But the historical reality that prompts the celebration is less warm and fuzzy.

So i wrote a letter to the PI's editor.

I fail to understand the humor behind David Horsey's caricature of the Seattle Public Schools' play about 'Thanksgiving'.

It can't be that the 'politically correct' script is false. The racism of early colonists was enshrined in the declaration of independence: one of the grievances against the British has to do with 'merciless indian savages'. That the colonists were European conquerors cannot be argued with, given the history of expansionist wars they launched against the Natives (and Mexico). Finally, it is beyond doubt that the colonists and our own government committed systematic
acts of violence 'with intent to destroy [the Natives], in whole or in part,' - the definition of Genocide.

Also unfunny is the fact that only two months ago our government was one of four which voted against the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, seeking to perpetuate a long legacy of oppression.

If Seattle's schoolchildren learn about the violence against the Natives for which we bear collective responsibility, perhaps that legacy can be broken.

What's so funny about that?

I taught at West Side High School. This is a story about their football team.

The trip takes just 378 steps. That is the distance between the Newark high school they turned into a football power and the ever-present reminder of how quickly it can disappear.

The players, wearing their green and white West Side High uniforms, form two lines near the school. They walk along South Orange Avenue, turning right under the brownstone archway for Fairmont Cemetery.

They continue up a leaf-covered slope until they arrive at a gravesite marked with five green flags and a pot of flowers. Brian Logan covers the cold ground with two No. 20 jerseys. His players circle around him. ''Everybody here knows what this means,'' the head coach tells the group. ''Everybody here knows how important this is to us. Everybody knows how important he was to us. ''We know the mission. We know he wanted to get a ring. Now, it's up to us to get it.''

Yusef Johnson, a linebacker and running back, was shot todeath on Aug. 10, 2005, just two blocks from his house. He was 15. The West Side players have come to his gravesite before several games since his death, and at the request of quarterback Anthony Baskerville, made the trip again yesterday.

West Side will play its biggest game in school history today, traveling to Morristown for the semifinals of the state playoffs. The team is 8-2 this season, the latest success story for a city that had not crowned a champion in 31 years until Weequahic High won last fall.

Dozens of high school teams will take the field in postseason games today, but none followed as difficult a journey to get there. It took a group from the community, led by a Newark cop with a knack for bringing people together, to carry them through a 70-game winless streak and the violence all around them.

''I get summoned to the funeral home quite a bit,'' said the Rev. Elijah Williams Jr., the pastor at the Welcome Baptist Church on 12 th Avenue. He leads a short prayer at the gravesite, asking everyone to join hands. ''For our community, this season is the zenith.''

RALLYING TO THE TEAM

Before the football team could become the pride of the community, the community had to rally around the team.

West Side had not won a game in more than eight seasons. Logan thought he could turn that around, but went 0-9 in his first season in 1998.

''I wondered, 'Should I go back to Pop Warner?' '' he said.

Logan works as a Newark police detective during the day, and maybe it was this background in a uniform that helped him understand he couldn't do this alone. When he got the job, a call came from Tony Woods, a Newark native who played 10 years in the NFL. ''If there's anything I can do to help,'' Woods said, ''you just let me know.''

“Don't you hang up that phone,'' Logan replied, and soon, Woods was writing an $8,000 check for weight-lifting equipment. Soon, Logan talked the former pro into becoming his defensive coordinator.

He kept looking. Logan found coaches on the police force -- five of them, in fact, ensuring that everywhere his players looked, they saw a role model. He asked legendary Barringer coach Frank Verducci, who had retired decades ago, to become a consultant.

Verducci tipped Logan off on where to find an offensive coordinator. There was just one obstacle: Frank Rossi was in Afghanistan, working as a staff sergeant in the Green Berets. Their first conversation about the option offense took place this summer over a crackling satellite phone connection.

''What was that?'' Logan asked.

''Mortar fire,'' Rossi replied.

He arrived on the practice field in August and might return to the Middle East before next season. Logan has a staff of 15 coaches. Seven of them are paid, and most end up spending that money on clothes and food for the players.

''This,'' Logan said, ''is the only family some of these kids have.''

But success always seemed to come with a setback. West Side finally broke through in

2000 with five wins, but an administrative error allowed an ineligible player on the field.

The Roughriders had to forfeit them all.

They went 8-2 the next season, but the team did not have enough power points to qualify for the state playoffs. City officials threatened lawsuits and demanded answers about the formula used to determine who makes the postseason, but nothing changed.

The team slipped back to mediocrity, then started to improve heading into the 2005 season. Then one day that August, Logan was driving home from a vacation in South Carolina when the call came.

Yusef Johnson was dead.

A SHOCKING CRISIS

Logan pulled off the interstate and checked into a hotel. His players were waiting for him to return home but he couldn't drive. He had dealt with problems before. But this?

Johnson, nicknamed “Taki,” was an energetic kid who Logan often took to a diner after practices to talk about life. He wanted to go to college, maybe become a cop like Logan. He was a honor student who was just returning from a friend's house, the victim of a random shooting that remains unsolved.

The coach handled the crisis the only way he knew how: Head on. They talked about the loss openly and made that walk to the gravesite. ''Everybody knows he will never be forgotten,'' Logan still tells his players, who carry Johnson's No. 20 jersey to every game.

''He's still with us,'' said Baskerville, the star quarterback. ''Every game. Every play. Every snap.''

Nearly two years to the day, another shooting shocked their school this summer -- the killings of three college students in a nearby playground -- and Logan had to pull his family close again.

He and the school principal, Otis Brown, took the team to the crime scene, where they

left flowers and said a prayer. Jamar Hightower, whose older sister was one of the victims, had played on the junior varsity the season before. Iofemi Hightower was the leader of the drum section in the marching band. Devastated by her loss, Jamar left the team and picked up her drumsticks.

''She talked about me and her going to the same college and playing in the same band, but she didn't get a chance,'' Jamar Hightower said. He was standing outside a classroom filled with the noise of young musicians tuning their instruments. ''I was going to do it for her.''

But now, the 17-year-old said he will rejoin the team next fall. Logan has been pushing him to come back, to rejoin the friends he calls ''my brothers.'' He figures his sister would

just want him to go to college, no matter how he got there.

Jamar Hightower will watch from the bleachers today in Morristown. So will several hundred people in this community who have rallied around the team. Logan, despite all the setbacks, allows himself to wonder: Is this the year everything finally comes together?

In that cemetery, with the high school just a couple football fields away, the players take black No. 20 patches and drop them onto the grave. They huddle around their makeshift memorial and raise their arms in the air.

''One-two-three... WIN!'' they yell, then,  “One-two-three... TAKI!''

They put their helmets back on and walk down the cemetery slope, backtracking the 378 steps to the school, where a bus waits to take them to one final practice. Logan watches them walk away.

''If that doesn't get you focused right now, fellas . . . '' he says, never finishing his thought. West Side has the biggest game in school history today. But the true victory was getting here.

By Howard Zinn (originally published on November 13th, 2002):

Veterans Day used to be called Armistice Day, because it was November 11, 1918, at 11 AM - the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, that the first World War came to an end.

It would be good to remember a few things about that war as this country is about to embark on still another war. First, that you don’t "win" wars. We "won" World War I, but sowed the seeds of another world war. War is a quick fix, like crack. An exultant high - we won! - and soon you’re down again, and you need another fix, another war.

In World War I. the German Kaiser was presented as the epitome of evil - a threat to the world,, who must be eliminated for our safety. In truth, he was bad, but his danger to us was enormously exaggerated, as with Saddam Hussein. So the Allies defeated Germany, got rid of the Kaiser, and ten million men died on the battlefields.

We can get rid of Saddam Hussein. Iraq is a fifth-rate military power, with no Air Force to speak of, its army a remnant of what it was ten years ago, the country still in ruins, its infrastructure devastated by two wars, its people weakened by ten years of sanctions depriving people of food and hospitals of medicine, and causing hundreds of thousands of deaths. And the U.S. with its invincible Air Force, will win.

In the course of that, tens of thousands of Iraqis will die, many of them innocent civilians, others poor, miserable conscripts in the Iraqi army. We will be killing the victims of Saddam Hussein. . Because of its high tech weaponry and overwhelming military superiority, America will lose few soldiers. But it will lose its soul.

World War I, presented to the public as a war for democracy, for freedom, was in fact a war fought by imperial powers (France, England, Russia) against an imperial rival, Germany. It led, not to the freedom of colonial peoples, but to a change in who dominated the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe.

Now, the war in Iraq is presented as a moral crusade to end the menace of "weapons of mass destruction", the evidence for which is far from clear. The assumption that Saddam would use them and invite annihilation (since most weapons of mass destruction in the world are held by the United States) makes no sense.

As in the first World War, there are imperial motives at work, and the defeat of Saddam will lead to a change in who controls the precious oil reserves of Iraq. Deals will be cut with Russia, France and England to divide the booty. The talks are going on right now.

The first World war was sold to the American public as "the war to end ll wars". But twenty-one years later came World War II, in which fifty million people were killed. The United Nations was formed, as its Charter says, "to end the scourge of war which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind".

But no, it’s been war after war for the United States: Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Yugoslavia. All accompanied by claims that we were at war for some good cause, all resulting in the loss of human life, all demanding acceptance of the government’s reasons for war, most of which turned out to be lies. We should have learned from Vietnam that true patriotism does not mean marching off to war just because the government tells you to. Those 58,000 names on the Washington memorial should make that clear.

As a veteran of World War II, as a student of the history of our wars, and contemplating still another war, I suggest we keep certain things in mind. First, that we must be extremely skeptical of whatever government officials tell us about the reasons for going to war. Second, that what is certain about war is that large numbers of innocent people will die, including many children, and what is uncertain about war is that any good will come of it.

Finally, that when you go to war, you assume that the lives of people in another country are not as valuable as the lives of your own countrymen. If we really believe, as our most fundamental moral principles demand we believe, that the children in other countries have as much right to live as our children, then we must refuse the call to war. It is time, by public demand, by general outcry, to end "the scourge of war" .

The best thing we can do for Veterans Day is to pledge: "No more war veterans".

My comment was posted on the NYTimes website (it's #64) - along with a slew of racist posts which seek to reinforce prejudice and in some cases outright bigotry. The fact that the article produced such responses reinforces my doubts about the effect that any such account will produce.

I didn't comment on the problems with the article that i mentioned in my previous post - but with the overall sense of impotence that the author was transmitting.

It’s true that AS TEACHERS the impact that we can have on the lives of the children in our care is limited.
But we are also CITIZENS of this country, and we have a role to play in CHANGING THE POLICIES that create daily tragedies that young people face.

It is not a law of nature that capital/industry is allowed to be free, and thus forces communities to compete against each other to see who can work for less, with fewer guarantees. Our great cities once were centers of industry, and thanks to the many who struggled in the labor movement those jobs could allow a family to survive.

It is not a law of nature that essentially the only form of ‘assistance’ that the federal government is willing to provide to our youth is to enroll them in the armed forces, so that they can be sent to kill other black and brown children in other countries, for the benefit of corporate pirates and the imperial designs of the white house.

It is not a law of nature that schools and teachers lack the training, suppliues, and support they need to implement quality extended-day programsto reach all children, while tens of billions are spent on corporate welfare disguised as ‘defense contracts.’

As citizens, we have a role to play in changing these things - and the need to change them is urgent. There are lives in the balance.

it's not clear to me whether this piece appeared in print in the NYTimes or only on their website.

This is a part of the author's bio: [he] has taught English and photography for eight years at Westside Alternative High School in the Austin community of Chicago. He appears to be a european-american.

His article rotates around the well-written account of a young man with lots of promise who succumbs to the streets of Chicago. The story sounds tragically familiar - but i wonder: is it necessary to feed the fetishizing fantasies of the mostly white upper-middle class readership of the Times? To the extent that 'we' whites spend time thinking about people of color at all, too much of it rotates around "their" problems, "their" disfunction. Our time would be better spent reflecting on the role that we collectively play in creating and supporting the conditions in which the mean streets of Chicago can continue to be killing fields.

But some of the points that are made are good - two in particular, among the proposed solutions:

2. More structured after-school and weekend activities in the community. The students believe that children who are involved in organized activities are much less likely to be targeted for gang membership than young kids who are constantly running the streets.

3. Higher paying jobs for parents. If parents can provide the basic needs as well as the material desires of their children, these youths will be less likely to seek the financial opportunities offered by the gangs

.And i like the closing comment: Are these kids not our own? indeed it's true that one reason why we don't place our national priorities on ensuring that everyone has access to a decent education and well-paying jobs has to do with racism and classism.

Some of the other elements of the story however seem to be placed simply to reinforce the dominant narrative about "urban youth" - and quite frankly think that they ought to have been left out.

The main problem i have with it however comes at the end:

Most everyone already knows what can and should be done to improve the lives and futures of our youth in America’s cities. And yet the government, the corporations, the schools, the communities, the families and the youths themselves make no real changes.

 First off, i disagree that "most everyone" knows what we should do to eliminate the conditions of poverty and desperation that exist in our cities. But to mention in the same sentence government, the corporations, the schools, the communities, the families and the youths themselves, implies that they share the same burden of responsibility for fixing the problem.

Corporations in particular are a large part of why the problem exist:: they fight to gut any efforts to provide increased services to the poor, and they force communities to compete against each other to see who can work for less and sacrifice the most to get the few scraps that the corporate pirates are willing to shake off their table. And they destroyed the cities by relocating their manufacturing abroad. They have no incentive to help fix the problem they are responsible for - only to make it worse.

Furthermore, the youth, their families, and their community are the VICTIMS of capitalism and racism - how seriously can i take someone who expects the victimized youth of Newark or Chicago to mend what is being destroyed by the most powerful forces in our society? And the article does a further disservice to communities of color by totally ignoring the daily struggle for existence, education, dignity and self-determination that DOES go on in communities of color and poor white communities all over the world, including in our own cities.

I tried to post a comment, but apparently the NYTimes has to approve them - which did not prevent the posting of a comment by someone who seeks to place the entirety of the blame for street violence on 'black adults'. We'll see if they publish me.

This was an editorial in the NYTimes today - and it's good news! not just that this bill to fund Amtrak passed, but also that the Times is supporting it - even though they have to do it in their classist "we've been to Europe" way.

Anyone who has ridden Amtrak lately, especially anyone familiar with rail travel in Europe or Japan, should be able to see that it needs help. Congress is considering a bill to significantly increase funding for the nation’s only passenger railroad. The bill would be a welcome step, but even if it passes, Amtrak — badly underfunded compared with air and auto travel — could use a lot more support.

The Passenger Rail Improvement and Investment Act, which passed the Senate Tuesday, would direct a little more than $3 billion a year to Amtrak for each of the next six years. The bill comes courtesy of one of Washington’s more unlikely duos, Senator Frank Lautenberg, a Democrat from New Jersey, and Senator Trent Lott, a Republican from Mississippi. Rail travel is important not only to their states but to the whole country.

Railroads are a relief valve for America’s clogged skies and overloaded highways. They also make environmental sense. According to the National Association of Railroad Passengers, airplanes use energy at a rate of 20 percent more per passenger mile than Amtrak. Cars are even worse, at 27 percent more per passenger mile.

Rail offers other advantages. Surveys show that people who suffer road rage and airplane anxiety yearn for more civilized ways to travel. Amtrak will never be the Orient Express. But as regulars can attest, a trip across the Rockies or up the Hudson River from New York City can be an extraordinarily pleasant way to get around. It would be even more pleasant if Amtrak were on time. This bill would try to help with that by fining freight rail companies that cause many of the delays.

The goal of the Senate bill is to make Amtrak more efficient, not to turn it into a profitable enterprise as the Bush administration has attempted in the past. The House now needs to act. If the bill becomes law, it would give Amtrak steady enough financial support that its managers could start to plan a few years at a time — and spare them their yearly trek to Capitol Hill. In the costly world of mass transportation, adequately funding Amtrak is an easy bargain.

In the NYTimes:

When 17,000 people pour into the heart of New Jersey’s largest city on Thursday night to hear Bon Jovi perform the first of 10 shows, they will undoubtedly be impressed by the glimmering Prudential Center, the first new sports arena in the metropolitan region in 25 years.

The question that many people here are asking is whether the millions of visitors expected to traipse through Newark on their way to and from the $375 million arena in the coming years will be equally entranced by a city that might be charitably described as a work in progress.

For now, when they look out through the arena’s soaring glass facade or make the two-block hike from Pennsylvania Station, they will see a landscape of parking lots and ramshackle buildings. Their dining choices on Broad Street near Market Street, the city’s storied but tattered main intersection, will be limited to a Burger King, a Popeyes and a Bojangles’. If they want to grab a beer or a wine spritzer after the show, they will have to satisfy their thirst at Arena Bar or Scully’s Publick House, the only new drinking establishments within four blocks.

City officials and arena executives take pains to point out that downtown Newark is a flower about to bloom. A hotel is planned for a parcel just across from the arena’s front door, and next spring, an adjacent parking lot will be transformed into the $19 million Triangle Park.

As officials tell it, there is a hungry band of real estate developers jockeying to construct new residential buildings in the forlorn blocks that surround the red and gray brick-faced arena, which is nicknamed “the Rock” and will be home to Seton Hall’s men’s basketball team in addition to the Devils.

“Things are really shaking. There’s a lot of energy coming in,” said Mayor Cory A. Booker, who opposed the arena’s construction before he was elected but who was reborn as a booster after he realized he could not reverse the previous administration’s decision to contribute $210 million in public money toward construction.

There has already been some gain for Newark residents. More than half the arena’s 1,200 ushers, custodians and concessionaires have local ZIP codes, and eight of the outlets in the Taste of Newark food court will bear the names of popular local establishments.

Of course, not everyone expects such change to be beneficial. Many owners of jewelry and clothing stores on Broad Street who cater to African-Americans are skeptical. They say hockey fans, an overwhelmingly white demographic, have little need for the hip-hop clothing shops and hair weaving services that dominate the Broad Street strip. There is also widespread concern that the arena’s success will lead to soaring rents and the demise of many longtime businesses.

Sabina Smith, who owns the Calabash African Food Market in the shadow of the arena’s facade on Edison Place, said she was pleased that a year of disruptive construction was finally ending but also fearful of what the future will hold. Since opening in 1995, Calabash has been the only business on a very forbidding block, although her rent, an affordable $1,300 a month, has made it easier to stay afloat.

Standing in her shop, the air heavy with the aroma of smoked mackerel, the shelves heaving with giant yams and sacks of potato starch, she said she would try to appeal to concertgoers and sports fans with Doritos and bottles of cold Sprite. But she admitted that it might all be for naught. “This project is just too big for a little African shop like me,” she said, growing tearful. “I can see the landlord wanting me out of this place.”

City officials acknowledge that some displacement is inevitable, but they say the new apartments and stores they hope will revive Newark’s largely desolate downtown in the coming decade will create hundreds of new jobs and churn out desperately needed tax revenue.

The Police Department has been figuring out deployments for the 80 extra officers who will walk the street when the arena is open.

“My biggest battle right now is dealing with the perception of crime,” said Deputy Chief Daniel Zieser, who is in charge of operations within a quarter-mile radius of the arena.

Among hockey fans, who will be arriving on Saturday for the New Jersey Devils’ home opener against the Ottawa Senators, the biggest concern right now is parking and traffic. Sam Schwartz, a transportation consultant hired by the city and the arena’s owners to plan for the expected onslaught of cars and pedestrians, said there would be 10,000 spaces within a half-mile of the arena.

During a news conference last week, Mr. Schwartz urged people to take a train or bus to the city, although he predicted that fewer than a quarter of those coming to the arena would do so, at least in the beginning. He said the police would operate traffic signals by remote control and would favor foot traffic over cars.

From Reuters:

Ecuador's leftist President Rafael Correa said Washington must let him open a military base in Miami if the United States wants to keep using an air base on Ecuador's Pacific coast.

Correa has refused to renew Washington's lease on the Manta air base, set to expire in 2009. U.S. officials say it is vital for counter-narcotics surveillance operations on Pacific drug-running routes.

"We'll renew the base on one condition: that they let us put a base in Miami -- an Ecuadorean base," Correa said in an interview during a trip to Italy.

"If there's no problem having foreign soldiers on a country's soil, surely they'll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States."

Well Said!!!

The U.S. embassy to Ecuador offers a fact-sheet on the base here.

You can get more information about the empire of US military bases at the National Priorities Project

The information below comed from Education Week:

Teachers in the United States spend more hours at work than their counterparts in 29 other countries, but are among the lowest paid, according to an annual survey comparing the education systems in some of the world’s leading economies.

The report, released Sept. 18 by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, says that primary-level teachers teach an average of 1,080 hours each year in the United States—well above the average of 803 hours for all countries surveyed.

The average salary of just over $40,000 for a U.S. primary teacher with 15 years of experience ranked the United States 12th among the countries surveyed. In Luxembourg, the average salary for a teacher with similar experience was $88,000 in U.S. dollars. In Hungary, it was $16,000.

Although the average U.S. teacher salary is above the OECD average of $37,603, the report points out that relative to the gross domestic product, “per capita teachers’ pay in the United States is among the lowest in OECD countries.”

The report ranked the United States 10th for its efforts to control class sizes, with 23.1 students per classroom at the primary level, higher than the OECD average of 21.5.

Of course, these are AVERAGES, which say a lot by saying little about the internal differences between schools in the 'burbs and schools in the cities, for example. But still worth noting. Oh, before I forget:

I sent in a form and donation to become a member of both the washington state and national Green Party - because i believe in supporting institutions that challenge power and authority.

And I was glad to have done so when I read the following snippet from the great NYTimes columnist Paul Krugman:

the [Hillary] Clinton campaign is holding a “Rural Americans for Hillary” lunch and campaign briefing — at the offices of the Troutman Sanders Public Affairs Group, which lobbies for the agribusiness and biotech giant Monsanto. You don’t have to be a Naderite to feel uncomfortable about the implied closeness.

Monsanto is one of the worst corporate criminals in history (and that's saying something, given the competition for that title): they produce Agent Orange, which was used in Vietnam to destroy the forests and has caused untold suffering to civilians (and US vets). They push Genetically Modified crops on US consumers and on other countries (Brazil, Argentina, and India to name a few). They produce and mass-market the recombinant bovine growth hormone which induces untold damage to cows and human consumers. There are better candidates for the corporate death penalty, but not many.

Thanks for the head's up, Paul. And screw you, Hillary.