Author: jameswagner

the end of the world, or just hives?

We’re scared out of our wits, and the Bushies’ continual and manipulative alarms are doing everything they can to keep the heebie jeebies going.

Nine months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States finds itself in a jittery mood, as scandal and doubts envelop a growing number of major institutions.

But there is also sheer fear, and it won’t go away.

During the maximum jitters of the Cuban missile crisis, the high school where I was an impressionable freshman happened to be holding an assembly. The star speaker was a priest from San Francisco, who arranged to have his remarks interrupted by a student delivering a note. The priest studied the note, then looked up with a somber face and announced that the Soviet Union and the United States had just launched nuclear missiles at each other.
Forty years later, I can still hear the terrified whimper in that auditorium as we all considered our imminent doom. But I can’t remember a word of what the speaker said afterward. That’s the thing about fear: It gets your attention and then refuses to give it back.

ACTing Up in Palestine

It took some time before the Gay City News interview with Steve Quester, who joined the International Solidarity Movement in Palestine this past April, was put on line, so I have been unable to send this until now.

While the internationals are pledged to take only non-violent actions they do support the right of the Palestinians to use force.
“If somebody invades your town you have the right to shoot at them,” Quester said. “No one element alone –– armed struggle, diplomacy, non-violent resistance –– is going to free the Palestinian people.”

Steve, who is a dear friend, had written the following note at the time the article first appeared, about a week ago, and it should be included here, together with the Frederick Douglas quote he appended:

The issue of Gay City News that came out today
includes a profile of me on the front page. It’s long
on me and short on Palestinians, despite my best
efforts. It also completely ignores the role of women
activists–see my response, below.
–Steve

To the editors:
I was glad to have an opportunity to speak with Duncan
Osborne about the dire situation faced by Palestinians
today, and their heroic resistance to oppression
(“Zionism to Palestine, via ACT UP”, Gay City News,
June 7-20, 2002). I was disappointed, though, that
the (mostly male) editors of Gay City News chose not
to include information from Mr. Osborne’s interview
with a lesbian who was in Palestine with me. As I
noted in my correspondence with Mr. Osborne, the
movement for freedom and justice for Palestinians is
led by women, many of them lesbians, in Palestine,
Israel, and the U.S. Men in the movement, like
myself, are too often forefronted to the exclusion of
the women doing the work.
I hope Gay City News will do features in the future on
queer women and the struggle for Palestine.
Steve Quester
Jews Against the Occupation (JATO),
Palestine Activist Forum of New York (PAFNY),
International Solidarity Movement (ISM)

=====
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
Frederick Douglass

Israel a surrogate religion?

Henry Siegman has credentials. He should be able to participate in the argument, but he has been more than marginalized by those who dominate the discussion in the U.S. of the fate of Palestinians and Israelis. Henry Siegman is a pariah.

The Korean War [where he served with combat troops as a chaplain], coupled with his own childhood experiences in Europe, inclined him to those in Jewish life who saw social justice as central to faith. He went on to become the head of the American Jewish Congress for 16 years, before joining the council [the Council on Foreign Relations].
But for many Jews, he says, there came to be new definitions of faith, ones that he says turned the ideology of the Jewish state into “a surrogate religion.”
“The support for Israel fills a spiritual vacuum,” he said in his corner office on Park Avenue. “If you do not support the government of Israel then your Jewishness, not your political judgment, is in question.”

NOT IN OUR NAME statement

We need not stand alone. We are not alone. Where can we sign up?
I’m not a celebrity and I’m not an academic, but I have asked to be a part of this very reasonable statement. But I’m already a part of it! I feel like I have been a voice crying in the wilderness since September 11, and this from a born again atheist. I’ll keep you posted about the organizers’ response and the details of the procedure.
Ok, just more words, but words which will mean that we and the entire world will know that the our rampaging government cannot shut us up or out.

Jeremy Pikser, one of the organizers of the statement, said yesterday that he had been concerned that the rest of the world was under the impression that there was no dissent in the US to the bombing of Afghanistan and the plans for a war against Iraq.
Pikser, a screenwriter who wrote Bulworth, a satire on American politics in which Warren Beatty played a politician who finally decided to speak his mind, said some people had been reluctant to add their names. “A lot of people haven’t signed it, although they agree with it, because they think it might jeopardize other things they’re involved in.”

the current state of Shrub science

Fortunately, it only takes a few good words to totally destroy any “rationale” offered by the current intellectually-challenged Administration for its insufferable deeds, attacks on the environment no less than any other crimes.

Our understanding of what affects global warming far exceeds our knowledge about the consequence of the president’s so-called war on terrorism, his trillion-dollar tax gift to the wealthy or his “Star Wars” defense system. Ideology rather than knowledge or science is what drives the policies of this administration.

Unfortunately, intelligent words don’t stop thugs.

Bushies say we’ve lost the “war”

So, if everything the Administration is doing is not going to protect us from terrorists, why do we accept what the Administration is doing to protect us from terrorists?

Three weeks have passed since government officials unleashed dire warnings that the United States is destined to suffer future terrorist attacks and, incredibly, there has been little public outcry.
Perhaps the full meaning of the doomsday rhetoric emanating from Washington is not clear: our national leaders have said we are bound to lose the struggle against terrorism. Imagine Franklin Roosevelt saying that there was no way of turning back the Japanese navy, or Winston Churchill proclaiming that the British would not be able to stop the Nazi onslaught.