Sheldon Motley's Blog

Nuclear Power leads to Nuclear weapons

Sheldon from Doylestown — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:59:40 EDT

The weapon design and arms control communities agree that it is not the capability to design a nuclear device that determines the pace of a country’s acquisition of a first weapon, but, rather, the availability of nuclear weapons materials that can be turned to weapons purposes. For a nation-state, the material for weapons can come from uranium enrichment plants (highly enriched uranium), or reactors and nuclear fuel reprocessing plants (plutonium), or both.

Regardless of its isotopic composition, the minimum amount of plutonium required to make a pure fission nuclear explosive, with a yield equivalent to one to 25 kilotons of chemical high explosives, is quite small, on the order of 1 to 3 kilograms (kg), with the exact amount depending on the level of design expertise and the desired nuclear explosive yield. The minimum amount of highly enriched uranium required is a few times larger—5 to 10kg.

While far from ideal for military applications, the isotopic composition of the plutonium typically produced in civil power reactors does not pose a serious obstacle to fabricating efficient and powerful weapons, as well as crude terrorist devices.

http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/power/power.pdf

The proliferation of nuclear weapons is inextricably linked to nuclear power by a shared need for enriched uranium, and through the generation of plutonium as a by-product of spent nuclear fuel. The two industries have been linked since the very beginning and a nuclear weapons free world requires a non-nuclear energy policy. http://www.cnduk.org/index.php/information/info-sheets/briefings.html#nuclearpower

The Economics of Nuclear Reactors

Sheldon from Doylestown — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:42:34 EDT

HOPE AND HYPE VS. REALITY IN NUCLEAR REACTOR COST

THE ECONOMICS OF NUCLEAR REACTORS:
http://www.vermontlaw.edu/Documents/Cooper%20Report%20on%20Nuclear%20Economics%20FINAL%5B1%5D.pdf

Tracking Legislation. Effecting Change.

Sheldon from Doylestown — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:02:28 EST

Commit yourself to identifying and tracking legislation, practices, and policies that are helping to end the war in Iraq or are furthering it, and commit yourself to writing letters to the editor and to your lawmakers that carefully and tactfully detail why this war must end.

Olmert: Israel must return to 1967 borders

Sheldon from Doylestown — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:20:26 EST

Olmert: Israel must return to 1967 borders

(Haaretz)

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1036118.html

By Shahar Ilan and Nadav Shragai

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert took advantage of yesterday's special Knesset marking the 13th anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin to call for territorial withdrawals in all disputed areas and to denounce violence on the part of Jewish settlers.

"We must give up Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem and return to the core of the territory that is the State of Israel prior to 1967, with minor corrections dictated by the reality created since then," he said.

"Many Israelis viciously beat up Palestinians seeking to harvest olives as they have for centuries, and there is no end [to it]. Young Israelis, smitten by messianic dreams, hit our soldiers, breaking their bones and threatening their lives, and no one stops them," Olmert said. "I will not permit this to continue," he promised.

Olmert also said that, "Every government will need to tell the truth, which unfortunately will require us to tear out many parts of the homeland in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights." Addressing the settlers, he said: "You, too, will have do carry out a moral reckoning and reach a decision."

The National Union-National Religious Party Knesset whip Uri Ariel and fellow party MK Aryeh Eldad left the plenum in protest. "We cannot tolerate the fact that a failed prime minister, who is accused of corruption, uses the little free time he has left between police interviews to call for the destruction of the Jewish settlement enterprise in Israel," Eldad said.

Likud whip Gideon Sa'ar accused Olmert of "cynically exploiting a state ceremony for a political speech in the spirit of the extreme left."

Three hours earlier, Foreign Minister and Kadima Chairwoman Tzipi Livni told a meeting of party MKs that "the murder of a prime minister in Israel must not be a subject of political disputes. [Rabin] was the prime minister of us all."

Yesterday was the last day of deliberations in the Knesset plenum before the election hiatus. Party whips postponed the dissolution of the Knesset session by a few days in order to hold the Rabin memorial.

The denunciation of attacks by Jewish settlers on Israel Defense Forces soldiers and pointed criticism of the media for conducting interviews with Rabin's killer, Yigal Amir, dominated yesterday's Knesset deliberations.

"We cannot tolerate the calls being heard today to hurt the prime minister or IDF soldiers. We will take immediate action against lawbreakers and inciters," opposition leader and Likud Chairman MK Benjamin Netanyahu told the Knesset.

Knesset Speaker MK Dalia Itzik (Labor) said she was astonished by the competition between the television networks over broadcasting the interview with Amir. "The name of the despicable murderer must not be mentioned among us," Itzik said. "This is not an issue of freedom of expression, rather it's an attempt by the murderer to win legitimacy. Let him rot in prison, don't give him a stage, throw him into the garbage pail of history."

In large measure Olmert's Knesset speech yesterday echoed his remarks at the state memorial for Rabin earlier in the day at Jerusalem's Mt. Herzl, where Rabin is buried. He called for giving up Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and returning to the 1967 borders, with slight amendments.

"We have no choice but to give up, with great torment, parts of our homeland of which we dreamed for generations of yearning and prayers," Olmert said. "For a generation an increasingly sharp disagreement has been raging in Israel over what should be here. Since the murder the dispute has only become fiercer.

"Rabin was not thrilled about the decision, he was tormented before Oslo, he hesitated about the agreement and was filled with doubt even after making a decision - not out of illusions or false hopes - but rather he decided to go in a direction that more and more people today are willing to accept," Olmert said.

President Shimon Peres addressed recent settler violence in his remarks at Mt. Herzl. "There is a small minority of reckless, unrestrained people who boldly defy the state's authority, attack Palestinians just for being Palestinian and challenge the law-enforcement mechanisms that, among others, protect them, too.

"We must isolate and expel this violent and dangerous minority," Peres added, "and we mustn't be silent in the face of their incitement. We cannot tolerate the acts of vandalism and violence. It is as though they are a state within a state. It is the responsibility of the state to carry out justice without fear - the honor of Israel and the strength of its democracy and lawfulness depends on it."

Lieberman Tacitly Agrees: McCain Exhibited His Bad Judgment With VP Pick

Sheldon from Doylestown — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 10:08:17 EDT

Senator Lieberman, Former Democratic VP Candidate now McCain pusher talking about Sarah Palin yesterday:"Thank God, she's not gonna have to be president from day one, because McCain's going to be alive and well," Lieberman said in a conference call with reporters.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/25/lieberman-on-palin-thank_n_137769.html

Absentee Ballot Information for Philadelphia

Sheldon from Doylestown — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 09:53:02 EDT

For Pennsylvania And Particularly Philadelphia:

I received an email saying that some people have not received their Absentee Ballots in the mail.

Anyone who is going to be out of town on Election Day can go to Room 142 in City Hall and submit his/her absentee ballot on the spot. They don't have to go through the process of waiting for the ballot to come back in the mail. (County Board of Elections: 215-686-3469 or 215-686-3943) Bring acceptable I.D.
Acceptable I.D. from http://votespa.com/HowtoVote/GuideforFirstTimeVoters/tabid/77/language/en-US/Default.aspx:

Pennsylvania driver's license or PennDOT ID card
ID issued by any Commonwealth agency
ID issued by the U.S. Government
U.S. passport
U.S. Armed Forces ID
Student ID
Employee ID

If you do not have a photo ID, you can use a non-photo identification that includes your name and address. Approved forms of non-photo identification include:
Confirmation issued by the County Voter Registration Office
Non-photo ID issued by the Commonwealth
Non-photo ID issued by the U.S. Government
Firearm permit
Current utility bill
Current bank statement
Current paycheck
Government check

There are special provisions for people who miss the deadlines as well as military personnel.

(Reference: http://votespa.com/HowtoVote/VotingbyAbsenteeBallot/tabid/78/language/en-US/Default.aspx)

Absentee Ballot Applications must be received by the Board of Elections by 5 p.m. on October 28th. Absentee Ballots must be received by the Board of Elections by 5:00 PM on October 31st. Postmarks are NOT honored; applications must be in the office before the deadline. (See: http://www.phillyelection.com/abeng.htm)

The mailing address for Philadelphia County on the state's two websites is incorrect. The correct address, which is printed on the Absentee Ballot forms from the Philadelphia Board of Elections is:

Philadelphia County Board of Elections
Room 142 City Hall
Philadelphia, PA 19107-3211

For additional help, please see this website: https://www.myfamilyvotes.com/Absentee_Ballot.html. Further instructions at https://www.myfamilyvotes.com/Ab.html. (Thank you, Emma Tramble.)

First-time voters and those who have moved should confirm that they are registered to vote by searching Pennsylvania's voter registration database. You also can confirm your registration by contacting your County Board of Elections (County Board of Elections: 215-686-3469 or 215-686-3943) or by calling 1-877-VOTESPA.

Print out an Absentee Ballot Application here:

https://www.myfamilyvotes.com/uploads/absentee_ballot_application_for_PA.pdf

(Reference: http://votespa.com/HowtoVote/VotingbyAbsenteeBallot/tabid/78/language/en-US/Default.aspx)

New York Times' Endorsement of Barack Obama

Sheldon from Doylestown — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 09:47:41 EDT

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/opinion/24fri1.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all

Editorial

Barack Obama for President

Published: October 23, 2008

Hyperbole is the currency of presidential campaigns, but this year the nation's future truly hangs in the balance.
The United States is battered and drifting after eight years of President Bush's failed leadership. He is saddling his successor with two wars, a scarred global image and a government systematically stripped of its ability to protect and help its citizens — whether they are fleeing a hurricane's floodwaters, searching for affordable health care or struggling to hold on to their homes, jobs, savings and pensions in the midst of a financial crisis that was foretold and preventable.
As tough as the times are, the selection of a new president is easy. After nearly two years of a grueling and ugly campaign, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has proved that he is the right choice to be the 44th president of the United States.
•
Mr. Obama has met challenge after challenge, growing as a leader and putting real flesh on his early promises of hope and change. He has shown a cool head and sound judgment. We believe he has the will and the ability to forge the broad political consensus that is essential to finding solutions to this nation's problems.
In the same time, Senator John McCain of Arizona has retreated farther and farther to the fringe of American politics, running a campaign on partisan division, class warfare and even hints of racism. His policies and worldview are mired in the past. His choice of a running mate so evidently unfit for the office was a final act of opportunism and bad judgment that eclipsed the accomplishments of 26 years in Congress.
Given the particularly ugly nature of Mr. McCain's campaign, the urge to choose on the basis of raw emotion is strong. But there is a greater value in looking closely at the facts of life in America today and at the prescriptions the candidates offer. The differences are profound.
Mr. McCain offers more of the Republican every-man-for-himself ideology, now lying in shards on Wall Street and in Americans' bank accounts. Mr. Obama has another vision of government's role and responsibilities.
In his convention speech in Denver, Mr. Obama said, "Government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves: protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools and new roads and new science and technology."
Since the financial crisis, he has correctly identified the abject failure of government regulation that has brought the markets to the brink of collapse.
The Economy
The American financial system is the victim of decades of Republican deregulatory and anti-tax policies. Those ideas have been proved wrong at an unfathomable price, but Mr. McCain — a self-proclaimed "foot soldier in the Reagan revolution" — is still a believer.
Mr. Obama sees that far-reaching reforms will be needed to protect Americans and American business.
Mr. McCain talks about reform a lot, but his vision is pinched. His answer to any economic question is to eliminate pork-barrel spending — about $18 billion in a $3 trillion budget — cut taxes and wait for unfettered markets to solve the problem.
Mr. Obama is clear that the nation's tax structure must be changed to make it fairer. That means the well-off Americans who have benefited disproportionately from Mr. Bush's tax cuts will have to pay some more. Working Americans, who have seen their standard of living fall and their children's options narrow, will benefit. Mr. Obama wants to raise the minimum wage and tie it to inflation, restore a climate in which workers are able to organize unions if they wish and expand educational opportunities.
Mr. McCain, who once opposed President Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy as fiscally irresponsible, now wants to make them permanent. And while he talks about keeping taxes low for everyone, his proposed cuts would overwhelmingly benefit the top 1 percent of Americans while digging the country into a deeper fiscal hole.
National Security
The American military — its people and equipment — is dangerously overstretched. Mr. Bush has neglected the necessary war in Afghanistan, which now threatens to spiral into defeat. The unnecessary and staggeringly costly war in Iraq must be ended as quickly and responsibly as possible.
While Iraq's leaders insist on a swift drawdown of American troops and a deadline for the end of the occupation, Mr. McCain is still taking about some ill-defined "victory." As a result, he has offered no real plan for extracting American troops and limiting any further damage to Iraq and its neighbors.
Mr. Obama was an early and thoughtful opponent of the war in Iraq, and he has presented a military and diplomatic plan for withdrawing American forces. Mr. Obama also has correctly warned that until the Pentagon starts pulling troops out of Iraq, there will not be enough troops to defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Mr. McCain, like Mr. Bush, has only belatedly focused on Afghanistan's dangerous unraveling and the threat that neighboring Pakistan may quickly follow.
Mr. Obama would have a learning curve on foreign affairs, but he has already showed sounder judgment than his opponent on these critical issues. His choice of Senator Joseph Biden — who has deep foreign-policy expertise — as his running mate is another sign of that sound judgment. Mr. McCain's long interest in foreign policy and the many dangers this country now faces make his choice of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska more irresponsible.
Both presidential candidates talk about strengthening alliances in Europe and Asia, including NATO, and strongly support Israel. Both candidates talk about repairing America's image in the world. But it seems clear to us that Mr. Obama is far more likely to do that — and not just because the first black president would present a new American face to the world.
Mr. Obama wants to reform the United Nations, while Mr. McCain wants to create a new entity, the League of Democracies — a move that would incite even fiercer anti-American furies around the world.
Unfortunately, Mr. McCain, like Mr. Bush, sees the world as divided into friends (like Georgia) and adversaries (like Russia). He proposed kicking Russia out of the Group of 8 industrialized nations even before the invasion of Georgia. We have no sympathy for Moscow's bullying, but we also have no desire to replay the cold war. The United States must find a way to constrain the Russians' worst impulses, while preserving the ability to work with them on arms control and other vital initiatives.
Both candidates talk tough on terrorism, and neither has ruled out military action to end Iran's nuclear weapons program. But Mr. Obama has called for a serious effort to try to wean Tehran from its nuclear ambitions with more credible diplomatic overtures and tougher sanctions. Mr. McCain's willingness to joke about bombing Iran was frightening.
The Constitution and the Rule of Law
Under Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the justice system and the separation of powers have come under relentless attack. Mr. Bush chose to exploit the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, the moment in which he looked like the president of a unified nation, to try to place himself above the law.
Mr. Bush has arrogated the power to imprison men without charges and browbeat Congress into granting an unfettered authority to spy on Americans. He has created untold numbers of "black" programs, including secret prisons and outsourced torture. The president has issued hundreds, if not thousands, of secret orders. We fear it will take years of forensic research to discover how many basic rights have been violated.
Both candidates have renounced torture and are committed to closing the prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
But Mr. Obama has gone beyond that, promising to identify and correct Mr. Bush's attacks on the democratic system. Mr. McCain has been silent on the subject.
Mr. McCain improved protections for detainees. But then he helped the White House push through the appalling Military Commissions Act of 2006, which denied detainees the right to a hearing in a real court and put Washington in conflict with the Geneva Conventions, greatly increasing the risk to American troops.
The next president will have the chance to appoint one or more justices to a Supreme Court that is on the brink of being dominated by a radical right wing. Mr. Obama may appoint less liberal judges than some of his followers might like, but Mr. McCain is certain to pick rigid ideologues. He has said he would never appoint a judge who believes in women's reproductive rights.
The Candidates
It will be an enormous challenge just to get the nation back to where it was before Mr. Bush, to begin to mend its image in the world and to restore its self-confidence and its self-respect. Doing all of that, and leading America forward, will require strength of will, character and intellect, sober judgment and a cool, steady hand.
Mr. Obama has those qualities in abundance. Watching him being tested in the campaign has long since erased the reservations that led us to endorse Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primaries. He has drawn in legions of new voters with powerful messages of hope and possibility and calls for shared sacrifice and social responsibility.
Mr. McCain, whom we chose as the best Republican nominee in the primaries, has spent the last coins of his reputation for principle and sound judgment to placate the limitless demands and narrow vision of the far-right wing. His righteous fury at being driven out of the 2000 primaries on a racist tide aimed at his adopted daughter has been replaced by a zealous embrace of those same win-at-all-costs tactics and tacticians.
He surrendered his standing as an independent thinker in his rush to embrace Mr. Bush's misbegotten tax policies and to abandon his leadership position on climate change and immigration reform.
Mr. McCain could have seized the high ground on energy and the environment. Earlier in his career, he offered the first plausible bill to control America's emissions of greenhouse gases. Now his positions are a caricature of that record: think Ms. Palin leading chants of "drill, baby, drill."
Mr. Obama has endorsed some offshore drilling, but as part of a comprehensive strategy including big investments in new, clean technologies.
•
Mr. Obama has withstood some of the toughest campaign attacks ever mounted against a candidate. He's been called un-American and accused of hiding a secret Islamic faith. The Republicans have linked him to domestic terrorists and questioned his wife's love of her country. Ms. Palin has also questioned millions of Americans' patriotism, calling Republican-leaning states "pro-America."
This politics of fear, division and character assassination helped Mr. Bush drive Mr. McCain from the 2000 Republican primaries and defeat Senator John Kerry in 2004. It has been the dominant theme of his failed presidency.
The nation's problems are simply too grave to be reduced to slashing "robo-calls" and negative ads. This country needs sensible leadership, compassionate leadership, honest leadership and strong leadership. Barack Obama has shown that he has all of those qualities.

Philadelphia Election Commissioner Scoffs. Lawsuit Filed.

Sheldon from Doylestown — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 09:41:24 EDT

Earlier this week, American News Project (http://americannewsproject.com/) reported that, come November, Pennsylvania voters could face substantial delays at the polls. We spoke with the man running the election in Philadelphia, who scoffed at long lines and tales of lost votes. Now, voters are suing the state of Pennsylvania. With the help of Voter Action and the NAACP, they filed a complaint this morning in Philadelphia federal court, specifically citing an interview between the American News Project and Philadelphia Deputy City Commissioner Fred Voigt. Here's an update and more of our interview with Philly's deputy commissioner, Fred Voigt.

Watch video here: http://americannewsproject.com/node/155

10/23/08 Today's Voter Action Press Release "COALITION OF VOTERS AND CIVIL RIGHTS GROUPS FILE FEDERAL LAWSUIT IN PENNSYLVANIA SEEKING EMERGENCY PAPER BALLOTS" here: http://www.voteraction.org/press-release/2008/coalition-of-voters-and-civil-rights-groups-file-federal-lawsuit-in-pennsylvania-

Oct 23 2008 | PLAINTIFFS CLAIM VOTING MACHINE BREAKDOWNS AND LONG LINES WILL DISENFRANCHISE VOTERS 'A PERFECT STORM' IMPACTING THE RIGHT TO VOTE PHILADELPHIA, PA – A coalition of Pennsylvania voters and civil rights groups, led by the NAACP State Conference of Pennsylvania, filed a lawsuit today in federal court in Philadelphia seeking to ensure that voters receive emergency paper ballots on Election Day when 50% or more voting machines become inoperable at any polling site in the state. The lawsuit, filed against Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Pedro A. Cortés, alleges that voters will be disenfranchised when they face the burden of having to wait hours in line, due to voting machine breakdowns, in order to exercise their constitutional right to vote.

"Pennsylvania's Secretary of the Commonwealth has issued a directive to all Pennsylvania counties requiring that emergency paper ballots be distributed only when 100% of voting machines malfunction on Election Day," says Jonathan Abady, a partner at the New York-based law firm Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady, and co-counsel for the plaintiffs. "If left unchanged, this standard will place an undue burden on voters across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania."

In his declaration filed with the lawsuit, J. Whyatt Mondesire, the president of the NAACP State Conference of Pennsylvania, states: "One of the major impediments to members exercising their right to vote is the long lines frequently encountered on election day…Thousands of members have faced serious delays in voting when machines have broken down in the past and this problem will be much more severe this year when unprecedented numbers of voters will be coming to the polls."

In addition to the NAACP State Conference of Pennsylvania, the plaintiffs include individual voters who reported long lines and voting machine breakdowns during the state's primary election in April, as well as the Election Reform Network, a local election integrity organization. The plaintiffs are represented by Voter Action, a national voting rights organization, the law firm of Emery Cell Brinckerhoff & Abady, and the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia.

View complaint here:
http://www.voteraction.org/files/PA%202008%20%20Complaint%20(00016006).pdf

View Plainfiff's Memorandum here: http://www.voteraction.org/files/Final%20MOL%20in%20support%20of%20PI%20(00016007).pdf

Nuclear Power Is Contraindicated as a Solution to Global Warming

Sheldon from Doylestown — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 17:26:51 EDT

Nuclear Power Is Contraindicated as a Solution to Global Warming Because of Nuclear Mutagenesis. Watch: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4397307903287515932

Nuclear Power Is Contraindicated as a Solution to Global Warming Because of Excessive Cost: "When it comes to nuclear power specifically, every dollar invested in new US nuclear electricity will save approximately 2-11 times less carbon, and will do so roughly 20-40 times slower, than investing in the same dollar in energy efficiency and "micropower" (cogeneration plus renewables minus big hydro dams). Buying new nuclear capacity instead of efficiency causes more carbon to be released than spending the same money on new coal plants!

"These conclusions and the empirical evidence supporting them are summarized in "Forget Nuclear," and fully documented in "The Nuclear Illusion," available for download here, which is to be published in early 2009 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences' journal Ambio. (courtesy of rmi.org)

Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club's Global Warming Program has said, "Switching from coal to nukes is like giving up smoking and taking up crack."

Here is the Natural Resources Defense Council's position on Nuclear Power: http://nrdc.org/nuclear/power/power.pdf.

Make a small statement. Join our My.BarackObama.com group, Nuclear Power?, here:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/NuclearPower

Barack Obama is a man of integrity. Our belief is that when all the facts about nuclear power are presented to him clearly, that he will reject it as an option.

The large utilities eager to build nuclear power plants are now suddenly pressing Congress about global warming. Very convenient. But is nuclear power a solution for the problem of global warming? Hmmm, No.

1)Nuclear power plants are too expensive to build. The nuclear power industry refuses to accept responsibility for the unique risks of nuclear power and demands massive federal subsidies so that they can rake in profits on their suspect investments. To quote the Rocky Mountain Institute (rmi.org) position on nuclear power: "Contrary to an argument nuclear apologists have recently taken to making, nuclear power isn't a good way to curb climate change. The power they produce is so expensive that the same money invested in efficiency or even natural-gas-fired power plants would offset much more climate change." Quoting the Natural Resources Defense Council(NRDC): "Our national electricity needs could be met, while simultaneously reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 70 percent or more, through a combination of increased energy efficiency, wind power, solar power, advanced coal-fired plants with carbon capture and storage, and high-efficiency natural gas turbines."

2)Nuclear power is extremely unsafe. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has acknowledged in a reference document "that early containment failure cannot be ruled out with high confidence for any of the plants." Even with the most technologically advanced checks and safeties, eventually some critical part of everything man makes fails. If an explosion occurs at a gas-fired or coal-fired plant, this is not good. But if a nuclear reactor melts down and breaks through its containment vessel, we have at least a regional catastrophe. Large areas of necessary habitable land are rendered uninhabitable, and people die of radiation-caused cancer.

3)To again quote the Rocky Mountain Institute's position on nuclear power: "Nuclear power poses significant problems of radioactive waste disposal."

4)Quoting the NRDC: "Plutonium is a normal by-product of electricity production in conventional reactors. Thus, the same reactors and fuel-processing facilities that are used for energy production can also be used for the manufacture of weapons." "Perhaps the most serious of all the problems that would be exacerbated by dramatically increasing global nuclear capacity is the threat of nuclear proliferation."

Join our My.BarackObama.com group, Nuclear Power?, here: http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/NuclearPower

Olmert Says Israel Should Pull Out of West Bank

Sheldon from Doylestown — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 14:11:29 EDT

From The New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/world/middleeast/30olmert.html?hp

Olmert Says Israel Should Pull Out of West Bank

By ETHAN BRONNER

Published: September 29, 2008

JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in an interview published on Monday that Israel must withdraw from nearly all the West Bank as well as East Jerusalem to attain peace with the Palestinians and that any occupied land it held onto would have to be exchanged for the same quantity of Israeli territory.

He also dismissed as “megalomania” any thought that Israel would or should attack Iran on its own to stop it from developing nuclear weapons, saying the international community and not Israel alone was charged with handling the issue.

In an unusually frank and soul-searching interview granted after he resigned to fight corruption charges — he remains interim prime minister until a new government is sworn in — Mr. Olmert discarded longstanding Israeli defense doctrine and called for radical new thinking in words that are sure to stir controversy as his expected successor, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, tries to build a coalition.

“What I am saying to you now has not been said by any Israeli leader before me,” Mr. Olmert told Yediot Aharonot newspaper in the interview to mark the Jewish new year that runs from Monday night till Wednesday night. “The time has come to say these things.”

He said traditional Israeli defense strategists had learned nothing from past experiences and seemed stuck in the considerations of the 1948 Independence War.

“With them, it is all about tanks and land and controlling territories and controlled territories and this hilltop and that hilltop,” he said. “All these things are worthless.”

He added, “Who thinks seriously that if we sit on another hilltop, on another hundred meters, that this is what will make the difference for the State of Israel’s basic security?”

Over the last year, Mr. Olmert has publicly castigated himself for his earlier right-wing views and he did so again in this interview. On Jerusalem, for example, he said, “I am the first who wanted to enforce Israeli sovereignty on the entire city. I admit it. I am not trying to justify retroactively what I did for 35 years. For a large portion of these years, I was unwilling to look at reality in all its depth.”

He said that maintaining sovereignty over an undivided Jerusalem, Israel’s official policy, would involve bringing 270,000 Palestinians inside Israel’s security barrier. It would mean an ongoing risk of terrorist attacks against civilians like those carried out earlier this year by Jerusalem Palestinian residents with a bulldozer and earth mover.

“A decision has to be made,” he said. “This decision is difficult, terrible, a decision that contradicts our natural instincts, our innermost desires, our collective memories, the prayers of the Jewish people for 2,000 years.”

The government’s public stand on Jerusalem until now has been to assert that the status of the city was not under discussion. But Mr. Olmert made clear that the eastern, predominantly Arab, sector had to be yielded “with special solutions” for the holy sites.

On peace with the Palestinians, Mr. Olmert said in the interview: “We face the need to decide but are not willing to tell ourselves, yes, this is what we have to do. We have to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, the meaning of which is that in practice we will withdraw from almost all the territories, if not all the territories. We will leave a percentage of these territories in our hands, but will have to give the Palestinians a similar percentage, because without that there will be no peace.”

Elsewhere in the interview, when discussing a land swap with the Palestinians, he said the exchange would have to be “more or less one to one.”

Mr. Olmert also addressed the question of Syria, saying that Israel had to be prepared to give up the Golan Heights but that in turn Damascus knew it had to change the nature of its relationship with Iran and its support for Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia.

On Iran, Mr. Olmert said Israel would act within the international system, adding, “Part of our megalomania and our loss of proportions is the things that are said here about Iran. We are a country that has lost a sense of proportion about itself.”

Reaction from the Israeli right was swift. Avigdor Lieberman, who heads the Yisrael Beiteinu party, said on the radio that Mr. Olmert was “endangering the existence of the State of Israel irresponsibly.”

He added that those who thought Israel’s problem was a lack of defined borders — as Mr. Olmert stated in the interview — “are ignoramuses who don’t understand anything and they invite war.”

As they reacted to Mr. Olmert’s remarks, Palestinian negotiators said it was satisfying to hear Mr. Olmert’s words but they said the words did not match what he had offered them so far. Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior Palestinian official, told Palestinian Radio that it would have been better if Mr. Olmert had taken this position while in office rather than while leaving it and that Mr. Olmert had not yet presented a detailed plan for a border between Israel and a Palestinian state.

In theory, Mr. Olmert will continue peace negotiations while awaiting the new government. But most analysts believe that, having been forced to resign his post, he will not be able to close a deal.

Killing and Dying for Oil. Meanwhile,

Sheldon from Doylestown — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:46:00 EDT

Killing and Dying For Oil

When Refusing to Kill Has a Higher Sentence Than Murder

9-20-08

by Ann Wright

Ann Wright is a retired US Army Reserves colonel with 29 years of military service. She also was a US diplomat who served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. She was on the small team that reopened the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, in December 2001. She resigned from the US diplomatic corps in March 2003 in opposition to the Bush administration's decision to invade and occupy Iraq. She is the co-author of "Dissent: Voices of Conscience," profiles of government insiders who have spoken and acted on their concerns of their governments' policies.

http://www.truthout.org/article/when-refusing-kill-has-a-higher-sentence-than-murder

Meanwhile:

Nuclear Power is not a good option.

Sheldon from Doylestown — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:56:15 EDT

Nuclear Power is not a good option.

“A widely heralded view holds that nuclear power is experiencing a dramatic worldwide revival and vibrant growth, because it’s competitive, necessary, reliable, secure, and vital for fuel security and climate protection.

“That’s all false. In fact, nuclear power is continuing its decades-long collapse in the global marketplace because it’s grossly uncompetitive, unneeded, and obsolete—so hopelessly uneconomic that one needn’t debate whether it’s clean and safe; it weakens electric reliability and national security; and it worsens climate change compared with devoting the same money and time to more effective options.

“Yet the more decisively nuclear power is humbled by swifter and cheaper rivals, the more zealously its advocates claim it has to serious competitors. The web of old fictions ingeniously spun by a coordinated and intensive global campaign is spread by a credulous press” and boosted by the new nuclear enthusiasts.

http://rmi.org/images/PDFs/Energy/E08-01_AmbioNucIllusion.pdf

Global warming from the carbon in coal, all the other air pollution from coal burning, and the destruction of Montana, Wyoming and Appalachia are all a part of a steamroller bearing down on us, one that if we act and act now, we can dodge to a fair degree. But there will soon be a worse steamroller bearing down on us if you and I let it happen. A planet so poisoned with radioactivity that all life will be sickly.

Nuclear Power is a dinosaur. But not just any dinosaur. It is unsafe, and it is too expensive. And during the nuclear cycle, plutonium for nuclear weapons is produced.

Regardless of the steady propaganda recently pumped into the major media outlets by the nuclear power industry, nuclear power’s time is past. Come on over to our side. We currently are staring at 2 steamrollers, and nuclear power apologists would have their steamroller BIGGER??

Barack Obama is a man of integrity. Our belief is that when all the facts about nuclear power are presented to him clearly, that he will reject it as an option. The large utilities eager to build nuclear power plants are now suddenly pressing Congress about global warming. Very convenient. But is nuclear power a solution for the problem of global warming? Hmmm, No. 1)Nuclear power plants are too expensive to build. The nuclear power industry refuses to accept responsibility for the unique risks of nuclear power and demands massive federal subsidies so that they can rake in profits on their suspect investments. To quote the Rocky Mountain Institute (rmi.org) position on nuclear power: “Contrary to an argument nuclear apologists have recently taken to making, nuclear power isn't a good way to curb climate change. True, nukes don't produce carbon dioxide—but the power they produce is so expensive that the same money invested in efficiency or even natural-gas-fired power plants would offset much more climate change.” Quoting the Natural Resources Defense Council(NRDC): "Our national electricity needs could be met, while simultaneously reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 70 percent or more, through a combination of increased energy efficiency, wind power, solar power, advanced coal-fired plants with carbon capture and storage, and high-efficiency natural gas turbines." 2)Nuclear power is extremely unsafe. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has acknowledged in a reference document “that early containment failure cannot be ruled out with high confidence for any of the plants.” Even with the most technologically advanced checks and safeties, eventually some critical part of everything man makes fails. If an explosion occurs at a gas-fired or coal-fired plant, this is not good. But if a nuclear reactor melts down and breaks through its containment vessel, we have at least a regional catastrophe. Large areas of necessary habitable land are rendered uninhabitable, and people die of radiation-caused cancer. 3)To again quote the Rocky Mountain Institute's position on nuclear power: "Nuclear power poses significant problems of radioactive waste disposal." 4)Quoting the NRDC: "Plutonium is a normal by-product of electricity production in conventional reactors. Thus, the same reactors and fuel-processing facilities that are used for energy production can also be used for the manufacture of weapons." "Perhaps the most serious of all the problems that would be exacerbated by dramatically increasing global nuclear capacity is the threat of nuclear proliferation."

Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club's Global Warming Program said, "Switching from coal to nukes is like giving up smoking and taking up crack."

Here is the NRDC's position on Nuclear Power: http://nrdc.org/nuclear/power/power.pdf.

Make a small statement. Join our My.BarackObama.comgroup, Nuclear Power?, here:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/NuclearPower

Who are we?

Sheldon from Doylestown — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 00:23:58 EDT

Who are we?

by Dorothy in Rural MO

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/dorothy75/gG5z3z

Who the hell ARE we? What have we become? What have we allowed this nation to become? Originally American companies, who now give no allegiance to ANY nation, but have bought our Congress and our military off, have become who we are abroad - and that is frightening...

This week, I have listened to a variety of reports, none boding well for the US...

That Trent Lott, and crew, are attempting to BLOCK Ecuador's lawsuit to force Chevron to clean up the god-awful environmental disaster that they left behind..

That the Congress EXEMPTED Chevron from trade sanctions on companies doing business in Burma, thus supporting, directly or indirectly, another military dictatorship..

That Congress basically bailed out Freddie Mac to prevent China from chucking the dollar;

That the top 1/2 of 1% now own some 22% of the nation's wealth, while the BOTTOM 90% only own 4%- so where's the other 72%? (I suspect it is NOT in the US)

That more Americans are 'food insecure' (read one paycheck from hungry) while commodities speculators are 'making a killing' - god, I HATE that phrase... while millions around the world are facing outright starvation - not always because it's not available but because it's overpriced...

AND that corporate America is on the warpath, frightening their employees with dire tales of what will happen if Obama gets elected (but they're NOT trying to influence the vote) - PUH-LEEZE....

I've read Kinzer's OVERTHROWN; I've read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man; I've read FREE LUNCH; I've even read some of Milton and Thomas Friedman's nightmare economics theories - and they DID give us nightmares, not to mention, Pinochet and crew - oh, boy, I really want to repeat THAT horror!

We have military bases in over 130 countries - why? To protect corporate profits? That is not the way to win friends... it is the road to exploitation and oppression. And we wonder why the world hates our government? DUH...

We have been too willing to sell our military to protect the profits of companies that have left us high and dry, that have moved jobs to the cheapest labor market, that have 'externalized' their filth onto indigenous populations here and elsewhere; that don't pay taxes here; that will sell us out in a heartbeat on any excuse and then blame US.

How do we repair the damage our 'free trade' reign of terror has wrought on the poorest and most vulnerable across the world? How do we help the democratic movements that we have helped quash in the name of trade? How do we rebuild sustainable alliances that are actually based on MUTUAL respect and benefit? How do we become something OTHER THAN the biggest bully on the block?

Until Obama came along, I was pretty convinced that the US had BECOME "the evil empire". While he is certainly a statesman, and will not make everyone happy all the time, at least the tenor and timbre of his language says that we must, once again, become good, responsible and responsive world citizens. That if we have been blessed with more, we must be more responsible for helping those with less - because we MADE our more on their less... Good world citizens... what a concept.

Max Hastings in The Guardian: “Negotiating with Iran is maddening, but bombing would be a catastrophe”

Sheldon from Doylestown — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 22:47:36 EDT

Negotiating with Iran is maddening, but bombing would be a catastrophe

US military posturing towards Tehran lacks credibility and, in any case, such action would fail in all its purposes

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/04/iran.usa

Max Hastings. The Guardian, August 4, 2008

The favoured season for launching wars used to come when the harvest had been gathered. This year, there is talk of an Israeli strike against Iran in November or December, when it would no longer embarrass the US election process but George Bush will still be in the White House during the presidential transition.

Last year, following a US intelligence submission which stated that Iran was not actively pursuing the creation of atomic weapons, a direct American attack on the country's nuclear facilities became implausible - and remains so. But Jerusalem and Washington are talking seriously about a possible Israeli strike, for which American collusion would be indispensable.

In Washington at the weekend, Shaul Mofaz, Israel's deputy defence minister and a candidate for the premiership, said of negotiations to halt Iran's nuclear programme: "It's a race against time, and time is winning." He repeated the familiar Israeli warning that Iran's possession of nuclear weapons would be "unacceptable".

Optimists welcomed last month's meeting in Geneva, at which the US under-secretary of state, William Burns, met Iranian delegates. This was the highest level contact for decades between the two nations. Yet there remains no sign of Iranian retreat from its longstanding position, that it is entitled to maintain a uranium enrichment programme. Pessimists fear that the Burns trip was designed to highlight Tehran's intractability, in advance of military action.

Last month, Tehran announced that it now possesses 6,000 centrifuges, a dramatic increase in its last declared figure. This was probably an exaggeration for negotiating purposes, but gives no comfort at all to the UN, the EU or anybody else seeking signs of a breakthrough towards a deal.

Most Europeans would like to hear their new American idol, Barack Obama, warn the Israelis against undertaking military action against Iran. Even if Obama does not yet sit in the White House, no Jerusalem government could lightly defy America's likely next president on an issue of such gravity.

But no man who wants to win a US election dares to qualify his support for Israel. Obama's statements during his brief visit to the country last month were indistinguishable from those of Bush. There seem grounds for anticipating that Obama may be less radical, more indulgent towards Israel, than visionaries suppose. A McCain administration, meanwhile, would merely pick up where Bush leaves off.

There is no doubt about the desire of both the Israeli and US governments to destroy Iran's nuclear plants by force. Two years ago, a Washington political guru suggested to me that Bush's last months would be the time to watch, when he became obsessed with his legacy. "Solving" the Iran nuclear issue, said my friend, would be foremost in Bush's mind. So, indeed, it seems today.

The best prospect of averting this disaster - and, of course, many of us would perceive it as such - lies in the intractable practical difficulties. The US military has briefed the president that, with most of Iran's facilities underground, only nuclear bunker-busting bombs offer a real prospect of achieving their destruction.

It remains hard to believe that the US could countenance the use of such weapons, by their own aircraft or those of the Israelis. Conventional bombs could inflict some damage. A limited attack would demonstrate Israel's ability to strike at will if the Iranians persist with their programme.

But the economic and political costs of such an exhibition of force would be appalling. Oil prices would soar to dizzier heights. Any possibility of dialogue between Iran and the west would vanish for years to come. The Iranians would probably fulfil their threat, to retaliate with terrorist action against US interests worldwide. Former US air force colonel Sam Gardiner, a respected military analyst, suggests that bombing Iran "would be unlikely to yield the results American policymakers do want, and ... likely to yield results that they do not".

The Iranian government may be reckless - even fanatical - but it is not mad. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have assuredly made these calculations for themselves. The US is seeking to behave with the outward assurance of a superpower, while crippled by its difficulties in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US wishes to bestride the Middle East as an armoured knight, but its foes know that beneath the plates it is bleeding badly.

The Iranians appear to be gambling that, at the last ditch, the US will flinch from taking military action, or from allowing Israel to do so, because the costs would be unacceptably high. The implacable unhelpfulness of Russia and China about western purposes towards Tehran strengthens Iranian resolve. Moscow and Beijing have no more desire than the Americans to see Iran possess nuclear weapons. But they both gain satisfaction from Washington's embarrassments, and from strengthening their own influence in the Middle East at American expense.

However deep is European distaste for the Bush administration, for the Iraq war and for the excesses of Israeli policy, it seems important not to lose sight of some basics. The Tehran government aspires to regional hegemony, which it would be unlikely to exercise in an enlightened fashion. Iran is an exceptionally nasty elective dictatorship that denies freedoms and represses human rights, not least those of women. It is deplorable that Israel and Pakistan possess nuclear weapons, but the world will become an even less safe place if Iran also acquires them. Its desire to do so seems hard to dispute, even if doubts persist about its proximity to fulfilment.

Thus, America's fundamental objective deserves endorsement, which it receives from the UN and the EU through their backing for sanctions. The difficulty, as usual, is that so many issues are entwined - Iraq and Israel foremost among them. Lawrence Freedman has just published a new book, A Choice of Enemies, in which he examines America's relationship with the Middle East over the past 30 years. His conclusion is that today's problems stretch beyond anything that can be dignified as solutions. They can only be "managed or endured".

This is unspectacular, but seems right. The folly of American military posturing towards Iran is its absence of credibility. That is to say, no one doubts Bush's executive power to launch an air attack, or sanction the Israelis to do so. However, it is evident to all but the neocons and some dangerous people in Jerusalem that such action must fail in its purposes, making matters worse rather than better.

The dreadful Bibi Netanyahu, who may soon again become Israel's prime minister, declared that 9/11 was "good for Israel", and so from his viewpoint it was. It left the Muslim world almost friendless in the US, and increased the readiness of Americans to perceive the Israelis as comrades in arms against a common enemy.

Yet the fallout from a putative Israeli attack on Iran - and I hope I am right to use the word only figuratively - should cause even post-Bush Americans to perceive that this is no way to order the world. Negotiating with the Iranians is a maddening and frustrating business. But bombing them would be a catastrophe for us all. Many fingers will need to be tightly crossed between now and next January.

"The Walls Cannot Stand" Barack's Speech in Berlin 7-24-08

Sheldon from Doylestown — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 02:54:56 EDT

7-24-08 Obama in Berlin “The walls cannot stand”http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/berlinvideo/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/25835684#25835684

Maliki Endorses Obama Timeline in Huge Blow for McCain, Bush

Sheldon from Doylestown — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 00:26:59 EDT

Maliki Endorses Obama Timeline in Huge Blow for McCain, Bush

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-hayden/maliki-endorses-obama-tim_b_113845.html

In a stunning diplomatic breakthrough for Barack Obama, Iraq's prime minister yesterday endorsed the Democratic candidate's 16-month timeline for withdrawing combat troops from Iraq.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki endorsed the Obama approach in a July 18 interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, just as President Bush and Sen. John McCain were touting a vague new commitment to a "horizon" for withdrawal. The New York Times did not report the Maliki statement in its July 19 edition.

Uncertainty about Maliki's surprise statement persists since his top political spokesman told the Times only one week ago that troop withdrawals would take three to five years, if not longer. [NYT, July 11]. The number of American troops he would request as counter-terrrorism units, trainers and advisers could be tens of thousands.

But as Obama's plane touched down in Afghanistan, Maliki's comments were having a far-reaching effect on the war and presidential politics, with the Maliki government withdrawing from George Bush and making McCain appear foolish.

This could be the "Philippine option" predicted in Ending the War in Iraq, in which the US arranged behind the scenes for the Manila government to request the departure of the American fleet.
While the sequencing may be accidental, it appears that the Obama forces could reap a windfall. Obama will seem more successful than Bush in managing the last stages of the war, depriving McCain of the claim to superior foreign policy experience. Obama's imminent arrival in Baghdad could seem like a victory lap in the foreign policy "primary."

Why would Maliki break so sharply with his long-time US partner in the White House? Are the Iraqis more adept at playing American politics than the White House is?

As noted before at this site, Iraqi public opinion -- Shi'a and Sunni -- strongly favors a deadline for American troop withdrawal. The provincial elections to be held later this year [at the insistence of the US] will produce victories for candidates who demand ending the occupation, both in Sunni areas like Anbar and Mahdi Army areas like Sadr City. Maliki's coalition must appear to stand for Iraqi sovereignty and the departure of US forces.

Somewhere in the background is Iran with its strong ties to the entire Shi'a community in Iraq. The Iranian interest is in keeping Shi'a factions unified in a demand that the US troops and bases are folding up and returning home. Iran believes that a retreating US will be less able to strike from positions of strength on the ground if a US-Iran conflict takes place.

Besides Iran and the Shi'a bloc, the big winners in this scenario would be the multinational oil companies now subtly assuring themselves access to Iraq's oilfields after thirty years of absence.
The Bush Administration could mask defeat in claims of "mission accomplished", perhaps with garlands of flowers provided by Maliki at a joint ceremony.

Though genuine peace would a blessing, the real losers stand to be the Sunni minority which is the backbone of the insurgency, and the long-suffering Shi'a poor in Sadr City whose social-economic needs are little recognized by the dominant Shi'a party. In the region's geo-politics, Saudi Arabia would be angered at the rise of greater Shi'a and Iranian power in potentially competitive oil fields. And despite their alarm about Iran's nuclear plans, Israel would welcome an Iraq shorn of its power in the Sunni world.

As for al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, they could claim a victory in helping drive the American forces out of Iraq, but their narrow public support would shrink further if Iraqis recover sovereignty. A loophole in the Obama plan, certainly endorsed by Maliki, would allow American counter-terrorism units to go after alleged al-Qaeda units operating in Iraq as US combat forces draw down.

The huge "if" hovering over this sudden development is simply whether the Bush Administration can force Maliki to back down from his statement, or at least retreat from going further.

Here is Maliki's statement, delivered as Obama's visit to the region was beginning:

Whoever is thinking about the shorter term [for withdrawal] is closer to reality. Artificially extending the stay of U.S. troops would cause problems... As soon as possible, as far as we're concerned... Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic... Artificially prolonging the tenure of US troops in Iraq would cause problems. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.

Tom Hayden is the author of Ending the War in Iraq [2007].

Frozen provincial minds and their missiles

Sheldon from Doylestown — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 23:40:31 EDT

Frozen provincial minds and their missiles

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/opinion/13kristof.html

Rational minds on Iraq and Iran

Sheldon from Doylestown — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 22:58:09 EDT

Obama Gets Help From Iraq's Prime Minister and from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

http://www.slate.com/id/2195134/ By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, July 10, 2008, at 5:55 PM ET Barack Obama

It's been a good week for Sen. Barack Obama. National security is the one area where his opponent, Sen. John McCain, holds an advantage in the polls. Yet on the two most contentious security issues—Iran and Iraq—Obama's views have now been endorsed by two of the most unassailably authoritative figures: the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. armed forces and the prime minister of Iraq.

When it comes to military matters, McCain the war hero might get away with pulling rank on the junior senator from Illinois—but he can't claim more experience than those two.

The stab from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki turned into a comedy routine. Maliki stated this week that he would not sign any treaty allowing U.S. armed forces to remain on his nation's soil—the current accord, known as a Status of Forces Agreement, expires at the end of this month—unless it includes a timetable for their withdrawal.

Obama has called for just such a timetable. McCain has opposed one, famously saying that a substantial number of U.S. combat troops might need to stay in Iraq for another 100 years.

When asked about Maliki's statement, McCain told reporters that it had been mistranslated—to which Maliki responded that, no, the English version was correct. At that point, some of McCain's supporters said that the prime minister wasn't serious, that he'd been forced by political constituencies to demand a timetable. Maliki again insisted that he meant what he'd said. (Even if he was caving to political pressures, one could infer that this suggests a majority of Iraqis and their major parties want us to commit to getting out in the not-too-distant future.)

It's a rather awkward situation for McCain, who did publicly say four years ago at the Council on Foreign Relations that if an elected government of Iraq asked us to leave, "I think it's obvious that we would have to leave," adding, "I don't see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policy has been based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people."

Meanwhile, Maliki's insistence on this score makes life a lot easier for Obama. McCain pressured him into planning a trip to Iraq this summer—he hadn't been there for two years—so he can see the place up close before making judgments about its future. While he's there, Obama will be briefed by Gen. David Petraeus and other commanders; he'll probably also talk with junior officers and enlisted men, and with Iraqi politicians, too. Security in Iraq is better than it was a year ago. To some degree, this improvement is the result of George W. Bush's surge (combined with Petraeus' strategy, Muqtada Sadr's cease-fire, the paying of many insurgents to stop shooting at us, and, most important, the alliance between U.S. forces and Sunni insurgents against the common enemy of al-Qaida—an alliance initiated by the Sunnis before the surge began). It might have been awkward for Obama to praise the troops' accomplishments then rapidly pull them out. But he could say, "If our friend the Iraqi prime minister wants us to set a schedule for withdrawing, well, how could any president of the United States insist otherwise?"

Obama also got a boost this week from reports in the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz that Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently told top officials of the Israeli Defense Forces that the United States would not give them a "green light" to launch airstrikes on Iran.

This is not merely a political statement. To send fighter-bombers to attack Iran, the Israelis would need permission to fly over Iraq on the way. Maliki certainly wouldn't approve such a plan; Mullen was saying that President Bush wouldn't, either.

Obama has said that the situation in Iran—the continued enrichment of uranium, the recent test-firing of missiles, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's persistently belligerent rhetoric—calls for a full-court diplomatic press. This means economic pressure but also direct talks. Mullen and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have said much the same thing in public, noting that an attack would merely delay, not halt, Iran's nuclear program and that Iranian retaliation to an airstrike could do far greater damage—especially economic—to the United States and its allies.

McCain hasn't called for military action (except for the standard boilerplate of keeping "all options on the table"), but he refuses to consider direct talks—thus leaving us in the same hole we're in now.

Once more: advantage Obama.

Obama Overwhelming Favorite in Britain

Sheldon from Doylestown — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 22:27:17 EDT

US election 2008: Britain's backing Obama: Democrat beats McCain by five votes to one

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/14/barackobama.johnmccain

Barack Obama is overwhelmingly Britain's choice to be the next US president, five times more popular than his Republican rival, John McCain, a Guardian/ICM poll shows today. Carried out ahead of the Democratic candidate's visit to Britain next week, the poll reveals that 53% feel certain he would make the best president, with only 11% favouring McCain; 36% declined to express an opinion.

Obama will soon set off on a marathon trip that will take in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Jordan, Germany, France and, lastly, Britain. The exact timing of the visit to Iraq and Afghanistan is being kept under wraps for security reasons, but he is expected in Britain on July 25 or 26. His campaign team and the British government had originally discussed making the UK his first stop but, citing diary clashes, rescheduled it as the last.

It will be his first trip overseas - apart from a holiday weekend in the Caribbean - since he launched his bid for the White House in February last year. The aim is to counter accusations from McCain that he lacks foreign experience.

Obama's poll lead may have as much to do with his high profile and recognition factor as it does his policies. But it underlines the desire among US allies to see a change of political direction there after eight years of George Bush. Obama's campaign team hopes to use the European leg of the trip to press home to the US public that replacing Bush with the Democratic candidate should see America's popularity in Europe restored.

McCain is less well known than Obama, despite having visited Britain several times and attending the House of Commons and the Conservative party conference.

The survey, carried out late last week, found that Obama's support is strongest among male voters - 57% of whom want him to be president. There are small regional variations in support: 50% back him in the south-east, against 57% in the north of England. But overall enthusiasm for an Obama presidency is solid across people of all ages and backgrounds. Unlike the US, there is no evidence of young Britons being keener on Obama than older people.

Obama, who met Gordon Brown in Washington earlier this year, is scheduled to meet him again. In keeping with diplomatic etiquette, he also plans to meet the Tory leader, David Cameron.

He wants to fit in time to thank British-based Americans who have been raising funds for his campaign and for a photo-opportunity that would win him airtime on US television. The centrepiece of his visit to Europe will be Berlin, where he plans to deliver a speech about establishing a new transatlantic relationship. Obama's extensive foreign policy team have promised a complete rethink for the post-Bush era. He will stress that, in contrast with Bush, he will listen to Europe. According to an adviser, he is also likely, to avoid being portrayed as soft, to call on Germany and France to play a bigger military role in Afghanistan.

There is confusion about how long Obama has spent in Europe before. Some reports claim he has only spent 24 hours in total, but he told a local paper in the US last year: "I've travelled extensively in Europe ... I love Europe."

Obama, who likes being compared with John F Kennedy, opted for Berlin in part because of the former president's much-quoted speech outside the town hall, in which he declared "Ich bin ein Berliner."

Pictures with foreign leaders are useful during election campaigns in establishing foreign policy credentials. But the main purpose of his trip is to be filmed in Iraq with US troops. Obama, who has pledged an early withdrawal of most American troops from Iraq, has been in Iraq before but has been repeatedly taunted by McCain about his failure to visit the country since becoming a presidential candidate.

ICM Research interviewed a random sample of 1,009 adults aged 18+ on July 9-10. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults. ICM is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules.

Iraqi Officials Insisting on Timetable to Withdraw

Sheldon from Doylestown — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:22:57 EDT

Iraqi Officials Insisting On Timetable To Withdraw

By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

Published: July 9, 2008

BAGHDAD — Iraqi officials continued to insist Tuesday that a timetable for the withdrawal of coalition troops must be included in any security agreement with the United States.

Meanwhile, in western Anbar Province, 22 bodies were found at a Ramadi elementary school that was undergoing construction, 20 of them buried in the playing fields, apparently over a lengthy period, the local police said.

Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the national security adviser, said the government would reject any security agreement that did not include a schedule for the departure of foreign troops.

“We will not accept a memorandum of understanding without having timeline horizons for the cessation of combat operations as well as the departure of all the combat brigades,” Mr. Rubaie said in a telephone interview. However, he declined to offer specifics on a timeline, suggesting that the Iraqi government itself was not yet sure how quickly it wanted the United States to withdraw.

Earlier in the day, Mr. Rubaie was in the holy city of Najaf meeting with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s most senior Shiite religious leader. The ayatollah has not expressed an opinion on the specifics of the negotiations, emphasizing only that Iraq must protect its sovereignty.

Mr. Rubaie’s remarks came a day after Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki confirmed that his government was considering a short-term pact with the United States that would extend the presence of American troops but also include a timetable for withdrawal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/world/middleeast/09iraq.html?ref=world

Unity For Change: Video: Obama and Clinton together in Unity, NH 6/27/08

Sheldon from Doylestown — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 00:53:12 EDT

6-27-08 Unity For Change Coming together Obama and Clinton in Unity, NH

Hillary Clinton’s speech. Video(short commercial at start):

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/25415076#25414991

Barack Obama’s speech. Video(short commercial at start):

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/25415076#25415076

McCain's Duplicity

Sheldon from Doylestown — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 19:01:24 EDT

Many in the Middle East see Peace as an enemy, but it cannot be stopped.

Sheldon from Doylestown — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:08:20 EDT

Peace will come to the Middle East. Both sides are growing weary. When Israel and the Hamas make peace, the threat from Iran will be ended, and Hezbollah will be stilled.

Voices of reason that have been showing the way to peace, demanding peace for so long, will finally drown out the divisive words from so-called leaders on both sides fighting against peace.

Obama Announces Plan to Crack Down on Excessive Energy Speculation

Sheldon from Doylestown — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 00:58:40 EDT

Obama Announces Plan to Crack Down on Excessive Energy Speculation

From Headquarters blog:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/stateupdates/gG5Rzb

By Christopher Hass - Jun 22nd, 2008 at 1:13 pm EDT

Senator Obama announced a plan today to crack down on excessive energy speculation and fully close the “Enron Loophole” to ease the impact of skyrocketing gas prices. The Enron Loophole was created by McCain campaign co-chair Phil Gramm at the behest of Enron, and exempts most over-the-counter energy trades and trading on electronic energy commodity markets from regulation.

In his statement, Senator Obama explained:

For the past years, our energy policy in this country has been simply to let the special interests have their way—opening up loopholes for the oil companies and speculators so that they could reap record profits while the rest of us pay $4.00 a gallon. My plan fully closes the Enron Loophole and restores common-sense regulation as part of my broader plan to ease the burden for struggling families today while investing in a better future.

The “Enron Loophole” was slipped into law by Senator Phil Gramm in late 2000 at the behest of Enron lobbyists to exempt some energy traders from the regulations and public protections applicable to exchange-traded commodities. As a result, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is unable to fully oversee the oil futures market and investigate cases where excessive speculation may be driving up oil prices. Many economists believe that the speculation could be adding between $20 and $50 to the price of every barrel of oil.

A vibrant oil futures market can help producers and buyers hedge against swings in the price of oil, but an absence of common sense rules allows a few energy lobbyists and speculators to undermine the public confidence in the integrity of the market. It's another example of the special interest politics that put the interests of Big Oil and speculators ahead of the interests of working people. Today, Barack called for stepped-up oversight of energy markets to help stabilize oil prices and ease the burden of high energy prices for American families.

Read the full Obama Plan to Crack Down on Excessive Energy Speculation . . .

The Obama Plan to Crack Down on Excessive Energy Speculation

Ø Fully Close the “Enron Loophole”: One of the reasons our energy market is particularly vulnerable to excessive speculation is the so-called “Enron Loophole.” This provision was slipped into law by Senator Phil Gramm in late 2000 at the behest of Enron lobbyists to exempt some energy traders from the regulations and public protections applicable to exchange-traded commodities. As a result, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is unable to fully oversee the oil futures market and investigate cases where excessive speculation may be driving up oil prices. This regulatory gap is dangerous because: 1) the absence of government oversight has the potential to facilitate abusive trading or price manipulation. And 2) the failure of a large derivatives dealer could trigger disruptions of supplies and prices in energy markets. As President, Barack Obama will go beyond the changes included in the recently-passed Farm Bill and fully close the Enron loophole by requiring that U.S. energy futures trade on regulated exchanges. He will call for new, disaggregated data on index fund and other passive investments to increase transparency and oversight of the growing number of institutional investors participating in commodities futures markets. And he will support legislation directing the CFTC to investigate whether additional regulation is necessary to eliminate excessive speculation in U.S. commodities markets, including higher margin requirements and position limits for institutional investors.

Ø Ensure That U.S. Energy Futures Cannot be Traded on Unregulated Offshore Exchanges: CFTC oversight of oil market speculation is also limited by rules that allow energy traders to engage in unregulated transactions through foreign subsidiaries of U.S. exchanges. Currently, about 30 percent of U.S. oil futures trades fly below the regulatory radar because they are transacted on a U.S. exchange that works through a subsidiary in London. Similar arrangements are being pursued by U.S. exchanges in partnership with Dubai as well. Barack Obama would limit the price impacts of excessive speculation by preventing traders of U.S. crude oil from routing their transactions through off-shore markets in order to evade speculation limits and also impose reporting requirements.

Ø Work with Other Countries to Coordinate Regulation of Oil Futures Markets: As the global energy market expands and trading for oil futures increases, Barack Obama believes we must work with our other countries to establish uniform approaches to avoiding excessive speculation in commodities futures markets. As President, he would work through the International Organization of Securities Commissioners (IOSCO) and other international organization to harmonize regulations across countries. This effort will help to ensure that as the U.S. strengthens oversight and transparency in U.S. exchanges, these efforts are not undermined by overseas trading subject to lax regulations.

Ø Call on the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice to Vigorously Investigate Market Manipulation in Oil Futures. In 2007, Senator Obama supported legislation that gave the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) new authority to investigate and pursue price manipulation in oil markets. However, even in the face of record oil prices and growing concerns about excessive speculation, the Bush Administration has failed to utilize these new powers. Barack Obama does not believe we cannot afford to wait weeks and months more to vigorously investigate whether energy traders and oil companies manipulating the market at the expense of consumers. He is calling on the FTC to immediately expedite its investigation into market manipulation, including in the oil futures markets. He is also calling on the Department of Justice to open an investigation into whether energy traders have been engaged in illegal activities that have helped drive up the price of oil and food.

Independent experts agree that excessive speculation is elevating oil prices:

Ø Akira Yanagisawa, Senior Economist at Japan’s Energy Data and Modeling Center: “In the most recent terms (the third and fourth quarter in 2007), the fundamental prices [of oil] are estimated around 50 to 60 dollars. On the other hand, it is estimated the premium has risen up to around 40 dollars at maximum.” [Institute of Energy Economics, 3/08, http://eneken.ieej.or.jp/en/data/pdf/421.pdf, p. 13]

Ø Michelle Foss, Center of Energy Economics at University of Texas: “[G]iven that inventories of crude and products are healthy in many locations and that the very real risk of supply disruptions has so far been avoided, the remaining factor left to balance the price per barrel is speculation. The role of speculation in oil markets has been widely debated but could add upwards of $20 to the price per barrel.” [Oxford Institute for Energy Studies Working Paper, 2/07, http://www.oxfordenergy.org/pdfs/NG18.pdf, p. 34].

Ø Larry Chorn, Chief Economist of Platts: “says the actual costs incurred in producing the most expensive oil is only around $70 or $80 a barrel, meaning that about $50 of the current price represents ‘the market's risk premium plus speculation.’” [BusinessWeek, 5/13/08,

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/may2008db20080513_734146_page_2.htm].

Ø Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations: “Several analysts have estimated that speculative purchases of oil futures have added as much as $20-$25 per barrel to the current price of crude oil, thereby pushing up the price of oil from $50 to approximately $70 per barrel.” [Staff Report, 6/06,

http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/supporting/2006/ PSI.gasandoilspec.062606.pdf].

Ø Clarence Cazalot Jr., CEO, Marathon Oil: “$100 oil isn't justified by the physical demand in the market - it has to be speculation on the futures market that is fueling this.” [CNNMoney, 11/12/07,

http://money.cnn.com/2007/11/12/markets/oil_hundred/index.htm?postversion=2007111216].

Ø J. Stephen Simon, Executive Vice President, Exxon-Mobil: the price of oil should be $50 to $55 per barrel based on supply and demand fundamentals. [House Testimony, 4/1/08,

http://globalwarming.house.gov/tools/assets/files/0453.pdf].

Ø John Hofmeister, President, Shell Oil Co: The proper range of crude oil is “somewhere between $35 and $65 a barrel.” [Financial Post, 5/22/08,

http://www.financialpost.com/reports/oil-watch/story.html?id=532747].

Ø Gerry Ramm, Senior Executive, Inland Oil Company: “Excessive speculation on energy trading facilities is the fuel that is driving this runaway train in crude oil prices.” [Senate Testimony,

http://commerce.senate.gov/public/_files/RammSenateCommerce060308Testimony.pdf].

Senator Obama’s speculation plan is part of his broader strategy to provide immediate relief from high gas prices while investing in a better energy future:

Ø Enact a Windfall Profits Tax on the Top Grossing Oil Companies and Ease the Burden on American Families: Barack Obama recognizes that it is critical that oil companies and shareholders have strong incentives to run well managed businesses that invest in efficiency and innovation. However, a significant share of the remarkable profits currently enjoyed by big oil companies has not resulted from their foresight, efficiency or innovation. Barack Obama supports imposing a windfall profits penalty on oil selling at or over $80 per barrel. Revenue from the proposal will be invested in a number of mechanisms to reduce the burden of rising prices, such as expanding resources for the federal Weatherization Assistance Program, increasing federal support for state and local-level efforts to relieve the burden of rising energy prices on low and moderate-income families, and helping permanently expand the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps families pay their heating and cooling bills. Obama will couple these investments with his plan to invest in job training initiatives that will help more Americans enter the growing energy efficiency jobs sector, a good-paying field that cannot be outsourced.

Ø Provide a Tax Cut for Working Families: Barack Obama will provide broad-based tax relief to American workers so they are better able to pay rising energy, housing and health care costs and save money for a secure retirement. The Obama tax fairness agenda provides 150 million workers a “Making Work Pay” tax credit of $500 per person or $1,000 per working family. The tax credit will completely eliminate income taxes for 10 million Americans.

Ø End Oil and Gas Industry Tax Breaks: Obama has called for repealing the oil and gas industry tax breaks that President Bush himself has said himself are unnecessary given today’s strong market incentive for expanding exploration and production.

Ø Cooperate with Oil Importing Nations to Reduce Demand: As new large oil importing nations come on the market, the United States is at the mercy of an ever more volatile oil market. Obama believes we should use existing organizations, like NATO, to make energy security a shared global goal. We should take steps to engage the largest new consumers, China and India, including by inviting them to join the International Energy Agency. Though they are not OECD countries, a formalized relationship for them with the International Energy Agency – where we work together on common analysis and emergency response mechanisms – is imperative.

Ø Invest in a Better Energy Future: Obama has a comprehensive plan to make America a global energy leader, including accomplishing the ambitious goal of reducing our dependence on foreign oil and reduce oil consumption overall by at least 35 percent, or 10 million barrels of oil, by 2030. This plan includes increased fuel economy standards, investments in developing advanced vehicles, building a biofuel distribution infrastructure, and building more livable and sustainable communities.

John Dean and Keith Olbermann expressing hope that President Obama will press criminal charges against telecom community if his fight to strip telecom immunity from FISA 2008 is unsuccessful in the Senate

Sheldon from Doylestown — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 01:26:02 EDT

John Dean and Keith Olbermann expressing hope that President Obama will press criminal charges against telecom community if his fight to strip telecom immunity from FISA 2008 is unsuccessful in the Senate. This, after the caving by Democrats in the House of Representatives on FISA 2008.

Video:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#25292233

June 21, 2008, 12:20 PM

Obama: I'll Fight To Strip Telecom Immunity From FISA

Posted by David S Morgan|

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/06/21/politics/horserace/entry4200105.shtml#ccmm
(CBS/AP) - Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., issued a statement in support of the House's update of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but said he would try to strip a provision granting immunity to telecommunication companies when the bill comes to a vote in the Senate next week.

The House approved a compromise bill Friday that would set new electronic surveillance rules that would also shield telecoms from lawsuits arising from their participation in the government's warrantless eavesdropping on telephone and computer lines in the United States.

The government eavesdropped on American phone and computer lines for almost six years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks without permission from the FISA Court, the special panel established for that purpose under the original 1978 law.

Some 40 lawsuits have been filed against the telecommunications companies by groups and individuals who say the Bush administration illegally monitored their phone calls or e-mails.

Obama said there is "little doubt" that the Bush Administration, with the cooperation of major telecommunications companies, "has abused [its] authority and undermined the Constitution by intercepting the communications of innocent Americans without their knowledge or the required court orders."

"Given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as president, I will carefully monitor the program.

"[The bill] does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses."

The House approved the legislation 293-129.

The White House had threatened to veto any surveillance bill that did not also shield the companies.

Critics say granting immunity to telecoms would scrap the pending lawsuits and prevent any public airing of details about the government's surveillance activities.

Last February, when an earlier version of the FISA bill came to a vote, Obama voted for an amendment to strip the telecom immunity provision from the bill. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) voted in favor of keeping immunity for the telecoms.

For more background on FISA 2008, see:

Surveillance Bill: The Worst of All Worlds

June 20, 2008

Months of troubled negotiations over new surveillance legislation ended in the House of Representatives today, with the approval of the so-called FISA Amendments Act of 2008. Hailed in some quarters as a " compromise" after the capitulation of the Protect America Act of 2006, the new surveillance bill is nothing of the kind: on core issues of privacy and accountability, there is no compromise, since little in the measure honors those two values. Since the New York Times's revelation of massive illegal surveillance by the NSA, electronic privacy has been a battlefield for claims of executive power and civil liberties. In 2006, the Administration used the shadow of midterm Congressional elections to stampede both Houses into temporary authorization of sweeping new powers in the Protect America Act (PAA). The measure's grants of new authority had sunset clauses, which expire either immediately before or after the 2008 elections.

The PAA set the scene for another legislative bait-and-switch: On the cusp of national election contests, the Administration rang alarms of crisis, claiming the nation is losing spying capabilities. Legislators inclined to protect civil liberties weighed their exposure to soft-on-security attacks against their allegiance to constitutional values. Either way--in terms of raw power or partisan advantage--the Administration and its supporters win.

House Democratic leadership agreed to support the measure--seemingly out of fear of losing conservative Democrats to an even weaker proposal. But it is the worst of both worlds. It contains just enough of a pretense of accountability to allow the legislators to claim a victory for civil liberties, as it sells out core principles of accountability and privacy.

Begin with accountability. Since the enactment of the PAA, the Administration and its allies have pushed for legislative immunity for the telecommunications companies that aided the NSA's illegal spying from 2001 until 2005. (Those companies are the defendants in multiple suits, presently consolidated before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, challenging their complicity in past illegal wiretapping).

They argue that protection is necessary to ensure future cooperation, even though the telecoms were not deterred by the fact their past actions were clearly in violation of federal law.

In fact, immunity is on the White House front burner for wholly different reasons: pending lawsuits against the telecoms are the best opportunity for the American public to learn what kind of illegal surveillance occurred under Bush's watch, and how existing law against warrantless wiretapping was circumvented. As bad as the telecoms will look, the Administration will look worse as more of its cynical and results-oriented reasoning and contempt for constitutional rights is fully aired.

At first blush, the new bill seems to be a fair compromise. Under Section 802, pending lawsuits are not automatically dismissed. They are not even moved to the secretive FISA court, as an earlier proposal would have done. Rather, the district court in each case is required to dismiss a case provided that a defendant telecom can show that it acted with the "authorization" of the President and also with a certain kind of "written request or directive." The bill then provides an elaborate description of that directive: it can be from the Attorney General, or the head of "an element of the intelligence community" (or from their deputy), and must say simply that the surveillance was determined to be lawful. The bill does not say who must have made this determination.

According to the a report in the Washington Post, this provision would give courts "the chance to evaluate whether telecommunications companies deserve retroactive protection from lawsuits." But the provision does nothing of the kind. Rather, the court can only look to see if the defendant has the piece of paper described in the law, and if it does, the court must dismiss the case. By interposing a certification requirement, and directing judicial attention to a piece of paper, the bill fends off judicial scrutiny of what in fact occurred.

And there is every reason to believe that the telecom defendants will have the necessary piece of paper. Indeed, there is every reason to believe that the bill has been carefully written to track the precise piece of paper the telecoms have--otherwise, why list both the Attorney General and the heads of intelligence community elements? And why include the weird codicil about the deputies of one but not the other?

House minority whip Roy Blunt of Missouri has all but confirmed that the law was drafted to give the pretense of judicial review without the substance: "The lawsuits will be dismissed," Blunt explained, "and we feel comfortable that the standard of evidence that the law requires will be easily met."

The bill, in short, is worse than granting absolute immunity: it is an effort to suborn the legitimacy of the federal courts by having a judge rubber-stamp the dismissal of cases against the telecoms without looking at the substance of what, in fact, was done. It reduces the separation of powers to a check-the-box exercise.

The bill does no better on privacy matters--the question of new surveillance power. Title I of the measure grants the executive branch new surveillance powers for collecting the communications of persons overseas. Although it contains several provisions that purport to shelter Americans' privacy both at home and overseas, these parts of the bill are rendered irrelevant by the grant of sweeping collection authorization.

Under the bill, the government can create new surveillance programs, each lasting a year, that focus on "persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States." Provided that spying agencies do not "intentionally target" someone "known" to be in the United States, or intend to target "a particular, known person reasonably believed to be in the United States" (and with some other minor caveats), large-scale acquisition of data is permitted.

To be sure, the bill then installs judicial review of such collection efforts--but the courts will not examine the actual surveillance programs, let alone individual cases of surveillance. Again, the bill interposes a certification requirement between the court and the facts.

Specifically, the role of judges is limited to ascertaining whether the Attorney General has completed a certification promising that either he has followed the law, or that he will follow the law soon. If the Attorney General cannot meet even this spectacularly low bar, the bill gives the government time to amend and to re-file the certificate. Something even Alberto Gonzales could manage.

This is a radical break from the FISA regime created in 1978, and risks severe harm to Americans' privacy interests. The most important break with FISA is the absence of any individualized warrant requirement: it is now whole collection programs that are authorized and reviewed. And the abandonment of discrete, individualized legislative authorization and judicial review is only the first of the bill's troubling features.

The new provisions also allow the government to create sweeping new programs that are formally targeted at overseas persons, but that predictably sweep in large. The provision's loose language about targets--who do not in fact have to be overseas, only reasonably believed to be overseas--gives the government substantial latitude in crafting the parameters of its searches. Past experience gives no cause for confidence on this point. If the bill is enacted, Americans could simply no longer have confidence that calls placed or received from abroad would be private.

Democrats have emphasized new Section 102, which affirms that the act is "the exclusive means" for electronic surveillance for national security ends. But this was the provision in the original FISA that the Bush Administration circumvented. Re-enacting a notional rule that has been flagrantly violated for half a decade, and whose violation continues to be defended and even celebrated, is hardly a victory for civil liberties.

All this is too high a cost in the phony war over privacy. Despite the repeated cries of crisis, there is no verifiable evidence--and nothing at all beyond the self-serving complaints of Bush Administration Cassandras--that the pre-PAA regime under the FISA Act was fundamentally flawed. If the PAA wholly lapses, it is certain that the nation's security will not collapse. When the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 passes the Senate--as it almost certainly will next week--we can be certain that it will be the privacy rights of Americans, and their ability to hold government accountable, that will suffer.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080707/huq

Head of International Atomic Energy Agency: "Mideast will burn if Iran attacked."

Sheldon from Doylestown — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 17:47:03 EDT

The Associated Press: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gBMOJYFFlUOfdtpnIEeb-aLK5diAD91EICCO0

ElBaradei: Mideast will burn if Iran attacked

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI – 5 hours ago

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The U.N. nuclear watchdog chief warned in comments aired Saturday that any military strike on Iran could turn the Mideast into a "ball of fire" and lead the country to a more aggressive stance on its controversial nuclear program.

The comments by Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, came in an interview with an Arab television station aired a day after U.S. officials said they believed recent large Israeli military exercises may have been meant to show Israel's ability to hit Iran's nuclear sites.

"In my opinion, a military strike will be the worst ... it will turn the Middle East to a ball of fire," ElBaradei said on Al-Arabiya television. It also could prompt Iran to press even harder to seek a nuclear program, and force him to resign, he said.

Iran on Saturday also criticized the Israeli exercises. The official IRNA news agency quoted a government spokesman as saying that the exercises demonstrate Israel "jeopardizes global peace and security."

Israel sent warplanes and other aircraft on a major exercise in the eastern Mediterranean earlier this month, U.S. military officials said Friday. Israel's military refused to confirm or deny that the maneuvers were practice for a strike in Iran, saying only that it regularly trains for various missions to counter threats to the country.

But the exercise the first week of June may have been meant as a show of force as well as a practice on skills needed to execute a long-range strike mission, one U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record on the matter.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said he prefers that Iran's nuclear ambitions be halted by diplomatic means, but has pointedly declined to rule out military action.

The U.S. says it is seeking a diplomatic resolution to the threat the West sees from Iran's nuclear program, although U.S. officials also have refused to take the threat of military action off the table.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice refused to comment on the Israeli maneuvers in an interview with National Public Radio aired Saturday but said: "We are committed to a diplomatic course."

One Israeli lawmaker on Saturday urged caution, saying that the world should first do more to toughen and broaden the sanctions against Iran to persuade its leaders to halt the nuclear program.

Tzahi Hanegbi, chairman of the powerful Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in Israel's parliament, suggested steps including banning Iranian planes, ships and sports delegations from entering Western countries.

"There's a long way to go before diplomatic efforts are exhausted," Hanegbi said. "The sanctions aren't very strong, they are very shallow, there's a lot of room for enhancing them."

Meanwhile, reaction to the Israeli exercises rippled across other parts of the Gulf.

In Dubai, the government-owned Khaleej Times newspaper warned in an editorial Saturday that an attack on Iran by Israel or the United States would have "disastrous consequences for the region."

"A nuclear Iran is in nobody's interest, but military action and armed rehearsals will also not be tolerated," the paper said.

The U.S. and many Western nations accuse Iran of seeking a nuclear bomb. Iran has rejected the charges saying its nuclear program is aimed at generating electricity not a weapon.

A U.S. intelligence report released late last year concluded that Iran has suspended its nuclear weapons program, but Israeli intelligence believes that is incorrect and that work is continuing.

There is precedent for unilateral Israeli action.

In 1981, Israeli jets bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear facility to end dictator Saddam Hussein's nuclear program. Last September, Israel bombed a facility in Syria that U.S. officials have said was a nuclear reactor being constructed with North Korean assistance.

McCain's Nuclear Waste: How the Arizona senator doomed his own global warming legislation with billions in nuclear subsidies

Sheldon from Doylestown — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 00:48:36 EDT

McCain's Nuclear Waste: How the Arizona senator doomed his own global warming legislation with billions in nuclear subsidies

On January 9, 2003—five years before he would become the Republican Party's presumptive presidential nominee—Senator John McCain strode to the Senate floor and began a speech by citing the National Academy of Sciences: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in the Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise." He then pointed to a host of scientific studies that had outlined the negative consequences of global warming. "The United States must do something," he proclaimed, announcing that he and Senator Joseph Lieberman were introducing legislation that day to establish mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions and set up a system for the trading of emissions credits.

Environmental groups endorsed the McCain-Lieberman bill, which compelled major industries to reduce greenhouse gases to 2000 levels by 2010. The League of Conservation Voters called it "a relatively modest reduction" but an "important first step" that would "send an important signal to the global community." It was indeed the first serious attempt in the Senate to impose a cap on global warming emissions.

Ten months later, the bill was defeated by a relatively close margin, 55 to 43. (Then-Senator John Edwards, who missed the vote, had indicated he supported the bill.) Environmental advocates in Washington considered this a decent start considering that six years earlier the Senate had voted unanimously for a nonbinding resolution that signaled opposition to the Kyoto global warming treaty. With this bill, McCain established himself as the undisputed Republican leader on climate change. Convinced that global warming had already led to more droughts and wildfires in his home state of Arizona, McCain vowed to keep fighting for the measure. But within a year and a half, McCain would lose ground and set back the effort to reduce emissions because of a profound political miscalculation, his own stubbornness, and, most of all, his deep attachment to nuclear power.

About a year after their bill was defeated, McCain and Lieberman began drafting a new version. It was close to the original, but with one significant addition: billions of dollars in tax subsidies for the nuclear energy industry.

McCain had long been an advocate of nuclear power. "He feels strongly that nuclear power will be one of the keys to reducing emissions," says Heather Wicke, who was his environmental legislative aide at the time. But environmentalists who had worked with McCain and Lieberman on the first bill were stunned. In one meeting, lobbyists for environmental groups attempted to persuade McCain not to attach nuclear subsidies to the legislation, arguing that doing so would weaken support for the bill. "He shook his finger at us and scolded us," says one participant at the meeting, who recalls McCain saying, "You're wrong and I'm right." Wicke, now the director of policy for the Piedmont Environmental Council, notes that McCain had already made up his mind and that the session was "testy."

In meetings with McCain's staff, environmental lobbyists argued the obvious points, according to Karen Wayland, legislative director of the Natural Resources Defense Council: what to do with nuclear waste, the need to prevent nuclear proliferation, the problem with security at nuclear facilities. They noted that legislation restricting greenhouse emissions in and of itself would create a competitive advantage for nuclear energy companies. They made no headway, so the enviros appealed to Lieberman and his staff. "Lieberman didn't seem to care for this provision," one of the green lobbyists remembers, "but he needed McCain, and McCain was pushing hard" for the nuclear subsidies.

Part of McCain's motivation was political. According to Wicke, he and his aides figured that these subsidies could attract several pro-nuclear Republicans, and they had their eyes on Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Senator Liddy Dole of North Carolina. Wicke was concerned at the time that the nuclear subsidies would cost the measure support and that a bill loaded with money for the nuclear energy industry would contradict McCain's high-profile opposition to subsidies—which was partly responsible for his reputation as a fiscal conservative and a maverick. In June 2003, McCain had joined 47 other senators to vote for an amendment stripping an energy bill of up to $16 billion in subsidies for the nuclear power industry. (The amendment lost by a two-vote margin.)

Wicke heard from staffers for several senators who had supported McCain and Lieberman's original bill that these senators might oppose the measure if the new version contained nuclear subsidies. "It made me nervous," she recalls. But McCain remained firm in his belief that the billions for nuclear power would draw in more Republicans.

In May 2005, McCain and Lieberman reintroduced their climate change bill—with the subsidies. McCain acknowledged that "friends" in the environmental movement were opposed to the nuclear provision. He spoke at length in the Senate to defend this part of the bill: "The idea that nuclear power should play no role in our energy mix is an unsustainable position.... I, for one, believe it can and should play an even greater role, not because I have some inordinate love affair with splitting the atom, but for the very simple reason that we must support sustainable, zero-emission alternatives such as nuclear if we are serious about addressing the problem of global warming.... I am a green, and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy."

His friends were not persuaded. While the Environmental Defense Fund and the National Wildlife Federation continued to support McCain, the Natural Resource Defense Council, the Sierra Club, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and others mounted a fierce campaign against the new bill. On June 22, 2005, it came up for a vote and was defeated 60 to 38. Several Democratic senators who had backed McCain's original legislation—Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Mark Dayton (D-Minn.), Tom Harkin (D-Iowa)—defected, and McCain picked up no new Republicans. (Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both voted for it.) "The staff didn't fully appreciate how much opposition there would be to the nuclear provision," Wicke says, adding, "I could say it was a bit of miscalculation.... It did stymie this climate change legislation." After collecting 44 supporters for the first bill, McCain had lost ground.

Sometime after the vote, the NRDC's Wayland attended a meeting McCain held with representatives of environmental organizations. McCain was unapologetic about his decision to tie his climate change measure to nuclear power subsidies. "He said that environmentalists had lost power and influence because they did not support nuclear power," Wayland recalls, "and that renewables would never be more than 1 or 2 percent of the active energy supplies. I tried to argue with him and got nowhere. It was hard to a get a word in edgewise." After the meeting an upset Wayland, engaging in retail therapy, headed to a store and bought several pairs of shoes.

In January 2007, McCain and Lieberman again introduced their climate change bill, and the nuclear subsidies remained in the bill. (Public Citizen estimated the subsidies would run to at least $3.7 billion.) But in fall of 2007, the McCain-Lieberman bill was eclipsed by legislation introduced by Lieberman and Republican Senator John Warner. This bill called for deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions—though not as great as many scientists advocated—and it contained no special subsidies for nuclear power. The Lieberman-Warner measure immediately became the major piece of pending climate change legislation in the Senate. McCain and his bill were essentially out of the picture. He was, at the time, busy campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination.

"To his credit, he was a leader in the Republican Party on climate change," Wayland says. But by pushing breaks for nuclear power, McCain damaged a cause he had been passionately advocating for, leaving this particular battlefield with self-inflicted wounds.

http://motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2008/03/john-mccain-nuclear-waste.html

Reposting Susan in the OC's post.

Sheldon from Doylestown — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 22:17:15 EDT

Reposting Susan in the OC's post. (links are failing on her account.)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25281747/

Bloomberg defends Obama before Jewish group Says deceptive efforts threaten to undo strides Jews, Muslims have made

The Associated Press

updated 11:21 a.m. ET, Fri., June. 20, 2008

Richard Drew / AP New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, left, told a Jewish audience lies about Barack Obama are "cloaked in concern for Israel, but the real concern is about partisan politics."

NEW YORK - Mayor Michael Bloomberg urged Jewish voters to denounce the whisper campaign that for months has pushed the false rumor that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim. Bloomberg warned a Jewish group in Boca Raton, Fla., on Friday that the attempt to portray Obama as a shadowy Muslim with a hidden agenda often targets Jewish voters online and with e-mails. The deceptive campaign against Obama, who is Christian, "threatens to undo the enormous strides that Jews and Muslims have made together in this country," the New York mayor said.

The lies are "cloaked in concern for Israel, but the real concern is about partisan politics," said Bloomberg, who is Jewish. "This is wedge politics at its worst, and we've got to reject it - loudly, clearly and unequivocally."

Bloomberg, a billionaire independent, had considered making his own run for the White House this year, but decided against it. He has said his endorsement and potential financial backing could still be up for grabs, and there has been occasional chatter about how he might make a good running mate for either Obama or Republican John McCain.

Either way, Bloomberg's passionate defense of Obama in front of a Jewish audience in Florida could help the Illinois senator in the state, which is home to many Jewish voters.

Some have questioned Obama's commitment to Israel; this stems partly from his stated willingness to talk with leaders of rogue nations, which McCain and others have criticized as a sign he underestimates the threat posed to Israel by Iran and others in the Middle East.

There is also uneasiness about Obama among some Jewish people because his former church pastor has praised black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan, who has made anti-Semitic remarks. Obama has disavowed his pastor and left the church.

Earlier this month in a speech to Jewish activists in Washington, Obama referred to the e-mail campaign against him as one "filled with tall tales and dire warnings."

Bloomberg noted how racial and religious tensions have cooled, and remained calm, in New York City — an achievement for which he is often praised.

One thing he has learned, Bloomberg said, is that one must speak out against those who spread "fear and stereotypes."

"That's why I'm speaking out today," he said, "and I hope all of you will join me throughout this campaign in strongly speaking out against this fear mongering, no matter who you'll be voting for."

Information For PA Delegates and Alternate Delegates: Denver Marriott Tech Center (Pennsylvania's hotel), RTD, and the Pepsi Center

Sheldon from Doylestown — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:44:47 EDT

Denver Marriott Tech Center (Pennsylvania's hotel), RTD, and the Pepsi Center

4900 S. Syracuse Street
Denver, Colorado 80237 USA
Phone: 1-303-779-1100
Fax: 1-303-740-2523

Useful links:

Denver Marriott Tech Center home:

http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/dentc-denver-marriott-tech-center/

Map at Marriott site:

http://www.marriott.com/hotels /maps/travel/dentc-denver-marriott-tech-center/

Google 4900 S. Syracuse St. map link (just off 88 (Belleview Ave.) near I-25):

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=4900+S.+Syracuse+St.,+Denver,+CO&ie=UTF8&ll=39.625127,-104.900293&spn=0.014048,0.026436&z=15

Google map link (as seen in the Denver metropolitan area):

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=4900+S.+Syracuse+St.,+Denver,+CO&ie=UTF8&ll=39.625127,-104.900293&spn=0.449545,0.845947&z=10

Regional Transportation District RTD

E Line: Belleview Station (Near the Marriott Denver Tech Center) to Pepsi Center/Elitch Garden Station:

http://www.rtd-denver.com/routemaps/r0_EFGHLines.pdf

Another view (Southeast Business Parks) scroll 1/3 down to see Belleview Station:

http://www.rtd-denver.com/SystemMaps/SystemMaps_pdfs/SE_BusParks.pdf

RTD light rail schedules: http://www.rtd-denver.com/RoutesLockedHeader/index.html

E Line weekday schedule:

http://www.rtd-denver.com/RoutesLockedHeader/RouteSE/901WeekdaysFrameN-BoundL.html

Click more to the right on the header to see time that you arrive at the Convention Center (One-way trip is 27 minutes.) One train every 30 minutes.

The fare is $3.00 one-way.

http://www.rtd-denver.com/FaresAndPasses/Lightrail_Cash_Fare_Zone_Matrix.pdf

RTD main site: http://rtd-denver.com/

RTD Light Rail image:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.rtd-fastracks.com/images/uploads/main/Web_new_train.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.rtd-fastracks.com/main_102&h=336&w=448&sz=46&hl=en&start=20&tbnid=J3YuSqdrFd-6iM:&tbnh=95&tbnw=127&prev=/images%3Fq%3DRTD%2BLight%2BRail%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG

Pepsi Center images:

http://cache.marriott.com/propertyimages/d/dendt/phototour/dendt_phototour25.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Denver_Pepsi_Center_1.jpg

Seating at: http://www.pepsicenter.com/Facility/ArenaFacts/Default.aspx

Arena

· 5 level arena.

· Seating: Basketball – 19,309; Hockey – 18,007; Arena Football – 17,417; Lacrosse – 18,007; Concerts – 20,000+ depending on stage configuration; Special events – 21,000.

· Building is 675,000 square feet.

Compared with the Fleet Center in Boston (now renamed TD Banknorth Garden)

http://www.tdbanknorthgarden.com/gardeninfo/general.asp

Seating Capacity:

Hockey: 17,565
Basketball: 18,624
Maximum: 19,580
Total Size: 755,000 square feet

FEC Rules for National Convention Delegates

Sheldon from Doylestown — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 23:53:52 EDT

Pertinent information:

Please see FEC Rules for National Convention Delegates:

http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/delegate.shtml ( and http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/biennial.shtml/)

Uri Avnery's latest column on Israel and Palestine

Sheldon from Doylestown — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 02:09:53 EDT

Uri Avnery

Israeli peace activist, journalist, and former member of Israel’s Knesset. He joined the Irgun underground in 1938 and served as an Israeli Defense Force commando in the 1948 war.

(for profile see: http://www.afsc.org/israel-palestine/profiles-of-peace/uri-avnery.htm)

The following column pertains to Israel and Palestine.

An Apology

6-14-08

THIS WEEK, the Prime Minister of Canada made a dramatic statement in Parliament: he apologized to the indigenous peoples of his country for the injustices done to them for generations by successive Canadian governments.

This way, White Canada tries to make peace with the native nations, whose country their forefathers conquered and whose culture their rulers have tried to wipe out.

APOLOGIZING FOR past wrongs has become a part of modern political culture.

That is never an easy thing to do. Cynics might say: nothing to it. Just words. And words, after all, are a cheap commodity. But in fact, such acts have a profound significance. A human being - and even more so, a whole nation - always finds it hard to admit to iniquities performed and to atrocities committed. It means a rewriting of the historical narrative that forms the basis of their national cohesion. It necessitates a drastic change in the schoolbooks and in the national outlook. In general, governments are averse to this, because of the nationalistic demagogues and hate-mongers who infest every country.

The President of France has apologized on behalf of his people for the misdeeds of the Vichy regime, which turned Jews over to the Nazi exterminators. The Czech government has apologized to the Germans for the mass expulsion of the German population at the end of World War II. Germany, of course, has apologized to the Jews for the unspeakable crimes of the Holocaust. Quite recently, the government of Australia has apologized to the Aborigines. And even in Israel, a feeble effort was made to heal a grievous domestic wound, when Ehud Barak apologized to the Oriental Jews for the discrimination they have suffered for many years.

But we face a much more difficult and complex problem. It concerns the roots of our national existence in this country.

I BELIEVE that peace between us and the Palestinian people - a real peace, based on real conciliation - starts with an apology.

In my mind's eye I see the President of the State or the Prime Minister addressing a special extraordinary session of the Knesset and making a historic speech on the following lines:

MADAM SPEAKER, Honorable Knesset,

On behalf of the State of Israel and all its citizens, I address today the sons and daughters of the Palestinian people, wherever they are.

We recognize the fact that we have committed against you a historic injustice, and we humbly ask your forgiveness.

When the Zionist movement decided to establish a national home in this country, which we call Eretz Yisrael and you call Filastin, it had no intention of building our state on the ruins of another people. Indeed, almost no one in the Zionist movement had ever been in the country before the first Zionist Congress in 1897, or even had any idea about the actual situation here.

The burning desire of the founding fathers of this movement was to save the Jews of Europe, where the dark clouds of hatred for the Jews were gathering. In Eastern Europe, pogroms were raging, and all over Europe there were signs of the process that would eventually lead to the terrible Holocaust, in which six million Jews perished.

This basic aim attached itself to the profound devotion of the Jews, throughout the generations, to the country in which the Bible, the defining text of our people, was written, and to the city of Jerusalem, towards which the Jews have turned for thousands of years in their prayers.

The Zionist founders who came to this country were pioneers who carried in their hearts the most lofty ideals. They believed in national liberation, freedom, justice and equality. We are proud of them. They certainly did not dream of committing an injustice of historic dimensions.

ALL THIS does not justify what happened afterwards. The creation of the Jewish national home in this country has involved a profound injustice to you, the people who lived here for generations.

We cannot ignore anymore the fact that in the war of 1948 - which is the War of Independence for us, and the Naqba for you - some 750 thousand Palestinians were compelled to leave their homes and lands. As for the precise circumstances of this tragedy I propose the establishment of a "Committee for Truth and Reconciliation"' composed of experts from your and from our side, whose conclusions will from then on be incorporated in the schoolbooks, yours and ours.

We cannot ignore anymore the fact that for 60 years of conflict and war, you have been prevented from realizing your natural right to independence in your own free national state, a right confirmed by the United Nations General Assembly resolution of November 29, 1947, which also formed the legal basis for the establishment of the State of Israel.

For all this, we owe you an apology, and I express it hereby with all my heart.

The Bible tells us: "Whoso confesseth (his crimes) and forsakes them shall have mercy" (Proverbs 28:13). Clearly, confession does not suffice. We have also to forsake the wrongs we have done in the past.

It is impossible to turn the wheel of history back and restore the situation that existed in the country in 1947, much as Canada - or the United States, for that matter - cannot go back 200 years. We must build our common future on the joint desire to move forwards, to heal what can be healed and repair what can be repaired without inflicting new wounds, committing new injustices and causing more human tragedies.

I urge you to accept our apology in the spirit in which it is offered. Let us work together for a just, viable and practical solution of our century-old conflict - a solution that may not fulfill all justified aspirations nor right all wrongs, but which will allow both our peoples to live their lives in freedom, peace and prosperity.

This solution is clear for all to see. We all know what it is. It has emerged from our painful experiences, hammered out by the lessons of our sufferings, crystallized by the exertions of the best of our minds - yours as well as ours.

This solution means, simply: You have the same rights as we. We have the same rights as you: to live in a state of our own, under our own flag, governed by laws of our own making, ruled by a government freely elected by ourselves - hopefully a good one.

One of the fundamental commandments of our religion - as of yours and every other - was pronounced 2000 years ago by Rabbi Hillel: Do not unto others, what you do not want others to do to you.

This means in practice: your right to establish at once the free and sovereign State of Palestine in all the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, which will be accepted as a full member of the United Nations.

The borders of June 4, 1967, will be restored. I hope that we can agree, in free negotiations, to minimal exchanges of territory beneficial to both sides.

Jerusalem, which is so dear to all of us, must be the capital of both our states - West Jerusalem, including the Western Wall, the capital of Israel, East Jerusalem, including al-Haram al-Sharif, which we call the Temple Mount, the capital of Palestine. What is Arab shall be yours, what is Jewish shall be ours. Let us work together to keep the city, as a living reality, open and united.

We shall evacuate the Israeli settlements, which have caused so much suffering and iniquities to you, and bring the settlers home, except from those small areas which will be joined to Israel in the framework of freely agreed swaps of territory. We shall also dismantle all the paraphernalia of the occupation, both physical and institutional.

We must approach with open hearts, compassion and common sense, the task of finding a just and viable solution for the terrible tragedy of the refugees and their decendants. Each refugee family must be granted a free choice between the various solutions: repatriation and resettlement in the State of Palestine, with generous assistance; staying where they are or emigration to any country of their choice, also with generous assistance; and yes - coming back to the territory of Israel in acceptable numbers, agreed by us. The refugees themselves must be a full partner in all our efforts.

I trust that our two states - Israel and Palestine, living side by side in this beloved but small country, will quickly come together on the human, social, economic, technological and cultural levels, creating a relationship that will not only guarantee our security, but also rapid development and prosperity for all.

Together we will work for peace and prosperity throughout our region, based on close relations with all the countries of the area.

Committed to peace and vowing to create a better future for our children and grandchildren, let us rise to our feet and bow our heads in memory of the countless victims of our conflict, Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians - a conflict that has lasted far too long.

SUCH A SPEECH is, to my mind, absolutely essential for opening a new chapter in the history of this country.

In decades of meeting with Palestinians of all walks of life, I have come to the conclusion that the emotional aspects of the conflict are no less - and perhaps even more - important than the political ones. A profound sense of injustice permeates the minds and actions of all Palestinians. Unconscious or half-conscious guilt feelings are troubling the souls of the Israelis, creating a deep conviction that Arabs will never make peace with us.

I do not know when such a speech will be possible. Many imponderable factors will have an impact on that. But I do know that without it, mere peace agreements, reached between haggling diplomats, will not suffice. As the Oslo agreements have shown, building an artificial island in a sea of stormy emotions just will not do.

THE PUBLIC apology by the Canadian Prime Minister is not the only thing we can learn from that North American country.

43 years ago, the Canadian government took an extraordinary step in order to make peace between the English-speaking majority and the French-speaking minority among their citizens. That relationship had remained an open wound from the time the British conquered French Canada some 250 years ago. It was decided to replace the Canadian national flag, which was based on the British "Union Jack", with a completely new national flag, featuring the maple leaf.

On this occasion, the Speaker of the Senate said: "The flag is the symbol of the nation's unity, for it, beyond any doubt, represents all the citizens of Canada without distinction of race, language, belief or opinion."

We can learn something from that, too.

Source: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1213478638/

Video: Al Gore's endorsement of Barack Obama

Sheldon from Doylestown — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 01:08:02 EDT

Video: Al Gore's endorsement of Barack Obama (15:02) (short commercial at start)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/25195391#25201367

Video: Keith Olbermann on Senator McCain’s statement that it's not too important when the troops come home from Iraq:

Sheldon from Doylestown — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 18:45:18 EDT

Video: Keith Olbermann on Senator McCain’s statement that it's not too important when the troops come home from Iraq:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/25130683#25130683

Service Agreements Masquerade as Iraqi Oil Revenue Sharing (Bill Marjenhoff's post)

Sheldon from Doylestown — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 13:11:35 EDT

(Originally posted by Bill Marjenhoff at http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post_edit/_new/dJ2FN)

Thirty year service agreements are masquerading as an Iraqi Oil Revenue Sharing bill. There is nothing in any Iraqi Oil sharing legislation about sharing oil revenue. There is only a clause that says that later, a law will be passed to figure out how to share that revenue. The law actually sets up oil field service agreements with the “sovereign” Iraqi government. Most countries only have two or three year agreements. But these are for thirty years. They allow the oil companies to award themselves these agreements and to take seventy percent of the profits from these oil service agreements, tax-free, out of Iraq. These thirty year agreements would gut the Iraqi oil ministry and turn it into nothing more than a shell of itself, with multi-national oil companies allowed to sit on boards that determine and award themselves the most lucrative oil fields. The agreements would allow the foreign oil companies to take their seventy percent profit up front from existing oil fields for two years without sinking a dime into a single well.

The thirty year service agreements proposal was written by a firm in Texas and leaked to alternative media before it was even handed over to the Iraqi government to be rubber stamped. The Bush administration wants permanent bases in Iraq so our troops can protect the oil companies’ investment. One is tempted to conclude that U.S. and U.K. soldiers are dying in Iraq to fill the corporate coffers of Big Oil.

Escaping Forwards: The Syrian Option

Sheldon from Doylestown — Wed, 28 May 2008 00:38:00 EDT

The Syrian Option

Escaping Forwards

By URI AVNERY

The Germans call it "die Flucht nach vorne" - escaping forwards. When the situation is desperate, attack! Instead of retreating, advance!
When there is no way out, storm ahead!

This method was successful in 1948. At the end of May, the Egyptian army was advancing on Tel Aviv. We - a very, very thin line of soldiers - were all that stood in its way. So we attacked. Again and again and again. We suffered heavy losses. But we stopped the Egyptian advance.

Now Ehud Olmert is applying the same method. His situation is desperate. Most people in Israel do not doubt that he has received large bribes in envelopes stuffed with dollars. The Attorney General is liable to indict him any time, and this will compel him to resign.

And lo and behold, at the most critical moment, just before the most damning details come out, a joint statement is issued simultaneously in Jerusalem, Damascus and Ankara, announcing the start of peace negotiations between Israel and Syria, with Turkey acting as mediator. The talks will be based on the principles of the 1991 Madrid Conference, meaning the return of the entire Golan Heights.

Wow!!!

* * *

IN THIS, too, Olmert is the worthy pupil of his predecessor and mentor, Ariel Sharon.

Sharon was up to his neck in corruption affairs. In one of them, the so-called "Greek Island affair", the Israeli millionaire David Appel paid huge sums to Sharon's son, a novice, for "advice". At the time, too, it seemed that the Attorney General could not possibly avoid issuing an indictment.

Sharon's response was sheer genius: the Separation. Separation from the Gaza Strip. Separation from the Attorney General.

That was a gigantic operation. In a minutely orchestrated melodramatic performance, the Gush Katif settlements were dismantled. Together with several army divisions, all police forces - the same police that was supposed to investigate the Sharon family's business affairs - were deployed in a breath-taking national endeavor. The peace camp supported, of course, the evacuation of the settlements. The corruption affairs were all but forgotten.

The separation, which was carried out without any dialogue with the Palestinians, has turned the whole of the Gaza Strip into a ticking bomb, and now Ehud Olmert has to negotiate a cease-fire. For Sharon, though, the entire exercise was a success. If he had not suffered a stroke, he would still be Prime Minister today.

The lesson did not escape Olmert.

* * *

AESTHETES MAY exclaim: Phooey! We should not countenance such a dirty trick! We cannot agree to a peace conceived in sin!

Maybe my aesthetic sense is blunted. Because I am ready to accept peace even from a totally corrupt leader, even from Satan himself. If the corruption of a politician causes him to do something that will save the lives of hundreds and thousands of human beings on both sides - that's OK with me. Didn't the philosopher Friedrich Hegel talk about the "cunning of reason"?

The Bible recounts that when the army of Damascus laid siege to Samaria, the capital of the Kingdom of Israel, four leprous men brought the news that the enemy had fled (2 Kings, 7). The Hebrew poetess Rachel wrote, alluding to this story, that she was not willing to receive good news from lepers. Well, I am.

Conventional wisdom has it that to make peace, one needs a strong leader. Now it appears that the opposite also works: that a weak leader, almost submerged in troubles, whose term in office could come to a sudden end at any moment and whose coalition stands on feets of clay, a leader who has nothing to lose - he too may risk all to make peace.

THE PLOT may move on from here in several possible directions.

The first possibility: it's all "spin" - an American term that has become Olmert's middle name. He will just stretch the negotiations out like bubble gum, as he has been doing with the Palestinians, and wait for the storm to blow over.

It will be difficult for him to do so, because Turkey is now a partner in the game. Even Olmert understands that it will be sheer folly to annoy the Turks, who are risking their national prestige here. Turkey is a very important partner of our security establishment.

Whatever comes of it, Olmert's agreement to conduct negotiations based on the return of all the Golan is an important step forward. Coming on top of the previous undertakings by Yitzhak Rabin, Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, it defines a line of no return.

The second possibility: Olmert really means it. For his own reasons, he will conduct negotiations "in good faith", as he undertook this week, and reach an agreement. In the country, a wild campaign of incitement will be launched against him. The Knesset will fall apart, new elections will be held, Olmert will again head the Kadima list and win as peacemaker.

Alternatively: he will lose those elections. But he will leave the scene in an honorable cause, not thrown out for his own corruption, but sacrificing himself on the altar of peace.

Alternatively: the Attorney General will indict him in spite of everything, he will resign but go home with head held high as a leader who has taken a historic step. The Attorney General will look like a saboteur of peace and perhaps even the cause of another war.

* * *

A PERTINENT question: if Olmert has indeed decided to "escape forwards"' why escape forwards towards peace and not towards war? This is what usually happens: leaders on the threshold of disaster prefer to start a little (or sometimes big) war. There is nothing like war to divert attention, and waging war is almost always more popular, at least at the beginning, than making peace.

Here there are also two possibilities:

The first: like Paul, Olmert had a revelation, and has really become a man of peace. The nationalist demagogue has matured and now understands that the national interest demands peace. A cynic will laugh out loud. But stranger things have happened on the road to Damascus.

The second: Olmert believes that the Israeli public prefers peace with Syria to war with Syria, and hopes to gain some popularity as a peace-maker. (I believe this to be true.)

The third: Olmert knows that all the chiefs of the Security Establishment (with the notable exception of the Mossad boss) support peace with Syria out of cold strategic calculation. In the eyes of the army General Staff, the loss of the Golan Heights is a reasonable price to pay for breaking Syria loose from Iran and lessening its support for Hizbullah and Hamas, especially if an international force is stationed there after they revert to being the "Syrian Heights".

Syria is a Sunni country, even if it is ruled by members of the small Alawite sect, which is closer to the Shia. (The Alawis derive their name from Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet, who the Shiites consider his rightful heir.) The alliance between secular Sunni Syria and orthodox Shiite Iran is a marriage of convenience, without an ideological basis. The alliance with Shiite Hizbullah is also based on interests: since Syria does not dare to attack Israel in order to get the Golan back, it supports Hizbullah as a proxy.

* * *

ALL THIS happens without the US. This, too, has its precedents: the Sadat initiative of 1977 matured behind the backs of the Americans (as the American ambassador in Cairo at the time told me later). The Oslo initiative also ripened without American participation.

Until lately, the US has opposed any Israeli-Syrian thaw, and even now looks at it askance. In George Bush's cowboy world vision, Syria belongs to the "axis of evil" and must be isolated.

That is grist to the mill for John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, the two American professors who are due to visit Israel next month. Their provocative book asserted that the Israel lobby totally dominates US foreign policy. In this new development, it does indeed seem that Jerusalem has bent Washington to its will.

During his visit to Jerusalem a few days ago, Bush railed against talking with enemies. This was understood to be a rebuke aimed at Barack Obama, who has announced his willingness to speak with the leaders of Iran. Perhaps Olmert is already betting on Obama's entering the White House.

But Bush is not finished yet. He has got eight more months to go, and he, too, may come to the conclusion that he should "escape forwards". In his case: by attacking Iran.

* * *

HOW IS all this going to affect the mother of all problems, the core of the Israeli-Arab conflict: the question of Palestine?

Menachem Begin made a separate peace with Egypt and gave back the whole of the Sinai Peninsula in order to concentrate on the war with the Palestinians. Undoubtedly, Begin was ready to do the same on the Syrian front. According to the map used by Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky, which Olmert was brought up on, the Golan, like Sinai, is not a part of Eretz Israel.

A separate peace harbors great dangers for the Palestinians. If the Israeli government reaches a peace agreement with Syria (and then Lebanon), it will have peace with all the neighboring states. The Palestinians will be isolated and the Israeli government will be able to deal with them as it wishes.

As against this danger, there is a positive prospect: that after the evacuation of the Golan, there will be increased pressure, from inside and outside, to reach peace with the Palestinians, too, at long last.

The Golan settlers are far more popular in Israel than their West Bank counterparts. While the Ofra and Hebron settlers are viewed as religious fanatics, whose crazy behavior is quite alien to the Israeli character, the settlers of the Golan are seen as "people like us". The more so, since they were sent there by the Labor Party. If the Golan settlers are evacuated, it will be much easier to deal with the "Judea and Samaria" crowd.

Being at peace with all Arab states, the Israeli public may feel more secure, and therefore more willing to take risks in making peace with the Palestinian people.

The international atmosphere will also change. If the "axis of evil" fantasy disappears together with George Bush, and a new American leadership makes a serious effort to achieve peace, optimism will again dare to raise its battered head. Some people dream about a partnership of Barack Obama and Tzipi Livni.

All this belongs to the future. In the meantime we have a weak Olmert, who needs a powerful initiative. In the Biblical legend, the hero Samson killed a young lion, and when he returned to it, "behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcase." Samson put forth a riddle unto the Philistines: "Out of the strong came forth sweetness", and nobody was able to solve it (Judges, 14).

Now we can well ask: "Will the weak bring forth sweetness?"

Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom.

http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery05262008.html

Tibet and Palestine

Sheldon from Doylestown — Wed, 28 May 2008 00:12:56 EDT

"Not You! You!!!"

Tibet and Palestine

By URI AVNERY

"Hey! Take your hands off me! Not you! You!!!"--the voice of a young woman in the darkened cinema, an old joke.

"Hey! Take your hands off Tibet!" the international chorus is crying out, "But not from Chechnya! Not from the Basque homeland! And certainly not from Palestine!" And that is not a joke.

* * *

LIKE EVERYBODY else, I support the right of the Tibetan people to independence, or at least autonomy. Like everybody else, I condemn the actions of the Chinese government there. But unlike everybody else, I am not ready to join in the demonstrations.

Why? Because I have an uneasy feeling that somebody is washing my brain, that what is going on is an exercise in hypocrisy.

I don't mind a bit of manipulation. After all, it is not by accident that the riots started in Tibet on the eve of the Olympic Games in Beijing. That's alright. A people fighting for their freedom have the right to use any opportunity that presents itself to further their struggle.

I support the Tibetans in spite of it being obvious that the Americans are exploiting the struggle for their own purposes. Clearly, the CIA has planned and organized the riots, and the American media are leading the world-wide campaign. It is a part of the hidden struggle between the US, the reigning super-power, and China, the rising super-power - a new version of the "Great Game" that was played in central Asia in the 19th century by the British Empire and Russia. Tibet is a token in this game.

I am even ready to ignore the fact that the gentle Tibetans have carried out a murderous pogrom against innocent Chinese, killing women and men and burning homes and shops. Such detestable excesses do happen during a liberation struggle.

No, what is really bugging me is the hypocrisy of the world media. They storm and thunder about Tibet. In thousands of editorials and talk-shows they heap curses and invective on the evil China. It seems as if the Tibetans are the only people on earth whose right to independence is being denied by brutal force, that if only Beijing would take its dirty hands off the saffron-robed monks, everything would be alright in this, the best of all possible worlds.

* * *

THERE IS no doubt that the Tibetan people are entitled to rule their own country, to nurture their unique culture, to promote their religious institutions and to prevent foreign settlers from submerging them.

But are not the Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria entitled to the same? The inhabitants of Western Sahara, whose territory is occupied by Morocco? The Basques in Spain? The Corsicans off the coast of France? And the list is long.

Why do the world's media adopt one independence struggle, but often cynically ignore another independence struggle? What makes the blood of one Tibetan redder than the blood of a thousand Africans in East Congo?

Again and again I try to find a satisfactory answer to this enigma. In vain.

Immanuel Kant demanded of us: "Act as if the principle by which you act were about to be turned into a universal law of nature." (Being a German philosopher, he expressed it in much more convoluted language.) Does the attitude towards the Tibetan problem conform to this rule? Does it reflect our attitude towards the struggle for independence of all other oppressed peoples?

Not at all.

* * *

WHAT, THEN, causes the international media to discriminate between the various liberation struggles that are going on throughout the world?

Here are some of the relevant considerations:

- Do the people seeking independence have an especially exotic culture?
- Are they an attractive people, i.e. "sexy" in the view of the media?
- Is the struggle headed by a charismatic personality who is liked by the media?
- It the oppressing government disliked by the media?
- Does the oppressing government belong to the pro-American camp? This is an important factor, since the United States dominates a large part of the international media, and its news agencies and TV networks largely define the agenda and the terminology of the news coverage.
- Are economic interests involved in the conflict?
- Does the oppressed people have gifted spokespersons, who are able to attract attention and manipulate the media?

* * *

FROM THESE points of view, there is nobody like the Tibetans. They enjoy ideal conditions.

Fringed by the Himalayas, they are located in one of the most beautiful landscapes on earth. For centuries, just to get there was an adventure. Their unique religion arouses curiosity and sympathy. Its non-violence is very attractive and elastic enough to cover even the ugliest atrocities, like the recent pogrom. The exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, is a romantic figure, a media rock-star. The Chinese regime is hated by many - by capitalists because it is a Communist dictatorship, by Communists because it has become capitalist. It promotes a crass and ugly materialism, the very opposite of the spiritual Buddhist monks, who spend their time in prayer and meditation.

When China builds a railway to the Tibetan capital over a thousand inhospitable kilometers, the West does not admire the engineering feat, but sees (quite rightly) an iron monster that brings hundreds of thousands of Han-Chinese settlers to the occupied territory.

And of course, China is a rising power, whose economic success threatens America's hegemony in the world. A large part of the ailing American economy already belongs directly or indirectly to China. The huge American Empire is sinking hopelessly into debt, and China may soon be the biggest lender. American manufacturing industry is moving to China, taking millions of jobs with it.

Compared to these factors, what have the Basques, for example, to offer? Like the Tibetans, they inhabit a contiguous territory, most of it in Spain, some of it in France. They, too, are an ancient people with their own language and culture. But these are not exotic and do not attract special notice. No prayer wheels. No robed monks.

The Basques do not have a romantic leader, like Nelson Mandela or the Dalai Lama. The Spanish state, which arose from the ruins of Franco's detested dictatorship, enjoys great popularity around the world. Spain belongs to the European Union, which is more or less in the American camp, sometimes more, sometimes less.

The armed struggle of the Basque underground is abhorred by many and is considered "terrorism", especially after Spain has accorded the Basques a far-reaching autonomy. In these circumstances, the Basques have no chance at all of gaining world support for independence.

The Chechnyans should have been in a better position. They, too, are a separate people, who have for a long time been oppressed by the Czars of the Russian Empire, including Stalin and Putin. But alas, they are Muslims - and in the Western world, Islamophobia now occupies the place that had for centuries been reserved for anti-Semitism. Islam has turned into a synonym for terrorism, it is seen as a religion of blood and murder. Soon it will be revealed that Muslims slaughter Christian children and use their blood for baking Pitta. (In reality it is, of course, the religion of dozens of vastly different peoples, from Indonesia to Morocco and from Kosova to Zanzibar.

The US does not fear Moscow as it fears Beijing. Unlike China, Russia does not look like a country that could dominate the 21st century. The West has no interest in renewing the Cold War, as it has in renewing the Crusades against Islam. The poor Chechnyans, who have no charismatic leader or outstanding spokespersons, have been banished from the headlines. For all the world cares, Putin can hit them as much as he wants, kill thousands and obliterate whole towns.

That does not prevent Putin from supporting the demands of Abkhazia and South Ossetia for separation from Georgia, a country which infuriates Russia.

* * *

IF IMMANUEL KANT knew what's going on in Kosova, he would be scratching his head.

The province demanded its independence from Serbia, and I, for one, supported that with all my heart. This is a separate people, with a different culture (Albanian) and its own religion (Islam). After the popular Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosevic, tried to drive them out of their country, the world rose and provided moral and material support for their struggle for independence.

The Albanian Kosovars make up 90% of the citizens of the new state, which has a population of two million. The other 10% are Serbs, who want no part of the new Kosova. They want the areas they live in to be annexed to Serbia. According to Kant's maxim, are they entitled to this?

I would propose a pragmatic moral principle: Every population that inhabits a defined territory and has a clear national character is entitled to independence. A state that wants to keep such a population must see to it that they feel comfortable, that they receive their full rights, enjoy equality and have an autonomy that satisfies their aspirations. In short: that they have no reason to desire separation.

That applies to the French in Canada, the Scots in Britain, the Kurds in Turkey and elsewhere, the various ethnic groups in Africa, the indigenous peoples in Latin America, the Tamils in Sri Lanka and many others. Each has a right to choose between full equality, autonomy and independence.

* * *

THIS LEADS us, of course, to the Palestinian issue.

In the competition for the sympathy of the world media, the Palestinians are unlucky. According to all the objective standards, they have a right to full independence, exactly like the Tibetans. They inhabit a defined territory, they are a specific nation, a clear border exists between them and Israel. One must really have a crooked mind to deny these facts.

But the Palestinians are suffering from several cruel strokes of fate: The people that oppress them claim for themselves the crown of ultimate victimhood. The whole world sympathizes with the Israelis because the Jews were the victims of the most horrific crime of the Western world. That creates a strange situation: the oppressor is more popular than the victim. Anyone who supports the Palestinians is automatically suspected of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.

Also, the great majority of the Palestinians are Muslims (nobody pays attention to the Palestinian Christians). Since Islam arouses fear and abhorrence in the West, the Palestinian struggle has automatically become a part of that shapeless, sinister threat, "international terrorism". And since the murders of Yasser Arafat and Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the Palestinians have no particularly impressive leader - neither in Fatah nor in Hamas.

The world media are shedding tears for the Tibetan people, whose land is taken from them by Chinese settlers. Who cares about the Palestinians, whose land is taken from them by our settlers?

In the world-wide tumult about Tibet, the Israeli spokespersons compare themselves - strange as it sounds - to the poor Tibetans, not to the evil Chinese. Many think this quite logical.

If Kant were dug up tomorrow and asked about the Palestinians, he would probably answer: "Give them what you think should be given to everybody, and don't wake me up again to ask silly questions."

Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom.

http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery04072008.html

Rabbi Michael Lerner: How To End The War in Iraq

Sheldon from Doylestown — Tue, 27 May 2008 21:56:22 EDT

Video: Rabbi Michael Lerner: How To End The War in Iraq: http://youtube.com/watch?v=sChZ3Qda5rc

Please watch the videos at these links:

Sheldon from Doylestown — Sat, 24 May 2008 02:12:32 EDT

Please watch:

David Gregory and panel on Clinton's RFK remark
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/24797095#24797536

Keith Olbermann
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/24798368#24798368

Uri Avnery on Barack Obama, McCain, and Hillary

Sheldon from Doylestown — Fri, 02 May 2008 19:58:58 EDT

From Zaji Xola's Blog: http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/zajixola/gGBNjY

By Uri Avnery

Gush Shalom, March 24, 2008

"WAR IS much too serious a thing to be left to military men," in Talleyrand's memorable words. In the same spirit, one could say: The American presidential elections are much too serious to be left to the Americans.

The US is now the only super-power on earth. It will remain so for quite some time to come. The decisions of the President of the United States affect every human being on this planet.

Unfortunately, the citizens of the world have no part in these elections. But they may, at least, voice an opinion.

Availing myself of this right I say: I am for Barack Obama.

FIRST OF ALL I must confess: my attitude towards the US is one of unrequited love. In my youth I was a great admirer. Like many others of my generation, I grew up on the legend of the new, idealistic country of pioneers, the world's torch of freedom. I admired Abe Lincoln, who freed the slaves, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who hastened to the rescue of besieged Britain, when it stood alone against the Nazi monster, and who entered World War II at the decisive moment. I grew up on Wild West movies.

Gradually, I lost my illusions. Joe McCarthy helped me along the way. I learned that with depressing regularity, the US is seized by some hysteria or other. But every time, just before the brink of the abyss, it draws back.

During the Vietnam War I took part in demonstrations. I happened to be in America in 1967, and participated in the legendary march of the half million to the Pentagon. I reached the entrance of the building and saw before me a line of cold-eyed soldiers who seemed to be just itching to open fire. At the last moment it occurred to me that it would be unseemly for an Israeli Member of the Knesset to be implicated, so I jumped from the ledge of the entrance and twisted my ankle.

Somehow I got on the CIA (or was it the FBI?) black list. I managed to obtain a visa only with great difficulty, and was struck forever from the list of invitees to the American embassy parties in Tel Aviv. I don't know if this happened because of those protests, or because of my friendship with Henri Curiel, a Jewish-Egyptian revolutionary who helped us in our contacts with the PLO. The Americans held him, quite mistakenly, to be a KGB agent.

At the same time, my name was struck by the Soviets from every list of people invited from Israel. Perhaps they considered me a CIA agent (as I was called in the Israeli Communist party paper). So I was one of the few people in the world who appeared simultaneously on the black lists of both the USA and the Soviet Union - a source of moderate pride to me.

My friend Afif Safieh, now the chief PLO representative in the US, argues that there are two Americas: the America which exterminated the Native Americans and enslaved the blacks, the America of Hiroshima and McCarthy, and the other America, the America of the Declaration of Independence, of Lincoln, Wilson and Roosevelt.

In these terms, George Bush belongs to the first. Obama, his opposite in almost every respect, represents the second.

ONE CAN arrive at Obama by a process of elimination.

John McCain is a continuation of Bush. More attractive, probably more intelligent (which doesn't mean much). But he is more of the same. The same policy - a dangerous mix of intoxication with power and simple-mindedness. The same world of the Wild West myth, of Good Guys (Americans and their stooges) and Bad Guys (everybody else). A macho world of sham masculinity, where everything is seen through the sights of a gun.

McCain will go on with the wars, and may start new ones. His economic agenda is the same "swinish capitalism" (Shimon Peres' phrase), which has now brought disaster on the economy of the US, and the economy of all of us.

Eight years of Bush are enough for us. Thank you.

Hillary? True, there is something very positive in the fact that a woman is a potential candidate for the leadership of the most powerful country in the world. As the old Jewish blessing has it: Blessed art thou, the Lord, our God, who let us live to see this day. I believe that the feminist revolution was by far the most important one of the 20th Century, since it overturns the social patterns of thousands of years, and perhaps also the biological patterns of million of years. This revolution is still going on, and the election of a woman president would be a milestone.

But it is not enough that it be a woman. It is also important which woman it is.

I spent some years struggling against Golda Meir, the worst Prime Minister Israel ever had. Almost all recent female leaders of countries have started wars: Margaret Thatcher started the Falklands War, Golda Meir bears the responsibility for the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, Indira Gandhi made war on Pakistan, the current presidents of the Philippines and Sri Lanka are conducting internal wars.

The usual explanation is that in order to prevail in a man's world, a woman politician has to prove that she is at least as tough as the men are. When she comes to power, she wants to show that she, too, can make war and command armies. Hillary has already acted tough by voting for the disastrous Iraq war.

(Years ago, when she came out for a Palestinian state, Gush Shalom demonstrated in her honor in front of the US embassy in Tel Aviv. We wanted to present her with a bunch of flowers. The embassy people treated us as enemies and refused to accept the flowers. Since then, Hillary has not uttered another word in favor of the Palestinians.)

I don't know how much she was a partner to her husband's decisions in the White House. The President's wife may be closest to his ear - and the President's husband will probably be closest to her ear. Anyhow, in the eight years of Bill Clinton nothing good for Israeli-Palestinian peace happened. In his "peace team" there were a lot of American Jews, but not a single American Arab. He was totally subservient to the Israel lobby, and on his watch the number of Israeli settlers in the Palestinian territories more than doubled.

Israel doesn't really need another term of Billary.

Hillary is a run of the mill politician. If McCain is a continuation of Bush, Hillary is an extension of the entire present American political system, the present policy and the present routine. But the world needs another America.

THE NAME of another America is Obama. Full name: Barack Hussein Obama.

The very fact that this person can be a serious contender for the presidency at all restores my faith in the possibilities inherent in America. After the excesses of Senator Joe McCarthy there was President John Kennedy. After Bush there can be Obama. Only in America.

The great message of Obama is Obama himself. A person who has roots in three continents (and another half: Hawaii). A person whose education spans the wide world. A person who can see reality from the viewpoints of America, Africa and Asia. A person who is both black and white. A new kind of American, an American of the 21st Century.

I am not as naïve as I sound. I realize that in his speeches there is more enthusiasm than content. We can't know what he will do once elected president. President Obama may disappoint us. But I prefer to take a risk with a man like this than to know in advance what the two routine politicians, his competitors, will do.

I am not overly impressed by election speeches. I have conducted four election campaigns myself and I know that there are things one has to say and things one must not say. It's all with limited liability. But beyond all the speechifying, one fact is more important than a million words: Obama opposed the Iraq invasion from the start, when this took integrity and a lot of courage. Hillary voted for the war and changed her position only when public opinion had changed. McCain supports the war even now.

We in Israel know the huge difference between opposing a war in its first, decisive hour, and opposing it after a month, a year or five years.

On the other hand, perhaps this very fact - more even than the color of his skin, his middle name and his "lack of experience" - will work against him. The voters do not like a person who was right when they were wrong. It's like admitting: he was wise and we were stupid. When a politician wants to be elected, he would be well advised to hide the fact that he was right.

A personal note: as an optimist from birth, I like Obama's optimism. I prefer a candidate who brings hope over one destroying hope. Optimism spurs to action, pessimism produces nothing but despair.

America needs a complete overhaul. Not just a wash, not just a wax job, not just a new coat of paint. It needs a new motor, a change of the entire leadership, a reappraisal of its position in the world, a change of values.

Can Obama do this? I hope so. I am not sure. But I am quite sure that the other two will not.

HERE A JEW will pop the classic question: Is it good for the Jews?

The people who claim to speak for the American Jews, the "leaders" who were not elected by anyone, the chiefs of the fetid "organizations", are conducting a dirty campaign of defamation and sly hints against him. If his middle name is Hussein and he is black, he must be an "Arab-lover". Also, he did not distance himself enough from the anti-Semite Louis Farakhan.

The same "leaders" are in bed with the most loathsome racists in the US, obscurantist fundamentalists and blood-stained neo-cons. But most American Jews know that their place is not there. The unholy alliance with those types will inevitably come home to roost. The Jews have to be where they have always been: in the progressive camp, striving for equality and the separation between state and religion.

IT MUST be asked: Is it good for Israel?

All three candidates have groveled at the feet of AIPAC. The fawning of all three before the Israeli leadership is disgusting. They all show a lack of integrity. But I know that they have no choice. That's how it is in the USA.

In spite of this, Obama succeeded in getting out one courageous sentence. Speaking before a mainly Jewish audience in Cleveland, he said: "There is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel, you're anti-Israel and that can't be the measure of our friendship with Israel."

I hope that the American Barack (blessed, in Arabic), if elected, will not turn into a replica of the Israeli Barak (lightning, in Hebrew).

Real friendship means: when you see that your friend is drunk, you don't encourage him to drive. You offer to take him home. I am longing for an American president who will have the courage and the honesty to tell our leaders: Dear friends, you are drunk with power! You are speeding along a highway that leads to an abyss!

Perhaps Barack Obama will be such a friend. This would be a blessing for us, too.

Get Involved:

-------------

Demand Congress Support a Democratic Process

Make sure the superdelegates hear our voices and sign the petition:

http://www.colorofchange.org/superd/?id=1908-528048

----------

What is Hillary hiding that is revealed in her tax returns? Tell Hillary we want transparency.

Demand Hillary release her tax returns.

Sign the petition:

http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?hcinctax

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Where a rose to show support for Obama>>

Join "A Rose By Any Other Name"

http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/4rfjv

----------

Send Howard Dean e-mail

Tell Gov. Dean what you think. Share your thoughts with DNC Chairman Gov. Howard Dean

http://www.democrats.org/page/petition/chairman

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FOX is a Republican mouthpiece, not a legitimate news organization. Real news organizations must reject FOX's smears of Barack Obama, not parrot them and distract Americans from the pressing issues of the day."

https://pol.moveon.org/pac/donate/foxattacksobama2.html?r=3495&id=12363-9004370-bk_QER&amp=&amp=

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When you do nothing, you feel over-whelmed and powerless. but when you get involved, you feel the sense of hope and accomplishment that comes from knowing you are working to make things better. --Pauline R. Kezer

Nuclear Madness - Interview with Dr. Helen Caldicott

Sheldon from Doylestown — Fri, 02 May 2008 19:53:51 EDT

Please watch: Nuclear Madness - Interview with Dr. Helen Caldicott (YouTube video):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpAgzji9KnE

Former Hillary Supporter: Why Hillary Clinton makes my wife scream

Sheldon from Doylestown — Fri, 02 May 2008 18:15:30 EDT

Tom Hayden outside the 2004 Democratic National Convention

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/360639_hayden27.html

Why Hillary Clinton makes my wife scream

TOM HAYDEN
GUEST COLUMNIST

My wife Barbara has begun yelling at the television set every time she hears Hillary Clinton. This is abnormal behavior, since Barbara is a meditative practitioner of everything peaceful and organic, and is inspired by Barack Obama's transformational appeal.

For Barbara, Hillary has become the screech on the blackboard. From first lady to Lady Macbeth.

It's getting to me as well. Last year, I was somewhat reconciled to the prospect of supporting and pressuring Hillary as the nominee amid the rising tide of my friends who already hated her, irrationally I thought. I was one of those people Barack accuses of being willing to settle. I even had framed a flattering autographed message from Hillary. But as the campaign has gone on and on, her signed portrait still leans against the wall in my study. I don't know where she belongs anymore.

At least Hillary was a known quantity in my life. I knew of the danger of her becoming more and more hawkish as she tried to break the ultimate glass ceiling. I also knew she could be forced to change course if public opinion was fiercely opposed to the war. And I knew she was familiar with radical social causes from her own life experience in the '60. So my progressive task seemed clear: help build an antiwar force powerful enough to make it politically necessary to end the war. Been there, done that. And in the process, finally put a woman in the White House. A soothing bonus.

But as the Obama campaign gained momentum, Hillary began morphing into the persona that has my pacifist wife screaming at the television set.

Going negative doesn't begin to describe what has happened. Hillary is going over the edge. Even worse are the flacks she sends before the cameras on her behalf, like that Kiki person, who smirks and shakes her head at the camera every time she fields a question. Or the real carnivores, like Howard Wolfson, Lanny Davis and James Carville, whose sneering smugness prevents countless women like my wife from considering Hillary at all.

To use the current terminology, Hillary people are bitter people, even more bitter than the white working-class voters Barack has talked about. Because they circle the wagons so tightly, they don't recognize how identical, self-reinforcing and out-of-touch they are.

To take just one example, the imagined association between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers will suffice. Hillary is blind to her own roots in the '60s. In one college speech she spoke of ecstatic transcendence; in another, she said, "Our social indictment has broadened. Where once we exposed the quality of life in the world of the South and the ghettos, now we condemn the quality of work in factories and corporations. Where once we assaulted the exploitation of man, now we decry the destruction of nature as well. How much long can we let corporations run us?"

She was in Chicago for three nights during the 1968 street confrontations. She chaired the 1970 Yale Law School meeting where students voted to join a national student strike again an "unconscionable expansion of a war that should never have been waged." She was involved in the New Haven defense of Bobby Seale during his murder trial in 1970, as the lead scheduler of student monitors. She surely agreed with Yale president Kingman Brewster that a black revolutionary couldn't get a fair trial in America. She wrote that abused children were citizens with the same rights as their parents.

Most significant in terms of her recent attacks on Barack, after Yale law school, Hillary went to work for the left-wing Bay Area law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein, which specialized in Black Panthers and West Coast labor leaders prosecuted for being communists. Two of the firm's partners, according to Treuhaft, were communists and the two others "tolerated communists." Then she went on to Washington to help impeach Richard Nixon, whose career was built on smearing and destroying the careers of people through vague insinuations about their backgrounds and associates. (All these citations can be found in Carl Bernstein's sympathetic 2007 Clinton biography, "A Woman in Charge.")

All these were honorable words and associations in my mind, but doesn't she see how the Hillary of today would accuse the Hillary of the '60s of associating with black revolutionaries who fought gun battles with police officers, and defending pro-communist lawyers who backed communists? Doesn't the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whom Hillary attacks today, represent the very essence of the black radicals Hillary was associating with in those days? And isn't the Hillary of today becoming the same kind of guilt-by-association insinuator as the Richard Nixon she worked to impeach?

It is as if Hillary Clinton is engaged in a toxic transmission onto Barack Obama of every outrageous insult and accusation ever inflicted on her by the American right over the decades. She is running against what she might have become. Too much politics dries the soul of the idealist.

It is abundantly clear that the Clintons, working with FOX News and manipulating old Clinton staffers like George Stephanopoulos, are trying, at least unconsciously, to so damage Barack Obama that he will be perceived as "unelectable" to Democratic superdelegates. It is also clear that the campaign of defamation against Obama has resulted in higher negative ratings for Hillary Clinton. She therefore is threatening the Democratic Party's chances for the White House, whether or not she is the nominee.

Since no one in the party leadership seems able or willing to intervene against this self-destructive downward spiral, perhaps progressives need to consider responding in the only way politicians sometimes understand. If they can't hear us screaming at the television sets, we can send a message that the Clintons are acting as if they prefer John McCain to Barack Obama. And follow it up with another message: If Clinton doesn't immediately cease her path of destruction, millions of young voters and black voters may not send checks, may not knock on doors, and may not even vote for her if she becomes the nominee. That's not a threat, that's the reality she is creating.

Tom Hayden was prominent in the civil rights and anti-war movements in the 1960s. He later served in the state legislature in California. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Hayden

Barack Obama Is The Superior Choice

Sheldon from Doylestown — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 23:09:58 EDT

Barack Obama is the Superior Choice
for African-American Voters

Theodore Cross

Please click on this link: http://www.jbhe.com/obamaprint.html

The Racial Reliability Of Obama: An Unworthy And Contradictory Conversation

Sheldon from Doylestown — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 22:28:37 EDT

The Racial Reliability Of Obama: An Unworthy And Contradictory Conversation

Dr. Maulana Karenga

There is an unworthy and contradictory conversation going on in a few unseemly places about the racial reliability of Barack Obama as an adequate representative of Black interests in the presidential process. This revolves around a test of racial wholeness not normally used. For we used to hold that Black blood was like the blood of Jesus; one drop makes you whole. The origins of this contrived issue are, on one level, suspect and at first appear as an attempt to cover up or justify support for favorite White candidates. After all, it seems odd, irrational and morally untenable to question racial representation by a mixed Black man, Obama, and holler hallelujahs for a completely White woman, Hillary Clinton; not to mention the contorted silliness and suspect naming of Bill Clinton as "soul brother" and John Edwards as "homeboy". It also represents a dance of desperation by Black conservatives to appear concerned about a history they don't really discuss and a people they constantly counsel to forget their concepts of race and the racial realities of oppression.

But this questioning also comes from a mistaken posing of a legitimate concern for support of issues and policies important to Black people. Clearly, we have the right and responsibility to be concerned about our interests being effectively and rightfully represented. But our criteria must not include unworthy and contradictory ideas of racial reliability based on questions of "pure" parentage and imagined experience, rather than on African ethical ideals of social justice and human good in the world. other sources seem to be more out of unawareness and an insecure identity and rootedness in one's own culture and history. Indeed, we have always recognized mixtures, usually accepted a person's self-definition as Black, and respected those who chose to be Black even when they could have passed.

These arguments about racial reliability revolve around several unsupportable and contradictory notions. First, there is a question about whether Obama's being born in Hawaii and traveling around the world makes him less sensitive to Black heartland or mainland thinking, needs and aspirations. But Hawaii, like Wyoming, is a part of a racialized U.S., hardly exempt from racist practices and lessons from this. Also, African Americans in the military take their children around the country and world regularly and until now such a world experience was considered an asset rather than a liability.

Secondly, there is the question of whether Obama's so-called lack of an enslaved past makes him different than other African Americans? But some of us are descendants of free and unenslaved Blacks and we've never raised any questions about their difference or ability to represent us. Moreover, having a direct or indirect relationship to the Holocaust of enslavement does not guarantee a sensitivity to this history, the ancestors who experienced it or the struggles we've waged to free ourselves from its horror and continuing legacy. After all, Clarence Thomas and Condi Rice could hardly be called representative of the social consciousness and social justice commitment such a history invites and encourages.

Also, any narrow notion of the Holocaust of enslavement or conquest of the Continent itself undermines our real link with our ancestral families and people in Africa whose historically enslaved relatives and descendants we are and who have suffered also in the global oppression Europe imposed on African people. Clearly, the African Holocaust of enslavement is a shared heritage and history of all African people. We easily understand and accept this about the Jewish Holocaust for Jewish people. We only become forgetful or confused when it comes to us.

Furthermore, it is said that if Whites embrace him, we should have a healthy concern about his sense of obligation to them and how this will affect his understanding of his relationship and obligation to his community and the social justice and human good issues they hold dear. Whites are said to like Obama for several reasons: because he doesn't hate or have a grievance against them or make them feel guilty for what they have done and do; and offers them a chance for redemption and recovery in the bloodied and offended eyes of the world. But one of the paralyzing aspects of Black politics is the continuous efforts to show care and concern for Whites and reassure them of our commitment to them and society.

Moreover, what Whites call grievances are actually our just demands which should have been met centuries ago in any society claiming liberty and justice for all. So, if there is any feeling of white guilt, it's self-inflicted and my sense is, if Oprah and a meaningful commitment to justice do not help them deal with their racial demons and dilemmas, there is little hope Obama will either. Our need is thus not to alienate Obama and turn him toward Whites as a savior from his own people, but embrace him in his progressiveness and the promise this offers for us, society and the world.

Finally, the problematic conversation is reduced to questions about Obama's parentage and the political and moral nature of our concern about his candidacy and his commitment to social justice is lost. However, it is not Obama's parentage but his political views and practice that are critical. He has announced a commitment to diversity, but whom has he chosen as advisors and assistants in the highest places? And where does he stand on issues vital to us as a people, the country and the world: on poverty, civil rights, hunger, homelessness, health care; on the oppressed, vulnerable and struggling peoples of the world, especially the peoples of Africa, Haiti and Palestine; on war, global warming, education, immigration, employment, economic initiative, energy and urban renewal as distinct from urban removal of us in New Orleans and elsewhere? And where does he stand on privatization, the prison-industrial complex, prisoner's rights and the legal bloodletting called capital punishment?

There are signs Obama understands the ethical meaning of his mission, in both the campaign and the office. He has said that his thought and work are rooted in the African American spiritual and ethical tradition which calls on us to care for the vulnerable, support social change and continue the "historical struggles for freedom and the rights of man." But Obama cannot save us or salvage whatever is good and meaningful in this country by himself. This is the task of a rebuilt Movement, broad in its inclusiveness of peoples, deep in its commitment to social justice and human good, and actively committed to achieving and sustaining these.

Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor of Black Studies, California State University-Long Beach, Chair of The Organization Us, Creator of Kwanzaa, and author of Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture, [www.Us-Organization.org and www.OfficialKwanzaaWebsite.org].

http://www.us-organization.org/position/documents/TheRacialReliabilityofObama.pdf

Barack Obama on CNN today: Clinton's vote for Iran measure repeats Iraq mistake

Sheldon from Doylestown — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:36:44 EDT

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/11/obama.clinton/ WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama on Thursday criticized a recent vote by Democratic presidential rival Sen. Hillary Clinton as helping to give President Bush a "blank check" to take military action against Iran. "We know in the past that the president has used some of the flimsiest excuses to try to move his agenda regardless of what Congress says," Obama said in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

Last month, Clinton voted to support a resolution declaring Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite part of the Iranian military, a foreign terrorist group. (The nonbinding amendment to the Defense Authorization Act passed by a 76-22 vote.)

Obama said he would have voted against the measure but he didn't because he was campaigning in New Hampshire at the time. He said it was impossible to know when votes will be scheduled in the Senate. "This is a problem" related to running for president, he said.

Obama said Clinton also had shown "flawed" judgment during the vote to authorize the Iraq war five years ago.

"We know that there was embodied in this legislation, or this resolution sent to the Senate, language that would say our Iraqi troop structures should in part be determined by our desire to deal with Iran," Obama said. "Now if you know that in the past the president has taken a blank check and cashed it, we don't want to repeat that mistake."

While Clinton was campaigning Sunday in New Hampton, Iowa, an audience member at a town hall-style meeting pressed her on why she voted for the Iran measure and asked why she hadn't learned from past "mistakes." Calling "the premise of the question" wrong, the senator from New York argued the resolution calls for the terrorist label so that sanctions can be imposed.

The sanctions, Clinton said, will in turn "send a clear message to the leadership" and lead to stronger diplomatic efforts.

Earlier this month, Clinton also co-sponsored legislation with Sen. Jim Webb, D-Virginia, that would prohibit military operations against Iran without congressional approval.

Obama's comments came on the fifth anniversary of the 77-23 Senate vote that authorized the president to use force against Iraq. Obama, then an Illinois state senator, spoke out against the resolution authorizing force at the time.

Clinton's 2002 vote shows a clear difference in judgment between the two of them, Obama said"I don't think it disqualified her, but I think it speaks to her judgment and it speaks to my judgment," Obama said. "It speaks to how we will make decisions going forward.

"I think her judgment was flawed on this issue."

Obama said he also will step up efforts to clarify his differences with Clinton, whom many political observers view as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination.

"There's no doubt we are moving into a different phase of the campaign," Obama said. "The first part of a campaign is to offer some biography and give people a sense of where I've been and what I am about.

"In this next phase, we want to make sure that voters understand that on big issues, like the decision to go into the war in Iraq, I had real differences with the other candidates and that reflects on my judgment."

Another leading Democratic candidate, John Edwards, also voted in 2002 to authorize force in Iraq while he was then a senator from North Carolina. He later called his vote a mistake.

In a veiled swipe at Clinton, Obama also suggested he could better unite the country and offer "something new, as opposed to looking backward and simply duplicating some of the politics that we've become so accustomed to, that frankly the American people are sick of."

Obama would not say whether he would consider Clinton as his running mate should he become the Democratic Party's nominee.

"I think Sen. Clinton is a very capable person," he said. "Right now my goal is to make sure I am the nominee, and she is still the senator from New York." http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/11/obama.clinton/ video: http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/11/obama.clinton/#cnnSTCVideo

Barack Obama sees it: We are all part of one human family

Sheldon from Doylestown — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 13:36:22 EDT

Finally we have a candidate for the office of the President of the United States who understands that we are all part of one human family. Clearly, Barack Obama sees that we are all in this together. Quoting Barack Obama, "Part of what we've lost is a sense of empathy towards each other." We have lost a sense that we must stand in others' shoes, that we must see through their eyes.

We need dialogue. But the desire for world dominion and conquest of resources has been allowed to push diplomacy and the desire for peace aside. Immature "leaders" listen to money instead of to the citizens of the world. That has to end, or civilization will end.

We are our brother's keeper. We are our sister's keeper. And we long for peace. We cannot afford to have Bush-lite. The Us vs. Them worldview of Barack's primary opponent is passe; it is old-school. Its time is done.

Barack Obama will bring people throughout the world together. Barack Obama is the candidate who will do the most for peace. Please assist Barack Obama's campaign for the Presidency in any way that you can. www.BarackObama.com

Please join Citizens Of The World For Barack Obama by clicking on the "Join Group" tab to the left under Citizens Of The World For Barack Obama here:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/CitizensOfTheWorldForBarackObama

Barack Obama sees it: We are all part of one human family

Sheldon from Doylestown — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 13:30:56 EDT

Please join Citizens Of The World For Barack Obama by clicking on the "Join Group" tab to the left under Citizens Of The World For Barack Obama here:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/CitizensOfTheWorldForBarackObama

Barack Obama sees it: We are all part of one human family

Sheldon from Doylestown — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 13:25:51 EDT

Please join Citizens Of The World For Barack Obama by clicking on the "Join Group" tab to the left under Citizens Of The World For Barack Obama here:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/CitizensOfTheWorldForBarackObama

Barack Obama sees it: We are all part of one human family

Sheldon from Doylestown — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 13:19:16 EDT

Please join Citizens Of The World For Barack Obama by clicking on the "Join Group" tab to the left under Citizens Of The World For Barack Obama here:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/CitizensOfTheWorldForBarackObama

Please watch this: Ted Sorenson introduces Barack Obama

Sheldon from Doylestown — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 13:08:12 EDT

Ted Sorenson introduces Barack Obama

Video:
Ted Sorenson, advisor to John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy introduced Senator Barack Obama to a crowd in Des Moines, IA
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid900881681/bclid900480414/bctid1213922374

Please watch this: Ted Sorenson introduces Barack Obama

Sheldon from Doylestown — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 12:57:25 EDT

It was Barack's answer to Stephen Sixta's question that...

Sheldon from Doylestown — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 12:37:29 EDT

It was Barack's answer to Stephen Sixta's question in the YouTube Debate that mainstreammedia and MSM's overseers used as their "turning point" with the public. Please watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHY1rtmIovk (It is the first question at the start of the video)

Are we, Barack Obama's supporters, going to continue to allow this?

If we allow this, well .....

It was Barack's answer to Stephen Sixta's question that...

Sheldon from Doylestown — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 12:28:06 EDT

It was Barack's answer to Stephen Sixta's question in the YouTube Debate that mainstreammedia and MSM's overseers used as their "turning point" with the public. Please watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHY1rtmIovk (It is the first question at the start of the video)

Are we, Barack Obama's supporters, going to continue to allow this?

If we allow this, well .....

Private Security Contractors: Mercenaries for Conquest of Oil Fields in Iraq

Sheldon from Doylestown — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 21:54:31 EDT

Please see this blog post on Private Security Contractors in Iraq by Barack Obama (9/24/07) at The Hill”s Congress Blog entitled Congress to Address Oversight for Security Contractors (Sen. Barack Obama)

http://blog.thehill.com/2007/09/24/congress-to-address-oversight-for-security-contractors-sen-barack-obama/

Please watch this video produced by Sam Graham-Felsen, our National Campaign blogger:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqM4tKPDlR8

Read (Source provided by Linda Robinson): http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/9/25/25528/3100

'Iraq For Sale' : Blackwater http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N83BdpNPvgw

Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan: "The Iraq war is largely about oil."

Sheldon from Doylestown — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 11:56:08 EDT

Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan: "The Iraq war is largely about oil."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=15&entry_id=20343

It is clear that Saddam Hussein was in no position to control the Straits of Hormuz. Rather, he had converted from petrodollars to euros and had signed oil-field leases with European and Russian companies to the exclusion of American companies.

"I thought the issue of weapons of mass destruction as the excuse was utterly beside the point."

"http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2170661,00.html

Pennsylvania Volunteering for Barack Obama

Sheldon from Doylestown — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 18:04:17 EDT

Greetings Pennsylvanians,

If you have not already done so, (kudos to Centre County and Berks County for their great on-going work and to Philadelphia County for all the energy being put out now), it is now time to start setting up tables loaded with Barack Obama literature, Obama buttons and bumperstickers at fairs, festivals and any other high profile location. (Request permission from event organizers first.)

It is time to volunteer for the next President of the United States, Barack Obama.

If you are a member of a county or local group, find out which members in your group are the most active and work with them. You can contact members through the My.BarackObama messaging function, or you can send an introductory email giving your phone number and email address including the types things that you would be interested in doing such as tabling (literature on tables as described above) or canvassing to the email addresses below or to your group's listserv.

For assistance in finding events and others working on events, use these addresses below:

For Philadelphia: philadelphiaforobama@gmail.com

For Northeast PA: Lisa Fierman. MsPrudenceJuris@aol.com

For Central PA and South Central PA: Greg Stewart: CentralPAforObama@gmail.com

If you are interested in being involved in Pittsburgh, please email pittsburghforobama@gmail.com or paforobama@gmail.com.

Those outside of Philadelphia in Southeastern PA and those in Southwestern and Northwestern PA, please send your questions to paforobama@gmail.com.

The more people you talk to about Barack Obama, the more well-known Barack becomes. He has said repeatedly, "I can't do it without you." It is time to do something now.

Please have sign-up sheets and flyers for tabling. You can click on the titles of the campaign flyers below, download them, and print them out. (If you are using an ink-jet printer save money by printing out a couple copies of each of the flyers you want, and photocopy them at your local copy center. You should be able to save a bit more money by having the copy center make 2-sided copies putting similar topics on the same sheet.)

Meet Barack Obama
Meet Michelle Obama

Issue flyers:

En Español:Barack Obama Sobre Temas Latinos

___________________________________________

When tabling or canvassing, use the form here ( http://my.barackobama.com/page/-/Action%20Center/Sign-In%20Sheets/OFA%20Sign-In%20Sheet.pdf ) as a sign-up sheet for those who want to receive notices of meetings and events that your group will do. Make an additional mark such as a "V" next to the name of those who want to help out by volunteering. Have one person enter these on a spreadsheet. Set up events so that you can use the information on these spreadsheets as soon as possible. Also, send your spreadsheets as attachments to paforobama@gmail.com.

_________________________________________________

Look for the official campaign store tab at barackobama.com. Click on this tab at barackobama.com, if you need buttons and bumperstickers. Prices go down substantially on most items when you buy in quantity.

_______________________________________________

Here are the talking points provided by the campaign. Use these when tabling, canvassing, and when talking to friends and people at work, but don't be a robot. Listen to the person you are talking with, and say the things about Barack that they would interest them.

Challenging Conventional Thinking in Washington

· Barack Obama believes that what's stopped us from meeting our challenges isn't a lack of good ideas; it's a politics that puts the partisan and special interests ahead of the people's interests. Too many in Washington see politics as a game, instead of a mission. That's why Barack Obama believes this election cannot be about who can play this game better. It has to be about who can put an end to the game-playing. Barack Obama is the one candidate with the judgment to challenge conventional thinking in Washington and bring about fundamental change in this country.

Iraq · Barack Obama opposed the Iraq war from the start – at a time when it was unpopular to do so. He believes this war should never have been authorized and never been waged. He introduced a plan back in January that would have gradually and responsibly removed all combat troops from Iraq. He's kept the pressure on the Republican Senators and Congressmen who continue to support the President's failed course. Now he's calling for an immediate end to the surge that begins to bring our troops home. If we don't end the war before George Bush leaves office, then it will be the first thing Barack Obama does as President.

Health Care · Over the last decade, the drug and insurance industries spent $1 billion in lobbying. And their friends in Congress made it illegal for our government to negotiate with the drug companies for cheaper drug prices. As President, Barack Obama will sign a universal health care bill into law by the end of his first term that will cover every American, cut the cost of a typical family's premiums by up to $2,500 a year, make sure that if you lose your job, you don't lose your health care, too, and make it legal to negotiate with the drug companies for cheaper drugs.

The Experience America Needs

· The pundits say Barack Obama lacks experience because to them, only the years you spend in Washington count. But Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld had two of the longest resumes in Washington and they got us into the worst foreign policy fiasco in recent history. So time served doesn't mean sound judgment. Barack Obama may not have the experience Washington likes; but he has the experience America needs.

· Barack Obama's experience tells him that real change comes not by dividing, but by bringing people together to get things done – like when he worked with police officers and civil rights advocates to reform a death penalty system that had sent thirteen innocent people in Illinois to death row. Or when he worked with Republicans and Democrats to expand health care for 150,000 Illinoisans, or put $100 million worth of tax cuts in the pockets of working families.

Barack Obama's experience tells him that real change comes when we put the people's interests before the special interests and partisan interests. That's what he did in Illinois when he took on money in politics and passed the first major ethics reform in twenty-five years, and in Congress when he challenged both parties and pushed through a landmark ethics law – and for the first time in history forced Washington lobbyists to disclose who they're raising money from and who in Congress they're funneling it to.

________________________________________________

If you have questions or run into any problems, email paforobama@gmail.com.

What we are working for is Barack Obama in the White House.

All the best to all of you,

Sheldon Motley

Co-Chair Pennsylvania Field Team

paforobama@gmail.com

Southeastern Pennsylvania Volunteering for Barack Obama

Sheldon from Doylestown — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 17:33:59 EDT

Greetings Pennsylvanians,

It is time to volunteer for the next President of the United States, Barack Obama.

The more people you talk to about Barack Obama, the more well-known Barack becomes. He has said repeatedly, "I can't do it without you." It is time to do something now.

Meet Barack Obama
Meet Michelle Obama

Issue flyers:

En Español:Barack Obama Sobre Temas Latinos

___________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_______________________________________________

Challenging Conventional Thinking in Washington

The Experience America Needs

________________________________________

Philadelphia for Obama is getting organized and has started to plan some events.There is a meet-up for local supporters on September 23 at 2:00 pm at Tritone on 1508 South Street here in Philadelphia, please come along to show your support for Obama and help us plan future activities. You can RSVP for the event at http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/4vdmv.

When the Debates come to Philadelphia on October 30th, the Obama supporters will be out in force. We are planning a big rally for outside of the Debates. Details are still in the works but we will be there outside of the venue to show our support and get some free press for Barack Obama, hopefully we will be able to continue the festivities and watch a simulcast of the Debate for those of us who can't get tickets to go in. If we can make this as big as I think we
can, then we should be able to get the man himself to greet us on the way in. You can RSVP for that as well: http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/debatewatchingparty/4vc5l.

________________________________________________

If you have questions or run into problems, email paforobama@gmail.com.

What we are working for is Barack Obama in the White House.

All the best to all of you,

Sheldon Motley

Co-Chair Pennsylvania Field Team

paforobama@gmail.com

Southeastern Pennsylvania Volunteering for Barack Obama

Sheldon from Doylestown — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 17:16:00 EDT

Greetings Pennsylvanians,

It is time to volunteer for the next President of the United States, Barack Obama.

The more people you talk to about Barack Obama, the more well-known Barack becomes. He has said repeatedly, "I can't do it without you." It is time to do something now.

Meet Barack Obama
Meet Michelle Obama

Issue flyers:

En Español:Barack Obama Sobre Temas Latinos

___________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_______________________________________________

Challenging Conventional Thinking in Washington

The Experience America Needs

________________________________________

________________________________________________

If you have questions or run into problems, email paforobama@gmail.com.

What we are working for is Barack Obama in the White House.

All the best to all of you,

Sheldon Motley

Co-Chair Pennsylvania Field Team

paforobama@gmail.com

Southeastern Pennsylvania Volunteering for Barack Obama

Sheldon from Doylestown — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 16:59:58 EDT

Greetings Pennsylvanians,

It is time to volunteer for the next President of the United States, Barack Obama.

The more people you talk to about Barack Obama, the more well-known Barack becomes. He has said repeatedly, "I can't do it without you." It is time to do something now.

Meet Barack Obama
Meet Michelle Obama

Issue flyers:

En Español:Barack Obama Sobre Temas Latinos

___________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_______________________________________________

Challenging Conventional Thinking in Washington

Iraq

· Barack Obama opposed the Iraq war from the start – at a time when it was unpopular to do so. He believes this war should never have been authorized and never been waged. He introduced a plan back in January that would have gradually and responsibly removed all combat troops from Iraq. He's kept the pressure on the Republican Senators and Congressmen who continue to support the President's failed course. Now he's calling for an immediate end to the surge that begins to bring our troops home. If we don't end the war before George Bush leaves office, then it will be the first thing Barack Obama does as President.

Health Care

· Over the last decade, the drug and insurance industries spent $1 billion in lobbying. And their friends in Congress made it illegal for our government to negotiate with the drug companies for cheaper drug prices. As President, Barack Obama will sign a universal health care bill into law by the end of his first term that will cover every American, cut the cost of a typical family's premiums by up to $2,500 a year, make sure that if you lose your job, you don't lose your health care, too, and make it legal to negotiate with the drug companies for cheaper drugs.

The Experience America Needs

________________________________________

________________________________________________

If you have questions or run into problems, email paforobama@gmail.com.

What we are working for is Barack Obama in the White House.

All the best to all of you,

Sheldon Motley

Co-Chair Pennsylvania Field Team

paforobama@gmail.com

The Honorable Senator Barack Obama’s Major Policy Speech on Iraq, September 12, 2007.

Sheldon from Doylestown — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 18:37:55 EDT

The Honorable Senator Barack Obama’s Major Policy Speech on Iraq, September 12, 2007

Clinton, IA | September 12, 2007

A few months ago, I met a woman who told me her nephew was leaving for Iraq. As she started to tell me about how much she'd miss him and how worried she was about him, she began to cry. "I can't breathe,' she said. "I want to know when I am going to be able to breathe again.'

I have her on my mind when I think about what we've gone through as a country and where we need to go. Because we've been holding our breath over Iraq for five years. As we go through yet another debate about yet another phase of this misguided war, we've got a familiar feeling. Again, we're told that progress is upon us. Again, we're asked to hold our breath a little longer. Again, we're reminded of what's gone wrong with our policies and our politics.

It was five years ago today - on September 12, 2002 - that President Bush made his case for war at the United Nations. Standing in front of a world that stood with us after 9/11, he said, "In the attacks on America a year ago, we saw the destructive intentions of our enemies.' Then he talked about Saddam Hussein - a man who had nothing to do with 9/11. But citing the lesson of 9/11, he and others said we had to act. "To suggest otherwise,' the President said, "is to hope against the evidence.'

George Bush was wrong. The people who attacked us on 9/11 were in Afghanistan, not Iraq. Al Qaeda in Iraq didn't exist before our invasion. The case for war was built on exaggerated fears and empty evidence - so much so that Bob Graham, the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, decided to vote against the war after he read the National Intelligence Estimate.

The whole world needed the Geneva Accord to be implemented.

Sheldon from Doylestown — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 02:16:19 EDT

The Geneva Accord
A Model Israeli-Palestinian Peace Agreement

Full Text of the Accord at (http://www.geneva-accord.org/Accord.aspx?FolderID=33&lang=en):

The State of Israel (hereinafter "Israel") and the Palestine Liberation Organization (hereinafter "PLO"), the representative of the Palestinian people (hereinafter the "Parties"):
Reaffirming their determination to put an end to decades of confrontation and conflict, and to live in peaceful coexistence, mutual dignity and security based on a just, lasting, and comprehensive peace and achieving historic reconciliation;
Recognizing that peace requires the transition from the logic of war and confrontation to the logic of peace and cooperation, and that acts and words characteristic of the state of war are neither appropriate nor acceptable in the era of peace;
Affirming their deep belief that the logic of peace requires compromise, and that the only viable solution is a two-state solution based on UNSC Resolution 242 and 338;
Affirming that this agreement marks the recognition of the right of the Jewish people to statehood and the recognition of the right of the Palestinian people to statehood, without prejudice to the equal rights of the Parties' respective citizens;
Recognizing that after years of living in mutual fear and insecurity, both peoples need to enter an era of peace, security and stability, entailing all necessary actions by the parties to guarantee the realization of this era;
Recognizing each other's right to peaceful and secure existence within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;
Determined to establish relations based on cooperation and the commitment to live side by side as good neighbors aiming both separately and jointly to contribute to the well-being of their peoples;
Reaffirming their obligation to conduct themselves in conformity with the norms of international law and the Charter of the United Nations;

Learning through humor: Why did the Neo-Con's invade Iraq?

Sheldon from Doylestown — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 02:03:07 EDT

Learning through humor: You will need 46 minutes to view this. I present to you, Robert Newman:

The History of Oil - Robert Newman (45:42):
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8957268309327954402
(Please paste to your address line above.)

Learning through humor: Why did the Neo-Cons invade Iraq?

Sheldon from Doylestown — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 12:24:04 EDT

Learning through humor: You will need 46 minutes to view this. I present to you, Robert Newman:

The History of Oil - Robert Newman (45:42):

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8957268309327954402

NY Times Op-ed by Active-Duty Soldiers in Iraq

Sheldon from Doylestown — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:47:04 EDT

If you missed it, please read this Op-ed on the Iraq War in the NY Times by Active Duty Non-Commissioned Officers

(Page 1): http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/opinion/19jayamaha.html

(Page 2): http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/opinion/19jayamaha.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

An excerpt: Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched.

Here's the text of the op-ed just in case you can't get through to the NYTimes page:

August 19, 2007

Op-Ed Contributors

The War as We Saw It

By BUDDHIKA JAYAMAHA, WESLEY D. SMITH, JEREMY ROEBUCK, OMAR MORA, EDWARD SANDMEIER, YANCE T. GRAY and JEREMY A. MURPHY

Baghdad

VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the "battle space" remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers' expense.

A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.

As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.

Similarly, Sunnis, who have been underrepresented in the new Iraqi armed forces, now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our tacit support. Sunnis recognize that the best guarantee they may have against Shiite militias and the Shiite-dominated government is to form their own armed bands. We arm them to aid in our fight against Al Qaeda.

However, while creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.

In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear. (In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a "time-sensitive target acquisition mission" on Aug. 12; he is expected to survive and is being flown to a military hospital in the United States.) While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse — namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force.

Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.

Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible while the military situation remains in constant flux.

The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920: rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context. They saw in us something useful for the moment.

Now that moment is passing, as the Shiites have achieved what they believe is rightfully theirs. Their next task is to figure out how best to consolidate the gains, because reconciliation without consolidation risks losing it all. Washington's insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made — de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government — places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.

Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict — as we do now — will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.

At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. "Lucky" Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.

In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, "We need security, not free food."

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.

Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.

We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.

Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.

NY Times Op-ed by Active-Duty Soldiers in Iraq

Sheldon from Doylestown — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:28:21 EDT

If you missed it, please read this Op-ed on the Iraq War in the NY Times by Active Duty Non-Commissioned Officers

(Page 1): http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/opinion/19jayamaha.html

(Page 2): http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/opinion/19jayamaha.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

Here's the text of the op-ed just in case you can't get through to the NYTimes page:

August 19, 2007

Op-Ed Contributors

The War as We Saw It

By BUDDHIKA JAYAMAHA, WESLEY D. SMITH, JEREMY ROEBUCK, OMAR MORA, EDWARD SANDMEIER, YANCE T. GRAY and JEREMY A. MURPHY

Baghdad

We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.

News and Links for Group Administrators

Sheldon from Doylestown — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 10:41:47 EDT

So that Group Administrators can share news and links, *News and Links for Group Administrators* has been formed.

*Group Administrators* for Obama - Collaboration Group is a group for Group Administrators to share and compare strategies and ideas for organization, fundraising, and mobilization, but not intended for the dissemination of news items and poll results. *News and Links for Group Administrators* will serve as a clearinghouse for news and links (blog sites and videos included) so that we can find news and links to share with our national, state, metropolitan and local groups. Please provide news and links that will be useful nationally.

To help explain the intent of this group, please look at two other groups that serve a different purpose:To help craft response to misinformation or negative spin, please join:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/ObamaRapidResponse. To discuss news through emails, please join:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/NewsJunkiesforObama

One last detail: in this group, dialogue and discussion should be done privately. Please join our new group, *News and Links for Group Administrators* here: (Links have not been making their way through the MyBarackObama.com messaging system. If that is the case here, please copy and paste the following web address to your address box above)
http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/NewsandLinksforGroupAdministrators

All the best,
Sheldon

From Samantha Power's Campaign Memo on Barack Obama's Foreign Policy

Sheldon from Doylestown — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 22:02:12 EDT

From the Barack Obama Campaign memo penned by Samantha Power, a former journalist and Harvard professor who is advising the campaign:
August 3, 2007
To: Interested Parties
From: Samantha Power -- Founding Executive Director, Harvard University Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
Re: Conventional Washington versus the Change We Need

"Barack Obama defied conventional wisdom and opposed invading Iraq. He did so at a time when some told him that doing so would doom his political future. He took that risk because he thought it essential that the United States 'finish the fight with bin Laden and al Qaeda.' He warned that a 'dumb war, a rash war' in Iraq would result in an "occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences."

"Barack Obama was right; the conventional wisdom was wrong. And today, we see the consequences. Iraq is in chaos. According to the National Intelligence Estimate, the threat to our homeland from terrorist groups is 'persistent and evolving.' Al-Qaeda has a safe-haven in Pakistan. Iran has only grown stronger and bolder. The American people are less safe because of a rash war."

"Diplomacy: For years, conventional wisdom in Washington has said that the United States cannot talk to its adversaries because it would reward them. Here is the result:

'The United States has not talked directly to Iran at a high level, and they have continued to build their nuclear weapons program, wreak havoc in Iraq, and support terror.
The United States has not talked directly to Syria at a high level, and they have continued to meddle in Lebanon and support terror.
The United States did not talk to North Korea for years, and they were able to produce enough material for 6 to 8 more nuclear bombs.

'By any measure, not talking has not worked. Conventional wisdom would have us continue this policy; Barack Obama would turn the page. He knows that not talking has made us look weak and stubborn in the world; that skillful diplomacy can drive wedges between your adversaries; that the only way to know your enemy is to take his measure; and that tough talk is of little use if you're not willing to do it directly to your adversary. Barack Obama is not afraid of losing a PR battle to a dictator - he's ready to tell them what they don't want to hear because that's how tough, smart diplomacy works, and that's how American leaders have scored some of the greatest strategic successes in US history.

'Barack Obama's judgment is right; the conventional wisdom is wrong. We need a new era of tough, principled and engaged American diplomacy to deal with 21st century challenges."

"Nuclear Attacks on Terrorist Targets: For years, Washington's conventional wisdom has held that candidates for President are judged not by their wisdom, but rather by their adherence to hackneyed rhetoric that make little sense beyond the Beltway. When asked whether he would use nuclear weapons to take out terrorist targets in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Barack Obama gave the sensible answer that nuclear force was not necessary, and would kill too many civilians. Conventional wisdom held this up as a sign of inexperience. But if experience leads you to make gratuitous threats about nuclear use - inflaming fears at home and abroad, and signaling nuclear powers and nuclear aspirants that using nuclear weapons is acceptable behavior, it is experience that should not be relied upon.

"Barack Obama's judgment is right. Conventional wisdom is wrong. It is wrong to propose that we would drop nuclear bombs on terrorist training camps in Pakistan, potentially killing tens of thousands of people and sending America's prestige in the world to a level that not even George Bush could take it. We should judge presidential candidates on their judgment and their plans, not on their ability to recite platitudes.

"Vision: American foreign policy is broken. It has been broken by people who supported the Iraq War, opposed talking to our adversaries, failed to finish the job with al Qaeda, and alienated the world with our belligerence."

One human family

Sheldon from Doylestown — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 22:21:28 EDT

I did volunteer work in Sierra Leone, West Africa, and the experience absolutely changed my life. There is only one human family. We live in one town, the globe, with different neighborhoods called "the Middle East," "West Africa," "Eastern Europe," etc., and we have to see that and get along.

In my opinion, The Honorable Senator Barack Obama sees one human family in a way that the other candidates do not. The Honorable Senator's continued willingness to speak truth combined with humility is key to winning the primaries and the general election.

Comparing the PBS debate at Howard University with the NAACP Presidential Candidates Forum today, July 12, in Detroit:

Sheldon from Doylestown — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 00:47:19 EDT

Comparing the PBS debate at Howard University with the NAACP Presidential Candidates Forum today, July 12, in Detroit:

I wish I had been at the PBS debate at Howard University. It is hard to analyze these things if one is not present. But I read that afterward Cornell West said that Senator Obama had to speak more like a statesman, and some women I know who support Barack said that Hillary stole the show.

Watching online, I felt that when Hillary started speaking very firmly that Barack should have adjusted any prior strategy (which may have been to be more gentle and comfortable with the audience). I felt that he needed to respond to Hillary's firm voice by speaking more firmly.

Today in Detroit, he spoke firmly and took the place over as he has too.

One human family.

Sheldon from Doylestown — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 00:38:39 EDT

Submit your video question for the next Presidential Debate. (Dates of subsequent debates given.)

Sheldon from Doylestown — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 00:16:48 EDT

If you wish to submit a video question for the next Presidential Debate at The Citidel in South Carolina on July 23rd (CNN and YouTube are co-sponsoring the debate) go to: http://www.youtube.com/debates.

Quoting from the above page: "This summer and fall, YouTube, CNN and a few engaged and engaging citizens will make political history by having the presidential candidates answer questions submitted via YouTube videos. The first debate will feature the Democratic candidates on July 23rd in Charleston, South Carolina. Submit your question for the Democrats between June 14 and July 22 (the earlier the better). The CNN political team will choose the most creative and compelling videos, and if yours is one of them, you may get the chance to fly to Charleston to watch the debate live and offer your reactions afterward on YouTube's political video blog, Citizentube."

Here is a post on this debate format: Link .

Please be sure to vote in the CNN poll at the conclusion of the debate. Please also vote in the MSNBC poll and any other polls from the major networks.

MARK YOUR CALENDER: Here are the dates of the debates that follow: August 19, 2007 - Des Moines, Iowa
September 26, 2007 - Hanover, New Hampshire
October 30, 2007 - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
November 15, 2007 - Las Vegas, Nevada
December 10, 2007 - Los Angeles, California
January 6, 2008 - Johnson County, Iowa
January 15, 2008 - Las Vegas, Nevada
January 31, 2008 - California

Sign Up Now For The Campaign's Primary Southeastern PA June 9th Event.

Sheldon from Doylestown — Thu, 24 May 2007 19:44:11 EDT

Southeastern PA Walk for Change. Please join thousands of volunteers across the country on June 9th and hit the streets for the Walk for Change National Canvass being organized by grassroots supporters of Barack Obama.

For Southeastern PA, the campaign would like us to focus on the event being held in Glenside, PA. Media including The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Daily News and apparently the T.V. stations have been invited. The campaign would like to quickly sign up 100 people and have 100 people in attendance. Please view event details and sign up at the following link now. (You sign up by clicking on "Next" at the bottom of the page.) The link: www.my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/4jjpz

Transportation is easy. We meet at the Glenside Train Station. From the south, take SEPTA's R2 and R5 trains. From the north, take SEPTA's R1 and R5. The 22 bus also runs by the station.

For people from the city, take it as a trip to the "country" where you will meet other Obama supporters. For Bucks, Chester and Delaware County residents, take it as an opportunity to meet a whole bunch of other Obama supporters. Please sign up now. The campaign is focusing on this event. Be there for Barack Obama. Click on "Next" at the bottom of this link: www.my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/4jjpz

Sign Up Now For The Campaign's Primary Southeastern PA June 9th Event.

Sheldon from Doylestown — Thu, 24 May 2007 17:53:44 EDT

Transportation is easy. We meet at the Glenside Train Station. From the south, take SEPTA's R2 and R5 trains. From the north, take SEPTA's R1 and R5. The 22 bus also runs by the station.

Flyer Distribution for Barack Obama's May 22nd Philadelphia Kickoff

Sheldon from Doylestown — Tue, 08 May 2007 08:58:30 EDT

I proceeded calmly and carefully, but I estimate that I distributed just over 600 flyers in 6 hours and 20 minutes on the sidewalks in Center City yesterday. It was a good experience, still "Whew." If you haven't done flyer distribution before, as best I can, I want to share with you learned strategy.

With so many people passing by so quickly, I believe it is necessary to quickly visually select who you are going to try to hand a flyer to and announce it with phrase such as: "Barack Obama coming to Philly on May 22nd." I observed their reactions to that phrase and did not force a flyer into anyone's hand. Perhaps 50% of the people who took the flyer wanted more information on the event and how to buy the ticket before they reached out to take it. I learned that it is best to make kind steady eye contact with the person you hope to hand the flyer to when they are still about 6 to 10 feet away from you if they are walking towards you.

You usually find a trail of discarded flyers as you walk away from a distributer--on the ground or in the nearest trashcan. I recommend that you observe people's reaction and wait for them to reach for the flyer that you are holding out before you give it to them. Doing this, I found only one (that's one) discarded flyer on the ground all day long.

Forgive me Joseph, but if you have not yet received a copy of the campaign flyer for the event, please email Joseph Hill and ask for one JosephH@StudentsforBarackObama.com as he is our main campaign contact now.

Then, please hand out as many as you can. We have a lot of work to do. As of today, May 8th, we still have to sell over 2000 tickets.

Barack Obama must be the next President of the United States, and he will be with our concerted efforts.

All the best,

Sheldon

Flyer Distribution for Barack Obama's May 22nd Philadelphia Kickoff

Sheldon from Doylestown — Tue, 08 May 2007 08:56:29 EDT

Forgive me Joseph, but if you have not yet received a copy of the campaign flyer for the event, please email Joseph Hill and ask for one JosephH@StudentsforBarackObama.com as he is our main campaign contact now.

Then, please hand out as many as you can. We still have a lot of work to do. As of today, May 8th, we still have to sell over 2000 tickets.

Barack Obama must be the next President of the United States, and he will be with our concerted efforts.

All the best,

Sheldon

From the American Library Association's Booklist Review of Nuclear Power Is Not The Answer.

Sheldon from Doylestown — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 10:33:47 EDT

"For starters, enormous amounts of fossil fuel are burned during the nuclear energy process, and nuclear reactors use and pollute vast amounts of water. Radioactive emissions do escape and are released from nuclear facilities, and man-made radioactive elements regularly enter the food chain and our bodies to deleterious effect. Nuclear power plants are vulnerable to natural disasters and to terrorists; all nuclear plants generate plutonium, seeding the proliferation of nuclear weapons; and we have yet to discover a safe place or method for storing waste that remains deadly for millennia. Add to that the scandalously corrupt and hypocritical economics and politics of nuclear power. So numerous and so severe are the problems Caldicott precisely records and clearly interprets that, as it stands today, nuclear power is a costly, dangerous, even ludicrous technology."

Please view our new mybarackobama group and then make a small statement by joining at Link

Watch Obama's excellent speech at the DNC Meeting.

Sheldon from Doylestown — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 10:16:49 EDT

If you haven't already watched this speech, please do. We must make sure that Barack Obama is the next President of the United States. (Click on the following youtube Link. If necessary, wait for downloading.)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=siSe8Qb91wQ

Nuclear Power is a better option??

Sheldon from Doylestown — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 15:17:06 EDT

Nuclear Power is a dinosaur. www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid508.php. But not just any dinosaur. It is unsafe, and it is too expensive. And during the nuclear cycle, plutonium for nuclear weapons is produced.

Regardless of the steady propaganda recently pumped into the major media outlets by the nuclear power industry, nuclear power’s time is past. www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid1151.php Come on over to our side. We currently are staring at 2 steamrollers, and nuclear power apologists would have their steamroller BIGGER??