Saturday
Fiddle and the drum
If you only listen to one song this weekend...make it this one.
Peace protest video set to a A Perfect Circle's cover of Fiddle and the Drum.
Peace protest video set to a A Perfect Circle's cover of Fiddle and the Drum.
Thursday
Wednesday
I'll write war instead of peace...
Hi there,I am darkdaughta. My home blog is here. I received an invitation to come post as part of the peace tree. I haven't written a poem for about four years...but that's probably because my prose, coming now mostly in the form of blog posts, flows over into poetry when it serves and back into a more strict letter/journal format when I so choose.
Before I launch into my reason for posting here, today, I just want to say thanks for the opportunity to once more let poetics flow from the tips of my fingers in ways that bring pictures, emotion and spirit. I appreciate the opportunity.
So!
I thought about peace, I wanted to write peace here, today.
But it felt fleeting and insubstantial.
In truth, I'm not strictly peaceable. I don't believe in turn the other cheek. Too many of my people's have been sacrificed to that doctrine.
I want my children to live. And for them to live, they will need to know when and how to fight. They will need to know that there are imperialist wars that are always unjust and that there are defenders who fight to remove various oppressive boots off the necks of the people. They will have to be able to tell the difference...even when the imperialists use the rhetoric of liberation to bolster their cause...even when those who fight because they must scorch the earth and cry tears of regret over the harm they have caused in support for their causes.
My children will have to think critically and be able to fight even more critically.
I hope this doesn't X me out as a suitable blogger posting on matters related to peace. I prefer it to war and dream of a day when there really are no more wars to be fought.
I will not live to see this as I know that Iraq and Afghanistan are really just hot points, skirmishes, not the only unjust wars happening all over the globe.
And so, yeah...
I'm thinking about the fact that I grew up during the cold war, constantly afraid of being bombed into oblivion or of surviving with toxic, cancerous side effects.
I understand that as the war progresses, even if it should stop tomorrow, the rage harboured by those who have been harmed in other countries will continue. This means that they will bring our fight, the battles of our intrepid warlords home to all of us and to our families and friends.
But even if this doesn't happen any time soon, I understand that there are ongoing battles being waged against people of colour on this continent. Mass imprisonment, criminalization, coerced sterilization, poor food leading to even poorer health, substandard education, lived, daily experiences of oppression...these I understand as the tools of war at home.
But even aside from this, I know that there is an older war happening here right under our noses. There is a war happening against the original custodians of these lands. Our homes are built on land where they lived and hunted and birthed and fought and made confederacies and spoke to their dieties undisturbed.
These peoples are still here...some of them, anyways. Some have vanished from the face of the earth and will not walk here again. I understand that I have played a part in this, that we've all played a part in this ongoing disappearing.
There has been war here in this place for centuries. I have always known war.
I'll write war...becuz I don’t know how to write peace
still here on stolen land/ war
all I know at “home”
Monday
CRUEL MONTH...
Jewish Voice for PeaceThis is the third of Professor Joel Beinin's monthly analyses of the current state of affairs in Israel, Palestine and beyond. Beinin is currently Director of Middle East Studies at the American University in Cairo while he is on temporary leave from his position as History Professor at Stanford University. Beinin is also a past president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America.
Unpleasant Anniversaries
March is a cruel month in the recent history of the Middle East. This year is the fifth anniversary of the death of Rachel Corrie who was crushed to death by an Israeli soldier driving an armored Caterpillar D9 bulldozer on Mar. 16, 2003 as she attempted to stop the gigantic vehicle from destroying the home of a Palestinian family in Rafah. Rachel's sacrifice did not prevent Israel from turning Gaza into an inferno. Its people are mired in poverty and hopelessness, subject to Israeli depredations, and nearly forgotten by the majority of the corporate media which is covering Vice President Cheney's wanderings throughout the Middle East as though they were relevant to something mendaciously called a Palestinian-Israeli "peace process." Peace and Palestinian statehood have become propaganda terms, emptied of any positive meaning.
Saturday
Thursday
LABELS - MIND WHERE YOU TREAD!
Dear George,
The beauty of America’s one-party system is its efficiency at eliminating inconvenient candidates who become a little too populist for comfort. America is a white, male oligarchy, first, last and always. No candidate who dreams of empowering the people has a snowball’s chance in Hell of occupying the Oval Office until the oligarchy has leeched any and all populist impulses from said candidate.
Arbitrary labels are the desiccants that turn a candidate’s populist dreams into dried pods in an empty shell. The best labels are those that divide and weaken.
It is a fact that both HillBill and bamaobama are getting a little too populist for comfort. It is tempting to dismiss their rhetoric as so much posturing to garner votes. The problem is that when a candidate raises the mob’s expectations, the mob puts pressure on said candidate to deliver once he or she is in office.
So the oligarchy has rolled out the two labels that stand the best chance of neutralizing them both: race (with its implication of black militancy) and gender (with its implication of bra-burning feminists). These labels are precious jewels guaranteed to divert America’s attention from a crumbling economy, the upward flow of capital and foreign enterprises that are trashing America both at home and overseas.
The most powerful labels are those grounded in illusion. The use of “race” overlooks the fact that race is a false category that has no basis in reality. To imply great differences between individuals on the basis of insignificant morphological differences is pure fantasy, which is why it works so well. (Read the rest of the letter...)
Tuesday
THE WAY I SEE IT (Obama and race)
Visit The coffeehouse Studio for the inspiration...coffee's not bad, either.
The way I see it...
Bring on the dialogue about race. Talk to Obama about race.
Let him speak fluently and clearly about race in America. Let the fascists consider for a moment the truth of his and his pastors words. Let them mingle together in this lexicon bowl of races. Let them sink into the skulls of those doubting that the black man is still slave to the white man's establishment!
Let the rhetoric, the debate flow out into the halls of Congress, into the pubs of Louisiana, under the train tracks of Missouri and Arkansas, along the plush golf courses, clatter over the clink of wall street fat cats, jangle around the barstools of mid-west saloons and jingle near the pockets of the oil barons, and land at the feet of the CEO pushing the pedal down in his Hummer.
Let it come.
Let it be fleshed out,
Brown, red, black, and white...
Skins laid bare over the cold granite of truth.
The way I see it...
Bring on the dialogue about race. Talk to Obama about race.
Let him speak fluently and clearly about race in America. Let the fascists consider for a moment the truth of his and his pastors words. Let them mingle together in this lexicon bowl of races. Let them sink into the skulls of those doubting that the black man is still slave to the white man's establishment!
Let the rhetoric, the debate flow out into the halls of Congress, into the pubs of Louisiana, under the train tracks of Missouri and Arkansas, along the plush golf courses, clatter over the clink of wall street fat cats, jangle around the barstools of mid-west saloons and jingle near the pockets of the oil barons, and land at the feet of the CEO pushing the pedal down in his Hummer.
Let it come.
Let it be fleshed out,
Brown, red, black, and white...
Skins laid bare over the cold granite of truth.
An Interview With Lifetime Activist and Social Entrepreneur Charles Halpern
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The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal, as well as The Wild Wild Left, The Peace Tree, Independent Bloggers Alliance and Worldwide Sawdust.
Effective change agents and activists must blend their cognitive skills and passions with deep reservoirs of inner strength. It’s a life path requiring self-sacrifice, discipline, a tough hide combined with empathy, idealism joined with pragmatism, a willingness to put ego aside, resiliency and a perspective beyond the moment of immediate conflict.
Alas, many of us dedicated to pursuing the cause of peace, justice and economic fairness are demoralized by setbacks and criticisms overtime. Personal lives are also easily consumed by the flames of devotion to causes larger than ourselves, such as reversing global warming or stopping genocide. It’s so easy to lose our balance as we stand apart from professional colleagues, friends and relatives who don’t share our passions or devotion to change the world for the better.
Lifetime activist and social entrepreneur Charles Halpern provides a life road map in his inspiring memoir, Making Waves and Riding The Currents: Activism and the Practice of Wisdom (Berrett-Kohler). In an accessible and compelling narrative, Halpern describes his journey starting as an ambitious young Washington corporate lawyer to becoming a crusading advocate on behalf of the public interest.
It’s also the story of a man who learned to lead, listen and follow. On his unique journey, Halpern realized his cognitive and adversarial skills were by themselves insufficient. Hence, Halpern developed “inner resources” that complimented his professional abilities and led him to what he calls “the practice of wisdom.”
With humility and self-deprecating wit, Halpern conveys revealing anecdotes about the remarkable cast of characters he encountered along the way such as Barney Frank, Ralph Nader, Ram Dass and even the Dalai Lama in his pursuit of justice and self-knowledge. Overall, Halpern’s book is a compelling read for veteran activists or anyone who has struggled to enhance the quality and meaning of their daily lives.
READ THE REST OF THE POST +/-
In 1970, Halpern founded the first public interest law firm the Center for Law and Social Policy, and helped train a generation of public interest lawyers while going toe-to-toe with the Nixon Administration on behalf of the environment and civil rights. The profession of public interest law was further strengthened in 1982, when Halpern became the founding Dean of the City University of New York (CUNY) Law School in Queens. At CUNY Halpern championed a curriculum specifically designed to graduate public interest lawyers. Twenty-five years later, CUNY Law School is still standing with public interest law graduates fighting the good fight for the common good.
After his stint at CUNY, Halpern became president of the new $400 million Nathan Cummings Foundation. He is also the founder and board chair of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, a leading force in bringing meditation and inner work into universities and other mainstream institutions. Halpern has been involved in many other progressive and activist organizations, such as founding the think tank Demos: A Network for Ideas and Action.
The Dalai Lama wrote the following in a Foreword for Halpern’s book,
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ILJ: I was quite engrossed by your book. A re-occurring theme as the title suggests is the practice of wisdom both in daily life as well as social activism. Tell the readers, many of whom are activists themselves, what you mean by the “practice of wisdom.”
HALPERN: By the practice of wisdom, I mean first and foremost making a commitment to bringing wisdom into our lives--setting ourselves on the path of becoming wiser people. And for activists what it means is cultivating wisdom as a way of becoming more effective in our work and coming to our work from a deeper place.
For me the cultivation of wisdom has a number of aspects. I think that wisdom is a practice, like tennis or playing the piano, which can actually lead us to become wiser people then we are. Most of us are not going to reach the level of wisdom of the Dalai Lama but we can move in that direction. In this book I suggest some of the ways that I’ve explored the wisdom path. And I have some ideas about how others, particularly activists might do so.
For me, the first element of cultivating wisdom is aligning our work with our values. Second, making a commitment to keep our lives in balance. A balance between our public involvement and our private lives. A balance between our head, our cognitive abilities, our advocacy abilities on the one hand and the qualities of the heart and the emotions, on the other.
Third, the practice of wisdom for me implies assuring time for reflection and introspection. In my case it has been through a formal meditation practice. But I think anyone who wants to cultivate wisdom has to have some regular and systematic way of pulling himself or herself out of the cacophony of noise, mostly media generated, and for activists, out of the tensions and anxieties that go with an activist commitment.
ILJ: I was struck by one part of your book where you wrote about how you found yourself ensnared in the “success trap” and you describe that as a common American malady in which we only pursue those projects we’re comfortable with or that we’re good at. How important is it to avoid performing only those projects we feel proficient at in cultivating wisdom?
HALPERN: The success trap, in my view, is a very pervasive phenomenon in our culture. We are naturally drawn to do the things that we do well and to avoid doing things we feel less confident about. I think it’s extremely important to explore the edges, take some risks and go into areas where our skills are less fully developed.
For example, in the book I describe how I went on a weekend retreat that was committed to improving skills at music improvisation. I signed up for that retreat with full knowledge that was an area of notable lack on my part. I’m not good at music and I had never tried improvisation at all.
I thought it would be a good thing to push that edge and see what it was like for me to work in an area where my competence was so low. And to just monitor my experience of that. I did this at a time when I was starting a new law school and I was particularly interested to put myself in the place of people who were anxiously preparing for the study of law-- a new discipline for them and one where many had no real confidence in their capability. And I thought by putting myself in a situation something like theirs I might improve my capacity to identify with their experience and help them get past their anxiety and grow in confidence.
I think this is a subset of something I consider very important -- the willingness to take risks and push the boundaries. And particularly to do it in a way that increases our capacity for empathy and understanding how the world looks to other people.
ILJ: Let’s talk about your life journey. In the beginning of your book you write about the seminal moment of your life occurring in 1965. You’re a young, ambitious associate at the prestigious law firm Arnold & Porter, started by New Dealers who served in FDR’s administration. Future Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas was there.
And a pro-bono case falls in your lap, defending the rights of a man named Charles Rouse who had spent four years being mistreated in a mental hospital after committing a misdemeanor. This was the One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest era when it came to mental health treatment. You successfully represented Rouse after initial setbacks and the course of your life changed. If that case hadn’t come along, would you have remained a corporate lawyer even with the turmoil of the 1960s?
HALPERN: That case was extremely important to me. It gave me an opportunity to do two things. One was to increase my empathic capacity to identify with this poor guy who was then a little younger then I was, in his mid-twenties. To see what this incarceration had done to him. And then I could actually use my lawyer skills to do something for him and to get his release. I saw in that case the possibility of expanding the reach of the Constitution into mental hospitals and to institutions for mentally retarded people. I thought here is an area of civil rights that had really not been explored.
And by fortunate circumstance -- my assignment to this case -- I had the opportunity to think about how a whole new area of law might develop. So you’re quite right in identifying that as a turning point in my life. And it permitted me to see that I could use my legal skills in a way that would help build a more just and compassionate world. And that was a major insight for me. If it hadn’t been for that case I probably would not have moved just at that moment to a different kind of career.
But I think it would’ve happened at some point. There was too much emptiness for me in the kind of law I was doing at Arnold & Porter. I was handling cases that had very little in them to make a connection with my values. It was work that, whenever I stopped to take a look at it, I would say, “What am I doing here? This isn’t the person I expected to be when I went to law school. This isn’t the person I wanted to be.” So I think even if it hadn’t been for the Rouse case my career in corporate practice would have been a short one.
ILJ: You took a leave of absence from secure employment with Arnold & Porter, became a social entrepreneur and established the Center for Law and Social Policy about 1969. Reading about that, I was struck by how you simultaneously interfaced with the privileged elite, while mingling with the counter-culture and took on entrenched corporate power by playing within the rules of our civil society. Rules that many in your generation had come to despise and therefore drawn into the counter-culture. How were you able to keep your balance and finesse the contradictions?
HALPERN: When I set up the Center for Law and Social Policy with a group of three other young lawyers, we realized that for us to be effective, we were going to have to maintain relationships with the establishment. First of all we had to get foundation support. Our plan for this enterprise was to get foundation support to permit us to represent clients that lacked resources to hire lawyers.
I was twenty-nine at the time. From the perspective of the large foundations,that’s a very junior person. They weren’t going to make a big investment in a novel venture like a public interest law firm unless we looked like we were really well grounded. One of the ways we did that was by putting together a board of trustees of eminent leaders of the legal profession. So already by virtue of being connected to the foundations, we were maintaining a connection to the establishment world.
Our board chair, Arthur Goldberg, had been a Supreme Court Justice. He had been ambassador to the United Nations. He had been Secretary of Labor. Incredible credentials albeit always on the progressive side of things. He had been general counsel to the AFL-CIO before Kennedy had made him Secretary of Labor. So he was very sympathetic to what we were doing but an establishmentarian nonetheless. He had been a cabinet member. And we found we could do the work we wanted to do with those connections.
When we considered a major lawsuit to enjoin the construction of the Alaskan pipeline which put us against the biggest oil companies in the world, our board of trustees gave us complete support. So we managed to keep the support of progressive elements of the American establishment for some pretty counter-cultural activities. Now our activities were filing lawsuits. We were not throwing rocks. We were not in the streets. So we had found a place where we could navigate these cross currents.
ILJ: You and your colleagues at the Center made history and sued the Nixon Administration’s Interior Department to prevent the construction of an environmentally hazardous pipeline in Alaska. You won a great victory. Sadly, the pipeline is built years later anyway and we had the Exxon-Valdez catastrophe in 1989. The Supreme Court is expected to make a ruling about it in June. Given the current makeup of the court with conservative corporatists, is there any reason to hope for a just ruling?
HALPERN: Well, the turn that the Supreme Court has taken under Bush II is really sad. It’s disheartening to see so many Constitutional principles pushed aside, with so much corporate bias reflected in court decisions. This represents a conservatism that goes way beyond the conservatism of the Nixon era. Warren Burger, the Chief Justice that Nixon appointed, would be a moderate by today’s standards. So you can’t be optimistic about the decision in the Exxon-Valdez case. This brings me back to the question you started with -- bringing the cultivation of wisdom into our activism.
One of the things the wisdom perspective gives us is the long view. The understanding that there are going to be ups and downs. And the down cycles might last for quite awhile. When we are dealing with the complicated challenges of the twenty-first century, the long perspective is going to be critical to avoid burnout and despair among activists.
ILJ: During your career at the law center in the ‘70s, your wife Susan, a very accomplished person herself, became heavily involved in women’s causes. You acknowledged in your book feeling threatened at the time. Why do you suppose that an enlightened progressive man like yourself, as well as other men in this era who otherwise considered themselves progressive, struggled so much during the early stages of the women’s liberation movement?
HALPERN: It’s hard to put oneself back into that historical moment. I want to stress that my formative years were the Eisenhower years. I entered college in 1957. My generation was a transitional generation, and much shaped by the fifties.
Many people of my era lived their lives from the old playbook, the fifties story. And some of us tried to be more open and receptive to the forces that were alive in the sixties. This goes back to your question earlier about how I was able to bridge the fifties attitudes of my seniors to the sixties attitudes of my juniors. And I think it has to do with this odd historical moment of which I came of age. And one of the revolutionary developments of the sixties era was the women’s movement. I talk in the book about how hard it was for me to adapt.
It was a hard one. The fact that a person is progressive doesn’t mean he or she will be good on all issues, including those that are close and personal. It was a complicated moment and lots of marriages were breaking up around us. I consider it a mark of success that we were able to renegotiate our marriage and recreate a vibrant new marriage that has thrived and been a blessing for both of us.
ILJ: In the early 1980s, you’re recruited to become the founding dean of the City of University of New York School of Law in Queens. A very different world than the comfortable universe of law and well meaning activists you had come to know. New York was especially gritty in those days and you find yourself caught in the vortex of the corrupt Donald Manes Queens political machine and bureaucrats who cared more about patronage than public interest idealism. How close were you to giving up?
HALPERN: I was very close. I had never lived in New York City before. New York City was a tough place and I underestimate how tough this job was going to be. Setting up a new law school is hard-- particularly one that has a public interest emphasis and a commitment to design a new curriculum for training public interest lawyers. So it was hard work and I would come home many days exhausted and discouraged. My wife Susan and I would discuss if I should cut my losses.
Fortunately, I saw it through. The law school was then and is now an absolutely great and unique place. So as hard as it was to do, I am very proud to have been the founding dean. The law school is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary since the founding.
It’s fair to say that the City of University of New York Law School has graduated more public interest lawyers practicing in New York State then all the other law schools in the state combined. That’s quite a legacy and when I was back there on my book tour a couple weeks ago we had a wonderful gathering of old students, faculty members, new students and alumni. And it was thrilling to see this group of people who had carried our unique training out into the law world where they held influential positions -- from judgeships to public defenders to senior positions in state agencies.
ILJ: It is indeed a remarkable legacy. Looking back twenty-five years ago, Donald Manes, the Queens Borough President, was the antithesis of your good government reformist sensibilities. Years later he was caught up in scandal and even committed suicide. When you met him, Manes was in his prime as a tough talking machine boss.
HALPERN: Right.
ILJ: You write that during a dispute over faculty you wanted to hire, Manes told you with a smile, “Queens, despite its two million people, is really a small town. If you fill the Law School up with a bunch of Communists and lefties, I’ll drive you and the Law School out of the County.” What kind or relationship did you have with him that enabled this law school to survive?
HALPERN: He was at the outset the essential person who got the money to start this law-school and keep it running. So part of my job was to stay in a good working relationship with him. Fortunately, I grew to like him despite his shortcomings and the distinctly different sense of politics and governance that he and I had. I think the fact that I did like him … he had a sense of humor about himself and his work… made it easier for me to function effectively in his orbit.
It wasn’t easy but I was able to keep a civil relationship with him. And in that dispute over our faculty hires he backed us up. He was in our corner. And of course we were giving him something too. To have a respected law school in his borough was a good thing. He used to enjoy meeting with the American Bar Association teams, academic intellectuals who would come in to inspect the law schools. We had to get ourselves accredited by the ABA. He took great pride and saw this law school as one of his accomplishments. In a certain sense he recognized that we were returning something important to the borough of Queens. He was deeply devoted to the borough and interested in seeing its institutions thrive.
ILJ: You used the word legacy a moment ago. Ironically, with the corrupt Donald Manes, one of his legacies is this public interest law school which helped train and nurture a generation of do-good lawyers.
HALPERN: It’s a great irony. Again to return to the wisdom theme: one of the hallmarks I think of a wise person is the capacity to live with and appreciate paradox and the kind of ironies that you just pointed to.
ILJ: The stresses of your position in Queens influenced you to learn meditation. It happens one of my dearest personal friends has become a practitioner of meditation. Last time I saw her she seemed to have gained a new wisdom about her life and was practically glowing. Why is meditation that powerful for people like my friend and yourself?
HALPERN: We’re starting to get some scientific answers to that question. I began meditation when I was dean at the law school. A friend of mine suggested it was a way to manage the stresses of this position that I was in. I started with a very simple meditation practice -- and with some real skepticism. It didn’t seem likely to me that simply sitting for half an hour in the morning, watching my thoughts come and go, and trying to stay centered and balanced was going to be helpful to me in this difficult job I had.
But to my pleasure and surprise, it turned out to be a powerful force. Precisely by giving me a place of stillness and centeredness inside myself, to which I could return in the middle of a confrontation-filled day. I could take a few breaths and come back to that place of meditative stillness. I tried it as an experiment and it paid off for me so I just kept doing it I would get up each morning and do this meditation.
Now scientists have begun using the most sophisticated brain scanning techniques to look at what happens to the brain with meditation. This was an entirely pragmatic thing in my experience. But what we’re finding is that the practice of meditation actually changes brain function and brain structure. So you shouldn’t be surprised when you observe really dramatic shifts in your friend who is meditating.
In my case I think changes have been gradual. But over time mediation has given me a way of dealing with high stress situations, making me less reactive, more capable of identifying with the views of people who disagree with me, more effective in promoting the values that I care most about.
ILJ: It sounds also as if you’re able to put ego in a certain perspective. You still have your ego but you’re able to rise above it when the situation calls for it. Does meditation help one do that?
HALPERN: Yes, absolutely. I don’t’ want to say free from ego. Nothing like that. But it helps give me some distance from my own egoic sense of what the world is like. And that’s been tremendously important to me. I think it’s made me a better husband and father and surely a better activist. Meditation creates a space in which wisdom can arise.
ILJ: I like the way you put that. Creating a space where wisdom can arise. And in pursuit of that, following your service at the law school you become president of the Nathan Cummings Foundation and one of your program areas was Jewish life. You managed to arrange a get together with Jewish Rabbis and the Dalai Lama. What interests did they have in common?
HALPERN: That was a wonderful project. Another turning point in my life. I think what brought the Dalai Lama to the gathering was his particular interest in how the Jewish community had so successfully maintained itself in Diaspora, away from its homeland. That is the situation the Tibetans were confronting since he and many of his followers had been driven from Tibet by the Chinese invasion in the fifties. So he was trying to figure out how to keep this culture and religion alive, and here he saw a community that had done it over millennia.
And from the Jewish point of view, I think it was admiration for the Dalai Lama and a desire to be helpful and to learn from him. Something that was on both sides was a sense that these were two ancient and deep spiritual traditions that had really not interacted much over their thousands of years of life. And I think they were both drawn to that historic dimension of this meeting, a unique gathering in the long histories of their religions.
Most of the foundations that had been approached with this proposal had summarily turned it down. The Cummings Foundation saw the potential in it. For people who are interested in pursing this, I describe this gathering a in my book because it was so influential for me to be in the Dalai Lama’s presence for a week. But there is a wonderful book by Roger Kamenetz, The Jew and the Lotus, which describes the gathering in detail and provides wonderful insights into Judaism and Buddhism for people who may not be familiar with one or both.
ILJ: You also write that during your tenure at Nathan Cummings you became more connected with your Jewish heritage. Why did that happen at this point in your life?
HALPERN: Meditation had opened me to deeper spiritual insights. I grew up in a very secular home. The central importance which I now give to the meditative dimension of life came to me late. It wasn’t something I learned in childhood.
At the Nathan Cummings Foundation, I worked with a brilliant and deep Rabbi, Rachel Cowan, one of the first generation of women to be ordained. And through her I gained access to the rich and diverse strands of Judaism that were flowering in the nineties and now. The Jewish renewal movement, for example. I never thought I would meet rabbis and scholars who were so stimulating and spiritually engaged, committed to social justice and to spiritual inquiry. It was very exciting for me personally, and here we were at a foundation where we could support these people and help them realize their commitment to spiritual renewal with our grants.
So it was that combination of things that led me deeper into my own Judaism. And one of the nicest things about it was that this Jewish program came to infuse other parts of the foundation’s work. So for example, in the environmental field, Paul Gorman and I worked out an idea that would bring religious groups more directly and effectively into the environmental movement.
Prior to that time there was little attention within organized religion to the environmental field and the National Religious Partnership became an important catalyst that brought diverse groups, from the liberal denominations to the evangelical Christians, into the environmental movement which has had real impact in the world. And it’s not just that these are new resources brought to the environmental issues. They brought the depth of their traditions into the environmental movement which gave it a resonance and spiritual force that environmentalism didn’t have before.
ILJ: It sounds like they brought a moral dimension to the cause of environmentalism.
HALPERN: I think it’s a moral dimension, a religious dimension and a spiritual dimension. And if we’re going to be able to succeed in the huge challenges we face today in the environmental world — such as global climate disruption and the like -- that deep grounding is going to be a critical component.
ILJ: This year is of course a presidential election year. For my generation, politics has promoted an ethos of hyper individualism at the expense of community values. Do you a sense a tipping point this year in the other direction?
HALPERN: I hope so.
ILJ: Any sense that the pendulum is finally swinging in the direction of activism towards a better society instead of I want mine and I don’t care about you?
HALPERN: Well my crystal ball is cloudy. There have been so many incredible surprises already that between now and November I’m reluctant to make a prediction. What does please me greatly is the fact that the importance of wisdom is starting to be recognized. I was impressed that when Senator Kerry endorsed Obama, he specifically did so because of his wisdom.
When Tony Morrison endorsed Obama, the first time she’s ever endorsed a presidential candidate, she did so because of his wisdom. And she wrote a lovely essay about wisdom in doing this. The very idea that this word has resurfaced in our political discourse is I think an encouraging sign. The idea that we will look for a candidate that embodies wisdom as well as experience and communication skills and strategic judgment marks a big moment in my opinion.
ILJ: In your opinion does Senator Obama embody wisdom? Are you in fact an Obama supporter?
HALPERN: I am in fact an enthusiastic Obama supporter. I think he’s someone who has cultivated the wisdom dimension. A person shall we say who walks the wisdom path. And to have the opportunity to vote for such a candidate is quite thrilling for me.
ILJ: Charles, you’ve been very generous with your time. A final question if I may. As you might surmise, many reading this are bloggers as well as activists. In your opinion has the Internet enhanced activism or made people more detached?
HALPERN: I don’t really have an opinion about that. I want to become more of a web person myself. I can see real virtues in having so many more voices expressing themselves and new networks being formed. That strikes me as a very exciting phenomenon. And I think the way the web has opened up the financing of political campaigns is a pro-democratic influence. Whether there is also significant downside, whether it leads to a fractionalization of political opinions and makes it harder to put together effective coalitions, I just don’t know that yet. I suspect it’s just too soon to know.
ILJ: Understood, it’s still very much an evolving phenomenon. Charles, thanks again for doing this. It was a lot of fun for me.
HALPERN: A real pleasure for me too.
The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal, as well as The Wild Wild Left, The Peace Tree, Independent Bloggers Alliance and Worldwide Sawdust.
Effective change agents and activists must blend their cognitive skills and passions with deep reservoirs of inner strength. It’s a life path requiring self-sacrifice, discipline, a tough hide combined with empathy, idealism joined with pragmatism, a willingness to put ego aside, resiliency and a perspective beyond the moment of immediate conflict.
Alas, many of us dedicated to pursuing the cause of peace, justice and economic fairness are demoralized by setbacks and criticisms overtime. Personal lives are also easily consumed by the flames of devotion to causes larger than ourselves, such as reversing global warming or stopping genocide. It’s so easy to lose our balance as we stand apart from professional colleagues, friends and relatives who don’t share our passions or devotion to change the world for the better.
Lifetime activist and social entrepreneur Charles Halpern provides a life road map in his inspiring memoir, Making Waves and Riding The Currents: Activism and the Practice of Wisdom (Berrett-Kohler). In an accessible and compelling narrative, Halpern describes his journey starting as an ambitious young Washington corporate lawyer to becoming a crusading advocate on behalf of the public interest.
It’s also the story of a man who learned to lead, listen and follow. On his unique journey, Halpern realized his cognitive and adversarial skills were by themselves insufficient. Hence, Halpern developed “inner resources” that complimented his professional abilities and led him to what he calls “the practice of wisdom.”
With humility and self-deprecating wit, Halpern conveys revealing anecdotes about the remarkable cast of characters he encountered along the way such as Barney Frank, Ralph Nader, Ram Dass and even the Dalai Lama in his pursuit of justice and self-knowledge. Overall, Halpern’s book is a compelling read for veteran activists or anyone who has struggled to enhance the quality and meaning of their daily lives.
In 1970, Halpern founded the first public interest law firm the Center for Law and Social Policy, and helped train a generation of public interest lawyers while going toe-to-toe with the Nixon Administration on behalf of the environment and civil rights. The profession of public interest law was further strengthened in 1982, when Halpern became the founding Dean of the City University of New York (CUNY) Law School in Queens. At CUNY Halpern championed a curriculum specifically designed to graduate public interest lawyers. Twenty-five years later, CUNY Law School is still standing with public interest law graduates fighting the good fight for the common good.
After his stint at CUNY, Halpern became president of the new $400 million Nathan Cummings Foundation. He is also the founder and board chair of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, a leading force in bringing meditation and inner work into universities and other mainstream institutions. Halpern has been involved in many other progressive and activist organizations, such as founding the think tank Demos: A Network for Ideas and Action.
The Dalai Lama wrote the following in a Foreword for Halpern’s book,
“In this new book, Making Waves and Riding the Currents, he shows the importance of fostering basic human values like compassion in our relations with others and of working to generate inner peace. If we are able to do this, we will make our lives and our work meaningful, and ultimately contribute to the welfare of all living beings.”Halpern agreed to a telephone interview with me about his life, work and book. Below is a transcript of our conversation that took place on Sunday, March 9th.
********************************************************************************
ILJ: I was quite engrossed by your book. A re-occurring theme as the title suggests is the practice of wisdom both in daily life as well as social activism. Tell the readers, many of whom are activists themselves, what you mean by the “practice of wisdom.”
HALPERN: By the practice of wisdom, I mean first and foremost making a commitment to bringing wisdom into our lives--setting ourselves on the path of becoming wiser people. And for activists what it means is cultivating wisdom as a way of becoming more effective in our work and coming to our work from a deeper place.
For me the cultivation of wisdom has a number of aspects. I think that wisdom is a practice, like tennis or playing the piano, which can actually lead us to become wiser people then we are. Most of us are not going to reach the level of wisdom of the Dalai Lama but we can move in that direction. In this book I suggest some of the ways that I’ve explored the wisdom path. And I have some ideas about how others, particularly activists might do so.
For me, the first element of cultivating wisdom is aligning our work with our values. Second, making a commitment to keep our lives in balance. A balance between our public involvement and our private lives. A balance between our head, our cognitive abilities, our advocacy abilities on the one hand and the qualities of the heart and the emotions, on the other.
Third, the practice of wisdom for me implies assuring time for reflection and introspection. In my case it has been through a formal meditation practice. But I think anyone who wants to cultivate wisdom has to have some regular and systematic way of pulling himself or herself out of the cacophony of noise, mostly media generated, and for activists, out of the tensions and anxieties that go with an activist commitment.
ILJ: I was struck by one part of your book where you wrote about how you found yourself ensnared in the “success trap” and you describe that as a common American malady in which we only pursue those projects we’re comfortable with or that we’re good at. How important is it to avoid performing only those projects we feel proficient at in cultivating wisdom?
HALPERN: The success trap, in my view, is a very pervasive phenomenon in our culture. We are naturally drawn to do the things that we do well and to avoid doing things we feel less confident about. I think it’s extremely important to explore the edges, take some risks and go into areas where our skills are less fully developed.
For example, in the book I describe how I went on a weekend retreat that was committed to improving skills at music improvisation. I signed up for that retreat with full knowledge that was an area of notable lack on my part. I’m not good at music and I had never tried improvisation at all.
I thought it would be a good thing to push that edge and see what it was like for me to work in an area where my competence was so low. And to just monitor my experience of that. I did this at a time when I was starting a new law school and I was particularly interested to put myself in the place of people who were anxiously preparing for the study of law-- a new discipline for them and one where many had no real confidence in their capability. And I thought by putting myself in a situation something like theirs I might improve my capacity to identify with their experience and help them get past their anxiety and grow in confidence.
I think this is a subset of something I consider very important -- the willingness to take risks and push the boundaries. And particularly to do it in a way that increases our capacity for empathy and understanding how the world looks to other people.
ILJ: Let’s talk about your life journey. In the beginning of your book you write about the seminal moment of your life occurring in 1965. You’re a young, ambitious associate at the prestigious law firm Arnold & Porter, started by New Dealers who served in FDR’s administration. Future Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas was there.
And a pro-bono case falls in your lap, defending the rights of a man named Charles Rouse who had spent four years being mistreated in a mental hospital after committing a misdemeanor. This was the One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest era when it came to mental health treatment. You successfully represented Rouse after initial setbacks and the course of your life changed. If that case hadn’t come along, would you have remained a corporate lawyer even with the turmoil of the 1960s?
HALPERN: That case was extremely important to me. It gave me an opportunity to do two things. One was to increase my empathic capacity to identify with this poor guy who was then a little younger then I was, in his mid-twenties. To see what this incarceration had done to him. And then I could actually use my lawyer skills to do something for him and to get his release. I saw in that case the possibility of expanding the reach of the Constitution into mental hospitals and to institutions for mentally retarded people. I thought here is an area of civil rights that had really not been explored.
And by fortunate circumstance -- my assignment to this case -- I had the opportunity to think about how a whole new area of law might develop. So you’re quite right in identifying that as a turning point in my life. And it permitted me to see that I could use my legal skills in a way that would help build a more just and compassionate world. And that was a major insight for me. If it hadn’t been for that case I probably would not have moved just at that moment to a different kind of career.
But I think it would’ve happened at some point. There was too much emptiness for me in the kind of law I was doing at Arnold & Porter. I was handling cases that had very little in them to make a connection with my values. It was work that, whenever I stopped to take a look at it, I would say, “What am I doing here? This isn’t the person I expected to be when I went to law school. This isn’t the person I wanted to be.” So I think even if it hadn’t been for the Rouse case my career in corporate practice would have been a short one.
ILJ: You took a leave of absence from secure employment with Arnold & Porter, became a social entrepreneur and established the Center for Law and Social Policy about 1969. Reading about that, I was struck by how you simultaneously interfaced with the privileged elite, while mingling with the counter-culture and took on entrenched corporate power by playing within the rules of our civil society. Rules that many in your generation had come to despise and therefore drawn into the counter-culture. How were you able to keep your balance and finesse the contradictions?
HALPERN: When I set up the Center for Law and Social Policy with a group of three other young lawyers, we realized that for us to be effective, we were going to have to maintain relationships with the establishment. First of all we had to get foundation support. Our plan for this enterprise was to get foundation support to permit us to represent clients that lacked resources to hire lawyers.
I was twenty-nine at the time. From the perspective of the large foundations,that’s a very junior person. They weren’t going to make a big investment in a novel venture like a public interest law firm unless we looked like we were really well grounded. One of the ways we did that was by putting together a board of trustees of eminent leaders of the legal profession. So already by virtue of being connected to the foundations, we were maintaining a connection to the establishment world.
Our board chair, Arthur Goldberg, had been a Supreme Court Justice. He had been ambassador to the United Nations. He had been Secretary of Labor. Incredible credentials albeit always on the progressive side of things. He had been general counsel to the AFL-CIO before Kennedy had made him Secretary of Labor. So he was very sympathetic to what we were doing but an establishmentarian nonetheless. He had been a cabinet member. And we found we could do the work we wanted to do with those connections.
When we considered a major lawsuit to enjoin the construction of the Alaskan pipeline which put us against the biggest oil companies in the world, our board of trustees gave us complete support. So we managed to keep the support of progressive elements of the American establishment for some pretty counter-cultural activities. Now our activities were filing lawsuits. We were not throwing rocks. We were not in the streets. So we had found a place where we could navigate these cross currents.
ILJ: You and your colleagues at the Center made history and sued the Nixon Administration’s Interior Department to prevent the construction of an environmentally hazardous pipeline in Alaska. You won a great victory. Sadly, the pipeline is built years later anyway and we had the Exxon-Valdez catastrophe in 1989. The Supreme Court is expected to make a ruling about it in June. Given the current makeup of the court with conservative corporatists, is there any reason to hope for a just ruling?
HALPERN: Well, the turn that the Supreme Court has taken under Bush II is really sad. It’s disheartening to see so many Constitutional principles pushed aside, with so much corporate bias reflected in court decisions. This represents a conservatism that goes way beyond the conservatism of the Nixon era. Warren Burger, the Chief Justice that Nixon appointed, would be a moderate by today’s standards. So you can’t be optimistic about the decision in the Exxon-Valdez case. This brings me back to the question you started with -- bringing the cultivation of wisdom into our activism.
One of the things the wisdom perspective gives us is the long view. The understanding that there are going to be ups and downs. And the down cycles might last for quite awhile. When we are dealing with the complicated challenges of the twenty-first century, the long perspective is going to be critical to avoid burnout and despair among activists.
ILJ: During your career at the law center in the ‘70s, your wife Susan, a very accomplished person herself, became heavily involved in women’s causes. You acknowledged in your book feeling threatened at the time. Why do you suppose that an enlightened progressive man like yourself, as well as other men in this era who otherwise considered themselves progressive, struggled so much during the early stages of the women’s liberation movement?
HALPERN: It’s hard to put oneself back into that historical moment. I want to stress that my formative years were the Eisenhower years. I entered college in 1957. My generation was a transitional generation, and much shaped by the fifties.
Many people of my era lived their lives from the old playbook, the fifties story. And some of us tried to be more open and receptive to the forces that were alive in the sixties. This goes back to your question earlier about how I was able to bridge the fifties attitudes of my seniors to the sixties attitudes of my juniors. And I think it has to do with this odd historical moment of which I came of age. And one of the revolutionary developments of the sixties era was the women’s movement. I talk in the book about how hard it was for me to adapt.
It was a hard one. The fact that a person is progressive doesn’t mean he or she will be good on all issues, including those that are close and personal. It was a complicated moment and lots of marriages were breaking up around us. I consider it a mark of success that we were able to renegotiate our marriage and recreate a vibrant new marriage that has thrived and been a blessing for both of us.
ILJ: In the early 1980s, you’re recruited to become the founding dean of the City of University of New York School of Law in Queens. A very different world than the comfortable universe of law and well meaning activists you had come to know. New York was especially gritty in those days and you find yourself caught in the vortex of the corrupt Donald Manes Queens political machine and bureaucrats who cared more about patronage than public interest idealism. How close were you to giving up?
HALPERN: I was very close. I had never lived in New York City before. New York City was a tough place and I underestimate how tough this job was going to be. Setting up a new law school is hard-- particularly one that has a public interest emphasis and a commitment to design a new curriculum for training public interest lawyers. So it was hard work and I would come home many days exhausted and discouraged. My wife Susan and I would discuss if I should cut my losses.
Fortunately, I saw it through. The law school was then and is now an absolutely great and unique place. So as hard as it was to do, I am very proud to have been the founding dean. The law school is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary since the founding.
It’s fair to say that the City of University of New York Law School has graduated more public interest lawyers practicing in New York State then all the other law schools in the state combined. That’s quite a legacy and when I was back there on my book tour a couple weeks ago we had a wonderful gathering of old students, faculty members, new students and alumni. And it was thrilling to see this group of people who had carried our unique training out into the law world where they held influential positions -- from judgeships to public defenders to senior positions in state agencies.
ILJ: It is indeed a remarkable legacy. Looking back twenty-five years ago, Donald Manes, the Queens Borough President, was the antithesis of your good government reformist sensibilities. Years later he was caught up in scandal and even committed suicide. When you met him, Manes was in his prime as a tough talking machine boss.
HALPERN: Right.
ILJ: You write that during a dispute over faculty you wanted to hire, Manes told you with a smile, “Queens, despite its two million people, is really a small town. If you fill the Law School up with a bunch of Communists and lefties, I’ll drive you and the Law School out of the County.” What kind or relationship did you have with him that enabled this law school to survive?
HALPERN: He was at the outset the essential person who got the money to start this law-school and keep it running. So part of my job was to stay in a good working relationship with him. Fortunately, I grew to like him despite his shortcomings and the distinctly different sense of politics and governance that he and I had. I think the fact that I did like him … he had a sense of humor about himself and his work… made it easier for me to function effectively in his orbit.
It wasn’t easy but I was able to keep a civil relationship with him. And in that dispute over our faculty hires he backed us up. He was in our corner. And of course we were giving him something too. To have a respected law school in his borough was a good thing. He used to enjoy meeting with the American Bar Association teams, academic intellectuals who would come in to inspect the law schools. We had to get ourselves accredited by the ABA. He took great pride and saw this law school as one of his accomplishments. In a certain sense he recognized that we were returning something important to the borough of Queens. He was deeply devoted to the borough and interested in seeing its institutions thrive.
ILJ: You used the word legacy a moment ago. Ironically, with the corrupt Donald Manes, one of his legacies is this public interest law school which helped train and nurture a generation of do-good lawyers.
HALPERN: It’s a great irony. Again to return to the wisdom theme: one of the hallmarks I think of a wise person is the capacity to live with and appreciate paradox and the kind of ironies that you just pointed to.
ILJ: The stresses of your position in Queens influenced you to learn meditation. It happens one of my dearest personal friends has become a practitioner of meditation. Last time I saw her she seemed to have gained a new wisdom about her life and was practically glowing. Why is meditation that powerful for people like my friend and yourself?
HALPERN: We’re starting to get some scientific answers to that question. I began meditation when I was dean at the law school. A friend of mine suggested it was a way to manage the stresses of this position that I was in. I started with a very simple meditation practice -- and with some real skepticism. It didn’t seem likely to me that simply sitting for half an hour in the morning, watching my thoughts come and go, and trying to stay centered and balanced was going to be helpful to me in this difficult job I had.
But to my pleasure and surprise, it turned out to be a powerful force. Precisely by giving me a place of stillness and centeredness inside myself, to which I could return in the middle of a confrontation-filled day. I could take a few breaths and come back to that place of meditative stillness. I tried it as an experiment and it paid off for me so I just kept doing it I would get up each morning and do this meditation.
Now scientists have begun using the most sophisticated brain scanning techniques to look at what happens to the brain with meditation. This was an entirely pragmatic thing in my experience. But what we’re finding is that the practice of meditation actually changes brain function and brain structure. So you shouldn’t be surprised when you observe really dramatic shifts in your friend who is meditating.
In my case I think changes have been gradual. But over time mediation has given me a way of dealing with high stress situations, making me less reactive, more capable of identifying with the views of people who disagree with me, more effective in promoting the values that I care most about.
ILJ: It sounds also as if you’re able to put ego in a certain perspective. You still have your ego but you’re able to rise above it when the situation calls for it. Does meditation help one do that?
HALPERN: Yes, absolutely. I don’t’ want to say free from ego. Nothing like that. But it helps give me some distance from my own egoic sense of what the world is like. And that’s been tremendously important to me. I think it’s made me a better husband and father and surely a better activist. Meditation creates a space in which wisdom can arise.
ILJ: I like the way you put that. Creating a space where wisdom can arise. And in pursuit of that, following your service at the law school you become president of the Nathan Cummings Foundation and one of your program areas was Jewish life. You managed to arrange a get together with Jewish Rabbis and the Dalai Lama. What interests did they have in common?
HALPERN: That was a wonderful project. Another turning point in my life. I think what brought the Dalai Lama to the gathering was his particular interest in how the Jewish community had so successfully maintained itself in Diaspora, away from its homeland. That is the situation the Tibetans were confronting since he and many of his followers had been driven from Tibet by the Chinese invasion in the fifties. So he was trying to figure out how to keep this culture and religion alive, and here he saw a community that had done it over millennia.
And from the Jewish point of view, I think it was admiration for the Dalai Lama and a desire to be helpful and to learn from him. Something that was on both sides was a sense that these were two ancient and deep spiritual traditions that had really not interacted much over their thousands of years of life. And I think they were both drawn to that historic dimension of this meeting, a unique gathering in the long histories of their religions.
Most of the foundations that had been approached with this proposal had summarily turned it down. The Cummings Foundation saw the potential in it. For people who are interested in pursing this, I describe this gathering a in my book because it was so influential for me to be in the Dalai Lama’s presence for a week. But there is a wonderful book by Roger Kamenetz, The Jew and the Lotus, which describes the gathering in detail and provides wonderful insights into Judaism and Buddhism for people who may not be familiar with one or both.
ILJ: You also write that during your tenure at Nathan Cummings you became more connected with your Jewish heritage. Why did that happen at this point in your life?
HALPERN: Meditation had opened me to deeper spiritual insights. I grew up in a very secular home. The central importance which I now give to the meditative dimension of life came to me late. It wasn’t something I learned in childhood.
At the Nathan Cummings Foundation, I worked with a brilliant and deep Rabbi, Rachel Cowan, one of the first generation of women to be ordained. And through her I gained access to the rich and diverse strands of Judaism that were flowering in the nineties and now. The Jewish renewal movement, for example. I never thought I would meet rabbis and scholars who were so stimulating and spiritually engaged, committed to social justice and to spiritual inquiry. It was very exciting for me personally, and here we were at a foundation where we could support these people and help them realize their commitment to spiritual renewal with our grants.
So it was that combination of things that led me deeper into my own Judaism. And one of the nicest things about it was that this Jewish program came to infuse other parts of the foundation’s work. So for example, in the environmental field, Paul Gorman and I worked out an idea that would bring religious groups more directly and effectively into the environmental movement.
Prior to that time there was little attention within organized religion to the environmental field and the National Religious Partnership became an important catalyst that brought diverse groups, from the liberal denominations to the evangelical Christians, into the environmental movement which has had real impact in the world. And it’s not just that these are new resources brought to the environmental issues. They brought the depth of their traditions into the environmental movement which gave it a resonance and spiritual force that environmentalism didn’t have before.
ILJ: It sounds like they brought a moral dimension to the cause of environmentalism.
HALPERN: I think it’s a moral dimension, a religious dimension and a spiritual dimension. And if we’re going to be able to succeed in the huge challenges we face today in the environmental world — such as global climate disruption and the like -- that deep grounding is going to be a critical component.
ILJ: This year is of course a presidential election year. For my generation, politics has promoted an ethos of hyper individualism at the expense of community values. Do you a sense a tipping point this year in the other direction?
HALPERN: I hope so.
ILJ: Any sense that the pendulum is finally swinging in the direction of activism towards a better society instead of I want mine and I don’t care about you?
HALPERN: Well my crystal ball is cloudy. There have been so many incredible surprises already that between now and November I’m reluctant to make a prediction. What does please me greatly is the fact that the importance of wisdom is starting to be recognized. I was impressed that when Senator Kerry endorsed Obama, he specifically did so because of his wisdom.
When Tony Morrison endorsed Obama, the first time she’s ever endorsed a presidential candidate, she did so because of his wisdom. And she wrote a lovely essay about wisdom in doing this. The very idea that this word has resurfaced in our political discourse is I think an encouraging sign. The idea that we will look for a candidate that embodies wisdom as well as experience and communication skills and strategic judgment marks a big moment in my opinion.
ILJ: In your opinion does Senator Obama embody wisdom? Are you in fact an Obama supporter?
HALPERN: I am in fact an enthusiastic Obama supporter. I think he’s someone who has cultivated the wisdom dimension. A person shall we say who walks the wisdom path. And to have the opportunity to vote for such a candidate is quite thrilling for me.
ILJ: Charles, you’ve been very generous with your time. A final question if I may. As you might surmise, many reading this are bloggers as well as activists. In your opinion has the Internet enhanced activism or made people more detached?
HALPERN: I don’t really have an opinion about that. I want to become more of a web person myself. I can see real virtues in having so many more voices expressing themselves and new networks being formed. That strikes me as a very exciting phenomenon. And I think the way the web has opened up the financing of political campaigns is a pro-democratic influence. Whether there is also significant downside, whether it leads to a fractionalization of political opinions and makes it harder to put together effective coalitions, I just don’t know that yet. I suspect it’s just too soon to know.
ILJ: Understood, it’s still very much an evolving phenomenon. Charles, thanks again for doing this. It was a lot of fun for me.
HALPERN: A real pleasure for me too.
Monday
Body Count
"Peaceful efforts to disarm the Iraqi regime have failed again and again because we are not dealing with peaceful men. Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised,"
Bush said on March 17, 2003.
<--Deaths in each week from 2003–2007
Deaths per day from gunfire / executions -->
Sunday
Letter in reply to Christopher Hitchens "Why Women Aren't Funny"
What makes the female so much deadlier than the male? With assists from Fran Lebowitz, Nora Ephron, and a recent Stanford-medical-school study, the author investigates the reasons for the humor gap.
by Christopher Hitchens January 2007
by Christopher Hitchens January 2007
Be your gender what it may, you will certainly have heard the following from a female friend who is enumerating the charms of a new (male) squeeze: "He's really quite cute, and he's kind to my friends, and he knows all kinds of stuff, and he's so funny … " (If you yourself are a guy, and you know the man in question, you will often have said to yourself, "Funny? He wouldn't know a joke if it came served on a bed of lettuce with sauce béarnaise.") However, there is something that you absolutely never hear from a male friend who is hymning his latest (female) love interest: "She's a real honey, has a life of her own … [interlude for attributes that are none of your business] … and, man, does she ever make 'em laugh."
Now, why is this? Why is it the case?, I mean. Why are women, who have the whole male world at their mercy, not funny? Please do not pretend not to know what I am talking about.
Now, why is this? Why is it the case?, I mean. Why are women, who have the whole male world at their mercy, not funny? Please do not pretend not to know what I am talking about.
...All right—try it the other way (as the bishop said to the barmaid). Why are men, taken on average and as a whole, funnier than women? Well, for one thing, they had damn well better be. The chief task in life that a man has to perform is that of impressing the opposite sex, and Mother Nature (as we laughingly call her) is not so kind to men. In fact, she equips many fellows with very little armament for the struggle. An average man has just one, outside chance: he had better be able to make the lady laugh. Making them laugh has been one of the crucial preoccupations of my life. If you can stimulate her to laughter—I am talking about that real, out-loud, head-back, mouth-open-to-expose-the-full-horseshoe-of-lovely-teeth, involuntary, full, and deep-throated mirth; the kind that is accompanied by a shocked surprise and a slight (no, make that a loud) peal of delight—well, then, you have at least caused her to loosen up and to change her expression. I shall not elaborate further.
(Read the full article, if you can stomach it...)
~
Dear Christopher,
There is no need for you to elaborate further, probably put us all to sleep if you did...
I actually feel sorry for you, ol' bloke. You're a dreary sack who imbibes in the liquor so as to imagine that you're funny. I know 100s of women that have more humor in their handbag than you've in the whole of your gasping carcass. I know women that can make me guffaw for hours. I mean the snap my head back and show God my glottis kind of laughter. Blistering and unbridled, delivered deep into my soul by women that you, poor teetering Mr. Hitchens, can only dream about.
Oh, Chris! You heels heel! Funny women (perhaps all women) you're lucky enough to meet cause the misogynistic, inebriated urchins drinking scotch and arguing about Kafka deep within your gut to run screaming from the pub.
~
Joan Rivers: “Men find funny women threatening. They ask me, ‘Are you going to be funny in bed?’ ”
~
Maryon Pearson: "Behind every successful man there is a surprised woman."
~
Charlotte Whitton: "Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult."
~
Gloria Steinman: "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle."
~
Elayne Boosler: "When women are depressed they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country."
~
Erica Jong: "You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy."
~
Golda Meir: "Whether women are better than men I cannot say—but I can say they are certainly no worse."
~
Fran Lebowitz: "Being a woman is of special interest only to aspiring male transsexuals. To actual women, it is simply a good excuse not to play football."
~
Linda Ellerbee: "If men can run the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a little noose around your neck?"
~
Marie Corelli: "I never married because there was no need. I have three pets at home which answer the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog which growls every morning, a parrot which swears all afternoon and a cat that comes home late at night."
~
Gilda Radner: "I base most of my fashion taste on what doesn't itch."
~
Rita Rudner: "Some women hold up dresses that are so ugly and they always say the same thing: 'This looks much better on.' On what? On fire?"
~
Erica Jong: "Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilt and I'll show you a man."
~
Rebecca West: "I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute."
~
And, Christopher that's only a short list of the millions of funny women that exist world wide. And we only know of their spoken words because they happened to be lucky enough to have been heard above the godawful, incessant braying of the millions of men like yourself who are desperately trying to be humorous so that even the least of funny women will pay attention to them!
With all due respect,
thepoetryman
Saturday
Friday
OBAMA IN 30 SECONDS
If you support Barack...Let the ad-making begin!MoveOn.org has a message for all filmmakers, writers, directors, actors, editors, composers, graphic artists, and animators: Whether you're a total amateur or a total pro, now is the time to use your creativity to help Barack Obama win. We're launching an ad contest: "Obama in 30 Seconds."
Powered by grassroots enthusiasm, Obama has won the most states and the most delegates. But the race isn't over, and we've got to pull out all the stops to help him across the finish line.
We're counting on you to make amazing ads in the next three weeks. Then, MoveOn members and the public will rate the ads, and a panel of top artists, netroots heroes, and filmmaking professionals will pick the winner from among top ads. We'll air the winning ad nationally, and the winner will receive a gift certificate for $20,000 in video equipment.
Whether you're definitely interested or need time to think about it, sign up today. Then, check out the guidelines and tips on making a great ad, gather up your friends or find collaborators here, and get started! April 1 deadline! (OBAMA In 30 Seconds...)
Powered by grassroots enthusiasm, Obama has won the most states and the most delegates. But the race isn't over, and we've got to pull out all the stops to help him across the finish line.
We're counting on you to make amazing ads in the next three weeks. Then, MoveOn members and the public will rate the ads, and a panel of top artists, netroots heroes, and filmmaking professionals will pick the winner from among top ads. We'll air the winning ad nationally, and the winner will receive a gift certificate for $20,000 in video equipment.
Whether you're definitely interested or need time to think about it, sign up today. Then, check out the guidelines and tips on making a great ad, gather up your friends or find collaborators here, and get started! April 1 deadline! (OBAMA In 30 Seconds...)
*If you want to advertise this on your site you can use the graphic above. (Right click on it and save photomontage.)*
Thursday
End The Ignorance ! Artists Speak Out Against Violence in Israel and Gaza
Gaza...
Spread these works far and wide….use them in your Blogs, emails, wherever!
Ben Heine - Cartoons "End the Ignorance"
Tuesday
TO GW BUSH (CEO - USofA INC)
Belacqua Jones, meth riddled visionary,
via Case at Open Letters to George W. Bush (from his ardent admirer, Belacqua Jones),
is well worth a daily read if there ever was one in blogotopia.
Before reading his letters I will offer three cautions:
1. Do not drink anything while you read them, unless you can afford to buy a new monitor every other day or so or you keep a spray guard over your screen and keyboard.
2. Bring your "irony meter" and set it to "high" (pun intended).
3. Do not read them while taking medications of any variety as you will never no what is causing those nasty side effects (and doing so would likely negate any possibility of bringing suit against big pharma).
~
Our Quadrennial Search for a New CEO
Dear George,
It never fails to amaze me how often the left gets it wrong. I’ve been reading a piece that goes on and on about what wimps Congressional Democrats are, which they certainly are but not for the reasons the author describes. Their cowering has less to do with a missing backbone and more to do with the revolution you have set into place.
America’s traditional separation of powers has always been a pain in the ass. Under the pressure of constant bickering and posturing the wheels of government have clumped along to the stirring beat of inefficiency.
Thanks to you, the public no longer suffers the vacuum of inaction that for too long characterized the Beltway. You have strengthened our traditional separation of powers by making the legislative and judicial branches employees of the Corporatist State. This allows the three branches to achieve a unity of purpose never before dreamed of.
Congressional Democrats fold and fold and fold because they understand that loyal employees don’t buck the boss. Pork fat floods the hallowed halls of Congress, and our congressmen realize that if they don’t dance to the corporate tune they will find all this fat rendered out of them.
The bottom line is that they don’t fear you, they fear becoming low fat legislators. (Read the rest...)
via Case at Open Letters to George W. Bush (from his ardent admirer, Belacqua Jones),
is well worth a daily read if there ever was one in blogotopia.
Before reading his letters I will offer three cautions:
1. Do not drink anything while you read them, unless you can afford to buy a new monitor every other day or so or you keep a spray guard over your screen and keyboard.
2. Bring your "irony meter" and set it to "high" (pun intended).
3. Do not read them while taking medications of any variety as you will never no what is causing those nasty side effects (and doing so would likely negate any possibility of bringing suit against big pharma).
~
Our Quadrennial Search for a New CEODear George,
It never fails to amaze me how often the left gets it wrong. I’ve been reading a piece that goes on and on about what wimps Congressional Democrats are, which they certainly are but not for the reasons the author describes. Their cowering has less to do with a missing backbone and more to do with the revolution you have set into place.
America’s traditional separation of powers has always been a pain in the ass. Under the pressure of constant bickering and posturing the wheels of government have clumped along to the stirring beat of inefficiency.
Thanks to you, the public no longer suffers the vacuum of inaction that for too long characterized the Beltway. You have strengthened our traditional separation of powers by making the legislative and judicial branches employees of the Corporatist State. This allows the three branches to achieve a unity of purpose never before dreamed of.
Congressional Democrats fold and fold and fold because they understand that loyal employees don’t buck the boss. Pork fat floods the hallowed halls of Congress, and our congressmen realize that if they don’t dance to the corporate tune they will find all this fat rendered out of them.
The bottom line is that they don’t fear you, they fear becoming low fat legislators. (Read the rest...)
Monday
Let's Make it Happen for Dennis Kucinich...
Dennis Kucinich: Thank You!
Posted on March 10, 2008 at Dandelion Salad
See what you can do to help by visiting Dandelion Salad...
Posted on March 10, 2008 at Dandelion Salad
See what you can do to help by visiting Dandelion Salad...
so- what are we going to do now?
chris hedges nailed it:
"We live in a world, at home and in the Middle East, hardened and distorted by hate. We communicate in the language of fear and violence. Human beings are no longer viewed as human beings. They are no longer endowed in our eyes, or the eyes of those who oppose us, with human qualities. They do no love, grieve, suffer, laugh or weep. They represent cold abstractions of evil. The death-for-death means we communicate by producing corpses. And we are all guilty, Americans, Palestinians, Iraqis and Israelis. But we are not all guilty equally."
we see it here in america- with the callousness of treatment towards the victims of natural disasters; we see it in the lack of feeling for people who are homeless or poor; we see it in the lack of interest in what goes on in africa. what does that make us- we who used to want to take in the poor, the tired, the hungry of the world? it makes US less human.
"We live in a world, at home and in the Middle East, hardened and distorted by hate. We communicate in the language of fear and violence. Human beings are no longer viewed as human beings. They are no longer endowed in our eyes, or the eyes of those who oppose us, with human qualities. They do no love, grieve, suffer, laugh or weep. They represent cold abstractions of evil. The death-for-death means we communicate by producing corpses. And we are all guilty, Americans, Palestinians, Iraqis and Israelis. But we are not all guilty equally."
we see it here in america- with the callousness of treatment towards the victims of natural disasters; we see it in the lack of feeling for people who are homeless or poor; we see it in the lack of interest in what goes on in africa. what does that make us- we who used to want to take in the poor, the tired, the hungry of the world? it makes US less human.
Saturday
in spite of the white house....
diplomacy prevails.The handshakes were broadcast live on television across Latin America in response to a special request from the summit's host, Dominican Republic President Leonel Fernandez.
"We are all happy," Mr Chavez said afterwards.
"Peace! We must unite and integrate."
Friday
There May be More (or less) Than Meets the Eye
This is from Counterpunch (via Renegade Eye). It exposes Obama's politics as an individual. I would take it farther to say, Obama's politics are typical of the Democratic Party. I believe if the US had a party based on the union movement as the NDP in Canada, the Labor Party of Australia or PSUV in Venezuela, there would be a mass exodus from the Democratic Party. I don't believe the Green Party is the alternative party formation, since it lacks a programand class basis.Part of me shares the enthusiasm for Barack Obama. After all, how could someone calling themself a progressive not sense the importance of what it means to have an African-American so close to the presidency? But as his campaign has unfolded, and I heard that we are not red states or blue states for the 6th or 7th time, I realized I knew virtually nothing about him.
Like most, I know he gave a stirring speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. I know he defeated Alan Keyes in the Illinois Senate race; although it wasn't much of a contest (Keyes was living in Maryland when he announced). Recently, I started looking into Obama's voting record, and I'm afraid to say I'm not just uninspired: I'm downright fearful. Here's why:
This is a candidate who says he's going to usher in change; that he is a different kind of politician who has the skills to get things done. He reminds us again and again that he had the foresight to oppose the war in Iraq. And he seems to have a genuine interest in lifting up the poor.
But his record suggests that he is incapable of ushering in any kind of change I'd like to see. It is one of accommodation and concession to the very political powers that we need to reign in and oppose if we are to make truly lasting advances.
THE WAR IN IRAQLet's start with his signature position against the Iraq war. Obama has sent mixed messages at best. (Read the full post here...)
Wednesday
ANTI-EXPERTS
First let me just say... Glenn Beck is a goddamned pathetic misery and Pastor Hagee's a real goddamned piece of shoddy work! Parasites, the both of them...
~
Anti-Christ defined:
In Christian eschatology, the Antichrist or anti-Christ has come to mean a person, an image of a person, or another entity that is an embodiment of evil.
The word 'Antichrist' is translated from the combination of two ancient Greek words αντί + χριστος ('anti + khristos), which can mean anti "opposite" (of) khristos "anointed" therefore "opposite of Christ" (the meaning of christ as the 'anointed one', having become secondary to its meaning as the honorific of Jesus of Nazareth) or anti "as" (if) khristos "messiah" thus "in place of Christ" or a substitute for Christ. An antichrist can be opposed to Christ by striving to be in the place of Christ.
The term itself appears 5 times in 1 John and 2 John of the New Testament — once in plural form and four times in the singular - and is popularly associated with the belief of a competing and assumed evil entity opposed to Jesus of Nazareth.
Tuesday
Left, right, center and off kilter...
For Democrats a Pivotal Night...But, in Which Direction? from the NY Times...2. McCain/Clinton `08? from Joshing Politics...
3. McCains Running Mate from Lair of the Blue Bear...
4. Rev's Rant `n' Grr- The GOP from Night Bird's Fountain...
7. The Week in Review from The Peace Train...
8. Building a Bridge to Nowhere from Thought Theatre...
11. The Lesser of Two Evils from the Whitehouser...
12. Left in East Dakota...
13. Around the Campaign 2008 Sphere from The Moderate Voice...
Monday
Rending the UK
UN says UK soil used for rendition
Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera
The United Nations special reporter on torture says he has credible evidence that the US used a British territory for the secret detention and transportation of 'terror' suspects.
Manfred Nowak's assertion contradicts statements by the UK and US governments that Diego Garcia island was used merely as a refuelling stop for "renditions".
Nowak said on Sunday that he had received information about detentions on the British island from multiple sources. He said detainees and other sources had told him "quite a long time ago" that suspects were sent to the remote outpost and kept there between 2002 and 2003. "I've had a few allegations and, in my opinion, they were credible," Nowak told The Associated Press, adding that he could not disclose any of his sources.
Extraordinary Torture
"There can be no accountability without transparency: people - including former soldiers - who have information that may constitute evidence of war crimes or of grave human rights violations must be reassured that they can safely make that information public, without fear of punitive legal action against them.
"If the government of the UK succeeds in gagging Ben Griffin and burying any significant information he may possess, it risks preventing others from coming forward who may have evidence of serious violations."
Rendition... The Full Movie Online (free)
Sunday
An Iranian in the Green Zone
I always find stories like the one below from the BBC to be rather amusing...in a strange way, that is.
We hear of Iran and its connection to the dreaded "axis of evil" and we hear how they are aiding the insurgency with weaponry, essentially that they are an enemy of the US...and then we see that Iran's president visits the occupied country and leaves us with a statement that is so true that it inevitably sounds threatening. If we could but grasp the truth in his departing words.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad travelled from Baghdad airport to the city centre in a black BMW with a heavily armed escort.
He was welcomed by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani at his compound near the River Tigris. They stood solemnly side by side as a band played the national anthems of each country, starting with Iran's.
~
Asked about this and about the visit, US military spokesman Adm Gregory Smith said Washington welcomed positive influence from Iran, but added that Tehran needed to "find ways to turn around" what he termed negative influence in Iraq.
Iran says much the same about the US - before he left Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told reporters: "It is the American practice to present others as guilty wherever they are defeated. Is it not funny that those with 160,000 forces in Iraq accuse us of interference?" (More...)
Ouch!
We hear of Iran and its connection to the dreaded "axis of evil" and we hear how they are aiding the insurgency with weaponry, essentially that they are an enemy of the US...and then we see that Iran's president visits the occupied country and leaves us with a statement that is so true that it inevitably sounds threatening. If we could but grasp the truth in his departing words.
An Iranian in the Green Zone
By Hugh Sykes BBC News, Baghdad
By Hugh Sykes BBC News, Baghdad
Mr Maliki (r) told Mr Ahmadinejad
Iran had "helped enormously"
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad travelled from Baghdad airport to the city centre in a black BMW with a heavily armed escort.
He was welcomed by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani at his compound near the River Tigris. They stood solemnly side by side as a band played the national anthems of each country, starting with Iran's.
~
Asked about this and about the visit, US military spokesman Adm Gregory Smith said Washington welcomed positive influence from Iran, but added that Tehran needed to "find ways to turn around" what he termed negative influence in Iraq.
Iran says much the same about the US - before he left Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told reporters: "It is the American practice to present others as guilty wherever they are defeated. Is it not funny that those with 160,000 forces in Iraq accuse us of interference?" (More...)
Ouch!
Is This What We're Fighting For?
The topic below was originally posted in my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal, as well as the Wild Wild Left, Independent Bloggers Alliance, The Peace Tree and Worldwide Sawdust.A picture is worth a thousand words. This is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Iraqi counterpart Jalal Talabani together in Baghdad, today. Americans are fighting, suffering post traumatic stress disorder, permanent injuries, dying and killing innocent civilians to help establish an Islamic Shiite fundamentalist axis in the Gulf. Likely Republican nominee John McCain promises more of the same. Hillary Clinton enabled President Bush and John McCain to pursue this strategic calamity out of sheer political expediency. Yet Clinton has the temerity to suggest she has superior credentials to be commander and chief? Both Clinton and McCain represent more of the same. It's time for a change. Enough said.
Saturday
CONdi Rice the Peacewarrior...
LATEST FROM GAZA — Israeli aircraft and troops attacked Palestinian positions in northern Gaza on Saturday, killing at least 46 people and wounding more than 100 in the deadliest day of fighting in more than a year. Two Israeli soldiers were killed and seven wounded, the military said.
Half the dead were reported to be Hamas gunmen or those belonging to affiliated groups like Islamic Jihad. But as many as 19 Palestinian civilians also died in the heavily populated area, including four children, according to Dr. Moawiya Hassanain of the Gazan Health Ministry.
More than 70 Palestinians have died since fighting surged on Wednesday; an Israeli died in Sderot from a rocket, and six Israelis were wounded Saturday from rocket strikes in Ashkelon.
Half the dead were reported to be Hamas gunmen or those belonging to affiliated groups like Islamic Jihad. But as many as 19 Palestinian civilians also died in the heavily populated area, including four children, according to Dr. Moawiya Hassanain of the Gazan Health Ministry.
More than 70 Palestinians have died since fighting surged on Wednesday; an Israeli died in Sderot from a rocket, and six Israelis were wounded Saturday from rocket strikes in Ashkelon.
What have you got to say about that CONdi?
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The perpetrators of these horrors and their court stenographers are not satisfied with merely committing crimes; they insist on debasing the meanings of words and attempting to control our memories of events so that we will not remember that although we lost - in these and too many other instances - we fought against injustice, war, and inhumanity. Because keeping alive the memory of our past fights and connecting them to those ongoing today is a wellspring of hope that we can continue to fight, and perhaps next time, or the time after that, win.
A particularly ugly and cold-blooded recent effort at thought control is the campaign to suppress "My Name is Rachel Corrie, a play composed from Rachel's journals and e-mails from Gaza. The play opened at the prestigious the Royal Court Theatre in London and won the Theatregoers' Choice Awards for Best Director (Alan Rickman), Best New Play, and Best Solo Performance (Megan Dodds). It was scheduled to open at the New York Theater Workshop in March 2006. But the theater managers were subjected to pressure from groups purporting to speak for the Jewish community, and it was postponed indefinitely. The English producers denounced the postponement as censorship and cancelled the show. It finally opened at the Off-Broadway Minetta Lane Theater on October 15, 2006 for an initial run of 48 performances with Megan Dodds once again playing the solo leading role.
Efforts to suppress the play have continued, notably at CanStage, Canada's largest non-profit theater. But, it was revived in London and has been successfully staged in Edinburgh, Scotland, Dublin, Ireland and at venues across Canada and the U.S., including Edmonton, Alberta, Seattle, WA, Ashland OR, Silver Springs, MD, and Shepherdstown, WV. On March 16 an Arabic translation of the play, translated and adapted by the director Riyad Masarwi and the actress Lana Zureik, opened in Haifa. The show is now touring throughout Israel and the occupied West Bank.
The play has also been published as a book; and on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of Rachel's death, her diaries Let Me Stand Alone: The Journals of Rachel Corrie, have also been published. It would be an act of struggle and solidarity if everyone reading these words bought a copy of the book as a repudiation of those who think that attempting to repress the memories of our struggles and heroines will allow them to win. And for those in the vicinity of Portland, OR (my wannabe home), Powell's Books on Hawthorne Ave. in Portland will be sponsoring a book event on Thursday, April 10th at 7:30 pm with Rachel's mother, father, and sister: Cindy, Craig, and Sarah Corrie.
Only three days after Rachel Corrie's death, on Mar. 19, 2003, the United States invaded Iraq. This colossal foreign policy failure was born in lies playing on the post-9/11 fears of a nation that had forgotten, one hopes temporarily, how to think. It is now the second longest war the United States has fought in the last 200 hundred years, with the exception of Vietnam. Hardly anyone takes President George W, Bush seriously any more. But, as anti-war actions unfolded all over the country he had the audacity to address the Department of Defense and the American people with an unabashed defense of his war policies. As we have come to expect, the President was utterly detached from the reality of the enormous economic, social and political costs of his war, which will continue to mount long after the Bush administration and its occupation of the United States is a bad memory.
The country of Iraq has been destroyed and its people traumatized. It will take generations to repair the carnage, and it is unclear if a unified Iraqi state can ever be rebuilt. At least 90,000 Iraqi civilians have died along with nearly 4,000 American soldiers. Many more have been severely wounded and will suffer severe and permanent debilitation. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard public finance expert Linda Bilmes estimate that the eventual cost of the war to the U.S. economy will be $3 trillion. The United States has destroyed its credibility in the Arab and Muslim world for the foreseeable future.
Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, has been conducting public opinion surveys of six Arab countries since 2003 - Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates. The results of the latest survey, conducted in 2006, (2008 results will be available soon) indicated that 38% of the respondents disliked George W. Bush more than any other political leader outside their own countries - over three times more than chose Ariel Sharon; 69% had no confidence in the United States. If there were just one super power in the world 19% thought that it should be France; only 8% the U.S. The largest number of respondents also considered France the country with the most freedom and democracy for its own people, the most desirable country to live in, and the most desirable country to study in. Israel and the United States were considered by far the greatest threats to the Arab countries.
According to Telhami's respondents, the single most effective thing the U.S. could do to improve its image in the Arab world would be to broker a comprehensive Palestinian-Israeli peace with Israel withdrawing to its 1967 borders and the establishment of a Palestinian state with its capitol in Jerusalem. The next most important thing the U.S. could do is to withdraw its forces from Iraq. These are precisely the things which the Bush administration refuses to do. This is, in brief, why the much ballyhooed Annapolis conference of last November quickly became a charade. And, to recall another grim anniversary, it is also why the Road Map President Bush endorsed on March 14, 2003, as one of the preliminaries to the invasion of Iraq, led nowhere.
Telhami, along with William Quandt and Steven Spiegel recently participated in a study group chaired by former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer that evaluated U.S. diplomacy in the Arab-Israeli conflict since the end of the Cold War. Last month their results were published in Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East. They have produced some sensible recommendations which they hope will guide the administration which takes office on January 20, 2009. Don't count on it.
Joel Beinin
Cairo
March 22, 2008