Back to Reality; Back to the Skunk Palestine at the UN by URI AVNERY

WEEKEND EDITION, SEPTEMBER 17-18, 2011
14

“WILL THIS be the happiest day of your life?” a local interviewer asked me, referring to the approaching recognition of the State of Palestine by the UN.

I was taken by surprise. “Why would that be?” I asked.

“Well, for 62 years you have advocated the establishment of a Palestinian state next to Israel, and here it comes!”

“If I were a Palestinian, I would probably be happy,” I said, “But as an Israeli, I am rather sad.”

LET ME explain.

I came out of the 1948 war with four solid convictions:

(1) There exists a Palestinian people, though the name Palestine had been wiped off the map.

(2) It is with this Palestinian people that we must make peace.

(3) Peace will be impossible unless the Palestinians are allowed to set up their state next to Israel.

(4) Without peace, Israel will not be the model state we had been dreaming about in the trenches, but something very different.

While recovering from my wounds and still in uniform, I met with several young people, Arabs and Jews, to plot our course. We were very optimistic. Now everything seemed possible.

What we were thinking about was a great act of fraternization. Jews and Arabs had fought each other valiantly, each fighting for what they considered their national rights. Now the time had come to reach out for peace.

The idea of peace between two gallant fighters after the battle is as old as Semitic culture. In the epic written more than 3000 years ago, Gilgamesh, king of Uruk (in today’s Iraq) fights against the wild Enkidu, his equal in strength and courage, and after the epic fight they become blood brothers.

We had fought hard and had won. The Palestinians had lost everything. The part of Palestine that had been allotted by the UN to their state had been gobbled up by Israel, Jordan and Egypt, leaving nothing for them. Half the Palestinian people had been driven from their homes and become refugees.

That was the time, we thought, for the victor to stun the world with an act of magnanimity and wisdom, offering to help the Palestinians to set up their state in return for peace. Thus we could forge a friendship that would last for generations.

18 years later I brought this vision up again in similar circumstances. We had won a stunning victory against the Arab armies in the Six-Day war, the Middle East was in a state of shock. An Israeli offer to the Palestinians to establish their state would have electrified the region.

I AM telling this story (again) in order to make one point: when the “Two-State Solution” was conceived for the first time after 1948, it was as an idea of reconciliation, fraternization and mutual respect.

We envisaged two states living closely together, with borders open to the free movement of people and goods. Jerusalem, the joint capital, would symbolize the spirit of the historic change. Palestine would become the bridge between the new Israel and the Arab world, united for the common good. We spoke of a “Semitic Union” long before the European Union became a reality.

When the Two-State Solution made its extraordinary march from the vision of a handful of outsiders (or crazies) to a world-wide consensus, it was this context in which it was viewed. Not a plot against Israel, but the only viable basis for real peace.

This vision was firmly rejected by David Ben-Gurion, then the undisputed leader of Israel. He was busy distributing new Jewish immigrants across the vast areas expropriated from the Arabs, and he did not believe in peace with the Arabs anyhow. He set the course that successive Israeli governments, including the present one, have followed ever since.

On the Arab side, there was always support for this vision. Already at the Lausanne Conference in 1949, an unofficial Palestinian delegation appeared and secretly offered to start direct negotiations, but they were roughly rebuffed by the Israeli delegate, Eliyahu Sasson, on direct orders from Ben-Gurion (as I heard from him later).

Yasser Arafat told me several times – from 1982 to his death in 2004 – that he would support a “Benelux” solution (on the model of the union between Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg), which would include Israel, Palestine and Jordan (“and perhaps Lebanon too, why not?”)

PEOPLE SPEAK about all the opportunities for peace missed by Israel throughout the years. That is nonsense: you can miss opportunities on the way to a goal that you desire, but not on the way to something you abhor.

Ben-Gurion saw an independent Palestinian state as a mortal danger to Israel. So he made a secret deal with King Abdullah I, dividing between them the territory allocated by the UN partition plan to the Arab Palestinian state. All Ben-Gurion’s successors inherited the same dogma: that a Palestinian state would be a terrible danger. Therefore they opted for the so-called ”“Jordanian option” – keeping what is left of Palestine under the heel of the Jordanian monarch, who is no Palestinian (nor even Jordanian – his family came from Mecca).

This week, the present Jordanian ruler, Abdullah II, flew into a rage when told that yet another Israeli former general, Uzi Dayan, had again proposed turning Jordan into Palestine, with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as “provinces” of the Hashemite kingdom. This Dayan is, unlike his late cousin, Moshe, a pompous fool, but even a speech by such a person infuriates the king, who is mortally afraid of an influx of Palestinians driven from the West Bank into Jordan.

Three days ago, Binyamin Netanyahu told Cathy Ashton, the pathetic “foreign secretary” of the European Union, that he would agree to anything short of Palestinian statehood. That may sound strange, in view of the “historic” speech he made less than two years ago, in which he expressed his support for the Two-State Solution. (Perhaps he was thinking of the State of Israel and the State of the Settlers.)

In the few remaining weeks before the UN vote, our government will fight tooth and nail against a Palestinian state, supported by the full might of the US. This week Hillary Clinton trumped even her own rhetorical record when she announced that the US supports the Two-State Solution and therefore opposes any UN vote recognizing a Palestinian state.

APART FROM the dire threats of what will happen after the UN vote for a Palestinian state, Israeli and American leaders assure us that such a vote will make no difference at all.

If so, why fight it?

Of course it will make a difference. The occupation will go on, but it will be the occupation of one state by another. In history, symbols count. The fact that the vast majority of the world’s nations will have recognized the State of Palestine will be another step towards gaining freedom for Palestine.

What will happen the day after? Our army has already announced that it has finished preparations for huge Palestinian demonstrations that will attack the settlements. The settlers will be called upon to mobilize their “quick-reaction teams” to confront the demonstrators, thus fulfilling the prophecies of a “bloodbath”. After that the army will move in, pulling many battalions of regular troops from other tasks and calling up reserve units.

A few weeks ago I pointed to ominous signs that sharpshooters would be employed to turn peaceful demonstrations into something very different, as happened during the second intifada. This week this was officially confirmed: sharpshooters will be employed to defend the settlements.

All this amounts to a war plan for the settlements. To put it simply: a war to decide whether the West Bank belongs to the Palestinians or the settlers.

In an almost comical turn of events, the army is also providing means of crowd dispersal to the Palestinian security forces trained by the Americans. The occupation authorities expect these Palestinian forces to protect the settlements against their compatriots. Since these are the armed forces of the future Palestinian state, which is opposed by Israel, it all sounds a bit bewildering.

According to the army, the Palestinians will get rubber-coated bullets and tear gas, but not the “Skunk”.

The Skunk is a device that produces an unbearable stench which attaches itself to the peaceful demonstrators and will not leave them for a long time. I am afraid that when this chapter comes to an end, the stench will attach itself to our side, and that we shall not get rid of it for a long time indeed.

LET’S GIVE free rein to our imagination for just one minute.

Imagine that in the coming UN debate something incredible happens: the Israeli delegate declares that after due consideration Israel has decided to vote for recognition of the state of Palestine.

The assembly would gape in disbelief. After a moment of silence, wild applause would break out. The world would be electrified. For days, the world media would speak of nothing else.

The minute of imagination has passed. Back to reality. Back to the Skunk.

Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch’s book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.

To the victors go the spOILs Cameron and Sarkozy’s Coy Victory Lap in Tripoli by PATRICK COCKBURN

WEEKEND EDITION, SEPTEMBER 17-18, 2011
7

David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy were careful during their first visit to Libya since the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi to avoid anything evoking comparisons with President Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” rhetoric after the occupation of Iraq. They know how his imperial arrogance and premature declaration of victory came back to haunt him.

Their caution is sensible given that it is too early to say exactly what Britain and France have accomplished in Libya. Col Gaddafi is gone, but it is unclear what will replace him. In power in Tripoli, he provided a focus for a broad but disparate coalition of Libyans struggling to defeat him. Now that his followers hold only a few beleaguered towns, there is not much to bind together these lawyers from Benghazi, former Islamist guerrillas and defecting members of the old regime, who will be Libya’s next rulers.

Britain, France and other foreign powers are uncertain of their status in the new Libya. The rebels’ success would not have been without NATO. The final collapse of the Gaddafi regime came not only because of NATO air strikes, but because French and British planners played a commanding role in the military campaign.

It is uncertain how much political influence the NATO powers most involved in the war will enjoy, though presumably it will be large. Members of the National Transitional Council (NTC) have tried to show they are not push-overs when it comes to dealing with their foreign allies by rejecting suggestions they should send Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, to Britain. At the same time, the chairman of the NTC, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, implied that the countries which led the NATO intervention would be regarded favorably in commercial dealings.

This is someway down the road. The war is not entirely over. Damage to oil facilities is not severe, but it will take time for Libya to again export 1.3 million barrels of oil a day. As the government established itself, the scramble for a share in Libya’s oil wealth will intensify.

This has been a backdrop to the war from the beginning in a way that was never quite true to the same extent in Iraq. ENI of Italy, BP of UK, Total of France, OMV of Austria and Repsol YPF of Spain will all look to see how far they turn the post-war situation to their advantage. Any incoming Libyan government will be wary of giving credibility to Gaddafi’s claim that the rebels were pawns of foreign powers and oil companies aiming to steal Libya’s only asset.

A problem is that, whatever happens in Libya, it is difficult to see a strong government emerging. It will continue, to a greater or lesser degree, to be reliant on NATO powers. Gaddafi prevented the development of independent political and social groups so it is difficult to see how an elected “National Congress”, as is provisionally planned, will be able to assert its authority.

There is not just the divisions and disruption of war to be considered. Some members of the NTC speak of putting apolitical civil servants and technicians back to work, though this not an unmixed blessing given the ramshackle nature of Gaddafi’s state machine.

So far Libyans and foreigners have reassured themselves with the mantra that Libya is not Iraq or Afghanistan. It is true there is not the same legacy of war, communal and sectarian hatred. On the other hand, many successful national liberations have been followed by nasty and violent struggles to see who will be top dog.

PATRICK COCKBURN is the author of The Occupation: War, resistance and daily life in Iraq and Muqtada! Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia revival and the struggle for Iraq

Le Tarp? Geithner’s European Junket by MIKE WHITNEY

WEEKEND EDITION, SEPTEMBER 17-18, 2011
11

On Thursday–exactly 3 years after Lehman Brothers defaulted igniting the greatest financial crisis in 70 years–the world’s most powerful central banks launched a massive intervention to staunch a liquidity squeeze in the eurozone that threatened to wreak havoc on the EU banking system. The European Central Bank –acting in cooperation with the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the Swiss National Bank–agreed to provide limitless loans to banks that are having trouble getting dollar funding. European banks access to US money markets has been sharply reduced in the last year due to worries over their solvency. The joint-central bank action is designed to ease liquidity problems, allay investor fears and avoid the painful task of restructuring underwater banks. Stocks rose on news of the emergency intervention. The Dow finished up 186 points on the day. This is from the Wall Street Journal:

“European banks need the U.S. currency to fund loans they have extended to U.S. companies and consumers. European banks also need dollars to repay past borrowings they made in dollars, such as loans from U.S. money-market funds…

European banks have lost access to more than $700 billion in U.S.-dollar funding—short-term IOUs and interbank loans—over the past year from U.S. money-market funds and others worried about exposure to Greece and other troubled European economies, according to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and CreditSights research…..

“Things are deteriorating,” said Joseph Abate, a money-markets specialist at Barclays Capital in New York. “This week and certainly probably since August, it seems like their access to unsecured [funding] really has tightened up.” (“Europe Lending Woes Deepen”, Wall Street Journal)

Money markets are withholding funds from EU banks because the credit crunch is getting worse and because the banks have been lying about the true condition of their balance sheets. This is a point that Jonathan Weil makes in a recent article in Bloomberg. Here’s an excerpt:

“Back in October 2008, after the European Union threatened to override its standards legislatively, the London-based International Accounting Standards Board changed its rules on balance-sheet classifications retroactively, so that companies could immediately shift many of their financial assets out of categories where fair-value accounting was required. This meant a company holding lots of dodgy mortgage bonds, for example, could delay recognizing future losses simply by changing the bonds’ balance-sheet label….

The markets… know better than to believe the banking industry’s balance sheets. And so we get the present situation where most of Europe’s largest banks, including France’s BNP Paribas (BNP) SA and Societe Generale (GLE) SA, are trading for far less than what their books say their net assets are worth. The problem with fair-value accounting now is investors don’t get enough of it. Those banks that are destined to blow up will do so regardless.” (“European Bank Blowups Hidden With Shell Games: Jonathan Weil, Bloomberg)

So, by removing the “onerous regulation” of having to accurately report the true value of the assets on one’s balance sheet, the banks have triggered a panic as investors ditch their stocks and slash their funding. “Fair value accounting” is an oxymoron.

There’s no telling how long the central bank intervention will calm the markets. The basic problem still has not been resolved. Greece is bankrupt as are many of the other so-called PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) That means that bondholders will eventually face severe writedowns on their holdings and banks in Germany, France and England will have to be recapitalized or restructured. The system is broke. Here’s an excerpt from an article by Win Thin, the Head of Emerging Markets Currency Strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman, over at Credit Writedowns:

“This latest dollar funding scheme addresses the symptoms but not the illness. The illness is that Greece is insolvent, and one of the symptoms is that banks are afraid to lend to each other and are instead hoarding cash. Today’s actions won’t PREVENT a Lehman-type event (Greece is insolvent, period), but they could MITIGATE the dislocations and market turmoil that will likely result from such an event. We fully expect policy-makers are preparing quietly for a Greek default, and would look for more and more preparatory measures in the coming months.” (“Some Thoughts On The ECB/Fed Announcement”, Credit Writedowns)

So, while Wall Street clicks its heels and celebrates, the news is less auspicious than it seems. The intervention is just another stalling tactic. The troubles continue to mount. The gauges of market fear (Libor, Euribor-OIS) are still rising, interbank lending has slowed, many of the largest banks have suffered downgrades which will increase their funding costs, the spreads on default insurance continue to widen, and EU banks have parked more than $800 billion at the Federal Reserve. In other words, the credit markets are in turmoil.

Here’s more from the Wall Street Journal:

“European banks are woefully short of capital to cope with multiple losses on euro-zone sovereign bonds… this year’s European “stress test” disclosures, which showed a capital shortfall of €80 billion if Greek, Irish, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian debt had been marked to market prices. That deficit would rise to over €200 billion if the pass rate had been a 9% core Tier 1 capital ratio…

But this only tells part of the story. Any losses arising from multiple restructurings of euro-zone sovereign debt are sure to go well beyond merely first order effects given the scale of interconnectivity. If the euro zone started to fall apart—perhaps as a result of an ECB refusal to keep funding Greek banks—the consequences would be incalculable as instant deposit flight led to a toppling of peripheral country banking systems. It is hard to see what scenario banks should be recapitalizing themselves to withstand, bearing in mind official euro zone policy is that there will be no sovereign defaults beyond Greece….

… stock market valuations suggest markets are now focused on extreme scenarios.” (“Euro Banks’ Capital Conundrum”, Wall Street Journal)

Policymakers have only recently shown they even understand the problem, let alone have any interest in fixing it.

And what would “fixing it” really mean anyway?

Would it mean, creating a “supra national” fiscal authority as many experts have suggested?

No. That’s just another banker fantasy. Imagine the United States with no president, no congress, no judiciary, and no bond market; just a free-wheeling Treasury Department putting out fires and transferring tax revenues as it sees fit. Yes, that is something the banks would like, but would it really be enough to win the support of the people?

Not likely. This whole fiasco is a perfect example of what happens when elites try to impose their governing institutions without broad popular support. Now they’ve backed themselves into a corner with no way out. And it’s all because they never built the public support they needed to get them through the tough times. So, now they’re doing everything they can to pull the wool over people’s eyes so their elitist plan won’t be derailed; which is why Sarkozy and Merkel were splashed across the front pages of newspapers on Wednesday promising to keep Greece in the fold. Give me a break. The whole charade has been scripted to make sure that bankers and bondholders don’t lose money on their bad investments. This is from Reuters:

“In a report prepared for European finance ministers meeting in Poland on Friday and Saturday, senior EU officials said the 17-nation currency area faces a “risk of a vicious circle between sovereign debt, bank funding and negative growth.”

“While tensions in sovereign debt markets have intensified and bank funding risks have increased over the summer, contagion has spread across markets and countries and the crisis has become systemic,” the influential Economic and Financial Committee said.

“A further reinforcement of bank resources is advisable,” ministers were told in language that echoed an International Monetary Fund call for urgent action to recapitalize European banks….(“EU warned of credit crunch threat”, French banks hit Reuters)

Wait a minute. So the EU finance ministers knew the banking system was underwater but never forced the banks to increase their capital?

That’s called “regulatory capture”, where the banks control the political system to the extent that they can effectively block any rule that may inhibit their ability to maximize profits. Naturally, when the wolf is left to mind the henhouse, there’s bound to be trouble. The same is true here.

Geithner in Wroclaw

In a sign of how concerned the Obama administration is over developments in the eurozone, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has been dispatched to a two-day meeting of EU finance ministers in Wroclaw, Poland. Geithner is expected to push for controversial and, perhaps, illegal changes to the 440 billion (euro) financial emergency fund (EFSF). The Treasury Secretary wants policymakers to massively leverage the original sum so they can purchase trillions in sovereign bonds from Italy and Spain. Here’s the story from Reuters:

“Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is likely to suggest to European finance ministers on Friday that they leverage their bailout fund along the lines of the U.S. TALF program, EU officials said.

“Geithner will probably insist on the importance of leverage to have more funds to ringfence the big Europeans, Italy and Spain, and to find a solution for Greece,” one EU official said.

Leveraging the EFSF, however, would not take place before the fund’s new powers of intervention on bond markets, extending precautionary credit lines or lending for bank recapitalization were ratified by the end of September, the official said.” (“Exclusive: Geithner to float idea of leveraging euro rescue”, Reuters)

So, what’s going on here?

First, the EU finance ministers are going to try to expand the powers of the EFSF so the money can be used to directly recapitalize banks. This is a clear case of bait-and-switch. The EFSF was sold to the public as a way of helping struggling nations meet their funding needs by pushing down bond yields. It was never supposed to be used to bailout underwater banks. Second, if Geithner’s recommendations are followed, then the 440 billion euros will be levered many times over (perhaps 10 or 20x), which will create a big enough mountain of money to bailout all the EU’s insolvent banks (and nonbanks!). That way, bankers will not have to writedown losses on their toxic assets or undergo painful restructuring. Geithner’s plan is like TARP and QE1 combined, a double whammy for eurozone taxpayers.

And, third, the powers of the ECB will be greatly enhanced so that the central bank can execute policy independently, basically assuming the role of “supra national fiscal authority”, much like the Fed has done in the US by invoking the “unusual and exigent” clause in its charter.

So, what does it all mean?

It means the eurozone is headed down the same road as the US, where economic policy is largely decided at the Fed and where the primary function of government is to assure that its parasitic financial institutions remain profitable.

Euro leaders are very close to making the ECB the most powerful political institution in Europe and creating their own regime of zombie “Too Big To Fail” banks which will be a perennial drag on employment and growth just as they are in the US. This weekend’s meetings should tell us a lot about the future of the eurozone.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state, He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com

Three Big Challenges Threatening the Arab Uprisings by ESAM AL-AMIN

WEEKEND EDITION, SEPTEMBER 17-18, 2011
18
The Arab Autumn

With the fall of Muammar Qaddafi’s headquarters in Bab Al-Aziziyyah in Tripoli on August 23, Libya became the third country to oust its long-serving dictator after the fall of Tunisia’s Zein-al-bedin Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak earlier this year.

The failed assassination attempt on Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh on June 3, has kept him outside the country, recovering from his injuries in Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, the large daily peaceful protests of tens of thousands of Yemenis in many of the country’s cities and provinces have expanded, demanding the ouster of Saleh’s relatives and cronies from power.

In Syria, Bashar Al-Assad has been struggling for more than six months to contain his people’s daily discontent and maintain his grip on power to save his increasingly isolated and weakened regime.

However, the popular uprisings sweeping much of the Arab world this year are facing three crucial predicaments. How the different sides in each political theatre deal with these critical issues will determine the future of these societies, as they undergo their genuine popular revolutions, and a change in leadership, for the first time in decades.

Prevalent problems that usually accompany major shake-ups in society such as political chaos, relative lack of security, endemic corruption, and severe day-to-day economic hardships are symptoms of much greater issues. They cannot be dealt with effectively until the major challenges facing the nation are resolved.

Although each country has its own local conditions and special circumstances, there are many common factors facing the uprisings of the Arab spring. In particular, there are three main intricate challenges engulfing the Arab revolts since their inception.

1. The revolutionaries are not in charge

Popular revolutions are rare in history because they face the daunting task of establishing a new political and socio-economic order in society based on the people’s will.

The successful ones usually empower the revolutionaries to institute the new order, first by dismantling the old order and rooting out its adherents and supporters. The American, French, Soviet, Cuban, and Iranian revolutions are good examples of one system being fundamentally abandoned and cleansed of its remnants, then replaced by a new order.

But the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions were prematurely aborted. Shortly after successfully overthrowing the despised dictators, the levers of power in both countries were taken over by people who were either part of the old regime or have not effectively embraced the goals of the popular revolutions.

For example, in Tunisia people affiliated with Ben Ali or his predecessor Habib Bourgiba have maintained their political clout, and in some instances even risen to the height of power. They present themselves, despite their miserable records, as saviors of the popular revolution. Meanwhile, many of the officers associated with the much-despised interior ministry and secret police have also been retained and reorganized.

In Egypt, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has cast itself as the rescuer of the revolution. But as it took control of the country, many of the revolutionary and popular demands were either delayed or reluctantly instituted, usually after the people took to the streets.

As it seized power after the forced resignation of Mubarak, the military council promised a transitional period of no more than six months followed by free and fair elections. Since then, it has postponed the elections twice and has not announced a new date for the parliamentary or presidential elections.

But since March, it has tried over 12,000 civilians in summary military courts, a feat not even matched by Mubarak who, during his three-decade reign, sent one thousand people to military courts. The UN Human Rights Commissioner has strongly criticized the military trials, calling on SCAF to halt them and to retry the convicted persons in open civilian trials.

In a recent episode, thousands of Egyptian youth protested the lack of an adequate response by the SCAF to the unjustified Israeli killing of five Egyptian soldiers along the Gaza-Egypt border. They charged that by adhering to Israeli and American dictates and ignoring Egyptian public opinion, the military’s response was no different than Mubarak’s.

In anger, the youth protested in front of the Israeli embassy, knocked down the wall surrounding it, and stormed the building to take down the Israeli flag waving above. In the process, they seized thousands of documents that expose the degree of cooperation between both countries on such unpopular policies as maintaining the blockade on Gaza during the Mubarak regime. In response to this protest, SCAF announced the resumption of the dreaded emergency security laws, threatening a massive crackdown and long prison sentences.

Consequently, most political parties, social movements, and major presidential candidates have been so alarmed and outraged by SCAF’s action that they have threatened to go to the streets by the millions unless the emergency laws are rescinded and elections dates announced.

In short, revolutions are about fundamental transformations to the political structure and power relationships in the country as well as the redistribution of resources within society, not a change in personalities or modalities.

But so far much of the changes have been cosmetic and superficial. Unless those who led the revolutions, sacrificing their blood and livelihoods along the way, are elected and put in charge to lead the reforms and carry out the demands of the people, no genuine change can actually take place.

2. The role of Islam in society

In the midst of the struggle to oust each regime, the tension between the Islamic movements on the one hand, and the secular and liberal trends on the other, was kept under the surface as all political oppositions were united in their goal to defeat and overthrow their dictatorship. But once the regimes were toppled, old rivalries reemerged and ideological debates resurfaced, generating discord and mistrust.

For years, secularists and liberals feared that Islamic political movements secretly intended to impose a religious state and were just paying lip service to democratic principles. While many Islamists affirm their commitment to democracy, they charge their rivals with having an anti-religion and a liberal pro-Western hidden agenda.

This mistrust between the two camps in Egypt has become so rife that in many instances public accusations were rampant, as were calls to boycott each other’s events.

The liberal and secular camp believes that the Islamic groups are much more organized, better placed to win the elections and thus dictate a new pro-Islamic constitution. Consequently, they initiated a campaign to convince SCAF to issue a decree that would supersede any future constitution in order to guarantee certain principles.

Dubbed “above the constitution,” they would ensure that the constitution could never be amended. They also hint that the army should serve as the protector of the state against any encroachment of religion in state affairs, much like the role the Turkish army played in the second half of the last century.

The Islamic camp argues that having principles that are above the constitution is in itself an undemocratic practice. Many of its leaders insist that they seek a civil state that will have a modern and democratic constitution enshrining pluralism and basic civil rights.

While both camps agree that Shari‘a would be the basic source of legislation, they differ on how this principle would be applied in reality and how widely they will be allowed to interpret it. Similar pronouncements and disputes between both camps have also been raging in Tunisia, as the country prepares to elect a body to write the future constitution.

Furthermore, throughout the armed struggle between the National Transitional Council (NTC) and the Qaddafi regime, both the secular pro-Western and Islamic camps cooperated in their objective to depose the Libyan dictator. However, both sides distrusted and frustrated each other throughout months of struggles against the Qaddafi loyalists.

The Libyan Islamists accuse the pro-Western secularists within the NTC of making deals with NATO countries that are detrimental to the country. In addition, they charge them with conspiring against them. For instance, in late July the pro-secularist military commander of the Libyan opposition Gen. Abdelfattah Younis was gunned down by his own Islamically-oriented contingent of troops in retaliation for allegedly conspiring with NATO to attack them covertly.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior Libyan official recently appointed as the NTC representative in a major European country asserted that Younis used to give NATO the coordinates of the positions for aerial bombardment of members of his own troops that he considered “too Islamic.”

Thus, in many instances NATO was considered to have bombed the wrong targets, not because of technical errors, but because they were deliberately fed misleading information. The senior official further claims that over seventy percent of the Libyan insurgents who fought on the ground are Islamists who objected to the intervention of NATO and Western forces.

Shortly after the fall of Tripoli, this dispute came to the surface, as the acting Prime Minister, Mahmoud Jibril, admitted that the NTC was not in control of many of its armed groups. Meanwhile, Sheikh Ali Sallabi, a prominent religious leader, called for the resignation of Jibril and many of his colleagues, including the finance, communications and oil ministers. He accused them of being corrupt pro-Western stooges “stealing the revolution.”

Meanwhile, the military heads of the Tripoli brigade Abdel Hakim Belhaj, and Benghazi’s Ismail Sallabi, in charge of security and defense of these two major cities, have been accused by NATO officials of being anti-Western Islamists. Belhaj was in fact a former victim of the CIA rendition program, in which he was arrested by the United States, rendered to Libya, and tortured by the Qaddafi regime during the Bush administration.

In a recent interview, NATO’s secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen predictably sided with the pro-Western liberals, expressing concerns that “Islamic extremists” would “try to exploit” the situation in the country. Similar sentiments and warnings have also been expressed against the popular uprisings in Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain.

But the role of Islam in society should not be a source of tension and discord among political groups. There is no denying that Islam, as a religion and culture, has played a major role in shaping the identity and history of the region for over a millennium. This heritage and legacy will undoubtedly play a significant role in shaping the future of the region within the democratic nature of the civil state.

Thus for the objectives of the revolutions to be realized, both ideological camps should commit themselves to the principles of democratic governance and respect the will of the people with no imposition of one’s vision over the other.

3. The role of foreign powers

Undoubtedly the Arab spring has taken Western countries by surprise. In the early days of the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings, the U.S. and Europe supported the deposed regimes before belatedly supporting their people who overthrew them.

In Libya, the West quickly turned against Qaddafi in an attempt to seize the momentum and steer the revolution towards a pro-Western regime in a country that’s awash in oil and natural gas. Meanwhile, Western powers, especially the United States, have been instrumental in playing a behind-the-scenes role -along with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries-in trying to save the Saleh regime in the face of the massive demonstrations across Yemen.

The major objectives that have guided Western policy toward the Middle East over the past six decades have not changed. They are, namely: 1) to control access to oil and natural resources, sea lanes, and the massive wealth hoarded by a few Gulf families; 2) to protect Israel militarily and politically, even as it is an occupier and a regional bully; and 3) to maintain regional stability and ensure market accessibility to its products, military arms and other multinational economic interests.

Hence, the attempt by the West to maintain the policies of the former regimes should not be in doubt. When the Egyptian government lifted the Gaza blockade at the end of May, it only took a few members of the U.S. Congress to warn that U.S. aid to Egypt and in fact the future of US-Egypt relations were at stake, for SCAF to reverse its decision and close the Rafah crossing three days later.

In its bill to fund US foreign assistance to Egypt, Congress, in a total disregard to the will of the Egyptian people, imposed the humiliating demand that “the Secretary of State certifies that Egypt is not controlled by a foreign terrorist organization,” and that Egypt is “taking steps to detect and destroy the smuggling network and tunnels between Egypt and the Gaza strip.” It further stipulated that the military aid should be used for “border security programs and activities in the Sinai, with the expectation that the Egyptian military will continue to adhere to and implement the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty.”

In essence, the major concern of U.S policymakers and other Western officials is how to keep these countries in their orbit, and to maintain control of their economies according to the dictates of the IMF, the World Bank, and the multinational corporations. Congress has also appropriated over $120M for “promoting democracy” in Egypt and Tunisia, a staggering amount to be spent in order to directly impact the outcome of the upcoming elections, a direct interference in the internal affairs of sovereign nations.

The continuation of foreign interference in the internal affairs of the Arab World, particularly in the countries where the people have asserted their will and taken to the streets to topple their dictators, will continue to sour Arab public opinion against the West. Because of its unabashed meddling, it is questionable whether the U.S. and other Western countries truly respect and honor the will of the Arab people and their aspirations for freedom and self-determination.

Esam Al-Amin can be reached at alamin1919@gmail.com

Asking about Harrisburg, IL

One of my facebook friends took the time to "like" one of my myriad comments. To refresh my memory, I went to her F/B page to discover that she lives in Harrisburg, IL. "And so," thinks I to myself, "this would be a good time to ask what for me is the most obvious (and almost most important) question in the world:"

Thanks, Joanna, for taking the time to like my comment.

So, is life in Harrisburg, IL as laid back as I remember Streator IL (where I grew up) and Macomb, IL (where I went to college) to be? Where folks leave their doors open, house doors, car doors, where a kid doing DUMB goofing off has about 20 surrogate parents to whomperjaw him AND report to his parents, where somebody is always there to pick up the young boy who fell off his bike and skinned his knee, where the whole town comes out for Memorial Day parade, 4th of July, Labor Day, Homecoming and high school kids are respectful and have no problem mingling with and talking with their elders, and even their juniors?

(I strongly suspect this to be the longest sentence I ever composed ... I might very well be mistaken)

Or is this just some wistful notion of mine, longing for a childhood that never was, but ought to have been?

Joanna wrote: "Life in Harrisburg is laid back but not like it used to be when we were growing up.. I guess even in small town America the problems of city crime and unemployment and kids falling off bikes and people being to afraid to come out to do anything because their parents might sue, it is a society that has done a complete 360 compared to when I lived there in Carpentersville. We used to be able to leave our doors unlocked AND open at night but now at dusk, you close it up. The town comes out for parades and kids still sit in the parking lots and sit on the hoods of their cars and scout for their friends but there is a lot of kids with nothing to do but get in trouble anymore.

I really miss those days gone by. I don't know if I miis Carpentersville though. It is not the same and I know changes have to happen but it seems those changes happened a few years after graduation. I moved here to keep my son safe from the violence that was happening there. I am so glad i did that too. I missed out a lot of it too Mark. I think we all did to an extent. Take care of yourself my friend, you are a wondeful friend.."

Strong women we have known or read of; a most remarkable corporate visionary - John D. MacArthur, owner of Bankers Life & Casualty

KENT M

Hi, Mark,

Things have been a bit crazy lately, so I haven't been able to respond. I
was actually in the Chicago area yesterday -- I did a memorial service for
my late aunt, Mary Longbrake, at the chapel at Lake Forest College. But it
was running down on Monday, picking my son up at the airport in Milwaukee, staying overnight in Elmhurst, then picking up my daughter from Elmhurst College, running up to Lake Forest, doing the service, running back to Elmhurst, then running up through Milwaukee to get my son on a plane back to Boston, then getting back to Minnesota after midnight. I had another funeral this morning and have two church committee meetings tonight, so I'm just trying to catch my breath.

Thanks for sharing your faith story. We hear so little about the liberal
branch of Islam today. The phrase "seal of the prophets" I learned in my "Religion in the West" courses in grad school. I believe the idea was that
God had indeed spoken through many prophets but that orthodox Islam holds Muhammad to be the final and greatest of the prophets. Jesus is considered the next greatest prophet (not divine, of course). I'm not up enough on Qur'an to say what passage this might be based on (it may be in the Hadith rather than Qur'an; or it might be in the Second Sura).

In some ways, your views remind me of either the more theistic side of Unitarianism or Ba'hai without the authoritarian leadership. As I think I
noted earlier, I try not to tell God who God can or can't talk to, and I try
to learn from others.

I heard somewhere that there is conversation about having a multi-year
reunion. Have you heard anything?

Hope all is well with you.
God's Peace,
Kent

Mark Raymond Ganzer

Kent, I am 250 e-mails behind, and doing about 50 a day - which is barely treading water ... I felt guilty for not having responded sooner to your question - you were just pretty far down on the queue (then, I started working from the LAST page of my e-mails.
I attended a memorial service at the Lake Forest College Chapel for the wife of my dearest friend, Kenneth Bennett, emeritus Chair of the Department of English Lit at Lake Forest. His wife DJ was a world renonwn crafts person, and wrote two books (the definitive ones) on stichery and using the sewing machine to design your special order clothes. DJ, as a graduate student in English Lit did some original Blake scholarship (bragging - my 25-year old nephew is a graduate teacing assistant in Pullman, WA, at Washington State University, the only one of the 13 school to which he applied for grad school that would take him AND give him a full ride ... this past April he headed an international Blake symposium in Trenton, NJ, at which he was the Key Note Speaker!!! Not bad for akid who had not worked a day in his life until he began his teaching career last September). The chapel is so beautiful, and not at all somber ... Ihope that the phantom bag pipe player showed up on time - there were some concern in the area at DJ's service.


I think God all the times sends messengers to all peoples of the earth .. Jesus, for my money, was sent, not for the Jews, of which he was one, but for the gentiles ... and Jesus, did not hold gentiles (white people) in particularly high esteem (cf - Turn the other cheek .... EVEN the gentiles love those who love them)

If ever again you will be in the Chicago area, and have sometime, my cell is (xxx) yyy-zzzz ... I would love to show you parts of "my" world - e.g. in particular - The Crabtree FarmS in Lake bluff - 1000's of acres abutting Lake Michigan - just an incredible place, free and open to the public!


I hope you are aware how much our correspondence means to me ... and yes, my spiritual beliefs align pretty strongly with Unitarians / Universalits / Bhuddists and .. of course, the B'Hai faith (our neighbors Kathy and Koichi Yamamatah were of the Ba Hai faith, and I have read "The Lughing Bhudda" ... there is a web questionaire, and I can probably find it, that asks questions and then matches your answers with various "generic" faiths (e.g. - liberal Christian) ... on that test, I align 99% with "liberal Christian", about 34% with Muslims, and 100% with Quakers .. rofl ... the one quaker I know of in our family is known for refsing to bear arms for the union ... the LT ordered him to be executed. The firing squad fired, but, mirable dictus ... not a bullet got him! .... S O ... the LT put him to work as a field medic, a taksk at which he performed both fearlessly and quite competently

The messages of (almost) all the worlds religions / faith traditions / spiritual belief systems teach pretty much the same message - Do for those who cannot do for themselves, and all will be revealed, from what I have been told.

With Love to You and ALL YOU LOVE
Mark Raymond Ganzer

KENT M

Thanks so much! My aunt was very involved at LFC and was a life trustee. I had never been in the chapel before. I noticed there was a plaque to Irvin Young, who was a close friend of my father. Both my parents, my older brother, and one of my nieces graduated from LFC. I was accepted but decided to go to Mac instead. Aunt Mary had quite a life: in the first class of WAVE officers in WW II, lost most of her hearing when she contracted mumps on a flight back to Chicago from DC. Taught herself to read lips. She became the first woman to be an officer of the Northern Trust and then the first woman to become a vice president there. She was involved in multiple charities and was an avid supporter of the arts. She never married and never felt the less for it. She did have her "beaus", the last one had been a junior physicist working on the Manhattan Project. She had visited all 7 continents, including Antarctica. She had three degrees from LFC -- BA, LLD, and an MA in Liberal Studies which she earned at the age of 67. She was 97 and had been suffering from dementia for about 8 years, so her passing was a release for her and her family (I believe there is a book titled "The Long Goodbye" about losing a loved one to Alzheimer's -- it is indeed a "long goodbye"). 

I love the story of your Quaker ancestor. My great grandfather on my mother's side was a surgeon in the Army of Northern Virginia. After the war he settled in Ohio where my grandparents met.

God's Peace,
Kent

MARK GANZER

WHAT an amazing woman! I had the good fortune to work for Bankers Life & Casualty Company after John D. MacArthur "found religion" and the company elected to clean up its past "questionable" practices. John's wife, CT Highland with the corporate secretary and treasurer, and his chief counsel, dating back, I believe, to the 1940's was Zita Stone, who could make a longshoreman blush with her command of the English language, was known for being earthy in other ways which I shan't discuss, because it was passed on to me anecdotally, and had the dirt on ALL of the state insurance commissioners, so, when they were reluctant to approve a new policy, she'd call them on the phone, and, ahem, use some leverage to expedite the process.

MacArthur was also a very forward looking man who could see that a consequence of the civil rights movement would be for the US government to force companies to hire black minorities, SO, John with that midwestern practicality that borders on the verge of intuitive genius instructed his personnel department to start hiring black people, and to make sure that they hired the best ones available. And thus, we had a number of very talented, very articulate, black people working at Bankers.

MacArthur was very much an anti-union man. The BL&C corporate strategy was brilliant: hire the best talent available and pay them 25% more than they could make at any comparable job in the Chicago area.... BUT ... never give them the opportunity to advance behond the level of manager, reporting to a vice president (and back in the day, there were only six VPs, for aocompany with 5,400 home office employees and 10,000+ insurance agents; this would all change after MacArthur died, and the company devolved into a Charitable Trust, responsible for divesting itself of 80% of its assets within five years after MacArthur's death - they started handing out VP titles as if they were 3rd place ribbons in a state wide band/orchestra concert; not at all the way it used to be, and a LOT of big salaries, in comparison to the days of John MacArthur and his Risk Committee (of six)).

So, when the teamsters came on campus passing out their literature in an attempt to get the clerical workers to unionize, MacArthur assembled his division heads, and his Personnel people and said, "If this company goes union, I'll shut the office here down and move to Dallas. What are you going to do about it?"

And so, some of the best and brightest and most talented and creative minds went to work to develop a management sensitivity and training program whose motto was "Walk in their shoes." This one full week (7 1/2 hours a day, for five days) course was first attended by the BIG 6, and then the next two ranking managerial grades. Finally, it went to my level of management (I had no one to manage, but, as a highly skilled technician, would one day). It was an incredible, fully in house designed program (many of the people had masters degrees) and all of them were avid readers of the literature. Recovering from the teamster encroach was easy enough; they hadn't done their research, and had BAD suits, steeky Ceegars, and badly written, badly edited, mimeographed propaganda. When they teamsters went for round two, they were much better prepared, but by then, so were the BL&C managers.

N O W .... as to your incredible aunt - your telling her story reminded me SO much of this lady - the mother of a socialist war reporter and independent film maker, John Pilger:http://johnpilger.com/articles/a-tribute-to-my-mother


johnpilger.com
A tribute to my mother
17 May 2004
My mother, aged 19, sold her books to pay the fare to her first teaching job in the bush. The currency of her generation was determination and courage.
 
Since I left Australia, one journey has remained a small dream unfulfilled. It involves going north in New South Wales, to an old frontier town called Ballina, which is an Irish corruption of an Aboriginal word meaning "abundance". My mother Elsie arrived in Ballina in 1920, alone, aged 19. It was the middle of the night. She had travelled the 500 miles from Sydney, having sold her books to pay the fare, which the department of education said was "the responsibility of those privileged to teach". This was her first teaching job; in those days, you taught where you were sent.
The railway line had ended in the bush, and the handful of passengers who had come this far were loaded on to a truck with chains on its wheels; a track lay ahead. Two days after she had left Sydney, she was awakened and told she was in Ballina. "Sorry, Miss," said the driver. "Your bag's been dropped off somewhere else."
In the same clothes and flat broke, she walked along the long dirt road that was Ballina's main street, wide enough for a team of bullocks to turn, past W J Pickering Outfitters and the courthouse and the lock-up, to the only other 19th-century sandstone building, the school. "When I presented myself," she wrote, "the principal was busily inaugurating a pub nearby." So she sat on the steps and waited until he hove to, drunk and gasping for breath; like many of that Anzac generation, he had been mustard-gassed on the Western Front.
"What do you teach?" he asked her, to which she replied, "French and Latin and, if you like, history and English."
"You might as well go back," he said. "I want a maths teacher, and I want someone who won't be terrified by the brats" - meaning a male.
She didn't go back. She faced classes of up to 70 bush kids, many of them barely literate and there under sufferance of parents who really wanted their labour back on the farm. Her wage was £169 10s a year. She was of a remarkable generation of pioneering women, who asked for no material gain, whose currency was determination and courage.
She had grown up on the Hunter Valley coalfields, north-west of Sydney, before and during the First World War. Her great-grandfather was Francis McCarty, an Irishman who had arrived on the barque John Barry on 7 November 1821, wearing, along with all the other political prisoners, four-pound leg-irons. Convicted of "uttering unlawful oaths", he had been sentenced to 14 years in Britain's Antipodean penal colony. Her great-grandmother was Mary Palmer, a Whitechapel prostitute sentenced to life in a "female factory" near Sydney for the crime of relieving a client of his spare change; she would have been hanged had she not been pregnant. She arrived on the Lord Sidmouth, packed with rats, in 1822. She was 17.
Born soon after the turn of the century, Elsie was the only one of nine children from a mining family who completed her education. Up before dawn, she would catch the coal-company train to the new high school at East Maitland, where she had won a place with the first bursary ever awarded to her tiny primary school in the town of Kurri Kurri. At night, she would read and study by the light of a hurricane lamp or a candle under her bed or beneath the water tank that stood on stilts beside the house. Her books were the first of their kind her family had seen. "My other education," she wrote, "took place in the many hours I spent in the cemetery counting the number of miners accidentally killed and questioning the justice of their deaths and of the deity to whom we all prayed under my mother's surveillance every night."
The "Great War" with Germany was fed with Australian volunteers from small frontier towns; only the French, proportionally, suffered greater casualties. Elsie sold sprigs of bush wattle for pennies, which were sent to the Anzacs; she also questioned out loud why such a blood sacrifice had anything to do with Australia. She wrote, "I grew to hate their war; it's always their war." The warmongering prime minister of Australia at the time was the effete William Morris Hughes, whose speeches about "morality" were like those of Tony Blair. In two referendums, he tried to bring in conscription and failed, thanks largely to a campaign by women all over Australia, especially the young like Elsie.
At the age of 16, she arrived at Sydney University, where she became Australia's youngest graduate - a distinction that may still stand. Her family in the meantime had prospered and moved to a place called Merewether, to a house on a hill, which had the first refrigerator I ever saw, and running hot water. Elsie never lived there. In Sydney, she had met Claude, the son of a German sailor, who had also grown up in the Hunter Valley and had left school at 14 to go down the pit. As an apprentice, he was entitled to membership of the Mechanics Institute, whose "social, political and cultural lectures" were his education.
Elsie would smuggle him into the university library, where they read together. They became socialists, and he a member of the international Industrial Workers of the World, the "Wobblies".
In the late summer of 1920, Elsie took Claude home to meet her family. On the way, she met her eldest brother. "They're waiting for you," he said ominously. Going on alone, she found a family court in session. "The source of the disapproval was clear," she wrote: "the only educated daughter had deigned to want to marry a Bolshie!"
Now excommunicated by her family, she set out for Ballina. Her clothes arrived two months later, without a note and wrapped in newspaper. "The hypocrisy!" she wrote, "what with our Irish convict background! But of course we never talked about that." When she returned a year later, Claude had borrowed £10 so they could be married. They chose the register office near the walls of the old convict prison factory where Mary Palmer had been incarcerated and had met Francis McCarty. On her wedding day, Elsie sent two one-word telegrams to her sulking family. The first, before they were married, said GOING; the second, after the ceremony, said GONE. She laughed a great deal, often darkly, though when she and Claude fell apart, that stopped.
The other day, I followed her footsteps along Ballina's main street, past the same 19th-century courthouse and lock-up. In the library, I discovered a letter from the local MP, requesting "a competent teacher of languages . . . who will allow our children in the country district an opportunity they would not otherwise have". It was dated 1919 and it was the cue for Elsie. Her power as a teacher became something of a legend; year after year, for more than half a century, her former students would meet in Sydney for dinner to celebrate her, even though she always declined their invitations to attend. "I was never that good," she would say to me, ". . . just determined."
Ballina is leafy and brisk and very modern these days, and the original school took some finding. When I found it, I peered in and saw her there.

Will Palin run? Who knows, who cares?

The press is agog because the ci-devant Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate is in the midst of her bus tour up and down the East Coast. A girl has to keep an eye on her tv ratings. At present the great bus tour seems to have been primarily dedicated to aborting the rebirth of the Romney candidacy beneath its chariot wheels. Palin gave her press conference in New Hampshire just as Mitt was clearing his throat to shake hands with Destiny.

It’s a safe bet that Ms Palin will be playing the Will she/Won’t she game as far as the elastic will stretch without breaking, though in my view the elastic finally broke the day of the Tucson shootings. It’s safe to say that Ms Palin will never be the presidential candidate of the Republican Party, however much the Obamians and the left yearn to have her to kick around until November 2012.

The Republican Party has been on a suicide mission in the months since the midterm elections handed them the House of Representatives last fall, with the US Senate almost within their grasp.

As victorious Tea Party candidates surged into Washington DC, they swore mighty oaths that rather than add a single zero to the debt of the U.S. government they would fast until death, or make a histrionic lunge in that direction, or make a big stink, or a sort of stink. By God, they would draw a line in the sand, if only to get pushed off it.

The establishment press wrote encouraging columns and editorials about newly elected US Republican Senator Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, hailing this throwback to the economic dark ages as a man of measured principle, restoring thrift and budgetary good sense to the Republic.

Sam Smith garnered a fragrant bouquet of their plaudits in The Progressive Review.

“The Washington Post wondered if Ryan can “really manage the hardest sales job in U.S. politics.” The paper seemed to think so: “So far, the sales pitch appears to be classic Ryan. He will make his case with earnestness and a hope that a quiet explanation of budget math can swing the country in a way that previous politicians could not.”

“New York Times columnist David Brooks called Ryan’s budget plan ‘the most comprehensive and most courageous budget reform proposal any of us have seen in our lifetimes...[which] will put all future arguments in the proper context.’

“Even those who disagreed with Ryan’s plan found ways to praise it. In Time, Fareed Zakaria wrote that ‘Ryan’s plan is deeply flawed, but it is courageous.’ And on NBC’s Chris Matthews Show, pundit Gloria Borger declared: ‘We have to give Paul Ryan an awful lot of credit because, as all of our august colleagues have said, yes, it does define the conversation for 2012.’”

Ryan was duly installed as the new Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee and lost no time in announcing his plan to change Medicare from what it is now – a federal medical insurance plan for America’s seniors, into a privatized affair run by insurance companies which, given the slightest chance, would pare back services to what these same insurance companies conceive to be fiscal prudence.

It took about 30 seconds for America’s seniors to realize that Ryan’s plan represented an lethal onslaught on one of the two federal programs left – the other is Social Security – that keep them barely afloat. On May 25, Democrat Kathy Hochul whacked her Republican and Tea Party opponents with the Medicare issue and seized what had been a safe Republican House seat in the 26th congressional district in western New York state, once held by the late Jack Kemp.

Since then the wind has been whistling out of the Ryan balloon. Republicans who only a month ago were roaring their support for the man have scuttled for cover. As Ryan whimpers at Democratic opportunism and “demagoguery” his prime defenders are the above-mentioned press magnates and their hired opinion formers at the New York Times and Washington Post solemnly urging the Democrats not to over-use the Medicare bludgeon and to remember that Rep Ryan had at least advanced a plan which had not shirked Prudence and Responsibility.

Prudence and responsibility don’t carry much weight when seniors with cancer are suddenly faced with the prospect of bills of $2,500 every couple of months for the treatments keeping them alive. Seniors vote. The Democrats will run on defense of Medicare and Social Security all the way to 2012.

At the moment the Republican presidential candidates in the field are scarcely convincing, whether it be the Mormon Romney who failed in 2008, or the Passionaria of Tea Partydom, the luscious madwoman, US Rep Michele Bachmann.

Scenting opportunity, former New York Mayor Mayor Rudy Giuliani is now making moves consonant with a possible bid, as Stewart Lawrence reported here in Thursday. He’s testing the waters in New Hampshire. The problem is that Giuliani’s candidacy in 2008 – much touted by the press -- fell apart amid bizarre strategic missteps, endless publicity about his wives and mistresses, well founded charges of corruption and the evident fact, rendered more obvious with each debate and press conference, that the guy is a vindictive asshole. His money backers in 2008 are loath to finance another flaky run. So Giuliani is probably dipping his toe in the water to up his lecture fees, and pump up his public image – same as Palin.

As the mayor of New York during the attack on the World Trade Towers Giuliani’s prime card was Leadership in Crisis, a man who wouldn’t hesitate to send a team of SEALS anywhere, anytime to bring back the head of Osama bin Laden. But… that card is no longer his to play. In 2008 Obama was vulnerable to attacks from Giuliani and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton that he was soft on terror. Hard to make that case now. George Bush brought America’s enemies to Guantanamo. Obama just has them murdered in place.

This is not to say Obama is a shoo-in in 2012. Far from it. Presidents get into trouble when they face grim economic data during the reelection period. The economic outlook is extremely dire. The unemployment numbers are appalling and the total number of Americans near or amid destitution at terrible levels with the necessary large-scale Keynesian measures beyond the political capacities or even desires of the Obama administration. The sky is dark with bad news. Housing is in the septic tank. States are hacking away at their budgets. There’s no credit and people are frightened of borrowing anyway. America is tipping further into a second Depression. This is a record of failure that could very well doom Obama if a Republican challenger can mount an assault not festooned with manifest kookery.

But kooks is what they mostly are, and none of them with the economic populism that could gain purchase against Obama and the Democrats. Homilies from candidates like Romney about allowing the private sector to power the recovery don’t cut much ice, since he flourished by firing workers. The private sector is synonymous in many voters’ minds with tax avoidance, insane salaries for CEOs and flight to China.

This is really Pat Buchanan’s moment, armed with economic populism, plus stances on abortion and immigration that would carry him through the early primaries. It was the Kempian rhetoric about growth that helped carry Reagan past Carter in the 1980 battle when the economy was poor.

Not too many states that handed the Obama / Biden ticket its victories in 2008 have to drop out of the Democratic column for the Electoral College math to make it a squeaker. It’ll probably come down to Florida and Ohio yet again. These are early days. You punters, keep your money in your pockets a while.

In our latest newsletter

Takashi Hirose outlines in persuasive detail how How Japan can prosper without nuclear power. Andrew Cockburn reviews Donald Rumsfeld’s mendacious memoir of his stint running the Pentagon and promoting the attack on Iraq, Known and Unknown. As Andrew emailed me when he sent the review along:

“The opening paragraphs tell us much of what Donald Rumsfeld thinks about himself, and what we need to know about him. Referencing his title, he proudly cites the 300,000 internet citations of ‘known unknown,’ 250,000 of them linked to his name, thanks to his observation at a 2002 press conference that there ‘are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.’

“Given the deferential attitude evinced by contemporary press and public, there is little sign the remark generated any enlightened intuition, but it certainly left reason aside. What can ‘unknown unknowns’ mean other than simply that there are things we don’t know? Like similar exercises – ‘what is the sound of one hand clapping’ -- it carries intimations of profundity, and has been much acclaimed as such, not least by Rumsfeld himself, who introduces it here as ‘a larger point on the limits of human knowledge.’ Though sourcing a variant of the phrase ‘known unknowns’ to a former colleague, he leaves us with the belief that this is a unique Rumsfeld insight, though old Pentagon hands recall it circulating independently in xeroxed form as far back as the 1960s.”

Also in this edition of our newsletter Margot Patterson reports on a recent trip to Syria and the risks of a dreadful civil war.

Subscribe now! Don’t miss out on our Limited Time Special Offer! Get CounterPunch Print Edition By Email For Only $25 a Year!

And once you have discharged this enjoyable mandate, I also urge you strongly to click over to our Books page, most particularly for our latest release, Jason Hribal’s truly extraordinary Fear of the Animal Planet – introduced by Jeffrey St. Clair with the brilliant essay featured in this weekend’s website -- and already hailed by Peter Linebaugh, Ingrid Newkirk (president and co-founder of PETA), and Susan Davis, the historian of Sea World, who writes that “Jason Hribal stacks up the evidence, and the conclusions are inescapable. Zoos, circuses and theme parks are the strategic hamlets of Americans’ long war against nature itself.”

Alexander Cockburn can be reached at alexandercockburn@asis.com

The female invasion, or how to relax in style - by Wendy Effer

I had the incurably good fortune to have dated Wendy Effer in 1970. She was (and remains) the most beautiful human being I have ever known (I see only inner beauty; that she was also outwardly beautiful is interesting, but by and large, irrelavent and a distraction). She was kind, caring, compassionate, an incredible listener, and she routinely beat me at bowling by 70+ pins (at 4"10" and less than 90 pounds). I was a frequent guest at her house and had the great priveledge to get to know both of her parents, remarkable people, kind and generous, her older sister (who was in my HS graduating class), the older sister's boy friend, a brilliant mathematician, and all round world class scholar, and could share with her secrets that I've never told another human being.

Via facebook, I have come to learn that she has been in a loving and wonderfully commited relationship for 32+ years. She and her partner SAIL - around the world, and Wendy finds to the time to blog of their adventures.

She will be coming to a port near y'all soon.

May all your sailing days be uneventful, beloved child of God, my dearest Wendy.

L-Imbordin, Malta


Paradise Bay, Malta. Saturday 4th September 2011

After over a week of drippingly hot weather, bathwater seas and diving for treasures, this is probably our last day in Malta / Gozo. Temps a sweltering 30-35 deg C and water 28-30!

A long time without writing and a long time without connections. We arrived back to Gozo on 23rd August and it was still boiling. Rapid prep and shopping for arrival of first round of guests on this leg. R's daughter Sophie and friend Heather joined us on 27th August in Valletta for a week of sun and relaxation.

Now we were worried that they would find things too tame and looked up all sorts of things to do and places to see. We needn't have worried. It was so hot. They were in true holiday mode and were content to sun themselves and swim and chat. Nothing more strenuous than walking from one end of the boat to the other for another drink or book or txting fix.

We had a good time with them here and hope they also enjoyed. Highlights of the week: Improving diving skills off the bow of boat (see pics), falling into the water whenever one felt about to boil over, fishing for lost treasure 20 ft down (one plastic shoe (W), one towel (S), one snorkelling mask (Anon) with R's reel and grappling hook weight. Also the Bombay gin and Lanson's champagne, one ribs meal and one super fish supper (courtesy of S & H - thank you!!). And the snorkelling (nice Maltese gentleman on neighbouring boat loaned us 2 masks for the week, so we each had one).

And the laughs and card games. Heather is a shocking cheat (or very very lucky) and trounced us all the first night of play. However, we each of us managed to eventually get our own back at least once. The girls survived the heat and the sleeping arrangements (in the saloon with body bags - they wisely decided the furnace that was pretending to be an aft cabin was better suited to storage). And they did a mean job of washing up and were suitably frugal with water like seasoned sailors. A competent crew course may be in the offing….
So, stocked up on some "British" goodies (still stocked in the shops despite independence and eurozones) and looking forward to Sicilia again and onwards to Greece. We have a date in 3 weeks' time in Corfu - Talisman (alias COOC or Clive and Jane) are joining us there - we just need to make sure we get there!

And wish S well for her move, and H for her next steps. Xx

Some thoughts on our beloved American "freedoms"

I would rather have peace than "freedom" because I think I know what peace looks like.

Freedom, well:

I can't ever legally own a fire arm (convicted felon; involuntary mental health committments)

I can't consume a legally made, legally sold, legally purchased product in places of business where the business owners overwhelming preference is that I be able to consume this entirely legally made product in their establishment (cigarettes).

I cannot vote for a state or national official who will represent my interests in the state capital or in Washington DC (because such officials only represent corporate interests, and the interests of the wealthy elites)

If I were employed and making, say $50,000 a year, I would pay more in taxes (percentage basis - all taxes, including FIT, Social Security / Medicare, State, munincipal, sales) So I am not even free to keep as much of the money I make as a very much wealthier person (on a percentage basis)

Without a savings account nor a checking account, I am not free to get my checks cashed for free

When I was in the mental hospital, I was not free to request a change of doctors, the DR assigned to me told me the other doctor wouldn't take me

When my ex-wife took our son out of the country, in clear violation of a court order, I had no money, and could not afford to seek legal intervention to prevent her from violating the court order. I was not free to have the parenting rights that were guaranteed me in the divorce decree

Shall I go on? JUST WHAT freedoms are we talking about when we speak of being "Proud to be an American where at least I can be free ..."

The largest truth of 9-11 was this: that when our nation was under attack, the ONLY LINE OF DEFENSE our citizens had was our own citizens on Flight 93; not our military (the air force did not have the coordinates of any of the major city air ports), not our police, not our national guard, but citizens who took it upon themselves to GIVE THEIR LIVES to protect us on the ground.

Our government, and our military, and our intelligence gathering apparatus failed us so miserably on 9-11 that there should have been an uprising and a removal from office of the President and Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the director of the CIA, the director of the FBI, the director of the DIA. These all should have been fired for negligence, incompetence, and non-feasance.

The Republican Party should have issued an apology to Bill Clinton for ever accusing him of his attempt to assassinate Bin Laden for being a political cover for the Lewinsky blow jobs. President Dick Cheney and the Smirking Chimp George W Bush whould have prostrated themselves on the floor in the show window of Macy's and kissed Bill Clinton's fat ass for having failed to heed Slick Willy's warnings about Bin Laden. Richard Clark should have been promoted to Director of the DIA and Michael Scheurer should have been promoted to head the CIA and tasked exclusively with killing Bin Laden.

And the Media should have offered a public policy for having been so biased in its coverage of Al Gore that it (they) were far more guilty of stealing the election from Gore than even the Supreme Court Jefkoffs (yes, including that egomaniacal piece of crap lady justice, Sandra Day O'Connor, who got her just deserts in retirement.

From one of my facebook friends - Scott Werdebaugh

Scott Werdebaugh 5:37pm Sep 11
Wow! I sure needed to hear this today! I hope that it will minister to your spirit as it did to mine! The essay is entitled, "Simplifying Our Spiritual Vocabulary."

Simplifying Our Spiritual Vocabulary
By Ron Rolkeiser, OMI
2011-05-29

Somewhere near his 75th birthday, Morris West wrote a series of autobiographical essays entitled, “A View from the Ridge.” In the Prologue of that book he suggests that at age 75 you need to have only one word left in your spiritual vocabulary, gratitude, and that maturity is attained precisely at that moment when gratitude begins to drown out and cauterize the hurts in your life. As he describes it: Life has served me as it serves everyone, sometimes well and sometimes ill, but I have learned to be grateful for the gifts of it, for the love that began it and the other loves with which I have been so richly endowed.

I agree with West, though it is necessary to add that the fruit of that maturity is forgiveness. Just as smoke follows fire, forgiveness follows gratitude. Gratitude ultimately undergirds and fuels all genuine virtue, is the real basis of holiness, and the source of love itself. And its major fruit is forgiveness. When we are grateful we more easily find the strength to forgive.

Moreover, just as gratitude undergirds genuine virtue, forgiveness undergirds genuine religion and morality. Thus, as we get older, we can trim our spiritual vocabulary down to three words: Forgive, forgive, forgive! To age into and then die with a forgiving heart is the ultimate moral and religious imperative. We shouldn't delude ourselves on this. All the dogmatic and moral purity in the world does little for us if our hearts are bitter and incapable of forgiveness.

We see this, for instance, in the sad figure of the older brother of the prodigal son. He stands before his father protesting that he has never wandered, never been unfaithful, and that he has stayed home and done the family's work. But, and this is the issue, he stands outside the father's house, unable to enter into joy, celebration, the banquet, the dance. He's done everything right, but a bitter heart prevents him from entering the father's house just as much as the lustful wanderings of his younger brother took him out of that same house. Religious and moral fidelity, when not rooted inside of gratitude and forgiveness, are far from enough. They can leave us just as much outside the father's house as sin and infidelity. As Jesus teaches forcefully in the Lord's Prayer, a non-negotiable condition for going to heaven is forgiveness, especially our forgiving those who have hurt us.

But the struggle to forgive others is not easy and may never be trivialized or preached lightly. The struggle to forgive, I suspect, is our greatest psychological, moral, and religious struggle. It's not easy to forgive. Most everything inside of us protests. When we have been wronged, when we have suffered an injustice, when someone or something has treated us unfairly, a thousand physical and psychological mechanisms inside of us begin clam-up, shut-down, freeze- over, self-protect, and scream-out in protest, anger, and rage. Forgiveness is not something we can simply will and make happen. “The heart,” as Pascal once said, “has its reasons.” It also has its rhythms, its paranoia, its cold bitter spots, and its need to seal itself off from whatever has wounded it.

Moreover, all of us have been wounded. No one comes to adulthood with his or her heart fully intact. In ways small or traumatic, we have all been treated unjustly, violated, hurt, ignored, not properly honored, and unfairly cast aside. We all carry wounds and, with those wounds, we all carry some angers, some bitterness, and some areas within which we have not forgiven.

The strength of Henri Nouwen's greatest book, The Return of the Prodigal Son, was precisely to point out both the hidden cold places in our hearts and the mammoth struggle needed to bring warmth and forgiveness to those places. So much of the lightness or heaviness in our hearts, and most every nuance of our mood, is unconsciously dictated by either the forgiveness or the non-forgiveness inside us.

Forgiveness is the deep secret to joy. It is also the ultimate imperative.

Andrew Greeley, writing a review of Frank McCourt's book, Angela's Ashes, praised McCourt for being brilliant, but challenged him for being unforgiving with words to this effect: Granted, your life has been unfair. Your father was an alcoholic, your mother didn't protect you from the effects of that, you grew up in dire poverty, and you suffered a series of mini-injustices under the Irish social services, the Irish church, the Irish educational system, and the Irish weather! So, let me give you some advice: Before you die, forgive! Forgive your father for being an alcoholic, forgive your mother for not protecting you, forgive the church for whatever ways it failed you, forgive Ireland for the poverty, rain, and bad teachers it inflicted on you, forgive yourself for the failures of your own life, and then forgive God because life isn't fair ... so that you don't die an angry and bitter man because that's really the ultimate moral imperative.

How true and how challenging!

America Should Honor Her Troops by Bringing Them Home by John Nichols

The Nation On Memorial Day, America Should Honor Her Troops by Bringing Them Home by John Nichols
May 30, 2011

It is unfortunate but true that on this Memorial Day -- when we pause to honor those Americans who have fought the good fights against British colonialism, the sin of slavery and the menace of fascism -- U.S. troops are currently bogged down in a quagmire of George Bush's creation in Afghanistan and an continuing mission of Bush's creation in Iraq.

Appallingly, Barack Obama has maintained Bush's undeclared wars of occupation. And he has now steered the United States into another fight with Libya.

Everything about these undeclared and open-ended conflicts is at odds with the vision of the founders of the American experiment -- who generally shared James Madison's view that "permanent war" posed the greatest threat to liberty -- and the serious intent of wars against kings, slaveholders and fascists.

Soldiers fight wars because of a sense of duty. And the soldiers involved in America's current conflicts are good men and women. But these are not good fights.

Nor are their necessary fights for the U.S. military.

It is for this reason that veterans of these undeclared wars of whim have organized so well and wisely to end them, in groups such as Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War, which is mounting a Memorial Day campaign to highlight the wrongheaded practice of deploying traumatized troops, and the currently organizing Afghanistan Veterans Against the War project.
There are arguments to be made, some of them sound, some of them not, that people in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya have reasons to be fighting. But the fights are their own -- not America's.

John Quincy Adams summed the sentiment up 190 years ago when, in an address to Congress, the then-Secretary of State declared that: "[America's] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace."

"If the wise and learned philosophers of the elder world, the first observers of nutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and Shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to enquire what has America done for the benefit of mankind? Let our answer be this: America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity," explained Adams. "She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights. She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit."

The cynicism of the previous administration, which was led by a president whose family pulled strings to keep him out of the Vietnam War and a vice president who dodged the draft five times during that conflict, was beyond contempt. But so, too, is the cynicism of many Democrats who, despite their disdain for the failed foreign policies of Bush and Cheney, continue to echo the empty rhetoric of the administration when it comes to the debate about how best to end the war.
The best way to "support the troops" who have been placed in harm's way in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya is to bring them home.

Congress considered the prospect last week and more than 200 members of the House voted for a proposal to begin taking steps to exit Afghanistan. Unfortunately, a few more members opposed that necessary step.

The growing opposition to the misguided mission in Afghanistan, as well as the clear opposition to any expansion of the Libya mission, is the encouraging news of this Memorial Day.
America is growing weary of endless war.

Wars of whim, fought without proper congressional declaration and without exit strategies, are not fights for democracy.

Fights for democracy can only be considered successful when American democracy is open and vibrant enough to allow for a realistic discussion of the nation's circumstance. Those "my-country-right-or-wrong" politicians and pundits who would shut down dissent on Memorial Day, or any other day, make a mockery of the oath to defend a constitution that protects the right to speak truth to power and to assemble for the purpose of petitioning for the redress of grievances.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr's Vietnam War-era counsel to Americans holds true this Memorial Day.

Americans who love their country and its promise must move beyond "the prophesying of smooth patriotism" toward "a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history."
No honest reading of the history of America's founding, or of recent events, can led to a conclusion that the undeclared wars of the moment are justified.

Americans have fought and died in pursuit of what they -- and most Americans -- believed to be noble and necessary causes. It is right to celebrate their memory. But is right, as well, to recognize that not all wars are noble and necessary.

Making the distinction between wars that are unavoidable and wars that should have been avoided (and that can now be ended) honors all veterans and all soldiers, as does a recognition that it is time to begin establishing practices and policies that err on the side of making peace -- as opposed to endless conflict.

That's a message that Michael McPhearson, the former executive director of Veterans for Peace and a co-convener of United for Peace and Justice brings to the table this Memorial Day.
"To truly honor fallen soldiers requires self-reflection, questions and action," says the veteran who served as a field artillery officer in the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division during the first Gulf War. "We must reflect on our part in their deaths. Are we allowing the blood of soldiers and civilians to be spilled in war because we are not willing to do the hard work of peace making? Hard work that may mean we must change our lifestyles, consume less and learn more about the world around us. Are we prepared to take any responsibility for our nation’s relationships with other countries? Are we willing to question our government's foreign policies and demand a change from domination to collaboration? Are we willing to take action to change ourselves so that our personal behavior and attitude reflects peace making rather than acceptance of war?"

Americans will have plenty of answers to those questions. But the first ought to be that, on this Memorial Day, the time has come to honor the troops by bringing them home.
© 2011 The Nation

John Nichols is Washington correspondent for The Nation and associate editor of The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. His most recent book is The “S” Word: A Short History of an American Tradition. A co-founder of the media reform organization Free Press, Nichols is co-author with Robert W. McChesney of The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again and Tragedy & Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy. Nichols' other books include: Dick: The Man Who is President and The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders' Cure for Royalism.
more John Nichols

What we have here is a failure to communicate

I am rereading the exchange we had when you thought I was pregnant. I am laughing so hard (at me) because I had just briefly woken up when I initially read that you were praying for me. When I'm that tired my brain functions at pretty low levels...and to top it off...I'm a classic ADD...hence, my response:

I'm not sure about the child womb at Trinity Evangelical Lutheran church. We go to a church out here. Tell me about the one you mean, of what's happening there.

To which you responded, and that I am giggling so hard right now, I have tremors:

"well, hell, you're pregnant, right? so ... got to pray for more than just you ... is my point ... oops, forgot the other guy, the father guy - will remember him next time."

That is classic!!

The patriot's prayer

Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, over 300 journalists have been killed, more than in any other war.

Heavenly Father, we pray that you will send your angels to protect those independent journalists who cover and report on the atrocities of war. They are targets of the U.S. military, because they are dangerous truth seekers, unafraid to speak truth to power; unafraid to report the war crimes that are invariably committed when the U.S. decides it needs to go to war to protect or expand the financial / power / political agendas of this nation's elites. It is these people, who would accumulate capital for the mere sake of capital's accumulation, who gain from war, and no other class of people does. Father we know that in WWII, 50% of the casualties were civilians; in Vietnam, 70%; in the Iraq Invasion, 90%. Father, we weep for these lives of your beloved children. Give us strength, Dear God, to become instruments of your peace. Give us the courage to march, even unto death, to put an end to the wars waged by the most savage nation on earth, our own country. Give us this courage, and shield the civilians, this we ask, Oh Lord, in the Name of Your Son Jesus Christ, who suffered death that we all might live, if it be Thy will. AMEN.

Eeek! I'm a book hoarder!

Patti Shanaberg: Eeek! I'm a book hoarder! I can't seem to get rid of useless books!

Pam English: I have nursing school books from 1990...I'm afraid to toss them.

Erika A. Burch: You guys are funny! Donate them!!

Ginny Rankin: If they're progressive or at all liberal (or maybe selacious), give them to Sarah Palin. I'm sure she'd arrange a big book-burning. Michelle Bachmann would probably help you out, too.

Patti Shanaberg: If only they would READ them! lol @Erika - where to donate?

Erika A. Burch: Women's shelters and Retirement homes, prison's and Goodwill. Women's shelters also like nail polish (that isn't thick and stringy) and anything else that a woman in need could use to make her feel better. I buy LOT'S of books from Goodwil...See More

Erika A. Burch: I used to keep all my books. I LOVE books. LOVE LOVE LOVE them. But how many books does a person need? Some books that I am partial to I keep. Years ago in my apartment laundry room I put about 50 books in there with a nice sign that said "Please read me and then return me. And if you have any books you don't want, add them." Within 2 weeks there was one heck of a little library there.

Patti Shanaberg: You mean I can't sell or donate my 1970's college text books?! LOL Thanks - yes, I'm glad I'm not the only one who has a thing for books. I figured I could find plenty of places to donate them (not my text books, just kidding about thosebut I have PLENTY of others) just hadn't decided where yet. And I'm so pathetically attached to the dumbest things! I just threw out 10 boxes of old canceled checks from over 10 years ago. I can't believed I moved here from LA with all of those!!!

Drew Bourne: give them to the VA, they usually collect books to send to our troops.
I finally started selling some of them on Amazon. Those that are in abundance and lowest price is less than it's worth go to Goodwill, Library, Nursing Homes, etc. Textbooks (current) sell FAST and for almost if not more than what I paid (I buy used when available).

Erika A. Burch: Good to know, Rebecca!!!

Mark Ganzer: Even the most useless of books can be used for toilet paper, in a pinch!

Anne Alberts: I am a cook book hoarder! I love them and have collected them from all over the world. I only use about 10 of them all the time. The rest are in boxes in the attic. I haven't seen them in three years and I use the Internet for recipes all the time. Why can't I just let them go? Do they have meetings for this? LOL

Mark Ganzer: The only things I possess are (1) my clothes (2) my vinyl records (3) my books (4) my golf clubs (5) my golf balls (6) my golf tees (7) 150 decks of playing cards (8) four duplicate bridge bidding boxes ... and OUT!

Mark Ganzer: I'd give up the vinyle, the clothes, the golf crap, the cards / bridge crappola in a heart beat, or New York Minute .. but NEVER the books ... NEVER!!
Anne Alberts I am a cook book hoarder! I love them and have collected them from all over the world. I only use about 10 of them all the time. The rest are in boxes in the attic. I haven't seen them in three years and I use the Internet for recipes all the time. Why can't I just let them go? Do they have meetings for this? LOL

Mark Ganzer: The tactile feel of them - HELL ... I can't get a woman nor a dog to bed me down, but I've read books, magazines (not just Playboy and Hustler), newspapers that have put me to sleep and SOMETIMES, when the writing is real damn good - keep me up and excited all night long!

Patti Shanaberg: I'm in the midst of loading up books, books and more books to donate as I type - so many old favorites - really good rich literature - then I come to "Men are from Mars; Women Are from Venus" and "Rules" and more of that genre - WHATEVER POSSESSED ME???!!! Then I pull out "Smart Women Stupid Books" (a parody of the same type of book called "Smart Women Stupid Choices") - ahh - a moment of clarity! The sad thing is I'm barely making room on my book shelves for all the books piled up on the floor. I wasn't kidding - I'm a book hoarder! EEEK!