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Which Jerusalem do you mean?

This diary is meant to help clarify one of the more confusing points around the Israeli-Arab conflict. Both sides claim Jerusalem as their capital. And the more conservative elements in Israel and among my fellow Jews, is that Jerusalem will never again be divided, and other words to that effect.

What is left out in all this the question of what exactly do you mean by Jerusalem?

One of the less recognized realities, even among many of my American Jewish brethren is that when the Israeli government say Jerusalem, they are not talking about the city of Jerusalem as it was defined in 1947 or in 1967. Since 1967 and the occupation of the West Bank, Israeli governments have incorporated areas of what had always been considered the West Bank into ever expanding definitions of "Jerusalem.” By trying declaring this phony enlarged "Jerusalem" as sacrosanct and indivisible and solely Israel's they would be denying any hope for peace. If they were serious.

Let us look at some maps to see what I am talking about.

1. This map shows various boundaries and definitions of what one or another political force called "Jerusalem" between 1923 and 2000:



The orange line shows the municipal boundary of "Jerusalem" as defined during the British Mandate period from 1923-1947. Everything outside of that would be the "West Bank."

From 1947-1967, Israel including "West Jerusalem" was defined by the gray area bounded by the dotted green line, while "East Jerusalem" expanded under Jordanian rule to include the area in yellow bounded by the red line. Everything in the tan remained "West Bank."

Notice the small white box near the center. That is the walled "Old City" which within it contains Jewish and Arab and other Quarters, the traditional Jewish Temple Mount, on which are Mosques, and adjacent to which is the Western Wall.

From 1967-1993, Israel further redefined "Jerusalem" out to the boundary defined by the blue line, absorbing much land and villages from what had been the "West Bank" into a new definition of "Jerusalem."

So which Jerusalem is Netanyahu referring to as indivisible, and which one is Abbas referring to when he declares it the capital of Palestine?




2. This map shows the situation as of 2000, roughly the period of Clinton failed attempt to make peace during Camp David 2, with the then current borders, villages and settlements:



The blue triangles refer to newish Israeli Jewish settlements and the peach shapes refer to traditional Arab neighborhoods. Some such as French Hill, Gilo and the not shown Mount of Olives area had Jewish population in the pre-1947 period. And others can certainly be construed as West-ish such as Ramot.

But again note the extent of the black line, redefining a greater "Jerusalem," recognized only by Israel and not by the international community including the United States. Officially, for the rest of the world, everything outside of the green line and inside the black line is still the "West Bank." But that is what Israeli leader mean when they refer to "Jerusalem."




3. This map shows the situation in 2010:



Notice the many new and expanded settlements done or planned for, including for example those in the Arab neighborhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan that have been most in the news lately. These are settlement and occupations within "Jerusalem" where the Israeli right is creating facts on the ground to redefine what is "Jerusalem."

So when they say Jerusalem is indivisible, to conjure up warm feelings of Jerusalem as the historic city for all Jews worldwide (next year in Jerusalem as we in the Diaspora say every Passover), be aware that they are deliberately distorting what is meant by Jerusalem, and what is by all that is right and proper Palestinian. It certainly goes way beyond what the the word Jerusalem conjures up in the average American Jewish mind and heart.




But notice also, off to the right, the area called "Ma'ale Adumim," extending out beyond even the broken red-line demarcating on this map the Israeli-only defined definition of "Jerusalem." That is another huge problem for peace.




4. This map shows greater Jerusalem with settlement bloc known as Ma'ale Adumim.



On this map, the dark purple represent the Israeli-only defined greater Jerusalem. The yellow is the current major Israeli settlement bloc known as Ma'ale Adumim. By any definition, it is in the West Bank. Its strategic purpose is to create and Israeli controlled bulge towards Jordan, effectively dividing the West Bank into two sections (to the north and south), providing a more defensible buffer on the assumption that there will never really be peace.

Israel is roughly the size and shape of New Jersey. Israel is just 8,630 square miles, 290 miles in length and about 85 miles across at the widest point. Israel is very small:


And it is only 6.3 miles wide at its narrowest area near Tel Aviv. Short distance in general, and very easy to cut in half or into thirds, or other small pieces in particular.



From an Israeli point of view, the de facto cutting of the West Bank in half with the Ma'ale Adumim extension beyond Jerusalem is a strategic counter to the narrow isthmus to the north in Israel where the large coastal cities of Tel Aviv and Netanyahu are just 11 and 9 miles from the West Bank border. This is what Netanyahu means when he says Israel will not go back to indefensible borders.

But of course, that means an unacceptable lack of integrity and continuity for a Palestinian state. So in addition to the issue of what parts of "Jerusalem" stay Israeli and which are Palestine, the issue of the large settlement blocks, notably Ma'ale Adumim and Ariel to the north, are the big geographic obstacles.

And that is what is meant by "mutually agreed swaps."




Fortunately, for those who actually seek peace (meaning not Netanyahu and the current Israeli government) there is already a detailed draft that has already been worked out by Israelis and Palestinians. That is the so-called Geneva Accord which has worked out even details regarding Jerusalem and all the other issues.

There is no need for anymore of an endless peace process. Fatah's Saeb Erekat is absolutely correct to say that there could be a peace agreement in two days. If those who actually want peace will take charge. And yes, the onus is on Israel, as the occupier , dealing from a position of strength.

Where is Osama's Long Form Death Certificate?

So, anybody else out there want to see Osama's Long Form Death Certificate?
Just sayin :)

Meanwhile there is no reason to believe Al Queda won't continue as before, insofar as Osama was already a fugurehead, and now, body at sea or not, he is a martyr. The guy actually running the show, insofar as such a decentralized organization has a single leader, is still out there.

And Pakistan is still problematic, as highlighted by the fact the the giant out of place compound was built a few years ago in the same township at the Pakistani military academy, filled with retired Pakistani general.

Afghanistan is the same mess it was before.

Much of the Arab world is trying to move on... Syria and Iran not so much... yet.

Israel's leadership is still occupying the West Bank and does not appear to be serious about making peace.

Oh yeah... our economy is still in the crapper, insofar as unemployment and wage stagnation and economic insecurity, inequality and opportunity are concerned.

So is it a good thing a really bad guy is dead. Sure.

Is the hoopla mostly bread and circuses (and war).... just askin'.

In honor of May Day: the Robber Barons of World are United

Today, May 1st, is the internationally recognized day to celebrate labor and working people. But was deemed too socialist (and too European) by American labor and capital (and the capitol) alike, which is part of the reason it is officially ignored here in the U.S. and we have the end of summer Labor Day ostensibly instead.

Therefore, in honor of May 1st, I am posting about the pandemic of income inequality that has been attacking Europe and North America alike for over 30 years.

Solidarity forever indeed (well the Robber Barons of the World are united)!

On the one hand, income inequality has risen throughout the developed world, according the OECD:

While Inequality Varies Widely Among the Wealthy Developed Countries:



Nevertheless, Income Inequality Has Been Getting Worse Everywhere:


On the other hand, it is much worse in U.S. then almost anywhere else. Out of the 30 developed nations, the U.S. is the third worst in income inequality... trailing only Mexico and Turkey. But yippee... we are tied with Portugal.

What globalism has really meant is that the same "neoliberal" free market fundamentalism that promoted a small number to become filthy rich and income and wealth stagnation for the large majority has been in play throughout the developed world. It is not just America, though worse here.

And though it is admittedly a repetitious redundancy to point this out here, what is truly amazing is how following the global economic meltdown that they caused, the same selfish forces of reaction have also been winning the clean-up battle to preserve their privilege and screw the rest of us in formulating more bad policies. Everywhere, not just in America, instead of being discredited and cast aside, the same bad actors and bad policies have managed to distort what happened and why in order to retain both political control and wealth (.pdf).

Today’s Guardian has a good piece calling for left leaning economist of the world to unite, and rally against the austerity measures that are making things worse for the majority, while protecting the plutocrats who are in charge. And the great folks at ThinkProgress are all over it every day.

Of course here at home thoroughly mainstream, more or less progressive economists, such as Krugman and DeLong have pointed out repeatedly that while the specific Greece’s problems were not the same as Ireland, which were not exactly the same as Iceland or Portugal or UK or Spain. But everywhere the banks, financial markets and wealthy are getting bailed out, taxes on the wealthy continue to flat or lowered; effective total taxes on the middle and working class are flat or going up; and government services are being cut for the middle class, working class and poor.

Everywhere those who are actually in power are able to call is for even more of the same policies that got us into this mess, less government spending, less taxes for the wealthy and corporate, and less regulation and less oversight... ad nauseum.

And, as the weakening of the UK economy since conservative austerity measures began to kick in, everywhere they are wrong.

So in honor of May 1st Labor Day let us remember that the deficit is NOT the problem.

The real problem, as it has been for 40 years, in income stagnation over 90% of us and the rise in inequality in income, wealth and political power.

Income Inequality: The Top 10%


It is so bad, that even within that top 10% is mostly the top 1%:


And yes, the top 0.01% is disproportionately the driver of that!


This is of course where the "rage of the haves" comes from. The upper middle class, who are well off by any honest comparison to the real distribution in America, hob-nob and compare themselves to the truly wealthy. And think they are doing poorly. And, instead of making solidarity with the working class and true middle, blame them instead.

I and my family are an example of this: When I was growing up, in the 1960s-1970s, my quite liberal parents told me all about how America was the land of opportunity, being the first (in my father's case) or second (on my mom's side) generation from immigration and going to college and getting ahead. And how all this was different then democratic but still class ridden Europe. And, per the graphs above, it probably had been true for the period when they had grown up in the 1930s-1960s. Alas, just in time for me to go off to college, was the end of the period of the great leveling, and the rise of the new Gilded Era.

As one personal indicator of just how ridiculous it is: My wife and I are both doctors. We are both completely salaried, and non-entrepreneurs, in relatively speaking low-income specialties. Compared to the median American, we do very very well. But even we are falling relatively behind compared to our Manhattan neighbors who are in FIRE (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate). And just saying that is so ridiculous in so many ways. :)




So what did the OECD report find as the cause of all this?

Key Findings of Growing Unequal

Why is the gap between rich and poor growing?
1. In most countries the gap is growing because rich households have done significantly better than middle-class and poor households.
2. Changes in the structure of the population and in the labour market over the past 20 years have contributed greatly to this rise in inequality.
3. Wages have been improving for those people who were already well paid.
4. Employment rates have been dropping among less-educated people.
And, there are more single-adult and single-family households.


Who is most affected?
1. Statisticians and economists assess poverty in relation to average incomes.
2. Typically, they take the poverty line to be equivalent to one-half of the median income in a given country.
3. Since 1980, poverty among the elderly has fallen in OECD countries.
By contrast, poverty among young adults and families with children has increased.
4. On average, one child out of every eight living in an OECD country in 2005 was living in poverty.


What does this mean for future generations?
1. Social mobility is generally higher in countries where income inequalities are relatively low.
2. In countries with high income inequalities, by contrast, mobility tends to be lower.
3. Children living in countries where there is large gap between rich and poor are less likely to improve on the education and income attainments of their parents than children living in countries with low income inequality.
4. Countries like Denmark and Australia have higher social mobility, while the United States, United Kingdom and Italy have lower mobility.


What can be done?
1. In some cases, government policies of taxation and redistribution of income have helped to counteract widening inequalities, but this cannot be their only response.
2. Governments must also improve their policies in other areas.
3. Education policies should aim to equip people with the skills they need in today’s labour market.
4. Active employment policies are needed to help unemployed people find work.
5. Access to paid employment is key to reducing the risk of poverty, but getting a job does not necessarily mean you are in the clear. Growing Unequal? found that over half of all households in poverty have at least some income from work.
6. Welfare-in-work policies can help hard-pressed working families to have a decent standard of living by supplementing their incomes.

Needless to say, the OECD did not directly take on other issues such as "free trade" versus fair trade that include workers rights and not just the rights of capital. They did not directly take on the need to reign in the financialization of everything.

As the current public employee labor fights show, intra-class warfare is killing us. Poor, working and middle class folks in the private sector are being told to be jealous of and so fight against the unionized public sector workforce. Rather than make common cause with them for better wages and benefits. "What's the Matter Kansas" (Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana) indeed.

As for me, I will certainly vote for any Democrat over any Republican. Alas, third party (green, independent, whatever) in America are just a selfish and lazy excuse for doing nothing useful. All that time and energy is better spent -- as the Christianity right and tea party folks demonstrate -- in taking over the your local Democratic party apparatus. And as the 2010 midterms showed, not voting is a path to worse disaster. But long gone are the days when I will actively (time, money) support any politician who does point out the primacy of wages, income, labor, poverty and inequality. And I will oppose any politician who starts off by talking about the problem of the deficit. And bad Democrats need to be primaried from the left, even at the risk of losing. They need the threat and fear from the left to counter the money they get from the rich and corporate.

As to immediate activism, there is a glimmer of hope with UnCut for the America and the related Make them Pay and Mainstreet Movement... fighting for a better America and the World.

women, Clinton and Obama & McCain V.P. choices

1a. Obama could/should pick a woman, but not Hillary Clinton. Several good choices from swing state senate and governors.

1b. He must NOT pick a misogynist anti-female male such as Jim Webb, or others who are anti-choice. That will give women excuse to stay home or even vote for McCain, especially if McCain selects a woman (even if that woman is anti-choice).

2. Very scary for Democrats if McCain picks a woman. That is the only McCain VP choice that makes a difference. It could actually swing some of the supposedly outraged Clintonista white women to McCain, despite his and his party's immensely anti-female personality and policies (anti-choice, anti-equal pay, misogynist horndog (called wife c*&t, cheated multiple time on fist wife, etc.) militarism, supreme court choices, etc).

3. Some argue that Clinton believes that Obama cannot win and is positioning herself for 2012. Let us be clear: If Obama loses (with Clinton having already undercut him), there is no way she get the nomination in 2012. There will be new people running, including new women, and Clinton (both of them) will be remembered as having destroyed the Democratic party and the country.

This may shock you, but not all rabbis are ecumenical peace loving progressives. I have twice left congregations because the Rabbi was too right-wing on Israel and peace issues. But others who work hard fulltime on these issues have not, such as the estimable MJ Rosenberg have stayed because of the overall community. Even when they are both proudly Jewish and specifically "Litvak-centric."

If you are Catholic who goes to church regularly, you have probably attended mass overseen by pedophiles and their enablers. You certainly have gone to services run by rabid anti-abortion rights activists. Furthermore, not only are they proudly Catholic, some Boston Irish parishes have been known to be proudly "Celtic-centric."

We all now about the many right wing extremist America hating Protestant ministers who have had most Republicans and some Democrats davening and kissing their rings for years: Parsley, Hagee, Schaeffer, Falwell, Robertson, Doug Coe and Sun Myung Moon to name just a few.

Every Sabbath in America people attend services at their regular place of worship where the person in the pulpits says things we disagree with, particularly homophobia, ethnocentrism, patriarchy. Some of us stay there for years, for many different reasons. It is actually pretty complicated:

My Rabbis:

Here is MJ Rosenberg of Israel Policy Forum on his conservative (in all senses of the word) rabbi:

I've been a member of a conservative Jewish congregation for 25 years. I love the rabbi but not his sermons on Israel and the Palestinians. He is a total Israel hawk. To put it mildly, I am not.

Even worse, the congregation has become the favorite of Washington's neocons including the worst warmonger of all: Douglas Feith. The idea of communing with God together with a thug like Feith is sickening to me. Then there is Charles Krauthammer who, in 2001, disrupted Yom Kippur services by bellowing at the rabbi for expressing, in the most general terms, the desire for Middle East peace. The worst moment I've ever had at my congregation was when a visiting rabbi from Europe (he comes every year for the High Holy Days) devoted an entire sermon to the value of hate. "To everything there is a season. This is a season for hate." He was talking about the Palestinians. I almost puked.

And yet I am a member of this congregation and will remain one. Why? As I said, I like the rabbi (the regular one, not the annual visitor) despite disagreeing strongly with many of his views. More important, this is the congregation that my kids grew up in. This is where their Bar Mitzvahs took place. The people there (not the war criminals though) are kind of like family. It's home. Probably how Obama feels about his church.

The bottom line is that I am not discredited as a strong supporter of a Palestinian state and the end of the occupation because my rabbi has a different view. Pro-peace Israelis, Palestinians, and other Arabs do not refuse to work with me because I go to the "neocon" synagogue. My writings on Israel/Palestine are not disregarded because my rabbi is a Likud guy.

Of course, not. My rabbi's views are his views. He is my spiritual adviser not my political adviser.

Now I actually disagree with MJ on this; I'd walk. As noted, I have left two congregations that were "convenient" over peace politics. But then again, I had only been a member at each for a year or two, and there were other choices nearby. But MJ makes another point:

In 2000, when Joe Lieberman ran, do you recall articles about the political views of his rabbi? I don't know who his rabbi is (that tells you something) but Orthodox rabbis are invariably very conservative on the same issues on which Democrats are very liberal. They also tend to feel strongly that Jews and non-Jews should not marry each other or even date each other. Some Orthodox rabbis will tell you that dietary laws prevent Jews and non-Jews from even having a meal together except in a kosher locale.

Indeed, there are many reform and conservative rabbis (not just orthodox) who are not merely hardline neocon/likudniks on Israel, but who, if you non-Jews heard them, speak on issues of Jewish cultural identity would consider to be deeply racist against all non-Jews. And yes, some absolutely preach on Israel in a way that might lead an outsider to conclude there is a stronger patriotic affiliation to Israel then to the U.S.

So what. That's religion. Lieberman's politics (not his moderately liberal politics then or his conservative politics now) has nothing to do with his rabbi. Lieberman is pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-feminist, all the things Orthodox rabbis tend not to be. There is a good chance Joe's rabbi is against the Iraq war (75% of Jews are) but Joe sure isn't. But, as I said, Joe's rabbi, whoever he is, was never an issue. Obama's is. Why is that?

Indeed, I need to find out why my current rabbi is not listed among the supporters of J-Street, Rabbis for Human Rights, Imams & Rabbis for Peace, unlike some others in my neighborhood.

Your Ministers:

Here is Mike Lux from OpenLeft on his brother a Methodist minister:

...I thought I would weigh in on a topic not that much covered in the progressive blogosphere, which is the nature of ministers and their sermons. I only go to church these days when I am back home in Lincoln, but as the grandson and brother of Methodist ministers, and the son of the lay (non-clergy) leader of the Nebraska Methodist Church, this is a topic I know something about....

My minister brother and I were taking a few days back about the whole Wright thing, and he commented, "I sure wouldn't want my parishioners to be held responsible for the stuff I've said in my sermons." And that sentiment is true for every good minister I know of. What I was always told growing up was that a minister's job was to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Bad preachers speak in mushy truisms watered down to the lowest common denominator. Good ministers stir people up, challenge their congregants' assumptions, make people uncomfortable. They should serve, in the language of the church, a prophetic role that speaks truth to power.

They can get away with that, if they are good at their work, by that comforting the afflicted part of their job: visiting sick and elderly people at the hospital and in their homes, doing the funeral services, counseling those in trouble. When a minister does that sort of thing, they build an unshakable loyalty that allows them to survive, say, giving a sermon in favor of gay rights in North Platte, Nebraska. There were probably five people in my brother's congregation of 300 that agreed with what he said in such a sermon that day, but they didn't fire him or quit the congregation in droves because of it. That congregation knew my brother to be a good and gentle man who had been there for all of them time and time again in the hardest of times, and so they accepted what he said in his sermon without necessarily agreeing with it. I'm guessing that if one of them had run for office in North Platte, and been confronted with that gay rights sermon by my brother, they would have said about what Barack Obama did of Jeremiah Wright - "Well, I didn't like what he said, but that man performed my marriage and baptized my children and brought me closer to my faith, so I'm not going to walk away form him personally."

Good ministers say dramatic things, stir things up, and push people hard to look at what they believe and how they act. That's their job. To hold their congregants accountable for every word they say in a sermon is absurd, and shows the people who attack them for such that they don't understand religion very well.

The flip side of this is of course the fact that the Republican Party, and some Democrats, have been attending the Right ministries that hate America for more than the 20 years that Obama went to Wright.

Somewhat separate from Christians, and I suppose needfully hidden from them as a cult, is the longstanding bizarro world ties of the Republican Party to the Moonies as noted in the book Bad Moon Rising and at the author's homepage.

Another worrisome cult-like group that has gone out of its way to cultivate the Washington Power Elite, mostly Republicans but also some Democrats is The Family, also referred to as The Fellowship, led by Doug Coe.

Most of us recall Robertson's and Falwell's hate for San Francisco, New York City and New Orleans (are they not America too?). But the story of Francis Schaeffer was new to me; here is his now repentant son:

Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.

Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers... rail against America's sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the "murder of the unborn," has become "Sodom" by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children... They call America evil and warn of immanent destruction. By comparison Obama's minister's shouted "controversial" comments were mild.

Dad was a frequent guest of the Kemps, had lunch with the Fords, stayed in the White House as their guest, he met with Reagan, helped Dr. C. Everett Koop become Surgeon General.

Dad became a hero to the evangelical community and a leading political instigator. When Dad died in 1984 everyone from Reagan to Kemp to Billy Graham lamented his passing publicly as the loss of a great American. Not one Republican leader was ever asked to denounce my dad or distanced himself from Dad's statements.

Take Dad's words and put them in the mouth of Obama's preacher (or in the mouth of any black American preacher) and people would be accusing that preacher of treason. Yet when we of the white Religious Right denounced America white conservative Americans and top political leaders, called our words "godly" and "prophetic" and a "call to repentance."

We Republican agitators of the mid 1970s to the late 1980s were genuinely anti-American in the same spirit that later Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (both followers of my father) were anti-American when they said God had removed his blessing from America on 9/11, because America accepted gays.

In the Bible, many of the prophets, notably Isaiah, Micah & Hosea do indeed God-damn their own people from turning from the one true way. And they are held up (more in the Protestant tradition then Judaism) as the ultra-righteous model to be followed. Preachers white and black shout in the sermonic form called "the Jeremiad" for a reason.

Your Priests:

As noted, if you are Catholic who goes to church regularly, you have probably attended mass overseen by pedophiles and their enablers. You certainly have gone to services run by rabid anti-abortion rights activists (to say nothing of anti-birth control, anti-condom-so-pro-HIV transmission). Furthermore, not only are they proudly Catholic, some Boston Irish parishes have been known to be proudly "Celtic-centric."

In general the officials of the American Catholic church have played enforcer over abortion issues more then they do over poverty, death penalty, war and torture. Needless to say many American Catholics, like modern religious people of all faiths, have similarly taken the pick-and-choose cafeteria approach. Just as The Church has picked and chosen certain issues and candidates to embrace, so congregants may attend church and receive communion regularly from priests, bishops and cardinals who have not only preached things they don't believe but have committed acts that are reprehensible... but they also make other choices in their daily lives and politics.

Obama's Reverend:

Okay, lets go through the ritual... I renounce and reject Wrights comments on HIV/AIDS (another example of religion and science not mixing well) and (to some lesser extent) on Farrakhan.

That said, we are of course also talking about the man who served two tours of duty as a Marine and whose views of America were formed not only based on some truths about the real history of this country, but also because he came of age at a certain time. Chris Rock had a good bit on this generational aspect:



Somewhat more seriously, why did Obama choose that church over any number of other black churches in Chicago twenty years ago? Just an activist's need for street "cred" and a personal need for identity does not answer the question of why THAT church and minister, given the numerous choices available.

I think David Mendell biography, as channeled via Noam Scheiber in The Stump probably has got it right:

Wright earned bachelor's and master's degrees in sacred music from Howard University and initially pursued a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago Divinity School before interrupting his studies to minister full-time. His intellectualism and black militancy put him at odds with some Baptist ministers around Chicago, with whom he often sparred publicly, and he finally accepted a position at Trinity. ...

Wright remains a maverick among Chicago's vast assortment of black preachers. He will question Scripture when he feels it forsakes common sense; he is an ardent foe of mandatory school prayer; and he is a staunch advocate for homosexual rights, which is almost unheard-of among African-American ministers. Gay and lesbian couples, with hands clasped, can be spotted in Trinity's pews each Sunday. Even if some blacks consider Wright's church serving only the bourgeois set, his ministry attracts a broad cross section of Chicago's black community. Obama first noticed the church because Wright had placed a "Free Africa" sign out front to protest continuing apartheid. The liberal, Columbia-educated Obama was attracted to Wright's cerebral and inclusive nature, as opposed to the more socially conservative and less educated ministers around Chicago. ...

...it was his intellectualism and social progressivism that won Obama over. Certainly it's hard to imagine that someone like Obama, who came from a progressive, secular background, would have felt genuinely comfortable in a socially conservative, anti-intellectual church. The problem for Obama is that the flip-side of these virtues was a minister with a radical worldview and a penchant for advertising it loudly. ...

Which, put another way, means that Obama's decision to join Trinity was probably the opposite of cynical. Trinity was the place where, despite the potential pitfalls--and he must have noticed them early on--Obama felt most true to himself {as a worshipper}.

Of course this too subtle, thoughtful and progressive an interpretation to get a general hearing.

And there is a more directly political and theological history going on here, as the Prospect pointed out:

Starting in the Reagan years -- and with considerable practical and moral support from the GOP, which Posner documents -- the prosperity gospel swept through the country's Pentecostal churches, both black and white. To give you some idea of how incestuously this movement is bedded down in GOP politics, consider the fact that John McCain claims Rod Parsley and John Hagee -- two of the nation's biggest purveyors of the prosperity gospel -- as his "spiritual advisors." (A lot of us wondered why he chose these two, who are regarded as nutcases even by many Evangelicals; but reading Posner, the political ends being served become obvious.)

Needless to say: not everybody welcomed this new gospel with open arms. Millions of devout Evangelicals who've read their Bibles and noted Jesus' contempt for greed, as well as those who hew to older and more rigorous theologies like the Social Gospel and King-style liberation theology, find the whole thing beyond offensive and verging on blasphemy.

Wright has been a visible and articulate critic of the GOP's new pet theology over the years -- one of a noisy clutch of ministers who've made no bones about the mischief inherent in this new theology. He's also a respected and insightful proponent of black liberation theology, holding King's torch high in the face of unscrupulous preachers who think they're helping poor people by cajoling them to vote away their safety net and toss their government checks in the offering plate.

Beyond that: unlike the vast majority of these ministers, most of whom attended small Bible colleges of dubious accreditation (if they attended seminary at all), Wright has degrees from Howard University and the University of Chicago Theological Seminary. It's gotta go down hard that he's a black man who is far better-educated than they are, and can argue circles around them about the Bible or anything else. Take it as a whole picture, and it's not hard to see that Wright is very sharp thorn in these people's sides. As long as he and his friends out there, their 30-year investment in the whole Word of Life movement is at risk. Obama's candidacy put him in the spotlight, and thus magnified the threat. So now he has very powerful enemies on the religious and political right.
Furthermore, turning Wright into a national demon was a two-fer. They could not only tank the Democrats' front-runner; they'd also take down a serious and persuasive theologian who's been calling them out hard on one of their longest-running and most successful efforts to sell the conservative worldview to the very people who stand to be most harmed by it.

That's a big part of what's driving the animus against Wright. It's the issue he was addressing head-on at the National Press Club on Saturday, when he talked about how the storm of criticism surrounding his remarks was, in effect, criticism of the traditions of the black church. It also answers the burning question of why the GOP and the corporate media will not let this go. What's happening here is bigger than just Barack and Hillary and John. It's a struggle between two competing Protestant theologies, both of which claim tens of millions of adherents -- and a galvanizing figure who hasn't gotten the hint, and still keeps standing up for his flock against those bent on shearing them.

There is a longer history here then the media's kneejerk reaction is interested in telling.

McCain's Ministers:

The standard excuse for McCain is that that his embrace of the right wing extremist nutjobs who not only hate gays, Women, Jews, Catholics, Muslims but ALSO HATE AMERICA, is just a political endorsement. That it is not the same as having been a member of the church for 20 years, been married there and had one's children baptized there. I hope the above has helped dispel why the latter would be bad.

But there are two additional reasons why that argument is false:

1. The Republican party has been a member of that church for over 20 years. They have davened, kissed the ring, been baptized in it, married to it and raised their children in it.

2. Obama, upon hearing Wright's objectionable imprecations did renounce and reject. But McCain came to these guys after they had already said all those much more terrible things. Already knowing that that is what they stood for, he went out of his way to seek their endorsement and to ally himself with them. That seems worse to me.




Well... it's 4pm on Friday... Shabbat Shalom.

Equation for the day: "How many times x How many bullets until it = a crime?"

Unarmed and doing nothing criminal… but shot to death by police…

Sean Bell
Patrick Dorismond
Amadou Diallo
Ousmane Zongo
Timothy Stansbury
Demetrius DuBose
Tarika Wilson and 14 month old son:
Timothy Thomas
Anthony Baez
Malcolm Ferguson
Alberta Spruill

Those are just the folks at the individual level.

We in public health think about populations and history, so lest we forget (and I suspect Jeremiah Wright has not) the so called "race riots" of 1967-69, were mostly police riots against unarmed black citizens. Official mainstream analysis afterwards confirmed that the police initiated all of, and committed most of, the shooting and deaths. But due to initial reporting and white fear, that is not how they are remembered; see:
1967 Riots Detroit & Newark
Kerner Report
Kerner Report & Media

Right Wing Christianist Conspiracy to Listen to the Wrong Jews

Now, I don’t know if Jesus'" General will admit to this or not, but my talmudic analysis leads me to the sad but inevitable conclusion that there is a Vast Right Wing Christian Conspiracy (tm) to listen to the Wrong Jews. Please bear with me while I explain:

Jews are are about 2.5% of the U.S. population, whereas Christians make up about 80%.

Now it is true that the PNAC/AEI/NeoCon crowd are disproportionately, though not exclusively Jewish: Wolfowitz, Feith, Libby, Perle, etc. (of course Khalizad & Chalabi are Muslim).

On the other hand their Repuglican bosses, the folks who chose them for their appointed positions and had all the ultimate decision making power, were all Christians (thank god): Cheney, Rumsfeld & Bush.

Meanwhile, actual Jewish-Americans are and continue to be overwhelmingly Democratic, continuing to be second only to African-Americans as a Democratic voting bloc. Have been in the past and still are (see #2 below). In fact Jewish-America voting was even more Democratic and anti-Repuglican in the 2006 (87% vs 12%) elections then in 2004.

And, despite the NeoCons tiny but loud minority, Jewish American as a whole have been, from the beginning more opposed than the average American to the Iraq invasion and occupation (see #1 below). And still are.

Meanwhile Jewish-Americans as a whole have always opposed Iraq war the general American public, and continue to vote more Democratic than any group other African-American.

You may even have noticed that a large number of the lefty blogosphere, including those who were against the Iraq invasion and occupation from the beginning beginning are Jewish. And many are Christian (though I suspect that few if any are Christianist).

As a group Jewish-American have been all along and still are more Democratic, more liberal, and more opposed to the NeoCon & Bush Admininistration policies then the average American.
Now if only they would listen to us.
In conclusion: the PNAC/NeoCon crowd are sort of like "Jews for Jesus"... a teeny tiny, albeit disproportionately loud, minority of maladjusted delusional folks propped up by a Christianist majority.

1. Polls of Jewish Opinion on Iraq War

American Jewish Committee's "Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion"

During the Pre-War Build-up: December 16, 2002 - January 5, 2003(during overall BushCo build-up but just prior to Bush's State of the Union and Colin Powell's address to UN):

"Do you approve or disapprove of the United States taking military action against Iraq to try and remove Saddam Hussein from power?
Approve=59 (compared to 57-67% nationally)
Disapprove=36
(approval over 50% but still less than national average at the time)

"If the United States takes military action against Iraq, do you think the threat of terrorism against the United States will increase, decrease, or stay about the same?"
Increase=62
Decrease=6
Stay about the same=32
Not sure=1
(fascinating since Jewish-Americans were not hopeful/delusional of war's utility; unlike NeoCon message)

In your opinion, do you think that a war between the United States and Iraq is likely to lead to a larger war between other countries in the Middle East?"
Yes, likely=56;
No, not likely=41;
Not sure=3
(fascinating since Jewish-Americans were not hopeful/delusional of war's utility; unlike NeoCon message)

November 25 and December 11 2003:
Do you approve or disapprove of the war with Iraq?
Approve=43;
Disapprove=54 (60-70% support nationally)

August 18-September 1, 2004;
Do you approve or disapprove of the war with Iraq?
Approve=30
Disapprove=66
Not sure=4

November 14 - 27, 2005:
Do you approve or disapprove of the war with Iraq?
Approve=28 (40%s nationally)
Disapprove=70
Not Sure=2

Interestingly, with regard to Iran in AJC polling during September 25 - October 16, 2006:
"Do you approve or disapprove of the way the United States government is handling the situation with Iran’s nuclear weapons program?"
Approve=33
Disapprove=54
Not Sure=3

"Would you support or oppose the United States taking military action against Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons?"
Support=38
Oppose=54
Not Sure=8

As Gallop says from their polling: "Among Religious Groups, Jewish Americans Most Strongly Oppose War - Opposition goes beyond Jewish Americans' political affiliations" with 77% of Jews opposed, compared to 78% of Black-Protestants and 52% of all Americans.


2. Jewish Vote In Presidential Elections
Table from from Jewish Virtual Library which sources: L. Sandy Maisel and Ira Forman, Eds. Jews in American Politics. (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), p. 153.

Year: Candidate(Party) %-of-Jewish-Vote

1916: Hughes (R) 45 Wilson(D) 55
1920: Harding (R) 43 Cox(D) 19 Debs (Socialist) 38
1924: Coolidge (R) 27 Davis(D) 51 La Folette (Progressive) 22
1928: Hoover (R) 28 Smith (D) 72
1932: Hoover (R) 18 Roosevelt (D) 82
1936: Landon (R) 15 Roosevelt (D) 85
1940: Wilkie (R) 10 Roosevelt (D) 90
1944: Dewey (R) 10 Roosevelt (D) 90
1948: Dewey (R) 10 Truman (D) 75 Wallace (Progressive) 15
1952: Eisenhower (R) 36 Stevenson (D) 64
1956: Eisenhower (R) 40 Stevenson (D) 60
1960: Nixon (R) 18 Kennedy (D) 82
1964: Goldwater (R) 10 Johnson (D) 90
1968: Nixon (R) 17 Humphrey (D) 81 Wallace (I) 2
1972: Nixon (R) 35 McGovern (D) 65
1976: Ford (R) 27 Carter (D) 71 McCarthy (I) 2
1980: Reagan (R) 39 Carter (D) 45 Anderson (I) 14
1984: Reagan (R) 31 Mondale (D) 67
1988: Bush (R) 35 Dukakis (D) 64
1992: Bush (R) 11 Clinton (D) 80 Perot (I) 9
1996: Dole (R) 16 Clinton (D) 78 Perot (I) 3
2000: Bush (R) 19 Gore (D) 79 Nader (G) 1
2004: Bush (R) 24 Kerry (D) 76 Nader (G) <>

Cosmopolitinism

Our friends at Wikipedia say that Cosmopolitanism is the idea that all of humanity belongs to a single moral community.

Cultural cosmopolitanism pertains to wide international experience. It refers to a partiality for cultures besides one's own culture of origin, as with a traveler or globally conscious person. Cosmopolitanism supposedly dates back to Diogenes answer to the question where he came from “I am a citizen of the world." Human beings dwells in two communities – the local community of our birth, and the community of "human argument and aspiration."

Cosmopolitanism does not call for world state. A single world order is considered hegemonic at best and ethnocentric at worst. We acknowledging the otherness of those who are culturally different and the otherness of other rationalities. Cosmopolitanism shares some aspects of universalism – namely the globally acceptable notion of human dignity that must be protected and enshrined in international law. However, the theory deviates in recognising the differences between world cultures.

Snips from Jonathan Freedman's NY Times review of Kwame Anthony Appiah's The Ethics of Identity, gets at what I am getting at:

"Seeks to revive the traditions of tolerance, pluralism and respect for both individual and group rights that animated liberal thought for the greater part of the last two centuries.

I am who I am not only because I am engaged in the lifelong task of becoming the person I want to be but also because I can identify myself with groups of people engaged in similar ''life-projects'': secular Jews, people with kids, people raised in Iowa City, to mention three personal instances. Appiah stresses that the life-project I am carrying out, the story of my self that I'm struggling to tell, can't be separated from the affiliations in which that project was formed and to which it refers. The very pursuit of individualism demands the cultivation of collective identities, and the often conflicting ethical demands of each represent the poles between which Appiah's arguments swing.

Nowhere is this impulse more eloquently displayed than in the final chapter, where Appiah argues for a ''rooted cosmopolitanism.'' The term seems oxymoronic: to have roots is to be embedded in a specific history, nation or people; to be a cosmopolitan is to declare oneself a citizen of the world. For Appiah, however, these two are inseparable. Local histories, he reminds us, have themselves been shaped by the movements of peoples and their communal practices (let's not call them cultures) as old as human history itself. And -- the point has special salience after 9/11 -- one can pledge allegiance to one's country and still conceive of oneself in terms of global identities or universal values.

Appiah repeatedly invokes the example of his father, Joe Appiah, a Ghanaian and African nationalist who believed with equal fervor in internationalism. Kwame Anthony Appiah not only allows for but celebrates the contentiousness of the conversations that are to take place in a world where multiple affiliations are increasingly becoming the norm.

the superb rhetorical performance of this book offers the most persuasive evidence for his case. Indeed, his extraordinary scope of reference -- ranging from the proceedings of the Pueblo tribal council to Tolstoy's ''Anna Karenina'' to the experience of Appiah's multicontinental family -- not only exemplifies rooted cosmopolitanism, it performs it. To read ''The Ethics of Identity'' is to enter into the world it describes; it is also to imagine what it might be like to live in so urbane and expansive a place."

Appiah struggles with this as do we all, balancing, sorting and negotiating our way through the often conflicting thicket of individual rights and group rights; majority rules and minority rights; multiculturalism, pluralism, nationalism and universalism; tolerance of and betwtween ethnic identities.

How do I claim to be a humanist and cosmopolitan, and support the of Israel to exist as democratic Jewish state (albeit one closer to the 1967 borders, real two-state solution, no occupation and settlements...)?

How do we show tolerance for religious fundementalists at home and abroad, and uphold human rights, including equal rights regardless of nonbelief, sex, gender, orientation, etc.