Montgomery County, MD Green Party Blog

Green Party Activist Medea Benjamin interrupted Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, shouting; “Iraqis want the troops to leave. Bring them home now.”

Watch the video here.

A Tale of Two Nobel Prize Winners

I got this from Dennis Kobray via Green Alliance’s general discussion listerv.

Recently on Ready Steady Book I came across a link to an essay (apparently written in 2002) by the distinguished Hungarian writer Imre Kertész, who won the 2002 Nobel Prize for Literature.

In it he bitterly attacks Jose Saramago, the distinguished Portuguese writer and 1998 winner of the Nobel Prize for literature.

What divides them is not literature but politics and history; in a word, Israel.

Kertész is a passionate supporter of Israel, and as a Holocaust survivor and former inmate of Auschwitz he was appalled by Saramago’s bitter criticisms of human rights violations committed by the Israeli army in the occupied territories in early 2002:

I saw the Portugese writer Saramago on TV, how he bent over a sheet of paper, compared Israel’s line against the Palestinians with Auschwitz—proof that the author did not have the slightest idea of the scandalous irrelevance of his comparison. Even worse, he did not know that the concept represented by the term Auschwitz has long had a fixed meaning in Europe’s cultural consensus and can be used indisputably in a populist way and for populist purposes.

http://ellissharp.blogspot.com/2006/07/tale-of-two-nobel-prize-winners.html

Workers at Meatpacking Plant Must First Overcome Distrust

When she finished eating dinner at the party, Lenora Bruce Bailey sat for a spell on a little wood porch facing Main Street. Two years ago, she had one of the best jobs around: boxing scraps of hog meat at the nearby packing plant. Then she got sick. “They terminated me,” she said. “Took away my health insurance.”

In a nearby room, Raphael Abrego held up his purple and swollen right hand and wondered whether the same might happen to him. He was one of the better cutters on the fast-moving butcher line, but he slipped one day and injured his hand. “I can’t close it,” he said in Spanish, trying to clench bloated fingers.

Bailey is a black, native-born American. Abrego is a Latino immigrant. At Smithfield Packing Co., the largest meat-processing facility in the world, the two think of themselves as being in the same boat.

Recently, they attended a potluck to try to do something that is rare for African Americans and Latino immigrants: come together to fight for workers’ rights.
*

*

*

The union’s difficulties are part of a larger story of distrust between black and Latino workers, a vast cultural divide between immigrants who illegally enter the country seeking work and African Americans who worry that immigrants will take over their jobs, communities and local political power.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/23/AR2006072300698.html?nav=trm

I got this from Dennis Kobray via Green Alliance’s discussion listserv.

The apartheid state in question is, of course, Israel.  Its first class citizens are Israeli Jews, the majority of them of European or sometimes American origin.  The second class citizens are Israeli Arabs, who enjoy significant but limited rights under the law including token representation in the Knesset.  The eleventh class citizens are not citizens at all.  They are Palestinians.  One expects to be able to say that Palestinians live in Palestine and are governed by Palestinians, but the truth is something different.  The areas in which Palestinians may inhabit have shrunk nearly every year since the Nakba, their  name for the wave of mass deportations, murders, the dispossession, destruction and exile of whole Arab towns, cities and regions that attended the 1948 founding of the state of Israel.  As the whole world, except for the US public knows, Palestinians have lived under military occupation, without land, without rights, without hope, for nearly sixty years now.

*

*

*

The parallels with apartheid South Africa are many and striking.  Like its earlier apartheid cousin, Israel menaces all its neighbors with an impressive array of nukes and the largest military establishment in the region.

*

*

*

White South Africans rightly fretted at the fact that they were a minority ruling over an unhappy majority, and concocted schemes to exile the country’s black population to isolated rural reservations it called bantustans.  Israeli pundits calmly discuss the demographic bomb, their name for the fact that second and eleventh class citizens, Israeli Arabs and Palestinians will soon outnumber them within the borders of their supposed “Jewish state” while Israeli politicians sit in Knesset and hold ministries in successive governments openly calling for mass deportations and ethnic cleansing.

http://www.blackcommentator.com/192/192_cover_Israeli_apartheid_dixon.html

I got this from Dennis Kobray on Green Alliance’s discussion listserv.

Twenty-five years ago I stared into the eyes of Michael Berman, chief operative for his congressman-brother, Howard Berman. I was a neophyte running for the California Assembly in a district that the Bermans claimed belonged to them.

“I represent the Israeli defense forces,” Michael said. I thought he was joking. He wasn’t. Michael seemed to imagine himself the gatekeeper protecting Los Angeles’ Westside for Israel’s political interests, and those of the famous Berman-Waxman machine. Since Jews represented one-third of the Democratic district’s primary voters, Berman held a balance of power.

*

*

*

I can offer my real-life experience to the present discussion about the existence and power of an “Israel lobby.” It is not as monolithic as some argue, but it is far more than just another interest group in a pluralist political world. In recognizing its diversity, distinctions must be drawn between voters and elites, between Reform and Orthodox tendencies, between the less observant and the more observant. During my ultimate 18 years in office, I received most of my Jewish support from the ranks of the liberal and less observant voters. But I also received support from conservative Jews who saw themselves as excluded by a Jewish (and Democratic) establishment.

http://www.counterpunch.org/Hayden07202006.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2006/07/06/LI2006070600612.html

The ICC Plans Are Overrunning Derwood

Most of us in Derwood have done our homework on the planned intercounty connector because our town is slated to be the ICC entry point. This summer we’ve watched Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan ram through the approvals before the November elections. We’ve seen surveyors’ plastic ribbons fluttering in our woods. We’ve blanched as the state pushes forward on eminent-domain seizure of homes in nearby Cashell Estates.

But no one told us that a midnight confiscation of our private property was in the plan.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/21/AR2006072101413.html

Codeword: Hannibal

Please note that the idea that their problems might be resolved by building up Lebanese civil society (Law enforcement, education, housing, civil engineering, mass transit, social welfare, health care, etc.) is conspicuously absent from this piece.

…I fear that we might not stop there, and that we might succumb to the delusion that military action can transform Lebanon’s political and social realities. That same delusion led Israel to occupy Lebanon for an agonizing decade and a half in which hundreds of our troops — and many more Lebanese and Palestinians — were killed.

*

*

*

The following winter, helicopters suddenly descended near the muddy clearing in Galilee, where my unit was training. We were sent to Beirut, where before long I saw that our mission had little to do with protecting my neighbors back home. Instead, we served as a wedge between Christians, Muslims and Druze, who were taking advantage of the occupation to settle old scores. It would be the first of several tours of duty for me in Lebanon.

Sharon’s grand plan failed. True, the PLO was forced out three months after the invasion, and the rockets stopped falling on Israeli settlements. But we paid a huge price in Israeli troops killed and wounded — not to mention the casualties suffered by the Lebanese. Instead of remaking Lebanon, we found ourselves bogged down there much as the United States is now bogged down in Iraq. During some of my tours, we spent most of our energy keeping Lebanese from killing one another, rather than protecting Israel’s borders and civilians.

…[B]eing angry…can cloud your judgment and make you do foolish things. I can only hope that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will not fall victim to the same fantasies that sent me and so many other soldiers to Lebanon. In Lebanon’s unending political vacuum, no government can be strong and decisive. That’s why the country has been a pawn that the stronger countries around it have so willingly sacrificed. Absent a multinational campaign against Iran and Syria, Israel cannot permanently prevent southern Lebanon from serving as a forward base for enemy forces. Instead, Israel must use force every few years to push back the enemy, knowing that once we leave, our foes will return and rearm.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/21/AR2006072101372.html

Lebanese Warned To Flee to North

Of course, the Israeli Jews — as opposed to the Israeli Arabs — are systemically attacking anyone who is heading north. Gee, I wonder why this is the case? It wouldn’t have anything to do with the wide-spread anti-Arab bigotry felt by the vast majority of Ashkenazi Israeli Jews, now, would it? Nah, it couldn’t possibly be that reason (Even thought it’s a dirty secret in Israel that first class citizens are Ashkenazi — read caucasian — Jews, second class citizens are Sephardic — read Arab –Jews, and third class citizens are Arab Muslims.).

A poll in Friday’s Maariv newspaper showed overwhelming support for the war among Israeli citizens. Of those queried, 95 percent said the Israeli military campaign was justified and 90 percent said the attacks should continue until Hezbollah is pushed back from the border.

*

*

*
The Israeli military called up reserve troops Friday and broadcast urgent radio warnings for civilians of battered southern Lebanon to leave “immediately” for relative safety north of the Litani River, adding to the growing indications that Israel is planning a large-scale ground operation to root out Hezbollah guerrillas and their missile caches.

*

*

*

The Beirut-Damascus highway, a vital artery for Lebanon’s economy, has come under repeated attack by Israeli warplanes, forcing travelers to take back routes over the jagged mountains. Jets firing volleys of air-to-ground missiles Friday further damaged a key bridge connecting two steep hillsides that had shaved half an hour off the trip between the two capitals. The bridge’s 1.6-mile span, the country’s longest, was completed only several years ago and was regarded as a particularly proud symbol of Lebanon’s recovery from the destruction of previous wars.

*

*

*

Israeli warplanes have been firing on civilian cars and other vehicles regularly since the conflict began, and Lebanese trapped in the south said they feared they could become targets if they heed the warnings to flee. The French foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, said during a visit to Beirut that France wants to open an air and sea supply line for delivery of relief to besieged Lebanese civilians. He demanded that Israeli forces agree to respect a “humanitarian corridor” that would allow international aid to reach the estimated 500,000 Lebanese who have been driven from their homes during the past 10 days of warfare.

A Greek warship in Beirut to pick up Greek nationals fleeing the fighting brought in boxes of aid supplies and unloaded them at the port. It was unclear whether the aid would reach the people who need it in southern Lebanon, however, because Israeli air attacks have made travel down the coastal road highly dangerous.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/21/AR2006072100968.html

…it describes a google search that turns up just one entry.  Supposedly, finding such a search is a special thing.  If that is the case then I present the below google search:

“Mary Rooker” larch md