Hey midthoughters, if anyone’s still out there.
I’ll be liveblogging tonight’s foreign policy presidential debate. It will be amazing. Real-time drinking instructions and more. Get ready! Bookmark this site, refresh, and stay tuned.
I’ve been meaning to write about this forever, and now that it’s a couple months old perhaps its untimeliness will allow me some immunity for rubbing everyone the wrong way.
On September 19, I received an email from the Conservative Jewish Community at Penn (a listserv from which, try as I might, I have been unable to unsubscribe). The subject line was: IMPORTANT: STAND WITH ISRAEL.
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For years, Palestinian and Israeli “negotiators” have been sitting down for “peace talks,” always with “impartial mediators” alongside. Then, earlier this year, for whatever reason—the Arab Spring, perhaps—the “Palestinians” (I use quotes appropriately because Fatah, let alone Abbas, do not speak for Palestinians as a whole) went to the UN to request recognition of their statehood based on some bizarre notion of feasibility. I am of the opinion they did so knowing it would fail but as a way to take charge in (or overstep) a diplomatic process that has been ****ing them all along. Whether or not they gained anything like, well, a state, they gained some negotiating power back from Goliath. Then, Hamas brokered a deal to release over a thousand of the thousands more Palestinians held in Israeli prisons in exchange for the release of the one and only Israeli (a soldier) imprisoned by Hamas. That’s Palestinians 2 – 0 Israelis. Or it might be 1-0-1.
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Yesterday’s Guardian ran an article on a growing controversy among the ranks of OWSers. Apparently, a working group in New York has been established to put forth a set of demands.
On Tuesday night they will hold what could be one of the most controversial mass meetings at Zuccotti Park so far when the general assembly discusses whether the movement should officially call for a massive public works programme with government employment, paid for by ending all of America’s overseas military operations.
The substance of the demand is not the subject of the controversy. Rather, it is the principle of adopting a demand, and the process for doing so, that have opened a rift between “purists”, who favour consensus-building, and those now arguing for majority rule on some decisions.
The underlying force of the movement and its ultimate goals (inasmuch as “social revolution” is a goal) come from a collective understanding that radical social upheaval (revolution) is necessary to guarantee long-term sustainability and security. But this is a long process.
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I came to New York this week to visit friends, not unaware that my timing was particularly fortuitous to observe (or join) an #occupywallstreet protest just as the going was getting good.
Generally speaking, it is an action, and a movement, that I can get behind. I think the dependence on corporations, the reliance on corporations, and the power of corporations that we have created in this country out of what I think is fundamentally our own greed and expansionism is despicable. I think these big banks are, in a large part, responsible not just for the real crises we are facing, especially us jobless millenials, but also for the absurd wealth gap in our country, the amount of imaginary money we have been coerced into spending, and the amount of real money we owe.
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(I guess today is video day — below the break.)
I think the best part of this is: “As we say in Jewish…” .. “I think it’s bad when there are like sects of Judaism that are like against Israel” … “American Indians! Looking real nice in their clothes” …
To be quite frank, I have been negligent in following the proceedings on #AIPAC2011. After listening to Obama’s much-anticipated Middle East speech last week, and for some reason letting myself be disappointed that he didn’t magically become a one-stater, I’ve sort of checked out temporarily. (Oh, and I was working all weekend. Anyway.)
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It doesn’t need a facebook page to survive.
I received an email from a friend saying he was waiting for Obama to make a speech. It was 10 pm on a Sunday, East Coast, and he was in Central time – not a usual speaking hour.
Minutes later I got a New York Times New Alert saying Bin Laden had been killed. We hunted for a local NPR station – or any radio that wasn’t playing country or metal (we were in the woods of New Hampshire, driving back from a day of climbing) – while we speculated on what could have happened.
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Read this article. Come back when you’re done. (It’s short, don’t worry.)
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