A Thanksgiving Greeting from Rod Romney

Dear Friend,
As I was walking around the streets of Portland today, enjoying the beautiful holiday decorations and trying to ignore the panhandlers that stood on nearly every corner, suddenly, for no discernible reason, I found myself remembering the many wonderful friends that have been given to me in this lifetime. They have blessed me beyond measure, have believed in me even when I failed to do so myself, have accepted me for who I am and not for what I do, have been a resource of knowledge and understanding for me, and have given more to me than I could ever give back to them.

Filled with such gratitude and love for those who have blessed me in my life, I suddenly found myself face to face with a gray-haired, toothless old man in shabby clothing. He said to me, "Ya' wouldn't have somethin' to give an ole man, would ya', podner?" All my judgements and reservations against panhandlers were suddenly gone, and I said, "What do you need most?" He looked down, silent for a few moments, and then looked up and answered, "A friend." I reached into my pocket, found a bill and placed it in his hand, as I said, "I am your friend. Go have a good meal on me, and God bless you." His face twisted with emotion as he took the bill into his roughened hand. Then followed a radiant smile as he muttered, "Thank you, m'friend."

Jesus said, "You are my friends if you do what I have commanded." His commandment was simple but so difficult at times: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Giving money to street people is not always a wise or good thing to do, but being a friend to someone who needs that, if only for a moment, is one of the best gifts we can ever offer to another.

I am sending this little greeting to many of my friends on this day before Thanksgiving to thank you for the friendship you have given to me. Without it I could not be who I am. Each of you has given me something priceless, the gift of your friendship. My heart is filled with love and gratitude for each of you. Beverly and I will be with her family here in Portland for this Thanksgiving, but in a very real way each of you will be here with me. Thank you for all you have meant to me and for being my friend. Happy Thanksgiving.

Blessings,
Rod Romney
November 23, 2004

Behind the Evacuation of Israeli Settlers in Gaza

Gaza Strip. On December 17, 2004 the Israeli Occupation forces invaded Khan Yunis, killed 10 Palestinians, injured 40 more—including 18 children and destroyed at least 40 homes.

Behind the Evacuation of Israeli Settlers in Gaza
Since the war in June 1967, when Israel invaded the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the West Bank, the Israeli government, with the military back-up of its Army, has successfully promoted the settlement of Israeli Jews on Palestinian land. Within the last 15 years the number of settlers has grown to 400,000. Invariably these settlers—many of whom are soldiers-- live in fortified towns and cities, located strategically to slice Palestinian territory into isolated Bantustans.

This settlement violates UN resolutions, various Peace Plans, international public opinion and a significant sector of public opinion inside Israel. For years, the settlement of Gaza has shown the ugliest face of occupation. In Gaza 8600 Israeli settlers – surrounded by 1.3 million Palestinians-- control prime agricultural land, the main aquifers, most of the coastline and the Egypt/Gaza border.

While settlers enjoy seaside villas and a population density of 123 people per square kilometer, Palestinians endure the squalor of refugee camps and a density of 4362 people per square kilometer. (Source: Israel Central Bureau of Statistics). The Israeli army has met Palestinian resistance with overwhelming military force. Between September 2000 and early July 2005, Israeli security forces have killed 3280 Palestinians, including 764 children. During that same period 964 Israelis, including 115 children were killed by Palestinians. (Source: www.btselem.org) From September 2000 to September 2004 Israeli forces destroyed 2370 housing units in Gaza alone, leaving 22,800 Palestinians homeless. (Source UNRWA quoted in www.btselem.org) It has become untenable for the Israeli army to continue providing protection for the settlers to maintain this horrific injustice.

Yet, Israel will retain control over Gaza by maintaining the military force and prerogative to enter Gaza at will, and by controlling Gaza’s airspace, sea shore and borders. Therefore, although Israel would like to shift “blame” for Gaza’s problems to the victims of Israeli aggression, in fact, Israel is not absolved from the responsibilities of an occupying power.

Behind the hype about evacuation, is the calculation that in exchange for appearing to leave Gaza, international pressure on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank will lighten up.

In sum, the Israeli government is not taking a step towards peace by evacuating settlers from Gaza. Rather, this movement aims to mask Israel’s plan to continue to deny Palestinians’ right to self determination by maintaining the encirclement of Gaza and transforming it into a congested open-air concentration camp. At the same time, in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, confiscation of Palestinian land, settlement and the strangulation of economic and social life by the Wall and checkpoints all escalate.

[From Dateline: Occupied Palestine, An Occasional Newsletter from the Justice in Palestine Coalition, August 2005, vol.1 #1. Thanks to Jaime Cader for forwarding. The Justice in Palestine Coalition recommends the following actions: Get Involved. Join the movement to end all aid to Israel; Divest from all Israeli corporations and American corporations with subsidiaries operating within Israel; Boycott of all Israeli products, and support the Right of Return for all Palestinian refugees. End the occupation of Palestine. Support the right of self determination of Palestinian people.]

On the Death of Martin Luther King, Jr.

by Robert F. Kennedy

April 4, 1968, Indianapolis, Indiana

I have bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight.

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort.

In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black -- considering the evidence their evidently is that there were white people who were responsible -- you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization -- black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.

Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: "In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.

So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that's true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love -- a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times; we've had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.

Let us dedicate to ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.

Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.


[Thanks to David Enroth (Sky) for forwarding this article by Robert F. Kennedy. Here are his comments:

"If there is a politician that occupies a pinnacle place in my pantheon of political heroes, it is Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy. Had he lived 38 more years, he would have turned 80 yesterday, November 20, 2005.

"I remember the 1968 presidential campaign well. I had just come home from Viet Nam, and I was enrolled at Seattle Community College taking business and law courses from Jeff Brotman, who later founded Costco. Those happy days came to a standstill with the double executions of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert. Nowadays those times seem almost like yesterday. I have always loved the Aeschylus quote (see below) Robert used in his Indianapolis speech announcing Martin's death, and listening to Robert's words have always brought new tears to my eyes.

"In my bedroom is a large framed photo of Robert Kennedy walking with his beloved pet dog, Freckles, alone along a road in Oregon during the campaign. Inside the glass is a campaign bumper sticker and button: memories of the great hope for justice and peace Robert has always been to me. He combined meaning with grace in mystical ways, and he always put feet to his own prayers.

"Let us say a little prayer in Robert's memory today." -- Sky]

When red and blue turn purple [with indignation and rage]

by Lance Dickie / Seattle Times editorial columnist

When red and blue turn purple

President Bush is having an especially tough week with the Iraq war when he gets hung out to dry by Ahmad Chalabi and the U.S. Senate on the same day.

Chalabi is the convicted embezzler behind suspect intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, which the White House found irresistible before the war. He is now deputy prime minister of Iraq. His illuminating PBS appearance on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer came amid a grand tour of Capitol Hill and the White House.

Interviewer Ray Suarez homed right in on Chalabi's prewar role and the tales of menace he peddled to an eager audience. What did he tell the United States?

All he did, Chalabi purred, was make a few introductions. The Bush administration chose to believe what it heard, and it fell to the White House with all its intelligence resources to verify the accuracy of what it learned.

Suarez pressed on about the litany of certainty Chalabi spouted over Saddam Hussein's lethal armory. Oh, that stuff. Chalabi said that was his opinion and he did not expect the administration to simply take his word.

By now, even Republicans in Congress are feeling like chumps. For two years, they have been bankrolling a war in compliant silence, and putting the whole running tab — currently about $200 billion — on a credit card.

Prodded by Democrats, the Republican-led Senate finally asked the president — if it wouldn't be too much trouble — to provide lawmakers with progress reports on the war with an eye toward starting to get the hell out of harm's way sometime before the 2006 congressional elections.

For his part, the president has responded to critics with the bearing of a man with no plan: Disagree with me and you are a virtual traitor who might as well be planting bombs alongside the insurgents. Vice President Dick "Mushroom Cloud" Cheney is back on the attack with prewar levels of bellicosity.

Americans are quietly, resolutely having none of it. Red and blue states have turned purple.

Voters took 40 years to decide the Democrats had run out of ideas and integrity before they booted them from Congress. Republicans barely made it a dozen years. The end is near, and it's not only the war that has taken its toll.

Greed, incompetence and indifference drew the GOP away from any agenda remotely connected to the lives of ordinary people.

The legal and moral indictments that dog Republican leadership in Congress are all about hanging on to power and punishing opponents. That does not leave much time for congressional oversight of the executive branch, fiscal responsibility or the needs of taxpayers back home.

The United States won the Cold War because the Soviet Union went broke first, quipped a Washington congressman years ago. Now it's our turn. Blank-check spending on the Iraq war combined with tax cuts plunged the federal government into debt that will haunt generations to come.

Where were the fiscally conservative Republicans? They are in the federal trough up to their hindquarters doling out everything from corporate farm subsidies to pension breaks for major employers. Homeland security? They turned it into an industry.

Bush and the GOP worked overtime to ransack environmental regulations that directly affect the air we breathe and the water we drink. Midwest power plants don't have to modernize, and young lungs in the Northeast pay a price because of airborne pollution. At the very least we have to keep them healthy so they can spend a lifetime paying off the Treasury bonds purchased by Japan and China to finance epic deficits.

The separation of the Republican Party from ordinary lives starts very close to home and goes all the way to Capitol Hill. The state party sends out cheesy e-mails about the war, so maybe no one will remember the GOP supported the repeal of gas taxes for better highways. No connection to families idling off gas on crowded roads, or the backdoor draft through the National Guard.

Increasingly, congressional Republicans are vendors of a line of bull the public is refusing to buy or rent for another two or four years.

[Lance Dickie's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is ldickie@seattletimes.com]

Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company

Torture Does Not Work ... Texas Tough Doesn't Cut It

by Molly Ivins

AUSTIN, Texas -- I can't get over this feeling of unreality, that I am actually sitting here writing about our country having a gulag of secret prisons in which it tortures people. I have loved America all my life, even though I have often disagreed with the government. But this seems to me so preposterous, so monstrous. My mind is a little bent and my heart is a little broken this morning.

Maybe I should try to get a grip -- after all, it's just this one administration that I had more cause than most to realize was full of inadequate people going in. And even at that, it seems to be mostly Vice President Cheney. And after all, we were badly frightened by 9-11, whichwas a horrible event. "Only" nine senators voted against the prohibition of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of persons under custody or control the United States." Nine out of 100. Should we be proud? Should we cry?

"We do not torture," said our pitifully inarticulate president, straining through emphasis and repetition to erase the obvious.

A string of prisons in Eastern Europe in which suspects are held and tortured indefinitely, without trial, without lawyers, without the right to confront their accusers, without knowing the evidence or the charges against them, if any. Forever. It's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich." Another secret prison in the midst of a military camp on an island run by an infamous dictator. Prisoner without a name, cell without a number.

Who are we? What have we become? The shining city on a hill, the beacon and bastion of refuge and freedom, a country born amidst the most magnificent ideals of freedom and justice, the greatest political heritage ever given to any people anywhere.

I am baffled by these "arguments": But we're talking about really awful people, cries the harassed press secretary. People like X and Y and Z (after a time, one forgets all the names of the No. 2's after bin Laden we have captured). The SS and the Gestapo and the KVD weren't all that nice, either.

Then I hear the familiar tinniness of the fake machismo I know so well from George W. Bush and all the other frat boys who never went to Vietnam and never got over the guilt.

"Sometimes you gotta play rough," said Dick Cheney. No shit, Dick? Now why don't you tell that to John McCain?

I have known George W. Bush since we were both in high school -- we have dozens of mutual friends. I have written two books about him and so have interviewed many dozens more who know him well in one way or another. Spare me the tough talk. He didn't play football -- he was a cheerleader. "He is really competitive," said one friend. "You wouldn't believe how tough he is on a tennis court!" Just cut the macho crap -- I don't want to hear it.

If you are dead to all sense of morality (please let me not go off on the stinking sanctimony of this crowd), let us still reason together on the famous American common ground of practicality. Torture. Does. Not. Work.

Torture does not work. Ask the United States military. Ask the Israelis.

There seems to be some fantastic scenario floating around -- if Osama bin Laden had an atomic bomb hidden in a locker at Grand Central Station, and it was due to go off in 12 hours, and we had him in prison ... I seem to have missed some important television program on this theme. I am told it was fiction, but it must have been really scary -- it certainly seems to have unbalanced the minds of some of our fellow citizens.

Torture does not work. It is not productive. It does not yield important, timely information. That is in the movies. This is reality.

I grew up with all this pathetic Texas tough: Everybody here knows you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs; and this ain't beanbag; and I'll knock your jaw so far back, you'll scratch your throat with your front teeth; and I'm gonna cloud up and rain all over you; and I'm gonna open me a can of whip-ass...

And that'll show 'em, won't it? Take some miserable human being alone and helpless in a cell, completely under your control, and torture him. Boy, that is some kind of manly, ain't it?

"The CIA is holding an unknown number of prisoners in secret detention centers abroad. In violation of the Geneva Conventions, it has refused to register those detainees with the International Red Cross or to allow visits by its inspectors. Its prisoners have 'disappeared,' like the victims of some dictatorships." -- The Washington Post.

Why did we bother to beat the Soviet Union if we were just going to become it? Shame. Shame. Shame.

[To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com/.]

COPYRIGHT 2005 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Two kinds of religion, by Rev. Brian Stein-Webber, Director - Interfaith Council of Contra Costa Co.

[The following remarks are excerpted from an address given to:]

Interfaith Council of Contra Costa County

November 6, 2005

Islamic Center of San Ramon, CA 

 

There are at least two kinds of religion. (Allow me to say this first: the word 'religion' is from the roots 're-' and 'lig-.' Meaning 'to reconnect.' So the purpose of religion is to reconnect us with our past or some revelation or a person's life.) So there are two kinds of religion. One which seeks to reconnect us with traditions of life, and another with traditions of death. Too strong of words?

      There is a linguist, cultural critic and theorist named Rene Girard, professor emeritus of Stanford University, who posits that the roots of civilization rise from a religion of violence, in which a scapegoat was chosen by a mob who were conflicted by their competing desires, and the scapegoat was killed, which so miraculously stilled the mob that the scapegoat was determined to be divine, and worshiped, and so the sacrifice was reenacted at appropriate intervals in order to maintain and restore civil order. The distinction between good violence and bad violence led fairly quickly to the moral baptizing of aggression towards one's neighbors.

      We are witnessing in our country an attempt to reassert this old religion, with disastrous consequences. Our war machine is stealing from our people. It is voracious. And coupled with a mindset that we should not bother ourselves with society's wounded, nor ask those well enough off to shoulder a part of that burden, it might very well bring us to the brink of doom. Unless those who are committed to reconnect to the traditions of life come forward. And by traditions of life, I mean love, compassion, submission, humility, non-attachment, unconditional regard.

      So if, as I suggest, our violence is a religious problem, our non-violence must be a religious solution. Religious institutions themselves tend to be subject to a form of backsliding. The principles of the teacher can be forgotten or manipulated or distorted so that the way we should treat each other the earth are subsumed to other purposes. We must listen closely to the heart of God, as much as is possible, so that we may know the way to go. Those who believe that in a coming apocalypse, religion will play a vital role, are right. But what some of them might not see is that religion is fighting religion. I do not say God is fighting God. As Abraham Lincoln said in his second inaugural address about the two sides fighting the Civil War,

     "Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may see strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes."

      God does not fight God. God does not seek vengeance. So when my sister called me and said that in a social visit with a Christian pastor and his wife, when the couple said that the tsunami in Southeast Asia happened because the population there is largely Muslim, and my sister said that she immediately had a terrible feeling in her stomach, I told her to trust her stomach, that the god they worship who tells them such a thing is not God Almighty, that they have spoken out of their ignorance.

      Do you see the challenge that is set before us? It is to truly follow in the way of Jesus the peacemaker, of Mohammed and Moses, Baha'ullah and Guru Nanak, Amma and Anandima, Thoreau and Emerson, Gandhi and King, Parks and Day, Baker Eddy and Black Elk. For even though they don't all say the same thing, it is close enough for our purposes. We are truly engaged in a great battle, but it is a battle that will not be won with traditional weapons. It will only be won by laying down our weapons, whereby there will be no losers.

      The blessings of life to you.

The death of compassionate conservatism

by Jim Wallis

Urgent Action Alert: Call Rep. Tauscher now at (800)
426-8073. Say "no" to a morally bankrupt budget.

Last week, I spoke with other religious leaders at a
press conference in the U.S. Capitol, urging the House
of Representatives to oppose cuts in social services
in their budget bill. When it was over, we walked to
the rotunda to offer a prayer for our nation and its
leaders, that they would do the right thing for people
in poverty. Suddenly, we were face to face with
Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and took the
opportunity to deliver our message directly to him. He
listened politely, but offered little response.

The House is scheduled to begin debate tomorrow on its
budget bill, which includes $54 billion in cuts. On
the table are cuts of $9.5 billion in Medicaid - by
requiring co-pays for pregnant women and children for
the first time; $8 billion in foster care, child
support enforcement, and aid to the disabled; and $844
million in the Food Stamps Program, which would
prevent 300,000 people from receiving food stamps.
Forty thousand children would be cut from
reduced-price school lunches. Lawmakers intend to
follow these with a further cut of $70 billion in
taxes that will primarily benefit the top 3% of
taxpayers. The message from Congress is that in
response to Hurricane Katrina, we're going to cut
services for the poor, cut taxes for the rich, and
increase deficits for our children and grandchildren.

These plans for deep cuts to social supports, paid for
by tax cuts for the wealthiest, are contrary to the
national priorities we need to protect our most
vulnerable citizens. We need strong moral leadership
in Congress, especially during this time of war,
record deficits, rising poverty and hunger, and
natural disasters. Cutting food stamps and health care
that meet the basic needs of poor families is an
outrage. Cutting social services to pay for further
tax cuts for the rich is a moral travesty that
violates biblical priorities. The House leadership
seems to be saying they literally want to take food
from the mouths of children to make rich people
richer. If this ideology and politics of rich over
poor prevails and our leaders fail to govern from a
set of moral values, then the religious community must
conclude that compassionate conservatism is dead.

As this battle for the budget unfolds, I am calling on
members of Congress, some of whom make much out of
their faith, to start Bible studies before they cast
votes to cut services that will further harm the
weakest in our nation. They should focus on the gospel
imperative - what Jesus tells us about our obligations
to the "least of these." Some of them have heard the
slogan "What would Jesus do?" Now they should ask,
"What would Jesus cut?" Budgets are moral documents,
and they reflect our national priorities and values.
In the name of social conscience, fiscal
responsibility, equal opportunity, protecting our
communities, and the very idea of a common good, the
upcoming budget votes will be closely watched by
people of faith.

I urge you to read the alert that follows, pick up
your phone, and call your member of Congress. Tell him
or her to show political will in standing up for the
least of these, as Jesus reminds us.

Call Rep. Tauscher now, toll-free:

(800) 426-8073 (Thank you, American Friends Service
Committee).

The House of Representatives will vote on this immoral
budget proposal as early as Thursday of this week, and
a one-minute call from you and others could mean the
difference between a "yea" or a "nay" vote from Rep.
Tauscher. Dialing the number above will get you to the
Capitol switchboard. When you reach an operator, ask
for Rep. Tauscher, and when connected, say something
like:

"As a person of faith from California, I urge Rep.
Tauscher to vote "no" on this immoral budget bill that
cuts $54 billion in vital services to vulnerable
people, including Medicaid, foster care, food stamps,
and child support. These cuts will hurt survivors of
Katrina and countless working families. Along with
proposed tax cuts for the super-wealthy, these are the
wrong priorities at the wrong time."

After you call, click here to tell 10 friends about
our call-in day. With your help, we can jam the phone
lines for justice in Washington! Spreading the word
about this outrage is critical to the success of our
campaign.