MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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Uri Avnery’s peace proposal

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MEMO FOR OBAMA ON ISRAEL

For: the President-Elect, Mr. Barack Obama.

From: Uri Avnery, Israel.

The following humble suggestions are based on my 70 years of experience as an underground fighter, special forces soldier in the 1948 war, editor-in-chief of a newsmagazine, member of the Knesset and founding member of a peace movement:

-1- As far as Israeli-Arab peace is concerned, you should act from Day One.

-2- Israeli elections are due to take place in February 2009. You can have an indirect but important and constructive impact on the outcome, by announcing your unequivocal determination to achieve Israeli-Palestinian, Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-all-Arab peace in 2009.

-3- Unfortunately, all your predecessors since 1967 have played a double game. While paying lip service to peace, and sometimes going through the motions of making some effort for peace, they have in practice supported our governments in moving in the very opposite direction. In particular, they have given tacit approval to the building and enlargement of Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian and Syrian territories, each of which is a land mine on the road to peace.

-4- All the settlements are illegal in international law. The distinction sometimes made between “illegal” outposts and the other settlements is a propaganda ploy designed to obscure this simple truth.

-5- All the settlements since 1967 have been built with the express purpose of making a Palestinian state – and hence peace – impossible, by cutting the territory of the prospective State of Palestine into ribbons. Practically all our government departments and the army have openly or secretly helped to build, consolidate and enlarge the settlements – as confirmed by the 2005 report prepared for the government (!) by Lawyer Talia Sasson.

-6- By now, the number of settlers in the West Bank has reached some 250,000 (apart from the 200,000 settlers in the Greater Jerusalem area, whose status is somewhat different.) They are politically isolated, and sometimes detested by the majority of the Israel public, but enjoy significant support in the army and government ministries.

-7- No Israeli government would dare to confront the concentrated political and material might of the settlers. Such a confrontation would need very strong leadership and the unstinting support of the President of the United States to have any chance of success.

-8- Lacking these, all “peace negotiations” are a sham. The Israeli government and its US backers have done everything possible to prevent the negotiations with both the Palestinians and the Syrians from reaching any conclusion, for fear of provoking a confrontation with the settlers and their supporters. The present “Annapolis” negotiations are as hollow as all the preceding ones, each side keeping up the pretense for its own political interests.

-9- The Clinton administration, and even more so the Bush administration, allowed the Israeli government to keep up this pretense. It is therefore imperative to prevent members of these administrations from diverting your Middle Eastern policy into the old channels.

-10- It is important for you to make a complete new start, and to state this publicly. Discredited ideas and failed initiatives – such as the Bush “vision”, the Road Map, Annapolis and the like – should by thrown into the junkyard of history.

-11- To make a new start, the aim of American policy should be stated clearly and succinctly. This should be: to achieve a peace based on the Two-State Solution within a defined time-span (say by the end of 2009).

-12- It should be pointed out that this aim is based on a reassessment of the American national interest, in order to extract the poison from American-Arab and American-Muslim relations, strengthen peace-oriented regimes, defeat al-Qaeda-type terrorism, end the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and achieve a viable accommodation with Iran.

-13- The terms of Israeli-Palestinian peace are clear. They have been crystallized in thousands of hours of negotiations, conferences, meetings and conversations. They are:

13.1 A sovereign and viable State of Palestine will be established side by side with the State of Israel.

13.2 The border between the two states will be based on the pre-1967 Armistice Line (the “Green Line”). Insubstantial alterations can be arrived at by mutual agreement on an exchange of territories on a 1:1 basis.

13.3 East Jerusalem, including the Haram-al-Sharif (“Temple Mount”) and all Arab neighborhoods will serve as the capital of Palestine. West Jerusalem, including the Western Wall and all Jewish neighborhoods, will serve as the capital of Israel. A joint municipal authority, based on equality, may be established by mutual consent to administer the city as one territorial unit.

13.4 All Israeli settlements – except any which might be joined to Israel in the framework of a mutually agreed exchange of territories – will be evacuated (see 15 below).

13.5 Israel will recognize in principle the right of the refugees to return. A Joint Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, composed of Palestinian, Israeli and international historians, will examine the events of 1948 and 1967 and determine who was responsible for what. Each individual refugee will be given the choice between (1) repatriation to the State of Palestine, (2) remaining where he/she is living now and receiving generous compensation, (3) returning to Israel and being resettled, (4) emigrating to any other country, with generous compensation. The number of refugees who will return to Israeli territory will be fixed by mutual agreement, it being understood that nothing will be done that materially alters the demographic composition of the Israeli population. The large funds needed for the implementation of this solution must be provided by the international community in the interest of world peace. This will save much of the money spent today on military expenditure and direct grants from the US.

13.6 The West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip constitute one national unit. An extraterritorial connection (road, railway, tunnel or bridge) will connect the West Bank with the Gaza Strip.

13.7 Israel and Syria will sign a peace agreement. Israel will withdraw to the pre-1967 line and all settlements on the Golan Heights will be dismantled. Syria will cease all anti-Israeli activities conducted directly or by proxy. The two parties will establish normal relations between them.

13.8 In accordance with the Saudi Peace Initiative, all member states of the Arab League will recognize Israel and establish normal relations with it. Talks about a future Middle Eastern Union, on the model of the EU, possibly to include Turkey and Iran, may be considered.

-14- Palestinian unity is essential for peace. Peace made with only one section of the people is worthless. The US will facilitate Palestinian reconciliation and the unification of Palestinian structures. To this end, the US will end its boycott of Hamas, which won the last elections, start a political dialogue with the movement and encourage Israel to do the same. The US will respect any result of democratic Palestinian elections.

-15- The US will aid the government of Israel in confronting the settlement problem. As from now, settlers will be given one year to leave the occupied territories voluntarily in return for compensation that will allow them to build their homes in Israel proper. After that, all settlements – except those within any areas to be joined to Israel under the peace agreement – will be evacuated.

-16- I suggest that you, as President of the United States, come to Israel and address the Israeli people personally, not only from the rostrum of the Knesset but also at a mass rally in Tel-Aviv’s Rabin Square. President Anwar Sadat of Egypt came to Israel in 1977, and, by addressing the Israeli people directly, completely changed their attitude towards peace with Egypt. At present, most Israelis feel insecure, uncertain and afraid of any daring peace initiative, partly because of a deep distrust of anything coming from the Arab side. Your personal intervention, at the critical moment, could literally do wonders in creating the psychological basis for peace.

This article was published in the current issue of the progressive Jewish-American monthly TIKKUN.

January 4, 2009
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A Hero of the Cuban Revolution

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By the end of a Monday, I felt it was Friday ... Benicio Del Toro in Che

'By the end of a Monday, I felt it was Friday' ... Benicio Del Toro in Che

Che – Part 1

(Cert 15)

Philip French by Philip French , The Observer, Sunday 4 January 2009

This month is the 50th anniversary of the overthrow of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista and his replacement by Fidel Castro, who, sadly enough, was also to become a dictator. Shortly after the revolution, however, there emerged a more attractive and charismatic figure, his Argentinian lieutenant Ernesto “Che” Guevara, who became one of the great heroes of the 1960s counterculture and was murdered by the Bolivian army in association with the CIA in 1967. There was much talk at the time of a movie about Che’s life. Tony Richardson was going to make one from a screenplay by Alan Sillitoe and one of the greatest political film-makers, Italian Marxist Francesco Rosi, sent posters all over Europe announcing his search for an unknown Che lookalike.

In the event, Hollywood got in first with Richard Fleischer’s Che! (1969), co-scripted by the formerly black-listed Michael Wilson, co-author of Lawrence of Arabia, with Omar Sharif as a glamorous Che and Jack Palance as a villainous drunken Fidel. Told in flashback from Che’s death, it was a compromised work in almost every way that pleased neither his friends nor his enemies.

Now, partly, one supposes, as a reaction against the policies of the Bush administration, there has been a renewed interest in Che and he’s jumped off the T-shirts and back into the cinema, starting with The Motorcycle Diaries, produced by Robert Redford and directed by Brazilian Walter Salles. In that attractive film, the young Che (handsome Gael García Bernal), newly graduated from medical school in Buenos Aires, makes a lengthy journey around South America with a chum in the early 1950s and is politicised by the experience.

Steven Soderbergh‘s two-part film picks up from there. The first part opens with Che (Benicio Del Toro) meeting Fidel in Mexico City in 1955 (both clean shaven at the time) and joining the small invasion party that established a base in the Sierra Maestra in Cuba. It ends in January 1959 when the 30-year-old Che, cautioning against triumphalism and forbidding his men to indulge in looting, heads towards Havana to begin what he considers the really important part of the revolution, creating a new kind of society.

It’s an intelligent, fast-moving, well-researched film, based in part on Che’s posthumously published Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War, offering both a convincing account of the bitter, hard-fought struggle and a portrait of a great and complex revolutionary. He was first valued for his medical skills, but soon became such an essential adviser that Fidel tried to keep him out of harm’s way.

Che stands alongside his fellow communist Leon Trotsky as a model of the intellectual as man of action. Like him, he was a writer, thinker, strategist and tactician. Ruthless men of honour, they made up in courage and willpower what they lacked in physique (Che suffered throughout his life from chronic asthma) and died violently in exile. All this comes out vividly in the course of an exciting, adventurous narrative with Guevara figuring in virtually every scene.

The war is shot in colour, into which Soderbergh, who also photographed the film, cuts black-and-white, newsreel-style footage of Che’s subsequent appearances in New York following the revolution. In these flash-forwards, he defends Cuban policy in private discussion and publicly before the United Nations, challenging a hostile America, represented by Adlai Stevenson, and representatives of right-wing Latin American countries. Del Toro shows Che growing through the challenges and privations of the struggle, and one looks forward to Che – Part 2 which opens towards the end of February.

January 4, 2009
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Spike Lee: 'Barack changes everything'

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Lee lays it down for the Guardian

Ever since a college project filming riots in New York in 1977, Spike Lee has used his movies to provide an alternative commentary on life in his home country. Here, he tells John Colapinto what the future holds now that Obama has torn up the script for African-Americans

One morning last June, Spike Lee arrived early at the Sony Pictures Studios, in Culver City, California, to record the score for his new feature, Miracle at St Anna, a second world war film about the US Army’s 92nd Division, an all-black unit that battled the Nazis during the Italian campaign. Lee was joined in the studio’s control room by his music-recording team. A large window overlooked the cavernous soundstage where Judy Garland recorded “Over the Rainbow”, in 1938, when the lot belonged to MGM. A 95-piece orchestra that Lee had engaged had not yet arrived.

A month earlier, at a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival, Lee had sparked a very public feud with Clint Eastwood when he accused him of having omitted black soldiers from his two recent movies about Iwo Jima, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. (Historians estimate that between 700 and 900 black servicemen participated in the battle.) The spat had escalated quickly. Eastwood told the Guardian that he had left out the black soldiers because none had actually raised the flag, adding that “a guy like that should shut his face”. Lee shot back, telling ABCNews.com, “The man is not my father and we’re not on a plantation either.”

Lee’s remarks appeared online three days before he began recording the score for Miracle at St Anna. Lee sees the movie, the first by a major American director to treat the experience of black soldiers in the war, as redress not only for Eastwood’s pictures but for an all-white Hollywood vision of the second world war which dates to the 1962 John Wayne movie The Longest Day – and before.

As the orchestra began to gather on the soundstage, Lee scribbled notes about the score on a yellow legal pad. He is 5ft 6in, with a barrel chest and a pigeon-toed walk. His baleful, half-hooded eyes peered out from behind tortoiseshell frames. There was a diamond stud in his left earlobe. He is 51, has a small bald spot at the crown of his short Afro, and wore an orange T-shirt with a picture of Barack Obama and the word “REPRESENT”.

It’s been more than 20 years since Lee’s debut, the 1986 movie She’s Gotta Have It – a breezy sex comedy about a liberated African-American woman and her three male suitors – and he remains Hollywood’s most prominent black filmmaker. He has directed 18 features, three of which (Do the Right Thing, Jungle Fever, and Malcolm X) have earnt him a reputation as a filmmaker obsessed with race. Releasing movies at an average of nearly one a year, Lee has maintained a pace matched only by Woody Allen.

Lee is the artistic director of NYU’s graduate film programme, where he teaches a master class in directing. He also makes music videos and TV ads (he has done spots for Converse, Jaguar, Taco Bell and Ben & Jerry’s, among others) and has made two superb documentaries: 4 Little Girls, about the 1963 bombing by the Ku Klux Klan of a black church in Alabama, and When the Levees Broke, about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He is able to accomplish so much in part because he often rises at 5am. “You want to get a lot done, you gotta get up in the morning,” he told me. The rest, he says, is “time management”. But Lee’s output also reflects the unusual fecundity of his imagination. “Spike was the idea man,” Herb Eichelberger, who taught Lee in an undergraduate film course in Atlanta in 1977, told me. “He was a good writer, and he would explore those ideas and turn them into full-blown mini-epics.”

Continue . . .

January 4, 2009
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A fight to the death?

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Why Israel went to war in Gaza by Chris McGreal in Jerusalem, The Observer, Sunday 4 January 2009
‘Are you a target if you voted for Hamas?’ Last night Israel sent its ground forces across the border into Gaza as it escalated its brutal assault on Hamas. As a large-scale invasion of the Palestinian territory appears to be getting under way, Chris McGreal reports from Jerusalem on Israel’s hidden strategy to persuade the world of the justice of its cause in its battle with a bitter ideological foe

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January 4, 2009
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Truths and hope

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The Central Virginia Progressive-The DAVISReport sends us You Can’t Fix What you Don’t Acknowledge-Can I get an Amen?

I am pleased to present this guest essay from my friend and colleague, Tyrone Nelson. A former school board candidate,Tyrone Nelson is well known in the greater Richmond Community. He is the pastor of the Sixth Mount Zion Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia,the president of the ecumenical social justice advocacy group, RISC (Richmonders Involved to Strengthen Communities)and serves on the board of the Gilpin Jackson Center, Historic Jackson Ward Association, and the Elegba Folklore Society.

Are We Serious? Some Truth Telling by Pastor Tyrone Nelson

On a recent trip to the barbershop, I overheard a middle aged woman speaking with unbridled passion about the “pay for play” plan to sell the United States Congressional Senate seat of our President-elect. She was amazed at “the level of corruption” and the “It’s all about me and my wallet” politicking that Illinois Governor Blagojevich had been accused of. I have heard a continuous flow of intense conversation and verbal hay making thrown the direction of Governor Blagojevich.

As flurries of allegations of crooked politics in Illinois and Chicago continues to threatens and distract from this great moment in American history, one thought continues to cross my mind, “ Do we seriously believe this is just happening in Illinois?” What would make us think that this behavior is inconceivable?

I believe that we can find evidence of corruption in more than a few organizations, religious bodies, non-profits, schools, fraternities/sororities, etc. You may say, “ but Pastor, most people are not asking for $500,000 fundraising gifts, jobs for spouses, and likewise”.
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January 1, 2009
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Presumption

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I have no problem whatsoever with Caroline Kennedy being named to the United States Senate seat from New York that Hillary Clinton will be vacating if she is confirmed as the new Secretary of State. In fact, I could offer a couple of powerful argument why Ms. Kennedy should be named (and I will later in this post) but an artist friend, Zina Saunders, sent me this piece that I could not resist posting:

Her Highn… I Mean, Senator Caroline Kennedy (by Zina Saunders, December 26th, 2008)

There’s been a lot of talk lately about Caroline Kennedy’s quest for the Senate seat being left vacant by Hillary Clinton. Questions have been raised about Kennedy’s qualifications and experience and financial entanglements …to read more, go here and here.

Caroline Kennedy’s bid is audacious, sure, and carries a certain presumptuousness that I think Ms. Saunders sought to puncture in this art. I love the piece. It is great, especially her depiction of the putative kingmakers, the Rev. Al and Uncle Moneybags. But her audacity is precisely the reason why I think Ms.Kennedy should be named to this seat. She has the stature to be presumptuous, to expect that the seat would be handed to her.

Yes, some of the people handling Ms. Kennedy’s bid have made missteps, including the efforts to strong-arm some political leaders to jump on-board. They need to show some class. But I blame New York Gov. David Paterson for most of the backlash that is beginning to build against Ms. Kennedy. The governor is outspoken and plainspoken and, often, that is part of his charm. Not in this case. Paterson has appeared, at times, petulant.  with reporters when discussing Ms. Kennedy’s bid. He needs to show some class.

Any of New York’s political class who gets the nod, Andrew Cuomo included, would come into the role with a tremendous status gap that the 51-year-old daughter of a martyred president of the United States has never known since the day she was born and would never suffer from as long as she lives.

Who could better serve the interest of New Yorkers? A woman who comes the closest to being America’s royalty, or some sweaty New York politician? Yeah, Chuck Schumer is great and Al D’Amato was, whatever, but it should not be that hard. I can understand wanting to puncture the kind of presumptuousness that attend to people like Caroline Kennedy, certainly. It can be unbecoming.

But Ms. Kennedy brings to her bid a record of public service equal to, if not better than, that of many who have sought the office.

When our carpet-bagging First Lady, Hillary Clinton, first sought the office, was she really that much more qualified than Caroline Kennedy is now? No. I believe New Yorkers start out way ahead with Caroline as their United States senator.

December 26, 2008
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Like I said . . .

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Patrick Fitzgerald, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois

Patrick Fitzgerald, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is a public menace.

He makes it hard for people to exist and behave as they normally would in their natural habitat. Rod Blagojevich, Tony Rezko and others were doing only what came natural when Fitzgerald decided to stick his nose in their business. I mean, who ever heard of a person being arrested for a shakedown, especially when done properly, like Rezko and Blago do it?

If it were left up to me, it would be Fitzgerald who will be led off to the hoosegow, not our beloved governor. Listen to this description of Clean Fitz:

Kent Redfield, a political scientist at the University of Illinois, said Fitzgerald used indictments to pressure the governor’s confidants to turn on one another.
“It’s a message: You are in my sights, and I’d like to get you to come in and talk to me,” Redfield said. “It puts pressure on the person you indicted and puts on notice the next person up the chain.”
In seven years as U.S. attorney in Chicago, Fitzgerald generally has won strong reviews from government and defense lawyers alike. Obama is said to be considering keeping Fitzgerald in his job even though the coveted spots typically turn over with a new administration. But defense lawyers who have faced Fitzgerald say he can be hard-nosed when it comes to even small fish trapped in the government’s net.
One former prosecutor who knew Fitzgerald 20 years ago, when the U.S. attorney was a junior defense lawyer, said he was zealous in pursuit of his goals and offended by violations of the public trust.
“His line between right and wrong is very bright, and it’s very easy for him to see that line,” the former prosecutor said. “If there’s a brick wall, he’ll take it down brick by brick.”

That’s just not right.

December 22, 2008
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According to Google

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At least its Analytics application, no one is seeing this post.

The photographer is a Michael Castielli and this image is licensed by Creative Commons in his name.

Is this cat fierce?

He certainly has a fierce visage. Or, is it curiousity, which, as you know, they say killed the cat. Unless I’m getting that saying mixed up with something else. But I don’t think so.

I hope you’ve guessed by now that this is a test post to be taken down later. It’s all part of the work “I” am doing on the site.

When “I” am done, the site will be very nice, very professional. Hopefully, even Google Analytics would work properly and measure the actual traffic to this site.

Alright. I wish I have a story to tell you about the cat but I don’t. He’s a good looking cat. That much I can say.

I am going to go now because this cat is beginning to scare me.

December 18, 2008
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Wacko Jacko's Mask of Zorro

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Michael Jackson off the deep, deeper, deepest end

Michael Jackson off the deep, deeper, deepest end

Michael Jackson steps out in his most bizarre outfit yet

By Simon Cable

He has never lacked creativity when it comes to fashioning a ‘disguise’.

But Michael Jackson’s latest effort is remarkable, even by his standards.

With his trademark trilby hat and a black eye mask, the troubled 50-year-old looked a dead ringer for Zorro.

December 13, 2008
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"A passion for justice"

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The Fed Who Blew the Whistle

Is he a hero or a criminal?

by Michael Isikoff

NEWSWEEK

From the magazine issue dated Dec 22, 2008

Thomas M. Tamm was entrusted with some of the government’s most important secrets. He had a Sensitive Compartmented Information security clearance, a level above Top Secret. Government agents had probed Tamm’s background, his friends and associates, and determined him trustworthy.

It’s easy to see why: he comes from a family of high-ranking FBI officials. During his childhood, he played under the desk of J. Edgar Hoover, and as an adult, he enjoyed a long and successful career as a prosecutor. Now gray-haired, 56 and fighting a paunch, Tamm prides himself on his personal rectitude. He has what his 23-year-old son, Terry, calls a “passion for justice.” For that reason, there was one secret he says he felt duty-bound to reveal.

In the spring of 2004, Tamm had just finished a yearlong stint at a Justice Department unit handling wiretaps of suspected terrorists and spies—a unit so sensitive that employees are required to put their hands through a biometric scanner to check their fingerprints upon entering. While there, Tamm stumbled upon the existence of a highly classified National Security Agency program that seemed to be eavesdropping on U.S. citizens. The unit had special rules that appeared to be hiding the NSA activities from a panel of federal judges who are required to approve such surveillance. When Tamm started asking questions, his supervisors told him to drop the subject. He says one volunteered that “the program” (as it was commonly called within the office) was “probably illegal.”

Continue . . .

December 13, 2008
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