Healing Israel/Palestine

The Solution To The Conflict I Favor

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I wonder if the Israeli government now regrets that it didn’t consider the Arab League peace offer that was first issued in 2002 and then again in 2007. Every Arab state signed it and it was strongly backed by the Saudis who, in fact, drafted it.
It’s now called the Arab League Initiative but it actually began as a proposal by Saudi King Abdullah to Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. Friedman announced it to the world in his column and it evolved, almost incredibly, into a full blown offer to Israel by the entire Arab world (yes, every single Arab country and the Palestinians). In exchange for a return to the ’67 borders, Israel would not only achieve peace but normalization of relations with the Arab world: trade, travel, educational and cultural exchanges, security arrangements etc.

Culture

Yari Yari Ntoaso: An Upcoming Conference for African Women Writers

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As International Women’s Day celebrations continue, the Organization of Women Writers of Africa Inc (OWWA) seeks to bring Black women writers to Ghana. Yari Yari Ntoaso: Continuing the Dialogue is the theme of OWWA’s conference scheduled to be held in Accra on May 16-19. The word yari, from the Kuranko language of Sierra Leone means future while ntoaso from the Akan language of Ghana translates as understanding and agreement. According to Conference Director, Brooklyn College Assistant Professor and poet, Rosamond King, “this Yari Yari will extend the dialogue of the first two Yari Yaris, which put hundreds of women writers and scholars in discussion with thousands of people”.

Culture

The Problem With Black Churches in the Public Arena

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Are black churches the best (or even a reliable) mechanism for shaping public thought and policy, and for distributing public resources? Simply put, should black churches play a role in shaping the public arena and the public life of African Americans?

Gender and Sexuality

Muslim Women’s History Month: Spotlight on Noor Inayat Khan

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As a woman, I welcome the month of March—Women’s History Month—each year as an opportunity to pay tribute to women who have made significant contributions to our world. As a Muslim woman, I also look forward to this month as a time to recognize and celebrate the contributions Muslim women have made to the sciences, literature, honorable struggles such as the French Resistance, and so much more. During a time when women in Islam are viewed as dependent, covered up, and oppressed, I look forward to the narratives of strong, independent, and intelligent Muslim women of the past as a much-needed boost to the generally negative and (incorrectly) chauvinistic paintbrush that Islam has been painted with over the last few centuries. This month I will write a series of posts about several little-known Muslim women from whom I personally am honored to learn, and who can demonstrate what Islam really offers to women in terms of freedom, creativity, and authority.

Politics & Society

Rand Paul vs. Michael Moore

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Anyone who has failed to note the complete capitulation of American progressives to the Obama line should consider the dramatic contrast posed today on the question of the president’s “right” to assassinate American citizens.

Healing Israel/Palestine

How Obama Defeated The Israel Lobby

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I am not one for admitting I am wrong but sometimes the evidence is so overwhelming that I have to say it. I was wrong.
Specifically I have been repeatedly wrong when I said that the Israel Lobby could not be defeated unless and until the President of the United States confronted it directly. In that situation, I always believed the United States would prevail. I did not understand that a deft president could beat the lobby through indirect means — by quietly using his authority to prevail.

Inter-Culturalism

“What the Hell’s the Presidency for?”

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On Monday of this week, the police chief of Montgomery, Alabama, formally apologized to Georgia Congressman John Lewis, for what the police did not do in May 1961 – protect Lewis and the other young Freedom Riders who arrived at the city’s Greyhound Bus station and were summarily beaten by a white mob. The day before the ceremony (the first time anyone had ever apologized to him for that particular thrashing, the congressman noted), Lewis, Vice President Joe Biden and 5,000 others joined in an annual reenactment of the 50-mile March from Selma, which led to passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. On that occasion 48 years ago, state troopers took a less passive approach and brutalized Lewis and others themselves. A few days before the reenactment, President Obama unveiled a statue of Rosa Parks that will stand permanently in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall, making her the first African American women to be so honored. One name that doesn’t figure notably in these various commemorations is that of Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Health

Materialism and the Logic of Capitalism

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Resistance to capitalism must articulate a vision, not just call for the creation of opposition institutions. A world that has no sacred aspect, a world of mere heaps of matter, is a world devoid of ethics a priori. In such a world, the word oppression is meaningless, and justice is a legal term only. If we are going to challenge oppression and injustice, we have to believe that these are real categories of action, and this demands what is today a radical assertion: people are not just collections of cells, they are real relational entities, and ethics is the ontologically valid study of how such entities can exist and thrive in harmony. Hence, the materialist determinism of Marxism, though not flat-out denied, must be balanced-Hegel wasn’t standing on his head after all. And the desperate post-Romanticism of anarchism must be reconciled with itself-the dualism inherent in it must be transcended and a unity achieved.

Healing Israel/Palestine

Create The Backlash Against AIPAC Exempting Israel From Sequester

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It is clear from the article that Israelis are worried about that backlash, almost as much as AIPAC is untroubled by it. It is hard to believe, but it’s a fact, that AIPAC and its associated lobbying organizations are far more hard line than even the Netanyahu government. AIPAC relishes going to war with a U.S. President because it is a show of macho power and helps fundraising efforts. The Israeli government, which has skin in what AIPAC considers a game, is more cautious. (Ultimately, the Long Islanders of AIPAC are safe regardless of what happens to Israel; they can always find another hobby. Israelis can’t.)