Month: April 2010

Hillary Clinton shows that the US is now openly kissing-up to Israel, but not just Israel: Israeli right wing extremists like Netanyahu and the Likud project to continue colonizing all of original Palestine.
Uri Avnery, founder of the Israeli peace group, Gush Shalom, put it right in this recent article, In the Name of Zionism, when he bluntly admitted that Zionism controls American foreign policy. It is an illusion to believe that the US State Department runs our foreign policy when it comes to Israel and the Middle East.

Here is just a brief excerpt:

The leaders of the “Zionist State” depend to a large extent upon the Diaspora and use it for their own purposes. The Exile-Jewish AIPAC ensures the subjection of the US Congress to the will of the Israeli government. The “Anti-Defamation League” (which should more properly be called the “Defamation League”) is terrorizing the American media in order to prevent any criticism of Israeli policy. In the past, the United Jewish Appeal was essential for the economic wellbeing of Israel.

For years, the foreign policy of Israel has been based upon the power of the Jewish “exile” community in the US. Every country, from Egypt to Uzbekistan, knew that if it wanted aid from the American Congress, it had first of all to acquire the support of Israel. In order to get access to the American Sultan, they first had to get past the Israeli gate-keeper.

Full Article HERE

Al Jezeera reported that the Palestinians are now accusing Washington of killing all hope of reviving the peace process with the Israelis, as the continuation of settlement building is given Washington’s approval. As the above kissy video tells, Hillary Clinton, who represents US foreign policy, signaled a complete U-turn on settlement building. “The issue is not now a precondition for negotiations.”

In short, the Likud government is now free to build and expand settlements at will, while it delays and stalls during what will only be low-level “proximity” talks, i.e., the gateway to whether the Israelis and Palestinians will ever actually get to real peace negotiations. One is reminded here of the tactics of other Likud PM’s like Shamir and Sharon, who promised incessant talk without substance, as the colonization of Palestine continued.

Israel now controls 60% of the West Bank and all of East Jerusalem.

Welcome to Friday Foto Flogging, a place to share your photos and photography news. We were inspired by the folks at European Tribune who post a regular Friday Photoblog series to try the same on this side of the virtual Atlantic. We also thought foto folks would enjoy seeing some other websites so each week we’ll introduce a different photo website.

This Week’s Theme: Quick Shots. Pictures you took in a hurry. And tell us why you hurried, if you want.

Website(s) of the Week: Swimming w/ sperm whales off the coast of the Dominica in the Caribbean.

AndiF’s Why Were These Quick Shots?

	Because I kept having to clean big wet splotches off my lens and off of me. Click image for larger version
	Because the light was changing even as I took the shot. Click image for larger version
	Because I was driving. Click image for larger version

olivia quick shots

	Quick fish. Click image for larger version
	Through the car window, on a curvy mountain road. Click image for larger version
	Making pico de gallo … and hungry. Click image for larger version

Next Week’s Theme: A day in your life … as usual, interpret as you wish. Some ideas: morning/noon/evening, a particular project you’re working on at the moment (or in the past), things you see on your way to work or as you go about your daily routine.

Info on Posting Photos

When you post your photos, please keep the width at 500 or less for the sake of our Bootribers who are on dial-up. If you want to post clickable thumbnails but aren’t sure how, check out this diary:
Clickable Thumbnails. If you haven’t yet joined a photo-hosting site, here are some to consider: Photobucket, Flickr, ImageShack, and Picasa.

Previous Friday Foto Flogs

FFFs 1-36	FFFs 37-72	What is it?	DIY
Begin/End	Power	Random	Quiet

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Senate Democratic leaders will hold a news conference on immigration reform

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

What are the chances that British Petroleum and Transocean will pay us back for the staggering costs of cleaning up the mess from their exploded oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico? The Washington Post reports that the oil is already washing ashore:

An oil spill that threatened to eclipse even the Exxon Valdez disaster spread out of control with a faint sheen washing ashore along the Gulf Coast Thursday night as fishermen rushed to scoop up shrimp and crews spread floating barriers around marshes.

The spill was bigger than imagined – five times more than first estimated – and closer. Faint fingers of oily sheen were reaching the Mississippi River delta, lapping the Louisiana shoreline in long, thin lines.

You are going to love this next part (emphasis mine):

Government officials said the blown-out well 40 miles offshore is spewing five times as much oil into the water as originally estimated – about 5,000 barrels, or 200,000 gallons, a day.

At that rate, the spill could eclipse the worst oil spill in U.S. history – the 11 million gallons that leaked from the grounded tanker Exxon Valdez in Alaska’s Prince William Sound in 1989 – in the three months it could take to drill a relief well and plug the gushing well 5,000 feet underwater on the sea floor.

Ultimately, the spill could grow much larger than the Valdez because Gulf of Mexico wells tap deposits that hold many times more oil than a single tanker.

Okay, so it is gushing 200,000 gallons of crude oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico and it will take three months to plug it up. And it’s already washing up onto the Louisiana coast. I think it’s safe to say that this is an ecological apocalypse and it’s going to destroy the fishing industry on the Gulf Coast and cost billions (perhaps a trillion) to clean up as best we can. It can’t be completely cleaned up, and you can’t fix species extinction.

I hope the American taxpayer isn’t left holding the bill.

While a lot of polling shows a quite tolerant attitude towards undocumented workers, Gallup shows how meaningless those results can be.

Most Americans have heard about Arizona’s tough new immigration law, and they generally support it. The law was passed partly in response to a lack of federal action on the issue. Since the Arizona bill became law, congressional Democrats have considered taking up the issue in the coming weeks, though this initial read on public opinion toward the Arizona law suggests Americans may not necessarily back an attempt to supersede or otherwise undermine it.

Meanwhile, the Democrats plan on bringing up an immigration bill even if they have no Republican support for it. If it passes, great, but in the much more likely scenario where it doesn’t pass, we have to ask ourselves…does trying and failing to pass a good immigration bill with 59 members of the caucus make it more or less likely that we’ll pass a good immigration bill next year when we have a smaller majority?

Yes, forcing the Republicans to filibuster an immigration bill will galvanize the Latino vote, perhaps mitigating our losses in the fall a bit, but from a policy point of view, isn’t it a dubious strategy, at best?

If this is what they want to do, I’ll support it and make arguments for why we need immigration reform. But, unless they can secure the Republican votes to pass something, I think it’s likely to result in the following:

It will stir up the worst instincts of the Republican Party, who will stand united in opposition to the bill, calling it amnesty, and racially polarizing the country even further than it is right now. But, despite this sickening display, the Republicans will still make major gains in the midterms (much of their gains are already cooked in the dough), giving the impression that the effort to pass immigration reform backfired (even if it actually helped). Then, next year, the Republicans will be even less inclined to tackle the issue, and Democrats will not even think of doing something without Republican support. The press, having seen the issue burn Bush and Obama in turn, will treat the issue like HillaryCare, and the only way to pass something in the next decade and a half will be to effectively let Tom Tancredo write the bill.

I’m sorry to be a pessimist on this issue, but I am. Most Americans like the Arizona law. It’s sad and depressing. But it does tell us something about the prospects of passing acceptable immigration reform between now and November. Doesn’t it?

What this means, I don’t know.

Will BP pay for every minute of the thousands of hours of personnel time the government, in all its forms, has used to respond to this catastrophe? I highly doubt it. Will it pay for every resource, every bit of money the government uses, whether “coordinating” with BP or actively assisting in the clean-up? This is to say nothing of BP’s laughable mewling about spending “6 million a day” on it, which is something around .1% of their YEARLY PROFITS.

Honestly, if the government had any balls they would treat BP like no-bid contractors treat the defense department. And if BP doesn’t like the bill they can kindly leave the continental shelf and befoul some less self-respecting nation’s coastline thank you.

But here’s the larger issue. I’m not an expert on oil clean-up. But when tens of thousands of barrels of oil, and possibly much, much more, spills across hundreds of square miles of open water and hundreds of miles of coastline, there is no such thing as a “clean up”. You don’t clean that up. Maybe, with tens of thousands of man hours and god knows how much money, you succeed in removing a high percentage of the oil. But let’s not have any illusions about what is left. The area is not “clean”. You’ve just gone from large scale habitat annihilation to very thorough and intractable habitat degradation. That’s not “clean”.

Here’s the basic fact: even if you allow that there could be such a thing as a “total cost” for the clean-up, like some kind of enormous bill for services rendered, all of which BP is paying for, BP most definitely will not be paying for the incalculable environmental damage of this or any other oil spill. We all pay for that, and not this year but forever.

Florida Governor Charlie Crist will announce today that he is leaving the Republican Party and will seek a U.S. Senate seat as an independent. Chris Cillizza is correct in making the following observations:

Which side will he caucus with if elected?: Crist is almost certain to deflect this question, which will be asked of him repeatedly if he goes independent. But, his side-stepping won’t stop it from being asked until it’s answered. While a governor can get away with avoiding party labels — the essence of the job is competency and accomplishments not partisanship — a Senator simply cannot. Federal races are, by their very nature, far more partisan affairs and it’s impossible for any candidate to avoid answering the question of which side they will caucus with if they get elected. Crist will undoubtedly cast his decision as a sort of “pox on both your houses” choice but, at the end of the day, there is no independent caucus. (The two elected independents — Sens. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Bernie Sanders of Vermont both caucus with Democrats.) Crist is almost certain to have to choose a side and, in so doing, runs the risk of losing votes — no matter which side he picks.

As I see it, Crist has almost no choice but to say that he will caucus with the Democrats. It’s not that making that declaration will help him win the election exactly, but his divorce from the Republican Party will be made total by the actions of the Republican Party.

Start with the fact that NRSC Chairman John Cornyn is dumping Crist despite having recruited him heavily to get into the race. Then consider that there will be coordinated campaign to defund his campaign by making him return money to his donors. And then there’s this from the Florida Times-Union (emphasis mine):

Most of Crist’s Republican supporters and fundraisers will probably abandon him; volunteer support might also evaporate. Anyone who works for Crist’s Senate campaign and wants to work in future GOP campaigns will have to seriously consider leaving. At a time when fundraising is already slowing down, Crist would have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars rebuilding his organization.

While the Democratic Party will be supporting the winner of its primary (predicted right now to be Rep. Kendrick Meek), there will no comparable taboo on operatives who work for Crist ever working with the Democrats again. If Crist has any hope of staffing up, he’s going to have to turn to the centrist wing of Florida’s Democratic Party. He can have some success doing that if he promises to caucus with the Democrats, but not if he promises to caucus with the Republicans.

This is actually a useful development for demonstrating why I am so disdainful of third-party efforts to move the country in a better direction. I have nothing against a more progressive party pushing for more progressive change, but if you actually win election to Congress, you have to choose to caucus with either the Democrats or the Republicans if you want to have a seat on any committees. And if you want to keep those seats and your seniority, you have to show at least some allegiance to that party on procedural and substantive votes. There is no such thing as a true independent in Congress. Crist will have to make his choice, and if he chooses the Republicans he’s going to have trouble finding anyone to work for him and he’ll look like an idiot for promising to caucus with a party that has nothing but virulent and unhinged contempt for him.

If he wants to have any chance, Crist will eventually have to declare his intention to caucus with the Democrats. Unfortunately, this will severely diminish the prospects of a split on the right opening up an opportunity for the Democrat (presumably Rep. Meek) to pull off an upset victory. But it increases the chances that the Republicans will be lose a seat that they thought was safe.

It’s easy to overlook the many accomplishments of the Obama administration in their first year because so many of them were relatively low profile, or were little more than course corrections. But it will be very hard to overlook what the administration accomplishes this year. Whatever its shortcomings (and they are considerable), the health care bill was the most significant progressive legislation passed in this country since the passage of Medicare in July 1965. This will be followed by the most significant financial reforms since Franklin Delano Roosevelt grappled with the Great Depression. Before September, we should see a second lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court confirmed. If the administration accomplishes nothing else, it will still have assured itself of being in a league with the administrations of both FDR and LBJ for enduring consequence and progressive change. But the administration will accomplish more.

I’ve taken more criticism for questioning the decision to take up immigration reform this year than on anything else I’ve written in the last five years, but I didn’t say anything different from what the president said yesterday. Basically, I didn’t see the political will to pass immigration reform this year in the Democratic Caucus, and so I thought it would not pass and would create political problems without accomplishing anything. Harry Reid has had to walk back his promise to tackle immigration reform next after the financial reforms, and he will be introducing an energy bill instead. This makes sense for a couple of reasons. First, the House has already passed their version of the bill and the Senate has done their work in committee. In other words, the Senate is ready to debate an energy bill, but the same cannot be said about any immigration bill. Second, Obama has a three-pronged approach to fixing our economy. The three prongs are fixing our health care system, enacting financial reforms, and converting us to a green economy. Those priorities should pass in that order so that Obama can say that he has succeeded in implementing his economic plan. Only when his vision for fixing our economy is complete should he move on to other pressing issues.

The need to focus on the economy and jobs, combined with unprecedented Republican stalling tactics, means that the administration is behind schedule on keeping their promises to some of their most important constituencies: including the LGBT community and Labor. I will never tell the gay community to be patient because they are in the right to demand action now. But the proof of Obama’s commitment will be in what he delivers before November 2012. I expect that his record will be mixed. At a minimum, I think he will have eliminated the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy be then. I think there is a decent chance that the Employment Non-Discrimination Act will be law by then, too, but I am more doubtful that anything will be done to fix the Defense of Marriage Act. Some form of the Employee Free Choice Act should be passed by 2012, but if they don’t get to it this year it might not happen because of diminished majorities in Congress.

Keeping the long view, things are on track for an unbelievably successful and progressive presidency, but the big problem is still Afghanistan, which threatens to be Obama’s Vietnam if he doesn’t come to grips with reality. Our policy there is not working and has almost no prospect of working, even if the policy is changed.

Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

In Rwanda, more than 85 percent of the population’s livelihood depends on small-scale agriculture. And the majority of primary school students–roughly 60 percent– will return to rural areas to make their living in ways, instead of going on to secondary or vocational schooling or university.

With that in mind, in 2007, the organization CARE designed the  Farmers of the Future Initiative (FOFI) , a three year project that integrates modern and environmentally sustainable agriculture training into primary school curriculum in Rwanda–making traditional schooling more relevant to the average Rwandan student.

The project started with 27 pilot schools in nine districts: Nyamagabe and Nyaruguru Districts in the Southern Province, Gatsibo and Nyagatare Districts in the Eastern Province, and Karongi, Rutsiro, Rubavu, Nyabihu and Ngororero Districts in the Western Province.  Each pilot school received funding from CARE to invest in a school garden or farm.  After one year, profits from the garden went back into the school’s agriculture program while the other half was used to help another school, called a satellite school, start its own garden.  By the end of the project there were 28 satellite schools, each with its own garden started with the help of another school.

While maintaining the school gardens, students experimented and were trained in farming techniques that emphasize the preservation of natural resources as much as they do crop production, such as agroforestry, intercropping, mulching and compost, and non-chemical methods of pest and disease control.

According to Josephine Tuyishimire, a FOFI project coordinator, the school gardens also benefit students’ parents and their local community. As parents learn new farming techniques from their children, their neighbors also learned from them. “The population surrounding FOFI schools copied [the farming techniques] and replicated them at home.”

One boy, an orphan from Cyanika primary school in Nyamagabe District, who is living on his own, used irrigation and intercropping techniques he learned at school to start his own small garden. With the help of a teacher at the school he gained access to a local market to sell his vegetables and eventually earned enough money to purchase his own land. With the additional security that comes with land ownership, he continues to generate more income by selling his produce.

Helping students to be self-sufficient is especially beneficial for young women who are often kept out of school, but who can be “empowered in this project,” said Tuyishimire. “In the future they become self-reliant and less dependent on their male counterparts as breadwinners.” And women share their knowledge with their children, “passing these skills to future generations” to create future farmers who are educated in a way that allows them to self-sufficient and well-fed.

To read more about integrating agriculture into primary school education see:  School Feeding Programs Improve Livelihoods, Diets, and Local Economies, and How to Keep Kids Down on the Farm.

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AIPAC said it would eventually control our college campuses. Although it was not carried by the mainstream media, AIPAC announced that it would take over college campuses just as it has taken over Congress.

“This is how AIPAC operates in our nation’s capitol. This is how AIPAC must operate on our nation’s campuses.”

Last night, AIPAC showed us that it could indeed take over our college campuses, albeit as only a minority force which is capable of instilling fear in students of being anti-Israel, if not anti-Semitic, even though Israel is the source of human rights crimes against the Palestinian people.

Mondoweiss invited people to follow the voting on the UC Berkeley campus as well as the UC San Diego campus on divestment actions against companies that support the illegal occupation and colonization of Palestine and the inhuman Gaza siege.

Follow the UC divestment votes tonight

Both the UC Berkeley and UC San Diego Student Senates will be considering divestment bills tonight. Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Nora Barrows-Friedman and Rae Abileah will be live tweeting the proceedings at Berkeley and students at UC San Diego are tweeting from their meeting as well. You can follow all of their reports below or on their twitter pages –

A final Twitter message from JVP was:

#ucbdivest: a hush in the room, 13-5 motion to override fails, veto is sustained

Human rights lost.

In a similar action at UC San Diego,

1. voting yes for discharge, vote no to continue debate. Passes 13-10-4.
2. senate considering to discharge to a committee. Currently voting..13-12-2 for discharging to separate committee to rewrite resolution.

Tabling a vote to committee is the same as voting “no”. The tabling appeared to be influenced by the fact that Israel was being singled out for human rights abuses, even though the divestment action was against companies helping Israel continue the military occupation.

So AIPAC won, even though it was a minority vote that sustained the resolutions. Israel escaped the inevitable, and there were indications from the student body that this fight is not over.