The John Hagee-Rabbi Franklin Sound and Light Traveling Road Show
Protesting Faith Bible Chapel's support for Ariel, one of the larger West Bank settlements
Why the protest?
1. To protest the presence of Pastor John Hagee at the Faith Bible Chapel. Hagee’s Christians United For Israel are calling for the U.S. and/or Israel to bomb Iran. Hagee supports Israeli West Bank settlements and is opposed to a negotiated settlement that would include a viable Palestinian state. Homophobic, to boot
2. To protest that a prominent Denver rabbi, Rabbi Franklin who has a reputation for having supported the anti-apartheid movement in S. Africa when he worked there, would legitimize Hagee by appearing at the Faith Bible Chapel in concert with him
3. To support the current U.N, initiative that would grant Palestinian statehood; to support an end to the Israeli Occupation of the 1967 Territories and an international setttlement based upon U.N. resolutions.
4. In the Quaker tradition `to show witness’ against what is a political travesty – the alliance of mainstream Jewish organizations, in Colorado – the Allied Jewish Federation – with an organization as rightwing and politically reactionary as Christians United For Israel.
_____________________________ Read more…
Note…
Occup Denver Demonstration - October 15, 2011
Posted below is a message from Rabbi Michael Lerner, founder and moving force of the Tikkun Movement. A difficult person who can be as factional in his dealings with folks to the left of him as he accuses them of being, Lerner is still, a voice of Jewish humanism and one which I respect. A little too enthusiastic about Barack Obama and off the mark on his defense of NATO in Libya, he’s shown a great deal of courage on the Israeli-Palestinian issue and on the American political scene in general. Below is his statement on `Occupy Wall Street’, which is produced below in full and unedited.
I am not so concerned as Lerner seems to be about the failure, up until now, for this movement to come up with a clear message. This one of the criticisms of `Occupy Wall Street’ already coming from the right. No need to respond to them. They fear any manifestation of mass activity and are becoming increasingly nervous about the growth of this movement both in the USA and worldwide. And they should be. At this point what we have is a a global outbreak of pervasive anger and frustration. The target is not so vague, not in the least: it is the policies of finance capital and the political system that more and more promotes it at the expense of just about everyone… ie…the 99% the demonstrators claim to represent (and do). And more specific demands will emerge –and i do think in large measure – these demands will dominate the 2012 presidential elections, something that would not have happened (or not have happened to such a degree had this movement not exploded. Read more…
The Texas-Mexican Mafia-Iranian Revolutionary Guard Connection…or Resurrecting the Iranian Threat..
also published in Foreign Policy In Focus..
_____________________________________
“Up from the grave he arose; with a mighty triumph o’er his foes”
U.S. military bases surrounding Iran...
These are the opening lines of a Protestant hymn, which long ago a roommate of mine used to sing when he had one too many beers. As that happened more than once on those bygone days, I heard the refrain rather frequently. Today it rings a certain bell as the Obama Administration appears to be trying to resurrect its anti-Iranian coalition against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Let’s see…we are being told that a used car salesman in Texas of Iranian-American descent holding both Iranian and U.S passports, working in tandem with a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s security force were about to pass $1.5 million to the Zeta Mexican drug cartel so that the latter could assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. in his favorite restaurant in Washington D.C.
Hmmm… and here I thought that Colin Powell’s pathetic claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the United Nations (to justify the U.S. led invasion) in 2005 was an intellectual low point of U.S. foreign policy virtually impossible to match. Wrong again! Read more…
The Third Coming of John Hagee To Denver
previous pieces on the `sage from San Antonio’…
The Second Coming of John Hagee To Denver (September 13, 2010)
John Hagee: Second Coming Cancelled; Rapture Delayed (September 30, 2010)
Open Letter: John Hagee’s Pool: Swim At Your Own Risk; No Lifeguard on Duty (November 16, 2010)
______________________________________
Gaza: Four years of blockade...an open air prison...
He’s probably been in Denver far more than three times actually. In any event, John Hagee, Christian fundamentalist pastor from San Antonio, Texas and leader of what is called Christians United for Israel is returning to the mile high city. He’s scheduled to be the keynote speaker at the Faith Bible Chapel in Arvada (a suburb just west of Denver) on Sunday, October 16.
Scheduled to share the platform with him is Rabbi Selwyn Franklin of Denver’s BMH Synagogue, one of the city’s largest and most influential. Rabbi Franklin spent time in South Africa where he was active in the anti-apartheid movement. It is ironic, but perhaps not accidental to see a Jewish leader with such liberal credentials cozying up to the likes of George Morrison and John Hagee. But then as one Denver Jewish resident put it, when it comes to the Denver rabbinate, that ” `Israel-friendly’ trumps human rights every time”. Read more…
Kaddish for Oslo (2) – The Palmer Report: Justifying the Mavi Marmara Attacks and the Blockade of Gaza
Kaddish For Oslo (2) – The Palmer Report: Justifying the Mavi Marmara Attacks and the Blockade of Gaza…
By Ibrahim Kazerooni and Rob Prince
(Part Two of a series)
Turkey - Emerging regional key player in the Middle East...
Israel’s Black September
In a gesture that could only chill Turkish-Israeli relations that much further, Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, recently stated that Turkey’s naval forces would escort Turkish humanitarian aid ships bound for the Gaza Strip. This comes following Israel’s refusal to apologize for its deadly raid on an aid flotilla heading to the besieged Palestinian territory in May 2010.
Erdogan went on to say that Turkey would closely monitor international waters and has taken steps to prevent what he called `Israel’s unilateral exploitation of natural resources’ in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Shortly thereafter, Turkey opposed a move for NATO to open an office in Israel.
Such statements are an indication of the extent to which Turkish-Israeli relations have deteriorated in the past year and more, of the fraying of a number of important regional strategic alliances that Israel has long enjoyed. Turkish-Israeli tensions also tend to undermine the U.S. strategic position in the Middle East, which has long been dependent on the cooperation of such key players as Turkey and Israel. U.S. concern over Israel’s regional isolation and its implications for harming broader U.S. Middle East policy were brought sharply into focus during Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta’s recent visit to Israel. Read more…
U.S. Citizenship Is Based on Principles, Not Heritage
Adams wasn't the only one of the founding fathers to make this points
note: this is a piece written by colleague Lynn Holland from the Korbel School of International Studies. It appeared in History News Service (Sept 8, 2011). In it she challenges the ideas of conservative politican from Colorado Tom Tancredo.
Besides the fact that Tancredo, who once suggested that the U.S. bomb Mecca, has fashioned his appeal to the country’s extreme right wing, when it comes to cultural or `identity’ questions about the United States, he is essentially completely wrong. Legally as defined by its constitution, legal system and its broader cultural heritage, the United States from the outset has never been, nor never intended by the founding fathers (and mothers) to be a `Christian nation’ but something much more inclusive for all its worts and bumps.
__________________________________________
by Lynn Holland
To inspire Western youth to organize on the basis of identity, with pride in their heritage and their history, and counter radical multiculturalism on campus.”
– Mission Statement, Youth for Western Civilization, Tom Tancredo, national chair
Former Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo tells us to be proud of our western civilization. As a legacy of European culture, he says, “Western Civilization is our history.” And, he adds ominously, that civilization is now under attack. The countries of Western Europe are being invaded by “Islamo-fascists,” while here in the United States we face “multiculturalism.” The danger of multiculturalism, says Tancredo, is that it prevents us from assimilating American values. “Be Americans First,” he beseeches his audiences, meaning be “western.”
But Tancredo misunderstands the fundamental nature of American citizenship. In this country, citizenship is not about cultural identity; it is about constitutional principles. From the beginning, Americans embraced a new definition of citizenship and a new process of naturalization that set the nation apart from its European heritage. (to read the whole piece, click here)
Saying Goodbye To Cloudy…
A 1998 family photo… Cloudy where she always liked to be: in the center of things
In a few hours, a local veterinarian will be coming to our house to `put our dog to sleep’. Strange expression if you ask me, as the `sleep’ will be permanent. It will be done in stages which I am told is rather common. First Cloudy will be given treats, then a tranquilizer pill to relax her followed by an overdose of an even stronger tranquilizer that stops her heart beat. The process takes about an hour. With that, Cloudy, who is within a few months of turning sixteen, will pass from the scene although not from our hearts.
This is the second time that I have participated in `putting down’ a family dog. The first time was forty years ago when our family dog `Mimi’ had reached near the end of her line. I had returned to my childhood home to Queens, New York from Colorado for several weeks in the summer. My sisters were both out of the house already. My mother and I discussed what to do. I really wasn’t sure as it was the first time I was faced with the life-death decision of a pet.
Already mostly blind, her body wracked with tumors, the poor thing had only been kept alive by my mother’s loving tender care. It was hard not to conclude that her time had come. Although we both felt uncomfortable, we did bring Mimi to the vet who ended her days. I can even vaguely recall where it was – up 164th St., a few blocks north past Union Turnpike. I remember thinking that it was unpleasant but necessary. But it turned out to be much more than that as about an hour later, guilt filled, my mother became emotional, broke down in a fit of sadness and regret: she felt we had done the deed `too soon’, that Mimi still had life left and that we should have nursed her along a while longer. So she called the vet and asked him not to proceed with the the euthanasia. But it was too late. Mimi was already gone. Read more…
Eugenics: Initial Bibliography on Nazi Eugenics
Introductory Bibliography on Nazi Eugenics Movement
Sachsenhausen- prelude to Auschwitz: where French coal miners, Soviet POWS, Polish intellectuals among others, joined Jews and Gypsies in death.
– Allen, Garland, E. “Was Nazi Eugenics Created in the US.” European Molecular Biology Organization. 5:4 (2004) pp. 451-452
– Benedict, Susan and Jochen Kuhla. “Nurses Participation in the Euthanasia Programs of Nazi Germany.” Western Journal of Nursing Research. 21:2 (1999), pp. 246-63.
– Black, Edwin. War Against The Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign To Create A Master Race. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows: 2003
– Bock, Gisella.`Racism and Sexism in Nazi Germany: Motherhood, Compulsory Sterilizations and the State’ in When Biology Becomes Destiny: Women in the Weimar Republic. ed by Renate Bridenthal, Atina Grossman and Marion Kaplan (NY: Monthly Review Press: 1984:271-96)
– Burleigh, Michael. Death and Deliverance: `Euthanasia’ in Germany: 1900-1945. London: Cambridge University Press: 1994
– Gallagher, Hugh Gregory. By Trust Betrayed: Patients, Physicians,and the License to Kill in the Third Reich. Henry Holt and Co. 1990
– Hudson, Lee. “From Small Beginnings: The Euthanasia of Children With Disabilities in Nazi Germany.” Child Health. 47 (2011) pp.508-511.
– Karenburg, Alex. “Neurosciences and the Third Reich, Introduction.” Journal of the History of Neurosciences. 15:3 (2006) pp. 168-172.
– Kessler, Karl. “Physicians and the Nazi Euthanasia Program.” International Journal of Mental Health.” 36:1 (2007). pp. 4-16.
– Kuhl, Stefan. The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism and German National Socialism. Oxford University Press. New York. 1994.
– Proctor, Robert N. Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under The Nazis. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press: 1988
– Seeman, Mary. “What Happened After T-4? Starvation of Pyschiatric Patients in Nazi Germany?” International Journal of Mental Health. 35:4 (2007) pp. 5-10
– Strous, Rael. “Nazi Euthanasia of the Mentally Ill at Hadamar.” American Journal of Psychiatry. 161:1 (2006). p.27
– Vermaat, J. A. “Euthanasia in the Third Reich: Lessons for Today?” Ethics and Medicine. 18:1 (2002) pp. 21-32
Video: Killing Fields of the Third Reich (based in large measure on Burleigh’s book)
– Wallace, Max. American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh and the Rise of the Third Reich. St. Martin’s Press: 2003
____________________
Related Links:
Eugenics: The Scalpel and the Sword (on the involuntary sterilization of Native Americans in the 1970s)
Partial Bibliography on Native American Sterilizations in the 1970s
Article: `Hitler’s Hero Henrich Ford. Le Monde Diplomatique. May 2007
Eugenics: Partial Bibliography on the Involuntary Sterilization of Native Americans in the 1970s.
Partial Bibliography on the Involuntary Sterilization of Native Americans in the 1970s.
Note on the bibliography…
Mesa Verde National Park – home of the Anasazi Native American civilization in SW Colorado
One of the most serious outbreaks of involuntary sterilization took place at Indian Health Service clinics throughout the USA. Complaints of sterilization abuse were brought to the attention of then US Senator James Abourezk from South Dakota in the 1970s. Abourezk demanded a General Accounting Office (GAO) investigation. An initial investigation was undertaken which verified the disturbing pattern of involuntary sterilizations, many of them done on women just after they had given birth and were often still under the effects of birth-related drugs and pain killers, ie. in no condition to give informed consent. Many of the women victimized denied that any permission to perform tubal ligations was even asked. Even this initial GAO probe revealed that several thousand women were so victimized. However no follow up investigation was ever done, a strange fact in and of itself given the initial results. Read more…
Time to say Kaddish over Oslo...
___________________________
by Ibrahim Kazerooni and Rob Prince (first in a series of articles)…
Although not quite over, September 2011 is one month that Israelis are likely not soon to forget. It’s not that their whole world has been shattered, but many of the political threads that have held Israeli regional policy together for decades seem to have simultaneously broken leaving the Israeli `ship of state’ floating aimlessly in the Eastern Mediterranean. Worse, it seems to have been hit with a political tsunami for which it – as well as it main supporters in Washington – was ill prepared.
Five years after Israel’s abortive invasion of Lebanon that left 1200 Lebanese dead and the country’s infrastructure in ruins as a result of massive Israeli bombing, three years after Israel’s unconscionable military assault on Gaza, and one year after Israeli special forces stormed the Mari-Marmara Turkish aid ship to Gaza, killing 9 (8 Turks and one U.S. citizen) Israel finds itself more and more isolated both within the Middle East and in the world as a whole, its image tarnished, its credibility at a low point. Read more…
Eugenics: The Scalpel and the Sword: The Sterilization Campaign Targeting Native Americans in the 1970s..
The Scythe and the Scalpel:
Dissecting the Sterilizations of Native American Women in the 1970’s
 `the bad idea' being eugenics In the old days, genocide used to be so simple. Such things as biological warfare used to keep Indians warm with small pox infested blankets furnished by the United States government, and the only thing barren and infertile was the land set aside for reservations. In the 1970s, genocide became a little more complex. Biological warfare invaded the reproductive rights of Native American women, making their wombs as barren and infertile as reservation land. The sterilization policies during this time perpetuated the genocidal tendencies that have made the eugenics movement a viable legacy of terror in the biological history of Native Americans.According to some accounts, the eugenics movement died out in the 1930s. However, the forty two percent of Native American women who were sterilized under questionable circumstances by 1982, stand as testament that eugenics was alive and kicking during the seventies (Define 1997). Sparked by concern about overpopulation in the 1960s, eugenics was legally sanctioned under the Nixon administration (Johansen 1998). This sanctioning was given life in a campaign to sterilize the impoverished. For instance, between 1969 and 1974, the budget for family planning increased from $51 million to more than $250 million (Johansen 1998). This money helped to sterilize between 192,000 and 548,000 women each year between 1970 and 1977 compared to an average of 63,000 a year between 1907 and 1964, a period that included the pinnacle of the eugenics movement (Johansen 1998). This wave of sterilization came crashing down on Native American women the hardest. As Sally Torpy asserts in her thesis, Endangered Species: Native American Women Struggle for Their Reproductive Rights and Racial Identity, 1970s-1990s, “Native American women represented a unique class of victims among the larger population that faced sterilization and abuses of reproductive rights…They had, and continue to have, a dependent relationship with the federal government which has put them at a greater risk…”(Johansen 1998 p. 4). In fact, the federally funded Indian Health Service, the very agency that was supposed to protect and provide for Indians, was the perpetrator of these sterilizations. Read more… |
This event is also co-sponsored by the Front Range (Colorado) Jewish Voice For Peace chapter
Eugenics: Bibliography of articles critical of Charles Murray’s book: The Bell Curve
Cave Art from Chauvet, France
“It could probably be shown by
facts and figures that there is no
distinctly native American
criminal class except Congress.”
– Mark Twain –
Note: While open to everyone who might be interested, this is especially for my students:
An Initial Bibliography on Recently Published Articles/Editorials from the National Press on Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve (and related subjects).
1. Magazine Articles:
American Scientist. `The Role of Intelligence in Modern Society” by Earl Hunt. 83:4:356-367. July-August, 1995
American Psychologist. `Expert Performance: Its Structure and Acquisition.’ by Anders Ericsson and Neal Charness. 49:8:725-747. August, 1994.
Chicago Tribune. `An Anthropological View of Race and IQ.’ By Michael Lieber. October 23, 1994.
Child Development. `A longitudinal study of children with day care experiences of varying quality.’ 1988. by D.L. Vandell, V.K. Henderson and K.S. Wilson. 59:1286-1292.
Contention. `A Historian Looks At The Bell Curve.’ by Carl N. Degler. V:3:Spring 1995. pp.3-17.
———- `Genetics, Race and IQ: From Binet to Bell Curve.’ by Daniel Kevles 5:1:3-18. Fall 1995
CounterPunch. Alexander Cockburn and Ken Silverstein Read more…
Front Range (Colorado) Chapter of Jewish Voice For Peace: Yes To Palestinian Statehood
Yes To Palestinian Statehood
Note… shortly after this open letter went out, the mainstream Jewish Community in Colorado responded with this:
Some articles on Libyan events
Libya Oil Map...
Welcome To Libya’s Democracy by Pepe Escobar
Too Soon To Declare Victory In Libya by Phyllis Bennis
As Libya’s Oil Comes On Line, Opportunities Abound
The Scramble for Access to Libya’s Oil Wealth Begins …NY Times
Sweet and Lowdown: A Crude Analysis of the Libyan Liberation by Chris Floyd
Libya Now Needs Boots on the Ground by Richard Haas (of the Council on Foreign Affairs).
EU, NATO set for major role in Libya..Wall Street Journal
Western Powers Fighting for Oil Like `A Bunch of Piranhas…RT (Russian news service)
Note: At the request of a number of websites, I’ll be writing about the events in Libya myself soon. As usual, although I am not a fan of Mohammar Khadaffi, my take is more critical of events than what is appearing in the mainstream media. But I want to wait a few days until the dust clears. In general, I’d simply say that the rebels are `less than they appear’ and the U.S. involvement deeper than it seems. In some ways the events parallel the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, in other ways they are unique. Those who say what is happening is `not about oil’ (also said about Iraq early on after the March 2003 invasion) are either cynical or need their heads examined… more later. Meanwhile, you can blow up accompanying map and get a better picture of Libyan oil and gas wells and pipe lines, not a bad way to begin the study of the place.
View from the Left Bank: Rob Prince's Blog 