Renewed Israeli Threat Against Iran: Report by Trita Parsi

Netanyahu and threat of bombing Iran - the bluff that never stops giving?

By Trita Parsi

April 7, 2009

The Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/trita-parsi/netanyahu-and -threat-of-b_b_183822.html



In an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed to have told President Barack Obama that either America stops Iran or Israel will. Not surprisingly, the interview sparked quite a controversy and only a day later, General David Petreus told the Senate Arms Services Committee that "the Israeli government may ultimately see itself so threatened by the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon that it would take preemptive military action to derail or delay it."

So once again, in spite of President Obama's best efforts, the military option was put back on the table and the atmosphere for dealing with Iran was turned into "Do as we say - or else..." Even if the President wants to give diplomacy a chance, disbelievers have been quick to limit Obama's options by seeking to set arbitrary deadlines for negotiations - or by threatening Israeli military action if America doesn't act with its military might.

Reality is, however, that talk of an Israeli military option is more of a bluff than a threat - but it is a bluff that never seems to stop giving.

Israel does not have the military capability to successfully eliminate Iran's nuclear program. Even the most successful bombing campaign would only set back the known program for a few years - without affecting any potential clandestine program. This is not classified information. Military experts are well aware of Israel's capabilities - and its limits.

Yet, the threat of military action, or rather the bluff, serves a purpose: Threats of military action militarizes the atmosphere. It creates an environment that renders diplomacy less likely to succeed - it may even prevent diplomacy from being pursued in the first place.

In the Iranian case, Netanyahu's tough talk undermines the Obama administration's prospects for diplomacy in the following ways.

Getting to the negotiating table has proven an arduous task for the US and Iran. Both sides are currently testing each other's intentions, asking themselves if the other side is serious about diplomacy or if the perceived desire for talks is merely a tactical maneuver to either buy time or build greater international support for more confrontational policies down the road. From Tehran's perspective, uncertainty about Washington's intentions during the Bush administration was partly fueled by the insistence of the military option remaining on the table. Tehran seemed to fear entering negotiations that could have been designed to fail, since that could strengthen the case for military action against Iran.

Today, talk of Israeli strikes has similar effects. Tehran has repeatedly failed to appreciate the policy differences between Washington and Tel Aviv, oftentimes seeing them as either a perfectly coordinated team or as a single entity. Consequently, explicit or implicit threats of Israeli military action reduce Tehran's confidence in Washington's intentions.

Furthermore, Iran's sense of a threat from the US (and in extension Israel) is believed to be one of the driving forces of Iran's nuclear program. Whether Iran seeks a weapon or a civilian program that provides Iran with a weapons capability, the program's existence provides Tehran with a level of deterrence against the perceived US threat. The Obama administration's approach seems to have been to reduce Iran's sense of threat in order to kick-start negotiations. The threat of Israeli military action does the opposite - it fuels Iranian insecurity and closes the window for diplomacy.

Moreover, Israel uses this threat to pressure Washington and the EU to act tough. This has been a cornerstone of Israeli policy towards Iran since the mid-1990s. Even though Israel is reluctant to put itself on the frontline against Iran, fearing that this would counter its message that Iran is the world's and not just Israel's problem, it also fears that the absence of Israeli pressure would cause the West to go soft on Iran. Hence, Israel keeps the pressure on the West - by threatening military action - in order for the West to keep pressuring Iran. However, under the current circumstances, Israeli pressure may compel the Obama administration to adopt a confrontational approach that is incompatible with the diplomatic strategy President Obama seems to prefer.

Finally, Netanyahu - as well as hawks in Washington - are using the threat of Israeli military action to create arbitrary deadlines for negotiations with Tehran combined with exaggerated expectations of what diplomacy must achieve. The message of Israeli hawks has been that it can only afford to give diplomacy "a few months," meaning that whatever sanctions and confrontation has failed to achieve with Iran in the past 30 years, must miraculously be obtained after only a few months of negotiations - otherwise Israel will take military action.

This logic does two things. First, it brings us back to the foreign policy approach of the Bush administration in which diplomacy was treated with suspicion and skepticism, and military confrontation was viewed as a policy option with guaranteed success. Second, it ensures that diplomacy fails by denying it the time and space it needs to succeed and by setting the bar too high.

This does not mean that Israel does not have legitimate reasons to fear Iran's nuclear advances - on the contrary. But what lies at the heart of Israel's maneuvers is not necessarily the fear of a nuclear clash, but the regional and strategic consequences nuclear technology in Iranian hands will have for Israel.

In spite of its rhetoric, Israel views the regime in Tehran as rational, calculating and risk-averse. Even those Israeli officials who believe that Iran is hell-bent on destroying the Jewish state recognize that Tehran is unlikely to attack Israel with nuclear weapons due to the destruction Israel would inflict on Iran through its second-strike capability.

The real danger a nuclear-capable Iran brings with it for Israel is twofold. First, an Iran with nuclear capability will significantly damage Israel's ability to deter militant Palestinian and Lebanese organizations. Gone would be the days when Israel's military supremacy would enable it to dictate the parameters of peace and pursue unilateral peace plans.

This could force Israel to accept territorial compromises with its neighbors in order to deprive Iran of points of hostility that it could use against the Jewish state. Israel simply would not be able to afford a nuclear rivalry with Iran and continued territorial disputes with the Arabs at the same time.

Second, the deterrence and power Iran would gain by mastering the fuel cycle could compel Washington to cut a deal with Tehran in which Iran would be recognized as a regional power and gain strategic significance in the Middle East at the expense of Israel. This has been a major Israeli fear since the end of the Cold War, when Israel's strategic utility to Washington lost considerable justification due to the absence of a Soviet threat. Under these circumstances, US-Iran negotiations could damage Israel's strategic standing, since common interests shared by Iran and the US would overshadow Israel's concerns with Tehran and leave Israel alone in facing its Iranian rival. The Great Satan will eventually make up with the ayatollahs and forget about the Jewish state, Israeli officials fear.

Netanyahu's threat of stopping Iran if Obama doesn't should be seen in light of the Israeli right's fear of a US-Iran deal. Talk of Israeli military action has not coincided with major advances in Iran's nuclear program, but rather with hints of an American preparedness to strike a compromise with Tehran that would grant it the dreaded know-how and limit Israel's strategic maneuverability.

The flaw in the Netanyahu's approach, however, is its underestimation of how US-Iran diplomacy can significantly alter Iran's posture towards the Jewish state and reduce the threat it faces from Tehran. Therein lies the opening for Israel's new prime minister that carries far greater promise for Israel's security than efforts to complicate Washington's path towards diplomacy.


Trita Parsi is president and co- founder of the National Iranian American Council and author of "Treacherous Alliances: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States."

Kindergardner Handcuffed in St. Petersburg, Florida

Hungry Blues reports about a pending case involving a black kindergardner who was handcuffed because she was having a temper tantrum.

Raul Castro Meets with Black Congressional Caucus!

Progress has been made! We need normalized relations with Cuba! First step!

How brilliant that Obama ended his European tour in Turkey!

The Way He Makes Me Feel

Barbra

There’s no chill and yet I shiver
There’s no flame and yet I burn
I’m not sure what I’m afraid of
And yet I’m trembling
There's no storm yet I hear thunder.
And I'm breathless, why I wonder?
Weak one moment,
Then the next I'm fine.
I feel as if 1'm falling every time
I close my eyes
And flowing through my body
Is a river of surprise.
Feelings are awakening
I hardly' recognize as mine!
What are all these new sensations?
What's the secret they reveal?
I'm not sure I understand
But I like the way I feel.
Oh, why is it that every time
I close my eyes he's there?
The water shining on his skin,
The sunlight in his hair?
And all the while I'm thinking things
That I can never share with him.
I'm a bundle of confusion
Yet it has a strange appeal.
Did it all begin with him,
And the way he makes me feel
I like the way he makes me feel...

Journaling

I am not a fashion connossiuer, at least now now. When I was growing up, everyone in my family--and indeed the entire community put so much emphasis on dress and possessions(lets not even talk about church politics) that I grew to lack a passion or a care in the world for beauty, style, or fashion. It was stale and hegemonic with a driving brutality behind it all and I wanted no part of it.

I just saw MJB's "Take Me As I Am" video. What a compelling story!

The End of Excess

Kurt Andersen's assessment of America's current state of crisis and how it has gotten here is very good. He does a wonderful timeline of America's growing cynicism and excess from the end of WWII to Reagan to now, when it all ends. However, I think he is too optimistic. I don't think Americans are as good, moral, or as full of potential for living in more humane ways as he makes them out to be. I hope they do. But perhaps he has more trust in this country than I do. My favorite part of this essay, however, is when he says

"But at least as much of the new America of the 2010s and beyond will be the result of transformed sensibility, changes in our understanding of what's important and sensible and attractive, and what feels hollow or silly or nuts."

Yes, my hope is there.

From Paul Begala and the DNC

First they counted the votes. Then they recounted them. Then they painstakingly went over every disputed ballot by hand. It was the most thorough and exhaustive recount process Minnesota has ever seen.


First the bipartisan canvassing board declared Al Franken the winner of the U.S. Senate race in Minnesota.

But Norm Coleman didn't like that result, so he took it to court. And now when even his own lawyers are predicting he'll lose, Coleman's threatening to keep appealing to more and more courts.

How many more recounts does Norm Coleman want? How many more delays? How much longer will the Republican Party hold Minnesota's Senate seat hostage?

Coleman can end it today and give Minnesota the two Senators it's entitled to. But he's not going to give up unless we convince him to act. So let's speak with one voice and tell Norm Coleman it's time to go.

Tell Norm Coleman to pack it in, give up the endless court battles, and concede the race so Minnesota has its full representation in Congress.

On election night, Norm had a small lead. He said then that if he were behind, he wouldn't bother with a recount. "I would step back," he claimed. "I just think the need for the healing process is so important."

But the moment he fell behind is the moment he stopped caring about the "healing process." Al Franken came out ahead after a bipartisan recount that took place in front of live cameras, and Norm decided the best place to nurse his wounds was in court.

And that's where this election has been stuck ever since, as Coleman's legal team brings one obscure challenge after another.

Enough is enough. The people of Minnesota need their fair share of representation in Congress now, and President Obama needs Al Franken working with him in the Senate. We're debating the very survival of our economy, and Minnesotans deserve a voice!

So let's tell him nicely. Let's remind him that all the legal experts say he's done. Let's ask him not to drag this out just for the sake of dragging it out.

Let's speak with one voice and tell Norm Coleman to drop the legal challenges and concede this race!

Tell Norm Coleman to concede his Senate race for the good of Minnesota.

This has gone on long enough. But maybe if Norm hears from enough of us, he'll get the message. Thanks for your help.

Sincerely,


Paul Begala

Today's Oprah

Much love to Star Jones....

Bob Marley-Redemption Song

Redemption Song by Bob Marley
Old pirates, yes, they rob i;
Sold I to the merchant ships,
Minutes after they took i
From the bottomless pit.
But my hand was made strong
By the and of the almighty.
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly.
Wont you help to sing
These songs of freedom? -
cause all I ever have:
Redemption songs;
Redemption songs.

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our minds.
Have no fear for atomic energy,
cause none of them can stop the time.
How long shall they kill our prophets,
While we stand aside and look? ooh!
Some say its just a part of it:
Weve got to fulfil de book.

Wont you help to sing
These songs of freedom? -
cause all I ever have:
Redemption songs;
Redemption songs;
Redemption songs.
---
/guitar break/
---
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our mind.
Wo! have no fear for atomic energy,
cause none of them-a can-a stop-a the time.
How long shall they kill our prophets,
While we stand aside and look?
Yes, some say its just a part of it:
Weve got to fulfil de book.
Wont you help to sing
Dese songs of freedom? -
cause all I ever had:
Redemption songs -
All I ever had:
Redemption songs:
These songs of freedom,
Songs of freedom.

Reposts On the Economy From A Year and A Half Ago-Visit These Links

Here and here.

The World of Publishing Needs a Bailout, Not a Question.

Read two very good articles on the subject here and here.

Something I Wanted to Blog About

I can't believe that Chicago has allowed Tom Joyner to be taken off of its airwaves. Its tragic. I started listening to Tom Joyner when I was a little boy on Hot 107.5 GCI--when he was on at night and when he had an Afro. Its part of my childhood--and part of Chicago history. I think they need to bring him back to the airwaves in Chicago.

Prince on Leno

Prince is still so hot after all these years. lol

Oh Dear God

I learned today over at Melissa Harris-Lacewell's blog that John Hope Franklin has died. He was a giant among historians and one of the most important voices in the Black community, indeed in this country. His absence will surely be felt.

Harsh Beauty

I saw this documentary, which followed the lives of three eunuchs living in modern day India, on the Documentary Channel last night and I was quite intrigued. The entire concept of eunuchism is something very queer and one that has roots into the origins of humanity. While wathcing this documentary, I came to the realization that this history, that of the presence of eunuchs within societies-is one that has existed in societies ranging from Europe to China and one that has been practiced up until the 19th century ( and perhaps even later). It is truly fascinating what people will think up when left to their own devices. The most famous eunuch I have ever heard of was the Italian singer, Farinelli the famous 18th century castrato who's life was made into a film bearing his name. Wikipedia says that the last Eunuch present at the Vatican died in 1922. What intrigue. Definitely food for thought.

Analogies and The Language of Economic Crisis

Tonight, Chuck Todd perpetuated a practice that many in Washington and journalist all over this country have engaged in that I would like to see stopped. He referred to our efforts to emerge from this recession as a war. It has also seemed that the Obama Administration has also been forced into using this language as well--I have heard Christina Romer and others make use and agree to use this analogy on the political show circuit. The war analogy is wrong. Firstly, when you fight against something, you only strengthen it. Many have pointed out,and the history of this country reflects that the countless wars that this country has engaged in have for the most part failed. Vietnam, the war on drugs, the war on poverty...all of these have failed--and failed because those in power have engaged these problems in the wrong way. When I first heard the Obama administration announce its plan, they were making use of Dr. King's analogy of the house that is on fire. I believe this is the proper approach they should be taking and I believe they should not be persuaded from using this analogy. I pointed this out when they first laid out their plans for economic recovery. America does not need to engage in another ceaseless war that in the end will only serve to disintegrate this country even more. We need to shake off the shackles of patriarchy and phallocentrism(which is where this language comes from) and embrace a more humane way of living and being in this world. Only then, will the United States be secured against the total ruin that it now faces.

This Month's O Magazine

I want to rave some more about this month's O magazine. I just finished reading it-I never read the magazine all at once--and I go to what I really want to read first most times. So, I just finished reading O's magnificent essay on the fluidity of sexuality, She's So Fine! which I thought was very well done. I personally subsribe to Helene Cixous' theory that everyone is bisexual to various degrees. My own experiences with sex, gender, and sexuality have allowed me to come to this revelation. Sexuality is fluid-and people can bend. Now that said, I do say that it is in degrees. I think people have their preferences shaped and formed by the cultures and social settings that they come out of and those percieved choices(which oftentimes are just cultural imprints upon one's psyche and person) are hard to break. However, broken they can be. I can not tell you and you most probably couldn't imagine how many straight men I have found to be not so straight-or have personally recruited for the other team.I could, should, and probably will right a book. Men are easy-married, not married, doesn't matter. With enough lubrication, I believe any man can move from strict heterosexuality into queer. I wonder, and think that its probably the same for women. I myself have found women attractive and have even found myself flirting (on one particular occassion). However, I don't ever see myself becoming sexually or romantically involved with a woman. I found O's profiles of the lesbian couples in the article(with at least one previously straight partner) intriguing. Each of these couples tackle such issues as hierarchies within relationships(which mainstream society won't even acknowledge as existing nowadays) and the politics of being a lesbian couple in today's society. The article also does an interesting introspection of Jackie Warner of Bravo (you know that I am not a lesbian or the least bit hetero because I have never even feigned to watch that show lol). Perhaps each gender is supsceptible to it's own. Sexuality and gender roles are fascinating stuff. The study of identity and the politics of attraction are definitely fields that have not yet and probably never will be fully mined.

"Our Visions Begin With Our Desires"-Audre Lorde

Barbra-Stoney End

I was born from love
And my poor mother worked the mines
I was raised on the good book Jesus
Till I read between the lines
Now I don't believe I want to see the mornin'
Going down to stoney end
I never wanted to go down to stoney end
Mama let me start all over
Cradle me
Mama cradle me again

I can still remember him
With lovelight in his eyes
But the light flickered out and parted
As the sun began to rise
Now I don't believe I want to see the mornin'
Going down to stoney end
I never wanted to go down to stoney end
Mama let me start all over
Cradle me
Mama cradle me again

Never mind the forecast
'Cause the sky has lost control
'Cause the fury and the broken thunder's
Come to match my ragin' soul
Now I don't believe I want to see the mornin'
Going down to stoney end
I never wanted to go down to stoney end
Mama let me start all over
Cradle me
Mama cradle me again

Who Is The Greatest Prophetic Voice The United States Has Ever Seen?

Melissa Lacewell Harris declares it to be James Baldwin and I wholeheartedly agree. Listen to the speech he gave at UC Berkeley in 1979...

I applaud President Obama for extending a hand to the Iranians.

Gloria Steinem Interviewing Barbra!

"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all." -- Helen Keller

An Urban Garden At The White House

Does anyone else find it just absolutely magnificent that Michelle Obama is planting an urban garden at the White House? I think it is a bold and beautiful move...truly bringing the White House and the seat of power back to the people. And what a powerful message she is sending to the American public about their food choices!

From Portside

El Salvador's Left Wins Historic Election

By Mark Weisbrot

Center for Economic and Policy Research The
Guardian (UK) March 18, 2009

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica2009/mar18/el-salvador-election

Last Sunday's election in El Salvador, in which the leftist
FMLN (Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation) won the
presidency, didn't get a lot of attention in the
international press. It's a relatively small country (7
million people on land the size of Massachusetts) and fairly
poor (per capita income about half the regional average). And
left governments have become the norm in Latin America:
Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, and
Venezuela have all elected left governments over the last
decade. South America is now more independent of the United
States than Europe is.

But the FMLN's victory in El Salvador has a special
significance for this hemisphere.

Central America and the Caribbean have long been the United
States' "back yard" more than anywhere else. The people of
the region have paid a terrible price - in blood, poverty,
and underdevelopment - for their geographical and political
proximity to the United States. The list of U.S.
interventions in the area would take the rest of this column,
stretching from the 19th century (Cuba, in 1898) to the 21st,
with the overthrow of Haiti's democratically elected
president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (for the second time) in
2004.

Those of us who can remember the 1980s can see President
Ronald Reagan on television warning that "El Salvador is
closer to Texas than Texas is to Massachusetts" as he sent
guns and money to the Salvadoran military and its affiliated
death squads. Their tens of thousands of targets - for
torture, terror, and murder - were overwhelmingly civilians,
including Catholic priests, nuns, and the heroic Archbishop
Oscar Romero. It seems ridiculous now that Reagan could have
convinced the U.S. Congress that the people who won Sunday's
election were not only a threat to our national security, but
one that justified horrific atrocities. But he did. At the
same time millions of Americans - including many church-based
activists - joined a movement to stop U.S. support for the
terror, as well as what the United Nations later called
genocide in Guatemala, and the U.S.-backed insurgency in
Nicaragua (which was also a war against civilians).

Now we have come full circle. In 2007, Guatemalans elected a
social democratic president for the first time since 1954,
when the CIA intervened to overthrow the government. Last
September, President Zelaya of Honduras - which served as a
U.S. base for U.S. military and paramilitary operations in
the 1980s -- joined with Bolivia's Evo Morales and
Venezuela's Hugo Chávez when they expelled their U.S.
ambassadors: Zelaya defended their actions and postponed the
accreditation of the U.S. ambassador to Honduras, saying that
"the world powers must treat us fairly and with respect." In
2006 Nicaraguans elected Daniel Ortega of the Sandinistas,
the same president that Washington had spent hundreds of
millions of dollars trying to topple in the 1980s.

El Salvador's election was not only another step toward
regional independence but a triumph of hope against fear,
much as in the U.S. presidential election of 2008. The ruling
ARENA party, which was founded by right-wing death squad
leader Roberto D'Aubuisson, made fear their brand: fear of
another civil war; fear of bad relations with the United
States; fear of a "communist dictatorship." Almost comically,
they tried to make the election into a referendum on Hugo
Chávez. (Venezuela kept its distance from the election, with
no endorsements or statements other than its desire to have
good relations with whomever won).

ARENA was joined by Republican Members of Congress from the
United States, who tried to promote the idea that Salvadorans
- about a quarter of whom live in the U.S. - would face
extra-ordinary problems with immigration and sending
remittances home if the FMLN won. Although these threats were
completely without merit, the right's control over the media
made them real for many Salvadorans. In the 2004 election the
Bush administration joined this effort to intimidate
Salvadoran voters, and it helped the right win.

The right's control over the media, its abuse of government
in the elections, and its vast funding advantage (there are
no restrictions on foreign funding) led José Antonio de
Gabriel, the deputy chief of the European Union's observer
mission to comment on "the absence of a level playing field."
It's amazing that the FMLN was still able to win, and
testimony to the high level of discipline, organization, and
self- sacrifice that comes from having a leadership that has
survived war and hell on earth.

This time around, the Obama administration, after receiving
thousands of phone calls - thanks to the solidarity movement
that stems from the 1980s -- issued a statement of neutrality
on the Friday before the election. The administration appears
divided on El Salvador as with the rest of Latin America's
left; at least one of Obama's highest-level advisors on Latin
America favored the right-wing ruling party. But the
statement of neutrality was a clear break from the Bush
administration.

El Salvador's new president Mauricio Funes, a popular former
TV journalist, will face many challenges, especially on the
economic front. The country exports 10 percent of its GDP to
the United States, and receives another 18 percent in
remittances from Salvadorans living there. Along with
sizeable private investment flows, this makes El Salvador
very vulnerable to the deep U.S. recession. El Salvador has
also adopted the U.S. dollar as its national currency. This
means that it cannot use exchange rate policy and is severely
limited in monetary policy to counteract the recession. On
top of this, it has recently signed an agreement with the IMF
that commits the government to not pursuing a fiscal stimulus
for this year. And the FMLN will not have a majority in the
Congress.

But the majority of Salvadorans, who are poor or near- poor,
decided that the left would be more likely than the right to
look out for them in hard times. That's a reasonable
conclusion, and one that is shared by most of the hemisphere.

Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and
Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. (www.cepr.net).

_____________________________________________

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The 'Picnic' Controversy

I almost hesitate to mention this issue on my blog, but I have on several occassions run into Black people who have told me that they don't use the word picnic because they believe it has racist connotations. I have not tried to dissuade them of this idea, because they are partially true--there is a shared legacy between the history of "picnics" and the blotted history of this country in terms of its treatment of Blacks.Here is a link to a very profound discussion on the topic.

Thanks to Jane Fonda and Joan Didion For This Essay

This is a chapter from Joan Dideon’s 1961 book “Slouching Towards Bethlehem.” The chapter is called “On Self Respect.”

Once, in a dry season, I wrote in large letters across two pages of a notebook that innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself. Although now, some years later, I marvel that a mind on the outs with itself should have nonetheless made painstaking record of its every tremor, I recall with embarrassing clarity the flavor of those particular ashes. It was a matter of misplaced self-respect.

I had not been elected to Phi Beta Kappa. This failure could scarcely have been more predictable or less ambiguous (I simply did not have the grades), but I was unnerved by it; I had somehow thought myself a kind of academic Raskolnikov, curiously exempt from the cause-effect relationships which hampered others. Although even the humorless nineteen-year-old that I was must have recognized that the situation lacked real tragic stature, the day that I did manage to make Phi Beta Kappa nonetheless marked the end of something, and innocence may well be the word for it. I lost the conviction that lights would always turn green for me, the pleasant certainty that those rather passive virtues which had won me approval as a child automatically guaranteed me not only Phi Beta Kappa keys but happiness, honor, and the love of a good man; lost a certain touching faith in the totem power of good manners, clean hair, and proved competence on the Stanford-Binet scale. To such doubtful amulets had my self-respect been pinned, and I faced myself that day with the nonplussed apprehension of someone who has come across a vampire and has no crucifix at hand.

Although to be driven back upon oneself is an uneasy affair at best, rather like trying to cross a border with borrowed credentials, it seems to me now the one condition necessary to the beginnings of real self-respect. Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. One shuffles flashily but in vain through ones’ marked cards–¬the kindness done for the wrong reason, the apparent triumph which involved no real effort, the seemingly heroic act into which one had been shamed. The dismal fact is that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others – who we are, after all, deceived easily enough; has nothing to do with reputation, which, as Rhett Butler told Scarlett O’Hara, is something people with courage can do without.

To do without self-respect, on the other hand, is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable documentary that details one’s failings, both real and imagined, with fresh footage spliced in for every screening. There’s the glass you broke in anger, there’s the hurt on X’s face; watch now, this next scene, the night Y came back from Houston, see how you muff this one. To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commission and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice or carelessness. However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves.

To protest that some fairly improbably people, some people who could not possibly respect themselves, seem to sleep easily enough is to miss the point entirely, as surely as those people miss it who think that self-respect has necessarily to do with not having safety pins in one’s underwear. There is a common superstition that “self-respect” is a kind of charm against snakes, something that keeps those who have it locked in some unblighted Eden, out of strange beds, ambivalent conversations, and trouble in general. It does not at all. It has nothing to do with the face of things, but concerns instead a separate peace, a private reconciliation. Although the careless, suicidal Julian English in Appointment in Samara and the careless, incurably dishonest Jordan Baker in The Great Gatsby seem equally improbable candidates for self-respect, Jordan Baker had it, Julian English did not. With that genius for accommodation more often seen in women than in men, Jordan took her own measure, made her own peace, avoided threats to that peace: “I hate careless people,” she told Nick Carraway. “It takes two to make an accident.”

Like Jordan Baker, people with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things. If they choose to commit adultery, they do not then go running, in an access of bad conscience, to receive absolution from the wronged parties; nor do they complain unduly of the unfairness, the undeserved embarrassment, of being named co-respondent. In brief, people with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called character, a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to other, more instantly negotiable virtues. The measure of its slipping prestige is that one tends to think of it only in connection with homely children and United States senators who have been defeated, preferably in the primary, for reelection. Nonetheless, character – the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life – is the source from which self-respect springs.

Self-respect is something that our grandparents, whether or not they had it, knew all about. They had instilled in them, young, a certain discipline, the sense that one lives by doing things one does not particularly want to do, by putting fears and doubts to one side, by weighing immediate comforts against the possibility of larger, even intangible, comforts. It seemed to the nineteenth century admirable, but not remarkable, that Chinese Gordon put on a clean white suit and held Khartoum against the Mahdi; it did not seem unjust that the way to free land in California involved death and difficulty and dirt. In a diary kept during the winter of 1846, an emigrating twelve-year-old named Narcissa Cornwall noted coolly: “Father was busy reading and did not notice that the house was being filled with strange Indians until Mother spoke out about it.” Even lacking any clue as to what Mother said, one can scarcely fail to be impressed by the entire incident: the father reading, the Indians filing in, the mother choosing the words that would not alarm, the child duly recording the event and noting further that those particular Indians were not, “fortunately for us,” hostile. Indians were simply part of the donnée.

In one guise or another, Indians always are. Again, it is a question of recognizing that anything worth having has its price. People who respect themselves are willing to accept the risk that the Indians will be hostile, that the venture will go bankrupt, that the liaison may not turn out to be one in which every day is a holiday because you’re married to me. They are willing to invest something of themselves; they may not play at all, but when they do play, they know the odds.

That kind of self-respect is a discipline, a habit of mind that can never be faked but can be developed, trained, coaxed forth. It was once suggested to me that, as an antidote to crying, I put my head in a paper bag. As it happens, there is a sound physiological reason, something to do with oxygen, for doing exactly that, but the psychological effect alone is incalculable: it is difficult in the extreme to continue fancying oneself Cathy in Wuthering Heights with ones head in a Food Fair bag. There is a similar case for all the small disciplines, unimportant in themselves; imagine maintaining any kind of swoon, commiserative or carnal, in a cold shower.

But those small disciplines are valuable only insofar as they represent larger ones. To say that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton is not to say that Napoleon might have been saved by a crash program in cricket; to give formal dinners in the rain forest would be pointless did not the candlelight flickering on the liana call forth deeper, stronger disciplines, values instilled long before. It is a kind of ritual, helping us to remember who and what we are. In order to remember it, one must have known it.

To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out – since our self-image is untenable – their false notions of us. We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gist for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give. Of course I will play Francesca to your Paolo, Helen Keller to anyone’s Annie Sullivan: no expectation is too misplaced, no role too ludicrous. At the mercy of those we cannot but hold in contempt, we play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the urgency of divining and meeting the next demand made upon us.

It is the phenomenon sometimes called “alienation from self.” In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves – there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.

The End of the Death Penalty in New Mexico!

Cheers to Bill Richardson for ending the death penalty!

Sad Tidings-the Death of Natasha Richardson

What a horrific, tragic loss. Natasha Richardson was a great actress. My heart goes out to Vanessa Redgrave, Liam Neeson and the entire Redgrave clan.

From the Campaign for Peace and Democracy

For immediate release

Contact: Joanne Landy, Campaign for Peace and Democracy, jlandy@igc.org



STUNNING VICTORY

FOR CZECH OPPONENTS

OF U.S. RADAR BASE


NEW YORK, March 18, 2009 – In a major setback for Pentagon plans to install a U.S. military radar base in the Czech Republic, the Czech government yesterday withdrew, at least for now (and possibly for good), its proposal to ratify an agreement on the base. Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek halted the ratification process when it appeared that the Chamber of Deputies was likely to vote to reject the agreement. According to Jana Glivicka, a leader of the grassroots “No Bases Initiative” that has been active in opposing the radar for more than two years, this was a very significant retreat, since the radar has been promoted as one of the key accomplishments of the current government.

Two thirds of Czechs have consistently opposed the radar ever since it was first proposed in 2006. Anti-radar activists have repeatedly called for a referendum on the issue, but have been rebuffed. Meanwhile, in 2008 the Czech government signed the agreement with the United States to proceed with the installation of the radar, and the Czech Senate approved the accord. However the agreement could not be implemented until the Czech Chamber of Deputies ratified it. Thanks to the tireless activities of anti radar groups in the country, the No Bases Initiative and the Nonviolence Movement, popular opinion remained strongly mobilized against the radar. This public opposition culminated in a likely “no” vote in the Chamber.

The anti-radar movement has drawn support from around the world from people alarmed by the dangerous military escalation of the proposed European “missile defense” program of the Czech radar and its companion Interceptor missiles in Poland. In the United States, the Campaign for Peace and Democracy has since November 2007 supported the movement with public statements, letters published in The New York Times and The New York Review of Books, visits to the Czech Mission to the United Nations, demonstrations, a hunger strike, and, over the past weekend, an open letter to members of the Czech Chamber of Deputies signed by more than 550 people in less than 48 hours.

The CPD open letter was sent on Monday March 16 to all 200 members of the Chamber of Deputies. A member of the Chamber planned to read the letter aloud from the floor of the Chamber if the ratification had come up for a vote, Signers included public figures such as Noam Chomsky and Ariel Dorfman, and leaders of many major U.S. peace organizations. Most signatories were from the U.S., but there were some international signers including the Polish intellectual Adam Chmielewski, Iranian human rights activists, and a number of individuals from the United Kingdom, Japan and other countries. The text of the letter and list of signers are available at the CPD website, www.cpdweb.org

Czech Prime Minister Topolanek said that the government has not abandoned its plan for the radar. "This does not mean we would give up on the ratification process," Topolanek said in a live television address. "We will return to this issue after talks with the U.S. administration and after the NATO summit in Strasbourg and Kehl." (This information is from a Reuters story. Up until now there has been no significant U.S. media coverage of the withdrawal of the Czech government proposal.) It is by no means clear that the government will in fact reintroduce the radar for a vote after the NATO summit in early April. In any event, anti-radar activists in the Czech Republic and their international supporters are committed to continuing their campaign until such time as the proposal to install the radar is decisively and permanently withdrawn.

THE CAMPAIGN FOR PEACE AND DEMOCRACY (CPD) advocates a new, progressive and non-militaristic U.S. foreign policy -- one that encourages democracy, justice and social change. Founded in 1982, the Campaign opposed the Cold War by promoting "detente from below." It engaged Western peace activists in the defense of the rights of democratic dissidents in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and enlisted East-bloc human rights activists against anti-democratic U.S. policies in countries like Nicaragua and Chile. The Campaign sees movements for peace, social justice and democratic rights, taken together, as the embryo of an alternative to great power politics and to the domination of society by privileged elites.

Other current CPD campaigns are an open letter to Iranian officials in defense of human rights leader Shirin Ebadi, published by the New York Review of Books at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22511, and a statement on Gaza entitled “No More Blank Check for Israel!,” available at the CPD website.

Campaign for Peace and Democracy, 2790 Broadway, #12, NY, NY 10025. Email: cpd@igc.org Web: www.cpdweb.org

Fantasia Barrino and her Mother

Dear God,

If it be in accordance with your will,
I pray that this new age in human history
be a time of spiritual renaissance,
a "second Enlightenment" that will heighten values
and help everyone to realize their true purpose in life.
I pray for peace and justice,
and love and light.
I pray for an abundance of beauty, truth and goodness
in the lives of all the inhabitants of this troubled world.
May there be harmony, sustainability, and evolutionary progress.
Thank you for this gift of consciousness, dear God.
Amen - Steve McIntosh

This Mornings' News

Edward Liddy....is he related to G. Gordon Liddy....? Can't people who own AIG policies just stop paying?....Oh, capitalism

April's O, Oprah and Michelle

I am SO inlove with my April O magazine. Oprah's interview with our First Lady, Michelle Obama is very inspiring. I love the collage of pictures from the White House and the campaign. These two women, Oprah and Michelle, are role models for anyone out there searching for them....Pick up an O....

Allessandro, First Duke of Florence

Read about the first Medici Duke of Florence, Allesandro de Medici, known as 'il moro'- The Moor, who was the son of an African slavewoman and Pope Clement VII.

From The Campaign for Peace and Democracy

Dear Friend,




We have just learned that the Czech Chamber of Deputies is likely to vote this coming week of March 16 on whether to accept the U.S. military radar base that was originally proposed by the Bush administration. The radar, along with Interceptor missiles in Poland, would create a European "missile defense" system. Two thirds of Czechs have consistently opposed the radar, and the Campaign for Peace and Democracy has been active in supporting the Czech anti-radar movement. The upcoming vote in the Chamber of Deputies is critical; a vote to defeat the radar could put an end to this dangerous escalation.



Please sign the open letter below TODAY; we will be sending it to Prague early in the week of March 16. To sign the letter, donate, or see the full list of signers, please go to the CPD website at www.cpdweb.org If for any reason you have difficulty signing on at the website, just send us an email at cpd@igc.org



Thank you for your support,
Joanne Landy and Thomas Harrison
Co-Directors, Campaign for Peace and Democracy



Here is the text of the open letter:


TO THE MEMBERS OF THE CZECH CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES:




It is our understanding that after much debate in your country, the Czech Chamber of Deputies will vote very soon on the proposed agreement to accept the U.S. military radar. We are writing to let you know that we deeply believe that the radar is not in the real interests of people in either the United States or the Czech Republic. We hope you will vote to reject it.

Millions of Americans, including ourselves, are eager for a new peaceful U.S. foreign policy that advances democracy and demilitarization around the world, rather than an escalation of the arms race. Moreover, the extremely expensive missile defense program is, like so much of our country's military budget, a vast waste of resources. We would much prefer to spend our nation's wealth on education, housing, healthcare and other human needs, both domestically and internationally.

We are inspired by the fact that more than two thirds of the Czech people have repeatedly expressed their opposition to the radar. We join with them in calling on President Obama to pull back from plans to install Interceptor missiles in Poland and a companion radar station in the Czech Republic.

An end to this dangerous "missile defense" program could form the basis for a very positive and constructive relationship between the people of our two countries, and could serve as an important first step in a broader process of global disarmament.

Has Anyone Else Not Heard About the Murder of Brandon McClelland?

24-years-old,this Black youth was dragged behind a pickup truck by two white men in Paris, Texas last year until his body was nearly dismembered. I have heard nothing about this.

The Man In the Moon Is A Lady

The Chris Brown and Rhianna Story On Oprah

Today's Oprah is a powerful show. Everyone should be watching. I don't have much to say on this topic right now, except that I believe that the entire Chris Brown/Rhianna incident is shameful. I think he ought to be ashamed of himself and I think she is absolutely foolish to be in a relationship with him.

Today's Oprah

I love Oprah's hair today. I'm going to blog more later.

I Need Some Advice

I want to change the background color of Juliusspeaks. Anyone know how?

Interview With Shaindel Beers, Author of A Brief History in Time

With the recent publication of her first book of poetry,A Brief History in Time, I had the opportunity to interview author, Shaindel Beers, a former classmate of mine at Huntingdon College. Here is what transpired.

1. Your poetry is filled with some very astute perceptions along the lines of race, gender, and class. What is your background? Where are you from? What is your family like? What do they do?

I’m from a very small rural town in northern Indiana, called Argos, which, at least in the 2000 census, had a population of 1,613. It might seem unusual to someone that you can grow up somewhere that is 98% white and be so impacted by race, but I moved from Argos to Montgomery, Alabama, to go to Huntingdon College, and it was like another planet. I’d heard racist comments in Indiana, but they were the sort of things one “expects” from people of a certain generation. Like, my grandpa would say something and change the channel if he walked in and I was watching The Cosby Show. But I think there was a lot of jealousy in this. If you remember, on The Cosby Show, Bill Cosby’s character was a doctor, and the wife was a lawyer, and here’s my grandfather who has a sixth grade education and has had a hard life—farming (which always depends on the weather), factory closings (which depends on the whims of the wealthy, or the economy), all sorts of things. I think a lot of people from his generation in the same position probably felt the same way. It isn’t right, but you can understand where it comes from.

When I got to Alabama, the racism was much more real. First of all, there were people of other races—at least then in Alabama, Whites and Blacks. And, to me, it felt like the Civil Rights movement had barely happened. When I met one of my first college friends and wanted to go to Wal-Mart to buy some dorm supplies, she started driving the opposite way I thought we should be going. When I asked why we weren’t going to the Wal-Mart next to the college, she said, “Oh, that’s the Black Wal-Mart,” like it was the most common thing in the world. I heard other such gems such as a wealthy woman who said, “Of course, we’re not racist; all our maids have always been Black” and the one that appears in my poem, “Branching.”

For me, at least, gender and social class are so intertwined. I think that there is much more hope of social mobility for men than for women. There’s a book I haven’t read yet but want to called Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class. I remember when I was in high school and things were rough, my mom would say things like, “Maybe some nice boy will marry you.” That really seemed to be the answer she had for everything. She bought me a subscription to Brides Magazine when I was around fifteen and seemed fine when my high school boyfriend at that time just assumed we were getting married and gave me a ring.

I think a lot of women my age were raised without the skills we really needed because our parents still expected us to move from their house to a husband’s. And that really seems to surprise a lot of people, but I think small towns are socially a generation behind other places.

As far as my family, they are sort of a “mad genius” family. That’s probably saying enough.


2. What is your ethnic makeup?

On my father’s side, I’m Russian-Jewish, maybe with a few other Eastern European countries thrown in. On my mother’s side, it’s pretty much everything from the British Isles. I can look up family tartans in Scottish museums and things like that.

3. Do you have a great interest in Greek mythology? Your knowledge of it seems to be very expansive. Does it inspire you?

I absolutely love all mythologies, but I know more about Greek mythology than others, probably because it was required in eighth grade. We had to memorize who was the god or goddess of what and read The Odyssey. I’m always fascinated by rewritings of myths and fairy tales for a few reasons. First, there’s less work for the author because the reader already knows the basic story, and secondly, because there is a wealth of the human condition for the reader to connect to. For instance, in Louise Glück’s Meadowlands, she uses the figures of Odysseus and Penelope to explore the breakdown of (presumably) her own marriage. Most of us know the story of The Odyssey, and most of us have suffered broken hearts, so putting these elements together creates something between the author and the reader that is greater than the sum of the parts. For my creative writing MFA at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, part of my graduation requirement included giving a lecture on a specific topic in creative writing, and I did mine on “Feminist Revision of Myth and Fairy Tale.” If any readers are interested in it, they can let me know, and I’ll email them the lecture.

4. You seem to have lived a very interesting life--from the mundaneness of rural Indiana to the cosmopolitan life of the city. Give us a rundown of your life from birth to present. Where have you lived? What has marked you?

First of all, I don’t see how rural Indiana is any more mundane than living in a city. Wherever you are is your reality, and you can have a boring or an exciting life in either. I was born in South Bend, Indiana, which is where Kenneth Rexroth was born. (Maybe it will eventually be a city known for poets?) I lived in Argos until I moved away to Montgomery, Alabama, for college, then I moved to Chicago to go to the University of Chicago for graduate school, and after that, I kept moving further and further out to the suburbs, for jobs. (And I would do my graduate residencies in Vermont in the summers and winters from 2003-2005.) Eventually, I got a full-time college teaching position in Florida. I just wasn’t a Florida person and had to get somewhere where it would snow before I died of depression (or drank myself to death), and I ended up in Eastern Oregon. So far, it’s the best place I’ve lived. I have fantasies of a cabin in Montana or Alaska or somewhere more remote than this with bigger mountains, but this is pretty phenomenal for now. It’s also a great teaching position. It’s a rural mountain community college, and there are only three full-timers in the English department (myself included), so in addition to the regular Composition sequence, I get to teach Shakespeare, British literature, Fiction writing, Poetry writing, and Poetry as Literature. It’s nice to get to use my graduate degrees in both British literature and Creative Writing. Anywhere else, I’d most likely have to choose one or the other.

A lot has marked me. A. Lot. I’ll let people read my poetry collection and decide that.

5. You seem to have had a lot of experiences in terms of love and loss. What is the greatest lesson you have learned?

I’m still learning, but I think I’m discovering that you can survive anything if you have to. I’m also learning to value myself and not to mould myself into whatever will make other people happy, but it’s definitely a process.

6. Who are your greatest influences as a writer?

I’m just going to start listing here. As far as poets: Anne Sexton, Anne Carson, Richard Jackson, Eavan Boland. Fiction writers: Alice Munro, Lorrie Moore, Antonya Nelson, Ellen Gilchrist. I’m sure there are at least a hundred others, but I’m hoping readers will look up everyone on this list if they’re not already familiar with them.

7. What's next for you?

So far, I feel really fortunate to be booking readings since the publication of A Brief History of Time since it’s my first full-length book. I hope to keep giving readings and to keep up with my radio show, Translated By, on www.blogtalkradio.com . In June of 2010, I’ll be teaching at Writing Away Retreats http://writingawayretreats.com/ , which I’m really excited about.

I have a two book deal with Salt Publishing, which is just amazing. I’ve never even heard of another poet getting a two book deal! For my second book I’m working on, tentatively titled The Children’s War, I’m looking at children’s art drawn during war-time from the Spanish Civil War to the current time and writing an ekphrastic poem on each one that inspires me.

I have what amounts to maybe half of a short story collection so far, and one novel in progress that I wish was more in progress. And I always have stories and poems going on in my head.

Next stop on Shaindel Beers' Virtual Book Tour Kate Evans:Being and Writing.

This Mornings News

Kudos and much applause to President Obama for endorsing Stem Cell Research! This will go a long way towards stopping preventable diseases. I cannot believe there are those who can't or who refuse to make the connection between funding stem cell research, providing health-care for all people(healthcare IS a right, not a privilege), and boosting the American economy....Cheers to Obama!....In regards to the story I heard on the Today Show concerning the state of Connecticut planning to strip away financial control over parishes from the Catholic Church, I do believe that is unconstitutional although I applaud the effort. I believe the parishioners themselves should strip the church of financial control. They can set up their own board and refuse to give money to the priests....The big story this morning was Warren Buffett and others' admonishment of Barack Obama and his handling of the economic crisis that the United States is facing. Firstly, Obama inherited this mess from eight years of incompetence. He won't(even though he is brilliant) be fixing this problem in three months time. Secondly, I wholly disagree with Warren Buffett and others for making use of a war analogy to address this problem....that is the problem...this country has been engaged in nonstop warfare for three hundred years...and is no longer the superpower....I applaud Obama for making use of Dr. King's analogy in tackling this difficult and immensely complex problem. Thank you for your wisdom President Obama!

Does Anyone Remember This Film?

Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveler--

I soo got caught up in this film as a child!

Labelle and Nyro

Happy International Women's Day

Cheers to Alice Walker and Medea Benjamin on being in Gaza today to stand in solidarity with the women of Palestine on International Women's Day!

Dianne Reeves- Peace Song

Oprah: Fridays Live

Barbra had her Sadie...now Oprah has hers...lol

Congratulations to Ted Kennedy on his knighthood!

Labelle- What Can I Do For You?

People want truth
Or nothing at all
People want sincerity
And nothing false
People need happiness
As land needs rain from above
We need rain. We need
life, We need love
Most people find it so
hard to live without
Love, love, love, love, love, love
Oh yeah

People want to live, not merely exist
People want to enjoy,
not suffer and fear
People need
understanding, not
impatience or confusion
Oh I wonder should we hate those
[ Find more Lyrics on www.mp3lyrics.org/BwZG ]
Who present us disillusion
They talk about love, love, love
And lie about love, love, love
And they talk about love, love, love
Oh yeah

We need power
We need power
And we need peace,
peace, peace, peace
I think we all agree
Let's stop fighting
Let's stop fighting
And become sisters and brothers
And become sisters and brothers
And become sisters and brothers
And become sisters and brothers
And show its not too late to
Love, love, love
Love, love, love
Love, love, love
Love, love, love
Love, love, love
Love, love, love
What can I do for you
What can you do for me

Big Love

Oh my god. In ways, Bill and that family are as crazy as Nadia Suleiman. Both sets of families need to be locked up. No, not locked up-sent to that farm where Suleiman was offered a job...so they can pick some cotton...and do what people with fourteen and fifteen children used to do.I cannot believe that old crappy man killed Cathy!

First Lady Michelle Obama

Also, Kudos to our brilliant First Lady, Michelle Obama!

Kudos to the Obama Administration On Their Policy Towards Marijuana

Read about it in the title article.

What Can I Do For You?

Labelle

People want true things
Or nothing at all
People want sincerity
And nothing more
People need happiness as land needs rain
We need rain we need light we need love
Yes you'll find it so hard
To live without love love love
Love love love
Love love love
Whoa just say yeah (oh yeah)
Yeah yeah yeah yeah

People want to live (uh huh)
Not merely exist
People want to enjoy
Not suffer and fear no no no
People need understanding
Not tensions or confusion no no
Oh I wonder should the people who present us this solution talk about love love love
Love love love
Love love love
Oh yeah
Just say yeah (oh yeah)
Yeah yeah yeah yeah
Say yeah
Ooh yeah

We need power
We need power
Log on to kill this message.
We need peace
Peace
Peace
Peace

I think we'll all agree
I think we'll all agree
That's not fighting (fighting)
That's not fighting
Because this ain't war
This ain't war
This ain't war
This ain't war
I know it's not too late to love love love
Love love love
Love love love
Love love love
Love love love

What can I do for you
What can you do for me
What can I do for you
What can you do for me
What can I do for you
What can you do for me
What can I do for you
What can you do for me
What can I do for you
What can you do for me
What can I do for you
What can you do for me
What can I do for you
What can you do for me
What can I do for you
What can you do for me
What can I do for you
What can you do for me
What can I do for you
What can you do for me
What can I do for you
What can you do for me
What can I do for you
What can you do for me
What can I do for you
What can you do for me
What can I do for you
What can you do for me
What can I do for you

I have been like a baby, unsure of my steps and the ground beneath me. I must realize that the ground under me is paved in pantenes of gold.

Stevie Wonder Honored With The Gershwin Prize

I knew Barack Obama was going to be our next president when Stevie Wonder composed and sang a song about him. Whenever Stevie Wonder has commenced to sing a song for anything, it happens-he sang for the King Holiday--Reagan signed it, he sang for Barack- he is now president. Yea!

The Evil That Lives In Alabama-Reducing Food Tax

Do you know the Alabama Legislature doesn't want to pass a bill that would eliminate sales tax on food that would reduce poverty and help the poor because they are afraid it will hurt rich white people? These people need to go to hell...really... Somebody needs to set them straight.

Letter From John Legend To The New York Post

Dear Editor:



I'm trying to understand what possible motivation you may have had for publishing that vile cartoon depicting the shooting of the chimpanzee that went crazy. I guess you thought it would be funny to suggest that whomever was responsible for writing the Economic Recovery legislation must have the intelligence and judgment of a deranged, violent chimpanzee, and should be shot to protect the larger community. Really?



Did it occur to you that this suggestion would imply a connection between President Barack Obama and the deranged chimpanzee? Did it occur to you that our president has been receiving death threats since early in his candidacy? Did it occur to you that blacks have historically been compared to various apes as a way of racist insult and mockery? Did you intend to invoke these painful themes when you printed the cartoon?



If that's not what you intended, then it was stupid and willfully ignorant of you not to connect these easily connectable dots. If it is what you intended, then you obviously wanted to be grossly provocative, racist and offensive to the sensibilities of most reasonable Americans. Either way, you should not have printed this cartoon, and the fact that you did is truly reprehensible. I can't imagine what possible justification you have for this. I've read your lame statement in response to the outrage you provoked. Shame on you for dodging the real issue and then using the letter as an opportunity to attack the Rev. Sharpton. This is not about Sharpton. It's about the cartoon being blatantly racist and offensive.



I believe in freedom of speech, and you have every right to print what you want. But freedom of speech still comes with responsibilities and consequences. You are responsible for printing this cartoon, and I hope you experience some real consequences for it. I'm personally boycotting your paper and won't do any interviews with any of your reporters, and I encourage all of my colleagues in the entertainment business to do so as well. I implore your advertisers to seriously reconsider their business relationships with you as well.



You should print an apology in your paper acknowledging that this cartoon was ignorant, offensive and racist and should not have been printed.



I'm well aware of our country's history of racism and violence, but I truly believe we are better than this filth. As we attempt to rise above our difficult past and look toward a better future, we don't need the New York Post to resurrect the images of Jim Crow to deride the new administration and put black folks in our place. Please feel free to criticize and honestly evaluate our new president, but do so without the incendiary images and rhetoric.



Sincerely,



John Legend

Letter to His Former Master by Jourdan Anderson

Jourdan Anderson
Annotation Jourdon Anderson, an ex- Tennessee slave, declines his former master's invitation to return as a laborer on his plantation.
Year 1865
Text Dayton, Ohio, August 7, 1865
To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter and was glad to find you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Col. Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again and see Miss mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville hospital, but one of the neighbors told me Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here; I get $25 a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy (the folks here call her Mrs. Anderson), and the children, Milly, Jane and Grundy, go to school and are learning well; the teacher says grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday- School, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated; sometimes we overhear others saying, "The colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks, but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Col. Anderson. Many darkies would have been proud, as I used to was, to call you master. Now, if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free- papers in 1864 from the Provost- Marshal- General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you are sincerely disposed to treat us justly and kindly- - and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty- two years and Mandy twenty years. At $25 a month for me, and $2 a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to $11,680. Add to this the interest for the time our wages has been kept back and deduct what you paid for our clothing and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams Express, in care of V. Winters, esq, Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night, but in Tennessee there was never any pay day for the Negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

In answering this letter please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up and both good- looking girls. You know how it was with Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve and die if it comes to that than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood, the great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits. <>P.S. -- Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

From your old servant,

Jourdon Anderson

Source: Cincinnati Commercial, reprinted in New York Tribune, August 22, 1865.

True Beauty Finale

What a great ending! Congrats to Julia!

Justice

Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed has been freed! Obama is a just man!

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Wow...what an incredibly beautiful film....

Fabulous Oscar Ceremony and Penelope Cruz Accepts Her Oscar

Oscars-Early Wins

Hooray Penelope!

New Season of Bill Maher

When Maxine Waters says that we are on the verge of collapse, I am so on the edge of my seat listening.

Thirteenth Radical Progressive Carnival

A long delayed thirteenth edition of the Radical Progressive Carnival is now being posted. I don't think I need to give much explanation for its tardiness. I think everyone can afford a bit of wiggle room at present. I hope the selections here are thought-provoking and engaging. Firstly, we have two very engaging essays from GrrlScientist. The first is a very thoughtful analysis of poverty and definitions of poverty in the United States. This essay yields some very astute assessments and observations of realities concerning American culture and the American economy. The second is a look at how Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale almost made a leap from fiction to reality under the Bush administration with their draconian policies on women's access to proper healthcare and information.

David Gross over at The Picket Line offers up an account of how one gay man has begun using tax resistance as a form of protest against the government's refusal to recognize his marriage. Derreck over at I Will Not Die, offers a very astute
Guide for Increasing Your Creativity. It is definitely worth a read.

Joseph Orosco over at Engage: Conversation and Philosophy draws a very compelling link between Les Black and his observations of Western Civilization and the current phenomenon of high percentages of work death incidents among Latino workers in the United States.

Proper Australia offers an analysis of the Capital Gains Tax. I really barely undertand what Capital Gains Tax is (tax on wealth right?), but I think some may find this useful.

Feminist Review offers up a great review of Susan Faludi's book,
The Terror Dream and offers some frank discussion concerning the failure of the United States, in terms of it's cultural response and the response of the U.S. Government after 9/11.

In light of Roland Burris' recent dark episode over his ties with Rod Blagojevich, Phil For Humanity's call that vacant senate seats should be filled by the
recently unemployed seems quite a plausible and valid idea.

Praveen Puri over at Tao of Simplicity offers the lesson of the
cracked pot, a great parable that everyone can learn from.

Mad Kane, who always delivers, offers an Alpha-Political Farewell to Bush and Cheney. Finally, on a much more fabulous note(meaning, not dealing with Bush and Cheney), Erika at Visiting Spanish Speaking Countries offers up a guide on
What To Eat In Spain. Spain is definitely on my to go list. I hope I can make use of this list soon! I hope all enjoy this edition of the Radical Progressive Carnival!

Keiysha Cole- I Remember

If U Leave

Mary J Blige and Musiq Soulchild

You think I'm so full of it, full of it
But I think I'm just fed up, baby
You think I can be so arrogant, arrogant
But I'm just tryna keep my head up, baby
You think I procrastinate baby
But I think I'm taking my time
You think you need to leave
But I think I disagree but

If you believe you'll do best without me
I'll let it go girl, it's over
But before we say goodbye
Let's give it a try
If you leave, then baby I'll leave
I'll let it go girl, it's over
But I have no doubt
We can work it out yeah

I think you're so full of it, full of it
You just don't know when to let up baby
I think you're so arrogant, arrogant
But you think you're so much better baby
That I think it aint dealt before me to judge you by your flaws and that's why
No I could criticize, but I put that aside
To focus on you and I

But if you believe you'll do best without me
Then I'll let it go boy, it's over
But before we say goodbye
Let's give it a try
If you leave, then baby I'll leave
I'll let it go boy, it's over
But I have no doubt
We can work it out yeah

Now if you wanna go, baby
Then I'll let you go
And even though I'm tryna hold on
I can't if you don't

No, now if you leave me, you're gonna miss me
and I'm not saying that I'll be here waiting
Since we here right now (instead of just walking out)
Let's work to reach the point that I know we can be...

But if you believe, you'll do best without me
Then I'll let it go
It's over (it's over)
But before we say goodbye
Let's give it a try
If you leave, then baby I'll leave
I'll let it go girl, it's over
I have no doubt that we can work it out

If you believe, you'll do best without me
I'll let it go girl, it's over
Before we say goodbye
Let's give it a try
If you leave, then baby I'll leave...

Correa and Chavez

God bless Ecuador and Venezuela and long live the Bolivaran movement and all progressive struggle!

Interview With Scott Simmons, candidate for Mayor of Montgomery, AL

I initially came out for Michael Bridell in the municipal campaign for the city of Montgomery. Fifty-four years after the Montgomery Bus Boycott,I believe it is time for Montgomery to have a Black mayor.I also believe that the city should have a mayor who is dedicated to rebuilding the West-side of the city and creating some kind of economic justice for all of the citizens who have historically been left out in Montgomery. I believe Michael Bridell could be a catalyst for this kind of change. However, a friend of mine is a supporter of Scott Simmons, a business owner and strongly believes in his vision for the city of Montgomery. This friend of mine urged me to consider Mr. Simmons and arranged for me to dialogue with him. Mr. Simmons appears to be a very agreeable person with a great vision and a sincere interest in uplifting the city of Montgomery. After our initial discussion, he agreed to be interviewed for Juliusspeaks. This is what transpired.

Q: What is your agenda for the city of Montgomery?

Simmons: As mayor of Montgomery, I will be able to appoint judges. I want to find alternatives to incarceration for many of those convicted of minor offenses who now crowd Montgomery jails. Many of these people could benefit from rehabilitation, community service projects, and other alternatives to jail time. I also want to start a program called Second Chances. Through this program, we will help former felons to find work and assist in bringing down crime rates in the city of Montgomery. I also want to bring about some equity in the city's development.There has been $271 million spent on developing downtown Montgomery. North and West Montgomery have been completely left out. On day one, I plan to clean up Fairview Avenue. Also, I admire the Obama administration and want to work with the administration to bring about an economic recovery in Montgomery.

Q:What are your plans for economic development in West Montgomery?

Simmons: Well, as a business owner, I am already invested in the west side of Montgomery. I bought and established an apartment complex called Lofts at Cottage Hill. I took a dilapidated building complex and turned it into an inviting community for people from all economic backgrounds and walks of life. Further, as mayor I want to see a rebirth of the west side of Montgomery. I want to build an interpretive center at St. Jude like the one that is being brought to Alabama State University. That will attract tourism and tourism dollars. Tourism will be the next vehicle to move Montgomery towards a stronger economy. I also want to establish a police substation at Montgomery Mall and install a 6% sales tax in the city. This will encourage businesses in that area and draw tax dollars into the city.

Q:The road to bring back effective public transportation to the city of Montgomery has been long. What will you do as mayor to make public transportation more even more efficient and accessible to the public?

Simmons:Public transportation is a major issue. What I would like to do is make the buses free for all passengers in the city of Montgomery. Major cities like Nashville do this by allowing for advertising on the sides of buses which offset the costs of passengers. I believe this will further help stimulate the economy as well as make the buses more accessible to the public.

Send The New York Post to Its Grave

With the death of newspapers, let this one die-very quickly. The cartoon they made of President Obama is utterly offensive.

Queen of the Casino

The casino ha been abuzz all morning. Even on off-days there were fifty to a hundred regulars who came in needing to get their fixt. It was Thanksgiving and naturally the casino was packed, but the hotel was full as well and the staff had to push their way through touching bodies to serve drinks, clean, and work security detail. There was quiet pandemonium now, too, as the crazy, self-titled First Lady of the casino had announced that one lucky member of the female sex would be picked, including staff members, and anointed Queen of the Casino. The person chosen would recieve a crown, one night's stay in the most exclusive suite in the hotel, four and a half million dollars in cash in a black douffle bag, and a limousine to escort them to the bank to deposit the money.

The wife of the owner, Mme First Lady loved to show off her yacht and spend small fortunes on antique jewelry. She could now be seen standing in the huge window of her eighth floor penthouse, looking out over the patrons and staff who moved about like ants in a tunnel, waving her arms in a crazed, joyous fashion as a waiter served her martinis by the pitcher. Her husband was a clean mobster. Known to be peaceful and moral in his underworld kingdom, she had to beg him until he finally agreed for her to buy her yacht when they reached three hundred million dollars in liquid assets. With glee, she began spending most of her time reclining in her yacht drinking champagne and sailing around Capri or the Darndanelles. She could now be seen descending down the winding stairs from her penthouse, crown in hand, to the hall with the elevator that would take her down to the main floor. She swept in and in moments she appeared in the main part of the casino, holding the crown high into the air at the ready to place it on someone's head. George Lavin, a regular, called his wife, who always bickered at him for wasting money at the casino, and told her to throw on her clothes and make her way down to the casino now-nearly yelling over the cell phone at her.

Mme.First Lady weaved and bobbed through the crowd humming a wild,sporadic sing-song chant as she went. She passed several people feigning to place it on their head. She was possessed and turned the corner by the blackjack table and weaved her way towards the door to the kitchens. She was no longer the crazy lady who was married to the owner-she was now a demi-god who held a crown and could bless any one of them. Stella Movedos, the manager of the cleaning staff, quickly pulled out her compact and fixed her face in the mirror in the bathroom by the kitchen as every member of the staff poured ito the kitchen area in anticipation. She had three kids at home, a car payment, and a mortgage. She was destined to win. Marcos had just been turned away after he auditioned to model for Yves Saint Laurent...maybe he could persuade Mme. First Lady... He could retire without ever really working.... George Lavin and his wife complained loudly that she was going to give it to an employee so she could take it right back....

Meanwhile, Mme. First Lady walked into the kitchen and headed straight for a corner niche, stepping right before a crouched down 5'7, 27 year-old Latino with raven blakc curls that fell beautifully down her back. Magdalene Modena had just started working at the casino as a maid three weeks before having just crossed over from Mexico. She came over on foot and when she arrived found sponsorship through her sister who stayed at home with her three kids while her husband worked as a machinist. She had helped her get this job. She had worked at the casino before she had her last child. Magdalena had three sisters and a brother back in Mexico all under 19 and her parents were both sick. Mme. First Lady hovered over her and she flet the crown lightly touch down on her head. She could barely comprehend what was happening, but the tears began to fall. 4.5 million dollars! What could she do with 4.5 million dollars? She had intended to send money back to Mexico out of every check, but now she could retire to Mexico legally...She envisioned a sleeck limousine, her mother and father and siblings awed at the sight of her dressed like a million dollars, arriving home in a stretch limo... She thought estatically of staying in that magnificent suite at the top of the hotel...sipping champagne... As she opened her eyes, her world full of hope and excitement, the crazy lady who owned the place having just set the crown down on her head, she could feel the heat from her coworker's eyes upon her, seething....

Poem: The 1980s II

My aunt Johnnie's
peppermint green caddilac
was peppermint green and
matched the outfit she
wore to the classics every
year...green fur...so stylish
that was the 80s for you....
cracks in the concrete on the
side of the house...hopscotch and
games we could think of
to pass the time...
getting hit in the head or
cracked hard against my skin by jump ropes
spinning like crazy for Double Dutch...
jump in and don't get hit...
Double Dutch on a Chicago side street
jacks against the side of the house...
doing the electric slide across the green
carpet to attract the current...
lets play teacher...mother may I...
whoopin' mama in the living room and basement
in our house across the street
sleep good next to the front windows
on the floor when the storm comes
huddled together under blankets...
crack of thunder against a midnight sky
living proof of life-everlasting....