LEAVING ANATEVKA BEHIND

As the High Holy Days approach, a question occurs to me: how many other MOTs see the point, let alone the advantage, of Israel cultivating connections not only with sub-Saharan African countries and peoples (including the growing number of black Jews or Hebrews) but with indigenous peoples worldwide, such as North America's First Nations, aka Native Americans?
I'm serious: the Jews are so called, as Bibi himself pointed out, because they come from a place called Judah or Judea. And Eretz Israel was home to the Twelve Tribes of Israel until 722 B.C.E. and  descendants of the previously lost Ten Tribes are now emerging from the woodwork, such as the descendants of Manasseh now returning from Assam in northeastern India. The return of the Ethiopian 'Jews', although a more accurate term might be 'Hebrews' or 'Israelites' (don't they claim descent from the tribe of Dan, or are they further south, or both?) is well known and hailed by all of us who are uninfected by racism.
But by whatever name, the house of Israel, formerly known as Jacob, are the indigenous people of the land variously known as Eretz Israel, the Holy Land or southern Syria. Most of us know Hadrian  fastened the name 'Palestine' to try in vain to erase the memory of 'Judea' from it, so I won't use it! As an indigenous people returned to their ancestral land, does it not behoove Israel and Jews worldwide to form  alliances and friendships with other indigenes around the world? I certainly think so; to me it makes all the sense in the world!
In Israel as in the rest of the world (especially North America) I suggest Jews need to scrap the idea that they are 'white'. If  my memory is correct, it was 'whites' who murdered a third of the world's Jewry because some madmen decided Jews were 'counterfeit whites' who were too dangerous to let live. How many Jews have forgotten that so quickly as, at least in the USA, many all but stampede towards assimilation? (Not to mention the need to welcome in the children of intermarriage!) How does even Crown Heights and Farrakhan's ramblings, never mind street-corner harassment, compare with the Shoah? When my mother was a wee lass beginning her schooling at P.S. 221, there were many 'whites' the world over who considered neither her nor her family as 'white'. I wonder,  my impeccable paternal Anglo-Saxon credentials notwithstanding, what these 'whites' make of me, my sibs and their children?
The contrast between the open arms with which Israel has greeted the Russian immigrants--many of whom are 1) disputably Jewish and 2) barely observant if at all--and the suspicious squints which greet the Ethiopians, most of whom are 1) observant and 2)of relatively impeccable parentage looks profoundly suspicious to me, but I leave it to Israelis to decide whether this matter amounts to  a national disgrace.
Don't mistake me here: I know Arab racism is way worse than anything in Israel, and allow me to call Eldridge Cleaver (who lived in Algeria for eight years and experienced it firsthand) as my first witness. But that's not the point anyhow. The point is, bias from those with power to put it into effect   in favor of one group of Jews (or Israelites) or another, aka racism, has no place among the children of Israel and should be dealt with ruthlessly. And let's not mistake neglect of security measures for being anti-racist either.
We all need 'cocooning' times, mostly collectively but sometimes individually as well, but certain 'cocoons' can also be dangerously seductive. I just hope that Jews in the Western world haven't been fully seduced by being (at least for the moment) a wonderfully successful part of the 'white' majority. In the USA, that majority is scheduled to be gone when I'll be in my nineties if G-d keeps me here that long. Israel is already only half-Ashkenazic and may well be due for a general soul-searching on the matter of race, although as I don't live there I can't be altogether certain.
Being part of a 'majority' can be very soothing indeed and I can hardly blame Jews (of all people!) for embracing this identity with, probably, some little desperate gratitude indeed! On the other hand, getting close to, and having, power carries its own perils. How long can a David and a Goliath, even a debatably benevolent one, walk together?
One thing power does very poorly is listen. It generally has a particularly hard time in hearing the relatively powerless, its own some-time benevolence notwithstanding. But a big part of and debatably the main point of the story of Israel--and perhaps of Europe as well but hold on for further explanation--is how active engagement with G-d makes somebodies out of nobodies, both individually and collectively. Through such relationships, G-d empowers the powerless. Isn't that, then, supposed to be a central part of Israel's message to the world? Not to mention a central part of the church's message? And what about Islam's contribution to this message as well?
Let Israel welcome Jews and Israelites with black and brown skins with the same open arms they present to whites whose Jewishness is at least equally debatable and renew that message. Here, let's continue repairing the old civil rights alliance and continue the struggle for freedom and real equality. I had hoped to say something in this post about how the Hebrew return to their land is not 'colonization' and how the Arabs have, over the last century, behaved (at least out loud) mostly like Southern whites of the Bull Connor variety, but I've no wish to tire my readers so I'll need to cover that in subsequent posts, along with the parallel of the land's resettlement to the civil rights marchers and the parallel between ancient Israel and Latin Europe of the Middle Ages at least.
Let me end this post with a pair of lines from  Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing which I suspect many Jewish people, both in Israel and the Diaspora, would do well to remember:

Lest our feet stray from the places, O G-d, where we met thee,
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee

Brothers and sisters, let's not be drunk with the wines of the world, especially not with riches and/or power. Not now or ever,  and may G-d so help us all.
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FORWARD MARCH, PROGRESSIVES!

While anybody can read news (and God and my wife know how much news I read!) still, in the corner of southeastern Pennsylvania where I reside, things remain relatively quiet. The only ongoing fight with which I'm involved is the anti-fracking campaign of Food & Water Watch.
But I know, and I know you know, there's a lot more to do if we progressives want to be organized enough by this time next year to be fielding candidates at all levels from local to federal. One progressive trait which is, in my opinion, decidedly unhelpful is our tendency to build 'silos' within which we carefully stay. This is a time when many more of us need to be building a network of support and communication between those 'silos'. We need to reach out to other progressive organizations as we also look for possible candidates for all those offices--candidates who'd rather do the leg-or carwork of actual physical campaigning across their districts rather than selling themselves for BMCC (Big Media Campaign Cash) and, who, ideally, have a strong sense of identity quite apart from political office. People like that are usually not as buyable as those just ready to be bagmen for the highest bidders. You listening, Mister Speaker?
One thing we need is a way to find out how many other progressives are in our vicinity and also next door in all directions. Once we know this, then we must establish connections in all directions and begin to create a common plan of action depending on our local circumstances.
The network/campaign which I seek to build will run on such connections between people. Remember, the other side has the megabucks. What We The People have is us--the people--and the connections between us! If such a network and campaign is to take shape to which big money may be irrelevant (and, I hope, will prove largely impervious to big money) on what else can it be based but such person-to-person-to-other-persons-connections? That's why finding and forging these connections in a sort of nationwide 'weave' is so crucial.
A good place to start might be if a website exists for progressives in our respective states. If there isn't one, let's see what we can do about setting up one. Also, let's experiment with low-cost alternatives to high-priced media as to reminding people to vote, for whom to vote and why. Now is the time to see what each and all of us can do as per the purging of megabucks from our political processes!
Many of you already see the need for such a new organization and are already on it. Many thanks to those of you who see that; keep up the good work of spreading the news and picking and encouraging promising candidates for (fill in the blank). A big part of our work will probably be encouraging others to ask questions they may not have thought of before and taking it from there. Forward march, fellow progressives!

WELL, (SIGH) HERE GOES!

I think we're all agreed that, come November 5, 2014 and elections thereafter, we need to be firing as many 'Republicans' on ALL levels as might be humanly possible. Then they need to sit powerless (assuming they needn't be tried and jailed) for forty years at least.
But if we are to build a progressive network which becomes an all-levels campaign, we need to do some serious thinking as to which Blue Dogs we let be and which do we primary from the left. My own hunch is that a good many Blue Dogs deserve to be primaried, depending on whether or not they listen more to their actual constituents as opposed to their most generous contributors.
And this is where I reluctantly put myself forward as a candidate for POTUS. This much I can say on my own behalf which I haven't posted before: if I reach the White House, one factor I will COMPLETELY EXCLUDE in making decisions is any effect on my chances of re-election. With God's help I will act as if I may well have but one term. That is, act with dispatch and decision on behalf of all the people--especially on behalf of our middle class. No democracy can function well without a strong and expanding middle class and ours urgently needs strengthening after having been bled from above for thirty years! And we need to include the poor in this as being able to join the middle class is what nearly all of them want!
And we must restore, expand and replenish the commons--the infrastructure upon which we all depend and the biosphere without which we ourselves (not to mention almost all other species) cannot live. We must end the wanton despoiling of these commons, heal them and keep them healthy for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And to those who say that maintenance of our standard of living is impossible without despoilation, I reply: this is America. We are a land of dreams, realized and unrealized. If anyone can do what others believed impossible, who else (except Israel, maybe) but ourselves can step up to the plate and do what the naysayers proclaim impossible? How many times in our national history have we already done such things? No one believes this won't be done without hard work, but I believe we're not yet such couch potatoes as not to be wonderfully energized by such dreams of hope and renewal for all of us! Yes, it may be hard, but we're the men and women who can and will do it!
I'd like to conclude with two things: anyone curious about what I mean to do can find out either on my blog at http://nopartyline.blogspot.com or on my FB page titled 'Progressive Platform & Politics 2014+' in the post labelled 'The Central Article.' And if there's anyone who thinks they can do a better job than I would, let's talk. You've nothing to lose and, when push comes to shove, I've NO desire to live in a goldfish bowl for at least four years! I'd rather be a king/queenmaker (and maintainer) than the king himself! But while I don't know who'd get more done, I feel I've no choice but to stand up and be counted. God bless you all and God save the United States!

RETURN TO OSAWATOMIE

This is it--my 'Osawatomie' post. I call it that after the place where Teddy Roosevelt made the speech in which he broke with the Taft Republicans and with which he invoked the blessed memory of John Brown.
I was born and grew up in a Democratic family. In 1980, that attachment was tenuous. Then came twelve years of Reagan-Bush smoke and mirrors and I thought that sealed my place in the Democratic party beyond undoing. That's what I thought. However, the degree to which this current administration has proven itself to be just another tool of the military-industrial-security state, the banksters and of Wall Street generally has finally become insupportable to me and I must now leave the old Democratic tent and pitch a new one, with the help of, I hope, as many others as possible. I call for a revival of Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose Progressives!
For what that means so far, let me invite all to visit my FB page 'Progressive Platform & Politics 2014+' for both platform points and a blueprint for action. Both can be found on the post labelled 'The Central Article'. There are other posts either there or on my blog at http://nopartyline.blogspot.com/. as to how to proceed. On the website, 'Campaign Advice for all Progressives' sums up info following the platform.
As to rejoining the Democrats if Hillary's nominated: a definite 'maybe'. What bothers me about Hillary more than her vote for the unrighteous Iraq war is her husband's attempt to sneak an American version of Britain's Official Secrets Act through Congress in the last year of his administration. Let them both come forth with a smudge or two of ash on their heads and maybe a sackcloth scarf and/or tie and we might well rejoin the Democrats. Absent that and other serious signs of bringing our old party a nudge or two leftward, I think a word from New York's language says most of it: FUGGEDABOUDIT!
Congressman Trey Gowdy's words (R-SC) about the Department of Justice only doing what the gerrymandered House majority asked it to do (in regard to riffling through the phone records of the AP reporters) in the end only reinforces my feeling about how sickeningly much my party now has in common with the Tinfoil Hat Brigade now in full control of the 'Republican' party!
We need a party of, by and for the PEOPLE and we need such a party NOW. I ask the Greens, Working Families Party and others to come and see if we can all come together under the old and untainted banner of Teddy Roosevelt, Bob La Follette and of many other men and women.
The success or failure of this venture will depend as much on each one of you as it does on me: it's up to us all to spread the word among our fellow citizens even as we try to do so OUT of the MSM's neon floodlights for as long as is workable AND to either find and support Progressive candidates for all elective offices from local to federal or to run for those offices ourselves!
Let's do it, fellow citizens: make a Progressive party for all of us, starting right now! God bless you all and God save these United States!!

A VERY MISTAKEN ASSUMPTION

Something I've been pondering lately: not only the loony right but, it might be, a preponderance of most Americans, proceed and have been proceeding on the assumption that every penny of the money we earn belongs to us and ONLY to us, and, hence, that taxes are burdensome impositions if not, as the Randians at least prate (although when THEY need help it's quite a different story!), outright theft.
I challenge that assumption and throw down the gauntlet to the REALLY aspiring thieves, nearly all of whom do their dirty work under the Private Enterprise colors even while they seek to loot us every which way they can, including buying up OUR government. Not even the Founders believed that ALL anyone's property was theirs alone. In proof of which, read these two quotes from two Founders:

All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a [person], for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is [their] natural Right, which none can justly deprive [them] of:(Nowadays, that would be whatever's necessary for a modest but decent living and to bring up--and educate--one's children in modest comfort and security) But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages.

The protection of a [person] is more sacred than the protection of property; and besides this, the faculty of performing any kind of work or services by which [s/he] acquires a livelihood, or maintaining [their] family, is of the nature of property. It is property to [them], [s/he] has acquired it; and it is as much the object of [their] protection as exterior property, possessed without that faculty, can be the object of protection in another person.

The first was written by Ben Franklin in a letter to Robert Morris on Dec. 25, 1783. The second is from Tom Paine's 'Dissertation on First Principles of Government'.

I don't know about you but I can already hear the whines, "Don't WE know how to spend our own money better than any government revenue hound (modern variation)?"
The answer is, not necessarily. Especially not if you ain't been paying attention, clown! If you barely know what needs doing in your own town, city or region, can we believe you if and when you say YOU know how to spend all your money? I really do wonder.
Mind you, I have my own ideas where our tax dollars should be put to work, but that's another matter. You want roads and bridges safe to drive on? Clean air to breathe and water to drink? Uncontaminated and reasonably fresh food? Not to mention police and fire who serve EVERYONE fairly? The market will do whatever it thinks it can get away with; it's long past time to discipline it and none too gently neither at that!! We can (so far) only monitor the market through the agency of OUR government. You want to know who government is? The same folks as create jobs. THAT means the person you see in the mirror in the morning as you either shave or apply war paint--and his/her neighbors as well, all acting together and deputizing people (representatives; who in turn hire and deputize 'bureaucrats', many of whom actually work not at a desk but either on the road or in physically strenuous jobs) to carry out the things we the people want done!!
Remember: WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT. WE ARE ALSO JOB-CREATORS. If anyone tells you the government is your enemy, they say that YOU are your enemy and they seek to sell you for parts!
And I can't repeat often enough that OUR desires and demands create the jobs!!
So--what we need to maintain ourselves, bring up and educate a family in modest comfort is indeed ours, but anything above and beyond that can and should be put to work in ways which benefit ALL of us, benefit the society as a whole. At least, that's what Dr. Franklin said. And he wasn't the only Founder who believed that either.

IN PURSUIT OF BEING INCONSPICUOUS

I've been mulling something over lately: the initial purpose of hijab, niqab, yea even burqa, was to render women INCONSPICUOUS. How well they work, given the stats on abuse of women in Muslim societies, is open to a good deal of questioning.
More than that, though, is the fact that women wearing such clothing in Western or indeed in any non-Muslim societies are ANYTHING BUT inconspicuous; they stick out like sore thumbs! If Muslim men in non-Muslim societies want women to blend in to the scenery, a better costume might be: a cap (in North America, probably a baseball cap) with maybe a pony tail hanging out the back, either t-shirt or sweatshirt depending on the weather, capris or sweatpants ditto, sneakers and a pair of shades if it's a bright day.
And as a Westerner, I can only conclude two things about women who insist (or their menfolk who insist) on wearing niqab or burqa in a non-Muslim society: either they're shutting their eyes to certain things about their 'host' society or they are deliberately raising a battle standard and flaunting it in the faces of the rest of us!
I don't even want to write what I think of males (they don't even deserve to be called 'men' in my opinion) who compel their women to wear clothing which, given the time and place, amounts to a battle flag saying "We-you-coming-to-get, infidel!" except for that where I come from, most men who deserve to be so called would consider such a gesture unconscionably COWARDLY!
Is a combination of both possible? I don't know.
But, as the hijab has a close resemblance to the headscarves which most women still wear at some points or other, it's decidedly different from the other two. Indeed, it can even be a sign of respect for the 'host' society inasmuch as while it says something distinct about the wearer, neither does it hide her face (anyone's most unique feature) and thus enables her to blend into the societal stream as it were.
Besides, I know someone who honors me with the title 'brother' (and I'm delighted to reciprocate) who wears hijabs with more style, class and downright sparkle than I'd have thought possible before! You know who you are, sister! Mwah!
Anyhow, to conclude: if women want to blend in and not stand out, that needs to be sartorial as well. So, ladies, take my 'sister's' advice on how to wear hijabs if that's what you want. Otherwise, go and get the sweatsuits, t-shirts, capris, caps and sneakers. Dressed like that, most males, men and others, will pass you by without a second thought.

SAME FIGHT, DIFFERENT 'FAITHS'

For some reason Asra Nomani's piece today in the Washington Post brought this idea back to my mind: on the one hand liberal, progressive and 'secularized' Muslims, and on the other liberal, progressive and 'secularized' Christians (myself among the progressives)--and nearly all Jews with brains befitting them--are fighting the same battle, although not at the same stage.
The progressive, etc. Muslims are now fighting to separate mosque from state, both here in the West and in their native countries. We now fight to maintain and strengthen the separation we have between church and state. I at least like to think that those of us who are God-, or religiously, oriented understand that separation to be absolutely vital, not only for human freedom of mind (also necessary for technological progress) but also to allow real religion to flourish as it does here where no religious body has been (since 1833) nor will ever be again part of the state establishment. Upwards of four centuries before our First Amendment stated, "Congress shall make no law..." a poet who was himself a friar wrote these words:

When the kindness of Constantine gave Holy Church endowments
In lands and leases, lordships and servants,
The Romans heard an angel cry on high above them
"This day has[the church] drunk venom
And all who have Peter's power are poisoned forever."

If Will Langland could see the corrupting nature of religion and state in the same bed in a time when a different arrangement could hardly be imagined, what excuse do any of us have, with most of the European churches now being near-empty shells as a consequence of that very connection?!
No, those who fear such separation are not afraid on God's account nor for fear of not saving we innocent sheeple but for fear that they won't be able to terrify and enrage their 'flocks' into giving them hefty incomes for doing nothing but terrifying and/or enraging them--that is, with no more reason to 'fleece' the sheeple they actually may have to go and figure out how to earn more honest livings! I say this is so for both Islamist rulers and imams on the one hand and for the far-right Christendomist (new word) preachers, publicists and noisemakers on the other!!
One distinguishing characteristic for them all seems to be a reluctance to 1) use their imagination, especially on behalf of anyone without bursting purses and/or pockets and 2) to use, still less encourage others to use, the rest of their minds except what's necessary to pull the plows so that the massas can keep making money!. Minds awake tend to ask so many seditious and blasphemous (really meaning 'inconvenient' and/or 'difficult for me') questions, don't you know? So they fight tooth and nail against having to actually engage new information and ideas and lie to their flocks that they must consider even such thoughts as blasphemous and possibly damning!
Maybe, Asra, you remind me of these things because self-criticism is also a necessity for engaging the new information, which in turn gives rise to growth and progress for both individuals and societies as a whole.
As for all the should-be hedgerow (or sand-dune?) hollerers, listen up: the hands of many of you are stained, yea, caked (for some) with the blood of others you have either urged to bloodshed or whose blood you have goaded others to shed and that blood will, without your repentances, drag you down to the lake of fire!
And when you stand before the Throne, what will you say to the God Whom we have all been commanded to love with all our hearts, souls, strengths and minds?! Think about it and I hope you charlatans lose plenty of sleep over it!!