In which NTodd examines the nature of true friendship with Israel. (20:19)
Features: Jane's Addiction, Pearl Jam, The Beatles, Johnny Mandel, Eric Clapton
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ntodd
In which NTodd celebrates independence and mourns freedom. (16:18)
Features: Ernest Gold. Bonus links: Mahmoud Darwish, Time To Remember (Al Ghabisiyya), We Still Have The Keys (El Ghabsiya). Note: I hate transliterations.
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ntodd
Normally I avoid comments on newspaper articles posted online because they tend to be batshit insane, but this one was at the top of the thread:
I observed that Code Pink is in fact protesting Obama's policy, demanding answers and lobbying to end our military involvement. Some of us have even written LTEs:
Would that more people would join us in these efforts, no matter who's in the White House...
ntodd
In which NTodd looks at creation and destruction. (18:46)
Features: Jefferson Airplane, Doors, Rolling Stones, TS Eliot, Mahmoud Darwish.
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ntodd
In which NTodd gets back in the groove after a little jaunt to the Middle East. (40:03)
Features: Michael and Janet Jackson, Disturbed, Rage Against The Machine, Pink Floyd, U2, Bob Marley, Artists Against Apartheid.
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ntodd
Slowly but surely I'm catching up with my experiences in Palestine and Israel, not to mention regular life and blogging.
ntodd
198 Sundays will return in mid-June after I return from Gaza. In the meantime, browse the archives as you consider ways you can peacefully effect change at home and abroad.
ntodd
In light of NTodd's upcoming trip, it's a good time to highlight some not-so-bad news from Gaza for a change.
With Israel maintaining its longstanding ban on allowing construction materials into the Hamas-controlled Mediterranean strip, everyone from the UN and Red Cross to the Hamas-led government and frustrated families are taking matters into their own hands.
Faced with an unending river of raw sewage flowing into the Mediterranean and the Israeli cement restrictions, the Red Cross decided to scavenge the 25-foot-tall cement slabs from the Gaza-Egypt border fence that had been toppled by Hamas militants in January, 2008.
The Red Cross engineers worked with officials in Rafah to scavenge 2,800 of the concrete slabs to build two new football field-sized sewage treatment pools near the Gaza-Egypt border.
That has created a surreal scene as sewage flows into the new ponds whose borders are made of the concrete walls that once separated Egypt and Gaza.
"We are pioneers," said Marek Komarzynski, a Red Cross engineer who worked on the project.
From McClatchy's Checkpoint Jerusalem blog
There's more in the article about how Gazans are also building mudbrick homes, to circumvent the concrete shortage.
Some of us do in fact dedicate Memorial Day to trying to save future lives. Be nice if you'd look around and see the people already working for peace and maybe join them.
And the religion you wish for? It's called the Society of Friends. Been around since the 17th century.
ntodd
Despite my misgivings about some of Candidate Obama's policy stances—Afghanistan in particular—I worked hard for him last year, being deployed as a Deputy Field Organizer by the campaign to New Hampshire. Sadly, of all the promises he made before the election, the one President Obama chooses to pursue the most vigorously is escalating the disastrous war in Afghanistan, just as President Johnson did when he inherited Vietnam.
Our increased troop presence is further inciting Taliban and al-Qaeda, which continues to destabilize not only Afghanistan, but nuclear-armed Pakistan as well. As has been noted before, hope is not a strategy, and our troops cannot defeat an ideology, which a RAND Corporation study definitively demonstrated last year. At a time of economic crisis and dire domestic needs, pursuing a losing war is an unthinkable waste of our money.
It's long past time to put pressure on the President to rethink the failed war that his predecessor launched. Thankfully, Representative Peter Welch not only voted against the recent Supplemental funding bill, he also is a co-sponsor of HR2404, which calls for an Afghanistan exit strategy. I urge all my fellow Vermonters to call or write the Congressman to thank him for his stand against escalation, and to contact Senators Leahy and Sanders on this issue as well.
We cannot afford to waste more blood and treasure in the land where empires go to die.
NTodd Pritsky
Fletcher, VT
PS--Wrote this as part of National Media Day of Action on Afghanistan; Monday Lobby Blogging is in a similar vein.
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