Justice Sunday

While Barack Obama was being lauded by Bruce Springsteen, U2, Mary J. Blige, Betty Lavette, Jon Bon Jovi, and a host of stars at the Lincoln Memorial fest Jan. 18, Colorado Springs was having its own little festival of justice. The afternoon started with a rally on behalf of Palestinian rights in Gaza, with a great turnout of kids. The younger cheering section is featured above, and other rally videos are here, here, and here.

Later in the afternoon, Opera Theatre of the Rockies held the first of several special events leading up to a Feb. 28 presentation of the Kurt Weill/Langston Hughes/Elmer Rice opera, Street Scene. On Sunday, 20 actors read a sit-down version of the play sans sets or stage action. This will be followed by musical selections Jan. 25, a showing of the 1931 movie Feb. 5, a discussion on social aspects of poverty and recession Feb. 8, a survey of Kurt Weill Feb. 12, a wine tasting Feb. 13, and a sneak preview of the set Feb. 15. The spoken play was a wonderful preview of the opera to come.




Finally, at 4 p.m., the Martin Luther King march proceeded from Acacia Park, site of the Gaza protest, to Shove Chapel on Colorado College campus. The crowd is above, the Peace and Justice banner-carriers are here. Felt like a little local representation of the Obama mania in DC.

ISRAEL OUT NOW

It's that simple.

Fight With Tools Conference

The Flobots formed a non-profit group for community organizing, Fight With Tools, which held its first annual conference at the end of 2008. The band has funded the initial costs of launching community groups in several cities, working on topics like immigration reform and militarism. They are performing a New Year's Eve show just down the road from Denver University, at The Gothic. It's refreshing to see a band that not only talks a consistent political talk, but walks the walk by funding efforts to make things better.

Below is a video of band members welcoming everyone to the conference. Other highlights include a militarism workshop with a game of Jeopardy, and a talk by Dan Conerd from the Iraq Veterans Against the War, on the reality of deployment. Here's another video from Wednesday, with Jonny 5 and Brer Rabbit leading a workshop on Strategies for Change.







The first day concluded with a vigil at the State Capitol in downtown Denver, to protest Israel's bombing of the Gaza Strip. There were more than 200 people there, an inspiring sight.

Pre-Emptivity is (Almost) Always Wrong

The academic argument often made when discussing Dick Cheney's definition of "preventive" and "pre-emptive" war, is that the former is never justified under international law, while the latter could be rationalized if armies were massed at the border, or missiles were readied (or fired) into an adversary's territory. By that thought experiment, Israel could be justified for its late-December attacks on Gaza, as the occasional Katyusha assaults coming from Hezbollah now are augmented with scores of Hamas' unguided Qassam rockets from the Gaza Strip (pictured on the left - think roughly of the difference between the V2 and V1 buzz-bombs during the Nazi asaault on London, with Qassam playing the role of V1. Islamic subnational groups have no true equivalent of guided missiles yet.).

The importance of this definition is that Israel now claims it is absolutely "at war" with Hamas. The problem with this rationalization of pre-emptivity is that it does not take into account the asymmetry of the powers involved. Do rockets assaults from Hamas and Hezbollah occasionally kill Israelis? Of course. Are the continued attacks from Gaza in the wake of Israeli bombing raids a macho act of desperation that only makes things worse? Of course. But as usual, Israel is adopting an eye-for-an-eye response that shows total lack of reciprocity. Its matrix of control thrown over Gaza makes the so-called retaliatory assaults a series of turkey shoots.

Let's repeat it for emphasis: Israel is an imperial state. Israel is an occupationist state. Israel is a thug state. Does it sound like any other nations we're familiar with?

V for Pynchonesque Victory or V for Vendetta?

Thou Shalt Not, Except Sometimes

The State Department has taken a distinct and troubling new step by praising the assassination by car bomb of Imad Mughniyeh of Hezbollah. Not that I'd disagree too much, mind you -- the man who planned the 1983 Beirut bombing of the Marine barracks, and several of the Beirut Hezbollah kidnappings of the late 1980s, is probably indeed better off dead. A strict Christian approach to confronting evil would say that one can never rejoice over another's death. But let's face it, I was overjoyed the day Augusto Pinochet bit it, and will probably feel similarly for, say, Henry Kissinger or Dick Cheney (not the president, who is too much of a bumbling tool of the powerful). But I know I'm wrong to have a "party on the gravestone" view, and it seems troubling that the governments of the U.S. and Israel would make an official statement to praise a murder.

Carter Center Resignations

The resignation of several Jewish board members of the Carter Center, protesting Jimmy Carter's position on the Israel-Palestine debate in his new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, stands as proof positive of the closed minds of most American Jews. Criticize Israeli government policy in Israel, and get a lively debate. Criticize Israeli government policy in America, and you'll get called a Jew-hater if you're a gentile and a "self-hating Jew" if you're a Jew. I've got news for American Jews: Israel is an expansionist, colonialist apartheid state who has nuclear weapons and isn't afraid to use them. Of course, it's surrounded by dangerous enemies, but it's also dangerously imperialist and dangerously macho itself. The off-the-record comments of IDF members to the Sunday London Times, suggesting that Israel might use nuclear-tipped bunker-busters against Iranian nuclear sites, is a perfect example of a very twisted Israeli psyche. Kudos to Jimmy Carter for saying the truths that needed to be said, and to hell with American Jews who can't face the truth about the Israeli state.