YAD VASHEM MUSEUM AND THE 8-METER HIGH WALL A FEW KILOMETERS AWAY: ISRAEL AND MEMORIES 2007-2008

YAD VASHEM MUSEUM AND THE 8-METER HIGH WALL A FEW KILOMETERS AWAY: ISRAEL AND MEMORIES 2007-2008

By William Walker

Almost anyone who has ever been involved in Holocaust studies knows what Yad Veshem is. It is a museum complex which was started in Israel decades ago to recall the history, background and repercussions of the NAZI-led holocaust on European Jews and Jewry seven decades ago.

In 2007, the Museum Complex Yad Vashem in Israel received the Spanish national prize for education and peace, the Premio Prinicipe de la Concordia. This was an important step for Spain to take as at this very junction in history the entire land is the leading representative of growing anti-semanticist attitudes towards Jews and Muslims on the continent.

Ironically, in contrast to the current-rating of European Union surveys, which have indicated that Spain has the highest rate of anti-Semitism in Europe, Spain’s record during WWII during the time of the Nazis had been somewhat different.

Accordingly, on the serving of the award this past September 2007, Israeli representatives concurred that, unlike many other states in Europe during WWII, Spain had provided both regular refuge and temporary refuge for Jews fleeing from across continental Europe.

Meanwhile, that same month in Madrid on the 24th of September an international conference opened under the title: “The Holocaust and its Significance for Our Times”.

While I laud much of the mission of Yad Veshem and of the direction of conferences in Madrid on the Holocaust’s historiography this past September 2007, I feel that one really needs to visit both Yad Vashem and the massive Israeli Barrier Walls around Palestine nearby to really understand what symbolism these cement-brick monoliths hold in the current cultural war involving peoples of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish background as of 2007 and 2008.

http://www1.yadvashem.org/remembrance/index_remembrance.html



MASSIVE CEMENT MONOLITHS

The main display building of Yad Vashem was renovated a few years back.

In creating this newest central structure--formed completely of unadorned cement of over 8-meters in length (i.e. in triangular form) on three sides , Yad Vashem Museum complex has symbolically mirrored the great and horrible barriers being constructed and consecrated under the watch of Israeli security forces on Palestinian land throughout the Holy Land over the past half-decade.

Much of these so-called Security Barrier Walls are ugly and cut right through neighborhoods in and around biblical places and religious sites, like Hebron, Bethlehem, Ramallah and near Nazareth—“uglifying” the landscape and ghettoizing a great proportion of the population of inhabitants of the Holy Land in 2007-2008.

Unadorned concrete also covered much of German architecture after WWII as the peoples of post-war Germany sought a modern form of simplified architecture to create a new people, society and culture upon.

Unadorned concrete churches and public buildings blossomed across formerly Nazi-controlled Europe as a means of trying to forget—not remember—the recent past of horror.

Then in 1961, East Germany built a monument to divisions between brotherly peoples— a division which history demanded be torn down down three decades later to the delight of the entire planet.

This East German barrier Wall was built ostensibly to keep Western invaders out. It was really built to keep people on both sides of the wall from ever getting to know one another or uniting into one culture or economy.

Until Israel began such a similarly horrifying construction project of cement barriers less than a decade ago, most of the planet Earth had considered the Berlin Wall and the other Walls of the Cold War as a plague on society and mankind.

http://www.vtjp.org/background/wallreport2.htm


By mimicking the plan of the East German communists, Israel’s leaders are showing their inability to stop mimicking bad ideas of occupiers (and circle-the-wagon type governments) from fascist Germany, Apartheid South Africa and/or walled cities of Melilla & Ceuta in Western Africa (separating Morocco and Spanish Africa).

This is one of the best websites to view the overall main architecture at Yad Vashem and how empty concrete dominates the landscape within the central grounds of the park in which it is located west of Old Jerusalem:

http://www.arcspace.com/architects/Safdie/holocaust/yad_vashem.html



OTHER BAD IDEAS: PROCEEDING THROUGH YAD VASHEM

Unlike other holocaust museums and memorials, I have visited in Germany, Poland, former Yugoslavia, and the United States, the Yad Vashem Museum in Israel takes an unashamedly narrow approach on (1) the victimization of Jews and (2) the centrality of the Holocaust in the process of the state building of Israel in the 20th Century.

For example, I had been warned by Christian Palestinians prior to visiting this Yad Vashem Museum Complex that it hardly reveals the fact that there were other Holocaust victims and targets of Nazism, including Jehova Witnesses and the handicapped.

In the Museum proper, I saw only one small picture of a single gypsy-victim (Sinte and Romer) of the Holocaust.

In a separate art section of the holocaust museum, namely in artwork of those in the Terezin Ghetto and Camp of Central Europe, I came upon a memorable painting of one Christian worship service, memorializing the camp experience by one of the victim-painters at one of that death camp.

As far as the misuse of the Holocaust by politicians in Israel goes, the Yad Vashem Museum proper failed to mention this abuse at all. Later, I did see a few works on this very topic in the museum bookstore.

Likewise, books on Muslims, Christians and other Europeans who tried to save Jews in the 1930s and 1940s Europe were not mentioned in the Museum proper within any clear context. However, again, later I did observe that there were such books in the bookstore at the far-left entrance of the museum.

This lack of any foci on the righteous gentiles is an interesting area of neglect for Yad Vashem Museum proper as the whole museum complex is surrounded by thousands of memorials & trees planted to commemorating those who’d stood up for what was right—i.e. the planted trees commemorate Righteous Gentiles who saved Jewish peoples at risk to their own lives throughout the 1930s and 1940s.

In short, taking a step outside of the museum complex, one observes on the hillside and in the greater park (where Yad Vashem are located) a large areas known as the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations. This is where trees by the hundreds are planted in the names of at least a thousand Europeans and North Africans who risked life-and-limb to aid Jews in their hours of need.

Moreover, outside near the main complex is a large Monument to the Jewish Soldiers and Partisans who fought against Nazi Germany. Inside, in the museum proper, there was a short mention of the fact that some Jews had joined socialists, communists, and other resistance groups fighting against Nazis.

However, this very memory of the Holocaust museum experience was almost drowned from my consciousness as one fanatical tour guide made the astounding claim, “No one raised a hand--not a bullet was shot--to save the Jews.”

I thought to myself, is that Jewish tour guide with the American accent serious? Is she believing the words (or lies) coming from her mouth?

Of course, that female guide might quite likely just have been trying to hit these two points home: (1) Jews were locked out of areas of safety at the end of the 1930s when most European and North American countries refused Jewish immigrants assistance, i.e. in their hours of greatest need, and (2) later in the middle of WWII the Allies never agreed to bomb Auschwitz, a death factory of total infamy—even when Jewish groups were demanded that the Nazi-killing be stopped. (The British, for example, appeared to have had enough bombs lying about to “bomb the hell out of Dresden”, but not to have anything on hand to fling at Auschwitz a couple of hundred miles away. )

Despite such a rationalization of the Jewish guide’s blatant falsehoods, I left the Museum feeling that the female guide’s claim that “Not a shot was fired to help the Jews” was (a) a misleading attempt to build and support the ongoing official narration of Israel to use as (b) an excuse to build and support a messed-up walled-nation-state of Israel that one observes before visitors in the world today.


HOLOCAUST SUBTERFUGE REFLECTED IN ISRAEL TODAY

One of the points that Yad Vashem tries to demonstrate in a great series of displays and in the tours offered at the museum is how the Jews were tricked and mislead (by their own blind hopefulness at times) into demeaning themselves and agreeing to get into cattle cars which would ultimately lead to their own deaths.

In the main exposition, for example, it was noted that the Jewish peoples on trains arrived at their destinations with toothbrushes, photo albums, and other items--as though these victims-to-be fully expected “not-to-be-gassed” upon their arrival but either (1) be put to work and/or (2) be place in some sort of new ghetto or nicer quality place of living.

Terezin ghetto and concentration camp in Czechoslovakia was an example of this sort of Nazi subterfuge.

The Terezin ghetto was originally advertised around the German Reich as a retirement home or old-folks home for aging Jews. In Yad Vashem Museum Nazi-propaganda photos and newsreels from Theresianstadt were shared with visitors. These pieces of propaganda implied that life was ideal on the Nazi compound’s grounds in Terezin.

This sort of successful propaganda was further discussed in other parts of the exhibition.

http://www1.yadvashem.org/new_museum/Galleries/gal4.html

For example, the arrival at Auschwitz for many was set up similar to the confusing border crossings (once-prominent in Western Europe and) still prevalent on Israel’s borders with neighboring Jordan and Israel. On such borders, confused peoples speaking all kinds of strange languages come together and try to find direction through a series of ever-changing procedures to the other side of the border (going or coming).

Upon their arrival in Auschwitz, many Jewish victims were told that the location they were at was simply a transfer station, i.e. for passengers to get out and prepare to board other trains once papers were processed and passengers passed through various hygienic procedures, including delousing.

Amidst the confusion of the newness of the confusing location and long lines going in various directions, passengers could easily be separated quickly from their families—the old from the young, etc.

In short, illusion, propaganda, false-hope by victims, and other means of misleading passengers in camps & in train yards in a new world filled with speakers of nearly a hundred different languages and dialects made the Holocaust possible by those who controlled the process.

Tragically, Israel carries out its own form of manipulation of peoples, cultures, and hopes in the Middle East today.

Similar to Nazi-era Germany, the people of Israel are told that the country is in a continuous state of emergency that makes walled cities and Palestinian Ghettos necessary for the state’s survival. Therefore passports and permission to come and go are limited and usage of exit and entry visas by Palestinians and others are also intentionally confusing—one day this border is opened, the next day it is closed but another border with another set of crossing rules is opened.

Similar to concentration camps of the Nazi-era, thousands of Palestinians (especially if Muslim rather than Christian Palestinian) are living as stateless peoples within an Israeli dominated system and apparently run by people who value themselves and their level of society and culture higher than the peoples and society of any others around them.

This is the reality of the nation state of Israel. It is a land that has determined to rebuild the world of a divided Europe of the early and mid-20th Century Europe.

Further, many of those stateless Palestinians are rarely allowed outside of their ghettos into the Promised Land where their ancestors once lived and felt fully integrated in the land and societies around them.


MUSEUM LESSONS

By intentionally connecting the memory of the building of Israel to the Holocaust, Yad Vashem Museum in Israel has created a key means of interpreting modern Israel and the reason for its being.

Sadly, Yad Vashem Museum has not taken time nor opportunity to point out how the cement barriers of the modern Israeli system and its walls are mirrored so clearly in the unadorned concrete of its own main triangular structure.

Walls and borders are resurrected by Israeli officials on a regular basis. Each one mirrors the dehumanization process for the other.

Meanwhile, each year new divisions between peoples are created by the Israeli regime by its creating new apartheid laws—e.g. the anti-Jewish regime has recently copied the Nazis by proscribing who can be recognized as married or not under the law in Israel.

That’s right!

Just as the Nazi Regime revoked marriages between Jews and non-jews in 1930s and 1940s, Israel has recently created a marriage law which makes a non-Jewish wedding illegal within the Israeli Reich in 2007-2008.

Are Muslim weddings now illegal in Israel?

Are Christian weddings illegal in Israel?

Are Secular weddings illegal in Israel?

This sure seems to be the case—although the supreme court might throw out the law soon—who knows? The fact is, this is the trend in Israel over the past two decades. It is a bunker mentality set on resurrecting the memories of Hitler in an Israeli state in this 3rd Millenium.

This sort of trend in state building and lawmaking is the status quo in Israel today. Perhaps, the laws on marriage will change again next year under popular protest—instead of waiting for the courts in Israel to decide.

Meanwhile, since the Yad Vashem Museum has recently received the Spanish Peace Prize, it should take a new leadership role and at least work a bit more towards education and peace in Israel by connecting the dots better in its historical narration of both the Holocaust and the “reason for being” of the state of Israel.

In Israel, no institution—not even museums—are an island separate from the politics of hate and peace around them.

Please, Yad Vashem, connect the dots to Israel’s present today and tomorrow!


POSTLUDE

Outside of the Museum Complex of Yad Vashem is a train car seated on a train track going nowhere.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/westerborktrain.html

On the wall below the Gestapo modified-freight car, which once took victims of the Holocausts to their end, are the words of one of the Nazi victims who road that particular train to his or her death.

Written in pencil by one of the seats were these following words--which stopped so abruptly:

“Here in the carload,
I am Eve,
With Abel my son,
If you see my other son
Cain Son of Man
Tell him I …”

This is the Memorial to Deportation which commemorates the victims who went by their millions to their deaths during the Nazi-era.

What was the intent of the writer?

What was it that needs to be told to Israel and the other children of man? i.e. Of Cain?

One male tour guide explained why no one was allowed to enter that train car at the end of those tracks which go nowhere.

The guide stated, “Jews are not called here to look back at the past and focus only on the past. We are called to learn from it and to do something about our future.”

He emphasized again, “We need to come to grips with what the events of the holocaust mean for us today and for our future?”

I wanted to reply, “Obviously, the less is clear. Stop building walls and barriers. Stop promoting killers—whether they are named Cain or Abel! Please juxtapose the cement of the Yad Vesham walls to the Walls being built around you in Israel in the name of security and peace!”

I thought, “For an Israeli today, the lessons from the holocaust should be NEVER AGAIN just as your ancestors promised 3 to 4 generations ago! That is, you all had promised never to equate a whole people or peoples to be the cause of all that troubles you. Do as you promised in the Museum Yad Vashem and elsewhere to do.”

“The Blaming of the Other for your own crimes in the name of security is how the Germans and there bystanders came to join the perpetrators so readily in the time of the Holocaust. If you haven’t learned this here at Yad Vashem, the Yad Vashem Museum governing committee must demand a better set of displays be set up immediately.”


NOTES

Israel's Wall on the West Bank, http://www.vtjp.org/background/Separation_Wall_Report.htm

Mosche Safde, The Holocaust Museum, http://www.arcspace.com/architects/Safdie/holocaust/yad_vashem.html

Other Memorials, C-Z, http://www.fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/resource/gallery/galleryo.htm

Yad Vashem, http://www.yadvashem.org/

Yad Vashem on Flicker, http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicasaurusrex/1387946227/

DESPITE UGLY AND DEMEANING 8 METER HIGH WALL, MANY FROM AROUND THE GLOBE MAKE IT TO BETHLEHEM THIS CHRISTMAS

DESPITE UGLY AND DEMEANING 8 METER HIGH WALL, MANY FROM AROUND THE GLOBE MAKE IT TO BETHLEHEM THIS CHRISTMAS

By William B. Walker

I celebrated Jesus’ birthday by going to Bethlehem’s Manger Square and singing Christmas carols with visitors from Italy, the USA, Canada, and Palestine—We did this just after the finishing of the midnight mass in the Nativity Church, where Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had also been in attendance for the first time.

According to Al-Jazeera News, “A recent lull in violence and renewed Middle East peace talks have bolstered tourist and pilgrim numbers, with the Palestinian town in the West Bank enjoying its busiest Christmas since the second intifada began seven years ago . Despite the festive atmosphere, however, a heavy police deployment, the presence of Israel's massive separation wall and unease among Bethlehem's ever-shrinking Christian population served as reminders of the lingering tensions in the region.”

Al-Jazeera also noted that this recent seven-year period contrasts starkly with the 7 years just after the Oslo Peace Accords, which were signed in 1993. At that time many 1000s came each Christmas tide to Bethlehem for the first time.

This fairly disturbing trend in the lack of peace and security in Bethlehem and in other Israeli controlled Holy Land cities over these past 7 years has also coincided in a fairly great decline in the number of Jewish settlers arriving in Israel.

In short, on the face of it, the combined effects of the failed intifada of 2000 and the increase in the number of Israeli settlements (plus the somewhat obscene wall-building by Israel) over the last decade have made a mess out of what was once a blossoming peace process here in the Middle East.

NOTE: A pastor I know in Jerusalem has pointed out, too, that Israeli policies of the last two decades have also continued to sink the percentage of Christians living in either the West Bank or in Israel proper. That is, Christians in Israel are being forced by circumstances to migrate to safer climates or places where work and rights can be had more readily.


COMPARING TWO HOLY LANDS: ISRAEL vs. JORDAN

The disgraceful increase in violence in Israel over the past decade poses a sad contrast to its much poorer Holy Land neighbour, Jordan—another country which has also been active in the peace process since the 1990s.

THE JORDAN TIMES editorial, entitled “A Thought for Humanity”, in the 25th of December edition of the THE JORDAN TIMES indicates the degree of impatience Jordan and other neighbouring Holy Land states are having with both Israel’s and Hamas’ belligerent (i.e. round-the-wagons) approach to governance and failed peacemaking in this new Millennium.

The JT editorialist writes, “Here in Jordan, Christians live side by side with Muslims in complete harmony, proving that the two faiths are not, and need not, be in conflict with each other. There is no clash of civilisations, indeed of religions, in the Kingdom. Muslim and Christian Jordanians have always coexisted in peace, harmony and love, a model of tolerance and goodwill.”

The author continues, “True Islam, those who know it, like Christianity, preaches peace, love and compassion for fellow human beings, irrespective of their faith.”
Next, this editor laments, “Despite the message of love and peace spread by the monotheistic religions, it is sad to see that the birthplace of Jesus Christ is the farthest away from peace. The Holy Land, even Bethlehem where Jesus was born, is denied peace, living under occupation and enslavement. As long as the Palestinians, Muslim and Christian alike, are denied freedom, there can be no peace in the Middle East or elsewhere in the world.”

Besides asking that Christians, Muslims, and Jews work together more in this coming year to build peace, the editor also calls readers to take this Christmas period to pray for the Middle East.

Concluding his article, this unknown editor states, “We should also strive to live by the injunctions of the prophets, showing compassion and goodwill towards those in need, now and throughout the year. Merry Christmas!”

CROSSING OVER FROM JERUSALEM TO BETHLEHEM 2007

I, myself, observed the façade being placed around the Monster Walls built recently by the Israelis separating Palestinians who live on the “wrong side of the wall” to go through sometimes lengthy and humiliating checkpoints on a daily basis.
Amazingly, one of those check points is at a very famous pilgrimage destination. This checkpoint is not often open for use. The checkpoint is known in both Israel and in Palestine as the Tomb of Rachel, Abraham’s wife. (Abraham is the father of oth the Jewish and Muslim faiths.)

This location of Rachel’s Tomb is noted several times in the New Testament as the place where it had been prophesied already in Old Testament times that Rachel, the ancestor of King David and Jesus, would weep for the children of Bethlehem.
This weeping refers to the thousands of children slaughtered under King Herod’s orders near the time of Jesus’ birth in the town of Bethlehem. Some Catholic sources say that at least 14,000 boys under the age of two were killed in Bethlehem at that time.

By the way, every year on December 28th, the Catholic church recalls and commemorates the tragic slaughter of these children of Bethlehem two millennia ago. (Frustratingly, this December 28 event has the peculiarly sweet-sounding name of “Feast of the Holy Innocents”.)

In short, for any pilgrim going to Bethlehem a visit to Rachel’s tomb is historically a must-see! However, due to the fact that there is a behemoth wall and often-closed checkpoint at that location now under Israeli orders, few pilgrims in recent years have been able to pass by Rachel’s Tomb.

I was therefore happy to learn that this Christmas 2007 the crossing at Rachel’s Tomb would be open to both Palestinians and to Pilgrims crossing in either direction. However, when I arrived at the Israeli side of the 25 foot high double-wall, I was taken aback by the audacity of the Israeli government.

Painted on the Israeli side were large 18-inch high letters claiming that Israel wished humanity and the country “Peace”.

Everyone whom I have talked to in either Palestine or Israel about the writing about “peace” at the Wall entering Bethlehem find the statements almost obscene in the context with which Israel has proceeded with the building of walls and checkpoints over the past years and months.

Despite the checkpoint being open only a few Jews are allowed each year to visit the tombs and pray. This is the case even though both Muslims and Christians see it as a pilgrimage site for their faith.

BEYOND ISRAEL’S POTEMKIN FACADES

A “Potemkin Village” or “Potmekin Façade” is an old Russian term used to describe an illusion created by a government in order to portray life in a town or village as much-better-than-it-really is.

During my short tour of Israel, its checkpoints and barrier walls, I had the feeling that a lot of what was easily accessible was, in fact, a façade for short-term visitors to fall prey to. It is therefore of little wonder that perhaps after the construction of miles of barrier walls that the facades are finally having a positive effect on the tourist industry’s approach to Israel.

For example, although Jordan has experienced few bombings of any sort in recent years--in contrast to Israel--, travel agents and travel industry leaders have continued to spend more money advertising and promoting vacations to Israeli locations (including to Israel’s seaside resort of Eilat on the Read Sea) than has the industry been willing to spend on trips to Jordan.

In short, image is very important to Israel’s tourist industry success, and the barrier walls (and bantuization of life for Palestinians in the Occupied territories) are part of painting a seductive image for the Western tourist and for capturing the potential Jewish émigré.

It could well be that the recent rapprochement of Fatah, led by Palestinian President Abbas and the leaders of Israel are just a Potemkin Village for the TV cameras—not only this Christmas but for the U.S. elections in 2008.

One only has to look at the bizarre-looking maps of the Israeli-curled-Wall-fingers reaching deep into occupied Palestinian territory on the West Bank to see that no military planner would want to defend such atrociously ill-devised attempts to create a sense of peace and security via (1) simple propaganda, (2) image and neglect, and (3) cement wall construction.

The Israeli military is being asked to defend what is not really defendable for any length of time—that is, the military of Israel is being expected to simultaneously protect several hundred enclaves, any of which could cut off an illegal settlement on a moment’s notice if one of Israeli’s neighbors had a mind to support the destruction of entranceway.

This sort of Israeli security plan is not unlike Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars program which went bust in the 1980s. In that expensive military boondoggle, the USA government sought to build a costly weapons system to defend the indefensible. It was a security dream of being able to intercept any attack on the USA before it could happen. The Reagan Star Wars project cost 35 billion dollars before it was shot down by the 1990s. (Otherwise, it would have likely busted the U.S. economy soon thereafter.)

In short, finding Permanent Peace through wall buildings is an expensive mirage for Israelis (its military) and Israel visitors alike.

GOOD NEWS

The good news is that every single weekend every week of the year at least one Israeli barrier wall or checkpoint in Israel or Palestine, both Israeli and Palestinian Peace activists are at work, letting the Press and media of Israel and the World know that Israel’s Wall technology is not putting the Holy Land on a road to peace—NO MATTER how many times the Israeli government writes the word PEACE on the Wall.

There have even been a number of Orthodox Jewish coalitions joining hand-in-hand with their Muslim Arab brothers to lead protests in recent weeks.

If you don’t believe me . . . , check out some of these links

http://www.nkusa.org/
http://www.ainfos.ca/05/jul/ainfos00173.html
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/wall_articles.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1154221,00.html
http://religionandterror.com/category/israeli-palestinian-conflict/israels-separation-wall/

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article8940.shtml

http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2007/10/19/human-rights-activists-protest-against-apartheid-wall-in-um-salamona/

In the meantime, December 28th is coming soon and we need to recall the murders and deaths of innocent children at Bethlehem as we seek to stop unnecessary deaths in the coming years and really work to build peace across faiths and nationalities in the Middle East—Israel first.


NOTES

“ . . . and then they fight you, then you win . . . “ , http://samiawad.wordpress.com/2007/08/19/%E2%80%A6then-they-fight-you-then-you-win%E2%80%A6/


“CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: ‘Holy Innocents’”, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07419a.htm

“Christmas Celebrated in Bethlehem”, http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/05A2C75F-6171-4D2B-B890-41AFA9D80D27.htm

“Easing Tensions Helps Tourism in Bethlehem”, http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20071224/bethlehem_071224/20071224?hub=CTVNewsAt11

“Israel’s New Border Plans, North of Bethlehem”, http://www.poica.org/editor/case_studies/view.php?recordID=340

Netur Ei Karta, http://www.nkusa.org/

“Palestine-Israel, Joint Struggle against the Fence Expanded”, http://www.ainfos.ca/05/jul/ainfos00173.html


“Rachel’s Tomb: Back in Business”, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43326

“A Thought for Humanity”, http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=4568

Traer, Bob “At Rachel’s Tomb”, http://www.eappi.org/eappi.nsf/index/rep-bt-05041108.html

WILLIAM WALKER WRITES FROM JERUSAELM THIS CHRISTMAS

WILLIAM WALKER WRITES FROM JERUSAELM THIS CHRISTMAS

By Kevin A. Stoda, Kuwait

I received a note from William B. Walker who is in Israel taking photos of the Great Barrier Walls being built around Palestinian communities all across that troubled Middle Eastern land this Christmas 2007.

In the letter, W.B. Walker writes that there are many important details not being shared about the matter in the American press.

I will share some of Walker’s findings below:

Finding #1: Prior to the completion of the 36-foot high Monster Wall which went up near Bethany—not far from the famed Mount of Olives—there was an increase in thievery of livestock, especially sheep.

One cloister reported that a whole herd of sheep was taken.

This increase in crime was explained by one of the cloister’s residence who stated, “This was to be expected. When people have their access to jobs and livelihood cut off, they are forced to resort to stealing.”

Finding #2: One resident of a neighboring cloister also noted, “It was shameless. The Israelis began bulldozing the property of our brothers in the nearest cloister in the middle of the night. Then they put up a Wall taking land from the other Christian brother’s cloister.”

Next, Walker went to verify this same story at the land from the cloister, i.e. the land which had been taken in the dark of night.

At the property of the Orthodox Patriarch near the new Barrier Monster Wall, Walker made confirmation of the Israeli government’s midnight thievery of long-held (i.e. for centuries) church property.


Finding #3: An architect and manager at that cloister of the Orthodox Patriarch reported that at least 8000 square meters of property were stolen by the creation of the Wall. This Christian stated, “When we took our complaint to the Israeli government, all they gave us was the finger.”

The architect explained, “The Israeli government claims that they have not seized the property; ‘the government of Israel is simply borrowing the land for the duration’, i.e. with no compensation for the duration.”

Finding #4: Prior lawsuits and loss of property to Christians and Muslims have occurred in other parts of the Holy Land, whereby the government of Israel has laws on the books stating that any absentee landlords will have property confiscated—usually within a year or two.

One local Palestinian Christian stated, “The cloister could soon lose all rights to its 8000 square meters of farming and grazing land.”

Another long-time resident and foreign born priest stated, ”Only Israeli Jews have rights in this country. Muslims and Christians who were born here or have lived here for decades have little fair treatment or equal access under the domain of law enforcement in Israel.”

Finding #5: Israel receives billions of dollars of aid from the United States government each year, but the U.S. has yet to even firmly threaten to cut-off aid, even if the Israeli government were to continues to seize and not compensate property owners throughout its territories for these thefts against peoples and properties.

Finding #6: The sons and families of Ariel Sharon who own construction firms are earning millions and millions of dollar in these dead-of-night Barrier Wall Constructions.

Ariel Sharon dreamt up the idea of the Wall decades ago. Many of the cement and construction contracts are going straight into Sharon family pockets.

Finding #7: Back at the Orthodox Patriarch Monastery, the architect shared more information about the views of the landscapes beyond the mammoth barrier walls.

He said, “On your left, observe the crowded village where the Arab Palestinians are congregated with steep vertical housing and narrow streets. The Wall here was not built because those particular peoples had been causing any trouble for the Israelis. The Wall was built to preempt their urban sprawl or encroachment towards the valley between Jerusalem and their settlement.”

In short, it was a property land grab by the Israeli government—replacing redlining with actual barrier walls sanctioned by a racist government to keep balanced the property values level where Israelis lived. I.e. to protect Israeli property values from being affected by a growing population of Arab Palestinians.


Finding #8: Back to the right across the new barrier wall to the south from the monastery, the architect pointed a clear contrast to the Palestinian settlement to the left. He explained, “Here is an illegal Israeli settlement. Notice the horizontal drift of the development across a wide swath of territory.”

The placement of the Wall here near the cloister is set up to protect this bad use of public space in a region that has very little land for agriculture. It again was not set up to protect Jerusalem but to protect a bad form of development, more reminiscent of Southern California than of traditional land usage in the Middle Eastern Holy Land.


NOTES

The Israeli Apartheid Wall, http://www.auphr.org/thewall/


Photos of Security Fence Contest, http://www.pbase.com/yalop/fence


Stoda, Kevin, “Apartheid Maps—Israel & Palestinian Bantustans”, http://alone.gnn.tv/blogs/26043/APARTHEID_MAPS_ISRAEL_PALESTINE_BANTUSTANS?r=5

Stop the Wall, http://www.stopthewall.org/

Remembering:FIGHTING COLLUSIONS OF SILENCE! BREAK THE SILENCE! One Educator's Approach to Memory in Line with Iris Chiang's

Remembering:FIGHTING COLLUSIONS OF SILENCE! BREAK THE SILENCE! One Educator's Approach to Memory in Line with Iris Chiang's

By Kevin Anthony Stoda


Many of us our called to wander the globe and wonder at the good, the unknown, or be witness to evils and changes while rediscovering history on this earth. Many of us are also inspired to educate others.

Some of us have a camera’s eye for detail. Some of us feel a sense of loss at inappropriate silence. Some of us shout our outrage in the midst of silence—or at least support those who do stand up and are speaking for those who cannot any longer speak.

In my life I am blessed to be able to do all these things. I was blessed to be able to make journeys in my days on this earth to Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dachau—and other places of memory and witness. I plan to do so until I die, and I invite you to join me—for this is the millennium for us to really get to know one another!

Let’s dream big! Let this be the century when governments forget to worry about image and stop fearing shame and admit their errors, building a healthier new age of more mature and knowledgeable citizenry for this planet—a planet already wrought with too many wars and civil wars in the very first decade of this new millennium.


MEMORIAL MUSEUM KUWAIT 2007

Although I have already been living in Kuwait for over 3 ½ years, I recently visited for the Memorial Museum: Kuwait House of National Works. It is located not far from the old National Assembly building that looms as a large abandoned monument to the 1990 invasion of the country.

As in continental China these days, new structures are going up extremely quickly in Kuwait. So, it is surprising that the government has chosen to retain such a huge piece of property on Arab Gulf Road, one of the higher demand areas for construction and water front businesses in all of the country. As one looks around and marvels at the many tall cranes and high rise construction projects in Kuwait today, one should somberly recall that only 16 to 17 years earlier the invading Iraqi occupation forces used to hang Kuwait opponents and rebels from those same types of cranes.

As I write this essay, I ponder what museums, there are to memory of war and Massacre in Nanking. I look on line and see that there are such places of memory, and I hope they are not so hidden and out of the way as this memorial museum in Kuwait is.



Less than a mile away from the dilapidated Assembly structure and hidden away in a side street is where the Memorial Museum in Kuwait is located. Outside the building are a few pieces of captured Iraqi military equipment. In the garden is a sculpture of an aerial bomb hitting a small structure. On the blackened projectile is written “Saddam”.

As one enters the museum, the first rooms are dedicated to works of national heroes and to the life of early Kuwait, i.e. an era long before oil—an era of silk road trading, and pearling or fishing ships. It is a simpler time where wars of mass-execution were unknown.

The Kuwaiti residents of that era were also much poorer. Some had to indenture themselves, their children, and their grandchildren as servants just to get by. Alas, as is typical of national museums around the globe, the quasi-slavery of the 18th and 19th century Kuwaiti world is not referred to. (This is, of course not the museum's mission, but silences about history are not unknown throughout Kuwait either.)

Among the various photos of 1990-1991 occupied Kuwait are images of disappeared victims of the occupation of Kuwait. Further, one sees evidence of how the occupiers tried to erase the memory of Kuwait. Streets and townships were renamed after Saddam Hussein or Iraqi heroes.

The message is clear. Upon occupying the territory in August 1990, the Iraqis sought to erase memories of Kuwaiti history and memory as soon as soon as possible. Kuwaiti flags along with photos of the nation’s leaders were banned from public display. Police reports showed that children--as young as six years old--were arrested for carrying such items in the street.

On the walls are photos of women who died in hospitals of Kuwait in 1990. Iraqi government forces had systematically taken medicine and medical equipment from Kuwaiti hospitals as fast as possible—sending the medical supplies to Baghdad and other parts of Iraq. The narration under the photos indicates that these women died because they had been denied medicine and medical treatment. The implication is that a sort of genocide was being practiced in Kuwait by its neighboring occupier.

During the occupation, thousands of houses and buildings in Kuwait had been ransacked of their furniture, office supplies, jewelry, artwork, cultural artifacts, electronics, and anything considered of value. The large scale looting of the Kuwait National Museum and its humongous collection of Islamic memorabilia is just one example of what the occupiers did

In recent years, there has been a positive trend to put the Kuwait experience into a larger context of the ruthlessness of war and suppression of minorities in neighboring Iraq. This is reflected in the by the efforts at the Kuwaiti Memorial Museum to link its memories of occupation and rape of the homeland to the other abuses of Saddam Hussein, such as the gassing and chemical bombing in the 1980s in Kurdish areas Inside there is a vivid display of life-sized figures of villages who are left slaughtered and gassed in their Kurdish townships.

The focus of such a memorial museum is first of all to serve as a witness to what the people in Kuwait in their current mad-paced attempt to build a new world in the post Saddam era are likely to forget—that is, not pass on to their offspring in decades ahead.

The second focus is to remind visitors of the alliance that really did create for Kuwaitis a New World in February 1991: This is a world described in one brochure as a place “that discards the theory of survival of the fittest or the weak being eaten by the strong.” The founders of the museum want to remind the peoples of the world and their national leaders that in the end there is no room in this world for tyranny and dictators.


AMERICAN, GERMAN, AND JAPANESE MEMORIES 2007

As alluded to above, I am a life-long historian and educator who has had the opportunity to teach in many countries, including public schools or universities in Germany, Japan, Nicaragua, Mexico, the USA, and several Middle Eastern lands over the past two decades.

My sojourns have taken me to many places of memory over the same period. My most recent stop was to Cambodia, which is still trying to recover from the loss of millions of its citizens in the great genocide campaigns there in the 1970s. Some months earlier, I had visited Indonesia where so many had died in the anti-communist and ethnocidal programs of the mid-1960s.

Naturally, back in Europe, I observed the buildings of many new monuments in the 1980s to the atrocities of Nazi-era and fascist occupation of most of the continent in the 1930s and 1940s.. Many of these new monuments, including one at the entrance to the railway station nearest my apartment in Wuppertal City, Germany commemorated the holocaust and trainloads of local Jews who were loaded into box cars there in the 1940s and shipped to Poland.

In the 1980s and 1990s, I admired the growth in public consciousness in Germany of what had transpired under the Nazi Empire of the earlier part of the 20th Century. I also admired the fact that shame no longer seemed to drive the populace in Germany. That is, the Germans whom had seen themselves in the U.S. occupation period (from 1945-1953) primarily as victims of history were no longer doing so.

Long years of silence had ended by the time I arrived in Germany to teach part-time in 1986. In those years, the Parliament in Germany discussed the facts of history again and again—trying to deal with horrible things done in the name of nationalism and fascism. Throughout Germany governments at the town-, city-, state-, and federal levels have continued investing money, time, debate, and critical thought into how to remember and be witness to crimes against humanity. The new holocaust memorial in Berlin near the former Reichstag is just one manifestation of such public thought.

In contrast, as an American, I have often been dismayed at how such evolution of historical memory and historical debate had been missing in U.S. public debate, especially since April 30, 1975—when my own junior high school teacher told us students that Americans would remember that day and its infamy forever.

For that particular instructor, who had served in the Vietnam War flying helicopter, the loss of that war by America was a shame that we Americans would always remember. Even at that time, I didn’t buy that naive version of history of America in war. This is because as a teenager I was already pursuing an ideologies of pacifism and non-violence. My heroes were Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Sadly, most Americans were out of step with me.

While I spent my first freshman year at college in 1980 writing a paper on the vast use of chemical weapons in the Vietnam War, most Americans were being led into supporting the biggest arms build-up in American history to that date. This is why, despite having a very painful Vietnam War experience, Americans likely falsely perceived that the end of the Cold War in the 1989-1991 period was the result of America’s willingness to threaten, bully and defeat others through superiority in weapons.

Meanwhile, I had the honor of climbing over the Wall at Brandenburg Gate and walking down the Unter-den-Linden Street on December 31, 1989. At that time, I knew through my own activities in the Peace Movement that the collapsing of the East block had more to do with (1) bad economic planning in the East and (2) a common and uniting desire for peace demonstrated on both sides of the Iron Curtain in the 1980s. In that decade millions had marched in the West against the escalation of weaponry. Thousands more were working for peace on both sides of Iron Curtain through people-to-people public diplomacy to create a sense of trust among the European actors as that very decade ended. In short, it was when the politicians and military leaders got out of the way of the people that the walls came down.

Alas, that is not how American media and textbooks have taught such recent history. Due to this inadequate approach to history and memory, America recently tried to march into the Middle East and Afghanistan in the first decade of the 21st century with the peculiar expectation that firepower can rights all wrongs and creates peace.

Just over 70 years earlier, the Japanese Empire had marched into Asia—believing as well that firepower would bring Asia a Pax-Nipponia. Naturally, the methods of bullying and using firepower-over-all were not only inappropriate to tasks of building any sense of peace and stability in the region. Japan was soon itself left a smoldering ruin by 1945.

In the early 1990s, I taught in Japanese high schools and returned again to study and do research there in 1995. On the one hand, I had a happy experience teaching in Japan in what was the largest teacher exchange program in the world— a program bringing over 5000 teachers to Japan from various lands around the world as part of an officially suported public diplomacy effort to have more and more Japanese coming in contact with non-Japanese views of life and of our planet. The focus on peace and getting to know one-another’s cultures was very appealing to me as an educator in history and the social sciences. I met many Japanese who were interested in Peace issues and who were saddened by the educational practices and diplomacy inspired by its government.

As a person fascinated by the need to commemorate and invigorate oneself in the wake stopping further crimes against humanity, I have been disappointed by the public image portrayed by government leaders in their political acts related to the WWII era. They don't seem to realize how Imperialist Japanese history of the first half of the 20th Century was still affecting (1) how the average Japanese was educated and cultivated to relate to foreigners and (2) how foreign relations and national policies were failing to create an image of a matured Japan. The silent façade to memory revealed by the lack of critical textbooks and supported by insincere government pronouncements cover up shameful actions in China and a dozen other neighboring countries.

I recall the fact that when I was living in Japan, I had gained in a few days more information from what one-aged Japanese veteran of campaigns in China than his children or grandchildren had ever acquired. In short, the whole country of Japan at times appears to have had numerous skeletons in its closets that only the neighbors or neighboring peoples can see.

This façade of historical memory isn't due only to a culture of silence--driven by a tradition that runs from shame. This is the result political leadership putting up false images of what honor and dishonor mean. It also has to do with the fear of rocking the boat in a society that praises harmony—even if harmony is built on a false foundation: erasing of memory.

Compounding this silence in most corners of Japan has been a constant campaign to paint Japan as primarily a victim of history and of anti-Japanese crusades during recent decades. This focus on Japan as victim of history is certainly what drove Japanese nationalism at the birth of its imperialist efforts in the 1890s when Japan first faced off in Asia taking land from Russia and other neighboring countries in ensuing decades.

My country, the United States of America, also has played the victim card after the
11th September 2001--and naturally deserved this role to some small degree-- but the problem of always seeing oneself as victim is that one never grows up and takes responsibility for one’s actions. Therefore, one never seriously tries to correct the faulty logic, faulty steps of acculturation and misdirected educational processes which led a people astray in creating Nanking Massacres in the first place.

This linking of imperialist Japanese memory and American war memories came full-circle in the April 2, 2007 publication of an editorial by a Japanese historian (and advisor to two Japanese prime ministers), Hideaki Kase. Kase’s writing, called “The Use and Abuse of the Past” was an example of an almost official Japanese policy to rewrite again and again Japanese war crimes of the 20th Century.




NANKING’S MEMORY

The key quote expressing the sentiment of the author, Hideaki Kase, concerning the recent debate of war memories in Japan (and its affect on official Japanese diplomacy) was:
“The harder outsiders push Japan for an apology. The harder Japan may start pushing back.”

Moreover, Kase claims or implies falsely:

(1) No Japanese military occupier ever forced women to serve as prostitutes or “comfort women”.
(2) There is much evidence to indicate that no Nanking Massacre ever took place.
(3) Japanese politicians only ask forgiveness from its neighbors if it is good for business.
(4) Japanese textbooks have often “incorrectly” called what happened in Nanking as a rape or massacre.

As I read these claims, I thought to myself, “This is an outrageous series of claims to the world to be making in such a widely circulated magazine as Newswek!”

Throughout Kase\s insensitive and offensive writing—which was incidentally published in the special Newsweek magazine issue about memories of American soldiers and their families in occupied Iraq (2003-2007)—, Kase consistently implies that the Japanese are victims of a historical anti-Japanese campaign.

As a concerned cross-cultural educator and peacemaker, I responded to that article of Hideaki’s by writing an editorial of my own and published it in several free on-line blogs and websites criticizing his victimization of Japan and its distortions of memory and popular culture.

Wherever history and memory are manipulated by government officials, their backers and official histories, I have to stand up. This is the way I desire to honor Iris Chiang and her lifelong work. Iris Chang passed away a few years back but she is my ideal as an educator and a historian. She is famous for the revealing work: The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II.

This approach of mine to education and history as a lifelong struggle is the only way that the memory of what happened in Nanking will be remembered where it counts most—in the land of Japan that once tried to benefit from the massacre.

I desire that Japan (as well as America) grows into a country that can counter the worst tendencies in Asia now which continue to lead toward tyranny and dictatorship. So far, although at the people-to-people level in Japan, relationships between the Japanese and Chinese have been improving over the last two decades, the last 70-years of post-Imperial history have not shown significant change at the government level in Japan.


Mutual empathy and an educated understanding of how nations are linked historically across cultures is what we all need to have in order to connect and remain vigilant to misguided historians while reminding both our elders and our children of the fact that internalization of history is not always simply a duty or source of pride but is also a duty of peace.




Works Referred to:


Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II.
New York: Basic Books, 1997.

Iris Chang Memorial Fund, http://www.irischangmemorialfund.org/Mission_Statement.htm

Kase, Hideaki, “The Use and Abuse of the Past”, (Special Edition) Newsweek,
April 2, 2007, p. 15.

Kuwait National Memorial Museum, http://www.pbase.com/bmcmorrow/kuwaitmemorial

Stoda, Kevin, "The Use and Abuse of Newsweek: Was that a Japanese Government plant
in Newsweek in April or was that just Bad History?", http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_kevin_an_070616_the_use_and_abuse_of.htm

Stoda, Kevin, "Japan, please Stop the Whitewashing of Memory, Japan!", http://alone.gnn.tv/blogs/23731/Japan_please_STOP_THE_WHITEWASHING_OF_MEMORY_JAPAN

WHERE YOUR TAX DOLLARS REALLY GO?—WHEN IS ENOUGH ENOUGH, AMERICA? The total outlays for defense spending this 2008 fiscal year is about $2,400,000,000

WHERE YOUR TAX DOLLARS REALLY GO?—WHEN IS ENOUGH ENOUGH, AMERICA? The total outlays for defense spending this 2008 fiscal year is about $2,400,000,000,000

By Kevin A. Stoda


As I was preparing to do an End of Year report on the American budget, including monies set aside for present & past wars—including ongoing repayment of loans and the mounting medical payments for continuing health care for American Veterans of Foreign Wars etc.--, I received one of those infamous anti -governmental spending e-mails.

I have taken time to appropriate the humor, irony and satire from that particular e-mail below.

Sadly, I was struck by the fact that the unknown (or un-cited author) of this on-line humor failed (miserably) to look at the need to finally put the Defense Budget and government “discretionary spending to promote and carry out wars currently”.

This is quite like the quote of Jesus that people who criticize others for the way they look or act should first, “Take the log out of their own eyes.”

Any American citizen or tax-payer who rightfully criticizes the federal mismanagement of all American taxes absolutely must take the log out of their eyes if and when they neglect to put the Defense Budget and related discretionary expenditures under scrutiny.

See the WAR RESISTER LEAGUE’S REPORT at http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm

The total outlays for defense spending this fiscal year is about $2,400,000,000,000.

As one reads the attack on politicians which follows, Americans need to keep this in mind.

---With a growing food shortage in the world…
---With the need to shift expenditures to Solar and alternative energy sources…
---With the growing need to provide health care for aged, poor & middles class…
---With need to get more efficient transport systems in place…

There is no excuse for this practice of blind-eyeing America’s elephant in the room—the waste related to throwing money into things that go boom and have little positive multiplier effect in many parts of the economy.

One of the major casualties of war and mismanaged budgets “is the Economy, stupid!”


THE INCOME TAX E-MAIL ATTACK ON BAD PRIORITIES

The skewed (but somewhat accurate inflammatory) e-mail I received went as follows:

The next time you hear a politician use the word "billion" in a casual manner, think about whether you want the "politicians" spending YOUR tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.

A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

B. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

C. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.

D. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

E. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.


While this thought is still fresh in our brain, let's take a look at the WAR IN AFGHANISTAN It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division.

Officially, the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq are only running about $500 BILLION THIS YEAR, 2007. [In fact, it is triple that due to discretionary spending and deferring costs for another fiscal year or more.]

Interesting numbers, what does it mean?


A. Well, if you in a typical U.S. city of one-million people, every (a) man, (b) woman, (c)child would get about $516,528 each .

B. If you have one of about 360,000 homes in such a city , your home receives $1,329,787.

C. Or, if you are a family of four, your family gets $2,066,012.


Washington, D.C .. HELLO!!! ... Are all your calculators broken??

-Tax his land,
-Tax his wage,
-Tax his bed in which he lays.
-Tax his tractor,
-Tax his mule,
-Teach him taxes are the rule.
-Tax his cow,
-Tax his goat,
-Tax his pants,
-Tax his coat.


-Tax his ties,
-Tax his shirts,
-Tax his work,
-Tax his dirt.

-Tax his tobacco,
-Tax his drink,
-Tax him if he tries to think.

-Tax his booze,
-Tax his beers,
-If he cries,
-Tax his tears.

-Tax his bills,
-Tax his gas,
-Tax his notes,
-Tax his cash.
-
-Tax him good and let him know
-That after taxes, he has no dough.

-If he hollers,
-Tax him more,
-Tax him until he's good and sore.

-Tax his coffin,
-Tax his grave,
-Tax the sod in which he lays.
-Put these words upo n his tomb,
-"Taxes drove me to my doom!"

-And when he's gone,
-We won't relax,
-We'll still be after the inheritance TAX!!

-Accounts Receivable Tax
-Building Permit Tax
-CDL License Tax
-Cigarette Tax
-Corporate Income Tax
-Dog License Tax
-Federal Income Tax
-Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
-Fishing License Tax
-Food License Tax
-Fuel Perm it Tax
-Gasoline Tax
-Hunting License Tax
-Inheritance Tax
-Inventory Tax
-IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax),
-IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax),
-Liquor Tax,
-Luxury Tax,
-Marriage License Tax,
-Medicare Tax,
-Property Tax,
-Real Estate Tax,
-Service charge taxes,
-Social Security Tax,
-Road Usage Tax (Truckers),
-Sales Taxes,
-Recreational Vehicle Tax,
-School Tax,
-State Income Tax, >State Unemployment Tax (SUTA),
-Telephone Federal Excise Tax,
-Telephone Federal Universal Service Fe e Tax,
-Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax,
-Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax,
-Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax,
-Telephone State and Local Tax,
-Telephone Usage Charge Tax,
-Utility Tax,
-Vehicle License Registration Tax,
-Vehicle Sales Tax,
-Watercraft Registration Tax,
-Well Permit Tax,
-Workers Compensation Tax.


STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY?

Dear Congressman and Senators,


-Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, and our nation was the most prosperous in the world.
-We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.


2008 is the year to clean house and senate!!!!!



NOTES

“Bush War Budget Takes from U.S. Poor”, http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,124178,00.html?wh=wh

“Casualty of War: The U.S. Economy”, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/07/17/MNG5GDPEK31.DTL


“Just Security Budget”, http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4362

“Military Spending”, http://www.cdi.org/program/issue/index.cfm?ProgramID=15&issueid=34


“Where Your Income Tax Really Goes”, http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm

Dear Christians and American Supporters of Founding Fathers: “Here is Why Bush and Cheney should Resign Now—and why Pelosi should resign from leading

Dear Christians and American Supporters of Founding Fathers: “Here is Why Bush and Cheney should Resign Now—and why Pelosi should resign from leading the Democratic Party immediately”


Dear Christians and American Supporters of the Founding Fathers,

The following biblical, religious & sociological discussion clarifies why Bush and Cheney should resign now—and why Pelosi should now resign from leading the Democratic Party of America!

As an American historian and an educator of nearly 24 years, I have been appalled at the recent news of the destruction of CIA tapes related to torture investigations being carried out currently in Washington, D.C.

Moreover, I have been almost equally upset at the refusal of Democrats, such as Nancy Pelosi and John Rockefeller IV, to prosecute an impeachment against either the vice president or president over the past 12 months, especially after it has become clear that these same aged Democratic leaders had begun implicating themselves, too, in crimes against humanity nearly 5 years ago.

(I am already going out of my way to encourage Kansans to get my Republican home state senator, Pat Roberts, replaced in 2008 for the same negligence. By the way, this lack of good national security oversight is all described in Michael Cleavers article: http://www.opednews.com/author/author7762.html )

Therefore, I now feel it is more important-than-ever to address [1] concerns of millions of good Christians, Jews and Muslims in the USA and the [2] concerns of other Americans at the fact that neither Vice-President Richard Cheney nor George W. Bush have yet taken time to submit their resignations to Congress as did Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon approximately 35 years ago.

These (a) resignations of the executive branch administration and (b) the letters of resignations of congresspersons, like Pelosi. Roberts, and Rockefeller-- need to be handed in now, i.e. before 2008 rolls around.

Otherwise the currently all-time low-polling-ratings of both the U.S. Congress and the Executive Branch will likely reach the single digits before the end of the coming year.


PARENT’S AND FOUNDING FATHERS

This week at church my minister spoke on the theme of “Our Relationship to God as Child to Parent.” This is an important piece of imagery to focus on as we all have come well to understand in the midst of various recent cultural wars that the Ibrahamic Faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam now represent the majority percentage of ALL PEOPLES currently living on this fragile planet Earth.

We need more than ever to find COMMON GROUND—and I believe we can find it in terms of calling on the resignations of some of our countries greatest sinners

This means that American politics—as part of a Western Judeo-Islamic-Christian world view--sets an extremely important standard for consensus and concerning consensual behavior around the globe.

Particularly, the Christian faith focuses on a father-to-child relationship (or image), i.e., especially when discussing a Christian’s relationship to that entity or being (or “I-am”) referred to often in prayer as “God, the Father” or “God, Our Father”.

Moreover, practitioners of Christianity, Judaism and Islam also see themselves as beacons on the hill before God. This is understood to be the case with the one caveate that the human being is actually attempting to live out their faiths in a seriously manner on a daily basis. In such as situation, they are expected to shine for others—as reflections of the Light. (The image of “the Light” is further discussed below.)

According to Olaf Du Pont, author of “But we’re American… the Presence of American Exceptionalism in the Speeches of George W. Bush” & a researcher of language and concepts of image, President George W. Bush is particularly fond of citing the somewhat amorphous image of fathers, especially “founding fathers” in his speeches.

Similarly, staunch American apologists and their pro-fundamentalist American iconologists speak very highly & reverentially of the Founding Father Generation of America’s Constitution (1787 to 1800) as well as the era of the War of Independence( 1770 to 1786).

This is reflected in sort of secular faith, now predominant in America for 2 centuries or more

Finally, many Americans, in fact, concurrently worship or respect both (1) image of God as Father and the (2) images of the framers of the constitution as Founding Fathers of a Nation—i.e. a Nation called to be a “beacon on the hill” for other states.


LETTER FROM JOHN, THE APOSTLE

Many parts of the Bible focus on right living. The focus is never on living a mediocre life or on settings low goals for oneself, one’s family, one’s peoples or one’s nation.

A similar perspective would certainly guilt for a so-called Christian environment within the United States of America or within a so-called Christian Europe in the 21st Century.
It is this concerns for the failure of a society to promote good living, i.e. high standards of living out a good and wise life, that have led American Christian groups and coalitions to become fairly active politically in recent years.

For example, many Christian parents think it “just plain wrong to allow explicit sex on TV, cable, satellite and internet so that their children and other children in the nation can have easy access to it”. These Christian parents (and Islamic or Jewish parents) are concerned with raising their kids to live out life in what they belive is reflective of their heritages view on living out a wise and good life.

This is why so many have become actively campaigning against what they consider bad parenting across the U.S. However, this “bad parenting” orientation sadly mislabeled simply as “liberal” or “humanist”. This leads to abuses politically whereby, rather than keeping the issue focused on ideas of good local- and national parenting of young minds, political manipulators end up leading the Christian activists into the realm of cultural wars.

In short, the large and powerful political and media-savvy religious leaders can sa sort out internal dissensions among concerned progressive Christians by dividing and conquering progressive Christian leadership around the USA.

I John 1:1-15 in the Bible is a famous passage from about 1900 years ago. In it the author, the last remaining apostle of Jesus Christ, attacks similar sorts of bad thinking and the lack of good living in his own (Apostle John’s) day. In other words, the problem of bad thinking & bad living predate our modern age by millennia.

John, an aging man by this time, noted that many Christian peoples were too unconcerned about wise living.

These Christian peoples felt that that after being saved (or baptized) by their Lord, they could simply go ahead and sin—knowing or believing that in the end they are to be saved by “grace’.

By the way, “Grace” is not nearly such a strong focus in either Islam nor Judaism as it is in Christianity. Nevertheless, these other Ibrahamic faiths do consistently focus on right- and wise living from differing but related perspectives.

In John 1:1-15, the author, Apostle John, focuses on “wise living and walking in the Light”.

By “the Light”, John is referring to “God, the Father”.

Elsewhere, God is also equated to love, i.e. “God is Love.”

These foci of John and the New Testament also include the main point that men refrain any longer from walk in “Darkness”. John indicates that if one is not in the Light, one is in Darkness. Throughout both the older and newer books in the Bible, Christians are told to repent and turn away from unwise living. This “unright living” is known as “sin”.

Moreover, this particular book of I John in the Bible states fairly directly that “if we claim not to be sinners, we are calling God a liar.” (If we call god a liar by our thoughts or acts, how can we say we are his children and love him and respect him in a parent-child relationship over time.)

In short, only a confused religious person—i.e. who still needs to confess their sin and repent--would claim to not be a sinner. Only such an arrogant so-called Christian would refuse to repent. Such a person would never be allowed in the Kingdom.

Nor would such a sinner be allowed very long to run a nation—especially as unlike the famous King David, he or she failed to show contrition remorse or a changed heart.

Now, I return to the topic of why Cheney, Bush and Pelosi need to resign immediately. Their lack of change of heart on torture and other crimes against the great American project set up by our forefathers demands they fall on their swords and let the people of faith move on.


CONFUSED CHRISTIANS

I have written elsewhere of the number of confused Christians there are who have blindly supported torture because misguided and manipulative leaders have invited them to join them in their sin and short-sightedness.

At the junction in history, America needs wise leadership and people committed to reflection, repentance and reorientation. We are not getting it currently in Washington. Either Washington’s leadership take the coming Christian, Jewish and Islamic Holidays and recommit themselves TO SIN NO MORE and apologize or WE NEED TO CLEAN HOUSE IN 2008.

The Letter of John is written to a confused group of Christians who had moved away from condemning sin and crimes in place of “living the wise life commanded of THEM” by God, the Father.

Any parent knows, that children will hurt their parents sometime or another, but the stories throughout the Bible—and especially the New Testament—focus on the fact that the Father (the God figure) is willing to forgive if the child (1) confesses his sins or crimes and (2) turns from them.

Without the confession of child there is no forgiveness. Otherwise the child is never set right with the father.

Similarly, American government officials and congressman in their relationship to the image of the FOUNDING FATHERS are asked to confess their crimes publicly and turn from them. If these officials don’t confess and resign, a prosecution needs to be compulsory according to the traditions of a well-thinking secular state

Using this social imagery, from the Founding Father’s perspective, America’s leadership of this decade has neither confessed nor repented.

So, no forgiveness can be forgiven—nor is forgiveness by the American people’s warrented.

Nor can Bush or Cheny be excused arbitrarily for their sins or crimes. These men must stand up and go through the legal processes set up by AMERICA’S FOUNDING FATHERS CENTURIES ago. They must be investigated and given a fair trial.

However, they should still be encouraged as Nixon and Agnew were by their own party-men and others to resign—rather than to prolong the TRAGEDY of the last seven or eight years.

It is often declared that America’s Founding Fathers believed firmly that even in times of war, all these legal processes of investigation and impeachment must be carried out; otherwise justice will not proper --and reconciliation within the society and American federal state system will become more and more impossible.

The lack of reconciliation in America in the 1850s eventually led to Civil War, no one wants that to happen. The founding fathers prefer that the rule of law be enforced, but if it is not the people must overthrow the tyrant.

This is a harsh message from the founding fathers to their offspring, but it is exactly what these FATHERS said in the Declaration of Independence.

It is fairly similar to the Judeo-Islamic-Christian belief that without disciplining of the bad children or the bad behaving tyrant, there will be no good future leaders in the society, i.e. a society of faith will disintegrate without occasional fatherly punishment of sinning children (against the Father).

Without the procedures of either (1) presidential and vice-presidential resignation along with recognition of sin or guilt or (2) a legal impeachment and investigation in America—no peace will be found in America as the Founding Fathers and many religious peoples today are seeking from their leadership in America.

It is almost as though in this 2007 period, the wishes, messages, and warnings of United States of America’s founding fathers are simply being ignored in their graves by their own off-spring.


EIGHT YEARS WALKING IN THE DARK

For the past seven to eight years, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney (and their supporters in and out of the executive branch) have been walking in the Dark, i.e. never really confessing, nor repenting from their sins—or high crimes and misdemeanors.

One can easily find hundreds of reasons to carry out such a process of investigation, impeachment and trial in 2008. See just a few examples of Bush and Cheney crimes in these links (and in the NOTES section of this letter.)

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060109/editors

or

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Former_Powell_aide_says_Bush_Cheney_0510.html

or

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/22620


I, as a lifelong American Educator and Christian, shout, “Enough is enough!”

Americans, as a secular people who recognize the myth of the founding father’s intent for good governance and good living, need to find their plan being actualized and realized in America NOW or mediocrity is the U.S.’s imminent destiny for the coming ages.


WE NEED TO ASK OURSELVES

Americans need to ask:

(1) Are we walking in the Light?
(2) Is our government (including Pelosi, Bush, & Cheney) walking in the light?

The answer is “NO” to both queries.

Further, (3) are the leaders of OUR executive branch and OUR congress ready to confess and repent to their errors?

Again, the answer appears to be a resounding “NO”.

Finally, (4) in the immediate future are Congress and Executive Branch leaders willing to once again walk in the light and turn from their ways?

Once again, the answer is a clear “NO” as 2008 prepares to dawn.

This is tragic. This holiday all religious peoples and concerned Americans need to be hearing this hard Christmas Message.

For both followers of America’s secular FOUNDING FATHERS and followers of the Christian faith or other Ibrahimic faiths the direction in the coming weeks ought to be to not only demand that the rule of (1) constitutional, (2) international and (3) other common laws be respected and enforced at the highest levels of government and abuse.

Moreover, as individuals of different faiths and beliefs, we must also recognize that CURRENT status quo is neither biblically sound nor sound TRADITIONAL American practice.

Protests must follow THIS yule tide message

If there is no changed of heart in Washington DC, a great occupation of regional representative- and national government offices should proceed over the coming holiday weeks. This is so that come January 2008 Americans can (a) hold their head up & (b) live out their faiths and ideals—without the continued current shame of American leadership and their irresponsible drift from God and the Founding Fathers. This is why a sin offering is needed in this Holiday Season.

American hearts must demand repentance and the response to sins and crimes must be as harsh as any good father would give his unruly children who do not realize that what they are doing is hurting the parents badly.

This means Christian and American judges must do their duty and demand the arrest of criminals or suspected criminal at all government, especially those in the White House, the CIA, and the Capital currently supporting HIGH CRIMES AND DISMEANORS in the place of common sense and religiously fair & just practices.


THE AMERICAN NIGHTMARE MUST END THIS 2007

There may be a few misguided Christians and/or Republicans who still believe that America is in the midst of a Reaganesque-turn in political fortune for the Grand Old Party, but good Christians/Jews/Muslims need to tell the leadership of this neo-con era to kick the bucket and retire immediately from government.

The ongoing nightmare in terms of good living and good governance in America must end.

Christians are particularly being called on this holiday season as individuals and as groups to restate clearly the case I have lain out above:

NO REPENTENCE from Bush, Cheney and Pelosi should equal IMPEACHMENT or immediate RESIGNATION by January 1, 2008.

I encourage all Christian ministers to GIVE A MESSAGE in church on this topic prior to New Years Eve.

Meanwhile, all American History teachers are also encouraged to speak out in their classroom before Christmas 2007 in support of the FOUNDING FATHER’S RULEBOOK for maintaining good behavior. School teachers everywhere need to call for the prosecution of crimes and misdemeanors to begin this HOLIDAY SEASON!

If American educators and Christians take their responsibility as CHILDREN of the “Our Father” or CHILDREN of the “Founding Fathers” seriously in the next week or so, not only will the most lax officials and law enforcement officials respond, but possibly…from sea-to-shining-sea a real renewal away from America’s mediocre and cynical pathways can begin in 2008!

Let’s not continue to sink to breaking the law, promoting torture, and doing other crimes as national policy any more for the rest of this Century!

Repeat those words as a commitment to turn away from the activities of this horrible decade in American History!

CALL FOR THIS MESSAGE TO BE SHOUTED on every corner and on every mountaintop in America this HOLIDAY SEASON.

Yours,

Kevin A. Stoda






NOTES

“The American Experiment of Religious Disestablishmentarianism and Pluralism”, http://scp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/53/3/345?ck=nck

“Bush’s High Crimes”, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060109/editors

Du Pont Olaf, “But we’re American… the presence of American exceptionalism in the speeches of George W. Bush”, http://www.rpe.ugent.be/Du_Pont_paper.doc

“Freedom and the Environment”, http://jwharton.com/wordpress/

“High Crimes and Misdemeanors”
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=60

“The High Crimes and Misdemeanors of Bush, Cheney”, http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/22620

“Impeachment: Why Stop at Bush?”, http://www.impeachbush.tv/impeach/offenses.html

Juliano, Nick, “Former Powell Aid Says Bush, Cheney Guilty of High Crimes”, http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Former_Powell_aide_says_Bush_Cheney_0510.html

Michael Cleavers, “WHY IMPEACHMENT IS OFF THE TABLE”, http://www.opednews.com/author/author7762.html

“Original Zinn”, http://www.etymonline.com/columns/zinn.htm

Smith, Daniel (Col.), “Reclaiming the City on the Hill”, http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0222-21.htm

Stoda, Kevin, “Dear Republican and Progressive Evangelicals’ http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_alone_071208_dear_republicans_and.htm

Stoda, Kevin, “Continuing to Ponder God”, http://www.opednews.com/articles/life_a_alone_071006_continuing_to_ponder.htm

Stoda, Kevin, ‘Progressive Evangelical Critiques Thomas’ ‘What’s the Matter with Kansas?’”, http://www.opednews.com/articles/not_sh_kevin_an_070501_progressive_evangeli.htm

“U.S. Can Do Better than Sinking to Torture”, http://www.pocatelloshops.com/blogs/Journal_Politics.php?id=1118

“What are Impeachable Offenses?”, http://www.impeachbush.tv/impeach/offenses.html

“IMPEACH CHENEY AND BUSH”: YAHOO is GOING STRONG with nearly 4.5 Million RESULTS while GOOGLE APPEARS MANIPULATED DOWNWARD SHARPLY OVER THE PAST 3 MO

“IMPEACH CHENEY AND BUSH”: YAHOO is GOING STRONG with nearly 4.5 Million RESULTS while GOOGLE APPEARS MANIPULATED DOWNWARD SHARPLY OVER THE PAST 3 MONTHS

By Kevin A. Stoda


As most readers know, starting in July 2007, I began evaluating GOOGLE AS BAROMETER of American politics, specifically in terms of discovering how interested internet readers and bloggers were in the topic of “Impeach Bush Cheney”.

The first report came out that same month and I simply noted:

At 8a.m. Monday July 23: Google Search Shows 2,000,300 Results under "Impeach Cheney Bush" .

Next, in September 2007, I reported that the interest in this topic [as reflected on a GOOGLE search for these same terms“Impeach Bush Cheney”] had risen according to the GOOGLE BAROMETER.

GOOGLE WATCH: IMPEACH BUSH & CHENEY rises by 110,000 in less than six weeks-September 5, 2007

Naturally, the usage of GOOGLE searches as barometer of popular public interest in a subject is questionable.

On the one hand, users on the web simply copy, link and attach the same article onto several different parts of a website. This reveals a multiplier measurement of interest in a topic and its content as topics are discussed more and more.

Only by perusing all the thousands and millions of websites discussing a topic, such as “Impeach Bush Cheney”, can one get a much more salient picture of politics on the web and peoples interest in a specific topic.

I have noted, however, that the top hits each time [revealed as I have done the search] have been almost universally in support of starting the impeachment process hearings in 2007 for Dick Cheney and George W. Bush.

In other words, the GOOGLE BAROMETER was showing a significant interest on the web over several months for the topic of “Impeach Bush Cheney”. I believe this is a sound interpretation of an otherwise questionable barometer.


GOOGLE SEARCHERS TODAY & THE MULTIPLIER EFFECT

On the other hand, it is also unclear what the cumulative value of any multiplier effect is when on the web (or on any particular search engine) there exists for any single new article or topic on the web. Is it similar to economic multipliers or is much greater or smaller?

In economics, we look at the multiplier effects on the whole economy caused by a transfer or a single investment [or other measured contributions or subtraction from or] on the overall economy.

What is the effect of any particular web article or blog? How is this to be measured?

Currently, it is search engines with their “list of hits” which enables users of the internet to measure growing interest in a subject matter shared on the web or in other areas of media.

The problem is that all search engines are using secret and individualized and/or overlapping logarithms to calculate hits and interest in articles, phrases, mnems, and blogs.

Nevertheless, I have today some interesting things to report about how GOOGLE’s logarithm of results has been adding up results over the past 3 months, i.e. as concerns the three terms: “Impeach Bush Cheney”.

First in October 2008, the number of GOOGLE results recorded on a GOOGLE searches with these terms, “Impeach Bush Cheney”, slowly went under 2,000,000.

By mid-November 2008, the result level was several hundred thousand more lower.

Suddenly, at the end of the first week of December 2008, I have searched these terms “Impeach Bush Cheney” once again on GOOGLE.

To my amazement, the results are now over 1 million lower than they were only about one or two weeks ago.

At around 8pm tonight my GOOGLE search recorded only 327,000 results for “Impeach Bush Cheney”.

This is a particularly fascinating trend because during this same 3-month period, YAHOO searches have continued to show increases in results revealed under the terms: “Impeach Bush Cheney”.

Over the past few months, the number of results on YAHOO have increased by about 100,000 each month. Today at 8pm my results on YAHOO for these terms have risen to 4,420,000 results.



WHAT IS GOING ON AT GOOGLE?

These results on GOOGLE and YAHOO concerning the topic of “Impeach Bush Cheney” raise some important questions for web users and American political observers from all perspectives:

(1) Is GOOGLE’s search tool now [suddenly as of December 2007] so different from YAHOOs search tool algorithm that YAHOO goes up while GOOGLE’s goes drastically downwards using the same terms?

(2) Has GOOGLE changed its algorithm and why? Has it been a good or reliable/biased change?

(2) Why have GOOGLE’s results changed in an apparent 180 degree direction [as compared to YAHOO’s and to its prior results from summer 2007] on the specific terms of “Impeach Bush Cheney”?

(3) Is there politics involved in this change of direction? Who might have pressured GOOGLE to manipulate the logarithm in any particular way?

(4) With great articles coming out every day demanding the impeachment of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, how can GOOGLE be undercounting them [and effectively destroying the barometer I was using to measure and share the American pulse of interest in “Impeach Bush Cheney”]?

Would any insiders at GOOGLE or in the web-search engine world please explain what is going on?


NOTES

GOOGLE Search Results from December 8th:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4SKPB_enKW246KW248&q=impeach+bush+cheney

Article from September 5th.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_alone_070905_google_watch_3a_impeac.htm

Article from July 23rd.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_kevin_an_070723_at_8a_m__monday_july.htm

YAHOO Search Results from December 8th:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=utf-8&fr=slv8-msgr&p=impeach%20bush%20cheney&type=

DEAR REPUBLICANS AND PROGRESSIVE EVANGELICALS: A NOTE ON A WAY OUT OF THE QUAGMIRE

Dear Iowa Republicans,

Allow me to introduce myself! I am Kevin Anthony Stoda. I am a Midwesterner with roots in Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas. I am also candidating on-line and without a budget for the Presidency of the United States. I announced my candidacy a week ago.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alone_071130_i_decided_to_run_for.htm

I am running on-line and in your upcoming Presidential Caucus in order to bring a more balanced Evangelical and real American Justice Perspective to the Republican Party and its campaigns in 2008. I want to pressure the party into accepting and representing the vast number of conservative Americans who see the compact between people and our Federal State to include the need to apply the rule of law at the highest levels.

This means REPUBLICANS NEED TO WALK OVER TO THE WHITE HOUSE AND TELL GEORGE W. BUSH and DICK CHENEY TO RESIGN OR BE IMPEACHED.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/opedne_rob_kall_071207_rebuttals_to_reasons.htm

If Midwestern Republicans don’t get our party leadership to walk over to the White House and set up these resignations—and force the appointment of good and fair Republican Leadership immediately, the Republican Party will continued to be tainted by Bush and Co. throughout the next decade.

If Republicans beat the Democrats to the door on impeachment—a step required in the scenario we now face by our own founding fathers who set up the ground rules for ousting leadership decades ago--, we will get whipped all over the place in the coming decades as American voters move back to the center and left in terms of HEALTH CARE REFORM and commitment to the poorest.

I am an evangelical Christian who believes that sacrificing real Christian historical commitments to justice and empowerment (of the lowest members in our society and world) to misguided plans of creating a Puritan state in the U.S.A. is a NON-STARTER.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alone_071201_day_2_of_the_campaig.htm

Christians need to see themselves as passing through this planet. This passing through is not a free pass. It comes with commitments.

In the book of Genesis, we are charged as humans to take care of the planet and earth

This means:

-Stop wasting resources on things that go boom and supporting the watering down of the constitution (including habeas corpus) and rights of those among us!

-Set a good example by leading the fight against man-made related global warming! (Even if part of global warming is a natural occurrence, Americans-- as users of the greatest amount of natural resources and as the wealthiest country on the planet--need to set an example by using alternative sources of energy produced by wind and sun. Midwesterners have an abundance of this. We also have the ability not only to grow corn but the ability to grow rapeseed and other crops, like sugar beats, which could reduce America’s over-demand of global resources.)

-Stop being dependent on totalitarians to maintain U.S. security and fuel supplies.


SHORT HISTORY OF OUR CAMPAIGN

A few month’s ago, I wrote an article which outlines my dismay at the far right and misguided evangelical support of a shift in America from core human, social, and labor values that had made America the light of the world at mid-20th Century.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/life_a_alone_071006_continuing_to_ponder.htm

Prior to this, I had advocated that the time was right to try and set the political scene on its head by having campaigns carried out in a reality TV format so that costs could be kept down and real issues could be discussed.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_alone_070907_what_about_a__22realit.htm

We all know the status quo in American Politics is not functioning well. Elections are getting way too costly, which leaves a few media tycoons and others in charge of sound bites which kill and mislead all too quickly. So, I have discussed elsewhere, the need to make it, first, easier to reform, update, and amend the parts of the constitution which no longer enforce nor support good governance. (Come on! Our founding fathers would have been astounded that we only have amended their work about 15 times since 1795 and have not touched the document again since almost the 1960s. They talked about making a more perfect union—not to claim by default or neglect that the union was already perfect, i.e. as some people imply when they want to keep the status quo for their own personal benefits.)

I advocate constitutional conventions be encouraged and started up with support of all parties.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_kevin_an_070729_needed_now__constitu.htm

For example, the problems with elections themselves have more to do with the negative aspects of winner-take-all voting system. This should be one of the first areas of election reform. (Shorter campaigns and spending limits need to be enforced in many aspects of campaigns. Otherwise equal-access laws for all candidates need to be created and enforced.

http://the-teacher.blogspot.com/2007/11/since-voting-theorists-feel-that.html

I first set forth the problems faced by evangelical progressives in today’s world by looking at the now-classic study of “What’s the matter with Kansas?”. In it I indicated that there was a tend big enough in Kansas and other Midwestern states to include combinations like progressive evangelicals as had been prominent in America from the 1840s through the 1970s. (There is also room for peoples of myriads of faiths and beliefs who are ready to improve on the messed-up economy, government spending, and status quo America is facing today.)

http://www.opednews.com/articles/not_sh_kevin_an_070501_progressive_evangeli.htm


WHO AM I?

I come from a pair of families with a great number of members serving (or having served) in the U.S. military—all with the best intentions. I, however, am an American educator who needs to show a more balanced view of our world to our students and youth than what American media and public education have provided.

Graduating from a Kansas high school in 1980, I had had no foreign language educational experience. I had only even crossed a U.S. border once to Tiajuana by the time I was 20 years of age.

Yet, I have now (1) crossed border to nearly 100 countries, (2) have lived and worked in ten countries—sometimes with the support of the U.S. government or other agencies--, and (3) have learned fluent German and Spanish as well as intermediate levels of Japanese, French plus smatterings of other languages.

In short, since the 1970s, I have been experiencing continuously a sharp learning curve about America’s position in the world and about global relations and global economies specifically.

As a teacher or professor, I see myself as a servant.

Do you want a servant leading you or do you want the silver-spoon ill-trained leadership we have been having to date?

American Inc. can no longer function as it has done over the past 50 years. The party was over a long time ago. We need to stop the delusions about the status quo and move on.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_alone_070926_important_debate_hel.htm


Now, we need to be more eclectic and less ideological as the Bush-Cheney leadership—if we can call it that—has been. (Our cronyist leadership looks more like a Middle Eastern Authoritarian system currently. This is demoralizing to Americans like me who have bee serving abroad and trying to promote democracy around the globe for three decades:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alone_070905_with_millions_of_ame.htm

Simply circling the wagons is not the mentality that will lead America to be a better leader and land in the 21st Century.

Please, get my name on the ballot at your caucus and give the voters a chance to vote fro someone who stands for a 21st Century America—not someone carrying out their cold war fantasies in a 21st Century world.

The object would be to show ourselves, the Republicans (and the Democrats) that our tent is not shrinking but growing.

Yours,

Kevin Stoda

DAY 2 OF THE CAMPAIGN IN IOWA

DAY 2 OF THE CAMPAIGN IN IOWA

By Kevin A. Stoda

This writing is sort of a letter to Republican Unionists and Republican Iowa Progressives.


Howdy!

If Jay Leno can renege on his promise not to lay off writers currently on strike, I think it is time that the writer’s strikers support a change of regimes in the USA. I will support writers and all those interested in improving upon the economic status quo Americans have suffered under for far too long.

As of yesterday, I announced that I was running for President of the United States in the Iowa Caucus. I have received a sort of confirmation from the e-Republicans in Iowa just today. Mine is a low budget campaign of ideas meant to return the Republican Party to the era of 1980 when guys like John Anderson could run and take a good percentage of the Progressive Republican and Progressive Democrat vote. (We also voted for Nancy Kassebaum in my home state back in those years, too.)

America and the world need to have a better discussion in the Republican corner in both times of war and in times of (War) Budgets run-amok.

Americans need to have Republicans who are going to demand that leaders not only “talk the talk” but “actually bring values and honor” to the White House and transform business as usual in Congress.

What happened to standards of honesty we esteemed back when WE ALL got Nixon out of the White House in 1974

Over 3 decades ago, the so-called Moral majority messed up a generation of Americans by telling them, “It’s not the economy stupid!”

Come on! All Americans are related—not just the wealthiest, most connected and most powerful!

Stop pandering to those who focus on “logos” words but have no real soul nor heart.

Those messed-up Republicans and Moral Majority types claimed back in the 1980s that the key was to blindly bless the Gods of Shock Capitalism and Trickle Down economics.

Recall how Republicans back then had gumption in the 1970s through 1980.

Back then , even George Herbert Walker Bush wasn’t afraid to call a spade-a-spade and explained clearly that REAGANOMICS was simply voodoo economics and wishful thinking.


WISHFUL THINKING

Enough of this outmoded capitalism which brought America horrible bust and boom cycles from 1981 through 1992!

That was the Reagan model—it was a loser and didn’t get jobs and training nor long-term opportunities for the 21st century for American workers or for American employers within the geographical USA.

Our quality of life dropped. Our purchasing power continued to decline.

Come on you Republicans! You know I have nothing to lose by reminding you of the facts.

That myth of Reaganomics (and all the allied trinkle down mystical thinking) was an illusion that John Anderson, a once-good progressive Republican warned the Party and America about.

The Republican Party needs to return to the progressive eras and fill the plates of everyone as was the goal in the 1860s, early 1900s, and in the 1950s.

Such governance doesn’t strive towards mediocrity and third world status as have the Bush 1 & 2-Reagan era voodoo economies, which Americans have traumatically been suffering through most of my lifetime.

In short, for those who don’t recall the facts on the ground, the 1980 election was an extremely important one where both the conservative and evangelical Democrats and Republicans put the nail in the coffin of American political-economy by voting against their best interests—in terms of wages, jobs, careers and life choices for decades to come.

Admittedly, not only Republicans fell for it.

I recall my own grandfather—a lifelong Democrat—crying in late 1981 as he realized that he had contributed to the worst policy on the future of the American family. In less than a year after Reagan took over, my tearful grandpa knew a calamity was already unfolding before him. (Granpa had joined the many so-called Reagan Democrats and had voted Republican in 1980—ignoring the words of John Anderson and George H.W. Bush who had derided economic theory that was at best fantasy and at worst tumultuously dangerous. He and I had no doubt that had Reaganomics-as-usual, if continued through the whole of the 1990s, America would have led to major Depression, Deflation, or collapsed the economy in other ways—possibly seeing millions more Americans leave the country looking for more work and a better life.)

In summary, if the Soviet Union, i.e. the Evil Empire, had not tripped up first in the 1980s, the Reaganomics policies would have crashed the U.S. economy into 3rd World status in the 1990s.

Luckily, a fiscally conservative Democratic president managed to somewhat delay the economic slide started under Reaganomics until tragically (the Reaganomic’s Disciples) George W. Bush and Dick Cheney took office with their many misguided cronies in 2001.

Within two years many of the best progressive Republicans had quit office.

Thousands of other career civil servants have left government since then—joining the continued exodus of good progressive Republicans from Washington through this very day.

Just look at how hard it is to fill jobs in the U.S. government NOW. Voodoo economics and bad foreign policy have left the once great U.S. government offices in absolute shambles as of 2007-2008.


THE DOLLAR AS REFLECTION OF ILLNESS
Now, the American Dollar is no longer simply being SUPPORTED by good-hearted and self-interested governments in Japan and Europe (as was the case in the 1980s after the Arab economies collapsed).

Now, we depend on Russia, Venezuela, China, Vietnam, African fraudsters, the rich Arab World and Europe. They are trying their best to keep the dollar afloat—even though they make less and less on investments in the USA as each day goes by.

This is disgraceful!

Already, annually 30+ million Americans have to go abroad and work, too, just to support mortgages. Many of these include soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some, like my own sister, have to go abroad to help their husbands who serve in war.

Why aren’t we investing Americans’ money now in America--and the moneys of our children on developing our own country or building a more secure, economically sound, and energy efficient land??????

A beacon on the hill does much more to move the world than a bull-dozer filled with bombs.

Noble causes keep American going, but mismanaged wars and incompetent peace treaties and development projects are a waste



BLEEDING IN IRAQ AND ELSEWHERE

The so-called wars on poverty of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s were not carried out as seriously and faithfully as they should have been.

However, aside from the fact that only 3000 to 5000 people died on 9-11 [and shortly thereafter], the success outside the U.S. has been minimal—even after spending trillions of dollars on security measures since 2001.

Not only are more troops (including U.S. citizens) dying in both Iraq and Afghanistan than ever before, we still see no formation of stable governance in any of these 2 lands after 5 years of throwing money and weaponry at what the Reaganomics practitioners claimed was most important to undertake in a never-ending-war on terror. Nor have we seen progress in stability in Iran, Lebanon, Pakistan, Palestine, Turkey, nor Iran.

We need to call it a day and regroup, America!

In short, the Republican administrations of the past 28 years have had a worse record in gaining security for America than the Democratic governments of the 1960s. At least, the war on poverty had at least a progressive goal to it.

At least, the progressive Republican Nixon, was willing to join the Green Environmental movements of his era.

What have the Republicans of Reagan and the Bushes been able to claim in pride after all these decades in this department?


A PLAN

I came across a great plan for progressive Republicans to support in terms of kick-starting a better America in 2008 and 2009.

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/2007/strategic_drift.html

Check it. I will adopt it as the corer to my policy platform on the War in Iraq and War on terror or elsewhere, too. I recommend the Republicans start debating now on this seriously. Otherwise,--and need I remind you--, Hillary will switch parties and run as a Republican—then you other Republican presidential candidates will find your race dead.

Sure, she’ll keep spending on an endless war but she will have the Progressive Republicans and socially concerned evangelical Christians hands down.










NOTES

“1980 Debate Transcript”, http://www.debates.org/pages/trans80a.html

“John Anderson: The Nice Guy Syndrome”, http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/198002/john-anderson/2

“John Schmitz”, http://www.johngschmitz.com/_files/koplinski.pdf

Stoda, Kevin “I Decided to Run for President in the Iowa Caucus and Why You Should Run, too”, http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alone_071130_i_decided_to_run_for.htm

“Three’s a Crowd”, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/debatingourdestiny/dod/1980-broadcast.html