For 1/6: “…the United States has the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, and sexual coercion in the developed world, the lowest contraceptive use, and the highest rate of abortion.” — Dagmar Herzog, in Utne Reader 1-2/09 p. 9, from New Humanist.

For 1/5 (how we got where we got): “Spread the truth—the laws of economics are like the laws of engineering. One set of laws works everywhere.” — Lawrence Summers, while chief economist at the World Bank (1991-93), quoted in Matthew Rothschild, “The Great Recessoin,” The Progressive, Jan. 09, p. 8.

For 1/4: “Charity is not a substitute for justice.” — Jonathan Kozol, at F&M College, 10/8/03. Read more »

CBS news online: Norwegian doctor in Gaza with video of damage. Click here

letter in Daily Local News, 1/5/09

Cal Thomas’ column for Jan. 2 shows that not even the deaths of 350 Palestinians, in recent days, is enough to satisfy his lust for revenge against the enemies of Israel.

“Total victory or death should be Israel’s slogan,” he writes, presumably because “it is (also) the slogan and goal of Israel’s enemies.”

Thomas, a self-proclaimed evangelical Christian, does not tell us what “total victory” might mean. Complete expulsion of all Palestinians from Gaza and the rest of Palestinian-occupied territory? Tens of thousands of Palestinians dead, so that the mere thought of resisting Israeli government policy does not even arise in anyone’s mind?

One can’t be sure. What is certain is that Thomas is on the side of the most intransigent elements in Israeli society, the people who persuade themselves that Israel has already made more “concessions” than it should have, and in exchange for its good will has gotten only more rocket attacks from Hamas.

What Cal Thomas, a professed Bible believer, might be saying is something like the following: the way of the sword does not work, as Jesus and others have taught, no matter how much misery it causes in the short run. This, of course, is true no matter who wields the sword.

Between Israel and the Palestinians, of whatever stripe, there is nothing like a balance of power. So desperate and hopeless Gazans, at least a few of them, lob some virtually home-made rockets into Israel.

It appears to some outside observers, though Americans who support Israeli government policy without question are not neutral parties, that a solution to the Palestinian question — though hardly “total victory” — can only come through nonviolent means and a fair, negotiated settlement. But until ordinary Palestinians can see real hope for themselves and their children, some of their number will continue to pound their fists against the prison walls which now surround the Gazan and other territorial boundaries.

F.R. Struckmeyer
West Chester

Saturday 03 January 2009, Truthout
by: Laurent Pinsolle, Marianne2

Governments save banks, some of the managers of which save themselves with comfortable golden parachutes. American households that have lost their homes weren’t so lucky. And they’ll keep on paying taxes. To save the banks. Where is morality in this system?

Many authors, critical of neoliberalism [free-market fundamentalism], maintain that the neoliberal economic system is amoral since it is based on individual profit and selfishness only. One may wonder whether the current economic crisis does not demonstrate that this system is even completely immoral.

“Privatization of Profits, Socialization of Losses”

That’s how the ultra-neoliberal free market newspaper The Economist summarized government intervention in the fall. And how can one not be shocked finally by the fact that bank bosses are dismissed with golden parachutes worth several tens of millions of dollars, that their banks are rescued at a cost of tens of billions of dollars, while several million American households have lost their homes or their employment, sometimes even both? Read more »

Click here to see Rev. Rick Warren say:

“I’m opposed to having a brother and sister be together and call that marriage. I’m opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that a marriage. I’m opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.”

Click here to see Rev. Rick Warren explain(12/22/08) that he was just talking about marriage, not making any other comparison between the acts mentioned above.

letter to the Inquirer 12/31/08 (not published):

So, the good news, tucked away in “Shoe-thrower’s trial is delayed” (Inquirer, Dec. 31) is that according to the U.S. military, the murder rate in Iraq “declined to below prewar levels, about one per 100,000 people” (the 12/22 American Forces Press Service release specifies that “In November, the ratio was 0.9 per 100,000 people”).

More good news in the same Inquirer, headlined “Violent crime shows a drop in city in 2008″: homicides in Philadelphia are down to 332 in 2008. So let’s do the math: the population of Philadelphia is about 1,450,000; that means 332 / 14.5 = 22.9 murders per 100,000, divided by 12 months = 1.9 murders per month per 100,000 people, or about twice the November rate in Iraq.

What’s the moral? Maybe that some of the vast resources we are expending to keep order in Iraq are ready to be reoriented to improve life in the U.S., such as the economy, education, and (a big story in the Dec. 31 Inquirer) keeping public libraries open so people can read books and do online job searches?

Sincerely yours,

Nathaniel Smith
West Chester