Rotarian Al Jubitz, founder of the War Prevention Initiative, has pointed out an ill-starred coincidence: the town of Lahaina was burning on the anniversary day, even at the very hour (11:02 a.m. in Japan is 4:02 p.m. in Maui) that the United States dropped its second nuclear weapon on the people of Nagasaki back in 1945.

We have no need to rehash the controversy over whether Japan was ready to surrender even before President Truman decided to use those two city-extinguishing “gadgets” (as Oppenheimer and his team called them in an initial euphemism, one followed by many others, including “peacekeeper”) to quicken the end of a brutal war.

What is infinitely more significant for us is what events like the Lahaina holocaust portend for the looming history of our future on Planet Earth. If Lahaina carries an echo of Pearl Harbor, the fire-bombing of Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, it also ties together the two largest challenges our species faces together, nuclear war and climate catastrophe.

The two crises are unavoidably and intimately linked. The nine nuclear powers are plunging headlong into the renewal of their nuclear arsenals at just the moment they need to be finding novel ways to cooperate to mitigate global warming. The money and scientific brainpower desperately needed for the conversion to sustainable energy continue to be drained into an international deterrence system which, as we have seen in Ukraine, does nothing to deter the scourge of war. And should deterrence break down completely, no victory is possible for anyone.

In the case of both challenges, there is no impediment to workable solutions other than the lack of sufficient political will and the resistance of powerful special interests—though these are more than enough to accelerate our drift toward a twin apocalypse. This drift is perpetuated by a media environment where the indictment of a clownish conman for a dangerous but ultimately banal conspiracy to steal an election takes up a quantum more space in the press than more hopeful stories appearing at the same time, such as the children, exercising political will at its finest, demanding that the state of Montana live up to its constitutionally guaranteed environmental protections.

Even as we drift, a new idea has been pressing into our collective mind for almost a century: the fates of everyone on the planet are intertwined. This was always true, but now we know it both through the science of ecology, and through the poetry of seeing the curve of Earth from space. We’re all in this together. We have only one small home, in the shape of a sphere, and a sphere has only one side. We are all on the same side.

What I do to conserve energy, or waste it, in my local situation affects everyone else globally, and vice versa. My security is only as strong as the reliability of the circuits and wires in all the nuclear bombs out there, only as strong the training and restraint of the people who maintain them at the ready, only as sure as the communication systems that may be vulnerable to error or misinterpretation, only as healthy as Montana’s willingness to phase out coal. The Golden Rule that appears in all the major world religions turns out to have deep practical, logical, and scientific implications that call for a profound change in the way we think and act.

Our radical interdependence has been reinforced by our explorations of deep space by the Hubbell and Webb telescopes. Everything on earth, human, plant, rock, or the miracle of water, derives from atoms forged in the furnaces of stars. Everything is part of the same emergent story that is 26.7 billion years old. We all come from the same place and face the same fate together.

But our thinking has not caught up to such fundamental principles. We remain religiously sectarian and politically factional, blind to a more planetary vision of our self-interest. The hollowness of our avoidance has become a cavern in which we all sit passively, waiting for experts to find us a way out.

And there are experts. We know a lot about how to resolve our conflicts nonviolently. We know more than we ever did about how to communicate clearly, how to share our separate assumptions across languages and cultures to ensure understanding. We can model possible futures with our computers. With their help we can see how the potential of nuclear winter renders the whole enterprise of the nuclear arms race irrelevant at best, malevolent in fact.

But even the most knowledgeable and experienced establishment experts (as one of the most revered, Henry Kissinger, admits) have no idea what will unfold once the chaos of conventional war, say, between the United States and China over Taiwan, escalates to the nuclear level. There isn’t a single general or statesman on Earth who can predict what will happen, let alone control it to any one party’s advantage. This reality in itself points to the only solution: survival requires us to go to war against war itself.

In the same way the global climate emergency also invites us to go to war against real enemies like rising levels of greenhouse gases and ocean temperatures, and to mobilize on the level of urgency that the allied powers did during World War II, when our leaders knew that citizens were waiting to be called to sacrifice for a larger cause. The decimation of Lahaina has brought out that spirit of cooperative good will—can we summon a similar spirit to prevent global conflagration and build a world where children can flourish?

Winslow Myers, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is the author of “Living Beyond War: A Citizen’s Guide.”

The post Lahaina and global reality appeared first on Augusta Free Press.

The toughest thing for me to do is sit still.

Always gotta be doing something, even when I’m supposed to be relaxing.

I work at least a couple of hours a day on my “vacations,” because I can’t imagine just waking up, eating breakfast, piddling around, eating lunch, whatever.

The thought drives me bonkers.

I’m trying.

I keep a checklist as a note on my phone.

The list includes 20 things that I need to do each day.

Things like: feed the birds, do 1,000 pushups, read a chapter of a book.

I’ve added three separate checkboxes for “meditation.”

Just sitting in the backyard, listening to the birds chirp, the water flow, the trucks on the interstate drive by.

The leaves on the trees, rustling in the wind.

It’s hard, man.

This afternoon, on my way to earning my second check, I hit the five-minute mark – the goal: 10 minutes – and I was like, I’m good.

And then, I was like, no.

Gotta get to 10.

I looked at the timer – yes, I time my meditations; I’m honestly insufferable to have to be around – two more times before I got to 10 minutes.

It’s helping.

Doing nothing for 10 minutes three times a day is slowing me down.

A little.

But it’s hard, real hard.

The post I’m trying hard to slow down: But it’s hard, real hard appeared first on Augusta Free Press.

When the US gives arms to other nations, that is touted as diplomacy. If so, diplomacy needs a major makeover.

In 1978, against all predictions of success, Jimmy Carter sought to bring peace to the Middle East/North Africa (MENA). Others had presumed to try and had miserably failed, with all manner of wars featuring Egypt and others attacking Israel or Israel attacking them.

From 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973, those nations seemed to jump into the buzzsaw of war more than once every 10 years.

Carter sought, and got, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to join him at Camp David to see if they could manage to prevent the next war, at least between Egypt and Israel. Sadat hated Begin. Begin loathed Sadat. What could go wrong?

Begin had a history as a terrorist. True. Against British officers, but also against random civilians in the area. He led the bombing plot that succeeded in killing many of them in the King David Hotel in 1946. If anything, that seemed to make him more attractive to Israelis, who saw that as part of their war of liberation, not a campaign of terror.

Begin was a master of setting low expectations and promising little, while working hard to deliver more. He said he saw Carter’s talks as just preliminary discussions toward when to have more detailed negotiations.

Sadat was a more cosmopolitan, relaxed, fashionable leader, prepared to go big if it worked to the advantage of Egypt.

Carter patiently worked with their teams for 13 days, staying there, not leaving in the sort of Attention Deficit Disorder that plagued other American would-be deal brokers in the past and would again in the future. In the end, they succeeded and the peace between Israel and Egypt has held ever since. Sounds like a win-win, right?

Not so much. There are long-range negative consequences to elements of the side deals that continue to this day and have cost many lives. It all relates to arms transfers–the sale or giving of weapons and munitions as diplomatic carrots. In the case of the vaunted Nobel Peace Prize-winning Camp David Accords, the malevolent aspect was the weapons aid Carter promised to both Israel and Egypt, aid the US has kept up ever since, arming both countries and assuring that many innocent lives would be lost.

With its advanced weapons from the US, Israel inflicts mass civilian damage on Palestine from time to time. For example, during Operation Cast Lead it killed more than 1400 Palestinians, many of them children and other noncombatants, while Israel suffered only 13 mortalities, a 100:1 ratio that has been typical of such armed conflicts. That is structural violence at its worst. This is only possible because of the “peace” deal brokered by Jimmy Carter.

Egypt had made the rights of Palestinians a trumpeted centerpiece of its deal at Camp David. I would assert that the results did not benefit Palestinians whatsoever.

And Sadat may have been a bit liberal compared to Egyptian leaders before and since, but all the weaponry that Carter offered him to induce the success of the Camp David talks has also been used to oppress people–especially Egyptians themselves–and to empower increasingly dictatorial Egyptian leaders. That oppression led to Arab Spring but Arab Spring was unraveled by the well-armed (by the US) Egyptian military and now it is a military dictatorship.

Perhaps Carter could not have foreseen those terrible outcomes of his efforts to bring peace to the region. But after this sort of thing plays out in the MENA, in Central Asia, in Colombia, and elsewhere, diplomats and other international negotiators should know better.

We’ve been here again and again. Arms to Saudi Arabia to make them happy. Then they decimated Yemen, turning a poor country into the worst humanitarian crisis on earth, thanks to weapons and munitions marked Made In America. Meanwhile, US humanitarian aid to Yemen, while helpful, is a snowball thrown into a hell created in part by US arms sent to the region.

Why does all this happen? Is it misplaced altruism?

Oh HTTFN (Hell To The F___ No). This is the arms industry, controlling State, controlling Congress, controlling it all the way to the US presidency.

The biggest obscenely profitable war profiteering corporations benefit enormously whether the US sells weapons or gives them. It all means cost-plus, no-bid contracts for them. The enormity of the grift and the bloodshed is staggering. It’s bipartisan. Trump bragged about his arms deals with Saudi Arabia and Biden is quieter but doing the very same.

Who pays for it?

We do. US taxpayers pay for every nickel in arms aid to Ukraine and many other countries, and it just means the war profiteers are rolling in profits that are reminiscent of what former Office of Management and Budget David Stockman meant when he told a reporter, “The hogs are really feeding now.”

They are feeding off your elder health care.

They are feeding off your student loans.

They are feeding off your sketchy infrastructure.

They take what is withheld from your income at paycheck time and they divert it to war profiteers.

And they are the ones most responsible for the ballooning federal debt and deficit. Congress can fuss all day long over inane culture war issues that are less than a rounding error in the federal budget, but the real theft from all of us who work for a living is from the war profiteer corporations. Congress can pretend that Social Security and Medicare are making us impoverished but it is the contractor corporations who take more than anyone from our paychecks, quite literally.

Only the American people can correct this. It will not be done by those we’ve elected so far, with some noteworthy exceptions. Change it up. Bring in those who are actually committed to fixing this.

This is not naive. This is the new realpolitik.

When American diplomats are dealing with trying to bring peace, they have much more than US weaponry to offer. Much much more. They can offer humanitarian aid. They can offer increased refugee numbers accepted into our country. They can offer many opportunities to foreign students to study here or support for decent universities in the warring nations once they make peace. They can offer better trade terms. There are many carrots, many inducements.

The sticks should be economic and reputational. For example, the US might tell a belligerent nation to stick with the agreement you signed and you will gain, or if you don’t you will be punished economically by the majority of countries and your reputation will suffer.

In short, coercion is not limited to violence and arms never need to be any sort inducement. This should be a law. Congress? Come in, Congress…

Seriously, if it were a law we wouldn’t waste our immense resources approving the $60 billion in military aid to Ukraine (so far). We would instead busy ourselves with finding those who can devise a solution through honest peace talks.

This is how peace came to places like Liberia and to the Philippines. Other gains besides weaponry can bring the parties to agreement.

The US is the number one supplier of weapons and munitions in the world. We are not helping by doing this. We are producing more death, more repression, more war. This can, and should, change.

Dr. Tom H. Hastings is Coördinator of Conflict Resolution BA/BS degree programs and certificates at Portland State University, PeaceVoice Senior Editor, and on occasion an expert witness for the defense of civil resisters in court. 

The post Arms deals are bad deals appeared first on Augusta Free Press.

Dear EarthTalk: Is there any way to stem the tide of fiberglass pollution from aging and discarded boats fouling marine ecosystems?   – Jared Grissom, Summit, NJ

It’s summer vacation and you’re ready to let loose on the water. Time to head out to the lake house, bring the boat out of the driveway, and cruise around the lake. Now imagine that same vessel 10 years from now, rotting away and destroying the local marine ecosystem. Nobody wants to kill off Nemo and Dory when boating on the bay, but sometimes innocent pastimes have unintended consequences. The fiberglass in these watercrafts has a rippling wave of destruction on our marine friends, damaging aquatic organisms’ organs and leaching toxic chemicals into public soils and seas, affecting life even on land.

Okay fiberglass is pretty harmful, we get that, but then why is the boat industry still chock full of it? For one, fiberglass is much stronger compared to boat material alternatives like aluminum. Fiberglass simply resists adverse weather conditions better than other materials. Boats are more flexible than aluminum, giving them more maneuverability and versatility. The fiberglass allows for better hydrodynamics, increasing efficiency when venturing into the open water. In addition, boats made out of fiberglass allow for more surface area actually inside the vessel, a favorable advantage for fishermen and families alike.

To call degrading fiberglass damaging is an understatement, as the material’s effects have had astounding impacts globally. The microplastics present after fiberglass breaks down over time silently enter the bodies of aquatic organisms. These microplastics can disrupt their biological organs, like the endocrine system which is responsible for regulation of hormones. Toxic chemicals like lead and copper dilute in the water and break apart precious, coastal ecosystems like estuaries and coral reefs. These same heavy metals can stay in the soil and leach into clean groundwater, contaminating healthy resources. Amplifying the problem is the difficulty of disposing of fiberglass boats. It is complicated, costly and, time-consuming. A lack of education about the true severity of abandoning vessels further contributes to a carefree release of fiberglass toxicity into our marine ecosystems.

Thankfully, the ship of environmental remediation hasn’t fully sunk. Ships in good condition can be sold used, and others can be reused piecemeal as parts. Organizations can help as well. Groups like the Vessel Disposal and Reuse Foundation, U.S Coast Guard and others can help organize the recycling process.

The federal government, through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has collaborated with organizations like the Lynnhaven group and has granted almost $2 million in debris removal initiatives. There is still hope for optimism that we will solve the fiberglass issue. It is crucial to educate ourselves and our neighbors about the harsh dangers of fiberglass to really emphasize the magnitude of the issue. We can speak our minds to local legislatures for tighter regulations on the disposal of boats. While the issue of fiberglass pollution is still plaguing our waterways, we have many tools at our disposal to fight back.

CONTACTS: The Environmental Hazards of Fiberglass Boat Disposal, partsvu.com/blog/the-environmental-hazards-of-fiberglass-boat-disposal/; Fiberglass Pollution: Abandoned Boats A Growing Problem In VA, chesapeakebaymagazine.com/fiberglass-pollution-abandoned-boats-a-growing-problem-in-va/; Nautical not nice: How fiberglass boats have become a global pollution problem, .theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/06/nautical-not-nice-how-fibreglass-boats-have-become-a-global-pollution-problem.

EarthTalk® is produced by Roddy Scheer & Doug Moss for the 501(c)3 nonprofit EarthTalk. See more at emagazine.com. To donate, visit earthtalk.org. Send questions to: question@earthtalk.org.

The post Is there any way to stem the tide of fiberglass pollution from aging and discarded boats fouling marine ecosystems? appeared first on Augusta Free Press.

The socio-political turmoil in Israel which is manifested by the pervasive hostility, distrust, and disdain between the religious nationalists and secular liberal Jews is tearing the country apart. The Netanyahu government’s determination to subordinate the judiciary to the whims of elected officials does not only compromise the independence of the judiciary, but it has also exposed the other shortcomings of Israel’s democracy which is exacerbating the schism between the two camps and taking the country to a point of no return.

To prevent Israel from self-destruction, the demonstrators who tenaciously and relentlessly poured into the streets by the hundreds of thousands to protest against the so-called judicial “reforms” must not be satisfied by simply restoring the independence of the judiciary. The conflict over these “reforms” offers a historic opportunity to examine and rectify every aspect of Israel’s democracy which has been compromised since the day of Israel’s inception. Regardless of how difficult such an undertaking might be, it is imperative to embark on it to prevent future onslaughts on Israel’s democracy by aspiring authoritarians while ensuring its sustainability for generations to come.

There are five areas of reforms that will preserve and substantially strengthen Israel’s democracy.

Ensuring the independence of the judiciary

For all intents and purposes, the battle over securing the independence of the judiciary has only begun. Given that the government succeeded in passing a law that cancels Israel’s “reasonableness standard,” which allowed the Supreme Court to review and strike down government policies that were deemed unreasonable, the courageous demonstrators must remain vigilant and relentless in their fight for the independence of the judiciary. When the Knesset resumes its legislative session in October, the Netanyahu government is still determined to enact additional laws to subordinate the judiciary to the legislative branch, thwart the courts from intervening in cases of human rights violations, and most critically, take control over the committee that appoints judges, including Supreme Court justices.

The Netanyahu government must have no illusion about what the ramifications will be should it procced with its disastrous plans, as some of the consequences of its earlier actions will only be compounded if Netanyahu refuses to stop his nefarious design to reshape the judiciary and conform it to the whims of his messianic, reactionary and staunchly nationalist partners.

What has already happened should be a wakeup call that the government can ignore only at it peril. High-tech workers and companies are looking to relocate, with 80 percent of Israeli start-ups registered in foreign countries rather than in Israel this year alone; emigration is significantly on the rise; foreign investment in start-up companies is drying out; the shekel is sinking; doctors are looking to relocate oversees; Moody’s and Morgan Stanley are issuing gloomy reports about Israel’s economic future, downgrading its credit and advising their clients not to invest in Israel; thousands of pilots and other military reservists are not reporting for their voluntary service, which impedes military readiness; and Israel’s international standing is at an all-time low.

To be sure, the amalgamation of economic (especially from the high-tech industry) and military power is what has strengthened Israel’s hand politically and diplomatically over the years. The rapid erosion in these particular sectors poses a significant threat to Israel’s security and economic wellbeing.

The demonstrators must now doubly prepare to resort to any peaceful means to thwart further judicial “reforms.” This includes rallies, demonstrations, work stoppages, civil disobedience, and general strikes; they must prepare to for these peaceful acts transparently to leave no doubt in the minds of Netanyahu and his colleagues that the initial fight over “reform” was a rehearsal for what might come, that it could paralyze the country completely should the government not heed their call.

Indeed, as Andrew Jackson observed, “All the rights secured to the citizens under the Constitution are worth nothing, and a mere bubble, except guaranteed to them by an independent and virtuous Judiciary.” Indeed, in the final analysis, an independent judiciary is the beating heart of democracy and any compromise between the government and the opposition that might be achieved must, under no circumstance, undermine the independence of the judiciary.

Separating state and religion

Another fundamental foundation of democracy is the separation between state and religion, which was not the case from the day of Israel’s inception in 1948. Whereas initially David Ben-Gurion, the founding father of modern Israel and first Prime Minister, granted undue authority to the rabbinical institutions for the sake of projecting unity, believing that ultimately “Liberal Judaism” would eventually win out, the opposite has occurred. The religious parties and the state institutions further increased their power and became an integral part of most Israeli coalition governments and the most ardent supporters of the settlements.

The question is, given the presumed secular nature of Israel’s democracy, why should the rabbinical institutions be allowed to govern the lives of liberal Jews concerning marriages, divorce, circumcision, bar mitzvahs, and so on, while restricting the government’s activities on Sabbath?

This runs completely against the essence of democracy, which derives its moral strength and legitimacy from individual autonomy, as people should be able to exercise self-determination and control over their own lives and be granted equal rights as well as accepting equal obligations. As Laurence Overmire observed: “The separation of church and state protects people of all faiths and no faith. No religion should be able to exercise control over a government and thereby dictate its theology onto any diverse group of free people.”

Thus, neither liberal Jews, nor the Hasidic community, nor religious extremists should be allowed to infringe on each other’s right to live as they see fit, which is exactly what democracy stands for when it comes to the separation between the state and religion. However, each side has obligations to the state to meet as well, which is why the religious community in Israel should not be exempt from meeting those obligations as they currently are, shirking military service in favor of Torah study. This too is inconsistent with democracy, when the burden to protect the nation is not shared equally by its citizens.

What is worse is that the religious community depends almost entirely on government funding to finance their institutions—funds which are largely generated from the liberal hard-working taxpayers whom the staunch nationalists and religious fanatics chastise and look down upon for being secular.

The liberal Jewish community, which is the engine behind Israel’s economy, should now insist that, and never rest until, a new basic law is enacted to codify the separation between state and religion that would unshackle secular Israelis from religious doctrine that often infringes on their private life. The law should also require that observant Israelis who do not want to serve in the army for religious reasons, should instead be required to perform community service for two years to serve the nation, only in a different capacity than soldiers. This will not only benefit the communities who require such services, it is consistent with Jewish values to come to the aid of those in need and will also allow these young Orthodox Jews to acquire certain professional skills which they can use to make a living should they elect to do so.

To be sure, the observant community should live, just like the secular community, as they see fit and be provided with necessary funds to run their institutions, provided that they contribute socially to the welfare and wellbeing of the larger Jewish community. A basic law that enshrines the separation between religion and state will offer the only guarantee to prevent the continuing conflict between the two camps while preserving one of the main fundamentals of democracy.

Ending the occupation

Ending the occupation is sine qua non to the preservation of Israel’s democracy. Indeed, as long as Israel remains an occupying power and applies two set of laws in the West Bank—one for Israelis including the settlers, and one set of military laws that govern the Palestinian community—Israel is not and will never be a true democracy. Successive right-wing governments have been systematically misleading and brainwashing the Israeli public to justify the occupation on the grounds of national security. They have been methodically portraying the Palestinians as an irredeemable foe while describing the occupation as central to keeping the Palestinians at bay and preventing them from ever establishing an independent state of their own.

Furthermore, successive Israeli governments have been promoting the notion that the Palestinians are bent on destroying Israel even if they establish their own state, while normalizing the occupation of the West Bank as if it were simply an extension of Israel proper. Eighty percent of all Israelis and 92 percent of all Palestinians were born after the occupation began in 1967. The occupation is dangerously eroding Israel’s moral standing and social fabric regardless of what kind of spins are put on it. It is not only destructive for the Palestinians, instigating militancy and endless violence, it has fueled a rise in antisemitism as the ruthless occupation is being associated with the Jews, as we are currently witnessing. To be sure, the Israeli occupation is logically skewed, politically counter-productive, and misleading from a national security perspective.

The current Israeli government openly calls for the annexation of the West Bank, which not only makes a mockery of Israel’s democracy but leaves the Palestinians with no other option but violent resistance. Indeed, the occupation and the way Israel is treating the Palestinians is apartheid in the full meaning of the word. The multitude of Israelis who have been fighting to preserve the independence of the judiciary must fight with the same vigor, tenacity, and commitment to end the occupation if they really want true democracy to prevail for generations to come.

To that end, the government must remain under unrelenting public pressure to create a path that would lead to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in the context of an Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian confederation. (My entire proposal on the creation of such a confederation can be found in World Affairs Journal.)

Establishing a constitution

One of the reasons behind the judicial crisis is that Israel does not have a written constitution, especially one that would require a supermajority (two-thirds) of the Knesset to amend any basic law and prevent any amendments by a simple majority, as was the case of the “reasonableness” bill which passed by a meager majority of 64 out of 120.

Israel’s democracy as it is currently formulated lacks necessary safeguards and can be manipulated to conform with the ideological or religious leaning of the government at any given time. The constitution should rest on foundational provisions over which reaching a consensus is a must.

Given however the diversity of opinions, ideologies, religious beliefs, political leanings, and different visions about Israel’s future, it will be extremely difficult to reach a consensus on establishing a constitution. Nevertheless, Israel’s many basic laws can form the basis for a constitution, which can be built upon. To that end, representatives of all current political parties should convene on a regular basis and commit, from the onset, to continue working on drafting a constitution until they reach a consensus.

Some of the fundamental provisions of the constitution should obviously include judicial independence; separation between religion and state; comprehensive human rights regardless of race, color, gender, ethnicity, or religion; equality before the law; freedom of expression and the press; free and fair elections; and a clear definition of the legal prerogatives of the government, its obligation towards citizens, as well as the relationship between the military and the government. Ultimately, a constitution that encompasses all the above provisions will provide the necessary safeguards to protect and sustain democracy.

Reforming Israel’s electoral system

Much can be said about the inefficiency and intricacies of Israel’s electoral system. Israeli elections are largely fair and free but nevertheless there is a need for substantial reform. For the purpose of this article, it suffices to focus on one critical aspect of Israel’s electoral system. Any reforms should aim at reducing the number of political parties by raising the electoral threshold from 3.25 percent to perhaps 7 or 8 percent. This change alone would compel smaller parties who roughly share similar ideological and political leanings to merge and create a larger party, which would also help to reduce polarization. But more important, it would prevent small parties from being kingmakers and having outsized power to form as well as precipitate the collapse of a government if their demands are not met. With fewer parties, each party would naturally gain a greater number of seats and will be able to form a coalition government without the need for a party of only 4 or 5 Knesset members, which under the current structure holds the government hostage to the narrow demands that serve the sole interest of such a party, even at the expense of the nation’s interests.

Moreover, the fewer the number of political parties in any coalition government, the fewer compromises will have to be made in order to avoiding settling on the lowest common denominators to reach consensus on any policy. This change alone would allow most governments to complete their four-year mandates and prevent frequent elections. During the past four years the country went through five elections, which is absurd to say the least. There is no doubt that this one change alone will dramatically improve the government’s functionality and further enhance its democratic underpinnings.

In conclusion, Israel has never faced the kind of social and political turmoil it is currently experiencing. The foundations of Israel’s democracy as a representative government—independence of the judiciary, equality before the law, social justice, religious freedom, freedom of press and expression, and protection of human rights—must be guarded with zeal. These democratic pillars have largely been enshrined in basic laws and any tampering with these pillars betrays the very essence behind Israel’s creation.

Israel, which was established as a home to protect the security and the rights of every citizen and welcomes any Jew regardless of their religious affiliation, country of origin, or gender, has been alarmingly eroding in recent years.

The whole nation must now rise up and revive the moral tenets and the democratic values on which the country was created, and live up to the vision of its founders.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a retired professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.

The post A perilous implosion awaits Israel unless true democracy prevails appeared first on Augusta Free Press.

“The greatest danger to human civilization and the planet is the inability to believe that tomorrow can be different . . .”

So writes Derek Johnson of the Global Zero movement, an organization committed to a world free of nuclear weapons. Let’s put it this way: If we can cooperate in our own collective suicide — a.k.a., nuclear war — surely, surely we can cooperate in creating a world that transcends such a possibility. Or are cynicism, war and profit so thoroughly worked into the human social structure that I’m kidding myself? You can’t put the genie back in the bottle, people say, superstitiously (it seems) condemning themselves, or at least their children, to inevitable self-annihilation.

How do we turn Sept. 26 — declared by the United Nations to be (I kid you not) the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons — into a reality? Or does the human future have nothing to do with “us”? Are we just spectators of our own lives, stuck in the world our leaders continue to bequeathed us — a world in which “peace” is maintained at gunpoint and standing armies are what God has wrought?

Is disarmament — nuclear and otherwise — possible only in some parallel universe?

The point I’m reaching for is this: Transcending war is not only possible, but we’re a lot closer to doing so than we realize, and by “we” I mean mainstream consciousness, believers in the genie that science let out of the bottle. Believers in what you might call the “nuclear apple.”

Johnson, writing about that first successful atomic explosion, in the New Mexican desert on July 16,1945, describes it thus: “. . . it is a moment of awe and terror: the power of human resolve pushing past preconceived limits, a door we were never meant to open swinging wide.”

I couldn’t help but picture humanity sitting innocently in the Garden of Eden. Hmmm. Let’s see what this tree has to offer. Science, in service to the God of War, takes a bite of the nuclear apple and now we know more than we were ever supposed to know. Within a generation, not only did we drop two humorously named atomic bombs (Little Boy and Fat Man) on two actual Japanese cities, but we launched what became known as the Cold War and began testing and building multi-thousands of far more powerful nuclear weapons. Seventy-eight years later, Planet Earth remains stuck — not simply with its knowledge of nuclear weaponry, but in competitive conflict between nuclear powers and their allies. While about half the planet is calling for disarmament, the nuclear powers shrug and declare it to be impossible.

That’s a lie!

Tomorrow can, indeed, be different. What’s missing, as far as I can tell, is a uniting spiritual — religious? — belief that this is so. Yeah, we ate the nuclear apple, but let’s not forget: Countless millennia of bellicose human history and prehistory created the context in which that happened. Despite an infinite amount of human awareness that war is stupid and pointless, that it accomplishes nothing except its own perpetuation, humanity has continued to organize itself with war as its political core. This means big powers with standing armies. This means the ongoing development of nuclear weapons across the globe — no matter that something will inevitably go wrong and . . . oops. Boom! Destruction is mutually assured.

So with all this said, how the hell can tomorrow be different? My thought on the matter amounts to this: Humanity is in the process of transcending the nuclear apple, of learning how to think beyond war and domination, winning and losing. We’re in the process of learning how to value conflict and work with it, rather than merely fearing and attempting to quash it. This is no small change. We are in the process of creating a structure of spiritual belief that is bigger than war. All of us are involved in it, and will be for the rest of our lives.

Loving war has always felt easy and natural: “normal.” I remember as a boy, sometime in the mid-’50s, attending a military show with my family at a local park known as Ford Field. Families sat on the hillside and down below, literal tanks rolled, guns were fired, smoke and noise filled the air. After the display, as the soldiers withdrew, the boys in the crowd (and maybe the girls too) swarmed down to the shooting site in search of souvenirs. I found a flattened bullet shell, which became my lucky charm for the next few years. I carried it in my pocket. In church — in the midst of the boring service — I quietly held the bullet, as though in boyish (yikes) worship.

My point is that war goes deep in the human psyche and, despite the hell it creates, our inner adolescent all too often refuses to surrender his belief in it. Humanity has not fully transcended the social organizing principle of war — not when you toss in the corporate profiteering that accompanies it, or the political usefulness of a good enemy.

But as I say, many, many courageous people are involved in pushing humanity to transcend war. The threat of nuclear war makes this crucial. Human evolution is in the spotlight. We must find peace in our souls — in our collective soul. I will continue to write about our evolving, but for now let me close by celebrating Veterans for Peace and the Golden Rule Project.

In 1958 a group of Quakers set sail for the Marshall Islands, in a boat named the Golden Rule, where they intended to put themselves in the way of a planned nuclear test at Bikini Atoll. They were stopped by the Coast Guard, arrested in Honolulu — but a global outrage took hold, which ultimately resulted in the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963.

Members of Vets for Peace recovered and rebuilt the boat. They note on their website: “The reborn Golden Rule is sailing once more, to show that nuclear abolition is possible, and that bravery and tenacity can overcome militarism.”

Love plus courage, folks! This is part of it — evolution in action.

Robert Koehler (koehlercw@gmail.com), syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Chicago award-winning journalist and editor. He is the author of Courage Grows Strong at the Wound.

The post The nuclear apple appeared first on Augusta Free Press.

They’d have you believe that a guy from Farmville singing about fat people on welfare eating Fudge Rounds is inspiring a revolution.

Yeah, that’s what’s wrong with America.

I guess I’m the crazy one.

Because I think it’s … a lot of other things.

For one, the people who spend all their time trying to ban books.

Seriously, y’all gotta have something better to do with your time.

Novel thought: shouldn’t we be trying to get kids to read books, instead of looking at their damn phones all day?

While we’re there, why are we giving kids phones in the first place?

You give them phones to shut them up.

Come on, admit it.

That’s what you’re doing.

Read to ‘em, already.

Get ‘em outside playing, exploring the world.

Kids need to be kids.

Let ‘em be kids.

And if they’re trans, let ‘em be trans.

This is another thing that’s wrong with us.

Trans kids are less than 1 percent of the population, but you wouldn’t know that to watch the news or look at your social media.

We’re changing the way our whole world works because of people who are scared of less than one in a hundred kids that they wouldn’t know was trans if they were sitting in front of them, because, get this, trans kids, they’re kids.

Your nonsense on trans kids is literally driving these kids to suicide, and you pretend it’s because of your religion.

Just sayin’, if your religion teaches you to drive kids to suicide, you might need a new religion.

Speaking of which, religion, another thing that’s wrong is the guy I saw the other day with the religious bumper sticker on the back of his truck with an image of Jesus, a catchy slogan and a middle finger.

Yeah, because that’s what Jesus taught.

Eff the non-believers, so sayeth the Lord.

These are the people who get upset when the preacher quotes Jesus, “blessed are the meek,” because that’s apparently a liberal talking point.

These people would have turned Jesus away at the border.

(News flash: Jesus ain’t the white guy with a mullet like you see on the cheap painting on the wall of your church on Sunday. Think: not Morgan Wallen, but maybe more, Rami Malek.)

We get fighting, shooting mad about a beer brand being too “woke.”

What’s the opposite of “woke,” I wonder.

Best I can tell, the opposite of “woke” is “asleep.”

That’s something to be proud of.

Literally sleeping through life as if Black people still aren’t treated as equals, women haven’t been made second-class citizens by the Supreme Court, people aren’t shooting each other every day over nothing.

Meanwhile, we claim to care about people’s mental health, yet do nothing to improve how we treat mental health.

I don’t even think we pretend anymore to care about what our kids are learning in school.

We can’t even put them on a school bus and get back home before 9 p.m., much less expect them to learn anything meaningful about the world they’re going to have to live in on their own one day soon, because we’re too cheap to pay for good schooling, even for damn bus drivers to get them there and back.

Thirty million people still can’t afford health insurance, and 100 million more having health insurance and still having to hope that they don’t get too sick, because if they do, it’ll bankrupt them.

The earth we live on is literally burning to the ground.

And we’re dividing ourselves over, what?

Really, I want to know.

Why are we dividing ourselves over nothing?

Why are y’all banning books, trying to Whitewash history, treating people who aren’t white, hetero- and nominally Christian as lesser?

Have you ever thought, that’s what they want you to do?

They being, the politicians, the corporate elites.

If you look back at history, Southern history, in particular, is a good guide here.

White Southern elites kept political and economic power for 100 years after the Civil War by keeping working-class Whites and Blacks at each other’s throats.

The only thing different now is, it’s not just White Southern elites doing it.

Richard Nixon mainstreamed it, Ronald Reagan perfected it, and Donald Trump took it to the next level.

They got y’all hating on each other, and all the while, they’re getting richer, and you’re staying where you are.

This whole own the libs thing ain’t exactly working out the way they told you it would, is it?

But, yeah, it’s about fat people on welfare eating Fudge Rounds.

If that helps you sleep at night, I’m not going to change your mind.

The post It is the ‘rich men north of Richmond’: But it ain’t because of what you’re being told appeared first on Augusta Free Press.

I was on the ground in Charlottesville amidst the rally, supporting the local Showing Up for Racial Justice chapter. As I watched hundreds of young, white men stream past me, I thought, “We need to get to white people before they get to this point.”

At SURJ, we do not work to convince avowed white supremacists that their beliefs are wrong, but instead we focus on engaging white people in communities these groups are targeting — white people who are making sense of the world through changing economic and political conditions and could go either way. We offer ways for white people to make sense of our world and take action in deep solidarity with communities of color. This is necessary to fight the white nationalism on display six years ago and the fascistic politicians like Trump and DeSantis using their support to consolidate power today.

We must out-organize the right in majority white communities to prevent more Unite the Right Rallies or January 6’s from happening.

Erin Heaney is the Executive Director of Showing Up for Racial Justice.

The post Letter: Six years since Unite the Right appeared first on Augusta Free Press.

This is what it means to go back-to-school in America today.

Instead of being taught the three R’s of education (reading, writing and arithmetic), young people are being drilled in the three I’s of life in the American police state: indoctrination, intimidation and intolerance.

Indeed, while young people today are learning first-hand what it means to be at the epicenter of politically charged culture wars, test scores indicate that students are not learning how to succeed in social studies, math and reading.

Instead of raising up a generation of civic-minded citizens with critical thinking skills, government officials are churning out compliant drones who know little to nothing about their history or their freedoms.

Under the direction of government officials focused on making the schools more authoritarian (sold to parents as a bid to make the schools safer), young people in America are now first in line to be searched, surveilled, spied on, threatened, tied up, locked down, treated like criminals for non-criminal behavior, tasered and in some cases shot.

From the moment a child enters one of the nation’s 98,000 public schools to the moment he or she graduates, they will be exposed to a steady diet of:

• draconian zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior,
• overreaching anti-bullying statutes that criminalize speech,
• school resource officers (police) tasked with disciplining and/or arresting so-called “disorderly” students,
• standardized testing that emphasizes rote answers over critical thinking,
• politically correct mindsets that teach young people to censor themselves and those around them,
• and extensive biometric and surveillance systems that, coupled with the rest, acclimate young people to a world in which they have no freedom of thought, speech or movement.

This is how you groom young people to march in lockstep with a police state.

As Deborah Cadbury writes for The Washington Post, “Authoritarian rulers have long tried to assert control over the classroom as part of their totalitarian governments.”

In Nazi Germany, the schools became indoctrination centers, breeding grounds for intolerance and compliance.

In the American police state, the schools have become increasingly hostile to those who dare to question or challenge the status quo.

America’s young people have become casualties of a post-9/11 mindset that has transformed the country into a locked-down, militarized, crisis-fueled mockery of a representative government.

Roped into the government’s profit-driven campaign to keep the nation “safe” from drugs, disease, and weapons, America’s schools have transformed themselves into quasi-prisons, complete with surveillance cameras, metal detectors, police patrols, zero tolerance policies, lock downs, drug sniffing dogs, strip searches and active shooter drills.

Students are not only punished for minor transgressions such as playing cops and robbers on the playground, bringing LEGOs to school, or having a food fight, but the punishments have become far more severe, shifting from detention and visits to the principal’s office into misdemeanor tickets, juvenile court, handcuffs, tasers and even prison terms.

Students have been suspended under school zero tolerance policies for bringing to school “look alike substances” such as oregano, breath mints, birth control pills and powdered sugar.

Look-alike weapons (toy guns—even Lego-sized ones, hand-drawn pictures of guns, pencils twirled in a “threatening” manner, imaginary bows and arrows, fingers positioned like guns) can also land a student in hot water, in some cases getting them expelled from school or charged with a crime.

Not even good deeds go unpunished.

One 13-year-old was given detention for exposing the school to “liability” by sharing his lunch with a hungry friend. A third grader was suspended for shaving her head in sympathy for a friend who had lost her hair to chemotherapy. And then there was the high school senior who was suspended for saying “bless you” after a fellow classmate sneezed.

Having police in the schools only adds to the danger.

Thanks to a combination of media hype, political pandering and financial incentives, the use of armed police officers (a.k.a. school resource officers) to patrol school hallways has risen dramatically in the years since the Columbine school shooting.

Indeed, the growing presence of police in the nation’s schools is resulting in greater police “involvement in routine discipline matters that principals and parents used to address without involvement from law enforcement officers.”

Funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, these school resource officers have become de facto wardens in elementary, middle and high schools, doling out their own brand of justice to the so-called “criminals” in their midst with the help of tasers, pepper spray, batons and brute force.

In the absence of school-appropriate guidelines, police are more and more “stepping in to deal with minor rulebreaking: sagging pants, disrespectful comments, brief physical skirmishes. What previously might have resulted in a detention or a visit to the principal’s office was replaced with excruciating pain and temporary blindness, often followed by a trip to the courthouse.”

Not even the younger, elementary school-aged kids are being spared these “hardening” tactics.

On any given day when school is in session, kids who “act up” in class are pinned facedown on the floor, locked in dark closets, tied up with straps, bungee cords and duct tape, handcuffed, leg shackled, tasered or otherwise restrained, immobilized or placed in solitary confinement in order to bring them under “control.”

In almost every case, these undeniably harsh methods are used to punish kids—some as young as 4 and 5 years old—for simply failing to follow directions or throwing tantrums.

Very rarely do the kids pose any credible danger to themselves or others.

Unbelievably, these tactics are all legal, at least when employed by school officials or school resource officers in the nation’s public schools.

This is what happens when you introduce police and police tactics into the schools.

Paradoxically, by the time you add in the lockdowns and active shooter drills, instead of making the schools safer, school officials have succeeded in creating an environment in which children are so traumatized that they suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, nightmares, anxiety, mistrust of adults in authority, as well as feelings of anger, depression, humiliation, despair and delusion.

For example, a middle school in Washington State went on lockdown after a student brought a toy gun to class. A Boston high school went into lockdown for four hours after a bullet was discovered in a classroom. A North Carolina elementary school locked down and called in police after a fifth grader reported seeing an unfamiliar man in the school (it turned out to be a parent).

Police officers at a Florida middle school carried out an active shooter drill in an effort to educate students about how to respond in the event of an actual shooting crisis. Two armed officers, guns loaded and drawn, burst into classrooms, terrorizing the students and placing the school into lockdown mode.

These police state tactics have not made the schools any safer.

The fallout has been what you’d expect, with the nation’s young people treated like hardened criminals: handcuffed, arrested, tasered, tackled and taught the painful lesson that the Constitution (especially the Fourth Amendment) doesn’t mean much in the American police state.

So what’s the answer, not only for the here-and-now—the children growing up in these quasi-prisons—but for the future of this country?

How do you convince a child who has been routinely handcuffed, shackled, tied down, locked up, and immobilized by government officials—all before he reaches the age of adulthood—that he has any rights at all, let alone the right to challenge wrongdoing, resist oppression and defend himself against injustice?

Most of all, how do you persuade a fellow American that the government works for him when, for most of his young life, he has been incarcerated in an institution that teaches young people to be obedient and compliant citizens who don’t talk back, don’t question and don’t challenge authority?

As we’ve seen with other issues, any significant reforms will have to start locally and trickle upwards.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if we want to raise up a generation of freedom fighters who will actually operate with justice, fairness, accountability and equality towards each other and their government, we must start by running the schools like freedom forums.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

The post Indoctrination, intimidation, intolerance: What passes for education today appeared first on Augusta Free Press.

Dear EarthTalk: How are amphibians doing in the U.S. and around the world these days? – D. Victor, Philadelphia, PA

Amphibians, such as frogs, toads, salamanders and newts, live on both land and in water. Having emerged over 300 million years ago, today there are over 7,000 known species. However, they are perishing at an alarming rate. In 2004, about a third of amphibian species were threatened by extinction. Scientists have calculated that amphibian populations are decreasing at an annual rate of 3.79 percent in the U.S. alone.

Amphibians are crucial for ecosystem viability. They improve biodiversity and resilience in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems by transferring energy and organic matter. Certain amphibians eat decomposers, allowing soil to retain nutrients longer. Tadpoles feed on algae, slowing algal blooms and subsequent eutrophication. Lizards, birds, fish and snakes rely on amphibians as a source of food. Certainly, the disappearance of amphibians will have serious repercussions throughout a wide range of ecosystems.

Amphibians typically have highly permeable skin that helps them breathe. Oxygen molecules dissolve into the skin’s mucus membrane and surface blood vessels. Since their skin is so permeable, amphibians are very sensitive to their surroundings. As such they are considered an “indicator species” because they react so quickly when environmental factors change and can signal trouble for the wider environment.

There are many reasons why amphibian populations are declining, many of which are human-related. When people build roads and dams, amphibians may be separated from other members of their species. The infrastructure also interrupts migrating patterns and the flow of larvae in water. Water retention in rivers, streams and ponds is declining and shorelines are receding. Additionally, people exploit amphibians as pets or ingredients in medicinal/biological markets.

Many amphibians lay eggs in water, and toxins like road salts, pesticides, fertilizers, industrial wastes and plastics can penetrate the eggs’ membranes and poison the developing larvae. Pollutants can also cause behavioral irregularities, lower reproductive success, and even cause death. Moreover, ozone layer erosion has let more of the sun’s ultraviolet rays infiltrate the atmosphere. UV-B rays can kill amphibians directly and cause growth delays and immune dysfunction. These changes result in the mass mortality of eggs, larvae, and metamorphosizing amphibians.

Since the mid-1900s, there has been a pandemic of the infectious chytrid fungus in over 700 amphibian species. The fungal spores move through water and stick in soil. When amphibians (notably frogs) come in contact with this fungus, it degrades the keratin layer of their skin, causing skin sloughing, lethargy, weight loss and death. Scientists are still exploring efficient ways to slow the spread of this lethal fungus.

Everyone can play a part in helping amphibians, from keeping pets indoors, reducing fertilizer and pesticide usage, covering your pool when not in use (to save amphibians from falling in). These are some of many ways that you can do your part to help these endangered critters out!

CONTACTS: Why are amphibian populations declining? usgs.gov/faqs/why-are-amphibian-populations-declining; Water Quality and Amphibians, conservewildlifenj.org/blog/2015/03/27/water-quality-and-amphibians/; ​​What Amphibians Can Tell Us About Water Quality, cnr.ncsu.edu/news/2023/04/amphibians-water-quality/; What You Can Do, nps.gov/subjects/amphibiansandreptiles/what-you-can-do.htm.

EarthTalk® is produced by Roddy Scheer & Doug Moss for the 501(c)3 nonprofit EarthTalk. See more at emagazine.com. To donate, visit earthtalk.org. Send questions to: question@earthtalk.org.

The post How are amphibians doing in the U.S. and around the world these days? appeared first on Augusta Free Press.