Thoughts on the Path

Thoughts on the Path 2004-05-05T22:25:06Z User 300 https://newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v300/ OrgSpace NewsLog Sulha

The Sulha: Reconciliation in the Middle East

by Ilan Zamir (with Menahem Benhayim)

This article originally appeared in ISSUES 6:4

The policeman gaped at me, unable to suppress his astonishment. "Man, that's dangerous what you want to do. You can get into serious trouble. You're an Israeli Jew and these people you want to meet are Arabs on the West Bank.…"

I knew he meant well; he was a fellow Jew who wanted me to avoid a potentially explosive encounter with "the other side."

"Still, I feel I have to talk with them," I persisted, though my voice did shake a bit.

"The boy is already dead." He was doing his best to dissuade me. "How will it help for you to express your regrets now?"

He had a point. Obviously, expressing regret for the tragedy would not raise the dead. There I was, an Israeli Jew trying to contact an Arab family living under Israeli occupation. Further, I was coming to them as the driver of the car which had struck their boy in a fatal road accident. The accident wasn't my fault. I would have my day in court (and in fact was found innocent), but I felt the situation called for more than a dry and impersonal legal action.

"There are spiritual values I must deal with," I tried to explain to the policeman. He nodded, not in agreement, but in resignation, as if to say it was beyond his grasp why I should want to visit the family of the dead boy in their Arab village outside Jerusalem.

Family Honor

I told a friend of mine in Jerusalem about my desire to meet with the Arab family, and mentioned the policeman's warning about the risk involved. The concept of "avenger of the blood" from Bible times flashed in my memory with ominous portent:

…anyone who slays any person without intent…shall flee to the city of refuge…lest the avenger of blood in hot anger pursue the manslayer…(Numbers 35; Deuteronomy 19)

Would I be considered a manslayer whose blood had to be shed by a family avenger? I recalled stories I'd read of unfortunate Muslims who were murdered by members of their own family. The victims had deviated from their tribal code and thus had "stained the family honor." Would "honor" demand that my life be considered forfeit by the family of the dead boy? It would not be honest to say such thoughts never entered my mind. Yet there were other, more pressing thoughts.

I told my friend how again and again I relived the horrible memory of that dark dreadful night and my drive through El-Azariya. I was headed home to Jerusalem. I saw the figure darting out in front of my car, heard the screeching of my brakes, and the frantic honking of my horn. Within a fraction of a second, there was the sickening, dull thud of impact and the shrieks of pain from the boy who never heard the warning of the horn. He could not hear it, as I later learned, because he was deaf. Next came the nightmarish wailing of the police sirens and ambulance. Then came the days of waiting and hoping…and finally, the cruel news: the boy had died. He was only 13 years old.

My friend listened to my story without much comment. When I was through he said quietly, "Lord, I know an Arab believer in Y'shua, Pastor Suhail Ramadan. He is familiar with many different communities and customs in Israel. Let's consult with him."

Mediators and Interpreters

I had heard of this pastor. He was a respected leader of a congregation in Galilee as well as a chaplain to Arab prisoners in Israel. When my friend explained the situation, Pastor Ramadan immediately offered his help. Our goal was to arrange a "sulha," a reconciliation meeting with the Arab Muslim family of the deceased. An Arab believer who lived in the same village as the bereaved family would help make the arrangements. We also contacted an English woman, a journalist, who had connections with the village. through her we met Abu Musa, a building contractor who had served in the British Army during the Second World War. He agreed to mediate and interpret in arranging the reconciliation. He also recruited his uncle, who was a mukhtar (respected leader) in the community. The uncle was a retired pious Muslim who had made the hadj, the pilgrimage to Mecca.

It was about a month after the accident that we met in the house of one of Abu Musa's sons for an "exploratory" meeting. I was nervous and irritable as my friend drove me to the meeting.…

I thought of the gap between my background as a "sabra" (one who had grown up in a secular Israeli atmosphere) and that of the Arabs we were to meet. At the same time, I realized that in many ways, my life was as different from my fellow sabras as it was from the Arab Muslims I was about to meet…for I was a Israeli Jew who believed in Y'shua (Jesus).

My faith in Y'shua has sometimes led to hard feelings and occasional hostility, but when it comes to the issue of Y'shua as Messiah, I can understand and know how to handle it. On the other hand, with the Arab Muslims I was exposing myself to a possible collision with a culture which was not only alien to me, but one which viewed me as a hostile foreign invader. I began to imagine graphically chilling versions of the upcoming encounter. "Maybe the Jewish policeman was right," I allowed myself to think. "Maybe I'm taking too much of a risk." Yet I could not allow these fears to guide me. Principles, not fear, were behind my desire for the sulha. I had to hold tightly to those principles, and trust God to see me through.

A Preliminary Meeting

When we arrived at the village, Abu Musa was waiting outside his son's house. He invited us into a spacious living room, where I immediately noticed his uncle, the mukhtar. He was dressed in traditional Arab attire, an impressive Oriental figure with lively blue eyes. He greeted us warmly.

"Marhaba (Welcome)." I spoke the traditional Arabic greeting.

"Marhabteen (Your are twice welcome)," he replied.

The old mukhtar understood English but preferred to speak in Arabic, with his nephew acting as translator. Abu Musa had explained many details of the situation to him before we arrived.

"What kind of work does the young man do?" the uncle asked, pointing in my direction.

"You can classify me as a student," I replied.

The mukhtar shook his head slightly, though for a moment, then asked, "And how much does he think he can offer the bereavved family?" Almost immediately he added with a slight smile," Of course the family may refuse any offer of money." His voice was deep and resonant, but also earnest and not threatening. His nephew Abu Musa explained, "Sometimes it is customary to press a few bills into the hands of the mother of the family towards the end of the sulha."

"Would 200 dollars be enough?" I asked./p>

My friend, who was closely following the conversation, interjected, choosing his words very carefully, "It may be that there are expenses for the good services of arranging the sulha?" The uncle and Abu Musa understood the suggestion, and though not offended, they forcefully rejected the offer.

"No! No!" The mukhtar emphasized. "My work is to make peace between people; the only payment I ask is peace, nothing more." Our hosts passed around fruit and water on a beautifully decorated tray while Abu Musa explained that his uncle would make contact with the bereaved family, ascertain the terms of the sulha, the amount of money required, the meeting time and the names of the persons who would be present. If everything was agreed upon, another meeting would be held before the actual sulha with the family.

An "Astonishing" Revelation

"My uncle esteems you very highly," Abu Musa remarked to me in English. "You are not a part of the village, nor even an Arab, and you are asking to arrange a sulha with a family you don't even know."

Ilan Zamir

"I think that's the minimum I can do," I replied sadly.

"Nevertheless, he would like assurances that you won't back down at a later stage, because that would cause him to lose face very badly," he explained.

"Tell him I won't back down, for me this is a matter of faith," I answered at once.

My friend added, "We believe in the Holy Scriptures…in the Torah and in the Injil (the Gospels).

The old man raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Are you not Jews? Yet you believe in the Injil?" There was a touch of astonishment in his voice.

My friend answered, "Yes, certainly we are Jews. We believe in the Hebrew Scriptures and also in the New Covenant, and there it is written, 'Let your yea be yea, and your nay be nay." If Ilan has said he will not back down, then Inshalla (God willing) so it shall be."

The old man chuckled in undisguised mirth, and then with an air of solemn authority remarked, "Well, then, all you two need now is to believe in the Holy Koran, and you will be good Muslims, for we too believe in the Torah and in the Injil."

We smiled politely, embarrassed by the proposal. Suddenly the old man turned to my friend and asked, "Tell me, do you believe in the Trinity?"

"We believe that God was revealed in Y'shua the Messiah," he replied.

"Oh, then you believe in three gods!" came the old uncle's rejoinder. His triumphant tone suggested he felt he had beaten us at a game of theology.

"No, absolutely not," my friend countered. "We believe in the one true God who is revealed in three persons."

The old man smiled politely without uttering a word. His smile seemed to say, "That is not my opinion, but not is not the time to debate theology."

Just then our hosts brought in a tray of hot coffee in delicate little white cups. The coffee was black and heavily sweetened, and we understood it was a signal that the meeting was drawing to a close. We drank, rose from our seats, shook hands all around, and agreed to continue our contact with Abu Musa.

Further Negotiations

A report on the preliminary meeting was passed onto Pastor Ramadan in Galilee. He put us in touch with Munir Kakish, a pastor from Ramallah, an Arab town not far from Jerusalem. Pastor Kakish had spent a number of years in the West, so he was familiar with both Eastern and Western cultures.

"It would be better if there were a stronger representation of believers in the Messiah at the sulha," he observed. "It isn't good for one side to be over-represented." I smiled as I thought of the balance of forces among the different communities in our region. It plays a crucial and unsettling part in the Middle Eastern affairs. "It is also important that everything be completely understood by the mukhtar, the old man who is mediating, before the meeting with the family," he added.

"What about the amount of money as a gift?" I asked.

"I'll tell you, my family originated in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. There the custom is to offer a gift at the sulha, which the family formally rejects in the name of the Prophet and in the name of the king. If that is the way things work here, I'm not altogether sure. We must take into consideration the fact that you are not Arabs, and you have no ties to the village. In any case, it would be best to bring along money in case it is needed."

After a few phone calls, it was arranged to meet once more with the mukhtar at his son's home. Immediately afterwards, we would move on to the home of the bereaved family.

We left Jerusalem early in the afternoon, and reached the meeting place by three o'clock. It was a pleasant spring day, and the sun shone down on the old houses and narrow lanes of the village. We entered the house, and I saw the Ramallah pastor for the first time. He was young, balding, somewhat heavy, with a congenial manner. He welcomed us warmly in fluent English, while the old mukhtar rose to meet us, extending his hand in friendship. Our hosts brought out the traditional tray of fruit, this time accompanied by delicate cups of hot sweetened black coffee. The room was buzzing with Arabic conversation, with bits of translation from time to time by the Ramallah pastor.

"The family is willing to receive you and to forgive you; neither are they asking for any financial compensation. They will be satisfied with what they receive from the insurance company," he informed us.

"Still, I've brought money along, and I'm prepared to pay them" I assured him.

"No," the old man responded with emphasis, "it is not necessary." Then he arose from his seat, signaling us that we were to move on. We proceeded to the home of the bereaved family, who lived only a few yards away from the scene of the accident. As we drove up, a sudden wave of sorrow overcame me once again.

"Oh God," I prayed, "if only I could wipe out that tragic moment. Help me to endure this difficult testing." I thought of the verse: And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)

The Sulha

As we approached the large two-story, Arab-style home, the dead boy's father strode out to meet us. He greeted us, and cast a quick, gloomy glance at me. Then, with a swift sweep of his hand, he invited us to enter. I looked sideways at him as we moved along. He was a young, mustached dark-haired man. He walked with short brisk steps and spoke in a tense, high-pitched voice. My heart ached at the thought of his sorrow as we entered the large salon. The room was lined with sofas and chairs in a kind of circle against the brightly colored walls which were hung with beautiful Oriental tapestries We sat down and waited while the mukhtar and others engaged in animated conversation in Arabic. The pastor from Ramallah translated here and there for my friend and me.

An old grandfather quietly entered the room. He was dressed in traditional garb, his face was wrinkled and his body wizened. He told us a story of reconciliation which had happened 40 years ago. He had witnessed an accident in which a boy, a relative of the family, had been run over and killed by a driver form Hebron. When he realized the boy was dead, he covered the body and urged the driver to flee from the scene before other members of the family arrived. They would have lynched him on the spot. Later, the grandfather arranged for a sulha. The Hebronite offered money to the family, but they refused payment and forgave him.

Other members of the family entered the room: the old granny who had witnessed the accident, and a brother-in-law, a young man who spoke fluent Hebrew. From time to time, the father of the boy would enter and leave, tightlipped and seeming to scowl.

"It is still difficult for him to keep from weeping at the memory of his son. He does not want to weep in our presence," the brother-in-law explained in Hebrew.

Finally the father of the boy sat down and cups of black sweetened coffee were passed around on a tray. We all rose, and Pastor Kakish began to translate into English the conclusion of the sulha.

"Know that the family does not desire any money, but they receive this tragedy as from the hand of God, and they forgive you for your part in the affair. From now on they see you as a member of the family."

The cups of coffee remained on the table, untouched. According to tradition, the father would be the first to taste from the cup as a sign that he accepted the reconciliation gesture, and had indeed agreed to forgive. The tension in his face had cast a shadow on the proceedings until then, but at that point, he suddenly began to smile. The lines of grief softened. He looked at me squarely and his smile broadened as he moved towards me, opening his arms in a gesture of embrace. As we met and embraced, he kissed me ceremonially three times on the cheeks. Everyone began to shake hands with one another as the father sipped coffee. The whole atmosphere was transformed, the tension at an end.

An Adopted Son

I was overwhelmed by a desire to speak, so I turned to the Hebrew-speaking brother-in-law and asked him to translate for me.

"I want you to understand how much I am in sorrow about this accident," I began, "and how much I appreciate your readiness to forgive and to receive me."

They all began to shake their heads and mumble in Arabic. "They are saying there is no need to apologize now; they forgive you, and you can forget about the matter," I was told.

I thanked them as I sensed the sulha was drawing to a close. Suddenly, the brother-in-law turned to me. His voice was full of pathos, and I was reminded of the chanting of a cantor in the synagogue as he addressed me in Hebrew sing-song.

"Know, O my brother, that you are in place of this son who has died. You have a family and a home somewhere else, but know that here is your second home. Whenever you wish to come, at whichever hour you wish to come, this is your home."

"Peace be unto you!"

I shook his hand fervently. "Thank you, thank you so much. I will truly come."

I gulped down the remainder of my coffee and placed it back on the tray which was set on the table. I turned to the mukhtar who was still seated on the sofa, his eyes glowing. "You are a righteous man," I said in English. "Thank you so much for your help." He smiled at me a paternal smile, and thanked his nephew Abu Musa and all the others for their cooperation.

"Ma salaami (Peace be unto you)," we said to one another as we parted.

In the west the sun was beginning to set as I turned my face towards Jerusalem.

From:
http://www.jfjonline.org/pub/issues/06-04/sulha.htm]]> https://newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v300/__show_article/_a000300-000008.htm 2004-05-05T22:25:06Z 2004-05-05T22:25:06Z Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue

Published on Wednesday, April 7, 2004 by the Globe and Mail / Canada
The Third World War is Now From Palestine to Iraq, the Region is Aflame with Conflict yet the Need for Dialogue is Ignored
by Prince El Hassan bin Talal

A friend of mine recently visited a family in a small Palestinian
village on the border between Israel and the West Bank. It was, he said, like walking into a real-life version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

The table was laid, the dinner was ready -- but no one was there to eat it.

He continued through the house, eventually finding the family on the
roof, huddled together, crying as they watched a bulldozer tear up their orchard. The parents and their children were watching their land and their livelihood disappear behind Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's new eight-meter-high security fence, which has been erected throughout the country.

The driver of the bulldozer, an Israeli, said to them afterward, "For every tree I pulled out of the ground, it was like killing a person. It tore at my heart, but I am under orders."

The tragedy is that while they might be on opposite sides of the conflict, these are ordinary, moderate human beings whose lives are being ruined by governments, terrorism and the cruel, unilateral nature of international politics.

It is not only in this deeply troubled country that such problems occur.

Across the Middle East, for every orchard that is ripped apart, there is an olive branch torn down.

The Iraqis have watched their constitution being changed to allow foreign companies to own 100 per cent of Iraqi assets, except natural resources; the Lebanese live under constant threat of an Israeli air strike; and two weeks ago, the world witnessed Sheik Ahmed Yassin being assassinated.

Sheik Yassin was the founder of the terrorist group Hamas. I abhor suicide bombings; they are an affront to humanity. It must be remembered, however, that to his many supporters in the Islamic world he was an important spiritual leader.

Terrorism, violence, the proliferation of weapons, human-rights abuses and preventable or avoidable conflicts -- all these issues are debated day and night on Arab television. Across the region, millions perceive a denial of the inherent dignity that we all share -- equally -- as creatures of God, living under one sun, on a fragile earth upon which we all depend.

So perhaps it is no surprise that the mood is becoming ugly. In Jordan, where I live, and in countries throughout the Middle East, I witness the growing tensions and resentment every day.

Israel and Hezbollah are bombing in Southern Lebanon; in Syria there are
conflicts between Kurds and Arabs; in the Gulf there are tensions between the Sunnis and the Shiites. Iran, still anchored on the axis of evil, gains strength, day by day, with Shia and other sympathizers around the world. The makings of a third world war are taking place in front of our eyes.

There are more than 40 so-called low-intensity conflicts in the world today. Maybe it is not the Third World War if you are living in Manchester or Stockholm, but if I were in Madrid when the bombs at the station went off, it would look very much like the Third World War to me.

What must it take to move away from the madness that is sweeping the region? The extremists are engaging more and more moderate citizens, Who are becoming increasingly disillusioned and desperate. The blame for
this cannot simply be laid at the West's door. We must also look closer
to home.

The governments of the Middle East are losing touch with reality. While
they fight to hold on to their position, the power vacuum is being filled by extremist movements. It is they who provide compensation for children who are killed in conflict, who provide soup kitchens to feed the starving and, in so doing, enlist an increasing number of supporters for their wars.

Make no mistake that this is a world war, albeit not like any we have seen before. The conflict is not being fought by regimented armies of men, but by individuals and by small terrorist cells on our streets and in our homes. The human race has now reached such a point that we are arguing the merits of killing a half-blind man in a wheelchair on one side, and the blowing up of 200 innocent Spanish citizens on their way to work on the other.

Significantly, neither action has brought us any closer to ending the conflict. Sheik Yassin's assassination has only served to elevate him to

martyrdom, and will undoubtedly incite further violence in his name. We
must remember the real danger of such an act, which could change the agenda from Palestinian-Israeli confrontation to that between Arabs, Christians, Muslims and Jews.

Sheik Yassin's killing, like every other killing, whether it is justified by states or by individual groups, takes us several steps away from what must be the overall objective: comprehensive peace in the region.

All initiatives in the Middle East, through NATO, the G8, the Developing
8 Muslim Countries (the D8), focus on what appears to be the business of

the moment: security, security, security. I'd like to see them focus on dialogue, dialogue, dialogue.

What we really need is a Treaty of Versailles for our region, where everyone can sit down together and work towards peace. Experience has taught me that it is better for all parties to be at the table for peace talks, so that no one is left off the menu.

In this, the Middle East is at fault. Each nationality sits behind closed doors. I have sat with them, and all agree with the need for a multilateral security system. But when they come into the broad light of day, they are only worried for their own bilateral agreements with the United States. That attitude must change.

And the West, too, must adopt a different approach. Its member states need to move from the narrow day-to-day perspective of politics as usual

and policies that deal with hard security -- the use of the military to control borders and regimes, and too great an emphasis on economics and
profit.

My greatest fear is that if we continue to depend on the rule of force and on power as a deterrent, eventually we will be unable to disable violence.

We must become more sensitized to the concept of consequences: the
consequences of poverty, illiteracy, oppression, lack of opportunity, despair and anger -- all of which can all lead to the contemplation of violence.

We are standing on the brink and that is something that binds us all together: the Israeli who thinks he will be killed by a suicide bomber, the Libyan by an air strike or the Westerner by a random terrorist attack.

So rather than fight a war on terror, why not wage a struggle for the rule of peace? The Arabic word hamas means zeal, but flip it on its head, to samah, and it stands for tolerance. Sometimes you just have to look at things in a different way.

Prince El Hassan bin Talal, brother of the late King Hussein of Jordan, is the moderator of the World Conference on Religion and Peace, president of the Club of Rome, and president of the Arab Thought Forum.

© Copyright 2004 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc.]]> https://newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v300/__show_article/_a000300-000007.htm 2004-04-15T01:15:16Z 2004-04-15T01:20:01Z Will Your Vote Count This November? Will Your Vote Count This November?

I received this email and thanks to vaxen's comment on my previous article I was inspired to post this...

First of all, please forgive me for taking up space in your inbox when I
don't know you. Don't worry: I will never contact you again unless you
choose to reply to my message. I hate spam as much as you do, and I
would never do this if something very important wasn't at stake. My name is Anna--yes, an actual human being is sending this, not a machine--and I've put hours of work into creating and manually sending out this letter
because there's something I believe you and all Americans have a right
to know:

Our right to fair elections is in danger.

Right now, in over half of all US states, elections are run by private
corporations which control the electronic voting machines that have
replaced physical paper ballots. These corporations have little or no
accountability—election officials aren't even allowed to examine the
machines in depth or check the source codes of the programs which count
our votes! As more than one expert has pointed out, slot machines are
better regulated.

Needless to say, the possibility of accident or fraud is enormous. If
we don't act soon, the presidential election next year may make the one in
2000 look like a walk in the park.

Please read the article below for more information, then see the end of
this email for instructions on how to take action.

The following article, slightly condensed, originally appeared in the
Hightower Lowdown, a publication put out by Texas Congressman Jim
Hightower. Please note that while you may or may not agree with Mr.
Hightower's politics, his facts have been independently verified.

---------

WHO'S COUNTING OUR VOTES? By Jim Hightower

Welcome to WallyWorld. In the futuristic Land of Wally, elections take
place in cyberspace, and the voting process has been privatized. Indeed,
voting machines themselves are owned and tightly controlled by a small
group of for-profit corporations. These corporate machines "count" the
votes and issue a cyber-tally to declare the winner. The inner workings
of the machinery are a corporate secret—public election officials are
barred from examining the computer code to see if any flaws (or fraud) have been programmed into the system. Even in cases where recounts are ordered, only the corporate owners get to peek inside the computers' innards.

In other words, in this magical land, the keys to the kingdom have been
turned over to private electioneering firms. Mere voters are simply
expected to "trust" the system... and to moo contentedly as they move
through the corporate polling booths.

But WallyWorld is no fable. It's all too real, and the place where it's
happening is right here in the U.S. of A., where 30 states have already
turned over the people's balloting to a handful of these proprietary,
profit-seeking interests that reek with conflicts of interest.

Meet Wally O'Dell. He is CEO of Diebold, Inc., an ATM-maker that has
moved aggressively into what is now known as the electronic-voting industry. Diebold has rapidly become the second-largest purveyor of "touch-screen" voting machines. Already, over 33,000 of Wally's computers have been installed in polling places across the country. This is interesting for two big reasons: 1) Diebold keeps having "incidents" with its machinery,
leading to a growing concern that the company is losing, or even stealing, large numbers of our votes; and 2) Wally himself, a Republican, is rabidly partisan.

How partisan is O'Dell? In August, he was a guest at George W.'s
ranchette down in Crawford, Texas, where he and several other of Bush's fund-raising "Rangers" had a private tête-à-tête with the prez to discuss how each of them would raise $200,000 or more to keep him in the White House.

So excited was Wally to be part of Bush's team that he went home to Ohio
and promptly sent out letters to his wealthy associates declaring that
he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the
president next year." He then invited them to attend a $10,000-a-plate Bush fundraiser at Cotswold Manor, his mansion in Columbus.

One day after this solicitation hit the mail, Ohio's Republican
Secretary of State moved to qualify Wally's Diebold to sell its electronic-voting machines to the state's county officials.

You don't need Karl Malden's nose to smell this stinker. What we have
here is a politically biased corporation raising big bucks for the guy whose
votes the corporation will be counting. As Mark Twain said, "The
difference between fact and fiction is that fiction must be believable."
Unbelievably, the fact is that our country is rushing pell-mell to the
corporatization of our most basic democratic exercise: voting.

THE FIX

What wrong turn did our leaders take from America's straight and true
path of democracy to lead us into this fine fix? Initially, it looked like a
sensible idea. After the hanging-chad debacle of the 2000 presidential
election in Florida, spooked national, state, and local officials were
scrambling for a way to reform the voting system.

Out of the darkness stepped the most unlikely of caped crusaders:
corporations. Whispering the magic word "computers," corporate lobbyists
swarmed Capitol Hill with promises that high-tech was the path to true
reform, since electronic voting has no chads to hang and, in fact, no
paper of any kind to "clog" the machinery of democracy. Thus was born
HAVA--the Help America Vote Act. It requires states to replace
mechanical voting machines with touch-screen systems.

Besides Wally, here are some of the big players who are cashing in on
this government-fed boondoggle:

Election Systems and Software: The largest seller of computerized voting
systems in the country, ES&S counts Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel (R) as
its former top exec. ES&S is a subsidiary of the McCarthy Group Inc., a
merchant-banking company based in Omaha. It's headed by Michael McCarthy, who (coincidentally) serves as Hagel's campaign treasurer. The senator continues to hold some $5 million worth of stock in the McCarthy
Group—yes, the company that counts Hagel's votes in each of his
elections!

Science Applications International Corporation: A major Pentagon
contractor, SAIC is now drawing big bucks as a technology consultant to
the corporations and governments behind the electronic-voting gold rush.
SAIC has had numerous legal problems with its performance on various
government jobs, including being charged with fabricating tests, civil
fraud, and making false claims—not exactly the reputation you'd want for
an entity with a big hand America's election process.

Speaking of Pentagon contractors, Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman are also in the game and have lobbied forcefully for HAVA, as did computer giant EDS and offshore financial schemer Accenture (the spawn of disgraced accounting giant Arthur Andersen, of Enron infamy.)

Accenture, which boasts that it is not a U.S. firm but a world
corporation headquartered in Bermuda, is one of two foreign outfits that have already gained a piece of America's electronic-voting pie. The other is Sequoia, owned by England's DeLaRue corporation and now the third-largest provider of computerized voting systems in the U.S.

These new election barons proclaim that computer technology is secure,
accurate, and certified by the authorities, so don't go worrying your
little heads about stuff that's none of your business anyway. We're
experts...trust us.

Do we look like we just fell off a turnip truck? First, computers
inevitably and routinely are filled with programming errors and flaws;
they seem to crash about as often as they run smoothly; and they are
frequently attacked by hackers, viruses, worms, and other malevolent
forces.

To quote Verifiedvoting.org, an organization of concerned computer
engineers and programmers: "With these paperless machines, there is
nothing that can stop a determined group from achieving large-scale
election theft. We see no reason why major problems will not occur,
including obviously messed-up elections [and] election of incorrect
candidates."

Second, it is simply a lie that the corporate systems are subject to
rigorous oversight by state or county election officials. Authorities
are not allowed to look at the secret source code, much less examine it line
by line to find little glitches and switches that could upend a vote. A
number of credible technology labs have quit certifying voting machines
because outfits like Diebold and ES&S would not let them make a detailed
examination of the code.

BEV STARTS TO DIG

Bev Harris of Renton, WA, a former investigative reporter, got
interested in the issue when she read an article that questioned the corporate ownership of these voting machines. In January, she stumbled onto a mother lode of information—an open Diebold website that contained 40,000 files of source code and user manuals for its machines.

A Diebold vice president later said that posting this sensitive
information on a publicly accessible site was "a huge mistake." Yes, it
was, for Bev's discovery led to an expert analysis by four computer
scientists at Rice and Johns Hopkins Universities. Their study revealed
stunning flaws in the company's system:

**An individual with a minimum of computer knowledge could gain access
to a machine on election day, see the ongoing tally, and terminate further
voting on that machine.

**With a homemade smart card, one could cast multiple votes.

**With a regular phone line, one could tap into the machine and view the
results.

The academic researchers are not alone in their criticism. In a separate
study, SAIC, the industry's own top consulting firm, found 328 different
security weaknesses—26 of them critical—In Diebold machines being sold
to the state of Maryland. SAIC reported that the system was "at high risk
of compromise" due to software flaws, leaving the voting system open to
hackers and fraud.

Flaws and fraud are not merely theoretical concerns. Though it has
received precious little mass-media coverage, these machines have
already been producing all sorts of "incidents," including these:

**Georgia
In 2002, the Peach State had six big upsets of Democrats by Republicans,
including in the U.S. Senate race, where incumbent Max Cleland had a big
lead in the polls but surprisingly was upended by the GOP's Saxby
Chambliss.

The statewide vote was cast on 22,000 Diebold machines. Just before the
election, Diebold reportedly applied software "patches" to all of these
machines, purportedly to fix a problem with the computers crashing. The
patches were said to have been "certified" by election officials by
phone—with no actual examination of what the patches did.

Diebold honchos later said that they had investigated themselves
and—surprise!—found they had done nothing to mess with the system.

Bev, however, later discovered that Diebold had disposed of all of the
memory cards from these touch-screen machines. "You keep paper ballots
for 22 months," she notes, "and they're an awful lot bulkier than those
credit-card-size memory cards, but for some reason they felt compelled
to get rid of them all."

**Janet Reno
Running for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination last year, Reno
noted some unusual outcomes on election day. In South Florida precincts, where she was strong, the ES&S voting machines were inexplicably recording no votes in the governor's race. In some polling places where there were over 1,000 votes cast in other races, there were no votes for governor.

ES&S later sent "data extraction technicians," who "found" some votes.
Was this the actual count? Officials don't know; it was ES&S that
certified the count. Reno lost by less than 5,000 votes out of 1.3
million cast.

**The San Luis Obispo "Oops"
It is illegal for anyone to count, or even see, vote totals before the
polls close. But on March 5th last year, at 3:31 p.m. on election day in
this California city, Diebold's machines in 57 precincts simultaneously
"called home" to corporate headquarters and reported the mid-afternoon
tally, which then went up on a Diebold website—in plenty of time for
interested partisans to mobilize their voters.

PROBLEMS ARE ROUNTINE

**In a Washington, Florida city runoff election, the winner beat his
opponent by only four votes, but 78 electronic ballots were blank.
Election officials refused to blame the machines, asserting that these
78 voters apparently came to the polls and then chose not to vote.

**In Middlesex County, New Jersey, a Sequoia machine was taken out of
service after 65 votes had been cast without registering a choice for
either of the candidates. Yet Sequoia blamed the voters, again
maintaining that people were coming to the polls and not voting.

**In Canal County, Texas, three Republican candidates experienced an
astonishing coincidence when the electronic voting machines declared
them victors in their respective races by the exact same margin of 18,181
votes.

**Then there's our friend Chuck Hagel, who first won a U.S. Senate Seat
in 1996 in a big upset, including his winning in majority black precincts
that had never voted Republican—all recorded on machines owned by ES&S, the company he headed before running for the Senate.

ATTACK THE MESSENGER

Ticked off that Bev had published their internal memos on the Internet,
[Diebold] had their lawyers send a cease-and-desist letter—which,
ironically, authenticated the memos and laid corporate claim to them,
asserting that they were copyrighted documents.

[Bev] recently revealed a most interesting secret meeting of a panicked
electronic-voting industry. It was an insider teleconference that Bev's
colleague, David Allen, learned about and boldly dialed into without
being questioned. The invitees included Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia, and other
voting-machine companies.

Ironically, the meeting was led by Doug Lewis, head of the Election
Center. The Election Center is a private firm that also doubles as the
quasi-regulator of the industry, supposedly overseeing the integrity of
the machines while also coordinating affairs between the vendors and
state election officials, which makes Lewis the perfect embodiment of "voluntary regulation."

The purpose of the meeting was to create a PR front to counter the
rising public outcry against voting privatization. Allen reports that Lewis
asked the members to cough up $200,000 to fund a PR and congressional-lobbying campaign to refute any and all who question electronic voting. Allen's notes (see www.blackboxvoting.org) include Lewis saying, "Of course, we'll have to put some distance between the Election Center and this lobbying once it gets going."

WHAT TO DO?

Amazingly, there's a simple solution to all this: Require a
voter-verifiable paper trail of every vote in every election.

This is hardly techno-wizardry. Just as your ATM prints out a receipt of
your withdrawal, so can voting machines give us an auditable paper trail
of our votes.

Here are the steps: You vote on a touch-screen system; the machine
prints a paper ballot of how you voted; you verify on the touch screen that theballot is correct; you then turn in your print-out to election officials;
they put it directly in a lock-box, which they must hold for at least a
year. Thus the actual votes are there so the election can be physically
reconstituted in case there is a recount or charges of fraud.

One more thing: The computer code cannot be held as a corporate secret.
This is not the code for some video game, for heaven's sake, but for our
country's democratic electoral process! A copy of the code used for each
machine in each election must be given to public election officials for
their independent analysis before, during, and after every election.

The good news is that there is a bill that embodies all of the above: H.R.
2239, the Voter Confidence Act, sponsored by Rep. Rush Holt and some 40
other members of Congress. (Since this article was published, an
identical companion bill, S. 1980, has been introduced in the Senate, and the number of co-sponsors has risen to 102.) Also, the technology already exists to provide voter-verifiable audit trails, so there's no reason this can't
be done quickly.

Martin Luther King III and author Greg Palast have launched an online
petition drive to deluge Congress with demands that voting machines
leave a paper trail, as provided in Holt's bill. Sign up and zap it to
others—and let's yank our public elections out of the clutches of
partisan privatizers.
---

So there you have it. The aforementioned petition is here:
http://www.workingforchange.com/activism/petition.cfm?itemid=14993

However, while signing it is certainly helpful, it isn't enough. Your
members of Congress need to hear from you directly. To get their names
and contact information, just go to www.congress.org and enter your zip code.

Please call, write, or email your Senators and Representative as soon as
possible. You can send a pre-written generic letter here
(http://action.eff.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=2821), but if you
write your own it will have much more impact. You don't have to be
dazzlingly eloquent—just express your concern and ask them to co-sponsor the Voter Confidence Act. It will take only a few minutes and be well worth the effort.

NOTE: When you do this, make sure to specify that the problems must be
fixed BEFORE THIS YEAR'S ELECTION. Amazingly, some lawmakers say we
should indeed make sure votes are counted properly—but not until 2006!

And remember, even if the faulty machines are still in place this
November, you DON'T have to trust them with your vote—just send in an
absentee ballot.

Please pass this on to as many people as possible—conservative, liberal,
Democrat, Republican, Green, Libertarian, independent, or whatever. Even
in these politically polarized times, the right to fair elections should
be something We The People can all agree on.

For more information, visit www.blackboxvoting.org,
www.verifiedvoting.org,
http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/HR2239.htm,
or read "Broken Machine Politics" by Paul O'Donnell in the January 2004
issue of Wired magazine.

P.S. In case you were wondering, I am a concerned citizen from rural
North Carolina, and am not affiliated with any organization.
]]> https://newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v300/__show_article/_a000300-000006.htm 2004-02-19T08:01:57Z 2004-02-19T08:01:57Z Taking our country back

Dear MoveOn member,

MoveOn is now over two million people strong in the United States. That's a huge number: the organization we've built together is bigger than the Christian Coalition at its peak. To put it another way, one in every 146 Americans is now a MoveOn member. And we're still growing fast.

And what we're doing together is even more exciting. For decades, parts of our political system have been sold to the highest bidder, with corporate donors winning out over the public interest. But on Friday, we finished our $10 million Voter Fund grassroots fundraising campaign without a dime from corporations or special interests. In the end, over 170,000 people opened their checkbooks and contributed an average of about $60 to put ads on the air that challenge Bush and his corporate backers. The impact of this campaign shouldn't be underestimated: it clearly demonstrates that real people still matter in American politics. And the folks in Washington know it.

Political giving is almost always a quid-pro-quo business: corporate lobbyists trade money for policy, the wealthy trade money for access to politicians. MoveOn members aren't asking for anything but their democracy back, and that kind of generosity is pretty rare. When we hear about the families who saved up to make a $25 donation, or think of the thousands of folks who mailed in $5 checks, we know this is something amazing and new that we're a part of.

And money's only part of the equation: our phone calls and emails helped win a real victory last week. After CBS rejected our Voter Fund's Super Bowl ad, we learned that the White House was being allowed to air an advocacy ad about Medicare. We told you about it, and in just a few days over 50,000 MoveOn members called and emailed to complain. On Friday, CBS pulled the ad, stating that it had violated their policy. It's a big win, and a powerful blow to the Bush Administration's campaign to cover up its Medicare sellout.

This tidal wave of engagement and activism isn't exclusive to MoveOn, of course. Every leader of every organization we run into sees the same thing. Across the country, from labor unions like the SEIU to Greenpeace to the ACLU, people are standing up and getting active. President Bush told us he was a uniter, and he was right: he's uniting people across America to fight back for our country.

As this movement gains momentum and visibility, many of these organizations will inevitably become targets for Republican attacks. We've already seen some of the smear tactics the right will use. When their situation becomes even more dire, we know they'll strike hard at MoveOn and the groups we stand with –- a campaign of intimidation fueled by President Bush's $150 million war chest.

But this new democratic groundswell draws its strength from the hopes of millions of people, standing up and taking action for a better country and a better world. We simply refuse to let lobbyists, attack politics and fear-mongering destroy our democracy. And against the courage and conviction of real people, even Karl Rove and $150 million can't do much.

Thank you for your hope, your generosity, and your willingness to speak out. Together, we're taking our country back.

Sincerely,
--Adam, Carrie, Eli, James, Joan, Laura, Noah, Peter, Wes, and Zack
The MoveOn.org Team
February 16th, 2004
]]> https://newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v300/__show_article/_a000300-000005.htm 2004-02-18T10:52:41Z 2004-02-18T10:52:41Z The peaceful way works best

There's a remote little village in the West Bank that decided to behave differently. A village whose residents decided not to lament and not to blow themselves up. They chose another way between violence and surrender. The residents of the village of Budrus, west of Ramallah and close to the Green...

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/393347.html
'The peaceful way works best'
By Gideon Levy

There's a remote little village in the West Bank that decided to behave differently. A village whose residents decided not to lament and not to blow themselves up. They chose another way between violence and surrender. The residents of the village of Budrus, west of Ramallah and close to the Green Line, chose to wage a nonviolent struggle against the separation fence that is being built on its land. The whole village has pitched in - the Hamas and Fatah members, the old and the young, men and women, and for three months they have been going down by the hundreds to their olive groves every week, to demonstrate against the uprooting of their trees and the encircling of the residents.

The IDF and the Border Police have been faced with an unfamiliar phenomenon: What are they supposed to do about hundreds of unarmed, nonviolent residents slowly descending toward the bulldozers, with women and children leading the pack, and a handful of Israeli and international volunteers sprinkled among them, approaching to within touching distance of the armed soldiers? Should they shoot to kill? Shoot to injure?

So far, the IDF has fired, but less - no one has been killed, and about 100 people have been injured, most of them lightly, in the course of about 25 demonstrations over a two-month period. Most of the injuries were from batons and rubber bullets, like in the old days. Twelve villagers have been arrested, and nine of them are still in jail, for participating in clearly nonviolent demonstrations. This, too, is a violation of the IDF's rules, as one military judge noted when he refused to send one of the leaders of this pacifist revolt to administrative detention. The arrested man's brother, however, was sent straight to administrative detention by another military judge. But the most important point is that the construction work on the fence near the village has been stopped, for now.

Budrus against the occupation. Budrus against the separation fence, which will encircle the village on all sides and cut it off, like eight other villages slated to be enclosed in fenced-in enclaves opposite Ben-Gurion Airport. The fence could have been built along the Green Line, several hundred meters from the present route, but Israel had other ideas - about the vineyards, about the olives, about life. Today, or tomorrow, the quarrying and paving work will resume, and so will the protest demonstrations.

Will this remote village become a milestone in the struggle over the fence? Will the residents of Budrus herald a change to nonviolence in the Palestinian struggle against the occupation? Or, in a week or two, will the separation fence cut off life in this village, too, and show that nonviolence doesn't pay, with the scene in Budrus soon becoming a forgotten episode?

Cacti wherever you look. Old stone houses standing alongside half-built ones that will never be completed. Things look promising as you enter the village, but the further inside you go, the more the reality hits you. After the last house, from within the olive groves, is the sight that is frightening the residents: the rising orange of the bulldozers, blotches of color in the wadi cutting into the rock, digging up and scarring, and after them the steamrollers and the heavy trucks. Olive trees whose tops have been cut off stand in mute testimony to the work of the bulldozers so far.

This is where the fence will pass. Through these olive groves. One fence to the west of them and another to the east of them, leaving them stuck, imprisoned in the middle. Why? Because.

"If the fence were on the mountain, it would give more security," ventures Iyad Ahmed Murar, a leader of the protest in Budrus, whose two brothers are in administrative detention. "But they want a fence in the wadi. Common sense says that if you want a security fence, put it on the mountain and not in the wadi. But they want to destroy the land and the olives. What difference would it make if they moved 200 meters toward the Green Line?"

Before 1948, Budrus had approximately 25,000 dunams. Of that, 20,000 went to Israel and the village was left with about 5,000. Now, according to Murar's calculations, about another 1,000 dunams will be stolen. The construction work near the groves has stopped for now, but is continuing not far away, toward the neighboring village of Qibiya. But it's not just the fate of the land that is worrying the village, which hasn't had a resident killed since 1993. What's more worrisome is how the fence will effectively choke off the village.

Murar: "The fence will be around nine villages. Ramallah is our mother and only one gate will lead to it. And what if the soldier is on a coffee break? Or off smoking a cigarette? Maybe he'll lock the gate so he can go to the bathroom. Maybe there will be a problem in Tel Aviv and they'll close the gate. And then you won't be able to get to the university, to the hospital or to work, and in the end, people will start to live where they work. If someone gives me a job, and I come one day and not the next, in the end he'll tell me to stay there where the job is or be fired. People will start thinking about having to stay where their job is. And the student and the sick person will start thinking the same way."

This is what the village is the most afraid of - a "willing" transfer; of life being made so difficult that they'll be compelled to move east. A 1,000-year-old village. That's why the fence is here. In Budrus, they're convinced that Prime Minister Sharon is continuing what Captain Sharon began: In Qibiya, he tried it with dynamite, now he's trying it with a fence. The objective is the same: to move them away from the Green Line, especially in the vicinity of Ben-Gurion airport. What can they do? "Demonstrate in a peaceful manner," says Murar the rebel.

It all began on November 9, when construction work first started here. Since then, they've been demonstrating and demonstrating, always in a peaceful manner. Sometimes once a week, sometimes every day; sometimes the entire village; sometimes only the women and children. They walk down through the groves toward the route of the fence and get as close as possible to the soldiers and Border Police officers. Murar likes to describe the little rebellion, stage after stage, almost hour after hour. How they once stood there for a whole day, how they brought lunch and ate in front of the soldiers, how they were beaten with batons and rifle butts.

He records every detail: During one demonstration in December, he counted 15 humvees, six Border Police jjeeps, two blue police jeeps and another two military jeeps inside the village, 25 jeeps altogether. At another demonstration, the officer declared the area a closed military zone.

Murar: "They had a letter in Hebrew - maybe about this area, maybe about the whole village, maybe about the whole world, declaring a closed military zone. They said they'd impose a curfew if we did anything." He also talks about how they managed to go out to the land despite the curfew and to demonstrate in front of the bulldozers.

We decide to go down now toward the route that has already been paved. Murar remains behind. "If there are too many of us, they'll think it's a demonstration." The last demonstration was last Friday; tear gas canisters are still scattered about. The residents know the work is going to resume soon. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow. Here are the red markings on the ground. They have scouts on the balconies of the outer houses of the village, who will report if they see something. The treadmarks left by the bulldozers are still visible in the mud. From here, the route is supposed to ascend toward the olive groves, another four kilometers. The first trees have already been uprooted. Yesterday was Tu Bishvat (Jewish arbor day).

A group of volunteers from the International Solidarity Movement, along with two young Israelis, accompany us through the olive groves, but they do not go down toward the fence route. They are staying in the village now, preparing for what is to come. Today they're here, tomorrow they'll be in the next village that the fence is approaching. Young dreamers and fighters who pay 20 shekels a night to stay in a rented apartment in the village. Yonatan Pollak of Anarchists Against the Fence, a 21-year-old with blue eyes, dimples, acne scars, a worldview and a past: Europe is already closed to him because of anti-globalization demonstrations he participated in there. He pulls a black sleeve over the tattoos on his arm. He won't buy an Israeli soda in the village grocery store. While his contemporaries are standing at checkpoints and deciding which woman in labor to let pass and which not, he is here, with the Budrus residents, in their struggle.

We return to the village. The Amhassein family's two-story house: the family on the first floor, the chickens on the second. The mother, Suriya, just returned from Mecca and the house has been decorated in her honor. The children play loudly at recess at the school at the edge of the village. The fence will pass right behind the border of the school and the border of the nearby cemetery. Mighty Israel is spread out all around: Modi'in, Ramle, Shoham, Rosh Ha'ayin - and on a clear day, you can even make out the Shalom Tower in Tel Aviv. And on the other side, to the east, Kiryat Sefer, Nili, Na'aleh. "Tell me, could the fence go into the cemetery?," Murar asks.

A meeting at his home: About 20 women sit in the yard of the attractive house on the edge of the green valley and plan the exhibition they want to stage here on the 23rd of the month, the first day of hearings on the fence in the International Court in The Hague. Half the women came from Salfit and half are from the village. They sit in the shade of the banana tree in Murar's yard and talk about the exhibit of olivewood products they will present in a tent in the center of the village. Maybe people from all over the world will come to see. A Swedish member of parliament was already arrested here by the IDF. Murar says that the exhibition will include a dove carved out of olivewood. They're also planning a demonstration of children soon.

Murar: "We've learned lessons - where we did good and where we did bad. They [the Israelis] have also learned lessons. Maybe they'll strengthen the curfew more when they're working. But our plan is to defend our land and our trees in a peaceful manner. Sometimes among our people there are a lot of ideas about what to do against the occupation. We here have chosen a different strategy. Our strategy in this small village is that we're turning things over. In the north, from Jenin until Budrus, there were Israeli and international demonstrators, supported by Palestinians. But here, we think that it's our problem and that we have to defend our land and do something, and the Israelis and international protesters are only supporting us. First the Palestinians, and then the internationals. We are very grateful for Israeli and international support, but the Palestinians have to make a stand. We're adopting a special strategy, a peaceful strategy. The Hamas here, too. In the beginning, they walked with their green flags in the demonstrations. After the first three demonstrations, we only carry the flag of Palestine. Everyone together. In a totally peaceful way. We also all agreed on one thing: We are not against the Israelis and not against the Jews and not against the soldiers. We are only against the occupation. We are against the bulldozers. And we in Budrus believe that killing is easier than crying. But just crying over the land isn't enough. A peaceful demonstration is stronger than killing. If you stand before the Israeli soldier, right beside him, you'll be stronger.

If someone asks: Why peaceful? I tell him: I've tried all the ways and the peaceful way works best. The worst thing is to kill the innocent. That's the worst thing in the world. They kill day and night and say that we are terrorists. But we need all the world to be on our side. I'm against killing people. All people, Jews and Arabs. I'm not afraid or ashamed to say that. That's why I'm demonstrating peacefully against the fence."
]]> https://newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v300/__show_article/_a000300-000004.htm 2004-02-11T21:32:09Z 2004-02-11T21:32:09Z What Just One Company Can Do To the World

What Just One Company Can Do To the World Sanjay Suri Just one oil company has thrown three times ...

http://www.ips.org/
ENVIRONMENT:
What Just One Company Can Do To the World

Sanjay Suri

Just one oil company has thrown three times as much carbon dioxide into the air as the current annual emissions from fossil fuels, a new study by Friends of the Earth claims.

LONDON, Jan 29 (IPS) - Just one oil company has thrown three times as much carbon dioxide into the air as the current annual emissions from fossil fuels, a new study by Friends of the Earth claims.

The study by the leading global environment watchdog says Exxon Mobil has produced 20.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions in its 120 years of existence. This it says is about three times the annual global emissions now and 13 times the annual emissions from the United States.

The Friends of the Earth International (F0EI) report says that the oil giant and its predecessors since the foundation of the Standard Oil Trust in 1882 have caused between 4.7 and 5.3 percent of all man-made carbon dioxide emissions across the globe.

ExxonMobil has strongly denied the charge made in the report. The company trades as Esso, Mobil, Imperial Oil, Tonen General and Exxon in different countries.

The report 'Exxon's Climate Footprint' is based on two studies commissioned by FoEI. The group says the studies were carried out by independent experts in the United States and New Zealand.

”The research involved adding up data on fuel used and sold, calculating the emissions generated and feeding the results into an internationally recognised computer model,” FoEI said in a statement Thursday.

”The research, based on data Exxon published in its annual reports, and on other sources, also shows the impact Exxon-related emissions have had on global temperatures and the rise in sea level.”

FoEI says this is the first time a company's contribution to global climate change has ever been calculated ”and could prove vital in paving the way for compensation claims against companies by victims of global warming caused by man-made pollution.”

The FoEI report shows that about 70 percent of the company's emissions have come after 1967 ”when scientists produced the first reasonably solid evidence that global warming could really happen.”

Climate change as a result of global warming produced largely by carbon dioxide emissions means that hundreds of millions of people could lose their livelihoods because of changing rainfall patterns and severe storms, the report says.

A million species face extinction as a result of global warming, FoEI says, citing scientists.

The report says that United Nations scientists had warned in 1996 that man- made pollution was having a discernible effect on the global climate. ”Seven out of the ten worst years for ExxonMobil's emissions have occurred since this warning,” the report says.

This is the ”best estimate so far of ExxonMobil's contribution to climate change,” says Peter Roderick, director of the FoEI climate justice programme. ”It shows how the company's emissions have significantly increased over the years as climate science strengthened. This is essential reading for those current and future victims of climate change who wish to seek compensation from the company.”

The report points out that institutional shareholders have already expressed concern about business risks associated with climate change. The Carbon Disclosure Project, which represents 87 institutional investors with assets of more than 9 trillion dollars under management, has written to the 500 largest quoted companies in the world asking for the disclosure of investment-relevant information concerning their greenhouse gas emissions.

Challenging the report, a spokeswoman for ExxonMobil told IPS that ”it seems to us that Friends of the Earth is suggesting that it is illegal to be in the business of supplying energy for the world's needs”.

She said the company needs to examine the ”basis, methodology and therefore the accuracy of the data” but said that in the past the environment group's reports about the company have been ”high on sensation and low on substance.”

The statement that ExxonMobil is not taking a constructive approach to the issue of climate change is ”completely unfounded,” she said. The company has taken to conserving energy in refineries and chemical plants, resulting in 37 percent more efficiency than 25 years ago, she said. ”This equates to a decrease in carbon emissions of over 200 million metric tons.”

The company is also ”researching new energy systems with much lower carbon emissions and increased fuel efficiency,” she said. The company is the ”world's leader” in expanding the use of natural gas which is ”an attractive way to meet the world's growing demand for energy while emitting less carbon than other fossil fuels.” The company claims to be investing ”significant amounts in research of climate issues.”

The spokeswoman said it is ”ridiculous” to suggest that ExxonMobil's approach to climate change could affect shareholder value.

FoEI vice-chair Tony Juniper told IPS that ExxonMobil is indeed doing a lot on climate change ”but it is doing so by funding lobbyists who are pushing the Bush administration against signing the Kyoto Protocol to limit emissions.”

Most of the scientific studies being promoted by ExxonMobil ”are not giving the correct picture” on climate change, he said, ”and so the company is active at many levels in many ways.”

Juniper said it is important that shareholders are given the correct picture now. ”If the company is held responsible by courts over emissions, it is bound to have consequences for share value.”

ExxonMobil was meanwhile ordered to pay nearly 7 billion dollars Wednesday to thousands of Alaskans affected by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. A district court judge ordered the company to pay 4.5 billion dollars in punitive damages and around 2.25 billion dollars in interest.

The judge ordered distribution of the money among the 32,000 Alaskans affected by the 37,000-tonne spillage in the Prince William Sound area. Exxon Mobil says it will appeal against the ruling. (END)]]> https://newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v300/__show_article/_a000300-000003.htm 2004-01-29T21:44:01Z 2004-01-29T21:44:01Z One State for Two-Nations

In Israel/Palestine there is a grassroots peace movement of Moslems, Jews and Christians. It is the Sulha, or reconciliation.
http://www.metasulha.org/sulha/index.html
It is being led by religious leaders. Those of Hamas and those of the settlers, it seems that by choosing the language of "The Land of the Prophets" and "The Children of Abraham" there is a common ground, literally...From my brief glimpse of the sulha process, I see one state in Israel/Palestine, one state for two nations.
http://www.one-democratic-state.org/
The common religous roots of the Palestinians and the Jews can be used as a bridge between them. It is a radical idea for me and I am not sure about it. It seems impossible, yet the more I think about it the more sense it seems to make. The two government bodies would be merged. There would be a truth and reconciliation hearings much like in South Africa where people would recieve amnesty for their testimony. The Israeli Defense Forces would be transitioned into providing relief and refugee for the two peoples.

The issue of the Palestinian Right of Return has been the most problematic issue for the negotiations between the Israeli and Palestinians. Israeli society is very much against the Right of Return and sees it as the end of the Jewish homeland.

Yet, the Palestinians need to be heard, their Right of Return must be honored. This is where sulha comes in. This is where the religious and spiritual leaders need to show the rest of the population that peace is possible by coming together. And they are doing just that.
Another related article...
http://www.nahalatshalom.org/2003-05/It_Takes_Two_Wings.html

I want to believe in the one state solution but I am scared to. It seems so simple, yet it is very radical, almost too radical. I do not know...There is so much to forgive...so much suffering...]]> https://newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v300/__show_article/_a000300-000002.htm 2004-01-02T02:00:49Z 2004-01-02T02:02:52Z Separation of Church and State

Putting God Back in Politics
By JIM WALLIS

Published: December 28, 2003
NY Times OpEd

WASHINGTON

As the Democratic candidates for president attend religious services for the holidays, their celebrations may be tempered by an uncomfortable fact: churchgoing Americans tend to vote Republican.

An overwhelming majority of Americans consider themselves to be religious. Yet according to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, people who attend church more than once a week vote Republican by 63 percent to 37 percent; people who seldom or never attend vote Democratic by 62 percent to 38 percent.

This disparity should concern Democrats - if not as a matter of faith then as a matter of politics. More important, it should concern anyone who cares about the role of religion in public life. By failing to engage Republicans in this debate, the Democrats impoverish us all.

President Bush and the Republicans clearly have an advantage with people of faith as an election year approaches. Republicans are more comfortable talking about religious values and issues, and they are quick to promise that their faith will affect their policies (even if, like their Democratic counterparts, they don't always follow through on their campaign promises).

President Bush is as public and expressive about his faith as any recent occupant of the White House. Among his first acts as president was to establish the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, which helps religious and community groups get federal financing for some of their work. Although the "faith-based initiative" has turned out to be more symbolic than substantial, symbolism matters - in religion as well as politics.

The Democratic candidates, in contrast, seem uncomfortable with the subject of religion. (The exception is Joseph Lieberman, though even he seems less comfortable now than he was in 2000.) They stumble over themselves to assure voters that while they may be people of faith, they won't allow their religious beliefs to affect their political views.

For too many Democrats, faith is private and has no implications for political life. But what kind of faith is that? Where would America be if the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had kept his faith to himself?

Howard Dean, the leading challenger to President Bush, illustrates the Democrats' problem. Dr. Dean recently said he left his church in Vermont over a dispute about a bike path, and explained that his faith does not inform his politics. He has also said the presidential race should stay away from the issues of "guns, God and gays" and focus on jobs, health care and foreign policy.

By framing the issue in this way - declining to discuss overtly "religious" topics - Dr. Dean allows Republicans to define the terms of the debate. The "religious issues" in this election will be reduced to the Ten Commandments in public courthouses, marriage amendments, prayer in schools and, of course, abortion.

These issues are important. But faith informs policy in other areas as well. What about the biblical imperatives for social justice, the God who lifts up the poor, the Jesus who said, "blessed are the peacemakers"?

How a candidate deals with poverty is a religious issue, and the Bush administration's failure to support poor working families should be named as a religious failure. Neglect of the environment is a religious issue. Fighting pre-emptive and unilateral wars based on false claims is a religious issue (a fact not changed by the capture of Saddam Hussein).

Such issues could pose problems for the Bush administration among religious and nonreligious people alike - if someone were to define them in moral terms. The failure of the Democrats to do so is not just a political miscalculation. It shows they do not appreciate the contributions of religion to American life.

The United States has a long history of religious faith supporting and literally driving progressive causes and movements. From the abolition of slavery to women's suffrage to civil rights, religion has led the way for social change.

The separation of church and state does not require banishing moral and religious values from the public square. America's social fabric depends on such values and vision to shape our politics - a dependence the founders recognized.

It is indeed possible (and necessary) to express one's faith and convictions about public policy while still respecting the pluralism of American democracy. Rather than suggesting that we not talk about "God," Democrats should be arguing - on moral and even religious grounds - that all Americans should have economic security, health care and educational opportunity, and that true faith results in a compassionate concern for those on the margins.

Democrats should be saying that a just foreign and military policy will not only work better, but also be more consistent with both our democratic and spiritual values. And they must offer a moral alternative to a national security policy based primarily on fear, and say what most Americans intuitively know: that defeating terrorism is both practically and spiritually connected to the deeper work of addressing global poverty and resolving the conflicts that sow the bitter seeds of despair and violence.

Many of these policy choices can be informed and shaped by the faith of candidates and citizens - without transgressing the important boundaries of church and state.

God is always personal, but never private. The Democrats are wrong to restrict religion to the private sphere - just as the Republicans are wrong to define it solely in terms of individual moral choices and sexual ethics. Allowing the right to decide what is a religious issue would be both a moral and political tragedy.

Not everyone in America has the same religious values, of course. And many moral lessons are open to interpretation. But by withdrawing into secularism, the Democrats deprive Americans of an important debate.

Jim Wallis is editor of Sojourners magazine and the convener of Call to Renewal, a national network of churches working to overcome poverty.

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Jim Wallis is indeed a great peacemaker of our time. Separation of church and state is done for a reason and I am not sure how to traverse it. Talking about God is always dangerous. For example, I was just in France and they have a much stricter interpertation of separating church and state. If the President of France, Chirac were to say "God Bless America," it would be a statement of resignation. Is that better or worse?

I am realizing more and more that the kind of dialogue one is engaged in is as important as what is being discussed. Fantascism over any understanding of the world, be it divinely inspired and usually it is, has caused tremendous suffering throughout history. Wallis talks about framing the issue. That term is used in order to win an argument. For example, "we are attacking Iraq because they have WMD". Who wins that framing of the issue? It is easy. Attack Iraq. I am weary of using that type of language because it is still manipulation, I feel we need to engage in discussion, dialogue and democracy. What we need is a change in political climate, where we ask more questions, differences are encouraged to find a common point of value. God has a place in this dialogue but She is hidden, behind the scenes, quietly inspiring the acceptance and forebearance that allows a merging of the opposite to find a common path of prosperity.

That type of holding of opposites and differences is not an easy thing to do. It is a radical departure from the life of competition which pervades our existence. This is a struggle for me. It is a struggle to build bridges of understanding between myself and others. I find a tendency for myself and others to defend our island of difference.

And the funny thing is that I find a hard to time define where my island starts and stops and what exactly i am defending. I am constantly redefining my definition of who I am by defining the differences between myself and others. My defintion exsits in the differences and similiratities to others. In close proximity to someone who is similar to me I have a tendenancy to differentiate on small grounds. This is a natural process and one to be honored, but also imoprtant to honor or the overwhelming similarity that allows the engagement of the precise and specific differentiation. It is a dance of likes and dis-likes.]]> https://newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v300/__show_article/_a000300-000001.htm 2004-01-01T04:36:23Z 2004-01-01T04:36:23Z