Archive for December 2007

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Reform and the Schools Establishment

December 20, 2007

One of the principal obstacles to reforming the public schools in our large cities, where the school failure and dropout rates are particularly high, remains the fact that those who are best positioned to carry out any reform, the Teachers Unions and the school Superintendents, are not willing to change their own mostly defensive positions in regard to the schools, and admit that major reforms are necessary.

Now without a doubt, at least for those who are not union members or school superintendents, the most significant public school reform effort within the city of Boston, and probably within the whole country, during the past 20 years has been the Commonwealth Charter School.

It is well known, if not well recognized, that a good number of the charter schools in Massachusetts have been extraordinarily successful. Several of them have all but eliminated the so-called achievement gap between Blacks and Latinos on the one hand, and White students on the other, that which some felt couldn’t be done, given the enormous disadvantages that encumber the lives of inner city Blacks and Latinos compared with their White peers in the suburbs.

What has been the response, or rather the lack of response, of the public school Establishment to these highly successful, so-called “no excuses” charter schools? Has the Establishment contacted these public schools in order to begin to understand their successes?

The previous Boston Superintendent may have visited one charter school once during his ten year tenure, although I’m not sure about that. The new Superintendent, as far as I know, has yet to reveal what she will do in this regard.

As for the Teachers Union, instead of welcoming the “new kid on the block” as friend and partner, it looked instead for a way to compete with the charter schools, perhaps in order to thereby lessen the obvious positive impact of these new schools on kids and families in Boston.

The Teachers Union’s response was to support pilot schools, although only begrudgingly because the pilots were a lot like charters and therefore represented a threat to the traditional way of doing things.

But other than this defensive action there has been nothing else in the way of response, no sharing of best practices, no other contact, as far as I know, between the Boston Teachers Union and the Commonwealth Charter Schools. I find this situation incredible, and I find it even more incredible that no one is even talking about it.

If I could I would ask the Superintendent of Schools along with Teachers Union several questions, all in an effort to better a bad situation. First, is it because they believe that poverty itself does most to explain the achievement gap and that without  addressing this “gorilla” there is little that the school could do on its own to be effective?

Another question stems from the common establishment criticism of charters, that they remove good students from the “regular’ public schools to the detriment of these schools. But in fact in this regard who is most at fault?

Which group of schools, public charters or public exam, pilot and magnet schools, such as Boston Latin School, Fenway, and the Arts Academy, do the most “harm” to the non-selective district schools by removing the particularly talented children, not to mention the most motivated parents, from the general admissions pool?

Isn’t the answer is obvious? Clearly the highly selective exam, pilot, and magnet schools are most to blame, although we don’t hear anyone complaining about it. That no one does complain is probably because these schools have important friends, both in the School Department and in City Hall. OK, they are doing good work, but so are many of the Charters.

Two last questions, the first in regard to the most recent school reform, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which the defenders of the public schools see as a first step in the further dismantling of the public schools by private, usually corporate interests.

Does anyone really believe that Ted Kennedy, George Miller et al. had the undoing of the public schools in mind when they fashioned the law? I don’t think so. Wasn’t it one more attempt to address the problem of failing inner city schools, the problem that the Schools Establishment is loath to admit, let alone address?

Finally, in a series of op-ed pieces about intelligence appearing in the Wall Street Journal in January of this year Charles Murray makes a strong case that we are sending, or trying to send, too many students to four year colleges. For Murray it’s clear that many of them won’t be able to do the work, and will be quickly frustrated and disappointed and probably drop out.

Is Murray right, about there being only a minority of students in the inner city schools that are college material, perhaps no more than a quarter of an entering high school freshmen class? 

If he is right wouldn’t it mean that we should be getting behind major structural changes in our schools? Isn’t this a reform that is urgently needed? And about this also we hear absolutely nothing from the Establishment. Do the Superintendent of Schools and the Teachers Union even have a position on this issue?

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No Such Thing as Moral or Spiritual Progress

December 7, 2007

The contemporary British philosopher, Roger Scruton, writes in Why I Became a Conservative:

“Edmund Burke persuaded me that societies are not and cannot be organized according to a plan or a goal, that there is no direction to history, and no such thing as moral or spiritual progress.”

I think he and Burke are wrong about the first, partially right about the second, and completely right about the third.

Societies are forever being organized according to a plan or a goal, even if not always successfully. For it is true that the best laid plans (witness the totalitarian fascist and communist states of the past century) often come to naught, the goals of the planners abandoned.

But the U.S. Constitution was a “plan” and this plan, after more than 200 years, is still very much a plan we can live with. Also, in regard to a “goal,” the goal of securing for all certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, is no less our goal today than it was in 1787.

I’m not sure I know what Scruton means when he says there’s no direction to history. Perhaps this is just another way of saying there is no goal, that history is not going anywhere?

But this country’s history is the history of our reaching, or still trying to reach, one end point after another, be it civil rights for African Americans, equality for women, health care and education for all. So given all that has been accomplished of what we set out to do, isn’t there plenty of direction to our history?

But if Scruton means by direction to history, progress, well then things are no longer so simple or straightforward. The word progress itself, or the idea of progress, has not yet been defined to everyone’s satisfaction.

If by progress we mean a greater understanding of our biological nature as well as of the physical world we have certainly made enormous progress. For doesn’t the undeniable progress of knowledge, of science, and the technologies resulting therefrom, give a direction to history, even if we can’t yet envision an end to which all this progress is taking us?

But Scruton is clearly right where he says there has been no moral or spiritual progress, no progress in our view of man. This conclusion is supported by the fact that we read the oldest literary texts today as if they were no less relevant now than they were in their ow time, hundreds or thousands of years ago.

Progress in science is demonstrated by the fact that our science texts, while not ever being completely discarded, are constantly being replaced by new works reflecting our greater knowledge of man and nature. Literary texts, on the other hand, those of Sophocles, Shakespeare, and innumerable other writers, have not yet been set aside and replaced.

Our conclusion that we have not yet experienced moral progress, that know very little of what we really are, and even less of what we ought to be, should teach us humility. Yes we can go to the moon, but we are no more in control of our individual lives and destinies that was the biblical Job.

Yes, Roger, there is, so far anyway, no such thing as moral and spiritual progress. Is this conclusion enough to make conservatives of us all?

Categories: Political Science

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Vladimir Putin, as seen by Bill Nichols in USA Today, March 27, 2002

December 5, 2007

(My commentary on the text in red italic)

If Bill Nichols has correctly read Putin intentions in March of 2002 one might reasonably conclude that the present lack of cooperation between Russia and the West, is mostly our fault. And also that Bush’s reading of the man, ten months earlier on June 16 of 2001, was not completely whacky. That is, Bush’s words following his first meeting with Putin whem he said that he, Bush, "looked the man in the eye," and "was able to get a sense of his soul."

Perhaps, although I’ve never believed it until today, what Bush saw was not unreal. In any case by our actions since then we’ve helped to bury under a renewed and hardened and darkened antagonism whatever light Bush may have seen in the man. Nichols’ account makes me think that whatever Putin is today it’s in good part because of us. Certainly we’re to blame for the crazy idea to install missile defenses in two of the former Republics of the Soviet Union. Whose daft idea was that anyway?

In what follows I cite passages from Bill Nichols profile of Putin done for USA Today on March 27, 2002. Why the Russian translations? Probably that’s mostly for me. But we Americans sometimes seem to forget that the Russians do speak another language. English is not yet the world’s language, and the Russians, like many others still want to be heard in their own language. Nichols’ words are in bold, following by the Russian translation. If you know a little Russian it might be fun to follow along.

Russia’s Putin is an enigma to the world
(Путин – загадка для всеро мира)

Bill Nichols’original text is in bold characters,
Followed by a Russian translation in normal text size.

Several weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, Russian President Vladimir Putin confronted an historic choice.
Через несколько недель после нападений террористов на
Соединенные Штаты 11 сентября российский президент Владимир Путин встал
перед историческим выбором.

His top advisers pushed him to extract concessions from Washington in exchange for Russia’s help in the U.S. war on terrorism, officials close to Putin say. His response was startling: No. Instead, the Russian president would offer unconditional cooperation to strengthen bonds with the West.
По свидетельству официальных лиц из ближайшего окружения г-на Путина,
его высшие советники подталкивали его к тому, чтобы он выбивал у
Вашингтона уступки в обмен на помощь России в войне Америки с
терроризмом. Его реакция была поразительной. Нет! Вместо этого
российский президент предложил безусловное сотрудничество в целях
укрепления связей с Западом.

”He said to this crowd, ‘This is not about price lists. This is not
about bargaining. This is about something else,’ ” says Grigory
Yavlinsky, a leader in the Russian Duma, the lower chamber of
Parliament.
"Он сказал этим людям ‘Тут неуместно заводить разговор о прейскурантах. Мы не собираемся торговаться. Тут речь совсем о другом.’", – вспоминает Григорий Явлинский, один из лидеров Государственной Думы Российской Федерации.

The ”something else” Putin seeks is a new Russia, a Russia that is
regarded as a full partner by the same Western nations that were mortal
enemies of the Soviet Union.
То, другое, к которому стремится г-н Путин – это новая Россия, такая
Россия, в которой те самые западные страны, что были заклятыми врагами
Советского Союза, будут видеть полноправного партнера.

Just as earlier this week our own intelligence services told our government that Iran’s nuclear bomb initiative had been on hold since 2003 (meaning that during the time since then our government has not been aware of what was really going on at Iran’s nuclear facilities) so reading Nichols’ reporting from Moscow, one year earlier, in 2002, makes us painfully aware now of just how much we perhaps missed a golden opportunity to cooperate with Putin and Russia.

Apparently we just as incorrectly read the man Putin, as Bush did Iran. Has 9/11 blinded us to just about everything else that was and is going on in the world, including, perhaps, a more cooperative Russia?

Quick, name one important, beneficial, and well thought out international action that our government has undertaken during the past six years, that is, since 9/11. Can you? I can’t.

That this former KGB officer — who marked the second anniversary of
his election on Tuesday — would try to build such a Russia has shocked
diplomats around the world, turned traditional East-West relations
upside-down and left global leaders wondering what Putin will do next.
То, что этот бывший офицер Комитета государственной безопасности (КГБ) СССР – который во вторник отметил вторую годовщину своего избрания на пост президента России – намерен попытаться построить такую Россию, шокировало дипломатов во всем мире, перевернуло традиционные отношения Восток-Запад и заставило лидеров нашей планеты гадать, каким будет следующий шаг г-на Путина.

Well, at least some things don’t change. The elections in Russia are just over (last Sunday, December 2) with the crushing Putin victory, and now everyone is wondering what Putin is going to do next.

Perhaps nothing surprises Westerners more than Putin’s success in
turning around his nation’s economy, particularly in Moscow, where a
once drab and listless communist capital has come alive with glittering
streets and vibrant commerce: sushi bars, store windows displaying
trendy designer clothes, Manhattan-like traffic jams.
Пожалуй, ничто так не удивляет представителей западных стран, как успехи г-на Путина в деле перестройки экономики страны, особенно заметные в Москве. Когда-то серая и апатичная коммунистическая столица сегодня полна жизни: сверкающие улицы, бурно расцветшая торговля – суши-бары, одежда от модных дизайнеров в витринах магазинов – "пробки" на улицах, как в Манхэттене.

We need to hear this sort of thing more often. The city Moscow is now right up there with Paris and London in regard to glitz and show, and its citizens, no less than those of the other European cities, will surely fight to hold on to what they now have (a material prosperity they never knew during Soviet times). So in spite of the apparent incomprehension between Putin’s Russia and the West there will be no return to the closed Soviet society of before.

Russia was on the verge of economic ruin and political anarchy during Boris Yeltsin’s last years as president. Now, Putin wants his rejuvenated nation to be at the table with other Western nations.
В последние годы президентства Бориса Ельцина Россия стояла на краю
экономической разрухи и политической анархии. И вот теперь г-н Путин
хочет, чтобы его обновленная страна была за одним столом с другими
западными странами.

The difference between when Nichols was writing and now is that Putin is evidently thoroughly convinced that order and security trump democracy, at least in Russia. And it’s hard to quarrel with him in that regard. In 2002, his second year in office, Putin may have felt that a Russian democrat in office was possible, although Yeltsin’s example ought to have told him the opposite.

Now he knows there’s no place in present day Russia for the democrat. The Russian people are not ready. Putin has become, whether he knows it or not, a disciple of Hobbes, and he’s going to make sure that his country has a strong ruler at the helm.

Western leaders, however, aren’t sure whether to trust Putin. Many still question whether he is committed to a Russia that embraces capitalism and democracy.
Однако западные лидеры не уверены, стоит ли доверять г-ну Путину.
Многие все еще сомневаются, действительно ли он хочет, чтобы в России
восторжествовали капитализм и демократия.

Putin, now we know, while he has turned his back on democracy, does embrace a kind of state capitalism. See my earlier piece below, Putin and Kasparov.

Russia’s new prosperity, for example, is limited to Moscow and a few other large cities. Critics at home and abroad say Putin’s record is poor on civil liberties, such as press freedom. Rights groups say Russian troops continue to commit atrocities in the breakaway republic of Chechnya. Senior U.S. officials here say they question whether Putin believes in democracy at all.
К примеру, новообретенное процветание России пока ограничивается
Москвой и несколькими другими крупными городами. Критики дома и за
рубежом говорят, что г-н Путин плохо зарекомендовал себя в вопросе о
гражданских свободах, например, свободе печати. Правозащитные
организации говорят, что российские войска продолжают творить злодеяния
в мятежной республике Чечня. Американские высокопоставленные
официальные лица здесь, в Москве, говорят, что не уверены, верит ли
вообще г-н Путин в демократию.

Most of what Nichols has to say could have been said today, with few changes being necessary. The new Russian prosperity is limited to Moscow and a few large cities. The new found oil wealth has done little to raise a good half of the population out of the depths of poverty. There is little or no press freedom, but, and to the good, people are able to travel abroad, and as far as we know the latest representatives of Putin’s own KGB are not torturing and murdering dissidents in the basement of the Lubyanka.

Chechnya is no longer the "breakaway Republic", its people, those that are still alive, having been successfully pacified. Putin has succeeded with the Chechnyans whereas we failed with the Viet Cong, although admittedly the two situations are not comparable. But most of all we didn’t have the stomach to do in Vietnam what Putin has done in Chechnya.

Finally, when Nichols wrote Putin watchers weren’t sure, but now they are, that Putin is much more the Tsar of a fallen Russian empire trying to hold on to past glories, than the President of a new liberal and democratic Russia reaching out to the West. Helas! But we really couldn’t have expected anything else.

Some Russians have the same doubts and question whether he is merely building a new authoritarian system. ”(Putin) has started to restore what we had before, but in an even uglier way,” says Tatiana Chubrikova, 52, a translator for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. ”He thinks he knows what is good for everyone and then tries to impose it.’‘
Некоторые россияне испытывают аналогичные сомнения и задаются вопросом,
а не выстраивает ли он новую авторитарную систему. "Путин начал
восстанавливать то, что у нас было раньше, но в еще более скверном
виде, – говорит 52-летняя Татьяна Чубрикова, переводчик Верховного
комиссариата Организации Объединенных Наций (ООН) по делам беженцев. -
Он думает, что знает, что хорошо для всех, и пытается навязать это
людям".

Now six years later Putin no longer thinks, but knows what is good for everyone, and no longer does he try, but simply imposes his own thinking on everyone else. We see this today in the pictures coming out of Russia of the large numbers of Russian youth attending youth camps. They’re not yet, thankfully, comparable to the frightening Chinese youth formations of Mao’s cultural revolution, but they do remind us of that time in China.

Many Russians, long accustomed to living under a schizophrenic communist system that delivered far less than it promised, say the inscrutable Putin is another enigma for them to unravel. Officials close to the former spymaster say a normal day might find him talking to President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and a group of his former KGB cronies — and giving equal weight to each conversation.
Многие россияне, давно приученные жить при шизофренической
коммунистической системе, которая делала куда меньше, чем обещала,
говорят, что непостижимый г-н Путин является для них еще одной
загадкой, которую нужно разгадать. Официальные лица из окружения этого
бывшего шпиона говорят, что в любой обычный день он может беседовать с
президентом США Бушем-младшим (George W. Bush), с премьер-министром
Великобритании Тони Блэром (Tony Blair) и с группой бывших дружков из
КГБ – и каждой беседе придавать равноценный вес.

”Putin’s very far away from us,” says Eugin Dashkin, 52, a department manager in a sugar production company. ”It’s very difficult to tell the difference between his deeds and his words. It’s difficult to feel if it’s real or not.”
"Путин от нас очень далек, – говорит Евгений Дашкин, 52-летний менеджер
отдела в компании по производству сахара. – Очень трудно делать
различие между его поступками и его словами. Трудно понять, реально это
или нет".

Few Muscovites doubt that the economic turnaround is real. The economy has improved steadily since Putin, 49, became interim president when Yeltsin retired on New Year’s Eve, 1999. Putin was elected three months later.
Немногие москвичи сомневаются в том, что перемены в экономике реальны.
Устойчивый рост экономики отмечается с тех пор, как 49-летний Путин
стал временно исполнять обязанности президента страны, когда в конце
1999 года, накануне празднования Нового Года, ушел в отставку г-н
Ельцин. Через три месяца г-на Путин стал законно избранным президентом.

If you want to read Bill Nichols’s full account of Putin’s Russia in 2002, which I encourage you to do, go to the USA Today article here.

Categories: Thoughts

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Putin vs. Kasparov, Hobbes vs. Locke

December 1, 2007

"There
are, at the present time, two great nations in the world which seem to
tend towards the same end, although they started from different points:
I allude to the Russians and the Americans…. The American relies upon
personal interest to accomplish his ends, and gives free scope to the
unguided exertions and common-sense of the citizens; the Russian
centres all the authority of society in a single arm. The principal
instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter servitude."
             (Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Book One, 1835, Chapter 18)

During the some 40 plus years of the Cold War almost the entire
inhabitable world seemed caught up in the seemingly unending,
relentless struggle between de Tocqueville’s "two great nations,"
between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the long struggle
between the communism and totalitarianism of the one and the capitalism
and democracy of the other.

Then two things happened to bring the Cold War to an end. First,
Mikhail Gorbachev at the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress in 1986
inaugurated Perestroika, or economic structuring, this being a
fundamental reform of Soviet totalitarian rule from within.

Two years later, in May of 1988, the Soviet Union began the final
withdrawal of its troups from Afghanistan, this withdrawal and defeat
signaling the rapid break-up of the Soviet Empire that was to follow,
beginning with the Fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, and
ending with the dissolution of the Soviet Union into its component
republics in late 1991.

Then what happened? The West rushed in with their carpet bags filled
with democracy and capitalism. The one, democracy didn’t take hold. For
as we know from William Shakespeare the readiness is all, and the
Russian people were not ready for democracy.

The other, capitalism, did triumph, not only in Russia, but
throughout the former republics of the now defunct Soviet Union. It was
a wild and unruly capitalism, but capitalism it was, and communism was
relegated to the dustbin.

The Soviet Union had always possessed a wealth of natural resources.
The new, now Russian capitalists, first private grasping individuals,
and then the Russian state itself, set about to exploit them, seizing
ownership of the resources while paying little or no attention to
whatever rule of law had survived the death of the Soviet Union.

All that brings us up to the present moment and to President Putin,
a.k.a. Tsar Putin. Russia, under Putin’s not yet totalitarian but more
and more authoritarian rule, is again becoming a principal player on
the world stage, and once again a serious obstacle to America’s attempt
to export freedom and democracy to the Middle East and elsewhere.

There are even those who speak of a new Cold War, but I don’t think
this is an accurate description of what is happening. And in fact in
most areas, in particular in regard to spending on defense, Russia is
no longer a serious rival, if it ever was, to the United States.

Furthermore, in Russia itself, and in spite of Putin’s clamp down on
democracy, the West in important ways has triumphed. For example,
Russians are now able to acquire property. They are free to travel both
within and without the country. And for the first time since the end of
the second World War there is an abundance of consumer goods available
on the shelves.

However, at the very least, there are growing tensions between the
new Russia and the West. What is the source of the tensions? What has
kept Russia apart from Europe? Why didn’t the new Russia simply join,
say, the European Union? What is it that still seems to come between
Russia and the West?

I think what is going on in Russia is a revival of the old struggle
between Hobbes and Locke, between the merits of authoritarian rule,
such as that of a king or tsar, and another kind of rule by
democratically elected representatives, such as that of our Congress and
President, although I’m not sure that Putin has read either Hobbes or Locke, or
would even describe the situation he has faced in this manner.

But this difference is still a valid one. And in fact Hobbes is
still triumphant in many if not most countries of the world. The two
largest countries, China and India, well represent the two positions.
And it’s interesting that we would not think of imposing democracy on
the one, nor authoritarianism on the other, if indeed we could. We
can’t.

Putin probably hasn’t read Hobbes, and there’s probably even less
chance that he has read Locke from whom our own Declaration of
Independence (life, liberty, and, not the pursuit of happiness, but
property) was principally derived. But the strength of Putin’s position
clearly depends on its similarity to the position of Thomas Hobbes.

In his own lifetime Hobbes witnessed the beheading of a King, the
English Civil War, and the Protestant Revolution. He understandably
concluded that only a strong state under a strong, authoritarian ruler
could prevent anarchy and provide security.

Just today in a Wall Street Journal interview Mikhail Gorbachev said
of Putin that "he had somehow managed to put together a country that
was falling apart." And that’s probably the very best that can be said
about the man.

Putin must have known disorder. He witnessed the final years of the
Soviet Union, and he probably suffered through the chaotic first years
of Boris Yeltsin and the new Russia.

Then, and given his own totalitarian upbringing as a member of the
KGB, he must have readily concluded, probably during the Yeltsin years of non-rule, that the
Russian people needed security and order, not to mention income and
jobs, benefits that could come from a strong ruler, much more than they needed freedom and democracy from Europe or the United
States. And that makes him, whether he knew it or not, a disciple of
Hobbes.

The leaders of the Western world, on the other hand, are disciples
of John Locke, even while admitting along with Winston Churchill, that
"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other
forms that have been tried from time to time."

Those words of Churchill came at the very beginning of the Cold War.
At the end of the Cold War, following the collapse of the Soviet
Union, we all naively believed that Churchill was shown to be right.

But now, some 16 years after the collapse, we can’t be so sure.
Hobbes’ argument in his Leviathan of 1651 was valid at the time and
given the existing or imminent disorder and anarchy in many nations and regions of
the world, including Russia, it may still be valid today.

Who would go to the Sudan, to the Congo, or even to Iraq thinking
that representative democracy was more important than a strong and
capable authoritarian government? We did of course, and look what
happened.

So the good that can be said about Putin can be summed up by saying
that he has recognized that the Russian people want and need a strong
ruler. He is certainly trying to provide one. If he steps on a lot of
toes, and worse, crushes liberal minded individuals and reform minded
and rebellious groups, as in Chechnya, that’s just the cost of civil
order in Russia today.

Last week the Hobbes-Locke duality was beautiful illustrated by
the "match" between the former world champion chess player, Gary
Kasparov, and Putin. Kasparov lost of course and spent five days behind
bars.

Putin didn’t offer to take Kasparov on in a game of chess. That
being just one more piece of evidence that Putin, no matter what else
he may be, is not a great man.

Putin did win their "political" match-up, "hands down," and made his
point that in a Russia still highly susceptible to coming apart at the
seams not even a tiny rebellion, such as that of the liberal reformer,
Gary Kasparov, could be tolerated. And he may be right.

Categories: Political Science

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Analysis of the Y chromosome

December 1, 2007

At Annapolis this week President Bush spoke with Palestinian President Abbas and Prime Minister Olmert of Israel. But, alas! he had little or nothing to say about the sticky issues that for nearly 50 years have kept the two sides from reaching a two state solution, that which everyone agrees is the only solution.

Indeed, Olmert, now back in Israel, and as a follow-up to Annapolis, has been telling his countrymen that Israel’s very survival as a viable state depends on there also being a viable Palestinian state. I wonder if he wonders why Bush didn’t have more to say about all this. I do.

Everyone knows what a peace agreement depends upon. For one, the Palestinian refugees must be permitted to return, although most likely to Palestine, and not to Israel proper. Then Jerusalem must become the capital of both peoples. Finally, Israel must surrender Israeli land to the Palestinians as compensation for any Israeli settlements in the West Bank that are allowed to survive.

During the conference President Bush was eerily silent in regard to all three, although he did side with the Israelis regarding the refugees not being allowed to return to their homes in Israel. Why didn’t he do more? Shouldn’t he have pushed Olmert to in turn push his countrymen to do what had to be done? Why didn’t he?

In fact, Bush’s almost complete silence at the Conference in regard to the concessions the Israelis would have to make, if they would ever have peace, makes one wonder if the Israeli Washington lobby isn’t indeed all powerful.

In fact, the Annapolis Conference was hardly necessary. For we heard on day one about the only decision that would be made by the attendees. Olmert and Abbas would agree to resume thepeace talks that had been stalled for the past seven years. And they would pledge that during these talks they would reach an
agreement on the creation of a Palestinian state by the end of 2008. They could have announced all that without the trip Annapolis.

Do you believe that what has been pledged will happen? I don’t. And in any case, why wait a year? Everyone knows what has to be done, and it could be done today.

What does keep the two state settlement from happening? The answer is two-fold, history and religion, not enough of the one, and too much of the other. A history going back only a few thousand years, and two all powerful, totalitarian religions, curtailing the freedom of action of these peoples in the present.

Both are huge obstacles in the paths of these peoples otherwise highly suited to becoming friends, neighbors, and trading partners, that which they probably were at an earlier time in their pasts.

If in fact they were to go back a bit further into their pasts and obtain additional knowledge of their very similar histories, they would see that they were really one people, and that the so-called differences between them were all historical fabrications, not fundamental to who and what they were and are.

I take as an illustration of what I mean the following passage from an article in the New York Times by Nicholas Wade,Scientists Rough Out Humanity’s 50,000-Year-Old Story. 

"Analysis of the Y chromosome has already yielded interesting results. Dr. Ariella Oppenheim of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem said she had found considerable similarity between Jews and Israeli and Palestinian Arabs, as if the Y chromosomes of both groups had been drawn from a common population that began to expand 7,800 years ago."

And this, of course, is not a single isolated example. For we are constantly learning how much we all, not just the Palestinians and Israelis, are one people. Yet there are those among us who don’t want to hear this and prefer to go on killing one another, in the name of what? Their recent past? And at the very time when their deep past is telling them to make peace.

Categories: Current Affairs

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