Dorothy Online Newsletter

NOVANEWS

Dear All,

 

Once again I begin with an apology—apparently yesterday, for some unknown and inexplicable reason, I turned Goldstone from a stone into a mountain, i.e., Goldberg.  Inexcusable to turn this particular man from a small item into a big one.  He surely does not deserve it.

 

Below are just 4 items, but 2 of them—OCHA and Mondoweiss—contain several reports. 

 

Item 1 is important.  Please distribute widely. It is an appeal from Palestinian Christians living in the OPT—the Occupied Palestinian Territory —to stop Israel ’s confiscation of land in Beit Jala, specifically, but also in general.  Beit Jala is in the proximity of Bethlehem and is a primarily Christian city. 

 

Item 2 is OCHA’S “protection of civilians weekly report for 26 Oct—1Nov, 2011”   Hopefully, you will read it.

 

Item 3 contains the Mondoweiss headlines for November 4, 2011.  The first several focus on the flotilla, but from various standpoints.  The compilation also includes responses to Goldstone.   I enjoyed the one about Thomas Friedman.

 

Item 4 is an opinion piece by John Spritzler regarding the present socio-economic protests.  I fully agree with Spritzler regarding what is missing.  However, although he tells us what is missing from them, he himself does not furnish a program for how to carry out the revolution that he believes will bring about the needed change.  A revolution is indeed a means, but without a well designed plan of how to run it in order to achieve its goal, it does not stand a chance of succeeding.

 

All the best,

Dorothy

=====================================

 

1.  A worldwide appeal to Christians………

 

[forwarded by A. Anwar Sacca ]

 

 

Confiscation of Land / from a priest from the Holy Land ..

From Fr. Ibrahim Shomali via Fr Labib in San Francisco

Palestinian Christians call for an open air mass to pray for the end of the Israeli occupation days after Israel announces a major confiscation of lands in the town of Beit Jala

Israeli occupation forces have once again attack our town. They have announced the confiscation of the last green area left for Beit Jala, and the Bethlehem district. And we refuse to accept the dictation of the illegal Israeli occupation.

We denounce this new Israeli action as a step towards the consolidation of injustice and their Apartheid regime; we denounce the annexation of the most beautiful lands of the Bethlehem district as a direct attack against the Palestinian people, and particularly against Palestinian Christians.

We call upon the Quartet members and the rest of the international community to act in order to stop the Israeli colonial enterprise, and particularly in the most affected areas such as in and around occupied East Jerusalem and the Bethlehem district; the fact that confiscation orders were given a day after Palestine’s admission to UNESCO unveils the heavily political nature of the Israeli colonial enterprise.

We trust that all our relevant authorities, including our government leaded by President Mahmoud Abbas, the Latin Patriarchate and civil society will do everything possible to keep the land in the hands of its rightful owners, the Palestinian people.

According to the Holy Synod conducted last year in support of the Christian presence in the Holy Land , it is a must for the church to support our presence. Accordingly, we call upon the upon the Holy See and Pope Benedict XVI to act immediately, using all possible ways, to help protecting our people.

As members of the heroic Palestinian people as well as the oldest Christian community in the world , we remain attached to the hope for peace and justice. Jesus Christ was born in Palestine , lived in Palestine , was crucified in Palestine and resurrected in Palestine . We, the descendents of his earliest followers, are still waiting for our own resurrection as a free nation.

 

We invite all of you to join us in an open air Holy Mass to take place at the entrance of the Cremisan valley tomorrow Friday 4th of November at 15:50. The service will be conducted by Father Ibrahim Shomali and Father Mario Cornoli.

Text in French…..

Palestinian Christian Community – Beit Jala

Les chrétiens palestiniens appellent à participer à une messe en plein air
pour prier pour la fin de l’occupation israélienne après qu’Israël annonce une confiscation importante des terres dans la ville de Beit Jala

Les forces d’occupation israéliennes attaquent de nouveau notre ville. Elles ont annoncé la confiscation de la dernière zone verte laissée à Beit Jala du district de Bethléem. Nous refusons d’accepter l’ordre de l’occupation illégale israélienne.
Nous dénonçons cette nouvelle action israélienne comme une étape vers la consolidation de l’injustice et de leur régime d’apartheid. Nous dénonçons l’annexion des plus belles terres de la région de Bethléem comme une attaque directe contre le peuple palestinien et en particulier contre les chrétiens palestiniens.
Nous appelons les membres du Quatuor et du reste de la communauté internationale à agir afin d’arrêter l’entreprise coloniale israélienne, et en particulier dans les zones les plus touchées, comme dans et autour de Jérusalem-Est occupée et dans le district de Bethléem. Le fait que les ordres de confiscation soient donnés un jour après l’admission de la Palestine à l’UNESCO dévoile la nature hautement politique de l’entreprise coloniale israélienne.
Nous espérons que toutes nos autorités compétentes, y compris notre gouvernement dirigé par le Président Mahmoud Abbas, le Patriarcat latin et la société civile feront tout leur possible pour garder la terre dans les mains de ses propriétaires légitimes, le peuple palestinien.
Selon le Synode du Moyen Orient conduit l’an dernier en faveur de la présence chrétienne en Terre Sainte , il est un devoir pour l’Église de soutenir notre présence. En conséquence, nous appelons le Saint-Siège et le Pape Benoît XVI à agir immédiatement, en utilisant tous les moyens possibles, pour aider à protéger notre peuple.
En tant que membres de l’héroïque peuple palestinien et de la plus ancienne communauté chrétienne dans le monde, nous restons attachés à l’espoir de paix et de justice. Jésus Christ est né en Palestine, a vécu en Palestine, a été crucifié et ressuscité en Palestine . Nous, les descendants de ses premiers disciples, sont toujours en attente de notre propre résurrection comme nation libre.
Nous vous invitons tous à nous rejoindre pour une messe en plein air.
Elle aura lieu à l’entrée de la vallée de Cremisan vendredi 4 novembre à 15 h 50.
Le service sera effectué par le Père Ibrahim Shomali et le Père Mario Cornoli.

Le Curé et les Chrétiens de Beit Jala ( Palestine )

.___

 

 

2.  OCHA protection of civilians weekly report for 26 Oct—1Nov, 2011

 

http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_protection_of_civilians_weekly_report_2011_11_04_english.pdf

 

 

3.  The Latest Headlines from Mondoweiss for November 4, 2011

 

http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=8d38ef747c2061bb9c6137961&id=d0e69fa4c0#mctoc6

 

4.  [forwarded by JPLO-OLPJ ]

 

Turn the World Upside Down

On top, world elites are the thousands, imposing inequality and fomenting wars to control us. Under them, we are billions in resistance. Let us turn the world upside down.

 

John Spritzler

 

http://spritzlerj.blogspot.com/2011/10/from-occupation-to-revolution.html

 

 

Monday, October 31, 2011

From Occupation to Revolution

 

If OWS decides explicitly that its goal is revolution, it would transform the OWS movement. It would be a qualitative leap and set the agenda for the coming years : a national and international conversation about how to make a revolution and what a post-revolutionary society can be like. If OWS does this, then folding the tents in the heart of winter (or losing them to a police raid) won’t matter because the revolutionary strategy can be carried out even without them. What OWS will gain is what does matter : a whole new level of consciousness, determination, and ties to the community and each other internationally.

 

 

But what exactly does it mean to make revolution our goal? How is that different from what OWS is already doing? Does it mean picking up a gun or smashing more windows or attacking the police? No it does not. It means doing what is discussed below.

 

 

One of the most popular chants of the Occupy Wall Street occupations is, “The banks got bailed out; we got sold out.” People want a more equal and democratic society and they know that the 1% with the real power in our country want the opposite. How can the OWS occupiers make society more equal and democratic?

 

On this, opinions vary widely. While everybody wants more people to join and support the occupation, there is presently little agreement about what “joining and supporting the occupation” should mean in practice. What, exactly, do occupiers need to do in order to achieve a more equal and democratic society?

 

Some believe that if occupiers keep their tents at the various parks around the country long enough, then the desired changes will happen. Others believe that if enough people get themselves arrested in civil disobedience actions to demonstrate the sincerity of our convictions, that will exert “moral suasion” (as Gandhi called it) on the rulers and make them change their ways. Some think that if everybody can agree on a few realistic demands and communicate them clearly, that will do it. And some believe that electing different politicians to office will solve our problems.

 

None of the above actions, however, will achieve the desired goal, because these actions don’t remove from power the plutocracy that holds the real power in American and that wants America to be undemocratic and unequal, and these actions don’t abolish the capitalist system from which the plutocracy derives its power based on concentrated wealth.

 

Tents in parks won’t stop a ruling class that commands the greatest military force on the planet.

 

The plutocracy already knows we are sincere, and they don’t care if we offer ourselves to be arrested to make the point.

 

Any “realistic” demands we make will have to avoid challenging the power of the plutocracy or the capitalist system from which it derives its power, or the demands will be dismissed as “unrealistic.” Defining our goal as a set of “realistic” demands means declaring that we will stop bothering the plutocracy when it makes the demanded changes. Our movement will then be over; the plutocracy will remain in power, able to take back whatever it gave; and before long we’ll be back where we are today.

 

The plutocracy was never elected, and cannot be un-elected. Politicians in our society only have the power that the plutocracy delegates to them; they most certainly do not have the power to remove the plutocracy from power.

 

It will take a revolution to remove the plutocracy from power, and to begin creating a new kind of society based on equality and mutual aid and genuine democracy. The strategy and tactics of the OWS movement should be directed towards building a huge, popular revolutionary movement, one that explicitly aims to remove the plutocracy from power, that has a vision of a new and better kind of society that can inspire hundreds of millions of Americans to fight for it. This kind of movement can win the support of soldiers and sailors so that, when the ruling class orders the military to attack the revolution, they will disobey and instead join and help defend the revolution with their weapons. This is how a revolutionary movement, when it reaches critical mass, will be able to prevail even in a contest of violent force with the ruling class.

 

The world does not have to be a capitalist one , based on class inequality and the glorification of self-interest. Most people want a very different kind of society. We can create a society that is the way most people want it to be, in which products and services are created to satisfy real needs and reasonable desires consistent with sustainability and environmental wisdom, not to make a profit for the few at the expense of every other consideration; in which the economy is based on sharing, from each according to ability and to each according to need, where products and services are provided according to need, not according to who has enough money to buy them; where there are no rich and poor because everybody has an equal right to enjoy the benefits of the wealth that society produces.

 

 

We can create a genuine democracy in which all law-making power resides in local community and workplace assemblies that all adults who support the principles of equality and mutual aid can attend. Instead of social order on a large scale being imposed by a centralized government democratic in name only, it can be achieved in a truly democratic manner by voluntary federation of local assemblies. (This is discussed in some detail in “Thinking about Revolution.”)

 

The key to building this revolutionary movement is to first explicitly declare that building a revolutionary movement is the strategic goal. Then tactics can be evaluated with respect to how well they serve that goal. The chief element of the strategy is spreading the revolutionary ideas–that the ruling class has no legitimate right to rule over us, that revolution is necessary, that it is possible, and that it is the way to create a far better society based on equality and mutual aid and democracy. Tactics would emphasize communicating these ideas to the wider public: chants during demonstrations, leaflets passed out wherever the public is, talks by us where people live and work, teach-ins, interviews given to whatever media will do them. And tactics would include various creative ways to involve the public in actively discussing and developing revolutionary ideas, and recruiting others to help spread the message.

 

What about confrontational actions? These tactics also should be evaluated the same way. Do they spread the revolutionary message? Sometimes a confrontation with authority can indeed bring wider attention to our revolutionary message. But this depends on how we engage in the confrontation. A confrontation that exposes the illegitimacy and immorality of the rulers, for example when people pack a courtroom to protest eviction proceedings against a family, is good. A confrontation that gives the rulers what the public will perceive as a legitimate reason for using police force against our movement is bad. Confronting the police, in and of itself, does not help, and can backfire if it enables the rulers to paint a false picture of us in the public eye.

 

 

What about violence? Violence in self-defense may not be tactically wise in a given situation, but it is not immoral. The philosophy of nonviolence is wrong to say it is. Violence against property, when it is not clearly in self-defense, serves no good purpose and makes it easy for the rulers to turn the public against us. Violence against unarmed civilians has nothing to do with self-defense, and it is immoral.

 

 

If we focus on spreading the revolutionary message, then there will come a time when the revolutionary movement is large enough and has the support of sufficient numbers of soldiers and sailors to successfully defend itself against violence by the forces remaining loyal to the ruling class. At this time we should use whatever force, including violence, that is necessary to defend ourselves and the goals of the revolution.

 

 

But we are not yet at the point when we can actually prevail in a contest of violent force with the ruling class. Therefore it makes no sense to pretend that we are and to deliberately get into violent fights with the police that we have no way of winning. When the police attack us violently, we should do our best to make an orderly tactical retreat. Our strategic offense is what is most important: to spread a message about what we believe and what we want. The message isn’t that we can defeat the well-armed police today; it is that the movement we are building is for values and objectives that most people share, and it can grow large enough one day to win a contest of force with the ruling class.

 

We need to keep our eye on the revolutionary strategy. Let us not get deflected from it by wishful thinking of the sort that says that “moral suasion” or “enough tents” or “better politicians” or “reasonable demands” will make the rulers change their ways.

 

 

Let us neither be deflected from the revolutionary strategy by those who propose tactics that have nothing to do with spreading revolutionary ideas. There is a totally false Hollywood image of what it means to be a revolutionary, made up of images of Che Guevara and black-shirted bomb-throwing (or window-breaking) “anarchists” who strike a revolutionary pose and talk tough with bravado. Police provocateurs, agents of the ruling class, try to get us to act this way, or themselves act this way in our name, because they know that as long as we equate our movement with such actions we will not be thinking about how to spread revolutionary ideas and mobilizing the public around those ideas, and the public will be turned against us.

 

 

The rulers have many agents with many different disguises, all pretending to be our friends, trying to persuade us what to do. They can be very persistent–that is their job! They appeal to our wishful thinking, or our desire to view ourselves as courageous, or anything else that will work, as long as it prevents us from understanding what a real revolutionary strategy is, and carrying it out. Now, more than ever, we need to think carefully about strategy and tactics. Just doing what seems to be “in the air” or whatever the most persistent individuals advocate is not good enough to win. It will take a huge revolutionary movement to win, which can develop if, and only if, we aim to make it happen.