CLIMATE CHANGE IS HERE / THE PEOPLE MARCH BUT WILL THEY ACT

 A selection of posters from the People's Climate March. (photo: (L-R) Favianna Rodriguez, Nicolas Lampert, Collin Matthes)

Climate Change is here and now and can no longer be ignored as public demand for action has reached the tipping point. The largest climate change action in history takes place today in New York City as hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, representing over 1,400 environmental justice groups, march peaceably through Manhattan's streets as a reminder to the UN that their pathetic inaction will no longer be tolerated by the people ~ but will the people act: Allen L Roland, Ph.D

 

"Organizing a big march is like throwing a rock in a pond, the splash is exciting, but the real beauty is in the ripples. I'm confident the energy from this march will ripple out in all directions, from fossil fuel divestment fights on campus to the push for a global climate treaty in Paris." Jamie Henn, co-founder of the activist group 350.org, one of the march's principal organizers.

 

The Argument is over. Climate Change is Happening Now ~ see 11 minute YouTube Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bRrg96UtMc&feature=player_embedded

 

More than 30,000 people have turned out for today's climate change demonstration in Melbourne, the first of more than 2,500 similar events which will take place around the globe in the next 14 hours, ahead of a UN summit on climate change in New York early next week: http://bit.ly/1uTXD0y

 
Bill McKibben, a scholar in residence at Middlebury College, and the author of The End of Nature and Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, posted his comments regarding this historic  march on Tom Dispatch and his comments resonate with my own deeply held feelings about climate change ~ " We march because California has lost 63 trillion gallons of groundwater to the fierce drought that won’t end, and because the glaciers at the roof of Asia are disappearing. We march because researchers told the world in April that the West Antarctic ice sheet has begun to melt “irrevocably”; Greenland’s ice shield may soon follow suit; and the waters from those, as rising seas, will sooner or later drown the world’s coastlines and many of its great cities. We’re tired of winning the argument and losing the fight. And so we march. We march for the beaches and the barrios. We march for summers when the cool breeze still comes down in the evening. We march because Exxon spends $100 million every day looking for more hydrocarbons, even though scientists tell us we already have far more in our reserves than we can safely burn. We march for those too weak from dengue fever and malaria to make the journey."  See article ~ http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175894/tomgram%3A_bautista%2C_crisp-sauray%2C_and_mckibben%2C_a_future_to_march_for/#more

 

 

For myself, this march is for our children and grandchildren for our inaction regarding global warming and climate change is putting their health and existence at greater and greater risk.

As Dahr Jamail reports on Truth out  " Given the massive injection of carbon dioxide gasses into the atmosphere by humans and the fact that large amounts of methane are already being released in the Arctic which many scientists believe is already a runaway feedback loop that will add several more degrees warming to the planet, the current mass extinction event may closely resemble the Permian-Triassic extinction that happened about 251 million years ago.

During that extinction event, earth's worst, 95 percent of all species were killed off ".

See report ~ http://truth-out.org/news/item/25646-peak-water-methane-blowholes-and-ice-free-arctic-cruises-the-climate-crisis-deepens#.U_LdEFOYMLI.email

 

Chris Hedges calls the march the last gasp of Climate Change liberals and points out that

"The Climate Group, for example, which endorses the march, includes among its members and sponsors BP, China Mobile, Dow Chemical Co., Duke Energy, HSBC, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Greenstone. The Environmental Defense Fund, which says it “work[s] with companies rather than against them” and which is calling on its members to join the march, has funding from the oil and gas industry and supports fracking as a form of alternative energy. These faux environmental organizations are designed to neutralize resistance. And their presence exposes the march’s failure to adopt a meaningful agenda or pose a genuine threat to power."

Hedges, who I greatly respect, offers perhaps the only true solution to Climate Change and it demands action beyond marching for only we the people can defeat the corporate state ~ " We have known about the deleterious effects of carbon emissions for decades. The first IPCC report was published in 1990. Yet since the beginning of the Kyoto Protocol Era in the late 1980s, we have emitted as much carbon dioxide as was emitted in the prior 236 years. The rising carbon emissions and the extraction of tar sands ~ and since the industry has figured out how to transport tar sands without building the northern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline, this delivery seems assured ~ will continue no matter how many police-approved marches are held. Play by the rules and we lose. Resistance will come from those willing to breach police barricades. Resistance will mean jail time and direct confrontation. Resistance will mean physically disrupting the corporate machinery. Resistance will mean severing ourselves from the dominant culture to build small, self-sustaining communities. This resistance will be effective only when we refuse to do what we are told, when we turn from a liberal agenda of reform to embrace a radical agenda of revolt. " See Hedges article ~ http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/25637-the-last-gasp-of-climate-change-liberals

Climate change is most certainly here and now and the people are speaking and marching as they are today in New York but now it's time for action ~ for there is no change without action and action always involves risk.

“Men argue, Nature acts.” ~ Voltaire

Allen L Roland, Ph.D

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2014/09/climate-change-is-here-people-march-but.html

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and heart centered spiritual counselor Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private Skype consultations at allen@allenroland.com

 

Allen L Roland is also a lecturer and shares a weekly political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

 

 

BIRTH OF A STATE / DEATH OF APARTHEID

Click on to enlarge

As a citizen of the world, I extend a long awaited welcome to the state of Palestine with the firm hope that this small step for an oppressed people will become a giant first step towards peace and reconciliation in the Middle East and the death of apartheid: Allen L Roland

"The General Assembly is called upon today to issue a birth certificate of the reality of the state of Palestine."

MAHMOUD ABBAS, President of the Palestinian Authority, before a vote granting Palestine the upgraded status of nonmember observer state at the United Nations.

The birth of the STATE of Palestine was long overdue and there were many obvious birth complications ~ but there is no questions it was wanted by the vast majority of the world as witnessed in the historic recognition of statehood vote at the UN ~ where 138 members voted yes, 41 abstained and only 8 ( including Israel, Canada, the US and 4 of its Pacific Island protectorates) voted no.

The times, they are a changing !

Here's a 6-minute animation that explains what Israelis and Palestinians are fighting over. It’s not meant to be comprehensive, but it is meant to give you a tool to frame the conflict as one about the struggle for equal rights to the land, the vote, the roads, the resources. And it offers why one of the important tools to move toward a solution is the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y58njT2oXfE&feature=youtu.be

But let's turn to Uri Avnery ~ the long term leader of the Israeli peace movement Gush Shalom ~ for his valuable and important insider perspective on this historic moment: " ON FIRST sight, nothing much has changed. But only on first sight. What has happened is that the foundation of the State of Palestine has now been officially acknowledged as the aim of the world community. The “Two-State solution” is now the only solution on the table. The “One-State solution”, if it ever lived, is as dead as the dodo.

Of course, the apartheid one-state is reality. If nothing changes on the ground, it will become deeper and stronger. Almost every day brings news of it becoming more and more entrenched. (The bus monopoly has just announced that from now on there will be separate buses for West Bank Palestinians in Israel.)

But the quest for peace based on the co-existence between Israel and Palestine has taken a big step forwards. Unity between the Palestinians should be the next. US support for the actual creation of the State of Palestine should come soon after."

See article:

http://www.arabnews.com/palestine-vote-strong-and-sweet

How ironic that in this 2012 year of transition, we have birthed the state of Palestine ~ much like the Christ child over 2000 years ago ~ and now we have a shared responsibility to ensure and protect its health through the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

The BDS movement has been successful in drawing attention to Israel as a state deserving of the same treatment as once evidenced with apartheid South Africa ~ whereas prominent individuals such as former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Richard Falk and many others, have used the term apartheid at various moments to refer to Israel’s regime of gross violations of international law. Apartheid has come to hold a specific legal definition that was adopted by the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and that has its basis in the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid.

Under the Convention, the crime of apartheid is defined as “a crime against humanity . . . inhuman acts resulting from the policies and practices of apartheid and similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination, as defined in article II of the Convention, are crimes violating the principles of international law."

Article II of the Convention defines the crime as “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them,” and also includes “similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practiced in southern Africa.”

Based upon the definition of apartheid under international law, it becomes clear how and why Israel qualifies as an apartheid state vis-à-vis the Palestinians.  In the West Bank and Gaza, the Israeli occupation has developed into a pervasive system of apartheid, which includes checkpoints, the Wall, house demolitions, destruction of property, denial of access to education, arbitrary imprisonment, and Israeli-only roads. Israel’s apartheid policies also extend to the Palestinian refugee population expelled from their lands in 1948 to make room for the creation of the state of Israel ~ in refusing to permit the return of these refugees Israel is in violation of Article 2c of the apartheid convention adopted by the ICC … See more http://muftah.org/understanding-the-boycott-divestment-sanctions-movement-against-israel/

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the UN General Assembly vote implicitly recognizing Palestine as a state was “meaningless” and will do nothing to realize actual statehood. “This is a meaningless resolution that won’t change anything on the ground. No Palestinian state will arise without an arrangement ensuring the security of Israeli citizens,” Netanyahu on Thursday.

Netanyahu in essence has said that no Palestinian state will ever arise, so long as Israel has anything to do about it ~ Netanyahu and his right-wing Likud Party, obviously dream of a Greater Israel with full sovereignty over the territories currently recognized as Palestinian in the West Bank and Gaza.

Meanwhile, Apartheid continues as Israeli police have begun removing Palestinian passengers from buses at the request of Jewish settlers, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported ... and an army reservist told Haaretz that Israeli police stationed near Salfit had ordered Palestinians off buses multiple times, leaving them to walk several miles and then catch taxis home.

Unfortunately, Apartheid is a way of life in the West Bank where Settlements exclude Arabs and Jews only roads already exist and it even extends to sports ~ ESPNs Jeremy Schaap traveled to Jerusalem to report on those who have been called "the most dangerous fans" in Israel soccer as well as BEITAR - an Israeli Soccer Team which has been called the MOST RACIST on the planet. See 12 minute video ~

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKQHhed3djU

Israel has also seized more than $120m (£75m)in tax revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority in response to last week's overwhelming vote at the UN general assembly to recognize the state of Palestine. See story ~
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33199.htm

But the angry words and unjust actions of Netanyahu and the Israeli right wing Zionist zealots cannot stop a world coming to terms with its innate urge to unite and cooperate with each other ~ while isolating any gross impediments (such as apartheid) through the already proven methods of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

It is now time for conscientious people around the world to do more than just pay lip service to the Palestinian struggle for justice and freedom, and to advocate and implement comprehensive boycotts against Israel’s apartheid policies ~ As Sami Hermez wrote ~ "the Palestinians deserve no less than the dignity for which they have so patiently waited and struggled for over the last 60 years."

While we celebrate the long awaited birth of the state of Palestine we must ensure the death of apartheid as currently practiced by the state of Israel.

   

"The UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system. But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians." Nelson Mandela

~ Address at The International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People ( 1997 )

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/birth-of-state-death-of-apartheid.html

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com )

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

THIS WEEK WE ARE ALL PALESTINIANS

This week the United States Middle East hypocrisy will be viewed by the world. After 44 years of illegal military occupation by Israel, Palestine is reaching out to the world for recognition and statehood even though their bid for statehood at the UN Security Council will surely be vetoed by Obama. Our ongoing support for this glaring example of unjust Apartheid is still the number one reason America is not trusted in the Middle East and throughout the world: Allen L Roland

Here’s the graphic evidence of Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine but this map does not show the approximately 600 roadblocks and check points in the West Bank as well as the infamous Separation Wall.

Israel's Separation Barrier, dubbed the "Apartheid Wall" or "Berlin Wall" by Palestinians, has increasingly attracted international media attention, largely due to the hard-to-ignore scale of the project. The most obvious historical parallel to the barrier is the Berlin Wall, which was 96 miles long. Israel's barrier, still under construction, is expected to reach at least 403 miles in length ( About the distance from SF to LA ) The average height of the Berlin Wall was 11.8 feet, compared with the maximum* current height of Israel's Wall ~ 25 feet.

Israel's Apartheid barrier is therefore planned to be four times as long and in places twice as high as the Berlin Wall. The World Court calls it a gross violation of international law and basic human rights ~ yet Israel is continuing to build the wall in several regions of the West Bank. Also note that The Wall encompasses more than 50 Israeli civilian settlements in the Occupied Territories, in which the majority of Israeli settlers live and which are illegal under international law ~ which notes that security exceptions in international humanitarian law cannot be invoked to justify measures that benefit unlawful civilian Israeli settlements at the expense of the occupied Palestinian population.

And then there’s Israel’s Palestinian concentration camp, Gaza ~ note the Bombed out Gaza street with Israeli surveillance tower in background

The Gaza Strip lies on the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The Strip borders Egypt on the southwest and Israel on the south, east and north. It is about 25 miles long, and between 4 to 7.5 miles wide, with a total area of 140 square miles. The territory takes its name from Gaza, its main city.

Ellen Cantarow confirms in AlterNet, that Gaza is a Concentration Camp ~ “Gaza is an immense concentration camp ~ 1.5 million people squeezed into 140 square miles hemmed in on all sides by 25-foot-high walls separated by a vast expanse of bulldozed earth. The 2005 "pull-out" left Gaza still controlled by Israel from air and sea, its entries and exits prisonlike mazes electronically controlled and under constant surveillance. Bombing it, assaulting it with tanks and Uzis, is like shooting animals in a pen. The claptrap about "pinpoint" accuracy and "avoiding civilians" is a lie so flagrant, so transparent, that any child ~ certainly any Gaza child ~ could grasp it ...”

“There have been eight military assaults on Gaza since 2004; blockades started in 2005, and then a siege of medieval proportions in 2006, collective punishment for Gazans' having elected the wrong party for Israel and its U.S. patron….By December 2008, Richard Falk, special reporter on the Occupied Territories for the United Nations, reported an overall Gaza malnutrition rate of 75 percent, a childhood anemia rate of 46 percent and a devastated infrastructure. (For more, see Richard Falk's "Understanding the Gaza Catastrophe.")”

“The latest war -- called Operation Cast Lead ~ is the "holocaust" promised by Israel's Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai in 2008 when he said Israel would create a ‘shoa’ if Qassem rockets kept dropping on Israeli towns like Sderot.

Shoa, Hebrew for holocaust, is a serious word denoting the extermination of an entire people. Vilnai embarrassed the Israeli government, and no official has used the term since…. The Israeli human rights organization B'tselem reported 900 Palestinians killed, with more than 4,200 injured. The Israeli toll: three civilians and seven soldiers killed, more than 82 civilians and 61 soldiers injured. As for Israeli civilians killed by rockets, the Israel Project lists 25 dead during the past seven years…. “

“Operation Cast Lead is one of the great war crimes of our era. It was planned six to 18 months in advance, according to journalist Jonathan Cook. The war design "required directing artillery fire and air strikes at civilian neighborhoods from which rockets were fired ~ despite being a violation of international law. Legal advisers, Barak noted, were seeking ways to avoid such prohibitions, presumably in the hope the international community would turn a blind eye."

So to President-elect Barack Obama in his silence; to our senators and representatives who obediently parrot American Israel Public Affairs Committee's ( AIPAC) lines, forgiving the occupier and blaming the occupied, I'd address European Parliament member Luisa Morgantini's closing words in her open letter to European leaders:

"Israel has a right to exist as a normal state, a state for its citizens, along the 1967 borders, much wider than those of the partition plan passed by the United Nations in 1947. But I would have liked to hear your outrage and your humanity, and to hear you shouting for the pain of so many deaths and so much destruction, for such arrogance, for so much inhumanity, for so many violations of international and humanitarian law … "My God, what a terrible world we live in!" See full report http://www.alternet.org/audits/120197

Here’s the Amnesty International 2011 Annual report for Israel and the Occupied Territories (OPT) ~ note Life expectancy and Infant mortality rates.

Head of state: Shimon Peres
Head of government: Benjamin Netanyahu
Death penalty: abolitionist for ordinary crimes
Population: 7.3 million (Israel); 4.4 million (OPT)
Life expectancy: 80.3 years (Israel) vs. 72.9 years (OPT)
Under - 5 mortality (m/f): 6/5 per 1,000 (Israel) vs. 23/18 per 1,000 (OPT)

Around 6,000 Palestinians remain in Israeli prisons, many after unfair military trials. Israeli conscientious objectors to military service continued to be imprisoned. http://www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/annual-report-israel-and-the-occupied-palestinian-territories-2011#.TnVymSwwq_k.email

This week we are all Palestinians demanding freedom and statehood ~ but as Palestine pushes for statehood, Israel finds itself increasingly isolated and rightfully condemned by its Middle East neighbors. Turkey Prime Minister Recep Erdogan is an excellent example ~ Erdogan recently said in a Sept. 13 speech to the Arab League that Israel must "pay a price for its aggression and crimes" and that supporting Palestinian statehood was "not a choice but an obligation." Israel, he said, is "the West's spoiled child."
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2093351,00.html#ixzz1YPqKf0qf

Here are five practical reasons why the US should support the Palestinian bid and not exercise its veto at the UN ~ besides the obvious moral reason ( courtesy of Resa Aslan, LA Times ) See article ~ http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/289-134/7484-yes-to-palestine

1. Negotiations have failed.

2. The current Likud-led Israeli government is unlikely to ever agree to a sovereign Palestinian state.

3. President Obama has utterly failed to advance the Middle East peace process.

4. Contrary to popular belief, it is not political suicide to defy the will of Israel.

5. The Palestinians are doing almost exactly what Israelis did 60 years ago. “In 1948, after the UN voted for the partition of Palestine, debate among the world powers about how to divide the land dragged on and violence between Jews and Arabs grew worse. The Jewish Agency simply pre-empted negotiations and unilaterally declared the state of Israel; the United States immediately recognized it, and the UN accepted Israeli sovereignty the following year.”

Regarding the current Palestinian statehood bid; Tony (political whore) Blair is acting ‘like an Israeli diplomat' and has earned the full fury of Palestinian leaders after he was accused of blatant pro-Israel bias for his role in attempting to derail their bid for statehood at the UN. See report ~ http://tgr.ph/nwxRcM

In summary, are we not committing the same moral crimes in illegally occupied Iraq and Afghanistan as the Israelis are doing in Palestine ~ forgiving the occupier and blaming the occupied for the continuing bloodshed and civilian deaths. We all have blood on our hands in the Middle East and granting statehood to Palestine would be an important step toward restoring our severely damaged international credibility, moral integrity and self respect as well as bringing the world closer to peace.

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/this-week-we-are-all-palestinians.html

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com )

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net