Thank You Rosa

Thank you Rosa, your life has inspired so many and your death has been equally inspiring. The first WOMAN to be put in the Capital Rotunda. An amazing achievment considering what got you there was the inability to be seen as an equal because of your darky pigmintation. Thank you for reminding us all still in the struggle for people's dignity that we should never stop dreaming and never stop fighting for that dream



INSPIRATIONAL

Girls = Evil ???

I got this from one of my female friends so I feel more ok posting it. That and its funny

Message from John Cleese to the citizens of the USA ...

I do not endorse all that he says here.. Having played Rugby and American Football clearyly we are much tougher... But this is is exactly what they think of us...

Message from John Cleese to the citizens of the USA ...

In light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (excepting Kansas, which she does not fancy).

Your new prime minister, Tony Blair, will appoint a governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect: You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up aluminium, and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'favour' and 'neighbour'. Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters, and the suffix -ize will be replaced by the suffix -ise.

Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels (look up vocabulary). Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as US English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of -ize.

You will relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen". July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you're not grown up enough to handle a gun. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and this is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline) - roughly $6/US gallon. Get used to it.

You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.

The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. American brands will be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.

Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie MacDowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.

You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies).

Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).

Thank you for your co-operation.

"She sat down in order that we all might stand up, and the walls of segregation came down."

Info Here:
Yahoo News
CNN
New York Times

What I was inspired to write:

"She sat down in order that we all might stand up, and the walls of segregation came down."

Rosa Parks Dies

Today I stand without you I would not

3 stops a man whose complexion matched my grandfathers
Made Blake asked you to get up.
3 others with my other Grandfathers complexion did just that
But you refused

"No I'm tired of being treated like a second-class citizen."
Police arrived, but could not break this quiet elderly lady who had enough
"I didn't think I should have to. I paid my fare like everybody else."

Amassed beneath those unassuming dimensions
A strength to fuel a movement
While others had fallen, you refused

4 days later, $14 fine
An unknown Rev. led a charge; "we shall overcome"
Boycott, started with your quiet resilience
Ended 381 days later as the walls of injustice came crumbling down

Today I stand
The duty to exist
The duty to stand equally as a citizen
The duty to think to challenge to persevere
The duty to call out injustice
The duty to fight
Because the day I refuse to consent could be that day

"They didn't know what to expect
And they certainly didn't expect someone that quiet.
She sought no limelight
You'd never hear her talking about her own civil rights activities."

"She has saint-like qualities."

Today you have passed as you walked the earth
Quietly
A blare reverberating throughout the world
To announce your saintly presence at the gates of heaven

Things that have surprised me about London

After that little political Hiatus, I was thinking about what has really surprised me about London.

1. Everything closes by 3pm. By 3pm shops close, grocery stores are being emptied and finding some coffee is near impossible. By 1am, life as ceased to exisit aside from a few late night clubs. I miss the 24 hour unadulterated capitalism, where 3am is never to late to demand a good cup of coffee.

2. Picadilly Circus really isn't that big. I mean its a tiny little circle with a little life around it. Whne you see the areal pictures it always looks huge and beautiful. But up close it is tiny and pretty unimpressive. Maybe I am more American than I think.

3. I can't understand anyone. I know we all speak English, but most days I need an English to English dictionary.

4. "The Dodgy" parts of London really aren't that dodgy. First off you can get to the "Dodgy parts" just by turing a corner from an otherwise nice neighborhood, and then it still looks and feels the same, but aparently no longer safe. I am more used to the familial signs of the ghetto. Windows open with music blaring, graffitti from the 1980's, buildings all look the exact same with the uneventful government architecture, various pieces of couches and auto parts strewn about.

5. Everyone walks really fast like they have some where to be. I refuse to believe that somehow Londoners have more important things to do then people in America. And I know they can't be in a hurry because nothing runs on time and no one works that much (something as an overworked American I appreciate). So I can't figure out why I keep getting run over by people walking at a near running pace. Its ridiculous, I mean my parents are New Yorkers I can normally keep up with the best of them, but in this city I feel like I need motorized help just to stop from being run over.

I am sure I can think of more, but that is just a few of the things that have been bothering me.

Why Is Everyone Stealing MyBest Ideas - More on Possible Middle East Peace

Why is everyone stealing my ideas. This is exactly what I have said about South Africa and the experience with Non-violence. I really do hope Pretoria will step in:

October 20, 2005

Op-Ed Contributor

Pretoria Calling

By DENNIS ROSS

Washington

THE Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, has a credibility problem that his visit with President Bush is unlikely to help: how to convince his people that violence against Israel will not lead to an independent Palestinian state. While Mr. Abbas must certainly show that he can deliver for his people, he needs help in discrediting Hamas and other terrorist groups. And one of the best sources for that help is not in Washington, Brussels or Riyadh, but in Pretoria. Indeed, South Africa's experience can provide valuable inspiration for the culture of peace that Mr. Abbas says he hopes to create.

Yasir Arafat loved to equate the Palestinian struggle for statehood with the struggle of South Africans against apartheid, but his was always a false analogy. In South Africa, less than 15 percent of the population controlled all the power and wealth and subjected the other 85 percent to a degrading, inhuman and segregated existence. For the oppressed majority, the answer was not one state for non-whites and one for whites; rather, the goal was justice and majority rule.

Compare that to the Palestinian movement for self-determination. Arabs today remain a minority in the area that encompasses Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. To be sure, given demographic trends, Jews will become a minority in that area within this decade, but even by 2050, Arabs would outnumber Jews by only 60 percent to 40 percent.

The international community supports a two-state solution because it recognizes that there are two national movements with populations in rough equality. That was never the case in South Africa. And while Palestinians have endured occupation and a denial of their rights, their commitment to violent struggle has sadly perpetuated this condition and stymied their national aspirations.

Why raise the South African comparison today? Because Palestinians respect the South African model but are not learning from it. For all of Arafat's comparisons to the African National Congress, it did not have an ideology of violence: although the congress attacked the military and economic underpinnings of apartheid, it forswore attacks on civilians and generally expelled those members who violated that policy.

In contrast, no Palestine Liberation Organization member has ever been drummed out for violence against Israelis. As the price of joining the Oslo process, Arafat renounced terrorism, but he never delegitimized it; he never called those who carried out terrorist acts against Israeli enemies of the Palestinian cause.

I don't mean to idealize the African National Congress. But the Palestinians urgently need a credible and effective role model for assuming responsibility and rejecting violence. First, they must act in Gaza to prove that they can govern themselves and fulfill their responsibilities, including their security responsibilities. Second, they now have a leader, Mr. Abbas, who rejects violence but lacks Arafat's revolutionary authority and is being challenged by Hamas, which claims that Gaza vindicates the resort to terrorism. Arab leaders - who could have an impact - remain nowhere to be found.

The South Africans are far less reticent, especially in challenging those who call for violence, and they are likely to be taken seriously by the Palestinian public. I know from my conversations with members of South Africa's government in Pretoria this summer that they are interested in playing a role - an interest that they have signaled in several venues, including meetings with Palestinian and Israeli officials. Now is perhaps the time for a visit to Ramallah by Thabo Mbeki, South Africa's president, to share his country's experience and its lessons for the Palestinians.

No one can question whether South Africans struggled. No one can doubt the moral authority of their words. And no one can more forcefully offer a successful and nonviolent pathway to national liberation and a government of basic decency.

Dennis Ross, envoy to the Middle East in the Clinton administration, is counselor of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the author of "The Missing Peace."

War is a State of Mind--a talk given in Berlin by Israeli peace activist Uri Avneri

Couldn't find this on their website Tikkun. But got this in an email. It was so good I needed to put it on the blog

War is a State of Mind--a talk given in Berlin by Israeli peace activist Uri Avneri

Some years ago I talked with a young Israeli writer. I was struck by the fact that in spite of being very successful and acclaimed by the critics, and that at a relatively early age, she somehow exuded an air of insecurity.

When I asked her about it, she broke down. "I never told this to anybody. My whole childhood was hell. I did not know that both my parents had been in Auschwitz. They never talked about it. I only knew that there was a terrible secret hanging over my family, a secret so awful that I was forbidden even to ask about it. I lived in constant fear, under a constant threat. I never had a feeling of security."

This is violence - not physical violence, but violence nonetheless. Many Israeli children have experienced it, even when the State of Israel became more and more powerful, and Security - with a capital S - became its fetish.

We, Israelis and Palestinians, are living in a permanent war. It has lasted now for more than 120 years. A fifth generation of Israelis and Palestinians has been born into the war, like their parents and teachers. Their whole mental outlook has been shaped by the war from earliest childhood. Every day of their lives, violence has dominated the daily news.

In many ways, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is unique. Putting a complex historical process in its simplest terms, it goes like this:

120 years ago, many Jews in Europe realized that the growing nationalism of the various peoples, almost always accompanied by a virulent anti-Semitism, was leading towards a catastrophe. They decided to become a nation themselves and set up a state for the Jews. They chose Palestine, the ancient homeland of their people, as the place to realize their dream. Their slogan was: "A country without people for a people without a country."

But Palestine was not empty. The people living there objected, of course, to another people coming from nowhere and claiming their country.

The historian Isaac Deutscher has described the conflict in this way: A person lives on an upper floor of a building that has caught fire. To save himself, he jumps from the window and lands on a passerby below, injuring him grievously. Between the two, a mortal enmity ensues. Who is in the right?

Every war creates fear, hatred, distrust, prejudices, demonization. All the more so a war lasting for generations. Each of the two peoples has created a narrative of their own. Between the two narratives - the Israeli and the Palestinian - there is not the slightest resemblance. What an Israeli child and a Palestinian child learn about the conflict from their earliest years - at home, in kindergarten, in school, from the media - is totally different.



Let's take an Israeli child. Even if his parents or grandparents were not Holocaust survivors, he learns that Jews have been persecuted throughout history - indeed, he learns that history is nothing but an endless story of persecution, inquisition and pogroms, leading to the terrible Shoah.

I once read the reports of a class of Israeli schoolchildren, who had been asked to write down their conclusions after visiting Auschwitz. About a quarter of them said: My conclusion is that after what the Germans have done to us, we must treat minorities and foreigners better than anyone else. But three quarters said: After what the Germans have done to us, our highest duty is to safeguard the existence of the Jewish people, by every possible means, without any limitations.

This feeling of being the eternal victim still persists, even after we have become a powerful nation in the State of Israel. It is deeply imbedded in our consciousness.

Already in kindergarten, and then every year in school, a Jewish child in Israel experiences an annual series of national and religious holidays (there is no real difference between the two) commemorating events in which Jews were victims and had to fight for their lives:
- Hannuka, commemorating the fight of the Maccabees against the Greek oppressors
- Purim, the victory over the Persians who tried to exterminate all the Jews
- Passover, the flight of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt
- Remembrance day, devoted to the Israeli soldiers killed in our many wars against the Arabs
- Independence Day, our desperate fight for survival in the 1948 war in which our state was founded;
- Holocaust Day
- The 9th of the month Av, when the Jewish temple was twice destroyed, once by the Babylonians and five centuries later by the Romans
- Jerusalem Day, when we conquered the Eastern part of the city, and much more, in the Six-day war.
- Only Yom Kippur is a purely religious holiday, but in our mind it irrevocably connected with the terrible war of 1973.

On each of these occasions, year after year, there are special classes explaining its meaning, imprinting its significance. The climax is the Seder on the eve of Passover, commemorating the exodus from Egypt, when in every Jewish home around the world an identical ceremony takes place. Every member of the family, from the oldest to the youngest, has a role and every sense - seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and touching - is engaged. No Jew, however secular he may be, is ever free from the memory of this hypnotizing event in his childhood, experienced in the warmth of the assembled family.

In the mind of the child, all these events become intermingled. My wife Rachel, who for many years has been a teacher of the first and second elementary school classes, says that the children do not really understand who came before whom - the Romans or the British, the Babylonians or the Arabs.

The cumulative effect of this is a world-view in which Jews at every period in every country had been threatened with annihilation and had to fight for their lives. The whole world is, always was and always will be, "against us". God - whether he exists or not - has promised us our country, and no one else has any right to it. This includes the Palestinian Arabs, who have lived there for at least 13 centuries.

With such an attitude, it is hard to make peace.



Now let's take a Palestinian child. What does he learn?

- That they belong to the Arab people, who had a glorious empire and a flourishing civilization in the Middle Ages, when Europeans were still barbarians, and who taught Europe science and brought it enlightenment.

- That the barbarian Crusaders perpetrated a horrendous bloodbath in Jerusalem and ravished Palestine, until they were driven out by the great Muslim hero, Salah-al-Din (Saladin).

- That the Palestinians were humiliated and oppressed for many centuries by rapacious foreigners, first the Turks and then the European colonialists, who brought the Zionists to Palestine in order to suppress all hope of the Arabs achieving freedom in their own countries.

- That in the great Nakba (calamity) of 1948, half the Palestinian people were driven out of their homes and country by the Zionists, and that since 1967 all the Palestinians have been vegetating either as refugees or as victims of an endless, cruel occupation.

Every Palestinian child grows up with a deep feeling of resentment and humiliation, the feeling of being the victim of a terrible injustice, able to redeem his people only by violent struggle, heroism and self-sacrifice.



How to make peace between two peoples in the grip of two contradictory, seemingly irreconcilable, narratives?

Certainly not by diplomatic maneuvers. These can ease the situation temporarily, but cannot in themselves put an end to the conflict. The history of the Oslo agreement shows that without dealing with the root causes of the conflict imbedded in the minds of the peoples, an agreement is nothing but a short-lived cease-fire.

Peace is a state of mind. The main task of peace-making is mental: to get the two peoples, and each individual, to see their own narrative in a new light, and - even more important - to understand the narrative of the other side. To internalize the fact that the two narratives are two sides of the same coin.

This is mainly an educational undertaking. As such, it is incredibly difficult, because it first has to be absorbed by the teachers, who themselves are imbued with one or the other of these world-views.

Let me tell you a little story. Rachel was teaching her class the Biblical story of how Abraham bought a plot in Hebron from Ephron, its owner, in order to bury his wife, Sarah. First Ephron offered the plot for free, and only after many entreaties named a price, 400 silver shekels, saying "What is that betwixt me and thee?" (Genesis 23.)

Rachel explained to her children that that is the way business is conducted between the Bedouin in the desert even now. It is crass to come straight out with the price, one has to offer it first as a gift. Thus the transaction becomes polite and life more civilized.

In the intermission, Rachel asked the teacher of the parallel class how she had explained the chapter to her pupils. "Simple," she answered, "I told them that this is a typical example of Arab hypocrisy. You can't believe a word they say. They offer you a gift and than demand a high price!"

For peace to become possible, you need to change a whole mentality. That is what my friends and I, in the Israeli Peace Bloc Gush Shalom, are trying to do.



Is this possible at all?

Speaking here, in the center of what used to be the capital of Prussia, I am reminded of my childhood, when I was a pupil in what was then Prussia, which was then still governed by the Social Democrats.

Once, when I was 9 years old, in pre-Hitlerite Hanover, the teacher was speaking about the statue of Hermann the Cherusker in the Teutoburger forest. "Hermann stands with his face to the arch-enemy (Erzfeind)," she said. "Children, who is the arch-enemy?" All the children answered in unison: "France! France!"

Today, after centuries of war, Germany and France are not only allies, but partners in the glorious enterprise of a united Europe.

If this could happen here, peace is possible anywhere

Why I like MTV

Why I like MTV

There are things I don't like about MTV. The commodification of the offensive, unimaginative rap music, the death of real rock n roll, and the celebritzing of the absurd.

But MTV plays an important role of communicating news and values to my and younger generations. A role it takes seriously and does better than anywhere else.

It is the only place has done anything on the genocide in Sudan. Holding 24 hour discussion to end the genocide on its stations.

It is the only place teaching the importance of condoms and other forms of protection; as you can no longer get that information in Schools. In America is i the one of the only place with any healthy discussion on sex.

MTV has taught our generation the beauty and normaility of non-heterosexual relationships. Through Pedro on the Real World, Real Life documentaries on civil unions, and even discussions of polamery, MTV has had real discussions about sexuality in America.

Its where the one campaign educated millions of young people around the world in an intelligent way about what can be done to help Africa.

I have lots of problems with MTV, and lots of complaints that it is the only game in town for this important information. But I think MTV gets a bad rap. It does lots of great things, more social responsibility then ANY OTHER channel or corporation and they could all learn from it.

taste of london so far

Britney, Elsa, Cedya (Jada)

Interracial Children

A lot of people say and many ask why interracial children often date white people. While most of my exes are white, I have always been proud of dating all sorts of people.

I think when your parents are the type of people who cherish differences and valued different upbringings and cultures, you look for that to. Most people hang out and associate with what they know and are comfortable with. Black kids sitting at the black table, Jewish kids having mostly Hillel or USY friends; the nerds sitting with the nerds, Jocks with jocks, etc. As an interracial child you look for a different type of person. I look for a person who could date me. Who value stepping out of their comfort zones and date someone different from them. I think it is natural to want to associate where you know you will be accepted and safe, so I don't judge that. But a factor in dating is someone who doesn't necessarily want that.

I was challenged the other day about being of Mixed race. I have always denied being of mixed race because I believe that it gives more to race then just a societal construct. I am black because people react to me as black, treat me as black and therefor share a history with people who have similar experiences. I did not believe I was mixed because no one treats me as this. We are all people, pigmintation is no different from eye color and thus has no real value.

But a fellow student of Malaysian and British decent made an important point about mixed race children as we have an undeniable split personality, and the reality of our racial mixture creates a different reality for us.

The point. Because my parents are mixed race, challenged social norms and thought important to go beyond their comfort zones, I to value that and want that in my life. There are other charactersitics of mixed race children. It has certainly made me rething how I view my self, and my race.


[side note the other reason I dated more white people is simply location. Rural Pennsylvania during the beginning of your dating years in HS, it is a function of the availability as well as desire.]

Friends

Characters in my play that I will never finish

Elsa
I become inspired to unknown poetic prose simply by her visual presence
The bangs that so unapologetically hang
Nephritis's hands placing them into disorganized harmony across her brow
Sometimes trying to hide behind them, comforted by their presence
But unable to disguise the beauty emitting from inside

Impatience, nerves, thinking washes over
Her eyes move off center seeing what we cannot

The places her beauty takes me are unfamiliar territory
Not to an eroticism zone
But to an unstimulated subconscious
A painter wanting to paint her in Keats-ian prose


Britney
A warmth in her voice
That can be unnerving
In how quickly comfortable
It can make you feel.

Her beauty invades from the deepest parts of her heart
Washing over her form
Creating an unexpected exquisiteness


Ceyda [Jada]
A vivaciousness
That infects the hearts of all around
A laugh that outstrips her size
A liveliness that outpaces her frame
She always brings the truest smiles to your dimples

I Love Philadelphia Eagles Fans

As this weekends game against the hated Cowboys comes, I am reminded how much I love Eagles Fans

Last Sunday I watched the amazing game at a Sports Bar in Piccadilly Circus.

There were one or two fans representing other sports teams, a good contingent of Yankees and Red Sox fans watching their final game and then like 60 Eagles fans.

People who were on vacation in London and wanted to find a place to watch the game, like a devoubt christian finds a church for sunday service. There were students from all over London, even some who could not get the game at any bars in Dublin and wanted to catch it while touring London so left Monday morning instead of Sunday Afternoon.

There they were, making the crazy English Football fans uncomfortable with our zeal. Miles away singing the Eagles fight song as if in the Stadium.

It was comforting to have those tough Philadelphia women hardened by the our working class town standing up to these wimpy Redskin and Cowboy fans.

One girl (from just across the river in NJ) but native Philadelphian smashed her jade bracelet after a bad play by a philly player. While similtaniously booing (I don't ever think I have been so attracted to someone I didn't know) the play we noticed she was bleeding profusly.

After wrapping the incredible injury in a thick bandage (that she bled through twice) and being more mad about the Eagles play then her smashed favorite braclet, she got another drink and continued screaming at the screen.

I love our fans, passionate, violently devouted, uniquely self critical and depricating, obnoxious, and loving of our fellow Eagles brethren. Can't wait until tomorrow

Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo

I had the pleasure of seeing the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the Tate Modern in London.

The trip to the Tate would have been worth the trip itself. Past St. Paul's Cathedral, over the Millenium Bridge seeing the Thames, and the London Bridge for the first time, and then the Tate next to the Shakespeare Globe Theater it was amazing.

But I was blessed to see the Frida Exhibit and although it was expensive it lived up.

What was so striking for me about Frida was how vividly realistic she could make the surreal. The detail and the way she painted the most surreal images were dealt with the detail of an architectural designs of computers.

They were striking, for me not the content, but the honesty and feeling. Through her eyes and pictures I could empathize exactly what she must have been feeling some 50 or 60 years when she painted it.

I wish I had discovered her sooner and feel stupid that for so long I knew her only as Diego Rivera's wife.

Shana Tov

Happy New Year

Today the moon revolved around the earth creating the first day of this new lunar year.

But going to Temple for the first time in London today; on a day that we are supposed to enjoy the wonder and gift of making it another year and expectation of another to come, I was greeted with the stark reality of the sadness of the world today.

They barely let me into the Synagogue. I brought a student card, the email confirming I had been put on the list by the Jewish Society here at SOAS, and my passport just in case. And yet when I approached with all this information the Guard, the 5th one I had passed in one block asked if I was there for a "school project." I am actually saddened at my response, I should have been patient and understanding, I know how strange it is when I show up to Temple, I know that we was there for my security. But I snapped that no "I am Jewish."

On this, one of the holiest days in the Jewish Calendar, services were cut short as security asked us to finish quickly and leave, they were worried about our safety.

ITS THE NEW YEAR, like any faith, ethnicity, people, we like to celebrate it with food, drinks and celebration with our fellow participants. But on this day, there would be no small talk, no mingling after services.

I am sad on Rosh Hashanah. I feel from my soul a deep desire to bring peace to the middle east. I know what you are saying, who doesn't want peace. But this year, of all years peace seems so tangible, so within the grips and equally the powers threatened by peaceful living of these oppressed Palestinian and Israeli population are also strengthening their swords to stop it.

Here I am at a school notorious for their one sided view on the conflict. But I am hopeful and transformed by it. I know the answer, I know a plan, it is so clear and so easy. It can be embraced by all parties. Non violence. THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR EITHER SIDE TO USE VIOLENCE, the only answer is one of peaceful non-violence.

Its so simple and yet its realization has shook my core. I am not and have never been a pacifist. My mother, her father proudly serve and served in this country's armed services, (well the US's not here in England) and I supported the wars they have fought in. I recognize that the failure of people to act humanistically sometimes leads to arms to face.

But this conflict has only one answer. To answer violence with equally determined non-violence.

So when I am accosted to take a stand against the Israeli "occupation" or Palestinian "aggression" I have the correct answer. There is never a justification for violence. Black people answered 300 years of violent oppression with a revolutionary answer of non-violent demonstration that is still reverberating this country. South Africans put down their arms against a well armed White minority and persevered through demonstrations and love that outstripped the pain from violence. Mandela stands as a beacon of understanding and compassion. Gandhi did not try to out kill the British. he shamed them, shamed them with the goodness of his heart and the perseverance of his soul. His inspiration taught the world of the power of brown and black brethren.

The Jewish state does not want to be an occupying state. And while it HAS to take responsibility for policies of violence and continued aggression when patience and love are the answers. Equally a determination to put down the guns and stones, to educate the sons and daughters on the universal truths of love understanding would end the occupation over night.

I believe this to be true.

This year we can have a Shana Tov, a good year where the powers at be can no longer exploit the poor around the world to violence for their own selfish ends. Where the truth that all people want the peace to raise healthy families and good communities wins out over the use of hate to gain power.

Mahatma Gandhi’s Birthday

Today on Gandhi's birthday, I really been thinking about the amazing achievement of his movement. He didn't just win the liberation of Pakistan and India from colonial rule without raising a gun. He changed the way a global power viewed colonialism and the limit to power.

We had a "Society" [club] Fair and there were more leftist groups then I had ever seen. The Communists, Trade Unionists, Socialists, Leftist groups I hadn't even heard the of the Sparticists and some group that all I could tell was for Revolution, I guess just any revolution that may come. The Liberal Democrat party was the most mainstream political group there.

All the groups espoused desire for equality, end to poverty, sexism, racism, etc etc. They all had pictures and books about Che.

I don't like Che, I don't like because he used violence and because he was completely unsuccessful at bringing any positive change for anyone. [seems a odd hero, a violent failure]

But it made me appreciate Gandhi's work even more. Here is a true man these groups should be idealizing. He never used violence and enacted real change, change that reverberates even today. And the lessons of his life are political and spiritual lessons for our lives today.

Now that is a man to idealize, that is a man to adorn on red flags, not an unsuccessful terrorist.

Happy Birthday Gandhi and thank you for the lessons you have given me.

Enrollment and Registration

When I got the blue sheet in the mail that simply said "Keep for Enrollment" I knew that it was going to be problimatic that we simply didn't enroll online. But I HAD NO IDEA.

The British they like their Ques (lines). Queing as they say is a National Sport. Well I had a very british experience.

Being that my "surname" Berg starts with a "B" I was in the first group to enroll a process stretched over a week (a sign of the horror to come I should have known)

So you start Queing around 11 when it is to begin and first you notice how long it is. You wait an hour to get to a guy who checks your enrollment information. Gives you a sheet you could have filled out online. Then you wait. and wait. An hour and half later you get to a woman who checks that information.

WHICH DIDN'T CHANGE. Then she gives you your file. So now your file is Queing while you are queing. Till you get to another PERSON WHO CHECKS, the CHECKED INFORMATION, YOU CHECKED AFTER YOU FILLED OUT AN APPLICATION.

2 hours in, you move to a que to get a reciept or invoice. NOT TO PAY, just to see what you are paying, as if you would get an invoice and be like...um nah. Then another hour to PAY.

Finally if you survive all that, a finally line to check your information again.

I HAVE NEVER SEEN SO MANY PEOPLE DO SO LITTLE. THE LEVEL OF INNEFICIENCY WAS ACTUALLY IMPRESSIVE IN HOW BAD IT WAS.

That was just to enroll. [see in America when they send you and acceptance letter and you say, I am coming, they just enroll you then, but not here, how else could they employ all those people?]

Registration is with your faculty in the school, another hour que, where you just give them your picture and they confirm the information that was confirmed three different times at enrollment.

Then another line for a student card. where another hour goes by so they can check your information and put it into a computer. A process maybe shortened if ALL THE COMPUTERS WERE JUST NETWORKED TOGETHER. But then how could they employ all those people.

In total it was 5 hours to:
Enroll
Register
Get one Student Card
One University of London Union Card
One SOAS student Union Card
Plus the Student housing Card which of course cannot be used with any of the others.

They weren't kidding when they called it a sport. By the end, I needed water and food, and I felt like I had just run a marathon