Survival or Armageddon?

President Bush’s speech in Israel during his recent visit there to celebrate the country’s 60th anniversary criticized Senator Obama for willing to “appease” terrorists. His speech was criticized in America for being partisan because as a sitting president he is expected to stay out of the electoral fray. Bush’s speech and visit was also criticized by the Palestinians for even taking place. Stories of Bush’s visit, like many of the stories about Israel’s 60th Anniversary celebrations, were followed by stories of the Palestinian Nakba, the Palestinian word for catastrophe. Palestinians use the term for what they describe as the cataclysm that befell them with the rebirth of the state of Israel in 1948. The political spin of who is right, wrong and to blame for the state of Israel has to be put aside and both sides must sincerely try to survive the next 60 years as friendly sovereign neighbors. The alternative is Armageddon.

The simple facts are: The history of Jews running a political state has not been good. The last two times it did so, first under King Solomon, Jews ended up in exile in Babylon and the Jewish Commonwealth of the Second Temple period was conquered by the Romans who scattered the Jews and renamed the area Palestine. Zionism may actually be the most successful national liberation movement of the 20th-century. Today there are 5.4 million Jews in Israel, 1.3 million Christian and Muslim Arabs and an additional 3.4 million more Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza. While Israel’s short term threat is Iran, a greater long term danger is that it becomes overwhelmed by Arabs. It is estimated by 2020 Jews will only make up 47% of the population between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Israel has welcomed Jews from all over the world, including those evicted from Muslim and Arab countries because of their religion. Jewish refugees from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and all other Arab countries, whose families lived there for centuries, have been quietly absorbed by Israel without any claims of compensation or demands for the right to return. Together they built an economy that produced a gross national product of $150 billion in 2007. The Palestinians can do the same.

Palestinians are successful business people, merchants and politicians in the countries they have settled in. Antonio Saca, the president of El Salvador, is one of 100,000 Salvadorians of Palestinian origin. There are an estimated 10 million Palestinians worldwide. Those living in Arab countries cannot become citizens. Most of them are conflict-weary and simply want a passport and a secure place to call home.

Sixty years ago, the Palestinians refused partition and ended up stateless. If rejecting partition was a mistake then, it is a bigger one now that Israel’s population has increased eightfold. Palestinians deserve a better future. But they can help themselves by putting history behind them and coming to terms, as the Israelis already have, with the obvious. A peaceful future is possible only with two states, not just one. The alternative is Armageddon.

Destructive Religious Divide and Political Pastors

Crisscrossing America by plane, train and car during the spring 2008 democratic primary season, reading, listening and watching the multi-million dollar bitter implosive democratic primary campaigns of Senators Clinton and Obama, I couldn’t help exchanging views about it with fellow travelers. It became clear to me after these constructive discussions that America is ready for a change ─ not just in the White House ─ but the role of religion in politics.

The Clinton-Obama political bloodbath is reminiscent of the Democratic Party bloodletting of 1968 in Chicago that I witnessed first hand as a photographer. A badly divided Democratic Party will put Senator McCain in the White House with a foreign policy that will continue to make religion a cornerstone and will make the world shudder even more as it, like the Democratic Party, is further ripped asunder.

America can no longer continue to disregard and disrespect the Founding Fathers admonition and wish to separate church from state. If it does, it will become what the Founding Fathers feared and wanted to avoid ─ a country that is divided and destroyed by religious extremists. When 69 percent of Americans disapprove of the performance of America’s religious Bush, the highest disapproval rating for a president that Gallup has ever recorded, one does have to question the role of religion in American politics today.

America’s religious Founding Fathers were explicit and clear that there is no room for religion in politics for the reasons highlighted and crystallized during the primary season by Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr. and Pastor John Hagee. The ranting of Reverend Wright Jr. is well known. Lesser known are those of Pastor Hagee, the San Antonio televangelist who has endorsed Senator John McCain, who has offended Roman Catholics and others. Pastor Hagee, called the Catholic Church, among other things, “the great whore” and “a false cult system.” He also offended many with his 2006 statement to National Public Radio that New Orleans had suffered “the judgment of God” because of its “level of sin.”

America is a sinner if it allows religion to continue playing a central divisive role in its domestic and foreign policy, a sinner whose pain and suffering will only get worse at both the economic and geopolitical altars of capitalism.

Gassed Out

Driving in California, from Los Angeles to Sebastopol in Sonoma County and back in April 2008 after my protest horseback ride against high oil prices in Los Angeles, to attend book signings and make speeches on the reasons for the high price of oil, I stopped at several truck stops, diners and country cafes to get gas and personally gas up.

The conversations and concerns of locals at all stops was the same ─ the high cost of gasoline, food, health care, education and hardships of single parenting ─ the basics of American life. Driving through John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath Central Valley by vineyards and wine tasting rooms with the American flag proudly fluttering in the wind over the fertile land and irrigated fields with rolling hills of different shades of green grass, with hues of brown, I couldn’t help think of the beauty of America that was being corrupted by the hundreds of ugly graffiti covered empty rail cars idly parked on the silent rails snaking through the lush valleys, that like America, are waiting for an engine to move forward.

The silent landscape with motionless crane like oil derricks in San Aldo, was periodically disturbed by the occasional derrick huffing and puffing to pump the crude America so desperately needs to bring down the rising gasoline prices at the pump. Gasoline prices rose by more than 20 cents a gallon in the last two weeks of April. Truckers protested the rising fuel prices in Washington as politicians made more empty promises on how to lower gasoline prices, so I decided to share some personal tips on how to minimize the cost of gasoline and how I maximize my bang for the buck at the pump.

Only buy or fill up a car or truck in the early morning when the ground temperature is still cold because all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground. The colder the ground the more dense the gasoline. When it gets warmer gasoline expands. So buying in the afternoon or in the evening, a gallon is not exactly a gallon. In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and the temperature of the gasoline, diesel, ethanol and other petroleum products plays an important role. A one degree rise in temperature is a big deal but gas stations do not have temperature compensation at the pumps.

When filling up do not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to a fast mode. The trigger has three stages: low, middle, and high. In slow mode gas is pumped on low speed, thereby minimizing the vapors that are created while pumping. All hoses at the pump have a vapor return. When pumping on the fast rate, some of the liquid that goes to the tank becomes vapor. Those vapors are sucked up and back into the underground storage tank so one gets less value for their money.

One of the most important tips is to fill up when the gas tank is HALF FULL. The reason for this is, the more gas there is in the tank the less air occupies its empty space and makes room for more gas. Gasoline, like gassed politicians campaign promises, evaporates faster than people imagine.