The past is never really past - until it's faced and forgiven

This coming Sunday, that rabidly anti-Israeli paper, the New York Times Review of Books, reviews Joe Sacco's "Footnotes in Gaza," a comic book format account of two Israeli massacres in Gaza back in 1956. A couple of points stand out for me.

One of them was Moshe Dayan's advice in a speech six months before to be "tough and harsh" because the Palestinians in Gaza saw across the border that the Israelis were building their own homes in the villages that they had been robbed of - a perfect example of Eric Hoffer's observation that we hate people because we've done them wrong. Which suggests that the way to get over hatred is to start by acknowledging whatever wrong we've done to them and quit doing it.

Another point made in the review is that the world forgot what happened because lots else was happening in the Suez war. And then what the review doesn't mention is the further distraction with the Soviet invasion of Hungary at the same time. So the world paid no attention to these 500 or so men and boys coldly and methodically massacred in Khan Younis and Rafah as the Germans had done on a larger scale to the Jews in Babi Yar 15 years before.

It turns out, though, that what the world forgot matters anyway. The little boys who survived didn't forget, and the Israelis who got away with it and found themselves free to continue in this Nazi spirit with no consequences really didn't forget either. As Ecclesiastes puts it, "Because sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the hearts of men are wholly set in them to do evil." It's hard to imagine a better way to corrupt people absolutely than to give them assurance of impunity for the evil that they do, and so doing the evildoer such a favor is a pretty horrible crime to commit against him - an instance of the saying, "A flattering tongue works ruin."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/27/books/review/Cockburn-t.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

Christmas music

Keeping kosher for Christmas

Israeli arms merchant Rafael's Bollywood video. Heartwarming!

Two great old men died this week

Sunday the 20th saw the deaths of two remarkable old men - Lester Rodney, and Grand Ayatollah Hosain Ali Montazeri.

Lester Rodney was born in 1911 and was the sports editor of the Communist newspaper, the Daily Worker, from 1936 to 1956. He and the paper campaigned against the exclusion of black players from Major League Baseball for a good 10 years, when nobody else wanted to say anything about it, especially the mainstream papers. He left the Communist party when he couldn't stand its failure to deal with Stalin after Krushchev's denunciation of his crimes at the 20th Party Congress in 1956.

Grand Ayatollah Hosain Ali Montazeri was second in line after Khomeini after the Iranian revolution of 1979. When the regime began killing and torturing large numbers of people in 1988, Montazeri protested in letters to Khomeini, and eventually broke with him publicly. People wondered why he didn't just keep quiet until Khomeini's death, and then make things right when he became Supreme Leader. He responded that his conscience wouldn't let him sleep at night being aware of the injustices and human rights abuses that he would have to pretend not to know of. He followed Jesus in not bowing down to falsehood in order to obtain the kingdom. He was 87 years old at his death. Hundreds of thousands of people came to his funeral in Qom and observed it in other Iranian cities this week, even though the police have often been beating them up.

I'm not a Communist or a Shi'a theologian, but in these men I recognize quality, people better than myself. They're good for me, teaching me humility and calling me to better than I am, in a small way just as God does. Why do we so seldom get that from Christians?

Peace and division

I got a call this morning from my friend who was being assured by a family member that she would be defeated because there was disagreement in her family, and "a house divided will fall." The remedy of Job's friend was that mom was supposed to exercise authority over her boys to make them do what she thought best. And that man-made unity made by human will is supposed to stand!

Of course the same Jesus who said that about the devil's kingdom if it were actually fighting against itself also said, "Don't think I came to bring peace. I came to bring division - in one house father against son and against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."

The unity that God looks for is not established by us. It comes from above (Psalm 133), like every perfect and good gift (James 4). And it doesn't happen until we stop trying to enforce our own order and unity and permit ourselves to be subjected to the order and unity of the truth. That's the long way around, but it's the only way around. Like Jesus hanging stark naked on the cross, we'll look like public spectacles while we wait for it to be done right by our God. Tough indeed to go there. But that is the only path to resurrection. And we can't explain it any more than Jesus could win any arguments with his tormentors there on the cross, except in the conscience of one thief.

Afterwords, as the earth quaked and and the sky grew dark, as the graves were opened, as the veil in the temple was torn - now things were different. In his death according to God's will, Jesus won some arguments he wasn't going to win otherwise, including the one that really matters - against death.

We're not going to get there through our zeal and determination, or by applying anybody's rules, including Bible rules. God has to take us to school to become like him. There are some great classes there that nobody signs up for. It has to be court-ordered, which is how we find out that there is a Court in heaven that rules (Daniel 4).

So Jesus says, for instance, not to resist him who is evil, but he didn't forget the proverb that reads that those that keep the law strive against the wicked. The scribes and Pharisees felt pretty resisted, didn't they?

What is this all about then? Well, for sure it means at least that our response is never to be to what someone says or does, but to how God wants to handle it. We're not to resist the wicked but to stop being wicked ourselves, instead listening to the God of truth and following him in the situation. That way those that hate us can help us to learn obedience by giving us some practice.

Well, how does that look? Sometimes God wants to let himself be pushed around and be weak, so to follow him means to go there with him. Sometimes God wants to push back, so then we need to go there too. And all the time, we need to learn from what God does with us how to deal with others. It's fine to be tough with others if we're up for God being tough with us when we act the same way - and sometimes that's just how it has to be - but if that whoopass isn't what we prescribe for ourselves then how can we prescribe it for another?

Veterans Day - a word of warning

By Neal Gabler
Boston Globe, October 13, 2009

THE HOARIEST and most oft-repeated cliche in American politics may be that America is the greatest country in the world. Every politician, Democrat and Republican, seems duty bound to pander to this idea of American exceptionalism, and woe unto him who hints otherwise. This country is "the last, best hope of mankind," or the "shining city on the hill," or the "great social experiment." As if this weren’t enough, Jimmy Carter upped the fawning ante 30 years ago by uttering arguably the most damning words in modern American politics. He called for a "government as good as the American people," thus taking national greatness and investing it in each and every one of us.

Carter was speaking when Watergate was fresh, and government had been disgraced, but still. The fact of the matter is that whenever anything really significant has been accomplished by our government, it is precisely because it was better than the American people.

Think of World War II, America’s entrance into which was strenuously resisted by the populace until Franklin Roosevelt carefully laid the groundwork and Pearl Harbor made it inevitable. Think of civil rights, which Lyndon Johnson pressed despite widescale opposition, and not just in the South. Even then it took more than 100 years. Or think of the current health care debate in which Americans seem to desire some sort of reform, just not a reform that would significantly help people in dire need, while the Obama administration is pushing to provide that assistance. In the end, government has inspired Americans far more than Americans have inspired their government. They are too busy boasting.

There is nothing wrong with self-satisfaction or national pride. But the incessant trumpeting of our national superiority to every other country in the world is more than just off-putting and insulting. It is infantile, like the vaunting of a schoolyard bully that his Dad is better than your Dad. It is wrong. And it might be dangerous both to ourselves and to the rest of the world.

Consider what it means. By what standard is one nation any greater than any other nation? Yes, the United States has vast material resources - we rank eighth in gross domestic product per capita - but we also have, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the "highest inequality and poverty rate" in the world, outside of Mexico and Turkey, and things are getting worse. Nothing to boast of there.

Yes, we have a relatively high median income, but our standard of living as measured by the Human Development Index of the United Nations ranks us only 15th in the world, behind, among others, Norway, France, Canada, and Australia. Are they better than we are? Even our home ownership rate trails that of the citizens of Canada, Belgium, Spain, Norway, and even Portugal.

Yes, the United States has the best system of higher education in the world, but, according to an Educational Policy Institute report, we rank 13th in the affordability of that education, and we are much less successful with lower education - 11th in the percentage of the 25 to 34 population with a high school diploma and 22d in science education. And though Americans love to crow about the "best health care" in the world, the fact is that according to the World Health Organization Index, we actually rank 37th in the quality of our health care. And we are still the only industrialized country in the world without a national health care system.

Even when one considers anecdotal evidence - "If this isn’t the greatest country then why do so many people want to come here?" - the case isn’t particularly persuasive. Mexicans cross the border to the United States for economic opportunity. Turks go to Germany, Indians and Pakistanis to Great Britain, Arabs to France. This isn’t a sign of our special greatness, just a sign that desperate people seek a more powerful economy for their betterment.

The point of all this isn’t that America doesn’t have a lot to be proud of. It does. The point is that just about every country has a lot to be proud of, and America has no more right to assume it is the greatest nation in the world than does France, Switzerland, China, or Russia.

None of this would make much difference if the self-congratulation was just harmless bragging. But there are consequences. A country that believes it is the greatest in the world is also less likely to be constrained by that world. One could argue that the Iraq war was a direct result of a sense of national infallibility. So was our willingness to torture, our reluctance to admit our mistakes in Afghanistan, our culpability in the global recession, and our foot-dragging on global warming. Such a nation is also less likely to introspect or to strive for true greatness because it believes its greatness has already arrived.

There is something bizarre about a country whose leaders have constantly to toady to their constituents and in which any criticism is tantamount to a lack of patriotism, but that describes America today. Every politician feels compelled to ape Jimmy Carter’s old words to the point where our alleged greatness has also become our national mantra.

It seems eons ago when Bobby Kennedy, a politician who didn’t like to stroke even his own supporters, actually scolded a rally for booing Lyndon Johnson because, Kennedy said, Johnson couldn’t have done what he did in Vietnam if he didn’t have the American people, including Kennedy’s audience, as his facilitators.

We aren’t going to hear that sort of honesty from political leaders any more because the American people are too thin-skinned and arrogant to tolerate it. Arrogance in an individual is unbecoming. It is no more becoming for a nation. The Greeks understood that the gods punished mortals for their hubris - for feeling that they were godlike. They knew that overweening pride preceded a fall. One suspects that nations are no more immune to punishment than individuals. A nation that brooks no criticism, a nation that feels it is always better than any other, a nation that has to be endlessly flattered and won’t face the truth, a nation whose people think they possess some special moral exemption and wisdom, a nation without humility is a nation spoiling for calamity.

We’ve been living in a fool’s paradise. The result may be a government that is as good as the American people, which is something that should concern everyone.

/Neal Gabler is the author, most recently, of "Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination."

http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=4611

Board meeting

I went to the Board meeting with Bill Zeman and read Jeff Morris's letter accusing me of sexually harassing CVUSD female staff. People were pretty shocked and some found it outrageous, including at least three of the Board members. To my amazement, they really were unaware of this caper.

Fred Youngblood put on the agenda for next time to repeal the action of May 2007 putting the lawyers under the control of the Superintendent. It's not at all clear that Mr. Joseph knew about it either. It may have been cooked up by some of his subordinates, who got the lawyer to send it without even letting him know. If so, that's pretty audacious, even insubordinate.

Thoughts on the flood (Sharon Astyk)

Sharon Astyk is a Jewish farmer in upstate New York, and a writer. She has some thoughts on Noah, in light of our own present situation, that I think are worth thinking about:

http://sharonastyk.com/2009/10/23/the-drowned-world-parshat-noah-and-the-face-of-g-d/

I don't know much about how to respond to these things, but one lesson is clear. The only way to save ourselves is not to go about to save ourselves, which always involves stepping on the faces of other people, but like Noah to be the sort of people that God will want to save, however foolish that may seem. In the practical details, I have a lot to learn about this, and so do you. As we see the wheels coming off in our world, we get reminded that we'd better sign up for class and attend.

I don't hold at all with those that figure that the end of the world is upon us, or that Jesus will return any moment. Those who think so generally claim to believe the Bible, but the Bible makes it clear that that won't be right away, just as Paul wrote in his own day in 2 Thessalonians Chapter 2. However, short of the end of the world, the collapse of a civilization is a pretty stern test, as was the end of the western Roman Empire in the 5th century, and that's a problem that we do pretty clearly face today. It's a good time for anyone to seek God for a set of hearing ears, seeing eyes, and a hearing heart.

Whatever advantage we think we're getting in the world, whatever problems we thing we're solving, if we are not learning to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God, we can expect it to peel off at the most inconvenient moment, and we'll wish we hadn't skipped this prep work.

The people in Noah's day that had no use for Noah and his ark were solving their problems and protecting themselves just fine - filling the earth with violence in the process - but their solutions didn't work out too well for them when the flood came. When Jesus told us that it would be like the days of Noah before his return, he was inviting us to lay these things to heart.

Sacramento trip

Several parents from around San Diego invited me to join them in a trip to Sacramento to speak to the Advisory Commission on Special Education on the 22nd, set up in obedience to 20 USC Section 1412 to advise the governor, the legislature, and the state board of education on Special Education issues. We all had something to say, and I was surprised at how well received we were. It's only an advisory commission, but that is by no means worthless. People do listen.

My statement to the Advisory Commission, with a clause redacted for legal reasons:

I’m Peter Attwood, father of Stephen Attwood. Stephen has had no schooling at all since March 2007, pushing three years.

Stephen has Asperger’s Syndrome, like me. At the end of 2006 he was in desperate trouble in school, severely depressed and traumatized by his school experience.Chino Valley Unified School District and I both did much to make him that way. Come January, he refused to go to school at all and was put on Home & Hospital at the direction of his psychologist. That too quickly went bad. Like most parents I knew nothing about Special Education law. CVUSD took advantage of my ignorance and didn’t offer to assess him, even though it was obvious to all that he was emotionally disturbed and that that was keeping him from being able to handle school.

To avoid SE, CVUSD decided to have him drugged – putting him in a happy daze would make him want to do his school work. After they nagged about that for a month, they arranged an assessment by a school nurse in our apartment on false pretenses. They had him dragged away on a 5150 hold for three days. CVUSD’s paperwork shows that they knew he was not suicidal. They failed to get him on drugs, but they managed to make him unable ever to go to school.

CDE found that CVUSD had obeyed Child Find (S-0521-07/08), because they did offer to assess him over two months AFTER these events. And their offer to assess in June was in the same way prior notice for the assessment that took place two months before, in March (S-0663-07/08).

We recently settled our due process case, and I hoped that we would achieve a cold peace, if not friendship. CVUSD promptly retaliated against my long defense of my son by having their lawyer send me a letter accusing me of sexually harassing their employees at school board meetings. That’s their habit: they made a similar – and debunked - accusation against a Board member three years ago to get rid of him, and against two school principals before that whom they wanted to get rid of. Because of Stephen’s extreme fear of the District, especially in light of the implacable hostility he sees in their latest behavior, Stephen is unable to attend his current placement, . . ., so he can get no school at least until January.

These three years have taught us that the bottom line for the entire education establishment is that there must be impunity for educational professionals that abuse kids – as we saw last May in the House Education and Labor Committee hearing. They may be coaxed, admonished, or even subjected to empty threats, but on no account should bad behavior actually be punished. They have taught Stephen little else these three years, but they have made him know like his name that nobody in the education bureaucracy really cares. The foxes are watching the henhouse, and Stephen clearly sees the feathers sticking out of their mouths.

Now if I run a red light, even a right turn slow and go, that’s $500. But lawless conduct by an educational bureaucrat that trashes a kid’s life for years and maybe for keeps – who can imagine that abuser having to pay even a $500 ticket?

I’ve seen, in Beirut, how traffic is when violators face no consequences. That’s why it’s safer to drive in California than in Beirut, but not safer here to go to school.

American education, the most cost-ineffective in the world, looks like traffic in the streets of Beirut for the same reason – wrongdoers face no consequences. Since there is no money, it’s actually good news that money is really not our problem.

Here’s the problem. The whole industry, including its regulators, is devoted to mutual back-scratching and enabling incompetence. If someone’s no good, they give him a wonderful recommendation so he’ll be hired elsewhere, like pedophile priests hopping from parish to parish. Who does not know this?

CDE won’t investigate and enforce if it’s too embarrassing - in other words, if the abuse is too shocking. And when CDE whitewashes, there’s no appeal, so where’s the accountability? OAH is hopelessly biased against parents, and how many have the resources to fight a big DP anyway? The legislature passes some good law, but where are its teeth?

If this is what they do to my kid, with everyone’s approval, how many other kids are being ground up out there? And how many of those wind up being your guests in prison at $45K per year?

Some years ago, California changed the whole nation with the Lanterman Act. I can’t say I expect it or even hope for it, but what if California actually brought accountability to the education brass – to start handing out traffic tickets, at least, to the willful or reckless abusers of our kids and to those that cover up for them?

District retaliation, post-agreement

I supposed that CVUSD would want to stop the slap and tickle and settle into a cold peace, but they surprised me. They decided to accuse me of sexually harassing their employees at public school board meetings. The letter from their lawyer follows:

Re: Inappropriate Behavior

Dear Mr. Attwood:

You may recall that our firm is counsel for the Chino Valley Unified School District.

I wanted to bring to your attention observations by a number of staff who view your conduct toward female staff of the Chino Valley Unified School District as inappropriate. We are bringing this information to your attention in the hopes of making you aware of the behavior, with the anticipation that the behavior will stop.

Although I will not identify the staff who have observed your behavior and those who are separately the target of your behavior, but I would like to outline several instances of inappropriate conduct:

1. At a school board meeting, you attempted on multiple occasions to look down the blouse of the woman you were sitting next to.

2. At another school board meeting, you positioned yourself immediately next to a female staffer in her personal space. Security moved you away. Once security left the presence of the female staffer, you again returned and moved into that staff person's personal space.

3. At another school function, you were seated in the audience and cupped your hands like "binoculars" and stared at a female staff member for two hours.

4. At another school meeting, you proceeded to stare off and on during the meeting at a female staff member's chest. The female staff member reported feeling very uncomfortable during the meeting because of your conduct.

5. Multiple staff employees have observed you looking at a particular staff member in a sexually inappropriate way on multiple occasions.

These behaviors are being brought to your attention in the event that you were unaware of your conduct. Please be advised that this letter is only being directed to you. The District has an obligation to protect its employees from sexual harassment. The behavior cited above does constitute sexual harassment, since it is on going and pervasive. The goal of this letter is to bring this conduct to your attention in an effort to have it stopped.

We have not identified the female staff members or any witnesses to your behavior, because we do not want these individuals to be the subject of retaliation. As indicated, we would like this behavior to stop. Assuming the behavior stops, this issue will go no further.

If you would like to discuss this matter further, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Very truly yours,

STUTZ ARTIANO SHINOFF & HOLTZ

Jeffery A. Morris

This is not the time and place to reply in detail, but if they knew more about certain things, such as my eyesight, they would have devised these lies somewhat differently. Certainly I have been aware of the danger of their pulling this particular stunt, since on several other occasions in past years they have rounded up a bunch of false witnesses to bring accusations of sexual harassment against people they want to get rid of, including a board member cleared in the subsequent district investigation. I certainly get the impression they don't want me to attend and speak at board meetings, and I'm clearly expected to remember that they might retaliate against me for advocating for my son in IEP meetings too.

It's certainly not easy to stop behavior that you're not doing in the first place, except by not showing up at all. If they assailed my son by falsely accusing him of being suicidal, it's no marvel that they should charge me falsely with sexual harassment when they have a record of doing so to others. Stephen laughed out loud when I read him this letter, but he took the point that they are as dangerous to him as ever.

As I said, I hoped that when we settled they would want to stop the slap and tickle and move on, but how wrong I was!