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purplearth blog Ranting on the state of the world, and pondering ways to make it better. Site Menublog Home purplearth Home Transportation Liberation Media podcasts Whirling Rainbow A Different Reality youtube channel Travel Memoirs Europe 2001 Contact Post navigation ← Older posts Gaza – Stop the Bleeding Posted on February 26, 2024 by ObbieZ On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched an attack on Israel from Gaza. With unspeakable and nightmarish brutality they killed roughly 1,200 people, including women and children. The government of Israel responded with a massive and indiscriminate bombing campaign. Hospitals, water treatment plants, apartment complexes and other civilian infrastructure in Gaza have all become rubble. At this writing, the Palestinian death toll approaches 30,000 (mostly women and children); and over a million people face a humanitarian catastrophe in Rafah. Here in the USA, these events have driven such a deep rift into coalitions of Progressive Democrats that it seems they were designed to do so. Those sympathetic to the Palestinians see Israel as a colonial state that expelled their recent ancestors from their homes and took their land. They call out the desecration of holy places, and see Israel’s dehumanization of Palestinians as genocide. Those sympathetic to Israel remember the Holocaust of the mid-twentieth century, leading to the establishment of the nation of Israel as a safe homeland for Jewish people. Horrible memories are triggered when that nation is attacked, and they feel that Israel is surrounded by nations who are determined to exterminate them just as the Nazis did. At a fundamental level, both sides are right. This presents a challenge for President Biden and other world leaders. Both sides have legitimate humanitarian and security concerns, and it’s difficult to satisfy one side without inflaming the other. But in many ways, both sides are wrong. Each camp is dominated by extremists who are preying on fear of the other” to promote a campaign of demonization and annihilation. So anti-Semitism is whipped up on one side, and Islamophobia on the other. There are voices in Israel calling for the elimination” of the Palestinian people. There are voices in the Palestinian territories (and elsewhere in the Arab world) calling for the elimination” of the state of Israel. There are voices on each side calling for control of all land, from the river to the sea.” These voices must be rejected and marginalized. It’s time for cooler heads to prevail. Ordinary Palestinian families in Gaza are not Hamas. Ordinary Israeli families are not Likud extremists. Most people on both sides want to get along and to peacefully go on with their lives. They are fed up with the fringe elements among them who sabotage reconciliation. What side am I on? I’m on the side of the young Israelis celebrating at a rave party. I’m on the side of the little Palestinian girl trapped in a car, pleading to be rescued. I’m on the side of all good-hearted people in the region who wish to accommodate each other and live peacefully as neighbors. The shooting, bombing and bleeding must stop; and all hostages and prisoners must be allowed to return to their families. Israel has a right to exist, but it must abandon its illegal occupation and settlements, and return to its pre-1967 borders. Palestine also has a right to exist, and to have a secure homeland it can call its own. People of good will on both sides must resume work on such a two-state solution. Finally, American support for war crimes must not be tolerated. Israel may be a US ally, but unless/until the Netanyahu regime behaves in a civilized manner, the US checkbook must be closed. Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) Posted in Politics , Religion | 1 Comment High Water in La Crosse – 2023 Mississippi River Flood Posted on April 27, 2023 by ObbieZ Every once in a while, there are massive piles of snow in the Great North Woods that melt quickly enough to raise the river levels downstream. Watersheds from the Dakotas, through Minnesota to northern Wisconsin all send their water through La Crosse and we get a big flood every 10-20 years. This year was one of those years. The normal” river level in La Crosse is 6 feet. (Zero” is 626 feet above sea level.) Flood stage is at 12 feet, and the highest level recorded was just under 19 feet in 1965. Yesterday the gauge nudged 16 feet, the third-highest level in history (highest since 2001). An image of A Simpler Time” during dryer times. A popular photo subject at the riverside is the sculpture called A Simpler Time” , portraying a boy, girl and a dog waving to river boats. I’m including an image of that artwork from dryer times to illustrate the normal” level of the river. The river gauge at Riverside Park reads 16.0… ten feet above normal, and four feet above flood stage. A panorama of the La Crosse riverfront during the 2023 flood. Drivers like to park along the riverside to eat lunch, but that road is closed today. The eagle sculpture at the foot of State Street in La Crosse… surrounded by water. A scene in Riverside Park around the artwork A Simpler Time.” The characters represented in the sculpture A Simpler Time” stand in the flood waters of Riverside Park. During the 2023 flood, most of the best parts of Riverside Park were left to the ducks. There were very few dry places to sit in La Crosse’s Riverside Park during the 2023 flood. Rozie found a relatively dry place to sit while waiting for her spouse to finish photographing the flood. Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) Posted in Climate , Cool stuff | Leave a comment Good Copy” – Zendik Farm TV Coverage Posted on April 18, 2023 by ObbieZ Most new visitors to this site come for this post on my experiences at Zendik Farm, an intentional community of artists and assorted craftspeople I was part of from 1978 until 1991. The farm presented itself as a living laboratory for a way of living based on a feeling of reverence for the Earth. Part of our strategy was to get journalists’ attention by being good copy”. So when we arrived in the San Diego area, local TV crews saw us as good copy and took turns doing stories on our unusual lifestyle. Meanwhile, my family was a bit apprehensive about my living situation. Knowing that they watched a lot of TV news, I assembled our recent TV coverage onto a VHS tape and mailed it to them. (That’s how it was done in the late 1980’s.) They wrote back that it relieved a lot of their concerns. On a recent visit to my family, I found that tape. 35 years greatly exceeds the life expectancy of a home VHS tape, so the picture quality is marginal and there are a lot of glitches. But it effectively documents where I was living and the cause I was pursuing during a significant period of my life. Even though Zendik Farm disbanded in 2013, it continues to attract interest. So in an effort to preserve the historical record, I posted the videos to YouTube and you can view them here… Read on → Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) Posted in Activism , Stories | 2 Comments Let’s Nationalize the Railroads Posted on March 4, 2023 by ObbieZ Our highways are not owned by trucking companies. Our skies are not owned by the airlines. These public assets are part of The Commons,” and are managed by officials accountable to We The People. Why should railroads be any different? Why should private corporations control these vital corridors, often in violation of the public interest? When corporate bosses demand that decrepit trains keep moving, private rail inspectors end up sacrificing public safety at the altar of profit....