IN BRIEF: With or without annexation, permanent damage has already been done

There's plenty of good analysis on how annexation will be wrong and dangerous, along with much speculation on whether Netanyahu will or won't do it, when, and how much.

MY FOCUS: The permanent damage that's already been caused.

Trump plays with fire, and we get burned

Even if the federal courts overrule him, President Trump's immigration ban on Muslims -- and on refugees who survive the very crimes he claims to defend us against -- has already inflicted permanent damage on our strength and our spirit. Now, his words may add injury to the insult.

The stated and implicit goal of Islamic State and Al-Qaeda is to force a civilizational conflict between the West and Islam, to demonstrate to 1.6 billion Muslims that there is no place for them in the modern world or among non-believers. The vast majority will probably not accept Trump's contrived declarations, or they will take them on face value without acting on that hostility. But the promise and momentum of the post-War decades, stalled at the threshold of globalization and common cause, are now traumatically inundated with doubt and distrust. Thanks, Donald.

I need not elaborate here on the consequent undermining of our security, boosting recruitment by terrorist groups, alienating of military and economic partners, further stigmatizing Muslim Americans, reducing U.S. standing as a global leader, betraying our basic Constitutional principles. 

Bibi imposes Putin-leaning NGO restrictions

In Israel today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's carefully constructed Knesset majority passed a new law restricting NGOs that receive more than half their funding from foreign governments. Effectively, it establishes a second class for those NGOs, nearly all of which are devoted to expanding civil society and to connecting Israelis with likeminded democracy activists in Western Europe and the United States. That's right, U.S. Government-supported organizations are also included.

Not included? Dozens of right-wing, pro-settlement groups which receive funding from non-governmental foreign sources. In most cases, this unofficial funding is difficult to trace. And in many cases, those donating to the 'acceptable' NGOs are also major donors to political campaigns in the United States...invariably, Republican ones. And guess what? Netanyahu's Likud also receives significant support from those same individuals and enjoys close ties and coordination with the U.S. Republican Party; as Ambassador to the United States, Netanyahu confidant Ron Dermer has even spoken at the annual Republican strategy retreat convened by Sheldon Adelson. And Adelson is the most prominent of these donors, putting him in position to pull the strings of major politicians in both countries. And yet, no need for disclosure or special status, or Knesset speeches denouncing the right-wing groups as traitors.

Post-Sandy Hook, GOP can lead, follow, or disappear

A couple of years back, I blogged about the GOP's craven transformation of once non-partisan issues into partisan wedge issues. Gun control was number-one, followed by the environment, immigration, civil rights, and campaign finance reform. Recently, the more Congressional Republicans push their partisan buttons on basic common-sense issues, the more they lose at the voting booth and in demographic projections of party allegiance.

This is good news, not because Democrats are more deserving than Republicans, but because in the end America needs practical solutions. The unspeakable tragedy that occurred last Friday may finally pull us -- and even the Republican Party -- back from the brink of the gun lobby's stranglehold on even basic measures like uniform background checks and a general ban on assault weapons. If the GOP maintains its blanket opposition to any further gun restrictions, that will further exacerbate its own failure to relate to the majority of Americans, even many of its own supporters.

If, with President Obama's leadership on the issue, our nation can succeed on gun control, we might have enough momentum to apply people power against well-organized big money in the other areas as well. It is too late to avert widespread environmental catastrophe during the 21st century, but it is never too late to start instituting serious emission controls and other regulations and incentives to minimize the kind devastation and dislocation that scientific consensus has been predicting for years.

Either the GOP joins up, or it continues its long-term decline as a political force -- analogous to the resulting inevitability of climate change. But we must succeed in addressing these issues regardless. And either way, our children and our grandchildren will be a little less disadvantaged. In the meantime, I'm taking my kids to visit glaciers before it really is too late.

Freedom without democracy?

A new book, With Liberty and Justice for Some, argues that the system is stacked in favor of the elite, regardless of which political party runs Washington.

With only five percent of the world's population, the United States nevertheless holds nearly one-quarter of all prisoners in the entire world. And yet, nearly no one ever goes to prison in America for violating the United States Constitution or crimes against the American people. That includes everything from illegal wiretapping of thousands of U.S. citizens, to the financial meltdown that engulfed our nation just over three years ago. In fact, our financial agencies are controlled by executives of Goldman Sachs and a few other major banking firms, regardless of which party controls Washington.

I've been blogging this past year about how Egypt will remain under the same military rule, regardless of whether the brave demonstrators in Cairo succeeded in getting Mubarak removed as the President (though I had hoped otherwise). Russia will continue to be run by the same security apparatus and moneyed classes as before, but this past month's popular protests will force them to scale back some of their control and possibly change one or both faces at the top. Whatever it takes...

In the United States, a previous generation mounted full-scale protests against military adventurism in Vietnam and racism at home, and truly changed the face of our land. New laws were enacted, freedoms were expanded, and public welfare enhanced for millions. 

But do we have effective and functional democracy today?

Good 'ol boys at the top

The latest news about Dominique Strauss-Kahn's alleged sexual assault of a New York hotel maid is typically shocking, and typically it will go down as another isolated incident. There will be no connection between what has now become a criminal matter and what goes on in capitals and international centers every single day. Strauss-Kahn, as it happens, is head of the International Monetary Fund and WAS the leading prospect to challenge French President Nicolas Sarkozy in next year's election. (He might still have a future in Italian politics...)

Strauss-Kahn's previous affair with a subordinate did not cost him either job, though Paul Wolfowitz had a similar complication that did force him to leave as head of the World Bank (especially when he awkwardly pulled strings on her behalf). Israel's former President Moshe Katsav is currently awaiting his appeal, having been convicted of raping and assaulting women right in his office. NGOs (non-governmental organizations) are also susceptible to this institutional culture.

When the men at the top have no sense of propriety, and their behavior goes unreported (as it so often does), public campaigns against sexual harassment and even sex trafficking ring hollow. What impact can they possibly have, and what hope does a female lawyer or economist have of getting the same consideration as her male colleagues?

One Partisan Nation, Divisible

Democrats and Republicans will always have plenty to fight over (or better, "respectfully disagree"). In the quest for votes, and especially in our increasingly static political landscape dominated by safe districts, politicians from both sides find it pays off to find new issues to label as "ours" or "theirs". This is too bad, because these are issues that deserve responsible treatment by our political leaders, issues that could determine our physical survival and moral worth, issues that do not intrinsically belong to one side or the other.

GUNS. Many Democrats as well as Republicans support gun rights, and the National Rifle Association gives generously on both sides of the aisle. Sensible gun control was not always a partisan issue, and it just makes sense. Members of Congress are now being advised to surround themselves with police protection and metal detectors, which would be less necessary if high-volume ammunition clips weren't freely available. The rate of gun deaths in America is staggering on its own, even without comparison to the low numbers in other industrialized countries. And yet, "gun rights" are still seen as a Republican cause.

ENVIRONMENT. PCBs, arsenic, lead and other toxins pervade our ecosystem, and global warming is an objective fact -- the aggregate temperature of our planet is increasing at an alarming and consistent rate, and it's impacting our climate and raising sea levels toward an eventual showdown with hundreds of millions of unlucky coastal dwellers. Teddy Roosevelt was an environmentalist, so this should have been easy.

CIVIL RIGHTS. Republicans extol the virtues of individualism, they're "the Party of Lincoln," and yet the last 60 years have been a partisan showdown over African-American voting rights, the right to abortion, the right of gays to serve in the military. What happened to "all men are created equal" and government not interfering in people's lives? Perhaps the combination of racist southern "Dixie-crats" dumping the Democratic Party for the GOP, and the Democratic President Lyndon Johnson pushing so hard on voting rights and Great Society programs, was too polarizing and too beneficial to Republican candidates to resist (and Democrats locked in the African-American vote for two generations).