Perspectives

"Marc Parent is one person who should never have been a child protective worker. In his widely acclaimed book, "Turning Stones" Parent portrays the Emergency Children's Services in New York as an operation that tolerates outlaw switchblade knife toting cowboys, including Parent himself.

Because Child Protective Services (CPS) is a political issue that depends on the political process for budgeting and priorities, and because CPS is subject to being used as a political football and is also subject to intense media oversight and pressure it is necessary for CPS workers themselves to speak up and stand against the tide, if need be, on behalf of their clients, the children."

"The Soviet Union, even at its mightiest, never had the firepower and military might that the U.S. now possesses. And yet the U.S. is struggling to maintain security of its own forces in the tiny nation of Iraq, after years and years of disarming and weakening of the Iraqi military and population!"

"Like the surreal Oslo Agreement, the Geneva Accords seem to be oblivious to the unequal nature of the ‘conflict’."

"Today, two thousand years later, Bethlehem like much of Palestine, continues to be home to thousands of refugees. Ringed by settlements for Jews only, walled off and separated, Bethlehem today is virtually cut off from the rest of Palestine: choked by the settlements that surround her."

"Globalization’s negative impact in the region as elsewhere includes volatility of capital flows, rampant consumerism, environmental impacts, and death of infant industries. There is also a cost to labor that is losing rights because of the new system of global production relying on temporary jobs."

"...belief in being better than others is quite convenient since, in their minds, it justifies their historical and current dehumanization and sacrifice of others. Almost certainly this is the basis for much hate that plagues the Jews (and their supporters)."

"The underlying narrative, that the current Intifada was a reaction to Arafat's misrule, and thus launched in order to divert attention from it, has belatedly found favor with Israeli media commentators, and since been echoed widely in post-9/11 diagnoses of Arab "inabilities to cope" with "globalization" and "modernity". But under the tutelage of institutions such as the World Bank, the Palestinians did indeed try to globalize during Oslo, and in this precedent lies the revealing tale of globalizing imperatives transmitted through a local reality of occupation."

"About 50 stouthearted protesters rallied at the York County, PA prison and also at a distribution plant owned by the Caterpillar Corporation."