Two weeks from today, President-elect Barack Obama will be installed as our nation's 44th president. He has been brought to office promising "change" in a spirit of transformation in a broken culture. After eight years of malfeasant government, including U.S.-sponsored war and occupation, a rapidly-growing class divide, the destruction of New Orleans and the Gulf region, hundreds of thousands of people thrown in prison, coddling and deregulating of banks and multinationals, and other social and political maladies, there are many reasons for hope.

Friday's New York Times featured an important article about the continuing effects of violence on military veterans. The piece, "A Focus on Violence by Returning G.I.'s," adds to a growing body of evidence that many people who are trained to kill in the armed forces bring that experience back to their civilian lives.

Recent years have brought numerous stories about this connection, such as several stories that appeared in the news (including a series in the Times) last year about concerns that high levels of post-traumatic stress syndrome for Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans was an influence on dozens of homicide cases as well as many suicides and attempts at such.

The news and images we are receiving from Gaza and southern Israel are horrific. Once again, violence has trumped nonviolence; missiles have shot down cease-fires; civilians including children are killed without compunction. I have been to Gaza twice, during four trips to Israel and the Palestinian territories in the past dozen years, and known it to be not only one of the most densely populated places on earth -- a tiny piece of land with some 1.5 million people stuffed into its borders -- but also a land of such intense poverty that its state of perpetual oppression by the Israeli state spawns even deeper hatred and violent responses in turn.

As the Judeo-Christian religious seasons of Hanukkah and Christmas approach, many organizations around the U.S. are working to send messages of love and support to members of the armed forces who are far away, engaged in the wars that their countries have sent them to fight. It is good that our loved ones are supported in this way. We don't necessarily think, however, of taking time at the holidays to send messages of support to young people who under arrest for taking a courageous stand against participating in such aggression.

Today's news offers deeply disturbing additional coverage of the fall-out from the Bernard Madoff scandal. The investor, who is under arrest for defrauding companies and individuals of at least an estimated $50 billion, managed the assets of numerous philanthropic groups. In stunning announcements made yesterday, at least three of these foundations will have to close -- affecting potential hundreds of nonprofit organizations who rely on the income from those charitable gifts.

Friends…Neighbors….Community

Join us at the Fellowship of Reconciliation for a

Solstice Celebration

Great music, food, conversation, and community.

Sunday, December 21st,  1:00-5:00 p.m.     

At FOR's "Shadowcliff" headquarters

521 North Broadway, Nyack NY

Food will be Potluck- please bring a dish to share

(Appetizers or Desserts)
Beverages will be provided…alcohol and smoke free

Children always welcome
To RSVP and more info call 845-358-4601 ext. 35

I tend to lump Sweden in with all of those "peaceful" countries -- you know, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Norway, New Zealand, etc.! -- so it was with great surprise that I received word a few weeks ago from a Swedish friend, Martin Smedjeback, that the country was deeply involved in the sale and shipment of armaments.

I met Martin last year when he visited the United States for several weeks, taking a sabbatical from his position as nonviolence coordinator for the Swedish FOR, and we traveled together to the U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta. He's a wonderful person, and I was impressed with his creative energy around peacemaking -- he was learning new tactics for nonviolent resistance and engagement by spending time with Christian Peacemaker Teams and other peace and justice groups around our own country.

In the past few weeks, the Fellowship of Reconciliation has received a steady stream of concerning news from Colombia about the targeting of "peace communities," nongovernmental organizations, human rights workers, labor organizers, and other groups and individuals. Yesterday, Secretary of State nominee Hillary Clinton spoke with the conservative president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, to lay the groundwork for a dialogue during the new Obama administration. Given the fact that President-elect Obama spoke out against human rights abuses in Colombia during one of the presidential debates with Sen. McCain, we can hope that will lead to strong pressures on the Uribe government to crack down on these abuses.

Tomorrow, December 10th, is the 60th anniversary observance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, published by the United Nations shortly after the international body's founding. There are many problems with the U.N. -- the power imbalance in the structure, the lack of accountability, its limited enforcement mechanisms, and more -- but this is not one of them. As the U.N. web site states, the declaration is a "living document" that is as relevant today as it was in 1948, in the wake of World War 2.

FOR Iran Program Director Leila Zand (left) is interviewed by an Iranian journalist at Yousef-Abad Synagogue in Tehran.

More reports have come in today from the Fellowship of Reconciliation's 8th peace delegation to Iran. Jacob R., a young Jewish activist from the U.S. Pacific Northwest, has posted three reflections on a blog he is maintaining.

Before traveling to Iran, Jacob had expressed his commitment to building ties across political and religious lines, noting that he has traveled three times to Palestine and Israel to help connect Israeli Jews with Palestinians living in the West Bank. This formed a foundation for his interest in visiting Iran, and learning about the historic relationships between Muslim and Jewish communities in that land. What follows is an excerpt from his most recent set of written reflections: