Wait, wait , What's your hurry!

"Procrastination is the thief of time" said the bard, and urged all to abjure it. But that is harder to do than it looks..

"Avoid procrastination" is slogan so elegant in its simplicity. But the thing that neither the dictionary nor fake procrastinators understand is that for a real procrastinator, procrastination isn't optional—it's something they don't know how to not do.

To understand why procrastinators procrastinate so much, let's start by understanding a procrastinator's brain.

It seems the Rational Decision-Maker in the procrastinator's brain is coexisting with a pet—the Instant Gratification Monkey.This would be fine—cute, even—if the Rational Decision-Maker knew the first thing about how to own a monkey. But unfortunately, it wasn't a part of his training and he's left completely helpless as the monkey makes it impossible for him to do his job.

The fact is, the Instant Gratification Monkey is the last creature who should be in charge of decisions—he thinks only about the present, ignoring lessons from the past and disregarding the future altogether, and he concerns himself entirely with maximizing the ease and pleasure of the current moment. He doesn't understand the Rational Decision-Maker any better than the Rational Decision-Maker understands him—why would we continue doing this jog, he thinks, when we could stop, which would feel better. Why would we practice that instrument when it's not fun? Why would we ever use a computer for work when the internet is sitting right there waiting to be played with? He thinks humans are insane.

In the monkey world, he's got it all figured out—if you eat when you're hungry, sleep when you're tired, and don't do anything difficult, you're a pretty successful monkey. The problem for the procrastinator is that he happens to live in the human world, making the Instant Gratification Monkey a highly unqualified navigator. Meanwhile, the Rational Decision-Maker, who was trained to make rational decisions, not to deal with competition over the controls, doesn't know how to put up an effective fight—he just feels worse and worse about himself the more he fails and the more the suffering procrastinator whose head he's in berates him.

It's a mess. And with the monkey in charge, the procrastinator finds himself spending a lot of time in a place called the Dark Playground.

The Dark Playground is a place every procrastinator knows well. It's a place where leisure activities happen at times when leisure activities are not supposed to be happening. The fun you have in the Dark Playground isn't actually fun because it's completely unearned and the air is filled with guilt, anxiety, self-hatred, and dread. Sometimes the Rational Decision-Maker puts his foot down and refuses to let you even have unfun leisure time, and since the Instant Gratification Monkey sure as hell isn't gonna let you work, you find yourself in a bizarre purgatory of weird activities where everyone losess. And the poor Rational Decision-Maker just mopes, trying to figure out how he let the human he's supposed to be in charge of end up here again. Given this predicament, how does the procrastinator ever manage to accomplish anything?

As it turns out, there's one thing that scares the shit out of the Instant Gratification Monkey: The Panic Monster is dormant most of the time, but he suddenly wakes up when a deadline gets too close or when there's danger of public embarrassment, a career disaster, or some other scary consequence.
The Instant Gratification Monkey, normally unshakable, is terrified of the Panic Monster. How else could you explain the same person who can't write a paper's introductory sentence over a two-week span suddenly having the ability to stay up all night, fighting exhaustion, and write eight pages? Why else would an extraordinarily lazy person begin a rigorous workout routine other than a Panic Monster freakout about becoming less attractive? And these are the lucky procrastinators—there are some who don't even respond to the Panic Monster, and in the most desperate moments they end up running up the tree with the monkey, entering a state of self-annihilating shutdown.

Of course, this is no way to live. Even for the procrastinator who does manage to eventually get things done and remain a competent member of society, something has to change. Here are the main reasons why:

1) It's unpleasant. Far too much of the procrastinator's precious time is spent toiling in the Dark Playground, time that could have been spent enjoying satisfying, well-earned leisure if things had been done on a more logical schedule. And panic isn't fun for anyone.

2) The procrastinator ultimately sells himself short. He ends up underachieving and fails to reach his potential, which eats away at the him over time and fills him with regret and self-loathing.

3) The Have-To-Dos may happen, but not the Want-To-Dos. Even if the procrastinator is in the type of career where the Panic Monster is regularly present and he's able to be fulfilled at work, the other things in life that are important to him—getting in shape, cooking elaborate meals, learning to play the guitar, writing a book, reading, or even making a bold career switch—never happen because the Panic Monster doesn't usually get involved with those things. Undertakings like those expand our experiences, make our lives richer, and bring us a lot of happiness

So what should we do? Ah! There's the rub! For nobody has figured out the path to break the cycle of procrastination!.

When friends call......

Some  time ago I had written about how difficult most of us find to console friends in times of tragedy. But now my views are leavened with having been on the receiving end too.
Last month tables were turned and it was I who lay in a hospital bed.

 So what can I tell you about how to console friends in their times of travail.

The first, do call or write. The very fact that you are in their minds and prayers is very reassuring

When you write recall incidents in the past of happier times together and urge them to get well soon for happier times to come

It is true that when you call, emotions often take over despite your best efforts. But you need to control the urge to commiserate or cry. Rather focus on the serious cheerful. For example once a friend called and said " I want you to get well soon so that I can fight with you about Obama and the state of the country" or another "Keep it up Anil! It's always great to be alive, (and to have you with us) no matter how difficult it is to stay involved!!" "All I can say I am so happy to see this to know you are on your way to getting back to your old life! Hope you will be out of hospital/re-hab real soon now. Lots of love and good wishes from all of us,"

All these messages and calls are a reminder that you are still loved and missed and that you have a life, a trifle altered, still awaiting you ahead.

Your words will provide "Comfort on difficult days, smiles when sadness intrudes, rainbows to follow the clouds, laughter to kiss your lips, sunsets to warm your heart, hugs when spirits sag, beauty for your eyes to see, friendships to brighten your being, faith so that you can believe, confidence for when you doubt, courage to know yourself, patience to accept the truth,  and Love to complete your life"

And finally , if you can, simply sit by their side - quietly , gently- simply sit. No words are necessary, your very presence says it all. That will be the most soul satisfying moments of them all.

Going home

Going home

It had been a month. And boy,what a month it had been! From a near unanimous prognosis of a few days left on the death bed to walking home after thirty days of pain! The very thought of going back to some semblance of my former life cheered me immensely.

And it had all started with a swelling of my feet-an indicator of edema increase. Mine had, it seems, gone beyond limits. So I was rushed to the hospital and then followed some of the most painful days of my life. But now I was going home and that was all that mattered...

But in a sense you cannot really go home- the world has changed,your environment is no longer the same, and the people you knew before you went away too have pursued their own lives. And don't forget you have changed too- after all the turmoil has to have left a mark on you too.

The key is to recognize the changes and to learn to adjust to ..one of the hardest tasks was wearing shoes and getting into the car, walking everywhere but with a walker, ensuring that all the medicines were at hand, and that oxygen boost was available, reorganizing the house with a special bed, shower chair, and bedside toilet, and getting a wheelchair for those long journeys to cinemas and restaurants ( one can dream cant one?). Nothing was a great hardship but only if one planned and organized for it. Life could be managed, I found,if one put ones mind to it.them. I certainly found that in my case. I found myself speaking much less and thinking and reflecting more..appreciating the little kindnesses and courtesies..curiosity about my surroundings slowly reemerging...writing albeit slowly becoming once again a joy.

Yes it seemed I had almost touched the pearly gates but had been to my great surprise denied admission at least at this time....so now it was upto me to make the best of the extension of life granted me.

What had I learnt from this journey...

The great love and sacrifice of people around me,principally my family. Never would I take them or their love for granted.The affection of my friends, the kindness of strangers and the wonders of science - the dialyser was one of those life saving machines. I learnt patience and becoming careful in my words, even a trifle timid. I learnt the joy of watching the daily sunrise, hearing the conversations of those around me, and watching my grandson dance!

 

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The hidden obama

The hidden side of Obama

Joseph Dubois

The White House is not supposed to be a place for brokenness. Sheer, shattered, brokenness. But that’s what we experienced on the weekend of December 14, 2012.

I was sitting at my desk around midday on Friday the 14th when I saw the images flash on CNN: A school. A gunman. Children fleeing, crying.

It’s sad that we’ve grown so accustomed to these types of scenes that my first thought was I hope there are no deaths, just injuries. I thought, Maybe it’s your run-of-the-mill scare.

And then the news from Sandy Hook Elementary School, a small school in the tiny hamlet of Newtown, Connecticut, began pouring in. The public details were horrific enough: Twenty children murdered. Six staff. Parents searching a gymnasium for signs of their kids.

But the private facts we received in the White House from the FBI were even worse.

How the gunman treated the children like criminals, lining them up to shoot them down. How so many bullets penetrated them that many were left unrecognizable. How the killer went from one classroom to another and would have gone farther if his rifle would’ve let him.

That news began a weekend of prayer and numbness, which I awoke from on Saturday only to receive the word that the president would like me to accompany him to Newtown. He wanted to meet with the families of the victims and then offer words of comfort to the country at an interfaith memorial service.

I left early to help the advance team—the hardworking folks who handle logistics for every event—set things up, and I arrived at the local high school where the meetings and memorial service would take place. We prepared seven or eight classrooms for the families of the slain children and teachers, two or three families to a classroom, placing water and tissues and snacks in each one. Honestly, we didn’t know how to prepare; it was the best we could think of.

The families came in and gathered together, room by room. Many struggled to offer a weak smile when we whispered, “The president will be here soon.” A few were visibly angry—so understandable that it barely needs to be said—and were looking for someone, anyone, to blame. Mostly they sat in silence.

I went downstairs to greet President Obama when he arrived, and I provided an overview of the situation. “Two families per classroom . . . The first is . . . and their child was . . . The second is . . . and their child was . . . We’ll tell you the rest as you go.”

The president took a deep breath and steeled himself, and went into the first classroom. And what happened next I’ll never forget.

Person after person received an engulfing hug from our commander in chief. He’d say, “Tell me about your son. . . . Tell me about your daughter,” and then hold pictures of the lost beloved as their parents described favorite foods, television shows, and the sound of their laughter. For the younger siblings of those who had passed away—many of them two, three, or four years old, too young to understand it all—the president would grab them and toss them, laughing, up into the air, and then hand them a box of White House M&M’s, which were always kept close at hand. In each room, I saw his eyes water, but he did not break.

And then the entire scene would repeat—for hours. Over and over and over again, through well over a hundred relatives of the fallen, each one equally broken, wrecked by the loss. After each classroom, we would go back into those fluorescent hallways and walk through the names of the coming families, and then the president would dive back in, like a soldier returning to a tour of duty in a worthy but wearing war. We spent what felt like a lifetime in those classrooms, and every single person received the same tender treatment. The same hugs. The same looks, directly in their eyes. The same sincere offer of support and prayer.

The staff did the preparation work, but the comfort and healing were all on President Obama. I remember worrying about the toll it was taking on him. And of course, even a president’s comfort was woefully inadequate for these families in the face of this particularly unspeakable loss. But it became some small measure of love, on a weekend when evil reigned.

And the funny thing is—President Obama has never spoken about these meetings. Yes, he addressed the shooting in Newtown and gun violence in general in a subsequent speech, but he did not speak of those private gatherings. In fact, he was nearly silent on Air Force One as we rode back to Washington, and has said very little about his time with these families since. It must have been one of the defining moments of his presidency, quiet hours in solemn classrooms, extending as much healing as was in his power to extend. But he kept it to himself—never seeking to teach a lesson based on those mournful conversations, or opening them up to public view.

Jesus teaches us that some things—the holiest things, the most painful and important and cherished things—we are to do in secret. Not for public consumption and display, but as acts of service to others, and worship to God. For then, “your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you,” perhaps not now, but certainly in eternity. We learned many lessons in Newtown that day; this is one I’ve kept closely at heart.

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Falling out of love.....with obama

Falling out of love...with Obama

Lately the true believers have started seeing the stars dimming when they talk about Obama...five years of attacks by the republicans without an adequately forceful defence seems to have taken its toll.....

And as in any love affair, disenchantment starts setting in as the poetry of the campaign turns to the prose of governance. Every misstep is magnified, every error seems to be end of the world. In this period objectivity tends to get lost and people forget all that has been achieved already.

The facts are this president has delivered more sweeping, progressive change in 36 months than the previous two Democratic administrations did in 12 years. "When you look at what will last in history," historian Doris Kearns Goodwin tells Rolling Stone, "Obama has more notches on the presidential belt."

As president, he has rewritten America's social contract to make health care accessible for all citizens. He has brought 100,000 troops home from war and forged a once-unthinkable consensus around the endgame for the Bush administration's $3 trillion blunder in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has secured sweeping financial reforms that elevate the rights of consumers over Wall Street bankers and give regulators powerful new tools to prevent another collapse. And most important of all, he has achieved all of this while moving boldly to ward off another Great Depression and put the country back on a halting path to recovery.

Along the way, Obama delivered record tax cuts to the middle class and slashed nearly $200 billion in corporate welfare — reinvesting that money to make college more accessible and Medicare more solvent. He single-handedly prevented the collapse of the Big Three automakers — saving more than 1 million jobs — and brought Big Tobacco, at last, under the yoke of federal regulation. Even in the face of congressional intransigence on climate change, he has fought to constrain carbon pollution by executive fiat and to invest $200 billion in clean energy — an initiative bigger than John F. Kennedy's moonshot and one that's on track to double America's capacity to generate renewable energy by the end of Obama's first term.

On the social front, he has improved pay parity for women and hate-crime protections for gays and lesbians. He repealed the policy of "dont ask, dont tell."He has brought a measure of sanity to the drug war, reducing the sentencing disparity for crack cocaine while granting states wide latitude to experiment with marijuana laws. And he has installed two young, female justices on the Supreme Court, creating what Brinkley calls "an Obama imprint on the court for generations."

The historic progress that Obama has made is especially evident in eight key areas especially if you remember where the U.S was in 2008 before he took over: In 2008, just two years ago, the country faced a fiscal crisis and a second great depression, we were mired in two wars abroad , we were losing 750000 jobs per month,  Dow was at 6000, there were no investments in infrastructure or green technology, the American auto industry faced bankruptcy.And what has Obama managed to do in just three years:

1 | Averting a Depression: his economic team has helped prevent the collapse of the US into the second great depression and the world economy
2 | Sparking Recovery: US economy has shifted from a tailspin to some measure of stabilization and some prospect of job growth and Dow stands at over 15,000
3 | Saving Detroit: GM is now the largest and most profitable car company in the world
4 | Reforming Health Care: Universal health insurance (with promised deficit reduction!) is now law of the land providing coverage to over 20 million of our fellow citizens, covering pre existing conditions, allowing students to stay on their parents plans - a goal sought by Democrats for decades.
5 | Cutting Corporate Welfare
6 | Restoring America's Reputation:Equal pay for women has been passed into law.
7 | Protecting Consumers: The race to the top in education spending has created reform in a large number of states from the bottom up,.The size of Peace Corps has been doubled, Pell grants increased substantially and a major fillip given to Volunteerism. A new Consumer protection agency has been created.
8 | Launching a Clean-Energy MoonShot:Major investments have been made in green technology laying the foundation for the future.A stimulus package has helped undergird infrastructure and will probably do more to advance non-carbon energy than anything that might have emerged from Copenhagen..

It is my hope that in time the true believers will recognize these achievements and that stars will return to their eyes once again!



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Women of nazi germany

Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields

The conventional image of women in Nazi Germany is well known. In what was a very masculine world, women generally appear either as hysterical, weeping Hitler fanatics or as hapless rape victims, reaping the Soviet whirlwind. Some readers, however – those familiar with the execrable concentration camp guards Irma Grese and Ilse Koch or perhaps with Bernhard Schlink’s novel The Reader – might recognise a third stereotype: that of the woman as perpetrator.

Hitler’s Furies, a new book by the American academic Wendy Lower, brings this latter image to a non-specialist audience. Distilling many years of research into the Holocaust, Lower focuses her account on the experiences of a dozen or so subjects – not including Grese and Koch – ranging from provincial schoolteachers and Red Cross nurses to army secretaries and SS officers’ molls. Despite coming from all regions of Germany and all walks of life, what they had in common was that they ended up in the Nazi-occupied east, where they became witnesses, accessories or even perpetrators in the Holocaust.

Lower is scrupulously fair to her subjects, providing a potted biography of each, explaining their social and political background and examining the various motives – ambition, love, a lust for adventure – that propelled them to the “killing fields”. This objectivity is admirable, particularly as most of the women swiftly conformed to Nazi norms of behaviour, at least in turning a blind eye to the suffering around them. One woman, a Red Cross nurse, organised “shopping trips” to hunt for bargains in the local Jewish ghetto, while another, a secretary, calmly typed up lists of Jews to be “liquidated”, then witnessed their subsequent deportation.

Most shocking of all are the accounts of the women who killed. One of Lower’s subjects, a secretary-turned-SS-mistress, had the “nasty habit”, as one eyewitness put it, of killing Jewish children in the ghetto, whom she would lure with the promise of sweets before shooting them in the mouth with a pistol. Lower presents another chilling example: that of an SS officer’s wife in occupied Poland who discovered a group of six Jewish children who had escaped from a death-camp transport. A mother, she took them home, fed and cared for them, then led them out into the forest and shot each one in the back of the head.

Despite these horrors, Lower’s book resists the temptation to wallow in emotive rhetoric; nor is it drily academic. She writes engagingly, wears her considerable erudition lightly and has opted to stick with a broad narrative account, comparing and contrasting but never allowing her analysis to outweigh the fundamental humanity of the stories. The book’s power lies in its restraint.

Neither can Hitler’s Furies be imagined as some sort of Woman’s Hour rereading of the Holocaust. There is no special pleading for the subjects and the gender studies aspect of the book is kept well within bounds. Indeed, in analysing the women’s progress from nurses and secretaries to accomplices and perpetrators, Lower is at times eager to emphasise that the forces that drove and shaped them were in some ways the same forces experienced by Germany’s men – the seductive appeal of Nazism, the heady lawlessness of the occupied eastern territories and the “new morality” of t Germany. It’s worth remembering here that many of those women who committed crimes could not resort to the time-worn excuse that they were “following orders”. They were not. They were merely reacting and adapting to their surroundings.

Consequently, Lower stresses that her subjects were not just marginal psychopaths; rather, they might be seen as perfect embodiments of the Nazi regime, products of the hideous, murderous times in which they lived. A gender-specific explanation is offered only tentatively: that the women simply got caught up in a heady vortex of power and anti-Semitic violence – the Ostrausch, or “intoxication of the east” – which was fuelled by their intimate relationships with the SS men around them.

In the final chapter, Lower relates the fates of her subjects after the war, detailing the efforts made – or more often not made – to bring them to justice. Of the women she has studied, only one was tried and found guilty; the others benefited from a combination of a biased judiciary, a perceived lack of evidence and entrenched cultural prejudices about female innocence. Only the German Democratic Republic, Lower argues, was rigorous in pursuing wartime female perpetrators. Elsewhere, they quite literally got away with murder.

My life in rehab

My life in rehab

A few weeks ago I found myself testing the US medical system-- again. It had been seven years since I underwent quadruple bypass surgery at the best heart center in the US. Unfortunately that experience had left me with an ejection fraction of 15% barely adequate to pump the heart. During the past seven years, three doctors had managed to skillfully redesign my life to a relative health. But now I was back again having fallen off the strict regime which had upset the chemical balance of my body.

After the hospital stay it was decided that I needed dialysis to rid my body of all the toxins that were slowly damaging my body.  You need dialysis when you develop end stage kidney failure --usually by the time you lose about 85 to 90 percent of your kidney function. When your kidneys fail, dialysis keeps your body in balance by: removing waste, salt and extra water to prevent them from building up in the body, keeping a safe level of certain chemicals in your blood, such as potassium, sodium and bicarbonate, and helping to control blood pressure.

Chronic kidney disease and GFR - glomerular filtration rate is the best test to measure your level of kidney function and determine your stage of kidney disease. Your doctor can calculate it from the results of your blood creatinine test, your age, body size and gender. The earlier kidney disease is detected, the better the chance of slowing or stopping its progression. One in 10 American adults, more than 20 million, have some level of CKD.

Actually some kinds of acute kidney failure do get better after treatment. In some cases of acute kidney failure, dialysis may only be needed for a short time until the kidneys recover. Dialysis can be done in a hospital, in a dialysis unit that is not part of a hospital, o r even at home.

I chose a rehab nursing home for the early days of my dialysis. And it was another learning experience. The dialysis machine is really a very simple machine which takes blood through one tube and returns it to your body through another. The machine itself does all the work of cleaning the blood and removing the toxins from the body. So you go in twice or thrice a week, are tied to one of these machines ,and after three hours you emerge with considerably cleaner blood. The hardest part is lying on a bed for three hours!

The collingwood facility I went to was clean, efficient and well run. There were a variety of patients there


....a CEO painfully learning to recognize what day of the week it was, A high school teacher determined to walk again, a grandmother surrounded constantly by her children and grandchildren, a lonely old man who cried at night..yes it was a varied mix of humanity...while management was mostly white, specialists were mostly Indian, daytime nurses were the local black, but night time nurses were tall strapping women from Africa- Somalia, Nigeria, Eritrea...an interesting mix indeed..

I learnt a lot....from how to walk, how to urinate lying down, getting up from comfortable sofas, and sleeping on beds surrounded by bars, being woken by a floating cast of nurses at all times of night and day and constant pricking by needles drawing blood....

But after ten days I was ready to go home!


After ten days I was ready to go home...


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It was a day in my life........

A few weeks ago I found myself testing the US medical system-- again. It had been seven years since I underwent quadruple bypass surgery at the best heart center in the US. Unfortunately that experience had left me with an ejection fraction of 15% barely adequate to pump the heart. During the past seven years, three doctors had managed to skillfully redesign my life to a relative health. But now I was back again having fallen off the strict regime which had upset the chemical balance of my body.

One of the prime culprits was a new drug called Lyrica. NowI love my doctor-he is kind, considerate and so far his judgements (I have had him now for 25 years) and advice have been sound. But....once in a while his judgement slips. Unfortunately it happened last week...He had prescribed Lyrica, a brand new drug, a month ago to alleviate my phn pain a result of a bout of shingles the prievous year. But he had not taken into account it's possible side effects! Apparently lyrica had built up in my body raising both the creatinine and bun levels beyond the danger levels. Alarmed at the new levels he now recommended a right heart  catherization and an iv drip. Except that I had become so weak as a result of lyrica, I felt that the procedure may be danger to my life. So I refused the procedure then, only to reap the fruits of my delaying and leading to the emergency trip to the hospital! 

The new hospital system-- and it's old habits. I entered the hospital and soon enough found myself engulfed with various experts.

The perils of specialization and coordination: The  tale of three experts. -- during my seven days scores of experts visited my bedside but three standout each of whom predicted my demise with different degrees of subtlety. One prognosed that the only solution to my condition was a heart transplant. But a few years earlier, John Hopkins, after a detailed assesment had declined to place me on the list because of old age of 70. Another suggested an LVD but in the present condition it was not possible. A third prognosed that dialysis was only a temporary fix --in short I should get my affairs in order ( and this in presence of my daughter who was understandably distraught). Another suggested I focus on Gita . In short all of them saw but a limited lifespan left for me....fortunately my old cardiologist was there to provide a common sense path forward.

The hospital had now a new set of gadgets:

There was a 3 lb heart monitor

There was more paperwork- more computers but less efficiency

There was a new bed which moved every few seconds- modern but uncomfortable.

Among these shiny gadgets old fashioned commode stood out in discomfort and oddity

Lessons old and new

Doctors don't know everything --As Jerome Groopman wrote on average, a physician will interrupt a patient describing her symptoms within eighteen seconds. In that short time, many doctors decide on the likely diagnosis and best treatment. Often, decisions made this way are correct, but at crucial moments they can also be wrong Ð with catastrophic consequences.

Nurses are grossly under appreciated. Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon.  ~Dag Hammarskjold . Nurses dispense comfort, compassion, and caring without even a prescription.

Your family is everything. During the entire period my family stood like a rock beside me-my daughter took leave to spend nights massaging my back, my son flew back from Vietnam to reinforce her ministrations and my wife was an ever present presence in the room. Without them it is unlikely that I would be writing this blog!

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What is the solution?

In my last blog, I tried to identify the causes of the present turmoil in the US congress and how a group of about 80 members, financed by Koch brothers and a few other millionaires, were holding the country hostage. As in any hostage situation, negotiation is unlikely to produce any result. So what do we do?

The solution in the US congress is actually quite simple and it does so if we but look at the numbers.The house has 439 members while the hostage takers have the blind allegiance of about 80 members and perhaps a few other sympathizers i.e at best they command a group of no more than 20 % of the house. The Speaker of the house has therefore a clear path to have his way. It is true that the Republicans have about 240 members but it is still three times the "suicide group" of 80. A majority for all legislation requires only 217. The speaker can decided that "enough is enough" and appeal to the democrats to provide the balance 60 votes for legislation. He would then have a majority with 220 votes on all critical votes. And even in his caucus, he would still have the loyalty of 160 members or twice the "suicide" caucus.

The question is will he have the courage to take this step? Or will he prefer to join indirectly the suicide caucus? Would he choose to go down in history as an effective speaker or as the weakest speaker in decades?

Logically his choice should be clear but this is politics...

So let us wait and see what road he choses in the next week.

Understanding the turmoil in the US congress

We have been trying to understand the turmoil in the US congress in recent weeks. This article tries to get under the hood and uncovers the 80 odd members of the "suicide caucus", where they come from and the reason for their strength as well as the forces that fund them. In brief they are mostly in the south, over 80 % white and older. The funding comes from Koch brothers under various fronts. It is a unholy mixture and needs to be exposed, and confronted as it is attacking the basic structure of the country. Read on and weep!

WHERE THE G.O.P.'S SUICIDE CAUCUS LIVES

 BY RYAN LIZZA

The geography of Congress’s so-called suicide caucus. Click to expand.

On August 21st, Congressman Mark Meadows sent a letter to John Boehner. Meadows is a former restaurant owner and Sunday-school Bible teacher from North Carolina. He’s been in Congress for eight months. Boehner, who has served in Congress for twenty-two years, is the Speaker of the House and second in the line of succession if anything happened to the President.

Meadows was not pleased with how Boehner and his fellow Republican leaders in the House were approaching the September fight over spending. The annual appropriations to fund the government were scheduled to run out on October 1st, and much of it would stop operating unless Congress passed a new law. Meadows wanted Boehner to use the threat of a government shutdown to defund Obamacare, a course Boehner had publicly ruled out.

Back home in Meadows’s congressional district, the idea was quite popular. North Carolina’s Eleventh District had been gerrymandered after the 2010 census to become the most Republican district in his state. Meadows won his election last November by fifteen 

On August 21st, Congressman Mark Meadows sent a letter to John Boehner. Meadows is a former restaurant owner and Sunday-school Bible teacher from North Carolina. He’s been in Congress for eight months. Boehner, who has served in Congress for twenty-two years, is the Speaker of the House and second in the line of succession if anything happened to the President.

Meadows was not pleased with how Boehner and his fellow Republican leaders in the House were approaching the September fight over spending. The annual appropriations to fund the government were scheduled to run out on October 1st, and much of it would stop operating unless Congress passed a new law. Meadows wanted Boehner to use the threat of a government shutdown to defund Obamacare, a course Boehner had publicly ruled out.

Back home in Meadows’s congressional district, the idea was quite popular. North Carolina’s Eleventh District had been gerrymandered after the 2010 census to become the most Republican district in his state. Meadows won his election last November by fifteen points. The Presidential contest there was an even bigger blowout. Romney won the district by twenty-three points, sixty-one per cent to thirty-eight per cent. While the big story of the 2012 election was about demographics and a growing non-white population that is increasingly Democratic, that was not the story in the Meadows race. His district is eighty-seven per cent white, five per cent Latino, and three per cent black.

Before Meadows sent off his letter to Boehner, he circulated it among his colleagues, and with the help of the conservative group FreedomWorks, as well as some heavy campaigning by Senators Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Mike Lee, seventy-nine like-minded House Republicans from districts very similar to Meadows’s added their signatures.

“Since most of the citizens we represent believe that ObamaCare should never go into effect,” the letter said, “we urge you to affirmatively de-fund the implementation and enforcement of ObamaCare in any relevant appropriations bill brought to the House floor in the 113th Congress, including any continuing appropriations bill.”

They ended the letter with a stirring reference to Madison:

James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 58 that the “power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon … for obtaining a redress of every grievance…” We look forward to collaborating to defund one of the largest grievances in our time and to restore patient-centered healthcare in America.

Not everyone thought it was a terrific idea or one worthy of comparison to the brilliance of the Founders. Noting the strategic ineptness of threatening a government shutdown over a policy that neither the Democratically controlled Senate nor the President himself would ever support, Karl Rove railed against the idea in the Wall Street Journal. The conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer dubbed the eighty Republicans the “suicide caucus.”

And yet, a few weeks later, Boehner adopted the course demanded by Meadows and his colleagues.

The ability of eighty members of the House of Representatives to push the Republican Party into a strategic course that is condemned by the party’s top strategists is a historical oddity. It’s especially strange when you consider some of the numbers behind the suicide caucus. As we approach a likely government shutdown this month and then a more perilous fight over raising the debt ceiling in October, it’s worth considering the demographics and geography of the eighty districts whose members have steered national policy over the past few weeks.

As the above map, detailing the geography of the suicide caucus, shows, half of these districts are concentrated in the South, and a quarter of them are in the Midwest, while there’s a smattering of thirteen in the rural West and four in rural Pennsylvania (outside the population centers of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh). Naturally, there are no members from New England, the megalopolis corridor from Washington to Boston, or along the Pacific coastline.

These eighty members represent just eighteen per cent of the House and just a third of the two hundred and thirty-three House Republicans. They were elected with fourteen and a half million of the hundred and eighteen million votes cast in House elections last November, or twelve per cent of the total. In all, they represent fifty-eight million constituents. That may sound like a lot, but it’s just eighteen per cent of the population.

Most of the members of the suicide caucus have districts very similar to Meadows’s. While the most salient demographic fact about America is that it is becoming more diverse, Republican districts actually became less diverse in 2012. According to figures compiled by The Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman, a leading expert on House demographics who provided me with most of the raw data I’ve used here, the average House Republican district became two percentage points more white in 2012.

The members of the suicide caucus live in a different America from the one that most political commentators describe when talking about how the country is transforming. The average suicide-caucus district is seventy-five per cent white, while the average House district is sixty-three per cent white. Latinos make up an average of nine per cent of suicide-district residents, while the over-all average is seventeen per cent. The districts also have slightly lower levels of education (twenty-five per cent of the population in suicide districts have college degrees, while that number is twenty-nine per cent for the average district).

The members themselves represent this lack of diversity. Seventy-six of the members who signed the Meadows letter are male. Seventy-nine of them are white.

As with Meadows, the other suicide-caucus members live in places where the national election results seem like an anomaly. Obama defeated Romney by four points nationally. But in the eighty suicide-caucus districts, Obama lost to Romney by an average of twenty-three points. The Republican members themselves did even better. In these eighty districts, the average margin of victory for the Republican candidate was thirty-four points.

In short, these eighty members represent an America where the population is getting whiter, where there are few major cities, where Obama lost the last election in a landslide, and where the Republican Party is becoming more dominant and more popular. Meanwhile, in national politics, each of these trends is actually reversed.

In one sense, these eighty members are acting rationally. They seem to be pushing policies that are representative of what their constituents back home want. But even within the broader Republican Party, they represent a minority view, at least at the level of tactics (almost all Republicans want to defund Obamacare, even if they disagree about using the issue to threaten a government shutdown).

In previous eras, ideologically extreme minorities could be controlled by party leadership. What’s new about the current House of Representatives is that party discipline has broken down on the Republican side. On the most important policy questions, ones that most affect the national brand of the party, Boehner has lost his ability to control his caucus, and an ideological faction, aided by outside interest groups, can now set the national agenda.

Through redistricting, Republicans have built themselves a perhaps unbreakable majority in the House. But it has come at a cost of both party discipline and national popularity. Nowadays, a Sunday-school teacher can defeat the will of the Speaker of the House.

This i nformative political analysis.  The expression "aided by outside interest groups," however, could, if explained at least briefly, reveal the identity and the nature of these interests.  One, the billionaire Koch brothers, funded the organization from which FreedomWorks arose.  The Koch brothers propound the extreme Libertarian view and openly defy the environmental laws governing their business operations.  FreedomWorks expresses this activity

This lawless, extreme behavior has translated itself into a political movement under cover of the Tea Party, which in essence functions as a sock-puppet for the interests of the Koch brothers.  

Small in proportion both to the Republican Party makeup and to the national political makeup, the Tea Party by its rigid political dogmatism, aided by weighted gerrymandering, now performs in the role of the tail wagging the dog.  This distortion of the national politics by an extremist minority serves not the national interest but the narrow interest of the Koch brothers and their ilk.

This political distortion has polarized and poisoned the national dialog while seemingly dividing the polity into two camps -- one left and one right on the political spectrum.  Still in existence, the moderate middle political view goes effectively ignored, at the local level first, due to gerrymandering.  Then at the national level this side-lining of moderation happens from a political dominance led by a passel of right-wing political operatives whose views and actions the news media workers, in knee-jerk fashion, over-report.

This news media over-reporting serves the interest of the news media outlets that seek to keep and increase audience share to please advertisers who pay the bills according to the size of this share.  This lack of straight news reporting further imbalances the national dialog.  The right-wingers and their supporters know this news media outlet hunger and seeking for dollars via audience share, and they manipulate this biased appetite.

In a sense, the right-wingers, the rich Koch brothers, and the news media outlets together act unpatriotically.  They do so by splitting the nation in two during wartime.  

After all, the United States faces a fanatic Muslim campaign in the form of an international jihad actively plotting to murder more innocents.  The jihadists willing die in furtherance of this killing.  The United States thus finds itself in a war to the death.  

This warring condition requires national unity.  By dividing the nation, those individuals and political entities and news media outlets who do so effectively act as agents of the enemy.  They render themselves as unpatriotic, by rabidly blinding themselves to the impact and the outcome of their self-interested behavior.

Obama"s speech at the UN

Here is a clear, cogent and muscular delineation of American foreign policy:

 "Mr. President, Mr. Secretary General, fellow delegates, ladies and gentlemen, each year we come together to reaffirm the founding vision of this institution. For most of recorded history, individual aspirations were subject to the whims of tyrants and empires and divisions of race and religion and tribe were settled through the sword and the clash of armies. The idea that nations and peoples could come together in peace to solve their disputes and advance a common prosperity seemed unimaginable. It took the awful carnage of two world wars to shift our thinking. The leaders who built the United Nations were not naive. They did not think this body could eradicate all wars. But in the wake of millions dead and (inaudible) rubble, and with the development of nuclear weapons that could annihilate a planet, they understood that humanity could not survive the course it was on. And so, they gave us this institution, believing that it could allow us to resolve conflicts, enforce rules of behavior and build habits of cooperation that would grow stronger over time.

For decades, the United Nations has, in fact, made a difference from helping to eradicate disease to educating children to brokering peace. But like every generation of leaders, we face new and profound challenges, and this body continues to be tested. The question is whether we possess the wisdom and the courage as nation states and members of an international community to squarely meet those challenges, whether the United Nations can meet the test of our time. And for much of my tenure as president, some of our most urgent challenges have involved around an increasingly integrated global economy and our efforts to recover from the worst economic crisis of our lifetime. Now, five years after the global economy collapsed, and thanks to coordinated efforts by the countries here today, jobs are being created, global financial systems have stabilized and people are once again being lifted out of poverty.

But this progress is fragile, and unequal and we still have work to do together to assure that our citizens can access the opportunities that they need to thrive in the 21st century.

Together we’ve also worked to end a decade of war. Five years ago nearly 180,000 Americans were serving in harms way, and the war in Iraq was the dominant issue in our relationship with the rest of the world. Today, all of our troops have left Iraq. Next year, an international coalition will end its war in Afghanistan, having achieved its mission of dismantling the core of Al Qaida that attacked us on 9/11. The United States -- these new circumstances have also meant shifting away from a perpetual war footing. Beyond bringing our troops home we have limited the use of drones so they target only those who pose a continuing imminent threat to the United States where capture is not feasible and there’s a near certainty of no civilian casualties. We’re transferring detainees to other countries and trying terrorists in courts of law while working diligently to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. And just as we reviewed how we deploy our extraordinary military capabilities in a way that lives up to our ideals, we’ve begun to review the way that we gather intelligence so that we properly balance the legitimate security concerns of our citizens and allies with the privacy concerns that all people share.

As a result of this work and cooperation with allies and partners, the world is more stable than it was five years ago. But even a glance at today’s headlines indicates that dangers remain. In Kenya, we’ve seen terrorists target innocent civilians in a crowded shopping mall. And our hearts go out to the families of those who’ve been affected. In Pakistan, nearly 100 people were recently killed by suicide bombers outside a church. In Iraq, killings and car bombs continue to be a terrible part of life. And meanwhile, Al Qaida has splintered into regional networks and militias which doesn’t give them the capacity at this point to carry out attacks like 9/11, but does pose serious threats to governments and diplomats, businesses and civilians all across the globe.

Just as significantly, the convulsions in the Middle East and North Africa have laid bare deep divisions within societies, as an old order is upended and people grapple with what comes next. Peaceful movements have too often been answered by violence from those resisting change and from extremists trying to hijack change. Sectarian conflict has re-emerged, and the potential spread of weapons of mass destruction continues to cast a shadow over the pursuit of peace.

Nowhere have we seen these trends converge more powerfully than in Syria. There, peaceful protests against an authoritarian regime were met with repression and slaughter. In the face of such carnage, many retreated to their sectarian identifies -- Alawites and Sunni, Christian and Kurd, and the situation spiraled into civil war. The international community recognized the stakes early on, but our response has not matched the scale of the challenge. Aid cannot keep pace with the suffering of the wounded and displaced. A peace process is stillborn. America and others have worked to bolster the moderate opposition, but extremist groups have still taken root to exploit the crisis. Assad’s traditional allies have propped him up, citing principles of sovereignty to shield his regime. And on August 21st, the regime used chemical weapons in an attack that killed more than 1,000 people, including hundreds of children.

Now, the crisis in Syria and the destabilization of the region goes to the heart of broader challenges that the international community must now confront. How should we respond to conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa? Conflicts between countries, but also conflicts within them. How do we address the choice of standing callously by while children are subjected to nerve gas, but we’re embroiling ourselves in someone else’s civil war?

What’s the role of force in resolving disputes that threaten the stability of the region and undermine all basic standards of civilized conduct? And what’s the role of the United Nations and international law in meeting cries for justice?

Today, I want to outline where the United States of America stands on these issues.

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68th U.N. General Assembly: President Obama’s fifth address to the U.N. General Assembly took a much more prescriptive approach to problems in the Middle East and Iran than his broader, thematic speeches of previous years.

With respect to Syria, we believe that as a starting point the international community must enforce the ban on chemical weapons. When I stated my willingness to order a limited strike against the Assad regime in response to the brazen use of chemical weapons, I did not do so lightly. I did so because I believe it is in the national security interests of the United States and in the interest of the world to meaningfully enforce a prohibition whose origins are older than the United Nations itself. The ban against the use of chemical weapons, even in war, has been agreed to by 98 percent of humanity. It is strengthened by the searing memories of soldiers suffocated in the trenches, Jews slaughtered in gas chambers, Iranians poisoned in the many tens of thousands. The evidence is overwhelming that the Assad regime used such weapons on August 21st. U.N. inspectors gave a clear accounting that advanced rockets fired large quantities of sarin gas at civilians. These rockets were fired from a regime-controlled neighborhood and landed in opposition neighborhoods. It’s an insult to human reason and to the legitimacy of this institution to suggest that anyone other than the regime carried out this attack.

Now, I know that in the immediate aftermath of the attack there were those who questioned the legitimacy of even a limited strike in the absence of a clear mandate from the Security Council. But without a credible military threat, the Security Council had demonstrated no inclination to act at all.

However, as I’ve discussed with President Putin for over a year, most recently in St. Petersburg, my preference has always been a diplomatic resolution to this issue. And in the past several weeks, the United States, Russia and our allies have reached an agreement to place Syria’s chemical weapons under international control and then to destroy them. The Syrian government took a first step by giving an accounting of its stockpiles. Now, there must be a strong Security Council resolution to verify that the Assad regime is keeping its commitments. And there must be consequences if they fail to do so. If we cannot agree even on this, then it will show that the United Nations is incapable of enforcing the most basic of international laws.

On the other hand, if we succeed, it will send a powerful message that the use of chemical weapons has no place in the 21st century and that this body means what it says. Our agreement on chemical weapons should energize a larger diplomatic effort to reach a political settlement within Syria. I do not believe that military action by those within Syria or by external powers can achieve a lasting peace. Nor do I believe that America or any nation should determine who will lead Syria. That is for the Syrian people to decide. Nevertheless, a leader who slaughtered his citizens and gassed children to death cannot regain the legitimacy to lead a badly fractured country. The notion that Syria can somehow return to a pre- war status quo is a fantasy. It’s time for Russia and Iran to realize that insisting on Assad’s rule will lead directly to the outcome that they fear: An increasingly violent space for extremists to operate.In turn, those of us who continue to support the moderate opposition must persuade them the Syrian people can’t afford a collapse of state institutions, and that a political settlement cannot be reached without addressing the legitimate fears and concerns of Alawites and other minorities.

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68th U.N. General Assembly: President Obama’s fifth address to the U.N. General Assembly took a much more prescriptive approach to problems in the Middle East and Iran than his broader, thematic speeches of previous years

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At the U.N. General Assembly in New York, President Obama urged the international community to help secure two sovereign, peaceful states for Israel and Palestine.

We are committed to working this political trek. And, as we pursue a settlement, let’s remember this is not a zero sum endeavor. We’re no longer in a cold war. There’s no great game to be won, nor does America have any interest in Syria beyond the well being of its people, the stability of its neighbors, the elimination of chemical weapons and insuring that it does not become a safe haven for terrorists. I welcome the influence of all nations that can help bring about a peaceful resolution of Syria’s civil war. As we move the Geneva process forward, I urge all nations here to step up to meet humanitarian needs in Syria and surrounding countries. America’s committed over $1 billion to this effort. And today I can announce that we will be providing an additional $340 million. No aid can take the place of a political resolution that give the Syrian people a chance to rebuild their country, but it can help desperate people to survive.

What broader conclusions can be drawn from America’s policy towards Syria? I know there are those who’ve been frustrated by our unwillingness to use our military might to depose Assad and believe that a failure to do so indicates a weakening of American resolve in the region. Others have suggested that my willingness to direct even limited military strikes to deter the further use of chemical weapons shows we’ve learned nothing from Iraq and that America continues to seek control over the Middle East for our own purposes.

In this way, the situation in Syria mirrors the contradiction that has persisted in the region for decades. The United States is chastised for meddling in the region, accused of having a hand in all manner of conspiracy, at the same time the United States is blamed for failing to do enough to solve the region’s problems and for showing indifference towards suffering Muslim populations. I realize some of this is inevitable, giving -- given America’s role in the world. But these contradictory attitudes have a practical impact on the American people’s support for our involvement in the region and allow leaders in the region, as well as the international community sometimes, to avoid addressing difficult problems themselves.

So let me take this opportunity to outline what has been U.S. policy toward the Middle East and North Africa and what will be my policy during the remainder of my presidents (sic).

The United States of America is prepared to use all elements of our power, including military force, to secure our core interests in the region. We will confront external aggression against our allies and partners, as we did in the Gulf War.

We will ensure the free flow of energy from the region to the world. Although America is steadily reducing our own dependence on imported oil, the world still depends on the region’s energy supply and a severe disruption could destabilize the entire global economy.

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68th U.N. General Assembly: President Obama’s fifth address to the U.N. General Assembly took a much more prescriptive approach to problems in the Middle East and Iran than his broader, thematic speeches of previous years.

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At the U.N. General Assembly in New York, President Obama urged the international community to help secure two sovereign, peaceful states for Israel and Palestine.

We will dismantle terrorist networks that threaten our people. Wherever possible, we will build the capacity of our partners, respect the sovereignty of nations, and work to address the root causes of terror. But when it’s necessary, defend the United States against terrorist attack, we will take direct action.

And finally, we will not tolerate the development or use of weapons of mass destruction. Just as we consider the use of chemical weapons in Syria to be a threat to our own national security, we reject the development of nuclear weapons that could trigger a nuclear arms race in the region and undermine the global nonproliferation regime.

Now, to say that these are America’s core interests is not to say that they are our only interests. We deeply believe it is in our interests to see a Middle East and North Africa that is peaceful and prosperous. And we’ll continue to promote democracy and human rights and open markets because we believe these practices achieve peace and prosperity.

But I also believe that we can rarely achieve these objectives through unilateral American action, particularly through military action. Iraq shows us that democracy cannot simply be imposed by force. Rather, these objectives are best achieved when we partner with the international community and with the countries and peoples of the region.

So what does this mean going forward?

In the near term, America’s diplomatic efforts will focus on two particular issues: Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and the Arab- Israeli conflict. While these issues are not the cause of all the region’s problems, they have been a major source of instability for far too long, and resolving them can help serve as a foundation for a broader peace.

The United States and Iran have been isolated from one another since the Islamic revolution of 1979. This mistrust has deep roots. Iranians have long complained of a history of U.S. interference in their affairs and of America’s role in overthrowing the Iranian government during the Cold War. On the other hand, Americans see an Iranian government that has declared the United States an enemy and directly or through proxies taken American hostages, killed U.S. troops and civilians, and threatened our ally Israel with destruction.

I don’t believe this difficult history can be overcome overnight. The suspicions run too deep. But I do believe that if we can resolve the issue of Iran’s nuclear program, that can serve as a major step down a long road toward a different relationship, one based on mutual interests and mutual respect.

Since I took office, I’ve made it clear in letters to the supreme leader in Iran and more recently to President Rouhani that America prefers to resolve our concerns over Iran’s nuclear program peacefully -- although we are determined to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. We are not seeking regime change, and we respect the right of the Iranian people to access peaceful nuclear energy. Instead, we insist that the Iranian government meet its responsibilities under the Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty and U.N. Security Council resolutions. Meanwhile, the supreme leader has issued a fatwah against the development of nuclear weapons. And President Rouhani has just recently reiterated that the Islamic republic will never develop a nuclear weapon. So these statements made by our respective governments should offer the basis for a meaningful agreement. We should be able to achieve a resolution that respects the rights of the Iranian people while giving the world confidence that the Iranian program is peaceful.

But to succeed, conciliatory words will have to be matched by actions that are transparent and verifiable. After all, it’s the Iranian government’s choices that have led to the comprehensive sanctions that are currently in place. And this not -- is not simply an issue between the United States and Iran. The world has seen Iran evade its responsibilities in the past and has an abiding interest in making sure that Iran meets its obligations in the future.

But I want to be clear. We are encouraged that President Rouhani received from the Iranian people a mandate to pursue a more moderate course, and given President Rouhani’s stated commitment to reach an agreement, I am directing John Kerry to pursue this effort with the Iranian government in close cooperation with the European Union, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China.

The roadblocks may prove to be too great, but I firmly believe the diplomatic path must be tested. That while the status quo will only deepen Iran’s isolation, Iran’s genuine commitment to go down a different path will be good for the region and for the world, and will help the Iranian people meet their extraordinary potential in commerce and culture, in science and education.

We are also determined the resolve a conflict that goes back even further than our differences with Iran, and that is the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. I’ve made it clear that the United States will never compromise our commitment to Israel’s security, nor our support for its existence as a Jewish state. Earlier this year, in Jerusalem, I was inspired by young Israelis who stood up for the belief that peace was necessary, just and possible. And I believe there’s a growing recognition within Israel that the occupation of the West Bank is tearing at the democratic fabric of the Jewish state. But, the children of Israel have the right to live in a world where the nations assembled in this body fully recognize their country, and where we unequivocally reject those who fire rockets at their homes or incite others to hate them.

Likewise, the United States remains committed to the belief that the Palestinian people have a right to live with security and dignity in their own sovereign state. On the same trip, I had the opportunity to meet with young Palestinians in Ramallah, whose ambition and incredible potential are matched by the pain they feel and having no firm place in the community of nations. They are understandably cynical that real progress will ever be made, and they’re frustrated by their families enduring the daily indignity of occupation. But they, too, recognize that two states is the only real path to peace. Because just as the Palestinian people must not be displaced, the state of Israel is here to stay.

So the time is now ripe for the entire international community to get behind the pursuit of peace. Already, Israeli and Palestinian leaders have demonstrated a willingness to take significant political risks. President Abbas has put aside efforts to shortcut the pursuit of peace and come to the negotiating table. Prime Minister Netanyahu has released Palestinian prisoners and reaffirmed his commitment to a Palestinian state. Current talks are focused on final status issues of borders and security, refugees and Jerusalem. So now the rest of us must be willing to take risks as well. Friends of Israel, including the United States, must recognize that Israel’s security as a Jewish and democratic state depend on the realization of a Palestinian state. And we should say so clearly. Arab states and those who support the Palestinians must recognize that stability will only be served through a two-state solution and a secure Israel.

All of us must recognize that peace will be a powerful tool to defeat extremists throughout the region and embolden those who are prepared to build a better future. And, moreover, ties of trade and commerce between Israelis and Arabs could be an engine of growth and opportunity at a time when too many young people in the region are languishing without work. So let’s emerge from the familiar corners of blame and prejudice; let’s support Israeli and Palestinian leaders who are prepared to walk the difficult road to peace.

Now, real breakthroughs on these two issues -- Iran’s nuclear program and Israeli-Palestinian peace -- would have a profound and positive impact on the entire Middle East and North Africa.

But the current convulsions arising out of the Arab Spring remind us that a just and lasting peace cannot be measured only agreements between nations; it must also be measured by our ability to resolve conflict and promote justice within nations. And by that measure, it’s clear that all of us have a lot more work to do. When peaceful transitions began in Tunisia and Egypt, the entire world was filled with hope. And although the United States, like others, was struck by the speed of transition, and although we did not, and, in fact, could not dictate events, we chose to support those who called for change. And we did so based on the belief that while these transitions will be hard and take time, societies based upon democracy and openness and the dignity of the individual will ultimately be more stable, more prosperous and more peaceful.

Over the last few years, particularly in Egypt, we’ve seen just how hard this transition will be. Mohammed Morsi was democratically elected but proved unwilling or unable to govern in a way that was fully inclusive. The interim government that replaced him responded to the desires of millions of Egyptians who believed the revolution had taken a wrong term. But it, too, has made decisions inconsistent with inclusive democracy through an emergency law, and restrictions on the press and civil society, and opposition (inaudible).

Of course, America has been attacked by all sides of this internal conflict, simultaneously accused of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and engineering the removal of power. In fact, the United States has purposely avoided choosing sides. Our overriding interest throughout these past few years has been to encourage a government that legitimately reflects the will of the Egyptian people and recognizes true democracy as requiring a respect for minority rights and the rule of law, freedom of speech and assembly, and a strong civil society. That remains our interest today.

And so going forward the United States will maintain a constructive relationship with the interim government that promotes core interests like the Camp David Accords in (ph) counterterrorism, will continue support in areas like education that directly benefit the Egyptian people, but we have not proceeded with the delivery of certain military systems. And our support will depend upon Egypt’s progress in pursuing a more democratic path.

And our approach to Egypt reflects a larger point: The United States will at times work with governments that do not meet, at least in our view, the highest international expectations, but who work with us on our core interests. Nevertheless, we will not stop asserting principles that are consistent with our ideals, whether that means opposing the use of violence as a means of suppressing dissent, or supporting the principles embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We will reject the notion that these principles are simply western exports, incompatible with Islam or the Arab world. We believe they are the birthright of every person.

And while we recognize that our influence will, at times, be limited, although we will be wary of efforts to impose democracy through military force, and although we will, at times, be accused of hypocrisy and inconsistency, we will be engaged in the region for the long haul, for the hard work of forging freedom and democracy is the task of a generation. And this includes efforts to resolve sectarian tensions that continue to surface in places like Iraq, Bahrain and Syria.

We understand such long-standing issues cannot be solved by outsiders. They must be addressed by Muslim communities themselves. But we’ve seen grinding conflicts come to an end before, most recently in northern Ireland where Catholics and Protestants finally recognized that an endless cycle of conflict was causing both communities to fall behind a fast-moving world. And so, we believe those same sectarian conflicts can be overcome in the Middle East and North Africa.

To summarize, the United States has a hard-earned humility when it comes to our ability to determine events inside other countries. Now, the notion of American empire may be useful propaganda, but it isn’t borne out by America’s current policy or by public opinion. Indeed, as recent debates within the United States over Syria clearly show.

The danger for the world is not an America that is too eager to immerse itself in the affairs of other countries, or to take on every problem in the region as its own. The danger for the world is, that the United States after a decade of war, rightly concerned about issues aback home, aware of the hostility that our engagement in the region has engendered throughout the Muslim world, may disengage creating a vacuum of leadership that no other nation is ready to fill.

I believe such disengagement would be a mistake. I believe America must remain engaged for our own security, but I also believe the world is better for it. Some may disagree. But I believe America is exceptional. In part because we have shown a willingness through the sacrifice of blood and treasure to stand up not only for our own narrow self interest, but for the interest of all.

I must be honest though, we’re far more likely to invest our energy in those countries that want to work with us, that invest in their people instead of a corrupt few, that embrace a vision of society where everyone can contribute -- men and women, Shia or Sunni, Muslim, Christian or Jew -- because from Europe to Asia, from Africa to the Americas, nations that have persevered on a democratic path, have emerged more prosperous, more peaceful and more invested in upholding our common security and our common humanity.

I believe that the same will hold true for the Arab world.

This leads me to a final point. There will be times when the breakdown of societies is so great, the violence against civilians so substantial, that the international community will be called upon to act. This will require new thinking and some very tough choices. While the United Nations was designed to prevent wars between states, increasingly we face the challenge of preventing slaughter within states.

And these challenges will grow more pronounced as we are confronted with states that are fragile or failing, places where horrendous violence can put innocent men, women and children at risk with no hope of protection from their national institutions. I’ve made it clear that even when America’s core interests are not directly threatened, we stand ready to do our part to prevent mass atrocities and protect basic human rights. But we cannot and should not bear that burden alone.

In Mali, we supported both the French intervention, but successfully pushed back Al Qaida, and the African forces who are keeping the peace. In eastern Africa, we are working with partners to bring the Lord’s Resistance Army to an end. And in Libya, when the Security Council provided a mandate to protect civilians, America joined a coalition that took action. Because of what we did there, countless lives were saved and a tyrant could not kill his way back to power.

I know that some now criticize the action in Libya as an object lesson, that point to the problem that the country now confronts, a democratically elected government struggling to provide security, armed groups in some places, extremists ruling parts of the fractured land. And so these critics argue that any intervention to protect civilians is doomed to fail. Look at Libya. And no one’s more mindful of these problems than I am, for they resulted in the death of four outstanding U.S. citizens who were committed to the Libyan people, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, a man whose courageous efforts helped save the city of Benghazi. But does anyone truly believe that the situation in Libya would be better, if Gadhafi had been allowed to kill, imprison or brutalize his people into submission? It’s far more likely that without international action, Libya would now be engulfed in civil war and bloodshed.

We live in a world of imperfect choices. Different nations will not agree on the need for action in every instance. And the principle of sovereignty is at the center of our international order. But sovereignty cannot be a shield for tyrants to commit one murder. Or an excuse for the international community to turn a blind eye. While we need to be modest in our belief that we can remedy every evil, while we need to be mindful that the world is full of unintended consequences, should we really accept the notion that the world is powerless in the face of a Rwanda, or Srebrenica? If that’s the world that people want to live in, they should say so, and reckon with the cold logic of mass graves.

But I believe we can embrace a different future. And if we don’t want to choose between inaction and war, we must get better, all of us, with (ph) the policies that prevent the breakdown of basic order; through (ph) respect for the responsibilities of nations and the rights of individuals; through meaningful sanctions for those who break the rules; through dogged diplomacy that resolves the root causes of conflict, not merely its aftermath; through development assistance that brings hope to the marginalized.

And, yes, sometimes although this will not be enough, there are gonna be moments where the international community will need to acknowledge that the multilateral use of military force may be required to prevent the very worst from occurring.

Ultimately, this is the international community that America seeks: one where nations do not covet the land or resources of other nations, but one in which we carry out the founding purpose of this institution and where we all take responsibility. A world in which the rules established out of the horrors of war can help us resolve conflicts peacefully and prevent the kind of wars that our forefathers fought. A world where human beings can live with dignity and meet their basic needs whether they live in New York or Nairobi, in Peshawar or Damascus.

These are extraordinary times with extraordinary opportunities. Thanks to human progress, a child born anywhere on Earth today can do things can 60 years ago would have been out of reach for the mass of humanity. I saw this in Africa, where nations moving beyond conflict are now poised to take off, and America is with them, partnering to feed the hungry and care for the sick, and to bring power to places off the grid.

I see it across the Pacific region, where hundreds of millions have been lifted out of poverty in a single generation. I see it in the faces of young people everywhere who can access the entire world with a click of a button and who are eager to join the cause of eradicating extreme poverty and combating climate change, starting businesses, expanding freedom, and leaving behind the old ideological battles of the past.

That’s what’s happening in Asia and Africa. It’s happening in Europe and across the Americas. That’s the future that the people of the Middle East and North Africa deserve as well, one where they can focus on opportunity instead of whether they’ll be killed or repressed because of who they are or what they believe.

And time and again, nations and people have shown our capacity to change, to live up to humanity’s highest ideals, to choose our better history.

Last month, I stood where 50 years ago Martin Luther King Jr. told America about his dream at a time when many people of my race could not even vote for president. Earlier this year, I stood in the small cell where Nelson Mandela endured decades cut off from his own people in the world.

Who are we to believe that today’s challenges cannot be overcome when we’ve seen what changes the human spirit can bring? Who in this hall can argue that the future belongs to those who seek to repress that spirit rather than those who seek to liberate it?

I know what side of history I want the United States of America to be on. We’re ready to meet tomorrow’s challenges with you, firm in the belief that all men and women are, in fact, created equally, each individual possessed with a dignity and inalienable rights that cannot be denied. That’s why we look to the future not with fear, but with hope, and that’s why we remain convinced that this community of nations can deliver a more peaceful, prosperous and just world to the next generation."