Michael Braun's Blog

It’s National Bike To Work week, which has brought out a fair number of bicyclers around Madison. Today, while following one of these riders, I noticed a very disturbing action. In fact, it’s one I saw repeated a few weeks ago. Bicyclers these days don’t seem to know how to properly signal their turns!

It’s so simple too, which is what’s frustrating. In fact, you all learned it in Driver’s Education, or you should have. Rather than pointing to the right with your left hand, or gesturing with your right arm, bicylers should be following these simple guidelines.

Turning Right: Using your left arm, extend your elbow out to the left from your shoulder and raise your hand above it, forming an ‘L’ shape.

Turning Left: Extend your left arm out to the left from your body, pointing your hand outward.

Stopping: Lower your left arm, palm facing forward.

This may not be as intuitive as some of the gestures I have seen, but each of these signals is bold enough and noticeable enough that the vehicle behind you is likely to see that you intend to do something, even if they too are unfamiliar with these signaling techniques.

Israel is celebrating their 60th anniversary as the most controversial nation on the planet. No nation in current existence has more debate about whether or not it deserves statehood. And while other nations are rife with conflict (the Balkans, other former Soviet-Bloc nations, Kashmir, et cetera), no nation on earth exists with such hostile relations with its neighbors, such unwavering support from the West, and such a literally explosive payload ready to deploy at moment’s notice. Needless to say, it’s a dangerous situation.

President Bush is in Israel, and spoke this morning to the Israeli Parliament. In his speech, he outlined a vision of the Middle East that he sees 60 years in the future. Aside from children holding hands and dancing, he sees a Middle East ruled by democracy, peaceful, and calm; Al Qaeda is defeated; and Palestinians have their own state.

With such lofty goals, 60 years seems like a pretty reasonable timeline, until you remember – Bush has done nothing, NOTHING, up until recently to actively deal with the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. He didn’t want to: it’s a mess, he didn’t like Arafat, and he was too busy waging war around the world. We need 60 years after his disastrous lack of engagement.

When President Clinton left office, there wasn’t peace in the Middle East – far from it! Remember the daily reports of suicide bombings, constant Israeli army incursions, and rampant Israeli expansion in the West Bank. Bush offered a different vision – he was going to push for a Palestinian state. But because he did not like or trust Yasser Arafat, any engagement was quite limited. Without the influence of the United States on Israel, they were free to continue the status quo, which included building a massive wall to keep Palestinians out. When Bush finally stepped in, the damage was already done. The Palestinians had swept Hamas into power. Hamas then took over Gaza, and waged war against their own people, splitting the Palestinians into two warring factions – those supporting Hamas and those supporting Fatah. The only word to describe it is disaster.

There is no doubt that some of the problem lies in religion, internal politics and personalities, repression, colonialism, and acceptance of violence. But in terms of blaming a single person, Bush is an excellent candidate. The United States has long served as Israel’s biggest ally. Bush noted, during his speech, that it took Harry Truman just 11 minutes to recognize Israel, after the country was formed. That means that the US needs to not just support Israel, but also to support policies that are in Israel’s best interest (even if the Israelis themselves disagree about their interests)! Bush has failed to do this quite miserably. In turn, the search for peace is set back farther than it has been in recent memory. How can you reconcile your relationship with a group of people when half of them (or more!) are actively voting for a party that wants nothing more than to wipe Israel off the map?