It wouldn't be an exaggeration to claim that the resumption of peace talks between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority have thus far yielded nothing of value, at least not as far as settling the decades-long struggle.

For one, the media has paid the talks little attention, aside from the ceremonial coverage of the first round of talks in Washington on September 2. It barely noticed the following round in the Middle East nearly two weeks later. What did capture the media’s attention was US President Barack Obama’s attempt to minimize the damage he invited upon himself for merely pressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to issue a partial moratorium on settlement building (about 11 months ago), and then to extend the settlement freeze.

Contact the Free Press Election Protection group at: Free Press or 614-253-2571. Volunteers needed to watch the polling sites and videotape incidents.

On Sunday, when the New York Times put a “tossup” label on three dozen House races with Democrats running for re-election, there were very few genuine progressives involved. In fact, just three of the lawmakers on the list are members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. And only one of them is a progressive standout: Raul Grijalva.

With a record of grassroots activism that goes back four decades, Grijalva is the real deal. Since 2003, his presence in Congress -- representing a heavily Latino district in Southern Arizona -- has been a force of nature for progressive advocacy on issues ranging from healthcare and education to war. And immigration.

Now, the forces of xenophobia and bogus “populism” think they smell blood.

Nowhere in the United States is political courage for progressive principles more on the line this Election Day than in the battle to re-elect Grijalva.

Website

Kabul, Afghanistan – After an exhausting day trekking through the dirt roads of the city of Bamiyan and outlying settlements, three Americans were guided by a dozen Afghan boys to a tent packed with overstuffed pillows and comforters. After the boys served them a delicious meal cooked over a small outdoor stove, they affixed their flashlights to the spine of the tent and invited the Americans to enter. Unlike the forts I made in my parents’ living room when I was little, this tent had a pressing message: a group of youngsters in a central province of Afghanistan want peace, not war.

The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, a group of ethnically diverse young men from a city one hundred miles northwest of Kabul, have been actively speaking out against the U.S- and NATO occupation for the last four years. The boys have endured grave opposition and community ridicule. However, through the help of networking sites and YouTube, this group of young men want to ask the world, “Why not love?”

It’s been hard not to think about suicide lately — the act of it, in isolation and, seemingly, incredible despair.

The gay teenagers who killed themselves recently, in acts of private surrender, have made a collective public statement, but what is that statement . . . other than “something’s wrong”?

Whatever is wrong hits the young LGBT community with ferocity, but doesn’t confine itself to that community. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among 15- to 24-year-olds in the U.S. — evidence of a system backing up on itself.

The young people who are on the other side of the trouble — the bullies and the bystanders — do not, for the most part, act with an independence of malice. They are channeling a cultural certainty far beyond their own reckoning: that some traits, such as shyness, clumsiness, glasses, whatever, are unacceptable. And they reap social approval for weeding out the losers and oddballs, so long, of course, as nothing goes embarrassingly wrong — because as a society, this is what we do. We weed people out. We dehumanize individuals and groups. Any sort of anomaly will do as a pretext. It’s as American as apple pie.