Northeast Blizzard Warnings Posted As Region Braces For Up To Several Feet Of Snow
Snow began falling
across the Northeast on Friday, ushering in what was predicted to be a huge,
possibly historic blizzard and sending residents scurrying to stock up on food
and gas up their cars. The storm could dump 1 to 3 feet of snow from New York City to Boston and beyond.Even before the first
snowflake had fallen, Boston, Providence, R.I., Hartford, Conn., and other
towns and cities in New England and upstate New York towns canceled school
Friday, and airlines scratched more than 3,700 flights through Saturday, with
the disruptions certain to ripple across the U.S."This one doesn't come
along every day. This is going to be a dangerous winter storm," said Alan
Dunham, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Taunton, Mass. "Wherever you
need to get to, get there by Friday afternoon and don't plan on
leaving."The heaviest snowfall was expected Friday night and into
Saturday. Wind gusts could reach 75 mph. Widespread power failures were feared, along with flooding in coastal
areas still recovering from Superstorm Sandy in October.Boston could get 2 to 3 feet of snow, while New York City was expecting 10 to 14 inches. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said plows and 250,000 tons of salt were being
put on standby. To the south, Philadelphia was looking at a possible 2 to 5 inches.Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick banned all traffic from roads after 4
p.m., believed to be the state's first such ban since the blizzard of 1978.In the
southeastern Massachusetts town of Whitman, where up to 2 1/2 feet of snow was
forecast, public works crews were clearing crosswalk signs, trash barrels and
anything else that might impede plows later in the day."We've had
instances where they have predicted something big and it's petered out,"
said Dennis Smith, a public works employee. "I don't think this is going
to be one of those times."Smith's partner, Bob Trumbull, sounded a note of
optimism, saying the relative lack of snow earlier this winter would make this
storm easier to clean up. "At least there is room for this snow. There are
no snowbanks so we will have a place to put it," Trumbull said.Snow was
being blamed for a 19-car pileup in Maine Friday morning in Cumberland, as 6 inches blanketed the area.A New Jersey town hit hard by Superstorm Sandy
issued a voluntary evacuation order for areas that are still recovering from
that storm. Residents in flood-prone sections of Brick Township were also urged
to move their cars to higher ground by 5 p.m.Amtrak suspended train service
between New York and Boston in the afternoon.The organizers of New York's
Fashion Week a closely watched series of fashion shows held under a big tent
said they will have extra crews to help with snow removal and will turn up the
heat and add an extra layer to the venue.Airlines canceled at least 3,775
flights ahead of the storm, according to airline tracking website FlightAware.
At New York City's three main airports, most U.S. airlines planned to
suspend operations between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m., resuming after noon on Saturday, FlightAware said. At Boston's Logan and other New England airports, most airlines were to
cease operations between noon and 4 p.m.This is a storm of major
proportions," Boston Mayor Thomas Menino said Friday. "Stay off the
roads. Stay home."Blizzard warnings were posted for parts of New Jersey and New York's Long Island, as well as portions of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, including Hartford, New Haven, Conn., and Providence. The warnings extended
into New Hampshire and Maine.In New England, it could prove to be among the top 10 snowstorms in history, and
perhaps even break Boston's record of 27.6 inches, set in 2003, the
National Weather Service said. The last major snowfall in southern New England was well over a year ago the
Halloween storm of 2011.Dunham said southern New England has seen less than half its normal
snowfall this season, but "we're going to catch up in a heck of a
hurry." He added: "Everybody's going to get plastered with snow."Some
gas stations in Connecticut ran out of fuel Thursday night during the rush to prepare for the
storm. Long lines were reported at many stations.At Stop & Shop supermarket
in Mount Vernon, N.Y., on Friday morning, there was a line of shoppers outside when it opened
at 7 a.m., and a steady stream followed. Checkout lines were long.Mary Anne
DiBello was stocking up her cart as the snow began to fall. She said she hosted
a sleepover Thursday night with four 9- and 10-year-olds, including her
daughter."Now I think I'm going to be stuck with them until I bring them
to school on Monday," she said.The governors of Connecticut and
Massachusetts ordered nonessential state workers to stay home Friday and urged
travelers to stay home.
Renewed tension between China, Japan
China and Japan engaged on Friday in
a fresh round of invective over military movements near a disputed group of
uninhabited islands, fuelling tensions that for months have bedevilled
relations between the two major Asian powers. China's defence ministry
rejected a Japanese allegation that a naval vessel had aimed a
weapons-targeting radar at a Japanese military ship in the East China Sea, its first comment on
the week-old incident. It said Japan's intrusive tracking
of Chinese vessels was the "root cause" of the renewed tension.A
Japanese official on Friday dismissed the Chinese explanation for the 30
January incident. He said Beijing's actions could precipitate a dangerous
situation in waters around the islets, known as Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in
Japan, believed to be rich in oil and gas.His comments came a day after Japan
said two Russian fighter jets briefly entered its air space near other,
long-disputed islands, prompting Japan to scramble combat fighters. Russia
denied the charge.China's defence ministry, in a statement issued late on
Thursday, said Japan's remarks "do not match the facts". The Chinese ship's radar,
it said, had maintained regular alerting operations and "did not use fire
control radar". The ministry said the Chinese ship was tracked by a
Japanese destroyer during routine training exercises. Fire control radar
pinpoints the location of a target for missiles or shells and its use can be
considered a step short of actual firing.Japan, it said, had recently
"made irresponsible remarks that hyped up the so-called 'China threat',
recklessly created tension and misled international public opinion."... In
recent years, Japanese warships and aeroplanes have often conducted long
periods of close-range tracking and surveillance of China's naval ships and
aeroplanes. This is the root cause of air and maritime security issues between China and Japan."In Tokyo, Japan's Chief Cabinet
Secretary Yoshihide Sugatold a news conference on Friday: "We cannot
accept China's explanation."Japan's allegations, he said, had been "a
result of our defence ministry's careful and detailed analysis. We urge China to take sincere
measures to prevent dangerous actions which could cause a contingency
situation."Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera said this week that
the incident could have become very dangerous very quickly, and that use of the
radar could be seen as a threat of military force under UN rules.Hopes have
been rising in recent weeks for a thaw in ties after months of tension,
sparked, in part, by Japan's nationalisation of three of the privately owned
islets last September.Fears that encounters between aircraft and ships could
degenerate into an accidental clash have given impetus to efforts to improve
links, including a possible summit between Abe and Chinese leader Xi Jinping,
who takes over as head of state in March.
The Role of Psychological Resistance
The most puzzling
aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that after 65 years of mutual
violence, enmity and suffering, it remains unresolved even when coexistence is
inevitable and a two-state solution remains the only viable option. Although
there are many contentious issues that must be specifically addressed, it is
the psychological dimension of the
conflict which directly impacts every conflicting issue and makes it
increasingly intractable. To mitigate the conflict, we must first look into the
elements that inform the psychological dimension and how to alleviate them as
prerequisites to finding a solution. This is the first of six articles.On the
surface, the deadlock in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process seems illogical
and unsettling. After all, a majority of Israelis and Palestinians realize the
inevitability of coexistence and presumably understand the general parameters
of a negotiated peace agreement: a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders
with some land swaps, Jerusalem would remain a united city (but a capital of
two states), and the vast majority of Palestinian refugees would be compensated
or resettled in the newly-created Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip. These fundamental imperatives, coupled with appropriate security
guarantees for Israel, represent what was on the negotiating table in 2000 at
Camp David and in 2008/2009 in Jerusalem and Ramallah, with each round coming
closer to finalizing an agreement yet ultimately failing to do so. The question
is: why?The answer lies far beyond the political concessions on the ground and
is deeply embedded in the psychological dimension of the conflict, which
impacts every conflicting issue between the two parties. This dimension is at
play here: biased and selective perceptions, reinforced by historical
experience, religion and incompatible ideologies, have locked both sides into
immobile positions. The factors that maintain and enhance these patterns
include emotions such as fear, distrust and insecurity; the psychological
outcome is mutual denial of the narrative of the other and mutual
delegitimization. Put together, the operative result is stagnation and
polarization. What is therefore needed is a consensus-oriented dialogue at the
leadership level, by both officials and non-officials, to resolve the issues of
perception a tall order given the current environment that buttresses rather
than ameliorates perceptions.There are certain psychological concepts which are
relevant to understanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the concept of
illusion is an essential one. In "The Future of an Illusion" (1927),
Freud offers the following definition: "We call a belief an illusion when
a wish-fulfillment is a prominent factor in its motivation and in doing so we
disregard its relations to reality, just as the illusion itself sets no store
by its verification." An illusion then is not necessarily an error, unlike
a delusion - that is, illusions "need not necessarily be false...
unrealizable or in contradiction to reality." What is characteristic of
illusions is that: 1) they are derived from deep human wishes, and 2) the
belief is held (or would be held) in the absence of any compelling evidence, or
good rational grounds, in its behalf.It is impossible to deny that both
Israelis and Palestinians are in the grip of very powerful illusions which only
serve to prolong the conflict and prevent any mutual understanding. What are
some of these illusions, or pipe-dreams, as the great American playwright
Eugene O'Neill would call them? Following O'Neill, we can distinguish between
pipe-dreams of yesterday and pipe-dreams of tomorrow. For example, the belief
shared by many Israelis that they have a biblical right to the land (the
ancient biblical lands of Judea and Samaria) and that God gave the Jews this land for all time is undoubtedly an
illusion or a pipe-dream of yesterday. It is not affirmed because there is any
real evidence for it, but because it satisfies a deep-seated psychological need
for a God-given Jewish homeland. The belief that by expanding the settlements Israel will augment its
national security is a pipe-dream of tomorrow. It is important to note how these
illusions sustain and reinforce one another, and constitute a psychological
barrier which is that much more impervious to critical reflection. Israel's
illusions have served to create the logic for occupation, ultimately perpetuating the dehumanization of the Palestinians.The
Palestinians, for their part, are not without their own illusions. They
believe, for example, that God has reserved the land for them, and appeal to
the fact that they had inhabited the land for centuries. The presence of the
al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem attest to their
unmitigated historical and religious affinity to the Holy City. They also cling to
the idea that they will someday return to the land of their forebears, as they
have and continue to insist on the right of return of the Palestinian refugees,
even though this has become a virtual impossibility. The Palestinians cling to
their pipe-dreams of yesterday and tomorrow just as blindly and desperately as
the Israelis, which leads to resistance to and fear of change.This has
contributed to making the Israeli-Palestinian conflict both chronic and
intractable, as the various illusions are continuously and consciously nurtured
by the daily encounters between the two sides. It would thus appear that the psychological
concept of resistance to change is extremely relevant as well. First, a
distinction is needed between resistance to persuasion, which is conscious and
deliberate, and inner unconscious resistance to change. In his essay, "The
Psychological Dimensions of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: the Role of
Psychological Resistance," David Rabinowitz, one of Israel's leading
psychiatrists, observes that an important function of unconscious resistance is
that it is protective in nature. In seeking bridging concepts that could link
between the domains of psychology and politics in the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, it could be proposed that a collective mutual resistance to change
protects a vulnerable identity. Compared to the stable and mature political identities
of the American, British and French nations, the political identities of both
the Israeli and Palestinian peoples are, in a way, in their adolescence.
Identities in this setting are more vulnerable, and the protagonists are
naturally more defensive and resistant to change. By its very nature, the
players must find it difficult (if not impossible) to articulate this
publically, as to do so is to admit to this vulnerability.The concept of
psychological resistance to change may well affect the political setting in
general and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular; it is closely
connected to perceptions at many levels. Indeed, the psychological resistance
provides protection for vulnerable identity formation in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is this mindset, strengthened by historical
experiences, which transcends the more than nine decades since the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict began. The individuals and groups, Israelis and
Palestinians alike, have and continue to interpret the nature of the discord
between them as "you versus me" in a prejudiced and selective way. In
turn, this has stifled any new information and enabled the continuing
resistance to change, which could shed new light on the nature and the
substance of the conflict and help advance the peace process.The concept of
unconscious resistance to change in this setting links well to the view of
perceptions driving the polarization in the conflict. Historical experience,
which formulates perceptions, serves among other things to enhance the sense of
identity of "who we really are," a formative collective assumption
that sits at the bedrock of both key players and drives functional and
dysfunctional behavior. As Rabinowitz puts it, "the central benefit of
this powerful unconscious resistance to change provides is the protection of a
relatively vulnerable core identity [primary gains]. Secondary gains, however,
are essentially the side-effects of the chronic polarization of this conflict:
powerful allies offering material and political support [the US' support of
Israel and moderate Palestinians verses Iran's support for Palestinian
militants such as Hamas], engaging in alluring narratives, public attention and
useful alliances etc." In principle, such a mindset prevents either side
from entertaining new ideas that might lead to compromises for a peaceful
solution. The paradox here is that majorities on both sides do seek and want
peace, knowing full well that this would require significant concessions, but
are unable to reconcile the required concessions with imbedded perceptions that
have precluded these compromises as a result of resistance to change.Thus, to mitigate the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we must first carefully look into the various
elements that inform the psychological dimension of the conflict, and discuss
how they impact the relationship between the two sides and what it would take
to alleviate these psychological impediments as prerequisites to finding a
solution.
