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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (17872)	11/27/2003 5:41:10 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793624

Something Else to Be Thankful For "A week-old Iraqi infant has arrived in Israel to undergo an operation to correct a congenital heart defect," the Associated Press reports. An Israeli organization called Save a Child's Heart brought Bayan Jassem to the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, south of Tel Aviv, whose director, Moshe Mashiah, came to Israel as a refugee from Iraq in 1951. "The journey would probably have been impossible before the U.S.-led military sweep into Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein," the AP notes. Probably? Meanwhile, Ha'aretz reports that the British Political Cartoon Society has awarded its Cartoon of the Year award to Dave Brown of the Independent, a far-left broadsheet, for a strip depicting the prime minister of Israel eating an Arab infant. opinionjournal.com

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (17872)	11/27/2003 6:36:51 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793624

There are complaints that Brooks is not a Social Conservative. I see him as a Libertarian/Neocon combo. Babbling Brooks By George Neumayr George Neumayr is managing editor of The American Spectator. A liberal who calls himself a conservative is still a liberal. Except to liberals. Since turning conservatism into an echo of their own thoughts is job one for them, they are happy to describe liberals who calls themselves conservatives as "conservative." The liberals at the New York Times, for example, designate David Brooks as their "conservative" columnist, even as he takes a position on homosexual marriage to the left of the Democratic presidential field. "He's every liberal's favorite conservative," Michael Kinsley, editor of Slate, said to the New York Observer. "People were always stopping me, saying that they liked his stuff," said New York Times editorial page editor Gail Collins. "There is something about him -- he's like the conservative guy who can talk to liberals." In the Observer article, Brooks plays along with the game and accepts the conservative label but says (in response to a question about whether he might become a "leftist again"), "Sometimes I do think that.…If I was with the Nation left, I'd be depressed. If I was with the centrist–Joe Lieberman left, I'd be happy." Brooks is already there, and perhaps past it, judging by his Saturday column on homosexual marriage. In it he makes a "conservative" case for a radically liberal innovation most Democrats aren't even heedless enough to embrace. Brooks's case is not remotely conservative in its conclusion, just in its moralizing tone. He sternly calls for monogamous homosexuality. "We shouldn't just allow gay marriage," he writes. "We should insist on gay marriage." Call it the case for straight-laced sin. (Demanding that homosexuals sin monogamously is perhaps stringent conservatism for the Times.) "Anybody who has several sexual partners in a year is committing spiritual suicide," Brooks writes. "He or she is ripping the veil from all that is private and delicate in oneself, and pulverizing it in an assembly line of selfish sensations." This sounds like St. Paul's description of homosexual conduct, but Brooks's isn't worried about the moral character of homosexual acts, only their context. Outside of marriage they are bad for the soul, according to his moral logic. Inside of homosexual marriage they would be good for it. (St. Paul would be surprised to learn that sin ceases to be "spiritual suicide" if done repetitively with one person and with Caesar's seal of approval.) "We should regard it as scandalous that two people could claim to love each other and not want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity," writes Brooks. What's the moral logic here? That homosexuals can't choose their sexuality but they can choose lifelong fidelity? That's a curious position for Brooks to take if he is saying that homosexuals can't help their inclinations. What if they are inclined to be unfaithful? According to the moral liberalism Brooks takes for granted as a starting point for the discussion, homosexual inclinations and objects of desire aren't to be questioned, and certainly can't be controlled. No, no, whatever you are inclined to do you are entitled to do. (Since a substantial number of people are bisexuals -- and thus it must be a natural condition, according to liberal logic -- perhaps it is time for Brooks to also make a "conservative" case for polygamy. Don't bisexuals need the stabilizing influence of marriage too?) Brooks even suggests conservatives are duty bound to make the case for homosexual marriage. It is "up to conservatives to make the important, moral case for marriage, including gay marriage. Not making it means drifting further into the culture of contingency, which, when it comes to intimate and sacred relations, is an abomination." Homosexual marriage will stop the drift of our culture of contingency? That would only be persuasive if homosexual culture weren't part and parcel of that culture of contingency. Homosexual marriage will not stop the culture of contingency but bring it deeper into an institution already suffering under it. Brooks says that homosexual marriage will help to rebuild a "culture of fidelity." Fidelity to what? To God? To children? To morality? How do you rebuild a culture of fidelity on infidelity to fundamental moral laws? Brooks says "some conservatives have latched onto biological determinism" to oppose homosexual marriage. But he latches onto a form of homosexual determinism to call on conservatives to accommodate it with marriage (though his determinism is limited. He uses it to justify homosexual marriage but forgets about it when implying that homosexuals are capable of lifelong fidelity.) In one of his earlier columns, Brooks approvingly wrote of Pope John Paul II that he "is always taking us out of our secular comfort zone and dragging us toward ultimate issues. You can't talk about politics, economics, science, philosophy or war, he argues, while conveniently averting your eyes from God and ultimate truth." Does Brooks think we should talk about redefining marriage while conveniently averting our eyes from God and ultimate truth? Wouldn't his idea of marriage, as revealed in his design of the human body, be a little more authoritative than current fashion? In this debate, we constantly hear about the rights of man. When are we going to hear about the rights of God? Isn't He entitled to respect? The glibness and impiety displayed in the homosexual marriage debate is unbelievable. One would think society was debating country club memberships. Brooks tries to elevate the tone of the debate but his moralizing tone is odd in the context of what he is endorsing. To say as he does that "we are not animals whose lives are bounded by our flesh" and that we're "moral creatures with souls, endowed with the ability to make covenants," sounds not like an argument for homosexual marriage but against it. It is "up to conservatives" not to join liberals in laying an ax to the cornerstone of civilization in some deluded hope that a marriage certificate will magically make homosexuals moral, but to conserve the institution of marriage as established by God. spectator.org

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (17872)	11/27/2003 3:52:06 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793624

Atlantic Blog: It's all Sharon's fault Mark Mazower, a history professor at Birkbeck College London, writes in the Times that European anti-Semitism is Sharon's fault. There has always been a debate among Jews about the importance of anti-Semitism in Europe, and Zionists for obvious reasons have tended to emphasise the threat it poses. But today Israel itself looks more like a source of danger for Jews worldwide than a refuge, and even Israelis — though the emigration statistics remain a closely guarded official secret — are voting with their feet. If Sharon is seriously concerned about anti-Semitism, there is no one better placed than he to do something about it by changing his Government’s policies towards the Palestinians. I don't buy it. What I have seen here in the last decade is a shift from anti-Jew to anti-Israel noise from the same people. I have heard the same people who tell me they would not hire an Israeli hire Russians (notwithstanding Chechnya) and Indians (nothwithstanding the Kashmir dispute) or, closer to home, Northern Irish. In Semites and Anti-Semites, Bernard Lewis wrote in the introduction: On September 21, 1982, after the first reports of the massacre of Palestinians at Sabra and Shatilla, a group of teachers at one of the major French high schools, the Lycée Voltaire in Paris, declaring themselves to be "outraged by the massacres in the Palestinian camps in Beirut," stopped all courses between 10 A.M. and midday. They drafted two letters, one to the president of the French Republic, demanding the breaking of diplomatic and economic relations with the state of Israel and the official recognition of the PLO; the other to the Israel Embassy in Paris, demanding the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Israeli troops from Beirut and Lebanon. These two letters, with appropriate explanations, were read to the students of the school assembled in the main courtyard. There is no evidence that the teachers of this or other schools had ever been moved to such action by events in Poland or Uganda, Central America or Afghanistan, South Africa or Southeast Asia, or for that matter in the Middle East where the massacre at Sabra and Shatila, with all its horror, lacked neither precedents nor parallels. But in Mazower's tripe, I found this particularly intriguing. Recently there has been a remarkable increase in the number of Israelis settling in Germany: so much for anti-Semitism there. The argument has huge implications. Large numbers of blacks moved from the American south to the north in several waves after the Civil War. So much for the claim that there was racism in the north. The Irish fled to Australia and the Americas in the 1850s. So much for the claim that there was prejudice against the Irish. The Chinese came to America, so obviously there was no prejudice against the Chinese in America. During the apartheid years, there was immigration of black Africans into South Africa. So much for the claim that apartheid hurt blacks. I know quite a few Israelis, mostly young, in this country, and I have met Israelis who are living in other parts of Europe. They left Israel because their parents are terrified that they will be the next ones blown up on a bus or in a nightclub. In Europe, they run into a lot of fashionable anti-Semitism (from the Israelis I know, apparently Ireland is better than Britain, and way better than France; I don't know any Israelis who have lived in Germany), but however unpleasant or nasty it may be, it is better than being hit with a nail bomb. Andrew Wilkie may be a jerk, an anti-Semite, an obnoxious trendy leftist, a pompous ass, whatever, but he is unlikely to actually shoot a Jew. Tom Paulin may encourage others to shoot Jews, but he is not likely to do it himself atlanticblog.com

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (17872)	11/28/2003 9:52:31 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793624

Geneva Sellout By Charles Krauthammer washingtonpost.com Friday, November 28, 2003; Page A41 On Monday, a peace agreement will be signed by Israelis and Palestinians. This "Geneva accord" has gotten much attention. And the signing itself will be greeted with much hoopla. Journalists are being flown in from around the world by the Swiss government. Jimmy Carter will be heading a list of foreign dignitaries. The U.S. Embassy in Bern will be sending an observer. This is all rather peculiar: The agreement is being signed not by Israeli and Palestinian officials, but by two people with no power. On the Palestinian side, the negotiator is former information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo, who at least is said to have Yasser Arafat's ear. The Israeli side, however, is led by Yossi Beilin, a man whose political standing in his own country is so low that he failed to make it into Parliament. After helping bring his Labor Party to ruin, Beilin abandoned it for the far-left Meretz Party, which then did so badly in the last election that Beilin is now a private citizen. There is a reason why he is one of Israel's most reviled and discredited politicians. He was the principal ideologue and architect behind the "peace" foisted on Israel in 1993. Those Oslo agreements have brought a decade of the worst terror in all Israeli history. Now he is at it again. And Secretary of State Colin Powell has written a letter to Beilin and Rabbo expressing appreciation for their effort, and is now planning to meet with them. This is scandalous. Israel is a democracy, and this agreement was negotiated in defiance of the democratically (and overwhelmingly) elected government of Israel. If a private U.S. citizen negotiated a treaty on his own, he could go to jail under the Logan Act. If an Israeli does it, he gets a pat on the back from the secretary of state. Moreover, this "peace" is entirely hallucinatory. It is written as if Oslo never happened. The Palestinian side repeats solemn pledges to recognize Israel, renounce terror, end anti-Israel incitement, etc. -- all promised in Oslo. These promises are today such a dead letter that the Palestinian side is openly bargaining these chits again, as if the Israelis have forgotten that in return for these pledges 10 years ago, Israel recognized the PLO, brought it out of Tunisian exile, established a Palestinian Authority, permitted it an army with 50,000 guns and invited the world to donate billions to this new Authority. Arafat pocketed every Israeli concession, turned his territory into an armed camp and then launched a vicious terror war that has lasted more than three years and killed more than 1,000 Israelis. It is Lucy and the football all over again, and the same chorus of delusionals who so applauded Oslo -- Jimmy Carter, Sandy Berger, Tom Friedman -- is applauding again. This time, however, the Israeli surrender is so breathtaking it makes Oslo look rational. A Palestinian state, of course. Evacuating every Jewish settlement in new Palestine, of course. Redividing Jerusalem, of course. But that is not enough. Beilin gives up the ultimate symbol of the Jewish connection and claim to the land, the center of the Jewish state for 1,000 years before the Roman destruction, the subject of Jewish longing in poetry and prayer for the 2,000 years since -- the Temple Mount. And Beilin doesn't just give it up to, say, some neutral international authority. He gives it to sovereign Palestine. Jews will visit at Arab sufferance. Not satisfied with having given up Israel's soul, Beilin gives up the body too. He not only returns Israel to its 1967 borders, arbitrary and indefensible, but he does so without any serious security safeguards. Palestine promises to acquire and buy no more weapons than specified in some treaty annex. This is a joke. Oslo had similarly detailed limitations on Palestinian weaponry, and nobody even pretended to enforce them. Last year, a massive illegal boatload came in from Iran on the Karine A. What did the world do about it? Nothing. Today, however, Israel still has control over Palestine's borders. Under Beilin, this ends. Palestine will be free to acquire as much lethal weaponry as it wants. And on the critical question that even the most dovish Israelis insist on -- that the Palestinians not have the right to flood Israel with Arab refugees -- the agreement is utterly ambiguous. Third parties (including among others the irredeemably hostile Syria and its puppet Lebanon) are to suggest exactly how many Palestinians are to return to Israel, and the basis for the number Israel will be required to accept will be the mathematical average! This is not a peace treaty, this is a suicide note -- by a private citizen on behalf of a country that has utterly rejected him politically. That it should get any encouragement from the United States or from its secretary of state is a disgrace. washingtonpost.com

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (17872)	11/30/2003 3:43:15 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793624

Because "he" didn't refer to Muslims in general, but to Osama bin Laden. Actually, he referred to Osman Atto. More specifically, he referred to Osman Atto’s God, the same God worshipped by Muslims in general. A lot of people consider “my god is bigger than your god” to be fighting words, and we really don’t need to be fighting more people than we’re fighting already. Problem is, preaching situational morality tends to leave you without anything at all to actually practice Attack us, and we will kill you. Attack our friends, and we will help them. Threaten our interests, and we will oppose you in a manner consistent with the nature of the threat. What’s obscure or impractical about that?