One of the factors driving Muslim males, particularly educated ones, into these acts of extreme, expressive violence is that while they were taught that they have the most perfect and complete operating system, every day they’re confronted with the reality that people living by God 2.0., God 1.0 and God 0.0 are generally living much more prosperously, powerfully and democratically than those living under Islam. This creates a real dissonance and humiliation. How could this be? Who did this to us? The Crusaders! The Jews! The West! It can never be something that they failed to learn, adapt to or build. This humiliation produces a lashing out.
In the old days, you needed a terror infrastructure with bases in Beirut or Afghanistan to lash out in a big way. Not anymore. Now all you need is the virtual Afghanistan — the Internet and a few cellphones — to recruit, indoctrinate, plan and execute. Hence, the atomization — little terror groups sprouting everywhere. Everyone now has a starter kit. ...
The Soviet Union was easy to find and hard to kill, but once it died, it was dead forever. It had no regenerative power because it had no popular base. The terrorists of Iraq or London are hard to find, easy to kill, but very difficult to eliminate. New recruits just keep sprouting.
Of course, not all Muslims are terrorists. But it’s been widely noted that virtually all suicide terrorists today are Muslims. Angry Norwegians aren’t doing this — nor are starving Africans or unemployed Mexicans. Muslims have got to understand that a death cult has taken root in the bosom of their religion, feeding off it like a cancerous tumor.
This cancer is erasing basic norms of civilization. ...If Muslim leaders don’t remove this cancer — and only they can — it will spread, tainting innocent Muslims and poisoning their relations with each other and the world.
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
At a Theater Near You ...
New York Times:By Thomas Friedman
One House, Two Presidents, a Million Melodramas
New York Times: By Maureen Dowd
Can we take 4, or 8, years of this?
At very least, make Maureen Ambassador to the Vatican, and then revoke her passport.
“BILL!” Hillary shouts. “Enough! Hillaryland has spoken. You’re not going to have your own office in the East Wing or your own staff there. And don’t even think of pulling a Cheney and destroying the visitor logs. We’re going to set up a desk for you in the Oval. In Hillaryland, we say: Keep your friends close but your husband closer. You’ll have a nice little room of your own in the pantry. You were, after all, the guy who put the pant in pantry.”
Can we take 4, or 8, years of this?
At very least, make Maureen Ambassador to the Vatican, and then revoke her passport.
The Opinionator on the Commutation
The Opinionator - New York Times Blog:
As George Washington law professor Orin Kerr writes at The Volokh Conspiracy, “President Bush has set a remarkable record in the last 6+ years for essentially never exercising his powers to commute sentences or pardon those in jail. His handful of pardons have been almost all symbolic gestures involving cases decades old, sometimes for people who are long dead.” Ohio State law professor Douglas Berman wonders whether Bush’s empathy for Libby’s plight could, just maybe, lead Bush to reconsider his support for long prison terms for all people not named Scooter Libby who have been convicted of federal crimes. On his Sentencing Law and Policy blog, Berman writes of President Bush:
I now hope that he will instruct all members of the Department of Justice to demonstrate similar compassion for other defendants sentenced under the federal sentencing guidelines. After all, it seems the President views a significant fines and probation and harm to reputation and family as “harsh punishment.” I am sure a number of defendants now appealing punishments that include also a prison term will be glad to have the top executive now defining what sorts of alternatives to imprisonment are sufficient in his view.
Traveler’s TB Not as Severe as Officials Thought
New York Times: By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
New tests of the Atlanta lawyer who caused an international health scare by traveling abroad with tuberculosis show that the form of the disease he has is not as severe as originally thought, federal officials and his doctors said yesterday....
Although the confusion as to who knew what and when was never completely explained, one fact was clear: Mr. Speaker had extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis, or XDR-TB, the hardest possible variety to cure, and it had been identified by the disease center in Atlanta.
Except that he did not have XDR-TB, the disease center and the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver, where he has been a patient in isolation since June 1, said yesterday. A series of new tests at both institutions shows that Mr. Speaker has multiple-drug-resistant TB, or MDR-TB, still dangerous, but susceptible to more drug treatments. ...
The test findings also raised questions about the accuracy of TB tests at the C.D.C., a national and reference laboratory for the disease. The center reported in May that its tests showed that Mr. Speaker had XDR-TB, based on cultures from a lung procedure, a bronchoscopy, at a hospital in Atlanta. ...
In a statement expressing relief that he did not have the most severe form and harshly criticizing the government’s actions in his case, Mr. Speaker said his case had been misdiagnosed.
Can Blogging Derail Your Career?
The Chronicle:
From Juan Cole [responding to the seven]:
In the spring, Informed Comment took center stage in another arena — [Michigan Professor Juan]Cole's own career. After two departments recommended him for a tenured position at Yale University, a senior committee decided last month not to offer him the job after all. Although Yale has declined to explain its decision, numerous accounts in the news media have speculated that Cole's appointment was shot down because of views he expressed on his blog. We asked seven academic bloggers to weigh in on Cole's case and on the hazards of academic blogging.
From Juan Cole [responding to the seven]:
The ability to speak directly and immediately to the public on matters of one's expertise, and to bring to bear all one's skills to affect the public debate, is new and breathtaking. I have had some success in explaining the threat of Al Qaeda and suggesting how it should be combated, and have addressed U.S. counter-terrorism officials on numerous occasions on those matters. And then there is Iraq, about which I was one of the few U.S. historians to have written professionally before the 2003 war. In the summer of 2003, when the general mood of the administration, the news media, and the public was unrelievedly celebratory, I warned that a guerrilla war was building and that powerful sectarian forces such as the movement of Moktada al-Sadr were a gathering threat. I gained a hearing not only with broad segments of the public but also at the highest levels of the U.S. government.
I am a Middle East expert. I lived in the area for nearly 10 years, speak several of its languages, and have given my life to understanding its history and culture. Since September 11, 2001, my country has been profoundly involved with the region, both negatively and positively. Powerful economic and political forces in American society would like to monopolize the discourse on these matters for the sake of their own interests, which may not be the same as the interests of those of us in the general public. Obviously, such forces will attempt to smear and marginalize those with whom they disagree. Before the Internet, they might have had an easier time of it. Being in the middle of all this, trying to help mutual understanding, is what I trained for. Should I have been silent, published only years later in stolid academic prose in journals locked up in a handful of research libraries? And this for the sake of a "career"? The role of the public intellectual is my career. And it is a hell of a career. I recommend it.
Juan R.I. Cole is a professor of modern Middle East and South Asian history at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. His blog can be found at http://juancole.com
Keeping Patients’ Details Private, Even From Kin
New York Times: "By JANE GROSS
MORE
An emergency room nurse in Palos Heights, Ill., told Gerard Nussbaum he could not stay with his father-in-law while the elderly man was being treated after a stroke. Another nurse threatened Mr. Nussbaum with arrest for scanning his relative’s medical chart to prove to her that she was about to administer a dangerous second round of sedatives.
The nurses who threatened him with eviction and arrest both made the same claim, Mr. Nussbaum said: that access to his father-in-law and his medical information were prohibited under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or Hipaa, as the federal law is known.
Mr. Nussbaum, a health care and Hipaa consultant, knew better and stood his ground. Nothing in the law law prevented his involvement. But the confrontation drove home the way Hipaa is misunderstood by medical professionals, as well as the frustration — and even peril — that comes in its wake.
Government studies released in the last few months show the frustration is widespread, an unintended consequence of the 1996 law.
MORE
Ending the Farce ???
Talking about strutting little peacocks, here is a bit of bird excrement from today's David Brooks column in the Times: New York Times:
We know that Karl Rove leaked, even if he were not the first to do so. Prosecutor Fitzgerald chose not to indict, after multiple meetings with Rove's lawyers, for reasons that have never been explained. For better or worse, Fitzgerald is of the view that prosecutors should not discuss their reasons for not prosecuting. (One can debate, perhaps endlessly, the pros and cons of reports issued by special prosecutors in the years since Watergate.)
We don't know for sure VP Cheney's role in the particulars of the reprisals against Joe Wilson and his wife Valerie. (Brooks adverts to "the vice president['s] ... unfailing talent for vindictive self-destruction.") Given strong conclusions by judge and jury regarding Libby's intentional repeated perjuries and obstructions of Fitzgerald's inquiry, we can fairly presume that he did so for a reason pretty compelling to him, and protection of his longtime patron the VP (also known herein as The Dick) from accountability seems a likely suspect to be rounded up, perhaps along with the wayward W.
W, of course, gave his assurances that any leaker in the White House would be "taken care of". Quite so, with commutation of jail time now and the likelihood of a full pardon at the end of term.
The coverup seems to be working rather nicely,thank you.
Absent John Sirica, Sam Ervin, Peter Rodino, or their later-day apprentices, there it will end --unless the people rise up, and demand better.
And put the strutting Brooks back in his cage, with Bob Novak, Judith Miller, and others who have stained their profession with this sorry mess.
Howl.
Of course, the howlers howl. That is their assigned posture in this drama. They entered howling, they will leave howling and the only thing you can count on is their anger has been cynically manufactured from start to finish.
The farce is over. It has no significance. Nobody but Libby’s family will remember it in a few weeks time.
We know that Karl Rove leaked, even if he were not the first to do so. Prosecutor Fitzgerald chose not to indict, after multiple meetings with Rove's lawyers, for reasons that have never been explained. For better or worse, Fitzgerald is of the view that prosecutors should not discuss their reasons for not prosecuting. (One can debate, perhaps endlessly, the pros and cons of reports issued by special prosecutors in the years since Watergate.)
We don't know for sure VP Cheney's role in the particulars of the reprisals against Joe Wilson and his wife Valerie. (Brooks adverts to "the vice president['s] ... unfailing talent for vindictive self-destruction.") Given strong conclusions by judge and jury regarding Libby's intentional repeated perjuries and obstructions of Fitzgerald's inquiry, we can fairly presume that he did so for a reason pretty compelling to him, and protection of his longtime patron the VP (also known herein as The Dick) from accountability seems a likely suspect to be rounded up, perhaps along with the wayward W.
W, of course, gave his assurances that any leaker in the White House would be "taken care of". Quite so, with commutation of jail time now and the likelihood of a full pardon at the end of term.
The coverup seems to be working rather nicely,thank you.
Absent John Sirica, Sam Ervin, Peter Rodino, or their later-day apprentices, there it will end --unless the people rise up, and demand better.
And put the strutting Brooks back in his cage, with Bob Novak, Judith Miller, and others who have stained their profession with this sorry mess.
Howl.
Harold Scheub on Doing The University of Wisconsin
Paul Soglin: Waxing America:
Paul has reproduced part of UW Professor Harold Scheub's eloquent welcoming greeting to UW students and their families. As Paul puts it:
Paul has reproduced part of UW Professor Harold Scheub's eloquent welcoming greeting to UW students and their families. As Paul puts it:
Here was a keen and witty analysis of the UW that deserved an audience that includes the legislators and the people of the State of Wisconsin. ... For your enjoyment and edification:Click the link.
Impeach the Bastards
So, yes, the President has an undoubted Constitutional power to grant pardons and commutations of sentence.
But suppose, just hypothetically, a pardon or commutation is offered as part of a conspiracy to secrete information relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation, or an investigation into actions that may provide the basis for impeachment of one or more high public officials (say, again hypothetically, a Vice President).
To get (very slightly) less hypothetical, suppose Mr. Libby's conviction rests on perjury and obstruction of justice aimed to cover up potentially impeachable actions of The Dick and/or his nominal boss, he of the initial "W". Suppose further that Mr. Libby's commitment to remaining silent was thought to be tested by his (rapidly) impending change of address. (Perhaps his wavering commitment was even communicated to persons allegedly serving in the "Executive Branch".) Finally, suppose that the commutation of Mr. Libby's "excessively severe" 30-month prison term (reduced to a somewhat less severe zero, perhaps with additional understanding that a full pardon would follow after the 2008 elections) would be understood to enhance the likelihood that Mr. Libby would not be inclined to discuss these matters further.
My understanding, as a non-specialist, is that the undoubted Constitutional authority of legislators to cast votes on matters before Congress does not in and of itself (pesky matters of the "speech or debate clause" aside, to avoid complicating matters in the purely legislative--and, of course, Vice-Presidential-- contexts) immunize such persons from investigation and conviction of bribery charges.
There remain, of course, some matters of evidence to be pursued. But isn't that what the House Judiciary Committee's investigative authority (pursuant to an impeachment inquiry) are for?
Or did I miss something in Civics class?
But suppose, just hypothetically, a pardon or commutation is offered as part of a conspiracy to secrete information relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation, or an investigation into actions that may provide the basis for impeachment of one or more high public officials (say, again hypothetically, a Vice President).
To get (very slightly) less hypothetical, suppose Mr. Libby's conviction rests on perjury and obstruction of justice aimed to cover up potentially impeachable actions of The Dick and/or his nominal boss, he of the initial "W". Suppose further that Mr. Libby's commitment to remaining silent was thought to be tested by his (rapidly) impending change of address. (Perhaps his wavering commitment was even communicated to persons allegedly serving in the "Executive Branch".) Finally, suppose that the commutation of Mr. Libby's "excessively severe" 30-month prison term (reduced to a somewhat less severe zero, perhaps with additional understanding that a full pardon would follow after the 2008 elections) would be understood to enhance the likelihood that Mr. Libby would not be inclined to discuss these matters further.
My understanding, as a non-specialist, is that the undoubted Constitutional authority of legislators to cast votes on matters before Congress does not in and of itself (pesky matters of the "speech or debate clause" aside, to avoid complicating matters in the purely legislative--and, of course, Vice-Presidential-- contexts) immunize such persons from investigation and conviction of bribery charges.
There remain, of course, some matters of evidence to be pursued. But isn't that what the House Judiciary Committee's investigative authority (pursuant to an impeachment inquiry) are for?
Or did I miss something in Civics class?
Harvard president tackles first day at work
The Boston Globe: "Harvard University president Drew G. Faust spent her first workday in power yesterday hosting an ice cream social and doing business in a new office that she described as "surrounded with flowers and kind wishes and interesting problems."...
Faust took on many presidential duties months ago. Asked if she'd learned to handle the stress and long hours, she said she was still working on it.
For example, she likes relaxing with detective novels, but these days falls asleep after two paragraphs.
She also dotes on her dog, Clio, who has behavior problems.
'She reminds me that life is not perfect and life is not all about Harvard,' Faust said."
Faust took on many presidential duties months ago. Asked if she'd learned to handle the stress and long hours, she said she was still working on it.
For example, she likes relaxing with detective novels, but these days falls asleep after two paragraphs.
She also dotes on her dog, Clio, who has behavior problems.
'She reminds me that life is not perfect and life is not all about Harvard,' Faust said."
US chancellors slam boycott
Ynetnews:
American university and college chancellors met with Education Minister Yuli Tamir on Monday evening in Tel Aviv, and agreed to work together to forge academic cooperation between Israeli and American academic institutions.
During her speech, Tamir addressed the boycott resolution passed against Israel in May by Britain's main academic union, saying, 'Not only is the boycott misguided, it is also a destructive tool. It targets the people who keep their doors open even during the worst of times, the academics, who talk with Palestinians. It's an ironic step.' ...
Mark G. Yudof, Chancellor of the University of Texas, described the boycott as "a genuinely stupid move".
"I don't see any boycotts being proposed of African countries, or a boycott being proposed against Libya," he said.
"It's a double standard in my view. As the minister said, it's ironic to target the community which keeps dialogue open during national disputes. I think you'll see many American academics joining Lee Bollinger, President of Columbia University, in his condemnation of the boycott," Yudof added.
"My English friends told me I shouldn't take the boycott too seriously, that the group is not mainstream. But all I can do is judge them on their name and their actions," he added. ...
During a question and answer session, a number of academics told Tamir they were unhappy with the US State Department's decision to issue Americans wishing to visit Israel with a travel warning, saying the decision impeded academic cooperation. Tamir agreed, and added that the Israeli government has attempted to overturn the decision.
FDA Officials Criticized for Secrecy
My Way News : By ANDREW BRIDGES
Whay's the problem? It's not like the drug companies are like the oil and energy companies meeting secretly with The Dick.
Oh, you think so?
WASHINGTON (AP) - For years, the public calendars of two top federal drug safety officials were largely blank - devoid of the required detail about their contacts with the industry they regulated.
Open government experts and lawmakers said it is only the latest example of the lack of transparency at the Food and Drug Administration and a violation of the spirit of open government. The FDA attributed it to administrative oversight....
Federal regulations require the FDA to maintain a public calendar that details all "significant meetings" between its top brass and anyone outside the executive branch. There is no punishment for failing to disclose the information, but open government experts called it crucial to make public all the same.
"It's important to disclose this kind of stuff so the public knows who these high-ranking FDA officials are talking to and who has their ear. That's part of the process of assessing what's going on at FDA and are decisions being made in the best interest of the public," said Mary Boyle, a spokeswoman for the nonpartisan watchdog group Common Cause. ...
Frequent FDA critic Dr. Sidney Wolfe called it "ridiculous" that the FDA had failed to post the calendar listings but suggested the requirement should be expanded to cover even lower-level employees at the agency. It's those employees, Wolfe said, who spend the most time meeting face-to-face with drug companies.
"Before decisions that seem to be going in the wrong direction from the public health perspective, it might be nice to know a company was in there," said Wolfe, of the watchdog group Public Citizen.
Whay's the problem? It's not like the drug companies are like the oil and energy companies meeting secretly with The Dick.
Oh, you think so?
DOJ Documents Show Sampson Deleted Email
Truthout: By Matt Renner
As the President has recently reminded us, punishment of senior officials for perjury and obstruction of justice is way harsh.
An internal Department of Justice email dealing with a series of the most controversial aspects of the US attorney firing scandal was deleted by a DOJ official the day after Congress began to address the firings. Three months later, the official told Congressional investigators he had not destroyed any documents or deleted any records relating to the US attorney firings.
This is the first publicly released evidence that individuals directly involved in the plan to fire eight US attorneys have destroyed documents that are of interest to Congressional investigators. This revelation has raised some eyebrows with members of Congress, but officials were unwilling to speak publicly about it. The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee did not respond in time for publication.
Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and a central coordinator of the US attorney purge, deleted an official email on January 12, 2007. The email was a correspondence between Sampson and the DOJ White House Liaison Monica Goodling that dealt with the controversial appointment of GOP loyalist Tim Griffin to the post of US attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.
Three months after this email was deleted from Sampson's computer, he was interviewed behind closed doors by Congressional investigators. According to a Senior Congressional Aide with access to the non-public transcript of the interview, Sampson was asked directly if he destroyed documents or emails relating to the US attorney purge. He answered "No." The Congressional aide asked to remain anonymous because the interview transcript has not been made public.
The DOJ did not respond to repeated inquires into this matter. Kyle Sampson's lawyer did not return requests for comment.
Evidence that the email was deleted by Sampson came from the Justice Department's own documents released to Congress. They released a series of documents on June 21 that had previously been withheld. Many of the new documents are copies of emails from Monica Goodling's computer. On page 32 of the email sent, an email from Monica Goodling to Kyle Sampson shows that Sampson deleted an email from Goodling about five-and- a-half hours after it was written. The email system Goodling was using allowed users to track the progress of an email, recording when it was received, opened and deleted. For this particular email, the tracking system report read as follows: "Recipient: Sampson, Kyle. Deleted: 1/12/2007 7:12 PM."
The tracking program for email systems are bullet-proof, according to computer expert Frank Walton, an email systems developer and programmer and former information technology expert for the military contractor Northrop Grumman. "Tracking is what is happening to an email. It is the history of an email. It is not something someone can fake. It is a secure part of the email, meaning that a user cannot alter it," Walton said....
As the President has recently reminded us, punishment of senior officials for perjury and obstruction of justice is way harsh.
A Global Policy for the Jewish People
Prospects for Peace:By Daniel Levy
I was also struck by the Haaretz article and posted it to the blog below.
I wanted to draw people's attention to what I believe to be an important op-ed in Haaretz, on developing a global policy for the Jewish People. The author of the op-ed is Yehezkel Dror, the founding President of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute (JPPPI), professor of political science at Hebrew University, and formerly at RAND. JPPPI, which was established by the Jewish Agency for Israel, has a mission that includes a "deep commitment to the future of the Jewish people with Israel as its core state."
...And here is why I think this article deserves to be noticed: In it, Dror makes a small number of recommendations for a Jewish people policy and for Israel-Diaspora relations, and here is the one that caught my eye.
'Explicit and declared recognition of the right of Jews in the Diaspora to criticize Israeli policies.'
So here is the head of the most important Jewish Institute in the world to deal with these issues explicitly saying that blind Jewish support for any Israeli action or policy is an unhealthy thing and needs to be rethought. Ok ok, it sounds obvious, but for many organizations and leaders it has been a red line and Yehezkel Dror is both honest and courageous enough to blow the whistle on this nonsense. Much of the rest of the article has some interesting ideas on education, dialogue between the Diaspora and Israel, and rethinking the concept of aliyah (immigration to Israel). I hope this JPPPI recommendation will be listened to, especially in the US.
I was also struck by the Haaretz article and posted it to the blog below.
Latin Mass May Damage Catholic-Jewish Relations
The New York Sun: By GABRIELLE BIRKNER
Why, thanks. We are so appreciative of your consideration.
Google advertises Prayers Ringtones. O'perfidious Jews, find the light.
Pope Benedict XVI's expected decision this week to ease restrictions on a traditional Mass that includes a reference to Jewish conversion could damage Catholic-Jewish relations, interfaith leaders say.
The pope is said to have authorized the broader use of the Latin-language Tridentine Mass, which was widely supplanted more than 40 years ago by a less formal Mass in the local vernacular.
When celebrated in the traditional format that is favored by some conservative Catholics, the Good Friday liturgy contains a passage stating that Jews live in "blindness" and "darkness" and asking God to "remove the veil from their hearts." A reference to Jews as "perfidious" was excised from the liturgy in 1969....
The editor of a religion journal, First Things, the Reverend Richard John Neuhaus... posited that Pope Benedict XVI's forthcoming decree on the Tridentine Mass would 'reflect the language adopted by the Second Vatican Council,' and that phrases that could be construed as offensive to Jews would be removed.
Even if that language were not changed, Rev. Neuhaus said relations between Catholics and Jews would remain strong. 'We're not talking about a major part of Catholic worship,' he said. 'We're talking about one sentence that occurs once a year. That's not to say it is unimportant, but the things done with Catholic-Jewish relations over the past half-century is not going to be compromised. The church's commitment to a respectful dialogue with Judaism is irrevocable.'
The chairman of the board of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, the Reverend Philip Eichner, said the traditional Good Friday references to conversion are well meaning — not anti-Semitic. 'We would say everyone who doesn't see Jesus is living in a certain amount of darkness, and we want them to see the light,' he said.
Why, thanks. We are so appreciative of your consideration.
Google advertises Prayers Ringtones. O'perfidious Jews, find the light.
Help us to find the light
washingtonpost.com: By Michelle Boorstein
A two-week evangelical campaign designed to bring Jews to Jesus is underway in Washington, taking this question to Metro stations, Nationals games and popular spots like U Street: Is Jesus the Jewish messiah?
That is the core belief of the international missionary organization Jews for Jesus, the best known of dozens of messianic Jewish groups that have sprung up in recent decades. Followers believe that Jesus was the messiah mentioned in Jewish scripture. The group, which has a $17 million annual budget, defines its mission as 'making the messiahship of Jesus an unavoidable issue to Jewish people worldwide.' ...
But it comes at a time when congregations of messianic Jews are growing, albeit slowly. There are about 300 such congregations in the United States, up from none around 1970, according to the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations. Jewish groups that work to oppose conversion efforts estimate that 200,000 American Jews have become believers in Christ in the past three decades. ...
The issue of missionizing to Jews is becoming more explosive as evangelical Christian groups -- the primary backers of messianic organizations -- draw closer than ever with Jewish groups over their shared support of Israel. Christian blogs lighted up last year when the
Jerusalem Post reported that Texas megapreacher and stalwart Israel ally John C. Hagee believed that Jews have a special covenant with God that allows them salvation without accepting Jesus. The Rev. Hagee is already criticized by some evangelicals because he doesn't advocate proselytizing to Jews. He disputed the newspaper report, saying he believes that Jews do need Jesus, but many messianic Jews remain angry that some evangelical leaders are willing to tone down evangelizing in order not to offend Jews. ...
Barbra in the Garden of Exile
Barbara Streisand paid a private visit to the Jewish Museum Berlin. Accompanied by her husband, James Brolin, and two friends, Streisand visited the museum Sunday after it was closed for the night, according to a museum spokeswoman.
She spent two hours in the permanent exhibit in a private tour given by program director Cilly Kugelmann. At one point Streisand played a tune she had composed on a grand piano that had been shipped to South Africa when its owner fled Nazi Germany in 1936.
In addition to the permanent exhibit, which tells the story of nearly 2,000 years of Jewish life in Germany, Streisand visited the Garden of Exile. She tested several interactive exhibits, including one that asks what objects an 18th century religious woman would have taken on a journey.
'She did that game and got quite a lot of them right,' museum spokeswoman Eva Soderman said.
My wife and I spent more than five hours in that extraordinary museum last year. A few of the questions on the interactive exhibits were tough; most were not.
A Jewish summer in Himalayas
The Times of India: "
Google appends an ad for "Kosher [Zone] Diet Home Delivery." Not sure whether the diet extends to "Manala Cream", or whether that puts you "in the Zone."
The writing on the wall of the Old Manali village in the panoramic Kullu valley is clearly Hebrew. Israelis flocking to the valley in large numbers each year has turned this once-sleepy village into a thriving Jewish enclave. Better known for its cool climes and snow-capped peaks, over the past one-and-a-half decades the overcrowded-yet-quaint cafes along the Beas river have steadily emerged as the new paradise to which thousands of Jews annually migrate for an uninterrupted treat of drugs, rock ‘n roll and nirvana. ...
According to state officials, two-thirds of the estimated 1,00,000 foreigners that visit Old Manali, Vashisht, Naggar and Kasol and villages surrounding Dharamshala are Israeli backpackers. Most of them have been discharged from the three-year compulsory military service, say officials.
In the dense forests, with an endless supply of Malana Cream hashish, the backpackers come to escape the incessant armed confrontation back home and etherize in the valley’s seemingly infinite trance parties. The Malana Cream has time and again been rated as one of the best hashish in the world at the annual Amsterdam Cannabis competition.
"From April to September, this place is so packed with Israelis that no other tourists want to come here," says Tilak Ram, who works as a part-time waiter in many of the small hotels and guesthouses in Old Manali.
"They stay for weeks, months and sometimes even years thus creating permanent Jewish settlements. As a result many traditional pahadi villages have taken on the distinct appearance of the kibbutz or Jewish settlements..."
Though young Israeli backpackers have boosted the economy of villages around Manali, residents say they prefer other foreign tourists. "Israeli backpackers are misers. They bargain over everything, even a cup of tea..."
Google appends an ad for "Kosher [Zone] Diet Home Delivery." Not sure whether the diet extends to "Manala Cream", or whether that puts you "in the Zone."
Army Won't Bury Holocaust Survivors' Advocate
Forbes.com:
While the story does not make this entirely clear, cremation is not a permissible option for a religiously-observant Jew.
The Army has rejected an appeal by the family of Abraham Klausner, a leading advocate for Holocaust survivors, to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. ...
The family was told Monday that Klausner's cremated remains may be stored at the cemetery, but that his brief service as an Army chaplain did not qualify him to receive full burial honors.
The decision drew protests from Jewish groups and a prominent congressional Democrat, who said a man with his reputation and who witnessed the horrors of a Nazi prison camp should be exempt from the cremation rule.
Klausner, a rabbi, was the first Jewish chaplain from the Army to enter the Dachau concentration camp after it was liberated in 1945. After the war, Klausner became an advocate for survivors of the Holocaust, trying to reconnect families and writing a book about their experiences.
He died Thursday night at the age of 92 in his home in Sante Fe, N.M.
'It's just unbelievable to me he would be denied being buried at Arlington cemetery,' said Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish human rights organization based in Los Angeles. 'It's a rule that violates religious principles. So I want to know who made the rule and why it wasn't challenged.'
Army officials on Monday attributed the decision to a regulation adopted in 1967 that very narrowly restricted ground burials at the popular cemetery to conserve space. In general, the regulation allows burial only of active-duty members, retirees after lengthy service and veterans who have won special awards or medals.
According to Army spokesman Paul Boyce, Klausner qualifies for ground burial at any veterans' cemetery, but not at Arlington....
Jess Hordes, Washington director of the Anti-Defamation League, said Klausner should be made an exception primarily because of his work with Holocaust survivors.
"It was really exceptional work at an exceptional time," said Hordes, who noted he was calling officials at the White House and Defense Department, hoping they would intervene. "To offer cremation is not an option for a rabbi."
While the story does not make this entirely clear, cremation is not a permissible option for a religiously-observant Jew.
Monday, July 2, 2007
Toward a Jewish People policy
Haaretz:
By Yehezkel Dror
By Yehezkel Dror
Among the many domains in which Israel lacks a substantive policy, that of the Jewish People occupies a "place of honor."...But a deep understanding of the dynamics of the Jewish People and a correct perception of the emerging dangers to Israel-Diaspora relations are almost completely missing. ...
Even if the issue is well understood, it is not easy to base Israeli-Diaspora relations on a sustainable foundation. But this is not mission impossible. If we are creative in thinking and acting, then processes can be molded that will meet the requirements - including, for instance:
b Developing core curricula in Jewish and Jewish People studies, to be shared by Israel and the Diaspora, with care being taken to offer a range of options so as to accommodate value diversity.
b Inclusion of programs offering an understanding of the Jewish People and its dynamics in the mass media.
b A radical change in the conception of aliyah, with encouragement of partial aliyah, including multiple residences in Israel and the Diaspora.
b Substantive consultation with Diaspora leaders on Israeli decisions of importance to the Jewish People as a whole, with cautious movement toward establishing a 'consultative Jewish People council' related to the Knesset, which is entitled to prepare advisory opinions, and is composed of representatives of the Diaspora.
b Explicit and declared recognition of the right of Jews in the Diaspora to criticize Israeli policies.
b New modalities for Jewish investments in Israel, combining profitability with expression of solidarity.
b Shared challenging projects, including tikkun olam ('repair of the world') activities.
b Strengthening of identification symbols and shared centers, such as by making Jerusalem into the cultural capital of Judaism and the Jewish People.
b Setting up in Jerusalem a Jewish People leadership academy, to enable shared study and discourse by Israeli and Diaspora leaders, with special attention to younger ones.
b Deepening the nature of Israel as a "Jewish state" and making it more visible.
And more.
Embracing the empire ?
Haaretz: By Ian Buruma
Bernard Kouchner, France's new foreign minister, has a long and distinguished record as an advocate of intervention in countries where human rights are abused. As a co-founder of Doctors Without Borders, he stated that 'we were establishing the moral right to interfere inside someone else's country.' Saddam Hussein's mass murder of Iraqi citizens is why he supported the war in Iraq. One should always be careful about attributing motives to other people's views. But Kouchner himself has often said that the murder of his Russian-Jewish grandparents in Auschwitz inspired his humanitarian interventionism.
One may or may not agree with Kouchner's policies, but his motives are surely impeccable. The fact that many prominent Jewish intellectuals in Europe and the United States - often, like Kouchner, with a leftist past - are sympathetic to the idea of using American armed force to further the cause of human rights and democracy in the world, may derive from the same wellspring. Any force is justified to avoid another Shoah, and those who shirk their duty to support such force are regarded as no better than collaborators with evil. ...
Revolutionary Islamism is undoubtedly dangerous and bloody. Yet analogies with the Third Reich, although highly effective as a way to denounce people with whose views one disagrees, are usually false. No Islamist armies are about to march into Europe - indeed, most victims of Revolutionary Islamism live in the Middle East, not in Europe - and Ahmadinejad, his nasty rhetoric notwithstanding, does not have a fraction of Hitler's power. ...
If it were really true that the fundamental existence of our democratic Western world were about to be destroyed by an Islamist revolution, it would only make sense to seek protection in the full force of the U.S. informal empire. But if one sees our current problems in less apocalyptic terms, then another kind of trahison des clercs (treason of the intellectuals) comes into view: the blind cheering-on of a sometimes foolish military power embarked on unnecessary wars that cost more lives than they were intended to save.
There's room for hope
Haaretz : BY Avraham Burg
Anyone who, like me, believes in the separation of religion and state cannot support the "Jewish-democratic" formula. A state whose algorithm is so heavily weighted with religion can never fully contain democracy as well. Between "Jewish" and "democratic," Jewish theocracy will prevail. The fact is that the "Jewish" is getting stronger and more insular while the "democratic" - encompassing liberty, equality, rights and humanism - is growing very weak and ebbing away. ...
The alternative? The transition from defining Israel as "a Jewish state" to defining it as "the state of the Jews." It's the citizens, not the state, who define the identity. The individual is responsible for the contents and values of the society, for preserving its cultural and spiritual character, historical heritage, and for private and collective memory. The most profound, fundamental questions are to be decided only in a completely democratic manner. ...
Of all the things in the interview in question, I was especially disappointed by what was omitted. The book and its thesis were described only very briefly. None of the alternatives I posed were cited, no expression was given to my hopes for a new humanism, for a renewed Judaism, for less traumatic interfaces with the world. My views were hidden, as were my proposals for ways to recover from the national trauma and to transform weakness into strength; ideas for other trips that high-school students could make, for changes to the curriculum, for another, more Jewish way to commemorate the destruction of European Jewry.
Also not mentioned was the role that I envision for Israel as the catalyst for a greater, worldwide peace process - because our very existence should be motivated by a continual responsibility for world peace. Also missing from the interview was my aspiration for the Jewish people that says 'Never again,' not just for us, the Jews, but for every suffering victim today in the world, for them to get the support and protection of the Jews, yesterday's victims who defeated Hitler. ...
In my book and statements I join the stifled Israeli voices that are trying to sketch the outline of the next Israeli landscape. To add humanity and universalism to the old equations, and new dimensions of ethical content and national existence. A life of confidence, not a reality that is nothing but endless trauma. All those who are ready to ask tough questions, even if our answers are completely different, all those who put their hand on their hearts and admit "We are afraid" - they are my partners. And we are many.
Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish set to return to Haifa for first time since 1971?
Haaretz : By Yoav Stern
Palestinian national poet and writer Mahmoud Darwish is expected to take part in a literary event in Haifa, for the first time since leaving Israel more than 35 years ago.
Hadash Secretary Iman Ouda told Haaretz yesterday that the Defense Ministry has permitted Darwish to attend the event at Mt. Carmel Auditorium on July 15.
Hadash said the event, held jointly with Masharaf magazine, will focus on the poet and his work. Darwish worked and wrote in Haifa for many years.
Darwish was born in 1941 in the village of Al-Birwah, which was destroyed in 1948. His family stayed in Lebanon briefly as refugees and then returned to the village of Jedida in the Galilee. Darwish lived in Israel until 1971, when he left for Moscow to take a course given by the Communist Party. ...
Darwish has published more than 30 volumes of poetry and eight books of prose and has served as the editor of several publications. ... He is recognized internationally for his poetry, which focuses on his strong love for his lost homeland. His work has won numerous awards and has been published in at least 22 languages.
Hamas television to replace 'martyred' Mickey Mouse look-alike
Haaretz : By Reuters
A Hamas television station that last week killed off a Mickey Mouse look-alike who urged children to fight against Israel will use other famous characters to further their Islamist agenda, station officials said on Monday.
The host of the children's show 'Tomorrow's Pioneers,' Farfur, dressed in a full-body suit to resemble the Walt Disney cartoon character. The character was beaten to death in the show's final episode last week by a character posing as an Israeli.
Farfur and a female co-host instructed their young viewers on Hamas's militant brand of Muslim piety and urged children to support armed resistance against Israel.
Mohammad Saeed, the director of production at Al-Aqsa Television, told Reuters the station would use other famous cartoon characters in future shows.
'Farfur was a story alive and he has turned into another story as a [martyr]...
Impeach them all...
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush spared former White House aide I. Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby from a 2 1/2-year prison term on Monday, issuing an order that commutes his sentence.
This is a breaking news update. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
The Rx From "SiCKO:" More Choice
Truthout: By Dean Baker
The pundits are working overtime trying to defuse the message from 'SiCKO,' Michael Moore's new film. They are trying to convince the public that the United States could not possibly do what every other rich country (and even some not so rich countries) have managed to do: guarantee their people decent health care.
The centerpiece of the pundits' whine is that universal health care could not work here. They claim the systems which work in other countries require a larger roll for government in health care than Americans want. While this claim is contradicted by poll after poll on the topic, we don't have to argue with the pundits, rather pointless task in any case.
We can just give people a choice and let them vote with their feet. Suppose the government were to establish a Medicare-type program and open it up to all individuals and employers in the country. Those who already have insurance can switch to the government-run plan. Similarly, employers can switch to it as well. Individuals who do not already have insurance would have the option of buying in to the expanded Medicare plan as would employers who do not currently provide insurance for their workers. We can also have a system of expanded subsidies for health care for low and moderate income households, which will make health care insurance more affordable for those families.
This is more or less what both John Edwards and Barack Obama have proposed in their presidential campaigns. To get to universal coverage, there are important issues like mandating that individuals have health care insurance, and also questions about the revenue source for subsidies, but the key point is to establish a national Medicare-type insurance system that can get costs under control and eliminate the enormous waste in the private insurance system.
Medicare's administrative expenses are a small fraction of the administrative expenses of private insurers. Medicare uses just 2 percent of the money that flows through the system to cover administrative costs. By contrast, private insurers spend between 10 to 20 percent of their premiums to cover administrative costs. They use this money for marketing, high CEO salaries and dividends to shareholders; all expenses that Medicare does not have.
This is the reason Medicare always wipes the floor when it competes against private insurers on a level playing field.
House panel will hold hearing into Cheney's role in Oregon salmon die-off
Seattle Times : By Matthew Daly (AP)
He shot them ALL in the face?
WASHINGTON — The chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee said today his panel will hold a hearing into the role Vice President Dick Cheney may have played in the 2002 die-off of about 70,000 salmon near the California-Oregon border.
He shot them ALL in the face?
McDermott to Cheney: ‘Resign or face impeachment’
TheHill.com: By Chris Good
Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) told Vice President Dick Cheney to “resign or face impeachment” Thursday night as three more House Democrats lent their support to a plan to impeach the vice president.
“The vice president holds himself above the law, and it is time for the Congress to enforce the law,” McDermott said in a floor speech. “For the good of the nation, the vice president could leave office immediately.” ...
“When a sitting vice president claims that he is not part of the executive branch of government to which he was elected, it is time to remove him from office,” McDermott said. ...
“The intent of this administration, and this vice president, has been to silence all dissent,” McDermott said. “Fear is what kept this administration in office in 2004, and fear is the only public discourse this administration understands — and practices.”
The articles of impeachment, introduced by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) in April, have garnered support from 10 House cosponsors.
A Challenge to Gene Theory, a Tougher Look at Biotech
New York Times: By DENISE CARUSO
This fascinating, and potentially consequential article makes reference to one of my favorite expressions (see recent postings on science and religion):
Let me propose a central dogma from my decades in and around bioethics: We think we know more, and understand more fully, than we actually do.
My "central dogma" has this immediate corollary: That goes double when big bucks are involved.
And don't hold your breath waiting for technology companies to volunteer information on potential risks of their products.
But then, I thought Asilomar was a good idea.
Q.E.D.
THE $73.5 billion global biotech business may soon have to grapple with a discovery that calls into question the scientific principles on which it was founded.
Last month, a consortium of scientists published findings that challenge the traditional view of how genes function. The exhaustive four-year effort was organized by the United States National Human Genome Research Institute and carried out by 35 groups from 80 organizations around the world. To their surprise, researchers found that the human genome might not be a “tidy collection of independent genes” after all, with each sequence of DNA linked to a single function, such as a predisposition to diabetes or heart disease.
Instead, genes appear to operate in a complex network, and interact and overlap with one another and with other components in ways not yet fully understood. According to the institute, these findings will challenge scientists “to rethink some long-held views about what genes are and what they do."...
Because donor genes could be associated with specific functions, with discrete properties and clear boundaries, scientists then believed that a gene from any organism could fit neatly and predictably into a larger design — one that products and companies could be built around, and that could be protected by intellectual-property laws.
This presumption, now disputed, is what one molecular biologist calls “the industrial gene.”
“The industrial gene is one that can be defined, owned, tracked, proven acceptably safe, proven to have uniform effect, sold and recalled,” said Jack Heinemann, a professor of molecular biology in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and director of its Center for Integrated Research in Biosafety. ...
While no one has yet challenged the legal basis for gene patents, the biotech industry itself has long since acknowledged the science behind the question.
“The genome is enormously complex, and the only thing we can say about it with certainty is how much more we have left to learn,” wrote Barbara A. Caulfield, executive vice president and general counsel at the biotech pioneer Affymetrix, in a 2002 article on Law.com called “Why We Hate Gene Patents.”
“We’re learning that many diseases are caused not by the action of single genes, but by the interplay among multiple genes,” Ms. Caulfield said. She noted that just before she wrote her article, “scientists announced that they had decoded the genetic structures of one of the most virulent forms of malaria and that it may involve interactions among as many as 500 genes.”
Even more important than patent laws are safety issues raised by the consortium’s findings. Evidence of a networked genome shatters the scientific basis for virtually every official risk assessment of today’s commercial biotech products, from genetically engineered crops to pharmaceuticals.
“The real worry for us has always been that the commercial agenda for biotech may be premature, based on what we have long known was an incomplete understanding of genetics,” said Professor Heinemann, who writes and teaches extensively on biosafety issues.
Yet to date, every attempt to challenge safety claims for biotech products has been categorically dismissed, or derided as unscientific. A 2004 round table on the safety of biotech food, sponsored by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, provided a typical example:
“Both theory and experience confirm the extraordinary predictability and safety of gene-splicing technology and its products,” said Dr. Henry I. Miller, a fellow at the Hoover Institution who represented the pro-biotech position. Dr. Miller was the founding director of the Office of Biotechnology at the Food and Drug Administration, and presided over the approval of the first biotech food in 1992.
Now that the consortium’s findings have cast the validity of that theory into question, it may be time for the biotech industry to re-examine the more subtle effects of its products, and to share what it knows about them with regulators and other scientists.
This fascinating, and potentially consequential article makes reference to one of my favorite expressions (see recent postings on science and religion):
The principle that gave rise to the biotech industry promised benefits that were equally compelling. Known as the Central Dogma of molecular biology, it stated that each gene in living organisms, from humans to bacteria, carries the information needed to construct one protein.
Let me propose a central dogma from my decades in and around bioethics: We think we know more, and understand more fully, than we actually do.
My "central dogma" has this immediate corollary: That goes double when big bucks are involved.
And don't hold your breath waiting for technology companies to volunteer information on potential risks of their products.
But then, I thought Asilomar was a good idea.
Q.E.D.
Hamas Rejects an Outside Force for Gaza
New York Times:
Perhaps you could remind us of Suha's current net worth, in relation to that of the typical Gaza resident?
Hamas leaders have called on Mr. Abbas and his secularist Fatah movement to renew dialogue with them since their takeover of Gaza, but Fatah has rebuffed the overtures. Fatah leaders accuse Hamas of having carried out a coup in Gaza, and some have suggested that the Islamic group should no longer be included in the democratic process.
“In my opinion, after Gaza, Hamas ceased to be part of the Palestinian national fabric,” Nasser Jumaa, a Fatah legislator from Nablus, said recently. “I was one of those originally calling for Hamas to be absorbed and included,” he said, “but this experience was enough for me.”
Fatah leaders were especially upset at the scenes of Hamas militants breaking into the home of Mr. Arafat in Gaza during their victory celebrations, which included the looting of former symbols of Fatah power.
After touring the Arafat house on Saturday, accompanied by aides and reporters, Mr. Haniya telephoned the former Palestinian leader’s wife, Suha, in Tunis, in what appeared to be a gesture aimed at patching relations and restoring Palestinian unity. He told her that the house was untouched, and sent his regards to her and Mr. Arafat’s daughter, Zahwa.
Perhaps you could remind us of Suha's current net worth, in relation to that of the typical Gaza resident?
Once Upon a Radical Time on the Lower East Side
New York Times Blog: By Sewell Chan
Clayton Patterson — ex-teacher, artist, photojournalist, documentarian, as he describes himself — is a man obsessed. His first anthology, “Captured: A Lower East Side Film/Video History,” published in 2005, took up 586 pages. His latest anthology, “Resistance: A Radical Social and Political History of the Lower East Side,” weighs in at 624 pages. ...
Radicalism on the Lower East Side has a long history — settlement house reformers, garment worker organizers, Italian socialists, native-born Trotskyites and Yiddish-speaking intellectuals among others — but the radicalism that Mr. Patterson focuses on is more recent: the tenant, artistic, leftist, antiwar, civil-rights, gay-rights activism that dominated the area’s politics in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s. ...
The Lower East Side’s reputation as a refuge for struggling newcomers, down-and-out artists and nonconformist agitators appears to be fading, perhaps for good. “What we knew here before will never be here again,” Mr. Patterson said wistfully. Others were not so pessimistic. Mr. Rosen described local efforts to promote zoning restrictions that would prevent high-rise development in the area.
“Changing the zoning is not just a matter of how high a building goes, but it’s also a matter of remembering our history, being able to see our history, and beyond that, being able to protect our communities,” he said.
No More Babka? There Goes the Neighborhood
New York Times Blog: By Joseph Berger
Gertel’s, the legendary bakery on Hester Street on the Lower East Side known for its Jewish treats like rugelach, babka and marble cake, has closed its doors.
The closing is one more change in a string of changes on the historic Lower East Side, where hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Russia, Poland, Romania and Italy established their foothold in America and set up hundreds of dry goods and food shops that until recent years gave the area a characteristic pungency. But those shops are being replaced by hip boutiques and voguish restaurants, and only a few survivors, like the Russ & Daughters appetizing store and Katz’s Delicatessen, are left. ...
Reports on various Web sites say that Gertel’s is being replaced by a condo building and that a wholesale operation may continue. Gertel’s last babka was sold to a congregant at a Westchester synagogue, who gave the cake to her rabbi, Lester Bronstein.
Court Rejects Request to Delay Libby’s Sentence
New York Times:
File under, "Possible new uses for Gitmo."
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal appeals court refused on Monday to step in and delay former White House aide I. Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby's prison sentence in the CIA leak case. ...
''I hope it puts pressure on the president. He's a man of pronounced loyalties and he should have loyalty to Scooter Libby,'' said former Ambassador Richard Carlson, a member of Libby's defense fund. ''It would be a travesty for him to go off to prison. The president will take some heat for it. So what? He takes heat for everything.''
File under, "Possible new uses for Gitmo."
The Filthy Rich Are Different From You and Me
New York Times (IHT):By ROGER COHEN
To make this year's list of the 25 highest paid hedge-fund managers, published by Alpha magazine, you had to make $240 million. At the top was James Simons of Renaissance Technologies with $1.7 billion.
Simons used to crack codes for the U.S. Defense Department before moving on. Good luck to him. It is clearly more lucrative to detect small pricing anomalies in the Polish zloty or penny stocks - piling into them with your clients' billions - than to ponder clandestine North Korean signals.
Hedge-fund managers use technology, and their brains, to arbitrage little inefficiencies. Who would have dreamed this ultimate refinement of making money out of money would make them masters of the universe?
On Second Thought, Let’s Just Rate All the Lawyers
New York Times:
Legal publications these days are full of lists of supposedly stellar lawyers, which are a nice way to generate advertising and good feelings but perform no particular service. Avvo’s rankings at least take account of lawyers’ shortcomings.
A lawyer for Avvo, Bruce E. H. Johnson, was rated 10, or “superb,” which is a little suspicious. But he was making sense in discussing the suit the other day.
“Most ratings systems are very good at telling us who is super or who is best,” Mr. Johnson said. “But there are very few that tell us where there is a risk of substandard performance.”
“The First Amendment protects statements of opinion and evaluation,” he added. “And ratings are presumptively matters of opinion and judgment.”
Just Say AAA
New York Times: By PAUL KRUGMAN
So, Paul, maybe a column on how and why this happens, repeatedly?
What do you get when you cross a Mafia don with a bond salesman? A dealer in collateralized debt obligations (C.D.O.’s) — someone who makes you an offer you don’t understand.
...Now, you might have thought that S.& P. and Moody’s, which gave Thailand an investment-grade rating until five months after the start of the Asian financial crisis, and gave Enron an investment-grade rating until days before it went bankrupt, would by now have learned to be a bit suspicious. And you would think that the regulators, in particular the Federal Reserve, would have learned from the stock bubble and the wave of corporate malfeasance that went with it to keep a watchful eye on overheated markets.
But apparently not. And the housing bubble, like the stock bubble before it, is claiming a growing number of innocent victims.
So, Paul, maybe a column on how and why this happens, repeatedly?
Connecting.the.Dots: Hillary's Next Mate
Connecting.the.Dots:
One can see the political logic, and its consistency with Hillary's calculated positioning strategy.
I'd think about Bloomberg.
It’s been like waiting in line to get tickets for a rock concert. Yesterday the “Hillary Is 44” site promised: “Tomorrow we will address potential Vice President choices. Don’t miss it!” ...and the winner is...
James Webb, the junior senator from Virginia.
One can see the political logic, and its consistency with Hillary's calculated positioning strategy.
I'd think about Bloomberg.
He's No Churchill
New York Times Blog: The Opinionator
...But I think Bush’s hero would be bemused, to say the least, by the president’s wrapping himself in the Churchillian cloak. Indeed, the more you understand the historical record, the more the parallels leap out — but they’re between Bush and Chamberlain, not Bush and Churchill.”
Among the similarities Olson sees between Bush and Chamberlain: “Like Bush and unlike Churchill, Chamberlain came to office with almost no understanding of foreign affairs or experience in dealing with international leaders”; “Chamberlain and his men saw little need to build up a strong coalition of European allies”; and “Chamberlain also laid claim to unprecedented executive authority, evading the checks and balances that are supposed to constrain the office of prime minister.”
Fishing Around: Country Roads
Stanley Fish New York Times Blog:
After eliciting thousands of blog comments on high-falutin' matters theological, Stanley Fish turns to country music. I'll pass.
It’s a Christian world (and for “Christian” read “low Church Protestant”), where invocations of Jesus come as naturally as waking up in the morning. Think of it as Christian radio with all the sin left in. The religion is fierce and deep, and its consolations acknowledge the pain and trouble to which they are a not always adequate response: “God is great, but sometimes life ain’t good.”
After eliciting thousands of blog comments on high-falutin' matters theological, Stanley Fish turns to country music. I'll pass.
Prayer: A Neurological Inquiry
Skeptical Inquirer : DAVID C. HAAS
The folks who run studies trying to prove the efficacy of intercessory prayer probably deserve a response like this.
A plague on both their houses, he prays silently...
In view of what is known of brain development and organization (Harth 1993), the neural patterns underlying any thought, even a formulary prayer, would be unique for every individual. Thus, generic translations from neural patterns to verbal thoughts in any language would be impossible. A supernatural being would need to instantly surmount these difficulties—for multitudes of concurrent supplicants—in order to grasp the informational content of a mental prayer. Moreover, such a being would, logically, need to be with each supplicant while he or she is rotating with Earth at 1,038 miles per hour (if at the equator), orbiting around the Sun at 18.5 miles per second, rotating around the center of the Milky Way at about 150 miles per second, and moving through space with our galaxy at some thousands of miles per second.
Like all mental states, prayers are neither matter nor energy. Thus, they are not transmissible to or readable by another being by any means within the laws of nature.
Whether they can be known to a supernatural being hinges on the effects of the prayers’ solicitations as judged by proper scientific studies. To date, such studies of intercessory prayer have not shown it to improve health-care outcomes. In contrast to thoughts themselves, the brain activity from which thoughts arise does consist of energy--—electrochemical energy within neural circuitry. Reading this teeming energy in millions of circuit neurons and translating it into the thought or prayer arising from it seems theoretically impossible for even a supernatural being.
The folks who run studies trying to prove the efficacy of intercessory prayer probably deserve a response like this.
A plague on both their houses, he prays silently...
Where Were You During the Summer of Love?
The Chronicle:
The Summer of Love was a turning point away from politics toward a mysticism, drug culture, and anti-intellectualism that ultimately made a mockery of disciplined thought and discouraged the appreciation of and engagement with science. After 1970, when I became president of Franconia College, at the age of 23, a spirit of wild-eyed utopianism flourished in the context of a rage among young people toward the war, inequality, and injustice that increasingly was turned outward at older adults and inward with more than an edge of personal pain.
One ought to remember that era without nostalgia and with the recollection that as the energy and organization of the 60s descended into violence and escapism, a reaction was brewing that turned the anti-intellectualism of the left into the equally anti-intellectual moral absolutism of today's neoconservatism. Radical as that era seems in retrospect, it has been more than matched by the disasters wreaked by the extreme right.
If the revival of religion in public life and the intolerance of reasoned critical debate are legacies of reactionary conservatism, then the fundamental reshaping of the role of women in politics and the workplace and the slow but marked improvements in majority attitudes toward minorities are the positive residues of the 60s. The hammer blow of reaction against the perception of moral collapse, however, has done more damage than the late 60s and early 70s ever did. No matter one's political beliefs, one familiar quip from from that time is worth remembering. If one were forced to choose between simplistic extremes, I'd rather live with fellow citizens who, in a free society, would choose love over war.
Leon Botstein, president, Bard College: The Summer of Love passed me by. Having been a premature adult, I was not a candidate to be a hippie. As an immigrant, I was not inclined to drop out. With an internship as an urban fellow in New York City Mayor John Lindsay's administration, I thought I could substitute a contribution to resolving the urban crisis for involvement in Vietnam, a war I, like so many others, opposed. What those turbulent years did is to lead me first into public service before I embarked on my career in music.
We asked college faculty members and administrators to share their memories and reflections about where they were 40 years ago during the Summer of Love, 1967. Some were flying their freak flags; others were flying missions over Vietnam. Some said they felt part of a pivotal historical moment; others were just trying to survive lousy summer jobs. Deeply felt politics mingled with casually observed spectacle. It was light-years ago. And it was just yesterday. ...
Theodore Roszak, emeritus professor of history, California State University-East Bay: Maybe it was an advantage that I was 5,000 miles away when the Summer of Love happened. I had taken a leave from my teaching job and was living in London, editing a small pacifist journal and working on a series of articles for The Nation dealing with campus protest. The articles would eventually become a book titled The Making of a Counter Culture. That title emerged in large measure from the reports that were arriving in England from the streets of San Francisco, a bemused journalistic chronicle of young Americans experimenting with a zany lifestyle that might not outlast the summer, but which certainly made a blazing statement of dissent. From that distance, I had little to work from except sardonic commentary in the British press and sensational images of blissed-out youth cavorting in Golden Gate Park.
The coverage that came my way typified the European fascination with wild and wacky California. But by then I was convinced there was more to these matters than sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. Not that sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll didn't matter. They were the most forceful expression of the statement. But could that statement be given a more accessible philosophical translation? That was the task I set myself, giving my attention mainly to a group of influential thinkers (among them Herbert Marcuse, C. Wright Mills, Norman Brown, Paul Goodman, and Alan Watts) who were raising significant questions about the dominant reality principle of the modern world.
Remember, this was the era when, on both sides of the cold war, science and technology had signed on with the military-industrial complex, leaving the world to wonder how soon the missiles would fly and the sky catch fire; "mad rationality," as Lewis Mumford so aptly put it.
What I sensed beneath the surface of youthful dissent was the spontaneous emergence of a subterranean tradition that reached back to the early days of industrial revolution, a "cry of the heart" first voiced by romantic poets and artists against the "dark, Satanic mills" that were desiccating the human spirit and the natural world. A counter culture. That's what I saw in the ebullience of Haight-Ashbury for that one brief interval in 1967. It didn't last long, but it didn't have to. The lines had been drawn and the issue joined. ...
Michael Kazin, professor of history, Georgetown University: Having completed my first year in college, I imagined I was living in the springtime of the revolution. So naturally I spent the summer of 67 trying to nurture its buds. I attended my first convention of Students for a Democratic Society, in Ann Arbor, where network TV filmed our debates about how to stop the draft — and the national leaders all dropped LSD. Then I took a job in the SDS regional office in New York City, soaking up what passed for wisdom from people like Mark Rudd and Dave Gilbert, who, two years later, would be founders of Weatherman. We sponsored a talk by the SNCC firebrand H. Rap Brown and a conference of student radicals from Europe. Everyone I knew seemed to be reading Regis Debray's Revolution in the Revolution?, which proclaimed guerilla war as the salvation of the third world.
But politics didn't take up all that many evenings. I went to smoke-ins in Tompkins Square Park, heard the Fugs play at a tiny theater nearby where my girlfriend sold tickets. Sometime in August, she and I spent a long, tense day at Jones Beach, quarreled that evening, and broke up the next morning. But I was just 19, healthy, and headed back to Harvard. Everything mattered, which was fine by me....
David Horowitz, writer and conservative activist: I missed the Summer of Love. I was living in a two-room basement flat near Hampstead Heath in normally dank and dreary London. I don't remember anyone holding a Summer of Love in London — it was probably too cold. I probably wouldn't have participated if they did. I had three kids in a nuclear family and had never been high. I was a fairly humorless Marxist and would not hear a live electric guitar until the following year, when I moved back to Berkeley (I still remember the band's name, Purple Earthquake — I loved it). I worked for the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and facilitated a meeting between Lord Russell and Joan Baez, which was somewhat problematic since neither of them had the foggiest idea who the other was. I organized and wrote manifestos for the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, a little "vanguard" opposing the Vietnam War. Of course, as with every other leftist antiwar vanguard, our "solidarity" was with the Communists, not the Vietnamese, and we were not against war, just America's wars. When I wasn't plotting revolution, I was finishing a book called Empire and Revolution (seriously) and trying to figure out how I was going to get back home.
James Wright, president, Dartmouth College: It is hard to remember 1967 as the "Summer of Love." Although a student, I was a long way from San Francisco or Monterey. Married with three children, the youngest of whom was three years old, I was pursuing my doctorate in American history from the University of Wisconsin, working with the great Western historian Allan Bogue. I was just beginning my dissertation research on populism, and that summer, I piled the whole family into our old Chevy station wagon — which was not air-conditioned, of course — and drove from Madison to Boulder, taking the slow route through the Dakotas. The AM car radio played Otis Redding, the Beatles, Aretha Franklin, the Temptations, as well as, given where we were, Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline. And we followed updates on the Six Day War.
In Boulder we spent the summer in a house on 13th Street across from Beach Park, a gathering place for University of Colorado students and the counterculture. We could catch the whiff of marijuana and listen to the music. I read Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and William Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner. I worked in the libraries all day, but in the evenings we watched on television with horror the race riots in Detroit, Newark, Washington, and elsewhere. Public opinion on the Vietnam War had begun to turn extremely negative, and I joined in that opposition. Just a few years earlier I had served in the Marines myself, and so I sympathized with the young troops in Vietnam who had been given an impossible assignment. It was not really a summer of love....
The Summer of Love was a turning point away from politics toward a mysticism, drug culture, and anti-intellectualism that ultimately made a mockery of disciplined thought and discouraged the appreciation of and engagement with science. After 1970, when I became president of Franconia College, at the age of 23, a spirit of wild-eyed utopianism flourished in the context of a rage among young people toward the war, inequality, and injustice that increasingly was turned outward at older adults and inward with more than an edge of personal pain.
One ought to remember that era without nostalgia and with the recollection that as the energy and organization of the 60s descended into violence and escapism, a reaction was brewing that turned the anti-intellectualism of the left into the equally anti-intellectual moral absolutism of today's neoconservatism. Radical as that era seems in retrospect, it has been more than matched by the disasters wreaked by the extreme right.
If the revival of religion in public life and the intolerance of reasoned critical debate are legacies of reactionary conservatism, then the fundamental reshaping of the role of women in politics and the workplace and the slow but marked improvements in majority attitudes toward minorities are the positive residues of the 60s. The hammer blow of reaction against the perception of moral collapse, however, has done more damage than the late 60s and early 70s ever did. No matter one's political beliefs, one familiar quip from from that time is worth remembering. If one were forced to choose between simplistic extremes, I'd rather live with fellow citizens who, in a free society, would choose love over war.
School Diversity, Another Way
The Chronicle: By Derrick Bell
The Seattle and Louisville decision places in jeopardy similar plans in use by school districts across the country. Given the nation's racial history, it is hypocritical for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to assert that 'the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.' The suggestion cruelly conflates minor cures with the major disease. Were he a medical doctor, Roberts would ban the use of vaccines that are fashioned from the disease-causing virus. ...
The resilience of civil-rights groups is praiseworthy, but future litigation, even if successful, is not going to alter the fact that most poor children, regardless of race, are attending schools that are not meeting their educational needs. Their dire condition, and that of the schools they attend, is not solely the result of an insensitive Supreme Court majority quite ready to manipulate precedent to stifle well-intended racial-diversity plans. The plain fact is that a great many white Americans, including many with otherwise liberal views on race, do not want their offspring attending schools with more than a token number of black and Latino children. Whatever their status, they do not wish to be burdened by efforts to correct the results of racial discrimination that they do not believe they caused. Their opposition may not be as violent or as vast as it was during the early years after the Brown decision, but it is widespread, deeply felt, and if history is any indication, not likely to change any time soon. ...
It is painful for many of us, but it is time to acknowledge that racial integration as the primary vehicle for providing effective schooling for black and Latino children has run its course. Where it is working, or has a real chance to work, it should continue, but for the millions of black and Latino children living in areas that are as racially isolated in fact as they once were by law, it is time to look elsewhere. ...
After-school and supplementary programs including the All Stars Project, and BELL (Building Educational Leaders for Life), are only a few of the many achieving academic success for children whose educational outlooks are poor or nonexistent. Civil-rights groups should recognize and support such schools and programs, not as a surrender of their integration goals, but as an acknowledgment that flexibility is needed in fulfilling the schooling needs of black and Latino children in today's conservative political landscape.
As to higher education, if the prognosis for maintaining race-conscious admissions programs is as grim as I believe, it too needs to consider supporting the kinds of school programs I have described. ...
More on boycott opposition
Inside Higher Ed :
Opposition continues to grow to the push by leaders of Britain’s faculty union to have professors there boycott academics and universities in Israel. The Guardian reported that faculty members at the University of Oxford are demanding a full vote on the issue. Support for the boycott has generally been strongest at smaller conclaves of faculty leaders, and universitywide votes have suggested that a majority of professors oppose the boycott. On the other side of the pond, the Association of American Universities is the latest group to condemn the boycott. A statement issued Friday said on behalf of its 62 research universities in the United States and Canada said: “Academic boycotts are inimical to the free exchange of ideas that is essential to academic freedom. Members of the academic profession should seek to preserve academic freedom, not restrict it.”
Harvard’s Sort-of Divestment
Inside Higher Ed :
This provides a fairly detailed account of the challenges of incorporating divestment with complex investment strategies. Harvard doesn't want to go there; others have.
Two years ago, Harvard University became the first major university to announce a policy of selling off stocks in companies that operate in Sudan in ways that support the genocide taking place in Darfur. The announcement was huge for the nascent movement to push universities to take a stand on Darfur. No university has a larger endowment. And Harvard has a well known dislike for using its endowment for any political or social cause — so when it decided Darfur was important enough to make an exception, the divestment movement gained instant credibility.
Dozens of colleges followed Harvard’s lead — with many of them not just selling off a few companies’ stock, but setting general guidelines that would restrict holding stock in companies complicit in the genocide. Harvard was widely praised for being a leader.
But then things got complicated. ...In January, The Harvard Crimson reported that the university continued to hold stock in the companies from which it divested — stock worth more than that the university had sold — when the shares were part of a broad investment fund (like a mutual fund).
This provides a fairly detailed account of the challenges of incorporating divestment with complex investment strategies. Harvard doesn't want to go there; others have.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
The Six Stages of E-Mail
New York Times: By NORA EPHRON
Help! I’m drowning. I have 112 unanswered e-mail messages. I’m a writer — imagine how many unanswered messages I would have if I had a real job. Imagine how much writing I could do if I didn’t have to answer all this e-mail. My eyes are dim. I have a mild case of carpal tunnel syndrome. I have a galloping case of attention deficit disorder because every time I start to write something, the e-mail icon starts bobbing up and down and I’m compelled to check whether anything good or interesting has arrived. It hasn’t. Still, it might, any second now. And yes it’s true — I can do in a few seconds with e-mail what would take much longer on the phone, but most of my messages are from people who don’t have my phone number and would never call me in the first place. In the brief time it took me to write this paragraph, three more messages arrived. Now I have 115 unanswered messages. Strike that: 116.
Saudi Religious Police Faces Backlash
New York Times:
As the car stopped outside a Riyadh amusement park, two bearded men dragged the driver from the wheel and took the three women on a wild ride of more than an hour, bouncing over sidewalks and finally abandoning them on a darkened street.
The women at first thought they had been kidnapped by terrorists. The two men however, said they were religious police.
It might have gone down as just one more excess of zealousness by the forces charged with upholding Islamic modesty, except that Umm Faisal, the senior of three women, did something that is believed unprecedented in Saudi Arabia: She went to court. ...
[Umm Faisal headed to the police to lodge a complaint. ''When questioned, the commission members claimed we were indecently covered,'' because her daughter's veil didn't cover her eyes, she said.]
The unusual publicity surrounding Umm Faisal's story comes on top of two cases involving the death in religious police custody of two Saudi men -- one arrested for allegedly consuming alcohol, another for being alone with a woman not of his family. ...
Taken together, the cases threaten to undermine the authority of the force's employer, the powerful, independent body called the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.
Since the commission's creation more than six decades ago, there has been no known public legal action taken against its members despite complaints they occasionally overstep their boundaries. The public view has tended to be that whatever their faults, they are acting in Islam's name to defend morality. ...
The Saudi government is reluctant to tamper with its religious establishments for fear of angering conservatives and weakening its credentials as custodian of Islam's two holiest shrines. The conservative impulse has lately been illustrated by a request from 14 faculty members of King Saud University's medical school to ban male students from treating women and vice versa, on the grounds that handling bodies of the other sex is un-Islamic. ...
This Place Looks Familiar, but Where’s Starbucks?
New York Times:
Signs in front of downtown stores last week asked visitors to “pardon our appearance.” Not because they were undergoing construction but rather because they looked as though someone had turned back time — 50 years, to be exact.
A Starbucks near Yale University’s freshman quadrangle had been transformed into a pub. Enson’s, a men’s clothing store, occupied its usual place on Chapel Street, but the bow ties in the window belied the contemporary paisley men’s shirts inside. The upscale Urban Baby store became a pawnshop offering 30-day loans.
A few feet away, the Hollywood crew responsible for the municipal makeover, and all the resulting double takes, was shooting the latest Indiana Jones movie, the fourth in the series starring Harrison Ford as a dashing archaeology professor with a knack for adventure. ...
Some Indiana Jones aficionados — including Yale’s vice president and secretary, Linda Koch Lorimer — believe the title character was partly modeled after Hiram Bingham III, a Yale faculty member who explored Machu Picchu in the early 1900s. But while the letter sweaters worn by extras last week were blue, like Yale’s, they had M, not Y, on their chests, and the stately commons where freshmen eat bore a Marshall College seal (the film’s producer is Frank Marshall).
Regardless, Yalies will probably recognize campus icons like those that figure prominently in an elaborate chase scene through the college grounds. Majestic-looking gates to courtyards get smashed. A century-old statue of a former Yale president appears to have its head lopped off, and the motorcycle that Mr. Ford’s character rides hurtles through the front doors of Sterling Memorial Library. ...
Denis Stewart, the film’s co-producer, said making the city look old-fashioned was not that hard. “It’s not that the city hasn’t progressed, but it’s the charm that is New Haven,” he said. “It still has a really wonderful feeling of Americana here.” ...
Doug McDermott, a plumber for Yale who was eyeing the bevy of vintage cars parked on College Street on Thursday, seemed unworried. “They can’t do any more damage than the students do,” he said. Besides, he said, if they do, “it keeps us busy.”
Harvard Square to be Hogwarts Square
The Boston Globe:
Just when you thought you were safe from iPhone hysteria, a new hype hoo-ha about Harry Potter is heading your way, and helping to amp up the buzz is Harvard Square, which plans to briefly rename itself Hogwarts Square....
Some might think Harvard would be immune to a frenzy that has beguiled fourth graders and reportedly resulted in 1.4 million book 'preorders' at online book-seller Amazon.co.uk, but they'd be wrong.
Not to be outdone by London, where author J.K. Rowling plans a midnight reading for her book's release date, Harvard Summer School and the Harvard Square Business Association are organizing 'the most grand celebration of literature in Harvard history.'...
Plans call for a concert featuring such bands as Harry & the Potters, and there will be a scavenger hunt for owls, bats, and red stones at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, organizers said....
Perspective on Her Side, Mrs. Edwards Enters Fray
New York Times:
Mrs. Edwards has also become a free operator on behalf of her husband of 29 years, a development that her friends suggest reflects the clarity and perspective that come from her cancer diagnosis, and her increasingly confident political instincts as she advises Mr. Edwards, a North Carolina Democrat, in his second White House bid.
When Mrs. Edwards called in to a television talk show this week to confront the conservative commentator Ann Coulter who had attacked Mr. Edwards this year, it was a decision that Mrs. Edwards said she made impulsively and on her own. The resulting dramatic four minutes of television created a surge of attention that at least momentarily electrified her husband’s campaign, winning applause from the left and apparently spiking contributions in the critical final days of this second-quarter fund-raising period....She argued vigorously with her husband over details of his signature health care plan — before an audience of transfixed campaign aides. (He won that argument, an aide said.)...
Her stamina on the campaign trail appears steady, and she and her husband frequently say that her cancer has proved no encumbrance on her daily life. Mrs. Edwards shows no visible manifestations of the disease — her hair is full, her skin color robust, and she bustles with energy. She often carries her own bags, aides say, and she can put in the standard 16-hour day expected from anyone in the business of running for president. She takes a little yellow pill once a day, oral chemotherapy, and visits a doctor’s office for treatment about once a month.
Plea Deal for Israeli President Challenged
New York Times:
JERUSALEM (AP) A plea bargain that would allow Israel's former president to avoid rape charges and jail time has drawn a fierce public backlash, with protests in Tel Aviv and a Supreme Court appeal on Sunday that have put the deal in doubt. ...
The Supreme Court might take the rare step of declaring the plea bargain unacceptable and sending it back for revision, said Noya Rimalt, an expert on criminal law and feminist legal theory at Haifa University.
In announcing the plea bargain, Mazuz said one of his considerations was the reputation of the Israeli presidency and his desire to avoid a prolonged trial with painful headlines -- a point Rimalt said could be legally invalid and might provide a motive for the court to strike down the deal.
Even if the Supreme Court chooses to let the deal go ahead, a lower court that has to approve it could decide that the sentence is too light and impose a heavier one, Rimalt said.
The public outcry might also play a role.
''Judges are not supposed to be affected by such things, but of course they're human beings,'' Rimalt said.
The outcry over Katzav's plea deal is evidence of a slow evolution in Israeli public opinion, once tolerant of sexual misbehavior by high-ranking public figures, said Tziona Koenig-Yair, executive director of the Israel Women's Network, one of the three groups behind the Supreme Court appeals.
Israeli heroes like Moshe Dayan were reputedly notorious philanderers, an excess that the country's macho culture was willing to accept decades ago. But that changed...
Tears on My Pillow
New York Times: By MaureenDowd
Putin intervenes. “No, George, don’t blame Dick,” he says. “Dick good man. Shoots friend in face. But Dick too soft. Friend lived. He needs put more people in your Gitmo gulag, shut down newspapers, kill more critics. I’ll send you some of my special polonium-210 pellets. They just like Altoids, curiously strong.”
Michael Moore's Sicko reviewed
Slate Magazine:By Dana Stevens
I think this gets it right.
Even those viewers who are ideologically in sync with Michael Moore can find plenty to critique in his methods: the gimmicks, the deck-stacking, the deliberate neglect of opposing points of view. On the other hand, even Moore's worst ideological enemies would be hard put to dispute the basic argument of his new film Sicko (Weinstein Co.): The American health-care system is a sick joke and has been for a very long time....
...[Moore's] chosen to focus on Americans who have insurance and find themselves screwed up the yin-yang anyway. This is a wise choice from a rhetorical point of view, because by exploring the dilemmas faced by those who have shoveled out premiums for decades, Moore can show that our status quo doesn't just have a few soft spots—it's rotten to the core....
In one of the movie's best segments, insurance-industry insiders frankly admit that their profession is rapacious. A former medical director for an HMO, testifying before Congress, delivers a scathing rebuke both of the insurance industry and of her own role in denying patients care. Another whistle-blower describes the industry's tactics with stark clarity: "You're not slipping through the cracks. Somebody made that crack and swept you toward it." A woman who does customer service for a major insurer weeps as she recalls denying sick customers coverage, then adds, "That's why I'm such a bitch on the phone to people. … I just can't take the stress."...
In a democracy, of course, complaining about something is doing something about it, as long as some of that griping is done at the polling booth. In that spirit, Sicko is less a documentary than a clearinghouse of rage.
I think this gets it right.
Ali Farzat: Arab Cartoonist and Gadfly
Newsweek: MSNBC.com: By Hassan Abdallah
( Newsweek in Arabic)
Not that this would be of interest to British Lecturers Union or anything. The big problem confronting the world is Israeli academics...
( Newsweek in Arabic)
Ali Farzat, Syria's best-known political cartoonist, began publishing Al-Doumari, the country's first independent satirical weekly in 2001. Although Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had initially encouraged Farzat's efforts, he soon soured on the experiment. The magazine's call for sweeping political reforms, its attacks on corruption and—most of all—Farzat's stinging cartoons infuriated the Baathist leadership. In 2003, the government shut the magazine down. ...
We used to cover important issues dealing with reform and the things holding it back, and we sent an open letter to the president asking him to institute needed reforms. They viewed that as a threat to their control. They wanted me to follow the official line, they offered all sorts of incentives, and then they threatened. Finally, they shut down the paper....
Is this adversity to criticism specific to you, or is it a Syrian policy in general?
It's generalized of course. [It] extends to many fields: literature, science, medicine and art. They want people to be subservient just like the members of the Syrian People's Assembly, who get elected based on the needs of the regime....
Are you a political dissident?
That's belittling my importance as an artist. An artist and creator is more important than a politician. They know the importance an artist has, which is why their response is harsh when you refuse to accept their misdeeds. I hate conformity, and a true artist must rebel against all this. I don't represent a political party, but I represent the people's conscience....
What's the future of the Syrian regime?
If they don't recognize the dangers and if they continue to deprive other national parties of true and effective participation, I foresee a monumental crisis. The regime is in need of total reform and change. Free elections are a must...
Did you ever draw a cartoon of the late Syrian president Hafez al-Assad or his son Bashar?
In Syria, drawing the president is forbidden...
Not that this would be of interest to British Lecturers Union or anything. The big problem confronting the world is Israeli academics...
Alan M. Dershowitz: An Academic Hijacking
SPME: :
In a world in which dissident academics are murdered in Iran, tortured in Egypt, imprisoned in China and fired in many other parts of the world, the British Union decided to boycott only academics from a country with as much academic freedom as in Britain and far more academic freedom -- and more actual academic dissent -- than in any Arab or Muslim country. Indeed, Arabs have more academic (and journalistic) freedom in Israel, even in the West Bank, than in any Arab or Muslim nation.
But these union activists couldn't care less about academic freedom, or any other kind of freedom for that matter. Nor do they care much about the actual plight of the Palestinians. If they did, they would be supporting the Palestinian Authority in its efforts to make peace with Israel based on mutual compromise, rather than Hamas in its futile efforts to destroy Israel as well as the PA.
What they care about -- and all they seem to care about -- is Israel, which they despise, without regard to what the Jewish state actually does or fails to do. The fact that this boycott effort is being undertaken at precisely the time when Israel has ended the occupation of Gaza and is reaching out to the PA, and even to Syria, in an effort to make peace proves that the boycott is not intended to protest specific Israeli policies or actions, but rather to delegitimize and demonize Israel as a democratic Jewish nation. One union activist said on a BBC radio show that "Israel is worse than Stalinist Russia."..."
It is fair to say, therefore, that the British boycott appears to be backfiring. British academics are on notice that if they try to isolate Israeli academics, it is they -- the British academics -- who will end up being isolated from some of the world's most prominent academics and scientists.
No one wants that to happen. Academics and scientists should collaborate with each other in the interests of promoting knowledge. The hope is that this ill-conceived boycott will be voted down by general membership of the university and college union, and that those radicals who are pushing it will be delegitimized in the eyes of the vast majority of British academics who will not want to see their union hijacked by single-issue bigots.
Middle East Studies Assn Challenges US Civil Rights Commission's Definition of "Campus Anti-Semitism"
A document of interest:
SPME
Also see:
US Commission on Civil Rights, "Public Education Campaign to End
Campus Anti-Semitism":
"Ending Campus Anti-Semitism Public Education Web Site to be Launched
By U.S. Commission on Civil Rights," Media Advisory (10 April 2007):
"USCCR Report Examines Incidents of Campus Anti-Semitism," Media
Advisory (15 August 2006):
"USCCR to Call for End to Anti-Semitic Harassment," Media Advisory (27
March 2006):
"Findings and Recommendations of the United States Commission on Civil
Rights Regarding Campus Anti-Semitism" (3 April 2006):
"Campus Anti-Semitism" (18 November 2005):
SPME
Dear Chairman Reynolds and Members of the Commission,
I write to you on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association of
North America (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom (CAF) to
express our grave concern with aspects both of the briefing report
titled "Campus Anti-Semitism," released by the United States
Commission on Civil Rights earlier this year, and of the "Findings and
Recommendations of the United States Commission on Civil Rights
Regarding Campus Anti-Semitism," dated April 3, 2006.
MESA rejects all forms of hate speech and discrimination, including
anti-Semitism. It supports prompt and forceful action in response to
anti-Semitic incidents on university campuses. MESA also endorses the
Commission's efforts to increase awareness of anti-Semitism on
university campuses.
However, MESA is concerned that the briefing report and findings
issued by the Commission may actually weaken efforts to combat
anti-Semitism by expanding its definition to include an indefensibly
broad range of legitimate speech and conduct. We are also concerned
that false allegations associating Middle East studies programs and
faculty with anti-Semitism may contribute to an already troubling
environment of harassment, intimidation and censorship of faculty and
students on college and university campuses, thereby threatening
academic freedom. ...
Also see:
US Commission on Civil Rights, "Public Education Campaign to End
Campus Anti-Semitism":
"Ending Campus Anti-Semitism Public Education Web Site to be Launched
By U.S. Commission on Civil Rights," Media Advisory (10 April 2007):
"USCCR Report Examines Incidents of Campus Anti-Semitism," Media
Advisory (15 August 2006):
"USCCR to Call for End to Anti-Semitic Harassment," Media Advisory (27
March 2006):
"Findings and Recommendations of the United States Commission on Civil
Rights Regarding Campus Anti-Semitism" (3 April 2006):
"Campus Anti-Semitism" (18 November 2005):
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
