Monday's Brain: Binge And Purge!

[elfs]

'Principals' OK'd Harsh Tactics

Confirming what we always knew, ABC News publishes a story revealing that Cheney convened and Rice chaired meetings to sign off on torture techniques. They deliberately "insulated" Bush from the proceedings.

Rice? From State? So much for her chances of running as VP with McCain, ne? Or will McCain sell his soul again?

Avedon Carol watches the NY Times slide into obscurity.

The NY Times ombudsman defends the Times' unwillingness to cover the Winter Soldier hearings, and does so with tragically stupid results.

The Wall Street Journals blames the American Airlines fiasco on... Democrats!

Of course! It's the Democrat's fault that the FAA is enforcing the publicly agreed upon rules! All of those people waiting in airports, it's all the Dem's fault. I would never have noticed it! Thank you, right wing lobotomy, for showing me the truth!

Crosstalk Reminds You: Obama Isn't Christian Enough

Obama on Intelligent Design:

I'm a Christian, and I believe in parents being able to provide children with religious instruction without interference from the state. But I also believe our schools are there to teach worldly knowledge and science. I believe in evolution, and I believe there's a difference between science and faith. That doesn't make faith any less important than science. It just means they're two different things. And I think it's a mistake to try to cloud the teaching of science with theories that frankly don't hold up to scientific inquiry.

That quote in months old, but they're going to keep repeating it every day to remind those ready to swallow Ben Stein's lies that Obama isn't going to be their man.

Chuck Colson lies about "Expelled."

Chuck Colson, who once did time for conspiracy in the Watergate case, has a bizarre little article in which he attempts to address the "lies being told about Expelled."

He claims that "The Darwinists were not tricked into participating." Producer Mathis said that he called the film "Crossroads" at first and portrayed it to those interviewed as more even-handed than Expelled turned out to be, but decided to be more confrontational for "marketing purposes." However, writer and actor Ben Stein says that the film's vision was as it is now from the very beginning of the project. Research shows that the "Expelled" domain name was bought months before the interviews, and no similar domain name for a project called "Crossroads" was ever considered. Who's lying now?

He also claims that "The film isn't anti-science." He's partially right: it isn't anti-science because those who have seen say there's no science in it. It's anti-scientist, because it portrays those actually doing work in the biological sciences as anti-religious.

That's okay. When the Salt Lake Tribune tells people Expelled shows every sign of being a dog, you know it's gonna die.

Expelled: Now Necessary And Sufficient!

Mathematician David Berlinski, who has some personal problems with evolutionary biology, claims in Expelled that Darwinism was a "necessary but not sufficient" part of Nazi philosophy. But now Expelled has to deal with its own little bit of sordid ugliness: Maciej Giertych, who is listed as being in the film, turns out to be a nasty piece of work who believes that Jews support evolutionary biology because they're trying to speciate away from humanity (no, really!), they're dishonest and parasitical.

What lovely company Ben Stein is keeping these days.

Charles Krauthammer goes partisan insane for Israel.

Krauthammer, apparently concerned that Iran will get nukes and attack Israel, wants the United States to declare: "It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear attack upon Israel by Iran, or originating in Iran, as an attack by Iran on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon Iran."

Krauthammer is an unabashed Israel supporter to the exclusion of any other interest and I don't think he quite realizes how stupid his request sounds. Why don't we just go all in? "It shall be the policy of the United States that any nuclear attack upon any nation by another nation shall be regarded as an attack upon the security of the United States, demanding a full retaliatory response upon the aggressor nation."

I'm in agreement with Krauthammer that Israel is pretty much the only functioning liberal democracy in that part of the world and so deserves our protection. But I don't think that makes the lives of individual Israelies uniquely precious compared to the lives of others. Krauthammer clearly does, and in ways that seem completely insane to me. If we're going to risk nuclear war by providing another nuclear umbrella, we should either do it right as we did against the Soviet Union, or not do it at all.

No Wingnut Welfare for Alberto Gonzalez?

Feel the love, people. Feel the love.

Comments

[shunra.livejournal.com]

Whatever makes you think that Israel is a functioning liberal democracy?

I lived there for thirty years, from 1970 to 2001 (and I'm about three months younger than you are, so that should give you a good sense of what ages and stages I passed through during that time). I was politically active from 1978 onward. Even the description of Israel as a democracy is hard to fathom (although it does hold elections - sort of - quite frequently). But a liberal democracy? And what's more, a *functioning* one?

Israel would feel like an F.L.D. if you were of a Jew of ashkenazi extraction, had completed military service, and were male. For women, it's much more like an oppressive theocracy (two examples: I had to bring my FATHER to court in order to get divorced. I have a friend whose father's got legal permission to marry a second wife, legal bigamy, because wife wouldn't agree to a divorce.)
For the non-ashkenazi Jews (Sephardic, Mizrahi, Ethiopian, etc.) - the rules are different and customs even more so.
For the Arabs? And I mean the Arabs who are nominally full citizens of Israel, not the ones under occupation since 1967 in the occupied territories; the "1948" Arabs. They have their school teachers vetted by the General Security Services (a.k.a. the secret police), and are prevented from having any real political representation by the now-majority Jewish parties. (This includes the Druze Arabs, who have generally served time in the Israeli army). The very first Arab cabinet minister was appointed to the currently sitting cabinet. Arabs are not permitted to buy or lease lands owned by the government; which includes approximately 93% of the land, most of which was seized by the Israeli government in 1948 be defining nearly all Arabs as "absent refugees", and seizing their lands - even if they were in the next town; when they returned, a law was enacted to handle the cases of "the present absent" (and it sounds even crazier in Hebrew).
The situation was described in detail in the Israeli government's Orr Report, which is available online. That report was written in response to live fire being used as crowed control in October 2000, killing a dozen Arab protesters inside Israel. It has basically been shelved, as far as I can tell.

One of the primary indicators of being a liberal democracy is the principle of equality under the law. As to "functioning" - other than managing to be at war with its entire surrounding neighborhood for sixty years, and starting wars with various of them for various reasons (two examples: 1956: in order to "help out" France and England; 1982-2002: in order to conquer Lebanon up to the Litani). So that very basic level of functionality, ensuring safety, doesn't describe Israel very well. But other indicators - health, education, jurisprudence - Israel fits in passably well with the region it lives in.

And even if you snap your fingers and make all the Palestinians disappear, you don't get all of Israel's differences from functional democracy even remotely solved. The warring groups of particularists, each of which wants to disenfranchise at least one group (ultra-orthodox; orthodox messianic; "labor" which means conservative; "liberal" which means "free-market conservative"; Mizrahi; military-industrial; Russian-emigres, both Jewish and non-Jewish) make Israel a fascinating place to live and observe. But not really a functioning liberal democracy.

[whatthehay.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your insight. It's so hard to know what to believe about Israel from what is read in the media. Besides all the policial pressure here in the states to do so, I can't understand why America is so pro-Isreael. They seem to have a stong military. Why can't they take care of themselves?

Forgive me if I am ignorant, but I just don't really know much of the truth of what goes on there.

Again, thanks.

[shunra.livejournal.com]

Fundamentally, Israel can't take care of itself because in the territory controlled by it there are about 6 million Jews and 6 million non-Jews. And the non-Jews are at various stages of disenfranchisement.

It needs to bring in ever more potential soldiers (more than 1 million Jews and relatives of Jews were imported from the former USSR between 1989-2000), and it needs ever more cash (billions of dollars in US foreign aid every year, most of which is spent on US weapons technology and is thus very popular among US lawmakers, who get to spend money for Israel that gets spent right back in their own districts.)

There is a better way - the South African model would work very well in the Israel/Palestine situation. But that would reduce arms sales by more than 3 billion dollars a year and require some painful resource sharing by the Israelis (who are currently clutching every grain of sand and pint of water). So it isn't happening.

And that's why they can't take care of themselves.

[bikerwalla.livejournal.com]

Because we need the nation of Israel there to fulfill the prophecy of Revelation. These are the end times, and we're going to pray for Armageddon by lighting off as many regional conflicts in the Middle East as we can, hoping one of them will be the battle that brings Jesus back so that the Jews can recant and become Christians in one fell swoop. John Hagee can't go seven days without talking about the need for Israel to be there, because the Bible is 100% truth, therefore the Apocalypse is going to happen.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/062907J.shtml
http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4417
http://suzieqq.wordpress.com/2007/09/18/american-exceptionalism-meets-team-jesus/

[whatthehay.livejournal.com]

Oh crap. That is so scary! But explains a lot. Thanks for the reminder.

Now where can I hide?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I appreciate you hanging out and giving your perspective; over here, even if we look for alternative views on Israel from what the local press gives us, we either get "the view from the Palestinian side" or "the view from people who enjoy using the Palenstinians' misery as a bludgeon against so-called Western values." A view from street level is valuable.

[mundens.livejournal.com]

Go shunra! Not being in the US, and having friends who have visited Israel, and been hosted and shown around by liberal Israeli's who presumably have similar views to yourself, I was going to make a similar comment, but you covered it very well, with the added cachet of actually living there!

[abostick59.livejournal.com]

I'm entertained by how my world links together. Avedon Carol has been a friend of mine for more than thirty years.

Expelled

[(Anonymous)]

Now it’s time for a re-make of “The Usual Suspects” with the devil reading off-the-wall quotes from “Expelled” to the Inquisitors.

Jim

(http://www.blogger.com/profile/07674489078935633842)