Israel: Politics: Kadima win shaky, tied to coalition + Kirschen cartoon à propos

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The Israeli election yesterday sets pro-Israel folks around the world somewhat at ease, while still on edge, in that Ehud Olmert at the helm of the new party Kadima (The Future, in Hebrew) won the vote and will be Prime Minister pending his recruitment (negogtiation) to create a new Cabinet with sufficient support in Knesset (parliament) to govern with a coalition majority. Many Israeli voters voters did not go to the polls; there will be long analyses as to why not in the next months.

Olmert did not gather the support directly that Ariel Sharon may have. Sharon remains in a coma, descended upon him shortly after he created Kadima with Olmert, and called the elections.

Rookmaker Club geostrategic analysis:

UPDATE: Iran gets scolding, but ElBaradei (head of UN's anti-nuke prolif agency IAEA)is now "sole solution" according to Russia–putatively in the group of disciplinarian countries trying to reign-in Iran's nuclear-plunge bombward. Final count of seat distribution for Israeli parties, with BBC list of possible coalition partners for Ohlmert's Kadima. - P


Students of the Jewish Scriptures will find this fate resonant with what happened to King David when the Lord, displeased with David's sending a general to his death at the head of the army and then taking the man's wife, denied David the privilege of building the Temple – a task that then devolved onto David's favoured son Solomon whose own misdeeds, tho he built the Temple, denied him the line of descent thru which the Messiah would come. But even more than these, one thinks of Moses who brawt Israel the Ten Commandments from the Lord's hand, but whose sins prevented him from living long enuff actually to cross the Jordan River as Israel entered the Promised Land. And conquered. Sharon's fate is all too biblical, as the story goes.

But Sharon's successor Olmert did win the election as the party with the most votes, far fewer than a direct majority. Olmert's Kadima party does have a very difficult priority program to consolidate the West Bank settlements into just a few of large populations (what other parties will strictly join in advancing such a priority?) and thus hopefully further reduce tensions with terrorist-led Palestine, and otherwise determine the future boundaries of the Israeli state - whether Hamas-led Palestine negotiates the determination of that border or no (so far, they say only the pre-1967 border is acceptable for now, before they day when the push the Israelis into the sea (of blood, which meanwhile they will prepare for even a shrunk-down pre-1967-bordered Israel).

"Israeli Elections (1977)"©YaakovKirschner(May 17,1977).
Republished here with the author's permisssion.

Olmert wants peace and safety for Israel, both. We know that Hamas wants the destruction of Israel and has been backed up in that aspiration by Iran, which probably already has the nuclear weaponry to fulfill the Hamas dream and the Israeli nitemare. That means, besides securing the borders, Olmert, the Israeli Security agency Mossad, and the Israel Defense Forces must be ready in concert to cripple Iran's capacity to exterminate all of Israel (an Iranian move that would kill, not just Jews, but many Israeli Arab Muslims and Christians, as well as Palestinian Arab Muslim and Christian civilians too). Hey, but that's no skin off mullahcratic Iran's nose. Hamas claims to be ready for any exigency in seeking Iran's terrible swift sword. Iran stands then to establish the new Caliphate of Muslim world political and legal domination with the dhimmitude of Jews and Christians and secularist Humanists, too.

We can see from the way the wind is blowing in the UN Security Council, the windy effort to water down the sanctions adamantly proposed against Iran, taken with in mind now the shaky Elmert government in Israel, that exactly no help will come from the UN enforcer agency. That means, Olmert, Kadima, and Israel stand in need of backup against the Hamas-Palestine and Mullahcratic Iranian extermination scenario. Islamofascism is now rampant from these two quarters against Israel. One hopes that the US does not reward the unjust watering down of sanctions by the UN Security Council, and prepares itself and such allies as are willing to take out the nuclearizing Iranian Islamofascists. Perhaps, but I doubt it, Canada will be able to muster membership in the the prayed-for coalition to stop exterminationist Iran.
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US-Israel defense against Hamas-Palestine / Mullah-Iran. But Canada too has its own shaky minority government of Conservs opposed by three parties, the largest of which is itself in such disarray that it mite let the shaky Tory (Conservs) government team stay on, prop it up even should it join in with a coalition of the willing to defend Israel. After all, most Jews in Canada voted Liberal, and they mite persuade the leaderless Libs not to bring down the Tories should sufficient among the Libs in the House of Commons too feel that duty calls them to help in preventing Israel's extermination.

Of the three named potential allies in countering the UN water-down and in taking on responsiblity to stop Hamas-friend Iran dead in its tracks toward nuclearization, only the Bush Administration is led by a majority-secure Presidency that will last another three years (no matter what the opinion polls or the outcome of the November 2006 elections). The dirty bloody job that needs doing now can be accomplished soon, over the heads of the mindless appeasers of injustice who populate the UN, its organs and agencies (once again). We hope the latter will not prevail, and that Bush and allies will forcibly disarm exterminationist Iran before it's too late. Such are the political-military nuclear realities that must be faced. The Americans don't need nukes to accomplish it; its mega-"conventional" weapons could do the job–albeit with great lamentations, gnashing of teeth, sack-cloth and ashes. - Politicarp

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• politics
• israelpolitics
• palestinepolitics
• palestinehamas
• iranpolitics
• unsecuritycouncil
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Juridics: Constitution: US Supremes want 'foreign sources of law' to alter American law heritage

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An important study is available online in an abstract from the Social Science Research Network [SSRN], "The Supreme Court and Foreign Sources of Law: Two Hundred Years of Practice and the Juvenile Death Penalty Decision," by Steven G. Calabresi. To give readers of refWrite a taste of the meatiness (or: if you're vegetarian, the brocolliness) of the question of 'foreign sources of law' for interpreting the US Constitution (without looking into the example of the decision on the juvenile death penalty other than as an example), I offer a samplar from Calabresi's abstract:

The legitimacy of citation to foreign sources of law generated comment in all three of the Supreme Court opinions written in Simmons v. Roper, the landmark case that recently struck down the juvenile death penalty. Justice Kennedy's majority opinion and Justice O'Connor's dissent in Simmons, both argued that foreign sources of law can in fact be relevant to issues before the Court, even though they ultimately reached different conclusions as to the constitutionality of the juvenile death penalty. In addition, Justice Scalia's dissent, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Thomas, forcefully declared, as Justice Scalia has repeatedly done in previous Eighth Amendment cases, that international law and opinion is not relevant to the Court's constitutional adjudications, even when it is used simply to provide evidence of the validity of the Court's opinion.

Justice Kennedy's majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, which declared unconstitutional state laws prohibiting homosexual sodomy, in part, by considering decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, brought the issue of the Supreme Court's consideration to center stage. But, Justice Kennedy's opinion in Simmons stands to move the debate to an even higher level of attention and importance. By citing foreign sources of law as further support for the Court's own views of what punishments violate the Eighth Amendment, the Simmons Court showed what may be at stake in the outcome of this debate between the six liberal justices and the three conservatives led by Justice Scalia. The depth of the support for citing foreign sources of law suggests that the movement to do this is just beginning and will only gather force over time. In the wake of Simmons, the debate on the Court is no longer over whether to cite foreign sources of law but over when and how to cite them. This portends a sea change in the Court's doctrine.

I haven't myself absorbed all the implications of the issues involved on the central question; I'm more or less prejudiced to think a juvenile death penalty should be used only rarely, and I certainly tend to look favourably on the school of strict construction and what is called 'originalism' in Constitution interpretation.

Having said all that, while being dubious of the 'penumbra' and 'aura" argument used by the Supreme Court majority to launch 'the right to privacy' which simply isn't in the text of the Constitution, thus becoming foundational law for the USA to solve many issues extra-Constitutionally. That is, settling issues by law-making on the part of the judiciary, because the Constitution only insufficiently provides any basis, if at all, for many sweeping claims to rights that really turn on an extra-Constitutional ideology of the individual. Now, I think there's much good, as well as much bad, in this whole trend; but I don't like to go into denial to pretend with the main mindset in American jurisprudence that certain kinds of laws cannot be made by various state or federal juridistictions.

To my mind the whole appartus of esoteric interpretation required to strike down the Texas sodomy law, for instance, was fictional, not based on Constitutional provisions, but essentially more just than allowing Texas to continue with its absurd and unequal criminalization of adult consensual non-adulterous sex-acts within a private domicile. I agree with Canada's former Prime Minister, "The state has no business in the bedrooms of that nation" - except if one of the two parties is absued, injured, or murdered in the context of this adult conssensual sex (whether anal or non-anal, whether strait or homo).

But to hold both attitudes at once puts a conscientious American in the position where the Constitutional value stands in opposition to the reasonable privacy principle I feel strongly is part of natural justice. But a judge is not free to make up his/her own Constitution, not free to establish preedents arguing from 'penumbras' or 'auras,' to my mind. I don't see a way out of this dilemma of juridics without a constitutional amendment with a text so-well crafter that privacy emerges as real but not absolute.

Of course, becoming aware of flaw in American jurisprudence where it cannot square with a normative juridic philosophy based on the USA Constitution, gives impetus to the current argument among the Supremes whereby on one side would conveniently forget the American Constitution and its demanding amendment process–and turn instead to rely on whatever can be whacked out of the pinata and adjudged suitable.

Well, the preceding metaphor is somewhat heavy-handed, I do realize, especially when I consider the Canadian situation–where it's not the juvenile death penalty that interests, but where the study by Laurent Moss which refWrite posted yesterday from Monsieur Moss' Le blog de poloscopique in which 'foreign law sources,' particularly from recent developments determining the rules for the upcoming referendum regarding the possible independence of Montenegrao in withdrawing from its present Federation with Serbia.

On the question for Canada of how much of a majority should be required should Quebec again hold a referendum on separation to establish its independence as a state distinct from Canada, the foreign sources of law are very tempting because the previously canonical idea (customary and not constiutional) was that Quebec would leave the Canadian confederation should the Yes vote for independence reach 50% + 1. The most glaring feature of this folkloric norm is that it would leave Quebec society so divided, with so small a margin carrying such a large consequence for the entire Quebec general community, that such a win could prove to be a disastrous loss on wich to launch a newly independent state.

The question of the use of foreign sources to settle huge issues of the foundationa of the entire legal system needs really careful future thawt, case by case, as different casess may require quite dissimilar decisions about the value of specific 'foreign soursces." - Owlb

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• juridics
• jurisprudence
• lawPhilosophy
• hermeneutics
• strictConstruction
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• cosmonomicIdea

Politics: Québec: New pressure on Québec separatists to honour internat standard on referenda need for 55% majority

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by Laurent Moss

Leading French/English bilingual blogger, Le blog de polyscopiqueDigitally republished with the author's permission: Laurent Moss©Mar 19, 2006

Much attention has been paid in Québec to the fact that the Parliament of Montenegro recently voted in favour of holding a referendum on Montenegro's secession from Serbia in which the secessionnists will need 55 percent, and not 50 percent + 1, of the vote in order to win the referendum. This requirement for a clear majority flows from the demands of the unionist opposition in Montenegro and from the recommendations made by the European Union and by an opinion of the European Commission for Democracy through Law, better known under the name of the Venice Commission.

The importance of this turn of events cannot be minimized and it holds many important lessons. In its new program, the Parti Québécois says that it will hold another referendum on Québec sovereignty which will be decided by "the internationally recognized benchmark of 50 percent plus one of the votes [expressed]". But now two international organizations, with respectively 25 and 48 European member countries, have explicity recognized 55 percent as a valid threshold in such referendums. According to the ,Venice Commission, not only is such a requirement for a qualified majority consistent with international standards, but it also "help[s] to ensure greater legitimacy for the outcome." According to a May 2005 Léger Marketing poll, a majority of Quebecers agree: 52 percent believe that 50 percent + 1 is not enough support to proclaim the independence of Québec whereas 46 percent believe it is.

The Venice Commission cites various examples of requirements for qualified majorities in European referendums. But there are also Canadian precedents. In 1898, Wilfrid Laurier's Liberal government refused to introduce alcohol prohibition despite the fact that the prohibitionists had won 51.3 percent of the votes expressed in a referendum. British Columbia's 2005 referendum on electoral reform required a qualified majority of 60 percent of the votes expressed, including simple majorities in 60 percent of electoral districts, in order to change British Columbia's electoral system. The YES side won 57 percent and Gordon Campbell's Liberal government refused to implement electoral reform. The British Columbian government required a qualified majority in this referendum, as opposed to simple majorities in previous referendums, because it thought that a change in the electoral system was too important a change to be approved by a simple majority. The Venice Commission agrees with the principle that more important changes need more important majorities, and points out that the fact that "the proposed [Montenegrin] referendum is one dealing with the crucial issue of the independence of the country" argues in favour of a qualified majority.

The Venice Commission also said that "any question submitted to the electorate must be clear (not obscure or ambiguous) [and] it must not be misleading". It deemed that the question of the Montenegrin referendum met these standards of clarity: "Do you want the Republic of Montenegro to be an independent state with full international and legal personality?" On the other hand, the question of the 1995 Québec referendum would probably not have met these standards of clarity and Le Devoir columnist Michel David points out that "with a question as clear as that asked in Montenegro, the probability of a YES victory [in Québec] would be quite small, no matter the required majority".

These two issues of the required majority and of the clarity of the question are the same ones that are tackled in the Clarity Act, and have thus been the subject of most attention in Québec. Nevertheless, there are other relevant elements in the Montenegrin referendum. The first one is that the Montenegrin Parliament has unanimously agreed to the referendum process. In contrast, the Québec 1980 and 1995 referendums were called by the Government through executive decrees without any agreement with the Opposition. In both cases, Québec's National Assembly voted only on the wording of the question and it was adopted by the Parti Québécois majority in the Assembly over the opposition of the Liberal minority. On September 20th 1995, the Parizeau government rejected a Liberal amendment that would have clarified the 1995 referendum question by adding the word "country" after the word "sovereign". The Venice Commission held that such a cavalier treatment of the concerns of the Opposition is not acceptable. It strongly recommends that "serious negotiations should take place between the majority and opposition within Montenegro in order to achieve a consensus on matters of principle concerning the conduct and implementation of the proposed referendum" and that such matters include both the required majority and the wording of the referendum question. Indeed, the 55 percent threshold is the main thing that came out of the negotiations between the government and opposition in Montenegro.

Thus, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said the "sine qua non condition" for France's and the European Union's acceptance of the Montenegrin referendum was that it be accepted by the Montenegrin opposition, which then asked for a 55 percent threshold. This is why Douste-Blazy says that this threshold has not been introduced by the European Union, but has rather come out from an internal political process in Montenegro. This is also why Douste-Blazy could not say which threshold should be used in any future Québec referendum, because this threshold will come out from an agreement among all parties to the referendum in Canada. But what is striking is that the French Foreign Minister declined to endorse the 50 percent + 1 threshold for a Québec referendum despite the fact that all three Québec political parties agree with such a threshold. The reason is that at least another party must agree to the referendum process: the federal government. In the Montenegrin case, the agreement of the Serb government is automatic, because the right to secession was expressly enshrined in the Serbia-Montenegro agreement. In contrast, the Canadian constitution is silent on secession and the Supreme Court of Canada, in its Secession Reference, held that a Canadian province had no right to secession under Canadian law and that any secession would have to be effected through amendments to the Canadian constitution with the agreement of the federal government and of the other provinces. The Supreme Court also said that the federal government and the other provinces would have to negotiate in the event of "a clear majority vote in Quebec on a clear question in favour of secession", but it left to political actors the task of determining what constitutes "a clear majority on a clear question", which led to the Clarity Act. Douste-Blazy, by declaring that "this is a question internal to Canada and its provinces", thus validated the Supreme Court's approach.

Québec sovereignists have often been quite naive in thinking that the international community would necessarily side with them. They forgot that the international community is made up of already sovereign countries, not of separatist movements. These sovereign countries, even though they may have been created in the past through secession, now have no particular interest in supporting separatist movements elsewhere and may instead be themselves facing separatist movements at home. It is thus not surprising that, as Michel Vastel revealed in his book on Jean Chrétien, about 30 world leaders told Prime Minister Jean Chrétien at the end of 1995 they were shocked that he could have let Canada come so close to dismantlement. These conversations motivated Jean Chrétien to take a harder line on separatism. United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali told Chrétien: "How could you have let that happen? If you accept secessions as easily as that, we will have 500 new states and the world will be impossible to govern." Indeed, world leaders realize that if a country like Canada, with a long continuous experience as a stable liberal democracy, can be dismantled, then no country is safe from such a fate.

Satire: Irony: Kirschner designs howler, offers Shmendrik Awards 4 AntiSemitism (equal opportunity > some fellow Jews included)

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The distinctive Israeli cartoonist Yaakov Kirschner, usually gentle and even whimisical in pointng to the absurdities and horrors of these times from the perspective of an American-born Jew living in Israel in his elderly years, has produced a belly-shaker of strait-faced irony in picturing photographically the awardwinners in his recent Shmendrik accolades – a set of awards that, for me, rival the Oscars this year. I don't want to give away the pleasures of surprise in enjoying the semiotic technique of satire and irony employed on a very serious theme.

Kirschner is himself an outstanding cartoonist who swept the recent Israeli and Jewish Annual Blog Awards in several categories. I've learned to take his work as a reference-point for determining what cartoon and satire techniques are legit, and what stray into the zone of gross impropriety. It's a fine line sometimes, at others its not difficult at all to discern the spirits in the cartoon-works of a given artist who becomes nothing but savage propagandist.

Politicarp (refWrite's main political writer) and I (as his editor) have been very stringent, but correctly so (I believe), on the Jyllands-Posten spirit of cartooning and of prophet-mocking aimed explicitly against our Muslim neighbours in an incendiary world situation. Politicarp and I have tried to point out how an absolute doctrine of freedom of expression, freedom of speech, is inherently contradictory. I've pointed out how in the case of the Danish cartoons the freedom for public cartoon-mockery (some of the J-P cartoons seemed to me to be quite innocuous, others were not, indeed were quite vile); in that case the J-P was was consistent with the (il)logic of the demand for absolute freedom in Danish secularist free-market ideology for the child pornography for which Denmark is world famous, along with Danes in the same spirit who are active in the worldwide child-sex tourism industry. But this absolutist "freedom of expression/speech" contrasts sharply with the statutory prohibition of anti-religon (Danish state Lutheran Christianity) and particularly antiJewish, antiJudaic, and Holocaust-denial in expressive acts and public discourse. I support the Danish law in these prohibitory and penalizing regards, and likewise insist that it is antiChristian not to catch the positive spirit of that prohibition and extend it sympathetically to prohibit attacks on the core figure in the Muslim neighbour's attitude toward honouring prophecy (which requires respect for Abraham, Moses and all the Judaic Prophets, respect for Jesus, and respect for Mohammed - tho the violation of this spirit may be conducted by some Muslims too). But mostly the violations in Denmark, in all of Europe, and in North America are the work of secularist "Humanists" who hate all religions without ever noting the corporate sins of secularist atheist Nazi and Communist mass-murder systems which surpass the horrors of all other religions ever in Europe). Kirschner, to the extent I know his corpus of work, manages to draw the line well!

Moreover, refWrite now has organized a Satire section on the sidebar, experimenting and reflecting upon satire, irony, mockery, et., by linking to both the great Kirschner, HumorFeed, and some independent blogging satirists. They appear uncensored and unmonitored on this blog for the meanwhile, to test how well and how far a Christian blog, largely political in content, can accomodate the most severe visual and writerly critical works of some satirists, ironists, and mockers. We will try to keep up somewhat with what we make available, but invite our readers / viewers to use the Comments of this particular blog-entry to make criticisms of matter carried in the Satire section offered in refWrite's Sidebar. You are welcome to criticize, or alternatively to praise any particular well-wrought urn of such humour. If the HumorFeed proves unbearable over a bit of time, it will be dropped. More largely, it must be said that there is still a keen place in a shared morality of living with neighbourliness in a society of diverse religions and their adherents of good will, a shared place also for cartoonists, mindful of the thawt that launches the Book of Psalms. Please note Psalm 1 (verse 1):

"Blessed is the man

who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked

or stand in the way of sinners

or sit in the seat of mockers."

I don't think this verse rules out the full development of personal vocations to gifted people as cartoonists, satirists, and ironists; but reflection on it should give Judaists, Christians and Muslims pause as they put their pen to the piece of paper before them each day and awaiting that first line to be drawn. As in so many vocations of cultural service, there's an existential moment for the person of conscience – secularists and atheists too! - Owlb

Pisteutics: Scripture: Emerging philosopher Cynthia Nielsen on the Augustian line of reflection today re surplus of meaning

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I don't usually admit blog-entries explicitly philosophical-theological into the precincts of refWrite, but today I do. I do so because of the deep resonance of philosophy blogger Cynthia Nielsen's latest on her Per Caritatem. One thing I've noted, is that she seems to be mining moments of truth from ancient Christian thinkers that have been repristinated in the thawt of some Christian thinkers today which have at least momentary coincidence with what are generalized as "postmodernists."

Scholarship in a Christian line of thawt:

Now, there's a lot of brittle denunciation of "postmodernists" these days among folk who consider themselves "conservatives" but who don't know the tradition well enuff to judge what is more Christian and what is less Christian in what they themselves are conserving, nor from what century their particular fetishes of interpretation originate. And not just the theocons, but the theolefts as well, like Jim Wallis.

Be that as it may, I have two intellectual sources I love for their contribution to my mind in sofar as I have been able to keep on converting into a Christian mind. One is Bob Sweetman of the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto, without a thoro knowledge of whose writings on Augustine and the Augustinian line traced by him in a free-flowing Vollenhovenian manner (consequent problem-historical method) any student of this particular giant of Western philosophy and theology is impoverished. The other is Paul Ricoeur whose entire top-notch book on Metaphor turns around the notion of "surplus of meaning," especially as metaphor-phenoms come to full flower in poetry (combine Ricoeur with Roman Jakobson on "Distinctive Features" of a given language's sound-system, plus John Ciardi's Sound and Sense, and then you understand something of what poetry is in the first instance). For Ricoeur, whose philosophical project arose out of the tradition and milieu of l'Église réformée de France, but who tawt also in anglophone countries and has been much translated, metaphor-dominated poetry when generating live metaphors and not dead ones, is a key to a language-specific aesthetic way of knowing irreducible to any other (Seerveld, Zuidervaart, Chaplin-Dengerink). This brings us to the nexus of the metaphory of Scripture, the specific structure of metaphor in Scripture (as perhaps clustered around the foursome > mountain, garden, cave, furnace), and Scripture itself as a metaphor for the whole Truth incarnate and growing in stature with God and man (to put a Christological gloss on Northrup Frye, his two books on The Great Code of the West, the second being entitled Words of Power, an important gloss if you follow the rubric of Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven of the Christian base in Creation, Fall, Redemption, and communion in the Holy Spirit).

Most philosophy and theology doesn't bother to research the specificity of this layer integral to Scripture's meaning. So Nielsen's gem from Augustine comes indeed as a breath of fresh air. Or perhaps I'm only longing for Springtime here in the grey North, and when it comes I know I shall be turning to the great heathen poet, e.e.cummings' Spring is a perhaps hand.

Nielsen: Christian philosopher cites Saint Augustine on interpreting Scripture:

Augustine On Interpreting Scripture: Always a "Plus" of Meaning, she headlines here following note, and I quote in full:

As Michael Hanby notes, in the Confessions, Augustine teaches that there is a “plenitude of true meanings for a single text” […] The ontological warrant that underlies this insistence throughout the Augustinian corpus derives, in part, from the very nature of truth’s oneness, which defies its circumscription or possession” (Augustine and Modernity, p. 34). For example, in Confessions XII, Augustine writes:

“Having listened to all these divergent opinions and weighed them, I do not wish to bandy words, for that serves no purpose except to ruin those who listen. The law is an excellent thing for building us up provided we use it lawfully, because its object is to promote the charity which springs from a pure heart, a good conscience and unfeigned faith, and I know what were the twin precepts on which our Master made the whole law and prophets depend. If I confess this with burning love, O my God, O secret light of my eyes, what does it matter to me that various interpretations of those words are proffered, as long as they are true? I repeat, what does it matter to me if what I think the author thought is different from what someone else thinks he thought? All of us, his readers, are doing our utmost to search out and understand the writer’s intention, and since we believe him to be truthful, we do not presume to interpret him as making any statement that we either know or suppose to be false. Provided, therefore, that each person tries to ascertain in the holy scriptures the meaning the author intended, what harm is there if a reader holds an opinion which you, the light of all truthful minds, show to be true, even though it is not what was intended by the author, who himself meant something true, but not exactly that?” (Augustine’s Confess. XII.27, pp. 327-328, M. Boulding translation).

I thank all readers who are tolerant of my digressive discourse on this theme that is important to me, beyond all the dreadful news of the day that usually I try to analyze in my desultory way. Thanks, Cynthia, for sparking me today to set aside momentarily my stated main thinkfield here, and to think otherwise. - Owlb

Free Speech: Bodyguards: The New Heroism - a Kirschen cartoon

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"The New Heroism"©Yaakov Kirschen (Mar24,2k6)
The cartoon is republished here with the artist's permission.

Denmark: Child Porn: Andrew Sullivan covers for Danish child porn capital in name of 'free speech'

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Andrew Sullivan has continued his misrepresentations, this time by using a Danish correspondent's email as prima facie a truthful document about freedom of speech in Denmark. An exceptional email worthy of his lugubrious praise. And then he attaches a bizzare final comment of his own that not only compounds the falsehood of his correspondent, but exponentially expands it into a smog of cliché. But I have to reproduce in full the whole dang bit in order to assure readers that the cool cat has flipped his moral lid like that of Pandora's Box.

A Danish reader writes:

"Allow me to illustrate what we're up against here and why the people of Denmark have every right to refuse to tolerate or appease Muslim intolerance. Back in the 1980's I covered a murder trial for a Copenhagen tabloid. The victim was a woman from a family of Kurdish guest workers newly arrived in Denmark from Turkey. Her crime was to divorce her husband in order to support herself and their children through honest labor. By doing so, she violated the family's so-called "honor" and enraged her father in-law to the point where he ordered his two youngest sons to revenge this blatant violation of his patriarchal prerogative. Returning home in the early morning hours after a night spent cleaning offices she was set upon by her teenaged brothers in-law who stabbed her repeatedly before leaving her to bleed to death in the street.

Now try to imagine the impact of this horror in Denmark, a country with very low crime rates and also one of - if not the most - advanced countries in the world in terms of equality between the sexes. Danes have a long and proud tradition of tolerating and protecting minorities whether they be religious, sexual or otherwise. When Protestants from the 17th century fled Catholic persecution in - what was then - the Spanish Netherlands, they were welcomed with open arms in Denmark. Jews have practiced their religion freely in Denmark and were so seamlessly integrated into the national fabric that looking the other way and pretending not to notice simply wasn't an option for their Christian compatriots when the Nazi occupiers came knocking on Jewish doors in 1943. What I'm trying to say here is that Danes have a proven track record of openness, fairness and tolerance. We are however most intolerant towards those who would limit or abolish those freedoms we simply take for granted."

After commiserating with the victim in the Sullivan correspondent's horror story about "the Other" and noting the correspondent's accompanying whitewash of snow-white Denmark, let's just briefly note that an immigrant family in culture shock in a cold country where the patriarch sends his wife out to work all nite at a job that the well-fed Danes won't do but who will use hard-pressed folk from a world away–this helps contextualize the horribly dysfunctional family dynamics that bind titely the dislocated to ancient traditions, and the extended family falls into deep sin against the wife/mother who becomes victim. But in the correspondent's construction and Sullivan's exploitation of it without reflection – these now well-othered immigrants become a single example to prove a huge generalization, a whole religion and ethnicity held up for loathing, while the corresondent self-righteously cites Denmark's lack of crime [by the native born, he means to say, of course!]. Perhaps upon examination, when we look closer, we may note that Denmark doesn't have crime because it won't (for instance) criminalize child pornography and the child pornographers who hover about taking pictures and making movies or videos of the Danish men who sexually-abuse the children. Danes are famous as child-sex tourists to third-world countries. At home, they don't get criminalized because they don't kill their victims (often); and that's because the penalties are not so severe for sex such as appear in the Danish child-porn dossiers. And, of course, the photographing and the photos placed on the world market for such is in Denmark only a matter of a falsely absolutized freedom of expression.

It is this stark reality of forces in Denmark who want to protect the child-porn industry and integenerational sex down to nearly the just-born that stands behind the ferocity of the atheist absolutization of "freedom of expression" in the Conservative = Liberal = Ayn Rand mental territory of the Jyllands-Posten cultural ideologues. Most Danes, born and baptized into the state's Lutheran church, a truly gutless wonder, apparently don't give a damn. The Christian political party which wants to oppose some of these excesses gets barely enuff votes to have two or three representatives in the Parliament, where laregely they're scoffed at by the o-so-enlightened atheist Free Market "Conservatives" (Liberals) supported by the xenophobic junior partner in the governing coalition.

Having concentrated these very real criticisms into one brief passage, it may seem I am opposed to free markets and busniness enterprise (I'm not, just opposed adamantly to their absolutization and to the ideologues of political parties and governments that do the absolutizing); it may also seem that I'm opposed to Danes and Denmark (I'm not, but am opposed to the vile failure of the government and the crown prosecutor to protect Muslims equally to the protection of Jews and on-paper of Christians); it may seem I despise atheists (I don't, but at the same time I try to drag into the light the outcome of atheism in godless free-marketism that allows the child-porn industry to flourish, its photographers to witness and record and possibly sponsor the sex-violent abuse of children down to the youngest of all, and the cover for all of this by Denmark's malicious ideology of "freedom of expression" which is aimed to protect these horrible white gentlemen while othering people of colour (often in culture shock) who are stereotyped as incorrigibly backward and criminal by a Dane/Danes, to Sullivan's applause. Here's what numbnut AS says:

I have to say I am ashamed that the West has not been more forthright in defending the Danes. That idiots like John Kerry and Bill Clinton would call standing up to Islamist intimidation bigotry appalls me. The West has a right to say that all its citizens have an inviolable right to free speech, and that all its female - and gay and Jewish - citizens have a right not to submit to medieval barbarism. Period.

Period? Hah! I'm no supporter of Kerry and Clinton; I support the War on Terrorism against the Islamofacists, and the child-pornofascists who function in the name of freedom of speech. Sullivan sows confusion, but not everyone is fooled by his priorities and ideology; not even all homos are fooled by his cover-up. After erasing vital facts of the Danish milieu, Sullivan trots out his usual clichés themselves exploitive of women, homos, Jews, Muslims and Christians who do not coincide with his clever cover of the real import of his specious defense of absolute free speech and expression to the hurt of sex-abused pornized children by a Danish free-enterprise industry in the free-market economy of the ruling "Conservatives" plus Xenophobes. And Sullivan does this with the scare tactic of only one instance of a presumably Muslim family of Kurdish ethnicity gone berzerk and invoking ancient codes (these codes are found in many societies and cultures other than some Muslim communities; they linger in immigrant communities with special virulence because of the culture shock). Notice that the correspondent and Sullivan select the Muslim aspect of this family from the ensemble of factors involved in this family's heinous action. Why? – because it pleases both the correspondent and Sullivan to do so in defense of Jyllands-Posten, the Danish Free-Marketeers' version of atheism, the Danish Xenophobes, and the Danish child-porn industry (which is hidden in the text of both of writers). Period? I guess Sullivan was having his period. - Politicarp

Politics USA: Mexican border : Standing with Bush on a sane just Guestworker program, without amnesty, without security risk

Some Republicans in Congress are lambasting Bush for not adopting their negative labour-policy approach to immigration, an immigration wave that they correctly point out is now flooding illegally over the US border with Mexico, creating an emergency situation where at present most immigration is illegal, and a wave of illegality that is detrimental to those who apply for an orderly entry to the land, jurisdiction, and employment of America. At best the illegals are line-jumpers. At the same time as some Republicans jingoistically decry a sane, safe, and orderly compassion toward newcomers seeking work at the lowest level of income; most Democrats in Congress seem aligned with their leadership to filibuster and otherwise work to defeat any proposed new law that doesn't simply grant "amnesty" to 12 million illegals presently in the USA, indeed advocating an amnesty in advance to those who are continuing to flood in every day and nite. These line-jumping illegals will continue to do so until the border is effectively closed to them, so that orderly legal immigration can be restored and perhaps increased.

National Security and American Labor Policy

In a report by Charles Hurt and Stephen Dinan, "Bush seeks 'civil' immigration debate," Washington Time (Mar24,2k6), we get a glimpse into the shenanigans of Bush-opposing politicians on these issues:

...[T]he Senate debate is turning pointed, with Republicans warning Senate Democrats that they will pay a political price if they block efforts to pass immigration legislation this year.

"It's discouraging that before the debate has even begun in the full Senate, the Democrat leadership is threatening to filibuster any legislation that doesn't include amnesty," said Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican who has offered immigration legislation. "This is not the way to improve our national security and keep Americans safe."

Earlier this week, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid stood near the US-Mexico border and threatened to "use every procedural means at my disposal" – including a filibuster – to thwart the border security legislation Majority Leader Bill Frist plans to begin debating Monday.

Mr. Reid said he's opposed to the bill because Mr. Frist is introducing it directly to the full Senate, bypassing the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"What we're bringing to the floor is a border security bill to secure the borders and protect people," Frist spokesman Bob Stevenson said. "To suggest that he would filibuster such a measure only weakens our position at a time when we're fighting a war on terror. It just fits into the Democrat strategy of delay and obstruct."

A pox on Reid, Clinton, and similarly-irresponsible Democrats who once again evidence their supineness regarding America's national security. Yet, the Frist bill, his proposed Securing America's Borders Act (SABA), is also unacceptable from the standpoint of a holistic public justice. Altho, were I in the American Senate, I would probably end up voting for it because of time and further political factors at the moment, in the situation where even worse "solutions" are in play and capable of obstructing any amelioration.

Nevertheless, Frist's SABA is so national-security monomaniacal that it does not factor in and achieve a balance between nat-securpol (national security policy or: nsp) and labor policy. Labor policy has several dimensions that should be incorporated into a comprehensive and balanced approach to nsp, so that the two are wedded: nsp/lp. But first, let's look at the present moment in the Senate, referring again to the WaTi article by Hurt and Dinan.

What the reporters tell us is that Frist has insisted on splitting the nat-securpolicy (borders, illegals, expenses to states in health, education, etc.) from labor policy (labor demand from American businesses, businesses that hire and exploit "the reserve army of cheap labour" (Marx) which in this case consists of illegals rather than legals. (America's present reserve "cheap labour" usually does not include poor Americans needing work but who often will not take jobs from the lowest-wage exploiters among marginal companies.) All of these labor-aspect considerations add up to a legislative choice basically between proposals for programs for Guestworkers, or Amnesty of all current illegals, or neither (which latter means > Drive the bastards out!). Such Republicans seem to want to de-globalize the labor market entirely, with the result that marginal companies will leave the country and the worst companies will go underground as in the prostitution industry and illegal sweat-shops in the garment industry. Farm labour is another industrial sector that attracts illegals. In starb but blessed comparison, the Guestworker program attempts to begin the process of bringing both illegal immigrants working illegallly and shady American businesses employing illegally at exploitive wages, often in unsafe conditions and lacking any provision of medical insurance for workers who may be injured on the job.

Why does Frist want to split nsp from labor policy in the present situation? Basically, because the labor/business aspect of the illegals/borders problem is tied up (for who-knows-how-long) in the Senate's Judiciary Committee where obstructionists like Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer palaver on and on, not least because they are beholden to extreme leftwing interests for campaign financing and ideologically-motivated campaign workers. So, the Judiciary Committee is going to be yapping much nonsense quite superfluously over a long time, before it exhausts itslf and reaches some decision or other, on the question of a Guestworker program–Yes or No?, the question of an Amnesty decree for the 12 million illegals in the nation (many of whom are in the workforce at the bottom rung)–Yes or No?, or the know-nothing question that wants the status quo to continue–Yes or No?. Frist simply decided that he can't force the issue that is key to a balanced approach, can't force it out of the Committee and onto the the floor of the full Senate for decision-making now. Yet, the borders, meanwhile, are dangerously insecure on a day by day, nite by nite basis; and the whole point of Homeland Security is compromised.

So, Frist split the subject matter to hive off the labor aspect which is under seemingly-interminable discussion in the Senate Committee and left it to that Committee's internal devices, while calling onto the floor of the full Senate the subject matter of a separate security law, arguing the emergency priority of nat-securpolicy, and thus to consider a proposed new law on that subject which he himself has sponsored – namely, the Securing America's Borders Act (SABA). It is not out of utter lack of compassion for immigrants (or even illegals) that Frist proceeds with SABA to the howls of Democrats. Take Clinton for example.

...[T]his week, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton promised to block any legislation that would make being in the U.S. illegally a felony, rather than the current civil offense. Such a move would be "mean-spirited," she said, and not in keeping with Republicans' professed belief in religious values.

"It is certainly not in keeping with my understanding of the Scriptures, because this bill would literally criminalize the Good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself," she told a crowd in New York on Wednesday.

So, like the Devil, Clinton can quote Scripture; but she does so speciously not compassionately, drawing on a leftwing fundamentalist interpreation that is as one-sided as any rightwing fundamentalist approach would be. She does not want to be a Christian politician who must integrally balance all the legitmate interests at stake around these questions and thereby reach policy-decisions on the basis of integral Christian political philosophy where the law-writing must be all-sidedly accountablility on the full range of relevant issues (simultaneity of norm realization, Bernard Zylstra). The idea that Christian politics simply wants to make things easier for the person in difficulty (in this case, the illegal immigrant) is specious, based on poor hermeneutics [approach to interpretation of Scripture, in this case that of Sen. Clinton (D, NY), where she follows the script put out by the evangelical leftwing's Jim Wallis' and his Sojourners; Wallis' defective political vision was critiqued recently by Gordon College political-studies professor Timothy Sherrat (Mar6,2k6)]. Senator Clinton, like Jim Wallis, has split the Gospel into parts and selectively put the interests of illegals before border security, before legal immigrants, before an orderly program of welcoming non-citizens to work at low wages in marginal US businesses that could move their operations abroad and decrease their expenses and taxes further, and most importantly, thereby avoid unionization by legitmated Guestworkers where business and labor both pay into medical and safety insurance programs.

Contrary to Clinton and Wallis and Kennedy and Boxer, the Bush solution is the most balanced and fair, over the long term, by providing a Guestworkers program where businesses are forced to improve conditions and come to terms with the possiblity of unionization. But "unionization" can be and is a deceptively abstract term, if we don't note that such an option also needs reform. Guestworkers taking low-wage jobs that Americans won't accept, need the minimal protections at least of a union not serving the interests of Big Labour, but instead struggling on behalf of those Guestworkers who choose them, a union struggling for Guestworkers in their special situation and predicament which involves hard labour for the low wages paid, replete with on-the-job safety issues, and accompanied by an acute need for medical insurance – partly at least paid for by the low-wage employer. I think that the new kind of compassionate unionism of the small Christian labour movement in the USA and Canada is part of the solution. And that the unbalanced approaches of millionairess Clinton and company are not.

The Bush solution of No Amnesty for illegals, a new Guestworker program with safety and medical features, and also the effective option of unionization, including unionization open to the Christian-labor option working to meet the special needs of workers in a still-difficult Guestworker situation – this would be a holistic approach that the Clinton and Wallis myopic splintering of issues cannot solve, but only obstruct in a quite subChristian way (C.S.Lewis). If Wallis is so bent on solutions, why isn't he working for a Christian unionization among the poor hardworking people who would come to America as Guestworkers. This is what has taken place to some small extent already in Canada. What is wrong with evangelicalism's leftwing in the States that it can't do anything but look for entirely government-socialistic solutions? Thru the World Confederation of Labour, CLAC-USA can work to ameliorate the lot of Guestworkers in cooperation with Christian and related unions around the world, including the many such unions active among workers in Hispanic countries. Such faith-based unionization is not unfamiliar to people from the originating cultures out of which most Guestworkers would come to take the lower-income hard-labour jobs Americans won't take. Thus, these Guestworkers would help keep marginal USA businesses in the country, legal, safe, and medically-conscious on behalf of their workers from other lands. It wouldn't be utopia; but, amelioratingly, it would be good for all in this segment of the economy, and would strengthen national security integral to a better labor policy. - Politcarp

Pisteutics: Conversion: Death a 'clash of civilizations' proof, right to convert & proselytize a human basic

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Abdul Rahman, the Afghan convert to Christ turned over to Sharia judges who themselves have little leeway (given their juridic sources), and perhaps have even less courage to break with the Muslim rule requiring the death penalty for turning one's back on Mohammed's "revelation," cannot deter the USA, Canada, and our other NATO allies from pursuing the total defeat of the Taliban and Al-Quaeda in that country. At the same time, however, the irony of fiting to preserve the beginning of Afghan democracy when the country's extensive Sharia-bondage leads a family to turn one of its own members over to authorities to face the death penalty for converting away from the family's Islamic faith, cannot be lost on any of us. Remember, there are Christians among the Canucks and Yanks and other coalition forces. There are atheists too among our combined forces there, we may presume. No one escapes from the irony, especially Mr Rahman, a fellow believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Afghanistan has a way out, as I understand the matter. Its legislature can pass a civil law which stays/stops all Sharia trials for apostacy from the state religion and conversion to another–while asserting the inviolable right to convert, to proselytize under certain conditions without penalty, and to be free of coercion, either to remain adherent to or to become nonadherent to one's original religion–precisely in order to adopt another, including even a secularist one (anti-religion ideologies which thereby become religions of their own).

There's no way thru the present situation without inflaming a significant part of the Afghan and worldwide Islamic population. And already people of many religions, certainly Christians in North America are inflamed and are tempted to swing into Islamophobia of a worse kind than already prevails.

Our first duty, I think, is to pray for Brother Abdul, that the Lord may show himself in a very close way to this witness for the faith, and strengthen him for the ordeal (including the inevitable publicity now), and the possiblity of a trial in which Sharia itself will be on trial. And our second duty in North America is to write, email, fax and visit our legislators and to participate in mass demonstrations if they're called on this continent, demos on Mr Rahman's behalf (all those of us able to participate). Most important: we must let Prime Minister Harper and Foreign Minister MacKay in Canada, and President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice know that only a forthright affirmation of the right to convert and, under certain conditions, to prozelytize is acceptable. Otherwise, there is no end to the clash of civilizations between the West and Islam; in such an instance we should prepare for a Hundred-Years War.

Maverick rightwing Christian blogger LaShawn Barber has fumed furiously on this subject matter, and has drawn an inpour of sometimes furious but always supportive responses. Hat Tip to her and to Christopher Taylor for his comment on LaShawn's blog, regarding the legal situation in Afghanistan:

This case is actually a test, to see if the legislature is willing to pass a law protecting people who believe in faiths other than Islam. The constitution of Afghanistan recognizes Islam as the official state religion (dated I know, but at least it’s a step forward from what was before). It states explicitly, from what I understand (I don’t read their languages) that Islamic Law is followed unless there are state laws that say differently.

So Afghanistan has a choice: pass a law protecting people’s freedom of religion, or slide slowly and brutally back into the 14th century. The choice is theirs, thanks to the coalition led by President Bush. Let us pray and hope that they choose wisely. [Comment #42]

Sad to say, I think a lot of Christians are going to get this matter terribly wrong–more railing aganst Islam and Sharia, and Afghanistan and its government, and President Bush and Prime Minister Harper (the latter Western leaders for urging us to support our troops there rather than bringing them home with a snap of the fingers. Prayer, patience, diplomacy, and pursuit of the War against Terrorism on all fronts against all obstacles is our best counsel at this very critical moment, meanwhile showing also our respect for everything good in Muslim life and culture. - Politicarp

Turkey: EU Membershp: Accession to EU blocked by Turk intransigence on culture, education, particularly Christian education

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The closure in 1971 and refusal to allow to reopen the only institution of Christian h+er learning in Turkey, has become a metaphor for Turk intransigence toward historically-Christian Europe and for freedom of religion in Turkey today. Tho Europe is now a post-Christian society, and tho it has strong secularist and atheist power-hegemonic structures and cultural forces (typified these days by Mohammed-mocking-cartoons publisher, the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper), Europe in an often-inconsistent way still seeks to maintain religious freedom - from which many religions - including numerous Christian groups, observing-believing Judaic faith-formations, and Muslim denominations - benefit far beyond the status quo in "secular" Turkey.

The institution in question is the historic theological seminary of Turkey's main Christian denominaton which is headed by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which on the negative side unfortunately does not offer Eucharists in Turkish but which has undergone numerous episodes of severe oppression since Turkey became a "secular" state, and whose Christian people exist in a precarious state of dhimmitude (classical subservience to Islam, masked in Turkey as a second-classs citizenship to the "secular" state). These Christian Turkish citizens are not at all equal to the status of the mainstream Turkish Muslims who constitute the approved "seculars" - or laîques, to use the evasive French term, with its model of state secularism whereby Muslim girls are forbidden to wear a headscarf in school (to understand the history of the French school policy, see Thomas McIntire - again even while Turkey styles itself a "secular state" and imposes its Muslim-tinted "secularism" with its mainstream-Muslim tint, a mainstream that suppresses even some peacful Muslim sects [for a soporific presentation of the government stance, see the site honouring Moustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938)], founder of what seems like French-style totalitarian religion of secularism, instead of pluralism. A secularity that interconnects with pluralism, instead of suppressing every form of traditional religion except that elevated by the state, could accomodate by the several Islamic denominations that firmly disavow violence and Turkey's religious minorities, including the Christian Orthodoxy of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

In Turkish Daily News, Fatma Dimirelli reports, "Political criteria: Finished or unfinished job? (Mar19,2k6):

The EU norms require the unanimous vote of all [EU] member states in opening and closing of all chapters [of the statutory regulations for accession to EU membership], giving each state the power to effectively block the negotiations citing a concern on the level of Turkey's compliance with the political criteria.

A reference to political criteria in connection with the chapter on education and culture, for example, may be expected to raise such sensitive issues as the opening of a Greek Orthodox seminary near Istanbul, closed since 1971, or education in Kurdish.

EU officials, on the other hand, admit that such a reference could be used as an instrument by those who oppose Turkey's membership in the EU, but even those who do not want to see the reference to political criteria in the letter say the process is as political as it is a technical one.

"In principle, there should be no problem here because there is nothing new to the whole process. The accession process to the EU is by far not only a technical process," Ambassador Hansjoerg Kretschmer, head of the Delegation of the EU Commission to Turkey, told Turkish Daily News. "There is a lot of technical work to be done, and the bulk of the work in fact is technical. That's certainly correct. But this is a political process apart from that."

He added, "Government knows very well that we are still quite a long distance away from the complete fulfillment of the political criteria."

Interestingly, in a disturbing way, the Greek news source online, Reporter.gr, essentially rewrites Fatma Dimirelli's article but strategically omits her reference to the Greek Orthodox Christian theological seminary on the island of Halki (Heybeliada). Cut from the English-languge Reporter.gr, nevertheless the Greek-language η θεολγικη σχολη τησ χαλκησ carries a most significant snippet in English:

Although in October 2005 [Turkey's] Minister for Education noted that he was opposed to the continued closure of the Greek Orthodox Halki (Heybeliada) seminary, which has been closed since 1971, no steps have yet been taken to facilitate its reopening». “

One can't help but speculate that the Education Minister's stance suggests that the Turkish Prime Minister and Cabinet are using the very possiblity of allowing the Christians to reopen their Halki Seminary, without which the Orthodox Christians have no means of training future priests (since priests must be of Turkish nationality and study in Turkey, according to government rules), is itself a bargaining chip to force Greece and the EU to pressure effectively its member Greek-speaking Cyprus to agree to the re-integration of Turk Cyprus into one unitary secular state. In other words, the problem for reopening Halki Seminary may be the intransigence of Greek-speaking Cyprus.

refWrite supports the fair and minority-protective unification of Cyprus, the reopening of Halki Seminary, the turning over of Holy Wisdom ('αγια σοφια ) Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Istanbul to the Patriarch (whose community is the true owner), and the protection thereof by the Turk "secular" state. The catherdral goes all the way back to the Byzantine Christan Empire and was forcibly alienated from the administration of the Patriarchate upon the Muslim conquest. The moves again advocated by refWrite could help the Turkish tourist industry by the subsequent influx of Christian pilgrims and tourisists annually. It would lead to the urban redevelopment and revitalization of that section of Istanbul where the Cathedral is now used as a storage wharehouse. Such a return of the Cathedral after all these centuries, besides being a magnificent Turkish statement, would then be able to pay for any expenses of turning over and protecting the Cathedral, the Patriarchate, and Halki seminary. The Christian sites and institutions of Turkey do need special protection, as the 2004 blast that damaged Saint Gregorios church (a modest Istanbul substitute for the ancient Hagia Sophia Cathedral mentioned> so clearly demonstrates.

Istanbul, Turkey (Associated Press). - An explosion shattered windows at the seat of the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians in Istanbul on Thursday [reported Oct8,2k4 in The National Herald] officials said. No one was injured.

The explosive device was placed on the roof of the church of St. Georgios where a similar device had been placed in 1997, a fact that has caused concern both to the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the authorities.

The Cathedral’s windows and the main building of the Patriarchate complex were shattered.

A terrorism police squad was investigating the cause of the blast, which came weeks after police clashed with hundreds of rock-throwing fanatic Turks who staged a protest outside the Patriarchate and burned an effigy of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomaios I, whom far-right groups accuse of working against Turkish interests.

The Patriarchate has been the target of a number of small attacks in the past, which has worked against Turkish interests as they strive towards E.U. membership.

The explosion came one day after the E.U. agreed to open membership talks with predominantly Muslim Turkey, but called for humanitarian greater reforms, including expanding religious freedom and improving its treatment of non-Muslim minorities.

Many right-wing Turks are suspicious of the Patriarchate because of its close ties with Greece, and also strongly oppose Bartholomaios’ efforts to reopen an Orthodox seminary that Turkish authorities closed in 1971. Greek Orthodox say the school is crucial for the education of future leaders.

Members of Turkey’s government have expressed support for reopening the school as they push forward with the country’s bid to join the E.U.

Although few Greek Orthodox Christians remain in overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey, forced out years ago, the Patriarchate is still based in Constantinople (Istanbul). It dates from the Orthodox Greek Byzantine Empire, which collapsed when the Muslim Ottoman Turks conquered the city in 1453. Istanbul, then called and still referred to as Constantinople by Orthdox Christians, was the capital of the Byzantine Empire.

Bartholomaios has spiritual authority over the world’s 300 million Orthodox Christians.

Were Turkey able to deliver promptly on Halki Seminary and Hagia Sophia Cathedral, the Turk state's bid for EU membership would be h+ly likely to accelerate. It would also go a long way toward undoing Greek Cyprus' injustice to Turk Cyprus.

In closing, I must mention that one authority, Prof David Koyzis in his blog Notes from a Byzantine Calvinist has disagreed with refWrite on the importance of returning Hagia Sophia to the Ecumenical Patriachate in Istanbul. - Politicarp

Diplomacy: Iran & USA: Iran wants talks with America, a Kirschen cartoon

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"Iran wants to talk with America"©YaakovKirschen (March 17, 2006)
The cartoon is republished here with the artist's permission.

Denmark: Historian's augury: R Plat blogs historical sleuthing of Danish govt's failures toward Muslim community and aftermath

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Earlier, I blogged under the headline Ex-Muslims ally with anti-Christian Humanism to end pluralism," and the ex-Muslim secularist manifesto to seal the doom of the West still troubles. But I prefaced the matter responding to the aforesaid, with a strait-up link-filled note on the emergence on the Net of historians beginning to systematize and narrate the unfolding of events around the notorious slap at Muslim religious sensiblities under the cover of "freedom of speech." Altho I was still somewhat leery of R Plat's first 6 installments of his history (then 4 parts + 2 digressions), I was impressed with the good work of each installment which make for fascinating reading, but still didn't satisfy me because they didn't attend to the tripartite clash of ultimate values in the situation. Those major configurations (ultimate values, value systems, and clusters of worldviews), in historical order, are: Christian, Englightenment, and Islamic.

They represent religious groundmotives (Herman Dooyeweerd, Dutch philosopher) that set the tone of value-contestations in Danish culture and all that society's differentiated spheres of life (from state to church to mass media to family to art, for instance). How the state handles this multi-sphere diversity by which contesting configurations of ultimate values criss-cross each sphere in the overall societal reality it serves is of utmost importance. But historian R Plat seems to have another view (I don't fawlt him for that) which is never made explicit historiographically against its conceivable alternative (and on that, I'm after him to come to grips with at least some salient features of this Danish difference regarding the starting point of history-writing).

In my all-too-brief earlier post, I even deployed without nuance a perhaps-contentious metaphor, "Sometime soon I hope to dissect this 'Whig Interpretation of History.' I was thinking, of course, of Herbert Butterfield, the British historian's famous book of that title, which his intellectual biographer Thomas McIntire has suggested never entirely frees itself of its own 'whiggism' - in the Brit's case, his own formative Christian Methodism.

We can't truly become sterile "neutralists' in our history-writing because we need our own ultimate values to function as our depth-motivation in our various callings, including our sense of historicity and our historical discourse. So with R Plat, his excellent blog Random Platitudes, and his first major blogged histriography project, I am still hoping to get a few scraps thrown to the floor for the beggars like myseelf, so that we can understand just how much the self-consciously Christian community in Denmark (with its own variant tendencies) has acceded regressively to the ethnocentrist Conservatives in the government (think LePen, Fortuyn, etc), or to the free-market Conservatives leading the government (thinks the Austrian School of Economics, Ayn Rand, etc). But, once one can get some grip on that assumedly widespread historographical failure, are there any cultured Christian voices standing against the religious failure of the Danish government to truly and warmly welcome the neighbour, in this case especially the Muslim immigrants (of course, among whom as among Christians and Enlightenment-secularists there are shady characters and hate-mongers). Have any Christians had the courage to challenge the Englightenment ideology of an absolute "free speech," which from its origins then over the centuries hooked itself up to a further idea born in rankly apostate absolute individualism, now mythologized as the core value of a later society of media-consumers manipulated by ideologues and advertizers driving massive institutional vehicles like Jyllands-Posten.Is there no robust lay Christianity, politically informed and aware of the unhindered deployment of power by self-anointed gate-keepers and promulgators of public discourse?

There's no hint of this depth-historical problematic (yet) in the online work of Plat. However, all is not lost, by any means, as the 8 posts to the Plat history (now grown to 6 parts + 2 digressions) fully indicate (see below). For what he has published online, according to his own ulitmate values and consequent historographical presuppositions, I do indeed congratulate and thank Dr Plat. Sir, please keep these blog-entries coming!

Yet, there's the yawning gap I've been feeling. I thnk Ulf Hedetoft got it correct in Denmark cartoon blowback in the online Open Democracy (Feb1,2k6). Hedetoft speaks of the motivation of the assault of the cartoons publisher on Denmark's Muslims, reversing the Danish stand against Hitler's antiSemitism and antiJudaism:

There was no other substantive context, no thematic or analytic justification, no other narrative, slant, or interpretative framework that might have made them palatable or just somehow reasonable. The message was simple, unadorned, and childishly, defiantly provocative: we publish these because we have a right to do so; the liberty of free speech allows us to offend whoever we like, and the religious sensibility of Danish Muslims has to come to terms with this basic fact of Danish life and values if they want to be accepted and to integrate.

This defence of free speech – testing the limits of Muslim tolerance rather than observing the limits of civility – was portrayed as necessary because this democratic value is allegedly under threat from Islamic communities wanting to curtail democracy, to impose a different culture on Denmark, and eventually to introduce sharia law. Provocation was called for and offence justified in order to teach the "immigrant other" a serious lesson, and at the same time wage a battle for what "we all" believe in, before it is too late.

Thus, the paper itself depicted this act of deliberate provocation and insult – the perversity of deliberately offending because one is allowed to – as almost an example of civic disobedience: as if Jyllands-Posten and not the Danish Muslims were a minority voice in a public landscape dominated by non-Danish values, and as if the aliens were winning the domestic "clash of civilisations".

This picture of a hysterical Englightenment dominant culture rings true but exposes so unfocused a situation in the country that it constitutes a denial of Danish reality to such an extent the ideologically-dominant picture is its own verbal cartoon. In his article Hedetoft mentions the fact of Denmark as somehow today still "a Lutheran society" in some sense. Clicking up Hedetoft's live-link of the word "Lutheran" we arrive at a government site, all neatly organized under a state ministry.

The Constitution and ReligionEcclesiastical and religious matters in Denmark are subject to the Constitution, the main principles being established by the stipulation that the Evangelical Lutheran Church – as the established Church of Denmark – shall be supported by the State, and also by provisions on freedom of religion, speech and assembly.

State support is partly moral and political (Sunday observance legislation and legislation on church matters), partly financial and administrative (contributions to clergy salaries and pensions, the collection of church taxes, the maintenance of the national church governance by means of a Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs and diocesan administration, supervision, advisory services, etc.).

. And ...

Of religious communities, the established church is by far the largest (84.1% of the population in 2002). Alongside the established church various other Christian churches are represented in Denmark and have been accorded the status of officially recognised religious communities. ... During the last decades of the 20th century, the largest of the non-Christian communities has been dominated by Muslim immigrants; on the basis of the number of immigrants from Muslim countries now resident in Denmark, the number is estimated to be c. 150,000 (2002), made up of a number of mutually independent Islamic communities."

So this brings us full circle thru the Lutheran clergy as minions of the Danish state to their widely-scattered flock dispersend into their Humanist secularist political parties subject to the dominant ideology of each in turn, and not having accessiblity to a stable Christian policy on immigration and re-education of newcomers with all due hospitality. Yet, I suspect the Danish clergy - half-secularist themselves (the updated politics of the Lutheran two-realms doctrine) - have been at least consulting with their Muslim neighbours, while still unable to critique the secularism of the establishment and its Islamophobia in the name of the Enlightenment and its version of freedom of speech. Hedetoft helps us, especially if we fathom his source on a bureaucratic Lutheranism in all its slumber.

Another voice joins in ruffly the same critique as Hedetoft, this one from Belgium, Paul Belien, editor of Brussels Journal in the context of an ex-Muslim Englightenment-secularist manifesto that he subjects to critique. Says Bielen:

There is no doubt that Islamism is a threat to freedom and human dignity. However, as we have warned before, some [non-Muslim] people – undoubtedly brave, but nevertheless mistaken – are prepared to destroy certain basic freedoms, such as freedom of education, in their fight against Islam and religion in general. The question has already been put here: Is Islam dangerous because it is a religion? Do Muslim values differ from European values because the latter are rooted in Christianity or because [European values] are secular[ist]? These questions are at the heart of the debate in Europe today.

In our opinion, man is a religious being. Secularism destroyed the Christian roots of Europe and, in doing so, created the religious vacuum that is now being filled by Islam. The manifesto warns against “battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. […] We must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.”

History in the past century, however, has clearly indicated that those fighting for an “egalitarian” world were the most “liberticidal” of all. Freedom is the right to live “unegalitarianly.” This is why Brussels Journal defends the right of individuals – though not of the state – to “discriminate” (which, by the way, contrary to what the manifesto implies, is not the same as “oppress”). Indeed, it is no coincidence that the manifesto avoids referring to “Socialism” (and even “Communism”) among the scourges of the past century and prefers to speak of “Nazism” and Stalinism” instead. Half the manifesto’s signatories are probably Socialists, which explains why the manifesto obfuscates the secular[ist], Socialist roots of these scourges.

In this fine-pointed critique of secularist ideology the sad reality is that here Bielen and his Dutch colleague, Dr Jos Verhulst, altho they also bring out the historical problematic I find lacking in Plat's Enlightenment 'whig' interpretation of the present Danish experience, at the same time godify individualism, like secularist Humanists of the Enlightenment - because the Enlightenment always was conflicted on which human reality to absolutize, either the collectivity (race, state, etc.) or the individual (one's rights against everyone else and every sphere-grouping, the free market, etc.). Some Christians add a vanilla-chocolate cover to socialist ideology, others add the covering to libertarian ideology; but both are merely modes of a baptism of the Englightenment with a sugar-coating.

Here Prof Plat has a most important moment of truth, while not dealing with the priority problematic I have concern for, he at the same time does not inflate the niceties of the details into specious ideologizing - such as do the ex-Muzzies, their two "French philosophers," and the opponents of the latter two - Belien and Verhulst with their slightly-Christian individualism. Christian philosophy can do better; it is no more dependent on individualism than it is on socialism. But there's no room here to enter into that theme. In the interim, I recommend that all readers have a go at Ulf Hedetoft's piece, and a good read of the uptodated list of historian Plat's blog-entries on "The Cartoon Row dissected." Please, don't miss Part Six! - Politicarp

• The Cartoon Row dissected - Part 1 (Feb16,2k6)
• A Digression [#1]: Origins of xenophobia in Denmark (Feb17,2k6)
• The Cartoon Row dissected - Part 2 (Feb18,2k6)
• Another Digression [#2]: Freedom of speech, and discrimination laws in Denmark (Feb20,2k6)
• The Cartoon Row dissected - Part 3 (Feb23,2k6)
• The Cartoon Row dissected - Part 4 (Feb27,2k6)
• The Cartoon Row dissected - Part 5 (Mar9,2k6)
• The Cartoon Row dissected - Part 6 (Mar14,2k6)

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Here's refWrite's own earlier tracing of the Danish cartoons story Before joining the Buy Danish campaign (mentioned at the end of that previous post), I want to have knowledge that some Danish Christians are grouped politically to speak out normatively against the Anders Fogh Rasmussen Free-Marketeers and their ethnocentric collaborators in the government on the matter of the cartoons. I'm not calling for censorship of the press, but for the responsibles pro-active censure of Jyllands-Posten and the ex-Muslims fanatical dismissal of value-pluralism for unitary secualrism; all that would be a good move. I want to see some Christian element in Denmark that I can identify with because of its own-faith based neighborliness to Danes and newcomers of the Muslim religion. Then I can freeely join in the Buy Danish campaign, but not until then. I have another certifying reason for joining in, if and when the time comes. And that's the excellent socially-responsible Danish business enterprise, Leggo, that testifies to what an ethical capitalism can accomplish. I want to get to the place where I can sincerely "Buy Danish" and recommend that others do so as well. - P

Ethnoreligious roots: St Pat: Irish all over the world and their friends celebrate Ireland's first Bishop

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Well, I googled for something to help me celebrate St Paddy's Day on this blog. I was greeted by a special logo for the day. So here it is. Then, thinking of "the Luck of the Irish," I entered "St Patrick Day Ireland civilization" (I vaguely had a special book in mind, but didn't use the Amazon search option). When Google confronted me with a general search or "I'm feeling lucking," for the best single result - given my search terms, I chose the latter.

Presto! I got St Anthony's Messenger with a full feature on St Patrick by Anita McSorley, "The Saint Patrick You Never Knew." I wanted to launch the day with some historical accuracy as well as Christian appreciation of the man. What I didn't know was that as a teenager Patrick, of a Christian family but "not very religious," was seized by a band Irish kidnappers and taken from Roman Britain in the 400s AD, as a slave, to Ireland. He was a rugged lad who survived the slavery, maybe he was ransomed (we don't know, but that happened), anyway he got back to Britain and his family and his education - where he chrystallized his sense of calling to become a missionary to the unevangelized "babarbarians" to the west of the British Isles under Rome.

The rugged man was on his way to becoming a ruff-and-ready Bishop, and eventually to be recognized as a Saint. McSorley segments her text into six parts, so you can do a Quick Scan to decide where you actually may want to read deeper, or not.

Illustration by Michael O'Neill McGrath, OBFS

• Patrick in Myth and History
• Stranger in a Strange Land
• Patron Saint of the Excluded
• Patrick the Mystic
• Patrick's Lasting Legacy
• Patrick at the Judgment
• Patrick's Lasting Legacy

Oh, i notice, here's the book I'm looking for: Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization - Western civilization, that is, during "the Time of the Barbarians" (Daniel-Rops) or, more commonly, "The Dark Ages" of much of Europe. These northern seag-going outsiders poured down from northern lands and in the wildest outcome a branch called the Visigoths crossed into North Africa and destroyed the Latinate Roman civilization there, to the grief of Saint Augustine in Carthage, now laid waste. In time, the Muslims came from the opposite direction and displaced the slowly Christianized Visigoths and indigenous North Africans. But how the Irish priests, monks, nuns, and laity countered this trend from their island startingplace - truly the great legacy of Patrick - is a story you may want to read. Cahill's book has been a bestseller and continues to find new readers. - Anaximaximum

Intelligence: Juridics: Libby launches contretemps against mainstream media's belated collusion with errant prosecutor

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The water gets hotter, thanks to Scooter Libby's supoenas of journalists and newspapers, as the lobsters make final efforts to crawl out of the suddenly boiling pot they had stoked for the VP's man in their previous re-incarnations. Lobsters named Miller (who spent time in the clink first) and the New York Times (which likes to call itself The Times, but it ain't, as that's in London UK and nowhere else, despite all the imitators).

President's Men - Scooter [2]

Quite objectively reporting (I would imagine) on his own boss, his newspaper as employer and article-assigner, Adam Libtak reports (Mar16,2k6) in NYT:

Lawyers for I. Lewis Libby Jr., a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney who faces charges of obstruction of justice, served subpoenas on Tuesday on The New York Times Company and a former reporter for The Times, Judith Miller.

The subpoenas seek documents concerning the disclosure of the identity of an undercover CIA operative, Valerie Wilson. Mr. Libby has been charged with lying to a grand jury about how he learned about Ms. Wilson's identity.

Ms. Miller testified before the grand jury last fall, after having served 85 days in jail to protect a confidential source later revealed to be Mr. Libby. She also provided the grand jury with edited notes of her interviews with Mr. Libby. Ms. Miller retired from The Times in November.

The new subpoenas seek her notes and other materials, including any other documents concerning Ms. Wilson prepared by Ms. Miller and Nicholas D. Kristof, an Op-Ed columnist for The Times; drafts of a personal account by Ms. Miller published in The Times in October concerning her grand jury testimony; documents concerning her interactions with an editor of The Times; and documents concerning a recent Vanity Fair article on the investigation.

A lawyer for Mr. Libby, William H. Jeffress Jr., would not say whether other reporters and news organizations had been subpoenaed. Matthew Cooper of Time magazine and Tim Russert of NBC News have received subpoenas, their representatives said.

A spokeswoman for The Times said its lawyers were reviewing the subpoena served on it. A lawyer for Ms. Miller, Robert S. Bennett, said she would probably fight her subpoena.

"It's entirely too broad," Mr. Bennett said. "It's highly likely we'll be filing something with the court."

Of this latest turn of events, hot response is starting already to trickle from the faucette above the pot, desperately attempting to reduce the temperature. A Jeff Gannon (hey!, is that the same guy who ran porn sites or escort services while infiltrating the White House Press corps as a partisan for the Prez? allegedly, of course - nah, couldn't be). Anyway, this JG says:

In a delicious bit of irony, lawyers for Scooter Libby have delivered the first of many, many, many subpoenas to journalists and news organizations. Libby's defense team is turning the tables on the Old Media, who orchestrated the Valerie Plame affair into a major event when it is in fact, nothing.

What will be interesting to see, besides the information that is revealed, is the length to which the Old Media will go to stonewall Libby's lawyers. I am repeating my prediction of another bad year for what some are describing as the "dinosaur media".

It looks like JG is tempted to surf the Liddy counterattack, but there is a link between a certain aspect of their nonpolitical lives. Seems Liddy has done some novel-writing and is a published author of The Apprentice, his 1996 thriller that takes place in 1903 Japan."

The novel earned Libby favorable reviews. The Boston Globe called The Apprentice an "alluring novel of intrigue" while the New York Times Book Review said Libby's "storytelling skill neatly mixes conspiratorial murmurs with a boy's emotional turmoil."

Well, now you know. Since the indictment, Libby's book, The Apprentice (St. Martin's Press), has jumped from #16,249 in sales on Amazon.com to #379, as of Friday evening.[Vicinity of Oct29,2k5]

Hysterically, New Yorker magazine is less comforting in its effort to gannonize Libby under the article title, "Libby's Sex Shocker". I doubt the magazine would review the Libby work with the same outraged puritanism were it unaware of the author's name and political role in the current Administration. It's not much of a connection, but Irve Lewis Libby, Jr, touches a nerve in those of us news-hounds who were astounded at the blatant braggsdacio and pugnacious pulchritude of Jexxx the White House correspondent. - Owlb

P.S. Jacqueline - Valerie Plame got her husband Joe Wilson sent to Niger, not Nigeria. A small slip, given a great Pelicanpost post otherwise (Mar16,2k6). Thanks! - Owlb

Previously in this series:

President's Men - Scooter [1] (Mar14,2k6)

President's Men - Tom [1] (Mar14,2k6)

President's Men - Karl [4] (Aug9,2k5)

President's Men - Karl [3] (Aug1,2k5)

President's Men - Karl [2] (Jul31,2k5)

President's Men - Karl [1] (July13,2k5)

Politics: UN Security Council: China & Russia stop veto-holders unity toward UNSC discipline of rogue-state Iran

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The United Nations Security Council which meets tomorrow apparently has been stopped in its tracks by China and Russia, which refuse to unite with fellow veto-holders France and Britain (with US concurrence) in addressing the necessity of severe discipline against the unabashed threat to world peace by Iran, including its announced intention of exterminating Israel. Specifically, Iran is a threat due to its drive to position itself to manufacture nuclear warheads for its enlarging missile system. Previously, France and Britain had sought in numerous consultations with the other two, to have a united front of the veto-holders prepared when the Security Council meets tomorrow, all 15-members strong. The other members (non-permanent, non-veto-holding, 2-yr terms) are: Argentina, Denmark, Greece, Japan, Tanzania, Congo Republic, Ghana, Peru, Qatar and Slovakia.

The specific point for which pre-arranged unity of the five was sawt, is the endorsement tomorrow by the Security Council of a requirement that the International Atomic Energy Agency (with 35 member states) bring in a report within 14 days on Iran's compliance or refusal to comply with prohibition of the latter's pursuit of nuclear weapons. This is what the diplomacy of China and Russia are obstructing.

Should they vote with the other three permanent members, or at least abstain, the IAEA would not have room to back away from its responsiblity. The next step, should Iran not comply and allow effective inspections of its nuclear facilities and the placement of seals on the program's relevant locations, would be UN Security Council sanctions against Iran.

Rookmaker Club geostrategic analysis:

Of course, the almost-certain failure of China and Russia to allow the UN to function in disciplining Iran brings us back to the parallel situation in regard to Iraq under Saddam Hussein (which just a day or so ago was shown to have had Al-Quaeda operatives functioning on its territory a year before 9/11 to advance the international terrorist program, coddled by the Saddam Hussein regime).

If the UN balks again, as it seems likely tonite (but tomorrow will probably tell all), this would put the US in the difficult position of having to invoke again its right and power of pre-emptive strike, this time against the Iranian nuclear facilities and its regime. (Or, perhaps Israel could function as surrogate in that regard, since it's been threatened with extermination, at the very moment when Iran is conducting a conference to Deny the Holocaust).

Another parallel exists as well: China is playing the same game in the Middle East with Iran that it has been playing in the Far East with the North Korean project of nuclear weaponry. In both cases, China has advanced the cause of the two rogue anti-states by using its diplomacy to delay and ever delay the consolidation of international prevention of nuclear proliferation endangering all humankind.

Russia is more opportunistic. It wants to leverage its status on the international diplomatic scene, and has tried brokering solutions in a number of cases where it hoped to serve as middleman. None of them has succeeded. Russia's role is opportunistic; but China's is not. China's behaviour has been principled in its own interests - not least of all the securing of a steady flow of oil. That steadly flow also could include Iranian oil for which it has a plan to construct a series ports and fortresses from the Persian Gulf to its own southern coastal terminals thru the pirate-infested Stait of Malacca to its own coastal terminals, or to terminals in Burma or Vietnam, both of which would allow massive pipeliness to connect a China-fortified oilport in one of their designated harbours on their own soil with China itself (the client would get a pumping fee plus some oil splash). So, China has extremely strong reasons to satisfy Iran diplomatically.

The difficulty mentioned, that the US again had to face its responsiblity of pre-empton when circumstances warrant cannot be lost on its allies, nor on China and Russia, nor on Iraq, nor on Iran. Just today, a major return to airborne tactics, if not bombing, saw the deployment of American Airborned Combat Teams in the terrorist-infested Samarra region of Iraq. The occasion was coupled with a hi-ly significanct announcement (CNN;Mar16,2k6).

Also Thursday, the White House reaffirmed the principle of pre-emptive war in its updated National Security Strategy, despite the fact that no weapons of mass destruction, which were a key justification for the pre-emptive 2003 invasion of Iraq, were found.

That is to say, is it not?, that what held true for Saddam Hussein's regime clearly hold true now also for Iran's regime.

Associated Press via CNN for tomorrow carries a full report on the reaffirmation of the pre-emption strategy:

President Bush reaffirmed his strike-first policy against terrorists and enemy nations on Thursday and said Iran may pose the biggest challenge for America.

In a 49-page national security report [titled National Security Strategy], the president said diplomacy is the U.S. preference in halting the spread of nuclear and other heinous weapons.

"The president believes that we must remember the clearest lesson of September 11 -- that the United States of America must confront threats before they fully materialize," national security adviser Stephen Hadley said.

"The president's strategy affirms that the doctrine of pre-emption remains sound and must remain an integral part of our national security strategy," Hadley said. "If necessary, the strategy states, under longstanding principles of self defense, we do not rule out the use of force before attacks occur, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack."

The AP report continues, after the apparent failure by France and Britain to bring China and Russia around to a Security Council mandate to the IAEA:

The report had harsh words for Iran. It accused the regime of supporting terrorists, threatening Israel and disrupting democratic reform in Iraq. Bush said diplomacy to halt Tehran's suspected nuclear weapons work must prevail to avert a conflict.

"This diplomatic effort must succeed if confrontation is to be avoided," Bush said.

Bush went on to say: "We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran. For almost 20 years, the Iranian regime hid many of its key nuclear efforts from the international community. Yet the regime continues to claim that it does not seek to develop nuclear weapons."

He did not say what would happen if international negotiations with Iran failed. The Bush administration currently is working to persuade Russia and China to support a proposed U.N. Security Council resolution demanding that Iran end its uranium enrichment program.

Since Iran is already at war with the fledgling Iraqi democracy, supplying ever-more complex road bombs (for instance) to disrupt the Iraqi military, Iran is also actively at war with the USA, Britain and the other allies in Iraq. Iran is siding with the terrorists. Therefore, the use of an armada of planes that could carry aerial bombs instead for dropping paratroopers in the Samarra region, can also serve as a warm-up for the planes that most likely will have to be used to halt nuclear-weapon manufacture in Iran, but also to make the border between the two countries extremely difficult to negotiate for the Iranian infiltrators.

I'm so doubtful that Iran will pull back, because the evidence is overwhelming in regard to the mullahs' desire for another Shiite agony in which Iranians will be whipped again to shed blood all the way from Teheran to Baghdad in the messianic quest of the mullah's for imperial power. Moqtada Sadr is creature of the Iranians in Iraq; his forces within the Shiite political umbrella in the new Parliament of Iraq do Iran's dirty work there, obstructing as much as possible the functioning of Iranian democracy. There is one war against terrorism in in Mesopotamia and Persia. The excision of Iran's nuclear facilities is an integral part of winning that war and protecting Iraqi democracy and pluralism. - Politicarp

Dr Keith Pavlischek on a Christian approach to pre-emptive war, Mar10,2k3.

Report of a debate on pre-emptive war, Mar23,2k3.