UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 26 — Human rights organizations and the co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus protested on Thursday a decision by the Bush administration to back a measure introduced by Iran denying two gay rights groups a voice at the United Nations....

Among countries with which the United States sided were Cuba, Sudan and Zimbabwe, nations the State Department has cited in annual reports for their harsh treatment of homosexuals.

At a time when Iran's nuclear program is a top American priority, the Bush administration appears to have backed Tehran in a fight over the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community center in Argentina.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III said he gave Lawrence A. Franklin a sentence on the low end of federal guidelines because it appeared Franklin was trying help the United States, not hurt it.

The judge also agreed to let Franklin remain free while the government continues with the wider case. His prison time could be sharply reduced in return for his help in prosecuting two former members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Franklin admitted that he met periodically with Rosen and Weissman between 2002 and 2004 and discussed classified information, including information about potential attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq. Rosen and Weissman would later share what they learned with reporters and Israeli officials.

Al Jazeera television, which aired the tape, said it was dated to the Muslim lunar month which corresponds to January. The TV station said earlier the tape dated from December.

Thanks to the tireless efforts of libertarians, art majors, paleoconservatives, anarchists and other True Patriots, we are all well aware of how Israel, neocons, Zionists, and other Jews plot to have the United States do their bidding in the world. So, please pay no attention to what the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports this weekend...

At a strategic-dialogue meeting this week among senior officials, Israel laid out for the United States three scenarios if Bashar Assad is toppled: chaos, an Islamist regime or another strongman from Assad’s minority Alawite sect. Israel fears all those options, saying Assad provides a measure of stability.

U.S. officials told their Israeli counterparts that toppling Assad could be “transformative” and dismissed concerns about an Islamist regime taking his place (JTA, Dec 2).



 

President Bush addressed the nation on Veterans' Day:

"As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them. Our troops deserve to know that this support will remain firm when the going gets tough. And our troops deserve to know that, whatever our differences in Washington, our will is strong, our nation is united and we will settle for nothing less than victory."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad takes a brave stand for resistance....

"There is no doubt that the new wave in Palestine will wipe off this stigma from the face of the Islamic world," Ahmadinejad told students Wednesday during a Tehran conference called "The World without Zionism."

"Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury, any (Islamic leader) who recognizes the Zionist regime means he is acknowledging the surrender and defeat of the Islamic world."

Do we all see what is being said here? 

(Washington Post): And special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald has some significant advantages over the White House press corps when it comes to getting answers. He's not trying to curry favor with anyone. He has an intense professional aversion to being lied to. And perhaps most devastatingly, he can ask as many follow up questions as he wants.

Ha'aretz reports,

The United Nations World Summit begins today.  Tomorrow Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is scheduled to address the General Assembly with some heads of state in attendence.  However, most Arab heads of state will be absent.

Where are the progressive voices opposing the racist radical rejection of non-Arab national rights in the Middle East?  Where is a genuine peace and human rights movement?

It is fundamentally accepted by the mainstream Israeli electorate that Jewish and Arab national rights are not mutually exclusive in former British Mandatory Palestine.  However, this principle lacks any corresponding vision in an emergent Palestine or the Arab establishment, creating an internationally dysfuncional culture of radical rejectionism that is shamlessly and reflexively cheered by Western liberal intelligentsia. 

Only three out of the 22 member-nation Arab League, and only four out of the 56 member-nation Organization of Islamic Conferences recognize the legitimate national rights of the Jewish people and the state of Israel.  Non-Arab national rights in the Middle East are widely considered an absurdity, notwithstanding the abundant history of persecutions of non-Arab and non-Muslim peoples in OIC and Arab League member-nation Sudan, and of Kurds in OIC and Arab League member nations Iraq and Syria. 

But we are supposed to accept as an article of faith in the progressive dogma that a secular Israel, with a genuine electorate that has sent non-Jewish representatives to Israel's parliament, is the lone, uniquely "colonial" "imperial" "racist" state in the Middle East.

Unbelievable.

"I hope people don't play politics during this period of time.... There'll be ample time for politics. But now's the time to focus attention, our compassion and our resources on helping people who need help" (President Bush, BBC, 9/1/05).

"It gives us cover," said one House Republican strategist, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the disaster. "Now everything is going to be about putting together a relief package quickly" (LA Times).

...And now the RNC is pushing hard to get the Senate to kill the estate tax on Tuesday.

"I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees" (President Bush, on ABC News, Sept. 1).

Hat tip

If I read one more comment implying negative connotations to "using distaster for political gain" I'll flip.

"Political" means "people"; citizens; a smoothly running system of government.  What better use of disaster and tragedy than for "political gain"?  It beats the hell out of irresponsible policies that ultimately weaken national unity in general and distaster mitigation in particular for the sake of personal gain and narrow special interests.   The people of New Orleans are now living the brutal consequences of a myopic conservative domination of political discourse since the Reagan era.

Like any rhetorical device, issue framing runs a certain risk of oversimplification.  But Iraq was never a simple issue.  We can certainly lament over the obscene abuses of power and disinformation campaigns that brought the US military to its current situation, but none of it can alter the problem of what we now owe to the Iraqi people. 

Besides being a take-off on a great Clash album, the name Zionista is a reclamation of sorts of the modern 19th century Jewish national liberation movement through a stylized 20th century progressive rhetorical device.

One particular symptom of the many problems brought on by the recent Western trend toward conservatism is the attempt to coopt Israel and Zionism by messianics in general and fundamental Dominionist Christians in particular.  As a somewhat practicing, but largely secular Jew I see little use for the alliance between Dominionist Christians and socially conservative Jewish leadership.  As numerous polls reveal, most Israelis and most American Jews at the popular level understand that Jewish and Arab national self-determination within the former British Palestine Mandate are not mutually exclusive, and now favor the disengagement of Israeli occupation and settlement from territories won in the wars of 1967 and 1973, and the establishment of an emergent Arabic Palestine alongside a secure Hebrew Israel.

The principle of Jewish national self-determination in particular is vulnerable to the ravings of American clergypersons who would fight the so-called War on Terror to the last Israeli for the sake of a Christian triumph over enlightened secular civilization.  These efforts can be effectively resisted by a genuine liberal perspective consistent with the values of human rights.  I hope to contribute to a unified sense of purpose among progressive activists: sharing liberal principles of equality within a context of basic human rights; collective responsibility opposed to unchecked, deregulated, privatised laissez faire competition; and a vibrant, creative, ecologically responsible human civilization.