saddam is scheduled to die this weekend. this is the brand of justice and freedom brought to iraq: pre-ordained show trials in place of actual safety and security. enjoy the show.

Alas, I’ve been away/offline for a while. Apologies for the delay. But it is a slow time where folks get to be with family and reflecton the cold (or lack thereof).

I’ve found a few tidbits I find interesting enough:

Note the cover of der spiegel’s international (read: English) magazine.

Can she lead them out of the so-called malaise?

We’re all fucked.

Although it’s unclear – it’s still clear enough. Right?

Ah… if only the Jewish lobby or the Israel lobby were as potent as detractors give them credit for….

Wha? – les habitudes alimentaires de l’armé sont mauvaise ?!

Trop tard ? le changement climatique est peut-être déjà en force…

Not only is this guy a raging bigot, but he’s also so poorly informed on the facts of passive smoking and its effects.  Further, studies show that pack-a-day smokers and two-pack-a-day smokers are fewer and further between than ever, thanks to education campaigns.  Legal limits may work in workplaces and public spaces, but someone’s home is not for the intrusion of government.

 

If you ever thought i wasn't obsessed enough with my dog, this should end all speculation.

cows not cars

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2062484.ece

 

if we are different from the other animals, is it not because we have human responsibilities more important than rights?

It’s clear to me now that Canada, as a project will never succeed until the deep-seated fear and hatred many Anglophones regard the French. Stephane Dion’s French “citizenship” debacle, prompted by no other than the bigoted and foolhardy Ezra Levant (why do people even read this guy??) has demonstrated the double standard by which French politicians must operate. Not only must Mr. Dion’s English be “perfect” (despite our latest real PM barely speaking either language), but now his pedigree offends. Until Canadians realize this is precisely the type of cultural colonialism that Quebeckers have been trying to get away from, we will continuously face the specter of a broken federation. Even a hardcore federalist like Dion understands that francophones are not going to accept that his support for Canada is any weaker because he honours his heritage; just like Quebeckers can honour their heritage as part of Canada.

Love this

 

The Jews Behind the War Against the War Against Christmas: Jewish Evangelical-Supporters Are Mobilizing and America is Listening

Josh Nathan-Kazis

In March of 2006, the evangelical organization Vision America hosted a conference entitled “The War on Christians and the Values Voters in 2006” at the Omni Shoreham hotel in Washington, D.C. Scheduled in the wake of the ‘War on Christmas’ controversy that dominated conservative airwaves and op-ed columns in November and December of 2005, the conference aimed to “expose those responsible for the ongoing assault on people of faith, including Hollywood, the liberal media, the courts and groups like the ACLU and Anti-Defamation League,” according to a press release.

With panels entitled “The Gay Agenda: America Won’t Be Happy” and “The Judiciary: Overruling God” and appearances by such prominent allies of the Evangelical movement as Alan Keyes, Phyllis Schlafly, and Tom DeLay, the conference appeared to be just like any other Christian Right media circus.

Behind the scenes, however, there was something different about this particular star-studded Evangelical happening. This conference was conceived by an observant Jew.

“The people who are probably subjected to the most discrimination in our society are evangelical Christians,” says Don Feder, a former Boston Herald columnist-turned political consultant and the Jewish man who takes credit for the “War on Christians” conference.

Back in April of 2005, Feder called a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington to announce the formation of Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation, an organization dedicated to defending evangelical Christians from the attacks of the secular elite. In his address, Feder explained, “Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation was organized because we recognize that Christians are the last remaining obstacle to the moral deconstruction of America.”

The organization won some notice last winter, at the peak of the War On Christmas, when Jackie Mason started showing up with some frequency across the desk from some of Fox News’ biggest hosts as a representative of the group. In his Brooklyn-accented, Yiddish-inflected patois, Mason provided an ostensibly Jewish perspective on the place of religion in the public sphere during the holiday season, leading New York Times columnist Frank Rich to dub him “Fox News’ obligatory show Jew.”

Don Feder is a self-proclaimed ultra-conservative. “I’m to the right of Sharon on Zionism, to the right of Pat Buchanan on immigration and Americanism, to the right of Mother Angelica on abortion, to the right of Chuck Heston on Second-Amendment rights, and generally make the legendary Atilla look like a limousine liberal,” he writes on his personal website.

Feder left the newspaper business in 2002 to launch a political consulting firm. At the time of the “War on Christians” conference, he had been retained by Vision America as a media consultant.

Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation, whose ponderous name is an apparent dig against the Anti-Defamation League, boasts an advisory board that is a veritable who’s who of prominent right-wing Jews. The board includes Mason, Republican hobnobber Rabbi Daniel Lapin, David Horowitz of FrontPage magazine, Zionist Organization of America president Morton Klein, Rabbi Jacob Neusner of controversial academic renown, and conservative talk show hosts Michael Medved and Barry Farber.

The unlikely alliance between evangelical Christians and politically conservative Jews carries obvious benefits for both sides. Much of the discourse on the so-called “War on Christmas” centers on a supposed liberal elite that uses its control of the media to persecute a Christian minority. The anti-Semitic undertones are apparent, and having Jews on hand is helpful in deflecting any charges of religious intolerance.

The Jews, for their part, win considerable cachet within the evangelical community. Rabbi Daniel Lapin, a close friend of Jack Abramoff with ties to Tom DeLay, was dubbed “Republican Washington’s Official Rabbi” by the Washington Post, and has impressive access to the most powerful members of the conservative establishment. Michael Horowitz, another member of JAACD’s advisory board, became the first Jew to receive the Wilberforce Award, a prestigious annual social justice prize within the evangelical community. Don Feder gets consulting contracts with groups like Vision America, and Jackie Mason was interviewed on Fox at least three times during the 2005 Holiday Season.

This is not to say that the JAACD and its advisory board members are disingenuous. Beneath Mason’s hamming and Feder’s over-the-top rhetoric (“The choice isn't Christian America or nothing, but Christian America or a neo-pagan, hedonistic, rights-without-responsibilities, anti-family, culture-of-death America,” Don Feder wrote last February) lie deep and serious concerns about the viability of a secularized American republic.

Their proposed alternative has been widely described as close-minded. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report called the Vision America conference that Feder takes credit for an “anti-gay extravaganza.” A posting on the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism’s blog accused the speakers at the JAACD’s founding press conference of Islamophobia, and of defending “the bigotry of the Radical Right under the guise of tolerance.” While pursuing victim status for the evangelical Christians who make up a third of the country, the JAACD uses its Jewish identity to legitimize and even institutionalize an intolerant ideology that endangers weaker and more vulnerable minorities.

Feder’s attack on secularism takes aim at the roots of the American system, and flies directly in the face of some of the most basic assumptions about the nature of our democracy.
Feder believes that the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religious…”) has been wrongfully conflated with Thomas Jefferson’s 1802 description of a “wall of separation” between church and state, and that the intention of the founding fathers was simply to avoid the creation of a national Church like the Church of England.

Put bluntly, “I think the separation of church and state is a myth,” says Feder. “[The Establishment Clause] is being used to drive any religious manifestation from the public square…If governmental decisions are not based on religious decisions then whose values are they based on? Why is it less legitimate to base political decisions on religious values than on socialist values or feminist values or environmentalist values?”

While many legal scholars agree that the original intent of the Establishment Clause may not have been the construction of the so-called wall of separation, two centuries of binding legal precedents have made such an interpretation somewhat moot.

Still, the viewpoint is the same as the one expressed by failed Florida Republican senatorial candidate Katherine Harris in an August interview with the Florida Baptist Witness, when she called the church-state divide “that lie we have been told.”

Mark Pelavin, the associate director of the Religious Action Center, is troubled by Feder’s position on the separation.

“On this particular question, as on so many, the constitution got it right,” Pelavin says. “They created a system that gave tremendous religious liberty, protection for religious freedom, and simultaneously said that religion shouldn’t be in the government’s business and the government shouldn’t be in religion’s business…There’s all the difference in the world, in my mind, between what motivates individuals when they walk out into the political arena and what are the foundations on which governmental decisions rest.”

Not all of the members of JAACD’s advisory board are ready to do away with the separation between church and state. Many, however, seem to agree with Feder when he says, “Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation understands that this is a Christian country.”

“The Constitution is ostensibly an Augustinian document,” says Herb London, a JAACD advisory board member and a former candidate for Governor in New York on the Conservative Party slate. “It’s not a Hindu document. It’s a document that comes right out of the Christian tradition.”

In the 230 years since the founding, in the eyes of the JAACD, the forces of liberalism and secularization have been working to drive Christianity from the soul of the nation. Jews, it seems, have been on the front lines of that attack.
JAACD advisory board member David Horowitz, a former Marxist with ties to the Black Panther Party who turned sharply to the right in the 1990s and is now best known for his efforts to eliminate left-leaning political bias from the academy, says that the left is inherently and necessarily secular.

“The left is actually a Christian and Jewish heresy,” Horowtiz says. He argues that the left thinks it can “create the kingdom of heaven on earth by political means,” and yet “Orthodox tradition teaches that human beings are the source of social problems and that there is not going to be a solution until there is a messianic coming.” As a result, the left has always pitted itself against religion. Jewish and left wing values, he maintains, are irreconcilable, a contradiction in terms. “Liberal Jews tend to be not very religious. They don’t have a strong identification with Judaism. In Reform temples, Judaism is a form of liberalism,” Horowitz says.

Pelavin refutes Horowtiz’ critique. “I think it’s offensive and demeaning to the vast majority of American Jews, who both take their Judaism seriously and tend to line up on the liberal side of the political spectrum,” he says. “Clearly Mr. Horowitz and others have seen the exit polls for the last election, that Jews voted 87% for Democrats. Are they saying that none of those 87%, the overwhelming majority of American Jews, take their Judaism seriously? I think that, for many people, the very fact that they take their Judaism seriously is what leads them to what might be considered liberal viewpoints.”

The specific nature of the danger posed by secularization is difficult to grasp. There seem to be two sets of answers, each preferred by different breeds of JAACD advisory board members. For David Horowitz and Herb London, the threat is embodied by what London calls the “force of darkness.”

“We’re in a religious war where, depending on the estimates, there are 150 million Muslims who subscribe to a radical Muslim philosophy who have declared war on the West,” says Horowitz.

“The Muslims,” London concurs, “have gained traction all over Europe in part because the Europeans don’t believe in anything. Religion has been eviscerated from European life. [Europeans] don’t make babies anymore. Why don’t they make babies? Because they don’t have any confidence in the future.”

For both Horowitz and London, then, the defense of evangelical Christianity in the United States is an essential part of the larger strategy in the global War on Terror. Fundamentalism must be fought with fundamentalism.

Says London, “The key ingredients of the kind of society that we live in are our traditions…To the extent that we lose sight of them we are not capable of marshalling the requisite energy and the requisite skill and the requisite language to deal with this enemy that we are now facing on the world stage.”

For domestic policy-minded culture warriors like Feder and advisory board member Rabbi Aryeh Spero, the threat of secularization is embodied, in the words of an ad taken out by JAACD, by those who “seek an America shaped by San Francisco, not Sinai.” In an interview, Feder clarified the statement, saying, “San Francisco is not a city known for Judeo-Christian values. It’s shorthand. San Francisco has legalized marijuana, has legalized everything. I don’t think you can find a city in America to the left of San Francisco.”

Rabbi Spero says that while he doesn’t agree with the entirety of the evangelical’s so-called values platform, “the differences are far less than the commonalities.”

“I like their idea of morality, that there are limits to what the human being can do in public,” Spero says. While he says he has no problem with embryonic stem cell research, he supports the display of the Ten Commandments in government buildings and opposes gay marriage. “I certainly don’t consider it the optimum lifestyle, but if somebody is, then they are,” he says. “In this country, you are allowed to be whatever you decide to be. But you can’t change the definition of marriage.”

Says Feder, “By defending conservative Christians, we’re also—we think—in the long run, helping to preserve America, and we’re defending our common values.”

In its 18 months in existence, JAACD has spoken out on a number of issues that it sees as relating to Christian defamation. In May of 2006, Feder was quoted in the Hollywood Reporter calling the movie The Da Vinci Code a “clear attack on all religions.” This fall, JAACD joined with the Catholic League to take out an advertisement defending the Pope in the wake of the criticism he received for his supposed slur against Islam in a speech at Regensburg University in September.

Feder says that the organization has no paid staff, and that it hasn’t done extensive fundraising. He plans to take the JAACD on another anti-“War on Christmas” campaign this holiday season, and would like to approach issues facing Christian groups on college campuses. “One of the things I find most disturbing is the number of Christian groups on college and university campuses that have lost university support and recognition because they have policies against homosexuals serving as officers,” he says.

The JAACD’s concern for the Christian in this multicultural society has won it greater recognition among Christians than Jews. Feder doesn’t think that the larger Jewish community has any idea that his organization exists. He says that there’s a perception among some Jews “that we’ve become the fawning Jewish auxiliary of the religious right.”

The RAC’s Pelavin agrees. “I don’t think they’re representative of the American Jewish community in any kind of serious way,” he says. “I went to a press conference they had last year in Washington that was one of the most—one of the strangest events I’ve ever been to. To listen to these ‘Jewish Leaders’ stand up and complain that there’s a war against Christmas in our country was unbelievable on so many levels… It was just amazing to me.”

Among the evangelicals themselves, of course, the attitude is very different. David Parsons, a spokesperson at the Christian Zionist organization the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, said in an e-mail that the formation of JAACD “reflected the growing bonds between Jews and Christians as people of biblical faith.”

While the JAACD as an organization remains obscure within the Jewish community, its relative prominence among evangelicals is cause for concern. The support it provides to evangelical causes and the sound-bytes it feeds to the media promote an anti-secular worldview that is intolerant toward gays and Muslims. Meanwhile, the Jewishness of JAACD members allow them to appear as representatives of an entire religion, despite the opinions of the vast majority of its American adherents.

Says Pelavin, “It’s important to recognize that many of the leaders of the evangelical community have a very different view of America than we do. We need to go into any alliances that we go into, as we go into any alliance, open-eyed, and knowing with whom we’re standing.”

---

Josh Nathan-Kazis is a senior at Wesleyan University and a member of the New Voices student editorial board. He was once, briefly, the only Google result for "mentally handicapped journalist."

 

here are some links. if i wasn't tired, i'd be inclined to write more. but you're creative: imagine what i'd say. finally found media source confirming this sook yin lee shortbus cbc debacle i know some will think i am crazy; but i think he's right. the world is crazy, and why shouldn't britain have nukes? this cdn gov't is so stupid: this move will COST us money! proactive vs. reactive only ezra levant would try and make an issue out of this. a large number of canadians are indeed citizens of multiple countries, and to suggest that their loyalty to canada is weak is only a soco-i-hate-my-own-people thing. did you know?

i love jukeboxes. last week, i was able to eat montreal smoked meat sandwiches with a dear old friend in la belle province and pick from the table side jukeboxes. now, having returned south to unseasonably warm temperatures that ended yesterday, while the rest of north america experiences the onslaught of global warming weather changes (snow in the juan de fuca straight! 700 flights cancelled in chicago! 72 in DC!). hoo wah it's been an interesting a full week: i just got a few great cds from emusic. it's a subscription i kind of fell into - so if you sign up, "refer" to me... but it's great. lots of less popular music. got a new teevee as a gift! and since i brought back the ps2 from canada, it's all GTA. boy i love cheating! since israel and the palestinians have actually agreed to some sort of cessation of activities, it is now time for peace lovers to be stronger than peace-haters. lots of interesting tidbits on this. mostly, though, real politics need to engage real dialogue. musings and discourse are splendid and important; but they do little to actually stop violence (often aggrevating it). another controversy raging is conservative america's impossible to overcome deep-seated racist hatred for islam and muslims: rep-elect keith ellison, the first muslim to ever be elected to congress, has requested to take his individual oath on the koran. conservatives are pissed. somehow, even jewish ones (read: dennis prager), think that the christian bible is the only valuable holy text in america and forgets that secularism is a hallmark of american democracy. finally, this weekend, is the Liberal party of canada's leadership convention. basically, in my view this weekend will determine if canada sticks together or not: without a strong federalist win here, the separatists will have all the ammunition they need with stephen harper weakening the central government, and still pissing quebeckers off enough that their own country will sound pretty good in a couple years. interesting thoughts here and here. last, but not least: mazal tov to sacha baron cohen!