Current Affairs

Depressing Assessment of The Future of Peace in the Middle East

The Death of Arafat and the Myth of New Beginnings by Mark Levine in Juan Cole’s Blog Here is a graf: "In the weeks leading up to Palestinian President Yassir Arafat’s death American politicians and pundits have repeatedly called on the Palestinian people to use the opportunity of his passing to transform the intifada from a violent uprising into a non-violent, democratic and pragmatic program for achieving independence. This is very good advice, needless to say, except for one small problem: Palestinians have been trying to build such a movement for the last two decades, and the Israeli Government, IDF…

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Current Affairs

From a blue stater to red staters

John Stewart said last week that being in New York he clearly knew nothing about terrorism and he was glad that the red staters were there to tell him about it…. Maybe you are content to think that, to write me off as a “liberal” — the dreaded “L” word — and rejoice that your candidate has triumphed over evil, immoral, anti-American, anti-family people like me.

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Film Inter-faith Intra-faith

Film on Muslim Homosexuals

I think it’s a necessary film, because the reality is that they do exist, and how do we as a religious community deal with them, especially when the issue of religion and homosexuality is getting more important internationally as it becomes a wedge issue in the US. I like his last point, an obvious one, about a vocal minority hijacking the faith. Unfortunately, it will be this same vocal minority who will scream “Zionist conspiracy,” and “Jews trying to destroy Islam,” because of his work with a Jewish director.

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Current Affairs

International Observers

Joi Ito found a good article on the International Herald Tribune about what international observers are saying about our election process…. I don’t do it because I have affiliation to another country (unless we finally get the New York succession movement going), but because I have friends and family overseas, I like to travel and because of work and research.

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