Posted 11/10/2003 07:30:00 AM by Ocean Guy
Blogger Exodus

I've moved to the new digs, please adjust your blogrolls.

Posted 11/05/2003 10:00:00 AM by Ocean Guy
Exodus from Blogger

My long-overdue move is in process.

The gracious folks at Bloghosts are making the transition much easier than I feared, though it's taking a bit longer than I hoped. The new site is open but the content is extremely thin... that'll be fixed soon. A new design is also in the works, I'm excited about the make-over.

Allahu Akbar

Posted 11/03/2003 10:50:00 AM by Ocean Guy
Our Friend Abdel Rachman

I've been curious about the absence of Abdel Rachman from the networks, and was almost glad to see him during the Senate's hearings about our aid money going to fund the terrorists. Rachman was his usual deluded self:

The PLO/PA representative in Washington, Hassan Abdel Rahman, also testified. He initially claimed that the PMW film's translations of PA schoolbooks and speeches are "mistranslations." When challenged by the Senators on this point, Rahman then claimed that even if they were not mistranslated, "they are just expressions of religious belief, and it does not matter what they are saying, if it's a religious belief."

ZOA President Klein's testimony refuted a number of Rahman's allegations. In one dramatic example, in response to Rahman's claim that the PA wants to live in peace with Israel, Klein held up a piece of Rahman's own official PA stationery, which shows a map of all of Israel labeled "Palestine."

In response to Rahman's claim that most people in America and Israel support the creation of a PA state, Klein cited a recent McLaughlin poll showing 71% of Americans opposing such a state, and a recent Geocartography poll showing that 61% of Israelis opposing it.

In response to Rahman's claim that most PA Arabs oppose terrorism, Klein cited polls showing that roughly 70% of them support suicide bombings. He also noted a poll taken earlier this month that found that 59% of PA Arabs support continuing violence against Israel, even if Israel surrenders all of Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and eastern Jerusalem.

Refuting Rahman's claim that Israel had stolen Arab lands from "Palestine," Klein explained that there never was an independent country called Palestine, and challenged Rahman to "name one Palestinian king or queen." Rahman did not respond.

I wonder if the Senate was as entertained as I was.

Posted 10/31/2003 03:14:00 PM by Ocean Guy
Moving

I'll be off line for a couple of days as I go through my blogspot exodus. Hopefully everything will run smoothly.

Shabbat Shalom

Posted 10/30/2003 09:24:00 AM by Ocean Guy
More about Jews on Campus

Natan Sharansky's article that appeared in last week's Forward has resulted in a rebuke by Hillel's Interim President, Avraham Infeld. Mr. Infeld, though, doesn't offer much of a counter-argument, in fact his comments identify a gaping hole.

Infeld, however, said the situation was not as dire as Sharansky had portrayed it.

"If I were to look at the 400 campuses where Hillel has a presence, I don't think there are serious battle issues on more than 25 or 30 of those campuses," Infeld said. "And on those campuses the Arab students are organized, the Arab students have mobilized the faculty and we're having a more difficult time. But that's not representative of the entire country."

In his article, Sharansky cited the example of a Harvard University student who told him she was afraid to participate in pro-Israel activities for fear that her professors would retaliate against her.

The president of Harvard Students for Israel, Josh Suskewicz, told the Forward that outspoken pro-Israel faculty members, such as law professor Alan Dershowitz, have helped to create a campus climate free of intimidation. But at the graduate level, students have said they felt intimidated by professors who are hostile to Israel, said a Harvard Hillel rabbi who asked not to be identified by name.

Infeld agreed that hostile faculty can be a problem, but said the problem is limited in its scope.

"There is no question that faculty on campuses speaking out against Israel can be very intimidating to the Jewish student," Infeld said. But, he added, faculty intimidation is a problem on only a few campuses.

From his comments, it seems to me, that Mr. Infeld ought to be writing in Forward about the 25 or 30 campuses where there is a problem. Maybe he ought to be publicizing the problem of faculty intimidation and where it exists.

There has been an identifiable global trend of increasing anti-Semitism over the past few years. We should not ignore it and hope that it will simply go away. As I said last week, I thought Mr. Sharansky's column offered hope while describing a gloomy situation. One of the best ways to eliminate the gloom is to shine light on the facts. The brighter the light the faster the gloom disappears. Mr. Infeld is in a position to bring the light to bear on the problems where they exist. To be sure he should and cannot ignore the good things happening, but we'd all be better served by knowing where problems do exist. Mr. Sharansky may have opened some eyes... Mr. Infeld ought not to try to put blinders on us by minimizing the problems.

Posted 10/30/2003 09:20:00 AM by Ocean Guy
Party Affiliation

I am not comfortable with either the Democrats or the Republicans. The Democrat's hard turn to the way left and increasingly reactionary rhetoric pushed me to change my party of record. I made the change as a sign of displeasure with the Democrats more than real acceptance of Republican aims. I am not alone.

"Coleman Republican" appears to be a new moniker for Moderate Jewish Republicans.

The trend of Jews running under a moderate Republican banner has been a long time in coming, some analysts say.

"It shouldn't be surprising," said Pennsylvania pollster G. Terry Madonna. "Many [Jews] are pro-business and socially liberal. Many Democrats are not pro-business. Breaking into the party machinery in cities and suburbs isn't easy. The Republican Party is a little more open and flexible."

Some see internal Democratic Party politics as the source of Jewish alienation from the party of Franklin Roosevelt.

"Those Jews who are staying in urban areas are fed up with the Latino and African American tribal politics [of the urban Democratic machines], which are not serving cities particularly well," said Joel Kotkin, a public policy fellow at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif...

...A surge of Jewish Republican office-seekers would come in the wake of a steadily evolving shift that began in the 1970s, when Jews began taking a prominent role as Republican theoreticians and policy-makers and continued more recently with a slow shift of Jewish opinion, particularly among younger and more affluent Jews.

The "Coleman Republicans," most of whom are running in heavily Jewish districts — and several of whom are Orthodox or observant — are not shy about leveraging issues of Jewish concern to further their candidacies.

Non-Jewish Democrats have, for the most part, become anti-Israel and anti-Jewish if not outright anti-Semitic. The opportunity to affect policy is more open to moderate Republicans than it is for moderate Democrats. I expect the trend of Jews running under and voting for moderate Republicans to gain momentum.

For another angle on the same underlying issue, see Judith Weiss on the anti-war movement.

Posted 10/29/2003 09:53:00 AM by Ocean Guy
Syrian TV

The folks at MEMRI have a translation of the Ramadan Mini-Series, The Disapora being broadcast from Syria via satellite. The Prologue: (appearing on screen in text)

Two thousand years ago, the Jewish sages established a global government, aimed at ruling the world, subjugating it to the precepts of the Talmud, and segregating Jews completely from the other peoples. Then, the Jews turned to inciting wars and internal strife and the [various] countries condemned them. They falsely presented themselves as persecuted, and waited for their savior, the 'Messiah,' who would complete the vengeance upon the 'gentiles' that their God Jehovah had begun. In the early 19th century, the Jewish global government decided to escalate the conspiracies. It dissolved itself in order to create a new secret Jewish global government headed by [Mayer] Amschel Rothschild.

The scene described, would be funny on SNL but the Arab mind sees it as a documentary:

The first scene, set in Frankfurt in 1812, shows the death of Amschel, the patriarch of the Rothschild family. Amschel Rothschild lies on his deathbed in what appears to be a cave illuminated by candles in Jewish candelabra. He instructs his "illegitimate" son to summon his four brothers, and when he leaves to call them, the following narration is heard: "Kill the best of the non-Jews, destroy their religion, annihilate their lands. Israel will not survive if the foreign peoples survive, the Jews are the offspring of God like the child is the offspring of his father. As man has hegemony [over the lower animals], thus the Jews are superior to all the peoples of the world, because the seed of strangers is like the seed of the ass. The delivering Messiah will not come until the peoples that are not Jews are extinct and control will be in the hands of the Jews alone."

Enter Rothschild's five sons. The dying patriarch says to them: "The non-Jewish nations – they are all of the filthy seed of the ass. Rule over them secretly and publicly, by force and by repression, by deceit and by trickery. Do not let any nation share power over this world with you… God has honored us Jews with the mission of ruling the world through money, knowledge, politics, murder, sex – by all means…

Posted 10/28/2003 12:59:00 PM by Ocean Guy
More on Life and Death Decisions

Carl Hiaasen speaks for me on this one:

It doesn't get any lower than that -- capitalizing on the plight of a brain-damaged woman to score points with religious fundamentalists.

Not since George C. Wallace fought desegregation in Alabama has a governor so brazenly thumbed his nose at a judge, and Bush had plenty of help.

His Republican pals in the Legislature hastily passed a bizarre law giving him the one-time authority to intervene in the Schiavo family tragedy.

And this is the same GOP that rails incessantly against government intrusion into private lives. What a gang of phonies...

...The governor well knows that the law inserting him into this case is ineptly written, baldly unconstitutional and doomed to be overturned.

He also knows that the odds are minuscule that Terri Schiavo will ever improve, and that she'll likely spend her remaining days in the same condition in which she's been since 1990.

That lawmakers gave Bush only 15 days to act is proof that it was theater from the beginning, that concern for the Schiavo family was merely a front for appeasing the ideological fringes of the GOP.

That the governor went ahead and ordered Schiavo reconnected to that feeding tube was the most cynical, morally bereft moment of his administration.

The gratitude and relief expressed by her parents is understandable, but it will be temporary -- and Bush knows that, too.

Long after this obscene piece of legislation is nullified, long after Terri Schiavo is left to die in peace, Bush and the others who staged this cruel charade will be touting their righteous stand to fundamentalist supporters.

Meanwhile, all of us who have watched loved ones fade away and struggled with life-and-death decisions can only shudder at the prospect of surrendering such heavy responsibility to a total stranger.

Not a doctor, not a judge, not a clergyman -- but a vote-grubbing politician.

Posted 10/28/2003 09:40:00 AM by Ocean Guy
Life and Death Decisions

Over the course of 11 years I watched three people I love, experience slow and painful deaths. Feeding tubes kept them all alive a little longer than otherwise possible. During those years I've had countless discussions with other family members about end-of-life issues. I've held medical power of attorney for someone incapable of acting in his own behalf. I can confidently say that I have given more than enough thought to the way I'd prefer my end-of-life care to be handled.

I never want to live like Terri Schiavo, being kept alive artificially with no ability to give love to those close to me. I want the right to die naturally with some sort of dignity. It is wrong for Governor Bush to have the right to make that decision for me. Michael Schiavo may not get your sympathy, but it is no reason to assume that it's not right to allow Terri to die naturally. Because you think you know better than he is no reason to allow a government official to force his will on them in the name of everyone in the State. I would consider it torture for anyone to make me live in the state she is in. She may not be able to say, "Keep me alive," but she can't say "Leave me to die in peace," either. The Law recognizes a special relationship in marriage. Those who take the parents side seem to disagree.

The life and death decisions that can be made in such situations are incredibly varied; the circumstances are limitless, as are the individual feelings we all may have when faced with those circumstances... either as the patient or the care-giver/decision maker. One thing is for certain: I want someone that I love making those decisions for me when I can't. I don't want Governor Bush or any other politician to have the power to decide for me, especially if the decision is against my wishes.

It is particularly offensive the way that the Florida Legislature rushed to take this ill-advised action to overturn six years of court decisions. The courts may not be perfect, but they are by far the best way to handle disputes in these cases.

It is a deeply troubling moment when a stranger, a governor, a legislator, a president is given the power to write the end of our ethical, medical, family tales. Yes, this is how we lose our freedoms: One signature at a time.

Posted 10/27/2003 10:59:00 AM by Ocean Guy
Where are the Millions?

More accurately the title ought to be Where are the Billions, but the idea is the same... the question is the same one I've been asking

"Where are the millions?" is the name of a popular Arab song in which Lebanese singer Julia Botrus denounces the failure of the Arab world to go to war against Israel. The song is played repeatedly on Palestinian Authority radio and TV as a cry of despair aimed at mobilizing the Arab masses on the side of the Palestinians in their fight against Israel. In recent weeks, amid reports that PA Chairman Yasser Arafat is in poor health, many Palestinians are also beginning to ask the same question, but in a different context: They are demanding to know what has happened to hundreds of millions of dollars belonging to the Palestinian people...

... Hassan Khraisheh, one of nine members of the Democratic Bloc, said he and his colleagues believe that Arafat's adviser on economic affairs, Muhammad Rashid (also known as Khaled Salam), is holding at least $200 million in a secret bank account. Rashid is now living in Cairo after he reportedly fell out with Arafat.

According to Khraisheh, only Rashid, who is chairman of the Palestine Investment Fund, and Arafat know where the money is deposited. A delegation from the fund visited Egypt lately in an attempt to find out what happened to the money.

"Rashid refused to cooperate in revealing where the money is," Khraisheh said. "He also refused to meet with the PLO ambassador in Egypt to talk about the issue."

"This is money that belongs to the Palestinian people," Khraisheh added. "It could have been invested in establishing a social welfare system instead of shady deals. The Americans and the Egyptians are protecting [Rashid], and Arafat provides him with cover. We're talking about tens of millions of dollars. How is it that one person can control such huge sums? When we asked Arafat about it, he said, 'Muhammad Rashid is my man. He is my financial adviser.' This is Arafat's method. The source of Arafat's power is money."

How can anyone possibly consider giving these criminals and murderers Sovereignty over anything?