QOTD: Judea Pearl in JPost
...in 2005, I still cannot name a single Muslim leader (or a journalist, or an intellectual) who has publicly acknowledged the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a dispute between two legitimate national movements.
Michael Freund on Chinese Jewish surnames in Kaifeng, China
All of the Jewish descendants belong to one of seven clans, each identifiable by its surname. Legend has it that during the Song dynasty over a thousand years ago, a Chinese emperor, unable to pronounce the Jews' Hebrew-sounding names, bestowed his surname and the surnames of six of his ministers on the Chinese Jews. These seven names -- Zhao, Li, Ai, Zhang, Gao, Jin and Shi -- were used by Kaifeng's Jews throughout the centuries, and it is to the Shi clan that Shi Lei traces his own roots.
Arutz Sheva carries this interesting nugget that seems to explain to me why the Labor Party in Israel has turned more and more to pro-Arab positions.
A registration campaign has made the Arab sector the largest faction in the Labor party. More than 100,000 Israelis signed up with labor, but police are probing charges of forged membership forms.
...Arab membership rose more to 22 percent of all registered members, 50 per cent more than the last membership drive three years ago. Arab parties now hold nine seats in the Knesset and have one seat in the Labor and Likud parties. They probably will receive more representation in Labor if the new membership list is ratified.
Barry Rubin writes in JPost about what Islamists will do if elected to office and what to do about it.
Two key points to keep in mind. First, the factor most likely to moderate larger Islamist groups is their knowing power is beyond their reach. Hamas never challenged the Palestinian leadership because it knew it would be crushed in a civil war. In Jordan and Egypt, Islamist parties take the quota of parliamentary seats permitted them and cause no trouble because they know beating the regime is impossible.
Once they conclude they can win, however, the result will be instability and more militancy.
Finally, the most likely result of any Western belief that power will moderate radical Islamists will be unilateral Western concessions to such groups. They will be given immunity for past terrorist acts, diplomatic backing against the local regimes, money and other benefits in exchange for promises to be good. They will then break these promises, most likely without cost.
Let's not be naive about radical Islamism and make even more problems for the Middle East.
Dr James Levine on work treadmill 
The New York Times covers an interesting approach to getting enough exercise in our busy days from Dr. James Levine at the Mayo Clinic.
In his office he has a treadmill in place of a desk. He got it last year when he saw the data from the study comparing lean people and obese ones.
"My computer is stationed over the treadmill," he said. "I work at 0.7 miles an hour."
A stand-up desk might seem simpler, but he prefers the treadmill.
"Standing still is quite difficult," he said. "You have a natural tendency to want to move your legs. Zero point seven is the key. You don't get sweaty, you can't jiggle too much. It's about one step a second. It's very comfortable. Most people seem to like it around 0.7."
He has installed a second treadmill alongside his own, and he encourages visitors to hop on and stroll while they talk to him. It takes some getting used to, but, he says, envious colleagues at Mayo have been clamoring for treadmill desks.
Palestinian Media Watch carries the translation of this speech by imam Ibrahim Mudayris on national Palestinian TV on May 13. (Pebble to Honest Reporting.) [Emphasis mine.]
With the establishment of the State of Israel, the entire Muslim nation was lost because Israel is a cancer that spread in the body of the Islamic nation; because the Jews are a virus similar to AIDS, from which the entire world is suffering... The day will come and we shall rule America, Britain, we shall rule the entire world, except the Jews. The Jews will not live under our rule agreeably and permanently, since they have been treacherous in nature throughout history... Listen to your Beloved [Muhammad], who tells you about the most dire end awaiting the Jews. The stones and trees will want Muslims to finish off every Jew.
QOTD: Kamal Nawash of the Free Muslim Coalition Against Terrorism
Muslim American leaders hesitate to come down hard on terrorism, he says, not because they support the violence, but because they share with terrorists the dream of a theocratic Islamic state.
JPost carries an interesting interview with Bibi. (The quote below is a summary from The Daily Alert newsletter of The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, prepared by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)
The question for the Israeli voter is whether or not Bibi would actually stick to the obvious consequences of such philosophical beliefs if he were ever to be elected to Prime Minister again.
The greatest impetus to terror is the terrorists' sense of impending victory. The greatest discouragement to terror is the sense of failure and hopelessness. It is very important that we do everything in our power even with this disengagement decision to minimize the sense of victory. Anything that persuades the Palestinians that we are being pushed by their superior will and their acts of terror to vacate one position after another emboldens terror and pushes peace further away. The terrorists are controlling themselves. They are rationing their acts of murder with the hope that once we leave they can then proceed, and the intelligence people are saying that they will probably proceed from Judea and Samaria. The Palestinians have moderate and sensible people but they are weak and they do not stand before the combined force of the radicals who are pushing toward a gradual elimination of Israel. We should keep the Philadelphi corridor [on the Gaza-Egypt border] in our hands. I don't expect the Egyptians to fight and die for us. I think it would be a mistake to ask them. The entry into the Sinai and right up to our border of a large Egyptian contingent could actually endanger the peace. We should create a counterbalance to our withdrawals by including the main settlement blocs in the main fence - that is, they should be part of the territorial contiguity of Israel. in addition to the main settlement blocs, there are vast unpopulated areas in the Jordan Valley and the Judean Desert which...are replete with security, strategic, and historical significance for us. So it would be possible to also fence around them.
The Washington Post reports that a federal judge has issued an injunction against a public-school sex education program on the ground that it improperly brings religion into the classroom. What makes this interesting is that the school district in question is in ultraliberal Montgomery County, Md., and the religious views it seeks to inculcate are liberal ones.
Eugene Volokh points to Judge Alexander Williams's opinion in Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum v. Montgomery County Public Schools (PDF), which quotes from a handout that is part of the curriculum:Myth: Homosexuality is a sin.
Facts: The Bible contains six passages which condemn homosexual behavior. The Bible also contains numerous passages condemning heterosexual behavior. Theologians and Biblical scholars continue to differ on many Biblical interpretations. They agree on one thing, however. Jesus said absolutely nothing at all about homosexuality. Among the many things deemed an abomination are adultery, incest, wearing clothing made from more than one kind of fiber, and earing [sic] shellfish, like shrimp and lobster.
Religion has often been misused to justify hatred and oppression. Less than a half a century ago, Baptist churches (among others) in this country defended racial segregation on the basis that it was condoned by the Bible. Early Christians were not hostile to homosexuals. Intolerance became the dominant attitude only after the Twelfth Century. Today, many people no longer tolerate generalizations about homosexuality as pathology or sin. Few would condemn heterosexuality as immoral--despite the high incidence of rape, incest, child abuse, adultery, family violence, promiscuity, and venereal disease among heterosexuals. Fortunately, many within organized religions are beginning to address the homophobia of the church. The Nation Council of Churches of Christ, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Unitarian Universalist Association, the Society of Friends (Quakers), and the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches support full civil rights for gay men and lesbians, as they do for everyone else.
As Volokh notes, "this material, which the school would apparently be conveying as its own views":1. Describes one interpretation of the Bible as "myth."
2. Suggests that the most important question in interpreting the Bible is what Jesus said, and that the Bible's use of "abomination" in different contexts should lead us to think that the items thus labeled are morally equivalent--not implausible claims about Scriptural interpretation, but nonetheless claims about Scriptural interpretation.
3. Implicitly--but I think quite strongly--suggests a particular reading of the Bible is theologically correct.
4. Condemns particular religious groups by name, not just as part of a discussion of history, but in an attempt to discredit the present religious teachings of at least some religious groups (quite possibly the same ones).
5. Specifically praises by name certain denominations--again, not just in a context which seems to be describing the facts, but one which suggests that their theology is more sound.
Volokh notes that the Supreme Court "has repeatedly held that the Establishment Clause bars public schools from endorsing and disapproving of theological beliefs. . . . Schools are not free to express views on how the Bible should be interpreted, what is or is not sin from the Biblical perspective, and which religious groups have good interpretations of the Bible and which have bad ones."
That is as it should be. Kudos to Judge Williams, who has struck a blow for religious pluralism.
JPost's Melanie Philips on Jew Hatred in Britain
Demographic change and crude political calculation explain some of this. There are 1.8 million Muslims in Britain and 280,000 identifying Jews. Senior Labor figures say privately that, as a result, the Jews have got to get used to the fact that their concerns are no longer of any account, that the Muslim vote is the only show in town and that therefore the Labor Party will adopt the "Muslim narrative" on Israel/Palestine.
...Public debate in Britain is now marked by a collapse of objectivity, truth, fairness and balance caused by a post-Christian and anti-Western victim culture, which stands truth and morality on their heads. The outcome is that British people are increasingly unable to make moral distinctions based on behavior -- which has produced a tendency to equate and then invert the role of the perpetrators of violence and that of their victims.
BOTW includes this great letter to the editor on liberal bellyaching on the choice of the new pope.
Yesterday's item about liberals' unhappiness with Benedict XVI brought an interesting observation from reader Roger Gore:
Regarding Andrew Sullivan, et al., I find all this politicking and commentary that surrounds the new pope (and the process of election, which itself seems far too founded in the ways of the world) a bit curious.
I am not Catholic, but it seems to me that if the pope is really God's mouthpiece on the earth--as the Catholic Church claims he is--then why the dissent? Either the man speaks for God, or he does not. If he does, the dissent is at best foolish, for who in his right mind would think to argue with Almighty God over his own doctrine? Can God really be lobbied, swayed, and convinced over same-sex marriage, condoms, celibacy, etc.? If the pope does not speak for God, then the Catholic Church is void of its stated 'divine authority,' and so why have a pope to begin with?
Indeed. If you're not Catholic, and especially if you're an atheist or agnostic, then it makes sense to regard the church as just another worldly institution. After all, you don't believe in papal infallibility or the guiding hand of the Holy Spirit. But if you do believe in these ideas, what could it mean that you oppose the new pope and his adherence to tradition, other than that you're disappointed in or angry at God for not changing his mind?
E.J. Dionne on the first, defining speech from new Pope Benedict. This type of theologian we haven't seen on a grand scale in awhile. (Pebble to BOTW). We can only hope that this shakes up the moral relativism in Europe.
"We are moving," he declared, toward "a dictatorship of relativism . . . that recognizes nothing definite and leaves only one's own ego and one's own desires as the final measure."
The modern world, Ratzinger insisted, has jumped "from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, up to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism and on and on."
Those are fighting words. They guaranteed that Ratzinger, who was Pope John Paul II's enforcer of orthodoxy, will either set the church's course -- or offer his fellow cardinals the ideas they choose to react against. Decades from now many conservative Catholics will see the war against the "dictatorship of relativism" as their central mission. It's not a line you forget.
To the meaninglessness of relativism, Ratzinger counter poses respect for the distinctive, incommensurable image of God in every single human being, from the most helpless to the seemingly most powerful, together with a sense of our solidarity with one another in the bosom of our Creator. This fundamental vision of the immortal value both of the individual person and the whole human community in solidarity has been the motor-power, the spiritual dynamic overdrive, of an increasingly global (catholic) civilization.
That, at least, is the way he sees it. He is willing to argue out his case with all comers.
Thomas Sowell on the reason for the high price of real estate in Silicon Valley.
What has happened essentially is that those already inside the castle have pulled up the drawbridge, so that outsiders can't get in. Politically, this selfishness poses as idealism.
Much of this exclusionary agenda is pushed by people who inherited great wealth and are using it to buy a sense of importance as deep thinkers and moral leaders protecting the environment. The foundations and movements they spearhead are driving working people out of areas dominated by limousine liberals, who are constantly proclaiming their concern for the poor, the children and minorities.
Meanwhile the poor, the children, and minorities are being increasingly forced out of the vast area of the San Francisco peninsula by astronomical housing prices and are moving out into California's interior valleys. But they are not safe there either.
The same wealthy busybodies who have made it an ordeal for less affluent people to try to live on the San Francisco peninsula are now pursuing them out into the interior valleys, where the environmentalist foundations and movements are trying to get the same housing restrictions imposed.
This is ultimately not about the environment but about egos. As T.S. Eliot said, more than fifty years ago: "Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm — but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves."
Jewish Pagans Break New Ground
Millennia ago, so the story goes, Abraham smashed his father's idols and founded the Jewish religion. Accordingly, his descendents' first goal was to build a fence around abstract monotheism, separating it from the Paganism in which it had taken root, and which, to them, represented all that Judaism was not. This explains Jews' second commandment, our moratorium on graven images, and our status as the first of the three major monotheistic faiths. Are Jewish Pagans, then, the ultimate contradiction in terms?
Letter of the day as seen in BOTW.
On Friday we noted that a score of Ohio University students and others had staged a 'die-in' to protest the liberation of Iraq. The Post, the student newspaper, carried a letter from Marc Fencil, a senior who is also a Marine currently stationed in Iraq, that is so excellent we reprint it in full:It's a shame that I'm here in Iraq with the Marines right now and not back at Ohio University completing my senior year and joining in blissful ignorance with the enlightened, war-seasoned protesters who participated in the recent 'die-in' at College Gate. It would appear that all the action is back home, but why don't we make sure? That's right, this is an open invitation for you to cut your hair, take a shower, get in shape and come on over! If Michael Moore can shave and lose enough weight to fit into a pair of camouflage utilities, then he can come too!
Make sure you all say your goodbyes to your loved ones though, because you won't be seeing them for at least the next nine months. You need to get here quick because I don't want you to miss a thing. You missed last month's discovery of a basement full of suicide vests from the former regime (I'm sure Saddam's henchmen just wore them because they were trendy though). You weren't here for the opening of a brand new school we built either. You might also notice women exercising their new freedom of walking to the market unaccompanied by their husbands.
There is a man here, we just call him al-Zarqawi, but we think he'd be delighted to sit down and give you some advice on how you can further disrespect the victims of Sept. 11 and the 1,600 of America's bravest who have laid down their lives for a safer world. Of course he'll still call you "infidel" but since you already agree that there is no real evil in the world, I see no reason for you to be afraid. Besides, didn't you say that radical Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance?
I'm warning you though--it's not going to be all fun and games over here. You might have bad dreams for the next several nights after you zip up the body bag over a friend's disfigured face. I know you think that nothing, even a world free of terror for one's children, is worth dying for, but bear with me here. We're going to live in conditions you've never dreamt about. You should get here soon though, because the temperatures are going to be over 130 degrees very soon and we will be carrying full combat loads (we're still going to work though). When it's all over, I promise you can go back to your coffee houses and preach about social justice and peace while you continue to live outside of reality.
If you decide to decline my offer, then at least you should sleep well tonight knowing that men wearing black facemasks and carrying AK-47s yelling "Allahu Akbar" over here are proud of you and are forever indebted to you for advancing their cause of terror. While you ponder this, I'll get back to the real "die-in" over here. I don't mind.
What can we say but "Semper fi"?
JERRY TAYLOR and PETER VAN DOREN write of the new coalition to encourage more energy independence through government intervention in the WSJ.com
The Energy Future Coalition -- the operation overseeing this campaign -- is really an 'Energy Past Coalition' that suffers from a severe case of amnesia. The stated policies that this crowd promotes -- sharply increased subsidies for domestic alternative-fuels industries and aggressive government-mandated conservation -- were textbook economic fiascos when adopted 30 years ago and will fare no better were we to enthusiastically re-embrace them again.
Unfortunately, when it comes to government intervention in energy markets, past is prologue. Ethanol and other forms of biomass energy -- the modern iteration of the Synfuels program embraced by the Energy Future Coalition -- are an open joke among economists and generally opposed by environmentalists. Already on the receiving end of about $1 billion of federal largesse per year, ethanol requires more energy to produce than it yields upon combustion and produces more worrisome air pollution than even conventional gasoline. In the electricity sector, biomass fuels generate more pollutants than natural gas-fired electricity (the fuel that biomass would likely displace), according to a recent survey of the literature by economists Thomas Sundqvist and Patrik Soderholm.
However one feels about foreign oil, the belief that government can intelligently pick winners in energy markets or promote conservation in an economically reasonable manner is belied by an avalanche of real-world evidence. The best way to weaken al Qaeda is by killing bin Laden and those who support him, not by subsidizing GM to make cars they wouldn't otherwise make.
DANIEL HANNAN is correct in his article in the WSJ about President Bush's wrong attitude toward the EU and its new constitution.
It is a paradox. George W. Bush, we are forever being told, is a conservative hard man, a scourge of international lawyers, a unilateralist. If he has one guiding principle in foreign affairs, it is a preference for national democracies over supranational bureaucracies. On such issues as Kyoto, the International Criminal Court or the United Nations, he takes the robust view that elected politicians are preferable to unaccountable functionaries. Yet, when it comes to the European Union, he is happy to support the Western world's most remote, backward and antidemocratic project.
European integration, he says, is a force for peace and freedom on Earth. Really? Where? In Iran, where the EU is cuddling up to murderous ayatollahs? In China, where it not only wants to lift the arms embargo but is collaborating with Beijing on the Galileo satellite system to challenge the 'technological imperialism' of America's GPS? In Cuba, where it refuses to back anti-Castro dissidents? Or perhaps within its own borders, where, through the proposed constitution, it plans to transfer yet more powers from elected national assemblies to unelected Brussels commissars?
...When it comes to the EU, though, Washington is still frozen in the Cold War, preferring to humor remote elites over encouraging democratization.
...Where the U.S. Constitution is chiefly concerned with the rights of the individual, the European Constitution is chiefly concerned with the powers of the state. Where the U.S. Constitution (in my version) is 11 pages long, the European Constitution runs to 438 pages. Where the U.S. Constitution restricts itself to delineating the authority of government and establishing a proper balance between federal and state jurisdictions, the EU Constitution busies itself with such minutiae as the rights of asylum seekers and the status of the disabled. Where the Declaration of Independence offers "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights guarantees the right to "strike action" and "affordable housing."
Perhaps President Bush takes the view that, if the Europeans want to lumber themselves with a top-heavy and illiberal system of governance, that is their business. He ought, though, ask himself whether the constitution is in the U.S. interest.
...Every superpower is resented, of course; but there is more to this than envy. Anti-Americanism in Europe has an ideological basis. Consider the areas where EU policy is most directly at odds with that of the U.S.: Iran, China, Cuba, Israel. There is a common theme linking these policy disputes: In each of them, the EU favors stability over democracy.
It is no surprise, then, that the EU should itself be at the point of adopting a constitution that strengthens the rulers at the expense of the ruled. When American critics accuse the EU of hypocrisy for cuddling up to tyrants, they are missing the point. Europe's apparatchiks have never been wild about democracy. When they get a result they dislike -- as when Danish and Irish voters rejected EU treaties, for example -- they simply ignore it. It is only natural that they should extend the same way of thinking to, say, Iraq or Palestine.
...Mr. Bush might glance at Article I-15 of the proposed constitution: "The Common Foreign and Security policy shall apply to all aspects of foreign policy and all questions relating to the Union's security. Member States shall support the Common Foreign and Security Policy actively and unreservedly in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity." It is worth asking whether, if this clause had already been in effect, Britain would have been allowed to join the Iraq war.
Saul Singer writes in JPost about eventhink -- the notion that being evenhanded is more important than siding with right and justice.
It is time we junked eventhink, because it blinds us from seeing, let alone addressing, the root causes of the conflict.
To return to cops and robbers, an anti-crime policy that did not distinguish between criminals and their victims would obviously fail. Yet making such distinctions requires taking sides, and taking sides detracts from mediating, which makes agreements, and therefore peace, harder to reach, right?
Wrong. The disconnect is this: Peace does not come from agreements; lasting agreements come from changing the conditions that cause war.
In our case, war does not come from the lack of a Palestinian state, even if creating such a state were advisable. War comes from the Arab dream of destroying Israel. Anything that helps crush that dream advances peace; anything that encourages it drives peace further away.
We must be honest and recognize that what the current titular head of the PLO, Farouq Qaddumi, said openly on Iranian TV just four months ago is what much of the Arab world still believes: 'At this stage there will be two states. Many years from now there will be only one' (www.memri.org).
According to eventhink, this is not something to talk about in polite company, because it harms the prospects for agreement. But if peace, not just agreements, is the goal, the more the US exposes, condemns and rejects the Arab destructionist dream, the better.
IMRA carries the unsurprising story...
Israel Television Channel Two News reported this evening that Israel is preparing for the rocket attacks that are expected to hit Ashkelon after Israel withdraws from the Gaza Strip.
The radar system for tracking incoming rockets and loudspeaker system so that the public can be warned to take cover a few seconds before the rockets slam into the city are already being installed. In addition, the roofs of school buildings are being reinforced.
It was not clear from the report as to what measures will protect the strategic targets located in Ashkelon (tank farms, etc.).
It should be noted that the expectation of rocket attacks against Ashkelon after the withdrawal was presented in the same tone as a report on preparations for bad weather (inevitable).
WSJ on the latest from Big Brother...
In a case that could have wide implications for the growing practice of telecommuting, New York's highest court ruled that a man who lives out of state and works by computer for a New York firm must pay New York state tax on his full income.
The New York Court of Appeals said computer programmer Thomas Huckaby, who lives in Nashville, Tenn., owed New York income tax for his full salary, not just the time he spent working at his employer's New York offices.
Mr. Huckaby, whose home state doesn't have an income tax, paid New York state tax on about 25% of his income over two years for the time he spent working there for the National Organization of Industrial Trade Unions.
The court upheld a state tax-department ruling that all his income should be taxed. That amounts to $4,387 plus interest. However, the ruling could lead to much greater income for the state as it is applied to the growing field of telecommuting.
...Marc Violette, spokesman for state Assistant Solicitor General Julie Mereson, said, "New York provides the job, New York provides the professional opportunity, and New York should be able to tax that income, even if the employee for his own convenience was working outside of New York state."
The issue split the court, and the majority acknowledged the decision could discourage telecommuting. [Oh, really...]