Month: January 2006

Some interesting developments for Islam, modernization and basic rights. Money quote:

If the king has his way, Moroccans will liberate themselves from the slogans and handouts of radical Islamist preachers. Although they may represent a threat to Mohammed VI’s reform policies, the only Islamist party seen as capable of succeeding in next year’s parliamentary election is the Justice and Development Party.

The party’s young leaders are using the Turkish ruling party, AKP, and the German Christian Democrats as their model. In the eight cities controlled by the Islamists, they have already dispensed with prohibitions on serving alcohol, Western films and provocative swimwear — knowing full well that Morocco’s economy depends on tourism.

Keep hope alive. And have a drink.

Europe gets closer to the truth. Meanwhile, a statement on the matter has been issued by a large number of people from a spectrum of religious groups – Jewish, Catholic, evangelical, Eastern Orthodox, and so on. It is indeed astonishing that a presidency declared to be "faith-based" will go down in history as having authorized, condoned and enforced a policy that violates every conceivable Christian principle; and that so much of the religious right has either acquiesced or approved. Maybe they’re just reflecting the views of this emailer:

"I take it you’ve yet to figure out that not only does Abu Ghraib not matter much to J.Q. Public. He actually expects his government to go over and above what would normally be thought of as acceptable, when pursuing information that would thwart terror attacks and protect American lives. Your apparent need to maintain a publicly viewed veneer of outrage is a bore. And quite frankly, one begins to wonder how long we’ll continue to suffer through you rhetorically "banging your head against the wall" day in and day out, knowing full well the only people who seriously give a damn are the other members of the flat forehead club. All of whom seem to be primarily motivated by the need to let everyone know they’ve occupied a plot atop the moral high ground. Great. We’re all happy for ya. Sorry bout not joining ya. But you see … While being full of one’s own sense of self-righteousness is appealing, desiring to protect the lives of our fellow countrymen by any means necessary trumps it."

"By any means necessary." We’ve heard that somewhere before, haven’t we? And if it is "self-righteous" to oppose torture, is every campaign against blatant government immorality "self-righteous"? Of course, we have had a public debate. We did have a full Congressional airing. We did pass a law banning such practices. It’s just that we have a president who sees himself as above the law. And so the torture continues.

The video. The guy is sooooo uncomfortable when "that subject" comes up.

Arianna joins the throng.

And he made most of it up. Much more convincingly than James Frey. Derb notices the quintessential mark of Tory reactionaryism:

"He had no answers, no hope.

Instead, he offered escape to Simpleham, Peter Simple’s country house with its library, attentive butler, rolling acres and respectful villagers. This was a paradise from which pre-1914 innocence had never been banished."

The present is so much more complicated.

I recall reassuring myself before the invasion that one of the reasons we would win over the Iraqi people was that we were planning to bribe them with massive infrastructure investment and reconstruction. How could they resent that? Once again, I didn’t count on the fathomless incompetence of the Bush administration. If someone had told you before the war that, three years later, electricity would be below pre-war levels and oil production held hostage by Jihadists, would you say that freedom had been on the march? Or just chaos?

Is it me or has the cynicism of this president’s use of the abortion issue now reached a new level? For six years now, this allegedly pro-life president has not addressed the pro-life rally every Roe anniversary. Every time, he’s outside Washington. There can be no scheduling conflict, unless he schedules this date six years in advance. These are his eloquent words:

"You believe as I do that every human life has value, that the strong have a duty to protect the weak, and that the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence apply to everyone, not just to those considered healthy or wanted or convenient. These principles call us to defend the sick and the dying, persons with disabilities and birth defects, and all who are weak and vulnerable, especially unborn children. By changing laws, we can change our culture."

It’s just that the duty to "protect the weak" and "change our culture" doesn’t take precedence over a politically opportune photo-op in Kansas.

His trial, like so much else in occupied Iraq, has become a farce. All the more reason to remind ourselves of what a monster he was. I’m a big believer of exposing the gruesome truth, whether it’s of our own moral failings or the far worse acts of torture and murder once routine under Saddam’s dictatorship, or terrorist acts of barbarism, like the beheading of Nick Berg. Here’s a blog that provides access to video footage of what happened. Not for the squeamish. But useful for the awake.

Some time has now passed since the Vatican’s clear ban on all gay men in seminaries. And here’s one thing that chief theocon, Richard John Neuhaus, and I can agree on. Judging by the public and private responses of most bishops, cardinals and lay people, this Instruction is not really going to be enforced. Some orders, like the Jesuits (thank God they’re still around), are explicitly resisting the order to discriminate against good seminarians on the basis of their sexual orientation. They regard the Instruction as the moral equivalent of an order not to hire black men or Latino men or red-heads. It’s morally preposterous. Given this, many friends – especially in the clergy – have urged me to cool it. They assure me that nothing is really going to happen, that Benedict doesn’t mean it, that even if he does, he’s old and no one in America is going to enforce it, and so on. What they’re really saying is that there are two churches – the one Benedict pretends to govern, and the one that actually exists. Although I’m relieved at the resistance to the Vatican’s bigotry, I find this too glib a response. For one thing, the Church has now a public voice in this, and it is clear: gay men are uniquely psychologically and morally flawed, "objectively disordered," and so on. This public teaching matters. It inflicts enormous pain on many people; it acts as a deterrent to gay teens or men who believe they have a vocation; and it rests on a profound hypocrisy, coming from an institution full of gay men at the very highest echelons. It is also empirically untrue. And any time the Church teaches something untrue, it wounds itself and the faithful. Nevertheless, it’s clear the new teaching has hit something of a wall. It has convinced no one not already in the grip of the new fundamentalism. And it has appalled everyone else. The Vatican, like the old Soviet Union, is pretending to preach things, and lay Catholics are pretending to believe them. This is not a sign of a healthy church.

In his own words. Money quote:

"This is what the Conservative Party has always done: the secret of our enduring success as a political party has been our ability to keep up to date with social progress and the changing aspirations that social progress brings.

Disraeli recognised the need to make the Conservative Party relevant to the emerging middle class in our towns and cities. Churchill recognised the need to offer the post-war generation the dream of a property-owning democracy.

Thatcher saw the need to make Conservatism the aspirational choice for working-class voters trapped by the patronising assumptions of socialism.

So today we need to show how our values and principles are the best way to meet the aspirations of a new generation who demand social justice for all as well as high standards of living for themselves; who care about their quality of life as well as the quantity of money in their pockets."

Vague enough to work? I guess we’ll have to wait for the details. One seems to be fiscal responsibility. Wow. A Conservative party dedicated to balancing the books? What a concept. Oh – and in Canada too.