Category: The Dish

Omar has a helpful update on the exasperatingly fruitless – so far – negotiations to form a new Iraqi government. I have to say how unimpressive the performance of Iraq’s elites has been so far. On the brink of civil war, they still cannot concede the slightest thing to the other side. Maybe this is a consequence of living for so long in a society where most important things were decided by brutal violence and sectarian division. I just hope their learning curve improves. The news – especially about the infiltration of the police forces by Shiite militias – continues to be dreadful.

(Photo: Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty)

In the latest New Yorker, Michael Specter has a positively chilling story on how theoconservatives and Christianists have waged a quiet war against some critical vaccines, especially against Human papillomavirus or HPV. A vaccine exists against this virus that would drastically reduce the numbers of cervix cancer cases. The religious right opposes it as a mandatory childhood vaccination, because it removes a disincentive to having sex:

"Religious conservatives are unapologetic; not only do they believe that mass use of an HPV vaccine or the availability of emergency contraception will encourage adolescents to engage in unacceptable sexual behavior; some have even stated that they would feel similarly about an H.I.V. vaccine, if one became available.  ‘We would have to look at that closely,’ Reginald Finger, an evangelical Christian and a former medical adviser to the conservative political organization Focus on the Family, said.  ‘With any vaccine for H.I.V., disinhibition’ – a medical term for the absence of fear – ‘would certainly be a factor, and it is something we will have to pay attention to with a great deal of care.’ Finger sits on the Centers for Disease Control’s Immunization Committee, which makes those recommendations."

Specter has a Q and A about the article here. These people would rather people die of AIDS and cancer than do anything to "encourage" sexuality. And they have the cojones to call the Democrats the "party of death."

Glenn Reynolds’ libertarian side has begun to temper his Jacksonian impulses lately. More, please!

Most of the Western media didn’t publish any of the Danish cartoons for fear of upsetting readers, provoking violence, or whatever reason they came up with. Even when the cartoons prompted international violence, even when art critics attacked them in mainstream papers, almost all editors decided that their readers did not actually need to know what the entire story was about; and it wasn’t the editors’ job to provide readers with information. But not every editor in the world thought that way. Some in the Arab-Muslim world acted as journalists, and are now in jail or at risk of imprisonment, or even execution. Here’s the story of one. He was simply doing his job – and is paying a terrible price. So many in the West refused to do theirs. So here’s to the eight journalists in five countries. Thanks for your courage and example.

A reader writes about the unnerving Islamist sexual advance recorded below:

"I think you may have missed something about the Islamist bodyguard’s amorous invitation: while it may have simply been an example of sexual attraction, it may also have been something more disturbing. You may remember that back in the late ’80s there was a case of a young Irish woman who was in love with a Jordanian man and was pregnant with this child. He had booby-trapped her luggage with explosives, in order to blow up the airliner she was intending to board. This was discovered: the poor woman really thought this man was in love with her and cared about their child. Actually, he deliberately deceived her so in order to use her in carrying out a terrorist attack. This terrorist was willing to immolate both woman and child for this horrible end."

As I said, a close call. Maybe very close. Then, of course, there’s this.

Some moral-economic analysis from the religious left. In my view, the Randians could do better.

In the depressing State Department report on various human rights abuses across the world, I was struck by this statement about Jordan:

"The most frequently reported methods of torture included beating, sleep deprivation, extended solitary confinement, and physical suspension."

That’s a pretty solid definition of torture. It comports with U.S. domestic and military law and the U.N. Convention on torture to which the US is a signatory. But it also means – and must mean – that the president is a liar. I wonder if that was what someone in Foggy Bottom specifically wanted to point out. If so, vive la resistance.

Yep: they’re screwed up on the sexual front. Here’s a passage from a fascinating piece by Joseph Braude in TNR about his meeting with a few of the hard-core types:

"We all went out for lunch at the best seafood place in Dubai, and most of the conversation, between eight bearded clerics and a Jewish kid from Providence, was about when, not whether, I should convert to Islam. Zindani gave me the hard sell and was crushed, two hours later, that I hadn’t said the magic words: "I bear witness that there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger." (Not everyone was fully on board with the Islamist message, however: Throughout the meal, Zindani’s bodyguard was giving me a look I couldn’t quite place. He pulled me aside afterward. "I love you," he said, and gave me a ring off his finger. Somehow, it felt less awkward to refuse the terrorist’s call to God than to formulate a response to this overture. He scribbled something on a piece of paper: "It’s my hotel room. Please come." Alas, I passed.)"

Alas? That was a close call.

(I garbled the first version of this post, misattributing it. Sorry. Blogging on the fly in a Starbucks in NYC…)

Check out this video from Palestinian television. And weep.

A reader writes:

"On days like this, in the midst of still unfinished resolutions on the nature of a seemingly distant God, I am comforted by your post about the Cross. Thank you for that.

Here’s a wonderful quote by George Steiner from Philip Yancey’s book, "Reaching For The Invisible God":

‘We know of that Good Friday which Christianity holds to have been that of the Cross.  But the non-Christian, the atheist, knows of it as well.  This is to say that he knows of the injustice, of the interminable suffering, of the waste, of the brute enigma of ending, which so largely make up not only the historical dimension of the human condition, but the everyday fabric of our personal lives.  We know, ineluctably, of the pain, of the failure of love, of the solitude which are our history and private fate.

We know also about Sunday.  To the Christian, that day signifies an intimation, both assured and precarious, both evident and beyond comprehension, of resurrection, of a justice and a love that conquered death … The lineaments of that Sunday carry the name of hope (there is no word less deconstructible).

But ours is the long day’s journey of the Saturday."