Politics

Dhimmi Watch

From MEMRI:

On October 20, 2005, the Lebanese press reported that a delegation from the Presbyterian Church USA, headed by Father Nihad Tu’meh and with Robert Worley as its spokesman, visited southern Lebanon at the invitation of Hizbullah, and met there with the terrorist organization’s commander in southern Lebanon Nabil Qawuq…

A year previously, on October 17, 2004, a Presbyterian Church USA delegation visiting Lebanon also met with Qawuq. MEMRI TV translated excerpts from a report on the meeting that was aired by Hizbullah’s Al-Manar TV. During the meeting, church elder Ronald Stone said, “We treasure the precious words of Hizbullah and your expression of goodwill towards the American people. Also, we praise your initiative for dialogue and mutual understanding. We cherish these statements that bring us closer to you. As an elder of our church, I’d like to say that according to my recent experience, relations and conversations with Islamic leaders are a lot easier than dealings and dialogue with Jewish leaders.”…
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2005.11.15 Interfax:

Moscow, November 15, Interfax – The Russian Orthodox Church wants Vladimir Lenin’s remains buried.

“Lenin should be buried, because the idea of mummification is beyond the realm of Russian cultural and religious traditions,” Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad Kirill, head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s foreign relations department, said at a press conference at Interfax on Tuesday in Moscow.

“This is an artificial phenomenon with a strange mysticism,” he said.

“Lenin’s burial need not set society ablaze, bring protesters out into the streets, create tensions between a part of population and the authorities or hamper the process of society consolidation, which – disregarding the radicals’ position – is underway with God’s help,” the metropolitan said.

Townhall.com Charles Colson

Commentators have been busily trying to explain the weeks of violence that have turned French cities into war zones. Some say it’s a result of high rates of unemployment among youth. Others suggested it is France’s fault for failing to assimilate the children of its mostly Islamic immigrants. Now, while true in part, these are only symptoms of a much deeper problem: France’s loss of moral and cultural vitality.

The unemployment rate among young immigrant men is 40 percent, as nearly every report notes. But no one asks why there is such joblessness. The answer is the economic system that, as writer Elizabeth Eaves puts it, “is eating [France’s] young.”
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Ed. The “Borking” of Judge Alito takes shape.

New York Times DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 – A coalition of liberal groups is preparing a national television advertising campaign against the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. that seeks to move the debate over his selection beyond abortion rights and focus instead on subjects like police searches and employment discrimination, several leaders of the coalition said.

The possibility that Judge Alito could vote to narrow abortion rights has dominated discussion among both supporters and opponents of his nomination. But Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice and one of the leaders of the coalition, said a poll commissioned by her organization showed the potential to attack Judge Alito on aspects of his record that had received less attention.
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In Normandy, it’s not just the cheese that’s soft and runny.

If you have not yet read Theodore Dalrymple’s Our Culture, What’s Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses, do so soon. There is a chapter in the book titled “Barbarians at the Gate” which chronicles (and predicted as it turns out) the lawlessness we see in France today. This book is a must read. My review of it can be found on Townhall.com.

Wall Street Opinion Journal JOEL KOTKIN Tuesday, November 8, 2005

France’s rigid economic system sustains privilege and inspires resentment.

The French political response to the continuing riots has focused most on the need for more multicultural “understanding” of, and public spending on, the disenchanted mass in the country’s grim banlieues (suburbs). What has been largely ignored has been the role of France’s economic system in contributing to the current crisis. State-directed capitalism may seem ideal for American admirers such as Jeremy Rifkin, author of “The European Dream,” and others on the left. Yet it is precisely this highly structured and increasingly infracted economic system that has so limited opportunities for immigrants and their children. In a country where short workweeks and early retirement are sacred, there is little emphasis on creating new jobs and even less on grass-roots entrepreneurial activity.
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