Turks of every political position tell me the same story to explain their situation: to cook a live frog you don’t put it in a pot on a high flame. You put it in cool water and raise the temperature very slowly. This is what’s happening in Turkey.
International media coverage of the July 22 Turkish parliamentary election repeats endlessly that the victorious Justice and Development (AK) party is really moderate now. Despite Islamist roots, they say, it is now a centrist party mainly concerned with Turkey becoming a European Union (EU) member and having a prosperous economy.
Certainly, such is the image the party has projected for its five years in power. Precisely because half of Turkish voters were convinced that AK had no Islamist intentions they voted for it. The economy is doing well. Turkey might benefit from having a system more balanced regarding religion.
Faith-based toys? These will surely make the politically-correct crowd squirm, complain, and hurl wild accusations about “indoctrinating” young minds — you know, the same bunch who seeks to eradicate all common sense morality from every social institution, be it private or public. The BBC’ssnide take:
Instead of Spiderman or Bratz dolls, children in the US could soon be clutching a talking Jesus toy, a bearded Moses or a muscle-bound figure of Goliath. …
Oh, G#d forbid children engage in some healthy playtime! Heaven help us if kids get exposed to our Judeo-Christian societal foundations! The PC crowd doesn’t seem to have any problem with young minds being indoctrinated with all manner of perversions. In one of his recent movies, Grindhouse, Quentin Tarantino appears as “Rapist Number One.” Artistic license, right? Not only is Tarantino poisoning minds through the film media, he’s released “Grindhouse Action Figures,” including a Rapist Number One doll with a gun. Also available is “a girl with an M16 as her prosthetic leg.” Just some harmless fun, huh?
*Is the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) going to make Turkey Islamist or not?
Which path the victorious party of the July 22 voting will take the country down is the main question Professor Barry Rubin asks while evaluating the situation after a suspenseful election process.
Rubin, director of the Global Research for International Affairs Center, a research center located at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya (IDC), said the AK Party, which won 47 percent of the vote in the July 22 election and will have almost two-thirds of the seats in Parliament, is a pragmatic, conservative and business-oriented moderate party despite its roots as an Islamic-oriented one.
However, he added that in societal terms, the party probably is up to transforming Turkey from a secular into a more Islamic society.
Fearless Leader Robert Mugabe sure has devastated his country. But what’s Mugabe got to worry about? He’s rich, safe, and comfortable, and to heck with his own people, whom he calls “filth.” While Zimbabwean “inflation has risen to more than 4500 per cent,” and “250 grams of butter [is] $Z497,000,” Mugabe’s cupboards are full. From The Sydney Morning Herald, entitled “Mugabe’s elite shops in style as a nation starves:”
ROBERT MUGABE’s local supermarket is unlike any other shop in Zimbabwe. Elsewhere there are empty shelves where bread, butter, sugar, meat and the staple maize meal should be.
But at the Spar in Borrowdale Brooke - a suburb of the capital, Harare, near the President’s palatial home - almost anything is available, including focaccia, sun-dried tomatoes and cigars.
The difference typifies a nation where a ruling elite enjoys wealth and privilege, while the vast majority exists in grinding poverty and struggle to survive. …
What is really amazing about something like this Los Angeles Times editorial (see below) is that those writing it don’t have the least consciousness of the fact that in Arab and Palestinian media, books, politics, etc., there is not the slightest acknowledgment to anything Israelis and Jews say, feel, or have experienced is acknowledged in any way. In other words, they and others demand that Israel be completely balanced–and criticize anything that appears not to be–while not demanding anything of the other side. I might add that I am not opposed to a passage being put in Israeli textbooks saying that the Arabs consider the creation of Israel a disaster for themselves.
Another small glimmer of hope for Iraq (see also here)? One would hope that if Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis could play soccer together, and pull off upset victories over the South Korean and Saudi teams, then they could learn to live together in peace. Who can tell? In the very stochastic realm of human emotions, sometimes even a single event can galvanize a previously fractured society. But the historic — and to me, minor — divisions separating Iraq’s Sunnis and Shiites run deep. Time will only tell. I hope that Iraqis can accentuate and perpetuate their football fever. From the BBC:
Farrakhan in his own words: European Jews are not Semites, are “misbehaving,” and are “Johnny-come-lately’s” to Israel. Farrakhan must be spending time with that other hate-monger, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. From YouTube:
“We must once again restore the Israeli army’s deterrence, because there is no other way,” explains Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Quite right. The place to start is Syria.
Israel’s strategic policy toward Syria should be based on two simple, basic principles:
1. Israel should make the Syrians believe it wants to see the current regime there overthrown even if it has no intention of making this happen or even really wants that outcome.
2. Israel should make clear that if there is a future Hizballah attack leading to a war like last summer’s that Syria, not Lebanon, will be the main target of retaliation.
Barack Obama’s latest pronouncement on Iraq should have shocked the conscience. In an interview with the Associated Press last week, the freshman Illinois senator and Democratic presidential candidate opined that even preventing genocide is not a sufficient reason to keep American troops in Iraq.
Once again Thailand has brought in another Muslim dignitary in the hopes that they will be able to miraculously quell the violence in the restive south, in which nearly 2,400 people have been killed since the start of 2004.
In late June, the head of the quasi-official Saudi agency, the Muslim World League, Abdullah bin Abdul Mohsin Al-Turki, came and white washed any religious or ideological affinity of the insurgents. The MWL is one of the primary means that the Saudi government exports their virulent and intolerant version of Islam, often termed Wahhabism. Yet the Thai government is in denial that there is any correlation between the current outbreak of violence and the spread of Salafi/Wahhabism into the region. Southerners repeatedly tell me that the current generation of militants is comprised of ideological hardliners, completely intolerant of non-Muslims and moderate Muslims who seek accommodation with the Thai state. To wit, roughly 55 percent of the victims of the insurgent have been their co-religionists.
National Review Online asked a group of experts: “On Tuesday, Pew released a poll indicating that support for suicide bombings is on the decline in the Muslim world, among other things. How encouraging is this poll? What can we do — as a government, as private entities — to use the information constructively?” For all replies, see “Suicide Reversal?“
It is good news if Muslim support for suicide bombings is indeed declining. But it need not have much to do, as the poll takers theorize, with improved personal circumstances. Two other factors likely have more importance.
I cannot for the life of me understand people who claim that humans are superior to flora and fauna, or that man has dominion over all creation. I prefer to see humankind as stewards, recognizing the right of the natural world to chart its own evolutionary course, and admitting that a healthy environment is good for humanity (as in Adam Smith’s enlightened self interest). For example, animals are obviously capable of the same emotions that some people covet (or do not have, e.g. the terrorists): emotions like empathy:
Oscar the cat seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die, by curling up next to them during their final hours. His accuracy, observed in 25 cases, has led the staff to call family members once he has chosen someone. It usually means they have less than four hours to live. …
“Many family members take some solace from it. They appreciate the companionship that the cat provides for their dying loved one,” said [Dr. David] Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor of medicine at Brown University.
The 2-year-old feline was adopted as a kitten and grew up in a third-floor dementia unit at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. The facility treats people with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and other illnesses. …
Princess Di. Fergie. And now Norway’s Martha Louise. You gotta wonder how taxpayers in these parliamentary monarchies continue to foot the bill for their royalty’s zany, crazy, exploits:
Norway’s Princess Martha Louise says she has psychic powers and can teach people to communicate with angels. …
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