Jewish Life Thrives in Iran

How can this be? Does Mahmoud Ahmadinejad not know there are 25,000 Jews in Iran?

Bibi Lies

The incomparable Max Blumenthal on Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before AIPAC and his position on Iran.

deLiberation

Some interesting things going on at deLiberation. Check it out.

For the Record

Updated below
In a post at the LRC Blog, "Charles Koch Makes a Good Point," Tom DiLorenzo writes this:

Sheldon Richman, who was working as CATO's publications editor at the time, seemed deeply embarrassed that the op-eds I was sending him, at his request, were constantly being returned to me with such heavy editing by an anonymous person (to me) who seemed to be on the same ideological wave length as a Ted Kennedy or a neocon like Newt Gingrich. I was apparently too much of a Misesian and not enough of an intellectual prostitute for CATO, so they dropped me as an adjunct scholar....

I wish to put on the record that this is untrue. I have requested a retraction.

Update: The latest version of the post now says this:

CATO's publications editor at the time seemed embarrassed that the op-eds I was sending him, at his request, were constantly being returned to me with such heavy editing by an anonymous person (to me) who seemed to be on the same ideological wave length as a leftist like Ted Kennedy or a neocon like Newt Gingrich. I was apparently too much of a Misesian and not enough of an intellectual prostitute for CATO, so they dropped me as an adjunct scholar.... [Emphasis added.]

My name has been removed. An email exchange between me and Tom DiLorenzo makes clear that he had his timeline confused. His post refers to a time when I was not working at Cato. I appreciate that he removed my name from the account.

Gaza, Sderot, and Najd

In Sunday’s speech to AIPAC, the main Israeli lobbying organization, President Obama said:

I have visited with families who’ve known the terror of [Palestinian] rocket fire in Sderot. That’s why, as President, I have provided critical funding to deploy the Iron Dome system that has intercepted rockets that might have hit homes, hospitals, and schools in that town and others. Now our assistance is expanding Israel’s defensive capabilities, so that more Israelis can live free from the fear of rockets and ballistic missiles.  Because no family, no citizen, should live in fear.

It is worth knowing something of Sderot’s history. Does Obama know this? From Wikipedia:

Sderot [less than a mile from Gaza] was founded in 1951 as a transit camp for Kurdish, Morrocan [sic] and Persian Jewish immigrants who lived in tents and shacks before permanent housing was completed in 1954. It was built on semi-arid lands, that was farm land associated with the Palestinian Arab village of Najd which was located a few miles to the south of Sderot. On 13 May 1948, Najd was occupied by the Negev Brigade as part of Operation Barak, and the villagers were “driven out”. [Emphasis added. The phrase in quotes is from Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem.]

Najd was one of 400 Arab cities, towns, and villages destroyed in the formation of the state of Israel, what is known by Palestinians as al-Nakba, or the catastrophe. The residents likely fled to nearby Gaza, which has been blockaded by Israel since 2007 and was subject to the Israeli Defense Force’s brutal three-week Operation Cast Lead (December 2008-January 2009), which took more than 1,200 Palestinian lives, far fewer than the 32 Israeli deaths by rockets and mortar from Gaza since 2001. One ought to be able to understand how the residents of the Gaza concentration camp feel about the residents of Sderot.

Further reading: “500 Citizens of Sderot Contradict the Israeli Government” by Janine Roberts

Could the Nail Have Been Hit More Squarely?

Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests."

--George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

This Must Be Stopped!

Latest Writings

Op-ed: "Out of Afghanistan Now!"
TGIF: "Oil Sanctions and the Pretence of Knowledge"

The Catastrophe

What about the Nakba deniers?

Question

What's there to say about a person who can't tell the difference between contraception and conscience?

Gilad Atzmon and Students

Funny how these students who protest Gilad Atzmon's appearances never bother to read his work before they hurl serious accusations. Why do they take Alan Dershowitz's word for anything? What credentials does he have to be taken on faith? Why assume he's a disinterested party?

Leap Day

Seeing as today is February 29, we should ruminate on this odd practice of adding a day to the calendar every fourth year. In that spirit, I turn to William Schwenck Gilbert, who took up the matter in his and Sir Arthur Sullivan’s opera The Pirates of Penzance. The background to this song is the Pirate King’s wish to inform his apprentice, young Frederic, that since he was born on February 29, he was not, as he thought, 21 and hence eligible release from his pirate apprenticeship, but in fact only “five and a little bit over.”


PIRATE KING.

For some ridiculous reason, to which, however, 
I've no desire to be disloyal,

Some person in authority, I don't know who, 
very likely the Astronomer Royal, 

Has decided that, although for such a beastly month as February, twenty-eight days as a rule are plenty, 

One year in every four his days shall be reckoned as 
nine and twenty. 

Through some singular coincidence -- I shouldn't be surprised if it were owing to the agency of an ill-natured fairy --  

You are the victim of this clumsy arrangement, 
having been born in leap-year, on the twenty-ninth of February; 

And so, by a simple arithmetical process, you'll easily discover, 

That though you've lived twenty-one years, 
yet,  if we go by birthdays, 
you're only five and a little bit over!

RUTH. and KING. Ha! ha! ha! ha! Ho! ho! ho! ho!

FRED. Dear me! Let's see! (counting on fingers) Yes, yes; with yours my figures do agree!

ALL. Ha! ha! ha! ho! ho! ho! ho!

FRED. (more amused than any) How quaint the ways of Paradox! 
At common sense she gaily mocks! 
Though counting in the usual way, 
Years twenty-one I've been alive, 
Yet, reckoning by my natal day, I am a little boy of five!

RUTH and KING. He is a little boy of five! Ha! ha! ha!

ALL. A paradox, a paradox, A most ingenious paradox! Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!, etc.


Happy Birthday, Frederic!

Op-ed: Obama Administration “Brainwashes” Public on Afghanistan

Obama, like his predecessor, systematically lies to the American people about the war. But don’t expect the Republican nominee (unless it’s Ron Paul) to expose the deceit.

Read the full op-ed here.

TGIF: Do Ends Justify Means?

If “goods” are incommensurable, then one of them cannot be said to be “greater” than others. Thus acting for the “greater good” is without meaning.

Read TGIF here.

Is Lawrence O’Donnell a Moron, or Does He Just Think His Viewers Are?

February 19, 1942: A Day that Will Live in Infamy

Two days ago was the 70th anniversary of President Roosevelt’s signing of Executive Order 9066, which resulted in the internment in "War Relocation Camps" (aka concentration camps) of some 110,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese who lived along the Pacific coast.

Two years later the U.S. Supreme Court, in Korematsu v. United States, upheld the order, 6-3. In the majority were the noted civil libertarians and FDR appointees Hugo Black, who wrote the opinion, William O. Douglas, and Felix Frankfurter. The other three were also appointed by Roosevelt. Dissenting were Owen J. Roberts (Hoover appointee), Robert Jackson (FDR appointee), and Frank Murphy (FDR appointee).

Any resemblance to the National Defense Authorization Act’s provision for indefinite detention without due process, signed recently by President Obama, is strictly ominous.

HT: Sandy Ikeda

Political Illogic

This is what passes for sophisticated argument in politics and the news media:

1. A (contraception, whatever) is desirable;
2. A costs money;
3. Therefore compulsory financing of A is both proper and imperative (either through taxation or an off-budget device such as “insurance”);
4. Opposition to 3 necessarily signals not only a denial of the desirability of A but also a wish to forbid the use of A.

Obamacare, Contraception, and Ayn Rand

It will be little comfort to the advocates of state-mandated “free” contraception that Ayn Rand, who would have abhorred Obamacare and all its mandates, was as staunch an advocate of birth control and women’s right to abortion as one can imagine. Writing about the anti-contraception papal encyclical “Humanae Vitae,” Rand wrote in “Of Living Death” (1968):

Try to hold an image of horror spread across space and time—across the entire globe and through all the centuries—the image of parents chained, like beasts of burden, to the physical needs of a growing brood of children—young parents aging prematurely while fighting a losing battle against starvation—the skeletal hordes of unwanted children born without a chance to live—the unwed mothers slaughtered in the unsanitary dens of incompetent abortionists—the silent terror hanging, for every couple, over every moment of love. If one holds this image while hearing that this nightmare is not to be stopped, the first question one will ask is: Why? . . .

 The passive obedience and helpless surrender to the physical functions of one’s body, the necessity to let procreation be the inevitable result of the sexual act, is the natural fate of animals, not of men. In spite of its concern with man’s higher aspirations, with his soul, and with the sanctity of married love—it is to the level of animals that the encyclical seeks to reduce man’s sex life, in fact, in reality, on earth.

The “Accommodation” that Changes Nothing

Hat tip: Mario Rizzo

Scenario: A woman who works for a Catholic hospital walks into a pharmacy and fills her birth-control prescription. The pharmacy files the claim with her employer’s insurance company. The insurance company pays the pharmacy.

Question: Is this a description of a transaction taking place before or after Obama’s “accommodation” to the Catholic objection to being forced to pay for contraception?

Answer: There’s no way to tell.

Possible objection: But won’t the hospital’s premiums be lower after the accommodation since it won’t be paying for contraception coverage?

Answer: Not if the Department of Health and Human Services is right. HHS says paying for contraception coverage offsets the cost of medical expenses associated with having children. Therefore there is no reason to expect a post-accommodation fall in premiums for Catholic institutions.

Bottom line: If in principle one cannot distinguish a pre-accommodation from a post-accommodation transaction, there is no accommodation at all. The grand compromise is a sham.

This Week's Scribblings

• FFF op-ed: "No One Should Be Forced to Act against His Conscience"
• TGIF: "It's Not about Contraception"