Iran, the Jews & Germany by Roger Cohen, New York Times

(Important op-ed from the Times in regard to American perceptions of Iran.  Having met several people from the country, I have been forced to address my own misconceptions and stereotypes based in the coverage the American media sadly continues to propagate.)

So a Jerusalem Post article says that I’m “hardly the first American to be misled by the existence of synagogues in totalitarian countries.”

Earl Wilson/The New York Times

Roger Cohen

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Related

Op-Ed Columnist: What Iran’s Jews Say (February 23, 2009)

Times Topics: Iran | Jews and Judaism | Holocaust and the Nazi Era

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The Atlantic Monthly’s Jeffrey Goldberg finds me “particularly credulous,” taken in by the Iranian hospitality and friendliness that “are the hallmarks of most Muslim societies.” (Thanks for that info, Jeffrey.)

A conservative Web site called American Thinker, which tries to prove its name is an oxymoron, believes I would have been fooled by the Nazis’ sham at the Theresienstadt camp.

The indignation stems from my recent column on Iranian Jews, which said that the 25,000-strong community worships in relative tranquillity; that Persian Jews have fared better than Arab Jews; that hostility toward Jews in Iran has on occasion led to trumped-up charges against them; and that those enamored of the “Mad Mullah” caricature of Iran regard any compromise with it as a rerun of Munich 1938.

This last point found confirmation in outraged correspondence from several American Jews unable to resist some analogy between Iran and Nazi Germany. I was based in Berlin for three years; Germany’s confrontation with the Holocaust inhabited me. Let’s be clear: Iran’s Islamic Republic is no Third Reich redux. Nor is it a totalitarian state.

Munich allowed Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland. Iran has not waged an expansionary war in more than two centuries.

Totalitarian regimes require the complete subservience of the individual to the state and tolerate only one party to which all institutions are subordinated. Iran is an un-free society with a keen, intermittently brutal apparatus of repression, but it’s far from meeting these criteria. Significant margins of liberty, even democracy, exist. Anything but mad, the mullahs have proved malleable.

Most of Iran’s population is under 30; it’s an Internet-connected generation. Access to satellite television is widespread. The BBC’s new Farsi service is all the rage.

Abdullah Momeni, a student opponent of the regime, told me, “The Internet is very important to us; in fact, it is of infinite importance.” Iranians are not cut off, like Cubans or North Koreans.

The June presidential election pitting the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, against Mohammad Khatami (a former president who once spoke in a synagogue) will be a genuine contest as compared with the charades that pass for elections in many Arab states. No fire has burned the Majlis, or parliament, down.

If you’re thinking trains-on-time Fascist efficiency, think again. Tehran’s new telecommunications tower took 20 years to build. I was told its restaurant would open “soon.” So, it is said, will the Bushehr nuclear power plant, a project in the works for a mere 30 years. A Persian Chernobyl is more likely than some Middle Eastern nuclear Armageddon, if that’s any comfort.

For all the morality police inspecting whether women are wearing boots outside their pants (the latest no-no on the dress front) and the regime zealots of the Basiji militia, the air you breathe in Iran is not suffocating. Its streets at dusk hum with life — not a monochrome male-only form of it, or one inhabited by fear — but the vibrancy of a changing, highly educated society.

This is the Iran of subtle shades that the country’s Jews inhabit. Life is more difficult for them than for Muslims, but to suggest they inhabit a totalitarian hell is self-serving nonsense.

One Iranian exile, no lover of the Islamic Republic, wrote to me saying that my account of Iran’s Jews had brought “tears to my eyes” because “you are saying what many of us would like to hear.”

Far from the cradle of Middle Eastern Islamist zealotry, she suggested, “Iran — the supposed enemy — is the one society that has gone through its extremist fervor and is coming out the other end. It is relatively stable and socially dynamic. As my father, who continues to live there, says, ‘It is the least undemocratic country in the region outside Israel.’ ”

This notion of a “post-fervor” Iran is significant. The compromises being painfully fought out between Islam and democracy in Tehran are of seminal importance. They belie the notion of a fanatical power; they explain Jewish life.

That does not mean fanaticism does not exist or that terrible crimes have not been committed, like the Iran-backed bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires 15 years ago.

But the equating of Iran with terror today is simplistic. Hamas and Hezbollah have evolved into broad political movements widely seen as resisting an Israel over-ready to use crushing force. It is essential to think again about them, just as it is essential to toss out Iran caricatures.

I return to this subject because behind the Jewish issue in Iran lies a critical one — the U.S. propensity to fixate on and demonize a country through a one-dimensional lens, with a sometimes disastrous chain of results.

It’s worth recalling that hateful, ultranationalist rhetoric is no Iranian preserve. Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s race-baiting anti-Arab firebrand, may find a place in a government led by Benjamin Netanyahu. He should not.

Nor should racist demagoguery — wherever — prompt facile allusions to the murderous Nazi master of it.

Why bombing Ashkelon is the most tragic irony

Robert Fisk:

How easy it is to snap off the history of the Palestinians, to delete the narrative of their tragedy, to avoid a grotesque irony about Gaza which – in any other conflict – journalists would be writing about in their first reports: that the original, legal owners of the Israeli land on which Hamas rockets are detonating live in Gaza.

That is why Gaza exists: because the Palestinians who lived in Ashkelon and the fields around it – Askalaan in Arabic – were dispossessed from their lands in 1948 when Israel was created and ended up on the beaches of Gaza. They – or their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren – are among the one and a half million Palestinian refugees crammed into the cesspool of Gaza, 80 per cent of whose families once lived in what is now Israel. This, historically, is the real story: most of the people of Gaza don't come from Gaza.

But watching the news shows, you'd think that history began yesterday, that a bunch of bearded anti-Semitic Islamist lunatics suddenly popped up in the slums of Gaza – a rubbish dump of destitute people of no origin – and began firing missiles into peace-loving, democratic Israel, only to meet with the righteous vengeance of the Israeli air force. The fact that the five sisters killed in Jabalya camp had grandparents who came from the very land whose more recent owners have now bombed them to death simply does not appear in the story.

Both Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres said back in the 1990s that they wished Gaza would just go away, drop into the sea, and you can see why. The existence of Gaza is a permanent reminder of those hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who lost their homes to Israel, who fled or were driven out through fear or Israeli ethnic cleansing 60 years ago, when tidal waves of refugees had washed over Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War and when a bunch of Arabs kicked out of their property didn't worry the world.

Well, the world should worry now. Crammed into the most overpopulated few square miles in the whole world are a dispossessed people who have been living in refuse and sewage and, for the past six months, in hunger and darkness, and who have been sanctioned by us, the West. Gaza was always an insurrectionary place. It took two years for Ariel Sharon's bloody "pacification", starting in 1971, to be completed, and Gaza is not going to be tamed now.

Alas for the Palestinians, their most powerful political voice – I'm talking about the late Edward Said, not the corrupt Yassir Arafat (and how the Israelis must miss him now) – is silent and their predicament largely unexplained by their deplorable, foolish spokesmen. "It's the most terrifying place I've ever been in," Said once said of Gaza. "It's a horrifyingly sad place because of the desperation and misery of the way people live. I was unprepared for camps that are much worse than anything I saw in South Africa."

Of course, it was left to Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to admit that "sometimes also civilians pay the price," an argument she would not make, of course, if the fatality statistics were reversed. Indeed, it was instructive yesterday to hear a member of the American Enterprise Institute – faithfully parroting Israel's arguments – defending the outrageous Palestinian death toll by saying that it was "pointless to play the numbers game". Yet if more than 300 Israelis had been killed – against two dead Palestinians – be sure that the "numbers game" and the disproportionate violence would be all too relevant. The simple fact is that Palestinian deaths matter far less than Israeli deaths. True, we know that 180 of the dead were Hamas members. But what of the rest? If the UN's conservative figure of 57 civilian fatalities is correct, the death toll is still a disgrace.

To find both the US and Britain failing to condemn the Israeli onslaught while blaming Hamas is not surprising. US Middle East policy and Israeli policy are now indistinguishable and Gordon Brown is following the same dog-like devotion to the Bush administration as his predecessor.

As usual, the Arab satraps – largely paid and armed by the West – are silent, preposterously calling for an Arab summit on the crisis which will (if it even takes place), appoint an "action committee" to draw up a report which will never be written. For that is the way with the Arab world and its corrupt rulers. As for Hamas, they will, of course, enjoy the discomfiture of the Arab potentates while cynically waiting for Israel to talk to them. Which they will. Indeed, within a few months, we'll be hearing that Israel and Hamas have been having "secret talks" – just as we once did about Israel and the even more corrupt PLO. But by then, the dead will be long buried and we will be facing the next crisis since the last crisis.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-why-bombing-ashkelon-is-the-most-tragic-irony-1216228.html

Dear President Obama...

We join people in your country and around the world in congratulating you on becoming the President-elect of the United States. Your victory has demonstrated that no person anywhere in the world should not dare to dream of wanting to change the world for a better place. We note and applaud your commitment to supporting the cause of peace and security around the world. We trust that you will also make it the mission of your presidency to combat the scourge of poverty and disease everywhere. We wish you strength and fortitude in the challenging days and years that lie ahead. We are sure you will ultimately achieve your dream, making the United States of America a full partner in a community of nations committed to peace and prosperity for all.

- Full text of a message from Nelson Mandela, the first black president of South Africa, to Senator Barack Obama

Colin Powell reacts to the election results!

Condi Rice talks about the historic election results!

Obama's Infomercial

The thirty minute commercial that ran the other day...

The Economist Weighs In

Count The Economist among the official endorsements for Obama. Here's the article:

The Economists Endorsement for Barack Obama

Obam's Economists

A List of some of his Economic policy advisors:

- Jason Furman
- Austan Goolsbee, University of Chicago tax policy expert
- Karen Kornbluh
- David Cutler, Harvard health policy expert
- Jeff Liebman, Harvard welfare expert
- Michael Froman, Citigroup executive
- Daniel Tarullo, Georgetown law professor
- David Romer, Berkeley macroeconomist
- Christina Romer, Berkeley economic historian
- Richard Thaler, University of Chicago behavioral finance expert
- Robert Rubin, former Treasury Secretary
- Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary
- Alan Blinder, former Vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve
- Jared Bernstein, Economic Policy Institute labor economist
- James Galbraith, University of Texas macroeconomist
- Paul Volcker, Chairman of the Federal Reserve 1979-1987
- Laura Tyson, Berkeley international economist, Bill Clinton economic adviser
- Robert Reich, Berkeley public policy professor, former Secretary of Labor
- Peter Henry, Stanford international economist
- Gene Sperling, former White House economic adviser
- Heidi Hartmann, President, Institute for Women's Policy Research

Other prominent economists who support Obama:

- Brad Delong, Berkeley macroeconomist
- Joseph Stiglitz, 2001 Nobel laureate
- Edmund Phelps, 2006 Nobel laureate
- Ray Fair, Yale macroeconomist
- Dan McFadden, 2000 Nobel laureate
- Robert Solow, 1987 Nobel laureate

Prominent finance people who support Obama (not actual economists):

- William Donaldson, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair 2003-2005
- Arthur Levitt, SEC Chair 1993-2001
- David Ruder, SEC Chair 1987-1989
- Warren Buffet, investor, richest person in world.

One of the things that have caused my support for Barack Obama is his thoughtfulness. His candidacy represents a marked departure from "Bush-like" political action mired in stubbornness and an inability to admit failed policy. With this supporting cast and Obama's ability to process and think through decisions, I find comfort. =)

Colbert Report: Socialist Candidate for President?

Stephen Colbert asks the Socialist Candidate for President why he's running against the Socialist Obama... Brilliant!

Haha, Apparently I'm Responsible

Pretty funny, check this out!

Obama on the Daily Show last night

Stolen from my good friend, Andrew Helms' blog.....

For the last x number of years I've been receiving countless pro-McCain, or more specifically anti-Obama smear emails alleging he is a Muslim (one of the bad ones), the anti-Christ, Satan or some other derivative of a spawn of Satan.

Just now for the first time did I receive a pro-Obama email. I figured I would share it.

I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....
* If you grow up in Hawaii and are raised by your grandparents, you're
'exotic, different.'
* Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American
story.
* If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
* Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.
* Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well
grounded.
* If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the
first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter
registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years
as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator
representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of
the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years
in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people
while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs,
Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you
don't have any real leadership experience.
* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city
council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000
people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people,
then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking
executive.
* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while
raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're
not a real Christian.
* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your
disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a
Christian.
* If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including
the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
* If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no
other option in sex education in your state's school system while your
unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.
* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in
a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city
community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values
don't represent America 's.
* If you're husband is nicknamed 'First Dude', with at least one DUI
conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until
age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession
of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable and you are know as putting country first.

OK, much clearer now.

This made me smile.

Thank God For George W. Bush


In the late summer of 2004, a seminary colleague and I pondered the possibility of another four years of Bush 43. The polls were very close, and it seemed highly possible that we could be faced with four more years of G.W. Bush, coupled with both houses of Congress under the Republicans. My colleague observed ruefully, "Perhaps unified Republican rule would be the best education for the people to see just how much they don't want it." Before I could respond, he added, "Though, I really don't know if we can afford four more years of Bush and a Republican Congress." It turns out he was right -- on both accounts.

One could easily bewail the manifold profligracy of the last incarnation of conservative rule, and what it will cost to recover from it. However, I focus my attention here on the extent to which Congress in general and the Bush presidency in particular have served to fuel an exodus from Bushian conservatism. It was Immanuel Kant who once wrote that David Hume awakened him from his dogmatic slumbers, and in like fashion I rejoice -- indeed, give thanks to God -- for the extent to which many Christians have been awakened from the dogmatic slumbers of narrow moralism to a broader moral agenda, one more consistent with the one whose name we bear when we call ourselves Christians. So, I find myself in an odd place as a progressive follower of Jesus, giving thanks to God for a man generally viewed as the enemy of progressive Christianity -- G.W. Bush.

My thanks, though, would remain too abstract without some attempt to be more specific, and I readily grant that, at best, I am trying to find a silver lining in an otherwise profoundly dark cloud. Yet, it is hard to imagine any one thing that has contributed more to the transition of so many young Christians away from the narrow agenda of many of Bush's right-wing Christian enablers than a presidency that stands in such contrast with the values of Jesus. My good friend and Sojourners colleague Jim Wallis likes to express his puzzlement over how Jesus came to be seen as "pro-war, pro-rich, and pro-American." It is now obvious that under the excesses of GWB, many more have come to be similarly puzzled. What could stand more in opposition to our Lord's injunction to be peacemakers than the Bush doctrine of "pre-emptive war" -- unless it be his willingness to put the development and use of nuclear weapons back on the table? What could stand more in contrast to the values expressed by Jesus in the second half of Matthew 25 than the Bush penchant for tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts paid for on the backs of "the least of these"? What could be more opposed to the God-given obligation to steward the environment than "clean air" rules that worsen air quality, "clean water" rules that worsen water quality, the utter inattention to our dependence on non-renewable energy sources, and the propagandized denial of climate change? Finally, could there be any stronger expression of hubris vis-à-vis the rightful concerns of our global partners than Bushian unilateralism?

On the one hand, George W. Bush will leave a somber legacy, from which it will take years of our best thinking and acting to recover. We rightly bewail this legacy and, sadly, must to some extent own our complicity for allowing his "all fear, all the time" mantra to bewitch us. On the other hand, just as our deepest appreciation of the light often comes in the midst of the darkest hour, perhaps it took the darkness of Bushian conservatism to help us see its bankruptcy on Christian grounds. If this be the case, then maybe there will be one positive, lasting legacy of this administration: Perhaps, for a generation, we will not allow ourselves so easily to be distracted from the simple message of Jesus -- "Blessed are the peacemakers, care for the least of these, think first of the interest of others, love your enemies ...." May it be so.

Chuck Gutenson is the chief operating officer for Sojourners.

An Increase for Hate Groups

A Washington Post article recently reports that since Senator Obama has been declared the winner of the Democratic Primary, most hate group web sites have seen a huge growth in traffic and increased applications for membership and activity. In a separate article in the same newspaper, the Post says that some 3 out of 10 United States citizens admit to having a "race bias".

Here's the links for the two articles:
"Hate Groups Newest Target"
"3 in 10 Americans Admit to Race Bias"

Nothing is so important as human life, as the human person. Above all, the person of the poor and the oppressed... Jesus says that whatever is done to them he takes as done to him. That bloodshed, those deaths are beyond all politics: They touch the very heart of God.

~~ Oscar Romero
March 16, 1980

Suspend the Gas Tax? More Political Pandering from Hillary Clinton

As the price for a gallon of gas continues to climb, (around $3.90 in Los Angeles, and the national average $3.60) Hillary Clinton and John McCain have come up with revolutionary plans of suspending the gas tax. Basically every gallon of gas is taxed by the government (around 18%).

Both McCain and Clinton are celebrating the move to help "average" Americans this summer...But here is what the two politicians are NOT telling you.

1) That this suspended tax cut will save the "average" American somewhere between $25 and $60 as a result.
Wow, I don't know about you, but really as I've seen the cost to fill up my tank almost double the past two years...that $25 to $60 range will save me jack. Awesome, so glad that they are worried about helping me out so much.

2) In order to suspend the gas tax, they would have to pass the notion through Congress and get Presidential support.
So the summer seems like it's pretty fast approaching, and actually I don't see much sign of Bush support on the whole idea. Awesome.

DON'T WORRY THOUGH at least Hillary is pointing out Barack Obama's lack of compassion towards "average" Americans like you and I....She is (once again) proving her connection with small-town, every day people by working hard to ensure real change here in America.

Hillary actually released new ads this week blasting Obama for saying "No" to helping average Americans...(for good measure, her campaign threw in images of her with black factory workers, people she can obviously strongly connect with).

Obama dismisses the ad as a gimmick (why in the world would he think that? "Lets find some short term, quick fix, so that we can say we did something, even though we're not really doing anything..."

NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman called the Clinton/McCain plan, "Shameful pandering." While it would cut drivers a little break, Illinois recenly tried a gas tax and it saved everday citizens barely anything, with gas companies seeing an opportunity to fill the void with the potential of more profit.

Not to mention, this amazing plan would also "deprive the government of $10 billion of revenue used to maintain highways." Clinton said she would make up the money lost, by taxing the likes of Exxon Mobile and others.

Because of gridlock on Capitol Hill, Hillary Clinton is unlikely to be able to pass this idea anyway.

Awesome, I'm glad Hillary is using her platform to connect with real people and to help make real change.

Seems like politics as usual. A lot of smelly stuff, you don't want on your shoes.

Hey Bill, Give It A Rest

As you might have noticed, I've posted a few different Hillary Clinton claims and stories on this blog...mostly because I've found them to be fairly troubling. I want to say that when the Primaries began, I was pretty partial between Barack and Hillary. I thought Barack represented the politics of the future, a buzz and excitement about the opportunities, and that Hillary was "old school" politics, but I thought both would be good in office.

At this point, I've become extremely weary of the Hillary campaign. Divisive politics, a lot of media games, posturing....it's just tired. I actually still think Hillary would do a pretty decent job as President, but her style and approach has really turned me off to her as a person. (what's more, I actually think she's "better than that", much of her posturing due to the campaign's fear of coming off "weak" or "feminine" -- a sad reflection of our society because I agree that they need to be cautious with that.)

What's adding to this is the disappointing words from former Prez Bill Clinton. A man I have had great respect for (I would say admiration if it weren't for the extramarital affairs). One thing that typically stands out in my mind about past President's is their grace -- although I'm not sure this trend will continue with George W. Even with Bush Sr and Reagan, although I'm not crazy about some of their policies, there is an aura of respect and worth that stands out as they continue(d) to make a positive impact after their time in office.

That's where Bill gets me. He has come off these past six months as ANYTHING but gracious, adding only more bitter taste to the Clinton campaign. His comments in South Carolina have been debated on their intent and impact, but it was fairly clear to me, that his comments bore some aspect of race and ethnicity. (Bill does have a good record of working for rights for minorities, but he is still NOT a minority and is in no way excluded from the ability to make insensitive comments.) NOW, he's popping off again, with some very disturbing, "politics as usual" rhetoric...I think he could start to stain his legacy even more from this kind of graceless behavior (stain pun not intended).

- Bill Clinton also weighed in last week, saying, "This is contact sport if you don't want to play keep your uniform off." (from cnn.com)

Really Bill? Politics is a contact sport? I thought we were talking about impacting our nation and the people within it. Not pushing and shoving to get to a place where we "win". Keep your uniform off? So because Obama doesn't want to be in a "full contact sport" he shouldn't "play"? Wow...that's affirming.

- On the eve of Tuesday’s critical Pennsylvania primary, former President Bill Clinton accused Barack Obama’s campaign of playing the race card against him. After the phone interview with Delaware radio station WHYY Monday night, a stray comment of his on the issue was also recorded before he hung up: “I don’t think I should take any s*** from anybody on that, do you?” (from cnn.com)

Obama played the race card on you...so when you make comments that show relatively little class and Obama voices his belief on why YOUR comments were inappropriate, he is playing the "race card". Again, wow. Could it be Mr. President, that even you, the champion of all things colored, could possibly offend? No, and definitely, you shouldn't take that "s***" from anybody on that...you Mr. Millionaire are far, far above that. Give it a rest.

- Joining wife Hillary Clinton at a campaign rally on the eve of the Pennsylvania primary, former President Bill Clinton argued that if Democratic candidates were awarded delegates the same way as Republicans, his wife would be beating Barack Obama in the race for the 2,025 delegates needed to secure the Democratic nomination.
“If we were under the Republican system, which is more like the Electoral College, she'd have a 300 delegate lead here,” Clinton told the Washington Post. “I mean, Senator McCain is already the nominee because they chose a system to produce that result, and we don't have a nominee here, because the Democrats chose a system that prevents that result.” (from cnn.com)

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Bill run for office under these same standards for deciding a candidate? Why has he not mentioned the need to change this system before? Not to mention the fact that I think the Electoral College system is a joke. When a majority of people, in the country, put their voice behind one candidate, should that not be the candidate? I understand the reason and the history behind the Electoral College system, but it's also a model that I have been puzzled by...why not take the individual who is desired by more Americans?

Come on Bill, you're better than this. Pull it together. Try to act, more "Presidential". Rise above the politics of division and animosity. This country needs a change, and it needs its leaders. It's time to be one.

Pray for Paraguay, for Bishop Lugo

Former Bishop Is Victor Over Party Long in Power
By Monte Reel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, April 21, 2008; Page A12

BUENOS AIRES, April 20 -- A former Roman Catholic bishop ended the 61-year rule of Paraguay's dominant political party on Sunday, promising to replace the country's reputation for corruption with one of honesty.
With more than 90 percent of polling stations reporting, Fernando Lugo, who resigned the priesthood to launch his campaign, had a margin of about 10 percentage points over Blanca Ovelar, who was outgoing President Nicanor Duarte's choice to succeed him from the Colorado Party.

"Today we proved that the little guy also is capable of prevailing," Lugo, who captured 41 percent of the vote, said during a televised rally. There is no runoff, so the candidate with the most votes wins.

Lugo, 56, has long been known for his poverty relief efforts throughout Paraguay, where more than a third of the citizens live on less than $2 a day. He becomes the first president since 1947 elected outside the Colorado Party, which until Sunday's defeat had held the presidency longer than any party in the world.

During the campaign, Lugo cast himself as an independent who had dedicated his life to the country's underclass. In the 1970s, he became a proponent of liberation theology, a school of thought within the Catholic Church that encourages political activism on behalf of the poor.

His emphasis on leveling the country's income disparities has drawn comparisons to South American socialists such as Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Bolivia's Evo Morales. Lugo has repeatedly discouraged such comparisons, preferring to call himself a centrist who neither endorses nor condemns those neighboring leaders.

"Lugo is seen as a political outsider, and he appealed to a group of people who generally haven't been involved in the political process -- the rural poor," said Álvaro Caballero, an analyst who directed polls for the Development Information and Resource Center in Asuncion, the capital. "There's a feeling that even though Paraguay is experiencing economic growth, that hasn't been reaching the people."

The landlocked South American country's economy grew 6.4 percent last year, but it is still saddled with a reputation for contraband and corruption. Lugo's political ascent rode a wave of dissatisfaction with those labels, and he launched his campaign after leading anti-corruption rallies against Duarte.
After initial results were announced Sunday night, Lugo said he would work to change the country's image to one of efficiency and honesty, and he pleaded with Paraguay's other politicians to ensure that "never again will the political class make policies based on clientism."

About two-thirds of the country's 2.8 million registered voters cast ballots Sunday, election officials said, the highest turnout in nearly 20 years. Interest was driven by a colorful cast of candidates that promised a historic result, no matter who won.
Ovelar, a former education minister, captured about 31 percent of the vote, officials said. She had hoped to become Paraguay's first female president and the third woman elected president in a South American country in the past three years, after Chile's Michelle Bachelet and Argentina's Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

A third candidate, Lino Oviedo, is a former general who was convicted for leading a 1996 coup attempt. He launched his campaign in October immediately after being released from jail. He got about 22 percent on Sunday, officials said.

Both Ovelar and Oveido conceded defeat Sunday night. "I'm content and happy because change was produced, even if it was not through me," Oveido said after congratulating Lugo on his victory.

Ovelar had also tried to campaign under the banner of change, promising to represent a renovated Colorado Party -- the only ruling party most Paraguayans have ever known. Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, the dictator who ruled from 1954 to 1989, was the party's most emblematic figure.

"A lot of people had come to think that the Colorado Party headquarters is the place you go for state services. That gives an idea of how ingrained the party had become," said Joel Fyke of the nonprofit Washington Office on Latin America."

I promise, I am NOT trying to find these articles on Hillary...if similarly troubling articles on Obama were to cross my screen, they too would be questioned That being said...I'm really scared about the implications this article could have...

Hillary Clinton's Little-Noticed Israel Problem
Her position on Israel could mean a significant departure from longstanding U.S. policy. How come no one cares?

By Justin Elliott
April 3, 2008
MotherJones

Though Senator Barack Obama has never—neither in his Senate votes nor in his campaign literature—strayed from the conventional position of support for Israel, he has in this primary season been dogged by the issue. The flare-up last week surrounding Obama's allegedly "anti-Jewish" campaign cochairman, sparked by a piece in the conservative American Spectator magazine, was only the latest instance in which his foes have suggested that Obama has an "Israel problem." Yet even as Obama has been subjected to intense scrutiny, Senator Hillary Clinton has received virtually no attention for taking an unconventional position on Israel (albeit in a direction approved by pro-Israel hardliners). Her vow of support for Israel's claim on an "undivided Jerusalem," if enacted, would mark a major—and problematic—break with longstanding U.S. policy.

Under the heading "Standing with Israel against terrorism," Clinton's official policy paper, released last September and currently touted on her campaign website, states, "Hillary Clinton believes that Israel's right to exist in safety as a Jewish state, with defensible borders and an undivided Jerusalem as its capital, secure from violence and terrorism, must never be questioned." With the phrase "an undivided Jerusalem as its capital," Clinton seems to take a hardline position on a deeply contested facet of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a position like this should have garnered at least passing interest from the mainstream media. So how come nobody's paying attention?

The answer may lie within the long history of empty rhetoric on Jerusalem doled out by presidential candidates. Perhaps the lack of interest can be chalked up to uncertainty in how to interpret Clinton’s position. Or it may be that right-wing pronouncements that give short shrift to the Palestinian side are simply not seen as remarkable. (An exception to the media silence on Clinton’s position was the American Prospect's Gershom Gorenberg, an Israeli.)

Clinton is toying with one of the few most important final-status issues that will have to be resolved as part of any two-state solution. Israel captured the eastern half of Jerusalem during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. While Israel has declared the whole of an expanded Jerusalem its capital, the international community views east Jerusalem as occupied territory and the potential capital of any future Palestinian state. In recognition of the contested status of Jerusalem, the United States and other countries maintain their embassies in Tel Aviv.

"Jerusalem is not only of political, religious, and emotional significance to Palestinians. It's the cultural and economic capital of any future state of Palestine. To carve out east Jerusalem from the rest of Palestine would be to deprive of it the geographic area which traditionally has been the heart of the Palestinian economy," said Philip Wilcox, a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer who served as consul general and chief of mission in Jerusalem and is now president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, a D.C. nonprofit. "It's an absolute deal –breaker, and there will be no peace if there isn't an agreed political division of Jerusalem."

If opposing a compromise on Jerusalem is a deal breaker, one would think there would be more importance attached to Clinton's words—especially appearing in the unequivocal construction of Israel's "right to exist" that "must never be questioned." If Clinton did, as president, endorse Israel's annexation of all of Jerusalem, it could mean nothing less than a repudiation of the concept of a two-state solution. And while her position mirrors that of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), it actually puts her at odds with some prominent Israeli officials, notably Vice Premier Haim Ramon, who have publicly spoken about the need to cede the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem. One explanation for this incongruity, offered by all of the half-dozen experts I spoke to on the subject, is that Clinton’s statement is nothing more than election-year rhetoric. That is, her stand may tell us more about the fraught politics of Israel/Palestine in the United States than it does about how a Hillary Clinton administration would approach the conflict.

"I think it is said in the knowledge that this is a rhetorical commitment only. And that all past presidents once coming to office have recognized that the problem of Jerusalem is one that has to be resolved through negotiations," Wilcox said. That interpretation would be in keeping with an old tradition of presidential candidates making empty promises on Jerusalem. A favorite, going back to Ronald Reagan, is to pledge to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush made and then broke that promise and, in so doing, had to repeatedly waive the requirements of a 1995 law—of which John McCain was one of 76 Senate cosponsors—demanding the embassy be moved.

This campaign season, none of the remaining candidates seem to have made that pledge, at least publicly. Earlier this month, however, Haaretz reported that a Clinton surrogate told a Cleveland audience that Hillary Clinton would move the embassy to Jerusalem. John McCain, for his part, was quoted on his Mideast trip last week as saying that he supported Jerusalem "as the capital of Israel"—a weaker formulation than Clinton's. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

So is there an electoral gain, at least perceived by the candidates and their advisers, to making these types of promises? While it's impossible to know how many American Jews would vote on the basis of Jerusalem, the most recent American Jewish Committee poll found 58 percent opposed to compromise on the status of Jerusalem as a "united city" under Israel's jurisdiction, putting them in line with Clinton. But the number of American Jewish voters is not that high. M.J. Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum, a dovish advocacy group in Washington, believes that voters simply aren't part of Clinton's calculus. Her Jerusalem position," he said, is "designed to appeal to money people. The single-issue donors in the Jewish community tend to be far to the right. It's throwing red meat out to some people who desperately want to eat some red meat. It's not a serious commitment."

But to discern whether Clinton is serious about moving the embassy or supporting an "undivided Jerusalem" as Israel's capital, one has to look at the history of her position and undertake the not-so-simple task of interpreting it.

Clinton's rhetoric dates back to when her husband was attempting to broker a compromise on the holy city. She first took the position in 1999, prior to announcing her candidacy for the U.S. Senate in New York. (It was later in the same campaign that Clinton was slammed for hugging and kissing Suha Arafat, the wife of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, at a ceremony on the West Bank, where Suha, speaking in Arabic, accused the Israeli government of using poison gas against Palestinian women and children. Hours after the event, Clinton condemned her.) "I personally consider Jerusalem the eternal and indivisible capital of Israel," she wrote in a letter to the president of Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, echoing the exact language favored by some Israeli politicians. That stand was interpreted in the media as an obvious pander, a play for support among the hardline segment of New York's sizable Jewish community. "Israel's new friend Hillary Clinton, born-again Zionist" read the headline in her hometown paper, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. As Michael Tomasky later wrote in Hillary's Turn, his book about the 2000 campaign, "The Jerusalem question is always an issue in New York campaigns, and anyone running for dogcatcher in New York signs on to the position Hillary took."

Her position might have been New York politics as usual, but it had serious implications for her husband's administration. A spokesman for Bill Clinton's State Department immediately distanced the administration from her comments, saying that the "first lady was expressing her personal views" and that the U.S. position on Jerusalem—that it was a matter to be negotiated between the parties themselves—had "not changed."

And, yet, despite Hillary Clinton's strong words in '99 and today, there is still linguistic wiggle room that allows her to support the idea of a Palestinian capital in east Jerusalem. "Well, [Clinton's statement] is strong, but if people are determined to be a little bit creative in the way they interpret these things, ‘undivided' sometimes literally means 'don't put the barbwire back up,'" said William Quandt, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia and a longtime observer of America's role in the Arab-Israeli conflict. "In 1967 there was a divided Jerusalem," he added, referring to the period before the 1967 war when Jerusalem was physically divided, a state of affairs to which no one wants to return. Clinton's campaign did not respond to a request for clarification of her position.

Then there's the ambiguity embedded in the very term "Jerusalem." James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, notes that it can be construed several ways. "Is it Jerusalem as defined by its municipal boundaries in 1967? Is it what Israel unilaterally and illegally annexed that was recognized by no one, including the United States government? Is it the expanded greater Jerusalem that now includes the settlement belt?"

But no matter how Clinton defines the borders of Jerusalem or whether the policy paper is intended as empty rhetoric, her position is emblematic of her record on Israel. As others have pointed out, her campaign position paper on Israel doesn't even mention a two-state solution. She virtually never utters the word "Palestinians." Her Senate website describes her as "a leader in supporting Israel's right to build the fence"—what others call the wall—that juts deeply into the West Bank and has been widely criticized for violating the human rights of Palestinians. She personally toured the barrier in late 2005. All this, and yet somehow Barack Obama is the only candidate whose position on Israel has drawn fire.

Hillary's "Instrumental" Role In Northern Ireland

Recently, Hillary Clinton has been flaunting her foreign policy experience in the bid for the Democratic nomination. Among recent claims of a life and death, sniper fire situation in Bosnia, Clinton claimed to have had an "instrumental role" in the Good Friday Agreement which brokered peace between the IRA, Sinn Fein and the British government in 1998.

Paul Bew had this to say about such ideas, "Calling her instrumental is silly....I can't think of anything to be said for the case that she had a major role." I wasn't necessarily ready to take his word as fatal until I came across Bew's credentials. "[Bew] is a prominent--perhaps the most prominent--historian of Northern Ireland. A professor at Queen's University Belfast, he last year published Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789-2006, a much-acclaimed work, which is part of the Oxford University Press's Modern Europe series. Bew was once an adviser to David Trimble (the former First Minister of the Northern Ireland) and he was appointed to the House of Lords in 2007, in recognition of his own contributions to the Good Friday Agreement.

Hm.