Theirs

Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria

I stumbled upon this show Thursday night at 11:30pm on PBS:
Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria | Where America Meets the World.

It was very interesting to hear 3 Muslims discussing the rights of women in Islam. Guests were Afeefa Syeed, who founded the Al-Fatih Academy, a Muslim school in Northern Virginia, and Irshad Manji, author of The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim?s Call for Reform in Her Faith. Manji has appeared on NOW.

Here in New Mexico, the show repeats at 5pm Friday on KNME Channel 5. However, it is also available on the Web (link above). The rest of the show is worthwhile, but this discussion of gender and religion is at the beginning and lasts 13 minutes. [Kudos for having transcripts and video available for free.]

You will see two women who seem so different and get a sense of a struggle for common ground over their shared faith. mjh

Here’s a snippet from the transcript (linked):

Show 4 Transcript | Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria

Irshad Manji: I find this very exciting because there?s a diversity of opinion and viewpoints among Muslim women and they?re going to be you know contesting one another which is in my view one of the things that needs to happen if we?re going to see the Islamic world as much more diverse than monolithic in the way that it has been for the last many, many generations. …

Fareed Zakaria: When people listen to you Irshad, I think there?s a tendency to wonder are you telling Americans what they want to hear.

Irshad Manji: [Laughs]

Fareed Zakaria: That is to say this sounds very comforting. Are you really a Muslim in that sense?

Irshad Manji: Well to many people I am not really a Muslim; that?s fine. I can tell you that you know I?ve done enough of my homework to know that when the first dissidents within Islam emerged from the woodwork only 100 years after Islam was established they, too, were accused not just of being real Muslims–or sorry–of not being real Muslims, but they were also accused of being in the pay of the Jews, and all kinds of conspiracy theories that still persist to this day. The thing though, Fareed, and I speak from hard experience here is that I know that the emerging generation of Muslims–not just in North America, but around the world, is desperate for debate and discussion–so much so that this was the number one reason that I had the emotional commitment and not just the intellectual commitment to write a book called The Trouble with Islam Today.

Fareed Zakaria: Is she a real Muslim?

Afeefa Syeed: Well only she and only God knows and that?s–that?s the essence of what being a Muslim is that you know the responsibilities between yourself and your creator. But I?d like to speak to the issue of representation and authenticity.

Irshad Manji: And I don?t represent–I don?t represent; I represent myself–no one else.
—–
Seat at the Table
Women in Congress/Parliament
Saudi Arabia: 0%
Iran: 4%
Pakistan: 21%
Iraq: 31%
US: 15%
—–
[If you enjoy programming like this, please be sure to read Republican Broadcasting Corporation by Ari Berman]

Dump Duhbya

The Nation | Blog | The Daily Outrage | Republican Broadcasting Corporation | Ari Berman

A conservative coup is underway at PBS.

The new head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (the gatekeeper between lawmakers and public broadcasters), Ken Ferree, is a staunch Republican proponent of media deregulation and a former top adviser to FCC Chairman Michael Powell. Three top CPB officials, all with Democratic affiliations, departed or were dismissed in recent months. For the first time in its 38-year history, the CPB ordered a comprehensive review of public TV and radio programming for “evidence of bias.” The CPB even tried to condition all new PBS funding agreements upon the network following “objectivity and balance” requirements for each of its programs.

Last January, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings denounced the cartoon rabbit Buster, of “Postcards from Buster” fame, for visiting a lesbian family in Vermont. The decision to slash in half the popular investigative show NOW after Bill Moyers’ departure, and the addition of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Tucker Carlson (who has since left for MSNBC) to the programming line-up proves just how far right PBS has moved in an attempt to appear fair and balanced. “This is the first time in my thirty-two years in public broadcasting that CPB has ordered up programs for ideological instead of journalistic reasons,” Moyers told The New Yorker last year.

A majority of the CPB’s eight-member board–chaired by Ken Tomlinson, a good friend of Karl Rove–are now Republican appointees. Two of the newest, Gay Hart Gaines and Cheryl Halpern, have donated more than $800,000 to the Republican Party since 1995. Gaines once ran a political action committee for Newt Gingrich, who as speaker of the House pushed to “zero out” all of PBS’s federal funding. In 2003, PBS President Pat Mitchell offered Gingrich a town-hall style show. It would’ve happened if Gingrich wasn’t already under contract with Fox News.

Ironically, the CPB was created to shield PBS from political pressure, just as PBS was intended to address the “needs of unserved and underserved audiences.” One can hardly argue that the WSJ edit page or Tucker Carlson fit into that category. “To find the same combination of conviction, partisanship and ideological extremism on the far left,” wrote my colleague Eric Alterman, “A network would need to convene a ’roundtable’ featuring Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, Vanessa Redgrave and Fidel Castro.”

These days, PBS is more likely to give James Dobson his own special on religion.

Dump Duhbya

A Real World Test of Private Accounts

U.S. SENATOR BARBARA BOXER | Issues

In 1981, three counties in Texas–Galveston, Matagorda, and Brazoria–decided to opt out of Social Security and instead provide their public employees with a system of privatized accounts.

While the privatization proposal advocated by President Bush is not an exact replication of the Texas plan, the concept is similar enough to warrant an examination of the Texas plan to see the impact of plans to privatize Social Security. …

Under the Texas plan, a married couple that has earned the median income would receive a monthly annuity benefit of $1568. Under Social Security, that married couple would receive $1818 at retirement–$3000 more over the course of the first year of retirement. Because Social Security beneficiaries receive an annual cost-of-living adjustment, at age 80, that gap increases to $13,440 more per year under Social Security than under the Texas plan.

Minor children are clearly better off with Social Security’s survivor benefits. If a worker who earned the median income dies at the age of 40, after working 20 years, the surviving spouse and two minor children would receive Social Security survivor benefits more than two and half times greater than they would receive under the Texas Alternate Plans.

Mine

Conservatives For a Free Press

Recently, I wrote a blog entry for www.dukecityfix.com about the public clash of two New Mexican Republicans. In public comments on that blog (see the link above), a very polite Mr Bohnsack respectfully approaches me for an education regarding a parenthetical remark in that blog entry.

Before I oblige his gracious request, I have to wonder: why doesn’t he want to talk about the “swell” story? Oh, he might say it is boring or he has nothing to add. But, before we follow his tangent, let’s not forget what he distracts us from: Republicans are not as united as they pretend (or as they vote). There are important divisions within the Republican party and when Duhbya’s days are done and he rides off into the sunset, it will be very interesting to see where the power goes. My money is on Karl Rove, god’s architect of victory.

As to Matt’s inquiry, let me first thank him for raising me into the company of the Founders. Yes, I am a blogger, a pamphleteer, child of Tom Paine (no kin to Greg). Yes, over two hundered years after the Revolution and the ratifying of the Constitution with its Bill of Rights, I am the epitome of all that. Thanks, Matt, you flatter me, even more than you flatter me by suggesting that I could educate you.

Now, I will agree with Matt that corporate news, like all corporations, is to be regarded with suspicion. Corporations put profits before everything, including the Constitution, the well-being of their workers, the health of their customers. That’s why — libertarians, please look away for a moment — we need laws to curtail man’s greed, selfishness and cruelty. I’m no friend of corporations and I am a natural ally of any schmo sitting at a keyboard expounding on the Truth. Matt and I are brothers.

I have nothing to teach Matt about rhetoric. In short order, he equates bloggers with the Free Press and then suggests that I would try to silence bloggers. Matt, I have 5 or 6 of my own and read dozens, including yours. Find someone I’ve ever tried to silence.

Understand, I’m really tired of this technique of redefining the argument. I’ve watched extreme conservatives hijack public policy with this since Goldwater. Define the terms, create the strawmen, set the agenda.

Still, it is very successful. My response is proof that you can goad people into following you on any tangent. So, though I owe Matt no explanation for a parenthetical remark — 10 words out of 300 — I’ll play along.

In the last 18 months or so, conservatives attacked CBS and stopped them from showing a biography of Raygun. Before it appeared on TV, before most of us had any idea what it might say, conservatives silenced Big Media. I don’t really care — I wouldn’t have watched — but I care about censorship, as I know Matt does.

So, one wonders, what’s that got to do with Rathergate. First, CBS News was planning a different report relevant to the election to follow the one that flowered into Blathergate. And, based on the fallout, they canned that one. I wish I could tell you what it was about, but I didn’t get to see it because censors scared the shit out of CBS. A nail in the coffin? Or a knife to the balls?

Second, the furor over a supposedly faked letter completely drowned out all other facts. There was simply no discussion of how nobly our War President served during Vietnam. No, it was all about fonts and CBS’s liberal bias (Joe Monahan has a great summary of Rather’s long career.).

Liberal bias of the Media. Another gem foisted on us by the Radical Right. And, setting up their own Isvestia — Fox — they explain all media is biased and their Pravda is just one small correction to the leftward tilt. Yeah, right.

Finally, it is nauseating to see the word Watergate twisted into Rathergate (after countless other -gates). Let us not forget that Watergate was a symptom and symbol of astonishing corruption at the top of a paranoid Republican administration. A criminal Republican administration that in turn provided top players in the current administration AND which pales in comparison regarding secrecy. A Republican administration brought down, in part, by a Free Press not nearly so corporate and unaided by bloggers.

Most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis. None were Iraqi.The Radical Right works steadily to undermine your confidence in absolutely anything outside of their control. Don’t trust the corporate media (except for the biggest cable news service, Fox, or the most widely heard commentator, Lush Limbaugh). Don’t trust the judges, most of whom were appointed by conservatives. Don’t trust the RINOs who want to rein in their fellow Republicans. Don’t trust the queers, the liberals, the Democrats, the non-Evangelicals or — god forbid — the atheists. No, don’t trust anyone but those holding hands with Duhbya.

And remember, history proves the Right is never wrong. Yeah, right. mjh

PS: Most of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudis; none were Iraqis. No WMDs were ever found in Iraq. There were more terrorist acts worldwide last year than ever before. Facts.

Dump Duhbya

Faithful Christians ought to be thrilled

ABC News: Conservatives See Win in Rise of New Pope By RICHARD N. OSTLING, The Associated Press

“Faithful Christians ought to be thrilled,” declared Charles Colson, the prison evangelist who’s among the best-known members of America’s largest Protestant group, the Southern Baptist Convention.

Colson is especially pleased because, as he sees it, America’s cultural elite is alarmed by the cardinals’ choice. He praised Ratzinger’s recent sermon against moral relativism, which amounted to a papal campaign platform. He also agreed with the pope that Western civilization is doomed if secular trends persist.

It’s significant that Colson is scheduled to appear Sunday night in Louisville, Ky., for a “Justice Sunday” rally where conservative Protestants will denounce what they call “out-of-control courts” and Democratic filibusters to block U.S. Senate votes on nominees to be federal appeals judges. …

[Sidebar on the honorable Charles Colson

Known as President Nixon’s hatchet man, Colson could be counted on to break the china – do whatever was necessary – to achieve the desired political ends of his boss. The saying at the time was that he would be willing to run over his own grandmother if the President ordered it to be done. (Colson never did so.) Such a reputation showed him as an administration loyalist.

Colson was involved in the Watergate Scandal, and in 1974 voluntarily agreed to a plea of nolo contendere (no contest) to obstruction of justice in the Watergate affair. Some months before this plea, Colson became an evangelical Christian.]

While the pope is no Protestant, conservative evangelicals see him as a powerful ally in such matters and Benedict’s track record suggests they’re correct. …

While Catholic liberals believe it would be both wise and just for the church to loosen up on doctrinal demands, Benedict might draw the opposite conclusion from U.S. Protestant trends.

Since the mid-1960s, liberal denominations like Thomas’ United Church of Christ have suffered a steady slide in membership, while conservative groups like the Southern Baptists have continued to expand. And in the past generation, Southern Baptist agencies have actually moved from moderate conservatism to stricter conservatism.

Penn State historian Philip Jenkins noted in his book “The Next Christendom” that the same trend is true globally.

While flexible, modernized churches stagnate, evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity are growing in the developing world as is Islam. These groups have been dogged in preserving doctrinal and moral tradition.

If Benedict plays to conservative Christians in the United States, he’ll be working with the growth sector of the religious world today.

loco

Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano

Synchronicity. Follow the first link for a dicussion of a new bill allowing Christians to refuse to serve others, which is sponsored by Dick Santorum (“‘Santorum? Is that Latin for asshole?'”), Clinton and Kerry. Follow the second for a discussion of Napolitano.

Napolitano is originally a New Mexican. I’m sure Richardson would rather people ignore her — there won’t be a Southwestern Ticket. mjh

The Nation | Blog | The Daily Outrage | Ari Berman

Instead of pandering to the get-right-with-God crowd, [Kerry] could instead follow the lead of Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, who recently vetoed conscience clause legislation….

Colorado Luis

I can’t imagine that if Napolitano were a man, we wouldn’t be hearing her name as one of the top possible candidates in 2008, and with good reason given her electoral record.

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." — Sam Adams