Quick Roundup 19

The Stimulus ...

Condi Rice says that Iran and Syria have been fanning the flames of the Moslem cartoon riots.

"Iran and Syria have gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and to use this to their own purposes and the world ought to call them on it," Rice said at a joint news conference with Israel's foreign minister.

Hmmm. The title of that old song "We are the World" fails, for once, to sound trite.

... and the Response

Some clerics in Afghanistan have finally come out against the cartoon violence.

Police shot four protesters to death Wednesday to stop hundreds from marching on a southern U.S. military base, as Islamic organizations called for an end to deadly rioting across the Muslim world over drawings of the Prophet Muhammad.

"Islam says it's all right to demonstrate but not to resort to violence. This must stop," said senior cleric Mohammed Usman, a member of the Ulama Council -- Afghanistan's top Islamic organization. "We condemn the cartoons but this does not justify violence. These rioters are defaming the name of Islam."

...

Aggression against life and property can only damage the image of a peaceful Islam," said the statement released by Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the EU chief Javier Solana. [bold added]

This sounds less like a moral objection to the riots than a tactical one to me. I'd have been a lot happier with something like, "Threats and vandalism are un-Islamic." At least then, man's life would be the implicit, if imperfectly-held standard of value. Here, it's still the faith.

Some Japanese Foreign Ministry Officials ...


... seem to need to be told that this Cox and Forkum cartoon is intended as criticism, and not as advice. From the Japan Times:

"If they find out Japanese newspapers or magazines carried the caricatures, they may start attacking Japanese embassies or companies abroad," said a senior Foreign Ministry official who asked not to be named.

While Mohammed made a scene ...

... you might have been too busy watching to notice that our own medievalists haven't been sitting on their hands.

First, a woman's right to her own body has come under a new attack:

A new front in the debate over abortion is emerging in legislatures across the nation. Abortion foes are gaining ground with proposals to require doctors to tell women seeking abortions that their fetuses might feel pain during the procedure.

State "fetal pain" bills began popping up last year in the wake of other statutes that have drawn attention to the interests of fetuses, including bans on a procedure that its critics call "partial birth" abortion. [bold added]

This completely ignores scientific evidence that the nervous systems in fetuses are not developed enough for them to feel pain until late in pregnancy.

Second, the evangelicals have joined the greens.

Despite opposition from some of their colleagues, 86 evangelical Christian leaders have decided to back a major initiative to fight global warming, saying "millions of people could die in this century because of climate change, most of them our poorest global neighbors."

Among signers of the statement, which will be released in Washington on Wednesday, are the presidents of 39 evangelical colleges, leaders of aid groups and churches, like the Salvation Army, and pastors of megachurches, including Rick Warren, author of the best seller "The Purpose-Driven Life."

In a related post a long time ago, I noted:

[R]adical environmentalist Adam Werbach says that for the Left to become a strong political force again, the new liberal narrative, "should be a powerful antidote to fundamentalism, be as powerful as fundamentalism is to people. It should be unchallengeable in the way liberalism was in the post-Depression era." For this to be true, we'd need to show that environmentalism is an important part of Stadther's story. I didn't get this from the interview. Nevertheless, it would seem odd to me that someone selling a book based on its emphasis on family values -- but sending his profits to the environmentalists -- would not include environmentalism as one of those "family values."

I guess Werbach would be happy with this development. Who needs to replace fundamentalism when you can co-opt it?

This seems to confirm some fears I have already articulated that we might "get a 'best-of-breed' party from hell: the social agenda of the Christian right and the socialistic one of the left." See also: John McCain and Lindsey Graham.

-- CAV