Currently viewing the tag: “Spread”
Let’s have a look at one example of how Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, spread compassion among the nations. As I explain in my book The Truth About Muhammad, Muhammad led a Muslim force against the Khaybar oasis, which was inhabited by Jews — many of whom he had previously exiled from Medina. When he did so, he was not responding to any provocation; he encountered the men of Khaybar going out to work their farms, with no idea that they were about to be attacked. One of the Muslims later remembered: “When the apostle raided a people he waited until the morning. If he heard a call to prayer he held back; if he did not hear it he attacked. We came to Khaybar by night, and the apostle passed the night there; and when morning came he did not hear the call to prayer, so he rode and we rode with him….We met the workers of Khaybar coming out in the morning with their spades and baskets. When they saw the apostle and the army they cried, ‘Muhammad with his force,’ and turned tail and fled. The apostle said, ‘Allah Akbar! Khaybar is destroyed. When we arrive in a people’s square it is a bad morning for those who have been warned.’”
The Muslim advance was inexorable. “The apostle,” according to Muhammad’s earliest biographer, Ibn Ishaq, “seized the property piece by piece and conquered the forts one by one as he came to them.” Another biographer of Muhammad, Ibn Sa’d, reports that the battle was fierce: the “polytheists…killed a large number of [Muhammad’s] Companions and he also put to death a very large number of them….He killed ninety-three men of the Jews…” Muhammad and his men offered the fajr prayer, the Islamic dawn prayer, before it was light, and then entered Khaybar itself. The Muslims immediately set out to locate the inhabitants’ wealth. A Jewish leader of Khaybar, Kinana bin al-Rabi, was brought before Muhammad; Kinana was supposed to have been entrusted with the treasure of on of the Jewish tribes of Arabia, the Banu Nadir. Kinana denied knowing where this treasure was, but Muhammad pressed him: “Do you know that if we find you have it I shall kill you?” Kinana said yes, that he did know that.
Some of the treasure was found. To find the rest, Muhammad gave orders concerning Kinana: “Torture him until you extract what he has.” One of the Muslims built a fire on Kinana’s chest, but Kinana would not give up his secret. When he was at the point of death, one of the Muslims beheaded him. Kinana’s wife was taken as a war prize; Muhammad claimed her for himself and hastily arranged a wedding ceremony that night. He halted the Muslims’ caravan out of Khaybar later that night in order to consummate the marriage.
Muhammad agreed to let the people of Khaybar to go into exile, allowing them to keep as much of their property as they could carry. The Prophet of Islam, however, commanded them to leave behind all their gold and silver. He had intended to expel all of them, but some, who were farmers, begged him to allow them to let them stay if they gave him half their yield annually. Muhammad agreed: “I will allow you to continue here, so long as we would desire.” He warned them: “If we wish to expel you we will expel you.” They no longer had any rights that did not depend upon the good will and sufferance of Muhammad and the Muslims. And indeed, when the Muslims discovered some treasure that some of the Khaybar Jews had hidden, he ordered the women of the tribe enslaved and seized the perpetrators’ land. A hadith notes that “the Prophet had their warriors killed, their offspring and woman taken as captives.”
Compassion!
“Armstrong: Islam came to spread compassion among the nations of the world,” by Siddeek Tawfeek for Islam Online, March 17 (thanks to Jan):
As part of its cultural events, Georgetown University’s CIRS (Centre for International and Regional Studies), School of Foreign Services in Qatar, invited professor Karen Armstrong to deliver a lecture titled, The Core of Our Religious Traditions on 13th March 2011.
Professor Armstrong started her lecture by saying that religion has a main role in that it can provide a major contribution to build a global community where people can live in peace and harmony. She said that some believe that religion is the cause of violence and wars throughout history, refuting this concept by saying that wars and violence are motivated by greed and power. Each religion has its own particular and exclusive insights, but all religions have a thing in common, and that is the belief in the Supreme Being who is God. Words stop and fail when we begin to define God. Professor Armstrong summed up the situation by quoting in Arabic: “Allahu Akbar” (God is greater).
She pointed out that religion teaches us mainly to worship Allah and to do good, and the Qur’an calls for good actions. She quoted the Arabic word: (al-salihat) which includes doing whatever good to help people, be it kindness to orphans, and giving alms to the poor. In other words, The Qur’an calls for compassion, and compassion is the core of the Golden Rule which says: “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” This is the bond of suffering. Professor Armstrong quoted the hadith (prophetic saying) of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), where he says: “None of you will be a true believer until he desires for others what he desires for himself.”
Professor Armstrong said that after the September 11th event, the Muslim communities in the West have been exposed to a lot of suffering inflicted upon them. Such a treatment is too far from the Golden Rule of compassion. As a reaction to this injustice toward Muslims, cities in different parts of the world have developed campaigns to promote community compassion among its residents, where Muslim youths are significantly participating in these campaigns, especially in Amsterdam, Holland. The city of Seattle in north-western United States, leads the list of compassionate cities. On the other hand, Professor Armstrong cited Afghanistan and Iraq as examples of venues where compassion is non-existent.
It is doubtful that Professor Armstrong mentioned such inconveniently non-compassionate post-9/11 (and indeed, quite recent) Muslims as Khalid Aldawsari, the would-be jihad mass murderer in Lubbock, Texas; or Muhammad Hussain, the would-be jihad bomber in Baltimore; or Mohamed Mohamud, the would-be jihad bomber in Portland; or Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood jihad mass-murderer; or Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square jihad mass-murderer; or Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, the Arkansas military recruiting station jihad murderer; or Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Christmas airplane jihad bomber. Mentioning them might have interfered with her narrative of Muslim persecution in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
“Just like a mother has compassion for her child, Allah has compassion for man. There was a time when Allah’s revelation to the Prophet (PBUH) stopped and the Prophet (PBUH) felt desolate, abandoned, and depressed” she added. Later, revelation returned and the Prophet (PBUH), feeling that the grace of the Lord was proclaimed, he went public in his message. The first Sura (chapter) that was revealed to him from Allah was “Al Duha”, whose opening Ayas (verses), Professor Armstrong quoted from memory: “By the morning hours, and the night when it falls. Your Lord has neither forgotten nor forsaken you. And the hereafter is better for you than present life. And verily, your Lord will give you so that you will be pleased.”
Furthermore, Islam came to spread compassion among the tribes, and consequently among the nations of the world. Compassion is very well testified when Allah ordered the Prophet (PBUH) prayers five times a day and not fifty times. This also indicates another aspect of compassion and that is to be moderate in order to be tolerant. The Qur’an preaches compassion by avoiding the infliction of pain upon others; compassion makes us closely akin to God….
Professor Armstrong is well versed in The Qur’an and has intimate knowledge of Islamic discourse and the life of the Prophet. Whenever she mentioned his name, she followed it by the phrase: Peace Be Upon Him (PBUH)….
That’s interesting. Has Karen Armstrong finally converted to Islam? Does she believe Muhammad was a prophet?
In an interview with Bill Moyers published on March 2009 at Public Broadcasting Service site, Armstrong states that “Islam is a religion of success.… Mohammed was not an apparent failure. He was a dazzling success, politically as well as spiritually, and Islam went from strength to strength to strength.” Armstrong argued that “until the 20th century, Islam was a far more tolerant and peaceful faith than Christianity. The Qur’an strictly forbids any coercion in religion and regards all rightly guided religions as coming from God; and despite the Western belief to the contrary, Muslims did not impose their faith by the sword”.
Armstrong is referring to the dhimma, which was so much more tolerant and peaceful than anything Christianity offered that at the dawn of the twentieth century, there were sixteen to seventeen million Jews in Christian Europe, and one million Jews in Islamic lands. And yes, Islam did not spread by the sword; non-Muslims were subjugated as dhimmis, and made subject to so many deprivations and legalized hardships that they freely converted to Islam just to have a chance at a better life. But no, no one forced them!
In another interview, Armstrong states that “Muslims should try to use the media; they have got to have a Muslim lobby. This is a jihad, an effort, a struggle, that is very important. If you want to change the media, then you have got to make people see that Islam is a force to be reckoned with politically and culturally.”
They’re doing that quite well already.
A challenging post from a sprightly new moderate, i.e. sane, conservative group blog, "Big Tent Revue." Check the whole blog out – and know a little hope.
Fakhruddin Ahmed starts out well in this op-ed, explaining the genesis of “Islamophobia” with a greater degree of honesty than most Muslim spokesmen in the U.S. have ever displayed. But he soon enough resorts to the familiar Islamic supremacist tactic of evading responsibility, pointing fingers at non-Muslims who dare to point out how Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and supremacism and to make recruits among peaceful Muslims. By the end of the piece he has run off the rails entirely, flinging wild charges of racism and bigotry, and blaming Pamela Geller and me for the fact that non-Muslims in America are looking at Islam and Muslims with open eyes, instead of buying into the full-blown campaign of deception, disinformation, and soothing lies that the mainstream media continues to pursue. He never connects up the first half of his piece with the second — in other words, he never explains why Islamic jihad terrorism and Islamic supremacism are real, and yet any resistance to them constitutes racism and hatred.
Yeah, sure, Fakhruddin — as if Pamela Geller and I inspired Khalid Aldawsari, the would-be jihad mass murderer in Lubbock, Texas, or Muhammad Hussain, the would-be jihad bomber in Baltimore, or Mohamed Mohamud, the would-be jihad bomber in Portland, or Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood jihad mass-murderer, or Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square jihad mass-murderer, or Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, the Arkansas military recruiting station jihad murderer, or Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Christmas airplane jihad bomber, or Muhammad Atta, Anjem Chaudary, Omar Bakri, Abu Hamza, Abu Bakar Bashir, Zawahiri, Zarqawi, bin Laden and all the rest.
The Times of Trenton should be ashamed to print such a farrago, but it isn’t really anything special — just another mainstream media outlet printing a deceptive, disingenuous piece claiming victim status for Muslims in order to deflect attention away from jihad terror and Islamic supremacism.
“Examining a painful history fraught with transgressions,” by Fakhruddin Ahmed in the Times of Trenton, March 12 (thanks to James):
There are cogent reasons why roughly half of Americans, according to polls, harbor an unfavorable opinion of Islam. Besides perpetrating the most horrendous crime on American soil on 9/11, Muslims have been responsible for some pretty ugly incidents lately.
The Ayatollah Khomeini challenged one of the West’s core values, freedom of speech, by issuing a “fatwa,” or religious decree, in 1989, for the murder of Salman Rushdie over his controversial book, “The Satanic Verses.”
The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were quickly followed by Muslim terror attacks in Bali, Indonesia (2002), Madrid (2004), London (2005) and Mumbai (2008). And when some Muslims went berserk, burning and boycotting in reaction to the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2006, the rest of the world held its collective breath in consternation.
Muslim terrorists’ attempts to blow up planes, airports, tunnels and subways in America were thwarted. And if Qur’ans had actually been burned by Pastor Terry Jones in Florida last fall, as he threatened to do, some Muslims would have reacted by creating mayhem. Clearly, there is a less-enlightened, fanatically violent underbelly at work in the name of Islam. Understandably, the Judeo-Christian polemic against Islam centers on terrorism.
Submerged in an all-encompassing anti-Muslim hysteria, when non-Muslim Americans see signs of increasing Muslim presence around them, they feel besieged by an intimidating culture. That America’s complexion is transforming from shades of white to brown is difficult for many Americans to stomach; when some of those brown faces belong to Muslims, the transformation becomes downright frightening.
With no prominent Muslim-American voice to assuage those apprehensions, fear begets fear, spawning more virulent anti-Muslim vitriol.
Are Muslims, their religion and their culture a mortal threat to America? Is this the vaunted “Clash of Civilizations” between the West and Islam, as Harvard’s Samuel Huntington had predicted in 1993?
Civilizational narratives are rarely one-dimensional. Western democracies, especially Britain and France, exploited and repressed most Muslim nations as colonial powers over the centuries, souring Muslim taste for democracy. Conceivably, America’s more recent interventions in the Islamic world are fueling Americaphobia. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, with the concomitant collateral death of thousands of civilians, have exacerbated Muslim-American relations, as have the al Qaeda-seeking drone attacks inside Pakistan that inadvertently kill civilians and whose legality stands on shaky grounds.
We may consider ourselves to be the “good guys” eliminating the “bad guys” before they attack us; but to the child of the civilian we kill in Afghanistan, we are the bad guys. He or she may vow to exact vengeance.
Quid pro quo is in vogue in international relations. America garnered the Muslim world’s gratitude when it rushed to bolster the Afghans after the Soviet invasion of 1979 (which led to Muslim participation in Gulf War I in 1991), and liberated the Bosnians (1995) and the Kosovars (1999) from the Serbs. Muslims were not thrilled, however, when America attacked Afghanistan in 2001 (and has occupied it since); the neoconservatives fabricated WMD “evidence” to facilitate President George W. Bush’s attack of Iraq in 2003; and America started waging an undeclared war inside Pakistan.
Excluded from the debate about them inside America, and reduced to passive observers, Muslim-Americans are chagrined at the spectacle unfolding right before their eyes. Right-wing Republicans see no downside to demonizing the Muslims. It energizes their base, carries no political penalty, and forces the Democrats to defend a progressively unpopular minority.
Democratic defense of Muslim-Americans has not been stellar either, perhaps because they, too, secretly covet the bigot vote. Deprecators realize that Muslim-Americans, who number only 7 million, cannot retaliate electorally, making Muslim-baiting a win-win proposition.
Sarah Palin tweeted last July, imploring “peaceful Muslims” to “refudiate” the proposed New York City mosque near Ground Zero. Other Republicans and some Democrats jumped on the bandwagon, attaching intellectual heft to an originally ignorant far-right-fringe viewpoint.
A “moderate” Muslim is being redefined as one who condemns on demand. Detractors are not interested in Muslim points of view; they want Muslim condemnation of Islam. For them, Islam-bashing is the new normal, the new acceptable form of racism. If any other ethnic or religious group was so maliciously mauled, the attackers would be branded incurable racists.
What astonishes Muslim-Americans is that those hurling imprecations at them on television, on the radio and in the blogosphere do not seem to care that Muslim-Americans are watching and listening. It’s as though Muslim-Americans are apparitions that do not really exist or have feelings. Muslims feel like screaming: “Hey, I am in the room. Stop backbiting!”
The virus incubated by right-wing bloggers Pam Geller and Robert Spencer has been spread so far and wide by Fox News that all of America is now infected with an anti-Muslim epidemic. It hurts Muslim-Americans to see their patriotism questioned, their faith defined, distorted and defiled beyond recognition by anti-Muslim bigots through blatant lies. It is un-American to attempt to sacrifice an entire America-loving community, already reeling under vicious attacks, at the altar of higher television ratings.
Fakhruddin Ahmed starts out well in this op-ed, explaining the genesis of “Islamophobia” with a greater degree of honesty than most Muslim spokesmen in the U.S. have ever displayed. But he soon enough resorts to the familiar Islamic supremacist tactic of evading responsibility, pointing fingers at non-Muslims who dare to point out how Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and supremacism and to make recruits among peaceful Muslims. By the end of the piece he has run off the rails entirely, flinging wild charges of racism and bigotry, and blaming Pamela Geller and me for the fact that non-Muslims in America are looking at Islam and Muslims with open eyes, instead of buying into the full-blown campaign of deception, disinformation, and soothing lies that the mainstream media continues to pursue. He never connects up the first half of his piece with the second — in other words, he never explains why Islamic jihad terrorism and Islamic supremacism are real, and yet any resistance to them constitutes racism and hatred.
Yeah, sure, Fakhruddin — as if Pamela Geller and I inspired Khalid Aldawsari, the would-be jihad mass murderer in Lubbock, Texas, or Muhammad Hussain, the would-be jihad bomber in Baltimore, or Mohamed Mohamud, the would-be jihad bomber in Portland, or Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood jihad mass-murderer, or Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square jihad mass-murderer, or Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, the Arkansas military recruiting station jihad murderer, or Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Christmas airplane jihad bomber, or Muhammad Atta, Anjem Chaudary, Omar Bakri, Abu Hamza, Abu Bakar Bashir, Zawahiri, Zarqawi, bin Laden and all the rest.
The Times of Trenton should be ashamed to print such a farrago, but it isn’t really anything special — just another mainstream media outlet printing a deceptive, disingenuous piece claiming victim status for Muslims in order to deflect attention away from jihad terror and Islamic supremacism.
“Examining a painful history fraught with transgressions,” by Fakhruddin Ahmed in the Times of Trenton, March 12 (thanks to James):
There are cogent reasons why roughly half of Americans, according to polls, harbor an unfavorable opinion of Islam. Besides perpetrating the most horrendous crime on American soil on 9/11, Muslims have been responsible for some pretty ugly incidents lately.
The Ayatollah Khomeini challenged one of the West’s core values, freedom of speech, by issuing a “fatwa,” or religious decree, in 1989, for the murder of Salman Rushdie over his controversial book, “The Satanic Verses.”
The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were quickly followed by Muslim terror attacks in Bali, Indonesia (2002), Madrid (2004), London (2005) and Mumbai (2008). And when some Muslims went berserk, burning and boycotting in reaction to the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2006, the rest of the world held its collective breath in consternation.
Muslim terrorists’ attempts to blow up planes, airports, tunnels and subways in America were thwarted. And if Qur’ans had actually been burned by Pastor Terry Jones in Florida last fall, as he threatened to do, some Muslims would have reacted by creating mayhem. Clearly, there is a less-enlightened, fanatically violent underbelly at work in the name of Islam. Understandably, the Judeo-Christian polemic against Islam centers on terrorism.
Submerged in an all-encompassing anti-Muslim hysteria, when non-Muslim Americans see signs of increasing Muslim presence around them, they feel besieged by an intimidating culture. That America’s complexion is transforming from shades of white to brown is difficult for many Americans to stomach; when some of those brown faces belong to Muslims, the transformation becomes downright frightening.
With no prominent Muslim-American voice to assuage those apprehensions, fear begets fear, spawning more virulent anti-Muslim vitriol.
Are Muslims, their religion and their culture a mortal threat to America? Is this the vaunted “Clash of Civilizations” between the West and Islam, as Harvard’s Samuel Huntington had predicted in 1993?
Civilizational narratives are rarely one-dimensional. Western democracies, especially Britain and France, exploited and repressed most Muslim nations as colonial powers over the centuries, souring Muslim taste for democracy. Conceivably, America’s more recent interventions in the Islamic world are fueling Americaphobia. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, with the concomitant collateral death of thousands of civilians, have exacerbated Muslim-American relations, as have the al Qaeda-seeking drone attacks inside Pakistan that inadvertently kill civilians and whose legality stands on shaky grounds.
We may consider ourselves to be the “good guys” eliminating the “bad guys” before they attack us; but to the child of the civilian we kill in Afghanistan, we are the bad guys. He or she may vow to exact vengeance.
Quid pro quo is in vogue in international relations. America garnered the Muslim world’s gratitude when it rushed to bolster the Afghans after the Soviet invasion of 1979 (which led to Muslim participation in Gulf War I in 1991), and liberated the Bosnians (1995) and the Kosovars (1999) from the Serbs. Muslims were not thrilled, however, when America attacked Afghanistan in 2001 (and has occupied it since); the neoconservatives fabricated WMD “evidence” to facilitate President George W. Bush’s attack of Iraq in 2003; and America started waging an undeclared war inside Pakistan.
Excluded from the debate about them inside America, and reduced to passive observers, Muslim-Americans are chagrined at the spectacle unfolding right before their eyes. Right-wing Republicans see no downside to demonizing the Muslims. It energizes their base, carries no political penalty, and forces the Democrats to defend a progressively unpopular minority.
Democratic defense of Muslim-Americans has not been stellar either, perhaps because they, too, secretly covet the bigot vote. Deprecators realize that Muslim-Americans, who number only 7 million, cannot retaliate electorally, making Muslim-baiting a win-win proposition.
Sarah Palin tweeted last July, imploring “peaceful Muslims” to “refudiate” the proposed New York City mosque near Ground Zero. Other Republicans and some Democrats jumped on the bandwagon, attaching intellectual heft to an originally ignorant far-right-fringe viewpoint.
A “moderate” Muslim is being redefined as one who condemns on demand. Detractors are not interested in Muslim points of view; they want Muslim condemnation of Islam. For them, Islam-bashing is the new normal, the new acceptable form of racism. If any other ethnic or religious group was so maliciously mauled, the attackers would be branded incurable racists.
What astonishes Muslim-Americans is that those hurling imprecations at them on television, on the radio and in the blogosphere do not seem to care that Muslim-Americans are watching and listening. It’s as though Muslim-Americans are apparitions that do not really exist or have feelings. Muslims feel like screaming: “Hey, I am in the room. Stop backbiting!”
The virus incubated by right-wing bloggers Pam Geller and Robert Spencer has been spread so far and wide by Fox News that all of America is now infected with an anti-Muslim epidemic. It hurts Muslim-Americans to see their patriotism questioned, their faith defined, distorted and defiled beyond recognition by anti-Muslim bigots through blatant lies. It is un-American to attempt to sacrifice an entire America-loving community, already reeling under vicious attacks, at the altar of higher television ratings.
MONROVIA, Liberia — Less than an hour’s flight away from the Ivory’s Coast’s capital of Abidjan, fears are growing that what started as a national Ivorian crisis could quickly infect the entire West African region.
Since outgoing Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo first refused to step down from office late last year, tension has consistently ratcheted up, and violence between Gbagbo and his political rival, election winner Alassane Ouattara, has only grown. In just a matter of days, the number of refugees leaving the Ivory Coast for Liberia has quadrupled from 20,000 to 80,000, and fighting — once far in the interior of the country — has reached the border.
"The civil conflict [in the Ivory Coast] … at times it seems like it’s on the verge of war," U.S. Embassy Deputy Chief of Mission Karl P. Albrecht told me yesterday. "It could be a destabilizing or unsettling influence, and in addition to all the challenges that Liberia faces," he said, noting that this is a presidential election year for the country, "now this [Ivory Coast] factor is in the mix."
Here in West Africa, peace is fragile. Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone have all suffered civil wars within the last decade, and in every case, the fighting was regionally tainted. Liberia’s warlord-turned-president, Charles Taylor, supported rebels in Sierra Leone and backed a certain faction in Ivory Coast’s civil war as well. The greatest fear for this region — so desperate to recover from years of conflict — is that the smallest spark could reignite the regional fire again. Over the last few days, those fears haven’t looked unfounded. Two developments are of greatest concern: the growing refugee crisis and the active fighting along the Ivory Coast-Liberia border.
Take the refugee crisis — the largest West Africa has seen in half a decade. After an initial flood of refugees in January, the numbers of people crossing the border had slowed to a mere 100 per day — until just a few days ago. Now there are some 80,000 refugees in Liberia, far outpacing capacity to house and assist them. The current refugee camp under construction has room for a mere 15,000. That’s less than half of the number that arrived in the last weekend alone.
For now, many of the incoming refugees are staying with Liberian families, sharing their food and being welcomed into their homes. "They have shared their rice with them, even though they themselves are getting strained," Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said in a radio address to her country on Monday. "If [the number of refugees] climbs too high, it will be trouble for us."
The fighting along the border is even more troubling — and the cause of the refugee crisis in the first place. On Monday, the rebel group Forces Nouvelles took a third town along the border, now controlling a 30-mile strip along the border. The ex-rebels support Ouattara, the internationally recognized winner of last November’s presidential election; Gbagbo supporters have fought back. And civilians have undoubtedly been the victims. In many ways they already are; Gbagbo cut electricity and water to the Ouattara-stronghold in the northern part of the country over a week ago.
But here’s the part that scares Liberia — and West Africa — most of all. During Ivory Coast’s civil war early this century, the Forces Nouvelles had allies in a faction of former Liberian rebels who supported Charles Taylor. And rumors are circulating here that those Liberian men might be traveling back across the border to join the fighting again. U.N. security forces here confirm that armed men also tried to cross the border into Liberia on Sunday.
It’s a potent combination: fighting along the border, recruitment of ex-rebels into the Ivorian conflict, and refugees streaming over the border, burdening already economically stretched Liberians. An Ivorian resident of Monrovia, whose wife lives in Abidjan, told me that his family hadn’t left the home for days, afraid of the violence on the streets. "It’s a civil war in Abidjan. It’s really bad." The question is, will it spread?
Missing: Marizela Perez
I just got off the phone with my family.
This is my beautiful cousin, Marizela Perez:
She is a University of Washington undergrad and she has been missing since Saturday afternoon, when she left the Rainier Beach neighborhood headed to the UW Seattle campus. Her parents have been trying to reach her all weekend; she apparently never made it to campus and has not been heard from by phone/Internet. They’ve filed a missing persons report with the Seattle Police Department. Hospitals have been alerted, according to family members, and bus and train routes have been checked. No sign.
Here’s more info we’re trying to spread via Facebook and Q13Fox/KCPQ in Seattle:
This is my beautiful cousin, Marizela Perez:
She is a University of Washington undergrad and she has been missing since Saturday afternoon, when she left the Rainier Beach neighborhood headed to the UW Seattle campus. Her parents have been trying to reach her all weekend; she apparently never made it to campus and has not been heard from by phone/Internet. They’ve filed a missing persons report with the Seattle Police Department. Hospitals have been alerted, according to family members, and bus and train routes have been checked. No sign.
Here’s more info we’re trying to spread via Facebook and Q13Fox/KCPQ in Seattle:
MISSING PERSON
Name: Marizela Perez
Date Missing: March 5, 2011, 12:00-12:30 P.M.
Last Seen: Rainier Beach area, heading to UW Seattle campus to meet friends for lunch or study in the UW libraries
Possible Routes: Sound Link Light Rail stations, downtown/Chinatown areas, UW Seattle campus, U-district
Description – Asian female, 5’5” tall, 110 lbs, skinny build, asymmetrical bob with short bangs and brown/red highlights hairstyle, tattoo on left inner arm with the words ‘lahat ay magiging maayos’, last seen wearing denim jeans, light brown suede laced boots, possibly wearing green eye contacts, possibly carrying a plaid backpack with a Macbook Pro laptop, taking medication for depression.
Seattle-area readers, can you please help get the word out — and if you or anyone you know might know anything about Marizela’s (nickname: “Em-Em”) whereabouts, please get in touch with the Seattle Police Department/UWPD or contacts listed at Facebook link above ASAP.
Marizela, if you are able to let your dad and mom know that you are okay, please contact them. You are so loved.
***
“Lahat ay magiging maayos” is Tagalog for “All will be well.”
May God make it so. Please keep my cousin and her family in your prayers. Thank you.
Please email me at [email protected] to be put onto my mailing list.
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Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com
One of the leading experts on Saudi Arabia poured cold water on the idea of the Arab uprisings spreading to the Kingdom at a speech Thursday, and finished his presentation with a bizarre rant against the U.S.-Saudi relationship and the “Israeli lobby.”
Robert Lacey, the British bestselling author of two books on Saudi Arabia-the most recent being 2009’s Inside the Kingdom-spoke at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C., on whether the protests that have toppled governments in Tunisia and Egypt (and may be on the verge of toppling Moammar Gaddafi in Libya) would move to Saudi Arabia.
Though Lacey tried to avoid speculating, about an hour into the event he was asked directly whether Tahrir Square would come to Riyadh.
“No, it won’t,” Lacey said. He dismissed “the idea that young Saudis are young hippies,” adding:
“The problem with young Saudis is that they’re too fundamentalist, they’re too conservative. And let’s not forget, the conservative Muslims don’t want democracy. They don’t want rule by people, they want rule by God. They don’t trust the ballot box. What happened when there was voting in Saudi Arabia for the municipal elections? All the bearded ones got returned.”
Lacey said the lack of housing combined with population growth-something the government encourages, despite the lack of resources for it-are “time bomb” issues that must be addressed.
“What I am taking issue with is the idea that Western, democratic solutions to this are what these people are asking for,” Lacey said. “These young people are in my experience deeply conservative.”
Lacey has lived in Saudi Arabia while researching for his books. He said the first time he lived in the Kingdom all the country’s governors were Western-educated technocrats who understood the intricacies of urban planning-an education that went almost completely unappreciated, he said:
“There’s not a single one of those left now. Now they’re all princes [running the cities]. And why are they princes? It’s not because the royal family pushed them. It’s because the local communities said: We want a prince. We don’t want some technocrat who’s got a degree in social management or town planning, we want a prince who can phone the king and get us what we want.”
But Lacey closed his remarks with a comment on the proposed $ 60 billion U.S.-Saudi arms deal. The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. is reviewing its arms sales to the region amid the uprisings, uncertain at this point which Mideast regimes are stable enough to receive American weapons.
“The $ 60 billion Saudi deal for F-15 fighters has already cleared Congress but prospective sales of naval ships and missile-defense systems to Saudi Arabia and other regional partners have yet to be completed and could run into congressional hurdles,” according to the Journal.
Lacey told the audience that he was happy to hear the deal might be in trouble, but is disappointed now that it looks to be going through after all. As a Brit, he said, he is resentful of the U.S. “monopolizing all the arms and leaving us Europeans out.”
His consolation, however, was that the arms sale at least stuck it to the “Israeli lobby.” His closing comments pivoted from complaints about the apparently undue influence of pro-Israel lobbyists to claims that the American arms deal enables the U.S. to help quell any possible uprising in and around the Kingdom:
“For the first time, the Israeli lobby had to yield to the fact that [the arms deal] would create 60,000 [American] jobs. Normally there’s no reason for an American congressman to quarrel with the Israeli lobby. Why cause trouble? But now there’s a real alternative: are you going to vote against 60,000 jobs in the country? And the Saudis have shrewdly seized this moment and pushed it through and that’s why I think they are pushing it through. But of course the result of it is that it will turn Saudi Arabia into an American battleship… although these arms are being sold to the Saudis to use, it means that if there is ever really serious trouble in the Middle East, American personnel can come in, as they [did] in 1990 and just take over all weapons systems, operate them and do whatever they have to do. As you know, this new military deal gives helicopter potential to the national guard for the first time and that obviously when it comes to the repression of internal disorder, gives the national guard an enormous extra potential. I think America should bless Saudi Arabia as sustaining your arms industry so generously.”
Has Lacey “gone native,” as they say? It’s difficult to conclude otherwise. His presentation about Saudi Arabia was notable for three recurring themes: insistence that Saudis want less liberalization, not more; resentment of the projection of American power; and conspiratorial thinking about Zionist influence on the American government.
There are two “days of rage” planned for Saudi Arabia this month. And if they amount to anything, the “experts” will be the ones most surprised.
What-you didn’t know the Arabs have a lobby?
From an email I received from DG
The New York Times sheds some light on the Arab lobby.
Arab Unrest Puts Their Lobbyists in Uneasy Spot
(Though I’m skipping a bit, the first example is excellent.)
Now the Washington lobbyists for Arab nations find themselves in a precarious spot, as they try to stay a step ahead of the fast-changing events without being seen as aiding despots and dictators. In Libya, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen, Egypt and other countries in the region, leaders have relied increasingly on Washington’s top lobbyists and lawyers, paying them tens of millions of dollars. Some consultants are tacking toward a more progressive stance in light of pro-democracy protests, while others are dropping their clients altogether because of the tumult.
and
As a rule, leaders in the Middle East have paid consultants generously, even by Washington lobbying standards, with monthly retainers commonly reaching $ 50,000 or more, according to federal filings.
(Price breaks are available, however: the law firm of White & Case promised Libya “a special 15 percent discount off of our standard rates” in light of the “significant relationship” it hoped to forge with Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s country in 2008, according to the contract.)
The United Arab Emirates spent $ 5.3 million in 2009 for lobbying American officials — second only to the Cayman Islands, which has lobbied to retain its status as a tax haven, according to an analysis by Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit research group. Working through DLA Piper and other Washington-based firms, the Emirates have sought greater access to American nuclear technology.
Morocco spent more than $ 3 million on Washington lobbyists, much of it aimed at gaining an edge in its border dispute with Algeria, while Algeria countered by spending $ 600,000 itself.
Turkey, which shares some interests with the Middle East countries, spent nearly $ 1.7 million in 2009 to lobby American officials on Turkish and Middle Eastern policy through the firms of Richard A. Gephardt, a former House leader; Mr. Livingston and other prominent lobbyists.And Saudi Arabia, one of the most powerful foreign interests here, spent about $ 1.5 million in 2009 on Washington firms, and it has a $ 600,000 annual contract with Hogan Lovells aimed partly at fighting legislation and litigation that would challenge OPEC’s influence over oil prices.
“These kinds of regimes have a lot of money at their disposal, and that’s a great attraction,” said Howard Marlowe, president of the American League of Lobbyists. Still, he said, “a number of lobbyists will stay away from international clients — period.” To work with dictators in Middle Eastern nations with policies that many Americans find unsavory, he said, “you have to have a strong stomach.”
Would this article have ever been published if these regimes were not under scrutiny? And remember charges that Israel has undue influence in American government aren’t exactly unheard of.
Technorati Tag: Arab Lobby.
Communists getting nervous about the revolts against tyranny.
American Thinker Blog
(CNN) – The fight over public union benefits and collective bargaining is spreading across the United States. Here is a state-by-state breakdown:
The sudden up-tick in HIV-specific laws in African countries has been tied directly to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Housing Works, an organization that advocates for the rights of HIV-positive people in the U.S. and abroad, reports on their blog Wednesday that USAID funded a 2004 Action for West Africa Region HIV-AIDS program that pushed HIV-specific criminal laws. The program received a grant of $ 35 million over five years. As part of the program’s activities, a “model” HIV-specific criminal law was created.
While the U.S. led the way in creating such laws in the late 80s, USAID says it opposes criminalization of HIV.
The advocacy group says these laws spread to at least 27 African countries since 2004. Prior to the advent of the model law framework, there were no African countries with HIV-specific laws. The spread of the laws has been called “legislation contagion” by the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network.
Advocates say the laws open HIV-positive people in Africa to human rights abuses.
The template contains a number of dangerous provisions.
First, it punishes the “willful transmission” of HIV through “any means.” This phrase opens the door for wide interpretation, allowing governments to incarcerate a person practicing safer sex, regardless of whether he or she informs a partner of his or her status. The template also opens the possibility of punishment for mothers who pass HIV to their children, regardless of precautions taken to stop transmission.
Second, the model law penalizes partners who do not disclose HIV status to a “spouse or regular sexual partner” within six weeks of diagnosis. In countries where HIV-positive status can subject a person to social isolation, exile, physical abuse or even death, this provision has major implications.
Women, said Frederica Stines, Africa program officer at the International Women’s Health Coalition, will be the overwhelming victims of this criminalization creep. They are more likely to know their HIV status; more likely to be the victims of rape; more likely to be thrown out of their homes because of their status; and less likely to be able to insist on condom use. “Criminalizing is not prevention,” said Stines, who has more than a decade of experience promoting reproductive rights in Africa. “Who wants to know their status if they could be arrested?”
Many governments adapted the model law but altered it in a way that allows for even broader abuses. Togo’s law makes any sex without a condom an illegal act, regardless of HIV status. Benin’s version makes it a crime for a person who knows he or she is infected to engage in “unprotected sexual relations” without disclosing his or her status—no actual transmission of HIV is required. Burundi’s version says that the government can try a “willful” transmitter for murder.
Housing Works also ties the criminalization movement to the brutal beating death of an Ugandan leader for LGBT rights. David Kato was an activist fighting the proposed “Kill Gays” legislation in Uganda. He was found bludgeoned to death in his home last month. Many Ugandan newspapers have been publishing lists of suspected gay or lesbian people, and calling for violence against them.
As the Florida Independent, a sister publication of the Michigan Messenger, reported Wednesday, the “Kill Gays” legislation was inspired by U.S. based anti-gay evangelicals. The legislation has also been tied to the shadowy politico-Christian group The Family which counts among its members former U.S. Reps. Pete Hoekstra and Bart Stupak as well as other leading conservative lawmakers in D.C.
Ironically, while African countries like Uganda point a finger at homosexuality as the cause of the HIV epidemic in Africa, statistics show the epidemic in Africa is driven by heterosexual behavior and reuse of dirty needles.
A few days ago, Gov. Scott Walker’s effort to end collective bargaining for state employees looked almost certain to spread to other GOP-led states. And there has been some interest, notably from Ohio’s John Kasich and New Jersey’s Chris Christie. But over the last 24 hours, we’ve also begun to see some pushback from Republican governors. In Florida, Gov. Rick Scott told a radio program that he wouldn’t be pursuing a plan similar to Walker’s. “My belief is as long as people know what they’re doing, collective bargaining is fine,” he said. In Indiana, where Republican legislators have introduced a bill mirroring Wisconsin’s and Democratic legislators have responded by fleeing the state, Gov. Mitch Daniels has asked his allies to table the legislation. “For reasons I’ve explained more than once I thought there was a better time and place to have this very important and legitimate issue raised,” Daniels argued.
There are a couple of possible reasons that this effort isn’t spreading further and faster among some of the GOP’s gubernatorial class. The unions have made clear that attempting to take collective bargaining rights will be, if nothing else, a huge hassle. The various governors have a lot they want to get done over the next couple of months — Daniels, for instance, is pushing legislation that’d bring vouchers to Indiana’s school system — and don’t see an interminable fight over ending collective bargaining as the best way to spend their political capital. And some might have sensed what a Gallup/USA Today poll found yesterday — that more than 60 percent of Americans opposed ending collective bargaining, and they’re not even that friendly to cutting pay and benefits for state workers.
It’s still too early to say what will happen in Wisconsin. The Democrats can’t hang out in Illinois forever, and Walker has left himself very little room to negotiate a compromise. But at this point, it seems clear that the unions have, if nothing else, conveyed the message that ending collective bargaining wil be a difficult, exhausting, and polarizing fight wherever it is tried. And that might prove enough to get other governors to think twice before trying it.
Top Stories
Harry Reid has unveiled his stopgap spending proposal, reports Corey Boles: “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) said he would bring legislation to the Senate floor next week to keep federal government funding at current levels for a month while lawmakers work out a longer-term deal on this year’s federal budget. Mr. Reid’s strategy instantly ran into difficulty when his Republican counterpart, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), said the measure was unacceptable because it didn’t cut government spending. House Republican leaders also quickly rejected Mr. Reid’s proposal…Unless the Democratic-led Senate and Republican-led House can agree to a funding extension, the federal government would be required to shut down on March 5, when the current temporary measure expires.”
Indiana lawmakers have followed Wisconsin senators by walking out, report Michael Fletcher and Brady Dennis: “Democratic lawmakers in the Indiana House followed the lead of their counterparts in Wisconsin, refusing to show up at the capitol and thus preventing Republicans from having the two-thirds quorum needed to vote on numerous bills, including a controversial measure that would curtail private-sector union rights. At issue is a ‘right to work’ bill that would no longer require private-sector workers to belong to a union or pay for union representation. Union officials have called the effort an attempt to weaken workers’ collective bargaining power. The bill’s author, Republican Rep. Jerry Torr, has said it is an effort to draw employers to the state and create jobs.”
But Mitch Daniels, the governor of Indiana, is taking a very different approach than Scott Walker, reports Evan McMorris-Santoro: “Members of the Democratic state House caucus in Indiana have found an unlikely ally in their quest to stop the GOP majority from pushing through a bill that critics say would destroy union organizing in the state. Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) took to the airwaves today to call on members of his party to drop the controversial ‘right to work’ bill that led to Democrats going AWOL. Daniels’ statement: ‘I’m not sending the state police after anybody. I’m not gonna divert a single trooper from their job of protection the Indiana public. I trust that people’s consciences will bring them back to work..For reasons I’ve explained more than once I thought there was a better time and place to have this very important and legitimate issue raised.’”
Obama has not met with unemployed people on his economic tours, reports Perry Bacon: “President Obama has traveled across the country since the November midterm elections to tout his economic vision and rebuild relationships with the business community, meeting with executives, community college presidents, students, venture capitalists, plant workers and others. One group has been left out: the nearly one in 10 working-age Americans who are seeking a job but can’t find one. In eight trips outside Washington since Election Day, Obama – who frequently says he uses such travel to better understand the lives of Americans – has held almost no formal meetings with groups of unemployed people or organizations that advocate for them.”
The earmark ban is causing some lawmakers to rethink their roles, report David Fahrenthold and Philip Rucker: “Is Rep. Harold Rogers the right man to break Congress’s addiction to spending? One might ponder that question…during a drive on Hal Rogers Boulevard. Or Hal Rogers Drive. Or Hal Rogers Parkway. Rogers, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, is the point man for GOP budget slashing…One of Rogers’s top committee deputies is Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R). In Florida, his name adorns a drawbridge, a marine science complex and a military depot. Their stories reveal the larger struggle behind the current spending debate in Washington. It’s not just about money. It’s about Congress’s DNA – and changing the definition of what a Congress member is.”
Shoegaze interlude: Blonde Redhead plays “Spring And By Summer Fall” live.
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Still to come: We’re getting pretty near to the debt limit; a federal judge has tossed out an anti-health care reform lawsuit; the White House is telling agencies to prepare for a government shutdown; the Energy Department is losing staff due to looming budget cuts; and cats who look like Ron Swanson.
Economy
We’re getting pretty near to the debt limit, writes Pete Davis: “On January 6, Treasury announced it would hit the debt limit no later than May 16, but it modified that to May 31, 2011 on February 2. It will issue another update during the first week of March. Then there’s the question of how much leeway Treasury may have to postpone exceeding the debt limit. ‘As of August 31, 2010, the extraordinary actions available to Treasury could provide about $ 147.5 billion in additional borrowing capacity without a DISP and an additional $ 7.7 billion per month based on the length of the DISP declared.’ [Page 10] Treasury could also run down its cash on hand and cash at the Fed. Altogether that might give Treasury an extra month or two.”
Credit card reform is showing good results: http://wapo.st/dNSLDY
The Senate will hold a year’s worth of hearings on tax reform, reports John McKinnon: “Overhaul of the tax code got off to a strong start in the Senate Finance Committee, with the announcement late Tuesday of a lengthy series of hearings. Still, it remains unclear whether any serious tax changes will get through before the 2012 political silly season begins. And the timetable laid out on Tuesday suggests that lawmakers are in no particular rush. Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D., Mont.) and the committee’s top Republican, Orrin Hatch of Utah, said the first hearing, entitled ‘How Did We Get Here?’ will look at the economic and policy changes that have occurred since the last big reform in 1986, and how U.S. tax rules have and have not kept up.”
The Treasury Department is running out of ways to avoid the debt limit, reports Andrew Ackerman: “The Treasury Department’s ability to take ‘extraordinary measures’ to avoid tripping up against the federal debt limit may not be as effective as in the past because of ballooning federal debt levels, a congressional watchdog warned Tuesday. As a result, Congress will have much less time to debate increasing the debt limit to prevent the federal government from hitting the fast-approaching $ 14.294 trillion debt cap, the Government Accountability Office said. ‘Treasury’s past success at managing cash and debt when near or at the debt limit is no guarantee that it can continue to manage successfully in the future and may be misleading,’ GAO said in a 55-page report. The Treasury recently notified Congress that the current debt limit could be reached as early as April 5.”
Germany’s economic miracle isn’t looking so good, asks David Leonhardt: “Germany’s economic growth surged in the middle of last year, causing commentators both there and here to proclaim that American stimulus had failed and German austerity had worked. Germany’s announced budget cuts, the commentators said, had given private companies enough confidence in the government to begin spending their own money again. Well, it turns out the German boom didn’t last long. With its modest stimulus winding down, Germany’s growth slowed sharply late last year, and its economic output still has not recovered to its prerecession peak. Output in the United States — where the stimulus program has been bigger and longer lasting — has recovered. This country would now need to suffer through a double-dip recession for its gross domestic product to be in the same condition as Germany’s.”
Social Security isn’t part of our deficit problem, writes OMB director Jack Lew: http://usat.ly/f9UfQ8
The Republican war on unions is broader than Wisconsin, writes Harold Meyerson: “For a more comprehensive view of the Republicans’ war on unions, we need to focus on what Republicans in Washington did last week. In the House, Republicans passed, as part of their continuing resolution to fund the federal government through September, a provision that slashed the funding of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) by one-third. But the truly breathtaking measure was an amendment by Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) to defund the NLRB – closing it down altogether – until the fiscal year ends in September. The measure failed Thursday because 60 Republicans joined every Democrat present in voting no, but three-quarters of House Republicans – 176 of them, including Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) – voted yes. In other words, the House leadership supported abolishing the right of American workers – in the private sector no less than the public sector – to bargain collectively.”
Scott Walker is overreaching, writes Steven Pearlstein: “One old trick is to suggest a thought experiment that asks readers to consider the mirror image of what is going on. In this case, you’d be asked what the reaction would be from Republicans and business interests if a newly elected Democratic governor and legislature proposed to deal with a budget deficit by first raising unemployment benefits and then pushing through a big corporate tax increase for all but the Democratic-leaning tech sector. For good measure, the package would also contain a ban on corporations making political donations without getting the permission of each shareholder…This is analogous, of course, to what Gov. Scott Walker has proposed for dealing with Wisconsin’s budget gap.”
Baking interlude: A playable Angry Birds cake.
Health Care
A federal judge has tossed out an anti-health care reform lawsuit, reports Nedra Pickler: “A federal judge on Tuesday threw out a lawsuit claiming that President Barack Obama’s requirement that all Americans have health insurance violates the religious freedom of those who rely on God to protect them. U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler in Washington dismissed a lawsuit filed by the American Center for Law and Justice, a Christian legal group founded by evangelist Pat Robertson, on behalf of five Americans who can afford health insurance but have chosen for years not to buy it…Kessler is the third Democratic-appointed judge to dismiss a challenge, while two Republican-appointed judges have ruled part or all of the law unconstitutional.”
A Supreme Court case on Congressional powers offers limited guidance as to the Court’s eventual health care ruling: http://nyti.ms/hMdgit
Budget cuts are ending a Pennsylvania program for low-income adults, reports Jenny Gold: “Pennsylvania’s adultBasic insurance was created in 2001 and is one of only a handful of health plans funded entirely by states to provide coverage to low-income adults who do not qualify for Medicaid, the joint federal-state health insurance for the poor. Such individuals will be eligible for either subsidized private coverage or be covered by an expansion of Medicaid under the new federal health law, but those provisions do not kick in until 2014…Shortly after taking office in January, however, Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican, announced that the program was out of money and coverage for all participants would end Feb. 28.”
Domestic Policy
The White House is telling federal agencies to prepare for a shutdown, reports Ed O’Keefe: “Federal agencies are preparing to operate at reduced levels if a government shutdown occurs, but the Obama administration hopes to strike a deal with congressional Republicans to avoid one, the White House said Tuesday. By March 4, lawmakers must pass a short-term resolution to continue funding the government, or President Obama and congressional leaders can strike a deal on how to fund government operations for the final seven months of fiscal 2011. Failing to do so would prompt at least a partial shutdown affecting various agencies and functions… OMB would not provide details Tuesday of individual agency plans, but most workers might stay on the job if a shutdown occurs.
Senators are still asking for de facto earmarks: http://bit.ly/evxyiX
There is no correlation between unionization and state budget deficits, writes John Sides: http://bit.ly/eiA0Pv
The Democratic party has abandoned the union movement, writes Kevin Drum: “Organized labor requires government support to thrive-things like the right to organize workplaces, rules that prevent retaliation against union leaders, and requirements that management negotiate in good faith-and in America, that support traditionally came from the Democratic Party…As unions increasingly withered beginning in the ’70s, the Democratic Party turned to the only other source of money and influence available in large-enough quantities to replace big labor: the business community. The rise of neoliberalism in the ’80s, given concrete form by the Democratic Leadership Council, was fundamentally an effort to make the party more friendly to business.”
Parks and Recreation interlude: Cats who look like Ron Swanson.
Energy
Cuts are spurring heavy turnover in the Department of Energy, reports Stephen Power: ” The third-ranking official at the Department of Energy is leaving the Obama administration next month, becoming the latest in a series of high-level departures from an agency whose budget is increasingly at the center of partisan clashes… The DOE is at the center of a growing battle between President Obama and Republicans in Congress involving the agency’s spending levels and priorities. Mr. Obama last week proposed increasing the department’s budget for the fiscal year that begins in October nearly 12%, to $ 29.5 billion, partly to pay for big increases in spending on wind, solar and geothermal projects at the department. Republicans in the House have proposed cutting support for some of those projects.
Harry Reid will not allow EPA climate rule defunding into the Senate spending bill: http://bit.ly/ei94zy
Closing credits: Wonkbook is compiled and produced with help from Dylan Matthews and Michelle Williams.
Several hundred protestors expected to show up in Lansing today, inspired by Wisconsin!
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As LA Times blogger Zennie points out, it seems that the very electorate who went to sleep on Democrats in 2010 — middle class workers, union households and white suburbanites — have sprung back to life, politically, thanks to Scott Walker’s union-busting power play in Wisconsin. Call it the Cairo inspiration. Call it labor finally […]
The Reid Report
As LA Times blogger Zennie points out, it seems that the very electorate who went to sleep on Democrats in 2010 — middle class workers, union households and white suburbanites — have sprung back to life, politically, thanks to Scott Walker’s union-busting power play in Wisconsin. Call it the Cairo inspiration. Call it labor finally […]
The Reid Report
