David and Linda were the only publicly professed Christian in the city. (Some Iranians who were Christian preferred not to reveal their religious views for political and social reasons.) The Wolfs…
From the NYTimes:
In many ways, it is Al Jazeera’s moment — not only because of the role it has played, but also because the channel has helped to shape a narrative of popular rage against oppressive American-backed Arab governments (and against Israel) ever since its founding 15 years ago. That narrative has long been implicit in the channel’s heavy emphasis on Arab suffering and political crisis, its screaming-match talk shows, even its sensational news banners and swelling orchestral accompaniments. “The notion that there is a common struggle across the Arab world is something Al Jazeera helped create,” said Marc Lynch, a professor of Middle East Studies at George Washington University who has written extensively on the Arab news media. “They did not cause these events, but it’s almost impossible to imagine all this happening without Al Jazeera.”
It bears noting that the reason Al Jazeera can create a “narrative” about oppressive pro-American Arab governments is precisely because we’ve consistently sold out democratic movements to back oppressive strongmen. The most obvious example was our long-standing political and military support of the Shah of Iran. It’s hard to imagine what Middle East politics would look like today if we had encouraged the student protesters in 1979.
NYTimes profile of a brave candidate challenging the one-party system that Russia’s become:
Up against this colossus went Ms. Safronova, 53, a former Kremlin supporter who grew increasingly frustrated with the country’s political stagnation and decided to do something about it this year. She mounted her campaign for regional assembly, and worked to transform A Just Russia in Novosibirsk, Russia’s third largest city.
"We’ve become so obsessed with who wins or loses in politics that we’ve forgotten what the winning and losing are about. Partisans fixate on punishing their enemies in the next campaign. Reporters, in the name of objectivity, refuse to judge anything but the Election Day score card. Politicians rationalize their self-preservation by imagining themselves as dynasty builders. They think this is the big picture."
"There are revolutions, actual political and legal revolutions, that are being led online. They’re just happening in new ways, and taking subtle forms unrecognizable to those who still want a revolution to look like they did in 1965."
Afghanistan policy after the McChrystal scandal—The New Yorker:
The military key to counterinsurgency is protection of the population, but the difficulty in securing Marja and the delay of a promised campaign in Kandahar suggest that the majority of Afghan Pashtuns no longer want to be protected by foreign forces. The political goal of counterinsurgency is to strengthen the tie between civilians and their government, but the Afghan state is a shell hollowed out by corruption, and at its center is the erratic figure of President Karzai.
In 17 months in office, President Obama has already outdone every previous president in pursuing leak prosecutions. His administration has taken actions that might have provoked sharp political criticism for his predecessor, George W. Bush, who was often in public fights with the press.
"Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government?"
A more complicated scandal that reverses some of the standard good guy/bad guy assumptions.
Clergy sexual abuse is taking place across the theological spectrum. Yes, there was a spike in abuse of children, but especially teen-aged boys, soon after Vatican II and that may have had something to do with the fact that many priests left to get married, contributing to the creation of what insiders have called a gay subculture in seminaries. And, yes, the whole liberated atmosphere of the ’60s and ’70s may have played a role. But those realities hid the larger truth, he said. There were conservative Catholics with dark secrets to hide and they were especially open to blackmail threats. There was also an incentive to enthusiastically preach conservatism, in an era of conservative leaders, while living a secret life that contradicted one’s sermons.
I have come to the conclusion that it is also a political act to come out openly as a supporter of people who are LGBT. As I have begun talking to folks in my own meeting and beyond about my concern that LGBT folks need to be accepted as co-equals, the vast majority of folks have nodded, and explained that they had already quietly come to that conclusion themselves. On the one hand, this has been very reassuring. On the other hand, it has been a little troubling.
This video pretty much says it all about the first year of Obama’s term.
In light of some recent political violence in Russia:
Kelly wants neither the escapism of other-worldly piety nor the obsession with here-and-now effectiveness of church-as-social-agency. It is the constant awareness (fading inevitably from foreground to background, and back again) of Divine Presence that gives us both endurance and perspective. As I contemplate how life is not a chess game where we have unlimited time to construct a perfect strategy, it’s a great comfort to me to consider that my only real task at any given moment is to remain in that Presence.
The question of whether it is ever right for Friends to support (or appear to support) one side over another in a conflict is not new. There is a difference between conscientious neutrality,…
"So it was no great surprise that Joe Wilson’s rebel yell was provoked by the first black president’s declaration that his health plans didn’t include government health care for illegal immigrants. It was an echo of the summer’s rowdy town halls all over America, for sure. But it was also an echo of those South Carolina statesmen, from John C. Calhoun to Strom Thurmond, who have forever specialized in one shouted word: “No!"
The original intention of these pioneering Quakers was that everything shoud be stripped away so that all that was left was G-d, and Jesus Christ as revealed in the scriptures, and experienced in every person’s heart as our Inner Teacher. George Fox would be rolling in his grave to know that not only has everything been stripped away, but Christianity ITSELF has been stripped away and demolished. Then, erected on this demolition site are some flimsy altars to political and social activism, and some “practices” that look no less like Zen Buddhism.
