Academic Thinking

This goes for wisdom written by David Kyuman Kim and John L. Jackson, Jr.:

For all of the anxious murmurings about the Muslim Brotherhood filling the void left in the wake of Hosni Mubarak’s oligarchic regime, it was not religious extremism that unequivocally won the day but rather an ethos as much in sync with the legacies of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi as in dialogue with the reformist efforts of Muslim civil rights groups.

Source: The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, September 2011 vol. 637 no. 1

Luckily, they do realize that

democracy, race, and religion [are] not...“problems” to be solved but rather as a set of inextricably interconnected social, cultural, moral, and political forces that are to be taken up without the illusion that they represent mutually exclusive alternatives...For the political pragmatist, race and religion are causes of concern that enervate democracies. As should be clear by now, we think otherwise. Race and religion can be (though certainly are not always) sources for humanizing democratic possibilities, particularly when giving due consideration to the ways that race and religion serve as sites for the public life of love.

The issue is, as they note, has:

the return of repressed imperial and racial pasts...created conditions for the racialization of religions (including the religions of Abraham — Christianity, Islam, and Judaism) and for their conceptualization as perceived threats to democratic order.

We reply: no.

But Islam is something else.

^

The Rules for Success a la Rahm Emanuel

Claimed:

Rahm's rules for victory

...Emanuel observations suggest some answers about how Emanuel is different than the average fanatically driven, would-gladly-slit-your-throat-if-you-get-in-my-way candidate when it comes to climbing the greasy pole of politics. Here are seven Rahm rules:

Moxie

Money

Message

Mania

Moderation

Malice

Mensch

^

Are You Disposed? Attracted?

I found this new article:

Personality Traits and the Consumption of Political Information


In this article, the relationship between dispositional personality traits (the Big Five) and the consumption of political information is examined. A detailed hypotheses is presented about the characteristics of the political environment that are likely to affect the appeal of politics and political information in general for individuals with different personalities as well as hypotheses about how personality affects the attractiveness of particular sources of political information.

It was found that the Big Five traits are significant predictors of political interest and knowledge as well as consumption of different types of political media. Openness (the degree to which a person needs intellectual stimulation and variety) and Emotional Stability (characterized by low levels of anxiety) are associated with a broad range of engagement with political information and political knowledge. The other three Big Five traits, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Extraversion, are associated only with consumption of specific types of political information.


^

On the Politics of Religious Parties

A researcher claims, with regards religious parties, that few studies develop general explanations based on systematic and detailed comparative analysis.

He has published an article seeking to explain when and how successful religious parties rise. He also promotes a "theory of revival-reaction-politicization" and suggests that religious parties rise successfully when major religious revivals confront social counter-mobilization and state repression, provided that existing political parties do not effectively represent religious defense. Commensurently, his findings challenge the pervasive tendency to treat Christian and Islamic politics as incommensurable.

As he only deals with Christian and Islamic parties, and I do not have the full text, it would be presumptuous to reflect on the ramifications on Israel's religious parties.

Too bad.

^

New York Times Defines The Labour Party's Ideology

Here it is:-

Defense Minister Ehud Barak [is a] member of the Labor Party, the only centrist element in a right-leaning government

- - -

Up the Irish?

Whatever could Irish MP Iris Robinson be laughing about with her husband?




In the dark?

Try this and this, for starts.

But read this, too.


P.S.

France is not a nice place for nieces of politicians:

The niece of defence minister Quentin Davies stabbed her lover to death following a frenzied sex session and then told police: 'I am a monster'. Jessica Davies, 30, was covered in blood when officers found her cradling the naked body of Olivier Mugnier, 24, at her one-bedroomed Paris flat, a French court heard yesterday.

Although barely able to stand because of the amount of drugs and drink she had consumed, the former model confessed to the crime, saying: 'I did it. I can't tell you why, but I did it. I am a monster'. Holding up a knife following the November 2007 attack, Davies added: 'I wanted to cut him a bit and it went right in.'

and the Irish connection:

Davies said that before the killing she had had several pints of beer and shots of spirits at Sullivans, an Irish pub in St Germain-en-Laye, the prosperous Paris suburb where she was brought up...

Obama's Iron Fist

From Walter Alarkon:

Rahm Emanuel [] The White House chief of staff last month expressed frustration with [Rep. Peter] DeFazio’s resignation calls for President Barack Obama’s top two economic aides — Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and White House chief economist Larry Summers...“Rahm does not yell at me,” DeFazio said, “because he knows that I yell back.”

...“I would have less of a voice and I would have less respect if I voted for things I didn’t believe in because of pressure from the leadership,” DeFazio told The Hill in an interview.

Obama himself has taken notice.

“Don’t think we’re not keeping score, brother,” Obama told DeFazio during a closed-door meeting of the House Democratic Caucus, according to members afterward.

Obama is tough on political enemies.

But on external foes - N. Korea? Iran? etc.?

You didn't think he was pressing a nuclear launch button in this did you?

Words Worth Quoting

Judaism is not liberal and it is not conservative; it is Jewish. But this is the
beginning of the matter, not the end. For Judaism is immense and various: it
holds within itself an oceanic plenitude of opinions and tendencies, developed
over 2,000 years of philosophical and legal deliberation, and they do not all go
together. To say that a view is Jewish is to claim a provenance more than an
essence.

Leon Wiseltier

More Quotable Words

From Mor Altshuler's op-ed today: In praise of rightist coalition

Even before all the votes have been tallied, we saw two more spins courtesy of Kadima's publicists. Firstly, Netanyahu is seemingly trying to "steal" the elections; secondly, should Netanyahu form a narrow rightist government, it would upset Barack Obama and disconnect us from Western Europe and from the civilized world...

As opposed to the common perception regarding the Left's collapse in the elections, Kadima is an inseparable part of the old Israeli leftist camp, and its 28 mandates show that hundreds of thousands of Israelis have not yet overcome the "Oslo syndrome."...Labor and Meretz voters are clearly unable to sober up from the illusion of imaginary peace because they lack the courage to admit that they fell victim to their own wishes. They also lack the ability to cope with the violent reality they created with their very own hands...

...There is no reason to fear a rightist government: It will not disconnect Israel from the Western World, but rather, constitute the frontal defense line of the entire West; a sober warning sign that will wake the West from its delusional dialogue with Iran and her terror emissaries – Syria, Hizbullah, and the Palestinians...

At this time, Western leaders are learning the price of delusions...The West has paid and will pay an inflated price for its reckless economic behavior. Benjamin Netanyahu and a rightist government can prevent Israel from continuing to pay an inflated price for the reckless delusion that panicky withdrawals shall bring peace and pieces of paper shall bring security.

The Right News

Right-wing Israelis outnumber those on the left by at least two-to-one, pollster Rafi Smith of the Rafi Smith Institute said on Wednesday. He based his conclusion in part on a telephone poll he conducted Tuesday of 1,700 people who said they had voted, with a 2.4 percentage point margin of error.

When asked to identify their political beliefs, 30 percent of respondents said they were right wing, 13% said they were center-right, 23%-24% said they were center, 13% said they were center-left and 6% said they were on the Left. Another 15 percent refused to answer.

Smith said the number of left-wing voters was higher than what was reflected in the combined 16 mandates the Labor and Meretz parties received in Tuesday's election, a drop of eight from the 24 seats they garnered in 2006.

Still, that number was a significant drop from the 1992 vote, when Labor and Meretz together won 56 mandates, he said.

"We are in a different time and the Israeli public has turned rightward, as expressed in this election," Smith said.

How Complicated Can Israeli Politics Be?

Very complicated.

Try this on. Received it via email. It's in two parts:

I.

A number of people who were not able to hear Bennie Begin in Sheinfeld this past Wed. night asked me to summarize what he said.

Bennie Begin is a much different speaker than his father, Z”L. He is not a spectacular orator. Rather, his presentation was more like that of a scientist delivering a paper at a conference. Indeed, before returning to the Likud and politics, Begin was the Director of the Geological Survey of Israel.

Begin presented a series of ten assumptions, starting with those made by Sharon, Livni and Olmert in the period leading up to the “Disengagement” and continuing through today by the Olmert-Livni-Barak team. Every one of these assumptions, Begin showed, has been proven wrong. Begin noted that the odds of getting ten straight assumptions wrong, assuming a 50-50 chance each time, are over a 1000 to 1. Begin estimated that the odds of getting ten assumptions wrong when there’s an intellectual thought process taking place before each assumption is made is probably around one million to 1. Rational, thoughtful people, Begin continued, whatever their good intentions might have been, who see that every assumption they have made has proven to be wrong with disastrous consequences, would realize that it’s not just a fluke and would change their approach. But not Livni and Barak. They continue with the exact same thought process, making the same mistakes over and over again.

Re Bibi, while he can’t issue any guarantees, he has trust and confidence in him and in the key members of the party, people like Ruby Rivlin and Boogy Yaalon. When asked how we can be sure Bibi won’t disappoint, brought in the Talmudic concept of a 'surety' and a 'perhaps'. The only real race is between Livni and Bibi. There’s a surety that Livni will do disastrous things if given the leadership of the country. We know that because she’s already announced it. He referenced her recent interview on 60 Minutes when she told Bob Simon that for the good of the country she would have to move tens of thousands of people from their homes. Bibi has spoken in opposite language. Is it guaranteed that he won’t ever do things differently? No, said Begin, there are no guarantees in life, but he is confident in Bibi and the Likud leadership. That is why he came back to politics and the Likud Party.

________________________________


II.

Some personal observations.


1. Many people in the so-called “right wing” camp retain much animosity for Netanyahu. I think a lot of it is unwarranted and misdirected. While I could talk about each of the issues that engender such negative feelings, let me just suggest that we all remember that Mashiach is not running for Prime Minister, nor, of course, have we ever had Mashiach as our leader.

2. We’re constantly complaining – where is the politician that will place the welfare of the country ahead of their own self-interests? Well with all his warts, that’s something Binyamin Netanyahu did. When he became finance minister in 2003, desperate and painful measures were required in order to save the economy. Netanyahu knowingly committed virtual political suicide in order to do just that.

3. The contrast in leadership and in a vision for the country at one of the most critical points in our history is gaping. Remember this contest is not between Bibi and Ketzeleh. It is a contest between Netanyahu, Livni and Barak. It is a choice between the continued דשדוש , missed opportunities and contentment with mediocrity represented by Livni and Barak and someone with a deep appreciation of our treasured past and a soaring vision for our future and for excellence. It is a choice between Livni and the Haim Ramons of Kadima who have a vision of Israel as just another European country, who believe time is against us and that our future is dependent upon the creation of another Arab state and people Bibi, Begin and Boogie Yaalon, who believe that we shape our own destiny, that we can make Israel a country that will truly be an אור לגויים and a magnet for Jews all around the word, including Jews from the West who will make Aliyah by choice in huge numbers.

4.Nor is this a contest between the Likud and Ichud Leumi or Habayit Hayehudi. The contest for leadership of the country is between Likud, Labor and Kadima. That’s where it’s at. Let’s look at the candidates of the 3 major parties. The no. 4 spot – Likud - Ruby Rivlin. Kadima - Tzachi Hanegbi. Labor –. Avishai Braverman; No. 5 spot – Likud – Benny Begin. Kadima - Roni Bar-On; Labor - Sheli Yachimovitz . No. 8 spot – Likud - Boogie Yaalon; Kadima- Ruchama Avraham; Labor - Biyamin Ben Eliezer. No . 9 spot – Likud – Yuval Shteinitz, Labor Yuli Tamir. No 10 – Likud – Leah Ness – Labor Amir Peretz. Last example – No. 15 - Likud – Gen. (Ret.) Yossi Peled; Labor – Ralab Madjale – who announced that he doesn’t sing the Hatikva and who boycotted the cabinet meeting where the government voted, after 8 years, to respond to the bombing of our southern cities.

5. If you agree with Labor and Kadima and with Meretz that because we have a demographic problem we should withdraw from parts of Jerusalem – even control of Har Habayit - then it makes perfect sense to vote for Lieberman. What’s more, Leiberman is so tough, he will also throw in parts of the Galil for the same price so that, if he has his way, we can come to the end of Highway 6 and be looking at signs for the Palestinian authority. And remember, the same way some parties can be bought for money, Lieberman has shown that he can be bought by Livni with a fancy ministry –It was Lieberman who prolonged the disastrous Olmert-Livni-Barak government by 2 years in exchange for Minister of Strategic Threats. He really stuck it to Iran in that time.

6. For those contemplating voting for Shas, remember that Shas did not oppose Oslo I. They were instructed by Rav Ovadya Yosef to abstain. Indeed, it was Shas’s very presence in the Rabin government that allowed Oslo to go forward in the first place. Rav Yosef similarly instructed the Shas MKs to oppose the call for a national referendum on the Disengagement. The main reason Shas didn’t support the “disengagement” is because they were not invited by Sharon into his government.

On the other hand, they were in Olmert’s government and stayed in it even as Olmert offered Abbas nearly all of Yehuda and Shomron, including East Jerusalem, and parts of pre-1967 Israel as compensation for the few percent of Yehuda and Shomron that Israel would keep. And if there was any doubt, Ariel Attias, one of Shas’s leading MKs, said last week that Shas would not rule out supporting future withdrawals from Yehuda and Shomron. So if you favor that and you like everything else that Shas stands for, Shas would be a good vote.

7. While it is important that Ichud Leumi and Habayit Hayehudi cross the electoral threshold, it will do us no good if Ichud Leumi and Habayit Hayehudi do great, but the country is led by Zipi Livni or a Livni-Barak-Lieberman combination. In the critical battle for the leadership of the country, there is only one real alternative. But for those who, come what may, are voting Ichud Leumi and Habayit Hayehud, my suggestion is that sometime before Tuesday, you call a family meeting – many of us now have kids of voting age so we have 3 and 4 votes per family – and agree to allocate your family votes in such a way that at least some go to the Likud.

8. Finally, two comments on Ichud Leumi vs. Habayit Hayehudi:

(i) If the polls are accurate, Habayit Hayehudi might need more help right now than Ichud Leumi. (ii) Ironically, Ichud Leumi is probably better off getting three seats than four. I would bet in their heart of heats, some of the Ichud Leumi’s top leadership may even be hoping for only 3 seats and that Dr. Michael ben Ari, the no. 4 guy on the list who is Baruch Marzel and Rabbi Wolpe’s guy, does not get in. Like it or not, Kach and Baruch Marzel are dismissed as, at best, irrelevant by most of Israel. T be more precise, they are seen as beyond the pale. Rabbi Wolpe also is viewed less than positively by most in the Dati Leumi camp. Ketzele, Uri Ariel and Arye Eldad can be a very positive force and if Bibi is able to form the government, he’ll have no problem integrating them into the coalition. However, a 4th seat provides the left with a ready-made opportunity to delegitimize Ketzele and the entire party and complicates Bibi’s ability to bring the National Union into the coalition.

DK

And here, in Hebrew, you are informed that Rabbi Aviner permits voting despite if one is sitting shiva for a close relative.

So, And What Happened?

In the New Yorker:-

Last June, Joel Benenson, who was Barack Obama’s top pollster during his Presidential run, reported on the state of the campaign. His conclusions, summed up in a sixty-slide PowerPoint presentation, were revealed to a small group...The primaries were over, Hillary Clinton had conceded, and Obama had begun planning for a race against Senator John McCain.

There was good news and bad in Benenson’s presentation. Obama led John McCain, forty-nine per cent to forty-four per cent, among the voters most likely to go to the polls in November, but there was also a large group of what Benenson called “up-for-grabs” voters, or U.F.G.s, who favored McCain, forty-eight per cent to thirty-six per cent. The U.F.G.s were the key to the outcome; if the election had been held then, Obama would have probably lost.

And?

...the presentation explained, “Obama’s image is considerably better defined than McCain’s, even on attributes at the core of McCain’s reputation,” such as “stands up to lobbyists and special interests,” “puts partisan politics aside to get things done,” and “tells people what they need to hear, not what they want to hear.”

...Benenson’s polling was revelatory. “Voters actually did not know as much as I think the press corps thought they did about John McCain,” Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to Obama, told me. “What they’d heard about McCain most recently, and certainly during the primary process, was that he was like every other Republican — fighting to sound more like George Bush.” Benenson said, “What we knew at the start of the campaign was that the notion of John McCain as a change agent and independent voice didn’t exist anywhere outside the Beltway.”

There's more.

Telephone Links to God and a Madam

Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, whose telephone number was disclosed by the so-called "D.C. Madam" accused of running a prostitution ring, says he is sorry for a "serious sin" and that he has already made peace with his wife.

"This was a very serious sin in my past for which I am, of course, completely responsible," Vitter said Monday in a printed statement. "Several years ago, I asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife in confession and marriage counseling. Out of respect for my family, I will keep my discussion of the matter there—with God and them. But I certainly offer my deep and sincere apologies to all I have disappointed and let down in any way."

He really received forgiveness?

He has a telephone link to a madam and God?

Source.

A Paradigm Analysis Applicable to Israel's Case

This, I found, is quite relevant to the way Israel is being treated:-

What we heard were discourses about "the end of history", the disappearance of antagonism and the possibility of a politics without frontiers, without a "them"; a "win-win politics" in which solutions could be found that favour everybody in society. Today social theorists like Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck argue that with the demise of communism and the socio-economic transformation of society linked to the advent of the information society and to the phenomenon of globalisation, the adversarial model of politics has become obsolete and that what we need is a politics "beyond left and right", a politics not any more structured around social division and without the us/them opposition.

This "post-political" discourse is accompanied by the promotion of humanitarian crusades, ethically correct good causes and the increasing reliance on the judiciary to deal with political issues. What this signifies is the triumph of a moralizing liberalism which pretends that the political has been eradicated and that society can now be ruled through rational moral procedures and conflicts resolved by impartial tribunals. It is the culmination of a tendency inscribed at the very chore of liberalism which, because of its constitutive incapacity to think in truly political terms, always has to resort to another type of discourse: economic, moral or juridical.

However the liberal incapacity to acknowledge political antagonisms does not make them disappear. Despites the fact that the key words today are those of "good governance" and "partisan -free democracy" no politics is possible without defining frontiers. The democratic consensus proclaimed by all those who celebrate the "centre" cannot exist without defining an exterior which by its very exclusion secures its identity and its coherence. Hence the necessity of defining a "them" whose existence will provide the unity of the democratic "we". But since one cannot think of politics in adversarial terms, this "them" cannot be envisaged as a political adversary any more. It is therefore on the moral terrain that the frontier is drawn. This is why the "extreme right" - a rather undifferenciated and unexamined entity - is increasingly presented as the personnification of the "evil them" against which all the good democrats should unite.

Clearly, what we are witnessing is not the disappearance of the political antagonism but a new mode of its manifestation. Given that it cannot be articulated in terms of a confrontation of hegemonic socio-economic projects, this antagonism now expresses itself in the moral register. What is at stake is still a political conflict but disguised as a moral opposition between "good" and "bad". On one side the good democrats who respect universal values and on the other side the representatives of evil, the racist and xenophobic right with whom no discussion is permitted and which has to be eradicated through moral condemnation.

The problem with this conflation of politics with morality is that it forcloses the possibility of posing what are the fundamental questions that a left-wing politics must address, those linked to the transformations of the key power relations in society and with the conditions for the establishment of a new hegemony. Moreover it does not help understanding the reasons behind the increasing success of right-wing populist parties and impedes envisaging how one can struggle against them on a truly political terrain.

The same criticism can also be addressed to the widespread identification democratic politics with the defense of human rights. Indeed nowadays there is a growing tendency to use the defense of human rights as the defining feature of democracy at the expense of the element of popular sovereignty which is seen as "old-fashioned". As Marcel Gauchet has pointed out, the fundamental shortcoming of a politics exclusively centered on human rights is that it has nothing to contribute to an understanding of the causes of present injustices. Indeed, by discrediting attempts to find explanations for what is deemed "inacceptable", it does not help designing strategies to come to terms with its causes. This is why such a politics is so often limited to discourses of denunciation.

Full article here.

Peres Presses On, Pushing Politics

While this happens:-

Livni, Olmert vow to keep working together despite her resignation call

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pledged Sunday to continue to work together, despite Livni's call last week for Olmert to resign over the Winograd report.

there's this:-

Peres: I'm willing to be PM, won't lend hand to coup

Vice premier Shimon Peres would not back any plots to oust Olmert from office, he recently told Kadima Knesset members. He would not, however, rule out being prime minister himself.