Charlie Crist Let My Daughter Die

Upon reading this from Robert Schindler, Sr., I have changed my choice for Governor of Florida from Charlie Crist to Tom Gallagher (link on side pannel).

Charlie Crist Let My Daughter Die

by Robert Schindler, Sr.
Posted Jul 31, 2006

As most Americans know, on March 31, 2005, my daughter, Terri Schindler Schiavo died of starvation and thirst after having her feeding tube removed by court order. The sad chain of events that concluded with Terri’s death ignited a media firestorm nationally and internationally. What few saw or heard was the callous inaction of aspiring governor Charlie Crist.

Florida Atty. Gen. Charlie Crist let my daughter die. He had it within his authority to save her life, but he turned a blind eye to her suffering. Even worse, he worked to ensure her death.

Terri lived in a neurologically compromised state for reasons that are still unknown, and my family wanted nothing more than permission to care for Terri for the span of her natural life. We were denied.

My daughter tenaciously fought for her life for more than 13 days after being deprived of the most basic, natural and constant need that we all share—the need for nourishment—food and water. Terri was not on a respirator, nor terminally ill. She was not dying, nor succumbing to a dreadful disease. She was disabled. She was dependent on others, but still very much a life, a woman, and a person.

Over the course of several years, our family, our lawyers, and our friends pleaded for help from local, county, and state police and regulatory agencies with constitutional and statutory authority to investigate the many sworn statements of extreme abuse and neglect suffered by our daughter.

Hoping to save my daughter’s life, our family sought the help of Attorney General Charlie Crist. Not only did Charlie Crist refuse our family lawful access to the assets of his office, but he violated his oath of office by actively cooperated with those in positions of political and judicial authority whom denied us legal access to the police and regulatory systems meant to protect the weak. Multiple sworn agents from responsible police and regulatory agencies who found probable cause to investigate allegations of abuse in Terri’s judicial and physical care, were ordered to shut down those probes. This heavy-handedness made us powerless.

Information of direct interest to Attorney General Charlie Crist’s office was directly delivered to his personal hands, and he refused to properly execute the duties of his office. And it was with deliberate decision that he failed to attend a scheduled Tallahassee meeting with our family. On another occasion, we approached each other by chance. Upon recognizing me, Charlie Crist abruptly stopped and walked away.

That callous action encapsulates Charlie Crist. He walked away from a man whose daughter’s fate he controlled. At that moment, he turned his back on Terri. And he turned his back on the most fundamental duties of his office.

It is quite clear that Charlie Crist, to this day, has demonstrated no public affection for the cause of life, or Christianity, or any set of core values. He has been posturing to become governor for decades. With each voting audience he has crafted a message based on the expediency of the moment.

To add insult to injury, at a recent banquet, our alleged pro-life candidate for the Governor of Florida said the following about Judge George Greer and other judges involved in the death of my daughter, “You are heroes to all of us, and your defense of the judiciary and what is right is beyond admirable.”

Through his actions, Charlie Crist has demonstrated that he has no regard for our most vulnerable citizens, the high duties of public office, or life itself. Charlie Crist’s celebration of the merciless judges who condemned Terri to death speaks to his true character.

Enduring Faith

Dear Friend,

When we suffer adversity, it’s so easy to sink into self-pity and condemnation. Sometimes we wonder if God is still with us. Being a believer does not guarantee us a pain-free life. In fact, the Lord told us to expect adversity, but He will not give us more than we are able to handle! God allows suffering — yet brings good from it for those who trust in Him! If we let them, trials will make us stronger. It is all determined by the choices we make in the midst of our situation. We must choose to believe that God has a plan we cannot see, and cling closer to Him, knowing He is near the brokenhearted.

“Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” 1 Peter 1:6b,7a

When was the last time you checked your house’s foundation? Probably not recently. Why? Because with the foundation, we only give it attention when there is a need. It shouldn’t be that way with our spiritual foundation. Did you ever know a person who appeared to be a strong Christian, with all the outward trappings? They owned a Bible, attended church faithfully, and seemed to have it all together. But when a serious trial came their way, all of a sudden they simply did an about face. What happened? The storm revealed their foundation, the genuineness of their faith. Rather than building their lives inwardly upon the rock of Jesus Christ, they were content to build their house outwardly on the sands of self. Storms reveal what a person is made of and also who a person runs to when times get tough. The storms of life reveal our foundation and just how much we either trust in the Lord or trust in ourselves.

Are you facing a significant storm in your life? Maybe it’s revealed some areas of your spiritual foundation that are weak and ready to crack. Ask God for the grace and wisdom to pass the test. Thank Him in advance for the joy and confidence you’ll gain when the test is over!

Trials are those unwelcome moments of life you and I wish we could escape. But LEADING THE WAY’s Michael Youssef gives sound biblical direction on how God uses trials in our lives for our good! “The Blessings of Trials”

We cannot base our peace in the circumstances and situations of life. We must not let our peace be centered in another man or woman-no matter how dear they are to us. Kay Arthur of PRECEPTS FOR LIFE guides us in “Finding Peace in Times of Distress”.

As Christians, we have a relationship with God that gives us insight, wisdom, and power to see an opportunity in every difficulty! Dr. Adrian Rogers of LOVE WORTH FINDING illustrates “Turning Problems Into Possibilities” by using the life of Nehemiah, who despite towering problems that could have overwhelmed most people became a towering man of faith.

‘Chasten’ literally means child training. Our word today for it would be discipline. In other words, God does not have undisciplined children. He disciplines His own, and there are certain lessons He gets through to us by suffering. THRU THE BIBLE’s Dr. J. Vernon McGee tells us there is a worthy purpose and a productive goal to be gained in the chastening or “God’s Discipline”.

May the Lord richly bless you!
The Oneplace.com Team
http://www.oneplace.com
Listen for Life!

An Important Clue is Found in the Cure for Muscular Dystrophy

Muscular dystrophy reversal clue
US scientists have found a way to reverse muscular dystrophy (MD) in mice, offering hope of a cure for humans with muscle-wasting diseases.

The animals in the Nature Genetics study had myotonic dystrophy – the most common form of MD in adults.

The therapy targets a particular kind of toxic molecule to “silence” its presence in the diseased muscle.

The University of Virginia team showed the treatment fully restored heart and skeletal muscle function in mice.

In myotonic dystrophy, like the other types of MD, faulty DNA is to blame for the abnormalities that occur.

Weakness

Myotonic dystrophy occurs because of a large expansion of DNA code, which most likely causes an accumulation of toxic messenger RNA molecules in cells.

Messenger or mRNA is a copy of the information carried by a gene on the DNA. If the DNA code is faulty then the mRNA will be faulty too.

These abnormalities lead to the progressive muscle weakness and wasting and heart problems seen in myotonic dystrophy.

The results of the research are encouraging for finding a treatment for myotonic dystrophy
Dr Marita Pohlschmidt
Muscular Dystrophy Campaign
Dr Mani Mahadevan and his team reasoned that eliminating the toxic mRNA molecules might help reverse the disease.

They created mice with faulty DNA that could be turned on and off by adding or removing an antibiotic to their drinking water.

In the “on” phase the mice showed all the cardinal features of myotonic dystrophy. When the DNA was turned off, normal skeletal and cardiac muscle function was restored in many, but not all of the mice.

Proof of principle

Although the treatment was not 100% effective, the researchers believe their results provide the proof scientists have been waiting for to demonstrate that it might be possible to reverse muscular dystrophy.

They said: “The results represent the first in vivo proof of principle for a therapeutic strategy for treatment of myotonic dystrophy by ablating or silencing expression of the toxic RNA molecules.”

Their work also suggests that it is indeed the toxic mRNA that causes the pathology.

They said: “The fact that the course of the disease can be reversed both overtly and at the molecular level suggests that the toxic RNA functions as a reversible metabolic toxin.”

Dr Marita Pohlschmidt, of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, UK, said: “The results of the research are encouraging for finding a treatment for myotonic dystrophy.

“It might be possible to reverse the symptoms of myotonic dystrophy when the toxic substance causing the condition is neutralised.

“However, there is still a lot that needs to be done before we can be sure that this will be successful.”

Author gives insight into Muslim sects

Event Transcript The Revival of Shia Islam Monday, July 24, 2006 Washington, D.C. Recent violence between Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim guerrilla group, and Israel; sectarian conflict in Iraq and escalating tensions around Iran’s nuclear ambitions have drawn urgent attention to the resurgence and politicization of Shiite Islam and its relationship to Sunni Islam. The Pew Forum and the Council on Foreign Relations invited Vali Nasr, author of the new book, The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape The Future, to address a small group of academics, policymakers and journalists and to answer questions after his opening talk. Nasr argued that Iran, a Shiite theocracy, is emerging as a regional power in the Middle East, a region where Shiites comprise about half the population. When the U.S. removed the Sunni-dominated regime of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, and allowed Shiites to gain political control through “one man, one vote” democracy, it shifted sectarian power in the region toward Shiites. Nasr asserted that despite its growing ambitions, Iran may well hold the key to regional stability. Speaker: Vali Nasr, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies, the Council on Foreign Relations, Associate Chair of Research, Department of National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School Moderator: Walter Russell Mead, Henry A. Kissinger Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy, the Council on Foreign Relations TIMOTHY SHAH: I’m Timothy Shah, and I’m a senior fellow in religion and world affairs with the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, which is a project of the Pew Research Center. We’re delighted that you could be here. I want to thank Vali Nasr for agreeing to speak to us. Obviously the topic we’re discussing today could not be more pertinent to what is going on before our eyes in the world today. We very much look forward to the discussion. We’re delighted that all of you could be here. This is an extremely diverse crowd of experts. Without further ado, I’m going to introduce Walter Mead, who is actually going moderate today’s discussion and will introduce our speaker. This meeting is part of a series of joint meetings between the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Council on Foreign Relations, which Walter will say a little more about. WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Thanks, Tim. And thanks, Luis, for having us. For the last year or so, the Council and the Pew Forum have been working together on a series of meetings as we think through the question of what impact religion has on foreign policy. We look both domestically at what impact American religion has on the formation and design of American foreign policy, and internationally at how religion shapes the world where American policy takes place. We’ve been fortunate enough to have a number of international collaborators and partners at various times. I see that Germany is represented today; welcome to Freidrich-Ebert-Stiftung. We have done our best to include a number of different political and religious points of view. We are planning future meetings, and, obviously, as we learn more, we think about better ways to do this. On the Council’s end, this question of religion and foreign policy is clearly something engaging more of our attention than it ever has before. We have a number of fellows, Vali Nasr is one of them, whose work is centered on different aspects of religion in the world; and it’s not simply a question of Islam, but many different parts of the world. If you look at India, Africa, Latin America, China and, of course, the United States, you see how religion and religious change is affecting political forces in the world at large. Today’s session is under a modified form of Council rules. That means the meeting is off the record, with one exception. Our speaker, Vali Nasr, has agreed that his remarks will be on the record. So if anyone is here journalistically, Vali is on the record unless he wants to say something terribly frank – (laughter) – that’s off the record. However, in terms of the questions and comments that members of the group make, that part remains off the record under our normal rules. We will ask Vali to speak for roughly half an hour and then go to a Q&A and discussion. I will probably abuse the moderator’s privilege of asking the first question, and then we will go forward. So, Vali, thank you. Vali Nasr MR. NASR: Thank you very much, Walter, and let me begin by thanking the Pew Forum and Walter and Tim for inviting me here and providing the occasion to discuss these issues. The question of how Islam relates to public life has been a preoccupation in academia and policymaking that involves the issue of fundamentalism, which has been with us for a number of years. When we talk of democracy, globalization, and change in the region, inevitably, those issues have involved the question of where religion stands in the public debate. Recently we’ve seen a twist on this. The old issues of Islam and its role in public life have not gone away; we’ve seen them manifested more forcefully than ever in the elections in Egypt and Palestine and other parts of the world. But in the aftermath of the Iraq War, we’ve also seen a sectarian dimension, which I think of as a different fault line, a different chasm in politics and religion in the Middle East, which has its own repercussions and will have its own logic to impose on how things develop. The events in Lebanon have pointed out the importance of the sectarian dimension, particularly in the way Saudi Arabia and the Arab League reacted. They didn’t do so in the expected way of declaring Arab solidarity in the face of Israel. They lamented first Hezbollah’s misbehavior – and that might have been expected – but then they went further to characterize this as a Shiite push for domination in the region and a Hezbollah-Iranian axis. So that contradicts a lot of people who argue that it’s the West who raises the specter of sectarianism and that somehow Muslims don’t see themselves as Shiites and Sunni. In this particular case, it’s the government of Saudi Arabia who put the Shia card on the table. In some ways, this is a reality that’s becoming somewhat inevitable, and many actors in the region are trying to understand how to calibrate this factor into policymaking. There is no doubt the Iraq war has had a very profound impact on the region, and I do not in any way want to put the record of that war on trial of whether it was right or wrong, because I think it’s somewhat irrelevant to the point I want to make. Whether it was right or wrong, whether it had been prosecuted differently, the impact of it was to shift the balance of power from one community in Iraq to another community. And that, in my opinion, was inevitable because Iraq, particularly after 1991, was much more organized along ethnic lines, as far as the Kurds were concerned, and sectarian lines, as far as the Shias were concerned. So any kind of a change in that regime would have inevitably meant a transfer of power. The question is, does the transfer of power in any circumstance happen necessarily violently or could it happen in a different manner? That’s an important question because if there’s going to be any kind of change in the region in the coming years, this question’s going to be revisited. It’s going to be revisited in Lebanon, it’s going to be revisited in Bahrain, it’s going to be revisited in Saudi Arabia. Even now, the question we also ask is, what comes after the bombing? What comes after Hezbollah is shattered as a political military organization? The fact of the matter remains that Shias are about 45 percent and possibly more of the population of Lebanon, and the current political structure of the country does not reflect that numerical reality. Whatever political force replaces Hezbollah this issue’s going to be on the table. The way in which the issue in Lebanon has been raised – mainly, a number of Lebanese asking what right did Hezbollah have to do this – raises the issue of who actually speaks for Lebanon. We saw after the Hariri assassination, when each side was capable of bringing a million people to the streets one day after the other, that this is a very, very divided country. If anything, this current crisis is going to make the sectarian division between Shias and the rest in Lebanon a political issue that will have to be sorted out with Hezbollah or whatever succeeds Hezbollah as the political voice of the Shias. One of the most important issues about Iraq is not how we handle the insurgency or how we come out in terms of the final setup of Iraq, but what kind of model emerges in Iraq for the transition of power between Shiites and Sunnis. The symbolic effect of Iraq is tremendous in the Arab world. This is the very first Shia Arab country; it hasn’t existed before in modern times. In many ways, the anger at the United States is not just because they invaded an Arab country or occupied an Arab country, but because the United States has facilitated the change in a balance of power that is centuries’ long in that region. The numbers tell the story. The Shiites – just as an introduction – are about 10 to 15 percent of the Muslim population worldwide, which makes them about 130 million to 190 million people, depending on what kind of statistics you look at. You don’t find any in Indonesia or Nigeria or Senegal, they’re all bang in the middle of the Middle East, and there the numbers are relatively even. In other words, between Lebanon and Pakistan, in that belt, there are as many Shiites as there are Sunnis. And around the Persian Gulf, the overwhelming majority is Shiites. Shiites always like to point out that wherever there is oil, they’re sitting on top of it, including in Saudi Arabia. But outside of Iran, they have always been treated like a minority, regardless of whether they were a numerical minority or not. The conception of the region has always been Sunni – even in the United States, the region has always been conceived of as Sunni. Now, this balance of power has changed, regardless of whether or not we like it, or whether or not the regimes in the region like it – this is now a fact on the ground. It is more so because sectarianism is not new to the region; it was an underlying factor in the balance of power in the Middle East. Before the U.S. arrived in Iraq, for a decade after the Iranian revolution, close to two decades, there was a sectarian balance between Iran and its neighbors, and its main rivalry with Saudi Arabia did involve a sectarian undertone. In South Asia, there were outright sectarian wars between Shia and Sunni communities that were sponsored and supported by these regional powers. I’ve argued that Saudi Arabia followed a policy throughout the 1980s and 1990s of creating a Sunni wall around Iran, and they contained Iran by investing in Sunni identity, because the only way to break Khomeini’s influence as an Islamic leader was to convince the Sunnis that “He’s a Shia, he’s a heretic; you shouldn’t listen to him.” If you have followed the flurry of Salafist fatwas in the past few days, you will see these are the underground corollary to Prince Saud al-Faisal’s declaration at the Arab League. [The fatwas say, in effect,] “Don’t look at Hezbollah. Don’t listen to Hezbollah. These are Shiites. These are heretics. They cannot speak for the Arab world. They cannot solve the Arab-Israeli problem. They cannot provide a panacea to the Palestinian issue.” For the Sunnis, Iraq created, at least initially, winners and losers, in the conception of the region. The Shiites, whether or not they welcomed the U.S., whether or not they wanted the war, whether or not they were pro-American or not, benefited from this. Even Hezbollah was initially very involved in the affairs of Iraq. Al-Manar, its television station, used to constantly repeat Ayatollah Sistani’s “one man, one vote” mantra. They clearly had an eye on what “one man, one vote” could mean for Shias in Lebanon, as far as the distribution of power was concerned. I’ve argued in my most recent book that this [shift in Iraq] has led to a Shia revival in the region. What does it mean? What is this Shia revival? Very basically, it is that this half of the population in the Middle East has now developed an expectation of better things to come. It has an expectation of positive change. Iraq showed that it is possible for Shiites, particularly in the Arab world, where they’ve been out of power everywhere – that it is possible for them to have power. And the understanding of the Shiites in Iraq was that it’s not so much the U.S. that facilitated this as the process of voting. Vali Nasr Sistani put his emphasis on voting – that [Iraqi Shias] ought to vote – and he issued fatwas for them to vote in election after election. His main intervention in politics was not to decide who ruled but [to advance] the idea that Shiites should band together under one umbrella. Who will actually get the pie, that can be settled afterwards, but they ought to band together under this united Iraqi alliance in order for the Shiites to win the prize of Iraq. This model has been extremely influential. I just mentioned the case of Hezbollah. In Saudi Arabia’s municipal elections last year, the main Saudi Shia leader, Sheikh Hassan al-Safar, repeatedly quoted Sistani’s sermons in telling the Shiites they should vote. He didn’t say he’s following Sistani, he didn’t say that Sistani says Saudi Shiites have to vote. Rather, he said there is a model out there, of voting, and that model clearly benefits the Shiites. It was no surprise that in the Shi’ite areas of Saudi Arabia, the voter turnout was twice as much as it was in the Sunni areas. It ran about 45 percent, compared to 25 percent in the rest of Saudi Arabia. It was so overwhelming that there was actually a text message campaign among the Sunni population in Qatif that they should go to the polls before they close, otherwise the Shiites will sweep the municipal councils. The result in Saudi Arabia is telling. It’s the first time that Shiites are sitting in any position of authority on municipal councils. It hasn’t occurred before. We’re going to be looking at elections coming up in Bahrain, which is 75 percent Shia, in the fall; that is, if they do actually take place. There again, the expectation is that of following the example of Iraqis. So I would say the first aspect of this Shia revival is an expectation of transfer of power through voting or through participation or through accepting political reform. The only thing that’s changed is that the Shiites initially did not expect the ferocity of the Sunni resistance and the willingness of the Sunnis to engage in violence in order to resist this transfer. This resistance, even in Iraq itself, led to a debate. After the Samarra bombings occurred, the argument, particularly from the more violent militias, was “restraint is interpreted as weakness; turn the other cheek does not work; the Shias have to establish a balance of terror; and that simply participating is not influential.” To some extent, Sistani has actually lost ground because of the degree of violence that has been perpetuated. The second aspect of this revival is that the opening of the borders of Iraq has created networks of relationships among people. Pilgrims, migrants, investors and money have begun going back and forth all the way from Lebanon to the Gulf to Iran. There are hundreds of thousands of Iranians who have gone to Najaf and Karbala since Iraq opened up. Iran now is investing in building an airport in Najaf; I guess they are trying to spare pilgrims from having to go through the Triangle of Death from Baghdad to Najaf. There is an enormous amount of money and investment going to Iraq now. Ayatollah Sistani receives far more money from Kuwait and Iran than he does from Iraq itself. In fact, Iraq is not really sufficiently economically vibrant to support the taxation mechanism that the Ayatollah benefits from. This is a reality that we never thought about; namely, that once Iraq opens up, linkages of people will create [new] relationships. We were too hung up, in my opinion, on this division between Arabs and Iranians, and we should have got our clue in the very first months after the fall of Baghdad, when then-Iranian President Khatami went to Lebanon and was received by 50,000 people cheering in a stadium. I would say not since Nasser in the 1950s had a non-Lebanese leader received this kind of reception in Beirut. And Hezbollah, which for some time has been arguing that it wants to define what Lebaneseness is – they took this concept from the Christians – does not see Lebaneseness as necessarily Arabness. It is Arab, but it also has non-Arab components in it, and that dynamic is clearly at play; namely, that the cultural relationships among the Shia communities is strengthening, rather than weakening. The Arab-Iranian tie is not as strong. And partly, it is the ferocity of the Sunni resistance to Shia empowerment that pushes them together, and as I’ll discuss, it has something to do with the way in which Iran and Hezbollah are conducting their politics. We often hear people talk about the Iran-Iraq War, that Saddam’s army was over 80 percent Shia, his conscript army, and that he put up a valiant fight in defense of Basra against an Iranian siege in 1982. But then we forget about 1991, when the massacre in the south occurred. Over 100,000 Shiites escaped to Iran, and during that horrible decade it was largely Iran and Iranian networks of clerics that supported the refugees and helped the people in southern Iraq. The memory of 1991 is far more important than the memory of the 1980s. And until such time as there is some kind of peace in the Arab world between Shiites and Sunnis, the Shiites are going to worry far more about a Sunni restoration in Baghdad than about Iranian influence in southern Iraq. I would say if the U.S. wants to wean Iraqi Shiites away from Iran, the way is not to play footsie with the Sunnis in Baghdad. I think that policy not only is not working, but it has actually been counterproductive in terms of our influence among the Shiites in Iraq. Finally, the other element in this Shia revival is the rise of Iran. In some ways, this is a multifaceted phenomenon. One could say that Iran was for a long time becoming the two-ton elephant of this region. It is probably the largest land mass there. It has oil, it has minerals, it has a very educated public, it has a fairly sophisticated society – that is, its leadership excluded. I’m not talking about the Iranian leadership. But the Iranian society itself has a high literacy late. It has a dynamic culture. Just look at Iranian cinema, for instance, and its impact on the outside. And Iran has a far larger economy than either that of Saudi Arabia or Egypt. One might say it was inevitable that Iran was going to assert itself. Iran has been on the rise from within for the past decade. It began during the Khatami period. It’s only manifesting itself right now, unfortunately, under the wrong kind of regime, something like Japan of 1930: militaristic, ultra-nationalistic, self-confident and seeing itself very clearly as a regional force. The Iraq war had two dynamics in it that accelerated this process. One is that it removed the Sunni bulwarks around Iran. This began, really, with the Afghan war. For reasons that had nothing to do with Iran, the U.S. took the Taliban out. Now, the Taliban-Pakistan-Saudi axis was the principal Sunni wall on Iran’s east. You talk to Iranian policymakers, that’s the way they saw it. You talk to Shias in Pakistan, that’s the way they saw it. This was a very successful containment strategy that essentially eliminated Iran’s influence in Afghanistan through the Taliban, reduced Iranian influence in Pakistan and was pushing further north into Central Asia as well. On Iran’s west, the Iraq war removed the Saddam regime and, in fact, made southern Iraq far more permissible to Iranian influence. So Iran found elbow room, if you would. And Iran all of a sudden found itself in a Prussian moment. In other words, its zone of influence became very obvious: the Persian/Shia zone in Central Asia and north-western Afghanistan, and the Shia zone of influence across the Persian Gulf and southern Iraq. Now, Iran, unlike the decade of Khomeini, does not necessarily want to invade and rule, but it sees these [zones] very clearly as Iran’s natural area of influence. Many senior Iranian leaders and strategic thinkers have on their websites a map of greater Iran, which to me is somewhat reminiscent of the map of the Shah’s period. It has the same notion of what the Shah used to call the Great Iran. And so in many ways they view the main problem with the United States as that the U.S. has both facilitated this expansion, but also that the U.S. is the main obstacle to the realization of Iran’s regional ambition. Of course, the problem between the U.S. and Iran existed before the war in Iraq. It found new dimensions after the war in Iraq, and as the Iranian nuclear issue became front and center, it became more pronounced. But even the Iranian nuclear issue is part of this whole issue of the rise of Iran. We forget, but the Iranians began to think about nuclear weapons when there was a nuclear weapon sitting in the middle of the Taliban-Pakistani-Saudi axis. In the late 1980s, it was thought of as a deterrent against Iraq and a way of asserting Iran’s regional hegemony. After 2001, it found additional deterrence value because it was seen as a way of preventing regime change in Tehran by the U.S., and now in Iran, it’s seen essentially as a mark of Iran being the India of the region, the China of the region, as the great power that would establish hegemony in the Persian Gulf. Iranian assertiveness feeds on the Shia revival because in some ways Iran believes a Shia regime in Iraq and Shia power in the region automatically makes the region less hostile to Iran, even forgetting about ruling over them. But generally, Iran believes that Arab nationalism is racist, chauvinistically anti-Iranian, that particularly Ba’athism was particularly anti-Iranian; and that a greater Shia voice in the region makes it more “Iranian friendly.” That can have multiple impacts – cultural, economic, all the way to military, foreign policy and the like. The issue that faces Iran and is critical in this current crisis is how do you handle the Sunni reaction, and particularly the ferocity of violence in Iraq from 2003 all the way to the Samarra bombing. I put Samarra as a date because after that, the Shias in Iraq, at least some of them, decided to join in and create a balance of terror. But before that point, there was a debate about how to handle this. There are two issues. One is that the Iranians understand very well that the successful rise of Iran cannot have street-Sunni resistance to it, either from Jihadis and the Salafists or from the mainstream Arab street; and that the more Zarqawi and Iraq problematizes the Shia revival in Iraq and attaches it to Iran, the more problematic it is for Iran to fully harness the new environment. Vali Nasr Secondly, the Iranians look with concern at the primary Sunni governments in the region – namely, Amman, Riyadh and Cairo – trying to play Washington by playing the Shia-Iran card, which, as you know, began with the Shia crescent comment of King Abdullah a while back and culminated in President Mubarak’s statement that Shias are always loyal to Iran. Iran’s profile as a rogue state obviously increased after Ahmadinejad became president and began to attack Israel and question the Holocaust and the like. Clearly Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan see playing this game of emphasizing the Iranian-Shia relationship as away of actively engaging the U.S. in the containment of Iran and changing the balance of relations in Iraq among the U.S., the Shia-led government and the insurgents. Now, whether this is true or not, it is an operative assumption in Iran that Iran has a problem because it’s at loggerheads with the U.S. over the nuclear issue. That has a logic of its own, but at the same time, Iran’s policies are leading to an opening for its traditional rivals in the region to try to cobble together what they would call “an American-Sunni alliance” to contain the Shia. The events in Lebanon are obviously heightening this, because it’s much more clear that Amman, Cairo and Riyadh have made this a public argument. I believe [those governments] would be supportive of the flurry of fatwas – not coincidentally, many coming from Saudi Arabia – trying to corner Hezbollah, if you would, on the Arab street. Iranian strategy has been to focus on the Arab-Israeli issue, and that’s been Hezbollah’s strategy as well. This has always been the Shia reaction to sectarianism. Khomeini’s strategy was to divert attention from the sectarian issue to the Arab-Israeli issue. It was Hezbollah’s strategy throughout the 1980s and 1990s. There was a brief debate after Ahmadinejad was elected, because one of the groups that supported his rise to power was a very chauvinistic Shia group that believed this was the Shia moment, and they ought to take the fight to the Wahhabis. They didn’t win the day. The counterargument came that you ought to focus on the Arab-Israeli issue because that is the way to deal with the Salafists. It creates confusion on the Arab street, as we’re seeing now in Amman and other places – should they support Hezbollah, or should they listen to Salafi fatwas that declare Hezbollah to be a heretical organization? Even before Ahmadinejad began to pick up the cause of attacking Israel, already you were hearing this kind of argument in Tehran. I remember when Abu Musaab Zarqawi gave his famous declaration that you should kill Shiites anywhere, anyhow, any time, a deputy commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard – who ironically was born in Najaf and whose family was expelled from Iraq by Saddam Hussein in 1975 – gave a very rare interview, saying there is no such thing as Abu Musaab Zarqawi; these are Zionist creations designed to confuse the Muslims and sow discord among them. The line was very clearly being laid that you don’t want to engage the sectarian issue, you want to bypass it. Ahmadinejad’s first volleys of attack against Israel made him very popular, with pictures of him being sold in Damascus and Amman – and the joke in Iran is that he’s more popular in Cairo than he is in Tehran – clearly meant that there is some capital in Iran essentially advocating the cause of the Palestinians. I think in some ways Hezbollah made a similar calculation. Not only did Hezbollah lose some support because of the way it supported Syria after the Hariri assassination, but also when Iraq happened, Hezbollah’s base of support among Palestinians and Sunnis in the region – in Jordan, in Palestinian camps, in Syria – expected Hezbollah, as an anti-imperialist, anti-American, anti-Israeli organization, to be on the side of the insurgents, that that should have been Hezbollah’s cause, to actively oppose the American invasion of Iraq. But Hezbollah’s real loyalties lay with the Shia, and Hezbollah’s television station was constantly broadcasting “one man, one vote” and the benefits that it had for Shias of Iraq. Hezbollah was early on fairly close to SCIRI and has been fairly close to Muqtada al-Sadr. Rumor has it that Nasrallah intervened directly with Sistani to come back from London to save Muqtada al-Sadr in Najaf. It’s just a rumor, but still the rumor itself is interesting. So Hezbollah began to lose certain support. And the more Zarqawi made the Shias of Iraq look like collaborators with Americans – which is the way they are depicted, as a collaborator government, as a collaborator people, not only are they heretics, but they’re collaborators, too – the more Hezbollah felt its space constricted. They decided to pick the same fight, follow the same logic, reach the same conclusion, that the Iranians did. So there is a convergence of interests in trying to focus on Israel. The benefit lies in saying the following; that it is the Shiites who are willing to take on Israel when the traditional Sunni governments have basically thrown in the towel, number one. Number two is that the Shiites are going to redefine the Arab-Israeli issue to back before Oslo: You don’t accept Israel’s right to exist, you don’t accept it as a country, and forget about a political process, you’re back to conflict. That’s exactly Ahmadinejad’s tactic; that everything that was agreed and settled in the past 20 years is off the table. Again, it’s the Shiites who are doing this, it’s not the Sunni government. And as far as Iran is concerned, the message is to tell Washington that it matters; it matters not only in Iraq, it matters in Lebanon, it’s going to matter in Afghanistan, it’s going to matter in Uzbekistan, it’s going to matter everywhere, and that Washington can bomb Hezbollah out of existence, but what is it going to do with the next one, and next one, and next one; that Iran holds a lot of cards, it is the regional power. The assumption is that Cairo, Riyadh and Amman really don’t have much to offer in this conflict; they’ve been sidelined in many ways. They don’t have any pawns in the game. It remains to be seen whether they can deliver Syria. That would be the litmus test, if they can deliver Syria. But ultimately, the underlying driver is the shift in the sectarian balance that happened in Iraq and the fact that sectarianism is now a main cleavage line in the region’s politics. It’s redefining not only the balance of power in individual countries, but the regional balance of power. And the region is reacting to this. I’ll stop there, though there is a whole different issue we can talk about: that this situation is also likely to fuel for a number of years the Salafi Jihadi problem. It was very, very interesting that bin Laden, whom everybody kept saying was not sectarian – his mother is supposedly Alawite from Syria, to whom he is very close – and has always shunned sectarianism and tried to focus on the U.S. as the main enemy, after Zarqawi’s passing away, decided to pick up where Zarqawi left off by giving that statement that the Shiites are at fault in Iraq, and they are the collaborators and therefore ought to be resisted. It suggests that the militant Salafis see anti-Shiism as the other face of anti-Americanism and as a way to continue to recruit and radicalize the Islamic political discourse in the region. Why don’t I stop here, and then you could follow up on any of the issues. MR. MEAD: Thank you. That was, as always, incredibly stimulating and interesting, and one learns a lot, at least I do. MR. NASR: Thank you. Following his presentation, Vali Nasr responded to questions from those present. Below is a condensed version of the exchanges. QUESTION: Public opinion in the Sunni Arab world seems susceptible to the Iranian-Hezbollah tactic of focusing on Israel, while elite and clerical opinion appears less moved. Is that tactic really working to suppress sectarianism? MR. NASR: The initial indication is that it’s working to a good extent, though the Iranians are not looking at Lebanon alone. The Arab street is not only the Beirut street. It’s Amman, it’s Cairo, it’s Damascus, it’s Riyadh. The Iranians believed from very early on that the U.S. owns those governments and that Iran has no way of changing that dynamic. But Iran can appeal to the Arab street because that’s where those governments are vulnerable. There is anti-Americanism on the Arab street and anger about Iraq and the Palestinian issue, all of which Iranians can use to make a play. And far as the [Sunni] clerics are concerned, they don’t have a lot of influence, partly because they are seen to be controlled by the government. So the muftis, for example at Al-Azhar in Cairo, are not seen to be honest powerbrokers. The Salafis are going to be more interesting. There’s been the flurry of Salafi fatwas against Hezbollah, but they have not impacted the mood on the street. That’s part of the problem these governments face and why they are trying desperately to get a cease-fire. Iran and Hezbollah have embarrassed and marginalized them, even though this may be a foolhardy effort by Hezbollah, banging its head against an Israeli concrete wall. But the Arab street rewards courage and foolhardiness over wisdom; look at Nasser and Sadat. The prudent diplomat is not going to be rewarded; it’s Hezbollah who’s going to have that heroic image. People in Amman or Cairo, they don’t have skin in the game. It’s not their neighborhoods that are going to be bombed. QUESTION: Is there a basis for a U.S.-Iranian understanding? Or are the two sides just so far apart that this relationship must continue to be conflicted? MR. NASR: The picture is changing. When Iraq first happened, the Iranian perception was that the U.S. and Iran had a common interest; namely, they were both supporting the same side. That picture is becoming a lot more complicated, particularly because of Lebanon and also because opportunities in Iraq were lost. Iranians still believe that the U.S. needs Iran in Iraq as a regional patron to bring the two sides together. The image in Iranian minds is the way Afghanistan was solved at the Bonn conference, where all the regional players were present. What’s changed since 2003 is the Iranians feel the U.S. is steadily weaker and they’re steadily stronger. There is a momentary shift in the balance of power, they think, and now is the time to run a very, very hard bargain with the U.S. because five years from now the balance may be reversed. The Iranians do not want to talk about single issues. They want a broader structure of agreement that commits the two countries to normalization of relations, kind of like Kissinger going to China. For Iranians, normalization would mean that regime change is off the table and Iran’s interests are recognized. I am not saying this is something that the U.S. necessarily can or should do, but I’m saying that’s what they want. One of the main Iranian strategic thinkers, a former commander of the Revolutionary Guard who is executive secretary of a very powerful council in Iran, said that the U.S. is attacking Iran on four fronts. It is attacking Iran on the nuclear issue, on human rights, on terrorism and on weapons of mass destruction, and ultimately, it wants to change this regime. So with the nuclear issue, then, it has to be everything or nothing. Because as they see it, “If we negotiate over the nuclear issue without relations being normalized, we’re going to be a lot weaker on the other issues, and the U.S. is going to be back.” QUESTION: Is there any price the Iranians would be willing to pay for some normalization with the U.S.? Is there any give on their side? MR. NASR: In their mind, they have things to give which we don’t value right now. One is called stability in the Middle East. I remember a high Iranian official said, even before Lebanon started, something like, “The U.S. doesn’t understand; they need us in Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Persian Gulf, Iraq and Lebanon, and they actually have to give us something for helping them with stability in these places.” Troubles like Lebanon are beneficial to Iran because they drive that point home. So in their mind at least, the first thing they’re going to give is something we don’t think we ought to be negotiating over at all, which is stability in Afghanistan and Lebanon and other places. As for other issues like support for terrorism, support for Hamas, and reining in Hezbollah, I think they would be willing to negotiate those issues and ultimately address the nuclear issue, under some kind of rubric of normalization. QUESTION: Why are the Iranians responding with such dramatic rhetoric about going to the U.N. Security Council on the nuclear file? Their rhetoric is out of proportion to what observers would say is likely to be the outcome of the U.N. Security Council process. If the Iranians feel they’re so ascendant, couldn’t they just defy the U.N. Security Council and say, “Go ahead, do your worst.” Or are they betting that their bluster will cause the Europeans to crack over this issue? MR. NASR: They see Europe is the weak link. Iran didn’t get any punitive measures from Solana; that package is short on carrots and has virtually no sticks. If the powers that be cannot agree, officially, to what the punitive measures will be against Iran, then that looks like weakness. Iran thinks there is enormous amount of disagreement at the Security Council. In their opinion, the Security Council process will fail because it will not yield any useful outcome the United States can hang its hat on. At the end of the day, in the Iranian view, the U.S. will find the Security Council process unsatisfactory. So the U.S. will sit down to assess the military option and find it unsatisfactory. That is how Iran wants the U.S. to approach the negotiating table: far more broadly than just talking about nukes. Iran’s domestic scene is also a factor here. Ahmadinejad’s power is by no means completely consolidated. There are rivalries in Tehran, and he is pitching to the bleachers here, taking the hard-line position defending Iranian rights and sovereignty. But the Iranians definitely do not want real sanctions at the U.N. It’s very risky domestically for them. QUESTION: If Iran is so confident the U.N. Security Council process is going to turn to mush, why would they be issuing such dramatic ultimata about it? MR. NASR: Even if the Security Council process doesn’t get anywhere, it’s much easier for Iran if there is no resolution on the table. Once a resolution is on the table, as we’ve seen with Iraq, as we’re seeing with Hezbollah, it is something you could take action with, even years later. You want to avoid a resolution, even if it’s not immediately effective. QUESTION: Are there any theological fissures with Shia Islam? It seems there is a quietist tradition, as exemplified by Sistani, and then you have a more militant or politicized tradition represented by Iran and Hezbollah. MR. NASR: Theological fissures exist, but they have not become conflictual in the way predicted before the Iraq war. At one point, Hezbollah strongly objected to Ayatollah Sistani’s call for the clerics to withdrawal from politics. This is the only time Hezbollah has openly showed its disdain for Ayatollah Sistani’s opinion. Sistani has not involved himself in Iranian politics. He is an alternative model because Sistani is akin to the pre-Khomeini Shiism of Iran; namely, you want to protect the faith, but you don’t put forward a model of government proactively. You say, “Let the political process take place, I’ll have a veto power over what I like, but I’m not saying that there is a model of Islamic government.” The Iranian Constitution of 1906 was exactly such a document. Many, including myself, have argued that Sistani is very influenced by the Iranian Constitution of 1906, even though it was never really implemented in Iran. The Iranians have not really pushed for an Islamic republic in Iraq, or at least not yet. The level of cooperation is far higher, at the level of consolidating gains rather than trying to decide on the form of government. Iranians also understand the limits of their influence. They learned their lesson in the 1980s that you cannot influence outside communities very directly. A friend of mine just visited with the Shias in Saudi Arabia and met many of their religious leaders. They all speak Persian because they all got educated in Qom because they couldn’t go to Najaf during the last decade. We forget that people who spent time in Qom read a lot of democratic literature. They read Akbar Ganji just as much as they read Khomeini. They want Iran’s support, not Iran’s overlordship. This may change, but now there is a lot more co-opting, if you would, than there is confrontation. For instance, Ayatollah Sistani is the most popular ayatollah in the bazaar of Qom; most of the money from religious taxes goes to him. His son-in-law is his representative in Qom who runs Sistani.org. Many Sistani representatives complain that Qom has become too dominant in articulating Sistani’s religious views because he controls the website. It’s too early for Iraq to challenge Iran. It may come, but not yet. QUESTION: Looking at the millions of Shia around the world, would you say most of them follow the Sistani theological tradition and see the Iranian Revolutionary tradition and Hezbollah as aberrations? What is the long-term theological trajectory of Shiism, if it’s going to be ascendent in the region? MR. NASR: Large numbers of ayatollahs everywhere have pledged allegiance to Sistani, including the primary ayatollah of Afghanistan, Muhsini; the primary ayatollah of India; all of the Shias of Pakistan; and large numbers in the Persian Gulf. Those who don’t pledge to Sistani are pledging to other ayatollahs who emulate his model. Sheikh Fadlallah in Lebanon now has an enormous following in Bahrain and Kuwait, but only after he transformed himself into a quietist and moved away from the Hezbollah model. Nobody follows Ayatollah Khamenei, other than political guys. Hezbollah as an organization officially follows Khamenei, but the rank and file either follows Fadlallah or Sistani. Sistani has revived a pre-Khomeini notion of Shia piety and devotion, and I think that’s his most important mark; it’s not what he’s doing in Iraq, but what he’s doing in the region. You do have Muqtada al-Sadr, you do have militias, you do have Hezbollah, and I do think they’re a threat. They don’t have a theological doctrine, but they’re capable of an enormous amount of troublemaking. If we see these ayatollahs as one level of transnational Shia leadership, I would like to refer to the militias as another level of transnational Shia power, because you have Hezbollah, Mahdi Army, Badr Corps, and the Basij Revolutionary Guards in Iran. These are a Shia regional assertion of power that is not theological at all, but purely political. QUESTION: Can you guess who among the various factions is going to control Iran in the next five years? MR. NASR: There are a number of factors. First of all, the reformists have been marginalized in Iran. So among the elite, you have two factions of conservatives: radical conservatives like Ahmadinejad and pragmatic conservatives like Rafsanjani. The supreme leader right now is vacillating both because his base of power is with the radicals, but at the same time he’s afraid that if they dominate, he will essentially become their prisoner. For instance, he’s postponed elections to the Council of Experts, which can decide his fate and the fate of his successor, three times now over since the presidential election. There’s a joke in Iran that everybody can drive at 60 miles an hour, but that when it gets to 100 miles an hour, only Rafsanjani can drive. That is, when things get really tense, the pragmatists, and in particular Rafsanjani, are going to rise to the top. The Ahmadinejad faction is rooted in the militia, the street thugs known as the Basij, who number anywhere from 300,000 to a million people and are designed to control the streets in Iran. The Basij have a cultic, xenophobic, militant, militaristic world view. They are insular, they intermarry, and that’s the power base he harnessed in order to establish himself. How it all works out will depend on the outcome of this current standoff between the U.S. and Iran. There is also an economic clock. Ahmadinejad has been making an enormous amount of promises – he’s a populist, a Chavez-like figure – and there is a window of time after which people will want reality to catch up to their expectations. But even if there is money to build hospitals and roads, there is not the capability to build everywhere at the rate he’s promising. Most people believe the reason the supreme leader doesn’t rein him in right now is because he is popular with the street and outside of Iran. He’s taken the high nationalist road, and it’s difficult to maneuver against him. But I suspect that he will be a casualty of a serious engagement with the U.S., unless he is very successful in building his case. He was kind of a Manchurian candidate. He came from nowhere within two years of being mayor of Tehran. He doesn’t have a strong independent base yet. QUESTION: What is the balance within the Iranian regime between the motive of power politics and the motive of religious messianism? Who can the U.S. negotiate with? You can negotiate with Machiavellians, however murderous they may be, but you cannot negotiate with messianists. MR. NASR: During the Khatami years, there was a revival of folk piety in Iran. It is like the Catholicism you might find in the barrios of Rio de Janiero, with shrine visits and dedication to the cult of saints. Khomeini and the revolutionary elite look down on that kind of thing. Khomeini never, ever went to a shrine. I argue in my book that the revival was actually a rebellion against the kind of Shiism Khomeini was promoting because these practices are not associated with the Islamic Republic’s high Islam. One aspect of this revival is a dedication to the cult of the hidden imam. It’s parallel to Pentacostalism in Christianity, in that it is not necessarily political. There is a mosque south of Qom. Nobody knew about it 20 years ago. Over the past 10 years, it has become famous. I went there about nine years ago; it was filled with upper-class Iranian kids. Ahmadinejad is trying to tap into that because the Khomeini version of Shiism is dead. It only mobilizes the Basij. He is trying to marry the rationalistic, revolutionary, liberation theology Shiism of Khomeini with the Rio de Janeiro barrio Shiism of the street. Buying a phone card to call the hidden imam in Iran is far more popular than the call for war against America. Any populist leader – like Chavez or Evo Morales – has to relate to the religion of the masses, the passionate, immediate religion of the poor and illiterate, not the religion of the educated literati. That’s exactly what Ahmadinejad is doing. He calls himself one of the downtrodden. QUESTION: How is this Middle East-based Sunni-Shia struggle playing out in the rest of the Muslim world? Do the Shias have a prayer of countering Salafist influence in the 75 percent of the Muslim world that’s not in the Middle East? MR. NASR: For the Shiites, it might not matter, because they don’t live outside of the Middle East. For Iran, it will matter, because in the 1980s and ‘90s, they were trying to be a great Muslim power, and Saudi Arabia effectively shut them out of Indonesia and Malaysia. It was very difficult for them to find local patrons, and many Sunni governments found it useful to characterize religious opponents as Shiites. Like in the case of Nigeria, where generals wanted to try a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a very Sunni organization; they accused him of being a Shia. Iran and the Shiites do look at Salafism with extreme concern, because you can always negotiate with the Saudi government and bury the hatchet or open economic ties with Jordan. But the violence of anti-Shiism that Salafism has produced will have far more long-run effect in terms of sectarian relations and Iranian power. Domestically within Iran it’s an issue, because now in southern Iran, in Baluchistan province, there is a Salafi insurgency, which has been quite violent. There’s been beheading of security officials. Iran accuses Saudi Arabia and Pakistan of being behind it. But it is indicative of the fact that Salafism can spread. The incentive structure in the region is likely to increase Salafi activism. Bin Laden and Zarqawi understood that anti-Shiism is a far more powerful driver for Salafism than anti-Americanism. I think from the beginning they saw the other side of the coin; namely, if you guide the U.S. out of Iraq quickly, then you can have a Sunni restoration in Baghdad. Ultimately the other governments in the region as well as the United States will pay the price for the rise of Salafism. But the danger of Iraq is that what’s happening in Al Anbar will not stay in Al Anbar, even after the dust is settled in Iraq, it’s going to travel, just as it traveled out of Afghanistan. So that’s yet another consequence of sectarianism: We’re going to have a period of Salafi bluster ahead of us. QUESTION: Is Shia revivalism limited by its own Shia theology? In Nasrallah’s recent speech, he said to Israel, “You’re fighting not only the army of Mohammed, but of Ali, Hassan, and Hussayn,” the first three Shiite imams. Somehow I wouldn’t imagine that would gain popular support in Cairo. MR. NASR: In a globalized age, what you say to your own community will immediately be transferred and broadcast everywhere. That does create a problem. Shias need to mobilize their own community, and at the same time, they want to pose above and beyond sectarian divisions as an Islamic force. It remains to be seen which will matter more end of the day: Hezbollah’s fight against Israel or Hezbollah’s very clear Shia identity. QUESTION: What is your assessment of the relationship between religious or political Shia identity and the economic support given to Shia communities outside Iran? MR. NASR: The relationships are strongest among those social classes that actually practice the religion. Middle class or upper middle class Iranians don’t feel any affinity, say, with Najaf and Karbala. But lower middle class and lower class, they do. There is a network of pilgrimages, business and ayatollahs that tie them together. Some of these organizations criss-cross the border. For instance, even during the Saddam period, Ayatollah Sistani had some charitable work in Iran, particularly in his own province. There are clerics in Iran who have charitable work now in Iraq. Recent history has made this more complicated; namely, you had large numbers of Iraqis of Iranian origin expelled from Iraq who settled in Iran. Then in the 1990s a larger community came from Iraq, further strengthening those cross-border ties. But there’s a big difference between Iran and other countries where Shias live. In Iran for a very long time now, Shiism has been the state religion, so social services have always been provided by the state, with only marginal social services during the Palavi era left to the clerics. Under the Islamic Republic, the government is the Islamic Republic. So the Shia establishment is essentially all the foundations and ministries controlled by the government. In the rest of the Arab world, where Shias are the minority, living under Sunnis, they have had no patronage, so they have a network, a pyramidal network of tax collection and donations that go up from below. From the smallest preacher in Basra, the money goes all the way up to Sistani, and then the patronage comes back from the top down. Finally, in the Shia world, you follow an ayatollah. It might be your local neighborhood ayatollah, but that ayatollah ultimately represents what is called the marja, which is a source of emulation, of which there are very few, and Sistani is one. That person, the marja, has always been transnational in Shiism. It doesn’t matter what his nationality is. There are Shiites in London who follow Sistani. Whether they’re Pakistani origin or Arab, their money will go to Sistani. So you have this criss-crossing network of money and opinion and patronage. It’s strongest outside of Iran because the Shiites have never had state patronage. That’s exactly what made them so powerful and why the clerics were able to take control of Iraq, because Saddam was very successful in shattering Shia political organizations, so there were no secular Shia ethnic sectarian parties. But in a society with no institutions, the institution that’s left standing becomes the dominant political force, and this was the clerical institution. QUESTION: How do Syria and Turkey fit into this picture? MR. NASR: Turkey’s main interest revolves around the Kurdish issue. There has been increasing cooperation between Iran and Turkey over this issue. Interestingly, the most anti-Iranian institution in Turkey, the military, is now the one leaning most in the direction of Iran, even talking about possible joint military exercises with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. When Iranians engaged the PKK in a battle several months ago, in which 16 Iranian soldiers were killed, the Turkish military said publicly that they look at Iran essentially as an ally. So as long as the Kurdish issue is not solved – and every indication is that it’s worsening – you’re going to have a common interest between Iran and Turkey. But Turkey is also very worried about Syria, because it believes that any change in Syria would ultimately expand the scope of the Kurdish problem, possibly creating another Kurdistan in Syria. The integrity of the current regime in Syria is key. Syria is a bit more complicated. Syria has for a very long time allied itself with the Shias in the region. It’s nothing new. There was a fatwa from Iman Musa al-Sadr, the leader of Amal in the 1980s, declaring that the Alawis of Syria are Shias. But for the mainstream Sunnis, the Alawis are an offshoot of Shiism, and they are beyond the pale. They don’t practice, they don’t belong to Shiism, although the Alawis also revere the shrine in Samarra that was destroyed. But that fatwa was key because the set-up of government in Syria is the opposite of Iraq. It’s Alawis ruling over a majority of Sunnis. One of the jokes in the Middle East is, “Give Syria to the Sunnis, and we’ll be even.” For Syria, this relationship with Iran and Hezbollah is a tactical relationship. It goes to the whole legitimacy of the regime. It doesn’t make sense for Syria to abandon these allies because they’ve been the lifeblood of Syria for the past 20 years. And Syria’s not likely to contemplate political reform, because look south. Just like political reform empowered the Shias, it’s going to empower the Sunnis. Domestically, though, Syria’s very worried about the Salafi-Wahhabi influence. The regime has relied on the Sufi orders, particularly the Naqshbandi order, as a way of balancing out the Muslim Brotherhood. Syria’s interest is to destroy the insurgency in Iraq. It does not benefit Syria to have militant Sunnis south of the border. The knee-jerk reaction of Syria would have been to do to Al Anbar what it did to Lebanon in the 1970s – Syrians first went into Lebanon to crush the Palestinians. But because Syria and the United States are at loggerheads, Syria follows a policy of supporting the insurgency just so far as the U.S. doesn’t develop an appetite for going after Syria, but at the same time containing it. Ultimately the insurgency is far more dangerous to Syria than any country in the region, because the Sunnis in Syria are a minority ruled by an “un-Islamic” Shia minority. QUESTION: Do you see any chance that the Syrians could be picked off by the Jordanians, Egyptians and Saudis? MR. NASR: It wouldn’t be cheap. It’s the same issue as with Iran. There are things we want from these regimes, but whether they’re good or bad, let’s put that aside. They do have interests, and the first interest is regime survival, in both cases. If the Syrians are going to navigate out of this relationship with Iran and Hezbollah, they would have to do so ensuring that the Alawi domination of Syria is going to stay intact. I don’t think they will just bite on promises from Saudi Arabia and Amman without having direct U.S. commitment to survival of the Alawi regime. QUESTION: What else would Syria want? MR. NASR: Economic aid and everything else. What they have to offer is to abandon Iran, abandon or rein in Hezbollah, and shut down the border with Iraq, which can do a great deal of damage to the insurgency. But it comes at a cost, and the cost is regime survival. QUESTION: Is it true, the assumption that Muqtada al-Sadr is biding his time until the Shiite position is consolidated and he can make his own push for power? And if so, who’s going to win that struggle? MR. NASR: On the surface, it’s true; the prominence of the Sadrist movement has been expanding. The Samarra bombing strengthened it because the bombing took some of Sistani’s authority away and shifted it towards the militias. His popularity is also growing in areas where there are both Shiites and Sunnis because the Sadrist rhetoric has been better. For instance, in Kirkuk you have Turkomen and Kurds as well as Arab settler Shiites – SCIRI lost a lot of support when it argued for federalism. It’s the Quebec problem. The Quebecois were willing to give up on the French everywhere else in Canada if they could get rights for themselves. Federalism works for SCIRI, but the Shiites who are going to be left in Kirkuk or Baghdad will end up being minorities. So those people like Muqtada’s arguments that Iraq has to remain unitary. Sadr also sent his militias into Kirkuk to prevent ethnic cleansing of Shiites. So he’s on the game. The danger is that Sadr’s control over this movement is not as firm as Abdul Aziz Hakim’s control over SCIRI and the Badr Brigade, which are very disciplined, hierarchical, almost Leninist organizations. Sadr rules through about 30 chieftains whose power varies depending on whether they have access to oil or some kind of contraband trade route, and whether they are in Sadr City or Basra or some other place. Sadr has more power if he goes along with the cheiftans’ opinions than if he’s restraining them. It is conceivable that the 30 may not always see eye to eye on a policy; for instance, what might be good for the chieftains in Basra may not end up being good for the chieftain in Kirkuk. He’s had difficulty ruling them. He will have challenges if he makes a clear bid for power. One question often raised is, what happens if he dies or is taken out? The danger is you end up with 30 Muqtada al-Sadrs and a very bloody turf battle within the Sadr movement. On top of it, he doesn’t have religious control of the entire movement, which is shared with Ayatollah Yaqubi in Basra who doesn’t recognize Sadr at all and with ayatollahs in Qom. So generally yes, the movement is on the rise, but the silver lining is that it’s not a organized, well-disciplined movement. QUESTION: Should we be striving to make the fight between the Shia and the Sunni Salafists more prominent than the fight either one of them has with us – a dual containment strategy? It seems right now we’re tipping towards the Salafists and heading towards a confrontation with Iran. Is there a way of shifting this situation to benefit American interests? MR. NASR: My plea has always been that we ought to take sectarianism seriously, have a public debate about it and formulate policies that take this it into consideration. Sectarianism is part of the lay of the land. There are self-consciously Shia forces and now self-consciously Sunni forces in the region and on the street level. What does it mean for our policy? In Iraq, we have been following the policy, under Ambassador Khalilzad, of trying to take one step in every direction. I don’t think it has worked. We could follow a policy of dual containment, which might have merit in places. We’re facing two challenges in the region, and we have taken our eye off of one of them, which is very dangerous. We face a Salafi jihadi threat that is not a state actor. It runs from Mumbai to Madrid, it’s on the streets in Amman, and it may explode way out of Al Anbar. We don’t have a strategy of containment, other than relying on other governments to do the war on terror – “keep your own house safe” – and, hopefully, defeating the insurgency. The other challenge is that of Iran and Hezbollah, which I would say is not a terrorist challenge. We shouldn’t lump everybody under the same heading, it’s self-defeating. But they represent a challenge of rogue organizations, rogue governments. Shiites are not recruiting on jihadist websites. They have forces on the ground that are engaging in battle in Lebanon and potentially could, in the case of Iran, end up in a military confrontation. But that’s a very different challenge; that’s a military threat. Our policy ought to be sufficiently nuanced to deal with both of these. The Iranian-Lebanese challenge is one that we have to take head-on. But even after Hezbollah is gone, even if we either attack Iran or negotiate with it, the Salafi challenge is likely to be there, and that has to be dealt with very differently. Even if there is peace in Iraq, this thing is not going to go away. Al Anbar is going to fester in that region. Jordan in particular is in a precarious situation because there’s an enormous reservoir of support for what’s happening in Iraq, as well as tribal lines running between the two countries and the regional Palestinian link. Lebanon is what can connect these two Sunni insurgencies in the West Bank and Iraq. In some of these cases dual containment might work, but after that, it ought to be a separate policy. We need the Shias at some level to deal with the Salafis; half the population of the region is not going to listen to Salafi fatwas. We also need the Sunni governments to deal and balance between the two, as well as to control their own governments. QUESTION: Should our policy be to first reach out to Syria and then, if that works, move on to Iran and create some kind of a grand bargain? Or should it be Iran first? MR. NASR: The current policy afoot has Israel taking out Hezbollah and showing Iran a heavy hand. But after Hezbollah falls, there has to be a political settlement for Lebanon that will redistribute power. In other words, you cannot create an Israeli Christian/Hariri political order in Lebanon and call it democracy and expect it’s going to work. It’s a perfect opportunity to say that you’re going to destroy militancy, but then after militancy will come real political reform. If the outcome of this war is that Iran has miscalculated and ends up losing Hezbollah and Syria, then it will be weakened and maybe some of its arrogance and self-confidence will be gone. That would be the time to regulate Iranian power by bringing it to the table. That would allow us to put our hands around the Shia side of things, and after that we could focus on the Salafi side. QUESTION: Of the two sides – the Sunni jihadists and the Iranians – one will have an atom bomb, probably five years from now, while the other one doesn’t, unless it takes over Pakistan. Doesn’t that make the Iranian challenge more serious? MR. NASR: Yes, but it’s a challenge that we’re more familiar with; namely, dealing with a state. We have mechanisms and ways of thinking about that. It’s about balance of power, it’s about when is the right time for the U.S. to be at the table with the Iranians, what should be the structure of a diplomatic discussion. Wars are horrible, but one silver lining of this war in Lebanon might be that it creates the right conditions for bringing the Iranians down a couple of notches so you can talk. The jihadi, Salafi problem is far more complex, for two reasons. One is that maybe we’ve escalated its value by calling it “the war on terror” and giving it more pretensions than it had before. Second is that it’s not about Mumbai and Madrid and London and New York, it’s about the fall of Saudi, Jordanian governments – having an impact on states in the region. If the Salafi problem continues to grow out of Al Anbar and becomes something bigger, then it will also have far broader implications for our interests and for Israel’s as well. QUESTION: If we make a grand bargain with a weakened Iran, what does that do to the liberal reformers in Iran that you say are already marginalized? MR. NASR: The question of continuing with the policy of democracy promotion in the region is a whole different discussion – that is, whether or not it actually coincides at this juncture with the U.S.’s security interests. By and large we’ve already made a decision that U.S. security and interests matter more; we’ve removed pressure from Egypt on the democracy issue. We’re not likely to push the Jordanians very hard, knowing what might be coming in an election. Let’s set our priorities on the table with Iran, and the biggest priority is to deal with the nuclear issue and the regional issues that we care about. The current regime in Iran in an ironic way provides a better venue for having a lasting negotiation. This is like Begin and Likud in Israel in 1977-78; it is like Nixon and China. What we can hope in the short run is not to democratize Iran. I don’t see an organized pro-democracy movement in Iran. They lost the elections; we can justify that loss any which way, but there was no Ukrainian moment before or after the elections in Iran. There is a lot of democracy potential in Iran, don’t get me wrong. But there is nobody to carry the torch within the time frame that matters to us, which is the next 18 months to two years. The best we can hope is to get the things we want from the government that’s there right now. Like with Syria: We want it to dump Hezbollah, dump Iran and close the border. We’re not going to wait for democracy in Syria to deliver those things. That would take a lot longer, if it happened at all. Our priorities in the region right now are hard-lined political, realist ones. Ultimately, engaging Iran will facilitate democratization far more than what’s happening now, where you have a rise of nationalism and rallying to the flag in an environment of imminent war. That does not favor democracy. QUESTION: What effect would a Sistani triumph in Iraq have on internal politics in Iran? MR. NASR: Sistani’s impact already has been profound, and it will manifest itself in all kinds of political and constitutional debates. But Iraq right now does not present a viable government or a model of transition for people to think about. Iranians welcome the outcomes only. Every Iranian would say “I’m very happy to go to Najaf,” or “I’m very happy for Iraqi Shias to have their own country.” But ask them, “Would you want this kind of regime transformation in Iran?” The answer would be no. There used to be a story that after Algeria blew up, Morocco became very stable because the king of Morocco would constantly point next door and say, “Is that what you want?” And every Moroccan would say no. Iraq has a tremendous amount of cultural, religious, emotional and intellectual impact on Iran, but Iran, ironically, is more stable than Iraq. The Iranian regime, even during the presidential elections, made a great deal of noise about the fact that it alone right now can provide stability and security to Iran. And not boycotting the elections and participating was a way, they argued, to confirm the civility and security of their daily lives. QUESTION: Over the last four or five years, we’ve seen indiscriminate violence in the name of Islam: the beheadings, the bombs going off at mosques, funerals, et cetera. Has this kind of fanaticism and violence impacted the leaders in Iran or elsewhere and changed their thinking in any real way? MR. NASR: Yes and no. Because this violence is happening in the context of a political struggle, it is legitimated in some ways. For Sunni Salafis, the suicide-bombers are taking on a far more powerful force, and they’re using their bodies in place of missiles. Or they are killing heretical Shias. The Salafis believe that Shia blood is “halal,” permissible to be shed. Only a few weeks ago, a Wahhabi cleric in Saudi Arabia challenged the monarchy: “How can it be that in this country somebody can be born Shia and die Shia?” By which he meant, what sort of an Islamic country are you if people can be born and die heretics? They shouldn’t exist at all. In that circle it gets justified. And in most of the Sunni Arab world, this is depicted as a war against the Americans, and the Shiites are depicted as collaborators, and therefore it’s been legitimized. Among the Shia, the violence has had a cathartic effect, particularly when the insurgents blew up the Samarra shrine. Shias felt the Sunnis were going for the jugular of the religion. They had a sense of, “It’s not just killing people in markets – they want to uproot us. There is no way of living with these people.” It led many Shia Iraqis to buy more into the argument for federalism. At what price are you willing to coexist with Al Anbar? “If the Sunnis don’t indicate they are willing to accept Shiism as a religion and live with us, then let’s forget it.” The U.S. is missing the point. It is still working on the assumption that the Iraqis really want to live together. I think that’s not the case. The battle for Baghdad has already begun. Ethnic cleansing’s begun, except everybody speaks in the name of Iraqiness. Nobody’s going to say, “I’m a secessionist,” other than the Kurds. For all effective purposes, the insurgents convinced the Shiites there is no way to coexist. The $64,000 question is whether this sectarianism will travel out of Iraq and translate into similar mass violence in Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. If Iraq comes apart, it will not just be the question of how to manage the humanitarian issue. It will have a tsunami effect in the rest of the region. QUESTION: So the Vali Nasr theory of the Middle East is as follows. The U.S. policy should tilt more toward the Shia in Iraq in order to stabilize a Shia-centric Iraq solution. We should give Iran a bloody nose with Hezbollah in Lebanon, maybe detaching Syria and having them close the frontier, which would help defeat the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. At that point we make a grand bargain with a chastened and weakened Iran. That will further stabilize Iraq. The depolarization of the U.S.-Iranian relationship will strengthen the tendency among Shia to support a more Sistani-style moderate form of Shiism. A more stable Iraq becomes an ideological model that influences Iran. With the Shia side of the Middle East in a good spot, we are then better prepared for the long-term battle with the Salafi jihadis. Is that a reasonably accurate summary? MR. NASR: Let me highlight two aspects that have to do with Lebanon, which is the immediate crisis. First, Lebanon may have taken away the reason to hit Iran militarily, as gruesome as that sounds. You have already shown force in one location; you hope the lesson is learned in Iran. But you need to take advantage of that. The use of force should be followed immediately by engagement. Second, if we want the Sistani model to spread to Lebanon, it will mean one man, one vote. The U.S. can have legitimacy if it supports the dismantling of Hezbollah, provided that then it supports the political aspirations of that community. If you don’t, then you’re going to face another Hezbollah with a different name. If we really want the Sistani model to go forward, we have to use the vacuum of Lebanon to politically enfranchise the Lebanses Shias. Speakers at Pew Forum events are given an opportunity to review and approve their remarks. This transcript also has been edited for clarity, spelling and grammar.

Gibson all apologies after rant

BY MICHELLE CARUSO
DAILY NEWS WEST COAST BUREAU CHIEF

LOS ANGELES – A day after being busted for drunken driving, Mel Gibson apologized yesterday for getting behind the wheel while “inebriated” and said he was “deeply ashamed” of the “despicable” things he said in an abusive rant to cops.

The Oscar-winning star and director of “Braveheart” said he had suffered a “horrific relapse” in a decades-long battle with alcoholism.

“I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested, and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable,” Gibson said in a statement. “I am deeply ashamed of everything I said.”

The 50-year-old actor didn’t get more specific about his tirade to the L.A. County sheriff’s deputies who stopped him on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu early Friday.

The sheriff’s department has refused to release either Gibson’s mug shot or the report of the arresting officer, Deputy James Mee. But celebrity news Web site TMZ.com obtained several pages of Mee’s report and published explosive details.

According to Mee’s report, Gibson berated and threatened the deputy, saying, “You motherf—–. I’m going to f— you.”

“The Passion of the Christ” director also made anti-Semitic remarks. “F—— Jews. Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world,” Mee’s report quotes Gibson as saying.

The “Braveheart” star offered a public apology yesterday to Mee, who “was just doing his job.”

“I feel fortunate that I was apprehended before I caused injury to another person,” Gibson said in his statement.

Cops said Gibson’s blood-alcohol level was 0.12 when he was pulled over for speeding. The legal limit in California is 0.08.

The Aussie-raised actor said he had battled alcoholism “all of my adult life.” He said he had “already taken necessary steps to ensure my return to health,” but he did not elaborate.

Police officials, meanwhile, denied they purposely covered up the star’s tirade.

“There was no favoritism. There was no sanitization. A complete report of everything that occurred will be turned over to the district attorney,” said sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore.

Originally published on July 30, 2006

Mel gives cops hell

Report: Drunken Gibson threatens officer in rant

BY MICHELLE CARUSO DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Mel Gibson <!– –> LOS ANGELES – A blitzed Mel Gibson launched into an obscenity-laced tirade when he was busted on suspicion of drunken driving early yesterday, threatening an officer and making anti-Semitic and sexually abusive remarks, according to a police report. The “Passion of the Christ” director repeatedly said, “My life is f—-d,” according to the report by Los Angeles County Deputy James Mee, which was obtained by TMZ.com. The celebrity news Web site posted excerpts of the handwritten report. Gibson, 50, was pulled over for speeding at 3:10 a.m. on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, Calif., cops said. The Oscar-winning “Braveheart” star and director was driving 80 mph when he was snared by a radar trap, sheriff’s deputies said. The speed limit in that area is 45 mph to 55 mph. Gibson failed both alcohol breath and field sobriety tests, deputies said. His blood-alcohol level was .12, Deputy Anthony Moore said. The legal limit is .08 in California. According to the incident report obtained by TMZ.com, the Road Warrior embarked on a belligerent, anti-Semitic outburst when he realized he had been busted. “F—–g Jews. The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world,” Mee’s report quotes him as saying. “Are you a Jew?” Gibson asked the deputy, according to the report. The actor also berated the deputy, threatening, “You motherf—-r. I’m going to f— you,” according to Mee’s report. The actor also told the cop he “owns Malibu” and would spend all his money “to get even with me,” Mee said in his report. TMZ quoted a law enforcement source as saying Gibson noticed a female sergeant on the scene and yelled at her, “What do you think you’re looking at, sugar t–s?” Deputy Mee then wrote an eight-page report detailing of the incident, but higher-ups in the sheriff’s department felt it was too “inflammatory” to release and would merely serve to incite “Jewish hatred,” TMZ said. Reached for comment on TMZ’s report last night, Deputy Moore said the department would neither deny nor confirm its content. He could offer no explanation for why Mee’s report was withheld from reporters. Gibson rep Alan Neirob could not be reached for comment last night. Earlier, when asked about the arrest, his assistant said in an e-mailed statement, “At this time we don’t have any information on this matter but are checking into it.” A devout Catholic, Gibson has been dogged by allegations of anti-Semitism – which he has steadfastly denied – since his 2004 film “The Passion of the Christ,” about the crucifixion of Jesus. Once known as a Hollywood bad boy, the Aussie-raised Gibson was known to down five beers before breakfast at his partying peak. But Gibson has said he gave up drinking in the 1980s at the urging of Tina Turner, his co-star in “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.” Gibson was previously busted for driving under the influence in 1984. In that case, he ran a red light and struck another car in Toronto while filming “Mrs. Soffel” with Diane Keaton. He pleaded guilty and was fined $240. After yesterday’s bust, Gibson was booked at the Lost Hills sheriff’s station at 4:06 a.m. The father of seven spent a few hours in the lockup before being released on $5,000 bail at 9:45 a.m., sheriff’s deputies said. His case will be further investigated and sent to the district attorney’s office for review. No court date has been set. The sheriff’s department has previously released mug shots of other stars arrested for drunken driving, including actress Kim Delaney in 2002, but Gibson’s booking photo “was not available,” according to department spokesman Steve Whitmore. Sheriff Lee Baca personally ordered Gibson’s mug kept under wraps, a deputy told the Daily News. The California Highway Patrol, which has busted stars including Nick Nolte and former “Growing Pains” cutie Tracey Gold for DUI, routinely releases stars’ mug shots, no matter how unflattering. Originally published on July 29, 2006

Ric’s Christian Blog: Prayer Works — No Murders in Washington July 21 – 26

Ric’s Christian Blog: Prayer Works — No Murders in Washington July 21 – 26

Evangelicals React to Global Warming Claims of the Evangelical Climate Initiative

Kathryn Davis

The Interfaith Stewardship Alliance (ISA) hosted a Washington, D.C. press conference on July 25 to refute the dire claims about Global Warming from the Evangelical Climate Initiative (ECI) formed earlier this year.

“Yes, we know there is global warming, but there is no ‘Catastrophic Human Induced Global Warming’ consensus,” said ISA organizer Calvin Beisner. He warned against rhetoric that portrays the earth as near a “tipping point” disaster.

According to Dr. Calvin Beisner, ” we know there is global warming, but there is no ‘Catastrophic Human Induced Global Warming’ consensus.”

Agreeing with Beisner, IRD President Jim Tonkowich, who also signed ISA, emphasized that an ethical environmental policy must elevate human beings. “By all means let’s clean up our environment,” he said, “but let’s remember that human belonging on this earth must form the basis of any sound environmental policy.”

Signers of ISA’s “A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Response to Global Warming” believe ECI, though well-intentioned, uncritically accepts the worst case scenarios of Global Warming.

ISA’s statement, which was signed by over 130 prominent evangelicals and scientists, makes these points:

• ·Foreseeable global warming will have moderate and mixed (not only harmful but also helpful), not catastrophic, consequences for humanity—including the poor—and the rest of the world’s inhabitants.
• Natural causes may account for a large part, perhaps most, of the global warming in both the last thirty and the last one hundred fifty years, which together constitute an episode in the natural rising and falling cycles of global average temperature. Human emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are probably a minor and possibly an insignificant contributor to its causes.
• Reducing carbon dioxide emissions would have at most an insignificant impact on the quantity and duration of global warming and would not significantly reduce alleged harmful effects.
• Government-mandated carbon dioxide emissions reductions would not significantly curtail global warming or reduce its harmful effects. They in fact would cause greater harm than good to humanity—especially the poor—while offering virtually no benefit to the rest of the world’s inhabitants.
• The most prudent response is not to try (almost certainly unsuccessfully and at enormous cost) to prevent or reduce whatever slight warming might really occur. It is instead to adapt by preparing for the effects of climate change and to defend humanity—especially the poor—from all types of catastrophes, natural or man-made.

Beisner, who teaches social ethics at Knox Theological Seminary in Ft. Lauderdale, said ISA is neither “evangelical right” nor the “evangelical left,” but simply an evangelical approach to environmental policy. ISA’s signers include 132 evangelicals and non-evangelicals including scientists, economists, policy experts, and theologians.

“Remember that human belonging on this earth must form the basis of any sound environmental policy,” said IRD President Jim Tonkowich.

“We have limited resources and unlimited wants, so we’ve got to make choices,” said ISA signer Kenneth Chilton, Director of the Institute for the Study of Economics and the Environment at Lindenwood University. Scientists will not be able to predict climate change in the future, he said. Predicitng tomorrow’s weather is difficult enough. Chilton urged evangelicals to focus on global poverty. “Poor people,” he explained, “pollute to survive.” Chilton suggested encouraging trade and free market systems worldwide to lift the poor out of poverty.

Chilton said he does not see global warming as a moral issue that is solved by a specific Biblical mandate. “I don’t believe evangelicals should put this on top of all other issues,” He said. Instead, evangelicals should proclaim the Gospel and focus on issues that the Bible does more directly address.

Supporting Chilton’s point, Rev. Abdul Karim Sesay from Sierra Leone testified about the living conditions in Africa, emphasizing the fight against poverty as an answer to many environmental concerns. Most Africans are given small rations of energy that are not sufficient to refrigerate food or regulate indoor temperature in any season, he said. The result is illness and premature death in many cases“What ISA is about is what God requires of us,” Karim Sesay said. “As Christians we must put that which God has entrusted to us to use while following the will of the Giver.”

The panel agreed that members of the media have blown the issue of global warming out of proportion, and believe the primary aim of environmental policies should be to work to improve the quality of life for the earth’s inhabitants.

Kathryn Davis is a summer intern for the Institute on Religion and Democracy. She is a student at Palm Beach Atlantic University, where she will be entering her senior year.

Date: 7/26/2006

Do Homosexuals Really Want to Get Married?

Feature by Ed Vitagliano
July 28, 2006

(AgapePress) – Homosexual activists in the U.S. are fighting ferociously for the legal right to marry, and are equalled in their tenacity only by their pro-family opponents. But when and where they are given the legal right, do homosexuals really want to get married?

Statistics appear to answer in the negative. That is the conclusion reached in a report issued by the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy (iMAPP) and written by the group’s president, Maggie Gallagher, and policy director, Joshua K. Baker. The iMAPP policy paper, “Demand for Same-Sex Marriage: Evidence from the United States, Canada, and Europe [PDF],” indicates that immediately following the legalization of same-sex marriage, “the number of same-sex marriages, after an initial burst, appears to [decrease] with each year the legal option is available.”

In 2001, the Netherlands became the first country to legalize same-sex marriage. They were quickly followed by Belgium, Canada, Spain and South Africa. According to Caleb H. Price, research analyst in the Government and Public Policy Division at Focus on the Family, civil unions or other forms of domestic partnerships are allowed in an additional 11 nations.

But Gallagher and Baker found that homosexuals don’t seem very enthusiastic about taking part in the institution of marriage. (See “State of the Unions” below) In the Netherlands, for example, only 6.3% of homosexuals in that nation have gotten married. Only 2.1% of the total Dutch population is homosexual.

In contrast, in U.S. states that have some form of same-sex benefits, a majority of heterosexuals are married: California (52%), Connecticut (55%), Massachusetts (52%), New Jersey (54%), Vermont (55%).

Even when they couple, homosexual relationships are relatively short-lived. A study of homosexual couples in Holland found that same-sex unions lasted an average of 18 months and included an average of eight additional sex partners outside the “monogamous” relationship.

Surprisingly, in France, despite the legalization of homosexual civil unions in 1999, a government commission issued its report in January of this year and recommended against legalizing same-sex marriage. The “Parliamentary Report on the Family and the Rights of Children” said the government should “affirm and protect children’s rights and the primacy of those rights over adults’ aspirations.”

After canvassing experts in France, and traveling to Spain, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands and Canada in order to assess the reforms that have occurred in those nations, the commission said that the best interests of children argue against same-sex marriage.

The commission determined that it “is not possible to think about marriage separately from filiation: the two questions are closely connected, in that marriage is organized around the child.”

As a result of that determination, the experts on the government panel realized that the right of homosexuals to marry would simultaneously or subsequently also have to include the right to adopt. “A majority of [the commission] does not wish to question the fundamental principles of the law of filiation, which are based on the tripartite unit of ‘a father, a mother, a child,’ citing the principle of caution,” the report said. “For that reason, that majority also, logically, chose to deny access to marriage to same-sex couples.”

If so few homosexuals want to get married when they are given the opportunity, why are “gay” and lesbian activists fighting so hard for legalizing same-sex marriage? Probably because homosexual activists are interested in the cultural victory that legalized same-sex marriage would represent, said Price.

“While winning the right to marry may be the ‘crown jewel’ of the gay-rights movement, what homosexuals really want is for homosexuality to be declared normative, natural and God-ordained,” he said. “Their deepest desire is that homosexual behavior would no longer be sin.”

State of the Unions
According to research conducted separately by the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy and Focus on the Family, only a small percentage of homosexuals marry, join in a civil union, or take advantage of domestic partner (DP) benefits when it becomes legal to do so. (While a few other nations have legalized some form of homosexual unions, an insufficient time has passed for the respective governments to collect statistics.)

Where same-sex marriage is legal … % of homosexuals joined
Netherlands … 6.30
Belgium … 14.70
Massachusetts … 10.20

Where civil unions are legal … % of homosexuals joined
France … 7.38
Germany … 0.59
New Zealand … 0.47
Vermont … 16.00
Connecticut … 1.17

Where DP benefits are available … % of homosexuals joined
New Jersey … 3.75
California … 9.40
Tasmania (Australia) … 0.97

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Ed Vitagliano, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is news editor of AFA Journal, a monthly publication of the American Family Association. This article, printed with permission, appears in the August 2006 issue.

Endowed by Our Creator?

By Coach Dave Daubenmire Email: coach@ptsalt.com Click here for bio and archived articles Posted: 07/26/2006

I’ve just returned from 4 days on the streets in Jackson, Mississippi, fighting abortion with Operation Save America. Despite what you read in the press, OSA is a group of God fearing, Christ honoring, and patriotic Americans. They are not a street mob, as many would have you to believe, but faithful, gentle Christians who hate what is happening to America.

Many took vacation from work to stand on the streets in Jackson and defend Truth. Young families, older grandparents, faithful Pastors, and sold-out Christians made up the “unruly mob” that lived out their Faith in the streets. Standing against the scourge of abortion is a good thing, despite what some churches, church leaders, and government officials might say.

If you are a regular reader of my commentaries you know that I am not a conspiracy nut, or obsessed with the New World Order, although I believe both elements are at work in our nation. I leave the exposing of those forces up to other, more qualified, writers. Make no mistake; however, something is seriously amiss in America. Unless you have been where I have been, and seen what I have seen, please don’t write me off as another black-helicopter guy. Trust me, America is in serious trouble. We are about one step from a police state.

As I have traveled around America defending Christian values, I have seen a lot of things that disheartened me, but nothing that reached the level of the police in Jackson.

Please don’t stop reading, and forget what it is you have heard about OSA. I was there. I saw it first hand.

The U. S. Constitution is almost worthless in America. Although our political leaders like to speak about it, very few of them follow it. The Declaration of Independence is the mission statement for America. The Constitution is the bylaws by which government will be restrained. The Constitution was written to put limits on the government, not controls on the people. The Declaration of Independence states:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…..

The purpose of government, as expressed by our founders, was to protect our God-given rights. It is crucial to understand this premise found in the declaration, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. Our rights come from our Creator, not from government. If the government can give rights, then it follows that it can take rights. If God gave us the rights, then only God can take the rights. The purpose of government is to make sure your rights are protected. God is the restrainer of tyrannical government. Acknowledging God keeps our leaders honest. The belief that there is an ultimate authority to which they are personally accountable keeps the power-hungry in check. But if God is no longer over government, to whom are our leaders accountable? America is teetering on the edge of tyranny.

What happens if God is removed from the picture? What happens if America and American law becomes secularized? What happens when they tell us that there is separation of church and state and we must keep our Faith to ourselves? What happens when “One nation under God” no longer acknowledges God? If God is not acknowledged, and government becomes the granter of rights, then who keeps an eye on “government”? If God is the granter of rights, then government must answer to God. If there is no God, then the government is god, and government determines what rights we have.

This was never more apparent than last week in Jackson, Mississippi.

This is not a police-bashing commentary. I honor the men and women who defend our streets, but unfortunately, in this godless culture in which we live; government has become the ultimate authority. Whatever “they” say is the law, is the law, regardless of what the Constitution says. Policemen now defend the law; they no longer defend the Constitution. To wit:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. 1^st Amendment.

Pastor Ed Martin is in his mid 60’has given his life to defending the unborn. This gentle, God-fearing Christian man is nearly penniless, having spent all he has in defense of the unborn. This loving, grand-pa like man was arrested for carrying a 8-foot cross on the sidewalk in Jackson. You must look at this picture. He was arrested for “failing to obey a lawful order”. How is that order lawful when it flies in the face of his Constitutional rights? See, law-enforcers determine what Pastor Ed’s rights are. They don’t like the cross, so it is illegal.

Dr. Patrick Johnston a family practitioner from Ohio was arressted for holding a sign. Look at this man’s family. Do they look like a mob to you? What was he arrested for? You got it. “Failure to obey a lawful order.” If government gives rights, then government can take them. God endowed Dr. J with the right to hold those signs on the streets of America, and God’s “lawful order” is above the Jackson police.

Selective law-enforcement, that is what is going on in America. See, abortion is wrong because “our creator” endowed all of us with the right to life. No “lawful order”can take that right away.

“Lawful orders” is another term for selective justice. The police officers give an order, enforce it, and then look for a law on the books that they can use to justify their “lawful order”. I couldn’t care-less if it is lawful. Is it Constitutional?

The pagans showed up to disrupt the event. Look at these pictures! Police watched them beat on a car with pipes and clubs (look at this!) and did nothing because “it was private property and no one had filed a complaint.” They watched it happen and did nothing!!

During an outdoor worship service in the park, the anarchists invaded and disrupted things by feigning homosexual acts, gyrating on the stage, with open-mouth same-sex kissing during a church service! Look at this! OSA had a “lawful order” to use the park. Police watched, and did nothing to defend our Constitutional rights. “They’re just kids” one officer chortled when shown video of lewd, simulated-sex, as parent’s tried to shield the eyes of children. No need for a “lawful order”, I guess.

I could go on with horror stories, but for a full accounting of the events visit Minutemen United, or OSA. Police confiscated (stole) over 60 signs as evidence. Check out how powerful the messages on these signs are. No wonder they didn’t want the citizens to see them!

Here is the problem. Unless you are out on the streets you will never realize how evil our government has become. Christian police officers enforce ungodly orders because it is “the law”. “Just doin my job” they say as they steal property from the citizens they are sworn to protect. Reminds me of a great line from “Cool Hand Luke”.

“Just doing my job, Luke’ said the boss man as he locked Luke in the “hole”.

“Callin it your job, don’t make it right, Boss’, was Luke’s reply.

As frightening as the thought is, martial law will be easy to enforce in America. Christian churches and Christian pastors encourage their flocks to follow un-Constitutional, un-Godly, “lawful orders”, while “Christian-cops”, arrest, and steal property from peaceful men and women who are only living out Proverbs 24:11, which is their God-given right.

We have removed God from the equation. Government is no longer accountable to God, but rather, to themselves. The law is what they say it is. God is dead. The law is now God.

I’m an optimist by nature, and by choice, but I am sorry to say that hard times are coming to America. Unfortunately the most surprised people will be the Christians. Hiding in the safety of our churches, bowing to the separation of church and state, we have become oblivious to the anti-Christian-tyranny rumbling for our door. Truth faileth…it is lying in the streets.

Allow me to close with this scripture From Isaiah 59:15 “and he who departeth from evil makes himself a prey”. If you are teaching your children Truth, then you are setting them up for big-time trouble in America. One worldview will win, and one will be punished. If we teach our children that much of what America practices is sin, and most of America disagrees with what we are teaching our children, then our children will pay a horrible price.

God is dead. Government is god! Now follow this “lawful order”.

Yep, we have been endowed by government with what they determine our rights to be.

Christians have retreated in cowardice, sheep for the slaughter. Our kids will have hell to pay.

Dems Have a Plan to Counter Growing Success of State Marriage Initiatives

By Jody Brown
July 27, 2006

(AgapePress) – The Democratic Party has apparently decided to take a different tack in its efforts to bring legalized homosexual “marriage” to every state in the country. Determined to provide more coordinated support to advocates of same-sex unions, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) recently announced it has adopted a five-point plan for fighting state ballot measures defining marriage as between one man and one woman.

In 2004, the Democratic Party made it clear it stood opposite President George W. Bush on defending traditional marriage. “We repudiate President Bush’s divisive effort to politicize the Constitution by pursuing a ‘Federal Marriage Amendment,’” it says on page 38 of The 2004 Democratic National Platform for America. In the statement prior to that, the party says such an issue should be left to the states. “In our country, marriage has been defined at the state level for 200 years, and we believe it should continue to be defined there,” it says.

Since that platform was written, the number of states installing the traditional definition of marriage as part of their constitution has grown to 20 — and as many as seven more are set to consider similar initiatives this fall. Sensing that its “leave it to the states” approach needs some tweaking, the DNC has apparently decided to add more structure to the state-level efforts to legalize same-sex marriage.

For example, the DNC recently contributed $10,000 to opponents of the pro-marriage “Protect Marriage Illinois” initiative in the state of Illinois. A spokesman for the pro-homosexual group National Stonewall Democrats — in an interview with the Washington Blade, a pro-homosexual publication — confirmed that contribution, adding that homosexual activists in the state were “very pleased” with the DNC’s help.

In the same article, DNC spokesman Danien LaVera spelled out the Committee’s five-point plan for fighting state ballot measures that would ban same-sex marriage:

1. Label “anti-gay” ballot measures as “divisive” ploys by the Republicans and others to deflect voter attention from other important issues, including “the Bush administration’s failed policies.”

2. Begin a state “party-building” operation that includes specific training for state party operatives in all 50 states on how to campaign against ballot measures banning homosexual marriage.

3. Work closely with the National Stonewall Democrats to “develop strategy and talking points” to combat state measures defining marriage as being between one man and one woman.

4. Work cooperatively with homosexual organizations fighting ballot measures in each state where they surface, providing campaign advice, expertise, and logistical and financial support.

5. Empower and organize GLBT [gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender] communities around the country through the help of Brian Bond, the DNC’s new “gay outreach organizer.”

According to LaVera, a number of these actions are already in place. The state party-building effort (Point #2), for example, was begun by DNC chairman Howard Dean, who is on record saying that the July 7 pro-marriage ruling by the New York Supreme Court “relies on outdated and bigoted notions about families.” LaVera also tells the Blade that the DNC’s involvement in the Illinois marriage initiative shows how “highly successful” cooperation between his organization and pro-homosexual groups can be.

The DNC will not be alone in its efforts to combat marriage protection initiatives at the state level. The Blade quotes spokespersons from two high-profile homosexual rights groups — the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force — who say the groups are committing several million dollars toward ballot measure fights. Their goal, says a NGLTF official, is to gain legalization of same-sex marriage in ten states over the next ten years — “either through legislative or judicial action.”

As of late, neither avenue has proven successful for advocates of same-sex marriage. Their most recent setback came out of Washington State, where on Wednesday the state Supreme Court ruled the Defense of Marriage Act passed by voters in 1998 is constitutional — and said that in a democracy, marriage should be defined by elected governmental representatives, not by judges.

Currently, Massachusetts is the only state that allows homosexuals to marry; the state of Vermont recognizes “civil unions.” States considering constitutional marriage amendments in November include Arizona (pending certification of petition signatures), Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

QUOTES FROM THE WASHINGTON STATE MARRIAGE DEBATE

QUOTES FROM THE WASHINGTON STATE MARRIAGE DEBATE SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS July 26, 2006 (Abridged) Opinions on Wednesday’s Washington state Supreme Court decision supporting a ban on same-sex marriage came from across the political and social spectrum: “The goal of these groups (gay marriage supporters) remains the destruction of marriage at the national level – they are powerful, well-organized and determined.” - Matt Daniels, president of the Alliance for Marriage. “In this case, the court was willing to treat my family differently than other families. … I think that is something that will change over time in the same way that many previous decisions have been overturned that kind of called out a group of people and treated them differently.” – Brenda Bauer of Seattle, one of the 38 plaintiffs in the case. “This is a civil rights movement, and time is on our side.” – Jennifer C. Pizer, lawyer for gay-rights law group Lambda Legal, which was involved in the case. “Now, the Washington decision will also be important and influential in the ongoing court battles. There are still many out there being fought and still some to be initiated.” – Monte Stewart, president of the Marriage Law Foundation, an Orem, Utah-based group that opposes gay marriage. “Emotion is raw … it’s going to take time for people to get over that sense of hurt and try and channel that energy to eventually win this fight.” – State Rep. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, the senior of four openly gay state lawmakers. “People who are unhappy with this decision have the ability to change the law through the Legislature or through initiative. But public policy should not be legislated from the bench.” – Attorney General Rob McKenna, whose office defended the state’s gay-marriage ban. McKenna is a Republican.

Execution of a teenage girl

A television documentary team has pieced together details surrounding the case of a 16-year-old girl, executed two years ago in Iran.

Atefah Sahaaleh: wrongly described as being 22 years old

On 15 August, 2004, Atefah Sahaaleh was hanged in a public square in the Iranian city of Neka.

Her death sentence was imposed for “crimes against chastity”.

The state-run newspaper accused her of adultery and described her as 22 years old.

But she was not married – and she was just 16.

Sharia Law

In terms of the number of people executed by the state in 2004, Iran is estimated to be second only to China.

In the year of Atefah’s death, at least 159 people were executed in accordance with the Islamic law of the country, based on the Sharia code.

Since the revolution, Sharia law has been Iran’s highest legal authority.

Alongside murder and drug smuggling, sex outside marriage is also a capital crime.

As a signatory of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, Iran has promised not to execute anyone under the age of 18.

But the clerical courts do not answer to parliament. They abide by their religious supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, making it virtually impossible for human rights campaigners to call them to account.

Code of behaviour

At the time of Atefah’s execution in Neka, journalist Asieh Amini heard rumours the girl was just 16 years old and so began to ask questions.

To teach others a lesson, Atefah’s execution was held in public

“When I met with the family,” says Asieh, “they showed me a copy of her birth certificate, and a copy of her death certificate. Both of them show she was born in 1988. This gave me legitimate grounds to investigate the case.”

So why was such a young girl executed? And how could she have been accused of adultery when she was not even married?

Disturbed by the death of her mother when she was only four or five years old, and her distraught father’s subsequent drug addiction, Atefah had a difficult childhood.

She was also left to care for her elderly grandparents, but they are said to have shown her no affection.

In a town like Neka, heavily under the control of religious authorities, Atefah – often seen wandering around on her own – was conspicuous.

It was just a matter of time before she came to the attention of the “moral police”, a branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, whose job it is to enforce the Islamic code of behaviour on Iran’s streets.

Secret relationship

Being stopped or arrested by the moral police is a fact of life for many Iranian teenagers.

Previously arrested for attending a party and being alone in a car with a boy, Atefah received her first sentence for “crimes against chastity” when she was just 13.

Although the exact nature of the crime is unknown, she spent a short time in prison and received 100 lashes.

Atefah was soon caught in a downward spiral of arrest and abuse

When she returned to her home town, she told those close to her that lashes were not the only things she had to endure in prison. She described abuse by the moral police guards.

Soon after her release, Atefah became involved in an abusive relationship with a man three times her age.

Former revolutionary guard, 51-year-old Ali Darabi – a married man with children – raped her several times.

She kept the relationship a secret from both her family and the authorities.

Atefah was soon caught in a downward spiral of arrest and abuse.

Local petition

Circumstances surrounding Atefah’s fourth and final arrest were unusual.

The moral police said the locals had submitted a petition, describing her as a “source of immorality” and a “terrible influence on local schoolgirls”.

But there were no signatures on the petition – only those of the arresting guards.

Men’s word is accepted much more clearly and much more easily than women Mohammad Hoshi, Iranian lawyer and exile

Three days after her arrest, Atefah was in a court and tried under Sharia law.

The judge was the powerful Haji Rezai, head of the judiciary in Neka.

No court transcript is available from Atefah’s trial, but it is known that for the first time, Atefah confessed to the secret of her sexual abuse by Ali Darabi.

However, the age of sexual consent for girls under Sharia law is nine, and furthermore, rape is very hard to prove in an Iranian court.

“Men’s word is accepted much more clearly and much more easily than women,” according to Iranian lawyer and exile Mohammad Hoshi.

“They can say: ‘You know she encouraged me’ or ‘She didn’t wear proper dress’.”

Court of appeal

She was my love, my heart… I did everything for her, everything I could Atefah’s father

When Atefah realised her case was hopeless, she shouted back at the judge and threw off her veil in protest.

It was a fatal outburst.

She was sentenced to execution by hanging, while Darabi got just 95 lashes.

Shortly before the execution, but unbeknown to her family, documents that went to the Supreme Court of Appeal described Atefah as 22.

“Neither the judge nor even Atefah’s court appointed lawyer did anything to find out her true age,” says her father.

And a witness claims: “The judge just looked at her body, because of the developed physique… and declared her as 22.”

Judge Haji Rezai took Atefah’s documents to the Supreme Court himself.

And at six o’clock on the morning of her execution he put the noose around her neck, before she was hoisted on a crane to her death.

Pain and death

During the making of the documentary about Atefah’s death the production team telephoned Judge Haji Rezai to ask him about the case, but he refused to comment.

The human rights organisation Amnesty International says it is concerned that executions are becoming more common again under President Mahmoud Ahmedinajad, who advocates a return to the pure values of the revolution.

The judiciary have never admitted there was any mishandling of Atefah’s case.

For Atefah’s father the pain of her death remains raw. “She was my love, my heart… I did everything for her, everything I could,” he says.

He did not get the chance to say goodbye.

10,000 gather in LA to support Israel

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger joined a crowd of 10,000 at a pro-Israel rally Sunday organized by the Jewish Federation Council of Los Angeles.

Rabbi Marvin Hier opened the rally by saying, “We are here today to stand, shoulder to shoulder with our brothers and sisters. Just a year ago, Israel had a dream of a new era of peace and hope for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. But the terrorists turned that dream into a nightmare.

“Israel withdrew unilaterally from Lebanon and Gaza, but the Palestinian response was Hamas and Hizbullah who crossed into Israel, murdered and kidnapped her soldiers, rocketed her cities all because they’re objective is a Middle East free of Jews. Something we can assure them, they will never live to see.

“Everyday, the critics of Israel want to rewrite the script,” said Hier, “change the focus, insert new catch phrases collateral damage – disproportional response – collective punishment.

“What would the nations of the world do if there were 10,000 rockets in the hands of terrorist organization, threatening their borders? I’ll tell you what they would do. They would do exactly what Israel is doing and no one would criticize them for it.”

Hier introduced Schwarzenegger as, “a great friend of the Jewish Community, a man who during the intifada, when the tourists were gone and the hotels were empty, and the people were down in spirit made his first foreign trip to the State of Israel as a sign of his friendship and admiration.”

To listen to Schwarzenegger’s speech, click here

Schwarzenegger told the crowd, “It is great to be here during this difficult time Israel is facing. We are all here to support the State of Israel.

“While we all regret the loss of innocent life, there is no doubt that Israel has the right to take all appropriate steps to keep its people safe.

“I have been to Israel many times,” he said. “I started in the ’70s as a body-building champion. I went back in the ’80s as the Terminator. I went back in the ’90s to open my Planet Hollywood restaurant, and Israel was the first country that I visited after I became governor of the great state of California.”

“There is nothing Israel wants more than to live in peace. That is why I am happy to be here to be supportive of that here today …Am Israel Chai…I’ll be back,” said the governor.

Also at the rally were LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; Congressman Howard Berman (D-CA); Jewish Federation President John Fishel; County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky; City Councilman Jack Weiss; Israel’s Consul General Ehud Danoch; Federation Board Chair Michael Koss; and numerous Jewish and Christian leaders.