Politics not for insane person

Watch the video on the BBC website

'No sane person would go into politics now', says former Ukip MEP Godfrey Bloom

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/no-sane-person-would-go-into-politics-now-says-former-ukip-mep-godfrey-bloom-8846125.html

Former Ukip MEP Godfrey Bloom has said no “sane” person from a professional background would enter politics now because they face being vilified for holding convictions.

Not one to shy away from controversy, Mr Bloom is now an Independent MEP for Yorkshire and Humber after facing a storm of criticism for comments that women who did not clean behind fridges were "sluts" and for hitting the Channel Four journalist Michael Crick over the head with a conference programme.

He was also condemned for referring to "Bongo Bongo Land" when discussing overseas aid, a comment he stridently defended on national television by claiming it was not a racist comment because "a bongo is a white antelope living in the forest".

Writing in the Yorkshire Post newspaper, Mr Bloom said the media coverage he received will ensure that "no sane individual from a successful professional background would now go into" politics.
He argued: "The vilification and lies overwhelm anyone with conviction."
The politician said the outrage expressed in the media was not felt by members of the public, who he asserts "flooded his office" with overwhelming support for his remarks.
He asked: "Is Bongo Bongo Land offensive? Only if I say it. Nick Robinson, the BBC's political editor, used it in his book Live From Downing Street last year and no one said a word.

"But of course he isn't me."
Mr Bloom claimed his "sluts" comment, which he stresses was a joke, was met with more "mock outrage" from the media, but not from the public, and insisted that when people read "what he had actually said" his "post bag was laden with support".

He then described his encounter with Mr Crick, who asked why there was an absence of black faces on the cover of the Ukip party conference agenda being as "harassed by an awful little man with a camera in a London street".
Mr Bloom continued: "I swat him with a magazine, more horror and mock outrage."

He also hit out at those who "tagged" him as a "misogynist", by pointing out that the fact he has "been a leading sponsor of women’s sport since 1992 remains unreported" is "not very convenient, is it?"
He claimed to be relishing returning to the back benches but pitied the electorate who will only have a choice of "grey, boring, stand-for-nothing politicians whose names you cannot even remember".

He concluded his article by telling the audience: "You're welcome to 'em."
When Mr Bloom decided to stand down as a Ukip MEP the party leader Nigel Farage said: "I'm very sorry it has come to this, he's been with us for 15 years, he's sat in the European Parliament since 2004, he absolutely 100 per cent believes in everything Ukip stands for and he's been a good, loyal MEP for us.

"It's a sorry state of affairs." 

• UKIP MEP's 'regret' on 'Bongo Bongo'
  07 AUGUST 2013
• In footage obtained by the Guardian, recorded last month at a meeting in Wordsley, West Midlands, Mr Bloom said: "How we can possibly be giving £1bn a month, when we're in this sort of debt, to Bongo Bongo Land is completely beyond me.
  Some of the money had gone on buying "Ray-Ban sunglasses, apartments in Paris, Ferraris and all the rest of it", he added.

Godfrey Bloom, the politician censured last week for joking that party activists were "sluts", says he is quitting the UKIP group in Europe.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24222992

Great nation or Great Satan? US-Iran love affair

Hassan Rowhani calls US a 'great' nation in sharp change
Obama holds historic phone call with Rouhani 

Rothkopf: Hassan Rowhani can change U.S.-Iran relations -- and the world

Iranian President Rowhani tweets Jewish blessing - or did he?

Thursday, 5 September 2013

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was known for calling for the Holocaust a myth and gleefully predicted the annihilation of Israel. (File photo: Reuters)

Analysis: Rouhani begins tougher mission of selling US outreach to hard-liners at home

Peter Oborne's confusion on Iran: a friendly note

Hassan Rowhani Dear Diary: There’s no reason we can’t sit down and rap. Now, who’s up for some hacky sack?

Tristin Hopper | 20/09/13 | Last Updated: 21/09/13 9:41 AM ET
More from Tristin Hopper | @TristinHopper

The National Post re-imagines a week in the life of a newsmaker. Today, Tristin Hopper looks at the week through the eyes of Hassan Rowhani, president of Iran.

Monday
I was shuttling between meetings when, what do you know? I found myself driving past Tehran’s Yousefabad Synagogue. On the spur of the moment, I ordered my driver to stop, got out and bounded through the front doors.  “Hey, what’s up, Jews!?” I said, holding my hand up for a high five, “President Rouhani here!” There were not many people inside, but they all just looked at me with shocked stares.  “Oh, you’re probably still raw about all the Holocaust-denial, ‘wipe-Israel-off-the-map’ stuff … but hey, that was the last guy, not me,” I said. More stares.  “Uh, mazel tov?” I yelled, but receiving the same muted response, I decided to make for the door. Well, nobody said mutual understanding was going to be easy.  As I was stepping outside, I went in for a high-five with a passing Baha’i, but he just flinched and ran away. What gives with these people?

• http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/09/20/hassan-rouhani-dear-diary-theres-no-reason-we-cant-sit-down-and-rap-now-whos-up-for-some-hacky-sack/

Wife of Jailed Pastor Asks Rowhani for Husband’s Freedom

Naghmeh Abedini hand delivered letter to Rowhani delegation on Monday

http://freebeacon.com/wife-of-jailed-pastor-asks-rowhani-for-husbands-freedom/

Saeed Abedini / Facebook

BY: Adam Kredo Follow @Kredo0
September 24, 2013 3:25 pm
The wife of an American Christian pastor imprisoned in Iran confronted Iranian President Hassan Rowhani to lobby for her ailing husband’s release on Monday in New York City.
Naghmeh Abedini, the wife of jailed Pastor Saeed Abedini, confronted Rowhani and his United Nations delegation in the lobby of New York’s One U.N. hotel, where both parties are staying.
Abedini delivered to the Iranian delegation a written plea from her husband, who has been imprisoned in Iran for nearly a year after being arrested for promoting his Christian faith and helping orphans.
He has been sentenced to serve an eight-year term.
Abedini’s wife intercepted Rowhani and his delegation as they made their way to the hotel’s lobby elevators.

glasnost to the Vatican

September 27, 2013 6:52 pm

The new Pope is bringing glasnost to the Vatican

By David Gardne

No one knows how his ideas will fare – but everybody senses they challenge conservative power

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0135735c-26a8-11e3-bbeb-00144feab7de.html?ftcamp=published_links%2Frss%2Fcomment%2Ffeed%2F%2Fproduct

©Getty

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, almost unknown to the world before his ascent this spring to the chair of Saint Peter after the sudden abdication of Pope Benedict XVI, is creating a real stir in the Roman Catholic Church. After long decades of papal intolerance that tried to silence debate and snuff out the flames of dissent, Pope Francis has just called for a “new balance” to prevent the two millennia-old Church collapsing “like a house of cards”. A discourse unheard inside the Roman hierarchy since the Second Vatican Council convened by Pope John XXIII in 1962 is being revived by this Argentine Jesuit.

The impassioned debates that fizzed and then fizzled through the 1960s and 70s – on everything from clerical celibacy to liberation theology – were shut up in the deep freeze of dogma by Popes John Paul II and Benedict. Francis has now opened the freezer. Nobody knows how these ideas will fare once they thaw. But everybody senses they challenge conservative power – from the Curia, the Vatican bureaucracy, to the reactionary Opus Dei order favoured by John Paul and Benedict – in ways that could change the face of the Church.

Quite how this has happened is a mystery. John Paul and Benedict, absolutists on questions of doctrine and papal prerogative, had more than 30 years to pack the conclave of cardinals, which chooses the pope, with prelates like them. Mystery still surrounds the (almost) unheard-of resignation of Benedict “on health grounds”. And Pope Francis himself, long reputed a conservative, looks an unlikely harbinger of perestroika and glasnost. But the signs of change keep accumulating.

He broadcasts his austere style, and that the Church of Jesus Christ is the Church of the poor. Whetherdenouncing the “idolatry” of money before jobless Sardinian miners, or telling his bishops to be shepherds who “smell more like the sheep”, Francis is sincere in casting his lot with society’s have-nots, something he dramatised by not moving in to the Vatican’s well-appointed papal apartments but instead to a priestly commune.

But the Catholic Church is about conserving an immutable core of orthodox belief, century after century, and while tone may vary, substance cannot. Can it be looked at in a different way? In recent weeks Pope Francis has fired off headline-grabbing statements on controversial themes, fromhomosexuality (“If someone is gay and is looking for the Lord, who am I to judge him?”) to atheism (“God’s mercy has no limits,” he said, “the issue for those who do not believe in God is to obey their conscience”). The contrast with Benedict, a subtle and retiring theologian with no pastoral background but a long history as John Paul’s doctrinal enforcer, could hardly be greater. Note, though, that the Church has, so far, changed no doctrine whatsoever.

But then came the Pope’s private meeting this month with Gustavo Gutiérrez, the Peruvian priest who in a 1971 book popularised the ideas of the theology of liberation. These ideas, declaring structures of injustice that enshrined poverty as incompatible with the Gospel, became a call to moral arms for priests and lay activists across the developing world. The Jesuit Pope’s meeting prompted some Catholics to remember that it was the former Jesuit superior general, the Basque Pedro Arrupe, who in a letter to his Latin American priests in May 1968 first used the term the “preferential option for the poor” – which became the foundation of liberation theology.

John Paul used papal power to try to extirpate this current, which he equated with Marxism, as well as to roll back the modernising ideas of the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Benedict, was his principal instrument, in a battle that in some respects resembled the cold war. Hélder Câmara, the late archbishop of Recife in Brazil, a big influence behind the scenes at the Second Vatican Council, summed up the predicament: “When I give food to the poor, I am considered a saint. But when I ask why they are poor, I am called a communist.”

Pope Francis is no liberation theologian. But his ostensible relaxation of old anathemas has clearly worried organisations such as Opus Dei. The Pope’s long interview this week with Jesuit magazines – arresting in its clarity – will not have reassured them.

A pope enumerating his faults, for instance, can hardly hold up the banner of papal infallibility. “I have never been a rightwinger,” said Francis. “It was my authoritarian way of making decisions that created problems.” He compared the Church to a “field hospital after a battle” where the doctors were obsessing about cholesterol levels. “We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods,” he said.

The Pope is taking action too. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the secretary of state of the Holy See who said the media was responsible for the impression that the Church was obsessed with sex and private morality, is out. Pietro Parolin, a skilled diplomat who will have to tackle everything from reform of the Vatican Bank to restructuring the Curia, is in. His observation that celibate priests are a clerical tradition, not a doctrine, did not go unnoticed. There appears to be a purge of individuals associated with the child sex abuse scandals that have so devastated the Church; this is not transparent.

There are demands for the reinstatement of sanctioned theologians, such as Hans Küng and Leonardo Boff. John Paul and Benedict manufactured hundreds of like-minded saints on assembly lines that devalued their sanctity. This pope may expedite the canonisation of Archbishop Oscar Romero, a modern Thomas Becket shot down by death squads while celebrating mass in San Salvador in 1980.

Francis’s first encyclical, moreover, will get straight to his point. It is said the title will be Beatis Pauperes – Blessed are the Poor. Anyone who wants to be more papist than this pope better get the message.

david.gardner@ft.com

Spain's double standards on Gibraltar

By Daniel Hannan Politics Last updated: September 27th, 2013

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100238466/spains-double-standards-on-gibraltar/

So what exactly is the difference?

How would Mariano Rajoy feel if the situation were reversed? The Spanish PM has raised the status of Gibraltar at the United Nations, calling it an anachronism, and demanding talks on sovereignty. But what would he say if Spain had conquered a slice of someone else’s territory and later had that annexation ratified by treaty? Would he now be arguing that the wishes of the inhabitants were secondary?

You can probably guess the answer. As a matter of fact, you don’t have to guess, for there is precisely such a case: the Portuguese town of Olivença, occupied by Spain since 1801.

When the issue of Gibraltar comes up, supporters of the status quo are wont to point, not at Olivença, but at Ceuta and Melilla, Spain’s two exclaves in Morocco. Like Gib, Ceuta and Melilla are physically separated from the mother country; indeed, you can glimpse Ceuta from Gibraltar, which rather focuses local people’s minds on Madrid’s contrasting stances. But Olivença is much the more precise analogy.

Spanish friends for whom Gibraltar is an issue (and, in my experience, most Spaniards are more relaxed about the whole thing than their newspapers and politicians suggest) say that Ceuta can’t be compared to Gibraltar because Morocco used to be Spanish, and they’ve been in Ceuta longer than the British have been in Gibraltar and yada yada.

“X is not Y!” The line is always delivered with great panache, as if it were both an original observation and a clinching argument. Draw any international parallel, however narrow and technical, and you are guaranteed – guaranteed – to be told, with Olympian authority, that we can’t compare the two situations. Chile has done impressive things with its pensions? “Britain is not Chile!” Switzerland has got rather a good deal with the EU? “You can’t compare us to Switzerland!”
Oddly, the put-down often seems to work. I was recently in Sarajevo with some Turkish friends. One of them, an MP, held forth for the better part of a morning about what he saw as the excessive autonomy granted to the Serbian part of Bosnia-Herzegovina. It was wrong, he said, to recognise borders carved out by force of arms. The international community recognised a single state, not two. The Serbs were, in any case, wholly dependent upon the support of Serbia proper.

They should be encouraged to take their places as full citizens of a united Bosnia, albeit with a recognition of their linguistic and religious rights. Having listened politely for over two hours, I asked him how many of the same arguments he would apply to Turkish Cypriots. “Bosnia is not Cyprus!” he replied, without missing a beat, and went back to pressing his case.

Let’s leave Ceuta aside, and consider the almost exact parallel of Olivença. Obviously X is not Y, but the legal and constitutional similarities between Olivença and Gibraktar could hardly be stronger.

Both territories were captured in war: Gibraltar in 1704, Olivença in 1801, when France and Spain, then allies, overran Portugal, which had pluckily refused to abandon its ancient friendship with Britain. In both cases, the annexation was subsequently ratified – by, respectively, the Treaty of Utrecht and the Treaty of Badajoz. In both cases, the defeated state might reasonably claim that it signed under duress – which, if you think about it, is what happens at the end of most wars.

In both cases, the former possessor maintains a claim: Portuguese maps do not demarcate the frontier at Olivença (Olivenza in Spanish). Both defeated states accuse the new proprietors of having broken the treaty.

Here, though, Portugal’s claim is the stronger. Britain’s violations of the Treaty of Utrecht are minor and technical. Jewish and Muslim settlement on the Rock has been permitted, in contravention of its articles; and there is some argument about whether the present frontier follows the line originally specified. Spain’s breaches of the Treaty of Badajoz, by contrast, are flagrant and overwhelming. The agreement was abrogated in 1807 when, in violation of its terms, French and Spanish troops again marched on Portugal. It was then wholly superseded as part of the peace settlement that followed the fall of Bonaparte in 1815, which decreed a return to the pre-1801 Hispano-Portuguese (or Luso-Spanish) border. Spain, after some hesitation, signed up in 1817, but made no move to return Olivença. On the contrary, it worked to eliminate Portuguese identity in the province, first prohibiting teaching in Portuguese and then banning the language outright.

While it’s literally true, of course, that Gibraltar isn’t Olivença, the minor differences work in Gib’s favour. Gibraltar has been British for nearly a century longer than Olivença has been Spanish, and the treaty under which it was ceded is still unquestionably in force.

So why won’t Spain even consider handing Olivença back to our oldest ally? For a pretty good reason. The same reason, in fact, that it won’t abandon Ceuta or Melilla, namely that local people are happy as they are.

That, in a democratic age, is the trump card, the argument that knocks down all the others. The people of Olivença, like the people of Gibraltar, have the right to decide their own destiny. Which is why Portugal, while maintaining its formal claim, has the good grace not not press the issue.

Since this blog might attract some grumpy comments from Spanish patriots, I ought to put on the record that you will struggle to find a greater Hispanophile than me. I love everything about Spain: its poetry, its fiestas, its landscapes, its theatre, its proud, prickly, people. I strongly support Spain’s claim to any territory which wants to be Spanish, from Melilla to the 1600-odd inhabitants of Llívia, a tiny sliver of Spanish land surrounded on all sides by France. It’s just that you can’t have it both ways, señores. ¡Viva la autodeterminación!

Successful Women

12 Things Successful Women Do Differently

The Huffington Post  |  By Emma GrayPosted: 08/26/2013 8:59 am EDT  |  Updated: 08/26/2013 12:37 pm EDThttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/26/things-successful-women-do-differently_n_3787406.html

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Career & Money, The Third Metric, Leadership Secrets, Secrets Of Success, Secrets Of Successful People, Secrets Of Successful Women,Success Secrets, Successful Women, Successful Women Do Differently,What Women Do Differently, Women News

Every woman has her own definition of success. But there are certain traits that most successful women share.

I spend a good part of my work day reading and writing about women who have achieved great things -- and I make it a point to surround myself with women who are well on their way to doing so.

Here are 12 things I've learned that successful women do differently:

1. They are deeply passionate about what they do.
"Without passion, all the skill in the world won't lift you above craft," wrote dancer Twyla Tharp in her book, The Creative Habit. If you don't love what you do, you're probably not going to be motivated to go above and beyond, to innovate and to stand out in the workplace. But if you're passionate about your career, it will make putting time and effort into it pleasurable, not a chore.

2. They don't expect perfection -- of themselves or those around them.
Research has shown that wasting time and energy trying to be "perfect" only leads to unhappiness. Successful women know that that they can't do everything well all the time. Beating yourself up for your perceived flaws will only dampen your abilities at work, not to mention your mental health. "We each, if we're lucky, will have our chance to leave a mark on the world, but we are trying too hard to be perfect," wrote Barnard president Debora Spar in an op-ed for Glamour magazine. "So don't emulate Wonder Woman; think about what's wonderful to you instead. Then boldly, audaciously, joyfully, leave the rest behind."

3. Often, they become the boss. 
Many successful women have figured out that if you're the boss, you can set your own rules. As editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan Joanna Coles said at the Third Metric Conference in June: "The higher you go in a corporation, the easier it is ... The truth is you get more control." And when you're in control, you have the ability to create a more sane, happy and balanced workplace for yourself and your employees.

4. They marry well -- or not at all.
Successful women know the value of a true partnership. As Sheryl Sandberg observed in Lean In: "I don’t know of a single woman in a leadership position whose life partner is not fully -- and I mean fully -- supportive of her career." And many successful women forgo marriage all together. Despite not being wed,women like Oprah Winfrey, Condoleezza Rice and Diane Keaton seem to be doing just fine.

5. They believe that they will be successful.
Not to go all "If you build it, he will come," on you, but believing in your own success -- no matter how crazy your idea might seem -- is integral to achieving it. Kay Koplovitz, founder of the USA Network, echoed this sentiment in a July interview. "You have to be comfortable that you can think your way through and actually execute your way through to the desired outcome," she said. "I expected to be successful." Bottom line? Confidence -- and faith in yourself -- is key.

6. They're not afraid to take risks.
Sheryl Sandberg says that all women should ask themselves the question: "What would you do if you weren't afraid?" Affecting change -- in your career and beyond -- requires the ability to stop playing it safe every once in awhile. Successful women don't make reckless decisions, but they do know how to take a calculated risk. Sandberg took her own advice, and wrote the bestseller, Lean In.

7. They know that failure goes hand-in-hand with success. 
"Failure is not the opposite of success but a stepping stone to success," was the advice given to Arianna Huffington by her mother, Elli Stassinopoulos. Successful women know that you can't excel all the time, and that an inevitable part of taking leaps in your career is falling down sometimes. For example, 12 publishers rejected J.K. Rowling's first Harry Potter book. But that didn't stop her from continuing to send it out.

8. They take care of themselves physically.
"My morning run is when my head is most clear and when I synthesize all of the things that are going on in my head," Jessica Herrin, founder of Stella and Dot, told The Huffington Post. Many successful women have spoken about the value of regular exercise -- not because they are trying to be thin, but because they know that exercise relieves stress, releases endorphins and increases energy. "If I didn't run, swim, or lift weights, I almost certainly would have killed someone by this point in my life," wrote Debora Spar.

9. They know that their to-do lists will never be completed, and they're okay with that.
Sometimes you can be more productive by accepting that you're simply not going to get everything done. Learning to let go of certain goals, responsibilities and tasks can be difficult, but freeing. Arianna Huffington has spoken about how finally allowing herself to cross unrealistic goals off her lifelong "to do" list -- in her case, learning German and becoming an expert skiier -- relieved her of a huge burden. "Getting rid of the anxiety of perpetually unmet expectations was so great," she said.

10. They make sure to schedule alone time.
Research has shown that women tend to prioritize domestic responsibilities such as housework and child care over themselves. Successful women know that they need to schedule alone time the same way they plan meetings, family dinners and networking events. "I’ve found if I don’t literally put pen to paper (or create a Google calendar appointment) and carve out an hour for myself, it never happens," Mary Kate McGrath, editor in chief of PureWow told The Daily Muse in March. "So that’s what I do. I literally invite myself to manicures or an extra 20 minutes in bed, and I’ve been known to take myself out for a Manhattan once in a while, too. (I’m a great date.) And my new rule: I’m not allowed to cancel on myself."

11. They know how to foster genuine relationships -- and keep them strong.
Having a support network is key to being successful. Keeping up your friendships and forming new ones at every place you work makes you happier and helps your career later on. In 2009, Diablo Cody told the New York Times about the importance of her relationships with fellow female filmmakers Lorene Scafaria, Dana Fox and Liz Meriwether. "They helped me be excited for things when I was kind of shellshocked," she said. "They were the ones who had to literally take me aside at the 'Juno' premiere and say: 'This is fun. You will never forget this. Please enjoy yourself.'"

12. They express gratitude to those around them.
No woman's success happens in a vacuum. Wildly successful women acknowledge those that support them every day -- both in their home lives and at the office. And that graciousness not only makes them better people, but fosters loyalty from their employees. Oprah is one powerful woman who understands the value of appreciating her employees. In 2009, she took her entire staff and their families on a Mediterranean cruise.

The right to die: Stephen Hawking's views

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7602546c-21de-11e3-bb64-00144feab7de.html?ftcamp=published_links%2Frss%2Fcomment%2Ffeed%2F%2Fproduct

September 20, 2013 8:03 pm

The right to die will put us on a very slippery slope

By Christopher Caldwell

Stephen Hawking’s views are being distorted in a misguided campaign

©Eyevine

This week, lobbyists for euthanasia appeared to be winning people over to their way of thinking. The 71-year-old physicist Stephen Hawking gave an interview to the BBC in which he was asked whether he supported assisted suicide. “Those who have a terminal illness and are in great pain should have the right to choose to end their lives, and those that help them should be free from prosecution ...” he replied. “But there must be safeguards that the persons concerned genuinely want to end their life and are not being pressurised into it, or having it done without their knowledge and consent.”

Mr Hawking would be a prized ally for those who favour a “right to die”. More than any scientist since Albert Einstein, he enjoys a reputation as the world’s deepest thinker. Since opponents of euthanasia generally argue that one can lead a fulfilling life even as the body fails, Mr Hawking, immobilised by motor neuron disease, can judge from experience whether a rich inner world is sufficient. The Australian, a newspaper, headlined “Hawking’s U-turn on euthanasia”, noting that he was no longer as sceptical as when he last spoke on the matter in 2006.

This was the thesis of almost all news stories on the interview, and it is false. What Mr Hawking said seven years ago concerned a Hong Kong man, paralysed in an accident, who had asked for euthanasia. “The victim should have the right to end his life, if he wants,” Mr Hawking said back then. “But I think it would be a great mistake.”

In other words, Mr Hawking’s views have not changed. He didn’t believe in criminalising suicide then, and doesn’t believe in it now. In this week’s interview, he even added warnings about patient consent. He is clearly not talking of euthanasia at all, only of assisted suicide. He would not advocate euthanasia in any of the dementia cases in which it is commonly urged.

By using the most euthanasia-unfriendly part of the old statement and the most euthanasia-friendly part of the new one, the media has wrongly made Mr Hawking sound like a man whose opinions are evolving. The encouragement for euthanasia supporters lies not in anything Mr Hawking said but in the willingness of the press to act as advocates for their position. Physician-assisted death is available in Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as four US states. It is a hot issue in Australia. In Québec, provincial activists began hearings this week on Bill 52, which would create a “right to die”. Abetting suicide is illegal in Britain, although a 2010 guidance from the director of public prosecutions discourages prosecuting friends and family who speed the death of loved ones in pain.

But who count as a “friend”? In August, cricket broadcaster Jonathan Agnew revealed he had offered to take his wife’s ex-husband, now deceased, to an assisted-suicide clinic in Switzerland. And who counts as family? The US Congress was called into a special session in 2005 to debate the case of the vegetative heart attack victim Terri Schiavo. Her husband was given the authority by a Florida court to end her life, although he had started a new family with another woman. This empowerment of the man of the house to settle the fate of family members looks suspicious, since the prerogatives of spouses and parents have been curtailed in almost all other areas – including domestic violence, corporal punishment, abortion and birth control, nutrition and school attendance.

There are good reasons why euthanasia has not yet caught on in most countries. Many arguments for it are suspect. Euthanasia advocates sometimes allude to the cost of caring for people in the last year of life. They sometimes fail to distinguish between agony and ennui. One Belgian testifying against Bill 52 said his mother had been euthanised on the say-so of one psychiatrist. Perhaps the very availability of euthanasia leaves older people feeling “pressurised”, as Mr Hawking puts it.

A survey by the Canadian Medical Association found that 26 per cent of doctors would euthanise patients if they could, and 54 per cent would not. If the practice were to be introduced now, in a world of doctors schooled on the principle “first do no harm”, its immediate effect would be minimal. But that would change. A doctor permitted to kill patients under certain circumstances inhabits a different ethical world. The real test of euthanasia will come a generation hence, when doctors unencumbered by the axiom of not harming are making decisions. One worries about what will happen then.

There must be something the advocates of a “right to die” are not telling us. The right to die, after all, has no need of advocates. It is a right that, over the long term, no human being has ever been denied.

The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard

Netanyahu misses Ahmadinejad

Rohani’s charm offensive poses difficult challenge for Netanyahu

The Iranian’s sophistication coupled with America’s disdain for confrontation begs the question: where is Ahmadinejad when we really need him?

By Chemi Shalev | Sep. 20, 2013 | 4:49 PM |  

www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.548013

Call it a charm offensive, seduction sortie, bewitchment blitz or wooing war, one thing is certain: Iranian President Hassan Rohani is waging an all-out public relations onslaught on American hearts and minds that poses unprecedented new challenges for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli policymakers.

Following initial skirmishes and reconnaissance patrols over the past few weeks on Twitter and Facebook, Rohani has now unleashed a preparatory salvo of moderate-sounding, peace-hugging statements on NBC and in the Washington Post. The main thrust of his campaign will be rolled out next week in New York, where Rohani will use his status as the star sensation of this year’s United Nations General Assembly to launch a barrage of interviews, speeches and public appearances, all aimed at convincing America of Iran’s benevolent policies and benign nuclear plans.

The attention, some of it fawning, that is already being bestowed on the so-called “moderate” Iranian president has confirmed the widespread assumption of most analysts following Rohani’s election in August as Iran’s 7th president: that it wouldn’t take long for Israel and other critics of Iran to sorely miss his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

After all, for the past 8 years, Israel’s efforts to convince the world and especially the U.S. to tackle Iran’s nuclear designs head on relied on two main figures: the relentless Netanyahu and the equally adamant, Holocaust-denying Ahmadinejad. And with all due respect to Netanyahu’s formidable public relations prowess, it was Ahmadinejad who served as Israel’s number one talking point, its strategic propaganda asset, a poster boy who self-explained Tehran’s sinister designs.

Rohani, it should already be obvious, is a different kettle of fish altogether, a sharp and formidable foe that should not be underestimated. He is experienced, sophisticated and wise to the ways and wishes of Western audiences. Compared to Ahmadinejad’s deterring demeanor, Rohani appearance seems completely benign: his resemblance to Homeland’s likeable Mandy Patinkin has already become a viral Facebook hit.

As Iran’s nuclear negotiator, Rohani has confessed to engaging European concerns as a cover for accelerating Tehran’s nuclear program. His interview on NBC and his carefully crafted oped in the Washington Post show his capacity to appeal to American audiences while trying to drive a wedge between the U.S. and the “pressure groups” that support “troublemaker” Israel.

Confronting Rohani after years of dealing with the coarse and uncouth Ahmadinejad was bound to be a daunting task under any circumstances. Disparaging knee-jerk reactions, such as the one issued on Thursday by the Prime Minister’s Office about the Iranian president’s “fraudulent words” along with the obligatory too-clever-by-half pun about “spinning” the media in order to keep the centrifuges “spinning” wouldn’t have cut it any more, even in the best of times.

And the Syria chemical weapons confrontation may have created the worst of times, in fact, as far as making the case against Iran is concerned.

Whatever the ultimate outcome of the deal hashed out between Russia and the U.S. to dispose of Syria’s chemical weapons, events of the past two weeks have diluted the credibility of an American military threat against Iran, a sine qua non, in Netanyahu’s eyes at least, to convincing Tehran to give up its nuclear weapons program.

Obama’s decision to ask for Congressional approval for a military attack against President Assad’s regime achieved the opposite of what the president presumably intended: it solidified public and political opposition to a military attack, especially in cases where there has been no direct attack on American targets or U.S. personnel. The more the issue was discussed, the more the public’s opposition to an attack was cemented in stone. By the time the Russians intervened, America had effectively handed in its badge as the world’s only policeman.

The Syria debate has changed America’s political landscape on war and peace in ways that can’t be quantified before the dust finally settles. The reemergence of a strong anti-war faction on the Democratic Party’s left coupled with a widespread isolationist sentiment in the Republican party - even if it was partly motivated by anti-Obama sentiments – has created a political fait accompli in the form of a strong, bipartisan Congressional anti-war caucus.

When Netanyahu addressed Congress in May 2011 and received scores of standing ovations for his staunch anti-Iranian message, as well as throughout the recent presidential campaign, Democrats were still loyal to their president and Republicans were still the uber-hawkish opposition lambasting the president for not bombing Israel’s enemies to smithereens. Other than John McCain, everything has now changed.

And while Obama may feel indebted to Netanyahu, AIPAC and other Jewish organizations for enlisting in his cause of persuading Congress to support a military strike against Assad, it’s far from certain that the American public feels the same way. Whatever the justification for lobbying on Obama’s side – and there were a number of good reasons, including a direct, can’t-be-refused presidential appeal – the bottom line is that the Administration ultimately bailed and Israel and its supporters were left holding the proverbial bag.

To catapult straightaway from pushing an unpopular proposal to embroil the US in Syria to playing Debbie Downer on Rohani’s encouraging flirtations is a precarious undertaking which could lend credence to hostile claims of Israeli warmongering. It is a fine line that needs to be walked, one that requires less sledgehammer and more finesse, a trait not usually associated with Israeli hasbara efforts.

U.S.-Russia deal || Israel's kindergarten reaction to a real American success story

The U.S.-Russia agreement on Syrian chemical weapons disarmament achieved a lot more than the nice little war that Israelis wanted.

 

It’s difficult to know whether to laugh or cry at Israel’s sour response to the agreement on Syria’s chemical-weapons disarmament. What is shows is nation-wide infantilism, with a strong stench of hypocrisy. Israelis are behaving like a little kid who had a toy taken from him. We were promised a nice little war and now it’s been taken away from us. That’s the main thing. It’s not ...