Love|Peace Israel’s ambassador to Washington calls relations between the US and Israel as in a ‘crisis of historic proportions’, a 35-year low.

Netanyahu’s  coalition government relies on the settlers for its existence.

“I think that Netanyahu is at a moment of truth,” says Gideon Doron, a political science professor at Tel Aviv University. “He has to choose whether or not he wants to ignite the forces for peace, or whether he’ll go against the US and play for time. He can’t do that. It’s suicide.” via Christian Science Monitor

Opposition leader Tzipi Livni of the Kadima party, says that Netanyahu ‘is leading us to a diplomatic collapse.’ Livni was quoted in the LA Times on San. 25, 2010 as saying ‘reports of her political demise are premature.

Today it’s seems she was prescient.

Unable to put a government together last fall, Livni has sat on the sidelines, also refusing to join Netanyahu’s government.  We support Livni and her vision of a two-state solution for Israel. Like women investors who wait for dividends, rather than trading their stock, Livni has watched her political capital incubate.

We agree with this dynamic, visionary pragmatist when she says: “Gentlemen, the time has come for women.”  Livni’s words inspire us to unveil the life of women in Israel, much as we have with women in Sudan with Lubna Ahmed Hussein and Chansa Kabwela in Zambia.

How liberated are the women of Israel, compared to other women in the Middle East? Consider the question front and center in our minds. The digging has begun.

Georgia’s House of Representatives Rules Committee passed in a 7-6 vote a bill that will imprison health care providers for 10 years with a fine of $25,000 for performing an abortion prompted by the baby’s race or gender. Pregnant women would not be held liable.

According to ABC News, 

There are now more than 60 of the giant billboards in Atlanta’s black neighborhoods, where a majority of Georgia’s black residents live, and the message isn’t going over well.

“They need to tear it down; they just need to put something else up,” said Atlantan Ashley Varner. “I think they could get their point across without just targeting black people.”

Another, Carrie Logan, went further. “I think it’s just a racist thing that they put out,” she said. via ABC News

Fox News reports:

Catherine Davis, director of minority outreach for Georgia Right to Life, the group behind the billboard campaign, told FoxNews.com that she supports the legislation that she says will address an issue that has “such a disproportionate impact on the black community rather than every other community in Georgia, as well as the nation.”

Davis noted that in 2008, blacks made up 30 percent of the population in Georgia but more than 57 percent of the abortions.

“Those numbers are so horrific,” she said. “There has to be something else contributing to this number.” via Fox News

The anti-abortionists behind the billboards are black themselves and say they are motivated by the disproportionately high number of abortions in black neighborhoods.

Pope Benedict’s brother Georg Ratzinger admits to hitting children as choirmaster.

In an interview with the Catholic paper Passauer Neue Presse, Monsignor Ratzinger, 86, said he had no knowledge of sexual abuse, but admitted that boys were often punished harshly, sometimes in an arbitrary manner.

“I myself handed out slaps repeatedly, although I always had a bad conscience about it,” he said. via London Times

Moneignor Ratzinger referred to the headmaster in charge at the Regensburg school from 1953 to 1992 as being ‘very violent’.

Angelo Balducci, a Gentleman of His Holiness, was caught by police on a wiretap allegedly negotiating with Thomas Chinedu Ehiem, a 29-year-old Vatican chorister, over the specific physical details of men he wanted brought to him. Transcripts in the possession of the Guardian suggest that numerous men may have been procured for Balducci, at least one of whom was studying for the priesthood. via The Guardian

We passed on this story yesterday because neither the Catholic Church nor this website condemns homosexuality, although the Catholic church states unequivocally: “Under no circumstances can they (homosexual acts) be approved.”

I’m more concerned about American bishops defining the terms of health care and reproductive rights of women in this country, than yet another Catholic sex scandal. The bishops are busy guys this weekend, according to Politico.

The Roman Catholic bishops signaled Thursday that if agreement is reached with House leaders on anti-abortion language, the church would work to get the votes needed to protect the provisions in the Senate — and thereby advance the shared goal with Democrats of health care reform. via Politico

If I read this article correctly, the Catholic bishops are literally saying that they will strong-arm the Senate to muscle through their abortion language. Presumably they will threaten enough Senators with re-election problems, to get them to agree with Rep. Stupak’s alleged ‘higher principles’ around abortion language in the health care bill.

Republican Rep. Carl Wimmer will modify the legislation he’s introduced into the Utah legislature, removing language that could subject to prosecution for criminal homicide, a mother who miscarries because of ‘reckless behavior’.

Only Utah’s more enlightened governor Gary Herbert’s refusal to sign the legislation prevents it from becoming law in Utah.

No, this is not the Taliban talking in Afghanistan. This is Utah in the United States of America. In Mexico, some states have passsed legislation putting women in prison for 50 years for having an abortion in a country where abortion is also legal. Months later, we see the possibility in action in the US.

Some people don’t believe that American women shouldn’t be charged for having a miscarriage. Yet the original language in Wimmer’s bill did just that.

Any husband or the state could prosecute a woman who was neglient in his eyes, or a mother-in-law or sister’s eyes — really anyone — for any behavior that theoretically triggered a miscarriage.

“These are the times that try men’s souls” said Founding Father Thomas Paine. Personally, I believe that we stand at this precipice again, centuries after the Declaration of Independence was signed, both globally and here in America.

The importance of religion in our lives is declared everywhere.

via Osvaldo_Zoom at FlickrYou will notice a new style of presentation here at A of C, where I take timely fashion|design editorial and marry it with my past writing and the ‘idea’ prompted by the fashion visuals.

While Thomas Jefferson has popped up more than once here at A of C, his words about rational inquiry and religion in government are married to French Vogue military wear this week.

Yesterday I chose still in use Biblical phrases about women to accompany a fashion editorial about veiled, BSDM silent women, and a NYT opinion piece about the Haitian missionaries.

I know that Arianna Huffington agrees that all thinking people must remain passionate about America and our relationship with the world. I’m thrilled to see her use her influence at Huff Po to encourage a dialogue around religion in America.

Vatican in Charge

To see representatives of the Vatican sitting in Nancy Pelosi’s office dictating American health care policy with the determination of further curtailing women’s abortion rights was a big wakeup call for pro-choice having a manicures on the sidelines.

While I have great respect for Catholics, I do not want them on the phone with the Vatican in Nancy Pelosi’s office negotiating health care. This is not my understanding of how America functions and it’s a slap in the face — almost a farce — on how government works.

This fashion editorial from Zink Magazine, via Fashion Gone Rogue, is appropriate for our ongoing learning about women and religion worldwide, and also the Founding Fathers of America and their views about religion. 

The latter is my new area of study and I posted about Thomas Jefferson last evening.

I’ve made every effort to use Biblical verses from the King James Bible, because it’s the one mandated by the Southern Baptists.  Just this morning Timothy Egan wrote in an Opinionator from the NYTimes that the Idaho missionaries have damaged legitimate adoption organizations in Haiti and elsewhere.

Readers have complimented me personally on my attempts to fairly and accurately present the facts of the Haiti case, with Laura Silsby and Clarisa Coulter remaining in jail. My commitment to fair reporting and commentary has not ended.

I confess to being a bit ‘rattled’ this morning, when I read that Idaho pastor Paul Thompson, who followed Silsby to Haiti, wrote just before the earthquake:

“War is declared! In God’s Holy Name let us arise and build!”

Researching the term, I came to this blog post Men of God, Arise!

“Too long have we been waiting for one another to begin! The time of waiting is past! The hour of God has struck! War is declared! In God’s Holy Name let us arise and build! ‘The God of Heaven, He will fight for us’, as we for Him. We will not build on the sand, but on the bedrock of the sayings of Christ, and the gates and minions of hell shall not prevail against us.

“Should such men as we fear? Before the world, aye, before the sleepy, lukewarm, faithless, namby-pamby Christian world, we will dare to trust our God, we will venture our all for Him, we will live and we will die for Him, and we will do it with His joy unspeakable singing aloud in our hearts. We will a thousand times sooner die trusting only our God, than live trusting in man.

“And when we come to this position the battle is already won, and the end of the glorious campaign in sight. We will have the real Holiness of God, not the sickly stuff of talk and dainty words and pretty thoughts; we will have a Masculine Holiness, one of daring faith and works for Jesus Christ”. Listen to the words of C.T. Studd (1860-1931) in a reading from “The Chocolate Soldier” on YouTube.

Describing the chosen speaker as a Stanford graduate, a Rhodes Scholar, a political analyst, and a TV host, the crowd cheers louder and louder as they collectively realize it’s Maddow who will deliver the address.

Nice.

Rachel Maddow To Deliver Smith College Commencement Address

Maryna Linchuk & Tom Welling by Steven Meisel US Vogue May 2008

After all these years, we women still want to be asked to the political party. Perhaps, I am too harsh, reading Can “Nice Girls” Negotiate? by Whitney Johnson for the Harvard Business Review.

The usual commentary is that women don’t ask for money, that we rarely seek a salary competitive with men’s or go about the research required to know the range of our salary expectations. In Salary, Gender and the Social Cost of Haggling, we refresh our minds with the group of graduate students at Carnegie Mellon University who lodged a complaint that women were working only as teaching assistants in PhD programs, while the men were all teaching courses.

“The dean said each of the guys had come to him and said, ‘I want to teach a course,’ and none of the women had done that,” she said. “The female students had expected someone to send around an e-mail saying, ‘Who wants to teach?’ ” The incident prompted Babcock to start systematically studying gender differences when it comes to asking for pay raises, resources or promotions. And what she found was that men and women are indeed often different when it comes to opening negotiations.

Like women aspiring to political office, the women PhD students expected to be offered a class to teach.

Last evening we added Paperwork | Procedure Never Part of Published Haitian Orphan Rescue Plan, after reading Laura Silsby’s ‘business plan’ for the rescue plan, which remains posted online.

Group Desired More Children

Shortly after, the Guardian UK published an in-depth article recapping the various proceedings. The Guardian added a new element to the discussion, of Silsby phoning a couple in the US, waiting for their child, offering three times to bring the child out of Haiti. The adoptive parents said ‘absolutely not’, but this rejection not dissuade Silsby, who went to the Haitian orphanage anyway. The child had been moved. The Guardian article is posted in Paperwork | Procedure Never Part of Published Haitian Orphan Rescue Plan

Other reports are surfacing, based on interviews in Haiti, that the group tried to round up many more children.

In Laura Silsby’s own business plan for the Haitian orphanage, the mission statement uses the words ‘gather the children’. There was no stated intention to obtain any paperwork or abide by any procedures mentioned. The time table allowed only to gather up the children and leave the country. This is the group’s own plan and is posted in our article.

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