| To: goldsnow who wrote (1672) | 8/27/2002 11:18:40 AM | | From: GUSTAVE JAEGER | | | | School apologizes for burning New Testament
By Shoshana Kordova
BEIT SHEMESH (December 25) - The organization that administers Orot school in Beit Shemesh issued an apology yesterday for publicly burning a copy of the New Testament a student received from Christian missionaries.
"Everybody knows we made a mistake," said Jordana Klein, spokeswoman for Sha'alei Torah. "We wouldn't do it again. We don't think it's the right thing to do."
The book-burning took place in the school courtyard the week before Hanukka, after a teacher in the boys' school found that one of his sixth-grade students had brought in a Hebrew copy of the New Testament.
The student received it from local missionaries who, according to Klein, have been active in proselytizing Beit Shemesh children.
"The teacher said: 'God sent it and He gave us the privilege, and we'll be able to burn the New Testament," said Ariel Lesnick, 11, who is in the class.
The teacher consulted with the principal, Rabbi Yair Bachar, said Klein. After receiving approval, the teacher - whose name Klein refused to divulge - took his class outside.
Then, Lesnick said, "We took a few sticks and we burnt it." The teacher emphasized that the book-burning was an anti-missionary activity and not an anti-Christian one, Lesnick said.
[snip]
Message 16829592 |
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| To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (1669) | 8/27/2002 1:20:13 PM | | From: pie-faced-mutt | | | | * A New Villain in Free Trade: The Farmer on the Dole
nytimes.com
WASHINGTON
WHEN diplomats, world leaders and economists meet in Johannesburg this week to figure out how to help struggling countries, they will be slinging darts at a brand new villain: the big American grain farmer.
Deserved or not, this year the big American farmers were transformed seemingly overnight from benevolent producers of the world's greatest bounty to unfair competition — greedy welfare kings undermining poor farmers in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
The criticism has nothing to do with famine relief, but with American farmers selling their subsidized grain below cost to the rising middle class overseas, much like countries that the United States accuses of dumping their underpriced steel here.
"It's fairly straightforward," said Pranab Bardhan, professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley. "The subsidies encourage overproduction, which depresses prices and leads to a kind of dumping of low-priced grain on the world market. The only people who will be hurt from these subsidies, who will really go hungry, are the poorest people in the developing countries."
In May, President Bush signed the $190 billion 10-year farm bill that will continue to give the nation's biggest farmers $19 billion in subsidies, perpetuating a Depression-era program of direct financial aid to encourage production of grain and cotton. Some critics call that a welfare system, and some of the most important developing nations with big agricultural exports — Brazil, Thailand and South Africa — spoke up loudly, charging the Bush administration with hypocrisy.
They complained that one minute the United States says it wants developing countries to rely on free trade rather than handouts, the next it enacts a law, which they say is the biggest impediment in the free trade of food, the one commodity all these countries produce.
These countries had hoped that Mr. Bush, an avowed free-trader, would reduce the American farm subsidies and shame the European nations to follow his lead and reduce theirs as well. The European Union gives its farmers $60 billion in annual subsidies, which cause similar problems for developing countries. Japan subsidizes its rice growers, too, but with fewer repercussions on the world market.
Thailand, which exports $40 billion of fruits, vegetables, fish, rice and other food, sent a delegation of farmers and parliamentarians to Washington in June to protest the new farm subsidies.
"This is the way of rich countries," said Prakarn Virakul, the agricultural attaché of the Thai Embassy in Washington, who accompanied the farmers on their visit. "They tell us to open our markets; we do but they don't stop giving their farmers subsidies. Now American farmers will be given money to grow cheap rice and push down the world price for the next six years. That pushes our poorest farmers out of business."
When he speaks of American farmers, however, he does not mean the farmers who grow the food Americans eat — farmers of fruits and vegetables as well as ranchers. They do not receive a penny of federal subsidies.
"There is now a complete disconnect between farm policy and what people actually eat," said Timothy E. Josling, a Stanford professor who specializes in agriculture and trade. "The subsidies support what was historically the most important part of American agriculture but not what people spend their food dollar on today."
With the federal budget tumbling into deficits, Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana and one of the few farmers in Congress, sided with the little farmers and denounced the subsidies. "These subsidies are destroying small family farmers, not helping them," he said, adding, "We've got food coming out of our ears."
At the end of the debate, Mr. Lugar and his allies were easily defeated.
The reason is politics. In this election year, Senate Democrats and House Republicans marshaled votes for the bill, hoping to appeal to the farm bloc and hang on to the majorities in their respective chambers.
In hindsight, this argument was merely a rehearsal for the current global debate.
In Congress proponents of the farm law argued that without subsidies indebted family farmers would be run off their homesteads.
Twenty or 30 years ago, farm policy actually had something to do with feeding the country. It was designed to ensure food security by continuing the Depression-era program to pay big grain farmers to grow food. But today there is no need to ensure food security. The United States has been self-sufficient in food for decades.
Early in the farm bill debate, Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman raised questions about fairness. There are more than two million grain and cotton farmers who receive free government subsidies, but only 10 percent of them get 69 percent of the $19 billion every year.
According to Agriculture Department statistics, these big farmers used their government checks to expand their acreage, buying small neighboring farms, and increased their production, which pushes down the world market price. They are still profitable, because government subsidies make up the difference. But the grain farmer in Asia, Africa or South America without subsidies has no defense against world grain markets, which are at historic lows.
For its part, the Bush administration is trying to find a compromise. Robert B. Zoellick, the United States trade representative, proposed breaking the deadlock between farmers in rich countries and those from developing nations by first eliminating export tariffs on agricultural goods and putting a tighter cap on subsidies rich countries pay their farmers. "This is a reform long demanded by developing countries, which rightly resent having to compete not only with internal agriculture supports but also with the lavish subsidies some developed countries used to pay others to buy their food," Mr. Zoellick said.
IN poorer countries where two-thirds of the people still live on farms, America's grain subsidies are seen as the equivalent of a declaration of war.
In the past several years, these developing countries have dropped barriers and opened their markets in the belief that free trade, not reliance on handouts, is the best way to climb out of poverty. This June, the administration promised aid at a conference in Mexico to countries that followed the free trade route.
The new farm law is seen as a betrayal of those promises and of these developing countries' attempts to beef up their own agriculture and feed their people. The United States, Europe and Japan spend $1 billion a day to support their farmers or about six times the aid payments they send to the developing world, which is desperate for help to build up its agriculture.
Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, said at the World Summit on Hunger this summer: "You put yourself in the shoes of a small developing country which cannot export its agriculture products because of restrictions and tariffs, a small developing country that cannot compete on the world market even if it could export, because the richer farmers in the richer countries are heavily subsidized.
"There is no point in giving with one hand and taking it with the other."
*In their efforts to keep their farmers busy, the non-corporate farmers, the governments of America and Europe, are undermining the poor nations by subsidizing farm products and isolating those framers who cannot afford GM seeds and other bioengineered farming implements. |
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| To: Emile Vidrine who wrote (1680) | 8/27/2002 2:13:08 PM | | From: lorne | | | | Emile. It's a free country so I suppose you are permitted to hate whom ever you want and it appears you really don't like Jews. Why do you expend so much time and energy on hating Jews when they are not the enemy? In an islamic controlled country you would not be permitted to speak of the rulers the way you do here or you would be executed.
Why not bitch about the real problem of to day...islam..
the Jewish faith will still be there tomorrow to hate. |
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| To: lorne who wrote (1685) | 8/27/2002 2:19:48 PM | | From: Emile Vidrine | | | | ARIEL SHARON'S SECRET PLAN.
TO REMOVE PALESTINIANS FROM ISRAEL.
by.
Gordon Thomas.
Israel's hard-line prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has ordered his defence forces to
prepare to drive 'hundreds of thousands' of Palestinians on the West Bank over the
border into Jordan..
Jordanian intelligence chiefs say the operation will commence on the day the
forthcoming United States conflict starts against Iraq..
Sharon believes that will give him 'a just excuse' to remove the Palestinians - as they
would then pose what he has called 'a totally unacceptable threat to the safety of
Israel'..
Details of his plan have been leaked by Jordanian intelligence to Western intelligence
services, including MI6..
The revelation will almost certainly deepen the split within the Cabinet of Tony Blair
about Britain's continued support for military action against Saddam Hussein..
King Abdullah II of Jordan revealed his own fear about Israeli intentions on his recent
visit to London.
He told Tony Blair and President Bush that any military action to remove Saddam
would open a 'Pandora's Box that would turn the entire Middle East into a cauldron', a
senior Jordanian intelligence officer said..
'Driving out Arafat and his Palestinians would lead to an uprising in the Middle East
against everything Western', he added..
Of immediate concern to Abdullah is that his own tiny kingdom - 'a mere pimple on
the rump of Arab nationalism' was how one Western intelligence report describes
Jordan - could be swept away..
Its Arab neighbours have not forgotten that in 1991, King Abdullah's late father, King
Hussein, lent his support to Saddam..
But Abdullah has been pressurised by Washington to allow some 4,000 American
troops to mass in the southern desert of Jordan. They are now preparing for the
assault on Iraq..
With them are some 200 British Special Forces - who are expected to pathfind the
route to Baghdad when the conflict starts..
Abdullah knows that in the event of conflict, Saddam could block the routes into
Baghdad by deporting a million Iraqi 'refugees' into Jordan..
He could also cut off Iraq's imports of cheap oil to Jordan..
Jordan, already finding it has insufficient water for its 5 million population, would then
find itself paralysed..
With the prospect of an influx from the West Bank of Palestinians and the pro-Iraqi
sentiments of many Jordanians, who are bitterly opposed to King Abdullah's acceding
to American pressure, the 40-year-old monarch could find himself toppled - or even
assassinated..
An indication of how close that could come is that Bush has now provided the king
with a bodyguard of US Special Forces. They have orders to fly the monarch and his
family to the United States - if his bodyguard decides their lives are in danger..
****.
Footnote: Sharon's new plan to drive out the Palestinians comes in the wake of his
fury that the Sunday Express had obtained details of his earlier plan to snatch Yasser
Arafat and dump him in Lebanon..
The paper's world-exclusive story last weekend was the main news on Israel's Channel-
2 television and in the country's newspapers. Media across the Middle East and
Europe also carried detailed confirmation of the story..
Sources close to Sharon said he was 'furious about the leak and had ordered a top
level enquiry into how details had been passed to the Sunday Express'.. |
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| To: Thomas M. who wrote (1677) | 8/27/2002 4:36:01 PM | | From: Eashoa' M'sheekha | | | | Thanks Thomas.
You know, many of us would just like to learn the truth in these matters since the attacks of 911, but it seems for every piece of information to blame one group, there is a contradicting piece of information to blame another.
I try to find sites that at least appear to have an unbiased approach in the hopes that history will not have been re-written to serve the writers.I also try to garner as much information as I can from those familiar with the subject at hand, but if those people are misinformed or willing to deceive, we are at their mercy, not being up to speed on these issues myself.
It's like investing, isn't it?After a while you don't know who or what to believe so you do as much due diligence as you can bare and then make your decision.
One comment I read dealt with the concept of a country or countries being able to wage war without consequence .That article referred to the ME situation after 1967 whereas the defeated were willing to go back to the boarders they started from.I tend to agree that it appears self defeating to just give back the spoils of war if your country was not the aggressor, however, therein lies the argument of who started it in the first place.
I will continue to try to remain neutral and ferret out the truth the best I can.Some can only hope there can peace before there is war, unlike some on SI advocate.
" They " say WAR never solves anything.I tend to agree,but know that WARRING,unfortunately, has become part of our human make-up, and there appears to more " war war war " than " talk talk talk ".
What a world.
PS: Thanks for the info.I will study it further. |
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| To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (1682) | 8/27/2002 8:05:57 PM | | From: Chris land | | | | | The only reason they apologized was because it was right around Christmas and they didn't want to incur the negative publicity. Nevertheless, it is obvious that the school up till that time had been breeding hate and contempt for Christianity and no doubt will continue to do so in the future. |
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| To: Eashoa' M'sheekha who wrote (1688) | 8/28/2002 1:01:48 AM | | From: Thomas M. | | | | I tend to agree that it appears self defeating to just give back the spoils of war if your country was not the aggressor
Except that Israel was the aggressor, unquestionably.
Furthermore, the primary dispute is not with the countries that fought in the 1967 war - Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. It is with the Palestinians. They were not part of the war, yet they have borne the consequences of it.
Tom |
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