If Gandhi Was A Palestinian?

I've just found an interesting piece from an Indian blogger, Ullas Sharma: that's worth reading:

It made me wonder how it would have been if the Mahatma were a Palestinian. He would have reveled in the opportunity; a just cause, and a just means to the end – a Palestinian state carved out of the philosophy of non-violence. How would he have gone about it? Well, for starters, he would have read the namaz five times a day, like any devout Muslim, and let the world know that he was a namazi. He would have worn a white tunic and carried his staff. He would have let the people know that although a Muslim, he respected all religions, including Judaism. He would have gone to the Mecca on the Hadj regularly. He would surely have traveled the length and breadth of the country talking not only to the Palestinian people but also to the Jews. He would have made friends with the Jews and put forth his point of view without ever raising his voice. He would have never hesitated to laugh, his childlike, toothless laugh that so disarmed his worst critics. And he would have propounded and lived his theory of non-violence with such vigor and conviction that any aberrance would have seen him going on a fast – for “atonement.” He would have been a fakir – a political fakir and would have amalgamated the two so judiciously that he could easily switch from one to the other.

He would have shunned the extremists like Hamas and Hezbollah. He would have totally rejected them and seen to it that their activities were to the minimum. Maybe he could not have stopped them completely – maybe he would not have wished them to stop completely, but he definitely would have discouraged them so that they would have been marginalized in the society. Gandhi would have demonstrated peacefully, again and again. He would have told the world how the Palestinians were being wronged. He would have asked his people to stage a dharna in front of the houses which were theirs a few decades back – where some of them spent their childhood. He would have exhorted his people not to work for the Israelis, in their shops and in their factories. He would have asked them not to buy anything made by them. A few would have heeded his appeal and left their jobs. They would have been hailed as champions and true patriots. The trickle would have then become an avalanche and there would be mass resignations from jobs and Jewish goods burnt in protest. Not because they hate the Jews, but as a mark of protest for what they believe is right. The Israeli economy would come to a grinding halt.

Gandhi would have harped on the importance of living a frugal life. He would have aimed at making the Palestinian people self-sufficient. He would have asked them to weave their own cloth, and tend their sheep and goat; thus creating an economically independent community. Gandhi would lead by example. He would have walked the streets of Jerusalem with a white flag calling out to all and sundry what he believed in. Inevitably, his demonstrations would have made the Israelis react and if a few of his people were killed he would have made the world know about the callousness of the Israeli security forces. He would never have verbally attacked the Jewish people, only their security forces for their highhandedness. He would still consider Jews as his friends and that would be such a media coup that TV channels and newspapers around the world would be vying to get his views on all and sundry. He would have thrown awry the Jewish game plan so ruthlessly and yet so gently that they would not have known what hit them. He would have been more potent than any atomic bomb. The likes of Ariel Sharon would be sidelined and completely outclassed – reduced to a statistic in the political arena.

He would have made a dent within the Jewish society and that schism would have found Jews calling out for the rights of the Palestinian people. The Knesset would then have passed a resolution for the creation of a Palestinian state. The Mahatma would have been called for discussions on the modalities of it all. He would have put forth his views, but also would have paid attention to the concerns of the other side. Gandhi would not call out for the annulment of the state of Israel, yet he would have carved a country for his people. He would have been magnanimous – something that is so difficult and so rare. For his magnanimity some hard-liner would have felt that he had bartered the country away. He would have been shot and would have died calling out the name of Allah – his mission complete – at one with the Almighty.

"Exciting opportunities In North Korea"

Not a phrase you hear very often. But here's a job advert.

The Closest Election EVER in Essex?

Lib Dem Brentwood Councillor Karen Chilvers has just written about what happened in her area on Thursday:

We knocked on a lot of doors yesterday telling you it would be close - but I had no idea how close it would be.
.
At 6am, after four recounts and with over 3,000 votes cast it finally came down to 1578 votes for Nigel and 1578 for the Tory candidate - dead heat.
.
The election was then decided by a drawing of lots and ....

Find out who won here.

News From A Blue Heartland

Down in deepest, bluest Rayleigh and Wickford , our Tory MP Mark Francois was swept back to Westminster with 57 percent of the vote and a majority of over 22000. And I wish him well - by the way, he doesn't seem to have the same right-wing reputation in Rayleigh that he seems to have outside the constituency.

It was really good to see Susan Gaszczak win 2nd place for us by a few hundred votes, pushing the affable Labour guy Mike Lesurf into third. Thanls, Susan....

The ten or twelve BNP supporters who came to the count left 90 minutes before the declaration, where they came sixth (behind the English Democrats and UKIP) and lost their deposit.

Incidentally, we have a very cosmopolitan set of names for candidates down here in Rayleigh - a Conservative with the middle name "Gino",Lib Dem with the surname "Gaszczak", Labour with the surname "LeSurf" and even a UKIP candidate with the first name "Tino". You could almost understand why the English Democrat candidate, Mr Hayter, thinks the way he does...

Next door in Castle Point, Brendan D'Cruz stood at very short notice and did a good job for us... he's definitely a guy to watch out for in the future. Spasibo Brendan!

Meanwhile in the Rochford district council elections we had to husband our resources carefully, so only put up 5 candidates.

But the results were gratifying - where we were challenging the Tories we improved our position and had three second places.

And the Tory attempts to take advantage of the general election high turn-out to wipe out the three defending non-Tories failed miserably.

Independent John Mason fought off a charmless Tory onslaught in Hawkwell West to win by over a hundred.

My Lib Dem colleague Chris Lumley, despite being ill during the campaign, won by 485.

And in Downhall and Rawreth - where Mark Francois is a resident - I won by 1846 to 770. With a turn-out of 71.4 percent, it seems that just over 50 percent of the ward electorate voted for me, which is a good mandate to take into the council chamber.


Finally, the Tories got punished in Hullbridge for poor performance on local issues, and having a candidate who lived in Hockley and is a parish councillor there. End result - the Greens get their first councillor on the District!

There's a lot to look forward to....

"Unpopular" Policies That Are Actually Quite Popular

From the Telegraph:

Mr Clegg will be boosted, however, by higher-than-expected levels of support for some of his party's more controversial policies. Some 46 per cent of voters backed replacing the Trident nuclear deterrent with a cheaper weapons system, 55 per cent were in favour of amnesties for illegal immigrants who have been in the UK 10 years and 49 per cent backed replacing prison sentences of less than six months with community service

However, 74 per cent disagreed with scrapping the pound and joining the euro when conditions allow – another key Lib Dem policy.

Andrew Sullivan: 'Clegg Triumph'

See here

Andrew Sullivan More Lib Dem Than Tory !

One of my favourite US bloggers finds he supports Lib Dem policies fractionally more than Tory ones:

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats have unveiled their manifesto. Check it out here. When I filled out this questionnaire on policy positions, it turned out that I was regarded as 45 percent Lib Dem and 44 percent Tory, with 37 percent Labour. I suspect that's my civil liberties bent and fiscal conservatism coming through.

Latest April Election News.

The Guardian has an exclusive look at Labour's election posters ... here.

There are also rumours this morning that Lord Ashcroft is moving his holdings from Belize to the Indian Ocean republic of San Serriffe.

A Worrying Sign?

I've done a fair bit of canvassing in the past week. And I always like to talk and stroke cats when I'm canvassing.

But maybe I'm overdoing it. I mean, last night I dreamed that our cat Felix actually was Gordon Brown. And he jumped into a pond and I had to rescue the poor animal.

One Of The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse Appears As A Dot On The Horizon....

Beware of Ug99 - it's a fungus that has the potential of creating a massive famine:

This distinct new race of P. graminis, dubbed Ug99 after its country of origin (Uganda) and year of christening (1999), is storming east, working its way through Africa and the Middle East and threatening India and China. More than a billion lives are at stake. “It’s an absolute game-changer,” says Brian Steffenson, a cereal-disease expert at the University of Minnesota who travels to Njoro regularly to observe the enemy in the wild. “The pathogen takes out pretty much everything we have.”

Hat-tip : Graeme Wood on the Andrew Sullivan blog

The Lingerie Jihad

From Saudi Jeans:

While the Religious Police today launched their annual nationwide crackdown on stores selling items that are red or in any other way allude to the banned celebrations of Valentine’s Day, Reem Asaad and her fellow woman continue their lingerie jihad. Starting on the 13th of February and for two weeks, women are called to boycott all lingerie shops that employ men.

This is the second phase of the campaign that Asaad started a year ago, aiming to address one of the many bizarre contradictions in Saudi Arabia, where in this supposedly most conservative country on earth women have to divulge their underwear sizes and colors to strange men on regular basis. Check out this Facebook group to learn more about the campaign.

Ghazi al-Gosaibi, minister of labor, who is currently ill and being treated in the US, has issued a law in 2006 stating that “only females may be employed in women apparel and accessories stores.” However, the law has never been implemented due to the objection and resistance of different parties.

Meanwhile:

Red-colored or heart-shaped items are legal at other times of the year, but as Feb. 14 nears they become contraband in Saudi Arabia. The kingdom bans celebration of Western holidays such as Valentine's Day, named after a Christian saint said to have been martyred by the Romans in the 3rd Century.

Most shops in Riyadh's upscale neighborhoods have removed all red items from their shelves. A statement by the religious police, informally known as the muttawa, was published in Saudi newspapers, warning shop owners against any violations.

"Those who don't comply will be punished," the statement said, without spelling out what measures would befall the offenders.....

....The Egyptian capital, Cairo, is a sharp contrast to the Saudi restrictions, with shops and restaurants going overboard in red ribbon and heart decorations.

Dubai, a conservative Muslim city-state with a Western outlook, is every year taken over by a Valentine craze. Luxury hotels are draped in red, offering romantic dinner specials. Malls and cafes are decorated with giant hearts and flower shops offer promotional deals on roses and fancy bouquets.

Apparently prompted by the Saudi ban, a group in the Philippines advocating the welfare of Filipino overseas workers — a million of whom work in Saudi Arabia and another million elsewhere in the Middle East — cautioned its countrymen to celebrate Valentine's Day only in private and refrain from publicly greeting anyone with "Happy Valentine's" across the region.

The Medieval 21st Century

The blogger Andrew Sullivan has a very soberly written , but extremely angry post today about torture - particularly as seen from a Catholic viewpoint.

It's well worth reading in full. But here's a paragraph:

As Christians and as Catholics, we are required to follow Our Lord's impossible example and not just love our friends, but to love our enemies. This does not mean pacifism; and I have a long, long record of supporting what I believe were just wars. I mean understanding that war is always evil even when it is necessary, but that some things, like torture, abuse and dehumanizing of others under our total control, are never justified.

What Sort Of People Ask A Question Like "Will the Antichrist be a homosexual?

I found a , um , provoking little article on the internet from May 2009.

The title was Will the Antichrist be a homosexual?.

The author, the pastor for an independent Baptist Church in a small US town, reckons it's likely:

...In effect, there is no greater sin against God than to reject how he made you, and no greater sin against women than to reject how God made them.

Having seen what the Bible says of sodomy, we have no further to look than the book of Daniel, chapter 11 to find our answer. It says, “Neither shall he [Antichrist] regard... the desire of women....” As I said at the onset, I am not the first to draw attention to this, but the verbiage is clear....

Now, you are asking yourselves, what kind of town has a Church like this? What sort of people live there? What sort of politicians do they elect?

Oddly enough, the place is Wasilla, Alaska, where Sarah Palin was mayor and where she still lives.

"That Huge Bust In The Marketplace Is Of Me"

It's never been easy ruling from Chelmsford, as this video demonstrates:

Embrace Life

I'm really impressed by this....