Presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry is intent on marking his differences with the president. He demonstrated by precently endorsing the doctrine of the pre-emptive strike against anyone who might possibly be a conceivable threat to America in 1 or 5 or 100 years. Assuming the intelligence is reliable. The doctrine is, of course, a new euphemism for a very old-fashioned concept: naked aggression.
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The gang that couldn't shoot straight strikes (out) again. The Department of Homeland Security [sic] recently imposed a dress code on its air marshals. The idea seems noble.
Documents and memorandums issued by the Department of Homeland Security and field offices of the Federal Air Marshal Service say air marshals must "present a professional image" and "blend unnoticed into their environment" reports the New York Times. But Some air marshals have argued that the two requirements are contradictory.
The marshals fear that their appearance makes it easier for terrorists to identify them, according to a professional group representing more than 1,300 air marshals.
"If a 12-year-old can pick them out, a trained terrorist has no problem picking them out," said John D. Amat, a spokesman for the group, the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association.
[...]
Federal air marshals must have neatly trimmed hair and men must be clean-shaven, the documents say. Some of the service's 21 field offices have mandated that male officers wear suits, ties and dress shoes while on duty, even in summer heat. Women are required to wear blouses and skirts or dress slacks. Jeans, athletic shoes and noncollared shirts are prohibited.
Why don't they just wear a big sign around their neck that says "I'm an undercover air marshal" so that potential terrorists know who to attack first?
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Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, President Bush's erstwhile ally, is adopting some of the president's tactics. Most notably, the old political axiom: when in trouble, change the subject.
Sharon is under pressure at home as his own Likud Party is abandoning him over his plans to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and from abroad for his plans to build an illegal wall separating Israel proper from the West Bank. His own governing coalition is so shaky he had to enter negotiations with his ideological opponents the Labor Party. Sharon was about to be indicted alleging that in his role as national infrastructure minister and as foreign minister, Sharon accepted bribes, and that this included "financial bribes in the form of a large sum of money paid to his son Gilad (Sharon) and through political support during the elections," the draft indictment said. However, the indictment was quashed by Sharon's attorney general.
Now, Sharon has inflamed relations with France by calling on all French Jews to flee the country. He told the American Jewish Congress "If I have to advocate to our brothers in France, I will tell them one thing, Move to Israel, as early as possible."
"We see the spread of the wildest anti-Semitism there," Sharon said. "In France today, about 10 percent of the population are Muslims ... that gets a different kind of anti-Semitism, based on anti-Israeli feelings and propaganda."
Though conceding, "I must say that the French government is taking steps against that."
Even the head of the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism blasted Sharon's remarks: "These comments do not bring calm, peace and serenity that we all need. I think Mr. Sharon would have done better tonight to have kept quiet."
Sharon has adopted a favorite demagoguery of Bush apologists. Criticizing the Leader and his government's policies is equated to criticizing both the country, its military and all those who share the Leader's religion.
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Not all accept Sharon's 'L'Etat c'est moi' demagoguery. Israeli paper Haaretz criticizes as 'racist' recent legislation approved by the country's parliament, the Knesset. The paper editorializes, Last summer, the Knesset revised the Citizenship Law in a manner that imposes draconian limitations on the freedom of Arab citizens of Israel to marry. That's not Arabs from the Occupied Territories, but Arabs who are citizens of Israel.
The government claims the law is only temporary (for "security" reasons, of course). But Haaretz doesn't buy it. If the reasoning for fundamentally damaging the basic rights of Israeli Arabs is, indeed, solely based on security considerations, the state could have been expected to avoid demonstrating an intolerable recklessness in changing one of the most important and equality-promoting laws on the books. The state could have been expected to institute a more fundamental security check for those who want to reside in Israel by force of their marriage. In addition, the 23 people whom the Shin Bet said were involved in hostile activity is a drop in the ocean, considering that nearly 100,000 Palestinians have settled in Israel in the last decade as a result of this law.
The editorial sums up the crux of the issue: The Citizenship Law is intended to balance as much as possible the discrimination that stems from the Law of Return [the principle according to which all Jews, anywhere in the world, have the right to settle in Israel], and every damage to it distances us from the basic principles on which Western democracies function. For as long as the Law of Return is intended to preserve the Jewish character of the state of the Jews, the Citizenship Law is intended to open a narrow gap for the entrance of non-Jews in specific personal circumstances.
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