CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY: CARDINAL ENDORSES ‘COMMON GROUND’ BILL SUPPORTING PREGNANT WOMEN
Cardinal Justin Rigali has endorsed the the Pregnant Women Support Act (PWSA), which has recently been reintroduced in the House. The bill includes provisions for: eliminating pregnancy as a “preexisting condition” that can be used to deny health coverage for women; grants to support centers providing alternatives to abortion; assistance encouraging colleges and universities to provide support for pregnant and parenting students; increased support for the WIC program, and for adoption programs; allowing states to cover unborn children and their mothers under the Children’s Health Insurance Program, providing prenatal care for especially needy pregnant women who may not otherwise be eligible; and improving services for pregnant women who are at risk from domestic violence. He said that the new bill represents ideas on which Pro-Life and Pro-Choice contingents can find common ground in the goal of reducing the need for abortions.
Question to the Blogosphere: Do you think this bill really represents the opinions of both Pro-Choice and Pro-Life groups in the United States? If you could add something to the bill, what would it be? Is there a balance between progress (however you define that) and the feasibility of passing a bill? Are there any flaws in this bill that need to be addressed before it potentially becomes law? Do all women get abortions because they cannot afford to have children or are there other valid reasons for delaying pregnancy?
THE CITIZEN: WEAVING THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN NARRATIVE–A 360 APPROACH
On April 29, 2009, Ihab Khatib wrote in The Citizen, the Harvard Kennedy School’s student newspaper, about his childhood as a Palestinian in Jerusalem and how that shaped his view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He discovered that, “what is important for Palestinians isn’t to dwell on what has happened to us, but rather to figure out what to do with what has happened to us in order to build a better future for the Palestinian people.” He reached out to Israeli students at Harvard to see how they could work together to reach common ground as students at the Kennedy School and improve the lives of all involved in the conflict. During this trying time in relations between Israelis and Palestinians, students from both backgrounds at Harvard worked together to bridge divides through three initiatives: a Standup Comedy for Peace Show that touched on stereotyping and misperceptions; a joint letter to President Barack Obama; and, a coordinated effort for a trip to Israel and Palestine. The purpose behind such initiatives was “to mobilize the public to understand that this isn’t solely a Palestinian issue or an Israeli one, and to show people that they have the power to shape their own future if they join forces.” Khatib ended by listing a set of recommendations for how we are to proceed in dealing with the conflict in the Middle East:
the United States needs to shift its expertise from “managing the conflict” to actually working as an honest broker with the Israelis and Palestinians on resolving the conflict. The Palestinians also need to look within to reverse the damage caused by the split between the Hamas and Fatah parties, and work forcefully on decommissioning the armed groups that aren’t part of the security service. These groups need to understand that the use of force is harming the Palestinians’ national interest of having a sovereign Palestinian State – when they shoot, they are not shooting at Israelis; they are shooting the Palestinian people in the foot. In addition, Israel needs to stop shirking its responsibilities and engage with the Palestinians to reach a compromise. It needs to help Palestinian moderates regain credibility among the Palestinian people by gradually lifting all major checkpoints; start a gradual dismantlement of settlements in the West Bank; and, allow for the flow of people and trade from and into Gaza.
Question to the Blogosphere: How do you think Palestinians and Israelis should proceed in their negotiations? What should the role of the U.S. be–is there another major power that should be involved as a third party in the negotiations? For example, what could Turkey bring to the table as a mediator that the United States cannot? Do you think that the initiatives undertaken by the Harvard Kennedy School Israeli and Palestinian students could be replicated outside the setting of an elite school that is separated physically from the conflict? Do you think the elites of Israel and Palestine feel more compelled to reach a solution that the average people on each side of the conflict? Is it more important to reach common ground among the elites or at the grass roots level?
COMMON GROUND NEWS SERVICE: OBAMA’S FIRST 100 DAYS
In an article for the Common Ground News Service, Arsalan Iftikhar writes about President Obama’s engagement with the Muslim world over the first one hundred days of his presidency. Arsalan Iftikhar is an international human rights lawyer, founder of http://themuslimguy.com/and a contributing editor to Islamica Magazine. The report, Changing Course: A New Direction for U.S. Relations with the Muslim World, can be found at www.usmuslimengagement.org. You can also read this article on Anderson Cooper’s CNN blog.
April 28, 2009
Washington, DC – During his January 2009 presidential inaugural address, US President Barack Obama sent a clear message to the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims when he said: “To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.”
A few weeks ago in Ankara, fulfilling his promise to give a major foreign policy speech from a capital in a Muslim-majority country in the first 100 days of his presidency, Obama emphasised to members of the Turkish Parliament that, “the United States is not, and will never be, at war with Islam.”
Thus far, Obama has done a remarkable job in his outreach to the greater Muslim world, where perceptions of the United States had suffered immensely from the garbled rhetoric and actions of the George W. Bush administration.
Many American leaders are also following suit in the quest to help bridge the public diplomacy gap with the greater Muslim world. For example, a bipartisan leadership group of 34 American political and civic leaders – including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Republican Congressman Vin Weber – recently published a report, Changing Course: A New Direction for U.S. Relations with the Muslim World, which suggests concrete ways to improve US-Muslim relations in the future. Moroccan Ambassador Aziz Mekouar called the report “a most constructive blueprint for building relationships of cooperation between the United States and the Muslim world.”
The report suggests that the United States partner with governments, multilateral institutions and philanthropic organisations to make education a more powerful engine for employment and entrepreneurship in the greater Muslim world. Thus, by investing in education reforms, both American and Muslim governments can “gain credibility and help transform a high-risk youth generation into a broad and deep pool of skilled workers”, which can help advance their respective nations and economies.
During a recent dinner reception in April which was aimed at briefing Washington-based ambassadors and journalists on the Changing Course report recommendations, Albright addressed the audience of about 80 ambassadors, journalists and political leaders (some notable faces included Ambassador Mekouar, who hosted the event, former Bush National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, Syrian Ambassador to the United States Imad Moustapha and Dr. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention) on the state of US-Muslim relations within the Obama administration.
“When I became Secretary of State, we did not have Muslims employed in the State Department”, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said in her opening remarks that evening. “I went back to my notes when I was writing my book…and I had various notes which read, ‘Learn more about Islam’.”
In light of Obama’s first 100 days in the oval office, Albright graded Obama an “A+” thus far in terms of his overall engagement with the Muslim world. She cited the president’s use of diplomacy, especially in Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel-Palestine, as a positive step in building a better connection with the Muslim world.
She concluded her remarks that evening by emphasising that this engagement “cannot be done without the people in this room…. We have our work cut out for us.”
We do indeed, Madame Secretary.
Job creation and economic development are two key development areas where Obama can expand his reach in the coming years. As noted above, investing in these areas can actually help reduce the threat of extremism by providing youth with opportunities for employment. Supporting effective governments and civic participation, as the report states, will be critical in US engagement with the Muslim world as well.
As Obama continues as president, it becomes a political imperative for his administration to ensure that his wonderful words to the Muslim world turn into tangible and concrete policy changes on the ground. As we Americans consider the completion of the first 100 days of his presidency, let us all work together so that his words of change turn into a collective “audacity of hope” for every corner of the world for the next 100 days, months, years and beyond.
BBC NEWS: WHO WANTS TO TALK TO HAMAS?
Hamas has had more international visitors since US President Barack Obama came to power, and they seem to be getting bolder. Most of the international community backs Israel’s view that Hamas is a terrorist group, and refuses to deal directly with it, but calls for a rethink have increased since Mr. Obama came to power. Some believe there are signs of a subtle change in mood. A senior economic advisor to Mr. Obama, Paul Volcker, recently put his name to a paper which included a “more pragmatic approach to Hamas” among wider policy recommendations. Meanwhile, Martin Indyk, a former US ambassador to Israel who advised US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her presidential campaign, recently co-wrote a book chapter asserting that “a peace process that excludes” Hamas is “bound to fail”.
Those who advocate dialogue with Hamas believe it will strengthen moderates from Hamas’s political wing, but others look at the rockets Israel says the group’s military wing is continuing to smuggle into Gaza, the fiery, anti-Semitic statements of Hamas-linked preachers and media outlets, and the group’s refusal to change its charter, and see no such hope.
Question to the Blogosphere: Do you think Hamas should be included in negotiations about the future of the Middle East, or will they prevent talks from moving forward? What are the motivations behind not working with Hamas? According to Lakhdar Brahimi, when he was the chief negotiator in Afghanistan, his biggest regret was not bringing in the Taliban into the negotiations. Do you think it would be a mistake not to bring in Hamas? Would asking them to search for common ground with other Palestinians and Israels help give power to the moderate elements of Hamas? Many groups have turned from guerrilla/terrorist organizations to legitimate political organizations. Can you foresee this for Hamas? How much does Hamas’ behavior hinder prospects for finding common ground in the Middle East?
In the 2008 presidential election, between 4% and 5% of voters self-identified as gay. Of these, 27% went for John McCain. That works out to 1.4 to 1.8 million gay Republican votes. There may be some common ground on the issue that most divides GOProud, a new tax-exempt 527 political organization aiming to be the voice for gay conservatives, from long-standing Republican orthodoxy: gay marriage. Like most conservative organizations, GOProud is skeptical about using courts to advance social change. They also tend to believe that social issues like this one are best left to the American people acting through their state legislatures.
Question to the Blogosphere: In our continuing focus on gay rights in America and an internal search for common ground between conservatives and the gay community, do you think being gay and Republican are compatible? Are there issues on which the gay community could find common ground with their Republican neighbors? Is GOProud a sign that partisan groups are being pushed to moderation after decades of polarized politics? Are stereotypes about what homosexuals believe inhibiting our ability as a country to maturely deal with issues such as health care, education, and marriage?
