This is completely off topic but I had to post this somewhere. This clip really infuriated me, Michael Medved hosts an hour of his show to say how disgusted and sickened he is at the President for spending $30 Billion to fight AIDS in Africa/Caribbean/South East Asia. This is a man who has no objections to sending Billions in aid to Israel, spending Trillions on Black Budget programs such as Area 51, and continuing the war in Iraq when only 28%(or less) of Americans are in favor of the war. Why is he sickened? Because its using Taxpayer dollars to fund the plan. He believes that the life of anyone dying of Aids(or any other illness for that matter) is not worth saving unless they are an American or Israeli.(and some people are kicked off the air for saying "nappy headed hoes", what a world)

The Clip is "Mr. President, this doesn't make any sense" Medved H1: Medved is sickened by President Bush's drive for solving the AIDS crisis abroad with taxpayer-dollars.

http://townhall.com/talkradio/show.aspx?radioshowid=4

RE:"teaching plato in palestine".- as a student of general philosophy (in college), of jewish philosophy (in yeshiva), as a longtime admirer of prof. nusseibeh, and as a longtime complainer about what i see as the almost exclusively anti-israel slant to the vast majority of the posts relating to the subject here on 1gm i just wanted to express my extreme pleasure at seeing this excellent, interesting and informative article here.

i hope it may lead some readers who have an interest in the topic to further investigate the thinking of sari nusseibeh, a truly impressive individual imho- all the more so as he is almost completely unique among the palestinians who are, as the article mentions, almost uniformely hostile to him. to his credit he stayed in "palestine" (i trust y'all understand my reasons for the quotes by now, even if you disagree with them) to actively try to help his people- most of whom would like to see him, at the least, kneecapped in the public square- unlike, say edward said. this is behavior worthy of the great hebrew prophets of old, who were also often despised by their own.

sorry about all the run on sentances, i'm just trying to say i really like the guy, have for a long time, and if you don't already know about him you should check him out.

i also wondered, norm, given the emphasis on academic give and take in the article and nusseibehs' opposition to the various and proposed academic boycotts of israeli institutions if your own feelings vis a vis such boycotts have been affected one way or the other by this most excellent post of yours. :)

Off-topic beater: Medved is worse than Prager, engraver of false idolatry (or is it dude from Prague?). [Gosh, look at these anglos: paris hilton, brit spears, the bushes, trump, prince charles, quayle, man alive. I definitely have reservations about the Anglo-angle, call Scotia "Caldonia". It is Great British, murdoch (media murderer), limbaugh?, brit hume, and Col. Forsyth, who had the foresight to take final revenge at Wounded Knee, admittedly a micro-genocide, but so close to (my) home.]

Nothing like Sophia to lift you out of your place, time, and accidental ethni-city/country into the Sempeternal, that's why the falseternal (religion) has to put it to death (Socrates, Bruno, al-Haqq).

Medi-vacuous, Medi-evil. There is a whole posse of these types over in Los Angloese: Dr. Laura, Denis Prager, Medved/Shithead, the authors Jonathan and Faye Kellerman [essentialist psychologist and rabbi-d (sorry!) ortho-docs/apologists], all spreading the word that evil is evil, Manichean-maniacal, that bad seeds are just that, born and determined.

Not bad for a scientific hypo-thesis. But this L.A. crew has no interest in science, quite the contrary. They are more dangerous than Oral Roberts, Falwell, etc., because of their suave sophistication, enemies of Sophia just as surely as Osama ibn Ladin is an enemy.

Of Sufi-a?

No religion should be beyond criticism. If you meet the Buddha on the road, criticise him.

i also wondered, norm, given the emphasis on academic give and take in the article and nusseibehs' opposition to the various and proposed academic boycotts of israeli institutions if your own feelings vis a vis such boycotts have been affected one way or the other by this most excellent post of yours. :)

I never did make up my mind. I hold countries that claim to be democracies to higher standards than others and so I get extremely annoyed at Israel's behavior on many fronts, and want them to pay a price for that behavior, particularly since we provide so much aid to Israel.

as far as paying a price: if you don't think that a population living in fear of using its own public transportation and places of entertainment, being under constant bombardment, threat of war, actual war, living under a kind of security lockdown which even post 9/11 america can't comprehend, spending the majority of an outrageous tax burden on defence (including the "aid" given by america), acting as the canary in the coalmine for the entire free world, a universal draft including women and being hated by the people who benifit most from our misery is enough of a price to pay, and you want to add to this the cessation of of the pittance in "aid" your country provides (for which it is paid back in spades, with interest) i say, fine. we'll all be better off, and israel will have more freedom of action to defend itself. but academic boycotts? you'd only be cutting your own throats, and i still have enough love left for america to plead with you not to be so stupid.