DebateGate

Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week
David Horowitz intends to spread fear and hatred under the guise of patriotism and freedom.

By Chelsey Perkins
his coming Monday, brace yourself for the excitement and thrills brought to you by the David Horowitz Freedom Center's "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week," beginning Oct. 22 and ending Oct. 26.

This fun-filled week will feature an array of speakers, films, enlightening literature and the opportunity to participate in a sit-in. Student organizers can choose from a delightful list of speakers, including:

Mark Steyn, a man who calls himself a "culturalist" rather than a "racist" for finding Western culture preferable to Arab culture and who supports immigration with the condition of assimilation

Phyllis Chesler, a professor of women's studies who wrote of the new anti-Semitism, which essentially encompasses anyone opposed to Israel's policies

And, if you're really lucky, like students at the University of Southern California, Ann Coulter, who once referred to Muslims as "ragheads" and is now apparently crusading for Muslim women's rights.

The point of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week is to spread the word about what Horowitz calls the two "Big lies of the left," that President Bush created the War on Terror and that global warming is a bigger problem than the threat of terrorism to our national security. Horowitz, author of the Academic Bill of Rights and a proponent of bringing a "diversity" of viewpoints to the college campus, totes the week as one which will bring attention to suppression of women's rights and Islamic attacks on Christians, Jewish peoples, gays and atheists. And of course, who better to discuss gay rights than suggested speaker Rick Santorum, who once compared consensual gay sex to polygamy and incest?

The Freedom Center will provide all materials necessary to any college student willing to host a week at their campus, including a pre-made petition - which unabashedly invites Muslim student associations to support the freedom of Americans from Muslim terrorists.

Horowitz warns that some college administrations, which he has criticized for years as supporting viewpoint discrimination in favor of liberal perspectives, might "refuse necessary permits or room reservations, and otherwise demonstrate their hypocrisy by failing to allow patriotic students a voice on campus." Because as you can see, this is what it means to be patriotic, supporting the complete and utter insult on our intellect this conservative-think-tank-fueled week brings to us.

As I have expressed before, I am certainly a proponent of free speech and recognize Horowitz's right as any other citizen of this country. However, I also believe in considering the source, and Horowitz's ill-researched and often nonsensical tirades reflect the content of his Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. He and the speakers he suggests participate in this "consciousness-raising" event all have similar political agendas, and as far as I am concerned, those agendas resonate with intolerance and fear in order to perpetuate the dichotomy of those who love freedom and those who do not.

According to the Terrorism Awareness Project's Web site, where you can download a guide to hosting the events, the University of Minnesota is a participating school. I hope that if this is the case, although I could not find a sponsor or event listed on any campus Web sites, students remain vigilant in their interpretations of the meaning behind the message.

http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2007/10/15/72163869

Life is harder now, experts say
Generation gap: After paying the bills, middle-class pockets are emptier
By Bob Sullivan
Technology correspondent
MSNBC
Updated: 7:12 a.m. ET Oct 16, 2007
Shopping malls are packed every weekend. Restaurants can't open fast enough. Everyone seems to be wearing designer shoes, jackets and jeans and sipping $4 lattes. Credit card commercials constantly advocate splurging and, it seems, U.S. consumers are all too ready to comply.

So what's the problem? Why do so many middle class Americans with so much stuff say they feel so squeezed? If they are dogged by debt, isn?t it their own fault?

Perhaps, some experts say, things are not as they appear.

Bankruptcy law expert and Harvard University Professor Elizabeth Warren spent a lot of time crunching consumer spending numbers for her popular books, "The Fragile Middle Class? and ?The Two-Income Trap.? In both, she makes this point: Despite all those $200 sneakers you hear about and the long lines at Starbucks, consumers are actually spending less of their income ? much less ? on discretionary items like clothing, entertainment and food than their parents did. In fact, after taking care of essentials like housing and health care, today?s middle class has about half as much spending money as their parents did in the early 1970s, Warren says.

The basics, according to Warren, now take up close to three-fourths of every family's spending power (it was about 50 percent in 1973), leaving precious little left over at the end of the month ? and leaving many families with no cushion in case of a job loss or health crisis.


Warren's theories fly in the face of conventional wisdom and those crowded malls. But the premise is simple: Even though household incomes have risen about 75 percent from 1970, most of that is the result of a second earner ? generally a woman ? joining the work force. And that added income has been swallowed by rising fixed expenses, such as child care and housing costs, Warren argues. The average family pays at least twice as much for housing compared to its counterpart in the 1970s, Warren says, and in some competitive areas with good schools, housing costs have risen by as much as 600 percent.

Without savings, at risk of job loss
Now consider these factors: Four in 10 Americans don't have even one month's worth of savings for use in case of an emergency, according to a survey by HSBC Bank published in 2006. And with two incomes built into the family budget, the odds of a household getting hit by a layoff have doubled in the last generation. This combination ? high housing debt, rising health care costs, lack of savings and greater exposure to unemployment ? leaves many families in a precarious financial position.

Yet before Warren can get policymakers to talk about the middle-class squeeze, or at least middle-class worry, she often finds she has to beat back the notion that overconsumption is to blame for the rise in consumer debt ? and in middle-class anxiety.

"A growing number of families are in terrible financial trouble, but no matter how many times the accusation is hurled, Prada and HBO are not the reason," Warren says in her book ?The Two-Income Trap.?

There is no arguing that most Americans have more gadgets in their living rooms and more clothes in their closets than ever before. Consider the explosion of the closet-organizer business. 

But government spending data paint a different picture. Take the often-cited evidence of culinary extravagance. While it's true that Americans are eating out much more than ever ? nearly half of all dollars spent on food now go to dining out ? overall food costs have plunged in recent decades.  Americans now spent only about 10 percent of their money on food each year, compared to nearly 20 percent in the 1970s, according to data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.


And despite the designer brands they buy, the average family of four spends about 20 percent less on clothes today, according to Warren's analysis. Think about your last trip to Target: Thanks in part to the entry of inexpensive imported textiles from China and other trading partners, it's possible to buy a Friday night outfit for under $40. This shows up in BLS data too: On average, Americans spent nearly 7 percent of their money on clothes in 1973, compared to about 4 percent in 2005.


Two weeks work for a fridge?
In fact, many consumer goods are much cheaper than they were in the 1970s.  A look at 1971 Sears catalog offers a glimpse of some plummeting prices. In 1971, a basic Sears refrigerator cost $399.  Adjusted for inflation, that would be about $2,000 in 2005 dollars, or nearly 10 times the $297 price of a basic fridge in today?s Sears catalog.  Put another way, a fridge costs more than two week?s work for an average earner in 1971, but less than two day?s labor today.

Other household items were similarly expensive in 1971 ? an 18-inch TV cost $429 (the equivalent of $2,150 today) and a 24-inch dishwasher cost $249 ($1,200 today).

Lower prices are, of course, a boon for the middle class, which now enjoys many conveniences and luxuries that were formerly reserved for the well-to-do. This is the cornerstone point for those who argue that the middle-class squeeze is a myth.

?I can?t hazard a guess as to why there is such a malaise in this country about current living conditions, but ... we have never had it better,? economist Arthur B. Laffer wrote in response to a question from a Gut Check America reader. Laffer is one of a large group of economists and policy-makers who point to crowded malls and high stock market returns as evidence that middle class America has little to complain about.

But Amelia Warren Tyagi, co-author of ?The Two-Income Trap,? and also Warren?s daughter, said weekend shopping trip receipts aren?t the best way to examine the state of the middle class.

"Yes, people are spending more on home electronics, but the dollars just aren't that big," Tyagi said. "Maybe they spend  a couple of hundred dollars more on stereo equipment. But they are spending less on tobacco. This is not to say that there's no frivolous spending going on, but as you add it all up, there's no more frivolous spending than there was a generation ago."

The source of the anxiety
With government data showing that Americans are spending much less than they did 35 years ago on clothes, food, and even entertainment, Tyagi says the anxiety they are feeling comes from somewhere else: the exploding costs of housing, health care and education.


In housing, recent data is most striking. Household incomes have largely stagnated in recent years, even shrinking 2.8 percent from 2000 to 2006.  Housing costs skyrocketed 32 percent in that time.

Even more striking is the amount of income most families are paying to stay in their homes. Banks have long had a standard that said mortgages should not be approved unless the monthly payment was 25 percent or less of the buyer?s income. That limitation clearly is long gone. The U.S. Census Bureau defines ?house poor? as spending more than 30 percent of income on housing expenses.  In 1999, 26.7 percent of U.S. households were considered house poor. By 2006, the number had jumped to 34.5 percent.

Because of difference in government data collection methods, it's hard to reach back to the 1970s for a precise comparison point. But the rise in house-poor mortgage holders is striking by any measure. A 1975 Census report showed that only 8.9 percent of mortgage holders spent 35 percent or more of their income ? including insurance, property taxes, and utilities ? on housing.

The number of households spending half their income on housing ? an amount that for most would be fiscal suicide ? also has dramatically increased, from 10 percent in 2000 to 14 percent in 2006.

The cost of education has similarly spiked. Pre-school was largely non-existent in the 1970s, but today many families pencil in $1,000 a month for child care and early childhood education. On the other end, college costs have easily outpaced the cost of inflation.  For example, the average bill for attending a four-year public college rose 52 percent from 2001 to 2007.

Health care costs have climbed steadily as well. According to the BLS, the average household spent 4.7 percent of its income on health care in 1984, and 5.7 percent in 2005. 


In the end, the portion of an average family?s budget spent on fixed costs like housing has risen much faster than wages and inflation, while spending on discretionary items has declined. That means mortgages, more than lattes, are the source of middle-class anxiety, says economist Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute, a generally liberal think tank that focuses on the interests of low- and middle-income Americans.


?They feel squeezed because they are squeezed?
"Consumers are asking, ?If the economy is doing so well why am I feeling so squeezed??? he said. ?Well, they feel squeezed because they are squeezed."

Identifying the source of the squeeze requires more than simply comparing overall inflation to overall wage growth, Bernstein said. 

"You have to look at a basket of key goods,? he said, like housing and college costs. ?If you compare income growth to growth in prices of key goods, that stuff is growing 10 percent faster than income. ... Perhaps (consumers) are beating overall inflation but are they beating inflation in key components of their market basket? No."

More to the point, Bernstein said, rising housing costs have quietly broken a social contract with consumers that promised that a good job with a good income would guarantee a good place to live. While that may have been true in the 1970s, it is often not true today, he said.

"Lodged in the minds of those who come from the middle class is the idea that the middle class is a safe haven. It's not," he said.

That notion is changing. People no longer feel certain they will be better off than their parents, for example. "What really messes with your economic mind is when your expectations and aspirations are violated, Bernstein said. ?You think, my parents died in a much better home than they grew up in. Will I?"

Generational trade-offs
Bernstein is not as pessimistic as Tyagi in his interpretation of the data. A comparison of then vs. now needs to be a little more subtle, he said. Clearly, middle class Americans are better off in some ways: larger homes and availability of what were once luxury items, like air conditioning, for instance.

?If a person is arguing that middle class families are worse off in every way, that person hasn't spent enough time at the mall,? he said. ?But these are things you don't see at the mall:  housing, health care, child care, saving and saving for college. The price of those (are) rising more quickly than inflation in general, rising more quickly than family income. And they are largely responsible for the squeeze that families report feeling."

Middle-class squeeze skeptics often point to rising credit card debt as evidence that consumers have themselves, and their spending habits, to blame for any economic anxiety.  But there?s a problem with that theory too ? it?s an exaggeration, says Liz Pulliam Weston, author of ?Deal With Your Debt? and an MSN Money columnist. The majority of American consumers carry no credit card debt from month to month and very few carry large balances, she notes.

Last year, Americans held about $900 billion in credit card debt, leaving the average household with a bill of about $9,300, according to Federal Reserve data.  That sounds like a lot, but a few consumers with very large debts can skew the average. The median balance is ? the point at which half of consumers have more debt, and half have less ? is a better indicator. The median credit card balance is $2,200, a fairly manageable amount. Only 8.3 percent of households owe more than $9,000 on their credit cards. Meanwhile, one-quarter of all Americans don?t even have credit cards, and another 30 percent pay them off in full every month.

Notion of heavy credit card debt called overblown
?Our national discussions about consumer indebtedness and bankruptcy are being distorted by the idea that we're waddling around with four- and five-figure credit card debts,? Weston wrote recently. ?That makes us sound like spendthrifts, when that's not the norm."

Nevertheless, overconsumption and excessive credit card spending persist as explanations for middle-class debt angst. Tyagi has a theory why.

?Frivolous spending is visible, and it?s easy to pass judgment on, she said. ?There is a comforting notion that if you are not spending wildly you are safe. If you are deeply invested in the belief that if everyone can solve their problems on their own, then there's no systematic problem, it would be important to think that if anyone is in trouble financially it?s because they did something stupid.?

It might be something their parents would never have done, such as taking out a negative-amortization mortgage or taking out a $100,000 home equity loan to pay for a child?s college, or spend as much money on child care as food.

But you can?t blame that on extravagant living, Warren said.

?Perhaps the most important thing we can do is persuade people that it's not about the lattes,? she said. ?I think the "latte factor" is a way to distract people from real changes in the economy. Those who shake their fingers over lattes can feel good about themselves, both for their own economic prosperity and for the fact that those who are in trouble are there because of their own personal failings.?


? 2007 MSNBC Interactive
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21309318/

Skies to be swept for alien life
The switch has been thrown on a telescope specifically designed to seek out alien life.
Funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen the finished array will have 350 6m antennas and will be one of the world's largest.

The Allen Telescope Array (ATA) will be able to sweep more than one million star systems for radio signals generated by intelligent beings.

Its creators hope it will help spot definite signs of alien life by 2025.

First light

The ATA is being run by the SETI Institute and the Radio Astronomy Laboratory from the University of California, Berkeley.

"For SETI, the ATA's technical capabilities exponentially increase our ability to search for intelligent signals, and may lead to the discovery of thinking beings elsewhere in the universe," said Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in a statement.

On 11 October the first 42 dishes of the array started gathering data that will be analysed for signs of alien life and help with conventional radio astronomy.

The first test images produced by the array are radio maps of the Andromeda Galaxy and the Triangulum Galaxy.


The ATA is pioneering a novel design for the antenna that will scan the sky.
Rather than being hand built, each 6m antenna is made of a mass-produced dish and off-the-shelf components. Behind the scenes, digital signal processing software is used to analyse data and clean out man-made interference that would otherwise make the captured information useless.

The layout of the antenna has also been carefully plotted so the instruments work in unison to take a single snapshot of huge swathes of the sky.

The ATA's creators claim that even with only 42 antenna on-stream the instrument already rivals larger instruments in its ability to carry out brightness, temperature and point source surveys.

When all 350 dishes are gathering data the ATA's creator's claim it will allow the gathering of data on an "unprecedented" scale.

The finished instrument will be able to study an area of the sky 17 times larger than that possible with the Very Large Array in New Mexico.

Mr Allen has provided SETI and Berkeley with a $25m grant to fund the initial construction work on the instrument. Other sponsors are being sought for the other $25m needed to complete the project.

It is expected to help improve understanding of such phenomena as supernovas, black holes, and exotic astronomical objects that have been predicted but never observed.

The array is situated in Hat Creek, California which lies about 290 miles (467 km) north of San Francisco.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/7041183.stm

Published: 2007/10/12 10:33:18 GMT

Muslim scholars reach out to Pope
More than 130 Muslim scholars have written to Pope Benedict XVI and other Christian leaders urging greater understanding between the two faiths.
The letter says that world peace could depend on improved relations between Muslims and Christians.

It identifies the principles of accepting only one god and living in peace with one's neighbours as common ground between the two religions.

It also insists that Christians and Muslims worship the same god.

The letter comes on the anniversary of an open letter issued to the Pope last year from 38 top Muslim clerics, after he made a controversial speech on Islam.

Pope Benedict sparked an uproar in September last year by quoting a medieval text which linked Islam to violence.

The letter coincides with the Eid al-Fitr celebrations to mark the end of Ramadan.

Koran and Bible

It was also sent to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the heads of the Lutheran, Methodist and Baptist churches, the Orthodox Church's Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I and other Orthodox Patriarchs.

The letter, entitled A Common Word Between Us and You, compares passages in the Koran and the Bible, concluding that both emphasise "the primacy of total love and devotion to God", and the love of the neighbour.

With Muslims and Christians making up more than half the world's population, the letter goes on, the relationship between the two religious communities is "the most important factor in contributing to meaningful peace around the world".

"As Muslims, we say to Christians that we are not against them and that Islam is not against them - so long as they do not wage war against Muslims on account of their religion, oppress them and drive them out of their homes," the letter says.

It adds: "To those who nevertheless relish conflict and destruction for their own sake or reckon that ultimately they stand to gain through them, we say our very eternal souls are all also at stake if we fail to sincerely make every effort to make peace and come together in harmony."

One of the signatories, Dr Aref Ali Nayed, a senior adviser at the Cambridge Inter-faith Programme at Cambridge University, told the BBC that the document should be seen as a landmark.

"There are Sunnis, Shias, Ibadis and even the... Ismailian and Jaafari schools, so it's a consensus," he said.

Professor David Ford, director of the programme, said the letter was unprecedented.

"If sufficient people and groups heed this statement and act on it then the atmosphere will be changed into one in which violent extremists cannot flourish," he said in a statement.

The letter was signed by prominent Muslim leaders, politicians and academics, including the Grand Muftis of Bosnia and Hercegovina, Russia, Croatia, Kosovo and Syria, the Secretary-General of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the former Grand Mufti of Egypt and the founder of the Ulema Organisation in Iraq.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7038992.stm

Published: 2007/10/11 10:49:59 GMT

China condemns U.S. award for Dalai Lama
Thu Oct 11, 2007 4:54am EDT
BEIJING (Reuters) - China has complained to the United States over a decision to award exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama a U.S. Congressional Gold Medal, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Thursday.

The Dalai Lama, who fled to India after a failed uprising against Chinese Communist rule of Tibet in 1959, is branded by China as a "separatist".

The Nobel Peace Prize winner says he only wants greater autonomy for the predominately Buddhist Himalayan region.

"The Chinese government strongly opposes the U.S. Congress giving the Dalai Lama a so-called award," spokesman Liu Jianchao told a regular news briefing.

"We strongly oppose any country or person who uses the Dalai Lama to interfere in China's internal affairs. We have already made solemn representations about this to the U.S. side."

White House National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said last month that President George W. Bush would attend the October 17 ceremony at the Capitol.

Bush has previously met the Dalai Lama at the White House.

China has already chided German Chancellor Angela Merkel for hosting the Dalai Lama, demanding Berlin take action to repair damage done to bilateral ties.

China, keen to maintain stability ahead of a key Communist Party meeting next week, is also questioning the loyalty of ethnic Tibetan Party members, accusing many of swearing their true allegiance to the Dalai Lama, according to an internal memo.

This week, China's state media lashed out at the Dalai Lama, accusing him of supporting "evil cults", such as Japan's Aum Shinrikyo and banned Chinese spiritual group Falun Gong.

On Thursday, the overseas edition of Party mouthpiece the People's Daily said the Dalai Lama was involved in killing people during an uprising in the 1950s, in violation of Buddhist principles, and that he was a liar.

"The armed rebels set houses on fire, looted Tibetan people and raped women. What happened then still lingers in Tibetan people's minds today," said the commentary, signed by somebody called Shi Shan.

This is a problem. On the one hand, we need to be on good terms with Turkey for obvious reasons. On the other hand...

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Bush urges rejection of Armenia genocide resolution
Wed Oct 10, 2007 12:14pm EDT
By Tabassum Zakaria

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Wednesday urged U.S. lawmakers to reject a congressional resolution calling the 1915 massacres of Armenians genocide, saying it would do "great harm" to U.S. relations with Turkey.

"This resolution is not the right response to these historic mass killings," Bush told reporters at the White House.

The House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee is to consider the Armenian genocide resolution later on Wednesday. If it passes, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a longtime supporter of the measure, could then decide to bring it before the full House for a vote.

Many Democrats, who control Congress, support the resolution, which has 226 co-sponsors, more than half the House.

The measure comes at a delicate time for Turkey-U.S. relations.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who telephoned Bush last week about the Armenian resolution, confirmed on Wednesday his government was drawing up plans to authorize a cross-border incursion into northern Iraq to strike Kurdish rebels after 15 Turkish soldiers were killed in attacks in recent days.

Washington has urged Turkey not to send troops into mainly Kurdish northern Iraq for fear of destabilizing the country's most peaceful region.

In calling on lawmakers to reject the Armenian measure, Bush said: "Its passage would do great harm to our relations with a key ally in NATO and in the global war on terror."

The bulk of supplies for U.S. troops in Iraq pass via Turkey's Incirlik airbase. Turkey also provides thousands of truck drivers and other workers for U.S. operations in Iraq.

HARD LOBBYING

Turkey has warned of damage to bilateral ties if Congress passes the Armenian bill, and a delegation of Turkish lawmakers visited Capitol Hill on Tuesday to underscore that point.

Turkey strongly rejects the Armenian position, backed by many Western historians and a growing number of foreign parliaments, that up to 1.5 million Armenians suffered genocide at the hands of Ottoman Turks during World War One.

Ankara says many Muslim Turks as well as Christian Armenians died in inter-ethnic conflict as the Ottoman Empire collapsed.

The resolution recognizing the 1915 mass killings of Armenians by Turks as genocide was introduced in the House by Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who has a large number of Armenian-Americans in his district.

Similar resolutions have been introduced in the House for years, with Armenian-American groups lobbying hard for passage.

The proposals have sometimes passed committees. But while Republicans controlled Congress, they blocked a vote by the full House, saying they did not want to embarrass Turkey.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the resolution would be "very destabilizing to our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan because Turkey, as an important strategic ally, is very critical in supporting the efforts that we are making in these crucial areas."

Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates made statements to reporters at the White House, emphasizing the administration's concern that the resolution would hurt U.S. ties with Turkey.

Noose discovery stuns Columbia University

From Sarah B. Boxer
CNN
NEW YORK (CNN) -- A noose was discovered this week on the office door of an African-American professor at Columbia University, school officials and the New York Police Department said.

The noose was found in a building at Columbia's Teachers College, said Joe Levine, executive director for external affairs at Teachers College.

The noose apparently was placed on the 44-year-old professor's office door sometime before 9 a.m. ET Tuesday, Levine said.

Security cameras cover the entrance to the building, but there are none in the hallway where the noose was discovered, he added.

The building, which is open 24 hours a day, is accessible only to those with a Teachers College ID card or proof that they are affiliated with someone within the school, Levine said

The New York Police Department's Hate Crime Task Force is investigating.

Reacting to the news, more than 150 undergraduates attended a meeting Tuesday night on campus, and more than 120 Teachers College students expressed outrage at a gathering in their dining hall as well, according to the student-run newspaper Columbia Spectator.

University President Lee Bollinger denounced the incident in a statement released to the Spectator: "This is an assault on African-Americans and therefore it is an assault on every one of us. I know I speak on behalf of every member of our communities in condemning this horrible action."

Teachers College has more than 5,000 graduate students and 165 faculty members, according to school officials.

Columbia has had a spate of bias-related incidents in recent years, but Levine said, "I've never seen anything like this here."

The student paper said the noose's discovery came on the heels of several recent politically and racially charged events at Columbia, including the controversial visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

It also follows news reports of racial tensions in Jena, Louisiana, that attracted national attention. In the "Jena 6" case, white students in the small town hung nooses from a schoolyard tree after black students sat under it. Marchers last month protested how authorities handled the cases of six black teenagers accused of beating a white student after the noose incident.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/10/10/columbia.noose/index.html?eref=googletoolbar