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The debate over George W. Bush’s legacy has erupted into a brawl at the University of Denver over whether to present the former president with an award for his humanitarian work. The Josef Korbel School of International Studies’ plan to honor Mr. Bush at a Sept. 9 fundraising dinner touched off a petition drive last month by a recent graduate, who is urging the university to “choose an alternative recipient.” The school originally planned to honor Mr. Bush with its Improving the Human Condition Award, according to an invitation posted on the university’s website. After a spate of publicity surrounding...

It is ever so obvious that Barack Obama's heart is not in Libya, but like every President since Jefferson he has come to recognize the harsh contradictions as the nation's chief executive and campaigning for the office. His predicament is nothing new. Principle meets the real world. In the midst of the BP oil spill, I wrote that the President seemed "detached". This entire administration can now aptly described as "detached", but more importantly it can now be held accountable for gross contradiction in selectively determining "humanitarian" intervention. Obama dithered for three weeks on Libya, missing a window of opportunity...

What Is Samantha Power Thinking?The charismatic Obama adviser believes that stopping "genocide" is the United States' top foreign-policy priority. On March 18, President Obama explained his decision to mobilize the United States military for international intervention in Libya. “Left unchecked,” he said, “we have every reason to believe that Qaddafi would commit atrocities against his people. Many thousands could die. A humanitarian crisis would ensue. The entire region could be destabilized, endangering many of our allies and partners.” (As if it hasn’t been already?) That last sentence was a Realpolitik, national-interest justification for the U.S. intervention. But it rang hollow....

As defined by Wikipedia: “In its most general form, humanitarianism is an ethic of kindness, benevolence and sympathy extended universally and impartially to all human beings. Humanitarianism has been an evolving concept historically but universality is a common element in its evolution. NO DISTINCTION is to be made in the face of human suffering or abuse on grounds of gender, tribal, caste, religious or national divisions.” (Note: words capitalized are for emphasis only and are not in the original quote.) Good - God = 0 The majority of humanitarians preach a social gospel and teach the “golden rule,” but what...

/AKI) Humanitarian convoys were used to smuggle weapons to Muslims during the Bosnia war from 1992-95, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, accused of genocide and war crimes, has told the UN Yugoslav war crimes tribunal. 'Everything was smuggled through these convoys - weapons, military equipment, cameras, food,' Karadzic said Monday, while cross-examining a prosecution witness. Bosnian Serb forces stopped only a few convoys, and Muslim officials stored away humanitarian aid and sold it in the black market, Karadzic said. Prosecution witness David Harland, who served with the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in Bosnia from 1993 to 1995, said Karadzic's accusations...

It's not true that the only good terrorist is a dead terrorist. Even dead terrorists aren't good. But at least they're dead. And that helps. But political correctness has possessed Washington. It's so bad that even Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who's done a great job in many other respects, parrots the cliché that "we can't kill our way out of this." Well, folks, there's no other way out of this all-or-nothing struggle with fanatics. Three thousand years of history teach that there's no alternative -- none -- to killing fanatics in large numbers when your enemies are ablaze with religious...

Leon R. Kass | Friday, 31 August 2007 How brave a new world? There is nothing "brave" or beautiful about the biotechnised world we are entering, says one of America's best-known bioethicists. This is a commencement speech made by Dr Leon Kass at St John's College, in Annapolis, Maryland, earlier this year. Dr Kass, a physician and philosopher, was the chairman of the President's Council for Bioethics from 2002 to 2005. He teaches at the University of Chicago. Surveying the world you graduates are about to enter, I am reminded of the ancient Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting...

"I wondered at first whether the women were exaggerating." The writer is Pamela Bone, a noted Australian journalist and self-described "left-leaning, feminist, agnostic, environmentalist internationalist." She is writing about a group of female Iraqi emigrees whom she met in Melbourne in November 2000. "They told me that in Iraq, the country they had fled, women were beheaded with swords and their heads nailed to the front doors of their houses, as a lesson to other women. The executed women had been dishonoring their country with their sexual crimes, and this behavior could not be tolerated, the then-Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein,...

Faith Communities Call for Immigration Reform Thursday, Feb. 9, 2006 Posted: 10:35:28AM EST Faith communities have stepped in to call for comprehensive immigration reform that would help ease the suffering of immigrants as spending on programs and systems to control the flow of immigrants over national borders have been included in President Bush's $2.77 trillion budget for fiscal 2007. The president’s new plan includes a $247 million spending on a guest worker program for immigrants, 1,500 new Border Patrol agents and a system to help states check immigration status. "The administration's plan,” states a summary of the proposals on border...

Bayan, a Kurdish-Iraqi week-old infant with a deadly heart defect, will be brought to Israel in the coming days for an operation, thanks to the help of Israeli doctors, international human rights workers, Foreign Ministry officials, and their American and Iraqi counterparts, The Jerusalem Post learned Monday. Until the American army liberated Iraq in April, Israel was technically at war with Iraq – a country whose former leader, Saddam Hussein, rarely missed an opportunity to call for the destruction of the Jewish state. The move could be a harbinger of future informal contacts between Israel and the fledgling democratic Iraq....

Bertie in particular sustained simultaneously a pair of opinions ludicrously incompatible. He held that in fact human affairs were carried on after a most irrational fashion, but that the remedy was quite simple and easy, since all we had to do was to carry them on rationally. —J. M. Keynes, on Bertrand Russell Oh, tell me, who first declared, who first proclaimed that man only does nasty things because he does not know his own real interests; and that if he were enlightened, if his eyes were opened to his real normal interests, man would at once cease to do...

While violence continued on the ground despite the cease-fire declared by the Palestinian terror groups, Civil Administration officials in Judea and Samaria facilitated the flight of seven Palestinian children ages 5 to 10 to Italy for lifesaving medical treatment. Six of the children suffer from thalassemia, a genetic blood disorder, and one has a heart defect. The four boys and three girls from Ramallah, Jenin, Nablus, and Hebron, were accompanied by 23 family members, some of whom will donate bone marrow to the children. Civil Administration official Dalia Bassa, who is in charge of the health division unit responsible for...

It's 2 p.m. at the Kalandia checkpost on a boiling summer's day. A long, crowded line of Palestinians wait to enter Ramallah. Young Israeli combat soldiers are positioned in front of them, standing behind grey concrete barriers and above on a dusty hilltop sweating inside guard towers. The 18-year-old troops are ready for anything. They have been trained for terrorism and war and keep a watchful eye out for the unusual. It could be a car with a sniper, a young boy holding a package or a women suicide bomber just waiting to make tomorrow's headlines. Then you hear the...

March 2, 2003 Palestinian Pilgrims Return Safely During the course of the past week Palestinians who left the West Bank and Gaza Strip in order to perform the Haj (holy pilgrimage) to Mecca, retuned safely with the help and coordination of the IDF. Approximately 4,700 pilgrims, residents of the Gaza Strip, returned via the Rafah border crossing starting from February 16, 2003 and continued to arrive during the course of that week until the end of the operation on February 21, 2003. A similar effort begun on February 17, 2003 to re-admit approximately 4, 880 Palestinian pilgrims back into the...

The cabinet unanimously agreed Sunday to speed up the immigration of the 20,000 Ethiopian Jews waiting in refugee camps to come to Israel. The cabinet appointed Interior Minister Eli Yishai to head a committee to oversee the process. Advocates hope the cabinet decision has removed the last legal obstacle to the immigration of Ethiopian Jews, many of whom are in danger of dying of starvation and have been separated from their families for years. "It's a historical decision," said Abraham Neguse, executive director of Southwing to Zion, an Ethiopian advocacy group. "It reunites families and ends the suffering and tears...

Spurred by Monday’s anti-War on Iraq “vigil,” I decided it was necessary that I presented the viewpoint concerning Iraq and what the truthful reasons for military action were. Furthermore, in this three part series, I will put forward what our goals will be in Iraq once Saddam is gone, and finalize my series with a column outlining who exactly these “peace” organizations are. A REPRESSIVE DICTATORSHIP The first and foremost attribute of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, that supports why we must go in, is that his rule of Iraq is done in a dictatorial and repressive way. He tortures his people...

January 26th, 2003 Thirty-Nine Palestinian Patients Transferred to Israel for Medical Treatment Alongside the IDF's operations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip aimed to prevent terrorism, the IDF is continuing its policy of providing humanitarian aid to the innocent Palestinian population. Below is a list of the restrictions that were lifted (as of 21 January 2003): Humanitarian medical aid provided: Representatives of the Red Cross and "Doctors Without Borders" provided medical aid to the Palestinian population in the Muassi. In addition six trucks delivered medical supplies, food, and oxygen tanks to hospitals in the West Bank. Eleven Palestinian...

DEATH AND DYING. . .AGING--ONE'S LAST GIFT J. Grant Swank, Jr., POB l984, Windham ME 04062 Pastor, New Hope Church, Windham ME As a believer, I have always been uncomfortable with the American way of death. It strikes me as being particularly pagan. There is too much emphasis on material things at this moment given to the soul. Why the costly caskets? Funeral displays? Elaborate fringes? Gawking at the deceased? "My, doesn't he look nice?" "They did a good job on her, didn't they?" Please. Enough. There has to be another way, I used to ponder. Yet for years, I...