19 Sunday Apr 2015
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Nous, a canadiens pour la coexistence, souhaitons vous inviter à nous rejoindre à cette célébration interreligieuse réunissant des personnes de tous les huit grandes religions du monde. RSVP jusqu’à mardi, le 21 avril, 2015.
We, at Canadians for Coexistence wish to invite you to join us in this Interfaith Celebration uniting people of eight major world religions. RSVP by Tuesday, April 21, 2015
http://www.interfaithcelebration.ca/#sthash.T2CW6ROQ.dpuf
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31 Sunday Aug 2014
Posted in Anti-Semitism, Canada, North America, United States of America
Temple is a major university in the USA, home of the brave, land of the free-where Lady Liberty holds her light high inviting all who are in need to her shores. And yet, and yet, a Jewish student, Daniel Vessal, was physically and verbally attacked-for being Jewish, at this place of higher learning.
It isn’t that he was sucker-punched and verbally abused. It was that it was treated… lightly.
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20 Monday Jan 2014
▶ Harper and Netanyahu deliver remarks in Israel – YouTube – 1/20/2014.
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The Jewish approach to ethics, culled from a rich heritage of over 3000 years of Jewish existence, has been tried and tested with an astonishing degree of continuity and coherence, enabling it to remain steadfast in the face of the transient whims of society. Judaism’s ascription to the commitments, obligations, and duties of each individual, rather than individual rights, and its lack of distinction between law and ethics, ensures that Jewish ethics does not deal with armchair philosophy, but with real, practical cases while proposing unyielding, yet realistic ethical standards. This comprehensive systematic approach of Jewish ethics has universal validity in the societal debate over public policy involving medical, legal and corporate issues.
Jewish Ethics Institute | Jewish Exponent
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In Wikipedia: Jewish ethics – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; Jewish medical ethics – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; Feminist Jewish ethics – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Elsewhere: Jewish Ethics Institute; THE JEWISH ETHICIST; Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir, Business Ethics Center of Jerusalem; Judaism and Ethics.
Four seminal figures: Hillel the Elder – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; Maimonides – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; Felix Adler (professor) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; L. F. L. Oppenheim – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Not to be overlooked: Jesus is a Jew
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Judaism inspires two great conversations: man with God; man with man.
The conversation begins in a garden with God, a snake, a woman, and a man, and the outcome may be (we could argue about it) a statement about the onset of human awareness, self-awareness, and, most of all, conscience.
There’s commentary on language too in Genesis 2 and 3, but it’s subtle and left to the reader to catch two trees in one chapter and only one in the next (hiding something by omission, but rightly omitting from Eve’s human perception what has been hidden, i.e., the Tree of Life; Eve gets to taste of the fruit of the other tree).
And there’s also the comment on decency, which is not tied to shame (as Christians may have it): more likely than shame, our two humans cover what should be in deference to one another, out of consideration, but it’s God, actually, who sews skins for clothes — clothes strong and fit for living — as he sends them as much into human life as out of the garden.
It may be the development of an extensive and millenial ethical argument in language and language behavior that provides Stephan Harper today with motivation to stand with Israel in defense of western ethics, laws, and values.
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“There are more votes, a lot more, in being anti-israeli than taking a stand, but as long as I am Prime Minister, whether it is at the United Nations, the Francophone, or anywhere else, Canada will take that stand whatever the cost.”
▶ Canadian PM: I Will Defend Israel ‘whatever the cost’ – YouTube – 11/8/2010.
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31 Friday May 2013
Tags
Canada, foreign affairs, human rights, Iran, policy, politics, Syria, United States
Iran has also helped the Assad regime crack down on social media. In February 2011, Syria allowed access to social media websites such as Facebook and YouTube for the first time since 2007. At the time, some viewed this as a positive attempt at reform in order to allow freedom of expression. By May there was a 105 percent increase in the number of Facebook users in Syria, but it also became clear that the regime was using social media to track dissidents.16 US officials reported that in
addition to providing weapons, riot gear, and training, Iran was also supplying sophisticated surveillance equipment to the Syrian government. The Syrian regime used it to track down leaders of the protest movements and arrest them.
What one may see on the web of Syria’s civil war may belie what either the Assad regime or the collection of rebel forces, group by group, have kept hidden even though the standards for propriety as regards online publishing could not be lower.
While Matthew Levitt’s report reaches back to the 2003 arrest in Iran and subsequent torture of journalist Zahra Kazem to provide its most graphic description of the kind of pain meted out by way of the regime’s paranoid fantasia, it may leave to YouTube and the future to describe what horrors behind the curtains became the lot of captured Syrian dissidents in recent times.
Of perhaps equal interest in the report may be a part of the primary source material cited in the footnotes, for example, “Executive Order 13572 of April 29, 2011: Blocking Property of Certain Persons with Respect to Human Rights Abuses in Syria“:
“I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, hereby expand the scope of the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13338 of May 11, 2004, and relied upon for additional steps taken in Executive Order 13399 of April 25, 2006, and in Executive Order 13460 of February 13, 2008, finding that the Government of Syria’s human rights abuses, including those related to the repression of the people of Syria, manifested most recently by the use of violence and torture against, and arbitrary arrests and detentions of, peaceful protesters by police, security forces, and other entities that have engaged in human rights abuses, constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States, and I hereby order . . . .”
The “Government of Syria” described in executive orders between 2004 and 2011 is the same as that supported by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
It would appear the ghosts of the Cold War continue to haunt the politics in the Middle East.
Levitt, Matthew. “Congressional Testimony: Iranian Support for Terrorism and Violations of Human Rights.” PDF download page. The Washington Institute, May 30, 2013.
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