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[Adventurer]

Last Updated: Tuesday, 24 April 2007, 07:43 GMT 08:43 UK

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Israel's 'modesty buses' draw fire
By Katya Adler
BBC News, Jerusalem



Women sit separately from men on Israel's "modesty buses"
The other day I was waiting for a bus in downtown Jerusalem. I was in the bustling orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of Mea Sharim and the bus stop was extremely crowded.

When the Number 40 bus arrived, the most curious thing happened. Husbands left heavily pregnant wives or spouses struggling with prams and pushchairs to fend for themselves as they and all other male passengers got on at the front of the bus.

Women moved towards the rear door to get on at the back.

When on the bus, I tried to buck the system, moving my way towards the driver but was pushed back towards the other women.

These are what orthodox Jews call "modesty buses".

'Abuse and threats'

Naomi Regen is one of a group of women now taking the separation bus system to court. She is an orthodox Jew herself.

"I wasn't trying to start a revolution, all I wanted to do was get home," she tells me.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6584661.stm

[Adventurer]

So, BJWD, what do you have to say about this one?

[Hater Depot]

I'm just glad the headline isn't meant to be read literally.

[ddeubel]

I'm sure based on this one case, he'll start frothing at the mouth and begin a tirade and campaign against Jews. Backward, illiterate, they come and take our jobs and are over running Europe......look how they treat their women! Look, they even make 'em fight in the damn army! Look, they exclude others (no Jewish mother, get lost!), Look! they only want money and use this to terrorize poor nations. Look! they are taking over America. Look, they say drive all heathens out of Palestine!

My point being, his assertions of Muslim, all Muslims as being "a threat" to us -- are just that. Drum beating by a little boy. As with my above.

I've enjoyed watching the program "Couscous and Cola" on Al Jezeera recently. Along with their 48, a great and insightful program, showing how these young, Dutch Muslims think and view the world. We need more of this kind of thing. Anyone else seen it?

DD

[postfundie]

This is why Religion has a tendency to suck ass.....Those practicing Jews who came up with this crap need to get real...Funny how I haven't seen you post anything about this DD? well about Muslims that is....You'd chime in on Jews but would you start a thread about Muslims? Oh no wait its more important to speak of all the great benefits of Al Jazeera.....

[Adventurer]

[Big_Bird]

[postfundie]

[Adventurer]

[postfundie]

Do you mind putting up a post where DD has droned on and on about the Islam?

[Adventurer]

[ddeubel]

Adventurer,

You've stated my position and beliefs quite correctly, if only in general.

I for one have written about both Muslim and non Muslim countries and their abuses and wicked human rights records. But my point is

1. postfundie and many others just want an enemy, actually feel safer with a well defined enemy. This is the key to the success of all fascism, appealing to that inner need of people to believe in a boogie man/barbarian at the gates.

2. Muslims come in all sorts of varieties, as do their countries. [I think bb made this point continually and succinctly also]. It isn't easy to just label and say they should all be driven away, they are all animals/beasts , aggressive etc....Look at Egypt. An ally but hoooooorible when it comes to abusing honest citizens. You almost have to support the Brotherhood because of this. Who on this board, postfundie and all, have posted about el Atir, or even worse in my mind, the blogger Karem Amer, wasting away....tortured, all without the U.S. putting pressure on this "friend".

I've written about Iran and in particular its horrible record vis a vis minorities and especially women / journalists. I've written with distane for how we have glossed over the Libyans slaughtered by Khaddafi, while crying out for those killed at Lockerbie. This is just geopoloticing around the truth..... The kurds, nobody gave a rats ass about them for years...now all the sharks are saying, WOW what a great job we've done, liberating them! Bull tweet, I say!

This world and governments have to stand by some standards or be castigated and condemned. Israel/U.S. or Arab and Muslim nations. It is a point about countries, NOT religion. Invading another country, bombing, using torture, denying people their full rights are things not particular to a religion but a way of governance.........so I just think so many always screaming at the Muslims should do so correctly and drop the religious hate.

DD

[postfundie]

[ddeubel]

Postfundie,

I copied this below from what I wrote on my website. I would also add that I love America and she is a sparkling light (still) for the world. But as I've said many , many times, I disagree with her addiction to the military/war . So do many, many other fine scholars and even some who were professional soldiers ( I'm thinking in particular of Andrew Bacevich
who wrote a very powerful work on this topic.). I'm against an America which promotes war for profit and which will eventually hurt and pull down the country into bankruptcy and loss. (if it hasn't already). I"m against the power politics of America.

But what I praise is below, everything Whitman said and more......I find American generosity of spirit, her intelligence and diversity at the edges, her openess to change, the individiual - I find all this great.

But too many Americans such as yourself have been duped recently and I think much of that has come due to America's own strengths unfortunately. That Americans don't travel, understand other culture enough (on the whole). This is a strength, a resilience and independence but when it comes to sending a boy from Iowa to Kirkut, it is disasterous......

DD

July 4th, 2006.

It is July 4th. As good a thread as any to write about America. As good at time as any to start a Blog. For any writing should be of free expression, even by default. My own is.

There, many label me at worst, anti - American leftist, at best, idealistic. I shall remain so though I am anything but anti- American. More to the point, real AMERICAN.

It is a day to remember when America let forth the myth for which she will always be remembered and forever the world in her debt..............the myth and hope and archetype of FREEDOM.

America shrugged off the yolk and deemed all men created equal, all men to live with the possibility of FREEDOM and being able to live unregulated, to fulfill their inner potential.

America as a land for the individual and rugged spirit. America as a land of the boisterous and the be damned. America as a land of experiment and a land where a man could make his own way, unencumbered by the past, by his bloodline or by his government.

This is the America that still is and rests moreso in the everyday man. It is the America of Walt Whitman. It is the America of Twain and Steinbeck. Of Miller and Mailer and Paine. It is the America that is still out there.......

When I think of all the friends I have in this world OR all the people I most value, the majority of them are American. God bless her. She is beautiful at her edges. She dances without preconceived step or regulation. She is........

July 4th. I think of those moments of dissent. I think of deTocqueville, I think of Springsteen and his always tone of being FREE in the arms of his lover, of being human, being honest about what is important in our lives, to lay in our loved ones arms....wherever, the tall grass, a house of glass, wherever....I think of Springsteen and an America of peace, of long grass, of tall beers and that generosity of spirit that is the envy of all peoples.

I've driven her length and talked to her marrow. Long hours with a horse trader in Erin , S.Carolina who offered me his house for a week, if only I'd talk to him another hour. The stock traders in Houston who just smiled and laughed with me and we were as one. The longshoreman in Chicago who bought me a hot dog and said , just because, cause he liked who I was. I talked to all those and I pay tribute to them. It is this common stock from where the soil will show her real nature. I believe.

Whitman evokes this common thread of Freedom, the freedom to do (and say, which is the most important form of doing). In his song of occupations. He sings.

Quote:
From Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman:

1
A song for occupations! In the labor of engines and trades and the labor of fields I find the developments,
And find the eternal meanings.

Workmen and Workwomen!
Were all educations practical and ornamental well display'd out of me, what would it amount to?
Were I as the head teacher, charitable proprietor, wise statesman, what would it amount to?
Were I to you as the boss employing and paying you, would that satisfy you?

The learn'd, virtuous, benevolent, and the usual terms,
A man like me and never the usual terms.

Neither a servant nor a master I,
I take no sooner a large price than a small price, I will have my own whoever enjoys me,
I will be even with you and you shall be even with me.

If you stand at work in a shop I stand as nigh as the nighest in the same shop,
If you bestow gifts on your brother or dearest friend I demand as good as your brother or dearest friend,
If your lover, husband, wife, is welcome by day or night, I must be personally as welcome,
If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake,
If you remember your foolish and outlaw'd deeds, do you think I cannot remember my own foolish and outlaw'd deeds?
If you carouse at the table I carouse at the opposite side of the table,
If you meet some stranger in the streets and love him or her, why I often meet strangers in the street and love them.

Why what have you thought of yourself?
Is it you then that thought yourself less?
Is it you that thought the President greater than you?
Or the rich better off than you? or the educated wiser than you?

(Because you are greasy or pimpled, or were once drunk, or a thief,
Or that you are diseas'd, or rheumatic, or a prostitute,
Or from frivolity or impotence, or that you are no scholar and never saw your name in print, Do you give in that you are any less immortal?)

2

Souls of men and women! it is not you I call unseen, unheard, untouchable and untouching,
It is not you I go argue pro and con about, and to settle whether you are alive or no,
I own publicly who you are, if nobody else owns.

Grown, half-grown and babe, of this country and every country, indoors and out-doors, one just as much as the other, I see,
And all else behind or through them.

The wife, and she is not one jot less than the husband,
The daughter, and she is just as good as the son,
The mother, and she is every bit as much as the father.

Offspring of ignorant and poor, boys apprenticed to trades,
Young fellows working on farms and old fellows working on farms,
Sailor-men, merchant-men, coasters, immigrants,
All these I see, but nigher and farther the same I see,
None shall escape me and none shall wish to escape me.

I bring what you much need yet always have,
Not money, amours, dress, eating, erudition, but as good,
I send no agent or medium, offer no representative of value, but offer the value itself.

There is something that comes to one now and perpetually,
It is not what is printed, preach'd, discussed, it eludes discussion and print,
It is not to be put in a book, it is not in this book,
It is for you whoever you are, it is no farther from you than your hearing and sight are from you,
It is hinted by nearest, commonest, readiest, it is ever provoked by them.

You may read in many languages, yet read nothing about it,
You may read the President's message and read nothing about it there,
Nothing in the reports from the State department or Treasury department, or in the daily papers or weekly papers,
Or in the census or revenue returns, prices current, or any accounts of stock.



Back to Springsteen and his 69 Chevy with a 396 -- back to Freedom. God bless it and may no army, president, ceo or sycophant take it away......let's drive on a road to nowhere.....

DD

de tocqueville found at .. http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/DETOC/toc_indx.html

This little snippet tells much and de tocqueville is one who understands the American character. America's birth cries can also be found in Paine, the Rights of Man http://www.ushistory.org/Paine/rights/ , a traitor and drunk..........so often the case of those who give birth to much.....

Quote:
I accost an American sailor and inquire why the ships of his country are built so as to last for only a short time, he answers without hesitation that the art of navigation is every day making such rapid progress that the finest vessel would become almost useless if it lasted beyond a few years. In these words, which fell accidentally, and on a particular subject, from an uninstructed man, I recognize the general and systematic idea upon which a great people direct all their concerns. Aristocratic nations are naturally too liable to narrow the scope of human perfectibility; democratic nations, to expand it beyond reason.

[thepeel]