Jonathan's blog

I just found out that Lisa's first cousin Jonathan Birdwell was recently on Canadian TV on a panel discussing:

...how can you grow up in middle class Canada, and yet become so radicalized that you to turn to terrorism?

The discussion was prompted by the recent arrests of three men in Canada who were charged with conspiracy to facilitate a terrorist activity (link):

Three Ontario men accused of taking part in a domestic terrorist plot and possessing plans and materials to create makeshift bombs had allegedly selected specific targets in Canada, sources told CBC News.

The suspects are alleged to have discussed attacks on specific government buildings and city public transit systems, security sources told CBC News.

But none of the targets was in the United States, sources said.

Misbahuddin Ahmed, 26, and Hiva Alizadeh, 30, both of Ottawa, and 28-year-old Khurram Sher, of London, Ont., have all been charged with conspiracy to knowingly facilitate a terrorist activity.

Here is the video of the discussion:

Today Todd Bouldin suggested a "radical new way" to remember 9/11 that, ironically, is not new at all:

“Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody.  If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.  Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for ‘revenge is mine,’ says the Lord…Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

The Apostle Paul, Romans 12

I was thinking along the same lines yesterday while reading a guest column on WaPo's On Faith site by a fellow Lipscomb graduate: "Terry Jones is not the enemy."  In the column, David French laments the fact that the public has been distracted from its focus on our "real enemy" by Terry Jones' "stupid and senseless" Qur'an-burning stunt:

Terry Jones wasn't burning Qur'ans on September 10, 2001. He wasn't burning Qur'ans when the "Blind Sheik" plotted the first World Trade Center bombing or when Pan Am Flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland. Our enemies don't need Terry Jones to hate us or to recruit thousands of suicide bombers and tens of thousands of jihadists. So on this week of remembrance, let's take the cameras off the crank from Florida and put them instead on the yawning gap in the New York skyline and on the soldiers who fight to make sure the enemy can never strike again.

David concludes:

The media has made Terry Jones. The media can unmake him. And they should - after all, there's a real enemy out there to challenge, to shame, and to defeat.

As I read those sentences, one of the thoughts that came to my mind was what was conspicuously missing from that list of things we should do to our enemy: love them.

I wouldn't claim that I know how to love Al-Qaeda, but I have no doubt that loving them is what Christians are called to do.  This highlights to me the difficulty of  consistently following both the way of nationalism and the way of Christ.  Frankly, I don't know how a nation can simultaneously resist evil and follow Christ's radical command to not resist an evil person or follow the example of early Christians who submitted to painful death rather than take up weapons of earthly violence to resist persecution by the Roman empire.  This is why the concept of a "Christian nation" almost seems like an oxymoron or sorts.  Even if we focus only on the actions of an individual Christian, I'm too confused about how one consistently marries citizenship in earthly kingdoms with citizenship in the heavenly one to advise anyone about what they should or shouldn't do in matters like these of national defense, responding to Al-Qaeda, etc.

On a related subject, this past week I was annoyed by the admonitions to "Support the victims of the September 11 terrorist attack" by adding a little red 9/11 tag on the corner of your twitter avatar.  To me, that seemed like a lousy way to actually support the victims of 9/11.  I decided to google a way to help provide financial support to 9/11 victims.  I was surprised to find that I couldn't easily find such an option.  I learned that there was a fund created by Congress that provided compensation to victims that agreed not to sue the airlines.  There was also a September 11th Fund that raised and distributed > $500 million before it concluded in 2004.  I didn't find much else.  The few other organizations I found (link,link,link) seemed to be more about education and remembrance but not so much about actual support of victims.

This caused me to wonder: do the victims of 9/11 still need our support?  If so, why isn't there an easy way to do so that is more direct and more impactful than the superficial changing of a twitter avatar?

After highlighting the many pro-business aspects of the economy-boosting moves that the Obama admin has proposed this week, Ezra Klein writes (insightfully IMHO):

...it's worth thinking harder about the idea -- propagated by many on the right and some in the business community -- that this president is somehow anti-business. The health-care reform bill bends over backward to preserve each and every private industry currently overcharging us for our care. The Obama campaign publicly supported the bank bailout and then repelled the populist measures to really hammer banker pay when they got into office. The financial reform bill didn't break up the banks, set leverage requirements in statute or do any of a number of other things that would've really hurt the financial industry. The auto bailout was designed to preserve the existence of America's auto industry, and even the Economist has admitted that the Obama administration did everything in its power to "restore both firms to health and then get out as quickly as possible." The various stimulus measures have been designed to directly support businesses or indirectly support the people who those businesses rely on.

The point isn't that all of these policies were good. Some of them weren't. The point is that the constant accusation that this White House is somehow anti-business, or deaf to the corporate community's concerns, is a fiction of the Wall Street Journal editorial page. There's a good argument to be made, I think, that this White House is too focused on business, but it's annoying to have to frame it as a boldly counterintuitive point, rather than as an obvious conclusion based on their raft of policy initiatives meant to save, help or otherwise improve the position of corporate America.

Tonight we finished watching Alexandra Pelosi's Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County.

From the HBO site:

HOMELESS...explores the world of children who reside in discounted motels within walking distance of Disneyland, living in limbo as their families struggle to survive in one of the wealthiest regions of America.  The parents of motel kids are often hard workers who don't earn enough to own or rent homes.  As a result, they continue to live week-to-week in motels, hoping against hope for an opportunity that might allow them to move up in the O.C.

The toll of this lifestyle on their children is severe.  Though the community tries to provide adequate education and food, the day-to-day lives of motel kids are often a numbing exercise in frustrating complaints and ever-diminishing expectations.

These kids' lives are bleak, and I think Pelosi is right that you can find similar stories everywhere these days.  The kids' hopelessness that the film communicates is tragic.  Pelosi seems clumsy, though.  Her voice intrudes too often, as one reviewer put it, to "influence answers and provoke responses".

I give it 3 out of 5.